Top 5 Greatest Scientists of All Time

         

             Hello again my science brothers and sisters! Today I will be sharing with you what I think are the top 5 scientist who were the most influential throughout history. 

5. Marie Curie 

            Marie Curie is a French-Polish chemist and physicist. She became known for many things, one of them is being the first woman to win a Noble Prize and the only women to win a Nobel Prize in two different categories, she won them in physics and chemistry. She is also know for her work with radiation and it's uses for imaging, she can be credited to being the mother of the X-ray. She also discovered two elements, polonium and radium, she suffered a lot of radiation poisoning due to all of her work with radiation and eventually developed aplastic anemia, which causes a deficiency in blood cells. She was so radioactive that even today her papers and things like her work books are considered dangerous to handle and are kept in lead-lined boxes. 

4. Louis Pasteur

        was a French chemist, biologist, and microbiologist known for is discoveries of the principles of vaccination, fermentation, and pasteurization. He is often known for his work with the germ theory, and bacteria, Pasteur undertook the task of finding out where bacteria came from through experiments and was able to prove that the bacteria was coming from the environment around us. Pasteur was able to extend his theories of germs and bacteria to explain how tiny organisms could kill large organisms like humans, and he linked many common diseases at the time like anthrax, cholera, and smallpox to his theory of germs, and was able to produce vaccines to help prevent further spread.

3. Charles Darwin

         Charles Darwin was the creator of the theory of evolution, and changed how we view biology and science as a total. His ideas of the origin of species based on mutation and the survival of the fittest was at first very controversial because it linked humans to being animals and that they may have evolved to where they were. This was contradictory to the idea that humans and all animals on Earth but his theory of evolution over the years has gained respect and is now viewed as the true history. 

2. Alan Turing 

             Alan Turing was an English mathematician, logician, and computer scientist, he is often regarded as the father of computer science. He was a huge part in the development of computer science, helping with the concepts of algorithms and computation in programming. He started out deciphering encrypted German messages during World War II, getting very important information for the allies. 

1. Albert Einstein

        You might have guessed it but I just couldn't not give the first place to Albert Einstein. He was a German-born physicist, who helped pave the way to modern theoretical physics along with quantum mechanics. He also produced one of the most iconic physics equations ever, E = mc². He is viewed as one of the most influential scientist of all time by almost everyone and is the face and name of genius.

Curiosity Rover Makes Water Discovery

Curiosity Finds Water On Mars

           Welcome back my science brothers and sisters, today I come to you with an exciting new story. The Mars Rover Curiosity has found water in Mars soil, it is to the amount of two percent water by weight. "That means astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints (1 liter of water out of every cubic foot (0.03 cubic meters) of Martian dirt they dig up," said study lead author Laurie Leshin, of Renselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Scientists have known for awhile that the red planet was previously habitable and very likely contained water, the amazing thing is that we have actually found water on the surface of Mars helping to verify this statement and tell us that there is still a chance for microbial life. Curiosity made this discovery in the Yellowknife Bay, a spot near where it landed, however it took awhile to reach the Yellowknife Bay due to other important tasks that came before in-depth soil analysis.
            The Curiosity took samples of martian soil, then heated the soil to a temperature of 1,535 degrees Fahrenheit, and then it would examine the gases that evaporated out of the martian soil. The rover found that the soil contained large amounts of carbon dioxide, oxygen, normal water, and sulfur compounds, along with lots of "heavy water." Heavy water is water that contains heavy hydrogen atoms of deuterium. Deuterium is an isotope for hydrogen and it contains a proton and a neutron while normal hydrogen contains one proton and no neutrons. Heavy water can occur on our home planet of earth, although it is found much less commonly than regular water, at a rate of about one in every twenty million water molecules are heavy. Deuterium can also be found in the martian atmosphere, allowing us to deduce that the martian soil was acting as a sort of sponge and absorbing the deuterium in the air. Although this may seem like amazing news heavy water is not consumable and may cause death if someone was to consume it. Deuterium however can be used for fusion energy in the future as we have yet to create a deuterium power generator that creates a net gain of energy, however in the future we could hope to harness the energy of deuterium.
          What does this all mean? I personally believe that this supplies us with hope that we can live on mars more realistically then possible before. We could find a way to safely extract the water from the soil while avoid the perchlorate that litters the soil (which is very bad for humans), this would allow extended stays to Mars. While this doesn't directly correlate to a higher chance of their to be life on Mars, I personally feel that this really helps the chances.
         

