Welcome to the Special Time Science Blog
For the Latest, Greatest Fun and Exciting Futuristic Scientific Breakthroughs incorporated into New Products from A to Z, just for YOU, and Seen on TV, Please see the Special Time Science Home Page.
The STS Blog: You'll Like it! Fun, Interesting and Hot Topics. Great Science Breakthroughs + Today's News from the Popular World of Science! Free Links area below.
Science Blogs.com is Great! For Everything You Want to Know!
Google sends a lot of people to my blog. Also, people come and then send their friends. A lot of people come to the blog and find just what they are looking for and that is great! But some people come and don't find the topic or info they wanted and that is not so great.
So I am doing what I think will be the very best solution to this and that is to tell you about Science Blogs.com, ScienceBlogs .
I have searched all over the world, ( Internet), and haven't found anything that comes even close to being a one stop spot for all your scientific inquiries and thirst for knowledge.
For scientific products,( from fun and toys to lab supplies), I still recommend Special Time Science, Special Time Science, but I am only one person and over at Science Blogs they have almost 70 blogs which really ups the odds they will have just what you want to know.
I have been on every blog, actually a number of times, and this community of scientists, mostly Ph.D. and Ph.D. candidates, is marvelous!
The whole site is laid out to make you finding what you are looking for as easy as possible. At the top there is a list of channels. Then there is the latest hot topics, more hot topics and a listing of the most recent posts on the channels.
On the bottom of the left side there is an alphabetical list of the blogs. There are also various places where you can do a search of the whole site, or on the individual blogs.
Science blogs, (SB), is huge! Almost 70 blogs, over 50,000 posts and over 600,000 comments. Some of the blogs have received literally millions of hits and their popularity is growing like wild fire! The blogs are all constructed on a uniform format so once you have been to one blog it is very easy to navigate all the rest.
The blog owners are a large group of very intelligent, highly educated people who are also very witty and frequently very humorous! Most, if not all of the blogs have a spot where you can write the owners, and also if you have something you are wondering about you can request that they put a post on the blog about it.
The blogs cover pretty much everything science from A to Z. Archeology to zoology. And almost everything in between!
I plan on putting a short list of some of the blogs from Science Blogs at the bottom here, and links to them with the owners kind permission. The more you go to SB the more you get to know the blog owners. The more you get to know them the more impressed you are with their hard work and extreme dedication to the cause of science and the betterment of mankind!
Here is what Science blogs says about themselves: "ScienceBlogs was created by Seed Media Group: seedmediagroup.com. ScienceBlogs is a portal to this global dialogue, a digital science salon featuring the leading bloggers from a wide array of scientific disciplines. Today, ScienceBlogs is the largest online community dedicated to science."
Modesty prevented them from raving about how great the site really is, but it won't stop me! Science Blogs is GREAT! If you want to expand your mind and enrich your life go on over. You'll be glad you did! ScienceBlogs
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Here is a list of just a dozen or so of the fine blogs at Science Blogs. I am sorry I can't include them all here, ( they are all great!), but if you click on the SB link above it will take you right to all of them!
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Adventures in Ethics and Science
Janet D. Stemwedel is a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. She is also a world class expert in ethics. Her caring and compassion and insightfulness will keep you coming back!
Chaotic Utopia
Karmen is a very sweet student in Colorado specializing in climate sciences. You'll enjoy her blog very much and look forward to getting to come back!
Deep Sea News
Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute. If you are interested in the deep blue sea you're going to love this blog!Discovering Biology in a Digital World
Sandra Porter is a microbiologist and molecular biologist turned tenured biotech faculty turned bioinformatics scientist turned entrepreneur and she is really something special! One day it might be the latest genetics breakthrough and the next it may be something that puts a smile on your face and keeps it there all day! :~)
Framing Science
Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D, is a professor in the School of Communication at American University, and he is great! He is dedicated to helping frame science in such a way that it can be understood and implemented for the greater good of mankind! The Frontal Cortex
Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large for Seed Magazine. An accomplished author and a brilliant thinker! He has a knack for getting into the fascinating, not only in his field of neuroscience, but just about anything!
