Ask the Dreadlocked Science Geek

[Melissa]

Why are scientists having problems curing viruses like the common cold virus and AIDS?

Melissa

[Melissa]

Posting for Rufus because he is too busy to sign in, but I am successfully procrastinating this morning so I will write his question for him.

Who invented Meringue? What chemical changes are occuring when you whip egg whites and sugar to form meringue?

Rufus (via Melissa)

[Melissa]

What are some limits of science?

Melissa

[Linus]

Since we've been discussing certain things in the Religion thread and I can't remember it being asked here...

Before the "Big Bang" what was there? Do we know if something else existed or was it truly ... well... nothingness?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Linus

Since we've been discussing certain things in the Religion thread and I can't remember it being asked here...

Before the "Big Bang" what was there? Do we know if something else existed or was it truly ... well... nothingness?

This is actually what is called an 'ill-formed problem'. By that I mean that it is a question that we most likely do not fully comprehend.

To understand why, it's necessary to go back to the moment go over why the Big Bang theory came into existence and what it says about the early universe.

The Big Bang is one of those necessary theories. The Universe is expanding, this much is very clear because objects far from us are moving *away* from us. Since gravity is *always* attractive this requires an explanation. The prior model--the Steady State model--cannot explain an expanding Universe. Since we know, because we do it everyday, that gravity can be overcome by a sufficient force there must have been SOME force that began the expansion of the Universe. This initial event would have to be strong enough to overcome the long-term tendency of matter to attract. Now, here is where we get into the necessary part. If the Universe is expanding (and it is) then it is possible to say that the current state of the Universe (N) is derived from some earlier state of the Universe N-1. N-1 is derived from an even earlier (less expanded) state N-2 and so on. Eventually you get to a state of the Universe that is VERY compact--this is the Universe just at the moment of the Big Bang.

One of the great quests in contemporary physics is a theory that allows us to model the state of the Universe at the moment of the Big Bang. What we need is a theory that can account for an exceedingly small (smaller than the nucleus of an atom) object that is VERY massive. Right now we have two separate and disagreeing theories to deal with objects--special relativity deals with very massive objects (thus explaining gravity, black holes, etc.) and quantum mechanics to deal with very small objects (thus explaining what is happening inside an atom). The problem is that these two theories lead non-sensical (infinities) answers when you try to use them at the same time. This is not to say either theory is wrong--both SR and QM are confirmed to a truly amazing degree of accuracy. QM has been tested to such a degree and confirmed to a level of accuracy such that it would be like measuring the distance between a sign saying "Welcome to Los Angeles" and another sign saying "Welcome to New York City" and being accurate to within the width of a single human hair. SR has been confirmed time and time again in the last 100 years (well, 96 years to be accurate). So both theories are as robust as any you'll find in science.

There's some part of the picture we are missing and so, right now, I don't think we can ask a *meaningful* question about 'what happened before the Big Bang' because I don't think we understand what that question actually means.

Btw. when I said that it’s a necessary theory I meant it in this sense. I KNOW that you had a mother and a father and you were born a baby. I know this because you are alive and therefore, by definition, you got half your genes from one parent and half your genes from another parent and since no human woman could survive giving birth to a full-grown adult you must have been born a baby. We can derive, from your current state, that at some point you were smaller than you are now. The same applies to the Universe, given the current expanded state of the Universe and given the ongoing expansion, there MUST--by necessity--be a point when the Universe was in a much smaller state than it is now.

Cheers
Aj

[LeftWriteFemme]

Originally Posted by Linus

Since we've been discussing certain things in the Religion thread and I can't remember it being asked here...

Before the "Big Bang" what was there? Do we know if something else existed or was it truly ... well... nothingness?

Doesn't the law of conservation mean that before the "Big Bang" there was everything we have now simply in a different form?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by LeftWriteFemme

Doesn't the law of conservation mean that before the "Big Bang" there was everything we have now simply in a different form?

Not exactly. There are a number of conservation laws:

Energy is conserved---meaning that in an isolated system the total energy in that system remains steady over time.

Mass is conserved--meaning that in an isolated system, the total mass of the system remains constant.

Both linear and angular momentum are conserved--meaning that provided that an object is not effected by another force, it will remain moving in the direction it is going (linear momentum) or spinning as it does (angular momentum).

Now, it is true that ALL of the mass of the Universe (less the anti-matter which was annihilated) was in the singularity at the moment just prior to the Big Bang. No energy or mass has been created since that time. The reason I say 'not really' is that matter--as we understand it--didn't even begin to exist until quite a bit AFTER the Big Bang. (around 250,000 years give or take) Before that, the Universe was too hot for atoms to form.

After things settled down, sub-atomic particles could live long enough which is why we see, for instance, the CMBR (cosmic microwave background radiation).

Cheers
Aj

[betenoire]

(I couldn't resist)

(Favourite line = they froze their asses off)

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by June

For me, the Big Bang theory is the most compelling reason to believe in a creator.

When I was a kid, I would sneak out at night and look up at the stars and think what was there before this? Who made this? How did this happen?

I still don't believe in a creator, but I am always awed by the fact that we're here and the chain of events, whatever they were that caused the imperfect Storm of Humanity (and everything else) to happen.

