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"Science Experiments Fiction."
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11 experiments that failed
A hyper-curious young girl tries a series of wacky experiments, such as seeing if a piece of bologna will fly like a frisbee and determining whether seedlings will grow if watered with expensive perfume, and then must suffer the consequences of experiments gone awry.
Book
The Forever War: understanding, science fiction, and thought experiments
The aim of this paper is to show that scientific thought experiments and works of science fiction are highly suitable tools for facilitating and increasing understanding of science. After comparing one of Einstein’s most famous thought experiments with the science fiction novel “The Forever War”, I shall argue that both proceed similarly in making some of the more outlandish consequences of special relativity theory intelligible. However, as I will also point out, understanding in thought experiments and understanding in science fiction differ in one important respect: While the former aim at what I shall call “physical understanding”, science fiction novels typically have “existential understanding” as their target.
Journal Article
On a scale from idiot to complete jerk : a highly scientific study of annoying behavior : science project by J. J. Murphy
When grade-eight science-project time rolls around, J.J. Murphy skips the beakers and the papiermache and dives into research about jerks. And idiots. But mostly jerks. By his own estimation, his science project, \"On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk,\" is groundbreaking, exhaustive, highly scientific and seriously worthy of bonus marks. Beginning with the dawn of humankind and concluding conclusively with a very cool pie chart, the project dissects the elements of jerkosity through extensive case studies and scientific illustrations. It explores the who, what, when, why and how of jerks and, more important, peppers the lively research with sciencey-looking graphs and charts that reveal a lot about J.J., his family and friends, and the jerks of this world.
Book
Isotopic constraints on the contribution of lightning-produced nutrients to Earth’s early biosphere
Lightning can produce bioavailable nitrogen oxides, but it is unknown whether this was a substantial nutrient source for Earth’s earliest biosphere. Comparison of nitrogen isotope measurements from spark discharge experiments to those from the rock record suggests that lightning was likely not the main source of bioavailable nitrogen for the biosphere throughout most of Earth’s history.
Journal Article
The Acadia files. Book two, Autumn science
Acadia Greene is at it again. In the summer she used science to figure out who was raiding her blueberry bushes. Now she's leading a campaign to clean up a local pond; figuring out why leaves change color; learning about time zones and germs; and discovering why we might all be drinking dinosaur pee. \"Conduct an experiment,\" her parents tell her whenever she has a new mystery to solve. \"Use the scientific method.\" So Acadia does science. And so can you.
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Time-travelling pathogens and their risk to ecological communities
Permafrost thawing and the potential 'lab leak' of ancient microorganisms generate risks of biological invasions for today's ecological communities, including threats to human health via exposure to emergent pathogens. Whether and how such 'time-travelling' invaders could establish in modern communities is unclear, and existing data are too scarce to test hypotheses. To quantify the risks of time-travelling invasions, we isolated digital virus-like pathogens from the past records of coevolved artificial life communities and studied their simulated invasion into future states of the community. We then investigated how invasions affected diversity of the free-living bacteria-like organisms (i.e., hosts) in recipient communities compared to controls where no invasion occurred (and control invasions of contemporary pathogens). Invading pathogens could often survive and continue evolving, and in a few cases (3.1%) became exceptionally dominant in the invaded community. Even so, invaders often had negligible effects on the invaded community composition; however, in a few, highly unpredictable cases (1.1%), invaders precipitated either substantial losses (up to -32%) or gains (up to +12%) in the total richness of free-living species compared to controls. Given the sheer abundance of ancient microorganisms regularly released into modern communities, such a low probability of outbreak events still presents substantial risks. Our findings therefore suggest that unpredictable threats so far confined to science fiction and conjecture could in fact be powerful drivers of ecological change.
Journal Article
Sam the Man & the rutabaga plan
\"Sam the Man is not a vegetable man. But when a school project has him paired up with the worst of all the vegetables--the rutabaga-- he soon will learn that it's not half bad. And as he grows fond of his new little friend, Sam the Man will have to come up with plan on how to keep him happy before he rots\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Did physicists create a wormhole in a quantum computer?
(Developing a quantum theory of gravity for our own Universe is one of the biggest open problems in physics.) \"It's a test of quantum-gravity ideas on a real lab experimental test bed,\" says Maria Spiropulu, a particle physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who led the study. (Physicists soon realized that even if wormholes exist, they are unlikely to allow anything like the interstellar travel that features in science fiction.) Because the latest teleportation experiment used an exotic toy universe, it didn't simulate anything resembling the kind of wormhole that could conceivably exist in our Universe, as suggested by Einstein and Rosen. The theory tested on the Google processor \"only has a very tangential relationship to any possible theories of quantum gravity in our Universe\", says Peter Shor, a mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Journal Article
Suspicious minds
A mysterious lab. A sinister scientist. A secret history. If you think you know the truth behind Eleven's mother, prepare to have your mind turned Upside Down in this thrilling prequel to the hit show Stranger Things. It's the summer of 1969, and the shock of conflict reverberates through the youth of America, both at home and abroad. As a student at a quiet college campus in the heartland of Indiana, Terry Ives couldn't be farther from the front lines of Vietnam or the incendiary protests in Washington. But the world is changing, and Terry isn't content to watch from the sidelines. When word gets around about an important government experiment in the small town of Hawkins, she signs on as a test subject for the project, code named MKULTRA. Unmarked vans, a remote lab deep in the woods, mind-altering substances administered by tight lipped researchers . . . and a mystery the young and restless Terry is determined to uncover. But behind the walls of Hawkins National Laboratory--and the piercing gaze of its director, Dr. Martin Brenner--lurks a conspiracy greater than Terry could have ever imagined. To face it, she'll need the help of her fellow test subjects, including one so mysterious the world doesn't know she exists--a young girl with unexplainable, superhuman powers and a number instead of a name: 008. Amid the rising tensions of the new decade, Terry Ives and Martin Brenner have begun a different kind of war--one where the human mind is the battlefield.
The Future of Material Scientists in an Age of Artificial Intelligence
Material science has historically evolved in tandem with advancements in technologies for characterization, synthesis, and computation. Another type of technology to add to this mix is machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Now increasingly sophisticated AI‐models are seen that can solve progressively harder problems across a variety of fields. From a material science perspective, it is indisputable that machine learning and artificial intelligence offer a potent toolkit with the potential to substantially accelerate research efforts in areas such as the development and discovery of new functional materials. Less clear is how to best harness this development, what new skill sets will be required, and how it may affect established research practices. In this paper, those question are explored with respect to increasingly more sophisticated ML/AI‐approaches. To structure the discussion, a conceptual framework of an AI‐ladder is introduced. This AI‐ladder ranges from basic data‐fitting techniques to more advanced functionalities such as semi‐autonomous experimentation, experimental design, knowledge generation, hypothesis formulation, and the orchestration of specialized AI modules as stepping‐stones toward general artificial intelligence. This ladder metaphor provides a hierarchical framework for contemplating the opportunities, challenges, and evolving skill sets required to stay competitive in the age of artificial intelligence.
In this perspective, the implications of adopting increasingly advanced AI technologies in materials science are discussed. It is considered how to best utilize AI technologies, identify the necessary new skills, and examine the impact they may have on traditional research methodologies. Central to the discussion is a conceptual AI ladder that spans from elementary data fitting to general artificial intelligence.
Journal Article