Quantum Physics

Forest Shepherd wrote:

Mrs Figg wrote:You should watch Another Earth, its a fascinating and haunting film, I highly recommend it.

Just beware the ending.    

yeah the ending is weird, I couldnt figure out if its positive or negative.   

Mrs Figg wrote:maybe before the 19th century not many people could afford glasses, or maybe there werent any high Street opticians, glasses were for the rich. Before the 19th century and the industrial revolution glasses would be hand made by artisans and probably too expensive for agricultural rural workers, who knows if people were killed by shortsightedness but it was put down to clumsyness or drunkeness. Also many people didnt read so they may not have been as aware of short or long sight problems. In England there was only really a large thriving middle class from the 18th century and mostly in cities, but the boom in the middle classes was in the 19th when they had money to spend on luxuries like glasses. women wouldnt have worn them in public either until they were married, it would have ruined their marketability. So I think its hard to say exactly if its due to devolution .

The thing is though, reading glasses were quite common with the middle class in the 18th and early 19th century. Many tradesmen got them for fine work and reading when their eyes got older. Grandmothers wore them for sewing and knitting. Clerks wore them for reading and writing. Think of the pictures of Benjamin Franklin. Glasses were everywhere, but ONLY for farsightedness. The change to nearsightedness begins suddenly in the late 19th century within one generation and gets steadily worse through WWII if I remember right. There's got to be something going on....

Could be the mass increase in print?
Before that people did not spend much time trying to read things in poor lighting, after the advent of print and the boom which followed (at least comparable to the boom of the internet in our own age) they did.
Maybe it only became an issue when there was a reason for it to be an issue.

Funny, just this morning I was reading about the appearance of the penny dreadfuls and dime novels. I would think the sudden occurrence of near sightedness would have more to do with changed conditions than the propagation of less beneficial genes. The first would affect the second but one would think it would take many generations for bad genes to become manifest under the relaxation of selection pressure (as opposed to selective breeding for good genes).

I'm trying to reconstruct some old conversations about this which I had with my sister, who's worked in the genetics field for many years, but I'm a little out of my depth here, so please don't take my words for gospel.

The underlying principle is basically that in genetics there are no easy answers, just millions of compromises.  Most genes that do something good for us in one area also do several things bad in seemingly unrelated areas. The classic example is sickle-cell anemia, a really nasty side effect of dominance of a gene that provides immunity to malaria when it's recessive. In one environment such a gene may be weeded out of a population entirely; in another it may be necessary to survive.

Now let's suppose that nerdiness is genetically linked to myopia (that old stereotype of the nerd with the glasses again, or Ben Franklin for that matter.) Suppose that when the trait is recessive it provides thoughtfulness and curiosity while still not really affecting eyesight, but that when dominant it makes one blind as a bat.

It's easy to imagine that in many cultures the myopic nerds would have a real disadvantage surviving to adulthood, and those who did survive would have a distinct disadvantage finding mates and raising families. The hypothetical gene would have enough advantage to survive within the population, but enough of a disadvantage that it's constantly being weeded.

Now imagine taking that social pressure away. Nerds are now cool and glasses are sexy!  
Myopia spreads throughout the population like dandelions in a lawn. In amazingly few generations the majority of the population requires glasses, to the extent that individuals with no eyesight problems at all actually feel pressure to wear designer glasses just to fit in.

Of course the reality is messier than the theory, but that's the general idea as I recall, and there was some persuasive data to back it up.

Hmm....let's take your example as gospel and do the math.

Suppose half the population has the recessive nerdy gene, so half would be nerdy (but somewhat despised) while the one quarter would be myopic and totally despised (half chance of being nerdy times half a chance of meeting another nerd).

Let's say nerdiness became somewhat attractive versus dunderheads, and the population increased to 2/3 of the population, being a modest increase of 33% over the original 1/2. Then myopia would go up to 4/9, nearly double the original.

I have to admit the math sort of makes sense. Even if you say the myopia gene isn't weeded out as vigorously as before, the squared contribution of a recessive gene would increase the effects.

I think it may have to do more with good nutrition and the fact we live longer. In the olden days people didnt live long. In Manchester in the 19th c the average life span was about late 20s or early 30s. I think living to past 50 was a privilege of the rich. As we know when you hit 50 your eyesight changes, you can suddenly become longsighted as well as shortsighted, the cornea changes shape due to age, so these days we notice it more because we all live longer.

I'm not sure what made me think of this documentary, but I just rewatched it and I find it to be a really remarkable story and a touching portrait of the Ricahrd Feynman, man. Plus it's a treasure-trove of information about the obscure but fascinating country of Tuva.  Well worth an hour's watch, IMO.

Mrs Figg wrote:I think it may have to do more with good nutrition and the fact we live longer. In the olden days people didnt live long. In Manchester in the 19th c the average life span was about late 20s or early 30s. I think living to past 50 was a privilege of the rich. As we know when you hit 50 your eyesight changes, you can suddenly become longsighted as well as shortsighted, the cornea changes shape due to age, so these days we notice it more because we all live longer.

