Science Story: Impossible Conditions [Uncertain Principles]

(When I launched the Advent Calendar of Science Stories series back in December, I had a few things in mind, but wasn’t sure I’d get through 24 days. In the end, I had more than enough material, and in fact didn’t end up using a few of my original ideas. So I’ll do a few additional posts, on an occasional basis, to use up a bit more of the leftover bits from Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist…)

While we mostly think of science being done in comfortable institutes if not gleaming laboratories, one of the most impressive and inspiring things about science is that people can and do carry on scientific research in an amazing range of conditions. I’ve previously mentioned the story of Sin-Itiro Tomonaga mailing his version of QED to Oppenheimer in 1948. One of the amazing things about that story is that Tomonaga was working in Tokyo, which had been utterly devastated by WWII– I spent a few months living in Japan in 1998, and visited the Edo-Tokyo Museum, and it’s really difficult to convey the scale of the damage inflicted on the city by American bombing in 1945. It’s difficult to imagine how Tomonaga and his group managed to make dramatic advances in physics in the disastrous conditions of postwar Japan.

But Tomonaga isn’t the most impressive example of advancing physics in impossible conditions. A century ago this November, Albert Einstein completed work on his theory of General Relativity, and published a paper laying out the essentials of the theory and showing that it correctly predicted the precession of the orbit of Mercury, a problem that had been vexing astronomers for decades. The mathematics of General Relativity are fearsomely complicated, though– Einstein had to laboriously learn a huge amount of math to make it work, which accounts for much of the ten-year delay between Special Relativity in 1905 and General Relativity in 1915. His calculation of the orbit of Mercury uses a bunch of simplifying approximations, as he thought it was too difficult to work out a general solution.

To his great amazement, though, within about a month of the completion of the theory, he received a letter from Karl Schwarzschild (the fellow in the robes and magnificent mustache in the photo above) presenting an exact solution to the equations of general relativity. In the simplest geometry you can deal with, mind– Schwarzschild assumed a uniform, stationary, spherical mass– but still, an exact and general solution of the type Einstein had thought might be impossible.

Schwarzschild’s solution is the first introduction of the modern idea of a black hole. It’s relatively (heh) simple to show from his equations that if the radius of the massive sphere becomes smaller than some critical value, the curvature of spacetime becomes so extreme that anything inside that radius is cut off from the rest of the universe– not even light can escape. This “Schwarzschild radius” is the location of the event horizon of a black hole, and investigating this phenomenon has driven a huge amount of fascinating physics (I highly recommend Kip Thorne’s book on black holes, which presents a very detailed history of the ideas).

The most amazing thing about Schwarzschild’s short letter, though, is the conclusion. He ended the letter with one of the most incredible sentences ever to appear in the scientific literature:

As you see, the war treated me kindly enough, in spite of the heavy gunfire, to allow me to get away from it all and take this walk in the land of your ideas.

Schwarzschild’s letter was written in December of 1915, from his station with an artillery company of the German army on the Eastern Front of World War I. So, not only did he rapidly develop a solution that Einstein had doubted was possible, he did it in one of the worst environments imaginable. (And, in fact, within six months he was dead, of an autoimmune disease contracted on the front.)

So, the next time you’re trying to do some science, and find yourself bothered by petty distractions– people talking, bad music, crying babies– give a thought to the example of Karl Scwarzschild, which puts everything else into a very different perspective.

(“Too much fucking perspective,” in the immortal words of David St. Hubbins…)

——

(Awesome Schwarzschild photo from Potsdam University.)

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1LQ6vNP

(When I launched the Advent Calendar of Science Stories series back in December, I had a few things in mind, but wasn’t sure I’d get through 24 days. In the end, I had more than enough material, and in fact didn’t end up using a few of my original ideas. So I’ll do a few additional posts, on an occasional basis, to use up a bit more of the leftover bits from Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist…)

While we mostly think of science being done in comfortable institutes if not gleaming laboratories, one of the most impressive and inspiring things about science is that people can and do carry on scientific research in an amazing range of conditions. I’ve previously mentioned the story of Sin-Itiro Tomonaga mailing his version of QED to Oppenheimer in 1948. One of the amazing things about that story is that Tomonaga was working in Tokyo, which had been utterly devastated by WWII– I spent a few months living in Japan in 1998, and visited the Edo-Tokyo Museum, and it’s really difficult to convey the scale of the damage inflicted on the city by American bombing in 1945. It’s difficult to imagine how Tomonaga and his group managed to make dramatic advances in physics in the disastrous conditions of postwar Japan.

But Tomonaga isn’t the most impressive example of advancing physics in impossible conditions. A century ago this November, Albert Einstein completed work on his theory of General Relativity, and published a paper laying out the essentials of the theory and showing that it correctly predicted the precession of the orbit of Mercury, a problem that had been vexing astronomers for decades. The mathematics of General Relativity are fearsomely complicated, though– Einstein had to laboriously learn a huge amount of math to make it work, which accounts for much of the ten-year delay between Special Relativity in 1905 and General Relativity in 1915. His calculation of the orbit of Mercury uses a bunch of simplifying approximations, as he thought it was too difficult to work out a general solution.

To his great amazement, though, within about a month of the completion of the theory, he received a letter from Karl Schwarzschild (the fellow in the robes and magnificent mustache in the photo above) presenting an exact solution to the equations of general relativity. In the simplest geometry you can deal with, mind– Schwarzschild assumed a uniform, stationary, spherical mass– but still, an exact and general solution of the type Einstein had thought might be impossible.

Schwarzschild’s solution is the first introduction of the modern idea of a black hole. It’s relatively (heh) simple to show from his equations that if the radius of the massive sphere becomes smaller than some critical value, the curvature of spacetime becomes so extreme that anything inside that radius is cut off from the rest of the universe– not even light can escape. This “Schwarzschild radius” is the location of the event horizon of a black hole, and investigating this phenomenon has driven a huge amount of fascinating physics (I highly recommend Kip Thorne’s book on black holes, which presents a very detailed history of the ideas).

The most amazing thing about Schwarzschild’s short letter, though, is the conclusion. He ended the letter with one of the most incredible sentences ever to appear in the scientific literature:

As you see, the war treated me kindly enough, in spite of the heavy gunfire, to allow me to get away from it all and take this walk in the land of your ideas.

Schwarzschild’s letter was written in December of 1915, from his station with an artillery company of the German army on the Eastern Front of World War I. So, not only did he rapidly develop a solution that Einstein had doubted was possible, he did it in one of the worst environments imaginable. (And, in fact, within six months he was dead, of an autoimmune disease contracted on the front.)

So, the next time you’re trying to do some science, and find yourself bothered by petty distractions– people talking, bad music, crying babies– give a thought to the example of Karl Scwarzschild, which puts everything else into a very different perspective.

(“Too much fucking perspective,” in the immortal words of David St. Hubbins…)

——

(Awesome Schwarzschild photo from Potsdam University.)

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1LQ6vNP

How “they” view “us”: Gordie Howe edition [Respectful Insolence]

Yesterday was a very strange day, at least on the Internet.

I really should learn to remove Twitter from my iPhone on Wednesdays. Why? Wednesdays tend to be my administrative days. I’m not in clinic seeing patients nor am I in the operating room. That’s why Wednesday tends to be one of the two days a week when I write grants, do administrative work, and meet with my lab people, among other miscellaneous tasks, such as working on upcoming presentations. So I tend to spend most of the day on Wednesdays sitting in front of my computer, and I’m easily distracted by Twitter or other things going on. Normally I can turn focus on what I have to do, but not yesterday, which is why things erupted more than they should have.

Yesterday’s post was about news stories portraying Gordie Howe’s “miraculous” recovery from his serious stroke last fall and further attributing his recovery to a dubious stem cell treatment he received at Clinica Santa Clarita in Tijuana, a clinic that uses Novastem stem cells, which are purchased from a company called Stemedica. It was basically a continuation of a post a month before, except that I complained about the credulous news coverage that basically let Stemedica the media as infomercials for their products. In particular I was harshly critical of Keith Olbermann, whose five minute segment two weeks ago on Howe’s recovery was, indeed, basically an infomercial for Stemedica. On a whim, I Tweeted out the link, plus a link to the previous post, to Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) and the local news station (@Local4News) that did a similar story on Tuesday night featuring new video of Howe.



