CT Scans Show Dinosaur Tail Was a Bone Crusher
To estimate just how hard Ankylosaurus could hit with its tail club, Canadian researchers examined CT scans of several fossilized tails from dinos of different sizes. Combining the imaging data with measurements of the dinosaur’s backbone, they determined the Ankylosaurus could swing its tail in a 100 degree lateral arc, and that larger clubs could generate forces strong enough to crush bone.
I pointed out to Iain what she was doing and said, “Our cat is doing science experiments.”
If this were a Far Side cartoon, the cat would have a chemistry set, or something similar. But no, this is real life; it’s optics.
Learn how to blow bubbles with your old plastic CDs in this edition of ‘It’s Effin Science.’
U.S. Chamber of Commerce seeks trial on global warming
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.
Chamber officials say it would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” — complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.
What a bad idea for science.
This doesn’t bring the Scopes trial to my mind, as mentioned in the article — that wasn’t primarily about whether evolution was valid science. This is more like the story of how the Indiana House once unanimously passed a bill to make pi a rational number (3.2; the bill died in the senate). Our legal system doesn’t get to decide what is sound science or not; if it attempts to make such a decision, mother nature won’t care at all and won’t serve any contempt-of-court sentence for disobeying the judge.
The legal system doesn’t argue the same way that science does, which is why this is a common tactic for anti-scientists. Creationists putting Darwinism “on trial” in literature is not uncommon. The absurdity of calling evolution “Darwinism” aside for the moment, these “trials” include appeals to ridicule that might sound convincing to some, because there is much about science that isn’t intuitive. In physics, one could probably convince a lay person that quantum mechanics and relativity are wrong using a legal style of argument, just by pointing out some of the counterintuitive, nonclassical (or non-Galilean) aspects (A single particle goes through both slits? Absurd! Twins can age at different rates? Preposterous!) But QM and relativity are true, regardless of how much they contradict classical experience.
It can’t merely be lining up experts, either, because there is no science so well-established that you can’t find a somebody, somewhere, who has a degree and disagrees with the mainstream. There are physicists who disagree with QM and relativity, just as there are biologists who are creationists (or cdesign proponentsists). The bench isn’t very deep of course (there are more biologists named Steve who agree that evolution is true than all who are touted to disagree), but they are out there. What matters is the empirical evidence, and the people best qualified to tell us this are the scientists who do the kind of work in question, not a judge. True, the judge might/should rule in favor of the scientists in this kind of case, but if he didn’t, that wouldn’t change the fact that smoking causes cancer, evolution is true, photons interfere with themselves, pi is irrational and humans are causing global warming. That’s what the evidence tells us.
The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition?
The physics, and statistics, of flipping a coin.
The 50-50 proposition is actually more of a 51-49 proposition, if not worse. The sacred coin flip exhibits (at minimum) a whopping 1% bias, and possibly much more. 1% may not sound like a lot, but it’s more than the typical casino edge in a game of blackjack or slots. What’s more, you can take advantage of this little-known fact to give yourself an edge in all future coin-flip battles.
All Sorts: A Linguistic Experiment
All Sorts is a collection of collective nouns that may or may not have found their way into the Oxford English Dictionary. If you think that a charismatic collective is far superior to a dullard ‘bunch’ or ‘flock’ then this is the place for you.
It culls them from tweets, grabbing anything that is of the form “a this of thats”
a theory of scientists
a pratfall of clowns
a radiation of physicists
a melting pot of ukrainian nuclear physicists
a rant of bloggers
an array of geeks
I think tensor of geeks is better, but the only way to submit suggestions is to tweet. Alas, I don’t tweet. So I leave it to someone else to fix this, or proffer a test tube of chemists, or a thrust of geologists, or whatnot. (or a what of knots)
Water Striders. Filmed in slow-motion, of course.
There’s actually a bit of physics here, starting with the obvious, the reason they don’t sink: surface tension. Water is polar, so the molecules tend to attract each other, making the surface act like a series of springs and able to support small masses, up to the point that the attraction is overpowered.
Once the strider starts moving, we can see some more physics in action:
The water strider is actually hard to see in this picture — it’s a little above and the the left of center. The black dots are a shadow of sorts. The insect would not cast much of a visible shadow if it were on a flat surface; it’s small and light will tend to diffract around the legs. But what’s happening here is that the feet make an indentation in the water and it turns the now-curved surface of the water into a lens. And the lens is concave, so the light diverges and leaves a dark spot because light has been directed away.
The water strider has been moving, and this disturbs the water. We see the waves from this disturbance and the interference as two separate waves pass through each other.
Once again, you’re seeing the effects displayed on the creek bed, rather than the surface.
The 3 key parts of news stories you usually don’t get
(1): The longstanding facts
…
In reality, these longstanding facts provide the true foundation of journalism. But in practice, they play second-fiddle to the news, condensed beyond all meaning into a paragraph halfway down in a news story, tucked away in a remote corner of our news sites.
An interesting piece with which I basically agree; I’v noticed the problem of he absence of basic facts numerous times, especially on the 24-hour news shows. I’ve had the misfortune of tuning in a few hours after the breaking news was fist reported, and all I was fed was what had happened or come to light in the last hour or two, as if I was watching the whole time. Surely if you can repeat the same story every 15 minutes, you can give some background and context to it.