Transit of Venus 2012

The 2012 transit of Venus, when the planet Venus appeared as a small, dark disk moving across the face of the Sun, began at 22:09 UTC on 5 June 2012, and finished at 04:49 UTC on 6 June. Depending on the position of the observer, the exact times varied by up to ±7 minutes. Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable celestial phenomena and occur in pairs, eight years apart, which are themselves separated by more than a century:The previous transit of Venus took place on 8 June 2004 (preceded by the pair of appearances on 9 December 1874 and 6 December 1882), and the next pair of transits will occur on 10–11 December 2117 and in December 2125.

Secrets of Giant Cloud Holes Revealed

Mysterious holes in clouds made by aircraft may owe their huge sizes to a little bit of heat, a new study suggests.

For decades people have seen gargantuan holes form in high, thin clouds made of supercooled water—liquid droplets that are chilled below the freezing point but that don't have any particles around which ice crystals can form.

In the absense of dust, these cloud droplets can turn to ice if the water gets cooled beyond -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 degrees Celsius). At such chilly temperatures the water molecules slow down enough to freeze spontaneously. Researchers previously knew that plane wings, propellers, and turbines could chill supercooled water via rapid expansion of air in their wakes—making things cold enough to force the liquid to become ice. This mechanism is thought to be what creates hole-punch clouds.

As the water freezes, though, the change of state releases energy in the form of what's called latent heat, and the role of this heat was suspect."I didn't think the latent heat would be so important, but it drives the whole feedback cycle, in some cases for hours after a plane flies through," said study co-author Gregory Thompson, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

"That's why the holes can grow to the size of cities under the right conditions."

Research Flights Affecting Cloud Data?

The researchers theorized that, as latent heat rises, it carries freshly frozen ice—material that would normally float down—back up into the cloud. There, supercooled water droplets migrate to the ice crystals, feeding a chain reaction of ice formation. Eventually the ice patch becomes too dense and falls out as a flurry of snow. To see if latent heat does lead to hole-punch clouds, the researchers ran cloud-model simulations with and without the effect.

The first simulation, which incorporated latent heat, showed that the heat suspended ice in the cloud, powered nearby evaporation, pulled surrounding vapor into the zone of crystallization, and created snow. The model ultimately formed holes in clouds that closely matched real images of the phenomenon. The simulation without the latent-heat effect didn't replicate what's been documented in nature.

Thompson emphasized that this finding almost certainly doesn't change our understanding of the role of aircraft in global climate. Nor do hole-punch clouds cause significant snowfalls around airports, he said: "It's likely too minor for that."

However, researchers "spend an awful lot of time flying through clouds to collect data, which we use to build models that mimic natural clouds. We may be altering that data as we measure it," he said.

"It's not a big effect, but it's something to be mindful of in future atmospheric modeling."

New Type of Black Hole Found—Relic of Early Universe?

After nearly three years of spying a superbright object nearly 300 million light-years away, astronomers with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and SWIFT telescope recently announced the discovery of HLX-1, the first representative of a new type of black hole.

Until recently, black holes were thought to come in only two sizes: Small stellar varieties that are several times heavier than our sun, and supermassive black holes that pack the gravitational punch of many million suns—large enough to swallow our entire solar system. Notorious for ripping apart and swallowing stars, extra-large black holes live exclusively in the hearts of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way. The new middleweight black hole is between these two types—equal to the matter of about 90,000 suns.

New Black Hole Relics of the Early Universe?

An international team, who discovered HLX-1 "almost by accident" in 2009, noticed the object was pumping out copious amounts of x-rays and radio flares—not from within the core of its host spiral galaxy, but some 12,000 light years beyond.

"Our observations from 2009 and 2010 showed that HLX-1 behaves similarly to the stellar [low] mass black holes, so we worked out when we should be expecting to see radio flares from HLX-1, and when we made more observations in August and September 2011, we did," said study leader Natalie Webb, of the Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France. The origin of these intermediate black holes may lie in centers of globular clusters, where hundreds of thousands of stars are densely packed together by gravity.