Good Math, Bad Math
Mark Chu-Carroll (aka MarkCC) is a PhD Computer Scientist, who works for Google as a Software Engineer. A winning combination!
Mark's blog is great! Get ready to learn and enjoy!
Greg Laden's Blog
Greg is really something! He does an outstanding job of scouring the world, finding and reporting to all of us the latest, greatest, most humorous and relevant news. His was the first blog I found at SB and I look forward to getting to go back everytime!
The Island of Doubt
James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use. It's always good to get to come back to James's blog. He keeps up on the latest in climate change, the environment and other important issues and passes it along to keep all the rest of us up to date!
Omni Brain
Steve Higgins is a psychology graduate student and his blog is on, You guessed it, the Brain! He has the most hilarious way of looking at it and teaching us. Want to get a good laugh and smile while learning at the same time? Go to Omni Brain!
On being a scientist and a woman
ScienceWoman is a first-year assistant professor in -ology. She blogs about the intersection of science and real life. She does an excellent job of opening up the worlds of both science and woman and gives us a unique view into what it's all about. A very fine blog!
Science To Life
Karen Ventii is a Ph.D. student of bio- chemistry at Emory University. She says, "I am interested in science & medical journalism as a career. The purpose of this blog is to write about current and interesting science news that may affect people's lives. I hope you enjoy my posts." We do Karen, very much! Keep up the great job!
Zooillogix
The Bleiman Brothers do an amazing job of turning zoology into the most fascinating, humorous and mind expanding experience! You almost have to see it to believe, but here's fair warning, you may still not believe it after seeing it! A unique and marvelous blog you're going to love!
Thank You,
Dave Briggs
www.specialtimescience.org
dave@specialtimescience.org
We can Make You a Famous Scientist!
We can Make You a Famous Scientist! Sounds like an unusual title for a science blog, doesn't it? Well, I thought so too, but there is an important message here for you whether you are a biologist, chemist, geneticist, physicist, meteorologist, paleontologist, seismologist or from any scientific discipline.
I have been studying different scientific fields for over 3 decades and I love them! Science is so interesting and amazing and awesome. We all profit greatly from the hard, diligent work of science in the past.
Electricity in our homes to run our lights and air conditioning and heat. It also runs our factories to make all those necessitates and niceties of modern day life. Your TV, computer, cell phone and on and on all came from scientific study and discipline.
What about the research that cured diseases and brought us other medicines. All this just starts to touch on the importance of science! The roster of benefits via science is astronomical and growing every day!
All these benefits started out as a thought in someone's mind followed by a lot of dedicated work in an office, lab, library or workshop, or all four. Just like what you have been doing!
I started Special Time Science , (STS), in 2007 to sell great science items and products at great prices. But even more important: for the promotion, proliferation and popularization of science and scientists.
Being able to help promote YOU and having you and many others benefit from your years of hard work would be my pleasure!
I even spent 2 years with a Public Relations, (PR), business in preparation for starting STS. I speak both the non science and the scientific languages and my tenure in the PR firm allowed me to learn how to be a better translator between the two. I can have a friend say, " I love Deoxyribonucleic acid " on one side while my friend on the other side has a blank look on their face. When I say, " They think DNA is really Great" I get two happy smiling friends! LOL! Being bilingual is cool! :~)
I worked with a good friend who has over 20 years experience in the PR field. He is an ace PR man who has connections with the entire spectrum, from the minuscule to giants in the rarefied atmosphere at top.
His specialty is booking people as guests on talk shows, both radio and TV. He handles people in obscurity all the way to the famous, sometimes moving the obscure up to the ranks of the famous! This could be you! I was very impressed the whole 2 years with his knowledge, ability, intuitive insights and connections.
While I was with his firm I personally booked guests on over 500 talk show interviews. We took a new author friend of mine all the way from an unknown to her book being number 1 on Barnes and Noble and near the top 10 on Amazon.com. She sold thousands of books and made thousands of dollars, and this is not a unique anomaly. The same thing could happen to you.
