Archive for science
5 Random Things About Skylab
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Skylab was the first and only American space station to date (I’m not counting the International Space Station because of the cooperation of the 15 other countries in addition to the United States). It suffered from being stuck between two eras; the era of moon exploration and the space shuttle era, and thus was only visited 3 times. The U.S. abandoned Skylab in 1974 after it had no more vehicles capable of reaching the station, and it burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere in 1979. Here are 5 more quirky facts about Skylab.
- Skylab was the first spacecraft to be inhabited for over 100 days. The crews that visited Skylab remained in orbit for a total of 171 days. They proved that humans could remain in space for an extended period of time.
- Each Skylab crew set a new spaceflight duration record. The first crew was the first to remain in orbit for four weeks, the second crew was the first to remain in orbit for eight weeks, and the third crew was the first to remain in orbit for twelve weeks.
- The commander of the first manned Skylab mission was also the 3rd person to walk on the moon. Paul Pete Conrad, commander of the Skylab-2 mission was also the commander of the Apollo 12 mission, which was the second trip to the moon.
- Skylab was NOT the world’s first space station. The Soviet Union launched Salyut-1, the first manned space station, in 1971. As a matter of fact, the Soviet Union built four space stations before the United States launched Skylab in 1973. One failed to enter orbit and two failed to remain in orbit long enough to send a manned mission to them.
- Skylab re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere prematurely. Skylab was supposed to remain in orbit for 8-10 years after the last mission in 1974. However, due to unexpectedly high solar activity, Skylab re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere in 1979. When it re-entered, it scattered debris across Western Australia and the eastern part of the Indian Ocean. The Shire of Esperance, a municipal area of southwest Australia, issued NASA a $400 fine for littering, a fine which remain unpaid until 2009.
Skylab is a monument to human achievement. It proved that people could survive in weightlessness for extended periods, and many of the principles of Skylab have been used in successive space stations, including Mir and the International Space Station.
5 Nikola Tesla Innovations Way Ahead of Their Time
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Born on July 10, 1856, Nikola Tesla was quite possibly one of the greatest inventors in modern history. Originally from Serbia, Tesla emigrated to the United States in 1884, where he became an employee of Thomas Edison. The two would become rivals over differences of opinion about money and electrical currents. Nevertheless, Tesla became one of the most prolific inventors of the 19th and 20th centuries, applying for 278 patents, in addition to coming up with a bunch of theoretical innovations. Sadly, Tesla passed away during World War II, virtually penniless. Here’s a glimpse at some of the stuff that Tesla came up with that the world just didn’t appreciate.
UPDATE: I’ve received a number of comments about Tesla’s ethnicity, so let me clarify. I said he was from Serbia, but he was actually born in Croatia. Tesla was, in fact, an ethnic Serb, though.
- Radio: Nikola Tesla first demonstrated radio in 1894. The world quickly took notice as a means to gossip with others from a distance. However, Tesla had other ideas in mind. In the late 19th century, Tesla demonstrated a radio-controlled boat to the U.S. military, expecting them to jump at the chance to control their equipment remotely. Unfortunately, they didn’t, and the world didn’t start taking radio-control vehicles seriously until the 1960s. Just imagine how different the World Wars might have been if the vehicles were controlled by radio…
- Wireless Energy Transfer: Tesla promoted the idea of being able to power machinery without the hassle of wires. I’m no electrical engineer, so I have no idea how it worked, but he was able to wirelessly power light bulbs as early as 1891. By 1899, Tesla was able to power 200 light bulbs using one electric motor 26 miles away! Here we are over 100 years later, and the closest we’ve come is an overpriced mat that requires special adapters to charge our electronic toys
Tesla with one of his inventions, a wirelessly powered light bulb
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- Free Energy: Tesla also worked on the idea of using renewable energy in order to create electricity. He believed that energy could be harnessed from anywhere in the universe, such as the sun, and even the Earth itself. One of his more ambitious ideas was to utilize the environment in order to wirelessly power planes and boats. His ideas laid the groundwork for the current field of ocean thermal energy conversion, which includes technologies such as desalinization. With cheap and easy access to fossil fuels, though, Tesla’s contemporaries just didn’t see the need to research this innovation further.
- VTOL Aircraft: Long before the F-35 or the Harrier Jump Jet, Tesla came up with the idea for a plane that could take off and land vertically. You’d think his idea would be awkward, with rotors and such, making it look like the bastard child of a jet and helicopter. However, his idea is the basis of current versions of VTOL aircraft. What’s even more amazing is that Tesla patented his VTOL aeroplane in 1928, yet it didn’t enter into serious development until the 1960s.
- Death Ray: In 1934, Nikola Tesla claimed to have built a directed-energy weapon that he called a teleforce. Tesla’s teleforce was a charged particle beam projector which was intended for military use. Nobody invested in his idea at the time, so he never got to actually build it. To this day, though, the U.S. government is doing experiments related to Tesla’s “death ray.”