           

           Alternatively, the middleweights may be true ancient relics of the universe, formed by the very earliest stars, said Webb, whose study appears tomorrow in the journal Science. "At the dawn of the universe, very massive stars may have existed—maybe as much as ten thousand times the mass of our sun—and these stars would have 
a very short lifetime and end their lives as intermediate mass black 
holes," Webb said.

Middleweights May Explain Black Hole Giants

The very existence of middleweight black holes may also be key in solving how their supermassive cousins formed. For instance, Webb suspects the middleweights may in fact be the supermassive black holes' progenitors. These giants may either form when a single intermediate black hole gobbles enough matter to grow into a supermassive black hole with at least a million solar masses.

Or, a number of intermediate black holes "merged in the early universe to form the supermassive black holes we see today," Webb said.Either way, without further surveys, it's impossible to tell how common middleweight black holes are across the universe.

"It's difficult to assess observationally, as [HLX-1] is the only good candidate," Webb said.

"But some people think that there may be hundreds in each and every galaxy."

"The Gates of Hell"

             In the hot, expansive Karakum desert in Turkmenistan, near the 350 person village of Derweze, is a hole 328 feet wide that has been on fire. For 38 years it has constantly been active. This hole is known as the Darvaza Gas Crater or the "Gates of Hells" by locals, the crater can be seen glowing for miles around.

             The hole is the outcome not of nature but of an industrial accident. In 1971 a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. Having punctured a pocket of gas, poisonous fumes began leaking from the hole at an alarming rate. To head off a potential environmental catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole alight. The crater hasn't stopped burning since.
Though little information is available about the fate of the Soviet drilling rig, presumably it is still down there somewhere, on the other side of the "Gates of Hell."

5 Facts About The Teen Brain

         They are dramatic, irrational and scream for seemingly no reason. And they have a deep need for both greater independence and tender loving care.There is a reason this description could be used for either teens or toddlers: After infancy, the brain's most dramatic growth spurt occurs in adolescence."The brain continues to change throughout life, but there are huge leaps in development during adolescence," said Sara Johnson, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who reviewed the neuroscience in "The Teen Years Explained: A Guide to Healthy Adolescent Development" (Johns Hopkins University, 2009) by Clea McNeely and Jayne Blanchard.

And though it may seem impossible to get inside the head of an adolescent, scientists have probed this teen tangle of neurons. Here are five things they've learned about the mysterious teen brain.

1. New thinking skills

Due to the increase in brain matter, the teen brain becomes more interconnected and gains processing power, Johnson said. Adolescents start to have the computational and decision-making skills of an adult – if given time and access to information, she said. 

But in the heat of the moment, their decision-making can be overly influenced by emotions, because their brains rely more on the limbic system (the emotional seat of the brain) than the more rational prefrontal cortex, explained said Sheryl Feinstein, author of "Inside the Teenage Brain: Parenting a Work in Progress" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009)."This duality of adolescent competence can be very confusing for parents," Johnson said, meaning that sometimes teens do things, like punch a wall or drive too fast, when, if asked, they clearly know better.

2. Intense emotions

"Puberty is the beginning of major changes in the limbic system," Johnson said, referring to the part of the brain that not only helps regulate heart rate and blood sugar levels, but also is critical to the formation of memories and emotions. Part of the limbic system, the amygdala is thought to connect sensory information to emotional responses. Its development, along with hormonal changes, may give rise to newly intense experiences of rage, fear, aggression (including toward oneself), excitement and sexual attraction.

Over the course of adolescence, the limbic system comes under greater control of the prefrontal cortex, the area just behind the forehead, which is associated with planning, impulse control and higher order thought.

As additional areas of the brain start to help process emotion, older teens gain some equilibrium and have an easier time interpreting others. But until then, they often misread teachers and parents, Feinstein said.You can be as careful as possible and you still will have tears or anger at times because they will have misunderstood what you have said," she said.

