Round The Table - Discuss

Srama,

You got me all reading, thinking and gaping! Let me write to you later on this (to let you know what understory you have stirred by bring this topic in the lore for discussion.

Thank you!

(I knew there was an advantage in having a biologist as a maths teacher in the group).

 

JAG - I here you loud here! Infact the gladiatorial clash of scientific titans Stephen Hawking and Leanord Susskind famously dubbed as 'Black Hole War' revolves round the approach of scientific analysis. To summarize - Hawking proposed that when a black body evaporates, all the information within disappears, evaporates which was against the basic tenet of physics that information cannot be destroyed in this manner. But Hawking had all the math perfect which was irrefutable to disprove his theory except for the paradox where at event horizon you bend the laws of physics resulting in few head shakers. Susskind took up the challenge, worked on it and proposed a new theory of 'Holographic Principle' where information is projected resembling a hologram around the horizon and is not lost. Finally Stephen conceded to his new theory and admitted that his original proposal on dissipated information may not be true.

To me it was a fascinating watch (the documentary) for two reasons. Susskind, who was a plumber early in his life, later graduated in physics to emerge as world renowned scientist and proponent of 'string theory'. His audacity to challenge Stephen and prove him wrong sends a message that sometimes even the brilliant don't get it wrong but fail to see it differently. Thats it! And this is where it is important to be open-minded in exploration to seek truth.

I found this simple version of the story Black Holes and Scientific Standoffs which is easy to read in maggie style of 2 mins, yet fully understand what the standoff was all about. My links to no frill, simple and comprehendable references is not assessment of your cognition to read more sophisticated journals; I believe when the title interests someone, one can hunt for the book on own!

 

Srama - the reason I had to keep you waiting was to intercut with my personal anecdote. As a student (who hated biology), I always thought that fungus was a PLANT! Okay now that was only till middle school, er...or may be high school but you see those little buggers have the sophistication to appear as plants, yet saprophytes in their eating habits. In the four kingdom taxonomical system of classifying life, they occupy a category today - 'Fungi'. I had major confusion during my schooling on how fungi was different to plants when they seem to look like tethered cousins.

The article on leaf cutter ant is stupefying - detailing the structuring of roles in colony: media worker, soldier, minima. As you noted, atrophy of reproductive urge in fungus and queen bee carrying seminal fungal stain for establishing new colony depicts a very advanced and intelligent sub-species, a variant in nature. I can't imagine how the evolution of this symbiotic relationship developed, from dietary constraints - feeding on fungi or nature's call in stabilizing the ecosystem. In any case, the ants feature in atleast one edition of Times magazine as 'Emmet Of The Year'.

The mind-controlling enzyme released by fungus got me thinking if there is anything similar that affects human brains. I found below reads on the net while surfing. The latter wiki article is more interesting in terms of its effects on sensory organs.

Household Mold Linked To Depression
Hallucinogenic Mushroom that acts as psychedelic drug

Why do I have a feeling that next time I shop for those little white button mushrooms, I'll let out a spasm

Curious to know, which of the pronunciations is more prevalent in US - 'fun-guy' or 'fun- ji'?

 

The credit goes to Lavii on mention of 'Janine Shepherd' in one of the forum threads exhorting to watch her TED video. I launched the video and it is no exaggeration to say that 18.57 min in my life were spent unaware of the milieu in the most noisy location I was in this morning. I wanted to peep and watch it later but the film rolled and her captivating survival story could not unlock my gaze even for a sec from the screen.

Here is the link to the video on TED - A Broken Body isn't a Broken Person

Janine was cycling through Blue Mountains in Australia when she met with a ghastly accident that transformed, awakened, liberated her life as she summarizes by saying - ' “It doesn't matter what you look like, where you come from, or what you do for a living. All that matters is that we continue to fan the flame of humanity by living our lives as the ultimate creative expression of who we really are.”

The video talks about her journey from spinal ward to aerobatics instructor; one of the most inspirational talks I've tuned to in recent times.

 

JGVR - the presence of Dark matter and Dark Energy though undetected is not unrealized.

Dark matter- There has been speculation now for some time on presence of matter that adds (halo kind) mass to galaxy. It is also dubbed as skeleton/framework to hold matter. Physicists term it as Dark/Missing/Invisible matter that cannot be observed. Perhaps one day we would be able to determine the presence of such matter and in what form it exists.

Dark energy was first suggested by Einstein, I believe, in his theory of general relativity which was not consistent in a static universe. And he added 'Cosmological Constant' but Hubble's discovery on speeding galaxies proves that Einstein original work that predicted presence of energy that builds space within space may be right.

Though the particles/energy has been disputed in scientific community the enigma still exists how to account the additional mass of a galaxy (wimps/dark matter?), what is that force that is pulling galaxies away (dark energy?). I'm no physicist but just an observer from my frame of reference of events - talks/shows/lectures, please don't quote me anywhere ...

 

Soks - The NAT Geo article was pretty interesting on how toxo induces chemicals in immune cells to agitate and carry them to the brain in a human. Thanks for the links.

 

Goodness! Me thinking - Two men, from Berber and Igbo tribe, agree for truce and set the venue as the only landmark available - The tree of Ténéré. One says to the other - "Meet you at 3:00PM sharp and don't forget to carry a reed pipe to play with ewer and fruit hamper as it might get very lonely there counting the number of trees"