Monday, July 14, 2014
GaneshScience: Help people
GaneshScience: Help people: समाजात काही तरी करायची इच्छा असणाऱ्याने 2 मिनिटं वेळ काढुन नक्की वाचा. फिलीपाईन्स देशाच्या अदिवासी पाड्यात जिथे विज पोचत नाही तिथेले...
Help people
GaneshScience: The temblor that shook Russia's Kamchatka Peninsul...
GaneshScience: The temblor that shook Russia's Kamchatka Peninsul...: Supersonic Earthquake Shook Kamchatka. The temblor that shook Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula last year was one of only six supersonic ea...
The temblor that shook Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula last year was one of only six supersonic earthquakes ever identified [image] Jul 14, 2014 |By Becky Oskinand LiveScience • • A comparison between the 2013 Okhotsk earthquake and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. One of the world's deepest earthquakes was also a rare supersonic quake, upending ideas about where these unusual earthquakes strike. Only six supersonic (or supershear) earthquakeshave ever been identified, all in the last 15 years. Until now, they all showed similar features, occurring relatively near the Earth's surface and on the same kind of fault. But last year, a remarkably super-fast and super-deep earthquake hit below Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, breaking the pattern. "This was very surprising," said Zhongwen Zhan, lead author of the study, published today (July 10) in the journal Science. "It's not only deep, it's supershear, and it's also quite small." The weird earthquake struck May 24, 2013, about 398 miles (642 kilometers) beneath the Sea of Okhotsk offshore of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The magnitude-6.7 quake was an aftershock to the largest deep earthquakeon record, a magnitude 8.3 that also hit May 24. [ Image Gallery: This Millennium's Destructive Earthquakes] The shaking provided the first sign that this was a strange quake. Earthquakes of similar size, such as the 1994 Northridge quake in Los Angeles, shimmy for seven to eight seconds. But this magnitude-6.7 temblor lasted for just two seconds. After dredging up all the available seismic recordings, Zhan and his co-authors realized the earthquake was extremely short because it was extremely fast. An earthquake occurs when two sides of a fault rip apart, opening up like a zipper. Faultscan slide side-by-side or up-and-down, or a combination of both directions. The event unleashes waves of seismic energy. Certain types of waves called shear waves usually travel faster than the rupture unzips, but in supershear earthquakes, the rupture catches the shear waves. When the rupturing fault moves faster than the shear waves, the waves of energy pile up like the Mach cone surrounding a jet flying faster than the speed of sound, creating a phenomenon akin to a seismic sonic boom. The Okhotsk quake's rupture speed clocked in at a zippy 5 miles per second (8 km/s), said Zhan, a seismologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Regular earthquakes, at shallower depths, break loose at about 2.2 miles per second (3.5 km/s), he said. 'U' is for unique Until now, seismologists had never documented a super-fast earthquake at such extreme depths. Nor have they seen supershear earthquakes on this kind of fault. Previously, the super-fast quakes were on strike-slip faults, where two slabs of the Earth slide past each other with no up-and-down motion. But the Okhotsk earthquake was in a subduction zone, where a fault thrusts one of Earth's tectonic plates down below another plate.
GaneshScience: GaneshScience: Interest in Information science
GaneshScience: GaneshScience: Interest in Information science: GaneshScience: Interest in Information science : Information science(orinformation studies) is an interdisciplinaryfield primarily concerned...
GaneshScience: GaneshScience: Interest in Information science
GaneshScience: GaneshScience: Interest in Information science: GaneshScience: Interest in Information science : Information science(orinformation studies) is an interdisciplinaryfield primarily concerned...
GaneshScience: Interest in Information science
GaneshScience: Interest in Information science: Information science(orinformation studies) is an interdisciplinaryfield primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, ...
GaneshScience: My blog,My ideas,My views
GaneshScience: My blog,My ideas,My views: ganeshscience.blogspot.com Information science(orinformation studies) is an interdisciplinaryfield primarily concerned with the analysis, ...
My blog,My ideas,My views
Interest in Information science
Information science(orinformation studies) is an interdisciplinaryfield primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval, movement, and dissemination of information. [ 1 ]Practitioners within the field study the application and usage of knowledge in organizations, along with the interaction between people, organizations and any existing information systems, with the aim of creating, replacing, improving, or understanding information systems. Information science is often (mistakenly) considered a branch of computer science. However, it is actually a broad, interdisciplinary field, incorporating not only aspects of computer science, but often diverse fields such as archival science, cognitive science, commerce, communications, law, library science, museology, management, mathematics, philosophy, public policy, and the social sciences.