My Personal Top 5 Awesome Animals

Hello my Science Brothers! Today I will be sharing with you what I think are the 5 coolest animals alive. This list will show some of the extremes in the animals kingdom because I personally believe that is what makes an animals truly cool. 

5. Aye Aye

            The aye aye is a really unique primate, it is on the smaller side as lemurs go and it has a very unique way of finding and gathering food. The Aye Aye has a seriously long and very thin middle finger that they tap on a tree with to listen to the sound and look for hollow holes burrowed in trees likely to contain nice juicy grubs. The aye aye will then reach its long middle finger down the hollow hole to hook the grub out and eat it. The aye aye are very freaky but are also extremely awesome so they make it in on the list at number five. I really recommend you watch this short video about the aye aye and you will surely not forget about it!

4. Basking Shark

 The basking shark is the second largest living fish, coming in right behind the whale shark, and it is one of the three plankton eating sharks, so you don't have to fear them eating you however they are quite scary! Basking sharks are very slow swimmers and are listed as vulnerable due to easily being able to fish them. Basking sharks feed on plankton by opening their mouths to enormous sizes to filter the water and eat plankton. They evolved these huge mouths so that they can take in enough nutrients to support their huge body, sharks are one of my favorite types of animals and basking sharks are just amazingly cool. 

3.  Cuckoo

Cuckoos are known for their relation for their relations with reed warblers. When a reed warbler makes a nest for its eggs, the cuckoo will then at a later time when the warbler is away it will lay its egg in the nest. The warbler does not notice the difference between the cuckoo egg and its egg so therefore it incubates the egg until it hatches. The cuckoo will then hatch before all the warbler babies, and will push remaining eggs off then nest. The warbler then ends up feeding this massive cuckoo chick that is way bigger than it despite being newly hatched.

2. Narwhal

Narwhals are a unique animal, they are the closest thing we will get to unicorns that is found in nature, they are a medium sized toothed whale that has its upper left canine jut out of its face looking like a horn. Yes, its often misunderstood that narwhals are actually horned animals, while it is just an elongated spiral tusks found only in male narwhals. But alas narwhals are still very awesome and earn their spot at number two in my list. 

1. Sun Bear

Sun bears are my favorite animal, they are the smallest bear, nicknames the "dog bear" for its small size, they however take a up a big place in my heart. They are also commonly referred to as "honey bears" due to their voracious appetite for honey and honeycombs. Sun bears are easily recognized with their black fur and their crescent shaped pale fur on their chest and muzzle. They however can be mixed up with Sloth bears who have a similar marking on their chest, however sun bears are much cooler because they don't have that doofus mane Sun bears are just awesome they are smart, cool, and super cute as babies. They automatically win first place for being not only my favorite animal but also being super cool.

Smaller Animals Perceive Time Slower

Smaller Animals Perceive Time Slower

           Hello my Science Brothers! Today I will be showing you about a new study that links body size and metabolism to how animals perceive time. As you can see in this figure, larger animals do not notice as much detail as the smaller animals. For example the owl only see the general movements of the chipmunk, while the chipmunks see each others movement at a finer detail. This allows for smaller animals to react to their ever changing environment faster than their predators can react to their environment. I believe this has to do with evolution and that animals that can perceive things slower than others had a higher chance of living compared to other species that are not able to perceive things slower. 

