The Last Extinction

NOVA: Last Extinction. (Hat tip: Anaconda).

Watch it here.

"...12,900 years ago a comet slammed into the Earth. This cosmic catastrophe would have devastated the great land animals."

"This lead to wildfires over great areas."

"The larger the animal the more devastating the effects of this would have been. It would have been hell on Earth. And a very bad day."

Thus the extinction of the Biblical giants.

So how do the mathematicians react? By quoting Carl Sagan of course!

"...it's just extraordinarily improbable. And when you're making an extraordinarily improbable claim you need extraordinary evidence. And I haven't seen any extraordinary evidence." -- Mark Boslough, physicist, 2009

Hmmm. So I guess mass extinction of giant megafauna isn't extraordinary evidence? What would constitute extraordinary evidence?

"You have improbability stacked upon improbability. We're talking about something that may happen only once in the entire age of the Earth." -- Mark Boslough, physicist, 2009

So what left giant impact craters all over the face of the Earth? And what wiped out the dinosaurs? And what caused the KT boundary? These science deniers are hilarious. It's amazing they're employed.

"And I have a hard time accepting something like that happened that recently." -- Mark Boslough, physicist, 2009

So what wiped out the megafauna? The tooth fairy?

"It seems a little far fetched. There's a lot of species that did not become extinct which would be hard to explain why weren't they afffected if all these other large mammals were why weren't deer and elk and bear affected? Why did they survive?" -- Gary Haynes, archaeologist, 2009

Hmmm. OK ... so I guess that means that there are no impact craters on the Earth. No impact craters on the Moon. No impact craters on Mars. Shooting stars are mass hallucinations. The tooth fairy wiped out the dinosaurs. And the KT boundary is actually Dark Matter.

The Sound of Gravity?

This is too funny. These idiots think that gravity makes noise and that the sounds can be detected. More than that, they say space (nonbeing) and time (tic-toc?) make noise as well. Do you have your tinfoil hat ready? Forget the Electric Universe. I offer you the Holographic Universe: Holographic Universe: Discovery Could Herald New Era In Fundamental Physics.

Craig Hogan, a physicist at Fermilab Centre for Particle Astrophysics in Illinois is convinced that he has found proof in the data of the gravitational wave detector GEO600 of a holographic Universe – and that his ideas could explain mysterious noise in the detector data that has not been explained so far.

The British-German team behind the GEO600, which includes scientists from the School of Physics and Astronomy's Gravitational Physics Group, will now carry out new experiments in the coming months to yield more evidence about Craig Hogan's assumptions. If proved correct, it could help in the quest to bring together quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity.

In order to test the theory of holographic noise, the frequency of GEO600´s maximum sensitivity will be shifted towards ever higher frequencies. The frequency of maximum sensitivity is the tone that the detector can hear best. It is normally adjusted to offer the best chance for hearing exploding stars or merging black holes.

Even if it turns out that the mysterious noise is the same at high frequencies as at the lower ones, this will not constitute proof for Hogan's hypothesis. It would, however, provide a strong motivation for further study. The sensitivity of GEO600 will then be significantly improved by using 'squeezed vacuum' and by the installation of a mode filter in a new vacuum chamber. The technology of 'squeezed vacuum' was particularly refined in Hannover and would be used in a gravitational wave detector for the first time.

Professor Jim Hough of Glasgow University, one of the pioneer developers of gravitational wave detectors, says: 'Craig Hogan made a very interesting prediction. It may be the first of a number of unexpected possibilities to be investigated as gravitational wave detectors become more sensitive.'

Professor Bernard Schutz, Professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy, member of the Gravitational Physics Group at the School, and recently elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society said: "It would be truly remarkable if GEO600 is sensitive to the quantum nature of space and time. The only way to confirm that would be to carry out controlled experiments, the results of which can be solely attributed to holographic noise. Such an experiment would herald a new era in fundamental physics".

Indeed. Or a new era of insanity.