3. Peer pleasure

As teens become better at thinking abstractly, their social anxiety increases, according to research in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published in 2004.

Abstract reasoning makes it possible to consider yourself from the eyes of another. Teens may use this new skill to ruminate about what others are thinking of them. In particular, peer approval has been shown to be highly rewarding to the teen brain, Johnson said, which may be why teens are more likely to take risks when other teens are around."Kids are really concerned with looking cool – but you don't need brain research to tell you that," she said.

Friends also provide teens with opportunities to learn skills such as negotiating, compromise and group planning. "They are practicing adult social skills in a safe setting and they are really not good at it at first," Feinstein said. So even if all they do is sit around with their friends, teens are hard at work acquiring important life skills.

4. Measuring risk

"The brakes come online somewhat later than the accelerator of the brain," said Johnson, referring to the development of the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system respectively.At the same time, "teens need higher doses of risk to feel the same amount of rush adults do," Johnson said.

Taken together, these changes may make teens vulnerable to engaging in risky behaviors, such as trying drugs, getting into fights or jumping into unsafe water. By late adolescence, say 17 years old and after, the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and long-term perspective taking is thought to help them reign in some of the behavior they were tempted by in middle adolescence, according to McNeely and Blanchard. 

What is a parent to do in the meantime? "Continue to parent your child." Johnson said. Like all children, "teens have specific developmental vulnerabilities and they need parents to limit their behavior," she said.

(Research on the different rates of brain function development during adolescence was published in the journal Developmental Review in 2008.)

5. 'I am the center of the universe'

The hormone changes at puberty have huge affects on the brain, one of which is to spur the production of more receptors for oxytocin, according to research detailed in a 2008 issue of the journal Developmental Review.

While oxytocin is often described as the "bonding hormone," increased sensitivity to its effects in the limbic system has also been linked to feeling self-consciousness, making an adolescent truly feel like everyone is watching him or her. According to McNeely and Blanchard, these feelings peak around 15 years old.

While this may make a teen seem self-centered (and in their defense, they do have a lot going on), the changes in the teen brain may also spur some of the more idealistic efforts tackled by young people throughout history.

"It is the first time they are seeing themselves in the world," Johnson said, meaning their greater autonomy has opened their eyes to what lies beyond their families and schools. They are asking themselves, she continued, for perhaps the first time: What kind of person do I want to be and what type of place do I want the world to be?

Until their brains develop enough to handle shades of gray, their answers to these questions can be quite one-sided, Feinstein said, but the parents' job is to help them explore the questions, rather than give them answers.

Male Seahorses Can Get Pregnant

                                                             Seahorses reproduce in an unusual way: the male becomes pregnant. Pipefishes and seahorses are the only species in the animal kingdom to which the term "male pregnancy" has been applied.

            The male seahorse has a brood pouch in which he carries eggs deposited by the female. The mating pair entwine their tails and the female aligns a long tube called an ovipositor with the male's pouch. The eggs move through the tube into the male's pouch where he then fertilizes them. The embryos develop in ten days to six weeks, depending on species and water conditions. When the male gives birth he pumps his tail until the baby seahorses emerge.

             The male's pouch regulates salinity for the eggs, slowly increasing in the pouch to match the water outside as the eggs mature. Hatched offspring are independent of their parents. Some spend time developing among the ocean plankton. At times, the male seahorse may try to consume some of the previously released offspring. Other species (H. zosterae) immediately begin life as sea-floor inhabitants (benthos).

                                                                   

Animals Can Naturally Explode

Natural animal explosions can occur for a variety of reasons. On 2004, a buildup of gas inside a decomposing sperm whale, measuring 17 meters (56 ft.) long and weighing 50 tons, caused it to burst in Taiwan. The explosion was reported to have splattered blood and whale entrails over surrounding shop-fronts, bystanders, and car. A significant population of toads in Germany and Denmark were exploding in April 2005 in an act described as a self-defence mechanism that failed, as it consisted of puffing up to look bigger while under attack by crows.