Information science should not be confused with information theoryor library science. Information theory is the study of a particular mathematical concept of information. Information Science as an academic discipline is often taught in combination with Library Science as Library and Information Science. Library science as such is a field related to dissemination of information through librariesmaking use of the principles of information science. Information Science per se deals with all the processes and techniques including generation, packaging, dissemination, refining, repackaging, Usage etc. through any modes.
Foundations
Scope and approach
Information science focuses on understanding problemsfrom the perspective of the stakeholders involved and then applying information and other technologies as needed. In other words, it tackles systemic problems first rather than individual pieces of technologywithin that system. In this respect, one can see information science as a response to technological determinism, the belief that technology "develops by its own laws, that it realizes its own potential, limited only by the material resources available and the creativity of its developers. It must therefore be regarded as an autonomous system controlling and ultimately permeating all other subsystems of society." [ 2 ]
Many universities have entire colleges, departments or schools devoted to the study of information science, while numerous information-science scholars work in disciplines such as communication, computer science, law, library science, and sociology. Several institutions have formed an I-School Caucus (see List of I-Schools), but numerous others besides these also have comprehensive information foci.
Within information science, current issues as of 2013include:
*. human–computer interaction
*. groupware
*.the semantic web
*. value-sensitive design
*. iterative designprocesses
*.the ways people generate, use and find information
Sir James Maxwell
“One scientific epoch ended and another began with James Clerk Maxwell.”
Don’t believe me? Well, I wasn’t the first person to say it – Albert Einstein said it first.
When Einstein was asked if he had stood on the shoulders of Newton, he replied: “No, I stand on Maxwell’s shoulders.”
And Richard Feynman, another of the 20th century’s greatest physicists said:
“…the great transformations of ideas come very infrequently… we might think of Newton’s discovery of the laws of mechanics and gravitation, Maxwell’s theory of electricity and magnetism, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and… the theory of quantum mechanics.”
James Clerk Maxwell is one of the giants of physics. Unfortunately, his work is less famous than that of the other greats – possibly because his crowning glory – Maxwell’s Equations – are so hard to understand.
In producing these equations, he was the first scientist ever to unify any of nature’s fundamental forces. He discovered that electricity and magnetism are actually, at the deepest level, the same force – the electromagnetic force. In doing so, Maxwell proved that light is an electromagnetic wave, and so made a link between electricity, magnetism and optics.
As if this achievement were not enough, his kinetic theory of gases accurately explained the origin of temperature.
He introduced statistics and probability into the physics of the very small, laying the foundation for quantum theory.
He was the first person ever to produce a color photograph; and he used mathematics to explain Saturn’s rings over 100 years before the Voyager spacecraft confirmed that he was absolutely right.
In addition to his great discoveries, in his personal life, he was known for his capacity for hard work, his friendliness, personal kindness and generosity.
Maxwell’s School Life
James Clerk Maxwell was born into a wealthy family in Edinburgh, Scotland on June 13, 1831. His father was a lawyer, and his mother died when he was only eight years old.
He attended high school in Edinburgh, where he published his first academic paper, ‘Oval Curves’ at the age of just 14. By this age, he had also completely memorized the Bible. Maxwell was an evangelical protestant, who believed his religion was a private affair. Like Isaac Newton, he saw no disagreements between his science and his religion.
Unable to properly understand the genius in their class, some of the boys at school gave Maxwell the name ‘dafty.’ Maxwell was completely unconcerned by this, and made firm friends with Lewis Campbell, who went on to became a professor of Greek at the University of St Andrews and Peter Guthrie Tait, who became a professor of physics at Edinburgh University.
Maxwell at University – A Student, then Professor
Aged 16, Maxwell entered Edinburgh University for three years, taking courses in physics (it was then called natural philosophy), mathematics, and philosophy. He found the courses rather easy, leaving plenty of free time for his own private scientific research. Maxwell continued to publish serious scientific papers while studying for his degree.
Aged 19, he moved to Cambridge University, studying mathematics, becoming a Fellow of Trinity College when he was 24, sharing the Smith’s Prize for theoretical physics and mathematics with Edward Routh.