Let’s just say, Olbermann was not pleased:

Sadly, this clown is too worried about ownership of the forest to see the trees: RT @gorskon Sadly, @KeithOl… http://t.co/VXs2wXqySK

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 4, 2015

Things degenerated from there.

I was tempted to write up a post about Olbermann, his thin skin, how he blocked anyone who defended the post or criticized his coverage of the Gordie Howe story, or, I guess, just annoyed him, and how he was utterly incapable of admitting that he might have erred. However, I realized that that’s not really the “teachable moment” here. Sure, Olbermann thought I would be “pissed off” by an update he plans on doing Friday, but in reality there would be nothing to be upset about unless he plans on attacking me and misrepresenting what I said, which, I suspect, is the case. Whatever. No, what’s more important is that Olbermann’s reaction serves as an excellent example to illustrate the difference between scientific skepticism and how the vast majority of human beings actually think. I’ve written posts about How “They” View “Us,” not once but multiple times, but those posts were about true believers in woo. Think of this post as an entry in the series about How “They” View “Us,” with the “us” this time being about the rest of the world, neither the true believers nor skeptics, but rather the vast swath of humanity in between. My impetus for this post came from two statements.

First, there is these Tweets from Olbermann, which are representative of several Tweets saying more or less the same thing:

Your conclusion, @gorskon requires that your diagnosis of a patient you've never met, is correct; that one by his son, a physician, is wrong

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 4, 2015

And:

This, @gorskon is the worst kind of dilettantism. Allow for the possibility that a medically trained witness might know more than a BLOGGER

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 4, 2015

And then there was this comment from SamE from Ohio:

I consider myself a fair- minded person and I usually never comment on articles or get involved in Twitter fights, but something about this tripped my trigger. I came to this article thinking Olbermann was being an arrogant jerk, but after reading it I changed my opinion. I think you’re on firm ground criticizing the company, but not on firm ground speculating on Mr Howe’s true medical condition and the opinion of his son who is a medical doctor.

I agree that this company seems super sketchy and exorbitantly expensive, but that does not mean Mr. Howe did not benefit from their treatment. No one who hasn’t examined Mr Howe can know for sure how the treatments effected him or the true state of his health or whether his family and doctors are exaggerating his recovery. I fail to see why Mr Howe’s son, who is a doctor, would make false claims if his father was really doing poorly and he had been fleeced by quacks.

And there you have it: This is how most people think and why this is about far more than the petulant reaction of a single sports pundit to having his story questioned. In this, Olbermann is being human and demonstrating one of the biggest impediments we humans have to properly determining causation in health matters. Specifically, people are pattern-forming animals. Our first reaction upon seeing correlation is to impute causation to it. We humans also tend to value personal stories and testimonials over scientific evidence—and not by a small margin, either. In a trial, the convincing testimony of a single witness can trump mountains of scientific evidence, even though it’s been shown time and time again how fallible memory is. Also, because we are social animals and like to hear stories of people doing well, we tend not to react favorably to any questioning of “miracle cure” testimonials, tending to view such analysis not as reasonable skepticism, but rather as attacks on the person giving the testimonials or as wishing ill on the person who is being presented as having undergone a “miraculous” recovery. I’ve seen this myself so many times when examining the testimonials of, for example, “miracle cancer cures” (in particular of patients of Stanislaw Burzynski). The same is true of the stories of antivaccine activists about how vaccines caused their child’s autism or how this or that quack treatment cured their child’s autism (i.e., “recovered” their child).

We see this in the reaction to my discussions of Gordie Howe’s recovery from stroke. Olbermann, for instance, completely ignores all of my other criticisms in my two posts, specifically of his coverage and its kissing up to Maynard Howe, CEO of Stemedica, the dubious involvement of Stemedica in Howe’s care, and how Novastem charges $20,000+ a pop to desperate patients for its unproven stem cell therapy, putting them on clinical trials in a manner not unlike that of Stanislaw Burzynski. (At least SamE acknowledged these, but he still focused like a laser on my questioning of Dr. Howe’s interpretation of what stem cells did for his father.) Instead, Olbermann zeroes in like the proverbial laser on my questioning of Dr. Howe’s account of his father’s progress, portraying it as being the “speculation” of some “BLOGGER” (yes, his Tweets drip with contempt for bloggers) versus that of a “medically trained witness,” a doctor, who’s been caring for his father since his massive stroke in October. In this, Olbermann misses the key message, repeated multiple times in both posts and hammered home at the conclusion of yesterday’s post:

Let no one doubt that I hope Howe’s condition is improved. I just doubt that it was the stem cells that were responsible for his improvement and have a lot of questions and concerns about Novastem’s treatments and clinical trials, concerns I deem well-justified.

Of course Howe’s condition has improved. That’s the normal course of recovery after a stroke: Improvement over several months until a plateau is reached, after which no more improvement occurs. After Gordie Howe survived his last health scare in early December, when he was admitted for severe dehydration, most neurologists would expect him to continue to improve, and it’s great that he apparently has improved to the point where he can stand and play floor hockey with his grandson. What I questioned (and continue to question) is whether the stem cells were responsible, and I laid out many reasons why. Similarly, what I also question is Stemedica and Novastem’s business practices marketing the clinical trials and the credulous coverage of “Gordie Howe’s ‘miracle’ recovery” by not just Olbermann, but by virtually every other reporter who covered the story, with few exceptions.

But, no, Olbermann focused on making it my “speculation” versus Murray Howe’s medically trained knowledge. Why is this? Is Olbermann being dishonest? He might be being a dick, so to speak, in terms of his behavior on Twitter, but in reality his way of thinking is the way that most human beings think. It is the default. And, physician or no, so is Murray Howe’s rapid willingness to let hope take over and to believe strongly that the stem cells are responsible for how well his father is doing. As I like to put it, contrary to how it will likely be portrayed, should Olbermann attack me on Friday, I am not questioning Howe’s assessment that his father is better medically (no doubt he is, as that’s what generally happens more than three months after a stroke), I am questioning Dr. Howe’s conclusion that it was the stem cells that resulted in his father’s improvement, because, as I’ve learned over the last decade, single anecdotes can mislead, even cancer cure anecdotes in which patients with terminal cancer are presented as having been cured of their cancer by this or that alternative therapy. That is what the vast majority of people out there do not understand, including SamE, Olbermann, any number of Stanislaw Burzynski fans, and antivaccinationist.

Indeed, Olbermann’s reaction is really no different than the reaction of antivaccine advocates who swear that their child became autistic as a result of this vaccine or that vaccine. They saw, dammit, and that’s a powerful narrative. Just as most “average” people become at least a little uncomfortable when skeptics question mothers’s stories about their children and tend to frame such questioning as an attack on the mother’s story, and therefore her character because such questioning, at least in the minds of most people, implies that the skeptic is accusing the mother of being wrong or lying. It doesn’t matter how much the skeptic emphasizes that that is not the case or tries to explain that all people are prone to confuse correlation with causation and all people have memories beset by problems like confirmation bias (where we tend to remember what confirms our preexisting beliefs and to forget what does not), changes in memory that occur based on events that follow the event being recounted, and, of course, emotional investment with the subject. When I hear people say that no one knows her child as well as her mother, that might be true for some things, but it doesn’t apply to medicine.

As for Murray Howe, no one doubts that he loves his father intensely, that he agonized over the decision to take him to Novastem, and that he really believes his father’s improvement is due to stem cells. Who knows? He might be right. On the other hand, given what we know about stem cell treatments for stroke thus far, it’s highly likely that he is doing what so many other people do and confusing correlation with causation. Also, as I well know, having made such mistakes myself, it is very perilous for a physician to treat a close family member—or even to make medical judgments about him. I’ve recounted (vaguely) that I once came to a very wrong conclusion about a new complaint of a close family member before, a conclusion that I doubt I would have made had she not been a close family member. Physicians tend to overestimate their level of objectivity and knowledge. Also, it is not a slam on Dr. Howe to point out that he is a radiologist, not a neurologist. Radiologists don’t take long term care of stroke patients. Most don’t even take care of patients in the same way a primary care doctor does. Radiology is a specialty that involves reading and interpreting images and doing procedures guided by various imaging technologies, such as CT- or ultrasound-guided biopsies or angiography.