They handle authors, lecturers, people with products to promote or just looking to increase their professional visibility, or whatever your motivation is.
My PR friend has booked many celebrities, celebrity status types, as well as virtually unknown people on talk shows, on 1,000s of shows across the country, including Opera, Good Morning America, the Today Show and other venues where you reach millions of people at once!
I talked to him the other day in preparation for writing this post to see what he thought and he loved the idea! He said there are always people wanting more science guests and lately there is real shortage of them. A shortage you could fill!
I am a big proponent of science popularization and proliferation and from the feedback I got from him, the country is very desirous of hearing more of what the experts have to say, and that expert could be YOU!
Some people who start out wanting to famous make it and some don't, but of all those guests I booked, invariably, even if they started out being a little nervous, very shortly thereafter they would tell me they were having the times of their lives!
On top of which, experts explaining scientific phenomenon provides a very valuable service to society and well as helping young people be exposed to the idea of pursuing a scientific career themselves! You could be a part of that!
It costs to start out on seeing if you will make it to the ranks of the super stars or whatever level you want to reach. A small radio interview costs $75 and it goes up to where an interview with Oprah on TV runs about $5,000. But even if you don't make it to the ethereal heights, it brings a great deal of satisfaction and notoriety as well as possibly leading to many other career and professional opportunities.
The last time I talked to my good friend mentioned above that we got up to number one on Barnes and Noble, she had been negotiating an offer from a TV network to have her own local TV show. The same sorts of thing could happen to you.
The demand for talk show guests is going up. When I talked to my PR friend he told me that he had recently doubled his number of bookers.
I don't plan on going back into the PR business, but because this is for science I will be more than happy to do any thing I can to be of help with anyone who is interested in investigating becoming a talk show guest expert. I have helped with and also completely written scientific press releases that are sent to the stations to promote guests and let the stations know of their availability.
If anyone is interested you can just let me know, (
dave@specialtimescience.org or
Specialtime@aol.com)
and I will make sure to hook you up. Radio interviews can be done to fit into your schedule and done from your office, or lab or home or whatever you like best. They will also work with you about any nuances or idiosyncrasies of any agenda you want to custom tailor just for you.
I hope to be of service to you and thanks very much!
Dave Briggs
"How Stuff Works"
No one, no matter how hard they try can put all the topics on their blog that people are going to want to know about. I try my best to put fun, interesting and insightful posts on the blog, but lots of people come here and some are going to want to know about things I haven't written about yet.
This is why I have put a link to the site, " HOW STUFF WORKS" in the links area here, down the left column on the page, and on the Special Time Science Home page.
How stuff works is one of the finest sites I have ever seen to easily learn about something you are curious about. I asked them and after thoroughly checking out our blog and site they said it was fine to put their link here.
You can find out about just about anything you can imagine there. After learning about things if you want to buy something please go to the Special Time Science Home Page where can find just about anything you want to buy in the thousands of Fun Science products there, from companies that have been in business for decades and even centuries!
How Stuff works won a Webby Award in 2007. They have categories, reviews, reference sources, image galleries, how to guides, featured videos and a fast search box where you can type in anything you want to learn about.
They are also real good about putting hyperlinks in their reports so as you read along if a place or concept is mentioned that you may not understand you can just click on it and go right to the explanation.
Whether you want to learn more about your self, car, home, business, planet or universe they do an excellent job of explaining it at whatever level of understanding you have or want to have. Many times there are links at the end of an article to learn more in depth or on topics related to your interests.
I have been using them for years and am extremely happy about the great job they do about letting us all know more about, " How Stuff Works."
Thank you,
Dave Briggs :~)
Dave Briggswww.specialtimescience.org dave@specialtimescience.org
Plug in Hybrid Vehicles could Save the Planet!
As we have moved into the 21st century there are things that have become a lot more important than they used to be. In America, having the world's largest economy, one could even postulate that we have a moral obligation to keep our economy healthy and growing so that all the other country's economies can do the same in a safe, secure manner. Since our government, at least theoretically is supposed to use our resources in a cumulative way for the greatest good for all, I think this idea is one that the government should get behind with subsidies and advocating in any way they can.
