Category Archives: Science

Heavenly Synchronicity

by in Hmmm..., Mystery, Numbers, Science | 26 Comments

“…la Providence était le nom de baptême du Hasard,…“
[“…Providence was the baptismal name of Chance;…“]
-Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794), Maximes et Pensées [Maxims and Thoughts] (1795, posthumous).

Four astronauts just launched toward the Moon for the first time in more than a half-century. To be clear, they won’t land on the Moon. They won’t even be going into orbit around the Moon. Rather, they will be following what is known as a “free-return trajectory”. 

This is actually just an elongated orbit around the Earth that extends to a distance beyond the moon. Timed correctly, the passing Moon’s gravitational influence will then bend this Earth-orbit into a tight figure-eight that will send the spacecraft almost directly back. This was how the Apollo 13 astronauts managed to return to the Earth.

How the Earth’s single, relatively large Moon came to exist is still something of a mystery. No one really knows the exact mechanisms of how it was formed, or how it ended up in its current orbit. There are a number of theories. But every idea has some underlying technical difficulty.

Lunar rocks brought back from the moon during the Apollo missions appeared to show that the moon’s surface is made from material virtually identical to that found on the Earth. This means that both the Earth and the Moon had to have formed together in the same region of the early solar system, and that the moon wasn’t simply captured after forming elsewhere. But the physics doesn’t provide any simply way for this to have happened.

One popular idea, known as the “giant impactor”, proposes that a proto-planetary object about the size of Mars collided with the early Earth, mixing their crustal materials together while ejecting debris into an orbit around the Earth where it would eventually coalesce into the Moon. However, computer simulations show that this would have required a very precise collision. And the calculated overall spin of the resulting system wouldn’t account for the Earth/Moon system’s present “angular momentum”.

While the Artemis II crew won’t be staying at the Moon, they will get a view of its mysterious far side. This is an aspect not visible from the Earth due to the Moon being “tidally locked” to the Earth. This gravitational effect results in the Moon having a spin-rate that exactly matches the length of its orbit around the Earth. As a result, we always see the same side of the Moon.

The Moon’s hidden face, however, appears very different from the side that we can see from the Earth. Its far side is heavily cratered. And it also lacks the dark, lower-lying basins, or “maria”, that comprise the cloud-like patterns humans have long described as a “man”, a “rabbit”, or as “seas”. Measurements made in 2012 also revealed that the Moon’s far-side crust is thicker, and that it includes an extra layer of material.

Several ideas have been suggested to explain the difference between the Moon’s near and far sides. Among them is that a dwarf planet in orbit around the sun collided with the moon some time after its formation. Simulations show that if an object about 480 miles (780 km) in diameter hit what is now the near side of the moon at around 14,000 miles-per-hour (22,500 kph), it would have resulted in a cloud of debris that would have fallen onto the Moon’s far side to a depth of from 3 to 6 miles (5 to 10 km).

Regardless, the moon’s existence has played a significant role in the development of life on the Earth. Its pockmarked face would have provided some shielding from large comet and asteroid impacts in the early solar system. And the early, much closer moon would also have created powerful tides, intermittently flooding tidal zones where prebiotic materials may have collected to form the Earth’s first life. And the moon also helps stabilize the Earth’s spin axis, keeping its seasons from fluctuating wildly.

However the Earth-moon system formed, it initially resulted in a much faster rate-of-rotation for the Earth, creating an about 5-hour day. This would have been fairly close to the physical limit of angular momentum for the formation of a planet within the proto-planetary disk. But the short days would have helped to stabilize planetary temperatures at a time when the the sun was at only about 70-percent of its present luminosity.

The Earth’s rapid spin, however, places a tidal drag onto the Moon. And this slowly transfers some of the Earth’s “angular momentum”, or spin-energy, into the Moon’s orbit. This gravitational transfer of energy gradually expands the Moon’s orbit while slowing the Earth’s rate of rotation. Even today, the Moon grows more distant from the Earth by about 1.5-inches per year as the Earth day lengthens by about 1.7-milliseconds every 100 years. In fact, an Earth day would currently be around 60-hours if not for various mediating influences from the Sun.

When the Moon first formed about 4.5-billion years ago, it was at a distance of only about 15,000 miles (24,000 km) from the Earth, and took a mere 11-hours to complete an orbit. But as the Earth’s rotation gradually slowed from its original 5-hour day to our present 24-hour day, the tidal energy transferred into the Moon’s orbit expanded it out to its present-day, almost 239,000 mile (385,000 km) distance. Today, about 80-percent of the Earth-moon system’s total angular momentum (its overall spin-energy) is concentrated in the Moon’s 27.3-day orbit. But this leads to an intriguing coincidence.

“Anatomically modern” humans have been on the Earth for only around 500,000 years. And their “pre-modern” ancestors who first developed larger brains and then migrated out of Africa only date back perhaps 1.8-million years. This represents such minds having perhaps looked toward the heavens in wonder for a mere 0.04%, or four ten-thousandths of the time in which the Earth/Moon system has existed.

And yet, humans have existed during a brief interval in which to witness both the Sun and the Moon covering the same arc in the sky. The Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun. But at just this point in the Earth’s long history, the Moon’s orbit also just happens to have reached a distance from the Earth that’s about one four-hundredth the distance to the Sun. In fact, the balance is so close that just the difference in the Moon’s slightly elliptical orbit can create both “total” and “annular” eclipses of the Sun.

It’s a curious coincidence; and it won’t last forever. As the Moon continues to drift away from the Earth, it will also continue to appear smaller. And in about 300-million years, there will never again be a total solar eclipse.

Emergence – part 1, Patterns

by in Hmmm..., Mystery, Numbers, Philosophy, Science | 22 Comments

“Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny,
for what could more aptly fit your needs?“
– Marcus Aureleus, Meditations.

Around the time I started college, the video-game, “Sim City” became popular. It was a city-building simulation game, where players tried to create a viable metropolis with infrastructure, neighborhoods and sources of economic production such as factories and businesses. The goal of the game was to improve the standard-of-living for the city’s residents over time by investing tax-revenues, without  going bankrupt or destroying its own environment.

Sim City was a slow, problem-solving game. But it was possible to have a little short-term, if perhaps sociopathic fun by doing things like burning down a city’s crappy neighborhoods or misappropriating the tax revenues from a future Superfund site. But around 2000, the game spun-off a more human simulation in “The Sims”.

The Sims was a sort of “virtual doll house” without any particular goals or objectives. Players simply created digital simulations of people, or “Sims”, put them into homes that could be designed in various ways, and then tried to direct their simulated humans’ actions by slightly adjusting their moods and desires. Later versions of the game added to what players could do with their Sims, eventually diverging into some fairly preposterous territories.

Will Wright, the original developer of The Sims, said that the game’s initial intent was merely to satirize US consumer culture. Taking ideas from 70s-era architecture and urban design philosophies, Abraham Maslow’s “Theory of Human Motivation and Hierarchy of Needs”, and Charles Hampden-Turner’s “Maps of the Mind”, he came up with a sort of primitive artificial intelligence that would direct the actions of the game’s simulated humans.
In other words, it was pointless.
–

I’m not aware of anyone ever considering Sims as conscious, self-aware beings. But computers, and especially the software they can run have now reached a point where it can be pretty difficult to distinguish an exchange with another human-being from a digital simulation of one. Artificial Intelligence systems now produce “art”, have friendly conversations, or even discuss philosophy. So questions about machine self-awareness or consciousness now elicit at least some degree of debate.

In 1949 the English mathematician and computer scientist, Alan Turing, proposed a test to answer the question, “Can machines think?” The “Turing test” as it’s come to be known, is a measure of a machine’s ability to act in a way that is equivalent to that of a human. Turing proposed that if a human communicatively interacting with a machine can’t reliably distinguish it from another human, then it must be assumed to be equivalent, and thus to be able to think.