In the end, although some aspects of science come naturally to humans, such as the curiosity that leads to scientific discovery and the testing of ideas against reality, scientific skepticism is difficult because it’s not the default manner of thinking in humans. Rather, our default is to assume causation from correlation and to believe the accounts of events by people we like and/or trust, such as Gordie Howe’s family (because we love Gordie Howe), doctors, mothers of children with neurodevelopmental disorders, and patients with life-threatening cancer and their families. We have to learn—and internalize—knowledge that correlation more often than not does not equal causation in medical matters and that because of that people—even physicians—are often wrong when they impute causation to correlation. We have to learn—and internalize—the uncomfortable message that people’s accounts of what they’ve observed are often not good evidence that their interpretation of events (e.g., stem cells resulted in Gordie Howe’s “miraculous recovery”) because memory is affected by so many factors that can interfere with such conclusions. We have to learn—and internalize—the message that questioning such stories is not the same thing as attacking the messenger or accusing him or her of lying, that rather even people we love and admire can be very, very wrong when trying to assess whether an intervention has helped a patient. If these things weren’t true, we wouldn’t need science. We wouldn’t need clinical trials. But we do need them.

One can only hope that Keith Olbermann learns and internalizes these uncomfortable messages, but I doubt he will. He appears to see me (and other skeptics) as buzzkills who think we’re better than, for example, Murray Howe and that we’re wishing ill on Gordie Howe and his family, as “clowns,” “pedants,” and “dilettantes” worthy of his scorn. He even views me as a physician who doesn’t care about alleviating pain in patients, a false dichotomy if ever there was one: You either embrace Stemedica’s and the Howe family’s account of how well its stem cells work or you clearly don’t care about patient suffering. Have we heard this false dichotomy before? I have. I’ve heard it time and time again over Burzynski patient cancer cure stories and “miracle cures” due to “autism biomed.” It’s a feature, not a bug, in human thought, and it’s how we skeptics, no matter how hard we try to avoid it, are often viewed by “regular people.” Keith Olbermann is nothing but this normal human tendency on steroids, wedded to a thin-skinned, very unpleasant personality. We’ve seen this before, too.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1xqgf6N

Yesterday was a very strange day, at least on the Internet.

I really should learn to remove Twitter from my iPhone on Wednesdays. Why? Wednesdays tend to be my administrative days. I’m not in clinic seeing patients nor am I in the operating room. That’s why Wednesday tends to be one of the two days a week when I write grants, do administrative work, and meet with my lab people, among other miscellaneous tasks, such as working on upcoming presentations. So I tend to spend most of the day on Wednesdays sitting in front of my computer, and I’m easily distracted by Twitter or other things going on. Normally I can turn focus on what I have to do, but not yesterday, which is why things erupted more than they should have.

Yesterday’s post was about news stories portraying Gordie Howe’s “miraculous” recovery from his serious stroke last fall and further attributing his recovery to a dubious stem cell treatment he received at Clinica Santa Clarita in Tijuana, a clinic that uses Novastem stem cells, which are purchased from a company called Stemedica. It was basically a continuation of a post a month before, except that I complained about the credulous news coverage that basically let Stemedica the media as infomercials for their products. In particular I was harshly critical of Keith Olbermann, whose five minute segment two weeks ago on Howe’s recovery was, indeed, basically an infomercial for Stemedica. On a whim, I Tweeted out the link, plus a link to the previous post, to Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) and the local news station (@Local4News) that did a similar story on Tuesday night featuring new video of Howe.



Let’s just say, Olbermann was not pleased:

Sadly, this clown is too worried about ownership of the forest to see the trees: RT @gorskon Sadly, @KeithOl… http://t.co/VXs2wXqySK

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 4, 2015

Things degenerated from there.

I was tempted to write up a post about Olbermann, his thin skin, how he blocked anyone who defended the post or criticized his coverage of the Gordie Howe story, or, I guess, just annoyed him, and how he was utterly incapable of admitting that he might have erred. However, I realized that that’s not really the “teachable moment” here. Sure, Olbermann thought I would be “pissed off” by an update he plans on doing Friday, but in reality there would be nothing to be upset about unless he plans on attacking me and misrepresenting what I said, which, I suspect, is the case. Whatever. No, what’s more important is that Olbermann’s reaction serves as an excellent example to illustrate the difference between scientific skepticism and how the vast majority of human beings actually think. I’ve written posts about How “They” View “Us,” not once but multiple times, but those posts were about true believers in woo. Think of this post as an entry in the series about How “They” View “Us,” with the “us” this time being about the rest of the world, neither the true believers nor skeptics, but rather the vast swath of humanity in between. My impetus for this post came from two statements.

First, there is these Tweets from Olbermann, which are representative of several Tweets saying more or less the same thing:

Your conclusion, @gorskon requires that your diagnosis of a patient you've never met, is correct; that one by his son, a physician, is wrong

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 4, 2015

And:

This, @gorskon is the worst kind of dilettantism. Allow for the possibility that a medically trained witness might know more than a BLOGGER

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 4, 2015

And then there was this comment from SamE from Ohio:

I consider myself a fair- minded person and I usually never comment on articles or get involved in Twitter fights, but something about this tripped my trigger. I came to this article thinking Olbermann was being an arrogant jerk, but after reading it I changed my opinion. I think you’re on firm ground criticizing the company, but not on firm ground speculating on Mr Howe’s true medical condition and the opinion of his son who is a medical doctor.

I agree that this company seems super sketchy and exorbitantly expensive, but that does not mean Mr. Howe did not benefit from their treatment. No one who hasn’t examined Mr Howe can know for sure how the treatments effected him or the true state of his health or whether his family and doctors are exaggerating his recovery. I fail to see why Mr Howe’s son, who is a doctor, would make false claims if his father was really doing poorly and he had been fleeced by quacks.

And there you have it: This is how most people think and why this is about far more than the petulant reaction of a single sports pundit to having his story questioned. In this, Olbermann is being human and demonstrating one of the biggest impediments we humans have to properly determining causation in health matters. Specifically, people are pattern-forming animals. Our first reaction upon seeing correlation is to impute causation to it. We humans also tend to value personal stories and testimonials over scientific evidence—and not by a small margin, either. In a trial, the convincing testimony of a single witness can trump mountains of scientific evidence, even though it’s been shown time and time again how fallible memory is. Also, because we are social animals and like to hear stories of people doing well, we tend not to react favorably to any questioning of “miracle cure” testimonials, tending to view such analysis not as reasonable skepticism, but rather as attacks on the person giving the testimonials or as wishing ill on the person who is being presented as having undergone a “miraculous” recovery. I’ve seen this myself so many times when examining the testimonials of, for example, “miracle cancer cures” (in particular of patients of Stanislaw Burzynski). The same is true of the stories of antivaccine activists about how vaccines caused their child’s autism or how this or that quack treatment cured their child’s autism (i.e., “recovered” their child).

We see this in the reaction to my discussions of Gordie Howe’s recovery from stroke. Olbermann, for instance, completely ignores all of my other criticisms in my two posts, specifically of his coverage and its kissing up to Maynard Howe, CEO of Stemedica, the dubious involvement of Stemedica in Howe’s care, and how Novastem charges $20,000+ a pop to desperate patients for its unproven stem cell therapy, putting them on clinical trials in a manner not unlike that of Stanislaw Burzynski. (At least SamE acknowledged these, but he still focused like a laser on my questioning of Dr. Howe’s interpretation of what stem cells did for his father.) Instead, Olbermann zeroes in like the proverbial laser on my questioning of Dr. Howe’s account of his father’s progress, portraying it as being the “speculation” of some “BLOGGER” (yes, his Tweets drip with contempt for bloggers) versus that of a “medically trained witness,” a doctor, who’s been caring for his father since his massive stroke in October. In this, Olbermann misses the key message, repeated multiple times in both posts and hammered home at the conclusion of yesterday’s post:

Let no one doubt that I hope Howe’s condition is improved. I just doubt that it was the stem cells that were responsible for his improvement and have a lot of questions and concerns about Novastem’s treatments and clinical trials, concerns I deem well-justified.