In 1856, aged 25, he was awarded Edinburgh’s highest prize in mathematics, the Straiton Gold Medal, and in the same year, he was appointed to the Chair of Natural Philosophy at Aberdeen University, where he stayed for four years.
Dr Alfred Noble
The foundation of the Nobel Prize-that has been honoring people from all around the world for their great accomplishments in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for work in peace-was laid by none other than Alfred Nobel. He was a Swedish scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, author and pacifist. He was a great genius who invented dynamite and many other explosives. He also constructed companies and laboratories in more than 20 countries all over the world.
Early Life:
Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was the third out of the four sons to the Swedish family. His father, Immanuel Nobel, an engineer and a prosperous arms manufacturer, encouraged his four sons to pursue mechanical fields. When Alfred was just nine years old, his family moved to Saint Petersburg in 1842, where his father started a “torpedo” works. Here young Alfred received his early education by private tutors. He studied chemistry with Professor Nikolay Nikolaevich Zinin.
At the age of 18 he traveled to United States where he spent four years studying chemistry and also worked for sometime under John Ericsson. During this time he also went to Paris where he was first introduced to nitroglycerin, a volatile, explosive liquid first made by an Italian scientist, Ascanio Sobrero in 1847. With the end of the war his father’s weapon’s business collapsed leaving the family poor. As a result the family had to rely on the earnings of his mother, Andriette Ahlsell Nobel who worked at the grocery store.
Contributions and Achievements:
After the family business got bankrupt, Alfred devoted himself to the study of explosives and sought a way to make the aggressive explosion of liquid nitroglycerin somehow more controllable. In 1863 he succeeded in exploding nitroglycerin from a distance with a gunpowder charge, and two years later he patented the mercury fulminate detonator which is a critical component for the development of high explosives. Nobel then built up factories in Hamburg and Stockholm, and soon New York and California.
Unfortunately his name became controversial after many serious accidents in the transit and use of his intrinsically unstable product, including an 1864 explosion at their factory in Heleneborg in Stockholm that killed Nobel’s younger brother Emil, among other casualties.
In order to improve the image of his business, Nobel put all his efforts to produce a safer explosive. In 1866 he discovered that when nitroglycerin was incorporated in an absorbent still substance like kieselguhr (porous clay) it became safer and more convenient to handle. He called this mixture dynamite and received a patent in 1867. The same year he demonstrated his explosive for the first time at a quarry in Redhill, Surrey, England. After a few months he also developed a more powerful explosive by the name of ‘Gelignite’, (also called blasting gelatin). He made this by absorbing nitroglycerin into wood pulp and sodium or potassium nitrate.
Later Life:
During November 1895, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and established the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. The executors of his will formed the Nobel Foundation to fulfill his wishes. The statutes of the foundation were formally adopted on June 29, 1900 and the first prize was awarded in 1901.
This great man died of a stroke on 10 December 1896 at Sanremo, Italy and was buried in Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm.
Dr.C.V.Raman
One of the most prominent Indian scientists in history, C.V. Raman was the first Indian person to win the Nobel Prize in science for his illustrious 1930 discovery, now commonly known as the “Raman Effect”. It is immensely surprising that Raman used an equipment worth merely Rs.200 to make this discovery. The Raman Effect is now examined with the help of equipment worth almost millions of rupees.
Early Life:
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born at Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu on 7th November 1888 to a physics teacher. Raman was a very sharp student. After doing his matriculation at 12, he was supposed to go abroad for higher studies, but after medical examination, a British surgeon suggested against it. Raman instead attended Presidency College, Madras. After completing his graduation in 1904, and M.Sc. in Physics in 1907, Raman put through various significant researches in the field of physics. He studied the diffraction of light and his thesis on the subject was published in 1906.
Raman was made the Deputy Accountant General in Calcutta in 1907, after a successful Civil Service competitive examination. Very much occupied due to the job, he still managed to spare his evenings for scientific research at the laboratory of the Indian Association for Cultivation of Sciences. On certain occasions, he even spent the entire nights. Such was his passion that in 1917, he resigned from the position to become the Professor of Physics at Calcutta University.
Contributions and Achievements:
On a sea voyage to Europe in 1921, Raman curiously noticed the blue color of the glaciers and the Mediterranean. He was passionate to discover the reason of the blue color. Once Raman returned to India, he performed many experiments regarding the scattering of light from water and transparent blocks of ice. According to the results, he established the scientific explanation for the blue color of sea-water and sky.