Nikola Tesla was a brilliant man, considered by some to be a mad scientist. However, upon his death in 1943, the U.S. War Department confiscated his materials, classifying them Top Secret. They then spent the following two years making copies of everything Tesla had on file, proving the value of his ideas. Tesla was truly one of the greatest inventors in history, and I’m not just saying that because I’m submitting this via wi-fi.
5 Random Things About Charles Richard Drew
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Charles Drew was an African-American physician who pioneered the field of blood transfusions and in many eyes “invented” the blood bank. I put invented in quotation marks, because a blood bank is an idea, and there were already methods of blood storage, but Drew’s research greatly improved the length of time that blood could be stored. Drew also pioneered the concept of separating blood from plasma, and recognized that while there are separate blood types there is only one type of plasma. He was also vehemently opposed to the policy of racial segregation which stated that the blood from white donors should be separate from the blood from black donors. In honor of Black History Month, here are 5 more random facts about Charles Drew.
- Charles Drew was the first African-American to serve as an examiner on the American Board of Surgery.
- Charles Drew was the first African-American to receive a Doctor of Medical Science degree from Columbia University.
- Charles Drew was also an outstanding athlete. In high school he played football, baseball, basketball, track and field, and swimming, and won his high school’s award for best all-around athlete. In college, he captained the Amherst College track team and also played halfback on the football team, winning All-American honors in the latter.
- Before entering medicine, Charles Drew served as Athletic Director and head football coach for two years at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. The football team had a 8-2-2 record during that span.
- Charles Drew died from injuries sustained in a car accident on April 1, 1950. A popular urban legend states that he was denied a blood transfusion at an all-white hospital because of his race. However, this has been found to be untrue, as Drew suffered from massive internal injuries and a blood transfusion would not have helped him because his injuries were too severe.
If it wasn’t for the research and efforts of the real Dr. Drew, college students everywhere would have to find another way to sell their body for ramen.
Who was Alfred Nobel?
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Alfred Nobel
Born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1833, Nobel was the third son of wealthy industrialist Immanuel Nobel. Immanuel Nobel invented the rotary lathe used in plywood manufacturing, and also invented a type of underwater bomb similar to a torpedo. In 1842, the Nobel family moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, where Immanuel Nobel opened an armaments factory. This is where Alfred Nobel would get his start, experimenting with nitroglycerin alongside his father and brothers. In 1867, three years after an accidental explosion at the family factory killed his younger brother Emil, Nobel discovered a way to incorporate nitroglycerin with an inert substance in order to allow for safe transport. He originally wanted to call his new invention “Nobel’s Safe Powder” in order to differentiate it from the dangerous explosives that the Nobel family had been manufacturing. Instead, he named his invention dynamite, in reference to the Greek word for strength, thinami.
The Nobel Prize
Despite the fact that he had no formal secondary education, Alfred Nobel amassed a great fortune, learned six languages, and was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1888, after the death of his older brother Ludvig, a French Newspaper mistakenly ran an obituary for Alfred with the headline Le marchand de la mort est mort (The merchant of death is dead). A lifelong pacifist, Nobel, desired to leave a better legacy, so he set aside the majority of his estate for the creation of the Nobel Prizes to award excellence in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. In 1969, the Central Bank of Sweden began awarding economists as well, although Alfred Nobel’s great-grand nephew requested that they rename the prize in 2001.
Thanks for reading! Do you think Barack Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize? Take the poll, and let EiH know.
7 Non-fatal Injuries That Should Have Been Fatal
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Image by funadium via Flickr
The folks over at humor site Cracked are giving medical journals a run for their money with their latest post, as they chronicle the stories of 7 individuals who under normal circumstances would have died, but somehow survived their ordeal. As they say, the human body is a miracle. Of course, being that it is Cracked, the language is of an adult nature, so if you are easily offended by such things, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
7 Fatal Injuries (That People Somehow Survived) [via Cracked.com]
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The Pre-history of the Swine Flu Pandemic
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Courtesy of Ben Chau on Flickr
Remember when swine flu was the only thing anyone would talk about? Swine flu was going to kill everyone and then we would be reduced to a post-apolcalyptic civilization similar to 12 Monkeys. Then we found out that everything was going to be ok, and there was nothing to panic about because the swine flu was apparently a kissing cousin of the regular flu. They even stopped calling it swine flu in favor of the technical term H1N1, so people would buy pork again. Great, nothing to worry about. Then came the pandemic announcement yesterday, which the World Health Organization was quick to disclaim measures the spread, not necessarily the deadliness. For most of us, the terms swine flu, hamthrax, H1N1…the hampocalypse (i couldn’t resist) entered into our vernacular just recently. But health officials have known about H1N1 for a while. Here’s the pre-history of the swine flu pandemic.
