A tech Blog

Jup, a new one, in Dutch only (at the moment) a TECH blog about not everyday science in everyday language (I think ;) )

Glow-in-the-dark tomato :)

Make A GLOWING TOMATO ! - video powered by Metacafe

Chaplin - Clown Illusion

It speaks for itself ;)

A true change of species by changing the genome in one cell...

First genome transplant changes one species into another from PhysOrg.com

For the first time, scientists have completely transformed a species of bacteria into another species by transplanting its complete set of DNA. The achievement marks a significant step toward the construction of synthetic life, with applications including the production of clean fuel in as little as a decade.

[...]

Slashdot | The Big Bang Vs. the Big Rumble

Slashdot | The Big Bang Vs. the Big Rumble WBUR radio in Boston hosts a talk with two physicists, Alan Guth and Neil Turok, who represent, respectively, the consensus theory of the inflationary Big Bang and an upstart theory of the initiation of the universe in the collision of two three-dimensional "branes." Turok and Paul Steinhardt developed their "Ekpyrotic proposal" out of the mathematics behind string theory. In the audio the two physicists are perhaps more respectful of one another's views than the host wishes them to be. If you ignore the "let's you and him fight" framing of the debate, you will hear some interesting physics elucidated.

I wanted to hear the discussion before posting on my blog... but haven't had the time yet to listen, but before the links get lost in a big pile of /. newspostings.. I blog it anyway.

Space... the final "thing" to keep us confused?

Just came by this article on /. about the discovery of a fossil star which is found to be 13.2 billion years old (recent studies show that the galaxy is about 13.7 bn years old). In one of the reactions someone answers the question of someone who wants to know if there is a 'place' in our universe where the Big Bang occurred. He/She states it nicely:

If by "origin" you mean "point of origin", then we already have that answer. The big bang was not an explosion which occurred at one point in space, spewing matter and energy out everywhere. The big bang was a big explosion OF space, and spewed out a glob of space which began to expand, making points more distant from each other.

So you cannot ask "where" the big bang occurred, because if you take all the points in space as far as can be seen, all of those points in space were at one single point at the moment of the big bang. So the best answer to "where" is "everywhere".

It may be nonsense (I don't think so, but I am not very well educated on the Big Bang topic), but if it is in a simplistic way correct, I like it :)

All modern humans descended from the same small group of people

Researchers have produced new DNA evidence that almost certainly confirms the theory that all modern humans have a common ancestry.

Ever since a member of my year club told me about the Dawkin's book, I all the time stumble onto stories which are related to science and religion... This one which I blogged from Digg is a lovely piece on evolution and read the reactions given by it's readers...

read more | digg story

Slashdot | 48% of Americans Reject Evolution

Slashdot | 48% of Americans Reject Evolution. WTF?!?! Is the world finally coming to an end? Is the Apocalypse there? Of course it is not a /. article, but a poll by Newsweek, you can read it here.
It states that 48% of the USA residents do not believe in evolution. Furthermore, 34% of college graduates (!) accept the Biblical story of creation as fact. Also we (earth and everything) were created by a godlike figure and not more than 10.000 years ago...
I am totally flabbergasted. Even more because of 91% (!) of the adult Americans say the believe in god.

But, this hits the alarm bells in my mind:

Nearly half (47 percent) of the respondents felt the country is more accepting of atheists today that it used to be and slightly more (49 percent) reported personally knowing an atheist. Those numbers are higher among respondents under 30 years old, 62 percent of whom report knowing an atheist (compared to just 43 percent of those 50 and older).

Like thinking for yourself is merely a crime... (at least, that is what I read in those sentences).

Quickly religions seem to take over the world once again. I hope it is their last gasp. But infiltrating everywhere, even paleontologists claim official degrees and tell the world that it is only 10.000 years old...

A creationist takes a place in the world of fossils - International Herald Tribune

A creationist takes a place in the world of fossils goes right against what I wrote about here. The dissertation by Marcus Ross is standard and about a certain class of marine lizards called mosasaurs. These animals lived more than 100 million years ago in the Cretaceous period and went extinct about 65 million years ago. The thesis is written within a conventional scientific framework.

The thing is this Ross-guy is hardly a conventional paleontologist. No this does not mean that he is some kind of Indiana Jones, doing his work under questionable circumstances. No, he is a "young-Earth creationist." Those people believe that the bible (the thing used by christians) is literally true about the creation of the universe and that Earth and all species were created in a 6 day week and at most 10,000 years old...

As he has his degree now, he can 'show off' with having his title. And, as what we are warned for by Richard Dawkins, we are even talking about it, writing about it and giving a minority in the scientific world a loud voice! Even I am part of the people who are shocked now and 'shouting' it out loud from their blogs.

I can only hope that a person who uses his scientific degree as a statue to gain even more power within the fundamentalistic christian world will be dethroned by taking away his "Dr." title.

Someone who is capable of using words in a much stronger way with views I totally agree with, is Larry Moran, a Professor at the University of Toronto. You can find the article I refer to here.

Small, smaller, ...

*~A Tiny Glimpse~* is where you can see something about why, well.. ehrrr... ehmm... we are quite small. This is a GIF-animation and quite short.

The one below takes 9 minutes, but worth watching:

(this is supposed to be the video "Powers of Ten", made in 1977. Unfortunately, the video is hard to find at the moment, due to copyright issues of the Eames-heirs, but if you are willing to share your email address at powersof10.com you can still see it)