There has recently been lots of hysterical commentary linking thimerosal, a mercury-based ingredient in childhood vaccines, with the increase in incidents of childhood autism. Robert Kennedy Jr. and Imus (in the Morning) have been two of the more vocal of these maniacal accusers. But, working against this frenzy have been numerous scientific studies pooh-poohing such a relationship. (See the NY Times Article published today.) To me, there are two possible explanations for this autism phenomenon: 1) The increased incidents of childhood autism are a function of our increased sensitivity to the symptoms of this malady (and the increased services offered to autism sufferers) and/or 2) some environmental substance that seems to be disturbing the genetic construction of these autistic children … possibly through their parents. Now, if this substance is not thimerosal, what chemicals are now so rife that they might be candidates for such genetic disturbance? Two candidates come immediately to mind – alcohol and designer drugs. However, alcohol has been around for eons whereas the increased popularity of designer drugs seems to coincide much more closely with the perceived growth of childhood autism.
How should we go about proving or debunking such a relationship? First, we must get around the political incorrectness of such a theory. Second, we need to probe the incidents of childhood autism in developed countries where designer drug use is much lower than in the United States (if there are any) to see if such a relationship might exist. And finally, if the previous results suggest, we need to investigate the history of designer drug use by the parents of autistic children and then perform statistical relationships between each of these drug-use patterns and the possible autism among their issue.
I think that such a study is very much worth the social disruption that it might cause. After all, our children are our future.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Hole in One
Astronomers Find Huge Hole in Universe
By SETH BORENSTEIN,
AP (Aug. 24) - Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's a giant expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday. Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody's home. In fact, one such place is practically a neighbor, a mere 2 million light years away. But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, is a void that's far bigger than scientists ever imagined.
"This is 1,000 times the volume of what we sort of expected to see in terms of a typical void," said Minnesota astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick, author of the paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal. "It's not clear that we have the right word yet ... This is too much of a surprise."
Never daunted by the lack of scientific credentials, I offer these possible explanations for this hole in our universe:
1) I know that the accepted astronomical paradigm for the universe is likening it to the edge of an expanding balloon with no real “center.” But isn’t it possible that this hole is, in fact, the locus of the big bang? In others words, the big bang obviously threw enormous amounts of fundamental matter out from some point in space. Could it not be that this hole is due to such a vacating of the universe’s “Garden of Eden”?
2) We generally know and somewhat understand black holes … spots of enormous gravity that suck everything back down into their centers … even light. Could it not be that black holes have an antithesis, or white holes? And that such white holes in space are filled with anti-gravity (anti-gravitons?) that push all matter away?
3) We have all read in science fiction about worm holes – connections to other universes or other time-space continuums. Could not this (these?) vacuum of space be a portal to such a worm hole?
4) Is it possible that there was a spot (or spots) in our nursery universe where matter and antimatter existed in roughly equal quantities … and that these dipoles, early-on, annulated one another to leave a great nothingness?
By SETH BORENSTEIN,
AP (Aug. 24) - Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's a giant expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday. Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody's home. In fact, one such place is practically a neighbor, a mere 2 million light years away. But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, is a void that's far bigger than scientists ever imagined.
"This is 1,000 times the volume of what we sort of expected to see in terms of a typical void," said Minnesota astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick, author of the paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal. "It's not clear that we have the right word yet ... This is too much of a surprise."
Never daunted by the lack of scientific credentials, I offer these possible explanations for this hole in our universe:
1) I know that the accepted astronomical paradigm for the universe is likening it to the edge of an expanding balloon with no real “center.” But isn’t it possible that this hole is, in fact, the locus of the big bang? In others words, the big bang obviously threw enormous amounts of fundamental matter out from some point in space. Could it not be that this hole is due to such a vacating of the universe’s “Garden of Eden”?
2) We generally know and somewhat understand black holes … spots of enormous gravity that suck everything back down into their centers … even light. Could it not be that black holes have an antithesis, or white holes? And that such white holes in space are filled with anti-gravity (anti-gravitons?) that push all matter away?
3) We have all read in science fiction about worm holes – connections to other universes or other time-space continuums. Could not this (these?) vacuum of space be a portal to such a worm hole?
4) Is it possible that there was a spot (or spots) in our nursery universe where matter and antimatter existed in roughly equal quantities … and that these dipoles, early-on, annulated one another to leave a great nothingness?
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