Turing made it clear that his proposed test’s results weren’t dependent upon actual “consciousness”, or even correct responses. Rather, it implies that the only observable distinction that humans can make regarding other humans is based on behaviors. Consequently, anything behaviorally indistinguishable from a human must be assumed to have the same capacities. Of course, it could be argued that the “mind” is something non physical, or that it at least has some non-physical properties that can’t be measured. But Turing’s point was simply that when observing the universe, all we actually see are its patterns.

Fundamentally, this is what defines “science”. As a discipline for revealing knowledge, science is based in the observation and measurement of patterns. Science moves forward by searching out, questioning, testing, and then cataloging the valid patterns which define our universe. And this also sets the limits for science.

In his autobiography, the physicist and originator of Quantum Theory, Max Planck, asserted that accurate knowledge about the universe requires accepting only that which can be observed and measured. “The belief in miracles must retreat step by step before relentlessly and reliably progressing science…” But Planck also acknowledged that those same patterns must have their foundations in something we cannot observe. Mathematics, for example, is the means through which the patterns of science are described. And yet, it exists as a concept emergent from something that can’t be held. “Modern Physics impresses us particularly with the truth of the old doctrine which teaches that there are realities existing apart from our sense-perceptions…” 

In 1931, the mathematician, Kurt Gödel, presented two theorems of mathematical logic that describe the limits of logical provability in formal theories. The first of these theorems demonstrates that a complete and consistent set of “axioms”, or foundational truths for all of mathematics is impossible. And the second theorem shows that there exist cases where certain “true” patterns will have no mathematical algorithms through which to prove that they are true. 

None of this refutes either science, or that the universe is defined by patterns. However, it does suggest that what we perceive in the universe around ourselves is based in something potentially unconstrained by any of the rules that govern our own existence. What we experience as “reality” could be little more than our own interpretations of patterns held in something otherwise unknowable.

A “computation” is simply a consistent pattern within some system. In a “computer”, like the one you’re probably reading this on right now, the patterns are simply electrical “ons” and “offs”, which can be represented as numerical ones and zeroes. Patterns are created when these “ones” and “zeroes” interact according some simple set of rules, like light switches flipping in predesignated responses to other lights being either on or off. And a software engineer can represent this pattern with numbers.

A “computer”, however, can work by any means of interactions. It can be waves that interact, or tubes, or wheels and gears, or levers and buckets of water… or something we can’t even imagine. All that’s important is that there is enough consistency to maintain an overall pattern.
–

In the metaphysical computer of my imagination, I see an infinitude of interconnected meta-water buckets, pouring into one-another as they’re tipped by a system of interacting levers. A trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion buckets slowly shift in its first computation… a “Planck time”, the shortest meaningful interval in the overall pattern. Standing at a great enough distance, and watching over a great enough number of shifts, the buckets create a beautiful pattern of waves propagating in various directions, sometimes recycling, or interacting to form new patterns.

Merely a vast infinitude of shifting buckets and spilling water, one particular collection of patterns describes the interactions of an incredibly complex murmuration and all of its environmental interactions. Examining it carefully, the numbers that represent full and empty buckets and their up or down positions describe places where some patterns are blocked, and others where they are able to pass through. Water spreads through the system, temporarily collecting in some areas, and irretrievably dispersing into others… decaying meta-hydrodynamics.
–

Sima knows nothing… can know nothing of those metaphysical buckets, despite her sometimes wondering. Watering the pepper plants in her kitchen window, she looks out, admiring the beautiful sunset and the trees swaying in the wind.

The Pain Scale of Acetaminophen

by in Death, Hmmm..., Numbers, Risk, Science | 21 Comments


“When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”
– Jane Austen

Acetaminophen (aka: “APAP”, “paracetamol” or “Tylenol”) has been in the news lately, for reasons I won’t even bother to address. However, I find this all rather amusing. The drug is actually something I avoid for several reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the current kerffuffle.

Acetaminophen is a non-opioid, non-steroidal “analgesic” (pain-reliever) and “antipyretic” (fever-reducer”) that is widely available as an over-the-counter drug sold under various brand names, including Tylenol and Panadol. It’s commonly used as an alternative to acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) or ibuprofen in cases where these latter medications cause stomach or gastrointestinal discomfort. It’s generally not considered an especially controversial drug. However, I avoid acetaminophen entirely for a couple of reasons that I think are worth mentioning.

Acetaminophen isn’t a “patent drug”, so it’s too inexpensive to be profitably researched by the pharmaceuticals industry. So there haven’t been many controlled studies regarding its efficacy or long-term side-effects. Most information regarding its effectiveness and safety is consequently either anecdotal, observational, or from documented cases of overdose.

These show a consistent pattern relating acetaminophen use with increases in mortality, strokes and heart-attacks, kidney damage, and gastrointestinal bleeding. However, causal relationships here aren’t clear. That’s to say that while acetaminophen may have caused the noted problems, it could also be that whatever caused the health problems merely encouraged the use of the acetaminophen. It is known, however, that acetaminophen does cause an increase in blood pressure and heart rate.

Acetaminophen is, however, well known to be “hepatotoxic”, or harmful to the human liver. In fact, by the time of my brief stint as a pre-med in the 1990s, unintentional acetaminophen overdoses accounted for nearly 25% of all emergency-room (ER) visits, a large percentage of which resulted in hospitalizations.

The drug can cause “hepatocellular necrosis”, or the death of liver cells. In fact, acetaminophen toxicity had become the single most common cause of acute liver failure in the United States as of 2003. And as of 2005, acetaminophen accounted for the single largest number of drug overdoses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. And as of 2004, acetaminophen overdose resulted in more calls to poison control centers in the U.S. than overdose of any other drug or medication.

More recently, acetaminophen overdoses have become associated with recreational drug use, and especially opioids. These drugs are often “cut”, or combined with with acetaminophen, with the drug’s toxic effects on the liver amplified by concurrent alcohol consumption.

Acetaminophen toxicity presently accounts for around 500 deaths, 100,000 calls to Poison Control Centers, 50,000 emergency room visits, and 10,000 hospitalizations per year in the US alone. As an over-the-counter and prescription drug (when mixed with prescription opioids), acetaminophen toxicity far surpasses all other prescription drugs as a cause for acute liver failure in both the United States and Europe. And despite this well known risk, it still isn’t significantly regulated.

To add insult to injury, acetaminophen is also recognized as a relatively ineffective pharmaceutical for pain relief. Among the few serious scientific studies done on the drug, most have involved its efficacy as an overall pain-reliever, including as a means to reduce opioid use in cases of severe pain. Among these…

  • In a 2020, randomized, double-blind controlled trial published in a peer-reviewed journal, IV acetaminophen when compared to a placebo, the drug entirely failed to show any beneficial effect.
  • In a 2021 Australian study of the effects of acetaminophen in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial, the authors concluded: “For most conditions, evidence regarding the effectiveness of paracetamol (acetaminophen) is insufficient for drawing firm conclusions. …there is strong evidence that paracetamol is not effective for reducing acute low back pain.”
  • A 2017 Cochrane Review study of pain relief in children and adolescents, researchers examined the reported efficacy of acetaminophen in treating chronic, non cancer-related pain in children and adolescents between infancy and 17 years old. The researchers concluded that results were too statistically insignificant to conclusively draw any conclusion one way or another. 
  • Another Cochrane review in 2016 citing a study of over 1,700 subjects concluded that acetaminophen was ineffective in treating lower back pain.
  • In 2016, Dr. Andrew Moore, then Director of Pain Research at Oxford, who had by then written 200 systematic reviews, posted a blog entry titled, “Paracetamol: widely used and largely ineffective“. Dr. Moore also refuted the idea that acetaminophen is safe.
  • In 2017, Dr. Jonathan (Josh) Bloom, Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science at The American Council on Science and Health, one of the least hyperbolic resources for legitimate US health information available, suggested that Tylenol could be, “By Far The Most Dangerous Drug Ever Made?” And in 2023, Dr. Bloom went on to conclude, “…acetaminophen fails to provide adequate pain relief for any condition. Yet, hospitals will dispense the pills like candy and/or an expensive and useless IV form of the drug.”

