Life's No. 1 Question, Finally Answered

Why is our urine yellow? It's almost as basic a question as "why is the sky blue?" And yet, the answer to the first question has been surprisingly elusive. Until now.

Perhaps it's slightly disingenuous to say we don't know why our urine yellow. We've actually known for over a hundred years that urobilin is the specific chemical compound responsible for that yellow coloration, and that the more well hydrated you are, the lower the urobilin concentration and the clearer the stream.

The question we didn't know is where the urobilin comes from, and that's the question a team of researchers from the University of Maryland have answered. And as with so many health-related issues, it all comes down to your gut microflora. Those little guys show up in so many places, being linked with diseases as varied as inflammatory bowel disease (duh), allergies, diabetes, and even depression. 

So, what's the gut microflora's role in this little escapade? To answer that question, we actually have to go even deeper into the body, right down to the blood that pumps through our veins. Red blood cells don't last forever. And as they degrade, they secrete a bright-orange chemical called bilirubin, which is moved into the gut so it can be excreted, reabsorbed, or in this case repurposed into something else. 

In this case, our gut microflora process the excess bilirubin by producing an enzyme, bilirubin reductase, that changes bilirubin into a byproduct called urobilinogen. If that sounds a lot like our original culprit urobilin, it should; urobilinogen doesn't last long before it spontaneously degrades into urobilin.

While this newfound urine origin story is very cool, the researchers went a step further and investigated the urine of multiple people, finding that bilirubin reductase is actually often missing from both newborns and people with inflammatory bowel disease. Could we be looking at a potential means of treatment for gut-related diseases? Perhaps, but the researchers noted this is merely the foundation for further research, not an end goal. Typical scientists, they're going to make us all sit through an entire 3-hour movie before we can cure all our pee-based diseases, and we don't even get intermissions anymore. That bathroom is going to be FULL when the movie ends.   

The Best Of Science In 2019

There were some big events in the scientific fields in 2019, and Science News has compiled a top 10 list of the biggest. Some were more positive than others (new depression drug good, measles return not so good), but all are important. (Yes, even the Denisovans. Cavemen are very important.) I'm glad that the black hole image took the number 1 spot though, because that's a very big deal. That little orange and black doughnut was the culmination of years of work, and it's great to say that we've finally actually seen a black hole. We can only hope 2020 is equally as interesting when it comes to science.

Want to See a Picture of an Atom?

Well, here you go! One picture of an atom, coming up!

Obviously, there's some hijinks going on, but that picture is of a single atom suspended in an ion trap. And that's some cool stuff. The picture's won a science photography prize, which I think is well-deserved.

Is Cosmic Inflation Theory Wrong?

Sometimes, even fairly basic scientific concepts get questioned. This is a good thing. If there's enough room in a theory for questioning, there's a good chance the theory is either wrong or incomplete. Take the Big Bang. It's a fairly uncontroversial theory in the scientific community. All the matter in the universe started from one single point, it explodes, and we get the universe. But there was a problem with that concept. The universe is flat, as in, the matter is spread out incredibly thin and space is basically empty. That's fine as far as it goes, but there was no way the Big Bang could have been powerful enough on its own to spread the matter of universe so thin. There must have been another factor, and into the breach came inflation. This inflationary energy is what cause the universe to become what we see today.

Of course, a theory is nothing without evidence, and we have significant evidence of inflation. There are the ripples in the cosmic background radiation, the existence of dark matter (though we still don't know what dark matter is), as well as another type of gravitational radiation called B-Mode polarization, found in 2013 using data collected from the Planck satellite. Case closed, right?

You know where this is going. Three scientists took issue with the Planck data, saying that it fit the most convenient theory of inflation, not the simplest one. And that leads into one of inflation's biggest problem. It is so broad a theory, with so many hypotheses contained within it, that all new data can be made to fit. Nothing can disprove it. And that's a problem. If it can't be disproved, it's not science, it's philosophy. And we're not dealing with a bunch of philosophers here, we're dealing with physicists. And pro-inflation physicists (the vast majority, let's remember) are not happy with this suggestion. They say they need more time and more data, that it's just taking a very long time to eliminate hypotheses. The anti-inflation physicists say that more than enough time has been spent on inflation, nothing will prove it, and new data will just cause the theory to stretch even further.

Inflation has another big problem, and that is inflation seems to require a multiverse. And once again, the existence of multiple universes would be impossible to prove and is therefore not science.

