Why Birds Can Fly over Mount Everest
nautil.us
nautil.us
But... viably teaching the tapestry, may require a much lower prevalence of misconception, and lack of insight, among teachers and texts. And creating such content, insightful and correct, is hard. Really really hard. As illustrated by the many newspaper-like "err, no, that's not quite right" errata of the OP story.
Which is one reason why sci-hub seems to me so very important (apropos a recent HN discussion). My experience is it's not even close to possible, to write such correct and insightful stories, without extensive use of the primary research literature across multiple fields. Creating such stories is already very poorly incentivized. And an awesome timesink, even by the already daunting standards of writing a book. Open access is increasingly wonderful, but only sci-hub holds at bay, for now, the additional filter of potential authors having to be simultaneously actively affiliated with a research university, and having copious free time. Without sci-hub, we're back to professors emeriti being the primary pool of potential authors.
VR/AR is a wonderful medium for storytelling. Perhaps we can use it as an excuse to begin creating wonderful stories. But it seems a nontrivial societal challenge.
This is why people like James Burke ("Connections" and other documentaries) are so important.
They can do this. But this takes funding from somewhere. And it's not going to make a profit.
But it will make for a better society.
Their comment was they'd love to do that, and would... just as soon as someone was willing to pay for it.
That's exactly what First Nations people all around the world have been doing for about 200,000 years!
Which I guess still overlaps. Hmm. Maybe a key difference is in one, stories are authoritative, and in the other, the sciences are authoritative, and the stories are educational artifact and subordinate to them. One failure mode in current science education content, is content "stories" that have taken on a life of their own, decoupled from or even conflicting with, the actual science. Hmm. Tapestry of connections vs tapestry of stories?
I was thinking more of stories vaguely like "Sticky strings play a large role in cellular microbiology. They stick and unstick at energies barely above thermal noise. Lower energy, would have them shaking apart too easily. Higher, would make unsticking too expensive and slow. So we refrigerate our food, so the bacteria in it slow down. And we cook our food, so bacteria's sticky strings are shaken apart."
Determining that one can correctly (I think?) say "slow down", rather than reality and the story being something else, like the speed doesn't change, but below some temperature some activities are turned off, regrettably requires going to primary literature. Because the odds of finding that precise issue, clearly addressed, with any hope of correctness, is elsewhere low.
For educational games, it are mainly the students themselves that make them (see https://rpgplayground.com/educational-games/). But storytelling is indeed the most important part of it all.
I think that with the right story and game interactions, you can make a game where the player can only progress by learning something and applying that knowledge. Very interesting indeed, especially since remote learning will become more important in the future.
I think in most western countries, the vast majority of actual teachers get very little say in what's taught - the content or the sequence - or how the streams are sub-divided.
The massive inertia of the education sector is not the fault of the people standing in front of the students.
I’m sure when dinosaurs were dealing with 12% oxygen they had developed adaptations to handle it. Special hemoglobins, etc. Whatever that is, is the real reason. The efficient air sac-lung system is better at explaining how they ventilate well and deal with high winds.
They basically have the ability to pull in oxygen at an order of magnitude greater ppm than hemoglobin based mammals...
But their metabolism requires a really high sugar intake constantly.
But their speed and endurance is stunning, some humming birds migrate btwn north and south america....
They are also fiercely territorial - ive witnessed two fight literally two feet from me - attacking and pecking at eachother, with the loser of the battle falling on the ground... (whom i picked up and brought him to bart in an uber i was catching - he woke up and escaped my grip and i was in an uber with a hummingbird flying around... ill never forget that experience, the driver loved it)
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/super-hummingbirds-full-epis...
“Humming birds have the highest metabolic rates of any invertebrates”
Checked the transcript. Luckily, it says vertebrates :-)
https://shop.pbs.org/nature-super-hummingbirds-dvd/product/N...
