Smile for the Camera

Above note a picture of gravitational lensing in action, as the light from several distant galaxies is bent by the presence of massive amounts of matter between us and them.

As this article from Astronomy notes, the warped space-time presents excellent proof that Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity is correct, since it claims matter causes such warping. The Cheshire Cat appearance of the combination of galaxies seems rather appropriate, as Einstein carried more than a bit of Mad Hatter about him and his theories have led to some very deep rabbit-holes indeed.

They Still Can't Fly

As the Thanksgiving holiday weekend draws to a close, a round-robin interview with some of the creators of one of the most famous televised Thanksgiving observances in U.S. history.

Remember. Please be curious, but well-behaved.

Stories of Science

The short version of the history of Europe involves a long period of intellectual stagnation following the fall of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance began in the 1400s. The Catholic Church was a slight help in some respects by salvaging some historical records and such, but was mostly a hindrance as its leadership refused to acknowledge any possible scientific advances if they contradicted the Bible.

Physicist and science historian James Hannam would beg to differ. In his 2001 book, The Genesis of Science, he argues instead that the Middle Ages offered several scientific advances that laid the groundwork for the major leaps forward that came from pioneers like Galileo and Copernicus. And far from being a hindrance to scientific and intellectual development, he says, the church and some of its officials and teachers were among those building that foundation.

Although a little pugnacious in his assertions and style, Hannam doesn't argue that the Middle Age church was responsible for all of the advances that led to our better understanding of the world where we live. He is quite clear, however, that the idea of pure stagnation between Alaric's spring break blowout in Rome in the fifth century and Nicolaus Copernicus' noodling about planetary orbits in the 15th is unfounded. And, he points out, the monks and religious scholars at the universities of Europe were those reflecting on the philosophies of Aristotle and other ancient Greek thinkers -- even more so after they were able to find manuscripts thought lost through contact with traders from the Islamic countries where they had been copied.

On the one hand, Hannam's working against a lot of preconceived notions. Even our terminology reinforces these ideas -- we talk about "Dark Ages," "Middle Ages," and a "Renaissance." That may fuel his tendency to overwrite his case a little. On the other hand, the idea of a full millennium of intellectual stagnation ending only when some Athena of Italian culture broke out fully-formed doesn't make much sense. Meaning that these preconceived notions, like a lot of others, merit some reconsideration and maybe reconceiving. Here's hoping that Hannam's book sparks a little of that.

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Eric Scerri is a chemistry professor at UCLA who also writes on the history and philosophy of chemistry. He's written several books on the development of the periodic table of the elements, that odd tiered chart we may vaguely recall from high school chemistry classroom walls.

A quick summation of the history of that table opens his 2013 book, A Tale of 7 Elements. From there he gets into the main part of his story. In the late 19th century, as the periodic table neared the form we have it in today, it accounted for most of the elements known to people at the time. But there were seven gaps -- places where the table's organizing characteristics said there should have been elements. The problem was that no substances known at the time matched what those characteristics should have been. So Scerri describes how the seven were ferreted out by researchers and scientists.

Anyone who thinks that science is a dispassionate quest for the truth unadulterated by human failings like pride, greed and nationalism will learn some things from the stories Scerri offers. Those failings and several others are on full display as claims and counterclaims are made by one team or one scientists or another, research corners are cut and contradictory evidence covered up or ignored.

Even the advancing technology that aids the search -- and in the case of a couple of the previously unknown elements is the only thing that makes their discovery possible -- doesn't completely remove the human element from it. Scerri spends perhaps more time than he needs in explaining the development of the table itself, but his clear writing style goes easy on the chemistry terms and works to explain the ones he has to use.

The book closes with a couple of entries in the search for the elements that come after the original ones listed by Dmitri Mendeleev, the ones theorized but which are so unstable their atoms exist for only fractions of a second before breaking down. So there will be plenty of opportunities for scientists to show they're human all over again, even if some of the last centuries' spats may be exchanged for new ones. Given the weirdness of the modern American college campus, at least, there's a significant likelihood of that.

Secret Tut

According to Egyptologists, there is an excellent chance that King Tut's tomb contains some hidden rooms unsuspected until now.

Tutankhamun was the boy-king who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. He, Queen Nefertiti and the Pharaoh Akhenaten were at the center of an attempt to remake Egyptian society and religion by royal decree. They failed when an Egyptian general staged a coup, brought back the polytheistic religion of Egyptian antiquity and erased almost all references to the three from historical records.

The hidden rooms, if they exist, were apparently concealed by the way that the outer rooms were built and probably required some elaborate construction techniques. It's not easy building hidden rooms into a condo made of stone-a, after all.

Word Clouding

A couple of researchers at Stanford University took a look at scientific papers which had to be retracted and compared them with ones that were found to be sound or which were retracted for reasons other than academic fraud.

Academic fraud can cover everything from fudging observational data to just flat-out making stuff up. Scientists are human beings, and sometimes when they confront data that doesn't match their theories, some of them will do like many of us will do and adjust the facts to fit the theory instead of the other way around.

The pair examined some 20 million words in papers published between 1973 and 2013, and they found that both third-person pronoun use and linguistic obfuscation were higher in retracted papers. Both are often seen as techniques used by people when they are lying. Evidently we feel we can create some distance between us and the untruth if we don't use first-person pronouns, and piling on the verbiage can leave so many interpretations available that the fibber can say, "Whoops! That's not what I meant." Or it may be that when linguistic obfuscation -- which is probably more commonly referred to by initials signifying bovine alimentary end-product -- is laid on thick enough, smart scientists are afraid to question it lest they be thought of as dumb for not understanding what everyone else does.

One of the researchers said it might be possible to develop software that would scan papers for that kind of language and prompt journal editors to take a second look at ones that exceed even the usual dry academese word salad that sounds a whole lot like linguistic obfuscation to folks outside of the relevant discipline. Programmers would need to be careful, of course, to create algorithms that wouldn't show too many false positives. Those could harm reputations and bring suspicion to people who write with perfect honesty but dull style.

They would also need to keep the software away from all political speeches and statements. It's bad enough to know that almost every one of those rat bastards is lying; seeing it proven by science would probably lead to voter turnouts in the single digits.

A Rational Holiday

Being thankful -- it's not just for Turkey Day.

Bagpipes on Camels? Genius!

Pakistan's Desert Rangers found themselves with some bagpipers and some camels, and they thought what anyone else would think -- the bagpipers need to be riding those camels.

Although it wasn't easy, they managed to get it done, and the results were glorious.