The Moon is Moving Away From The Earth

The Moon's orbit (its circular path around the Earth) is indeed getting larger, at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters per year. (The Moon's orbit has a radius of 384,000 km.) The reason for the increase is that the Moon raises tides on the Earth. Because the side of the Earth that faces the Moon is closer, it feels a stronger pull of gravity than the center of the Earth. Similarly, the part of the Earth facing away from the Moon feels less gravity than the center of the Earth. This effect stretches the Earth a bit, making it a little bit oblong.

 It is expected that in 15 billion years, the orbit will stabilize at 1.6 times its present size, and the Earth day will be 55 days long equal to the time it will take the Moon to orbit the Earth.

The Universe Is Beige

 

Cosmic Latte is the color of the universe, according to a team of astronomers from Johns Hopkins University. In 2001, Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry determined that the color of the universe was a greenish white, but they soon corrected their analysis in "The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: constraints on cosmic star-formation history from the cosmic spectrum", published in 2002. In this paper, they reported that their survey of the color of all light in the universe added up to a slightly beige white. The survey included more than 200,000 galaxies, and measured the spectral range of the light from a large volume of the universe. The hexadecimal RGB value for Cosmic Latte is #FFF8E7.

 In a Washington Post article, the color was displayed. Glazebrook jokingly said that he was looking for suggestions for a name for the new color. Several people who read the article sent in suggestions. "Cosmic Latte" was selected.

Animals Can Rain From The Sky

Raining animals is a relatively common meteorological phenomenon, with occurrences reported from many countries throughout history. The animals most likely to drop from the sky in a rainfall are fish and frogs, with birds coming third. Sometimes the animals survive the fall, especially fish, suggesting a small time gap between the extraction and the actual drop. Several witnesses of raining frogs describe the animals as startled, though healthy, and exhibiting relatively normal behavior shortly after the event. In some incidents, however, the animals are frozen to death or even completely enclosed in blocks of ice. These occurrences may be evidence for the transport of the victims to high altitudes, where the temperature is below zero, and they show how powerful meteorological forces can be. Most recent occurrences include the rain of frogs and toads in Serbia (2005) and London (1998), and rains of fish in India (2006) and Wales (2004).

        In Honduras, the Lluvia de Peces (Rain of Fishes) is a unique phenomenon that has been occurring for more than a century on a yearly basis in the country of Honduras. It occurs in the Departamento de Yoro, between the months of May and July. Witnesses of this phenomenon state that it begins with is a dark cloud in the sky followed by lightning, thunder, strong winds and heavy rain for 2 to 3 hours. Once the rain has stopped, hundreds of living fish are found on the ground. People take the fish home to cook and eat them. Although some experts have tried to explain the Rain of Fishes as a natural meteorological phenomenon, the fish are not sea water fish, but fresh water fish; they are not dead, but alive; they are not blind, they have eyes; they are not big fish, but small; and the type of fish is not found elsewhere in the area. There is no valid scientific explanation for this phenomenon. Many people believe this phenomenon occurs because of Father José Manuel Subirana, a Spanish catholic missionary and considered by many to be a Saint. He visited Honduras from 1856-1864, and upon encountering so many poor people, prayed for 3 days and 3 nights asking God for a miracle to help the poor people by providing food. The Rain of Fishes has occurred ever since.

 

Is Death An Illusion? Evidence Suggests Death Isn’t the End

After the death of his old friend, Albert Einstein said “Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us … know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

New evidence continues to suggest that Einstein was right – death is an illusion.

Our classical way of thinking is based on the belief that the world has an objective observer-independent existence. But a long list of experiments shows just the opposite. We think life is just the activity of carbon and an admixture of molecules – we live awhile and then rot into the ground.

We believe in death because we’ve been taught we die. Also, of course, because we associate ourselves with our body and we know bodies die. End of story. But biocentrism – a new theory of everything – tells us death may not be the terminal event we think. Amazingly, if you add life and consciousness to the equation, you can explain some of the biggest puzzles of science. For instance, it becomes clear why space and time – and even the properties of matter itself – depend on the observer. It also becomes clear why the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be exquisitely fine-tuned for the existence of life.