Of course Howe’s condition has improved. That’s the normal course of recovery after a stroke: Improvement over several months until a plateau is reached, after which no more improvement occurs. After Gordie Howe survived his last health scare in early December, when he was admitted for severe dehydration, most neurologists would expect him to continue to improve, and it’s great that he apparently has improved to the point where he can stand and play floor hockey with his grandson. What I questioned (and continue to question) is whether the stem cells were responsible, and I laid out many reasons why. Similarly, what I also question is Stemedica and Novastem’s business practices marketing the clinical trials and the credulous coverage of “Gordie Howe’s ‘miracle’ recovery” by not just Olbermann, but by virtually every other reporter who covered the story, with few exceptions.

But, no, Olbermann focused on making it my “speculation” versus Murray Howe’s medically trained knowledge. Why is this? Is Olbermann being dishonest? He might be being a dick, so to speak, in terms of his behavior on Twitter, but in reality his way of thinking is the way that most human beings think. It is the default. And, physician or no, so is Murray Howe’s rapid willingness to let hope take over and to believe strongly that the stem cells are responsible for how well his father is doing. As I like to put it, contrary to how it will likely be portrayed, should Olbermann attack me on Friday, I am not questioning Howe’s assessment that his father is better medically (no doubt he is, as that’s what generally happens more than three months after a stroke), I am questioning Dr. Howe’s conclusion that it was the stem cells that resulted in his father’s improvement, because, as I’ve learned over the last decade, single anecdotes can mislead, even cancer cure anecdotes in which patients with terminal cancer are presented as having been cured of their cancer by this or that alternative therapy. That is what the vast majority of people out there do not understand, including SamE, Olbermann, any number of Stanislaw Burzynski fans, and antivaccinationist.

Indeed, Olbermann’s reaction is really no different than the reaction of antivaccine advocates who swear that their child became autistic as a result of this vaccine or that vaccine. They saw, dammit, and that’s a powerful narrative. Just as most “average” people become at least a little uncomfortable when skeptics question mothers’s stories about their children and tend to frame such questioning as an attack on the mother’s story, and therefore her character because such questioning, at least in the minds of most people, implies that the skeptic is accusing the mother of being wrong or lying. It doesn’t matter how much the skeptic emphasizes that that is not the case or tries to explain that all people are prone to confuse correlation with causation and all people have memories beset by problems like confirmation bias (where we tend to remember what confirms our preexisting beliefs and to forget what does not), changes in memory that occur based on events that follow the event being recounted, and, of course, emotional investment with the subject. When I hear people say that no one knows her child as well as her mother, that might be true for some things, but it doesn’t apply to medicine.

As for Murray Howe, no one doubts that he loves his father intensely, that he agonized over the decision to take him to Novastem, and that he really believes his father’s improvement is due to stem cells. Who knows? He might be right. On the other hand, given what we know about stem cell treatments for stroke thus far, it’s highly likely that he is doing what so many other people do and confusing correlation with causation. Also, as I well know, having made such mistakes myself, it is very perilous for a physician to treat a close family member—or even to make medical judgments about him. I’ve recounted (vaguely) that I once came to a very wrong conclusion about a new complaint of a close family member before, a conclusion that I doubt I would have made had she not been a close family member. Physicians tend to overestimate their level of objectivity and knowledge. Also, it is not a slam on Dr. Howe to point out that he is a radiologist, not a neurologist. Radiologists don’t take long term care of stroke patients. Most don’t even take care of patients in the same way a primary care doctor does. Radiology is a specialty that involves reading and interpreting images and doing procedures guided by various imaging technologies, such as CT- or ultrasound-guided biopsies or angiography.

In the end, although some aspects of science come naturally to humans, such as the curiosity that leads to scientific discovery and the testing of ideas against reality, scientific skepticism is difficult because it’s not the default manner of thinking in humans. Rather, our default is to assume causation from correlation and to believe the accounts of events by people we like and/or trust, such as Gordie Howe’s family (because we love Gordie Howe), doctors, mothers of children with neurodevelopmental disorders, and patients with life-threatening cancer and their families. We have to learn—and internalize—knowledge that correlation more often than not does not equal causation in medical matters and that because of that people—even physicians—are often wrong when they impute causation to correlation. We have to learn—and internalize—the uncomfortable message that people’s accounts of what they’ve observed are often not good evidence that their interpretation of events (e.g., stem cells resulted in Gordie Howe’s “miraculous recovery”) because memory is affected by so many factors that can interfere with such conclusions. We have to learn—and internalize—the message that questioning such stories is not the same thing as attacking the messenger or accusing him or her of lying, that rather even people we love and admire can be very, very wrong when trying to assess whether an intervention has helped a patient. If these things weren’t true, we wouldn’t need science. We wouldn’t need clinical trials. But we do need them.

One can only hope that Keith Olbermann learns and internalizes these uncomfortable messages, but I doubt he will. He appears to see me (and other skeptics) as buzzkills who think we’re better than, for example, Murray Howe and that we’re wishing ill on Gordie Howe and his family, as “clowns,” “pedants,” and “dilettantes” worthy of his scorn. He even views me as a physician who doesn’t care about alleviating pain in patients, a false dichotomy if ever there was one: You either embrace Stemedica’s and the Howe family’s account of how well its stem cells work or you clearly don’t care about patient suffering. Have we heard this false dichotomy before? I have. I’ve heard it time and time again over Burzynski patient cancer cure stories and “miracle cures” due to “autism biomed.” It’s a feature, not a bug, in human thought, and it’s how we skeptics, no matter how hard we try to avoid it, are often viewed by “regular people.” Keith Olbermann is nothing but this normal human tendency on steroids, wedded to a thin-skinned, very unpleasant personality. We’ve seen this before, too.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1xqgf6N

Five Little Pieces of Paper [Casaubon's Book]

Take five little pieces of paper, and write down the five things that matter most to you in your life, whatever they are. Your parents. Your partner. Your kids, Your community. Your grand passion – art or the Red Sox, guitar or hunting or knitting. Your home. Your favorite chair. Your dreams for the future. Your best friends. Your free time. Prayer. Your dog, your cat. Your neighborhood, that place where everyone knows your name, your religious community, your buddies from work or school. Your music. Mint Milanos and a glass of wine with someone who understands you. That super-soft stuffed animal or the sight of the person you love best asleep, completely relaxed. Whatever matters most to you in life, take it and write it down….

Ok, you’ve got them in your mind.

Now pick which one you’d like to give up forever. Someone is coming to take it away from you, and you HAVE TO give it up, so crumple it up, screw up your eyes and let it go. It is gone. As far as you know it may never come back.

Ouch. Wow, that’s hard. Hold on tight to what you have. Look at what your life is now, and the hole that’s left in it without your home, your nephews, your cousins, your cat, your friends, your music… Take a breath….

Now pick the next-least-important most-important-thing-in-the-world to you, crumple it up and throw it in the trash. Then do it again, and again, choosing between your parents and your sisters, your dog and your beloved aunt, never seeing your home again or never watching your niece grow up. Throw out that stuffed animal you’ve carried your whole life, your devotion to your favorite team, grandma’s legacy or your best friend. Pick…which of your children do you want to keep? Mom or Dad?

And now only one of them is left. It is the only one you’ve managed to hold on to in all of this – it is the single thing you love most in the whole world, and you feel guilty and bad because you chose and this one won, and you learned that you aren’t as nice as you thought you were because you DO have a favorite when you have to. Cling to this one left thing as hard as you can. And then we’re going to get rid of it. Someone will come and take it away. It is gone now. All of it is gone…..Wow, that’s mean and horrible of me, isn’t it? I mean who would want to make someone even pretend to feel that kind of loss, much less have to do it?

Me. Because a lot of people say how nice I am because I take care of kids who need a home. But I’m truly not especially nice or kind or awesome…I’m doing what you would do – what some of you do do and what everyone would do if they saw. The difference is that I know that when kids come to my door, they have been through EXACTLY what we just imagined.

