Ebola and Zika, swine and bird flu - all new names of terrible viruses emerge and multiply at an alarming rate, and hundreds of people die from the effects of these viruses. Why are infectious disease specialists and virologists unable to stay ahead of and timely extinguish outbreaks of deadly diseases? With this and other questions, the columnist for MIA Rossiya Segodnya turned to the Deputy Director of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor, Academician Viktor Maleev.
Viruses are not a far-fetched threat. In the pathology of people, infections occupy a significant place, and most of them are viral. It's just that not all of them are open yet, and new ones open periodically. It is important to understand here: viruses are a product of nature, and all changes in nature and in humans cause changes in them, and they, in turn, change their environment. My colleague Professor Eduard Karamov came to the conclusion that changes in the nature of viruses are associated with changes in the structure of the oceans, coral islands, and many other global natural metamorphoses.
New viruses constantly appear, many of them are disease-causing, pathogenic, in addition, already known ones mutate. And the fact that science is not always able not only to predict these changes, but also to track them, only shows how little we have studied nature, in which there is immeasurably more unexplored than studied. And viruses, I repeat, component natural factors.
- Periodically, there are reports that another virus was developed in secret laboratories as biological weapons, and now, by someone's evil will, he broke out ...
- I also recently heard on television that, allegedly, Rockefeller trades. I just can’t understand why he needs it - what, he has nothing else to trade?
Seriously, there are many laboratories in the world that study and cultivate viral cultures - for research, medical purposes. Doctors are constantly exchanging strains of viruses among themselves, and now we will probably ask the WHO ( World Organization health care) strains of the Zika virus to see what it is, to test on experimental organisms. Without studying certain dangerous infections, we will not be able to develop vaccines against them.
— Virus danger in last years really intensified, or is it some kind of subjective feeling caused by the mass of media reports?
- Someone says that we will be destroyed by an asteroid ... There are many versions of the coming end of the world, and viruses are one of them. Information certainly plays a role. Nevertheless, it, information, is not from scratch. The scale of the spread of diseases, deaths from certain infections - all this, unfortunately, as a rule, actually happens.
- You say that we still know little about viruses - but why? After all, other viral cultures have existed for millions of years ...
I repeat: we do not know nature very well. And we try to influence it, in most cases without imagining the consequences. When I was at school, there was a poster on the wall in our classroom with a portrait of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin and his quote: "We cannot wait for favors from nature. It is our task to take them from her." Throughout its history, mankind has invaded nature, changing it. The environment around us is changing, the person himself is changing. We have learned how to quickly move around the planet - infections began to move faster with us. The spread of drug addiction led to the spread of AIDS. Sexual emancipation - to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Fashion for tattoos and piercings - to an increase in the number of cross-infections, including viral hepatitis.
Science does not stand still, but the study of nature is objectively not as fast a process as its "conquest". Of all the causative agents of human diseases, only about 5% are still known, not to mention the causative agents of diseases of other representatives of the fauna - animals, birds.
“Nevertheless, mankind has managed to defeat many terrible diseases of the past years - epidemics of smallpox, plague, cholera no longer happen, and if they happen somewhere, they do not get fatal distribution.
- Some infectious diseases can really be dealt with. Some infections can be defeated by vaccination. Antiviral vaccines, on the other hand, are far from always being developed. There is still no vaccine for AIDS, although huge amounts of money are being invested in its development. In the USA, I visited a huge complex, stuffed with the most expensive equipment, where an AIDS vaccine is being developed, but there is still no vaccine, although this virus has been known for more than a decade. There are still no vaccines for hepatitis C and malaria.
There are many reasons for this. Viruses mutate quickly, it is difficult to study their structures, there were cases when vaccines only worsened the situation - as happened, for example, with the polio vaccine, some vaccines are addictive.
The fact is that the criteria developed by Louis Pasteur for bacterial infections are not suitable for viruses. But even with regard to bacterial infections, one cannot speak of a complete victory over them. So far, only smallpox has been completely eradicated, and nothing else has succeeded, but smallpox can still be difficult. Its place in nature was taken by monkeypox, which was discovered in Africa. Thank God, she has not yet escaped anywhere, unlike the Zika virus, which also did not make itself felt before.
