Large Scale Space Colonization by Humans Is a Delusion; Survival Colonies on Earth and Autonomous Robotic Space Exploration (Robotic AI) are the Sensible & Correct Options

“Evenafter a nuclear apocalypse, Earth would be paradise compared to Mars.”

Human Space colonization is a hotly debated topic with some unrealistic goals touted by eminent scientists and a few very rich individuals.  Their argument rests on the need for humans to set up large scale independent colonies (of up to a million people) in space (Mars is the preferred choice) to ensure survival of sapiens in case of a catastrophic event wiping us out on the Earth.  This type of thinking is simply delusional because it ignores established scientific facts about human physiology/psychology, and of course the current technological capabilities.  It is also highly damaging/restrictive to the development of alternate sensible projects to ensure the survival of humans on Earth in face of existential threats. The time scale will be in centuries if it is required that the colonies are self-supporting without any help from the earth.  With ever escalating number of existential threats, the next 100 years are probably going to be the most crucial period for 'survival planning' and this can only be via earth-based facilities.  To establish a space colony is astronomically expensive - the first human mission to Mars is expected to cost 500 billion dollars. To set up a large scale colony could cost up to 1000 trillion dollars (according to Google Search).  One hundred survival colonies on Earth, capable to accommodate one million people, could be arranged for a tiny fraction of this cost.  Economically, a large scale space colonization programme without a parallel development of terrestrial colonies is sheer madness. So far it looks like an extravagant vanity project.

Before embarking on a project that costs hundreds of trillion of dollars, it is imperative that one analyses its aims and objectives, feasibility and alternate solutions.  Unfortunately, this has not been the case here - we still talk of terraforming Mars!  The irony is that humans are actively destroying the Earth ( the only planet that is ideally suited for supporting life) without trying to control their actions, and want to undertake a 2-year long one-way journey to Mars - a planet that is absolutely unsuited for human survival.  Where is the logic in this - but when it comes to big decisions, we are behaving as humans normally do - irrationally. 

Ten years ago, I had discussed space colonization in my feature here and analysed the situation to conclude that space is a good frontier for space tourism, scientific experiments and may be, in the long run, for  exploiting its mineral wealth. Not much has changed since then except that artificial intelligence (AI) has made great strides and is expected to reach human level intelligence (AGI) in the very near future.  

In this feature, I wish to address two subjects:

1.  Planning for earth-based survival strategies

2.  Exploration of space is best left to artificial intelligence or robotic AI. 

Earth-based Survival Strategies:  One needs to understand what the quote at the beginning is trying to convey -  even after nuclear apocalypse, Earth will be paradise compared to Mars.  The main  premiss of space colonisation advocates is to ensure that sapiens survive existential threats - no problem with that.  The difficulty is with the proposed solution. Let us first look at the threats one might be talking about - these are threats that will result in almost complete destruction of human population on earth and also extremely widespread collapse of the biosphere as we know it.  

Existential threats come in two forms:  

Natural catastrophes like a super volcano, large asteroid or comet strike, natural pandemics.  The first two, if big enough, could  result in most living creatures dying and likely  also cause havoc with the life-support systems on Earth for a decade or so. While the bio-diversity could take millions of years to recover, it is expected that life-support systems could recover over few decades.

Anthropogenic Catastrophes are disastrous events due to human activity causing human extinction and permanent irreversible destruction of civilization's potential. Nuclear war, synthetic pathogens, advanced AI, climate change leading to ecological collapse are a few examples where humans have increased the risk of existential collapse by orders of magnitude.  Many of the threats are potent immediate threats unlike the natural catastrophes that visit the earth once in long tine of the order of millions of years.

A catastrophic event (natural or anthropogenic) will shatter but still leave the basic life-support potential of the earth intact.  Not 100% of life will be destroyed and if proper planning has been put in place then it is quite likely that a small fraction of human population will survive and recover in due course.  Also worth a note is the fact that any life-support route from earth to planetary colonies will be completely severed and may not be reinstated for decades.  Unless the space colonies are self-sustaining and are completely independent of earth resources in terms of food, energy, machinery and other life-sustaining essentials, they will perish very quickly. The time scale for planetary colonies to reach self-sufficiency independent of the earth is counted in centuries and for a few hundred years, the only way to ensure survival of the human race is by planning and constructing a large number (may be one hundred) of self supporting colonies of 10,000 people each.  

Such colonies may be in pre-existing caves, underground or even underwater in the oceans.  They can communicate with each other and provide valuable mutual support.

Unfortunately, we are too heavily occupied with vanity projects - there is no sign of any covert discussions in this regard. 

Interestingly, several projects have been undertaken in the recent past when researchers have tried to live in simulated structures with conditions as would be met in colonies on Moon or Mars.  These missions studied the effects of isolation and confinement on human psychology, physiology and team dynamics. The results have not been good and point to the difficulty of successful colonization of planets. The simulations only had a small number of residents and did not include reduced gravity, atmospheric pressure and harmful cosmic radiation. 

End Note:  Over the past decade, many objections have been raised to the idea of space colonization as the only solution to ensure human survival.  The world now is facing more existential threats than ever before; it is imperative that the world governments should come together and develop a coherent strategy for building earth-based colonies that can withstand the catastrophic event(s).  The costs are not significant if the projects are planned and completed over a 10 to 20 year period.  

Space exploration is a valuable endeavour and satisfies many of the human traits that made us the most powerful species on earth.  The fruits of space exploration are many - weather prediction, communications and navigation have benefited enormously.  The future looks bright for space exploration - the only problem is the space debris - the large number of small (sometimes not so small) fragments that are accumulating in the lower earth orbit and have the potential of causing untold damage to the human societies as we know them.  This is a topic worth investigating further.