Only it isn’t pretend, and the things aren’t just paper. They lost the things they cared about most in the world. Mommy. Daddy. Auntie, Grandma. Baby brother. Big sister. Cousins. Neighbors. Home. Bed. Crib. Family. Language, The smell of arroz or pasta like Grammy makes it. The background sounds of their neighborhood. Their BFF, the teacher that cared for them, the boy down the street that held you up to put the ball through the hoop. The only blanket with the soft place that rubs just right, their Lambie-pie. Dog. Cat. Boyfriend. Girlfriend. Food that tastes right. The music of people who speak your way. Walking down the street and knowing you fit here, in this place. And the fact that in order to get to this ocean of loss, a lot of horrible, horrible things had to happen does not make you love what little you have less – it makes you love it more.

And now someone strange came in a car and took you away and brought you to my house and it smells wrong and the blankets feel wrong and you don’t know where the bathroom is and you are scared to get up to pee anyway. You don’t know whether your sisters are ok and if anyone will give your brother his medicine or if Mommy is in jail or the police hurt Daddy when they came. You don’t understand why Grandma was crying and why everything you care about is gone and the person holding you is a stranger, why the bottle tastes different and the arms that hold you aren’t the ones that you need, all you know is you are so very scared. And then someone comes to visit and says “Wow, they are so lucky to be with you.” And the kids don’t feel lucky. Because who the hell would feel lucky?

And then they say that I am so great to deal with their behaviors and challenges, as though those are awful things they do just to make me crazy (and I won’t deny it occasionally feels that way even to me). But you’d deal too, because they aren’t – they are the things you do to keep going and make sense of your world when you are a very small person and everything in the world got taken from you. And people then assume I hate their parents, blame their parents. And sometimes I do hate the things they did to the kids, and they make me crazy angry, and I certainly cry for the kids. But I know that just like the kids who lost everything when that car drove away…so did the parents. They made mistakes, they screwed up…but all that mattered most to them was in that car, and it drove away and they may never get it back, and their world ended too. And in most cases, once or twice or forty-seven times they were the little boy or girl in the back of the car 20 years ago. And if you break someone enough times, they stay broken.

Sometimes the parents can fix the mistakes, and make home safe again and maybe rebuild some of it. And sometimes maybe the kids can get a little bit of what they lost back, and go home to Grandma or Dad or Mom or Auntie, and have some of those things back. People think they can’t imagine how I could say goodbye – that’s the first response most people give, “I could never give them back.” Or they don’t understand how I can let them keep seeing their family after adoption. But that’s as though my feelings are what it is all about, from my safe place where I have it all intact, my home and family, children and pets and loved ones, where I’ve been lucky enough never, ever to have to really give up even one of those things. They aren’t. And the truth is that while it would hurt like hell to lose them, if I could give any of my kids back ONE SINGLE THING they loved, well, I’d do anything to get it for them. Because you can’t do this without loving them, the same as any one of you would do anything to get your babies what they need.

YOU would do it too, because you don’t look at broken babies who’ve lost their whole world and think just about yourself. Sometimes you get to keep them, and try and rebuild some of their world and sometimes, well, it just isn’t about you. And some of you could do this hard work. I know foster parenting isn’t easy and it isn’t for everyone, there are lots of good reasons not to. But then there are a lot of awesome people out there, and if there were children on your doorstep whose whole world just was taken from them, who were bereft of everything, hungry, cold, maybe hurt and alone – you’d feed them and hold them and love them and try to get them what they needed, even if it was hard for you, because there are good reasons to do that too. And maybe some of you should think about it. Because someone has to. Because the kids won’t stop coming or needing someone to help put them back together. You won’t stop being needed just because you aren’t there.

You don’t have to be nice, or a saint or unselfish. Trust me, you don’t. You just have to be a regular person, doing what anyone would do.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/16FVgHN

Take five little pieces of paper, and write down the five things that matter most to you in your life, whatever they are. Your parents. Your partner. Your kids, Your community. Your grand passion – art or the Red Sox, guitar or hunting or knitting. Your home. Your favorite chair. Your dreams for the future. Your best friends. Your free time. Prayer. Your dog, your cat. Your neighborhood, that place where everyone knows your name, your religious community, your buddies from work or school. Your music. Mint Milanos and a glass of wine with someone who understands you. That super-soft stuffed animal or the sight of the person you love best asleep, completely relaxed. Whatever matters most to you in life, take it and write it down….

Ok, you’ve got them in your mind.

Now pick which one you’d like to give up forever. Someone is coming to take it away from you, and you HAVE TO give it up, so crumple it up, screw up your eyes and let it go. It is gone. As far as you know it may never come back.

Ouch. Wow, that’s hard. Hold on tight to what you have. Look at what your life is now, and the hole that’s left in it without your home, your nephews, your cousins, your cat, your friends, your music… Take a breath….

Now pick the next-least-important most-important-thing-in-the-world to you, crumple it up and throw it in the trash. Then do it again, and again, choosing between your parents and your sisters, your dog and your beloved aunt, never seeing your home again or never watching your niece grow up. Throw out that stuffed animal you’ve carried your whole life, your devotion to your favorite team, grandma’s legacy or your best friend. Pick…which of your children do you want to keep? Mom or Dad?

And now only one of them is left. It is the only one you’ve managed to hold on to in all of this – it is the single thing you love most in the whole world, and you feel guilty and bad because you chose and this one won, and you learned that you aren’t as nice as you thought you were because you DO have a favorite when you have to. Cling to this one left thing as hard as you can. And then we’re going to get rid of it. Someone will come and take it away. It is gone now. All of it is gone…..Wow, that’s mean and horrible of me, isn’t it? I mean who would want to make someone even pretend to feel that kind of loss, much less have to do it?

Me. Because a lot of people say how nice I am because I take care of kids who need a home. But I’m truly not especially nice or kind or awesome…I’m doing what you would do – what some of you do do and what everyone would do if they saw. The difference is that I know that when kids come to my door, they have been through EXACTLY what we just imagined.

Only it isn’t pretend, and the things aren’t just paper. They lost the things they cared about most in the world. Mommy. Daddy. Auntie, Grandma. Baby brother. Big sister. Cousins. Neighbors. Home. Bed. Crib. Family. Language, The smell of arroz or pasta like Grammy makes it. The background sounds of their neighborhood. Their BFF, the teacher that cared for them, the boy down the street that held you up to put the ball through the hoop. The only blanket with the soft place that rubs just right, their Lambie-pie. Dog. Cat. Boyfriend. Girlfriend. Food that tastes right. The music of people who speak your way. Walking down the street and knowing you fit here, in this place. And the fact that in order to get to this ocean of loss, a lot of horrible, horrible things had to happen does not make you love what little you have less – it makes you love it more.

And now someone strange came in a car and took you away and brought you to my house and it smells wrong and the blankets feel wrong and you don’t know where the bathroom is and you are scared to get up to pee anyway. You don’t know whether your sisters are ok and if anyone will give your brother his medicine or if Mommy is in jail or the police hurt Daddy when they came. You don’t understand why Grandma was crying and why everything you care about is gone and the person holding you is a stranger, why the bottle tastes different and the arms that hold you aren’t the ones that you need, all you know is you are so very scared. And then someone comes to visit and says “Wow, they are so lucky to be with you.” And the kids don’t feel lucky. Because who the hell would feel lucky?

And then they say that I am so great to deal with their behaviors and challenges, as though those are awful things they do just to make me crazy (and I won’t deny it occasionally feels that way even to me). But you’d deal too, because they aren’t – they are the things you do to keep going and make sense of your world when you are a very small person and everything in the world got taken from you. And people then assume I hate their parents, blame their parents. And sometimes I do hate the things they did to the kids, and they make me crazy angry, and I certainly cry for the kids. But I know that just like the kids who lost everything when that car drove away…so did the parents. They made mistakes, they screwed up…but all that mattered most to them was in that car, and it drove away and they may never get it back, and their world ended too. And in most cases, once or twice or forty-seven times they were the little boy or girl in the back of the car 20 years ago. And if you break someone enough times, they stay broken.