That begs a question, though. If inflation is wrong, how did the universe get the way it is today? The anti-inflation physicists suggest something called "the Big Bounce", a process wherein the universe grows out of a point, reaches a certain point, then collapses back on itself, only to repeat the process again and again. This is also not a new idea, and like inflation, it has a big problem. The Big Bounce has always required the existence of naked singularities. And once a theory requires naked singularities, it's done. Nobody likes naked singularities. Our intrepid trio anti-inflation physicists claim they've managed to figure out a Big Bounce theory without a singularity, but that claim's been made before, and has always been disproved.

So where does that leave us, the non-physicist audience? Well, if you want to be democratic about it, inflation has the support of almost everyone, while anti-inflation is thought of as being pretty fringe science. I'd say if you're ever at a party, and someone asks about your opinion on the formation of the early universe, just say inflation. It would require less explanation.

Exoplanet with Rings Discovered

What? It most certainly hasn't been two months since the last post, what are you talking about?

And you thought these rings were impressive.

Anyway,  scientists found an exoplanet orbiting the star 1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6 (what a catchy name) a few years back. Nothing unusual about that, but after a closer look, things got a bit baffling. Ordinarily, when a planet transits in front of a star, the star dims once, and then brightens again. Old J1407, as I am henceforth calling, was not dimming like that. It would dim and brighten many times in succession. They figured out it was a ring system orbiting the planet, J1407b, back in 2012, but at the time, they thought there were only 4 rings.

As it turned out, they slightly underestimated. Apparently this planet has 37 rings, with a radius of 0.6 AU. That means Earth's entire orbit would fit with this ring system. They have an estimated mass of 100 times the mass of the moon, and a gap 0.4 AU out is big enough that a Mars or even Earth-sized object could be orbiting inside. It should be noted that this planet is very young, less than 20 million years, and these rings are not going to last long. Astronomically long, that is. Eventually, those rings will disappear as moons appear, but with that much mass contained in the rings, there could be some pretty big moons. The planet's a bit too far out for any Earth-sized moon to be potentially habitable, which is too bad, but the idea of seeing a ring system that ridiculously oversized would probably make J1407b quite the tourist destination. Now, all we need is interstellar travel...

Italy Putting Science on Trial

The earthquake in question.

I'm not sure what to say about this. Italy convicted scientist, actual scientists, for manslaughter, because they didn't science well enough to predict an earthquake that killed about 300 people in a town in central Italy. Now, the scientists are appealing, but their prospects don't look good. Looking at this story and another story going into more detail about the incident, it's clear that these people did communicate that earthquakes were unlikely, and that they didn't do a great job of stressing that earthquakes are not predictable, giving people the wrong idea so that the town was not as prepared as it could have been. But that's not the issue here, not really. The issue is that these scientists are being held accountable for getting their geophysics wrong.

We can't predict earthquakes, not with any accuracy. All we can say is that an earthquake is likely on a particular fault line in 10, 20, 50 years. If we had a way to know if San Francisco was going to have a major earthquake on December 15, 2014, it would be big news. But we don't. It probably isn't possible to predict earthquakes with that level of accuracy, and it certainly isn't possible today. These scientists are being held accountable for failing to predict the unpredictable, and it isn't right.

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Advanced Astrophysics is Kind of Difficult

A few months back, scientists announced they had found gravitational waves from the very beginning of the universe, lending credible evidence to the theory that the universe expanded at an enormous rate in the first few... what's the small prefix I can think of...picoseconds.  Anyway, in those first few instants, the universe expanded at much faster than the speed of light, or so the theory goes.

As I've mentioned before, science is hard, and this kind of science is really hard.  An extraordinary claim was made here, and you know what they say about those.  Of course, equally important is making sure you didn't make any silly mistakes, like not compensating for dust floating around the Milky Way.  Now, no one is saying the observation is wrong, or that the whole theory is wrong.  Unlike propulsion from nothing, this actually has a chance of working out.  I hope it does.

In an unrelated bit of news, I'm putting the link to my Twitter back on the bottom of each post.  I'm going to try and actually be an active Twitter user...er, even if I don't care for it.  Just don't expect too much.

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Rare Type of Black Hole Found

Typically, black holes come in two varieties.  There are the stellar black holes, formed when big stars go supernova, and supermassive black holes which dwell at the center of galaxies and are theorized to have a key role in galaxy formation.  Stellar black holes are anywhere from 10-100 solar masses, while supermassive black holes are upwards of a million solar masses.  Finding a black hole whose mass is somewhere in between those two ranges is incredibly rare, so rare that scientists dispute whether or not such things even exist, let alone agree on their characteristics.

