Gravity

Who is the greater, now that's a thought

Gravity, we take it for granted, we really do- but was is it, really? The concept was first given a sound rational and mathematical basis by Sir Isaac Newton in his Magnus Opus, ‘Principia’, 1687. But it was not always this way.

The ancient Greeks had their own ideas of why objects moved. The Greek/Macedonian philosopher, Aristotle of the 4th century BC, had worked out a system based on pure thought and a little empirical observation. Aristotle had some very strange ideas, many of which were not questioned for nearly two thousand years- such was the authority of this Great Man. Aristotle's concept of motion is very odd to the modern mind and follows naturally on from 'Aristotelian metaphysics'. To fully understand the concept of motion in Aristotelian terms requires a thorough drenching in Aristotelian metaphysics, a chore I have no intention of attempting here, so a brief summary concerning Aristotle's 'notions on motions' will have to do. According to Aristotle, motion on earth was due to the application of force- not an unreasonable and a correct supposition. Without an applied force there can be no motion. Why an object continued to move after the applied force was removed bothered the ancient Greeks. The concept of inertia did not occur to them. Aristotle believed that everything was composed of four basic elements: earth, water, air and fire. Amongst these elements like attracted like. Thus if you held out a rock and dropped it, the rock would fall because it was attracted to 'like', the bigger rock, the earth. His next class of explanation concerned the movement of the 'heavenly bodies.' Remember, Aristotle, like most ancients, thought the earth remained stationary and that the sun and other heavenly bodies moved around the earth in perfect circle. The movement of these objects was caused by the 'Prime Mover', the ultimate artificer, which we would equate with a deity. As the 'Prime Mover' was by definition, perfect, the motion was perfect and the perfect geometric conception for the Greeks was a circle. I will not delve into the ancient concept of motion any longer, except to say it was extraordinary wrong but extraordinary influential for many centuries.     

Isaac Newton worked out the laws and concept of motion which lay folk recognise as modern and it was he who proposed gravitational force to explain motion on earth and in the heavens. Newton's concepts did not arise from an intellectual vacuum and his work was influenced by eminent antecedents such as Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo. Simply stated, gravity is an attractive ‘force’ between two bodies dependant on relative mass and the distance between the two bodies. As mass increases so does the gravitational force of that mass. The attractive force between two bodies decreases as the distance between the bodies increases. Newton deduced that the decrease in attraction follows the inverse square rule. Or in other words, doubling the distance decreases the force by a factor of four. Gravity keeps us firmly planted and explains the motions of the moon, planets and even the sun with a high degree of predictability. Gravity is considered one of the four, fundamental physical forces in nature. We feel gravity on earth as a primary force because in relation to us feeble humans, the earth is very large.

Using his concept of gravity, Newton was able to provide an explanation for the motions of the planetary bodies which proved astonishingly accurate. But there was a problem which puzzled Newton and his learned contemporaries. How could two bodies separated by a great distance experience attraction? What was the mechanism involved? How could the sun 'detect' the earth and 'pull' it toward itself? Although Newton was able to describe the effects of gravity, he failed to understand it and never proposed a mechanism of action.

According to Newton, the laws governing motion and gravity were universal and applied to all bodies of mass regardless where they sat in the cosmos. The forces acting on an apple falling from a tree were essentially the same for the moon orbiting the earth. Newton was able to describe motion with the precision of a Swiss watch, or so he thought.

The Newtonian world view was shattered by an unassuming patent office clerk in the 1900s. Einstein's theory, of 'General Relativity' proposes that gravity is not a force at all but the consequence of mass warping space-time. Mass causes space to bend and the 'bent space' determines how mass moves. The greater the mass, the greater space is bent. This is not an intuitive concept, especially as most folk envisage space as not having any discernable  properties. Space is supposedly empty, isn't it? And to make things more interesting, mass also affects time as well. Thus mass, time and space are interrelated phenomena. Space consists of three dimensions and time simply adds a further, fourth dimension. Although, difficult to contemplate, Einstein's 'Theory of Relativity' has proven the best model we have to explain reality. The best analogy is represented in the 'rubber sheet' model represented below. As you can see, a large round object is placed in the centre of a tethered rubber sheet. This object causes the sheet to bend. Another object placed on the sheet will fall toward the dip in the sheet and therefore be 'attracted' to the large object.

