Probably by luck more than judgement, I've got a PhD in Astronomy and have had a lifelong interest in Physics. Like most Physicist I know it is the king of sciences, Biology being mere stamp collecting and chemistry cooking. Don't get us started on the softer 'sciences' like geography (colouring in) and … Actually, I've got a bit of a soft-spot for the biosciences. I did an MSc in bioinformatics (using advanced IT methodologies to work with, mostly, genetic data) and really enjoyed the 'wet' labs we IT people did. What's not to like about splicing DNA information into a bacteria and seeing the result! Must write something on CRISPR.
Anyway, This section will be about interesting science I've done or read about - probably mostly Physics and Astronomy but also good stuff from the other, lesser, sciences (joke).
So what exactly is science? Well I see it as a bit of an iterative process based on curiosity and creative thinking. Someone makes an observation of something and wonders why or what caused the observed phenomena (the trick here is to be curious - how many of us look at the blue sky and think: why is it blue and not green or purple?). We need to explain things though (being mildly rational creatures) - and this is where creativity comes in.
OK, so let's give it a go. Ummm ... how about 'the sky is blue because each morning hobgoblins climb ladders and paint it with unicorn tears collected the previous night by little tiny elves whilst the unicorns sleep'. Pretty ingenious and creative ehh? - and it might be true! Or how about 'the small particles floating in the atmosphere selectively scatter short wavelength (blue) light into our eyes'? Not so much - but I suppose that just about could be true also.
Here's were the scientific method comes in. It goes something (forgive me Francis Bacon) something like this:
- Observe a phenomenon.
- Think up an explanation (hypothesis)
- Use this to predict some further phenomenon.
- Go and look for it.
- If we don't see it then the explanation must be wrong - go back to 2.
- If we do see it - great - use it to predict further phenomena and go an look for them. If we keep confirming the predictions then we might have hit on a pretty good explanation. Let's call this a theory.
This process has served us well and we have some pretty good explanations of how the Universe ticks. BUT NOTE - we can never prove a theory is right - only that it's wrong. And that's the problem with scientists - they'll never tell you that they're 100% sure of anything (other than a hypothesis must be wrong). But Quantum, Einstein's and Darwin's various theories' predictions have been tested so many times now without being disproved that we're pretty sure they're close to an accurate description of 'the truth'.
Let's give it a go with our competing blue sky theories.
What happens if we look towards the sun as it's setting - i.e. through a large 'path length' of atmosphere.
- Hobgoblin hypothesis: Sky should still be blue - in fact perhaps a stronger blue because there is so much atmosphere.
- Scattering hypothesis. By the time the light gets to us most of the blue should be scattered away so the sky will look reddish.
Let's see now, sunsets are orange/red/pink. Bugger, looks like the Unicorns can sleep unmolested. But the scattering idea rates a further look!
OK, pretty unfair and not really rigorous but I hope you get the point.
