What happens with cholesterol?

Cholesterol is an essential lipid, used to build the membrane of many of our cells. In addition, various steroids, bile acids and vitamin D are synthesized from cholesterol within the body. High cholesterol increases the chances of suffering from heart attacks and strokes. On the other hand, too low cholesterol is associated with depression that can even lead to suicide.

When someone says: I have had an analysis and it turns out that I have cholesterol, we should answer: If you didn’t have cholesterol, you’d be dead. What you have is high cholesterol.

Is science taught correctly?

According to many evaluations, education at the elementary and secondary levels is faulty. Every year, students arrive at the university knowing less, which makes it necessary to lower the level at the university or use desperate remedies, such as the implementation of level zero courses.

On the other hand, textbook publishers sometimes launch a race. Secondary education is supposed to provide students with general, non-specialized training. However, in some subjects, such as chemistry and biology, students may be made to learn questions or solve problems that should be encountered in college, several years later. It seems a contradiction that they are forced to learn more, but actually get out knowing less.

Inventing worlds

Isaac Newton

Physicists seem to have lost touch with reality. Instead of figuring out how the universe works, they dedicate themselves to designing possible universes, an activity that possibly they find pleasurable, but which doesn't seem very practical. The worst thing is that they often insist that their imaginary universes are real, putting speculations above experimentation and transgressing one of the fundamental principles of the scientific method: theories must adapt to facts, not the other way around.

One of the weak points of modern physics is the difficulty of explaining the passage of time. Since Newton’s theory, but especially with Einstein’s relativity, our physicists have not been able to deal with time. This happens, despite the fact that other conceptions of physics, such as thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, require unidirectional time: quantum superposition and collapse make no sense except with the hypothesis of irreversible time.

A few trivia about the fine structure constant

Clifford Pickover

In a post I published in this blog over three years ago, I talked about the fine structure constant and some of its physical peculiarities. In this post I am going to talk about some of its mathematical peculiarities. I have taken them from a book I have mentioned on other occasions: A Passion for Mathematics, by Clifford A. Pickover.

As we know, the most exact value of this constant is this:

α = 1/137.035999206

Pickover points out that Eric W. Weisstein, in his World of Physics website, offers two mathematical approximations incredibly close to this value:

Black holes or gravastars?

As I explained in a previous post, our two fundamental physical theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics, predict infinities that physicists don’t like. General relativity does this in gravitational singularities: the Big Bang and black holes. Quantum mechanics, in vacuum energy and the quantities that must be renormalized in quantum field theory.

Until a little time ago, the theory of black holes, formulated by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in 1930, stated the following: when a star 30 to 70 times more massive than the sun undergoes a supernova explosion, it expels most of its mass, but a part of it (at least 3.8 times more massive than the sun) collapses to such a point that it occupies zero volume, and so it will have an infinite density.

The dream of antigravity

Man has always wished to be able to fly. Seeing how birds do it and not being able to do it has obsessed him, to the point of causing quite a few accidents. It is a craving that even very young children know. Some mishaps caused by the viewing of the movie Superman at the end of the seventies may be proof.

At the end of the 19th century, two fundamental interactions were known: electromagnetic and gravitational. In one respect, both are quite different. Electrically charged bodies can have a positive or a negative charge. A positive and a negative charge attract each other; two positive or two negative charges repel each other. Likewise, magnetic bodies have two ends with magnetism of a different type, north and south. If we bring two magnets together, the north end of one and the south end of the other attract each other; ends of the same type repel each other.

Does science explain everything?

William Shakespeare

Scientism is the philosophical theory that affirms that science is the only valid source of human knowledge. Taken literally, this statement sometimes leads to absurd conclusions. Perhaps the following case is an example of scientism. I’ve taken it from a recent article by Joseph Pearce entitled Shakespeare and Science.

Kathryn Harkup, British doctor in chemical sciences and science communicator, has published several books analyzing various literary works from the point of view of science. I don’t know if Harkup is a case of scientism, but her emphasis on science makes me think that perhaps she is. She has recently published a book titled Death by Shakespeare, where she criticizes how Shakespeare presents death in his plays, based on what she believes science modern knows about death. Pearce highlights two examples, which show some of the absurd conclusions caused by basing only on science.