WTFScience

Hello all! S. Kitty here (but call me Kitty) and I’m here to talk about science! Why would I want to do that? Well, because science is amazing and awesome and spectacular and just SCIENCE. You like science? Follow! Brought here by my science vlog on youtube? Welcome! I will be posting things related to science, along with my videos and science rants. Strap in and hold on for the ride!

[wtfscientific]

New video (finally)

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The Univers is Expanding!!!!

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Green Living and Sustainability.

[wtfscientific]

Right, just wanted to let y'all know that my video is running late because of technical difficulties, but it is only running late. Should be up today or tomorrow.

[the-promised-wlan]

Evolution Simplified

[goatbree]

This photoset should be required reading for every citizen.

[the-goddamazon-deactivingsoon-d]

FINALLY

[coelasquid]

One of the things I find to be a common misunderstanding is that people think “Adapt to survive” means life forms mutate in ways to suit their environment, when it’s really more like mutations happen and the life form adapts to accommodate it. If they find a more efficient way to live with the mutation or it allows them to spread and flourish in previously uninhabitable territory, it kicks of a process of divergent evolution. If the mutation is too harmful and impedes them too heavily before they can adapt to it, it dies out.

Mutated life forms are often reproductively unappealing to the original population! But in nature some amount of inbreeding is fairly common, and a mutation that might be recessive will become more common in an isolated population. With divergent evolution you often see a population split into groups that change until they do not wish to mate with each other and continue to change until the cannot viably mate with each other. And by then they’re different species. Like with birds, often a group of song birds will not be friendly towards song birds that sing a different tune, even if they’re the same species. One flock of birds gets separated and after a while they begin to sing slightly different songs. the two flocks will no longer socialize with each other, any genetic quirks unique to either of the two flocks will remain within that flock. Over a few generations one flock may have ended up with bigger beaks and the other flock may have loner legs, the standards for a desirable mate in each flock will have changed.

That’s also an oversimplification of the process, but you know, I feel like I see a lot of creationists get hung up on the idea that an animal would be like “it’s cold here, better evolve some blubber into my kids”, when it’s really more like “oh no I ended up with this weird blubber gene, well I guess at least it means I can hunt in colder territory and get food no one else can”

[midgard-morningstar-deactivated]

FAR TOO MANY PEOPLE DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS

[visualguides]

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

[wtfscientific]

The Common Cold video script

First off the common cold is a virus. Viruses, in general, are harder to cure than bacteria. Viruses are not living cells like bacteria. Instead they are infectious agents that cling to a host cell and reproduce. We have found ways to prevent viruses through inoculations or vaccines against said viruses. When you are getting a flu shot you are getting the vaccine for the flu virus. The reason you get a shot every year is that the flu virus changes.

 Now, back to the common cold. It is difficult trying to prevent the common cold because it is a virus, but also because it’s not actually just one virus. What we call the common cold is actually referring to numerous and varied viruses, most commonly different strains of rhinovirus. Now vaccines are shots that are meant to have you build up a resistance to a certain virus. Take the small pox vaccine for example. Now while small pox does not exist outside of labs nowadays the story behind its vaccine is a good example of how and why vaccinations work. While small pox was running rampant scientists noticed that a certain population of people was not contracting the virus. This population was comprised of people who worked with cows and had acquired cowpox, and built up a resistance to it.

See, the people who had been exposed to cow pox had antibodies in their blood stream that had been tailored to the cowpox virus. This is how you build up a resistance to a virus; your antibodies learn how to inhibit a particular virus through exposure. This is why people with autoimmune disorders can die from something like the common cold, which someone without said disorder can fight off within a few days to a week. So vaccines allow you to be exposed to a virus and form antibodies against said virus without contracting the worst of it.

 There are certain drugs that can inhibit the reproduction of viruses. These drugs inhibit certain steps that a particular virus needs to go through in order to reproduce or take over the host’s cells.

So why is there no cure for the common cold? The simple answer is that it is difficult to prevent and inhibit viruses in the first place and when you have such varied strains it is almost impossible to figure out an overarching cure.

[wtfscientific]

New video what what. It's about the common cold.

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This weeks video

Sorry guys, no video today. I got bronchitis and talking is a no go. Will post when I am well. In the meantime enjoy this video by someone else which is really good that you should watch it. It's about rain cause it rained here today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MqYE2UuN24

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Mitosis

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Faster Than Light Travel

[allekha]

Another synthetic bismuth crystal with pretty colors.

