Wednesday, December 17, 2008

this blew my mind...

so, sometimes i think non-scientists get a little too enamored with the theories that scientists espouse about the world or even about what is out there in broader space. journalists take a scientists theory, dumb it down, and go nuts with statements of certitude that were never vetted through scientific process. (think anthropogenic global warming, for one example). the end result is we end up with a general populace that are sometimes more misinformed because they tried to learn something about science from a journalist.

some people (read journalists) just want to believe that science has all the answers and that they can be distilled into a few lines of simple explanation.

the broader truth is that there is a heck of a lot about our own world, let alone broader space, that we have no clue about (yet).

the bloop is one example of this.

the bloop is a sound picked up on oceanic spy equipment (relics from the cold war) that has the "audio profile of a living creature", according to experts. the surprise is that any creature that could make such a sound would have to be many times bigger than a blue whale, the largest known creature on the planet.

there's something down there and it's big and we have no clue what it is or how it lives.

or maybe i'm just an example of a non-scientist grabbing a bit of data and taking the claim too far ;)

in any case it's kinda cool to think about. it's the kind of thing you would see as an opening scene of a sea monster movie. some grizzled old sea captain on a research ship with a bunch of nerdy scientist off the coast of south america.

they get an audio signal and some nerdy scientist type starts freaking out "this thing would have to be big, really big, HUMONGOUS!".

the sea captain just stares ahead, narrows his eyes and simples says "ayup" leaving the impression that he knows something the scientists don't through a grand tradition of fable telling and good old fashioned intuition.

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