There is a captivating event that served as the inspiration for the discovery of the Raman Effect. Raman was busy doing some work on a December evening in 1927, when his student, K.S. Krishnan (who later became the Director of the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi), gave him the news that Professor Compton has won the Nobel Prize on scattering of X-rays. This led Raman to have some thoughts. He commented that if the Compton Effect is applicable for X-rays, it must also be true for light. He carried out some experiments to establish his opinion.
Raman employed monochromatic light from a mercury arc which penetrated transparent materials and was allowed to fall on a spectrograph to record its spectrum. During this, Raman detected some new lines in the spectrum which were later called ‘Raman Lines’. After a few months, Raman put forward his discovery of ‘Raman Effect’ in a meeting of scientists at Bangalore on March 16, 1928, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.
The ‘Raman Effect’ is considered very significant in analyzing the molecular structure of chemical compounds. After a decade of its discovery, the structure of about 2000 compounds was studied. Thanks to the invention of the laser, the ‘Raman Effect’ has proved to be a very useful tool for scientists.
Some of Raman’s other interests were the physiology of human vision, the optics of colloids and the electrical and magnetic anisotropy.
GaneshScience: Postcards from the photosynthetic edge
GaneshScience: Postcards from the photosynthetic edge: Photosytem II utilizes a water-splitting manganese-calcium enzyme that when energized by sunlight catalyzes a four photon-step cycle of oxi...
GaneshScience: Figuring out methane’s role in the climate puzzle
GaneshScience: Figuring out methane’s role in the climate puzzle: The U.S. may be on the verge of an economy driven by methane, the primary component of natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal and is un...
GaneshScience: Peeling back the layers of thin film structure and...
GaneshScience: Peeling back the layers of thin film structure and...: The layer-by-layer analysis of the concentration of strontium within a 40-angstrom thick (La, Sr)CoO thin film applied to a SiTiO3 substrat...
Postcards from the photosynthetic edge
Photosytem II utilizes a water-splitting manganese-calcium enzyme that when energized by sunlight catalyzes a four photon-step cycle of oxidation states (S0-to-S3). When S3 absorbs a photon, molecular oxygen (O2) is released and S0 is generated. S4 is a transient state on the way to S0. Image: SLAC National Accelerator LaboratoryA crucial piece of the puzzle behind nature’s ability to split the water molecule during photosynthesis that could help advance the development of artificial photosynthesis for clean, green and renewable energy has been provided by an international collaboration of scientists led by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Working at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), a powerful x-ray laser, the researchers were able to take detailed “snapshots” of the four photon-step cycle for water oxidation in photosystem II, a large protein complex in green plants. Photosystem II is the only known biological system able to harness sunlight for the oxidation of water into molecular oxygen.
“An effective method of solar-based water-splitting is essential for artificial photosynthesis to succeed but developing such a method has proven elusive,” says Vittal Yachandra, a chemist with Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Div. and one of the leaders of this study. “Using femtosecond x-ray pulses for the simultaneous collection of both x-ray diffraction (XRD) and x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) data at room temperature, we have gone around the four-step catalytic cycle of photosynthetic water oxidation in photosystem II. This represents a major advance towards the real time characterization of the formation of the oxygen molecule in photosystem II, and has yielded information that should prove useful for designing artificial solar-energy based devices to split water.”
Photo-oxidation of water by photosystem II is responsible for most of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere. At the core of photosystem II is a manganese-calcium (Mn4Ca) metalloenzyme complex that when energized by solar photons catalyzes a four photon-step cycle of oxidation states (S0-to-S3) that ultimately yields molecular oxygen. Scientists need to observe intact x-ray crystallography of the Mn4Ca ion in action but the molecule is highly sensitive to radiation. The LCLS is the world’s only source of x-rays capable of providing femtosecond pulses at the high intensities that allow intact photosystem II crystals to be imaged before they are destroyed by exposure to the x-ray beams.
“In an earlier study at the LCLS, we reported combined XRD and XES data from photosystem II samples in the dark S1state and the one visible-flash illuminated S2(1-flash) state,” says Junko Yano, a chemist also with Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Div. and also a leader of this research. “In this new study we report data from the S3(2-flash) and S0(3-flash) states, which are the intermediate states directly before and after the evolution of the oxygen molecule. In addition, we report data for the first time from a light-induced transient state between the S3and S0states, which opens the window for elucidating the mechanism of oxygen-oxygen bond formation that occurs between these two states.”