Astronomers at the University of Maryland have found one of these rare, intermediate mass black holes.  The black hole in question lies in M82, a galaxy 12 million light years away.  M82 also happens to be the closest "starburst" galaxy, meaning it has an accelerated rate of star birth.  While observing this galaxy in the past, scientists noted an unusually bright source of X-rays, imaginatively named M82 X-1.  It was suspected that this object was an intermediate-mass black hole, but accurate estimates of its mass could not be obtained.

To get a more accurate mass estimate, the scientists measured individual x-ray particles from M82 X-1, finding a distinct pattern of light pulses which formed a 3:2 ratio.  This ratio could be used to measure the mass of the black hole, which is pretty amazing, when you think about it.  They found the black hole's mass to be 428 solar masses, give or take a 100.  Doesn't sound very accurate, but it does make this black hole definitively heavier than any stellar mass black hole.  Stars don't get that massive.  So, now the challenge is figuring out how a black hole of 400 solar masses forms.

Propulsion From Nothing Probably Nothing

You may have heard recently about how researchers have found a way to move an object without exerting any actual force on it.  The experiment was simple.  Place a radio transmitter inside a specially designed container, play the radio, and the container moves, breaking some very important laws of nature.  Why is this such a big deal?  You might think it's because photons have no mass, but that's not it.  If that was the case, solar sails wouldn't work, but they do.  The problem is that the radio waves are not reacting against anything.  The transmitter is inside the container, and the waves are pushing against all sides.  There is no reaction.  Newton's third law is not being satisfied.  The container is moving forward, but nothing is moving backwards.

This all sounds like fantastic news.  But science, especially science at the cutting edge, can be thrown by the simplest things.  A couple years back, people were going crazy about neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light.  It was even discussed in one of my English classes back in college, and not the science fiction one either.  People were talking about how it changed everything, but I was never convinced.  I knew there was no way that research was correct, I knew that they had made some error in calculation, or their observation was off slightly, I knew that the physics just weren't there.  And guess what?  They weren't.  I don't remember what it was exactly that they did wrong, but a few months later the scientists retracted their claim, and everything was right with the world.

Obviously, I'm not a physicist, I'm not even a scientist.  But I will say this with certainty.  There is no way the experiment is correct.  Something went wrong somewhere.  Just like last time, I wish they would be true.  I wished neutrinos moved faster than light, I wish radio waves propelled in all directions inside a fancy can could move the can, but it just won't happen.  A claim like this requires some impressive evidence to back it up, and so far, it just isn't there.  It may take months, maybe even years, but there will be another explanation.  Just watch.

Good News, Everyone!

I haven't exactly been posting up a storm here.  So, sounds like a great time to launch even more blogs!  Hooray...?  Seriously though, I've never been entirely sure what this blog was about, because I didn't want to write just about one subject.  I have a lot of interests, and just writing about one thing would have been boring.  So, I've decided the solution is create new blogs and devote them entirely to one subject.  This blog will still be around, and it's still going to be full of different things.  But, you won't be finding any more posts on golf or science here.  Everything that isn't that, you can find right here.  Oh, and I've got a Twitter now, so I'll put that link here too.  Isn't this exciting?

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A Little Blue Dot

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/11/world/space-blue-planet/index.html?hpt=hp_c4

 I'm a big follower of the search for exoplanets, so I just found this fascinating.  The article is about a planet that the Hubble Space Telescope was able to image 63 light years away.  Hubble didn't image the planet directly, but rather was able to discern the planet's color using the spectrum of light reflected off the planet surface as it orbited the star.  As the planet went behind the star, there was a noticeable drop in the blue portion of the spectrum, indicated the planet is blue in color.  That doesn't mean the planet is covered in water.  No, the planet is what is known as a "hot Jupiter," a gas giant that orbits very close to its star, and is several thousand degrees Fahrenheit.  This particular planet orbits about 3 million miles away from its star, a tenth of the distance between Mercury and our sun.  Scientists guess the planet is about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and that any rain would be liquid glass.  Now, this is obviously not a nice place, but the fact that we can do this is remarkable science.  The precision of the Hubble is remarkable, despite its age.  The news about exoplanets has been getting steadily more exciting as time goes on, I look forward to hearing the next story on them.