Category Archives: Science

Black Swans Part I

23 March 2025 By in History, Science Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Black swans are rare and unpredictable events, what the military calls “unknown unknowns“, that often have significant, domain-specific impacts, such as in economics or climate. Despite their unpredictability, societies tend to rationalize these occurrences after the fact, crafting false narratives about their inevitability. COVID-19, for instance, ripples across multiple domains, beginning as a health crisis but expanding to influence the economy, legal systems, and societal tensions. As a human-made pathogen, its risks should have been anticipated.

Black swans throughout history are legendary. Examples include the advent of language and agriculture, the rise of Christianity (predicted yet world-changing), and the fall of Rome, which plunged the Western world into centuries of stagnation. Islam (also predicted), the Mongol conquests, the Black Death, and the Great Fire of London shaped and disrupted societies in profound ways. The fall of Constantinople, the Renaissance, the discovery of America, the printing press, and Martin Luther’s Reformation brought new paradigms. More recently, the Tambora eruption (“the year without a summer”), the Great Depression, WWII brought unforeseen disruptions to economies and geopolitics, the Manhattan Project, Sputnik, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the rise of PCs and the internet altered the trajectory of human progress. Events like 9/11 and the iPhone have similarly reshaped the modern world. While black swans may be rare, they are not inevitable. We should expect moments of dramatic collapse or unanticipated brilliance to recur throughout history.

Nassim Taleb, author of the 2007 book The Black Swan, suggests several approaches to mitigate the effects of such events without needing to predict them. His recommendations include prioritizing redundancy, flexibility, robustness, and simplicity, as well as preparing for extremes, fostering experimentation, and embracing antifragility: a concept where systems not only withstand shocks but emerge stronger.

Through the lens of history, black swans appear as a mix of good and bad, bringing societal changes that were largely unanticipated before their emergence. As history has shown, predicting the impossible is just that: impossible. What might the next frontier be, the next black swan to transform humanity? Could it be organic AI, a fusion of human ingenuity and machine intelligence, unlocking potential but posing profound risks to free will, societal equilibrium, and humanity’s very essence? (Next week—preparing for a black swan: an example.)

White Holes, Black Holes, and the Cosmic Cycle

20 March 2025 By in Physics, Science, Space Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

White holes, theoretical counterparts to black holes, might be two sides of a cosmic coin. Black holes devour matter with relentless gravity; white holes expel it, hurling energy, particles, and possibly time into the universe. Both stem from Einstein’s general relativity, which predicts black holes, proven by solid evidence, while white holes remain elusive, perhaps lurking beyond our Earthly senses. 

To see their link, rethink black holes’ strangest feature and flaw: the singularity. General relativity paints it as a point where spacetime crushes so tight that physics breaks, a bug, not a feature. Exotic matter, with odd traits like negative energy, was once the fix. But the University of Barcelona’s Pablo Bueno and team ditched it, tweaking gravity with higher-curvature corrections to erase singularities. This needs extra dimensions beyond our four, turning black holes from traps into dynamic zones. 

The University of Sheffield adds a twist: the event horizon isn’t sharp. Quantum gravity blurs it into a fuzzy gateway where spacetime bends, not breaks. In 4D, black holes are sinkholes, matter vanishes. In higher dimensions, it slips through, heading elsewhere. Sheffield’s take ties this to dark energy, the universe’s expansion driver. Here, it’s the power plant: quantum fluctuations, fueled by dark energy, replace the singularity with a bounce, flipping spacetime to a white hole. 

Enter white holes, Janus-like transitions, Roman god of gates and duality. Black holes vacuum everything; white holes, linked via higher dimensions, spit it out, maybe far off. Picture Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s core black hole, channeling matter 25,000 light-years to the Orion Nebula’s arm. Unseen, white holes might hide in dimensions we can’t touch. 