Figuring out methane’s role in the climate puzzle
The U.S. may be on the verge of an economy driven by methane, the primary component of natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal and is undergoing a production boom. It has poised the country as a top fuel producer globally, but recent research is casting serious doubts over just how climate friendly it is, according to an article inChemical & Engineering News(C&EN).
In the article, Jeff Johnson, a senior correspondent atC&EN, explains that when burned as a fuel to produce electricity, methane emits about half as much carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, as coal. But not all methane gets burned as fuel. Some of the gas is released, either through leaks or intentional venting from oil and gas wells, into the atmosphere. Although it is present in much smaller amounts in the atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide—the primary target for climate change regulations—methane has 86 times more global warming potential. And estimates vary significantly over just how much is escaping into the air.
To get a better handle on the methane picture, researchers are planning more detailed studies to estimate the gas’s emissions from oil and gas operations. In parallel, the Environmental Protection Agency, which has so far been reluctant to directly regulate methane emissions, plans to review the situation. If deemed necessary, the agency would propose new regulations by 2016.
Peeling back the layers of thin film structure and chemistry
The layer-by-layer analysis of the concentration of strontium within a 40-angstrom thick (La, Sr)CoO thin film applied to a SiTiO3 substrate. Examples of 3-D electron density maps of layers within the thin film are shown (top) along with a crystal model inset.Perovskites—any material with the same structure as calcium titanium oxide (CaTiO3)—continue to entice materials scientists with their ferroelectricity, ferromagnetism, catalytic activity, and oxygen-ion conductivity. In recent years, scientists realized that they could vastly improve the properties of perovskites by assembling them into thin films. The problem was that no one understood why thin films beat out bulk materials.
Researchers gained new insight into thin-film superiority by probing the structure of perovskites at the X-ray Science Division 33-ID-D,E x-ray beamline at the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Laboratory. They used a groundbreaking approach to tease apart the thin-film structure and chemistry layer-by-layer.
As the researchers peeled back the layers, they found that, instead of having a uniform distribution of elements, there were drastic differences in composition between the thin-film layers. This observation may help researchers design thin-film perovskites with enhanced activity and stability.
Industrial applications for perovskites, which efficiently reduce oxygen, include the conversion of energy from fossil fuels to electricity, oxygen purification, and electrocatalysis. The research team, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hebrew University (Israel), Argonne National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory studied LSCO thin films—perovskites made from lanthanum, strontium, cobalt, and oxygen (LSCO)—as a model system for studying why thin films have greater reducing power than their bulk counterparts.
The researchers studied two 4-nm LSCO thin films at the APS, a DOE Office of Science user facility; one annealed thin film had been previously heated to 550° C for one hour to simulate real-world industrial settings, while the other as-deposited thin film was left at ambient temperatures.
The researchers then collected diffraction intensities along 10 different reciprocal space objects, called "Bragg rods," defined by the substrate. They used Coherent Bragg Rod Analysis (COBRA) to determine the three-dimensional (3-D) atomic structure of each thin-film layer, with higher peaks in the map indicating an element with a greater number of electrons, allowing the researchers to differentiate elements at different sites within the LSCO thin films.
But COBRA alone does not give information about the distribution of elements that occupy the same atomic site within the layers. Therefore, the researchers applied a second method called "energy differential COBRA," namely, performing COBRA measurements along Bragg rods by varying the incident x-ray energies around the strontium K-edge at each reciprocal space point. This approach provided the absolute strontium occupation fraction in a layer-by-layer fashion.
The end result of combining conventional COBRA with energy differential COBRA was high-resolution (sub-angstrom) 3-D atomic images of the LSCO thin films that included information about elemental distribution.
GaneshScience: Physical properties of glory lily beans
GaneshScience: Physical properties of glory lily beans: Physical properties of glory lily beans were evaluated as a function of moisture content. The average dimension of three principal axes (vi...