Sometimes the parents can fix the mistakes, and make home safe again and maybe rebuild some of it. And sometimes maybe the kids can get a little bit of what they lost back, and go home to Grandma or Dad or Mom or Auntie, and have some of those things back. People think they can’t imagine how I could say goodbye – that’s the first response most people give, “I could never give them back.” Or they don’t understand how I can let them keep seeing their family after adoption. But that’s as though my feelings are what it is all about, from my safe place where I have it all intact, my home and family, children and pets and loved ones, where I’ve been lucky enough never, ever to have to really give up even one of those things. They aren’t. And the truth is that while it would hurt like hell to lose them, if I could give any of my kids back ONE SINGLE THING they loved, well, I’d do anything to get it for them. Because you can’t do this without loving them, the same as any one of you would do anything to get your babies what they need.

YOU would do it too, because you don’t look at broken babies who’ve lost their whole world and think just about yourself. Sometimes you get to keep them, and try and rebuild some of their world and sometimes, well, it just isn’t about you. And some of you could do this hard work. I know foster parenting isn’t easy and it isn’t for everyone, there are lots of good reasons not to. But then there are a lot of awesome people out there, and if there were children on your doorstep whose whole world just was taken from them, who were bereft of everything, hungry, cold, maybe hurt and alone – you’d feed them and hold them and love them and try to get them what they needed, even if it was hard for you, because there are good reasons to do that too. And maybe some of you should think about it. Because someone has to. Because the kids won’t stop coming or needing someone to help put them back together. You won’t stop being needed just because you aren’t there.

You don’t have to be nice, or a saint or unselfish. Trust me, you don’t. You just have to be a regular person, doing what anyone would do.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/16FVgHN

This date in science: Maarten Schmidt’s revelation about quasars

February 5, 1963. On this date, Caltech astronomer Maarten Schmidt solved a puzzle about the quasi-stellar radio source 3C273 that changed the way we think about our universe. This object appeared starlike, like a point of light, with a mysterious jet. But its spectrum – the range of wavelengths of its light – looked odd. Astronomers routinely use spectra to learn the composition of distant objects. But, in 1963, emission lines in the spectrum of 3C273 didn’t appear to match any known chemical elements. Schmidt had a sudden realization that 3C273 contained the very ordinary element hydrogen. He realized that the spectral lines of hydrogen appeared strange because they were highly shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. Such a large red shift could occur if 3C273 were very distant, about three billion light-years away.

Dr. Schmidt told EarthSky that he recognized immediately the implications of his revelation. He said:

This realization came immediately: my wife still remembers that I was pacing up and down much of the evening.

The implications were just this. To be so far away and still visible, 3C273 must be intrinsically very bright and very powerful. It’s now thought to shine with the light of two trillion stars like our sun. That’s hundreds of times the light of our entire Milky Way galaxy. Yet 3C273 appears to be less than a light-year across, in contrast to 100,000 light-years for our Milky Way.

So 3C273 is not only distant. It is also exceedingly luminous, implying powerful energy-producing processes unknown in 1963. Schmidt announced his revelation about quasars in the journal Nature on March 16, 1963.

Maarten Schmidt is a Dutch astronomer who, in 1963, recognized that quasars are located in the very distant universe, and therefore must be extremely powerful energy sources.

X-ray image of 3C273 and its jet. Today, this quasar is known to lie at the center of a giant elliptical galaxy. Image via Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Today, hundreds of thousands of quasars are known, and many are more distant and more powerful than 3C273. It’s no exaggeration to say they turned the science of astronomy on its ear. Why, for example, are these powerful quasars located so far away in space? Because light travels at a finite speed (186,000 miles per second), we are seeing distant objects in space in the distant past. In other words, quasars existed in early universe. They do not exist in our time. Why?

In the 1960s, 3C273 and other quasars like it were strong evidence against the Fred Hoyle’s Steady State theory, which suggested that matter is continuously being created as the universe expands, leading to a universe that is the same everywhere. The quasars showed the universe is not the same everywhere and thus helped usher in Big Bang cosmology.

But Steady State theory had been losing ground, even before 1963. The biggest change caused by Maarten Schmidt’s revelation about the quasar 3C273 was in the way we think about our universe.

In other words, the idea that 3C273 was extremely luminous, and yet occupied such a relatively small space, suggested powerful energies that astronomers had not contemplated before. 3C273 gave astronomers one of their first hints that we live in a universe of colossal explosive events – and extreme temperatures and luminosities – a place where mysterious black holes abound and play a major role.

According to a March 2013 email from Caltech:

In 1963, Schmidt’s discovery gave us an unprecedented look at how the universe behaved at a much younger period in its history – billions of years before the birth of the sun and its planets. Later, Schmidt, along with his colleague Donald Lynden-Bell, discovered that quasars are galaxies harboring supermassive black holes billions of light-years away – not stars in our own galaxy, as was once believed. His seminal work dramatically increased the scale of the observable universe and advanced our present view on the violent nature of the universe in which massive black holes play a dominant role.

What are quasars? Astronomers today believe that a quasar is a compact region in the center of a galaxy in the early universe. The compact region is thought to surround a central supermassive black hole, much like the black hole thought to reside in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy and many (or most) other galaxies. The powerful luminosity of a quasar is thought to be the result of processes taking place in an accretion disk, or disk of material surrounding the black hole, as these supermassive black holes consume stars that pass too near.

ULAS J1120+0641, farthest quasar known as of 2011. The quasar appears as a faint red dot close to the center. Composite image created from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Chinese-born U.S. astrophysicist Hong-Yee Chiu coined the name quasar in May 1964, in the publication Physics Today. He wrote:

So far, the clumsily long name ‘quasi-stellar radio sources’ is used to describe these objects. Because the nature of these objects is entirely unknown, it is hard to prepare a short, appropriate nomenclature for them so that their essential properties are obvious from their name. For convenience, the abbreviated form ‘quasar’ will be used throughout this paper.

Today, the farthest known quasar is ULAS J1120+0641. Its co-moving distance is 28.85 billion light-years.

Bottom line: On February 5 1963, astronomer Maarten Schmidt’s flash of inspiration led to the understanding that quasi-stellar radio sources, or quasars, exist in the very distant universe. Quasars became the most distant, and most luminous, objects known. They changed the way we think about the universe.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1zCLOOW

February 5, 1963. On this date, Caltech astronomer Maarten Schmidt solved a puzzle about the quasi-stellar radio source 3C273 that changed the way we think about our universe. This object appeared starlike, like a point of light, with a mysterious jet. But its spectrum – the range of wavelengths of its light – looked odd. Astronomers routinely use spectra to learn the composition of distant objects. But, in 1963, emission lines in the spectrum of 3C273 didn’t appear to match any known chemical elements. Schmidt had a sudden realization that 3C273 contained the very ordinary element hydrogen. He realized that the spectral lines of hydrogen appeared strange because they were highly shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. Such a large red shift could occur if 3C273 were very distant, about three billion light-years away.

Dr. Schmidt told EarthSky that he recognized immediately the implications of his revelation. He said:

This realization came immediately: my wife still remembers that I was pacing up and down much of the evening.

The implications were just this. To be so far away and still visible, 3C273 must be intrinsically very bright and very powerful. It’s now thought to shine with the light of two trillion stars like our sun. That’s hundreds of times the light of our entire Milky Way galaxy. Yet 3C273 appears to be less than a light-year across, in contrast to 100,000 light-years for our Milky Way.

So 3C273 is not only distant. It is also exceedingly luminous, implying powerful energy-producing processes unknown in 1963. Schmidt announced his revelation about quasars in the journal Nature on March 16, 1963.

Maarten Schmidt is a Dutch astronomer who, in 1963, recognized that quasars are located in the very distant universe, and therefore must be extremely powerful energy sources.

X-ray image of 3C273 and its jet. Today, this quasar is known to lie at the center of a giant elliptical galaxy. Image via Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Today, hundreds of thousands of quasars are known, and many are more distant and more powerful than 3C273. It’s no exaggeration to say they turned the science of astronomy on its ear. Why, for example, are these powerful quasars located so far away in space? Because light travels at a finite speed (186,000 miles per second), we are seeing distant objects in space in the distant past. In other words, quasars existed in early universe. They do not exist in our time. Why?