This hints at a cosmic cycle, like Earth’s water cycle: evaporate, rain, repeat. Black holes swallow, dark energy and quantum gravity bounce it through higher dimensions, and white holes release it back. Barcelona and Sheffield suggest no endpoints, just a recycling of cosmic raw materials across realms we’re barely capable of understanding.

Source: Black Hole Singularity, Gielen and Menendez-Pidal, University of Sheffield, 2025. Regular Black Holes…by Bueno, P. et al, Physics Letter B, February 2025. Graphic: Black Hole Rendering.

Mind and Brain

13 March 2025 By in Science Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” — Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist 

For centuries, we’ve assumed consciousness resides in the brain. Yet, despite decades of slicing, mapping, and probing, its precise location remains elusive. Dr. Wilder Penfield, a neurosurgeon who charted the brain’s sensory and motor regions in the mid-20th century, wrestled with what we might call “self and memory.” While he pinpointed areas tied to movement and sensation, he couldn’t locate the “seat” of consciousness. By the 1960s, this led him to a bold hypothesis: the mind might not be fully reducible to brain activity. In his view, brain and mind could be distinct, with the mind perhaps holding a non-physical dimension—a whisper of something beyond neurons and synapses.

Fast forward to today, and researchers like Michael Levin at Tufts University are pushing this question further, though differently. Levin doesn’t dismiss the brain’s role in consciousness but argues cognition isn’t confined there. He proposes that intelligence and goal-directed behavior arise across the body’s cells and tissues. The brain, in this model, acts as a hub for processing and storing information—not the sole architect of the mind. Levin’s team explores how systems beyond the brain—from cellular networks to synthetic constructs—display mind-like traits: agency, problem-solving, and the pursuit of goals.

At the heart of Levin’s work is bioelectricity, the electrical signaling that guides cells from the zygote’s first spark to a fully formed organism. He sees it as a blueprint, directing how cells collaborate toward a larger purpose, much like ants hauling food to their colony. Each contributes to a collective intelligence, shaped by bioelectric cues that drive development and behavior. Levin stays rooted in empirical science, mapping the “how” without chasing the “why”—hinting at a distributed mind but avoiding a single source or controller.

Could memory bridge consciousness to the self, and perhaps beyond? For Penfield, electrical jolts to the brain summoned vivid past moments—smells, voices—yet the “I” reliving them remained elusive, suggesting a unity beyond the physical. Levin offers a twist: if memory isn’t just locked in the brain but woven into the body’s bioelectric web, consciousness and self might emerge together, shared across every cell. Each recalls its role, its history, to pursue a shared aim—like ants rebuilding their hill. Memory, then, isn’t merely a record but the thread weaving awareness into identity, maybe even purpose. Yet, does bioelectricity simply reflect life’s mechanics, a benign dance of physics and biology? Or does it hint at a deeper force—a directionality we’ve long named “lifeforce” or “soul”? Levin’s inductive lens echoes Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”—proving existence through awareness but leaving purpose a shadow on the horizon. Science maps the signals; their origin remains unanswered.

Sources: Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere… by Levin and Resnik, 2025, OSF Preprints; Ingressing Minds… by Michael Levin, 2025, PsyArXiv Preprints. Graphic: Molecular Thoughts by Agsandrew, iStock, Licensed.

Cosmic Gold Rush

6 March 2025 By in Physics, Science Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are the universe’s most energetic particles, with energies exceeding 100 quintillion electronvolts (100 EeV)—far beyond anything we can replicate on Earth. First observed over 60 years ago, these particles have puzzled scientists with their immense power and a curious pattern: their energy correlates closely with their electric charge. But where do they come from?

A new theory by physicist Glennys Farrar from New York University offers an answer. She proposes that UHECRs originate in binary neutron star (BNS) mergers—explosive collisions that form a black hole. These events unleash powerful jets of material, acting as cosmic particle accelerators that boost particles to unimaginable energies. The idea links UHECRs’ narrow energy range and charge correlation to a range of combined neutron star mass sufficient to form a black hole.