Subjectively, my own experiences with acetaminophen, including some instances when dosages were sufficient to cause liver pain, haven’t encouraged its use. I don’t even keep any in the house, as I’ve found it ineffective for even minor headaches or muscle pain. I also tolerate aspirin, which seems to work well for muscle and joint pain. And I’ve found ibuprofen to be as effective as a non-narcotic gets for anything else.

To be fair, I could find research concluding that acetaminophen is about 10% more effective than a placebo in relieving headaches, and that it can probably help with cold symptoms. I also came across something suggesting that it can augment ibuprofen after a wisdom tooth extraction. And it has been shown to help reduce fevers in children.

Still, I’ve grown rather attached to my liver… or at least what’s left of it. So current distractions notwithstanding, I have to question whether any of these benefits might outweigh acetaminophen’s already well known risk.

No Spin on “Centrifuges”

by in Boundary Behavior, Politics, Risk, Science, War | 12 Comments

“Round and round we spin, with feet of lead and wings of tin.”
–Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle (1963).

So what’s the big deal about these Iranian “centrifuges”?
What are they, what do they do, and why are they important?

URANIUM

Uranium from the Earth is found mostly in two “isotopes”. It’s not important to know exactly what this means, except that over 99% is the isotope “U-238”, and that less than 1% is the isotope “U-235”. Both types of Uranium are chemically identical, meaning that they will react with other elements in exactly the same way. And that means that there’s no way to separate them through any form of chemical processing.

For nuclear reactors or for weapons, however, only that less-than 1% that’s U-235 can be used to produce a “fission” chain reaction. This occurs when a subatomic particle called a “neutron” causes an atom to break apart, releasing some energy along with more neutrons, which then cause more atoms to break apart, and the process continues…

The amount of energy released in this process is quite large relative to the amount of material utilized, which is what gives nuclear energy its potential uses. In a nuclear power plant, this “chain reaction” is carefully controlled to produce heat for running steam turbines and electrical generators. But if an entire sequence of chain reactions can be made to occur in a tiny fraction of a second, it will result in a nuclear explosion.

U-235

“Enriching” uranium is simply the process of separating the useful U-235 from U-238. But since both isotopes of Uranium are chemically identical, this requires using processes that take advantage of their physical differences. There are several ways to do this. But one means is by using a rapidly spinning device called a “centrifuge” to take advantage of each atom of U-238 being just slightly heavier.

In the case of centrifuges used in the refining of Uranium, modern versions are designed to spin at up to 70,000 rotations-per-minute, with their outer walls moving at speeds of as much as 3,000 feet-per-second, or as fast as the bullet from a high-powered rifle. Spinning that fast, a single centrifuge running at full speed will posses the kinetic energy of a small bomb. So these machines must be carefully designed and operated, as even a slight imbalance or vibration can result in catastrophic failure. In 2009, around 1,000 centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz facility were likely destroyed due to slight operational irregularities introduced by the “Stuxnet” computer virus.

To coax out the useful U-235, a gas containing the Uranium to be refined (uranium-hexafluoride) is fed into the centrifuge, where it too will begin to spin. The heavier U-238 containing gas will force itself outward, toward the edge of the centrifuge. And that will in turn force a thin layer of gas containing lighter U-235 atoms toward the centrifuge’s center, where it can be extracted.

This process only very slightly increases the concentration of U-235 in the extracted gas, so the process has to be repeated many times in what is called a “cascade”. A U-235 refining facility may contain dozens of cascades linking thousands of centrifuges.

For obvious reasons, U-235 centrifuge technologies are kept highly secret. However, some countries (or individuals) have been willing to sell their designs. Iran developed its “IR-1” centrifuge using designs acquired from neighboring Pakistan starting in the late 1990s. Iranian centrifuge testing then took place in the Kalaye Electric Workshop through 2003, and then at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) testing site.

By March of 2006, Iran had completed its first 164-centrifuge IR-1 cascade. And by 2008, eighteen more cascades had been installed at the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz. As of August 2021, Iran was operating approximately 6,000 IR-1 centrifuges, with thousands more in storage. At that time, FEP was producing low-enriched uranium, while Fordow was producing uranium enriched up to 20% U-235.

ENRICHMENT

Most civilian nuclear reactors use “low enriched uranium”. This is uranium that’s been enriched to between 3% to 5% U-235. To create a chain reaction that takes place fast enough to create an explosion, U-235 needs to be refined to a much higher concentration.

“Highly enriched uranium” refers to concentrations of 20%, which can technically be used to create an explosion. However, a device using 20% enriched U-235 will be large and inefficient, as in something that might fit into a shipping container. “Weapons grade” uranium refers to concentrations of 90% or higher. This purity of U-235 allows for the construction of much smaller and lighter-weight nuclear weapons, such as something that might fit onto a ballistic missile.

Nuclear weapons can also be constructed from far more easily produced “Plutonium-239”. But plutonium requires the use of some highly sophisticated technologies to make a working bomb. Conversely, “Little Boy”, the U-235 fueled bomb dropped on Hiroshima, utilized little more than the barrel from a Howitzer. So while it’s far more difficult to refine U-235, a stockpile can very rapidly be turned into weapons.

WHY?

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran had enriched large quantities of uranium to 60% by March of 2023. And it is far easier to refine U-235 concentrations from a highly-enriched 60% to a weapons-grade 90% than it is to go from a civilian 5% to a highly-enriched 60%. This is why Iran is considered to be an immediate nuclear weapons production risk, and why their centrifuge sites are of such concern.

Ultimately, the same technologies that can be used to produce fuel for civilian nuclear reactors can also be used to produce nuclear weapons. As with most technologies, the difference is in how they are applied. And the concern with Iran is that their centrifuge technologies are pretty clearly being applied to at least the threat of producing nuclear weapons. Whether this justifies attacking these facilities is a subjective judgment. But given current geopolitics, it isn’t difficult to understand why Israel would feel compelled to act as it has. 

As for US involvement, a worst possible outcome is now clearly that Iran would be left with any ability to produce a nuclear weapon. So one way or another, that will likely dictate any future action.  However, there’s probably no immediate need for the US to use its B-2 fleet to drop “bunker busters” on Iran’s underground facilities at Natanz. While it’s not clear that the bombs could even destroy the facility, they don’t actually need to. Remembering that uranium centrifuges are delicate machines, just the threat that bombs might be dropped prevents Iran from actually using them.

More immediate worries probably involve shipping containers.

More:

BBC News. (2025, June 19). Visual guide to Fordo: Iran’s secretive nuclear site that only a US bomb could hit – BBC News. News.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-868e3c3d-25ec-43cb-bcc0-8832464b91ca

Beyond the IR-1: Iran’s Advanced Centrifuges and their Lasting Implications. (2021, November 22). Iran Watch.
https://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/articles-reports/beyond-ir-1-irans-advanced-centrifuges-their-lasting-implications

Murphy, F. (2025, May 31). Damning IAEA report spells out past secret nuclear activities in Iran. Reuters.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iaea-report-says-iran-had-secret-activities-with-undeclared-nuclear-material-2025-05-31/

Uranium enrichment. (n.d.). NRC Web.
https://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/ur-enrichment.html#centrifuge

Regression to Mediocrity, Part 2

by in Culture, History, Hmmm..., Humanity, Identity, Numbers, Science | 15 Comments

“Medianocrity”

“One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, seduced by different delusions.”  —Horace

A “median” is the point at which 50% is above, and 50% is below. Imagine lining up 99 people by height. Person number 50 would be at the median. It’s the point of 50/50 odds for the individual. A “mode” is simply the most frequently seen value, or the high-point of a distribution curve. But if extreme cases off to one side create a long “tail”, the median will move in that direction.

Much has been made of the fifth-grade level vocabulary and grammar of our current voice from the bully-pulpit. But that’s also the “readability” level of U.S. Air Force maintenance manuals for nuclear weapons. And most Americans have gone from reading their news in a morning paper to watching it on TikTok anyway.  So the surprisingly articulate speeches given by this same person at the Arab Islamic American Summit in 2017, and again at the US-Saudi Investment Forum last May might surprise some in the US.

