Fatal inventions

Last week's headlines sounded like something out of an old James Bond script, with Q presenting all sorts of deadly gimmicks to 007.

In recent days, in the gruesome conflict between Israel and its neighbors, some of Q's ideas seem to have been turned into real weapons. Exploding pagers and walkie-talkies have killed around 20 people and injured several thousand in Beirut, Lebanon, in two days. The victims are mostly Hezbollah members, but also some civilians who happened to be standing nearby. The explosives hidden in these tiny handheld devices were triggered by radio signals.

 

Clearly, this is a new and dangerous step in weapon tech to target people who are considered enemies. 

What's next on Q's list of deadly devices? Here are some suggestions: 

1. A tube of toothpaste filled with TNT that is triggered when it comes into contact with the toothbrush. "With Colgate you never need a dentist again"

2. A lighter filled with napalm that burns the face of the person who is going to light a cigarette. "Pleasure to burn."

3. Marshmallows made of Semtex that explode when you put them on a stick and roast them over a campfire. "Stay pufft"

4. A set of salt and pepper shakers filled with tallium chloride or anthrax spores. "I always told you, salt ain't good for your health"

5. A soda can which does not contain 0.3l Coke, but a hand grenade. "Have a coke and smile".

What a pity, and what a shame

Now, pretty much in the middle of my second half of life, I am often asked – or ask myself – whether it would not be desirable to be young again. For example a late teenager or early twen, that is, in the middle of the first half of my life. To quote a former German foreign minister, I would probably answer: I’m not convinced. You ask why I am so undecided? Read this:

 On Tiktok and in social media, you can see what numerous studies have also shown: more and more young people are voluntarily abstaining from sex. Many of them have probably never been happier, if you believe the posts. The hashtag “celibacy” has more than 195 million views on Tiktok. Is this a “celibate generation” talking here? Is this a kind of informal global sex strike? What has become of the legacy of the sexual revolution? Many young people today seem rather disillusioned with the sex-positive movement of the 1990s and 2000s. With the idea that good sex is always possible. With the so-called dating culture. The new abstinence, the choice of voluntary celibacy, not for religious reasons, also seems to be an answer to this. Bored by hook-up culture, this generation is rewriting the rules of intimacy. 

 

Ladybird-Coccinellidae-mating (You and me, baby are nothing but animals..)

What is left of life if you voluntarily forgo sex? Even if I were always cautious about making the “…most beautiful thing in the world” judgment, I would say that life without sex is possible, but pointless. And I don’t just mean life in the biological sense, but also life as our very individual existence, from birth to death.

 Without sex, every night would be a nightmare, a dreamless preliminary stage to death or a neuro-toxic insomnia. Nothing is better than a night with good, fulfilling sex to begin the new day with limitless optimism and love for life.

 Furthermore, sex is the only way to build a real family, with your own children, whose development you can follow and who often remain the people you trust and love most throughout your life. Of course, if you are childless, there is also the option of adoption, but stepchildren are also conceived somewhere, at some point, in the course of a sexual encounter between a man and a woman. Sure, from my daily work in the laboratory with mice I am quite familiar with reproduction technologies such artificial insemination and somatic cloning. But because of the various inherent hurdles of these procedures I strongly doubt that they will ever develop into an alternative for sexual reproduction in human society, even if Generation Y with their new dream of a sex-free future may fantasize about it.

 And finally, as a dyed-in-the-wool positivist I strongly believe that sex has been “invented” by nature (or some might say by God) not to test neither to destroy us, but rather because it appeared as the most efficient and clever way to combine genetic variability with positive selection and robustness against environmental challenges. Organisms that rely on asexual reproduction can expand their population much faster, a process we could follow recently during the Corona-Virus epidemic (with R-values of around 3 and infection doubling times of 1-2 weeks), when you observe how a few bacterial spores can rapidly spoil a bowl of potato salad, or when you follow the spreading of sumac tree rhizomes, which can occupy large garden or forest areas.

