After the crystal

Posts Tagged 'Science'

If 2009 was a great year in terms of scientific discovery is concerned, begins 2010 strong with a team of neuroscientists from Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. These guys have succeeded for the first time ever communicated with someone in a vegetative state. This, as you can imagine you, it opens many doors for both medicine and for the relatives of patients.

The vegetative state is caused various types of accidents causing permanent brain damage causing a person loses the capacity to respond to external stimuli, to communicate and move. So far, no one knew for sure whether these people were aware of what was happening around him, but thanks to this discovery we now know that YES you can hear and feel.

Adrian Owen and his team of neuroscientists have been able to communicate directly with the brain of one of its vegetative patients and it responds with a yes or no to a few simple questions. To achieve this had to do some tests first, both healthy volunteers and patients in vegetative state in which individuals were asked first to imagine themselves in a beautiful beach and then to imagine sitting on the couch from home. Using magnetic resonance imaging scientists found that each of those thoughts that people evoked in his mind is illuminated a very specific area of the brain, always the same. With these two thoughts were able to ask a patient who had five years in a vegetative state questions that I just had to answer yes or no. One thought was to say yes and another to say no. They were then able to have 5 fully consistent responses about whether his father was named in a way, if you lived in this city and so on.

As you can imagine this discovery was greeted with much hope for relatives of people in that state are irreversible and they now know they can listen to and answer your questions. In the same way medicine will be a giant step for these cases because the patient may ask things like if you have pain or not and depending on the response can tailor treatment to your needs.

There have been periods during the history of life on our planet where, for reasons internal or external, have become extinct more than half of the species inhabiting it. These periods are called mass extinction, and for some thousands of years, particularly since human beings appeared, evidence and evidence that we are in the sixth great mass extinction of species.

But first let's do a bit of biological memory. 440 million years ago, an abrupt climate change wiped out 60% of species on our planet, this was the first known species. The second took place 380 million years ago, in theory, several asteroids falling on the face of the earth. The third species was undoubtedly the most devastating of all. The prevailing theory for the third species is the fall of a large asteroid 250 million years ago, this caused the loss of 90% of land species making this the most important to date. The fourth mass extinction of species on our planet occurred through the opening of the Atlantic Ocean. As happens with the second extinction, with the fourth is not known for certain how many species disappeared ... but were enough to catalog it as one of the great mass extinctions. The fifth and most famous took place 65 million years ago when another asteroid or comet struck the earth causing the extinction of dinosaurs and 60% of the species of our world.

Unlike the five previous mass extinctions, the sixth not taking place because of climatic or cosmic, but by the action of a single species. The first phase of this sixth extinction began about 100,000 years with the emergence of the most destructive species on planet earth has ever known: homo sapiens. This phase is characterized by the disruption of ecosystems to human hand, when they began to hunt excessively massive and edible species. This and the dispersal of disease-causing organisms began to be collected the first extinctions.

And 10,000 years ago, when humans began to develop agriculture, we enter the second and more terrifying phase. At this time we have transformed the landscape, overfished species, polluted the planet and introduced exotic species and destroying native ecosystems. The human being, thanks to its ability to leave its own ecosystem causing overcrowding and the need to interact not with other species to survive and may subject them or their elimination has become terminal cancer of life on our planet, a cancer that is about to fulfill its mission and make the sixth extinction more impressive has been taken news.

Not yet known for certain whether this species will be the definitive end to life in our planet. The point is that, to save the biodiversity of our planet, there are only two options now: The first and most unlikely is that human beings change their nature and stop destroying things. The second, and most likely to happen, is that the human being himself ends before leaving the land uninhabited.

We must not be very smart to know that the option that advocate for 99% of the species is the second, but as a human being that I am I would love to be able to carry out the utopian first choice and that our species, in an act of egocentrism has always regarded itself as the good guy, he realizes that being his true role in this function and start to work seriously to change it.

To finish this article I leave a little video in homage, sent by my friend Irene, which resembles a tiny part of the species with which we finished recently. I hope that will serve more than one for reflection.

Since ancient times mankind fantasizes about the idea that God plays dice with the fates of human beings without asking if we want what we think about it. This metaphor for the insignificance of our existence becomes even more palpable when, little by little, we realize the immense events that happen around us. What's that make us increasingly fragile and small

In fact a few days, on 9 November and a new asteroid was "touching" the ground without being discovered missing until only 15 hours to their approach. According to the technical program of the NASA Near, who is investigating the asteroids that skim the ground, a distance of 15,000 km to our guest went from us amounts to pass you a bullet grazing his ear. As if this information not sinister enough, experts also said that if the asteroid had come to us we would not have had time to avoid collision.