The big problems, like energy production, air pollution, economic strain from importing oil and the like are the kinds of problems that can work towards resolution as they are fought with the power of increasing popularity of products and the simultaneous price reductions that come from the increased scales of production.
I am going to be including verbatim quotes from the Science Daily web site in this report so I want to make sure they get credit for those parts. They do an excellent job with these things!
Researchers at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory evaluated the impact of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, on foreign oil imports, the environment, electric utilities and the consumer.
"This is the first review of what the impacts would be of very high market penetrations of PHEVs, said Eric Lightner, of DOE's Office of Electric Delivery and Energy Reliability. "It's important to have this baseline knowledge as consumers are looking for more efficient vehicles, automakers are evaluating the market for PHEVs and battery manufacturers are working to improve battery life and performance.
"Current batteries for these cars can easily store the energy for driving the national average commute - about 33 miles round trip a day, so the study presumes that drivers would charge up overnight when demand for electricity is much lower. Researchers found, in the Midwest and East, there is sufficient off-peak generation, transmission and distribution capacity to provide for all of today's vehicles if they ran on batteries.
You will see that the people involved are taking a conservative and realistic view on all of this. And the feasibility of a big push in this area looks like it could be started tomorrow, with us all reaping rewards from it!
"We were very conservative in looking at the idle capacity of power generation assets," said PNNL scientist Michael Kintner-Meyer. "The estimates didn't include hydro, renewables or nuclear plants. It also didn't include plants designed to meet peak demand because they don't operate continuously. We still found that across the country 84 percent of the additional electricity demand created by PHEVs could be met by idle generation capacity."
So, here is an energy solution that doens't involve even having to build more new power plants. They just run closer to full capacity while we all sleep! I don't hear of very many solutions that don't include having to build new power plants! And if this could become popularized in the USA maybe it would catch on in China where I have heard they are building 2 new coal plants a week! Lots of CO2 and other bad stuff being pumped into the atmosphere we all share across the whole globe.
"Since gasoline consumption accounts for 73 percent of imported oil, it is intriguing to think of the trade and national security benefits if our vehicles switched from oil to electrons," added PNNL energy researcher Rob Pratt. "Plus, since the utilities would be selling more electricity without having to build more plants or power lines, electricity prices could go down for everyone." Lightner noted that "the study suggests the idle capacity of the electric power grid is an underutilized national asset that could be tapped to vastly reduce our dependence on foreign oil. "The study also looked at the impact on the environment of an all-out move to PHEVs. The added electricity would come from a combination of coal-fired and natural gas-fired plants. Even with today's power plants emitting greenhouse gases, the overall levels would be reduced because the entire process of moving a car one mile is more efficient using electricity than producing gasoline and burning it in a car's engine.
Total sulfur dioxide emissions would increase in the near term due to sulfur content in coal. However, urban air quality would actually improve since the pollutants are emitted from power plants that are generally located outside cities. In the long run, according to the report, the steady demand for electricity is likely to result in investments in much cleaner power plants, even if coal remains the dominant fuel for our electricity production.
"With cars charging overnight, the utilities would get a new market for their product. PHEVs would increase residential consumption of electricity by about 30 - 40 percent. The increased generation could lead to replacing aging coal-fired plants sooner with newer, more environmentally friendly versions," said Kintner-Meyer.
I believe as power production facilities are built as replacements they could be solar, or wind or whatever that region of the country has the largest supply of. When you look at the statistics there are states that have such an abundance of solar of wind that just implementing a portion of that state could provide power for all the 48 contiguous states! This is another idea I think the government should be involved in funding!
"The potential for lowering greenhouse gases further is quite substantial because it is far less expensive to capture emissions at the smokestack than the tailpipe. Vehicles are one of the most intractable problems facing policymakers seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said Pratt.
