Home > Magazine Science, the ultimate iconoclast on Earth
By A Sarwar, 13th July 2012 09:09 AM The Earth is not the centre of the universe More than 400 years ago, when Copernicus proposed that the sun and other planets do not revolve around the earth, it changed man’s perception of the Universe and his place in it. Fellow scientists confounded Copernicus's theory as "patently absurd". It would take several generations to sink in. Galileo's telescope made things worse: when he provided evidence for the heliocentric theory, fellow scientists were profoundly upset by the revelations: craters on a supposedly perfectly spherical moon, other moons circling Jupiter. Galileo was condemned as a heretic by the Catholic church. Found guilty of heresy, Galileo lived out the rest of his days in house arrest. We may be in the midst of a mass extinction right now Dinosaur bones are quaintly wonderful when seen in a museum. But knowing that paleontologists have identified five points in Earth's history when many reasons — asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions and atmospheric changes are the main — have caused mass extinctions and destroyed many or most species is frightening. Many biologists say we're in the midst of a sixth great extinction, the earliest victims being mastodons. The continental migration of human beings eliminated animal populations that had thrived for millions of years — mastodons in North America, giant kangaroos in Australia, dwarf elephants in Europe. More continue to disappear. Things that taste good are bad for you Its probably the world's longest scientific study. In 1948, more than 5,000 residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, participated in the Framingham Heart Study to evaluate cardiac risk factors. Now the grandchildren of the original subjects have been enrolled. It is this study that is indirectly responsible for diets, exercise and organic food: painstaking epidemiological studies have shown that risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer and other health problems increases with consumption of delectable food. Steak, salty French fries, eggs Benedict, paranthas, oily curries and many rich desserts are killers. This is because human taste preferences evolved during times of want when our hunter-gatherer ancestors would consume as much salt and fat and sugar as possible. The microbes will eventually win If there were no antibiotics and vaccines, the human race would be dying because of diseases like smallpox and influenza. But what’s scary is some microbes are evolving faster than our ways to fight them. New viruses migrate from animals to humans — ebola from apes, SARS from masked palm civets, hantavirus from rodents, bird flu from birds, swine flu from swine. The return of tuberculosis is worrying; some strains developed multi-drug resistance. It kills, even in the 21st century. Memory is farce and fact Freud's theory is that most of our behaviour as well as many of our beliefs and emotions are driven by factors we are unaware of. The weather makes you feel happy and optimistic or gloomy and sullen: sunny days make people happier and more obliging. In a taste test, the first sample you taste will be the favourite, even if all the samples are identical. Smell dictates mating decisions. We are subject to cognitive failings: a few anecdotes are enough to make incorrect generalisations; information is misinterpreted to support preconceptions, and irrelevant factors that catch our fancy distract us and or sway decisions. Memories, even flashbulb memories — the ones that feel as though they've been burned into the brain — are really stories the mind tells itself afresh each time we recall an event. Many psychologists find even detailed memories to be surprisingly inaccurate. Einstein was bad for humans Einstein’s equation may have changed the world of physics, but the byproduct became one of the most frightening things for the human race — the nuclear race. The power explained by the equation rests in the c²—or the speed of light (186,282 miles per second) times —which equals 34,700,983,524. Using multiplier, very little mass — a pinch of plutonium — is enough to create energy needed to annihilate a whole city. We're just a new primate species kind of ape. It's the most unflattering discovery about the human race. Understanding nature and appreciating its variety and power may be what makes us special, but it also made us realise that humans are merely a recent variation of the primate. Our abstract thought capability may be better than that of the apes, but we don’t have the strength of the gorilla, and can't swing along treetops except for Tarzan. The theory of evolution which upset the Church came about during Charles Darwin's travels on the Beagle. From 151 years ago, when On the Origin of Species was published, biology, geology, genetics, paleontology, chemistry and physics support his theory in spite of all contrary cultural belief on the birth of the human race. We come from a culture that indulged in ritual human sacrifice Shockingly, we are not as civilised as we think. Archaeologists worldwide show that ritualistic human sacrifice and cannibalism have been around since time immemorial. The Aztecs slaughtered thousands to inaugurate the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan; after the Mayan games, the losing team was sometimes sacrificed. Our ancestors have killed people as sacrifice to the gods. Evidence supported by the Bible, Greek mythology and the Norse sagas prove this custom was prevalent cross-culturally. The Romans accused many cultures of engaging in ritual sacrifice. When a noble in ancient Egypt died, his servants were slaughtered and interred in neighbouring tombs . Humans have irreversibly changed the climate for the rest of this century The effects of human-induced climate change have just begun to show, and the predictions for the earth's future range from grim to apocalyptic. We burn fossil fuels, causing more carbon dioxide to be released into the earth’s atmosphere where it traps heat, thus warming the planet. The consequences: fast melting glaciers, flowers blooming out of cycle, and plants and animals moving to cooler latitudes and altitudes. Carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for centuries. We know precious little of the universe So you think knowledge of planets, stars, galaxies, black holes and cosmic dust make you a Galileo. Think again — these make up just 4 per cent of the universe. The rest is "dark," or unknown, stuff which is 23 per cent of the universe. Dark energy makes up the rest. Scientists think dark matter might be exotic and still hypothetical particles, but they know little about dark energy, which University of Chicago cosmologist Michael S Turner calls "the most profound mystery in all of science." The effort to understand dark energy is causing a shift in the way most astronomers understand physics and cosmology, bringing us back to the old question: What is the universe made of? These dark parts are spurring the expansion of the universe. This will eventually lead everything in the universe to drift apart until the cosmos becomes uniformly cold and desolate and the world ends in a whimper.
