It’s Been a While..

I have been far too lazy to keep up with my science obsession lately. I blame this entirely on having 40 hour work weeks. Any free time I have I am sleeping or playing Pokemon. However, as of Sunday I am unemployed and no longer taken advantage of. So, I will have plenty of time to ramble on about things nobody reads or cares about!

Today is probably the best day to come out of hiding considering last night at 1 am EST Curiosity (refer to my last post) landed on Mars. Thanks to the magic of twitter and the internet, the first images of the martian surface were streamed directly to my handy dandy IPhone. It’s upsetting to me that although an event this monumental has taken place there are still ignorant (excuse my language) FUCKtards that have something to complain about. “America can’t afford this!” “We should be spending our money on more important things like society’s issues here at home!” “The economy!” “Obama is black!” Give me a break. What is more important than gaining essential knowledge about our world and what surrounds us? Absolutely nothing. After all, what is the point of anything at all then?

Above anything else, I am a firm believer that science is more important than ANYTHING. More important than gay marriage, abortion, healthcare, shoes, and 16 oz red bulls. If we are remaining stagnant in learning about life there is no reason to live at all. So if you believe this, you can go ahead and waste away in your useless bag of flesh that has no purpose. Harsh, maybe.. but there is no way around it. You’re just a plain old fucking idiot. I could get more sophisticated with this argument, but I spent enough time doing that already.

I cannot wait to see Curiosity dig into the precious Martian soil and find the beautiful speckles of carbon, until then I will be rocking my space print top in celebration.

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Curiosity

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Next month (August 6th), NASA’s new space rover “Curiosity” is expected to launch to Mars. It will be hunting for the organic particles that constitute life, which shouldn’t be too much of a challenge considering if these molecules were present they would be directly in the soil. If present, one would find them simply by “digging a shovel into the ground and scooping.” Finding these could provide substantial evidence of ancient life on Mars.

If Curiosity finds even more complex molecules, that only provides more evidence that life once existed on the Red Planet. They could resemble known building blocks of the amino acids present in our bodies and other life forms on Earth. These are trickier to find, considering they are much more fragile. However, the Mars Science Laboratory remains optimistic. Ongoing research continues to determine how deep in the soil radiation penetrates, so the rover may dig past that to discover these complex carbon chains.

Pavlov, the chief researcher of where and how radiation penetrates, states: “Right now the challenge is that past Martian landers haven’t seen any organic material whatsoever. We know that organic materials have to be there, but we can’t find any of them in the soil.”

Past martian rovers have only collected samples from the top of the surface of the planet. Curiosity will be digging 5 inches underneath.

Always on the hunt for life.

P.S. You can watch a real-time visualization of Curiosity’s journey through space on NASA’s website.

Ocean City

I have been spending the last three days of my week in paradise. Every morning, I get up and lounge on the beach reading my Ray Bradbury book with the roar of the ocean in the background. The sand and salt have been exfoliating my skin to perfection. My legs are the softest they have ever been. I spend a lot of time classifying sea shells and little molluscs I have found into their proper phyla. Always nerding out. After the beach, I shower quick and hit the boardwalk. Get a pina colada slushie, look at the dumb airbrush t-shirts. Last night my little brother ,mom ,and I drove 40 minutes to Wildwood. Damn, was it a lot scummier. I have noticed if you venture outside of the bounds of Ocean City, NJ it turns into the New Jersey I’ve always known. But, besides that my brother and I went on endless amounts of rollarcoasters and carnival rides. Every night I get into the bubble bath and read some more. I am not one for sitting in my own body filth, but the bathtub here has jets. I’m also kind of a nazi and shower beforehand.

All and all, this vaycay has been exactly what I want. Minus the fact that my boyfriend couldn’t get off of work to come with, but I’m making the best of it.

Devil in Jersey City

Tomorrow morning I’m off to Ocean City, NJ with my mom and little brother. She rented a cute little beach house for the week. I’m excited to be lazy on the beach all day with my Ray Bradbury book. Either I will be busy doing things, or have a lot of free time to write new posts. I prefer the latter. I am definitely in need of some chill time and a week away from Forever 21. 

Fuck yeah.