 In terms of quantity and speed, asexual reproduction might be quite advantageous, but when nature (or God) was looking for quality and sustainability, sexual reproduction was the new “must have”. 

No generation Y, no twitter or Tik-Tok would have ever been seen in the world without Sex.

The rise of an alternative king

For as long as homeopathy has existed, the British royal family has been a supporter of homeopathy. The now king Charles III, when he was still Prince of Wales, not only promoted homeopathy, but also many other alternative medical procedures. What's striking is that he only ever picks out the most bizarre and implausible, leaving aside those that are remotely evidence-based. This may be because he always prefers the mystical and anti-scientific. Even as a young man he was led on this path by Laurens van der Post, an esoteric and self-proclaimed South African guru. 

This is all the more frightening as Charles III is also ignoring the memory of one of his predecessors of the same name in office. Charles II (King from 1660 until 1685) was a great patron of science. Under his reign, for example, the Royal Society was founded in 1660 and is still one of the most important scholarly societies in the world today. But 250 years later, his follower on the same throne Charles III became notorious in proudly claiming to be called an "enemy of the Enlightenment". He probably wanted to express that he opposes rational thinking.

A really unlikely event: Spoting ISS and departing Starliner by naked eye

 Occasionally, when I go out late in the evening with our dog I used to watch in the sky westward, from where several times in the year the international space station can be seen when her trajectory goes over  Europe and it is just the right time between sunset and complete darkness. 

One can either trust a program such as ISSTRACKER.com to find out the matching days in the year, or can just watch the sky every night hoping to catch the ISS by chance. This is what I did the day before yesterday, i.e. May 25th at about 9:55 pm (CET). And indeed, there she came, visible as a bright spot on a straight path, from the western horizon eastwards. But something confused me a bit, since this time the space station was not just a single bright spot (by eye) but in front of it (in about a distance 3x the size of the ISS) there was clearly a second, slightly darker and smaller spot visible.

ISS and the Boeing Starliner in front of it, about 30 min after departure (picture drawn by hand, as I recall it)

First I thought that my eye vision was a bit blurred, so closed my eye and reopened it, but this secondary spot was still there. Then I suspected, that maybe it is not the ISS, but maybe a drone quite low in the atmosphere. But actually, drones usually never give such a brilliant white light. So at the end, I forgot about it.

Yesterday, I was talking to Leonard, our son, who as a physics student is always keen to find answers for tricky problems. First he suggested that this was not the ISS, but maybe some of Elon Musks Starlink satellites. But usually, they all have a very similar, small size. Then he quickly searched internet, and also considered that there was recently a rendezvous of Boeings Starliner capsule with the ISS. And funnily, this was exactly what I had seen (incidentally !!!). When we red NASAs log of the Starliner manouvers at ISS, it appeared that at 2:36 p.m. (or 8:36 p.m. CET) undocking started. For about one and a half hours, the ISS and Starliner were still close together (this is the constellation that I spotted at 9:55 p.m.), before a deorbit burn started at 4:05 p.m. (10:05 p.m. CET). Unfortunately, at this moment both ISS and Starliner had already disappeared beyond the eastern horizon, so only a potential observer further in the southeast Europe might have had a chance to watch it.

And this a view of Boeings Starliner, seen from the ISS in a few meters distance. It is amazing, that from the earth surface in about 408km distance, one can still identify it as the little satellite spot in front of the ISS (picture above).

 

Apart from the nice visual impression that I got, it made me also to reconsider the probability to meet a rather unlikely event. To go out at night at the right moment to watch the ISS (about 3 x 5min long transits over Europe per night), the rare occasion to watch it as a bright object against the dark sky (only about ~ 10 days every year), and the incidental event that NASA and Boeing had scheduled the undocking manoevre right at this moment. It is really hard to calculate, but my guess is that less than a few 10s of people worldwide had watched this scene by chance just like me. On the other hand, probably hundreds of dedicated hobby astronomy appasionados with sophisticated equipment had already prepared their telescopes and cameras for this moment days before, and maybe cooled champaign and invited friends to meet this event together. 