A Flesch-Kincaid score of the 2017 text resulted in a 9.5 grade-level as a speech, and a reading level at the “10th to 12th grade (fairly difficult to read )”. But most political addresses are actually the result of speech-writers who also know about things like medians, modes and “bell-curves” as they relate to audiences…

–
“Regression to the mean” was the statistical phenomenon Sir Francis Galton discovered in his 1877 analysis of heredity patterns in human populations. Galton explained this as resulting from an as then unknown mechanism of inheritance. The mathematics of random chance in this process would cause the offspring of extraordinary parents to revert increasingly toward some average, or statistical “mean” over successive generations, what Galton termed, “regression to mediocrity”.

“Mediocrity”, however, can range in definition. Fifty-percent would be “mediocre”, if a measure of the accuracy of predicting outcomes in random coin tosses. But ninety-percent might be a “mediocre” score in a class full of committed students with a competent instructor. The “mediocrity” of being in the statistical median of that particular classroom simply means being in the middle of the pack. Just where that middle is located is something else entirely.

Galton seized upon just this idea when developing “eugenics”. He proposed that a society might work to skew the median toward beneficial inherited physical potentials through selective human reproduction. In the nutshell version, people of good health and high intellect would be encouraged to reproduce from among others of similar stature, with the objective of improving odds within the inheritance-pool.

Of course, it’s not too difficult to imagine how this could turn into a dystopian nightmare as the concept of “family” becomes more like the breeding of racehorses. Indeed, the racial ideology of “Nazism” encouraged selective child-bearing by those with “Nordic” or “Aryan” traits, and used this to justify involuntary sterilization and mass-murder.

Appealing instead to economic incentives, Singapore attempted to encourage a voluntarily shift in fertility-rates toward its college-educated population in the 1980s. Still, ethnic controversies rapidly shuttered the program. Regardless, modern genetic manipulation may render natural approaches to changing the odds in human heredity a moot point, another dystopian possibility examined in the 1997 film, Gattaca. But there are other ways to change the odds in societies.

From a person simply learning a new skill to the choosing of mates with desirable characteristics, skewing probabilities to our own favor is an innately human endeavor. Humans can bend the odds of nature, moving the zone “mediocrity” to our own benefit.

For people born in Nigeria in 2023, the expected at-birth “average” lifespan is 54.5-years (World Bank). However, it’s 84.6-years in Japan, almost half-again as long! Genetics may play some role in this difference. But far more likely is that it reflects conditions that affect rates of infant-mortality, or conversely premature deaths among the elderly. And these create tails that skew distribution curves that plot ages-at-death.

So a “mediocre” lifespan in Nigeria versus Japan probably says more about societal access to medical care, healthy food, clean water, and a safe environment. “Mediocrity” is consequently relative, and can be changed by both individual and collective human behaviors. But this kicks the legs from beneath an intellectual sacred cow.

“Cultural relativism” is the idea that societies should be evaluated only relative to their own cultural norms, values, and practices, rather than as compared to other cultures. It’s a criticism of ethnocentrism, instead emphasizing the evaluation of differing cultures without external bias. The perspective is intended to present a more empathetic and humanistic understanding of societies.

From the perspective of objective study, this makes perfect sense. Evaluating the social function of a tradition, religion, or system of hierarchies might require observation from an entirely unfamiliar perspective. And unfamiliarity with cultural meanings can leave traditions open to misinterpretation… consider a “crucifix”. But there is a limit to this kind of objectivity when evaluating cultures in terms of their relative reciprocal benefits to and from the individuals that comprise them.

Most people would probably choose to live in Japan as opposed to Nigeria based solely on those longer expected lifespans. But they also imply a relative cultural stability that allows for more productive individual development, such as education, work-skills, and the accumulation of wealth. And conversely, these individual benefits can feed back into the society, helping to provide that medical care, healthy food, clean water, and safe environment.

The result is that an ordinary expectation in one society becomes divergent from the norm in the other. And this results in a kind of cultural inequality that can’t easily be resolved. This can even happen among sub-cultures in a larger society, and especially when there are forms of sectarianism.

This was much of the point in Charles Darwin’s 1871, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. With regard to the reciprocal benefit of societies and individuals, Darwin proposed that a society which extends the instinctive bonds found in family to a greater population works to strengthen both its individual members as well as the society itself.

Even accepting that Darwin was a product of a nineteenth-century British perspective, each successive generation can still make the same comparative assessments. And Darwin viewed the human-driven (by female choice) selection for both physiological fitness and compassion as an ongoing process central to the evolution of healthy civilizations.

Societies and their norms are consequently not equal in what they produce, whether for their members, or for themselves. The values and traditions that they select for and hand down are the heredity of civilizations. And they are subject to the same skews and even regression to mediocrity seen in physical traits if they are left to the odds of nature, whether mother’s or human.

That nature doesn’t give a damn about “equality” is an unpleasant truth, and especially in societies where we value the conflicting perspectives of compassion versus merit. In the US, we accept that all people are intrinsically endowed with, “…certain unalienable rights.” But we also enshrine the idea of an “American dream” that is meritocratic, that, “…to become a great and a happy people. …they who live under its (the United States’) protection should demean themselves as good citizens.” (George Washington, 1790)

Whether either Darwin or Washington would be all that impressed with the present-day United States, whether we’re really all that much more compassionate, or even better citizens, I can’t say. At some point, the US managed to skew its median into an expectation that attracts the attentions of half of the Earth’s human population.

But, which half?

Sources, References, and whatnot:

Carnegie Mellon University. (n.d.). Most presidential candidates speak at grade 6-8 level – News – Carnegie Mellon University.
https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2016/march/speechifying.html

Ekman, P. (2010). Darwin’s compassionate view of human nature. JAMA, 303(6), 557.
https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2010.101

Ekman, P. (2023, December 10). Survival of the kindest. Lion’s Roar.
https://www.lionsroar.com/survival-of-the-kindest-november-2010/

Eugenics: Its Origin and Development (1883 – present). (n.d.). Genome.gov.
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/timelines/eugenics

Population Research and Policy Review (Vols. 5, No. 1). (1986). Springer Nature.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40230009

President Trump’s speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit – the White House. (2017, May 21). The White House.
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-trumps-speech-arab-islamic-american-summit/

Schumacher, E., & Eskenazi, M. (2016). A Readability Analysis of Campaign Speeches from the 2016 US Presidential Campaign. arXiv (Cornell University).
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1603.05739

University of Virginia Press. (n.d.). Founders online: From George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport . . .
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135

World Bank Open Data. (n.d.). World Bank Open Data (accessed 6/6/25).
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?most_recent_value_desc=false

 

Regression to Mediocrity, Part 1

by in Boundary Behavior, Culture, Existentialism, Hmmm..., Humanity, Identity, Numbers, Philosophy, Politics, Science | 16 Comments

“Remember, half the people you know are below average.”
-Larry the Cable Guy (Daniel Lawrence Whitney).

Charles Darwin’s half-cousin, the polymath, Sir Francis Galton, was likewise knighted in 1909 for his own contributions to science. Galton created the first weather maps, discovered “anticyclones”, and devised classifications for fingerprints that are still used by forensic experts. He also analyzed the medical benefits of prayer (concluding that it had no measurable effect).

Galton was interested in statistical patterns, and especially those emerging from humans. However, this would eventually result in his becoming among the more controversial, if not maligned of scientific theorists. Today, Galton is mostly remembered as a product of his time and culture, for his role in promoting eugenics (a term he coined in 1883), and for his theories of social Darwinism.

Hundreds of Galton’s academic papers and books discussed statistical correlations in populations, especially with regard to human intelligence. He first used the phrase, “nature versus nurture“, and his 1869 book, Hereditary Genius, was intended as a scientific study of extraordinary intelligence through statistical correlations.

Valid ethnocentric, moral and ethical criticisms aside, Galton was at the very least a brilliant mathematician.  And he did make some interesting, if controversial observations.  Among the more amusing, and generally misrepresented, is Galton’s “regression to the mediocre”.

