Category: Science

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What Are Dimensions, and How Many Do We Know About?

You’ve probably heard countless sci-fi flicks wax poetic about entering the ninth dimension, but what does that even mean?

What even are dimensions, and how do we exist in them? Are there really nine and counting?

Well, it all depends on how you look at it.

At our most basic understanding, we exist in a world that’s defined by four dimensions: length, width, height, and time.

Image Credit: Hyperspace

Any of these four coordinates can help us determine where exactly we are at any given time. By including time as one of the core dimensions, we can understand that a dimension does not have to be physical or spatial to exist. It can also be a theoretical, unseen concept. As such, plenty of scientists have speculated about the existence of multiple other dimensions. Some have even suggested that there might be as many as 10 or 11 of them.

Now, that sounds like a world of bizarre polygons.

How could more than four dimensions exist? The answer, to some theorists, it simple: all additional dimensions are simply “rolled up” – or hidden to the human eye.

Image Credit: Unsplash

There are certain limits to what we can and cannot see in terms of multi-dimensional planes:

  • One-dimensional spaces exist on a never-ending line, like an x- or y-axis.
  • Two-dimensional spaces exist on a flat plane, like a sheet of paper or a chess board.
  • Three-dimensional spaces exist pretty much how we see the world around us.
  • And a four dimensional spaces would just factor in time.

But five, six, seven, eight, and all other dimensional spaces of increasing value are a little trickier.

It takes a slightly more complicated explanation to justify the idea of more than four dimensions. Can you imagine that there’s a rolled up, six-dimensional tape hidden within each four-dimensional world? Well, that’s basically the super short way of explaining how ten dimensions could exist, even if they’re not seen.

The long explanation accounts for atoms, particle theory, and a lot more complicated stuff.

Image Credit: iStock

That doesn’t necessarily mean that these theories don’t hold weight, though. Almost anything is possible when it comes to string theory. After all, there’s a lot of empty space between nuclei and electrons in an atom.

What’s going on in that emptiness is still unknown to us. That leaves a lot of possibilities for other dimensions that we just don’t know about yet. There could be 20, 30, even 40 dimensions that exist and effect the world around us. We just can’t see them. That doesn’t make them any less real, though. If all these dimensions do happen to exist, maybe we can find some comfort in the vastness of it all.

What do you think about these possible dimensions? Are they totally bogus, or might they actually be real?

Let us know what you think in the comments!

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Crazy Facts 2020-12-10 15:04:51

After losing her position in her university’s anatomy department in 1938, Rita Levi-Montalcini set up a laboratory in her bedroom and studied the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. This work led to her discovery of nerve growth factor, for which she was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1986.

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This is How to Tell the Difference Between an Asteroid, a Meteorite, and a Comet

I’m not advising that any of us get up close and personal with any of these things. We’ve all seen the movies (so many movies!) and obviously, close encounters with burning hot rock from outer space never goes well for the inhabitants of planet Earth.

That said, wouldn’t you like to sound (even) smarter the next time you engage in a game of Trivial Pursuit, or run into an ex with his new girlfriend?

Of course you would!

So, let’s take a look at the differences between asteroids, meteorites, comets, and for extra fun, meteors, too!

Asteroids

Image Credit: iStock

These rocky objects are smaller than planets, and are left over from the formation of our solar system. Basically, when a cloud of gas and dust collapsed to form our fun, the big chunks of remaining material turned into planets. The smaller fragments of dust are what’s left behind, just floating around waiting to kill us all.

There are millions of known asteroids. the largest, Ceres, is nearly 600 miles wide – big enough to be classified as a dwarf planet, technically. NASA tracks the asteroids that are nearest to Earth (Ceres is not one of them, thank goodness), and plots their trajectories to make sure they’re not coming too close.

Most of them are irregular in shape and sometimes orbit each other and the sun in small groups. Their compositions vary based on how far away they were from the sun when they formed.

The space between Marys and Jupiter is known as the asteroid belt, and that’s where most of them good-sized rocks reside.

Comets

Image Credit: iStock

Comets are also composed of leftover materials, and they formed around the same time as the asteroids. While asteroids formed toward the inner, hotter regions of the solar system, though, comets formed further out – beyond the frost (or snow) lines, where water can freeze.

That means that, instead of being comprised of only rock or other metals solid enough not to melt, comets are formed from frozen gas, rock, ice, and dust. Some scientists call them “dirty snowballs,” and are easily identifiable by their trailing jets of gas and dust that melt away as they fly too close to the sun.

Meteors

Image Credit: iStock

A meteor is an asteroid that is vaporized when it hits Earth’s atmosphere.

We sometimes see the glowing hot air left behind, and call them “shooting stars.”

