What On Earth Is Wrong With Gravity?
BBC2, 29th January 2008, 9PM. Clips from the Horizon programme "What on Earth is wrong with gravity?" featuring the scientist that everyone books when they need a physicist in a pinch, Dr Brian Cox. Searching for gravity waves in the swamps of Louisiana Here Brian demonstrates his intellectual superiority to average mortals by exposing his very sensible fear of spiders, creatures apparently drawn to gravity wave experiments like moths to flames or turtles to discussions about genetic drift in cloning. En route to GPS HQ, Colorado Springs, Colorado If you like science programmes but wish they could be just a little bit more Top Geary, minus Jeremy Clarkson (of course), then you’ll just love this clip of Brian in his car talking. If you dislike nanoseconds then you’ll love this clip just a little bit less. Explaining a gravitational wave Have you ever thought to yourself: how can I explain gravitational waves through space to a person who can’t comprehend that waves can compress and expand and still be waves and aren’t limited to sine curves with seagulls bobbing up and down on them whilst in a diner? Dr Brian Cox supplies the answer in this video clip. Napkins! Faking the moon landings Some helpful advice now for any would-be passengers in Dr Brian Cox’s car: don’t mention fake moon landings! Don’t drive angry, Brian, don’t drive...
Dinosaur Capabilities
The University of Manchester – world renowned world centre of all things prehistoric – recently released a study showing that computer modelling of dinosaurs indicated that Tyrannosaurus Rex was a fast-running creature capable of outrunning a footballer and not a carnivorous beast that only moved using stop-frame actions. Ray Harryhausen: you were wrong my friend. The study was originally conducted for Sir Alex Ferguson to see if there was any way to improve his team’s recent performances by exploiting DNA trapped in an amber pendant of his wife’s as opposed to dipping further into the transfer market. Manchester United are now expected to sign a T. Rex before the transfer window closes. For the more scientifically-minded and less football-minded there were a number of other unprovable – and undisprovable – discoveries made during the university’s computer modelling: The Velociraptor used the large, retractable claw on its feet for hanging from trees as it suffered from a bad back; the result of many years of failing to bend at the knees properly when picking up eggs. The Brachiosaurus coughed a lot. The feathers on Archaeopteryx were decorative as the entire species was flamboyantly homosexual. Geranosaurus liked to whittle objects from bark. The Allosaurus was one of the first punk-goth dinosaurs and the entire species regularly pierced itself in exactly the same manner to mark their individuality and determination not to conform. The Diplodocus was actually a carnivore that rolled onto prey crushing them into mush and absorbing their juices through its bright orange fur. The spiked thumb of the Iguanodon caused it to blind itself accidentally a lot when removing sleepy dust from its eyes in the morning. The Ankylosaurus’ bone-plated hide and formidable clubbed tail rendered it too heavy to move and the adults gradually sank into the soil and suffocated. Kotasaurus had a permanent shifty look to it so it wasn’t trusted much by the other dinosaurs. The Triceratops’ head shape made it susceptible to high winds and many creatures were blown off mountains to their deaths during extreme sports events. The Hadrosaur’s bones expand after death thereby inflating its perceived size in the fossil record. Hadrosaurs were the size of peanuts. Stegosaurus had no sense of balance and fell over for no reason. The plates along its back helped to right it. Callovosaurus had natural rhythm but was tone deaf. Despite its tail, fins, and gills the Icthyosaur could not actually swim and walked along the sea bed, avoiding anemonae where possible because they scared it with their waving arms and such. The Rhabdodon had poor circulation and cold feet so nearly always wore socks. The Titanosaurus...
Space Shuttle Foam
Mankind is an innovative beast. Inventor of dynamite. Inventor of the rotary washing line. Inventor of the toilet roll holder. Hell, mankind even invented ceramic tiles powerful enough to withstand the intense heat of re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere from the very edge of space itself! Woo! But now … mankind has excelled himself … for mankind has invented the toughest material known to mankind, a material so imbued with mankindly strength that it gouges tears in ceramic heat shields and laughs about it afterwards. Ladies and gentlemen, mankind would like to present … Space Shuttle Foam eats ceramic tiles for breakfast and then spends the rest of the morning shitting out ceramic pellets covered in foam crap! And it does this all on a toilet bowl constructed from pure Space Shuttle Foam because no other toilet bowl will do. Tired of waiting for natural erosion to whittle down that mountain spoiling your view? Maybe you need to take things into your own hands and cut it down to size with a whittling axe made from the material so tough it simply didn’t care when Data died in Star Trek Nemesis. Just what is that material? Just joined Fight Club and found out your first match is against Mike Tyson and he’s foaming at the mouth? Yeah, I said "foaming". You’d stand a better chance if your flimsy human hands of skin and bones and knuckle hairs were replaced in the backstreets of Chile by specialists who do nothing but make replacement hands from the material that gives Chuck Norris nightmares and leaves his bed smelling urine-fresh most mornings. Is that material balsa wood? No, you moron. Are you an alien architect who’s just calculated the tidal stresses on your Type II Dyson Sphere project in the Virgo cluster and realised there’s a very good chance that astro-wicker may not actually have the tensile strength needed and there’s a good chance that interstellar warp-kittens will find themselves uncontrollably attracted to it and scratch it to pieces for no reason whatsoever? Oh, you should have approached NASA my nine-nosed friend. Only NASA can supply you with the miracle material that is so tough it decorates itself with cartoons of the prophet...