The idea, which describes a mathematical tendency of the extraordinary to return to some average state over time is often attributed to Galton. Indeed, Galton found that generations of offspring of extraordinary individuals tended to deviate increasingly less from the mean (average) value of a population than did their parents.  That is, successive generations became increasingly ordinary, or what Galton called, “regression to mediocrity”.

While the statistical phenomenon is real, its emergence in discussions of Galton’s work is generally misinterpreted.  Regression to the mean, as it’s usually termed, is merely the result of dumb luck.

In college, I was generally a good test-taker. Much of that had to do with actually studying, and consequently knowing how to at least get into the ballpark with my responses. But I’ll admit to a fair amount of guesswork.

So imagine a whole class full of entirely clueless students merely guessing on a 10-question, true/false test. You might reasonably expect that most will score around 50%, more or less, a “failing” grade. Diverging scores, from 0% to 100%, are also possible. But they become increasing rare the farther they are from the average. The rate at which they happen is known as a “normal”, or “Gaussian” distribution.

Graphing such a distribution will ideally create what’s known as a “bell-curve”, where most scores are concentrated around the center, and increasingly extreme scores become increasingly infrequent. Still, every now and then someone might score an 80%, or a 90%, or even ace the test… if just by pure chance.

You can simulate such a randomly answered “test” on something known as a “Galton board”, or “quincunx”.  The device uses a series of carefully aligned pegs to mechanically bounce a dropped ball either right or left with an equal probability at each peg (essentially a “Pachinko” machine).  By dropping a large number of balls through the device, a probabilistic, normal distribution can be observed to appear in a series of collection bins at the bottom.

The example below is the result of a simulation where 100 “balls” have been dropped through a series of ten, right/left “pegs”, and collected into 11 resulting bins.  If this represents 100 students making random, true/false guesses on ten questions, each bin, from left to right, can also represent the number of correct answers, or of students who received scores ranging from 0% to 100%.

Hmm… So in this first simulation, the most common score was only 40%. Still, 20% of the class passed the test, with 5 students receiving 80% (a “B” grade), and 2 more 90% (an “A” grade)!
That can’t be right… can it?  So let’s try that again with another group…


Well… This looks slightly better.  Only 16% passed the test this time, and there weren’t any “A” grades.  Regardless, I know these students are entirely ignorant.  So let’s try it again…


Again, no “A” grades… Still, 19% passed, and 3 with “B”.  Hmm… Is somebody cheating?


This time 17% passed.  And there were a half-dozen “B” grades.  One more try…


19 people passed the test this time, and with 3 more “A” grades in the mix!

If these graphs all together represent 500 utterly ignorant students in a lecture class left to some entirely incompetent TA, how did 91 students manage to pass the test (“C” or better) without knowing anything at all? And how is it that 28 students received grades sufficient to go on to the next level in a core subject?  Five students even scored 90% for “A” grades!

Of course, no (competent) instructor would run a class like this. But the point here is that sometimes we get lucky. A guess might be right, the weather might have cooperated, cutting the red wire disarmed the bomb, or two fortuitously inherited genes combined to impart some unusually beneficial characteristic. But this doesn’t always happen.

Given more opportunities, random chance tends to drift each individual increasingly toward the middle. For example, if I was ball number 421 in the previous simulation, I might have been one of just that one-percent to get an “A”. But the odds of scoring a 90% (or better) again are a mere 1 in 512. And notice that about three-quarters of scores are in just the 40% to 60% range. Over time, events based in chance will tend toward the average, or the “mediocre”.

Galton observed this with the offspring of remarkable individuals. The descendants of unusually tall (or short) individuals tended to generationally drift toward some average in height. And more controversially, he observed the same tendency among the descendants of remarkable intellectuals…
with a caveat.

Humans are a (mostly) successful species because we (mostly) work to shift, or “skew” the odds… we educate ourselves, take a jacket when there’s a possibility of snow, read the instructions before cutting the wire. And given the chance, we tend to choose our mates.

Going back to those quincunx simulations, we can imagine a Pachinko player who searches for machines with some slightly bent pegs.  Likewise, a competent TA (or a little studying) might shift some number of student responses toward the “correct”, skewing the average toward a higher score.

Still, whether shifted to the right or to the left, there will be an average, a zone of comparative mediocrity. And with whatever influence is left to the gods of dumb luck, repetition will work to move results toward it.

Galton’s discussions of eugenics and cultural Darwinism were merely mathematical acknowledgements that selection, whether natural or human, have statistically predictable results. And where humans have an ability to change the odds, we also change the definition of “mediocrity”.

Photo:
Mug-shots of Francis Galton, taken at Bertillion’s criminological institute in Paris (1893).
Sourced from: https://www.galton.org/photos/slideshow3.htm
There’s an interesting discussion of what was behind the photo here:
Belden-Adams, K. (n.d.). Smarthistory – Alphonse Bertillon, Mugshot and Record of Francis Galton. https://smarthistory.org/alphonse-bertillon-mugshot-and-record-of-francis-galton/

References:

Francis Galton (1822-1911) | Embryo Project Encyclopedia. (2011, April 6).
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/francis-galton-1822-1911

Galton, F. (n.d.). Regression towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature.
https://www.galton.org/essays/1880-1889/galton-1886-jaigi-regression-stature.pdf

Galton, F. (1892). Hereditary genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences.

Jones, E. W. (2025, April 15). Francis Galton’s Theory of Intelligence | 2025. Psychology For.
https://psychologyfor.com/francis-galtons-theory-of-intelligence/

The collected published works of Francis Galton. (n.d.).
https://www.galton.org/bibliography/index.html

 

Thin Air

by in Altitude, Boundary Behavior, Environment, Hmmm..., Risk, Science | 24 Comments

Mount Sanford (I think)

“I am nothing more than a single, narrow, gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.”
-Reinhold Messner, Everest: Expedition to the Ultimate (1979).
–

Air

When I was a teen, my dad spent two months preparing to reach the summit of Denali in Alaska, the highest peak in North America at just over 20,000-feet (about 6,200-meters). A physician, he was well aware of the need to acclimatize to the altitude.

During that time, I accompanied him and several others to the summit of Mount Sanford, at just under 5,000-meters, the highest elevation I’ve ever reached. I was fairly well acclimatized up to 3,500-meters at the time. Still, I well recall the thin air during the last day up to, and back from the summit.

A month in Japan, mostly in near sea-level Tokyo and Osaka, and I’m reminded that the Earth’s atmosphere is little more than a thin blanket. And the oxygen that I like to breath accounts for only about one-fifth of it.

Still, the atmosphere presses with almost fifteen pounds per square-inch (14.7 “psi”) at sea-level . The weight of all the air above, that’s more than a ton per square-foot!  And though we don’t notice, our bodies push back with the same force.

Travel higher, and there’s less air above. So air-pressure decreases with altitude, by roughly one-half for every 18,000-feet (5,600-meters). At around 63,000-feet, it drops to a mere 0.9-psi, not even enough to keep human-body temperature water from boiling. (The “Armstrong limit”.)

Aside from keeping the fluids in our bodies from vaporizing, atmospheric pressure also pushes oxygen molecules close enough together for breathing. But with only half the pressure at 18,000-feet, only half as much oxygen is available as at sea-level. And at 29,000-feet, or the summit of Mount Everest, it’s only about one-third. And that’s not enough for human life.
–

Humans at Altitude

In the US, I live at around 6,300-feet (≈2000-meters), so there’s about 20% less “oxygen pressure”. That’s enough to affect the human body, especially when exercising. Humans can adapt; but it takes time. And a month at sea-level is more than enough time to lose that adaptation.

Those not adapted may reflexively breathe more deeply (“hyperpnea”), or faster (“tachypnea”), and the heart may beat faster (“tachycardia”). But this can throw-off blood “pH” (acidity or alkalinity), eventually leading to a medical condition known as “alkalosis”. But this is only temporary.

Over about a week, kidneys will work to re-balance blood pH, a process that mountaineers can speed up with certain drugs, such as acetazolamide. But the kidneys also respond by secreting a hormone called “erythropoietin”, or “EPO”.