We also see meteor showers, when more than one enters our atmosphere at the same time.

Meteorites

Image Credit: iStock

Meteorites are what survives the dive through the atmosphere to land on Earth’s surface.

They’re usually made from iron or stone, a mix of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, and a smattering of other elements.

Studying these fragments has helped us understand the age and formation of our solar system, and how and when Earth came into existence.

Well, now you know!

This information will come in handy one day, I just know it!

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Swimming in Cold Water Might Help Ward Off Dementia

If you’re fast approaching middle age (like I am) or are staring down the later years of your life and hoping to spend most of them lucid and enjoying the fruits of your labor, then keeping your mind in tact is likely something that interests you.

Dementia is scary, and it affects so many of our family and friends – which is why there’s so much research that goes into finding ways to combat it.

Most recently, a team from Cambridge University found that people who regularly swim outdoors in the winter had elevated levels of a protein that plays a key role in forming brain connections.

Image Credit: iStock

The protein in question has been found to help protect the brain against other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, too.

Professor Giovanna Mallucci, the Associate Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute, talked about the results in an online lecture.

Researchers have known for some time that the process of forming new synapses declines over time, and also that this process can be influenced by temperature. Hibernating mammals, for example, experience a loss of synapses when they sleep through the winter, but they are restored upon awakening in the spring.

A previous paper, published in Nature, revealed that a “cold shock” protein in the brain – RBM3 – is responsible.

In mice, exposure to freezing temperatures caused a loss of synapses… but that their RBM3 levels skyrocketed as they warmed up, allowing them to form healthy new ones.

Image Credit: iStock

Researchers then measured RBM3 levels in a group of outdoor swimming enthusiasts, all of whom became hypothermic during their chilly dips.

When compared to a group of non-swimmers, the ones who swam in cold water had higher levels of RBM3 in their blood, leading to the belief that hypothermic conditions does trigger the release of this key protein in humans, too.

This foundation is exciting and strong, but without peer-reviewed research or other, similar findings, we can’t say for sure that taking winter dips in the water will keep your brain healthy for years to come.

Image Credit: iStock

Letting yourself get too cold, or wandering too far down the path to hypothermia, is also deadly – so don’t try this at home until the scientists are sure it’s something that works.

So… just don’t do it alone. Or do it at the gym if they have a cold dip pool. We just don’t want you to drown or get hurt.

The good news for those of us how HATE being cold? If the RBM3 protein is shown to help regenerate skills, we’ll likely see the development of drugs that can help stimulate the desired responses without having to go swimming in the freezing cold.

Three cheers for science!

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People Are Sharing Things They’ll Miss About Lockdowns

Guess what, everyone?

The pandemic isn’t over yet! Not even close, in fact…

And, while we’re seeing a lot of people out there ACTING like things have improved, we all need to be smart about wearing a mask, keeping our distance from people, and washing our hands.

Regardless of all those pesky FACTS, people have been tweeting out what they’re going to miss about lockdown…whenever that happens. It’s good to dream, I guess…let’s take a look at what people had to say! Stay safe out there!

1. That’s a good thing.

Trust me, you’ll be able to hibernate this whole winter.

2. Awwwwww. Keep on enjoying that.

Looks like a good companion.

3. That is definitely a positive thing.

Let’s all keep ’em clean when this is over, okay?

4. The perfect excuse…

What’s YOURS?

5. They’re always there for you.

You gotta love that!

6. All kinds of experiments going on.

That can be good or bad…just ask your pets.

7. All kinds of good stuff.

You still have a good amount of time to enjoy all of this.

8. Pretty steady where I’m at.

That’s cheap!

9. Livin’ the life.

Like I said, lockdown ain’t going anywhere, so keep on enjoying it.

10. Guest appearance!

You know your co-workers love it!

11. Family is everything.

I’m sure they love having you there!

12. Oh come on, lighten up…

Give people a chance! It’s worth it!

Sorry, folks, but we still have quite a ways to go before we can get back to normal again…

Now we want to hear from you!

How are you spending your time during the lockdown?

Talk to us in the comments! And stay safe out there!

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People Share the Scientific Facts They Really Wish Weren’t True

Believing in science is important, and when a fact is irrefutable, researched, and peer-reviewed, we should all accept that it’s true.

That doesn’t mean we have to like it, though.

Here are 17 people who have a beef with one scientific fact or another, and their reasons are pretty darn good.

17. We have no idea what’s down there.

The fact that 80% of the ocean is unexplored.

All of that vast ocean… and we have no idea what’s in it.

16. Well that’s terrible.

Pandas often have twins, but usually the mother can only manage to care for one, so the other is abandoned.

Giant panda cubs can’t even open their eyes until they’re 6 weeks old, and can’t move around until they’re 3 months.

