great unexpectations
Jan. 6th, 2011 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adelaideseanIf there’s one thing reading two decades of New Scientist has taught me --
Tim Holy and Zhongsheng Guo of Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, recorded the vocalisations of male mice when they were presented with female pheromones and found they were far more complex than expected. (05 November 2005)
"The gradients of world-class surfing reefs are a lot steeper than we expected," says Shaw Mead of the University of Waikato. "The flow of water across a reef is more complex than you can mimic in a lab with a small-scale wave machine..." (06 September 1997)
"We found lots of new transcripts that have never been seen before, and there are many more binding sites for transcription factors than we expected," says Gingeras. (21 February 2004)
"It's pretty clear that the early impact rate was quite a lot higher than we expected," Frey told the meeting. "Buried basins are found everywhere in the highlands, which means the cratering rate was significantly higher than previously estimated." (18 March 2006)
This deposit of uranium ore, formed more than 2000 million years ago, turned out to have an extremely unusual composition. In some of the richest ore bodies in the open cast mine, researchers found far less of the fissile isotope uranium-235 than they expected, relative to the amount of the more common uranium-238. In other natural uranium, this ratio is constant; such depletions could be explained only by nuclear fission in a natural chain reaction, accelerating the disappearance of the lighter isotope. (05 May 1990)
"Before, the only thing that showed the connection was models," says Harries. "This is a real observation." Surprisingly, the change caused by methane was 30 per cent greater than they expected. (17 March 2001)
The brain turned out to be much smaller than they expected - in fact, no larger in proportion to the body than the brain of lower primates such as lemurs. (14 May 2007)
But in 1998, astronomers scouring distant galaxies for stellar explosions called type 1a supernovae found that light from these stars was dimmer than they expected, suggesting that the expansion is actually speeding up. (18 October 2003)
...and many, many more, covering the surface of the sun, the interior of Mars, the Galilean moons, transuranic elements, dark matter, dark energy, etc etc etc...
--it’s that the universe is always more interesting than we expected.
And that is completely brilliant.
Tim Holy and Zhongsheng Guo of Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, recorded the vocalisations of male mice when they were presented with female pheromones and found they were far more complex than expected. (05 November 2005)
"The gradients of world-class surfing reefs are a lot steeper than we expected," says Shaw Mead of the University of Waikato. "The flow of water across a reef is more complex than you can mimic in a lab with a small-scale wave machine..." (06 September 1997)
"We found lots of new transcripts that have never been seen before, and there are many more binding sites for transcription factors than we expected," says Gingeras. (21 February 2004)
"It's pretty clear that the early impact rate was quite a lot higher than we expected," Frey told the meeting. "Buried basins are found everywhere in the highlands, which means the cratering rate was significantly higher than previously estimated." (18 March 2006)
This deposit of uranium ore, formed more than 2000 million years ago, turned out to have an extremely unusual composition. In some of the richest ore bodies in the open cast mine, researchers found far less of the fissile isotope uranium-235 than they expected, relative to the amount of the more common uranium-238. In other natural uranium, this ratio is constant; such depletions could be explained only by nuclear fission in a natural chain reaction, accelerating the disappearance of the lighter isotope. (05 May 1990)
"Before, the only thing that showed the connection was models," says Harries. "This is a real observation." Surprisingly, the change caused by methane was 30 per cent greater than they expected. (17 March 2001)
The brain turned out to be much smaller than they expected - in fact, no larger in proportion to the body than the brain of lower primates such as lemurs. (14 May 2007)
But in 1998, astronomers scouring distant galaxies for stellar explosions called type 1a supernovae found that light from these stars was dimmer than they expected, suggesting that the expansion is actually speeding up. (18 October 2003)
...and many, many more, covering the surface of the sun, the interior of Mars, the Galilean moons, transuranic elements, dark matter, dark energy, etc etc etc...
--it’s that the universe is always more interesting than we expected.
And that is completely brilliant.
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Date: 2011-01-06 01:12 am (UTC)Hope your Midsummer celbrations when well.
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Date: 2011-01-06 03:50 am (UTC)Well on the whole, thanks, and the same to you!
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Date: 2011-01-06 02:04 am (UTC)By the way I still owe you a drink from Continuum and hope you NYE went well .
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Date: 2011-01-06 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-06 03:49 am (UTC)