In the 1960s, 3C273 and other quasars like it were strong evidence against the Fred Hoyle’s Steady State theory, which suggested that matter is continuously being created as the universe expands, leading to a universe that is the same everywhere. The quasars showed the universe is not the same everywhere and thus helped usher in Big Bang cosmology.

But Steady State theory had been losing ground, even before 1963. The biggest change caused by Maarten Schmidt’s revelation about the quasar 3C273 was in the way we think about our universe.

In other words, the idea that 3C273 was extremely luminous, and yet occupied such a relatively small space, suggested powerful energies that astronomers had not contemplated before. 3C273 gave astronomers one of their first hints that we live in a universe of colossal explosive events – and extreme temperatures and luminosities – a place where mysterious black holes abound and play a major role.

According to a March 2013 email from Caltech:

In 1963, Schmidt’s discovery gave us an unprecedented look at how the universe behaved at a much younger period in its history – billions of years before the birth of the sun and its planets. Later, Schmidt, along with his colleague Donald Lynden-Bell, discovered that quasars are galaxies harboring supermassive black holes billions of light-years away – not stars in our own galaxy, as was once believed. His seminal work dramatically increased the scale of the observable universe and advanced our present view on the violent nature of the universe in which massive black holes play a dominant role.

What are quasars? Astronomers today believe that a quasar is a compact region in the center of a galaxy in the early universe. The compact region is thought to surround a central supermassive black hole, much like the black hole thought to reside in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy and many (or most) other galaxies. The powerful luminosity of a quasar is thought to be the result of processes taking place in an accretion disk, or disk of material surrounding the black hole, as these supermassive black holes consume stars that pass too near.

ULAS J1120+0641, farthest quasar known as of 2011. The quasar appears as a faint red dot close to the center. Composite image created from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Chinese-born U.S. astrophysicist Hong-Yee Chiu coined the name quasar in May 1964, in the publication Physics Today. He wrote:

So far, the clumsily long name ‘quasi-stellar radio sources’ is used to describe these objects. Because the nature of these objects is entirely unknown, it is hard to prepare a short, appropriate nomenclature for them so that their essential properties are obvious from their name. For convenience, the abbreviated form ‘quasar’ will be used throughout this paper.

Today, the farthest known quasar is ULAS J1120+0641. Its co-moving distance is 28.85 billion light-years.

Bottom line: On February 5 1963, astronomer Maarten Schmidt’s flash of inspiration led to the understanding that quasi-stellar radio sources, or quasars, exist in the very distant universe. Quasars became the most distant, and most luminous, objects known. They changed the way we think about the universe.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1zCLOOW

Yesterday’s Intergral thruster burn went well

Update from Jutta Hübner, Integral Spacecraft Operations Engineer here at ESOC.

The third manoeuvre of the Integral de-orbiting campaign was successfully completed at 16:30 CET, 4 February.

Integral is now back under 'wheel control' (meaning its orientation in space is controlled by its reaction wheels) at the attitude planned for the upcoming science operations in revolution (orbit) 1504. Thanks to the reliable ground segment, all operations could be executed as planned with no deviations from the timeline. As ever, the satellite performed flawlessly!

Initial indications are that the manoeuvre performance was nominal. An initial check of the orbit will be done by the flight dynamics team here at ESOC on 5 February, which will allow us to assess the exact results of the manoeuvre.

Many thanks to everybody involved for the excellent work!

Kind regards,

– Jutta

from Rocket Science » Rocket Science http://ift.tt/1zCsAJb

v

Update from Jutta Hübner, Integral Spacecraft Operations Engineer here at ESOC.

The third manoeuvre of the Integral de-orbiting campaign was successfully completed at 16:30 CET, 4 February.

Integral is now back under 'wheel control' (meaning its orientation in space is controlled by its reaction wheels) at the attitude planned for the upcoming science operations in revolution (orbit) 1504. Thanks to the reliable ground segment, all operations could be executed as planned with no deviations from the timeline. As ever, the satellite performed flawlessly!

Initial indications are that the manoeuvre performance was nominal. An initial check of the orbit will be done by the flight dynamics team here at ESOC on 5 February, which will allow us to assess the exact results of the manoeuvre.

Many thanks to everybody involved for the excellent work!

Kind regards,

– Jutta

from Rocket Science » Rocket Science http://ift.tt/1zCsAJb

v

Zodiacal light is glowing pyramid in west after dark

Moonless evenings in February, March and April present the best time of year to see zodiacal light in the Northern Hemisphere evening sky. Meanwhile, from the Southern Hemisphere, the zodiacal light is best seen before dawn during these months of the year. The light appears when the evening twilight has left the sky (about 80 to 120 minutes after sunset). It looks like a hazy pyramid of light in the west after true darkness falls.

This light can be noticeable and easy to see from latitudes like those in the southern U.S. I’ve seen it many times from the latitude of southern Texas, sometimes while driving a lonely highway far from city lights, up to one hour or so after evening dusk leaves the sky. In that case, the zodiacal light can resemble the lights of a city or town just over the horizon.

In 2015, two planets can help you find the zodiacal light in the evening!

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Don’t know which way to look for the zodiacal light? Look westward for the planets Venus and Mars. The green light depicts the ecliptic – the area of sky where interplanetary dust reflects the light of the sun.

View larger. | Sometimes the camera will pick up faint sky phenomena that the eye can’t see. EarthSky Facebook friend Jim Peacock said this northern Wisconsin zodiacal light was visible to the eye on the evening of February 5, 2013. He said: “Yes, it was very visible to the eye … it reached high above the horizon. Was so cool to see over Lake Superior.” You can also see the Circlet of Pisces to the lower right of center – and the Y-shaped Water Jar of the constellation Aquarius to the lower right of the Circlet, just above the sunlit cloud. Thank you, Jim!

Skywatchers in the northern U.S. or Canada sometimes say wistfully that they’ve never seen the zodiacal light. But on February 6, 2013 – on our Facebook page – we received the beautiful photo above from Jim Peacock in northern Wisconsin. He captured the zodiacal light over Lake Superior. Sometimes the camera will pick up faint objects that the eye can’t see. But Jim said this northern Wisconsin zodiacal light was visible to the eye. He said:

Yes, it was very visible to the eye … it reached high above the horizon. Was so cool to see over Lake Superior.

You definitely do need a dark sky location to see the zodiacal light, someplace where city lights aren’t obscuring the natural lights in the sky. Remember, the zodiacal light is a pyramid-shaped glow in the west after dark. It’s even “milkier” in appearance than the starlit trail of the summer Milky Way. It’s most visible after dusk at this time of year because (as seen from the Northern Hemisphere) the ecliptic – or path of the sun, moon, and planets – stands nearly straight up with respect to the horizon after the sun sets in February and March.

Zodiacal light at Paranal. Image credit: European Southern Observatory/Y. Beletsky

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The zodiacal light can be seen for up to an hour after dusk. Unlike twilight dusk, though, there’s no rosy color to the zodiacal light. The reddish skies at dusk and dawn are caused by Earth’s atmosphere, and the zodiacal light originates far outside our atmosphere. When you see the zodiacal light, you are looking edgewise into the plane of our own solar system. The zodiacal light is actually sunlight reflecting off dust particles that move in the same plane as Earth and the other planets orbiting our sun.

Remember, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, your early spring months (August, September, October) are the best time for you to see the zodiacal light in the evening. Right now (February, March, April), you should be looking for the zodiacal light before dawn.

Bottom line: From the Northern Hemisphere, on a moonless night, try to find the elusive zodiacal light. It looks like a hazy pyramid of light extending up from the place where the sun went down. Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere now, the zodiacal light is best before dawn.

Live by the moon with your 2015 EarthSky lunar calendar!

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Moonless evenings in February, March and April present the best time of year to see zodiacal light in the Northern Hemisphere evening sky. Meanwhile, from the Southern Hemisphere, the zodiacal light is best seen before dawn during these months of the year. The light appears when the evening twilight has left the sky (about 80 to 120 minutes after sunset). It looks like a hazy pyramid of light in the west after true darkness falls.

