Kirsten: You know, to find a different way to get their research out there. I don’t have to be open-minded about that and allow that into the world of knowledge that is Science.
Justin: And most scientists have religious beliefs…
Kirsten: Most, yes…
Justin: Right?
Kirsten: A lot…Yes.
Justin: A vast majority…
Kirsten: Yes, absolutely!
Justin: So, here’s the thing…It comes into play…
Kirsten: But that doesn’t come into play, it shouldn’t come into play when doing “Science”.
Justin: Right, there’s, there’s actually room for people who’re religious at the scientific table. The thing is and this is the one that always – this is the one that I never really kind of get because, we get accused of like saying, well, people cannot be religious and scientific at the same time!
I happen to be an atheist and I don’t disagree with that. I don’t put anything on somebody who has found a happy medium between Science and religion for themselves. I don’t challenge their beliefs in any way, right?
Can you imagine though, if I was the leader of their religion or if the leader of their religion said that Science is completely wrong or that it destroys human dignity? I mean it’s really then the religious leaders who’re actually asking them to choose Science between the religion and the Science.
It’s them who’re actually putting the pressure on their faith and telling them that if they’re pursuing Science, then they’re not of the faith. I’m not doing that. I’m not saying if you believe in God, you can’t do Science.
Kirsten: Mm hmm
Justin: So, I don’t know…
(Paper being crumpled and thrown away)
Kirsten: Yes, so anyway, we thought we should address it because the letters that had been written because there were enough upset people who wrote in that they’re probably those of you out there….
Justin: Mostly, mostly mad at me at the military comment thing.
Kirsten: It’s all a bit…
Kirsten: (Laughs) Yes! Yes…
Justin: I’m not saying that the people in the military or the U.S. military are weak people…
Kirsten: No, not at all…
Justin: I’m saying you know…
Kirsten: No…
Justin: I’m talking about a religious leader who should be speaking out against war in general. I think and not bashing Science and yes I do… Gosh! The one – that listener who wrote in who was really upset with me – who said they were – they’ve been listening in the field I think in Afghanistan, Iraq while on tour…
Kirsten: Yes…
Justin: I mean that hits me hard because here I’m in this nice little university town where there is like no crime rate and it’s pretty affluent – I’m not that affluent but the town itself is very affluent.
Kirsten: Yes…
Justin: And here he is on duty away from friends and family on a mission…
Kirsten: Hmm…
Justin: …that perhaps he doesn’t completely agree with but he signed up to do the job. So, there is a -there’s some tear in it at the seams here…
Kirsten: Mm hmm
Justin: …even for me.
Kirsten: Wait… But the fact that you might disagree with what’s happening and people putting themselves at risk. They still are and we appreciate that. You know…
Justin: I see and I again I don’t…
Kirsten: We appreciate…
Justin: …but the risk… they can place themselves…
Kirsten: …what people are doing out there and putting themselves, yes.
Justin: …but I don’t I’m against war completely. I’m a pacifist. And it’s a strong position to take cause see I mean it really does open you up from a lot of attack for people who say “we got to have war otherwise everything would be – where everybody would be dead because we’d be killed” but not if it was a universally so.
Kirsten: Yes. Ah! Therein lays the rub.
Justin: …trust people which I really don’t at the end of the day too… so that’s the other thing…
Kirsten: …but what about a black hole?
Justin: I would trust that more than I would trust a…
Kirsten: You’d trust a black hole? Well researchers at University of Saint Andrews say that they’ve created a black hole in their laboratory.
Justin: Again?
Kirsten: (Laughs)
Justin: Wait… What laboratory is this? Because there’s another lab that they did in, and then we never heard from them again.
Kirsten: Yes. Poof! They disappeared.
Justin: Wherever gone!
Kirsten: Well, the study they’re trying to figure out is they’re trying to figure out what would happen to light at a black hole’s event horizon where light gets stretched out and it slows down and everything gets distorted. And there’s actually no way to actually go to a black hole and study it so we have to try and simulate it in a laboratory. How can we peek inside of a black hole?
Justin: Mm hmm.
Kirsten: Well researchers at St Andrews have accomplished this feat. They fired lasers down an optical cable, an optical fiber, and they used different wavelengths of light that moved at – different wavelengths do move at different speeds within these fibers.
So they shot a slow moving laser pulsed through the fiber and then they shot a faster laser pulse chasing after it.
So, the first pulse goes through and it distorts the optical properties of the fiber simply by the fact that it’s there, it’s changing the reflective – It’s change in all sorts of stuff going on in there.
It forces the fast “probe wave” to slow down when it catches up with the slower pulse and tries to go through it. So it’s like you know an overtaking car but you know the slow car in front of you is kind of not letting you pass you see you have to like slow down and follow right next to it. And the probe wave gets trapped and can never overtake the pulse’s leading edge effectively becoming the event horizon on a…
Justin: Hmm.
Kirsten: …black hole because that’s kind of like as it gets there you never reach the end of your event horizon that’s kind of the idea because like everything is just constant, it just stretches on forever into the…
Justin: Interesting…
Kirsten: …into the abyss of the hole and from which light can’t…
Justin: …lights… these black hole!
Kirsten: …escape so that pulse is kind of trapped. Yes, so this laser, they’re calling it a laser black hole. It could allow physicists to examine what happens to light on both sides of event horizon which is impossible in astrophysics study.
Cosmologists have worked out exactly how light should change frequency as it approaches an event horizon mathematically from the outside or the inside of a black hole. And the team observed they matched these shifts EXACTLY with the laser pulses in their experiment.
Justin: Wow…
Kirsten: Yes. So they calculate that the laser black hole shares the property of a hawking radiation being swamped by noise. That it will be that it will radiate photons if it heats up to about 1000 degrees Celsius.