The theory suggests that the highest-energy UHECRs—those above 100 EeV—could be heavy elements like gold, platinum, or uranium, forged in extreme cosmic events such as supernovae or neutron star collapses (stars can only create elements up to iron through fusion). By tying UHECRs to BNS mergers, Farrar’s work could reveal how precious elements form and deepen our understanding of cosmic cataclysms.

Source: Binary Neutron Star Mergers… by Glennys R. Farrar, Physical Review Letters, 28 February 2025. Graphic: Two Neutron Stars Merging by Universe Today.

Gravity and Vanilla Black Holes

27 February 2025 By in Physics, Science, Space Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which includes gravity, predicts that black holes have a tricky feature: a singularity. This is a point where space and time are squeezed so tightly that the laws of physics break down—think of it as a cosmic “error message.” To fix this, scientists often turn to exotic matter—hypothetical substances with bizarre properties like negative energy—to smooth things out. However, a team from the University of Barcelona, led by Pablo Bueno, found an alternative. They didn’t need exotic matter at all. Instead, they tweaked Einstein’s gravity by adding an infinite series of extra “rules” (higher-curvature corrections) to the math.

Their solution works in spacetimes with more than four dimensions—beyond our usual height, width, depth, and time. In these higher-dimensional worlds, black holes can exist without singularities. This “smooths out” black holes, making them less mysterious and more like regular objects in spacetime—no weird stuff required.

The presence of extra dimensions doesn’t just fix singularities—it can also change how black holes behave. In higher-dimensional spacetimes, black holes might have different event horizon shapes (the boundary beyond which nothing escapes) or other structural quirks. The Barcelona team’s work shows that these altered properties emerge naturally from gravity in more than four dimensions, offering a fresh perspective on these cosmic giants.

Thinking outside the box, is it possible that these extra dimensions link black holes to “a reality outside regular spacetime,” like wormholes (tunnels through spacetime), braneworlds (parallel universes on higher-dimensional “membranes”), or even gateways to white holes (theoretical opposites of black holes that spit stuff out)? Theories like string theory and braneworld scenarios suggest that extra dimensions might allow such connections. For example, a wormhole could theoretically bridge two distant points in our universe—or even lead to a completely different universe.

While the math of higher dimensions opens the door to these possibilities, it’s all conjecture. The Barcelona team’s work is a major step forward in understanding black holes in higher dimensions, but it doesn’t directly prove connections to other realities.

Source: Grok 3. Regular Black Holes… by Bueno, P. et al., Physics Letter B, February 2025. Graphic: Black Hole Rendering, iStock licensed.

Closer to Zero

21 February 2025 By in Science Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

“The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42” Douglas Adams.

But to the question “Are we alone?”—the answer leans towards likely,”  ElsBob. 

In a recent systems-thinking thought experiment, researchers from Germany and the U.S. revisited the statistical “Hard Steps” model, originally proposed by Brandon Carter in 1983, which aimed to estimate the probability of intelligent life emerging. Carter’s model focused on rare biological milestones—such as photosynthesis and multicellularity—concluding that intelligent life should be exceedingly rare due to the improbability of these “hard steps.” 

In a February 2025 paper, Mills et al. propose a tweak to this framework. Rather than life’s progression depending on a handful of unlikely biological breakthroughs, they suggest Earth’s environmental evolution—marked by the presence of water, organic compounds, oxygen, and geochemical shifts—created a more gradual pathway toward complexity. They argue that these conditions didn’t so much lower the odds of each step but reframed life’s development as a cumulative process, softening the gauntlet of improbable hurdles envisioned by Carter. 

