tismcosmology

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[tismcosmology]

Happy birthday, Karl Marx! (May 5, 1818)

One of the most significant philosophers of all time, Karl Marx is considered the founder of modern sociology, and his ideas comprise the foundation of the modern socialist movement, with his body of work laying the foundations for the Marxist school of philosophy and economics. Born in Trier, Germany, Marx became the subject of observation by German authorities due to his political activities from a young age. Gravitating towards left-wing politics and philosophy, and formed a close friendship and partnership with fellow German socialist Friedrich Engels, who would support and collaborate with Marx on some of his most important works, including the Communist Manifesto and The German Ideology. Marx's works and activities resulted in him becoming stateless, and he moved around Europe while continuing to write and involve himself in socialist organizing. Marx's magnum opus was Capital, a comprehensive critique of political economy intended to be published in three volumes. However, Marx died in 1883 before it could be finished, with only the first volume published within his lifetime; Engels prepared the remaining volumes based on Marx's notes. Marx's contributions to philosophy, sociology, and economics are incalculable, and continue to influence socialists and philosophers today. Marxist theory comprises a distinct philosophical school of its own, and later theorists, including Lenin, Mao, De Leon, and Luxemburg, have continued to develop and adapt Marxist thought.

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”

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Slime Molds and Intelligence

Okay, despite going into a biology related field, I only just learned about slime molds, and hang on, because it gets WILD.

This guy in the picture is called Physarum polycephalum, one of the more commonly studied types of slime mold. It was originally thought to be a fungus, though we now know it to actually be a type of protist (a sort of catch-all group for any eukaryotic organism that isn't a plant, animal, or a fungus). As protists go, it's pretty smart. It is very good at finding the most efficient way to get to a food source, or multiple food sources. In fact, placing a slime mold on a map with food sources at all of the major cities can give a pretty good idea of an efficient transportation system. Here is a slime mold growing over a map of Tokyo compared to the actual Tokyo railway system:

Pretty good, right? Though they don't have eyes, ears, or noses, the slime molds are able to sense objects at a distance kind of like a spider using tiny differences in tension and vibrations to sense a fly caught in its web. Instead of a spiderweb, though, this organism relies on proteins called TRP channels. The slime mold can then make decisions about where it wants to grow. In one experiment, a slime mold was put in a petri dish with one glass disk on one side and 3 glass disks on the other side. Even though the disks weren't a food source, the slime mold chose to grow towards and investigate the side with 3 disks over 70% of the time.

Even more impressive is that these organisms have some sense of time. If you blow cold air on them every hour on the hour, they'll start to shrink away in anticipation when before the air hits after only 3 hours.

Now, I hear you say, this is cool and all, but like, I can do all those things too. The slime mold isn't special...

To which I would like to point out that you have a significant advantage over the slime mold, seeing as you have a brain.

Yeah, these protists can accomplish all of the things I just talked about, and they just... don't have any sort of neural architecture whatsoever? They don't even have brain cells, let alone the structures that should allow them to process sensory information and make decisions because of it. Nothing that should give them a sense of time. Scientists literally have no idea how this thing is able to "think'. But however it does, it is sure to be a form of cognition that is completely and utterly different from anything that we're familiar with.

#biology

[tismcosmology]

5 years of grad school have taught me intelligence means very little in scientists you mostly just need to be obsessive and slightly deranged

[tismcosmology]

Someone captured the solar eclipse on an airplane

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I got the chance to road trip out to the path of totality! My phone camera didn’t do it justice, so I painted what I saw instead 🌞🌚

Here’s the photo I took and the sketch I made with my finger in the notes app while watching it happen 😆

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M45: The Pleiades star cluster

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2024 April 19

See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download

the highest resolution version available.

The Great Carina Nebula

Image Credit & Copyright: Demison Lopes

Explanation: A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula is more modestly known as NGC 3372. One of our Galaxy's largest star forming regions, it spans over 300 light-years. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye. But at a distance of 7,500 light-years it lies some 5 times farther away. This stunning telescopic view reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. The Carina Nebula is home to young, extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the bright star above the central dark notch in this field and left of the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324).

[tismcosmology]

Saturn and its rings in visible/ultraviolet

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there’s a decent amt of neurologists who’ve called the sleep schedules we’re obligated to be on despite flagrant conflict with our natural circadian rhythms “borderline torture” and the work hours we’re expected to put in despite the fact that the average person can only maintain maximal efficiency and focus for 3 hours at a time “nearly inhumane” and i think about that a lot

#neurology

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From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 1232 face-on. Nearly 200,000 light-years across, the big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located some 47 million light-years away in the flowing southern constellation of Eridanus.

Image Credit: Neil Corke

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in guarani there's a standard greeting that literally translates to "are you happy" (ndevy'apa) and the natural reply is "i'm happy" (avy'a) and as americans learning the language we were so distressed like "but what if we're not happy....." and our teachers were like "that's so not the fucking point"

we kept trying to think of any other way to reply but our teachers kept trying to get it into our brains that it's an idiomatic greeting, it literally is not the time or place to traumadump, and as usamerican english speakers we are not some special exception for saying "what's up" with the reply being "not much" instead of "the ceiling"

but anyway while i was working in paraguay -- the country with the largest population of guarani speakers -- i got sent an article by some friends back home like "look! they're saying that paraguay is the happiest country in the world!"

and the methodology was "we went around and asked paraguayans if they're happy and recorded their responses" and i was like. oh. of course you did. and of course you got a 100% positive response rate.

[tismcosmology]

Grad school quote of the day:

“Lovely man. They shouldn't let him teach.”

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Cassini: looking Saturn in the eye (October 11, 2006)

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Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

#holy shit #voyager 1 #nasa #space

[tismcosmology]

Comet Leonard

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Total Solar Eclipse l April 2024 l U.S. & Canada

Cr. Deran Hall l Rami Ammoun(236) l GabeWasylko l REUTERS l KendallRust l Joshua Intini l Alfredo Juárez l KuzcoKhanda