a

Is this reality? Not really

Of course this simple illustration only utilises two dimensions. In the real situation we have to factor in at least two further dimensions and perhaps more. An explanation of why mass causes space-time to warp requires a consideration of the concept of 'stress-energy tensor'. A discussion of the physics and sadly, mathematics, is beyond the remit of a simple blog post. For those endowed with an adventurous intellectual spirit, I advise a Google search.

So there you have it, gravity is both subtle and weird, just like this blog.

    

The Ballad of Lugless Douglas

The Ballad of Lugless Douglas

 by Oscar Smiled



Can you hear me, Dougie?

 

              He wore his scarlet shell suit,
              Stained with beer and food,
              And nicotine stained his hands
              When they found him in the road,
              The poor man had lost an ear,
              And the bloody stump did exude.

              He tottered amongst the drunken men,
              An earhole rent and tore;  
              A knotted hanky was on his head,
              An orifice spewing gore;
              But I never saw a man
              Spewing forth such bright red ichor.

              I never saw a man who bled
             With such wistful aplomb
             Upon the street that night
             And nowhere a soothing balm,
             Yet at every pump of blood that vent
             A bloody mess did he become.

             He walked, with staggered step,
             Within a world of pain,
             And wondered where his ear had gone                                                                             
             It had disappeared down the drain,
             When a low voice whispered so,
            ‘Dougie will never hear again.’

             Dear me! the poor man
             Suddenly began to reel,
            And Dougie’s ear had been struck orf
            With the finest burnished steel;
            And through the red mist,                
            The stump appeared like fresh cut veal.

            Don’t feel sorry for Dougie       
            For Dougie has been a sinner
            Penance did not abide in him
           And thus his ear became a rat’s dinner,
           A fate he truly deserved,
           The fate of a severed pinna.

"There is only one thing worse than having a big fat arse and that is having no arse at all"

Flaxen the Estate Agent tackles a difficult encounter with characteristic aplomb

In the office of the 'Head Estate Agent', Mr Ferrettamer III.

Mr Ferrettamer III, in repose

"Well Flaxen, I think you have a had a good start, a few minor quibbles aside. On the positive side, most vendors like your no nonsense practical approach to problem solving and your negotiating skills are second to none. On the debit side, not all the people viewing your properties get to go home. It appears that up to 1in 3 of the 'viewers' completely vanish off the face of the earth. Your explanation that they have simply fallen through a rent in the space-time continuum seems plausible. Miss Scrotybottom says she is enjoying her recently acquired 2 bed bijou basenette type feature property with engaging views across the adjacent sewerage works which you sold to her last Friday but is completely nonplussed by the locked room with runes scraped in blood on the door. I engaged Professor Mugumbo from the University of West Tipton and he had this to say, and I quote: "We have a very interesting series of West Saxon runes. Although they seem subject to insular affectation, the meaning is very clear to me. In essence it reads- "None shall enter here. This room contains the remains of two score of my fallen enemy, not including the succulent bits devoured by my trusty wolf, Loki". Well Flaxen, can you throw any light on the situation. An explanation relying on esoteric physics will simply not do".   

Flaxen, resplendent in his byrnie of brass and iron regarded Mr Ferrettamer with his single, baleful, blue eye and retorted thusly: "Who dares question the affairs of Flaxen, king of the Tipton Saxons. Impudent wretch! I will gather my war band and burn his garth to the ground. All shall perish by the sword, Arse, big Fat Arse, Biter. None shall escape my wrath!"

"Or perhaps you could go round to the house and furnish Miss Scrotybottom with a key to the room."

"I'll pop down there later today after reviewing the contract for Mr Pindleberry's property and after my 3 o'clock viewing of 2 Winston Terrace......" 

