Science&Society

Why Simple Explanations of Established Facts Have Value

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I’ve received various comments, in public and in private, that suggest that quite a few readers are wondering why a Ph.D. physicist with decades of experience in scientific research is spending time writing blog posts on things that “everybody knows.”  Why discuss unfamiliar but intuitive demonstrations of the Earth’s shape and size, and why point out new ways of showing that the Earth rotates?  Where’s all the discussion of quantum physics, black holes, Higgs bosons, and the end of the universe?

One thing I’m not doing is trying to convince flat-earthers!  A flat-earther’s view of the world is so full of conceptual holes that there’s no chance of filling them.  Such an effort would be akin to trying to convince a four-year-old Santa Claus devotee that the jolly fellow can’t actually fly through the air and visit half a billion homes, stopping to eat the cookies left for him in every one, all in one night.  Logic has no power on a human whose mind is already made up.  (If you’re an adult, don’t be that human.)

Instead my goals are broader, and more contemplative than corrective.   Here are a few of them.

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The Earth’s Shape and Size? You Can Measure it Yourself — Part 2

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In my last post, I showed, using only simple arithmetic, that the observed atmospheric effects from the January 15th volcanic explosion in the Kingdom on Tonga are consistent with a round Earth. From the timing of the observed spikes in pressure, seen around the world, one can work out how long the pressure wave took … Read more

The Earth’s Shape and Size? You Can Measure it Yourself — Part 1

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This week, I’ll describe how one can easily use the Jan 15th explosive volcanic eruption in Tonga to obtain strong evidence that the Earth’s a sphere and determine its circumference, using nothing more than simple arithmetic.   This illustration of scientific measurement is perfect for any science classroom, because it uses publicly accessible data, is … Read more

Physics is Broken!!!

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Last Thursday, an experiment reported that the magnetic properties of the muon, the electron’s middleweight cousin, are a tiny bit different from what particle physics equations say they should be. All around the world, the headlines screamed: PHYSICS IS BROKEN!!! And indeed, it’s been pretty shocking to physicists everywhere. For instance, my equations are working erratically; many of the calculations I tried this weekend came out upside-down or backwards. Even worse, my stove froze my coffee instead of heating it, I just barely prevented my car from floating out of my garage into the trees, and my desk clock broke and spilled time all over the floor. What a mess!

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Broken, eh? When we say a coffee machine or a computer is broken, it means it doesn’t work. It’s unavailable until it’s fixed. When a glass is broken, it’s shattered into pieces. We need a new one. I know it’s cute to say that so-and-so’s video “broke the internet.” But aren’t we going a little too far now? Nothing’s broken about physics; it works just as well today as it did a month ago.

More reasonable headlines have suggested that “the laws of physics have been broken”. That’s better; I know what it means to break a law. (Though the metaphor is imperfect, since if I were to break a state law, I’d be punished, whereas if an object were to break a fundamental law of physics, that law would have to be revised!) But as is true in the legal system, not all physics laws, and not all violations of law, are equally significant.

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What’s all this fuss about having alternatives?

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I don’t know what all the fuss is about “alternative facts.” Why, we scientists use them all the time! For example, because of my political views, I teach physics students that gravity pulls down. That’s why the students I teach, when they go on to be engineers, put wheels on the bottom corners of cars, … Read more

Polar Vortex, Climate Change, Red Herring?

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Wow, it was unusually cold last week. In a small fraction of the globe. For a couple of days. And what does that cold snap, that big wiggle in the Polar Vortex that carries high-atmospheric winds around the North Pole, imply about “climate change”, also known as “global warming”, also known as “global weirding”?

The answer is very simple. Nothing.

If you heard anyone suggest otherwise — whether they said that the extreme cold implies that there is no global warming going on, or they said that the extreme cold implies that global warming is happening — you should seriously question anything that person says when it comes to climate change. Because that person does not respect (or perhaps even understand) the difference between anecdote and evidence; between weather and climate; between a large fluctuation and a small but long-term trend. Or between media hoopla and science.

In the interest of an imperfect analogy: Let me ask you this. Are you generally happier, or less happy, than you were five years ago? Answer this as best you can.

Now let me ask you another question. Did you, within the last month, have a really, really bad day, or a really, really good one?

Does the answer to the second question have much to do with the answer to the first one?

Barring an exceptional recent disaster in your personal or professional life, the fact that, say, last Thursday your car broke down, you locked yourself out of your house, your dog vomited on the carpet and you got caught in the rain without your umbrella does not have anything to do with whether you are a happier person than you were five years ago. Being a happier person has more to do with whether you have a better job, a happier family, a better sense of self-esteem, and things like that. And even if you love your job, you know there are going to be really bad days in the office sometimes. That’s just the way it goes. We all know that.

It’s the same with daily and monthly and yearly fluctuations in the stock market compared to the slow but fairly steady century-long growth of the U.S. economy (both curves corrected for inflation.)

So why, when there’s a big fluctuation in the daily, monthly or even seasonal weather, do people jump up and down about what the implications are for the long-term trends in climate?

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More Scientist-Hostages Uncovered

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Just in case you weren’t convinced by yesterday’s post that the shutdown, following on a sequester and a recession, is doing some real damage to this nation’s scientists, science, and future, here is another link for you. Jonathan Lilly is a oceanographer, a senior research scientist at NorthWest Research Associates in Redmond, Washington, and I can … Read more

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