Most notably, EPO causes a gradual increase in red blood cells [“hematocrit” on a blood test]. Blood plasma also decreases, and more capillaries form in skeletal muscles. And the heart’s right ventricle may enlarge, increasing blood-pressure to the lungs. This all helps to more efficiently move oxygen.

Traveling to high altitudes without giving the body time to adapt can cause an illness known as “acute mountain sickness” (AMS). Severity can depend on elevation change, altitude, and rate of ascent. But AMS can be deadly.

Most who ascend from sea-level to 10,000-feet will experience some AMS symptoms for a few days, usually a headache and fatigue. Severe headaches, nausea, and difficulty with coordination might require descending to a lower elevation.

An inability to “get enough air” even when resting, and severe difficulties with coordination require immediate descent and medical attention, as they signal two potentially lethal forms of AMS.

A common thumbnail calculation for the time needed to fully adapt to an altitude is to multiply the elevation-change in kilometers (1,000-meters) by 11.5 days. So to fully adapt from sea-level to my home in the US at about 2,000-meters should take around 23-days.

Likewise, adapting to Base Camp at Mount Everest at around 5,200-meters (about 17,000-feet) should take about 60-days, assuming a start from sea-level. However, that pushes a limit. Most healthy humans can only adapt to long-terms up to about 5,000-meters (16,500-feet).
–

Thin Air

The summit of Everest might now be reached by hundreds each year. But only a handful have done so without supplemental oxygen. Elevations above 8,000-meters are commonly called the “death zone” due to the thin air. In fact, until the mountaineers, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler, reached Everest’s summit without supplemental oxygen in 1978, it was a feat considered impossible.

Still, after months of acclimatization, the two mountaineers only barely succeeded. Falling to their knees in the snow to catch their breaths, Habeler began hallucinating. And Messner later described feeling as though he had lost his sense of “self” before literally crawling onto the summit.

In a later recollection of that moment, Messner declared that, “In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.”
–

V̇O2 max

“V̇O2 max” is a measure of how much oxygen a person can utilize during a physical activity; and it’s constrained by the rate of blood oxygen transport. Many aerobic athletes, such as bicyclists and runners, will train at high altitudes in the weeks before events to naturally increase this capacity. However, the use of synthetic EPO to artificially induce the effect is almost universally banned in sports as a form of “doping”.  But there’s an odd gray area.

“Xenon” is a chemical element with the atomic number 54, and symbol “Xe”. It is a dense, colorless and odorless “noble gas” found in very small amounts in the Earth’s atmosphere. As a noble gas, like helium or argon, it’s generally non-reactive. However, the atom’s large size allows for some weak chemical interactions, including some that affect the human body.

Most importantly, breathing xenon can easily prove fatal. Not only can it displace the oxygen necessary for life, but high concentrations will also put a person to sleep in seconds. In fact, xenon is used for general anesthesia by trained physicians with proper equipment and careful administration. But a side effect is that it also stimulates the body to produce EPO.

The Russians apparently tried this with athletes at the Sochi Olympics, causing the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to later ban xenon use. But whether xenon-elevated EPO really improves performance is still an open question, with no scientific studies demonstrating any advantage.

Regardless, four British military veterans just summited Mount Everest in a single week by using xenon to boost their red blood cell count while at sea-level. Under medical supervision, the four men inhaled a xenon-oxygen mix in a single administration that lasted less than an hour, with the hope that the greatest effects would occur 10 to 14 days afterward.
–

Gas

Personally, I think this is mostly a stunt, with media (again) treating a press-release as “news”. The four men have also been sleeping and exercising for weeks in low oxygen environments, simulating the high altitudes. So this was more likely how they pre-acclimated their bodies. Still, Reinhold Messner has expressed his support of the process, including the use of xenon. 

These guys did manage to make it from sea-level to the summit of Mount Everest in a mere week, a record to be sure… with months of medically-supervised preparation, a massive support team, and supplemental oxygen. To what extent this represents a “human” endeavor I suppose depends upon what technologies one considers as a part of the human identity, whether high-tech clothing, synthetic ropes and aluminum ladders, bottled oxygen, or medically administered xenon gas.

The whole point of “mountaineering” was once considered to be the challenge. Granted, I’m nowadays happy to make it up a local hill to enjoy the view. But Mount Everest, at least, seems to have been reduced to the status of reaching the top of a tabloid news cycle with an expensive selfie.

 

References (though there’s plenty of media coverage):

Dias, K. A., Lawley, J. S., Gatterer, H., Howden, E. J., Sarma, S., Cornwell, W. K., Hearon, C. M., Samels, M., Everding, B., Liang, A. S., Hendrix, M., Piper, T., Thevis, M., Bruick, R. K., & Levine, B. D. (2019). Effect of acute and chronic xenon inhalation on erythropoietin, hematological parameters, and athletic performance. Journal of Applied Physiology, 127(6), 1503–1510. https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00289.2019

Horwath, H. (2020, January 3). Blood Doping and EPO: An Anti-Doping FAQ | USADA. U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). https://www.usada.org/spirit-of-sport/blood-doping-epo-faq/

Malcolm, C. (2021, December 30). Into thin Air: The Science of Altitude Acclimation. iRunFar. https://www.irunfar.com/into-thin-air-the-science-of-altitude-acclimation

UIAA Medical Commission. (2025, February 5). Statement on xenon and high-altitude mountaineering – UIAA. UIAA – International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (UIAA). https://www.theuiaa.org/statement-on-xenon-and-high-altitude-mountaineering/

Wilkerson, J. A. (1985). Medicine for mountaineering. Mountaineers Books.

 

 

Induced Atmospheric Vibration

by in Boundary Behavior, Environment, Hmmm..., Risk, Science | 18 Comments

“Do not merely accept the prejudices of that which calls itself ‘news’, especially from the Internet.“
-Abraham Lincoln

Sometimes, I just have to cough up my coffee and mumble “WTF!” under a facepalm.  Usually, the response corresponds to some new conspiracy theory, a UFO sighting, chakra realignment, or something else along those lines. But it’s started occurring frequently enough of late to affect my laundry schedule.

Most disturbingly, many of these episodes of reflexive coffee-spewing have been as a result of “news”. And I’m not talking about those editorials from self-appointed arbiters of misinformation. Rather, it’s established mainstream sources, like the BBC, PBS, or institutional media networks that are apparently just repeating whatever convenient nonsense emanates from some unquestioned source.

One latest descent into utterly uniformed idiocy involves the remarkably under-reported, but absolutely catastrophic power outage that just affected most of Spain and Portugal on April 29, including their capitals, Madrid and Lisbon. Sixty-percent of the two nations’ power infrastructure went offline within 5-seconds during the middle of a workday. And a cascade of subsequent failures then shut down many remaining, but interconnected systems, some extending into parts of France.

Airports, rail lines, and traffic signals were disabled. Banking systems, Internet and cell-phone services went down. Petrol (gasoline) stations, water-pumping and other electricity-dependent infrastructure ceased functioning. This resulted in massive numbers of people trapped in nonfunctional infrastructure, epic traffic backups, and everything from stores to hospitals unable to function.

A state-of-emergency was declared across most of Spain, authorizing the deployment of 30,000 police officers. Police and Red Cross workers were deployed to hand out blankets and bottled water to trapped commuters. Unfortunately, three people in the Galicia region died from carbon-monoxide poisoning after attempting to power a medical oxygen machine with a generator. And grocery stores and restaurants began disposing of produce lost after more than eight hours without refrigeration.

Restarting a power grid after such a complete failure is called a “black start”, and it’s a slow and involved process. Power had been restored to about half of affected areas by midnight, amounting to about one-third of total electrical demand. But the Spanish power company, Red Eléctrica (REN), warned that it could be a week or more before power is fully restored to all affected areas.

This is a big story because it relates directly to how drives to increasingly electrify infrastructure while moving to “renewables” can, and inevitably will affect populations.  What happened here should be a warning. However, the large corporations that are behind this failure have been allowed to control the narrative with little more than nonsense.