I was gonna say something similar but wasn't sure about the statistics. Was the average lifespan really only early 30's?    But then, old people tend to get far sighted, but one has to wonder.

I had the privilege of meeting Richard Feynman, hearing him speak several times, and knowing many people who knew him. He was a delightful character, but I think what little I've seen of that film so far shows it may miss out on his public speaking. That's when his mannerisms really came out - he was something of a natural performer.

Now I'm jealous Halfy. I would have loved to have met Feynman!

Though I think he gave me a bogus answer to why when you write on a black surface with a blue pen it comes out red. Or maybe I just missed a fine point about absorption length and wavelength.

halfwise wrote:

Mrs Figg wrote:I think it may have to do more with good nutrition and the fact we live longer. In the olden days people didnt live long. In Manchester in the 19th c the average life span was about late 20s or early 30s. I think living to past 50 was a privilege of the rich. As we know when you hit 50 your eyesight changes, you can suddenly become longsighted as well as shortsighted, the cornea changes shape due to age, so these days we notice it more because we all live longer.

I was gonna say something similar but wasn't sure about the statistics.  Was the average lifespan really only early 30's?     But then, old people tend to get far sighted, but one has to wonder.

Been doing some research. Life expectancy of a working man in Salford in the 1870s could be as little as 17 years.

  Coal smoke? I'm not completely sure if I'd even been kissed by that age.   

Those are the sorts of mortality that really change the evolutionary equation. In those days conditions like asthma, hemophilia and diabetes were often death sentences. They were constantly being weeded out of the gene pool. Now with modern healthcare these same people live long, productive lives, raise families, and live long enough to hold their great grandchildren.

That's a good thing, but the side effect is that the human gene pool is starting to look a bit like my attic. ( I hate to throw anything away.  ) 

But just supposing that bigger taller humans as we are today what with rapid physical growth some parts of out bodies (no snickering please) have remained smaller, ie the human cornea, and hasnt had time to adapt to the larger human body. In the 15th century people were tiny. Just go to a costume museum and check out the shoes of grown adults, the womens are like our childrens shoes, tiny and delicate, even suits of armour were tiny.

Mrs Figg wrote:But just supposing that bigger taller humans as we are today what with rapid physical growth some parts of out bodies (no snickering please) have remained smaller,

   Just what ARE you referring to, Mrs Figg?  

There have been studies here of the height of immigrant families by generation. Especially the Asian community. Children who moved to the US before they were 6 are on average several inches taller than their parents, children born in the US to immigrant parents are even taller, and the 3rd generation is even taller than that. I think most of the effect can be explained by a combination of nutrition and health care, but in a couple more generations you'll see the gene pool getting broader due to reduced survival pressure, even without the inevitable interbreeding with other gene pools.

'Physicists have uncovered a surprisingly straightforward strategy for turning light into matter.
This would prove an 80-year-old theory by Breit and Wheeler, who themselves thought physical proof was impossible.
Now, according to researchers from Imperial College London, that proof is within reach.
Prof Steven Rose and his PhD student, Oliver Pike, told the BBC it could happen within a year.
"With a good experimental team, it should be quite doable," said Mr Pike.'- BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment/

Among physicist circles this kind of a 'well duh' type of thing, equivalent to Magellan circling the globe. Nobody had the slightest doubt it's physically possible, it's just a matter of putting in the resources to do it.

So it will be done just to do it, but any implications that this is a big and important step are overblown.

I think this might have more of a real impact on the world-

'Researchers have developed a collection of new plastics that are recyclable and adaptable - and the discovery began with a laboratory mistake.
They include strong, stiff plastics and flexible gels that can mend themselves if torn.
It is the first time that durable "thermoset" plastic has been produced in a recyclable form.
Because they are strong and light-weight, thermosets are used throughout modern cars and aircraft, often mixed with carbon fibres to form composites. Some 50% of the new Airbus A350 jet, for example, will be made from composites.
Yet until now, none of this thermoset plastic could be recycled.
As well as very hard and durable plastics, the researchers adapted their procedure to a different monomer and produced flexible, self-healing gels. These could be useful in anything from cosmetics, to paint, to the design of drug capsules, because of their particular solubility properties.
"Applications are running like water," Dr Hedrick said. "We don't even know where to go with this yet."- BBC

Pettytyrant101 wrote:'Physicists have uncovered a surprisingly straightforward strategy for turning light into matter.
This would prove an 80-year-old theory by Breit and Wheeler, who themselves thought physical proof was impossible.
Now, according to researchers from Imperial College London, that proof is within reach.
Prof Steven Rose and his PhD student, Oliver Pike, told the BBC it could happen within a year.
"With a good experimental team, it should be quite doable," said Mr Pike.'- BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment/

turning light into matter. what is that, I cant even begin to understand what that entails, light into matter, light cant make matter can it.?   do you mean sunbeams turning into buttercups.     

Or Silmarils.   

but if light made matter the world would be chock full of extra stuff seeing as its been shining for ages.    derp

Matter is turning into light all the time in stars. But to go the other direction takes very intense light smacking into each other.

I think resealable, recyclable plastic will be good for making Terminator toys.