Poor little guys.

15. We won’t be around to see it either way.

The universe was theorized to either slam back together after many more billions of years and possibly create a new Big Bang, or just die by expanding away from everything else and getting colder and colder until atom basically stop moving.

I think its called the Big Chill. Guess which one sounds worse. You pick the Big Chill? Well thats the one scientists believe is the one thats gonna happen.

14. The face I am making right now.

Otters are not as nice as the look.

Male otters sometimes hold pups ransom to force their mothers to give up some of their food

They kill for fun, like a bunch of sociopaths,

One of them grabbed a baby harbor seal (with their fangs) and raped it to death.

11 percent of sea otters found dead on the California coast from 1998 to 2001 were killed, at least in part, by trauma associated with mating.

Also, they are necrophiles.

13. Makes you feel safe, doesn’t it.

Carbon fiber is extremely strong, but only when forces are applied in the direction of the fibers. If you apply the force perpendicular to the fibers, a carbon fiber will split easily.

So you either have to figure out where the forces will be and position the fibers of a carbon fiber part in that direction or settle for a sometimes weaker metal part, which can withstand forces in all directions.

12. Females always getting the short end of the stick.

Felines (and some other animals) have barbed penises which make intercourse extremely painful for females. Females will even try to escape because it causes so much pain.

Unfortunately the spikes are necessary to stimulate ovulation, so it’s unavoidable for reproduction.

11. It’s simple math.

Bigger people, be it taller or fatter are more likely to develop cancer than someone smaller. If anyone doesn’t know what cancer actually is it’s what happens when a cell divides incorrectly and it begins to reproduce at very high speeds.

The more cells someone has the more likely they are to develop cancer. This is not taking any exposure to a substance that can cause cancer into consideration.

10. I would very much never like to find out.

That you can get a blockage in your bowels and die crapping out of your mouth.

9. We so want it to be possible.

That nothing can go faster than the speed of light. I sucks because it make space exploration like in SciFi impossible. And yes I know that there might be ways around it or stuff like wormholes but right now they aren’t really possible.

There is tons of cool stuff we might be able to do in the future. Send seed ships to other solar system. Make generation ship to closer ones. Colonise and terraforming the solar system. Make drone exploration ship.

But actually go from system to system like in star wars, star trek and a million other show. Not an option and might very well never be.

8. We should be more careful.

Materials that are really useful, but extremely harmful.

Asbestos is an amazing material, if it didn’t cause cancer then freakin everything should be made of it. Lightweight, strong for its density, entirely fireproof, and extremely carcinogenic.

Lead paint and leaded gasoline is just plain better, real shame lead is so poisonous because otherwise you’d never want to use the lead-free versions of those things.

Carbon nanotubes, while not something that currently has practical application, probably never will because like asbestos they cause cancer. It is outstanding what that stuff is capable of, but breathing in broken material will absolutely give you cancer.

I’m sure there are some others I’m forgetting.

7. There are ways to deal with it.

Trauma stays with you for the rest of your life.

There are ways to help overcome it but it never truly leaves and will always keep affecting you to a degree.

6. That sounds unpleasant for all involved.

Animals, like Hamsters, have more babies then their bodies (nipples) can feed.

In order to save the others from competing with each other, the mother will eat any additional young, alive.

5. Really? That’s the thing?

Friction does not depend on surface area but instead on normal force on that surface and friction coefficient.

Drives me mad. If I could ask god one thing it’d be to change this.

4. Not-so-fun facts.

“Increasing number of people are unknowingly spreading HIV because they don’t get regular STI check ups”

– Doctors when I get STI check ups.

3. That sounds terrible.

There have been only 3 people who had died out of the earth.

They were the crew of the Soyuz 11. There have been recorded details about the mission, mostly graphic.

You know something was very serious when even the USSR doesn’t even bother covering it.

Yep, even the USA learned about it the second they heard about it.

2. But only if you’re not blind.

That being blind is akin to trying to watch the back of your head, you simply can’t, blind people don’t see black, they literally see nothing.

It’s a terrifying thought.

1. This really is the worst.

Things that taste good are bad for you.

In 1948, the Framingham Heart Study enrolled more than 5,000 residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, to participate in a long-term study of risk factors for heart disease. (Very long term—the study is now enrolling the grandchildren of the original volunteers.)

It and subsequent ambitious and painstaking epidemiological studies have shown that one’s risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, certain kinds of cancer and other health problems increases in a dose-dependent manner upon exposure to delicious food.

Steak, salty French fries, eggs Benedict, triple-fudge brownies with whipped cream—turns out they’re killers. Sure, some tasty things are healthy—blueberries, snow peas, nuts and maybe even (oh, please) red wine.