At that moment, Loki the Maltese Terrier, emitted a low growl and pounced on Ferrettamer's ankles. He tried to shake off the tenacious terrier, but to no avail. Finally, in frank despair and desperation he reached for the marble paperweight ubiquitously poised upon his leatherette feature desk. He raised the figurine, a tasteful rendition of Michelangelo's David, although some critics gave it a severe panning for not bringing out the quintessential boldness of the original piece, difficulties of working with the medium and the problem of blending texture and light, notwithstanding. Also the cock was deemed overlarge, rampant and inconsistent with the original due to the absence of a prepuce. I've digressed. Ferrettamer was poised to bring down the aforementioned paperweight upon the skull of the persistent beast, when......As if in a drunken reverie, Flaxen reached for his Danish double headed war axe, Twat Cruncher and with one mighty blow, split Ferrettamer in twain, from breastbone to coccyx. The pieces toppled to the floor and Loki immediately grasped the lighter of the two supine torsos and began to crunch on an exposed lumbar vertebrae with unrestrained relish.    

Next week, Flaxen loses his car keys and has to catch the bus.

The Elixir of Life

Do you want to live forever? Be careful what you wish for. Henrietta Lack has immortality, of sorts. Pieces of this unremarkable lady can be found growing in labs all over the globe. In 1951 Henrietta was dying from ovarian cancer when an enterprising physician removed cells from the tumour and placed them in a flask where they continued to grow and grow. In fact they have never stopped growing. Her cells were rebranded as He La and exported everywhere, for profit.  What is remarkable about cells growing you may ask? Aren’t cells supposed to grow? Well yes, cells grow. If they are sensible they mature and then stop growing. Eventually cells senesce and die- cells are programmed to die. Each cell has an internal clock which counts the number of divisions it undergoes. With each division, a new cell is born and after a while, and after a regulated number of divisions, the mother cell dies. He La cells (for it is none other) have a clock with a broken main spring. As long as we provide the necessary nutrients and conditions, these cells will continue to replicate. Like all cancer cells, Henrietta’s cells are non-compliant to normal regulatory processes and represent the first ever immortalised cell lineage.

He La cells have become the cornerstone of biological research and have contributed to a number of breakthroughs including the successful search for a polio vaccine. It is estimated that He La cells have been cited in more than 70,000 research papers.

Why we age and subsequently die is a great biological mystery. Over the past few decades researchers have diligently applied their skills to uncover the ‘last great mystery’. Imagine the rewards and riches which await success. Could the Alchemist’s dream of producing the ‘elixir of eternal life’ be within our grubby, grasping mitt? Probably not. Tis an extremely complex conundrum and we are no closer to producing an answer to the question why we age and die than we have of manufacturing gold from lead. The fundamental mechanisms underpinning cell obsolescence and death are poorly enumerated and those mechanisms that have been identified are understood, poorly, if at all. Of course we could apply the engineer’s maxim: ‘Don’t understand, just fix’. A great approach when considering mechanical devices. When applied to highly complex biological systems the consequences are highly unpredictable. Mrs Shelley should have known better.

The He La story has taken another turn, unrelated to complex biology. When the immortal cells were removed from the moribund Henrietta and grown in a dish 60 decades ago it was done so without the dying woman’s permission. Her family have fought a long battle over the years for acknowledgement and recognition of Henrietta’s important contribution to science. A whole raft of ethical and legal issues are involved. This is not a topic I would like to become enmeshed in- tis a very tangled weave indeed. In this instance a voluntary code of practice has been worked out which is acceptable to surviving family members and the scientific community, although no one bothered to consult me. There is nothing binding in the legal sense and Henrietta’s family have never received money for their dead relative’s legacy.