Until we recognize the universe in our heads, attempts to understand reality will remain a road to nowhere.

Consider the weather ‘outside’: You see a blue sky, but the cells in your brain could be changed so the sky looks green or red. In fact, with a little genetic engineering we could probably make everything that is red vibrate or make a noise, or even make you want to have sex like with some birds. You think its bright out, but your brain circuits could be changed so it looks dark out. You think it feels hot and humid, but to a tropical frog it would feel cold and dry. This logic applies to virtually everything. Bottom line: What you see could not be present without your consciousness.

In truth, you can’t see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Your eyes are not portals to the world. Everything you see and experience right now – even your body – is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. According to biocentrism, space and time aren’t the hard, cold objects we think. Wave your hand through the air – if you take everything away, what’s left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.

Consider the famous two-slit experiment. When scientists watch a particle pass through two slits in a barrier, the particle behaves like a bullet and goes through one slit or the other. But if you don’t watch, it acts like a wave and can go through both slits at the same time. So how can a particle change its behavior depending on whether you watch it or not? The answer is simple – reality is a process that involves your consciousness.

Or consider Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle. If there is really a world out there with particles just bouncing around, then we should be able to measure all their properties. But you can’t. For instance, a particle’s exact location and momentum can’t be known at the same time. So why should it matter to a particle what you decide to measure? And how can pairs of entangled particles be instantaneously connected on opposite sides of the galaxy as if space and time don’t exist? Again, the answer is simple: because they’re not just ‘out there’ – space and time are simply tools of our mind.

Death doesn’t exist in a timeless, spaceless world. Immortality doesn’t mean a perpetual existence in time, but resides outside of time altogether.

Our linear way of thinking about time is also inconsistent with another series of recent experiments. In 2002, scientists showed that particles of light “photons” knew – in advance – what their distant twins would do in the future. They tested the communication between pairs of photons. They let one photon finish its journey – it had to decide whether to be either a wave or a particle. Researchers stretched the distance the other photon took to reach its own detector. However, they could add a scrambler to prevent it from collapsing into a particle. Somehow, the first particle knew what the researcher was going to do before it happened – and across distances instantaneously as if there were no space or time between them. They decide not to become particles before their twin even encounters the scrambler. It doesn’t matter how we set up the experiment. Our mind and its knowledge is the only thing that determines how they behave. Experiments consistently confirm these observer-dependent effects.

Bizarre? Consider another experiment that was recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Science (Jacques et al, 315, 966, 2007). Scientists in France shot photons into an apparatus, and showed that what they did could retroactively change something that had already happened in the past. As the photons passed a fork in the apparatus, they had to decide whether to behave like particles or waves when they hit a beam splitter. Later on – well after the photons passed the fork – the experimenter could randomly switch a second beam splitter on and off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle actually did at the fork in the past. At that moment, the experimenter chose his past.

Of course, we live in the same world. But critics claim this behavior is limited to the microscopic world. But this ‘two-world’ view (that is, one set of physical laws for small objects, and another for the rest of the universe including us) has no basis in reason and is being challenged in laboratories around the world. A couple years ago, researchers published a paper in Nature (Jost et al, 459, 683, 2009) showing that quantum behavior extends into the everyday realm. Pairs of vibrating ions were coaxed to entangle so their physical properties remained bound together when separated by large distances (“spooky action at a distance,” as Einstein put it). Other experiments with huge molecules called ‘Buckyballs’ also show that quantum reality extends beyond the microscopic world. And in 2005, KHC03 crystals exhibited entanglement ridges one-half inch high, quantum behavior nudging into the ordinary world of human-scale objects.

We generally reject the multiple universes of Star Trek as fiction, but it turns out there is more than a morsel of scientific truth to this popular genre. One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that observations can’t be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the “many-worlds” interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the ‘multiverse’). There are an infinite number of universes and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them.

Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. When we die, we do so not in the random billiard-ball-matrix but in the inescapable-life-matrix. Life has a non-linear dimensionality – it’s like a perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse.

“The influences of the senses,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson “has in most men overpowered the mind to the degree that the walls of space and time have come to look solid, real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits in the world is the sign of insanity.”

Zoologger: The Fish With Its Genitals On Its Head

Species: Phallostethus cuulong
Habitat: surface waters of the Mekong River in Vietnam

The male fish, a Phallostethus cuulong just 2 centimetres long, weaves between drifting vegetation in the sluggish waters of a canal. He closes in on a female, swims alongside her and tries to mate with her. But to an outside observer, he seems to be doing it wrong. His head is right next to the female's, but he's at a 45-degree angle so his rear end is well below hers. Sounds misguided, but actually he's doing it exactly right – it's just that his gonads are on his head.

This is the challenge faced by all priapiumfish, a little-known group of Asian fish that have their reproductive organs on their chins, just behind their mouths. How does this Cronenbergian arrangement work?

With New Nicotine Vaccine, Cigarettes Give You No Pleasure

Nicotine addiction is a hard habit to break. But what if you could never get hooked in the first place? Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York report in the journal Science Translational Medicine that they have developed a potential vaccine for nicotine addiction. In mice, the vaccine inhibits the effects of nicotine before they reach the heart or brain, making it seem as though the nicotine never entered the bloodstream.

The vaccine works by using the liver to churn out a steady flow of antibodies that destroy nicotine as it enters the bloodstream, before it can make the circulatory loop to the brain and the heart. Previous therapies have proven effective at doing this, but they have to be administered on a regular basis. In mice, one dose of the vaccine activated the antibody-producing function in the liver for life.

That raises the possibility of a single vaccination, introduced to a person once in his or her lifetime, that would free that person from nicotine’s addictive qualities for life. That person could still choose to enjoy a cigarette for the sheer pleasure of sucking sweet, sweet tarred tobacco smoke into his or her lungs, but the capacity for addiction would be muted. It could also be used to treat smokers who have exhausted other quitting aids.

Space Helps Worms Live Longer--What About Humans?

 

Getting to space is a tough enough prospect, and even once you make it out of our atmosphere, there are still physical issues. Chief among them: a long flight can cause a loss of bone and muscle mass. To find ways to combat that process, researchers study C. elegans, worms that have a surprising amount in common with humans. But a recent study noticed a strange side effect for space-bound worms: they lived longer.Scientists from The University of Nottingham discovered that spaceflight suppressed accumulations of toxic proteins that tend to build up in aging muscle, and that another group of genes expressed themselves at lower levels in space. Using worms back on Earth, they lowered the expression of the same genes, and voila: the worms enjoyed a longer lifespan.

It's not entirely clear how these genes contribute to aging, but researchers think it might have something to do with metabolic processes. For example, a gene that encodes insulin, which is associated with metabolic control, was found in the set of expressed genes.This might mean that muscles shrinking in space is more of a natural response than we thought--or even, researchers suggest, that space is somehow just easier on aging. But it'll take a lot more research before we can name space the 21st Century Fountain Of Youth.

Global Warming Shrinking Plant Leaves

Warming temperatures are turning a native Australian shrub into a mini version of itself, revealing the effect climate change is already having on the globe.Researchers from the University of Adelaide examined specimens of narrow-leaf hopbush (Dodonaea viscosa, subspecies angustissima), a woody shrub with papery red seed capsules that were used by early Australian colonists to brew beer. They found that between the 1880s and the present, leaves have narrowed by an average of 0.08 inches (2 millimeters).

"Climate change is often discussed in terms of future impacts, but changes in temperature over recent decades have already been ecologically significant," study researcher Greg Guerin, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Adelaide, said in a statement. "Climate change is driving adaptive shifts within plant species and leaf shape has demonstrated adaptive significance in relation to climate."