But on balance, human taste preferences evolved during times of scarcity, when it made sense for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to gorge on as much salt and fat and sugar as possible. In the age of Hostess pies and sedentary lifestyles, those cravings aren’t so adaptive.

Me? Why can’t time travel actually work? I have things to do.

What would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments!

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This is How Scientists Figured Out the Age of the Earth

How old humanity is will remain a point of contention probably for as long as there are people around to argue.

When it comes to the age of this beauty, disastrous planet we all call home, though, scientists are pretty much in agreement as far as when she was born in a fury of explosions and creation.

Image Credit: iStock

What you’ll find if you Google this question (aside from my amazingly succinct and informative article), is that – since the 1950s – scientists have been secure in the belief that the earth is around 4.54 billion years old (plus or minus 50 million years).

People have been working on the answer to this question for a few hundred years, actually, all the way back to Greek philosopher Aristotle. He believed that time had no beginning and no end, and that the earth was infinitely old.

In ancient India, religious scholars envisioned a universe that perpetually exploded, expanded, and collapsed before beginning again – their calculations were that this had been happening for around 1.97 billion years.

Image Credit: iStock

In the Middle Ages, Christian scholars combed the Bible for clues, coming up with much shorter estimates, somewhere between 5471 and 7519 years.

From the Renaissance on, scientists looked at factors from the planet’s rate of cooling, the accumulation of sediment, and the chemical evolution but came up with such wide-ranging answers there couldn’t be a consensus.

Around the turn of the 20th century, scientists discovered they could calculate how old a rock was by measuring radioactive decay, from which we got carbon dating – a reliable method for measuring large swaths of time.

In the 1950s, a geochemist named Clair C. Patterson – who had worked on the Manhattan Project – measured the isotopic composition of lead from the Canyon Diablo meteorite and other space rock samples that correlated to the formation of the earth.

Image Credit: Public Domain

His estimate – 4.5 billion years.

That number has been revised only slightly in the decades since.

Patterson recalled later that “no one cared about it.”

Image Credit: Public Domain

He feels that remains true even today, and maybe even less so.

It’s pretty cool to think about, though – rocks from space can tell us how long our planet has been around.

It’s like alien but not, and if you take the time to ponder it for a few minutes more, I doubt you’ll be sorry!

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Futurists Weigh In on What Our World Might Look Like in 500 Years

Barring any significant scientific advancements, none of us alive today are going to be around in 500 years. That doesn’t mean we can’t harbor some curiosity about whether or not our planet will look the same for our descendents, or different?

If it’s going to look different, how will it look different? It can be a crazy thing to consider, and not just from a technology point of view, either.

Image Credit: Pexels

500 years ago, after all, the world barely resembles the one we see all around us today. It was in the midst of a small Ice Age, and a period of vast European exploration and discovery.

When looking ahead several centuries, it’s hard to say for sure, largely because we remain unsure how the relationship between humans and the natural world is going to develop. We’ve been leaving our mark on the Earth since the Neolithic Age, manipulating the evolution of domestic plants and animal species, transforming the landscape, and of course, burning fossil fuels to our heart’s consent.

We’ve altered the planet’s climate, which continues to change and affect everything around us. Carbon dioxide levels are up to 412 parts per million as of the end of 2019, and global temperatures and sea levels are also on the rise.

Our planet is warming, and scientists have been warning for decades that natural disasters, food shortages, and other catastrophic events will eventually lead to social unrest, mass migration, and increased conflict.

Will the 26th century humans be dealing with the fallout of our lack of action? Or will they be looking back and thanking us for changing course while there was still time?

Image Credit: Pexels

Technology will surely continue to advance, and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku predicts that, by then, humans will be a civilization that’s learned to harness the entire sum of a planet’s energy. That means they would be able to use any clean energy technology we’ve imagined, and probably some that we haven’t.

Other theoretical futurists disagree, citing political and economic forces being likely to thwart any real steps toward progress.

Machine learning will be AMAZING, though. Stephen Hawking weighed in, proposing that by the year 2600, we would be publishing theoretical physics papers every 10 seconds. Moore’s Law says computer speed and complexity double every 18 months, so some of this work would surely be done by machines, without assistance.

Chew on that for a minute.

Other ideas include the average human lifespan stretching to 140 years, and that the digital storage of human personalities will let humans achieve a sort of immortality. We’ll be farming oceans, traveling in starships, and living on the moon and on Mars while robots take on the great frontiers.

Image Credit: Pexels

If any or all of that sounds pretty cool to you, I suggest you start calling your representatives today and pushing for action on climate change.

Otherwise we’re just going to be fighting over land and food instead of living on Mars.

And you’ve gotta agree that one of those things sounds way cooler than the other.

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