In Greek mythology, the Dawn goddess, Eos, becomes infatuated with the mortal Tithonus. She asks Zeus to confer the gift of immortality on Tithonus so she can enjoy his beauty, forever. However, foolish Eos, perhaps distracted and infatuated with love, forgets to ask Zeus to bestow eternal youth on the young man. Tithonus ages but never dies, succumbing to the ailments of old age, but never its fulfilment. Eos becomes bored with the boorish senilic (is this a real word?) old man and locks him in a room to pass an eternal declining dotage until the end of time. He begs for death but eventually his cries become a whisper and are heard, no more......  

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.

Yet hold me not for ever in thine East:
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave:
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.

                                                                Tithonus- Lord Tennyson

North Korean noodle chef unearthed at Dudley Zoo

Kim Dim Sum (sporting noodles)

During the early 1950s, the American and Chinese superpowers faced off in the Korean peninsular and through their respective Korean allies waged a savage and cruel war by proxy (this is not historically correct, is it Flaxen?). The North Koreans, for the most part, were armed with a spicy noodle dish, whilst luckily for the West, the South Koreans were armed with napalm- thus the tasty, crispy, North Korean noodle was born. During this uneven conflict, the North Korean leadership ably abetted by their glorious, god-like leader, Kim Cum up Bum, decided that they could tilt the balance of power but only if they could insinuate a deadly noodle chef into the heart of the West Midlands. By a casual stroke of fortune, the Metropolitan borough of Dudley was chosen by default. On that fateful Wednesday morn, on the 26th of December, 1951, a diminutive malnourished and short sighted North Korean specialist noodle chef parachuted into the enclave of Dudley Zoo. He quickly ensconced himself in the baboon enclosure where he remained totally unnoticed for the next 64 years. By happenstance, Kim Dim Sum (for it is he) bore an uncanny resemblance to a generic simian and thus remained totally undetected by the incognisant zoo staff. Luckily for the good burghers of Dudley, his packet of deadly dried/fried noodles became entangled on an itinerant seagull and thus passed forever from the sight of mankind. Kim Dim Sum rapidly adapted to his new surroundings and became particularly adept at grooming other members of the troop and throwing his compressed and partially dried faeces at any schoolboy foolish enough to come within missile range. His idle life of idyll would have gone unabated except for a fickle twist of destiny. Whilst eating a banana with his usual accomplished aplomb, Kim Dim Sum slipped upon the carelessly relinquished banana peel. During the subsequent gyrations our erstwhile noodle chef exposed his rump to the attentive keeper who noticed immediately that the exposed posterior showed no signs of reproductive tumescence- as this was mating season, the game was up.   

Kim Dim Sum was inhumanely destroyed later that day.       





                                                              Arse, big red, arse

Doggerel written on the occasion of the demise of the popular entertainer, Cilla Black

 

O Cilla, you slipped on the patio and bumped your noodle,

No one around to help except Nobby the poodle.

But Nobby’s no Lassie and didn’t get help,

Not even a whimper, bark or a yelp.  

Sadly you expired in the hot Spanish sun,

Been baked alive like a big current bun.

 

So now you are with the choir invisible,

Entertaining the Angels with your Scouse accent, bizarre and risible.

No longer will we see you on the box,

No longer will we see your flaming red locks.

Although your performance was ever so crass,

So I’ll just finish off by saying, arse, big fat, ass.

 

Lies, damn lies and scientific papers...

American Creationists are very strident when it comes to promulgating their nonsense especially when it comes to foisting their twisted version of reality on the young in the school classroom. The Christian right lobby hard for so called 'Creation Science' to be taught in the mainstream biology curriculum as a valid alternative to Evolution. In my mind, placing 'science' after another word does not necessary validate the phrase as legitimate science. In this instance 'Creation Science' remains theology, regardless of it pseudoscientific mantel. Titles mean nothing, content is all. Creationism, as a serious subject, has no right to be taught in a secular school worthy of its name. Thankfully, there are rational Americans who have finally woken to the threat. They realise that this is actually a battle worthy of a fight and are prepared to contest the fundamentalist standpoint in the courts, if necessary.