Deduction Method

              Deduction means the withdrawal of state general conclusions or findings of the common special. Deduction method will prove a new truth of truths derived from existing and previously known (continuous). Deduction method commonly used in math to make the derivatives of the formula is much simpler.

                Deduction is also used as part of the investigation process, such as the police in the forensic and detective solving cases by requiring evidence of unusual. Fictitious example using the method of deduction in the life of a good detective played by Sherlock Holmes in any event.

Philosophy of Science

Working scientists usually take for granted a set of basic assumptions that are needed to justify a scientific method: (1) that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers; (2) that this objective reality is governed by natural laws; (3) that these laws can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation. Philosophy of science seeks a deep understanding of what these underlying assumptions mean and whether they are valid. Most contributions to the philosophy of science have come from philosophers, who frequently view the beliefs of most scientists as superficial or naive—thus there is often a degree of antagonism between working scientists and philosophers of science.

 

John Locke

The belief that all observers share a common reality is known as realism. It can be contrasted with anti-realism, the belief that there is no valid concept of absolute truth such that things that are true for one observer are true for all observers. The most commonly defended form of anti-realism is idealism, the belief that the mind or spirit is the most basic essence, and that each mind generates its own reality^. In an idealistic world-view, what is true for one mind need not be true for other minds.

There are different schools of thought in philosophy of science. The most popular position is empiricism, which claims that knowledge is created by a process involving observation and that scientific theories are the result of generalizations from such observations. Empiricism generally encompasses inductivism, a position that tries to explain the way general theories can be justified by the finite number of observations humans can make and the hence finite amount of empirical evidence available to confirm scientific theories. This is necessary because the number of predictions those theories make is infinite, which means that they cannot be known from the finite amount of evidence using deductive logic only. Many versions of empiricism exist, with the predominant ones being bayesianism and the hypothetico-deductive method.

Empiricism has stood in contrast to rationalism, the position originally associated with Descartes, which holds that knowledge is created by the human intellect, not by observation. A significant twentieth century version of rationalism is critical rationalism, first defined by Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper. Popper rejected the way that empiricism describes the connection between theory and observation. He claimed that theories are not generated by observation, but that observation is made in the light of theories and that the only way a theory can be affected by observation is when it comes in conflict with it. Popper proposed falsifiability as the landmark of scientific theories, and falsification as the empirical method, to replace verifiability and induction by purely deductive notions. Popper further claimed that there is actually only one universal method, and that this method is not specific to science: The negative method of criticism, trial and error. It covers all products of the human mind, including science, mathematics, philosophy, and art

Another approach, instrumentalism, colloquially termed "shut up and calculate", emphasizes the utility of theories as instruments for explaining and predicting phenomena. It claims that scientific theories are black boxes with only their input (initial conditions) and output (predictions) being relevant. Consequences, notions and logical structure of the theories are claimed to be something that should simply be ignored and that scientists shouldn't make a fuss about (see interpretations of quantum mechanics).

Finally, another approach often cited in debates of scientific skepticism against controversial movements like "scientific creationism", is methodological naturalism. Its main point is that a difference between natural and supernatural explanations should be made, and that science should be restricted methodologically to natural explanations. That the restriction is merely methodological (rather than ontological) means that science should not consider supernatural explanations itself, but should not claim them to be wrong either. Instead, supernatural explanations should be left a matter of personal belief outside the scope of science. Methodological naturalism maintains that proper science requires strict adherence to empirical study and independent verification as a process for properly developing and evaluating explanations for observable phenomena. The absence of these standards, arguments from authority, biased observational studies and other common fallacies are frequently cited by supporters of methodological naturalism as criteria for the dubious claims they criticize not to be true science.

History of Science

Science in a broad sense existed before the modern era, and in many historical civilizations, but modern science is so distinct in its approach and successful in its results that it now defines what science is in the strictest sense of the term. Much earlier than the modern era, another important turning point was the development of the classical natural philosophy in the ancient Greek-speaking world.