The asteroid called 2009 VA was seven feet, too little to cause a mass extinction, but it should be noted that the boulder 10 meters a few days ago exploded in Earth's atmosphere over Indonesia did so with a potency similar to that of three atomic bombs. As I said the 2009 VA measured 3 meters less what their destructive power equivalent to only two or two atomic bombs and a half, enough to wipe out however as any city in the world and all its surroundings.

So we are insignificant? We're in our homes thinking the worst that could happen to humanity is that this or that politician comes to power when, on our heads, constantly threatening us phenomena that could destroy a city, country or even all mankind without realizing time even to be aware of what is upon us.

How much longer that an asteroid of these reaching the earth caught unawares? Would not it be wise for our leaders, who are paid to ensure our interests, stop spending millions on wars and weapons and expended in trying to discover how ensure that we close the curtain before the time?

On more than one occasion I mention that you have read we are living interesting times for science. We are beginning to discover things were until recently science fiction, and this will is paving the way to the day before yesterday were just the fantasies of a few madmen.

This statement can be applied to multiple fields. In audiovisual technology have made incredible progress getting machines that reproduce holographic images so that we can almost touch. The field of physics is not far behind, just two days ago again put in motion the largest particle accelerator ever created by mankind, the LHC, whose many experiments will help us learn more about the formation of the universe. This is not only interesting for theories to be confirmed but by those we have always taken for granted and that overnight it will become obsolete.

But astronomy is the leading captivate the imagination of billions of people for all mankind, and this field has the greatest acceleration is taking in terms of surprising discoveries. A couple of years fantasized that there might be water on Mars for later, only weeks ago, stunned to discover that not only is water on Mars but on the moon, right under our noses, no ice. And now, just a few days ago, NASA confirms that he discovered two exoplanets (planets outside the solar system), rich in organic molecules such as carbon dioxide, which are essential for the emergence of life as we know.

The life beyond our planet is no longer a question of mathematics and a little common sense to become a palpable reality. I would rather play that, in not much more than a couple of years, humanity finally discover the first living beyond our planet, whether in the form of cell, bacteria or even in some kind of animal. Do not you think this interesting?
Although, of course, worst of all is that our media, in an attempt to simply indulge in instead of us think, give greater priority in its news to news like a balloon in a child who allegedly traveled to the latest American scientific discoveries, discoveries that lead us closer to our eternal dream of knowing that we are not alone in our universe.

As this post is more thoughtful than informative, I offer a good image that will delight as you meditate on this whole subject. This is a sunset, but no one like any other. This image was taken on the surface of Mars by Spirit, one of the robots sent by NASA to explore Mars.

In the Pampas de Jumana, Peru, near the Nazca desert lies one of the greatest mysteries of mankind: The Nazca Lines.

These drawings drawn by the Nazca culture for thousands of years have been challenging for researchers because it is not known yet sure of their purpose. Although the conquistador Pedro de Cieza de Leon made mention of these strange hieroglyphs in his book Chronicle of Peru in 1547, it was not until 1927 when the student discovers Xesspe Toribio Mejia, referring to them as sacred paths. Later Kosok researcher Paul would refer to them as places of worship and ceremonies.

But it was only shortly after that, thanks to the German mathematician Maria Reiche, who spent 50 years of his life investigating, it was discovered that these lines from the air took on a completely different meaning. In its continuing struggle against the Peruvian government to save the lines, this woman was even tied to the legs of the helicopters flying over the Nazca desert to take aerial photos of the peculiar drawings.

The technique that made these drawings are so amazing that it has made with his mouth open to researchers from half the world. Far from drawing lines on the floor or painting the rocks, the ancient inhabitants of Nazca are devoted to separate the first layer of dark rock, exposing the bottom, which is much clearer. With this contrast of stone colors created drawings with animal forms which are only visible from the sky. This fact, that the creators were not able to see the results of his work, some drawings are more than 70 meters, has excited the imagination of locals and foreigners from being considered a method of communicating with alien visitors to, and this theory I think the more correct, a star map to gigantic proportions.

There are many famous drawings in the Nazca desert such as the Mono, the Condor and Spider Hands (also known as the Elf). But the dream has fueled more than has been the call Astronaut, a drawing that could well represent an astronaut with his boots and helmet ... but it is more likely to question the representation of a shaman with his mask ritual.

The Nazca Lines are and will be one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the history of humanity, since we are still far from understanding the purpose for which they were drawn extrañísimos these drawings.