Thanks for reading ...

Global Risk Report & The Doomsday Clock - The World Is Projected to Get Even Riskier Over the Next Decade

 It is a good idea to keep an eye on the health of the world on an annual basis.  It might even be possible to do something about the risks identified.  

The world economic forum (WEF) asks >1000 experts for their views and has been publishing the Global Risk Reports (GRR) annually since 2006. GRR is a thoughtful document assessing where the world is now and, where it is heading over the next 10 years.  It tries to identify impacts of different risks on global welfare. 

GRR is an extensive document over 100 pages long - in this article, my aim is to provide a summary of the report's findings - how is the world today and what to expect at the end of the next 10 years. 

The Doomsday Clock (DDC) is monitored by the Science and Security Board (SSB) of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS).  Founded in 1945, DDC was set up to assess the danger posed by nuclear weapons.  Currently, SSB includes globally recognised experts in climate change, nuclear risks & disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).  Midnight on the clock represents a catastrophe when humans would have rendered the world uninhabitable.  The DDC on 27th January 2026 was set at 23:58:35, merely 85 seconds to midnight - closest it has ever been to catastrophe. 

The doomsday clock, like a countdown, is intended to reflect the level of continuous danger in which mankind lives in the nuclear age along with new existential threats of climate change, bioterrorism and AI. Its setting changes mostly with the perceived threat of nuclear war (at least until recently, threats from other causes were not considered catastrophic). 

I shall discuss DDC first and then analyse GRR that I consider of greater relevance to the human civilisation. 

Doomsday Clock (DDC):  With all the uncertainties about the future direction of nuclear wars in late 1940s, DDC  made total sense.  Hydrogen bombs, much more powerful than the 1945 fission bombs used in Japan, were getting introduced to the nuclear arsenal and the geopolitical tensions were high.  DDC settings fluctuated (see slide) over the years mainly reflecting the  possibility of a nuclear conflict - although the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) makes nuclear war less likely, even though the consequences of a nuclear war will ensure the end of human civilisation as we know it.

In the slide, the vertical axes represent the time - the left axis shows minutes from midnight while the right hand axis shows the actual clock reading.

Slide 1

IMHO, various treaties to limit the size of the nuclear arsenal etc. are academic - there are enough bombs to destroy the world many times over.  There is aways a risk that nuclear war is started unintentionally with some  misunderstanding or even through a technical fault.  

A more worrying development is the emergence of a political class of self-centred leaders who are not guided by any ideology but by an intense desire to dominate the world and leave a personal legacy behind.  The geo-political tensions that such behaviours create increase the risk of conflicts and this is what the DDC is also highlighting in 2026. 

It appears to me that in the medium term of a few decades, threats posed by climate change, bioterrorism and AI will become as potent as the threat of nuclear holocaust. The new risk of climate change and AI will be like the genie set free and humans will be helpless to control the damage that it can cause - all the sign are that we are not paying attention just now.  Unlike nuclear conflicts, risks from climate change and advanced AI are outside human control and over the long run they would pose a much more serious threat to the survival of human civilisation. 

This might be a good time to renormalise the setting on the doomsday clock to accommodate the new risks.  A renormalisation of DDC will also help to  move away from a permanent state of extreme threat that raises the possibility of people just ignoring the warning.

The Global Risk Report (GRR):  For the 2026 GRR, more than 1300 global leaders and experts were consulted for their views.  The world is a complex place with abundance of data (both reliable and fake) - navigating your way in the mountain of information is not an easy ask.  Bonafede experts offer our best hope to understand what is happening around us  - and opinions of a good number of such experts must carry reasonable credibility in identifying relevant risk factors. 

The world is also changing rapidly and to project the current situations to ten years in future may be a fool's errand. However, long-term forecasting helps identify trends such as technological disruption or climate change, and allows one to develop mitigation strategies to minimise damage.  At least that is the hope - personal biases, misinformation, vested interests etc. can cause uncertainty, paralysis and poor planning.  Climate change is a case in point where even though science and empirical information have been calling out for action, not enough is being done to address the risks.  In fact, expert opinion in GRR projects that 5 of the 10 top risks in 10 years will be environmental risks. 

Summary of GRR Findings: The five main risk categories (see Slide 2) had subcategories - 33 in total which the experts ranked in terms of the level of risk they present (now and in ten years time).  I have presented the top 10 risks in the slides below and refer you to the full report for more details.  

 Slide 2

Slide 3

Slide 4

Slide 5

Discussion:  Comparing slides 2 and 3, one notices that environmental, societal and technological risks dominate the 10-year outlook - in sharp contrast to the current outlook dominated by geopolitical concerns.  This is understandable with ongoing wars in Ukraine, Gaza and other places, and these are concerning for global risk.  But then some level of hostility is always present and it is reasonable to expect that this situation of localised wars will continue at one place or the other over the next 10-year (of course, one excludes the threat of nuclear war as mutually assured destruction idea largely precludes it).  What is different in the 10 years horizon is the rapidly escalating threat of environmental risks as well as the uncertainty about the development of advanced AI.  Societies are also getting more and more fragmented. 

Slide 5 summarises the situation very well - the experts clearly feel that the world will be a much riskier place in 10 years time with environmental degradation (slide 4) becoming by far the greatest threat.

One hopes that leaders of the world will pay attention to this important report and start to work in a co-operative way to control (and reverse) the damage to the environmental that is happening.