We Found God

The world has changed since the Higgs-Boson particle was discovered. The idea that this little guy exists first arose all the way back in 1964 via British physicist Peter Higgs. You may have heard of it, but what exactly does this mean for us? Well for starters, if this particle didn’t exist, neither would you. The Higgs-Boson gives other particles mass, thereby creating matter. It’s a hard concept to grasp since it is something just as invisible as a proton or electron – but the same idea. Have we found our creator? Is the spirit of God inside this particle?

Thanks to CRN and  $10 million dollar particle collider in Switzerland, the Higgs-Boson particle was detected and proven to exist. This is something deserving of parades and drunken celebrations all over the world. This is the discovery of a century, because it provides evidence towards many key theories in the world of physics that were based off of this yet-to-be-found particle. Most important of these is the theory of “supersymmetry” which states that all particles have a super partner with similar properties and dimensions, only a larger mass. Whilst the existance of H-G correlates with the theory of supersymmetry, some of the estimated numbers and dimensions don’t quite add up. Right now, it is unknown if this was because of a statistical error or if supersymmetry doesn’t work how we originally predicted. Supersymmetry might be completely down the tube after this, but disproving a theory can be just as, if not more, exciting than proving one. We’re still one small step closer to unlocking the secrets of the physical world.

Well, how did we find Higgsy? Did he just show up and say “hey, guys, here I am?!” A collider is exactly what it sounds like. It is a really large, underground, expensive machine that smashes protons together at JUST under the speed of light (hopefully one day we will catch up.) Colliders are meant to answer questions about what makes up our universe and hopefully detect more awesome unknown stuff – who else is hiding out there? Scientists are excited about the possibility of H-B to answer questions about dark matter and how our universe was formed.

How does the Higgs-Boson create matter? This particle has a field surrounding it named the “higgs field,” naturally. When other particles interact with this field energy is produced and mass is created, thereby creating matter. In the standard model, the higgs particle does not interact with all particles, but select ones that have the right properties.

I am a science obsessed freak of nature that spends her time researching stuff like this over college breaks, however physics is not my forte. BUT the discovery of the Higgs-Boson completely reshapes the scientific world. A creater of matter has been pinpointed with accurate proof, and that is something that everyone should be excited for – no matter what you’re interested in.

Science Quotes

It is late, I am overthinking about death and life as if my dumb human brain could grasp these concepts. So, here’s some of my favorite science related quotes by some really awesome peeps.

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Dr Carl Segan

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I’m not sure about the former.” -Albert Einstein

“Don’t become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.” -Ivan Pavlov 

Stress Will (Most Likely) Kill You

Stress is the number 1 killer of the human species. It causes cancer, hypertension, stroke, etc. It kills your brain cells, makes you to retain more fat, dehabilitates your immune system, formation of kidney stones, and even causes your chromosomes to unravel. The scary part is we don’t have control over this subconscious response – or do we?

When the fight or flight response is underway in the human body, adrenaline causes your heart and lungs to accelerate, your blood vessels to constrict, and the digestive system to slow. Alongside adrenaline, cortisol is produced. Simply put, this is the “stress hormone” that causes your blood sugar levels to increase, providing energy for the muscles so we can fight or flee. ALL of this is so your muscles can perform at the peak if their ability, neglecting other nonessential body functions. Intense focus on our muscular system is not healthy for our bodies to consistently experience, or else we would be Hulks all the time. Your other organs need love to, and not showing the smaller “weaker” ones proper attention (like the kidneys) can cause them to weaken.

 

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In the past, stress evolved to keep us alive. It produces the flight or fight response during a life-threatening situation. As a complex, social species, humans experience stress at times when our life is not in danger, such as fear of public speaking or worrying about paying bills. Evolutionarily, this is not what the stress system was meant for. In other animals, the  response only happens when they are at risk of death. Basically, only when they are being confronted by a predator. The feeling subsides after the confrontation is avoided or, obviously, after they are killed. So, it is usually over for them within 3-5 minutes. However, people can experience stress for days, weeks, even years. The chemicals produced and the biological responses mentioned above are not designed to occur chronically. Long term exposure to cortisol kills your brain cells, which are not able to regenerate. 