This light can be noticeable and easy to see from latitudes like those in the southern U.S. I’ve seen it many times from the latitude of southern Texas, sometimes while driving a lonely highway far from city lights, up to one hour or so after evening dusk leaves the sky. In that case, the zodiacal light can resemble the lights of a city or town just over the horizon.

In 2015, two planets can help you find the zodiacal light in the evening!

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Don’t know which way to look for the zodiacal light? Look westward for the planets Venus and Mars. The green light depicts the ecliptic – the area of sky where interplanetary dust reflects the light of the sun.

View larger. | Sometimes the camera will pick up faint sky phenomena that the eye can’t see. EarthSky Facebook friend Jim Peacock said this northern Wisconsin zodiacal light was visible to the eye on the evening of February 5, 2013. He said: “Yes, it was very visible to the eye … it reached high above the horizon. Was so cool to see over Lake Superior.” You can also see the Circlet of Pisces to the lower right of center – and the Y-shaped Water Jar of the constellation Aquarius to the lower right of the Circlet, just above the sunlit cloud. Thank you, Jim!

Skywatchers in the northern U.S. or Canada sometimes say wistfully that they’ve never seen the zodiacal light. But on February 6, 2013 – on our Facebook page – we received the beautiful photo above from Jim Peacock in northern Wisconsin. He captured the zodiacal light over Lake Superior. Sometimes the camera will pick up faint objects that the eye can’t see. But Jim said this northern Wisconsin zodiacal light was visible to the eye. He said:

Yes, it was very visible to the eye … it reached high above the horizon. Was so cool to see over Lake Superior.

You definitely do need a dark sky location to see the zodiacal light, someplace where city lights aren’t obscuring the natural lights in the sky. Remember, the zodiacal light is a pyramid-shaped glow in the west after dark. It’s even “milkier” in appearance than the starlit trail of the summer Milky Way. It’s most visible after dusk at this time of year because (as seen from the Northern Hemisphere) the ecliptic – or path of the sun, moon, and planets – stands nearly straight up with respect to the horizon after the sun sets in February and March.

Zodiacal light at Paranal. Image credit: European Southern Observatory/Y. Beletsky

Donate: Your support means the world to us

The zodiacal light can be seen for up to an hour after dusk. Unlike twilight dusk, though, there’s no rosy color to the zodiacal light. The reddish skies at dusk and dawn are caused by Earth’s atmosphere, and the zodiacal light originates far outside our atmosphere. When you see the zodiacal light, you are looking edgewise into the plane of our own solar system. The zodiacal light is actually sunlight reflecting off dust particles that move in the same plane as Earth and the other planets orbiting our sun.

Remember, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, your early spring months (August, September, October) are the best time for you to see the zodiacal light in the evening. Right now (February, March, April), you should be looking for the zodiacal light before dawn.

Bottom line: From the Northern Hemisphere, on a moonless night, try to find the elusive zodiacal light. It looks like a hazy pyramid of light extending up from the place where the sun went down. Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere now, the zodiacal light is best before dawn.

Live by the moon with your 2015 EarthSky lunar calendar!

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1Dl4MtJ

Hello, Pluto! New images from New Horizons

Pluto and Charon, the largest of its five moons, as seen by New Horizons. Image via NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

Now things are about to get exciting! On February 4, 2015 – 99th anniversary of the birth of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930 – NASA released new images of Pluto and its largest moon Charon. The images were captured by LORRI – New Horizons’ telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager – on January 25 and 27, 2015. New Horizons was about 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) from Pluto when the frames to make the first image were taken, and about 1.5 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) closer for the second set. Closer and closer, the spacecraft will finally sweep through the Pluto system on July 14 of this year.

In our lifetimes, the New Horizons mission is the only spacecraft mission directly aimed at Pluto. The spacecraft has been traveling toward Pluto for 9 years; when it was launched, Pluto was still considered a full-fledged planet of our solar system. Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, said:

Pluto is finally becoming more than just a pinpoint of light. LORRI has now resolved Pluto, and the dwarf planet will continue to grow larger and larger in the images as New Horizons spacecraft hurtles toward its targets. The new LORRI images also demonstrate that the camera’s performance is unchanged since it was launched more than nine years ago.

Over the next few months, LORRI will take hundreds of pictures of Pluto, against a starry backdrop, to refine the team’s estimates of New Horizons’ distance to Pluto.

As in these first images, the Pluto system will resemble little more than bright dots in the camera’s view until late in northern spring. The images aren’t just for show. Mission navigators will be using them to design course-correcting engine maneuvers to direct the spacecraft for a more precise approach. The first such maneuver based on these optical navigation images – or OpNavs – is scheduled for March 10.

Closing in on Pluto at about 31,000 mph, New Horizons already has covered more than 3 billion miles since it launched on Jan. 19, 2006.

Its journey has taken it past each planet’s orbit, from Mars to Neptune, in record time, and it is now in the first stage of an encounter with Pluto that includes long-distance imaging as well as dust, energetic particle and solar wind measurements to characterize the space environment near Pluto.

Come July … Pluto!

View larger. | A comparison of images of Pluto and its large moon Charon, taken in July 2014 and January 2015. Between takes, New Horizons had more than halved its distance to Pluto, from about 264 million miles (425 million kilometers) to 126 million miles (203 million kilometers). Pluto and Charon are four times brighter than and twice as large as in July, and Charon clearly appears more separated from Pluto. And it’s only going to get better from here.

Bottom line: On the 99th anniversary of Clyde Tombaugh’s 99th birth (February 4, 2015), the New Horizon’s spacecraft mission has released images of Pluto and the largest of its five moons, Charon. New Horizons will sweep through the Pluto system in July, 2015.

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Pluto and Charon, the largest of its five moons, as seen by New Horizons. Image via NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

Now things are about to get exciting! On February 4, 2015 – 99th anniversary of the birth of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930 – NASA released new images of Pluto and its largest moon Charon. The images were captured by LORRI – New Horizons’ telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager – on January 25 and 27, 2015. New Horizons was about 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) from Pluto when the frames to make the first image were taken, and about 1.5 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) closer for the second set. Closer and closer, the spacecraft will finally sweep through the Pluto system on July 14 of this year.

In our lifetimes, the New Horizons mission is the only spacecraft mission directly aimed at Pluto. The spacecraft has been traveling toward Pluto for 9 years; when it was launched, Pluto was still considered a full-fledged planet of our solar system. Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, said:

Pluto is finally becoming more than just a pinpoint of light. LORRI has now resolved Pluto, and the dwarf planet will continue to grow larger and larger in the images as New Horizons spacecraft hurtles toward its targets. The new LORRI images also demonstrate that the camera’s performance is unchanged since it was launched more than nine years ago.

Over the next few months, LORRI will take hundreds of pictures of Pluto, against a starry backdrop, to refine the team’s estimates of New Horizons’ distance to Pluto.

As in these first images, the Pluto system will resemble little more than bright dots in the camera’s view until late in northern spring. The images aren’t just for show. Mission navigators will be using them to design course-correcting engine maneuvers to direct the spacecraft for a more precise approach. The first such maneuver based on these optical navigation images – or OpNavs – is scheduled for March 10.

Closing in on Pluto at about 31,000 mph, New Horizons already has covered more than 3 billion miles since it launched on Jan. 19, 2006.

Its journey has taken it past each planet’s orbit, from Mars to Neptune, in record time, and it is now in the first stage of an encounter with Pluto that includes long-distance imaging as well as dust, energetic particle and solar wind measurements to characterize the space environment near Pluto.

Come July … Pluto!

View larger. | A comparison of images of Pluto and its large moon Charon, taken in July 2014 and January 2015. Between takes, New Horizons had more than halved its distance to Pluto, from about 264 million miles (425 million kilometers) to 126 million miles (203 million kilometers). Pluto and Charon are four times brighter than and twice as large as in July, and Charon clearly appears more separated from Pluto. And it’s only going to get better from here.

Bottom line: On the 99th anniversary of Clyde Tombaugh’s 99th birth (February 4, 2015), the New Horizon’s spacecraft mission has released images of Pluto and the largest of its five moons, Charon. New Horizons will sweep through the Pluto system in July, 2015.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1KezSrf