I feel pessimistic about things changing much over the next decade - for the simple reason that the two fundamental problems of global population size (still increasing albeit more slowly) and the global growth model of gross domestic product (GDP) are elephants in the room that nobody wants to talk about.  The world is being driven to go past many tipping points which, once crossed, make it very very difficult to neutralize.  Also, now the time to act may be just getting too late - results take time and we do not have this luxury any more.

Interesting times ahead ...

Thanks for reading.

Serendipity (Part 2) - The Antimatter Particle_ Positron - A Great Example of Serendipitous Discovery

Serendipity is the faculty of making fortunate and unexpected discoveries by accident. Part 1 may be reached here.

How the existence of antimatter was theoretically predicted and experimentally observed makes a great story.  Serendipity played a role at all stages of the discovery.  

Prediction of Antimatter: In 1927 Paul Dirac was trying to include relativistic effects in the formulation of the non-relativistic quantum theory as proposed by Schrodinger and Heisenberg.  Their theory needed to introduce some ad hoc properties like particle spin and magnetic moments which were difficult to justify (for an electron to have spin one-half, its surface would need to rotate at speeds greater than the speed of light!!).  

Dirac found that his theory was eminently successful in explaining the origin of particle spin and magnetic moments of the electron, except that there was a problem.  

The Problem & Dirac's Solution: Dirac's theory required symmetry in solutions such that a particle (for example an electron) with positive energy must have a twin with a negative energy - there was no escaping the situation. Real electrons have positive kinetic energy and that is fine, but the concept of negative energy states was a problem. Positive energy electrons will fall to negative energy states and make the system unphysical.

This was unexpected and unsought-for result of Dirac's theory. Dirac solved this problem by postulating 'Dirac-sea' that was to say that all the negative energy states are already full and positive energy electrons have no where to fall. Any holes in the negative energy sea may diffuse around and behave like a positive electron (or a positron).  If an electron falls into the hole then the hole is filled with the energy difference released as a packet of energy (the electron and a positron no longer exist -  annihilation of matter).  Later developments in theories in the form of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) have done away with the need to introduce the negative energy sea.  

Dirac showed sagacity in dealing with the unexpected result and predicted the existence of antimatter (positron and other  antiparticles).  Dirac was awarded Nobel Prize in 1933 for predicting the existence of the positron.  In many surveys, Paul Dirac is ranked as the fourth most important scientist behind Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell. I have had the pleasure of giving talks on the three luminaries and they are available to read here by clicking on their names.  In the Appendix, I give a brief introduction to Paul Dirac  - I am sure you have not met a person of such unusual character before. 

Experimental Observation of the Positron: Carl Anderson is credited with the observation of the positron in 1932 - Anderson was awarded Nobel Prize in 1936 for his discovery of the positron.  The story is really quite fascinating in that other scientists, even before Dirac predicted it, had observed positrons but had failed to see the significance of their measurements.  They either ignored it or tried to give bogus explanations. As Pascal had said - 'Chance only favours the prepared mind'.

Before I discuss the observation of the positron, let me digress and describe briefly how particles are experimentally detected; the detector is called a cloud chamber invented by CTR Wilson (Nobel Prize 1927), a device that makes the path of charged particles passing through the chamber visible; the path may be photographed for analysis.  When placed in a magnetic field, the path bends in an arc which allows one to calculate the velocity, charge  and mass of the particle.  

Positrons are created when high energy cosmic ray particles collide with nuclei in a medium.

Missed Opportunities: Several researchers missed the chance of detecting positrons:

1. In 1928, Dmitri Skobeltsyn had observed tracks in a cloud chamber that looked like electron tracks but were curved in the opposite direction in the magnetic field.  He chose to ignore them.

2.  In 1930, Chung-Yao Chao observed positron track but did not attribute them to a positive charged particle.  Chao was a fellow student of Carl Anderson, and Anderson later acknowledged that his work was inspired by Chao.

3. In April 1931, a few months before Anderson's discovery, Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie missed the opportunity to discover the positron in their experiment using a Wilson cloud chamber.  The Curies did not use cosmic rays but were bombarding aluminium and boron with alpha particles - they observed electron tracks that curved in the wrong direction indicating a positively charged electron (positron).   However, they interpreted the tracks as being due to electrons that have been scattered back into the equipment! 

The story of Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie is a fascinating one and may be read here. The Curies had the world's most powerful alpha source and were very well placed for making novel discoveries; they also appear to have a habit of missing out on important observations  - they could have won three extra Nobel Prizes.  

Besides the positron, the Curies misinterpreted their results and missed the discovery of the neutron for which James Chadwick was awarded Nobel Prize in 1935. They also ignored the presence of lanthanum after  bombarding uranium with alpha particles and thus missed out on the observation of nuclear fission - Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann repeated their experiment in 1938 - Otto Hahn was awarded 1944 Nobel Prize for this.

The Curies did win the 1935 Nobel Prize for discovering induced radioactivity showing that radioactive elements may be produced in the laboratory (basis for positron emission tomography (PET) scanners in medical diagnosis).

4. In late 1932, Blackett and Occhialini confirmed the existence of the positron using a cloud chamber equipped with Geiger counters - a much more efficient set up.  

Their experiment also observed the production of an electron-positron pair from energetic cosmic gamma rays thus confirming conversion of energy into matter as predicted by Einstein's famous equation E = mc2

Blackett and Occhialini published their work a few months after Carl Anderson and missed out on being the first to report the discovery of the positron.  Blackett did win the 1948 Nobel Prize for his work on cloud chambers and cosmic radiation.

Anderson's Discovery of the Positron: 

This is a picture of one of the first positron tracks observed by Anderson in 1932. It was taken in a cloud chamber in the presence of a magnetic field of 2.4 Tesla pointing into the paper (so the path of a positively charged particle travelling from the bottom of the picture is curved to the left). The cloud chamber (17x17x3 cm) contained a gas supersaturated with water vapour. In the presence of a charged particle (such as a positron), the water vapour condenses into droplets - these droplets mark out the path of the particle. 

The band across the middle is a lead plate, 6 mm thick, which absorbs some of the energy of the particle and slows it down. The radius of curvature of the track above the plate is smaller than that below. This means that the particle is travelling more slowly (23 MeV) above the plate than below it (63 MeV), and hence it must be travelling upwards. From the direction in which the path curves one can deduce that the particle is positively charged. That it is a positron and not a proton can be deduced from the long range of the upper track - a proton would have come to rest in a much shorter distance (~5 mm) 
Carl Anderson won the 1936 Nobel Prize for Physics for this discovery.  

In 1937, Carl Anderson with his student Seth Neddermeyer observed a totally unexpected track in the cloud chamber - the track was made by the passage of a particle of mass 207 times the electron, which had a negative charge exactly the same as that of an electron. This is yet another example of serendipitous discovery  - existence of a muon was absolutely astonishing - it was neither predicted by any theory and nobody was looking for it! When informed about the muon - I. I. Rabi had quipped - 'Who ordered it?' - Muon had no place in the current physics theories. Despite being an unexpected addition, the muon served as the first clue regarding the existence of a new family of elementary particles helping physicists build the Standard Model.

Discussion: the first half of the 20th century was a golden era for physics (and also chemistry) with major breakthroughs in theoretical insights in the form of theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. As is common when a paradigm shift happens in a field of study, a flurry of new ideas and empirical evidence come in quick succession and many of the outstanding problems find resolution.  It is also evident that many discoveries were accidental and serendipity played a significant role.  

The period 1900 to 1950 was such a time when one could say there was an awakening in physical sciences.  

It may be apparent from the presentation above that important new discoveries were forthcoming rapidly and such was the merit of the work that many Nobel Prizes were awarded with only 2 or 3 years gap between discovery and award.  Additionally, many researchers involved were very young - some had only finished their PhD when they did the Nobel Prize winning work.  This is highly unusual as the average age for such work is 40 years and the Nobel Award comes on average after 20 years (at age 60 years) of the seminal work. I had analysed this situation and refer you to my feature here.

Essentially, physicist who were born in 1880 to 1900 were fortunate to be completing their postgraduate degrees in the 1910 to 1930 when many opportunities of making great discoveries became available.  Historically, this happens when there is a paradigm shift - one recent example is the arrival of portable computers (laptops) in mid 1970s.  I reproduce the data below

Most of these innovators are multi-billionaires and were at the right place at the right time.  Notice that most were born between 1947 and 1965 - a short span of 18 years. 

We find a similar trend in physics around 1925 to 1940 when great discoveries were made by those born in 1880s to 1900. The slide highlights the situation: Red shows the age distribution of the laureates at the time of award for all categories.  Blue shows this distribution (numbers multiplied by 20 for clarity) for Nobel Prizes in physics between 1921 and 1940.

Considering that the age at PhD is about 26 years, the data confirms the points highlighted in the above discussion. For a more detailed discussion - See (1,2).

APPENDIX - Paul Dirac (b. - 1902 Bristol, England

                                         d. - 1984 Tallahasse, Florida)

Personality:  Dirac was regarded by his friends and colleagues as unusual in character.  

Niels Bohr called Dirac 'a complete logical genius' and also the 'strangest man' who had ever visited his institute. 

Dirac was known for his precise and taciturn nature.  His colleagues defined a unit called a 'dirac', which was one word per hour!  According to Dirac, his father who was originally from Switzerland wanted his children to  speak only French at home so that they might learn the language; Dirac found that  difficult and decided to remain silent.  

In 1937, Dirac married Margit Wigner, sister of famous physicist Eugene Wigner.  He would introduce Margit to visitors as "Allow me to present Wigner's sister, who is now my wife."

Dirac met Richard Feynman in a conference - after a period of silence, Dirac asked Feynman, "I have an equation, do you have one too?"

According to his biographer, Dirac suffered agonies if forced into socializing or small talk.

Dirac's views on poetry: 'The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way'

Dirac was absolutely blunt in his comments.  Niels Bohr was finding it difficult to finish a sentence in his paper - Dirac told him that 'I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it'.  

Undoubtedly, Dirac was regarded a 'strange' genius by his contemporaries.  

Einstein remarked about one of Dirac's paper, 'I am toiling over Dirac.  This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful'.  On another occasion, 'I don't understand the details of Dirac at all'.  

For Dirac's contributions to science - there were many - he was active until his death in 1984,  I refer you to his biography in Wiki for details.

Thanks for reading ...

Good Science, Bad Science, PseudoScience, Dogma, Common Sense, Religion and the Laws of Nature

 A defining characteristic of Homo sapiens is to make sense of things around them - the 'how?' and 'why?' of what is happening.  Wisdom gained from such curiosity driven enquiries - not equally possessed by other species - has helped us to become the most powerful species on earth. In two previous features (1, 2), I had discussed how our understanding of the laws of nature progressively improved over time - this process continues unabated in the present era.  Help from emerging technologies (microscopes, telescopes, digital devices etc.) has greatly increased the rate at which new understanding/insights, into how nature works, are being acquired.  

Of course, path to progress is never a straight one - it is full of detours, blind alleys and occasional blunders; due to inadequate means of observations, lack of direction and, not to be underestimated, less than perfect human psyche. 

Generally, our understanding of the laws of nature has improved with time - by building on previous wisdom and by further exploration of some remaining unexplained observations (accumulation of more empirical evidence). Existing laws are replaced by new to provide a more satisfactory explanation of what we observe.  This is the scientific method that has helped to place our understanding of the universe on a much firmer footing.  The work in science is never finished - older theories shall be modified or even discarded in the light of new evidence - nothing is 100%!

Attempts to understand and make sense of nature by our ancestors were hampered by a non-existence knowledge base and absence of any framework to guide them.  It is reasonable that early theories would appear simple minded and absolutely inadequate to us in the 21st century.  Nature is extremely complex and does not lend itself to simple interpretations.  It has been a slow process and only about 400 years ago, we arrived at a formal protocol for studying science - the scientific method - with emphasis on honesty, impartiality, meticulous planning and analysis. No matter how good a theory appears to work today, in future it may be modified or completely replaced by a better theory.    

How Human Psyche Influences Scientific Research:  Ideally, scientific investigations must be carried out in an objective manner as prescribed by the scientific method. In real life, human traits like cognitive biases, emotions, social and cultural dynamics profoundly affect planning, execution and interpretation of the scientific investigation.  It may be useful to look into this aspect in a bit more detail:

We pay more attention to data that support our existing ideas and overlook contradictory evidence (Confirmation/Expectation Bias).  Also, information supporting recent studies may be more appealing and readily accepted while other equally important information is ignored (Availability bias). We might be unduly influenced by the thinking of established authorities in the field (Authority Bias).  Additionally, one can suppress own dissenting opinions due to the desire for harmony and consensus with others (Groupthink). 

To curb these cognitive biases, one needs to follow transparent, open practices.  Reproducibility of results is an important check and hardly any empirical evidence is now certified valid without reasonable corroboration.

This brings us to explain what Good Science is.

 Good Science:  The purpose of science is to study the natural world and create a proper understanding of its working.  Good science studies the natural world by using observations/measurements that are impartial, verifiable, free from personal bias, reproducible and curiosity-driven.  Theories and hypotheses must not only explain the full empirical evidence but also make new predictions testable in a way that they could potentially be proven false - theory is reliable but must be open to further scrutiny.

An easy-to-read reference of some important landmark investigations that represent good science may be worth looking at.  A brief introduction to one such experiment follows:

The Rutherford Alpha Scattering Experiment:  Alpha particles were fired at a thin gold foil.  While most alphas passed straight through, a small fraction of alphas was observed to be unexpectedly deflected backwards at large angles.  This could only be explained if the positive charge and mass in gold atoms were concentrated in a tiny space (the nucleus) rather than distributed over the whole volume of the atom. The results replaced the plum-pudding model.

Bad Science: Research, while intending to be scientific, is flawed in its design, execution, or analysis.  Results from such studies would often be incorrect, unreproducible and/or misleading. They have the potential of doing much harm to the progress of scientific endeavour; peer-review of research before publication is a powerful way of preventing wider circulation of results from such bad science studies. I give an example that shows how bad science can happen and the checks and protocol of the scientific method can prevent misinformation and chaos that bad science is capable of:

Faster Than Light Neutrinos: Einstein's special theory of relativity says that nothing can travel faster than light - this is a core theory in physics.  In 2011, researchers sent a beam of neutrinos 730 km from CERN to the OPERA detector and measured their time of flight, and found that neutrino travelled slightly faster than light.  After much scrutiny and in view of scepticism of the result by many researchers, the finding were only reported in arXiv.org - a non-peer-reviewed open access archive. Subsequent investigations revealed that two pieces of equipment were faulty and the timing measurements were incorrect.  Neutrinos did not actually travel faster than light.

Pseudoscience (aka Fake Science):  is something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. It certainly does not follow the scientific method.  Pseudoscience suffers from lack of reproducibility, ignores contradictory evidence (cherry-picking), rely on cognitive bias, and is not peer-reviewed.  

I refer you to my feature on pseudoscience for a more detailed description.  Misinformation via pseudoscience is becoming a major problem in today's world due to the rise of profit-seeking big business (tobacco and food industries) and interest groups driven by some ideologies (climate-change deniers).  Social media plays an important role in giving free unchecked publicity to such pseudoscientists as their pronouncements can reach us without going through peer-review and not meeting the criteria of good science required by the scientific method.  

Natural world operates on a complex set of rules - pseudoscience flourishes by providing  simple explanations that many might find easier to accept. Health-related pseudoscience offers false hope or easy solutions to complex problems, sometimes leading to dangerous (but avoidable) health consequences. 

Wiki has a long list of pseudoscience examples and is worth a look.  I list a few:  Astrology,  Modern Flat-Earth Beliefs, Climate-change denial, Phrenology, Palmistry, and many more.

Dogma:  

" I would rather have a question I cannot answer than an answer I cannot question"                                           ... Richard Feynman

Dogma refer to principles that are accepted, without question, as undeniably true and impossible to dispute, contradict, or doubt. They are antithesis to good science as dogma resist being tested by available new evidence. They are very difficult to change.

Generally, religion is the first system that comes to mind when we think about dogma (e.g. Trinity or Mary's Immaculate Conception in Christianity, Islam), but dogma encompasses rigidly held ideas which can not be questioned  in any system - be it politics (totalitarianism, Marxism, national sovereignty) or science (geocentric model of the universe, several of Aristotle's theories, Luminiferous Aether,, Bloodletting - medical science). The situation in science has improved greatly since the adoption of the scientific method of inquiry - it is possible to challenge existing rules/theories and replace them by new if found insufficient.  This has been very effective.

By suppressing questioning, dogmatism excludes possibility of acquiring better understanding and challenging mistakes.  This does not serve us well.   

You might like:  10 signs of dogmatism 

Why does dogma arise?  For this, we need to have an understanding of the world that humans live in - it is a complex world and to deal with it, we have many evolutionary attributes or cognitive biases - short-cuts to conserve energy, time and effort.  Humans need certainty (confirmation bias);  we need to live in societies, feel in control and still have an individual identity.  We look for security  - a rigid dogmatic regime provides this by simplifying things.  

The downside of dogma is that it is easily exploited by those in authority and used as a means of control. This is very well expressed in the following slide (extract from Big Ideas) 

It is not easy to change dogmas - you have full confidence in the validity of what you currently believe.  It may be that you arrived there through brainwashing, fear or coercion but that is where you are. 

To combat dogmatism, challenge your own beliefs, be open-minded, create cognitive flexibility, seek new friends, practise mindfulness.  It is difficult!  

Common Sense & Religion:  I refer to the two features that I have published for this topic  - Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2. 

End Note:  The various sections in this article highlight the contradictions of our present day societies.  Good science has opened new vistas with wonderful technological achievements that has 'improved' our lives in a big way.  We also have a much better understanding of how the world works with new research addressing many of the remaining unanswered questions.  One would think that in the current environment, irrational and retrograde thinking will subside.  The evidence available just now does not support this view - the world is full of pseudoscientific and dogmatic thinking.  Why is it so?  May be the answer lies in the way sapiens have evolved - our executive function brain (the prefrontal cortex) and the limbic brain always seem to be at loggerheads.  The limbic brain controls the fast-acting, emotional and survival-driven tendencies - with finite energy resources and time constraints, limbic brain is still the main actor in our day-to-day functioning.  As somebody aptly said;

"Physically and cognitively, we are hunter-gatherers in Hugo Boss suits"

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Laws of Nature, Common Sense and Religion in Early Societies (Part 2)

 This is a reposting of a previous feature from 2013.

In Part 1 we had discussed why common sense is fundamentally incapable of explaining and making sense of the world we live in.  Simply, it is a matter of scale.  The world operates at the atomic/molecular level (~0.000001 mm or a nano meter) where particles move near the speed of light (300,000 km/sec) while common sense is built up over centuries from observations made by our senses operating at distances typically greater than 0.1 mm and speeds less than 0.1 km/sec.  Additionally, time scales for understanding fundamental chemical and biological processes are less than a billionth of a second, more than a million times faster than our reaction time.

To understand the working of the natural world using common sense is like trying to understand the geography of the UK by standing at a corner in George Square in Glasgow! An impossible task.

We had built up a whole series of laws by extrapolating what we could observe with our senses - that is until about 500 years ago when technological advances started to extend the limits of our observations. The rest is history; now in the 21st Century, we are truly appreciating the intricacies of the natural world and I believe, correctly formulating the laws governing it - the laws of nature. Theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have made possible the development of new technologies - digital, nano-, bio-, medicine and many others.  Life without these is unimaginable. To somebody living in the 19th Century, the technology today will be science fiction.

Humans like to make sense of things.  With extremely limited empirical information, acquired through our senses, for our ancestors it would have been impossible to explain much of what was happening around us. Natural phenomena like rain, thunder, lightening, tides, storms, earthquakes, motion of heavenly bodies, infectious/mental and other diseases etc. are mediated by causes well outside the range of human perception.  Theories and explanations would be put forward – of course different in different societies – to make sense of such events.  This can give rise to beliefs, customs, rituals, superstitions etc.
Who controls the clockwork-like motion of heavenly bodies; what causes earthquakes and storms? There has to be some almighty, omniscient being looking over the working of nature, controlling everything happening on the Earth.   
Reproduction and death were mysteries.  What happens after death would be a great puzzle.  Losing a loved one for ever is difficult and it would be natural to assume that he/she comes back to life again at some other place and time. Alternately, after death the person would go to some other unknown world where he/she will have access to all the comforts and good life, may be not available when alive.  
A mind full of a large number of unanswerable questions is very receptive to any suggestion that can even partially reduce the bewilderment.  

In distant past humans, with nomadic lifestyle, did not have a great deal of interaction with others.  They were preoccupied with the problems of survival - finding food and shelter was more important than worrying about the philosophical questions of how and why of things.  As humans started to settle in communities - particularly after discovering agriculture - they started to face a whole set of new problems.  In a community, one has to live in close proximity with the neighbours, there is more time to reflect on the natural phenomena around you and people would be living longer so there would be more continuity between generations.  Some sort of tradition will begun to be defined.  

Having evolved from the apes and with the history of struggle to survive, human nature would have the tendency to be selfish - hoarding of food and providing comfort to the family must have been of utmost importance. Physical strength would help to grab more land for growing food and to ensure security.  How does a community survive when everybody is fighting for a bigger share of whatever is available?  There is no point if the mightiest kills all the neighbours; then we are back to nomadic lifestyle. One needs a system of government and rules of conduct and, of course, punishment.      

If I am an intelligent person then I could exploit the situation by solving all the problems in one stroke.  I would attribute all the natural phenomena to an almighty who is benevolent by giving us rain for growing food, wood for making our huts, cows for milk etc. but will punish our collective bad behaviour by bringing storms, earthquakes, diseases and other natural calamities.  Someone who will nourish us but also punish us. He will also tell us how to behave in the community.  This code of conduct will be given to the community through a medium - somebody who can communicate with the almighty being.  Humans are too ignorant and too frail to question what the almighty decides - they must accept without question what is being decided for them.  They must have faith - blind faith is better as this makes the implementation of rules easier ensuring stability of the society. 
We have religion with an almighty God who we must try our best to please.  We have to have a prophet who can bring the message and the priests who can interpret the word of God for the common man.

Let us face it, most of the humans are not that clever.  They are already confused with what is happening around them in nature and about their safety and well-being.  A good lazy way for them will be to follow the code of conduct - it comes with the additional promise of good life after death. To keep reminding the community about the rules of conduct, we have to have beliefs, rituals and superstitions  - if faith is strong then all these make good sense - the main thing is not to question, just follow.

Of course, different regions will have their own unique way of describing God and the rules of conduct, rituals etc.  It does not really matter as nobody is there to question?  If one falls out of line - faith is shaken - then the community can take care of that by removing the unfaithful altogether. The good of the community is paramount and the chief priest can always decide what God wants - he has a direct line to Him.
One can have one God or several Gods looking after different issues. You can have unwritten code of conduct, everything is verbal (easier to modify) or you can have one book or several describing the will of God.  One does not even have to have a God - it could be just an energy field or an abstract being - who is somehow passionately concerned about the earthlings and their welfare.  As long there is unquestioning faith, the system can and has worked.  And it has worked for several millenia.

The question is how do the laws of nature (derived from the empirical evidence) and religion (needed historically to make sense of things) live side by side.  Things will be straightforward but for the idiosyncrasies of the human mind.  We shall leave this for the next instalment.

Laws of Nature and Common Sense (Part 1)

 This is a reposting of a previous feature from 2013

Common sense is what we humans live by – it is kind of wisdom gained from experience over many generations. Humans experience the world through the five senses, but importantly we also use our intelligence to perform cause and effect analysis of what has been happening around us to understand how the world behaves. 
Common sense has worked very well and has ensured the survival of the human race; particularly, in the avoidance of dangerous and harmful situations.  Human societies evolved to preserve and enhance the species.  Shared knowledge and effort proved useful in meeting adverse situations and quality of life improved rapidly as humans started to live together in social groups.  
Survival of human societies is a multifaceted situation; they not only have to guard against the hostile physical environment around them but also against other fellow humans who are driven by greed, violence and other undesirable traits.  Humans have always enjoyed exercising power and control over others around them. This is a classic example of conflicting requirements – living in societies is beneficial but at the same time exposes one to potentially dangerous elements of oppression and exploitation.  How humans dealt with this is fascinating and will be discussed in a future blog.
How does our common sense relate to the laws of nature is what we wish to look at first.  The difference is in the scope of the evidence available.

Laws of nature are deduced from experimental observations at all possible levels of space and time.  As human ability improves to expand such observations to wider regions of space and time, laws of nature are modified or even replaced by a different set of laws.  Fine-tuning of the laws is fundamental to their authenticity and acceptance.  The current set is the best available to make sense of what the empirical evidence tells us. 

Common sense is much more restricted in terms of empirical evidence at its disposal.  Without technological aids - and most human experiences have been in such conditions - humans really occupy a small region roughly in the middle of space-time expanse.   Their experiences are limited in size, speed, time, colour, frequency etc.  Quantitatively: We experience

Physical dimensions from ~0.01 mm to a few hundred km. 
Speeds vary from rest to a few tens of km/hour.
Time is restricted to our reaction time of the order of 10 ms to a few hundred years.
Colour is perceived in the narrow wavelength range of 0.4 to 0.8 micron                                       (1 micron = 0.001 mm)
Perception of sound is limited to frequencies less than about 20 kHz.

Animal species do better in colour and sound perception due to the evolutionary need to protect themselves against predators etc.

Humans mainly perceive the world around them through light which travels at the fantastic speed of 300,000 km per second; this gives the feeling of instantaneous communication – things are happening as we see them.

Natural phenomena like rain, thunder, lightening, tides, storms, earthquakes, motion of heavenly bodies, infectious/mental and other diseases etc. were mediated by causes outside the range of human perception.  Theories and explanations were put forward – of course different in different societies – to make sense of such events.  This can give rise to beliefs, customs, rituals, superstitions etc. 
We shall return to this later in Part 2.

Limited scope of human experience, nevertheless, provided some quite sensible and workable theories about the way the world operates – kind of ‘limited’ laws of nature.  In good true scientific spirit a law would get modified when the evidence against it became overwhelming.  Sometimes it would require great sacrifices as changing a law might encumber on the interests/dogma of the powerful in the society. 

Situation started to improve about 500 years ago with the acceptance that experiment based evidence could not be ignored and must be taken into account in formulating so called laws of nature.  Technological advances helped in removing many of the limits to observations – in space, time and other areas.  Common sense inspired laws of nature started to be replaced by the new physics at the turn of the 20^th century and in the short span of 25 years the acceptance of the new laws of relativistic and quantum physics was overwhelming. 

While common sense laws are arrived at through observations, mostly visual, and rely on the behaviour of matter around us at the macroscopic scale of dimensions greater than about 1 micron (0.001 mm), laws of nature (physics) are determined in the way elementary particles, typically of dimensions less than 0.001 micron, interact with each other.  These interactions are of four types:

gravitational (G), 

electromagnetic (EM), 

strong nuclear (SN) and 

weak nuclear (WN).  

G and EM are long range and affect matter at all distances. SN and WN are relevant only at nuclear dimensions with distances of the order of a billionth of a micron or less!   
Chemical and biological properties are determined by EM forces acting between atoms and molecules at distances of the order of 0.001 microns and may not be properly understood through evidence from everyday experience. Old theories based on human experiences have been unable to make good sense of chemistry and life sciences.
Motion of heavenly bodies is governed by gravitational forces but mostly involves distances far greater than our senses can be sensitive to.  That is why there has been so much confusion about this subject in historical accounts.  Newton's laws of gravitational attraction explained the way heavenly bodies are organised in the sky but a proper understanding of the Universe had to wait for the theories of relativity and the development of nuclear sciences. 