Humans Came From Bears
Darwin got evolution spot-on – you got a problem with that then you take it up with Richard Dawkins my friend. Well, almost spot-on. Please don’t hit me Mister Dawkins sir. You see, humans evolved not from apes as we’ve all been led to believe, but rather from bears. Oh yes. Riddle me this: what has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, a raincoat and a jar of marmalade in the evening, and a pair of wellies at night? I think I’ve made my...
Where Does Rain Come From?
Reproduced with permission from the neOnbubble Know You Some Science series of student learning guides. Where does rain come from? Rain comes from clouds, the grey and white bits in the sky that aren’t seagulls. Just like seagulls, clouds eject liquid excretions through their bottoms. Cloud excrement is called rain. Seagull excrement is called there’s fucking bird shit all over my car again, have they got a fucking map that tells them where I’ve parked?, bastards. What do clouds eat and drink? When anything in nature consumes something else it takes the nutrients it can and the rest – the waste – is dumped. Your waste is formed from hamburgers, artichokes, and Singapore Slings, for example, and is called wee-wee and number twos. Clouds eat the flesh from passengers on board planes struck by lightning – all of which is subsumed and used by the clouds to feed its fluffy neural network of rage. Clouds also absorb water when the liquid evaporates, which it retains until it is accused of being fat; this is then rained upon you. What is evaporation? Evaporation is the natural process where water molecules fight off the force of gravity and fly to a better life in space. In their natural state water molecules clump together for warmth – making them heavy – but it doesn’t work very well. Water is cold-blooded. However, if water is split apart or once it warms up it’s every molecule for itself and nothing can stop those babies from spreading their wings and soaring. Nothing except clouds that is. For over three years leading scientists have maintained that the bulk of water evaporates from the sea to avoid high salt in its diet, flies over mountains, and lands on the plains in lakes which leak through the Earth into ocean pipes. They call this the water cycle. This is clearly preposterous though – the sea contains mostly low sodium salt making it relatively healthy – and rain experts now suspect that the three main causes of water evaporation are: Footballers’ Spit · No other sport produces quite so much spitting as football; no, not even International Gobbing On Germans. Stepping on the field requires a great big wad of phlegm at the feet. Stretching exercises double that. When the actual match starts every other step transforms the pitch into a fountain display of spittle. Studs on the boots of footballers act to break down the pools of cooling liquid on the grass over the course of ninety minutes and the saliva vapour then escapes upwards to avoid being crushed under an excessive goal-celebration man-sandwich. Footballers’ spit accounts for...
String Theory Explained Simply
When scientists – such as hip and trendy physicist Dr Brian Cox – talk about the universe – and believe me, it’s difficult to get a lot of them to stop talking about the universe – then they invariably bring up subjects such as "Dark Matter" and "Hawking Radiation" and "String Theory" and "Space-Time Vortex Marmosets". Is it possible for a dummy like you to understand these complex scientific terms? Why, yes it is! Today we’ll be looking at String Theory, explaining in simple terms just what it is and how it is the cause of the weak and strong gravitational properties in the universe. One of the core principles of physics is that particles – for example particles of light radiation – behave both as particles (which you’d expect) and as waves (which is just mental). Physicists call this duality of particles: confusing. The confusing properties of particles allows physicists to bamboozle people and get grants. Imagine a wave of particles streaming out across space. Wouldn’t that look like a great, long, wiggly string? You bet your unscientific ass it would! Is that string theory? You bet your unscientific ass it isn’t! However, it does demonstrate that particles – any particles – can form long strings. There are long string streams emanating from the Sun right now, washing up against buildings and reflecting colours into your eye holes. There are strings of radiation particles bursting forth from your monitor, crashing up against your face, and running down cracks in your skin to cancerfy your intestines too. There are streams of strings everywhere. You may be thinking: "all this talk of streams is making me want to pee. Is that string theory?" No, that’s your prostate trouble flaring up again. I told you anal sex was dangerous. Gravity is everywhere in the universe and as such it needs energy to keep it running. As luck would have it there is an awful lot of energy in all those particle strings all over the place. An awful lot. To demonstrate just how much energy is present in strings you can perform a string theory experiment of your own. String Theory Experiment You will need: a string of christmas tree lights a tree a bag Step one: decorate a tree with the christmas tree lights. Step two: undecorate the tree. Step three: put the lights in the bag. Step four: put the bag in your loft. Step five: wait one year. Step six: retrieve the bag. Step seven: untangle the string of lights. What you will discover is that a seemingly inoffensive string with plastic bulbs on it somehow stores staggering...
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