John Tierney writes about an interesting television special on fractals.
Category Archives: General Science
Due For Disaster
This article is about the potential for a great quake in San Francisco, but the problem is actually much more widespread. LA is vulnerable as well, though not, as popular imagination has it, from the San Andreas fault, which is quite a distance away. Of much more concern (particularly to me, as a property owner in the South Bay) is the Newport-Inglewood fault, which comes within a few miles of my house. That’s the fault that ruptured in the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, and a seven on it would be much worse than an eight on the San Andreas, because it runs right through the LA metro area.
The Northwest is also in danger–there could be a magnitude nine in the Seattle area at almost any time. Of course, the greatest danger is in those areas that get quakes so rarely that they’re in no way prepared for them, such as the east coast. There’s still a lot of unreinforced masonry there that will come tumbling down in the event of a significant temblor, and they’re not unheard of.
Of course, in Florida, I live in one of the most seismically inactive places in the country. I can put all kinds of things on top of other things here that I’d never consider doing in California. Instead, we have to watch the weather for hurricanes half the year.
Pre-Humans
Alan Boyle has a story on the latest thinking about Lucy, with a cool artist’s rendering. And of course, no post like this is complete without the usual clueless comments by the creationists.
The Last Of The Neanderthals
Here’s an interesting piece on the latest research, at National Geographic:
“Most Neanderthals and modern humans probably lived most of their lives without seeing each other,” he said, carefully choosing his words. “The way I imagine it is that occasionally in these border areas, some of these guys would see each other at a distance…but I think the most likely thing is that they excluded each other from the landscape. Not just avoided, but excluded. We know from recent research on hunter-gatherers that they are much less peaceful than generally believed.”
“Sometimes I just turn out the lights in here and think what it must have been like for them.”
Nasty, brutish, short.
And many people have no idea how close we are to returning to those days, should things take a wrong turn.
Worth Its Weight In Gold
A list of items that have a higher value density than gold. This is a characteristic of any viable product of space manufacturing, at least one that will have a market on earth, because transportation costs are so high.
Nurture, Not Nature
Wild dolphins learning to tail walk. It would be fascinating to finally break the code to their language, and find out just how much culture they have. We can’t replicate their sounds, but synthesizers should be able to.
Perseids
It’s that time of year again. They peak tonight (or rather, early tomorrow morning). Be sure to get out of town, though. You won’t see any but the very brightest with city lights around.
Big Deal
I have a new piece up on this week’s non-discovery of water on Mars.
Fraud Detection
The (modern) difference between science and the humanities.
You Want Transitional Fossils?
Carl Zimmer has the story.
A graduate student at the University of Chicago named Matt Friedman was starting to research his dissertation on the diversity of teleosts. While paging through a book on fish fossils, he noticed a 50-million year old specimen called Amphistium. Like many fish fossils, this one only showed the bones from one side of the animal. It was generally agreed that Amphistium belonged to some ordinary group of teleosts, although biologists argued over which one. But Friedman saw something different. To him it looked like a flounder.
[Via LGF]