Waiting for New Episodes
While we wait for episodes 6 and 7 to be released, here are some things to read/watch/consider for the intervening classes.
Questions and suggestions from students
1) Some topics which a student felt we were on the edge of discussing, but never quite got there:
- a. Are humans still evolving? What are the selection "pressures"? What might be the role of artificial selection (including cloning, gene editing, etc.)?
- b. SETI (intelligence, not just "life"), including the "Fermi paradox" and possible explanations.
- c. What do we know about the cetacean species (sea mammals). The size and encephalization of their brains is greater than that of humans. Is "intelligence" necessarily defined by the development of technology?
2)
Unfinished business from "Ladder to the Stars"
• Project Breakthrough Starshot
Learn more about our humanity's first concrete plan to survey an exoplanet (a planet in another solar system).
How does this plan differ from your previous imaginings about the future of human exploration outside our own solar system?
Does it make you adjust your sights about the possibility of humans moving to another planet -- or another solar system -- when our planet begins to be unlivable?
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Unfinished business from "Lost City of Life"
• Lots of you asked, "What's special about olivine?" The linked article suggests that there is good reason, but the episode left that very ripe fruit unplucked. Can't imagine why it was so sketchy, when there is such good reason to think it special. Maybe a later episode will help? But I hope we can take up this article this week or soon.
• Try this poem: Nothing is Far, Robert Francis
To help with the "gradients" mentioned in the article, watch this:
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Unfinished business from "Vavilov"
• Genetics, the basics: Mendel's laws of inheritance
• Svalbard Seed Vault
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Unfinished business from "The Cosmic Connectome"
• The Machine That Tried to Scan the Brain -- in 1882, at NPR
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging, at Wikipedia
• Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, at Wikipedia
• How Scientists Know About Molecules
• Zooming in on the molecules that make up cells
• Mechanisms of nerve action (pretty technical)
1) Nerve impulse
2) The synapse
• Protein Music
In addition to listening to the sounds, look at how complicated are the motions that lead this protein model from a disorganized chain to a precisely folded one. Also notice that the final, folded, functional form is still fluctuating wildly, as are all things on this level of size at room temperature. How can life be so coherent while dealing with the dramatic motion characteristic of molecules at ordinary temperatures?
Molecular events are unimaginably fast. The model in this video is moving faster than we can see, but it's slowed down from 160 nanoseconds to 270 seconds to make the movements and sounds distinguishable (barely). The real process is 125 million times faster than what we are seeing. Molecular events are unimaginably fast.
Is there an echo in here?
A little bit more about how Protein Music is generated:
