Zipf's Law

Zipf’s Law, proposed by an American Linguist named George Kingsley Zipf, deals with probability.  It states the the frequency of an event (f) is inversely proportional to its rank (r).

Originally, it was proposed for the frequency of words used in the English language.  A word’s approximate usage is determined by the formula: f(r)≅0.1/r

The most common word (Rank 1) in the English language is “the”, which, in a typical text, occurs about one-tenth of the time.  The second most common English word (Rank 2) is “of”, which occurs approximately one-twentieth of the time, and so on and so forth.

To look at it another way, focus only on the rank: 1/rank means that world occurs 1/rank of the time.  The word “the” occurs 1/r times, the word “of” occurs half that amount (Because 1/rank for the second word is equivalent to ½).  The third word occurs one -third as often as the second word (1/rank equals ⅓).  And the forth word occurs ¼  as often.  Unfortunately, beyond the ranking of 1,000 the law becomes untrue.  

This same principle can be applied to other things.  Though the results are not exactly correct, it comes up with a decent estimate.  For example, the largest city in a country is about twice the size of the second largest.  The second largest city is about three times the size of the third largest, and so on.  The basic principle can be useful in schemes like urban planning.

For more information, visit: http://www.britannica.com/topic/Zipfs-law

                                         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law

Fracking And Why It Needs To Stop NOW!!!! -Science Blog Post

What Is It:

Hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, is a process used to recover natural gas and oil from shale rock.  

To do this, a hole is drilled into the Earth.  Then, a high-pressure water mixture is put into the rock, releasing the gas inside it.  To get the gas to go flow into the well, the rock is then injected with chemicals, water, and sand.  

The well is drilled into the ground horizontally so the gas will float upwards.  This process was named “fracking” because the name refers to how rocks are fractured apart by high pressure.

Why Is It Controversial:

With fracking comes great environmental concerns.  Immense amounts of water have been transported to fracking sites, damaging the environment. Also, many fear that chemicals used in this process will eventually contaminate groundwater near the sites. “The industry suggests pollution incidents are the results of bad practices, rather than the inherent risky technique.”  But there is always room for error.  If the risks of fracking could potentially contaminate acres and acres of land from one “bad practice”, why do it?  

In addition to these, an increased amount of earthquakes in areas with fracking is linked to fracking in those areas.  The graph below shows the how many earthquakes, how strong they were, and when they hit in Barnett Shale.  Under that is a mini interview telling the normal amount of earthquakes in Oklahoma that are at or above 3 magnitude before fracking and how many are at or above 3 magnitude now.

Many other worries include that fracking wastes energy and eliminates renewable resources.  

Conclusion:

Fracking destabilizes the earth, causing increases in earthquakes everywhere it happens.  So why do we continue to do it?

For more information, visit: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14432401

KIC 8462852: An Anomaly In The Cygnus Constellation? -Science Blog Post

KIC 8462864 is a sun 1,500 light years from Earth.  The irregular light blockage (up to 20%) due to objects orbiting it, has led scientist on a search for an extraterrestrial civilization. These objects appear as masses of tightly packed objects. They’ve been deemed too big to be planets.

If KIC 8362852 were a young star, we’d conclude that the star was surrounded by dust.  But KIC 8462852 isn’t young, and no excess of infrared light has been found near it. Jason Wright published a statement claiming that these objects are a swarm of megastructures. Wright hypothesized that these objects are Dyson Sphere’s built by this civilization to harness all of the sun’s energy.  Some think the human civilization is only a few hundred years from doing this as well.

To succeed at building this, the civilization would have to be a Type III civilization on the Kardashev Scale. In comparison, humans are a Type I civilization.

Besides aliens, other hypotheses include:

• KIC 8462852 is a young star with protoplanetary disks orbiting it
• The objects are massive planets with rings, irregularly obstructing our view of the sun
• Dense gasses occasionally pass between KIC 8462852 and Earth, because of a mass ejection event
• This galaxy’s old and violent resulting in debris orbiting the sun
• Large masses of comet-like objects block the light in irregular patterns
• A swarm of comets orbits KIC 8462852

These explanations sound reasonable, yet every one of them proves itself false or highly unlikely.

KIC 8462852 was discovered by the Kepler Telescope, and a scientist named Tabetha Boyajian.

But for now, scientist can only hypothesize.  The Allen Telescope Array has its focus KIC 8462852. The Very Large Array (VLA) may eventually get involved in this search.

For more information, go to:

http://earthsky.org/space/possible-alien-megastructure-kic-8462852

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/curious-case-of-kic-8462852-102020155/

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/15/world/extraterrestrial-intelligence-anomaly/

Also, for vocabulary important to this post, I have linked a Wikipedia page. Click the words to learn more!

Color Perception: Effected By Sadness? -Science Blog Post

We know emotions affect how we see the world around us.  But does it also affect color perception? Christopher Thorstenson, Adam Pazda, and Andrew Elliot conduct experiments to test this.

In one study, 127 undergraduates were randomly assigned to watch a film to generate sadness, or a stand up comedy to generate amusement.  After watching their assigned clip, the participants were shown 48 consecutive color patches and asked to determine whether each patch was yellow, green, blue, or red.  The participants who watched the sad movie were less accurate at identifying colors than the participants who watched the stand up comedy, but only in identifying colors along the blue-yellow axis.  There was no difference in identifying colors along the red-green axis.

Another study with 130 undergraduates had the same results.  Participants that watched the sad film were less accurate at decoding colors along the blue-yellow axis that participants shown the neutral film.  And like before, only the blue-yellow axis was impaired. There was no difference in the red-green axis.

The scientists were surprised by these results, as they were nowhere near what they predicted. But they think this study might give clues for the reason for the effect in neurotransmitter function.

They need to do more research before they provide a final conclusion to this study. We know color perception along the blue-yellow axis is linked to the neurotransmitter dopamine.  

For more information, go to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150902112006.htm 

A Beginners Guide To The Superstring Theory -Science Blog Post

The Superstring Theory suggests there are 10 dimensions.  It starts out simple, but grows to be one of the most mind-boggling things I’ve ever come across.  After a bit of research, I developed a slight understanding of this theory.

The First Dimension--- Is length, or the x-axis.  This dimension is a straight line.

The Second Dimension--- Is height, or the y-axis added to the first dimension.

The Third Dimension--- Is depth, or the z-axis added to the second dimension.  This dimension is the last one proven to exist. All others are theoretical.

The Fourth Dimension--- Is time.  I personally believe that time exists because we have change.  And isn’t time a measure of change?

The Fifth Dimension--- Is a world somewhat different from our own, giving a measurement of the similarities and differences between our world and others.  In other words, similar to parallel universes.

The Sixth Dimension--- Is a plane having all possible universes which began with the same beginning as ours (i.e. The Big Bang).

The Seventh Dimension--- Is a plane with all possible universes beginning with different starting conditions than ours.

The Eighth Dimension--- Is a plane of all possible universes

1. Having different start conditions
2. All expanding and continuing to expand infinitely

The Ninth Dimension--- Is all of possible worlds

1. Starting with different conditions
2. Having different Laws Of Physics

The Tenth Dimension--- Is complex enough for anything to happen, having infinite possibilities.  

For more information and pictures, go to: http://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/12/16/heres-visual-guide-10-dimensions-reality/

Also read Hyperspace by Michio Kaku--- http://www.amazon.com/Hyperspace-Scientific-Parallel-Universes-Dimension/dp/0385477058