Physical properties of glory lily beans
Physical properties of glory lily beans were evaluated as a function of moisture content. The average dimension of three principal axes (viz., length, width, and thickness), arithmetic mean and geometric mean diameter of glory lily bean were measured at a moisture content of 361.68 % (db), sphericity, 1000 bean weight, bulk density, particle density, porosity, angle of repose and co-efficient of friction were measured at moisture contents ranging from 361.68 to 9.77 % (db). It was found that the 1000 bean weight, bulk density, particle density and angle of repose increased linearly with increased moisture content. The porosity decreased linearly with increase in moisture content. The coefficient of friction on various surfaces increased with increase in moisture content. The coefficient of static friction was more on mild steel surface followed by galvanized iron and stainless steel.
GaneshScience: Cosmic ripples come into focus
GaneshScience: Cosmic ripples come into focus: The most detailed map of ripples in radiation left over from the big bang – known as the cosmic microwave background, or CMB – will let cos...
GaneshScience: Toughest creature ? Found view it
GaneshScience: Toughest creature ?
Found
view it: A new species of one of the toughest creatures on Earth has been found on the Antarctic coast.Mopsechiniscus franciscaeis a tardigrade, or ...
Found
view it: A new species of one of the toughest creatures on Earth has been found on the Antarctic coast.Mopsechiniscus franciscaeis a tardigrade, or ...
Toughest creature ? Found view it
A new species of one of the toughest creatures on Earth has been found on the Antarctic coast.Mopsechiniscus franciscaeis a tardigrade, or water bear. These microscopic animals can survive nearly any condition, including a vacuum, because of their ability to enter a deep resting state when water is not available. The new species was collected among moss growing on gravel during a 2011 survey of tardigrades along the coast of Victoria Land, which borders the Ross Sea.
The reddish creatures are tiny: Males are about a quarter of a millimeter long, and females are about 50 percent bigger than that. They sport four pairs of legs and red-brown eyespots that look like itty-bitty grains of rice. Because water bears have been in Antarctica since it was part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana, researchers hope to use the tiny beast to better understand how animals reached the far southern continent, says Roberto Guidetti of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy. He and his colleagues published their findings in the MayPolar Biology
Cosmic ripples come into focus
The most detailed map of ripples in radiation left over from the big bang – known as the cosmic microwave background, or CMB – will let cosmologists hone their theories of how the universe evolved.
This new view of the CMB comes from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite. Just how sharp is it? Find out using the slides below, which show the Planck map and its predecessors alongside corresponding images of the Earth, blurred to mimic the cosmic maps’ resolution.
〈 Previous Next 〉
Ripples revealed: COBE, 1992 George Smootof the University of California at Berkeley said that viewing the CMB map produced by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorersatellite was like "looking at God". Maybe if you're short-sighted – viewing the Earth at the same resolution, we can make out the continents, but little more. But as it was the first time ripples in the CMB had come into view, Smoot's excitement was justified; later he would share a Nobel prizefor the work.
Source: NASA/European Space Agency; graphic by Adam Becker and Peter Aldhous, published 22 March 2013.
GaneshScience: What is Science ?
GaneshScience: What is Science ?: Science is the concerted human effort to understand, or to understand better, the history of the natural world and how the natural world w...
What is Science ?
Science is the concerted human effort to understand, or to understand better, the history of the natural world and how the natural world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding1. It is done through observation of natural phenomena, and/or through experimentation that tries to simulate natural processes under controlled conditions. (There are, of course, more definitions of science.)
Consider some examples. An ecologist observing the territorial behaviors of bluebirds and a geologist examining the distribution of fossils in an outcrop are both scientists making observations in order to find patterns in natural phenomena. They just do it outdoors and thus entertain the general public with their behavior. An astrophysicist photographing distant galaxies and a climatologist sifting data from weather balloons similarly are also scientists making observations, but in more discrete settings.
The examples above are observational science, but there is also experimental science. A chemist observing the rates of one chemical reaction at a variety of temperatures and a nuclear physicist recording the results of bombardment of a particular kind of matter with neutrons are both scientists performing experiments to see what consistent patterns emerge. A biologist observing the reaction of a particular tissue to various stimulants is likewise experimenting to find patterns of behavior. These folks usually do their work in labs and wear impressive white lab coats, which seems to mean they make more money too.
The critical commonality is that all these people are making and recording observations of nature, or of simulations of nature, in order to learn more about how nature, in the broadest sense, works. We'll see below that one of their main goals is to show that old ideas (the ideas of scientists a century ago or perhaps just a year ago) are wrong and that, instead, new ideas may better explain nature
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