Finally, the study looked at the economic impact on consumers. Since, PHEVs are expected to cost about $6,000 to $10,000 more than existing vehicles - mostly due to the cost of batteries -- researchers evaluated how long it might take owners to break even on fuel costs. Depending on the price of gas and the cost of electricity, estimates range from five to eight years - about the current lifespan of a battery. Pratt notes that utilities could offer a lower price per kilowatt hour on off-peak power, making PHEVs even more attractive to consumers.
Here is a platform where having a "Big Brother" ( AKA the Federal Government), could be a real good thing! If they are willing to help cover the up front money, which they will recoup later, and also further the cause of a healthy environment for future generations it sure seems like a win, win, win to me!
And last but not least Pratt added: Adding "smart grid" communications technology to ensure the vehicles only charge during off-peak periods and to provide immediate, remote disconnect of chargers in event of problems in the power grid would make them attractive to utilities.
I believe that our energy and environment problems are going to take a lot of hard, consistent work over time to resolve completely, but when we have a technology here and how, ready to go it seems like we ought to jump on it with both feet! Thank you, Dave Briggs
Dave Briggswww.specialtimescience.orgdave@specialtimescience.org
Rent solar panels for your home!
As a preface to this post I would like to mention that I had the pleasure of talking with the Senior Vice President of Communications for the corporation mentioned here for a while the other day. She gave me permission to include the links to the company and we also had a great time talking about the science show we had both seen that outlined how Germany has become the world center for solar cells.
Germany has both a grass roots movement and government subsidizing of people installing solar panels on their homes, but it has also blossomed to where farmers are planting their fields with thousands of solar panels and harvesting solar electricity. They even have been installing thousands of panels along empty stretches on the highways!
She was also very excited because her company now has over 25,000 people who have signed up, wanting to get solar cells on their homes and the numbers keep going up!
If we had the kind of initiatives they have in Germany we could easily see our energy crunch here go into the history books! There is hundreds, even thousands of times more solar energy that hits the surface of the USA every day than we would need to power our whole country. Including powering our vehicles from, hydrogen made from the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen.
You may be able to tell from this blog that I love solar power and watching it's use grow! :~)
I feel very fortunate to be able to add posts to this blog that hopefully can be a part of the solutions to make our planet a better place and have all of our lives enhanced by science.
Here are links to a company that rents you solar panels to put on your home and they will lock in energy rates for you. This first link is from an independent associate http://rentsolarpanels.org/.
These links are from the corporation itself: www.jointhesolution.com and
http://renu.citizenre.com/index.php?p=svc_overview
I am not affiliated with this company but I did investigate it in the past and ended up talking to a Ph.D. scientist who has joined them and had signed up over 100 people to rent the solar panels for their homes. He was ecstatic about being able to do it.
I am not specifically endorsing this company but I certainly do advocate the idea! Getting scientists, accounts and thinkers from all areas to work together for the same goal I stated above.
I am going to copy some of the verbiage from their website below. Whether you are interested in doing this with this company or checking the idea out and going with another company, I think the cumulative effect of people doing what they can do, even if it just what I do by writing, can total up to some great benefits for the planet and all of us.
Thank you,
Dave Briggs
Dave Briggs
www.specialtimescience.org
dave@specialtimescience.org
From the rent solar panels website and links:
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What We Do REnU
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The Citizenre Corporation is making renewable energy cost competitive with today’s electricity rates. Moreover, with a fixed cost of electricity, Citizenre’s offering is not just cost competitive, it is also financially profitable. This makes participating in the Citizenre REnU program a financially sensible choice.
The Citizenre REnU program is the first to give residential customers the chance to use green energy in their home without the usual dilemma. A photovoltaic (“PV”) array, inverters, and an exchange point (“XP”) are prepackaged to deliver energy to the customer or the utility from power generated at the home. Our new program takes care of all the usual headaches: it provides hassle free installation, operation, and maintenance – and does so with the most attractive terms in the industry. Customers have the option to rent the system for either 1, 5 or 25 years. This arrangement eliminates the traditional up-front investment and associated investment risk. With all of the customary barriers removed, customers can get down to the bottom-line choice of do they want more renewable energy, do they want more reliability, and do they want more responsiveness.