Is this new? Not entirely. The idea that life’s journey—from planetary formation to advanced neural systems, language, and sociocultural structures—unfolded as a process has roots in the 1950s, with pioneers like Urey and Miller. What’s novel in Mills et al.’s work is their integration of geological timelines and Bayesian reasoning to qualitatively soften the perceived improbability of life’s emergence, rather than delivering a fully quantitative overhaul of the Hard Steps model. Where Carter’s framework likened intelligent life to finding a unicorn, this tweak nudges it from “highly improbable” to “slightly less than highly improbable.” 

Now, the fun part—calculating the odds of a planet fostering life advanced enough for Alan Turing to deem it intelligent. 

The “witch’s cauldron” of variables for simple life might include (though not exhaustively): a planet in the habitable zone, liquid water, organic molecules, self-replicating systems, protocell formation, anaerobic metabolism, photosynthesis, aerobic respiration, multicellularity, geochemical cycles, plate tectonics, ocean currents, atmospheric dynamics, natural radiation, planetary stability, appropriate size and gravity, and a protective magnetic field—plus, perhaps, a partridge in a pear tree. Estimating these probabilities is speculative, but let’s assume a rough combined probability for simple life emerging on a suitable planet. Using reasonable constraints, Grok 3 might estimate this at approximately 1 in 1 billion (10⁻⁹). 

The leap to sentient, intelligent life adds further layers: advanced neural systems, social organization, cultural evolution, time, and a dash of random chance. These additional factors could reduce the odds by another factor of 1,000, shifting the probability to between 1 in 1 trillion (10⁻¹²) and 1 in 1 quadrillion (10⁻¹⁵). These are back-of-the-envelope figures, grounded in the spirit of the thought experiment rather than precise data. 

To make these abstract numbers relatable, let’s scale them to the universe and our galaxy. Current estimates suggest the observable universe contains roughly 100 billion galaxies (10¹¹), each with an average of 100 million stars (10⁸). Assuming 3 planets per star (a conservative guess based on exoplanet studies), that yields approximately 3 × 10¹⁹ planets—30 quintillion—across the universe. In the Milky Way, with 100 billion stars (10¹¹), we might estimate 300 billion planets (3 × 10¹¹). 

Applying the probabilities: 

Simple life in the universe: At 1 in 1 billion (10⁻⁹), roughly 3 × 10¹⁰ planets—30 billion—might host simple life. 

Intelligent life in the universe: At 1 in 1 trillion (10⁻¹²) to 1 in 1 quadrillion (10⁻¹⁵), between 30 million (3 × 10⁷) and 30,000 (3 × 10⁴) planets might harbor intelligent life. 

Simple life in the Milky Way: At 1 in 1 billion (10⁻⁹), about 300 planets (3 × 10²) could sustain simple life. 

Intelligent life in the Milky Way: At 1 in 1 trillion (10⁻¹²) to 1 in 1 quadrillion (10⁻¹⁵), the odds drop to 0.3 (3 × 10⁻¹) to 0.0003 (3 × 10⁻⁴) planets—statistically less than 1.

Across the vast universe, intelligent life seems plausible on millions or thousands of planets, depending on how pessimistic the odds. On a galactic scale, though one planet with intelligent life is statistically improbable meaning that Earth is likely alone in the Milky Way as far as sentient beings are concerned.  Still, these numbers remain speculative, blending science with educated guesswork—and a touch of cosmic whimsy.

Source: …Evolution of Intelligent Life, Mills, et al, Science Advances 2025. Graphic: Grok 3 Drawn DNA.

Looking In All the Wrong Places

14 February 2025 By in Science, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Johnny Lee’s 1980 recording of “Lookin’ for Love” in all the wrong places is a mantra that most scientists and engineers eventually learn. Not love, but when confronted with the conundrum of not finding an object where it should be, the first response, before questioning the theory, is to look elsewhere.

This is further encapsulated in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Fate of the Evangeline” when Holmes quips, “Exclude the impossible and what is left, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Recent research suggests that Earth and Mars originally had higher concentrations of moderately volatile elements (MVEs), such as copper. These elements were likely abundant in the early formation of Earth and Mars but were depleted by violent cosmic events, such as collisions with meteorites.