Black holes matter

Yesterday three emminent scientists, two from the US and one from Germany, Reinhard Genzel from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in nearby Garching , were awarded this years Nobel Prize for Physics. Their contribution to the theory (Roger Penrose) and the identification and visualization of black holes in the universe (Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel) were acknowledged.

This is just an artists drawing of the possible close view of a black hole.

 

 

 

 

The question arises what kind of matter a black hole is composed of, and does this matter at all ?

 

Matter we usually think of as something solid, something we can touch and which resists movement (inertia) and which is heavy of course (because all matter is attracted by gravitational force). But another, in fact much broader definition comes from Karl Marx, who also included Radiation, Energy and other fields in his category of matter (the objective reality that is given to man in his sensations, which is copied, photographed, depicted by our sensations and exists independently of them.

So what we know about black holes is that they are the source of extremely strong gravitational force. A black hole in the center of our galaxy (the milky way) exerts a gravitational force to the surrounding stars that is equivalent to 4.1 million solar masses M_☉, or 8.2×10³⁶ kg. Its diameter is calculated as 3 x 10(x10) km, as compared to the suns diameter of 1.4 x 10(x6) km. Because of this, its density (which is responsible for inducing curvature of the space-time) is roughly 7 x 10(x13) times higher than the average density of the earth. There is element that we know which under normal conditions can be as dense. A sugar-cube size piece of this black hole would weight 56 million tons. This is similar to the mass density of an atomic nucleus. But there, the size is limitted to the radius of the largest transuranium elements, about 10(x-15) m, and it is believed that all nuclei that exceed this limit become unstable and fision.

A black hole of similar density is not only stable, but it even happily increases in mass and size. In my view, other candidates for the type of black hole matter are free quarks, isolated Higgs bosons or pure energy. Since according to Einsteins mass-energy-equivalence, pure energy of sufficient density would also excert a strong gravitational force.

But do black holes matter at all, or are they just an object for scary movies and academic research ?  No, I think they matter a lot.  Perhaps its a black hole which by its strong gravitational force keeps the milky way (our universe) together.

 

 

 

 

 

Money cant by me health

 

Yesterday the 2020 Nobel Prizes for Physiology/Medicine were announced. This year, three scientists who contributed to the discovery of Hepatitis C virus shared the award to equal parts. Harvey J. Alter, born 1935 in New York worked at the NIH Bethesda, Michael Houghton, born in 1949 in the UK works at the University of Alberta and Charles M. Rice, born 1952 in Sacramento, CA is researcher at the Rockefeller University in New York. The success of anglo-american bio-medical basic research is again reflected by the decisions of the Nobel Price committee, and there is little reason for doubts about the justifiction of their votes. It is, by the way, also reflected by the number of high-class publications, patents, discovery of novel therapies.

What is deeply disturbing, though, is the fact that despite the high level of basic research in medicine and biology in the US, their record of fighting the SARS-CoV2 pandemic is desastrous. Whereas the US makes up only 4% of the world population, it is responsible for about 20% of all SARS-CoV2 infections and the same percentage of coronavirus fatalities (as of today, the record of deaths shows 210.195 in the USA and 1.044.311 worldwide). During the last 10 month, 1 out of 1522 Americans died of the virus, as compared to "only" 1 out of 7469 people worldwide. The comparison becomes even more weired if you compare the death rate in the US with some countries which, despite limitted ressources for research, managed the corona-pandemic in much more planned and rational way. This is the Top-10 list of countries which achieved the lowest numbers of lost lives (relative to the population size):

CONTRY       CONFIRMED DEATH DUE TO SARS-CoV2 (per population)