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology
Dinosaurs never had to deal with 12% oxygen. Also, mammals' ancestors roamed the Earth together with dinosaurs, so they would have developed a similar adaptation if your hypothesis was true.
> MC: We think there is a dangerous situation developing, because oxygen levels have gotten higher every year and they might now be at 35 percent.
> Mr. R&D: So?
> MC: With indigestible lignin, there is nothing to keep it from continuing to go up.
This part is misleading. Evolution has no capacity to look ahead to future disasters (as the mass extinction later demonstrates). I understand that lignin digestion was evolved for the same reason we burn coal - a hitherto untapped source of engergy.
On the other hand, let me introduce a wild hypothesis: There are millions of planets out there just like Earth, except that microorganisms there never got around to digesting lignin. Deadwood and oxygen piled up on the ground and in the atmosphere respectively, until an epic fire decimated the biosphere, and only microscopic ocean life remained, if as much. The oldest such planets light up every billion years or so. The cycle is too short for complex life to get intelligent. This process is The Great Filter [1]. Earth is the only exception.
If that's true, than Mr. R&D did care a lot about future disasters.
I think the author admits that this is tongue-in-cheek style like the short fables on how camels got their hump.
The reason for mega flora and fauna (really large animals and plants) was due to a much higher % of oxygen in the atmosphere....
However, on the conspiracy spectrum, there was this russian kid who supposedly channeled living previously on mars who states that they had really really long life spans, but it is the fact that life on earth consumes much more oxygen, and it is oxygen that reduces overall life span - which is interesting when rated to vedic ancient books which talk of lives being ~900 years plus....
Only idiots downvote without comment...
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So the documentary i linked to states that hummingbirds have developed a hemoglobin that absorbs oxygen at even 6% which is the same as 40,000 feet - as compared to 21% at sea level....
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/super-hummingbirds-full-epis...
edit: I had assumed that the Himalayas grew gradually over 50 million years, but it turns out that the current growth rate is way too fast for that. It would take less than a million years to reach the current height. There must have been regular apocalyptic landslides in the geological history of the Himalayas to limit the height of the mountains?
Gravitational potential energy becomes sufficient to pay for rock deformation. As with toothpaste, when a pile gets sufficiently high, the bottom plastically deforms until it isn't. For a higher mountain range, you need a lower-G planet, like Mars.
Hence my assumption that the process of the mountains growing must be reset in a catastrophic manner from time to time. I guess the stresses build up somewhere until an apocalyptic earthquake happens that takes down entire mountains, rather than a gradual toothpaste-like deformation.
EDIT: Gravitational deformation creates a maximum bound near Himalayan height. But actual height below that is apparently a mix of tectonic support from the sides, above-snowline erosion, and boat floating on mantle.[2]
[1] https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/himalaya.html [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01601-4 Sci-hub doesn't have the underlying paper yet.
(not quoting every other part of the article where plants form committees to decide what to do next and receive "lignin" as a ready made thing, not as an emergent result of its own evolutionary process)
Oh, no. These kind of weird anthropomorphic ideas - that evolution is actively "finding problems" and "testing solutions" - take years to remove from students' minds. And make it very unclear whether the author themselves actually do understand what they're talking about or just parroting the same story they heard.
Cue the "but it's for kids!" arguments. Kids aren't dumb, and perfectly capable of understanding selective pressure - but you are doing them a huge disservice by making them feel like they understand something when really they understand your inaccurate (yet entertaining!) story.
Of course, I don't believe that every article has the same bias, but I saw it appearing with certain regularity.
I just hope they end up actually paying all these excellent writers.
The path of deforesting Europe? Ok, but even without an industrial revolution, that path only runs another century or two.
Maybe with an earlier medieval civilization, and sufficient plagues and famines?
... which matters, because while the objective world is made of complex systems our subjective lives are based on narrative. We are evolved to be a storytelling species, and to have any grip on reality we need to tell the right stories well.