(Source: Alchemist-hp @ Wikipedia)

[wtfscientific]

Script for Black Holes video

A black hole is basically a region of space that has so much concentrated mass that it creates a strong enough gravitational pull to trap everything nearby, including light without any way for these nearby objects that are in the Schwarzschild radius to escape. The Schwarzschild radius is just the area you have to enter to be sucked in to the black hole. If you do not enter this radius, the gravitational pull does not reach you. Black holes occur when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses in on itself. These stars have to be 10 to 15 times the size of our sun and will explode outward in a supernova before collapsing. This collapse creates a point with zero volume and infinite density-which is the ratio between mass and volume. This point is what is known as a singularity. Because not even light can escape this region, we can also receive no information from it. That is why it is called a black hole.

Now to understand more about black holes you have to understand more about gravity. The general relativity definition of gravity is the curvature of spacetime. Massive objects distort spacetime. That means it looks kinda like this (show diagram). I have links to some more science-y pictures below. So a black hole severely distorts spacetime. Black holes also have something called an event horizon. This marks the boundary of the black hole. Once you enter the horizon you are doomed to be sucked in to the black hole. The event horizon moves at very fast speeds, even though it seems still from far away. The event horizon’s velocity is the reason it is easy to get sucked in but impossible to escape.

I have links to articles about black holes below, they go really in depth explanation wise, for an article.

ARticles

http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/BHfaq.html

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/black_holes.html

Pictures

http://www.astronomynotes.com/evolutn/grwarp.gif

http://ideonexus.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/spacetimecurvature.png

[wtfscientific]

My new video about black holes

[blamoscience]

If you approached the rim of a volcano and looked down into it, you might expect to see a lava pool, but if the volcano previously erupted and then the top of it collapsed into a huge bowl-shaped crater, or caldera, then what you might see when you peer over the rim is a beautiful crater lake. Sometimes the water is acidic and the lake has a bright greenish hue. Other times the water is a cloudy turquoise color, yet other times the lake may appear to be a very deep shade of blue. Crater Lake, Oregon, is one of the most well known, but crater lakes can be found all over the globe. If the volcano has been dormant for a long time, the water can be extremely clear because no river or streams flow into with sediment deposits. In some cases, water may have filled up an impact crater to form a lake, but this is less common. A few crater lakes were created by man via an atomic blast, but an artificially-created crater lake is the least common of all. All crater lakes were once a place where the earth experienced great violence, but now are a place of great beauty … even though the volcano can become active and violent again.

See the full gallery here!

[thisweekinscience]

Is there life on mars?

A meteorite found in the Sahara, one of the oldest meteorites ever found, gives further evidence to support the theory of extra terrestrial life on mars. The 0.7-pound fragment, NWA 7034, contains more water than any pre-discovered martian meteorites. “It’s about 6,000 parts per million of water,” said Carl B. Agee, director of the institute of Meteoritics, Curator of meteorites and Professor of the department of earth and planetary sciences in New mexico, who led the study. In comparison, there are over 100 martian meteorites discovered, which mostly have 30 times less water content per million. This 320 gram meteorite fragment is currently the most substantial evidence we have of water-based organic life existing on another planet.  Using evidence from water molecules locked in the mineral structure, it has been estimated that life could have been supported on mars up to 2 billion years ago. It is suggested that the meteorite exploded from a volcano in the crust of the planet, the water locked in the basalt came from an underground water source near the source of the explosion. 

[wtfscientific]

Script for cannibalism video

Cannibalism actually isn’t bad for you as long as you avoid the central nervous system, ie, the brain and the spinal chord, etc. When you eat these things you risk contracting “kuru” or the laughing sickness. Now this disease is rare and unlikely outside of Africa. “Kuru” is similar to mad cow disease in symptoms. There is also the risk of contracting species specific parasites and germs but you’re actually more at risk of contracting these from cows than from eating some of your own.

  The mad cow like disease is called Creuzfeld-Jacob Disease or CJD. There was an outbreak of it in the UK about a decade ago. CJD is caused by a prion, which is neither a virus or germ. After the outbreak it was later discovered that it was the same thing that caused kuru in new guinea.

  Now cjd prion is so dangerous because it promotes refolding of proteins. Now I talked about how important and dangerous the folding of proteins are in my last video. These missfoldings contribute to mass cell death, which is obviously a problem. Once this prion is spread the defective proteins infect the brain and are produced in a self sustaining feedback loop. What that means is that it gives itself the information it needs to keep up production of these proteins.

  CJD is rare and hard to come by so most people do not have to worry about it.