Spain has made huge investments into renewable energy sources over the last two decades, including bioenergy, wind, solar, and hydro sources. And in 2023, Spain reached having more than 50% of its electricity generation derived from renewable sources, mostly wind and solar. And at the same time, it has shut down fossil-fueled power plants and started to phase out its nuclear facilities. But this comes with problems.

Electrical grids are a balancing act. Energy in at power sources has to be matched to energy out to consumers. A surplus can disrupt a power grid just as much as a deficit. Moreover, the timing of oscillations in the “alternating current” sent along power-lines and through transformers has to be carefully matched between different sources. And this is made even more difficult when a power source is provided merely at nature’s whim, such as with wind or solar.

In the week before the blackout, Spain saw several power surges and cuts. One cut due to “excessive voltage” disrupted rail lines, stranding high-speed trains near Madrid on April 22. Later that day, Repsol’s Cartagena refinery was also shut down by power supply problems. It was clear that the grid was operating on a knife-edge and becoming increasingly unstable. And on April 29, it reached a tipping-point where everything cascaded into one massive failure.

Initially, speculation on a cause considered a cyber-attack; though that was quickly ruled out. But in the background, operators already knew what had happened. The closure of coal, gas-fired and nuclear plants had simply reduced the grid’s capacity to balance itself to the point where it couldn’t adjust to demand.

Solar farms generate direct current (DC) power which needs to be converted to alternating current (AC) in order to be transmitted through grids. But if solar generation drops, there has to be a back-up source of AC power to help maintain a high enough voltage to keep the output frequency steady. Otherwise, the solar power source will be disconnected from the grid. And likewise, a drop in wind energy has to be compensated for if electricity demand exceeds production.

April 29 was nothing more, or less than a demonstration of the fragility of electrical grids. And it revealed how increasing dependence upon renewable, “flow” sources of energy for electrical power generation, such as wind and solar, make these systems even more susceptible to failures. This massive power outage illustrates exactly why such systems need to have some type of power-generation backup, perhaps nuclear if “decarbonization” is the objective. Betting everything on the vagaries of nature is merely a formula for disaster.

Initially, however, the outage in Spain and Portugal was blamed on a rare atmospheric phenomenon referred to as “induced atmospheric vibration“. WTF!? 

News agencies apparently obliviously reporting on the occurrence of this cosmic alignment of atmospheric chi-energy originally cited REN. But officials from the company have since claimed that the statement was wrongly attributed to it, probably realizing how idiotic it sounded.

Regardless, you can now find numerous articles on the topic of Induced Atmospheric Vibration, probably resulting in an eventual Wikipedia page. In one case, it’s claimed that this is a phenomenon caused by, “…rapid temperature shifts between layers of the atmosphere which set off dramatic pressure changes, leading to powerful electromagnetic disturbances.” 

Damn… coffee all over another shirt!

 

Apophenia

by in Existentialism, Hmmm..., Identity, Mom, Music, Mystery, Philosophy, Science | 19 Comments

Alice Sara Ott, Gnossiennes No.1, Gymnopédies No.1, & Gnossiennes No.3, by Erik Satie.

“Je suis fatigué de toujours mourir avec le cœur brisé.”
[“I am tired of always dying with a broken heart.“]
– Erik Satie

“Apophenia” is the human perception of patterns in otherwise unrelated or meaningless information. It’s the experience of seeing faces in clouds, or of sensing order in random events.

The experience is an ordinary and usually benign product of brain function. But in extreme cases, it can result in behaviors such as unreasonable gambling, superstitious actions, or irrational beliefs. In statistics, it can result in what is termed “Type-I error”, or a false positive.

The brain is an instrument of pattern-recognition, constantly searching for relationships between the sensory inputs it receives. And it changes throughout a life as it attempts to make sense of an external world by matching the patterns of its experiences to other established patterns. We discover clues to our existence by connecting perceptions, defining our bodies and the spaces around them, learning when to feel fearful or safe, and the communicative meanings of words and of sounds.

The very reality we experience in our minds is the result of how we construct these relationships. But always, the brain looks for patterns, even in the random occurrences that fill the world, even if they don’t exist.

When I was much younger, I thought of music as a sort of universal language, that people all sensed pretty much the same thing in its patterns of rhythms, melodies, harmonies. But over time, I’ve come to realize that’s not entirely the case. We may all hear the same things, and even connect certain instinctive responses. Regardless, interpretation is emergent; music is a product of mind.

The power of music is in its evoked emotional response, but without the need for any apparent linguistic or semantic context. It can express emotion while itself remaining abstract. But the experience of music is still an interpretation. So not everyone necessarily feels the same things from the same combinations of sounds.

This isn’t about those who seem to have super-abilities to hear things most of us cannot. Simply getting older reduces the physical ability of our ears to register higher frequencies. But “music” as an experience is something different. It’s more than just combinations of sounds; it’s what emerges from the mind.

About one in ten-thousand people have “perfect pitch”, or an ability to exactly identify notes without hearing a reference. This isn’t a “good ear”, or an ability to accurately perceive the relative notes of an instrument. Tuning a piano requires good relative pitch; but a piano-tuner will still use something like a tuning fork as a reference.

Perfect pitch is an ability to bypass that interpretation of sound, and to instead have direct access to the neurological connections within the ear itself. Likewise, it tends to become less acute with age, mirroring the physical decline of hearing’s mechanics. So it’s an ability that, while developed with exposure to music, also seems to bypass the relational character of music itself.

Conversely, “congenital amusia” refers to cognitive music deafness, which apparently affects about 4-percent of the general population. Amusics can usually tell whether one note is higher or lower than another, but they can’t consciously distinguish differences in pitch. Most people can reflexively experience the difference between an “octave” and a “major 7th”, the first sounding harmonious and latter discordant. Those with amusia cannot, nor can they distinguish major and minor chords.

Somewhere between these extremes is where the patterns that give rise to mind create the experience of “music”, with perhaps a sliding scale. And “audio pareidolia” might be the extreme, a form of apophenia where people may experience music in even the random noise of anything from wind to the sound of a motor.

As with perfect pitch, exposure to music, especially when young, probably has an influence in how sounds are interpreted in our awareness. And for that, I thank my mom especially for the music she taught my young mind to perceive.

“Frisson” (French for “shivers”), sometimes called, “goosebumps”, is a response to certain emotionally stimulating experiences. The sensation includes a feeling of tingling skin, and may occur as a pleasurable emotional response to music. Many, myself included, strongly experience this effect when listening to emotionally evocative pieces of music. And yet, about one-in-three people have never had such an experience.

Frisson is a psycho-physiological phenomenon. It’s a physical response of the human body to a stimulus that, in the case of music, is merely created by the brain. It’s a reflexive manifestation of mind, of something entirely imagined.

When I was very young, my mom would encourage me to lay on the floor, eyes closed, and to imagine something while listening to a piece of music. And later, after we moved to the US, she would encourage the same while she played the piano. Several of my favorite pieces were by the French composer and pianist, Erik Satie.

Satie expressed an absurdist sense of a world that shouldn’t be taken too seriously. And many of his compositions were written in such a way as to encourage those who performed them to make their own interpretations. So my mom would sometimes play these pieces slightly differently, and then challenge me to see how how the story had changed.

What my mom was trying to teach me was how to experience those faces in the clouds that hide in the patterns that give rise to music… that it becomes what we experience and what we feel. Life is indeed an absurd performance, filled with joy and with sadness, with passion, and with irony. But when we take the stage, we at least get to choose what to evoke in our own renderings of its script.

Music is to me as standing in the clouds, surrounded by the wind, an arrangement of incantations read from some ancient, esoteric text. Voices sometimes whispered, sometimes singing in a bell, summon something magical, a radiant tingling glow.

 

Ada Zhao, playing the Italian composer, Benvenuto Terzi’s, “Carillon” (Bell Carol).
Yes, this is two overlapping parts being played on a single guitar. The melody is tapped out with the left hand, while the harmony is played in bell-like single-hand harmonics with the right hand.
Talent, skill, and a lot of passionate practice!