A Definitive Assessment of Intelligent Design vs. Evolution: Part 5
Posted by: | CommentsThis is the final story in a five-part series comparing the theory of evolution with the theory of intelligent design. In honor of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, EverythingIsHistory.com has invited writer Tomo Albanese to share his experience of discussing the origins of man with a lawyer from the Discovery Institute, a proponent of the theory of intelligent design. If you haven’t read the other articles, here are the links to the other 4 parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
The Science of the Theory of Evolution or “Why the Theory of Evolution has Withstood the Test of Time”
“Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?
Innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?
Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?
Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, pp. 172, 280)
In the last day of Darwin Week, it is altogether appropriate that we discuss Evolution Theory and why it is the rock-solid foundation of the biological sciences – leaving Intelligent Design as the mere foot-note in history that it surely will occupy.
The theory of evolution is a theory often misunderstood and truly underappreciated. Published in 1859, The Origin of the Species while simple has influenced and been supported by nearly every branch of science it’s superficially touched. It has purpose and it is useful, and these are the very basics of why it is such an important scientific theory. For example, understanding the theory of evolution is integral to creating effective antibiotics and vaccines, animal management in areas like wildlife preservation and fish farms, aerospace engineering, architecture, astrophysics, data mining, electrical engineering, finance, geophysics, materials engineering, military strategy, pattern recognition, and the list just goes on and one. Many engineers actually use evolutionary models to find things like optimal wing shape and the most effective geometric structures for economy of motion. Still, these are just examples of how we know it works today, getting to this point was an amazing journey in itself.
A common mistake most people make about evolution is the assumption that it is random, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. We know this because Darwin founded his grand idea on more than just simple observation. Darwin founded his theory of evolution on understanding how we can track the passing of unique character combinations via nested hierarchies.
Sounds complicated, right?
Well, all of the advanced mathematics aside (Darwin was a scientist, but we don’t have to be), think of it in this way. When we say that blonde-haired blue-eyed left handed people will pass on their blonde hair, blue eyes, and left handed abilities to their children, this is what is considered a unique character combination – it’s completely unique to this group that we are talking about. Now, the mathematics of nested hierarchies basically explains that there is a specific way these traits will be passed on from generation to generation, and using this math we can predict how that will look – basically if evolution is true, the math will add up. One plus one equals two, and in the case of evolution, its dead-on.
So when someone asks where we get the “Tree of Life” from, you can tell them that the phylogeny is based off of the mathematics of nested hierarchies. Trust me; chicks love it when you say that.
Still, the fact that mathematics confirmed evolution isn’t even the most impressive part for me; it’s that genetics does too. Why is this so impressive? How about because Darwin would have known next to nothing about genetics – Mendel didn’t write his work until about 7 years after Darwin published The Origin of the Species, and that paper wasn’t fully understood until almost 40 years later. In fact, it’s only been within the past decade or so that we’ve truly discovered how accurate Darwin was with his predictions, and every day we find out more and more – in large part thanks to Darwin.
You’ll notice I haven’t brought up the wealth of fossil evidence, geological evidence, or even the genetic markers that we can trace along the genetic branches of the species that thrive around us. I also didn’t mention how mankind has engineered species and has even influenced the evolution of species since we could first farm. The reason I haven’t mentioned this is because it simply isn’t important. The fossil record is completely unimportant, as are “transitional forms” which is often mentioned by creationists. Why are they unimportant? Simple, they are completely unnecessary to support the theory of evolution. We have them to be sure; they are just completely unimportant thanks to genetics and the study of bacteria. We have WATCHED macroevolution happening in a lab, where we have seen bacteria go from eating petroleum to eating specifically rubber, and we watched the same happen in nature. If evolution didn’t happen, then where do these rubber and plastic eating bacteria come from?
Still, if you must see at least one to be satisfied, look in the mirror. You are a transitional form, so are your pets and countless other creatures in the world – all transitioning on evolutions extremely slow time-scale. In Darwin’s time they did not have an accurate idea of how old the earth truly was, so they could not fathom the amount of time that species actually had to evolve from the unicellular organisms that they once were. So in short, it is because Darwin and others back in 1859 believed the earth was much younger than it actually is that Darwin said the quote that I copied above. As it turns out, Darwin’s theory was also confirmed by the geological and astronomical sciences when they adjusted the age of the earth, so once again, Darwin had it right.
While I could go on for pages talking about the rock-solid nature of this theory, there simply isn’t enough time or energy to go into it all. For now, I must simply say, “Thank you Darwin.”One of the most influential minds has given humanity one of the most influential theories, and at one of the most influential times in the history of our planet, I think it’s appropriate that we give credit where credit is due.
Cheers Darwin, and thanks.
Cheers, Darwin