With the convenience of net-metering, customers have the chance to adopt while still having the additional reliability of the grid. Our well-engineered systems are designed to interact with the local utility to reduce system strain, defer network upgrades, and create redundancy of grid supply to enhance overall distribution reliability. This enhanced relationship is a win-win situation for the customer and the traditional utility.
That being said, net-metering does have its limitations. Most states place a cap on the amount of customers that the local utility has to allow into the grid. And the buy-back agreement for power generated in excess of the customer’s usage is typically unprofitable. Therefore, Citizenre will offer variations (see Grid-Paralleled and Grid-Separated) of the REnU program so that the number of people who wish to enjoy the benefits of green energy can do so.
The Citizenre Corporation is revolutionizing the way people include PV in their day-to-day routine. Citizenre NetWorks is the tool that is delivering PV to the residential market. Together, we are at the forefront of an epoch that is making electricity delivery more reliable, more responsive, and obviously more renewable.
Abstract or Concrete: Which is more Important?
In science there seems to be 2 camps. One on each end of the spectrum of what is most important in science.One end is the abstract, theoretical, and rather ethereal. The other is the concrete, pragmatic and practical. People in each end tout the virtues of their mindsets. I have heard people say that pure research is a waste of time, money and energy. I have also heard some people say that some new little obscure scientific breakthrough that enhances a limited number of people's lives is inconsequential. In my humble opinion the betterment of mankind to any extent is the duty of science and one of the main tenants for its existence. I admire and respect anyone who undertakes to study anything for the betterment of their and other's lives. Thomas Edison literally tried thousands of different elements for his first light bulb before getting it right. A kind of dogged determination that has to be admired by just about anyone! Einstein showed the same kind of determination in working out his E=MC squared! While I do admit I have a personal affinity towards the theoretical, it is the practical application for helping mankind that seems to me to be the best barometer of greatness! Much of the practical ends up coming from a theoretician doing their thing, sometimes long before, even sometimes hundreds of years before it looks like there will ever be any practical application of their work. The pure quest for knowledge for it's own sake can turn out to be a very fulfilling and powerful force! Our 21st century state of achievement in fields such as alternative energy, astronomy, astro physics, biology, biomedical, chemistry, computers, robotics and many other fields is the result of a combination of the theoretical and practical. In fact, many of the tools of science today such as microscopes, telescopes, mass spectrometers, etc., where only flights of fancy in some theoreticians head at one time! The dreaming of the impossible has been a driving force that has lead us up to our computer, cell phone, GPS, and "what in the world could be next" lives! Learning to keep my jaw from dropping onto my foot from amazement at the latest research and developments has become a constant ritual! LOL! One day in the future we may be mining the moon for it's high helium 3 content since it is scarce here but abundant there, and it is a prime candidate for commercial nuclear fusion for electric power production that could supply the whole earth! In the 21st century it almost seems like our credo is, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE! And even if it seems impossible, there is in actuality some theorist or pragmatist working on it right now to bring it to the shelves for next year's Christmas shopping! LOL! Albert Einstein was one of the greatest scientists ever. On the other hand I believe the same about Thomas Edison. Einstein's theories and hypotheses changed the world and even 50 years after his death there are people devoted to expanding on his research. But part of the reason the theorists can work on their theories during the part of the day when the sun isn't shining is because of Edison's practical determination. Another interesting fact about science is that much of the time a great discovery or breakthrough is actually the culmination of a lot of people's work, done over time, and once again that can encompass hundreds of years! Leonardo DaVinci made a prototype helicopter hundreds of years ago but we didn't get to fly around in the whirlybirds until the practical engine technology had caught up with the theorist. I personally believe it is an honor and a privilege to be involved in science in any way. Whether it is in the abstract which will eventually work it's way into the concrete, or for the sake of increasing knowledge as a goal in and of itself. I recently saw a science show where they interviewed the man who invented the Palm Pilot and the Handspring Treo phones. He said he started out wanting to do research into psychocybernetics in the 1980s but no couldn't