> I see your point, because at 43 percent a lightning strike will cause the entire atmosphere to ignite since it is so high in flammable oxygen.
Is that accurate, and if so where did the 43% number come from?
If the oxygen concentration was high enough many things on the surface would burn (green plants, metal, etc.), but the air itself wouldn't. Things would probably rust like crazy too.
No matter how much oxygen, the atmosphere would not ignite without fuel.
Forest fires would get epic though.
This trivia about Nitrogen used to be my favorite when I was studying chemistry in the school. Like there’s lot of nitrogen in the atmosphere and oxygen but they don’t “burn” because (almost all?) nitrogen oxidation is endothermic!
<side>must resist the username checks out comment</aside>
"Belcher’s team’s work indicates that while there is not a firm upper limit to the fire window, 30 percent is a practical limit. Burn prevalence increases only slightly between 23 and 30 percent oxygen, and fuel moisture plays an important role too. It would only be possible to have periods with atmospheric oxygen concentrations approaching 30 percent (and preserve terrestrial vegetation) if Earth were much wetter than today." [1]
[1]https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/flammable-planet-fire-...
Um, I'm not seeing the problem here. Who wants an Ice Age?!
Also, I really really hate hot weather, and wouldn't mind it being a fair bit chillier.
In the case of the owl it’s acoustic insulation (deadly quiet) but there’s a reason we make feather down coats. That stuff works very well.
The oxygen "event" discussed in TFA did not fall within the period covered by Knoll's book: the first 3B years of life on earth. Lignin started to pile up only after plants came along. I haven't read the book, but you're probably thinking of "The Oxygen Catastrophe", which was caused by cyanobacteria.
Mr. R&D changed his, ahem, HER name to Miss Renée Diana, then began adjusting the sexual hormone levels of every primate fetus until 100,000 years later, there were but 3 sterile but very not-so-clever and starving primates left shivering in an Iberian cave. The VNCPs formed a committee, and after 6 months of heated intersectional discussion, voted on a representative to approach Miss Renée Diana with their desperate plea.
"You rang?", replied Miss Renée Diana. "Um, no, I haven't a bell but have been screaming at the top of my lungs for a week, Miss RD. We three VNCPs, we're starving and cannot increase our population, nor compete against these damned hyper-evolved sea otters for food!" "How may I help you?", inquired Miss RD. "Well, I used to have a working set of ovaries and lactating breasts until the starvation kicked in. We had to eat the baby. My two pals, one of them we can't tell what sex they are because they refuse to disclose. The other one has situational erectile dysfunction because, well, we can't stand his, um, I mean their, toxic display of potential male hegemony. Please, Miss Renée Diana, we implore of you, help us increase our food supply and population!"
With that, the not-so-very clever primate sat and waited for Miss RD's reply. It came 48 hours later -- astonishingly quick in historical terms, yet none too soon for the hunger-weakened VNCP. "Oh, toot-a-loo!", sang Miss Renée Diana. "Uh?", the VNCP faintly responded. "My, you look famished, poor dear. No matter. I've looked into your case and have decided that sea otters, however bipedal and adapted to your former haunts, are MUCH too adorable to allow you VNCPs to re-infest the place. Toot-a-loo!" And with that, Miss RD sashayed away with gay abandon, leaving the miserable but ideologically pure VNCPs to their fate.
Can that really be true? 500 years seems awfully short for such a change.
I'll get my coat.
Thanks so much for sharing it!
How is this a book for young children?
Thought that was pretty good - so not too difficult.
Some, valued freedom. They wanted to see what's beyond that blue yonder and where those white clouds came from. They became birds.
I regard birds to be vastly superior to humans in spirit and function. Say, what is our most proudest achievement, flying in a rocket? Yeah. They did that a million years ago.
Everything we do becomes completely irrelevant if we can become birds. Every thing. Just every thing. Completely irrelevant.