References and stuff:

Bowling, D. L. (2023). Biological principles for music and mental health. Translational Psychiatry, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-023-02671-4

Jain, A., Schoeller, F., Horowitz, A., Hu, X., Yan, G., Salomon, R., & Maes, P. (2023). Aesthetic chills cause an emotional drift in valence and arousal. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 16. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.1013117

Satie, Erik: Why and where Satie composed | Gnossiennes – Mara Marietta. (2024, June 8). Mara Marietta. https://www.maramarietta.com/the-arts/music/classical/satie/

Schoeller, F., Jain, A., Pizzagalli, D. A., & Reggente, N. (2024). The neurobiology of aesthetic chills: How bodily sensations shape emotional experiences. Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 24(4), 617–630. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-024-01168-x

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2025, March 21). Erik Satie | Biography, Music, gnossiennes, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erik-Satie

 

Cosmik Debris

by in Environment, Hmmm..., Risk, Science | 20 Comments

 

“Look here brother, who you jivin’ with that cosmik debris?”
– Frank Zappa

When I first received my driver’s license at sixteen, I really wanted a bright red Lamborghini “P-300” Silhouette for my first car. Unfortunately, however, I ended up getting the family’s old Pinto Station Wagon. While it was probably far more practical than a Lambo for carrying a surf board to the beach, it was difficult to contain my disappointment. So I named the old brown pony, “Cosmik Debris”, alluding to a song by Frank Zappa.

About two months back, I spent a night in the high country with the intent of trying to see the “Northern Lights” of the Aurora Borealis. Alas, the gods of solar flares likewise left me disappointed. However, a night spent mostly staring at a sky relatively free of light pollution revealed something unexpected. There are a whole lot of satellites orbiting the Earth!

According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), there are 13,217 satellites in various orbits as I’m writing this on July 6, 2024.
I had no Idea!

If you’ve never seen a satellite crossing overhead, they look pretty much like non-twinkling stars moving at about the same rate as a jetliner, but without the warning lights. They’re visible due to reflected sunlight. Consequently, they can usually be seen toward the west after sunset, or toward the east before sunrise. Sometimes, you can follow evening sightings eastward across the sky until they suddenly wink-out as they pass into the Earth’s shadow.

Two decades back, staring at the sky from my hot tub shortly after sunset would occasionally reveal something visible, almost always tracking in the usual west-to-east direction intended to take advantage of some of the Earth’s rotational angular momentum. And the International Space Station (ISS) has always been visible, appearing at predictable times as an easily seen “star” moving in a likewise direction. Rarely, I might even see something moving in a northerly or southerly direction, probably indicating a surveillance satellite of some type.

Since my anti-climactic alpine overnighter, however, I’ve noticed that staring up while sitting in the hot tub for perhaps a half-hour (more-or-less) might reveal a dozen or more satellites, as well as a couple of “flares” (more on those later). Moreover, many of the satellites follow in seemingly predictable patterns, sweeping in highly angled trajectories, followed after a couple of minutes by another in the same trajectory, but a few degrees farther east or west. I’m thinking these are probably “Starlink” satellites. (Indeed, in-the-sky.org lists 54 Starlink and 39 other flyovers for tonight, including the notorious “Resurs P1“.)

As of June 2024, there were 6,219 Starlink satellites in orbit, of which 73 are non-functional. An indirect competitor, OneWeb, also has around 650 satellites in rather higher orbits. Starlinks are presently orbited at from 211 to 382 miles (340 to 614 km) above the Earth, while OneWeb satellites are at 750 miles (1,200 km). While higher than the International Space Station at around 250 miles (400 km), these are actually pretty low orbits for communications satellites.

Supposedly, SpaceX has developed a new satellite that will be less reflective, and that’s intended to be orbited at a somewhat higher, 326 to 332 miles (525 to 535 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. Regardless, the company’s goal is to ultimately have over 40,000 satellites in orbit… of which some 500 or so should be non-functional at current rates.

As of June 18, 2024, the European Space Agency (ESA), classified about 3,400 of the 13,200+ satellites currently in orbit as not “still functioning”. Among those no longer working, around 100 are various retired “geosynchronous” satellites that have been intentionally moved up to higher, disposal orbits. But most of those left are simply the abandoned hulks of satellites that can no longer be controlled. And many of these eventually begin to tumble.

Apparently, tumbling satellites are the sources of most of the flares I’ve seen recently. “Flares” are caused by especially reflective parts of satellites directing sunlight toward the surface of the Earth. Old “Iridium” radio-phone system satellites used to create these flares in such a predictable manner that there were online tables for watching them. When seen at certain times from the right locations on the Earth’s surface, these appeared as gradually brightening and dimming streaks of very bright light in the dusk or night sky.

During those informal, half-hour to forty-five minute hot tub observations over the last month, I’ve seen an average of about one flare each night. However, only one was typical of those old Iridium flares, which would gradually fade-in and then fade-out over a period of perhaps five to eight seconds while moving along their arcs through the sky. Instead, most of what I’ve seen have manifested as a series of swelling flashes.

Looking westerly after dusk (around 10:00 PM at present) some of these have been quite bright and hard to miss. Usually, there will be two to four flashes along a track. The most I’ve seen was six, each about a second apart. The reason I note this is because these flashes likely indicate the rate at which a dead satellite is tumbling in its orbit. From what I’m seeing on satellite tracking programs, most are likely defunct Russian surveillance satellites.

As a satellite orbits the Earth, it will gradually accumulate rotational energy from interactions with the solar wind, molecules in the Earth’s wispy upper atmosphere, and irregularities in the Earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields. Functional satellites will have mechanisms for counteracting these forces and keeping their orientations.  But eventually, these will become worn out or exhaust their energy sources, allowing the satellite to begin to tumble.

Tumbling represents an accumulation of kinetic energy in the same way as a spinning flywheel.  Over time, and especially as an orbit “decays” or becomes closer to the Earth, the rotational energy of a tumble can accumulate to the point where it exceeds the satellite’s structural limits, and pieces may fly off into new orbits.

The European Space Agency (ESA) presently estimates the number of such break-ups, explosions, collisions, or other events resulting in fragmentation at “more than 640”. This has resulted in the ESA also tracking and cataloging around 35,820 orbiting “debris objects”. And these are only a small part of an estimated 40,500 debris objects greater than 10 cm (about the size of a fist), 1.1-million between 1 cm and 10 cm (a bullet and a fist), and 130-million between 1 mm and 1 cm. (a grain of sand and a bullet).

On June 26, the defunct Russian “Resurs P1” Earth Observation satellite broke up, leaving at least 250 pieces of debris large enough to be trackable from the Earth. Orbiting at about 220 miles (350 km), the satellite had a mass of about 6,600 kilograms (14,500 lbs). While debris trajectories were being determined, ISS crew were forced to take cover. And this was for good reason.

In 2016, a quarter-inch pit was gouged into a glass window of the ISS, probably by a paint fleck or piece of metal the size of a bacteria. The damage was caused by the relative velocity of the object, which could have been as much as 30,000 mph (50,000 kph), or about 15-times the velocity of a military rifle round. Now imagine the kinetic energy in something the size of a bolt.

The space around the Earth has become the domain of a lot of big promises… worldwide phones and Internet, super-accurate GPS for automated cars and airplanes, space telescopes, and even tourism.  But looking up as pulses of light from another zombie satellite appear briefly between a sea of wandering stars, I picture Elon Musk’s old Tesla Roadster. It was maybe a nice car once. But now, it’s just another piece of Cosmik Debris.

Stuff:

In The Sky, Live Satellite Tracking:
https://in-the-sky.org/satmap_worldmap.php

United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, Index of Objects Launched into Outer Space:
https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/osoindex/search-ng.jspx?

Heavens Above Satellite Astronomy Site (Note: Go to “Change your observing location”, then check out the “Live Sky View” page):
https://heavens-above.com/

European Space Agency, Space Environment Statistics:
https://sdup.esoc.esa.int/discosweb/statistics/

Mary’s Astronomy / Science Blogs (I linked to her regarding “Iridium Flares” in the text):
https://marysastronomyblogs.blogspot.com/

Live Tracking of Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster (and “Starman”):
https://where-is-tesla-roadster.space/live