See, to me, the Big Bang theory--or more accurately, some of the fingerprints left behind by the Big Bang--are pretty serious nails in the coffin of ANY model of origins involving a creator. Why? Because I like economical theories. By economical I mean not requiring any more moving pieces than is necessary. Invoking a deity, in order to get a rapid expansion of the Universe which left a fingerprint in the form of a pervasive microwave radiation at a fairly uniform temperature no matter where one chooses to look*, seems extravagant to me. Because now there are TWO complex things to explain--first one has to explain the Universe expanding and then one has to explain the nature of a deity that could bring such a thing about and do so in a manner that almost *perfectly* disguises its presence.

Like you, I'm in awe of the fact that we're here. I'm even more in awe of the fact that our little species, which has no reason to be able to understand pretty much *anything* that has happened in science since the early 19th century, is able to understand so much.

Cheers
Aj

[mariamma]

Dear Dreadgeek,
Thank you so much for starting this thread. It's so very exciting to read nerdy science answers written by an educated skeptic who doesn't break out in hives to the word deist. I have no questions for you but I hope someone throws a good juicy one out there.
OH! And I love that I'm not the only one who believes in the possibility of creation being the creator. I thought that was just my weird belief. Now I see that I'm not alone
Mariamma

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Melissa

What are some limits of science?

Melissa

Science cannot 'prove' a theory. All you can do is falsify (disprove) or fail to falsify a theory. Science cannot disprove any deeply held belief. In fact, most deeply held beliefs are almost perfectly impervious to scientific inquiry. If I assert that an invisible pink unicorn waters the garden and makes the plants grow, there is NO scientific evidence you can present that will dissuade me from my belief. I will simply reject anything you say and there's nothing that can be done about that.

Science cannot tell us how we should WANT to live. It can tell us useful things about human nature but science is not a moral system. It can tell us why, for instance, women everywhere resist rape but it cannot tell us "rape is wrong". We can take what science tells us about, for instance, why human beings make war and use that as a means to prevent war but science cannot tell us "don't make war".

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Melissa

Why are scientists having problems curing viruses like the common cold virus and AIDS?

Melissa

The simple, one-word answer is evolution. For the purposes of this discussion, let's stipulate that viruses are living things (depending upon where you draw the line they either are or are not living). In the last four billion years or so, living things have developed a couple of macro-strategies for ensuring that their genes are passed on. Large, multi-cellular things like us go for the 'be big, complex but at the cost of speed of evolution'. Small, single-cell things like bacteria go for the 'be small, simple and retain the ability to evolve on a dime'. Viruses are even more simple than bacteria.

Pretty much the only way to 'kill' a virus is to give it no place to take hold. This is how scientists scored the one victory we've achieved over a virus--smallpox. To beat that, we simply vaccinated every single person on the planet who *could* be vaccinated. With no place to take hold, the virus died out. It still exists--in freezers in two labs, one in Russia and the other at Ft. Detrick in Maryland.

The problem is that certain viruses evolve REALLY fast. Both HIV and the rhinovirus (a class of viruses responsible for the common cold) are very fast at accumulating changes. Since every copy of every single thing that has lived since that very first replicating gizmo billions of years ago has been *slightly* different than the thing it was copied from, there's a great deal of genetic variation in all living things. What this means is that, for instance, even if we kill off 99% of the HIV viral load in an infected person there will still be 1% that is immune to whatever cocktail of drugs we've thrown at it. (And the reason why, for instance, HIV treatments are a cocktail is *because* without it, we were simply selecting for more robust strains of the virus. This way we're hitting it with too much for it to adapt to at once but that's still not enough to kill it off.) So while we might get rid of almost all the viral load in a body, we can't get rid of 100% of the load and that 1% that has survived will begin replicating, making copies that are almost but not precisely like itself--one consequence being that whatever made it immune to the drug-cocktail will be passe on.

With the common cold all of the same things apply but unlike HIV--where there isn't a reservoir in close proximity--both the influenza and rhinoviruses have non-human reservoirs where they can happily evolve for long periods of time and then, with a mutation, jump over to us. The two most common reservoirs are pigs and birds. In fact that's where all our influenza viruses come from--they are originally pig or bird viruses that have crossed-over. So we have the problem that we saw with HIV but more-so. At least with HIV, there's a way to box the virus in. With flu and the common cold we can't box it in. We'd have to pretty much STOP living in close proximity to ducks, chickens and pigs in order to give it no place to go.

Now, this does not mean that we'll never cure these viruses. I don't think we'll make the advances in nanotechnology in my lifetime but I think in my son's lifetime and almost certainly in my granddaughter's lifetime we will. Imagine, if you will, a very tiny machine about the size of a single bacteria that is inserted into your body at birth. This thing goes through your body, taking a catalogue of your genome, the genome of any commensal bacteria (for example, the Escheria coli in your gut that allows you to digest things) and then saying that anything matching that genome is 'you'. Anything else is 'not you'. (This is, effectively, what your immune system is doing) So whenever something is detected that has a genome that is not 'you', this little gizmo goes about systematically *dismembering it atom by atom*. It literally takes the virus apart.

This is something that I doubt even viruses could evolve fast enough to outwit since it's not really a chemical attack (which is what our drugs do) but taking the thing apart at a much more fundamental level. At present there's no reason why such an application of nanotechnology wouldn't work but that's pure blue-sky thinking right now.

Cheers
Aj