These collisions during planetary formation caused large-scale vaporization, leading to the loss of these crustal sources of MVEs into space but not necessarily those present in the mantle or core. While this new understanding challenges traditional theories about why MVEs are not in higher concentrations on Earth, it may also mean that we need to look not only to space for the lost MVEs but also to other deeper and less explored crevices and crannies here on Earth.

Additional areas of exploration on Earth may include hydrothermal vents on the ocean floors, deep crustal and mantle areas, tectonic boundaries, and active volcanic provinces.

Source: …Earth’s Missing Elements by Kim Baptista ASU, 2025. Lookin’ for Love written by Morrison, Ryan, and Mallette. Graphic: Earth Collision, Grok, 2025.

KISS–Not

31 January 2025 By in Science Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

An international team of researchers concluded in the January 2025 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences publication that Ockham’s Razor may need a whetstone. The authors state, “The preference for simple explanations, known as the parsimony principle, has long guided the development of scientific theories, hypotheses, and models,” but accuracy is likely sacrificed when modeling complex systems.

While acknowledging that simple models can be useful and provide accurate outcomes, in recent years, success has been demonstrated using highly complex models for scientific research, such as understanding protein folding and modeling climate over time. Their research also suggests that simple models inherently tend to have built-in biases, leading to predictions that support the initial hypothesis or narrative.

They suggest that the predictive quality of a model may improve by “Progressing from more complex to simpler models. Using more complex models, particularly in the initial stages of scientific exploration when prior knowledge is limited, can be instrumental in uncovering underlying structures in the data… Once we have a successful complex model capturing the structure of the data, this model can be effectively compressed into a more parsimonious account for future use.”

Source: Is Ockham’s razor losing its edge? New perspectives on the principle of model parsimony by Dubova etal, PNAS, 2025. Graphic: iStock Photo, licensed.

Who Knew

15 November 2024 By in Science Tags: , , Leave a comment

Researchers from the University of Birmingham and two other UK schools provide long-suspected evidence that glaciers near volcanoes move along the surface approximately 50% quicker than the average glacier.

The researchers write in the journal Communications Earth & Environment that, “Specifically, proximity to volcanoes most likely means higher volcanic geothermal flux or heat, which in turn triggers enhanced subglacial melt, increased basal water pressures, sliding, and ice flow.” In other words, a thin layer of water between the glacier and the warm ground acts as a lubricant, allowing the glacier to move faster.

The authors of the paper believe that monitoring the velocity of glaciers would prove to be a useful tool to assess imminent volcanic hazards. Left unsaid in the paper is that increased movement of glaciers may point to a natural process that is not related to climate change.

Trivia: One percent of the planet’s 214,086 glaciers are found within 3 miles (5 km) of an active volcano.

Source: Proximity to Active Volcanoes Enhances Glacier Velocity by Mallalieu et al, CE&E 2024.  Graphic: Antarctic Glacier.

Soulless

8 November 2024 By in Science Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

MIT researchers found that Large Language Models (LLMs), although able to output impressive results without internal understanding of the data they manipulate, were unable to cope with small modifications to their data sets.

The researchers discovered that an LLM could provide correct driving directions in New York City while lacking an accurate internal map of the city. When they took a detailed look under the LLM’s hood, they saw a map of NYC that included many nonexistent streets superimposed on the real grid. Despite this poor understanding of actual streets, the model could still provide perfect directions for navigating the city—a fascinating “generative garbage within, Michelangelo out” concept.

In a further twist, when the researchers closed off a few actual streets, the LLM’s performance degraded rapidly because it was still relying on the nonexistent streets and was unable to adapt to the changes.

Source: MIT. “Despite Its Impressive Output, Generative AI Doesn’t Have a Coherent Understanding of the World.” ScienceDaily, 2024.  Graphic: AI istock.