          This study used a wide range of vertebrates to collect their data, they found as body size goes up, time perception goes down and while, metabolism goes up, so does time perception. They measured their perception using a thing called critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF) which is where you use something like a light to see how organisms perceive time. Often they will use a blinking light at different intervals til an animal can no longer perceive the light as no longer blinking. What the study found is that as the animals became larger the faster they would see the light as not blinking. I'm not exactly sure how they would know when the animals would no longer be able to perceive the light as no longer blinking but they were able to somehow, most likely through using neuronal waves in the animals optic lobe.
        I talked about how smaller animals are influenced positively by their small sized, but I didn't really touch on the influence of size and how it influences larger animals. While the team of researchers was mainly focused on vertebrates they did do some studies on non-vertebrates, one of them was a deep-sea isotope, the larger under-water cousin of the woodlouse, it showed a surprisingly slow time perception at four blinks a second it still saw the light as being constant. Other animals like elephants can barely notice anything due to them having no real natural predators they can afford to see things faster with their long life-line and tough skin, they also don't have to worry about their "prey" running away from him.
      What does this mean you might ask, why is this important? Personally I believe it helps explain a lot of things that we were before unsure about, like why can't I ever kill that fly that has been annoying me! It answers that question by saying that a housefly has the ability to react 4 times as fast as I can due to perceiving time at a much slower rate. This means that there is some truth to "dog-years" animals perceive time at different intervals, so therefore their lifetime can seem to be a similar length. This has been another Brother Science Man report!
                                                                                       
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347213003060

Gear Discovered in Nature

The First Mechanical Gear Found in a Living Creature

The Issus Nymph, part of the Issus genus a group small flightless bug living on phloem, phloem is the living tissue found in plant stems that carries organic nutrients, and is classified as a nymph which consists of insects that undergo a gradual metamorphosis and never enters a pupal stage. The Issus Nymph has tiny interlocking teeth that help to propel it when it jumps at very high speeds. In two milliseconds the Issus Nymph has rocketed skywards accelerating at near to 400 g's, a rate that is more than 20 times the force that a human a withstand . It travels at a speed of 8 miles per hour which is very impressive considering that its body is less than a tenth of an inch. Therefore the Issus once dissected you can find the innards of this insect sort of seat-belted to their exoskeleton. The miniature insect is a adolescent Issus that is a plant-hopper insect that is one of the fastest accelerating organisms. "Jumping is one of the most rapid and powerful things an animal can do" says Malcolm Burrows, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge and the lead author of the paper, "and that leads to all sorts of crazy specializations." The researchers are lead to believe that the Issus Nymph which lives chiefly on European climbing ivy evolved the their gear mechanisms through needing to flee precarious situations. Although they are not sure what exactly what the Issus Nymph was jumping from to evolve the mechanical gear, they could be jumping from paralyzing wasps, birds, or even careless animals eating plants that they are on. The matter of fact however is constant need to be faster and faster to survive and the Issus Nymph is making an interesting step forward in the race.

As an animal wants to jump, both legs need to move simultaneously, so that you don's spiral uncontrollably out of control. Most animals use their nervous system to keep their legs in sync when pushing off to jump. But for the Issus, their legs actually can out-speed their nervous systems. By the time the Issus has sent a signal from its legs to its brain and back, which take about 5 or 6 milliseconds, the jump has already been engaged. Instead, the gears, which engage before the jump, let the Issus Nymph lock its legs together synchronizing their movements to a precision of 1/300,000 of a second. The gear that is found in the legs of the Issus is interesting in itself its not like a regular gear that you would find, it has crescent shaped teeth that are a unique design not seen normally. However the interesting thing is that the gear is not found in the final metamorphosis, this is believed to be in case one of the teeth were to be broken off the jumping ability of the Issus Nymph wouldn't been permanently hindered.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/the-first-gear-discovered-in-nature-15916433?click=pm_latest

Wealth Research Breakthrough

Monkeys Have a Primitive Form of Wealth

Dr. Agnieszka Tymula and a team of researchers from the Sydney School of Economics conducted a research on the behavior of wealthier macaques compared to the more poor counterparts. They discovered a non-pecuniary measure of wealth through the amount of water intake a macaque had, the more water that they had, the wealthier they were. While not a direct currency the relation between those who have and those who don't can be seen. The team found that in more affluent macaques there was a positive correlation in the amount of risks that they took. This same behavior can be found in humans suggesting that there is an evolutionary link between the attitude of the  macaques and humans. "Understanding the biological mechanisms underlying risky behaviours that evolved around satiety may provide unique insights about decision-making and consumption wealth," says Tymula. Macaques are very rational, they are able to pick a better option from a selection and if there is another option that is more beneficial they will choose that option instead. Saying that when gambling for water, the macaques with a higher amount of water intake were taking more risks and choosing an option that would give a 50/50 chance to get twice the amount of water or none. While the macaques with less water intake were taking fewer risks and choosing the option to just get a set amount of water guaranteed and avoided uncertainty in their decision making. Studies in the past on how wealth effects decision making were somewhat inconclusive due to difficulties in the humans reporting in data and difficulty simulating varying wealth. This new study reveals that macaques are a good model for the human decision making mentality, allowing us to get better results in a more controlled environment.