So they’ve done some pretty, pretty interesting work here. And they’ve created a black hole without you know like people thought that once upon a time and I think they’re still saying it now that maybe the LHC but every time you know a super collider opens up everyone’s like they’re going to create a black hole and destroy the world.
Justin: I think it’s a…
Kirsten: Well, now these researchers have done it and not…
Justin: Yes that they did it at small – Large Hadron Collider is going to do it big.
Kirsten: They did it small and they did, they didn’t put the world at risk.
Justin: Well the thing is it would also distort time so heavily that if that the Large Hadron Collider were to destroy the world, we’d already be gone.
(Laughs)
Justin: It would have happened last summer.
Kirsten: It would have already happened.
Justin: Yes, would have happened last summer.
Kirsten: A lot and so exciting news it looks as though as LHC is on track for having its opening collision this summer.
Justin: Uh… wait a second, wait a second.
Kirsten: Yes, so we should have…
Justin: It got pushed back, the opening…
Kirsten: It got pushed back.
Justin: No it’s this – No yes last summer, it should have…
Kirsten: Last summer it was supposed to get started but they had some magnets that were not getting aligned properly and you know when you’re dealing with things that are several tons and have to have nanometer precision, it’s a very …
Justin: It’s a beast of a project.
Kirsten: Yes, a beast of a project…
Justin: I hope it doesn’t settle before they get to run some experiments.
Kirsten: Ray Kurzweil is out again with words on the advancement of technology and humans; he says that machines will achieve human level artificial intelligence by 2029.
Justin: Wow!
Kirsten: Yes.
Justin: Let’s just say that’s about the same time that the president said that we should get up to 25 miles per gallon on all vehicles.
(laughs)
Kirsten: So we’re… great so…
Justin: That’s the same time robots take over the earth.
Kirsten: Yes… they’re going to be…
Justin: Pushed out, just far enough!
Kirsten: They’re going to be little tiny robots that will be able to be implanted in people’s brains to make people more intelligent. He thinks that machines and humans are going to eventually merge and it’s really part of our civilization. But that’s not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us. Yes… whatever!
Justin: Huh… (Grumbling something)
Kirsten: (Laughs) They’re totally going to displace us…
Justin: When you have two intelligent life forms vying through the same space and same resources…
Kirsten: They’re head butting. They head butt like the like the horny browed, shark tooth, ancient meat eater.
Justin: We need to start practicing now.
Kirsten: Meat eater, that’s right…
Justin: We need to start head butting, brick walls and stuff because they’re made of metal. They’re already harder. They already have the advantage.
Kirsten: I don’t know, would you allow nanobots to be injected into your capillaries and travel to your brain to make you smarter?
Justin: Yes, absolutely! To make me smarter? Yes, absolutely! I’d do it so quick. I’d be the first one to sign up.
Kirsten: This Week in Science poll, anybody out there? Send me an email like let me know, would you allow yourself to be implanted with nanobots to make yourself smarter
Justin: Anything that makes me smart and increases my killing power. I’m all for it.
Kirsten: Would you? Would you? I want to know, I want to know what the minions think. How many of you out there would actually allow it.
Justin: Well there, before that we may actually end up with a cure for the uncommon cold which is now been contemplated.
Kirsten: Oh yes…
Justin: Researchers at McGill University have discovered a way to boost an organisms natural antivirus defenses effectively making its cells immune to influenza and other viruses…
Kirsten: Wow!
Justin: Flu free!
Kirsten: Flu free. They also, like two weeks ago, big story that they gave mice a cold. The rhinovirus which is the common virus that causes sinus head colds. Mice typically are not – they’re pretty immune to the rhinovirus but in the lab they were able to adjust it and make mice sick.
Justin: Really? Wait…
Kirsten: Yay… for ‘Science”! Let’s give mice colds…
Justin: Poor mice.
Kirsten: I know but by doing that it will allow us to be able to figure out how to create the cure for the common cold.
Justin: This may have done it. We have to genetically alter our children first but the process which could lead to the development of new antiviral therapies in humans involve knocking out two genes in mice that repress production of the protein interferon.
Kirsten: Interferon?
Justin: Interferon which is an interfering protein. I’m guessing. The cell’s first line of defense against viruses. Without these repressor genes, the mouse cells produce much higher levels of interferon which effectively blocked viruses from reproducing.
Researchers tested the process on influenza virus, Encephalomyocarditis virus and vesicular stomatitis virus and Sindbis and it was effective. People have been worried about for a few years about the potential new viral pandemic such as avian influenza,” says Dr. Sonenberg. “If we might now have the means to develop a new therapy to fight flu, this potential is huge.”
Kirsten: Yes. There’s a new study also that just came out in science on February 14 on MRSA multi-drug resistant Staphylococcus Aureus which is becoming much more of a prevalent infection in California. We’re getting it and it’s infecting kids in our schools and Stockton California seems to be a hot spot for infections.
A team that consisted of people who are researches from around the world exploited a pathway that allows the Staph bacterium to defend itself against an immune response. They found out that the compound BPH 652 that was designed to lower cholesterol as its primary use actually blocks an enzyme that’s really crucial in the organisms’ defense pathway and it allows the body’s cells to prevail against the MRSA infections.
So instead of an antibiotic that would be used that the bacteria might be able to eventually overcome this might be something that might be much more crucial to the organisms’ survival and harder to overcome. So this is a new way of going after these bacteria. And that’s it for us today. We can’t wait…Wait. And we’re out of time
Justin: We’re all out of time and if you learned anything from today’s show, please remember…
Kirsten: It’s all in your head. And listen to us next week. We’ll be back.
(Music)