Taiwan           1 out of 3.371.423

Vietnam         1 out of 2.728.571

China (PR)    1 out of  295.421

Singapore      1 out of 211.111

South Korea  1 out of 122.275

Cuba              1 out of 91.057

Greece           1 out of 25.659

Finnland        1 out of 15.896

Denmark       1 out of 8.842 

Germany       1 out of 8.583

What makes these numbers even more confusing, and puts the poor record of the US death toll in an even worse light is the fact that the East-Asian countries like China, South Korea or Singapore were among the first confronted with the virus outbreak. In the US, the infectious spread started almost 6 weeks later, therefore the authorities theoretical had a huge advantage of preparing the right measures of preventing the spread. But little benefit was gained from this natural advantage. The risk of dying of SARS-CoV2 in the US is about 200 times higher than in any of the East_Asian countries. And it is not a different population structure that can be blamed for this: All these countries and not agricultural any more, but dominated by large urban settlements and people working and big enterprises.

Some scientists suspect that certain genetic variants in the genome of East-Asians confer a protective effect against a severe SARS-CoV2 infection. Even taking this into account, one than wonders why countries like Cuba, Greece, Finnland or Denmark, which have a very similar population genetics as the US, still show an 6 to 60 fold lower risk to dye from the virus than the US. The idea of a protective genetic variant among Asian people is further questioned considering that US americans with Asian origin are not less likely to develop a severe or fatal course after infection.

Some speculate that the low rate of fatal outcomes in East-Asian countries might be attributed to a baseline presence of cross-reactive immunity from a preseding infection with other, more common corona-virus variants earlier in life. If this is true, than at least the low death rate in Greece or Cuba must have other, more obvious reasons.

If you look on the bottom end of the rank list, where countries with the worst records of SARS-CoV2 fatalities group, you find that the US is in prominent company:  

 

CONTRY       CONFIRMED DEATH DUE TO SARS-CoV2  (per population)

Israel                       1 out of 5160

France                     1 out of 3073

United Kingdom     1 out of 1563  

USA                        1 out of 1522 

Brazil                      1 out of 1444

And except for Brazil, which is currently run by a government blinded by complete ignorance, the other for candidates in this sad group also have one thing in common:

Theese are the nations with the highest number of Nobel Price winners per capita for Medicine. Strange co-incidence ??   It just shows a crying discrepancy between the worldwide spendings for life science basic research and the achievements in our knowledge on the one side and the poor impact it has in the political handling of a mayor health challenge such as the coronavirus pandemic.

Enemy of Science : Donald J. Trump

Scientific American (with its German 1:1 translated version "Spektrum der Wissenschaft") is one of the eldest science magazins in the world. For the first time in its 175 years old history, it now publicly and unaninomously gave an emotional vote for the new US president to be elected in November this year. It writes that "The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science." Firstly but not only has he shown his grave disrespect towards science in the way he handled the coronavirus pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its
greatest challenges.

 

Trump repeatedly lied to the public about the deadly threat of the disease, saying it was not a serious concern and “this is like a flu” when he knew it was more lethal and highly transmissible, according to his taped statements to journalist Bob Woodward. His lies encouraged people to engage in risky behavior,
spreading the virus further, and have driven wedges between Americans who take the threat seriously and those who believe Trump's falsehoods. The White House even produced a memo attacking the expertise of the nation's leading infectious disease physician, Anthony Fauci, in a despicable attempt to sow further distrust.

I feel pride to be part of the scientific community, and also feel vividely remember the times when I studied physics in East Germany. I always took the risk to be hunted by the security forces when I visitted the public library of the US embassy, only to read Scientific American. It was for me a voice of truth and honesty, and therefore represented one of the main principles in natural science and research: that we should be only led by truth, and not by wishful thinking. Since 2016, Donald Trump has shown how little respect he has for truth, and that his policy is completely based on lies. Therefore, he is indeed the worst enemy of all honest scientists.