 http://phys.org/news/2013-09-monkey-business-primitive-wealth.html

New Discoveries About Earth

Earth's Widest Volcano Found Underwater

A 650 kilometer-wide volcano is found beneath the waters of the northwest Pacific Ocean by geophysicists the width of the volcano is about 7108 football fields. This mega volcano has been dormant for the past 140 million years. This shows that the Earth can support larger amounts of magma than previously thought, it also is setting records in the universe, passing up the previous record holder Olympus Mons located on Mars being 625 km wide. While not as tall as Olympus Mons it is similar to other volcanoes found on Mars giving us some more easily accessible way to study these monsters. The Tamu Massif has been previously known as being a part of the three mountains that make up the underground mountain range called the Shasky Rise. The mountains are found to the east of Japan and are approximately 1500 km wide and are formed near a junction in the tectonic plates.

The Volcano had originally been thought to be multiple volcanoes all contributing to the large solidified lava mass that is Tamu Massif. The Islands of Hawaii and Iceland were created this same way. William Sager, a marine biologist, and his colleagues used an air gun to send seismic waves to the volcano and and monitored the reflections. The team was shocked to find out that there was a central lava vent meaning that this previously thought underwater mountain had become the widest volcano in the universe. "From whatever angle you look at it, the lava flows appear to com from the centre of this thing," says Sager. What I found most fascinating is that we knew about the huge volcano on the surface of Mars before we knew about this huge volcano here on Earth.

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-monster-volcano-biggest-solar.html

Otters: Cute Little Climate Warriors

Otters are being revealed as being a very crucial animal to Earth's ecosystem, otters have positive effects on sea grass population. Why is sea grass so important? Well, sea grass absorbs carbon dioxide in the air and in our water helping to lower the impact of climate change, it also acts as a sanctuary for fish to breed in helping protect stability of ecosystems. This discovery was found after PNAS reintroduced sea otters to the Elkhorn Slough in Monterey Bay, the otters had been hunted to near-extinction during the late 1800's and the 1900's, the otters had a very good impact on the populations of sea grass in the nutrient-rich water. Otters help increase the population of sea grass through eating the crabs that would be normally feasting on the sea grass which allows the sea grass to then flourish. A similar study was completed but with kelp forests, the otters would eat the sea urchins, which can be known to destroy kelp forest, then allowing kelp to grow freely and reduce carbon dioxide from the water and air. Scientist also removed otters from the ecosystem to truly test if it them impacting the increase in carbon dioxide reducing plant life and indeed when the otters were removed the amount of carbon dioxide reducing plants plummeted. Otter populations are not only being directly reduced by humans but also indirectly through killer whales now hunting sea otters. This is believed to be caused by whaling after WWII where populations of baleen whales, killer whales usual food source, plummeted leaving killer whales to search for a new source of food. Otters are a keystone species as well as as umbrella species, that means that they are a key point in  the ecosystem and they also help through being an target to protect which then protects all the other species in the ecosystem. Otters can truly be a turning point for climate change, with a face that's easy to get behind they can help to change the world.

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/are-sea-otters-the-planets-climate-warriors/

Introducing Brother Science Man

Hello my science brothers and sisters, you can call me Science Brother Man, I am a 16 year old AP Language and Composition student writing this blog as a year long project. I am choosing to blog about science, and all things science related, this is includes but is not limited to: new scientific discoveries, historical scientific discoveries in the past, important scientific related items that you use everyday, and important scientist throughout time. I chose science as a subject because I loved science since I was a child and have always been curious about how things worked. The world its self around us is just awe-inspiring, as you read this the Earth is traveling 66,000 mph and rotating at approximately 1,000 mph. Science answers the tough questions and delves into the unknown mysteries of the world. I feel like I can talk forever about science, there is just so much that we can still learn about new things are being discovered everyday while we can still learn from the long history, stemming all the way back to finding out that the moon is responsible for the tides. I hope you enjoy reading my science blog throughout the year as I update you on all things science related!