The rarefied academic world would never be plagued by such blatant attempts to inculcate non-scientific and irrational bollocks into peer reviewed and respectable journals, or would it? Recently, a review paper in a highly respected journal was very nearly published even though it contained references to creation and a creator.  Luckily, the paper was aired online before going into print and thus came under wide  critical scrutiny before being published. But it was a close run thing.

I'll not bore you with any in depth consideration of the subject matter. It really does not matter for the resulting discussion. Suffice to say that it concerned the evolution of an organelle, an inclusion within animal cells. What is particularly worrying is that the paper was accepted for publication in a journal after the standard peer review and editorial process. For those not familiar with the process involved in the publication of a scientific paper a slight digression is necessary. When a researcher submits a 'paper' to a journal the editorial staff pass the paper on to at least two renowned experts in the field for peer review. They do not get paid for this esteemed privilege- tis a badge of honour. They check the work for factual errors and ensure that there are no conceptual errors; are the conclusions reasonable considering the data presented? And finally, are the experiments contained therein, well designed and immune to criticism (I made this last one up). Once the review process has been completed, recommendations are made: the work can be rejected outright; it can be provisionally accepted after revision, or accepted without change. Ultimately it is the responsibility of the Chief Editor of the journal (Proteomics) to decide whether the paper should be published; the buck stops here.

The paper under consideration should not have been about presenting data or expanding knowledge. A review paper is concerned with summarising existing knowledge. Scientists love a well written review paper. As we are not immortal and have other distractions in our lives, we cannot keep up with all the publications within our field. The journal, Proteomics, is a well regarded scientific journal with an eminent editorial team. The journal is not a specialist forum for evolutionary topics as such, but every biologist viewing their paper, if they are worth their salt, will be familiar with evolutionary concepts.                          

Whilst not criticising the usual suspects as itemised above, here is a list of the worrying factors which should have raised the blinkers and set off the alarms:

The title itself is a little worrying: 'Mitochondria, the missing link between body and soul'. Okay, scientists don't generally mention the soul. The 'soul' is not a scientific concept, although scientists can use metaphorical allusion as long as it is not over done. The abstract represents the article summary. Interestingly, although the paper was supposedly a review, the abstract mentions, and I quote: 'Novel proteomics evidence to disprove the endosymbiotic hypothesis of mitochondrial evolution that is replaced in this work by a more realistic alternative'.    

None biologists may not pick up on the problem. Actually, the first problem is subtle, but insinuates nonetheless. Reviews should not introduce anything new, by their very nature, reviews should encapsulate knowledge on a given subject and not add new stuff. The main problem is regard to the 'evidence' to disprove the endosymbiotic hypothesis' etc. This hypothesis is hard core biology and if you have evidence to the contrary you had better present in a separate paper and you had better come up with some great evidence. This should not be presented in a staid review. These folk are challenging established biology, with a sentence!

The rest of the paper, for the most part, is uncontroversial and typical review fodder. Anyway, I will not delve into specifics but the revolutionary contention proposed by the authors is that a 'creator' was involved in the process. In other words, God did it. An invisible deity, by means unknown, caused things to happen. As scientists we are supposed to examine the world of wonder and come up with rational mechanistic explanations which jibe with established knowledge. These authors were not only sailing close to the wind, they were pissing in the boat as well.  

It will come as no surprise that the two authors involved are self professed 'Creationists'. They are exceptionally rare beasts. To cut a long story short, the paper was pulled after righteous indignation from serious biologists. Interestingly, the paper was pulled for plagiarism. Foolish authors had been cutting and pasting from the established literature. In a way it saved face, for the journal. Better to reject a paper on the basis of  plagiarism than to admit you have been a bloody fool and incompetent.

Scientists are no different from other folk (bit smarter though) and our professional  bodies are governed by people who are not always elected on merit. Some folk like the 'power' engendered. Frankly, most scientists can't be arsed with the bureaucratic crap. Scientists are subject to all the mean foibles of the common man (steady Flaxen). We have our own inclusive jargon and have wonderful acronyms (A.R.S.E.) We can be elitist and sometime stupid, just like everyone else.