The world of atoms and nuclei was latent to our ancestors as the distances involved were unimaginably small and even their existence could not be contemplated. Understanding the true nature of atoms and nuclei only started at the turn of the 20^th century and this has created the atmosphere in which modern industry could start.  Nuclear energy, Nanotechnology, Computers, Biotechnology, Space Exploration all owe their success to the laws of nature enunciated through empirical evidence acquired through development in technology in the 19th and 20^th centuries.  Without this mind-set, modern industry would not even be science fiction.

Another interesting aspect of this discussion is the emergence of paradoxes.  A language that is weakly developed will be unable to describe a situation that is highly complex – the vocabulary is just not there.  A good example of a paradox is the wave-particle duality in classical physics (mostly based on common sense observations).  In our daily lives we see objects behave like material particles or as undulating waves in motion.  We do not have objects that switch between being waves and particles at different times.  This was the situation until the end of the 19^th century when light was observed to exhibit properties akin to waves in some experiments but behaved exactly like a stream of particles in others.  The situation was resolved and explained by quantum description of light in 1925.  Now, we know that everything in the universe shows wave-particle duality and it is just our attempt to classify things as either waves or particles that is flawed.  We are using the wrong language for our description.

It is not that there are no paradoxes in the modern theories.  There are many and this simply points to the fact that, while we have a much better understanding of the world we live in, we have more to learn and the laws of nature will be rewritten differently in the future.

Introducing Serendipity's Cousins - Leucippity/Aristopity - Validation/Rejection of a Pre-existing Significant Theoretical Insight

This feature is inspired by Professor Sheldon L. Glashow who coined the term Leucippity to describe a hypothesis/prediction that precedes the evidence required for its acceptance as a proper scientific theory.  A classic example of leucippity is Albert Einstein's 1915 prediction of gravitational waves which waited a full century before being experimentally observed in 2015.

In contrast to serendipity which refers to the occurrence of surprising & valuable discoveries that were not actually sought; leucippity refers to the deliberate, often slow, pursuit of experimental validation of an existing theoretical insight. 

The term leucippity is coined in honour of the ancient philosopher Leucippus (5th century BCE) who with his disciple Democritus is credited for founding Greek Atomism that all matter is composed of small indivisible particles which they called 'atoms'.  It took over two thousand years for their idea to become universally accepted!

Examples of leucippity are found in all fields of scientific endeavour - in physical sciences, medicine, geology, mathematics etc. Glashow (1, 2) gives some outstanding examples where the validation of a theory only came after a significant delay.  

The Slide lists a selection of leucippitous discoveries in physical sciences that were awarded a Nobel Prize:   

Leucippity mostly comes in play when a paradigm shift happens in a field of study; new ideas replace old explanations used to make sense of empirical evidence, and in turn generate a host of new predictions.  Such predictions await further empirical confirmation before the new ideas can be accepted as actual real theories (The Scientific Method). Einstein's Theories of Relativity (1905 & 1915) and Quantum Theory (1925) are two classic examples where the new theories explained a host of difficult-to-understand observations of preceding decades but the underlying assumptions in the theories were novel to the extent that few scientists were ready to accept these as real theories.  Einstein was not awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for his theories of relativity but for his explanation of photoelectric effect - such was the reservations in the scientific community for his 'wild' ideas. Same is true for Quantum Theory.  Thankfully both theories made plentiful predictions and all predictions have been verified experimentally over the past 100 years.  The number of Nobel Prizes awarded for experimental work related to these theories is the proof that these are valid real theories with far-reaching significance for mankind's efforts to understand the laws that govern how nature works - and of course providing very valuable benefits to our every day life.  

We reserve the term leucippity for the verification of ideas/hypotheses that are of significant importance and might have waited for a reasonable time for it. Such ideas are deemed to be important and may substantially influence the progress/development of the field even while the idea is awaiting validation.  If a hypothesis is eventually proved to be invalid then it is likely that it would have done much harm to the scientific progress - particularly if the hypothesis was due to a scientist/philosopher of outstanding reputation. With these considerations, I introduce the word aristopity to describe such a phenomenon.

I have chosen the word aristopity to represent Aristotle (384-322 BCE).  Aristotle was a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, known for inventing formal logic and developing a comprehensive system of thought that influenced virtually every field, including ethics, politics, biology, natural philosophy (physics) and arts, essentially laying the groundwork for Western science and philosophy with his emphasis on observation and logical reasoning. 

However, Aristotle did not seek experimental verification of what his theories predicted - his theories were what observations and common sense supported.  The ideas of scientific method and tools (microscopes, telescopes etc.) came much later.  Aristotle's stature was such that his ideas went unchallenged for almost 2000 years and were accepted as eternal truth - to question them could result in getting burned at stake. It is not difficult to appreciate what harm such blind following to his erroneous theories might have done to the development of scientific knowledge. The next two slides list some of Aristotle's scientific ideas that have been discredited.

 

For aristopity, an erroneous hypothesis must survive over a long-enough period of time to affect thinking of a significant number of scientists.  This can be seriously harmful for proper development of scientific ideas. One indeed encounters many aristopitous practices that lasted a long time - for example, astrology, alchemy, phlogiston, Einstein's cosmological constant, Ptolemy's Almagest, Galen's Humourism, Lysenkoism, Phrenology, Miasma Theory and many more.

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