If you’re a young, college student like myself and that doesn’t scare you, there is research out there showing that putting your brain under stress greatly reduces your ability to recall information. So, cramming for an exam and freaking yourself out only makes matters harder for yourself.

It is important to tell yourself not to sweat the small stuff and take deep breaths when you are nervous. Don’t psych yourself out. Be in control of your brain chemistry! There are a lot of different stress-reducing tactics out there, but mostly find something you love that makes you happy and relaxes you. For me, it’s researching crap like this 😉

Surrounded By Nothingness

What is that black stuff we see when we look at the stars in the sky? Empty space? Nothingness? It is not always what’s seen in the light, but what hides in the dark. Apart from black holes, one of the most interesting things about our universe is something called “dark matter.” In theory, dark matter is that black stuff you probably never thought about before. The catch is, we aren’t exactly sure what it is, we just know it is there and it is .. something? That is why it is so awesome! It cannot be seen with the naked eye or telescope, and it neither reflects nor emits light. Observing something you can’t see is not an easy task. For something that we know next to nothing about, it constitutes a large portion of space; estimated 84% of the universe.

Proof that this is something real? We have no solid evidence, just hints. Everything is supposed to be made of atoms or particles right? Well, we have yet to find any dark matter particle. If there is no real proof then, why does the dark matter theory exist? The idea first came about when cosmologists started to estimate the masses of certain galaxies about a decade or go. When this mass was compared to the mass of all the objects we can see, there is still some left over.  Personally, I’m not convinced based on just an estimate of a galaxy’s mass, one can never know this measurement truly. However, according to Einstein and the laws of physics, gravity causes objects closer to be exposed to more gravity than objects farther away. Now, for planets that would mean Mercury orbits the sun slower than Venus. The crazy thing is this does not actually happen. All the planets in our galaxy orbit at a constant speed. There is something else emitting a gravitational pull to cause this to happen. If not, our home galaxy would fall apart and be flying all over the place. So, according the indisputable rules of mother nature, there has to be more mass in our galaxy than what we see. Actually, about 10x more matter we cannot see versus what we can.

If that isn’t convincing enough, a technique was developed called “gravitational lensing.” Simply put, every type of matter bends light. Using this science, researchers found that light was being bent off of nothing. But.. light does not just bend by itself, that is literally impossible. Matter must exist within that dark space. There is an endless amount that one can write about dark matter, and believe me I plan on it, so consider this an introduction.

There is more than meets the eye.

Summer Trips

I love travelling anywhere, even if it’s just an hour away. I am willing to go anywhere just to see new things. Always eager to get away from the everyday routine. If you know me at all, you know I can’t stand being bored. 

So far this summer, I have a lot of these mini vaycays planned. The closest one coming up is Ocean City, NJ. My family got a beach house for a week for us to enjoy. Now, the few times I have been in Jersey it made me want to stab myself in the face with a rake, but like I said I’ll go anywhere. I think I could get past the little things I hate about this state to enjoy hanging out by the ocean/on the boardwalk with my boyfriend. This is the only trip that is definite right now. However, I really want to go to a music festival. I have never been to one and every summer I check the lineups and it never ends up happening. Today I discovered “Firefly” fest in Dover, Delaware. It’s only 5 hours away, just like my annual NYC trip. I would definitely be willing to replace that for some Jack White, Passion Pit, and Matt Costa (plus many more.) 

On top of that I definitely want to plan an overnight trip to Boston with my friend Marty. A few of my friends and I ventured to Boston this past winter and I fell in love with the city. It is beautiful, the people are friendly,  it is right on a harbor, it’s clean, PLUS the panhandlers here at least open the door for you. Afterwards I’ve been dreaming about going to graduate school somewhere in Boston and I would love to check out the campuses. Decent enough excuse to go. This will probably happen in the beginning of August.

My boyfriend and I also threw around the idea to go camping in the Adirondacks for a couple days. I am thinking it would be good timing to go at the end of August around the time of our 6 year anniversary (holy shit). Hike a bit, waterslide a bit, and hunt some bears.

Amongst these goals, I would also like to swim in the Ithaca waterfalls, roadtrip to Binghamton just for some Sonic food, and possibly still hit up New York City because I always have an interesting time. 

I am definitely excited and hopeful I can accomplish all this, time will tell.