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Nov 2023
2:15pm, 15 Nov 2023
31,895 posts
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macca 53
I get that the grooves in a record follow the output.
What astounds me is that the moulding process can reproduce that master image with the accuracy to differentiate the same note being played simultaneously on lots of different instruments.
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Nov 2023
2:21pm, 15 Nov 2023
31,896 posts
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macca 53
And on a different but tangentially related topic, Mrs macca’s first job as a young language graduate in 1980 was to design the layout of components on microchips - apparently having no knowledge of what the symbols meant was an advantage because it gave her no pre-conceived ideas of which ones should be near each other (she always loved it and likened it to doing a complicated jigsaw!)
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Nov 2023
2:25pm, 15 Nov 2023
48,449 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
What astounds me is that the moulding process can reproduce that master image with the accuracy to differentiate the same note being played simultaneously on lots of different instruments.
Love mrs macca's job there. Sounds amazing. Yes, re precision and complexity, as per answer to Dio, just because we understand the principle doesn't detract from the wonder and admiration at the technology and engineering to get it to work so well.  G
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Nov 2023
2:34pm, 15 Nov 2023
6,103 posts
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Windsor Wool
On the subject of some science things being hard to get your head around. The complexity of some biological systems really makes me question evolutionary theory tbh.
If I think about how (science thinks) the chlorophyll light harvesting complex operates I can only wonder how something so incredible evolved. The also-critical-to-life O2 binding processes of haemoglobin & myoglobin might be slightly less complex but blimey. It blows my mind!
I can’t remember who earlier mentioned that they worked with dyes. I love a bit of conjugated chemistry. My poor yr9 son, he’s scared to ask about his chemistry homework as he knows what conversation he’ll get from me.
For a different reason, he won’t discuss his biology homework with me. I mean I struggle with why all chickens eggs don’t have a baby chicken in them 😂😂😂. How can the British education system have left me with so little understanding of biology?!?!?
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Nov 2023
2:40pm, 15 Nov 2023
48,452 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
Well, WW, you're not alone, in that the most advanced research scientists haven't answer how life "spontaneously" arose from the complex chemical soup in primordial Earth. There are a few competing theories but no one proved and of course the process hasn't yet been reproduced. We can only alter life, not create it.
Or at least that's my understanding when I last looked into it a couple of years ago. Happy to be corrected. G
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Nov 2023
2:55pm, 15 Nov 2023
3,291 posts
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cackleberry
"For a different reason, he won’t discuss his biology homework with me. I mean I struggle with why all chickens eggs don’t have a baby chicken in them 😂😂😂. How can the British education system have left me with so little understanding of biology?!?!?"
That's an easy one, in commercial systems, the lady hens get to live a peaceful life without being pestered by cockerels. The birds have to mate to produce a fertile egg, the same as any other bird, animal*, human... etc.
*We'll not go into the ones that can self-fertilise or the ones that can just bud off and produce clones.
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Nov 2023
3:00pm, 15 Nov 2023
41,551 posts
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Nellers
The short (and as yet incomplete) answer to both "how did complex things evolve" and "how did life begin" is "Lots of random things happened over an incomprehensibly long time period and the ones that worked stuck."
It's not really surprising that we haven't been able to replicate that initial spark of life (yet). We've had, what? A hundred and fifty years since Darwin, give or take. Nature had how many million years, and a lab the size of a planet to play with. We've not only barely scratched the surface, we've barely identified what that surface is or where.
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Nov 2023
3:04pm, 15 Nov 2023
15,899 posts
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jda
Billions of years, though a few of them might not have been very conducive to life.
We've seen plenty of evidence of evolution over much shorter time scales. Even 10 million years ago we were basically gorillas.
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Nov 2023
3:07pm, 15 Nov 2023
48,454 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
True Nellers - but with computer models we are able to simulate millions of variations. We're not "random" either, but throw together likely combinations. But I get what you mean. It's hard, in summary! But I was making point to WW that it's OK to not know how some complex biological mechanisms work, because the most fundamental of all, no one knows! G
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Nov 2023
3:09pm, 15 Nov 2023
31,897 posts
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macca 53
This week’s Infinite Monkey Cage is on probability chance and luck and has David Spiegelhalter as one of the guests…
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