find any one doing the work or willing to pay for the research. He made his millions off of the inventions and now uses that money to fund his own research into neurobiology. The show was fascinating to say the least! He is working on mapping out the higher brain functions and the hierarchical structure of the brain and mind. Something mankind has wanted to understand more fully, probably since the first mind became aware of itself and our biochemical entities, ( our bodies), that carry it around! His is a perfect case of both the theoretical and the pragmatic working hand in hand over time. His inventions have helped millions of people organize their lives better and his research could help millions more into the future as we develop ways to link the body, mind and outside environment, to turn science fiction into science fact at an even ever more accelerated pace! If you are reading this and you are a resident of one end of the spectrum or the other, the theoretical or the pragmatic, I respect your viewpoints! As someone who resides squarely in the middle I would like to invite you to consider the fact that maybe it all works better for all of us when we rejoice together about every little niche on the spectrum. No one can do it all! Some inventions are actually the taking of a number of different inventions or theories and putting them together to construct a new thing that never existed before. To me, we all only get so much time, ( unless they finally get that time machine in the back room working, LOL)! If we can in any way work on the theory or the finished product in someone's life that enhances life as we know it, we are very fortunate indeed! Thank You! Dave BriggsDave Briggshttp://www.specialtimescience.org/dave@ specialtimescience.org
We are All Made of Stardust! again
I love this post and especially the title! So I pulled it out of the archives and hope you enjoy it! Thank YOU!
Believe it or not, we are all made of stardust! Actually I kind of like the idea! It makes me feel special to know that I am made of the same stuff that those pretty, shiny things up in sky are made of. :~) What is a star? Our big example is our sun, the big fiery ball up there that is 93 million miles away. When you look up at the sky at night almost all of the lights you see are stars. Stars are amazing things. They start out as a big cloud of mostly hydrogen and a little helium, and maybe some other elements. As gravity moves on the cloud it starts to swirl and compress. As it compresses the temperate and pressure at the center of it increase until it gets to the point where nuclear fusion starts up. Nuclear fusion is the process whereby atoms and molecules are slammed into each other so strongly that they fuse together to form a new element. The most common is hydrogen, with one proton and electron being slammed into another hydrogen and it forms helium, with 2 protons in it's nucleus. During this process some of the matter involved is converted into energy in the form or heat and light, just like what you see in the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. Scientists believe that at the big bang, the origin of the whole universe, most of the hydrogen there is came into existence, as well as some of the helium. There were no elements heavier than that at that time. All of the heavier elements we know of where made after that and they were made in the center of stars as they used nuclear fusion to put the heavier elements together by fusing lighter ones. Our sun is a hot place! It is over 27 million degrees at the center. But compared to some other stars it is cool! The heaviest element that our star can make is iron, which has only 26 protons in it's nucleus. There are 92 naturally occurring elements that we know of, with uranium having 92 protons in it's nucleus. So if our sun can only make an element, ( iron), with 26 protons, where did all the heavier stuff come from?Scientists believe that what happened is that billions of years ago, in this corner of the universe, there was a huge sun and if blew up in what is called a super nova. That is star talk for a great big explosion. Stars are real nice, but many times they end up exploding at the end of their lives. So, we had that big bang, right here in our neighborhood and it threw start dust all over the place and the whole process I described above about the gas cloud pulling in and compressing happened. Our bodies are composed of the elements we find here on earth. Lots of different ones and combinations that form the chemistry of life.When you were conceived your parents formed a single cell with the genetic code, ( like computer code), that said, " Find me water, iron, zinc, and lots of other elements and compounds so I can make a human being." Because the star dust was here, under our feet, the genetic code followed the instructions and made YOU!So you see, we really are made of star dust! We may not all be able to go to Hollywood and become stars, but we are made of the dust! So go ahead and feel just a little bit better about your self! You are special! It took a great big star to bring you to life on earth! Thank you Dave BriggsDave Briggshttp://www.specialtimescience.org/dave@specialtimescience.org
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