Color Blind

    The eyes are one of the hardest working body parts. Vision is really important to our everyday life. That's why it stinks when the eyes are doing what they are supposed to.

    When you see things its actually just light bouncing off of objects and sending the colors and shape back to your eyes. Your eye's retina has little rods and cones that process the colors that it sees. Color is determined by the wave length of light. The cone cells are categorized into three groups. The L-cone detects long wavelength light. The M-cone detects medium wavelength light. The S-cone detects short wavelength light. 

    When your color blind it means that one or more of the cone cells are inactive or has limited sensitivity. The most common form of color blindness is congenital(hereditary) red green color blindness. It means the "L" or "M" cones are damaged or inactive. There is many different kinds. You can find out more on www.colour-blindness.com/general/how-it-works-science/.

    The visible spectrum is very limited. There is a lot we cannot see with our eyes.

    The company Enchroma has made glasses that help color blind people see colors that they couldn't see before. This technology could help people with certain forms of color blindness and even in the future simulate the job of the eye to cure blindness. The topic of light is so large that I could write about it for hours. Maybe in the future I will expand upon this topic.

7 New Exoplanets || News on These Possible Habitats

This is breaking news straight from the solar system orbiting the star Trappist 1. The Earth scientists have discovered 7 of our planets. A few of these planets are in the habitable zone were it isn't to cold or to hot and liquid water can exist. The Earthling call this the Goldilocks Zone. It seems to be named after a Earth myth about a female human child that breaks into a families house. Very interesting indeed. 

Jokes aside, the Hubble Space Telescope and some more terrestrial telescopes across America and Europe are observing the 7 earth sized planets that orbit the dwarf star of Trappist 1. They are all possible habits but there a few that could in fact hold life. Aliens don't have to be little green men with ray guns. Most likely the first alien life found will be a plant or small bacteria colony. The Drake Equation is an equation proposed by a radio astronomer, Frank Drake, in 1961. The equation is usually written like this.

Sadly not all these variables are known yet. The great expanse of space is so great. It is just too big for us to be alone. And like the great Stephen Hawking once said, "I believe that the long term future of the human race must be space and that it represents an important life insurance for our future survival, as it could prevent the disappearance of humanity by colonising other planets."

Slow Time || Angular Momentum

    An iconic scene from the Superman films is when he flies counter clockwise around earth and effectively turns back time. While most people will say this is fake. They are completely right. You really can't. This may not be true but there is a close second. 
    The topic of angular momentum is a very well know concept in physics. The definition of angular momentum is the quantity of rotation of a body, witch is the product of its moment of inertia and its angular velocity. The equation of Angular momentum is "L=iw". L is the angular momentum, I is the point of inertia, and w is its angular velocity. 
    Earth has angular momentum. The Earth rotates at an angular velocity of 7.2921159×10⁻⁵ radians/seconds. Using this and earths moment of inertia we can figure out its angular momentum.

    The point of this math and long formulas is because there questioning about the Earth and how spinning counter clockwise robs it of its angular momentum. In theory this is true but to actually have a measurable effect on the planet you would have to spin at 4,000 rpm. This is very unreasonable when looking at the numbers but the concept was to cool to go unrecognized. For the few people who pass by this blog, just remember this if there is something or someone that you want to spend more time with, spin counter clockwise and rob time from Earth itself to gain a fraction of a second.

What If? || Its a Book!

    When you create a blog with blogger.com, they allow you to choose a custom URL. When I tried to look up my own blog I found something very interesting. 
    The popular web comic xkcd is a comic made by Randall Munroe. He is an ex-NASA scientist with a degree in physics. His comics are based mainly on science. It also seems that he wrote a book called "What If?" I didn't know about the book and it is ironic that that is what my blog is about. I bought the book and enjoyed every second of it. I highly recommend it. It is all about hypothetical questions he answers with research and science.(sound familiar?)

https://xkcd.com/    


    This man is my new role model. He is an esteemed scientist. He has an asteroid named after him (4942 Munroe)! He also makes comics for a living. I have to admit that I envy his lifestyle. He is a very comedic person and I highly recommend his book.

Liquid Oxygen || Can You Breath It

    My father and I were watching the show Pure Genius which is a show about futuristic medical technology in a real world hospital environment. What makes the show interesting is that they use actual technology that is either in testing or in use in the real world. 
    One of the recent episodes featured a mother that was struggling with a baby and an unhealthy addiction. The symptoms of her addiction had affected her baby and led to a premature birth. They lowered the baby into a vat and the chemicals and liquids simulated the effects of a womb and allowed the baby to develop properly. My dad later asked what had to be in the vat to simulate the effects of a womb?

    My first thought was the vat was filled with liquid oxygen. Oxygen can be changed into different forms of matter. When oxygen is cooled to -183 degrees Celsius it becomes a liquid. Sadly with more research on Wikipedia, I found that breathing liquid oxygen is not a good idea.

    But maybe the substance wan't oxygen. In the science fiction movie, The Abyss, you can see the character played by Ed Harris Using an oxygen-rich liquid to prevent his lungs from collapsing. This technique is known as saturation diving. I used research from gizmodo.com and found that the liquid is a perfluorocarbon. It is a liquid with low surface tension and a high O2 capacity. I have concluded that this was the liquid used on the show.