But who knows what might happen tomorrow? Why do focal infections suddenly break out of their endemic zone and begin to spread across the planet? Someone associates this with ecology, someone with urbanization, someone with climate change ... They associate it with the El Niño phenomenon(fluctuations in the temperature of the surface layer of water in the equatorial part of the Pacific Ocean). But, of course, no one knows for sure. Although for infections, I think the climate still has great importance. A simple example: meteorologists are not always able to correctly predict the weather. But influenza outbreaks depend on the weather, they are seasonal. In the summer, influenza epidemics, as a rule, do not happen.
- In order to develop a new vaccine based on the obtained strain of the virus, it takes at least six months. And the virus can change literally in a matter of days - even just by passing through the human body, for example, with impaired immunity, with HIV infection.
Everything in nature changes. A person is changing - our ancestors, for example, were much more lean. Our habits and lifestyle are changing. People take many drugs almost uncontrollably, food additives The pharmaceutical industry is operating at full capacity. And all this makes viruses and bacteria change with us.
Benedict Spinoza
What is a person? What is a person? Why was man created? What is the true nature of man, which determines his essence? In part, human psychology, as well as other human sciences, gives us answers to these and many other questions about ourselves. But these answers are clearly not enough for us to fully understand ourselves and other people, so we are still in search of an answer to the question: “who are we and why are we here?”. The nature of man, which will be discussed in this article, has not yet been fully studied, but what we already know about it is quite enough for us to understand many of the most important points in human behavior. And this understanding of the causes of people's behavior will allow us to find the “key” to every person without exception, including ourselves. Let's figure out who we are, people, after all, and why we were created.
We can call human nature all those innate, genetically determined qualities and behaviors that are inherent in all people. Human nature is everything that has always been in us, from the moment of our appearance, and that makes us human. Human nature is that which is characteristic of man as a species. Human nature is what determines our eternal and unchanging aspirations and desires. Human nature is our ability to specifically respond to external stimuli and perceive the world around us in a certain way. Human nature is our ability to shape the world for ourselves. And finally, the nature of man is his ability to survive. The last definition, in my opinion, best of all explains the nature of a person, as a biopsychic construction necessary for him, as for a species. Therefore, let's focus on this definition and discuss it in more detail. After all, philosophical disputes about human nature have a long history, and there can be many opinions about what it is - human nature. We need to understand the obvious in this matter, which we can verify, if necessary, by elementary observations of ourselves and other people. And more obvious to us, in my opinion, is not the definition of what human nature is, but what is its meaning and what it is intended for. After all, if we humans cannot or do not want to determine the structure of human nature, then we need to study its functions in order to then link them to various elements of the structure and thus understand it. It's both easier and more interesting. After all, what is more important for us - to know who we are, or what we are capable of? In my opinion, the best way to study human nature is from the standpoint of our needs, desires, goals and capabilities. So let's do just that.
So, in order to better understand human nature, it is necessary to understand the meaning of its purpose, which is quite simple to understand, if you do not go into details - human nature is designed for the survival of man and mankind. By nature, we are what we must be in order to survive in this world, therefore, when studying and explaining human behavior, one should always proceed primarily from this basic need. This need gives rise to other needs, which in turn induce a person to certain actions necessary to satisfy these needs.
To understand what people are inherently capable of, let's look at human nature through the prism of biblical commandments that show us what negative qualities a person has and how they manifest themselves in him. With your permission, I will cite only some of them, namely, the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth commandments. It is faster and easier for me to explain them, so I will show you, using their example, what is natural for people. So these commandments are: Thou shalt not kill; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness and do not covet what your neighbor has. That is, do not do what, attention - you want, you can, and in some situations you are forced and inclined to do. Do you understand what these commandments tell us? They tell us that all these actions and desires are characteristic of a person - he tends to kill, commit adultery, steal, lie, desire what others have, but what he does not have, and this, as you understand, is only a small part of those actions and desires to which we are inclined from birth, which are inherent in us by nature itself, or, if you like, given to us by God. Here, too, a logical question arises - if God does not like certain qualities of a person, then why did he endow him with them? To then punish a person for his natural behavior? What for? Okay, we will discuss these issues some other time, now we are not interested in religion, it has its own purpose, we are interested in human nature, which we need to understand well in order to understand ourselves and other people and live in accordance with this understanding, then is, in harmony with its nature.
So, as we can see, a person is characterized by everything that God forbids him to do with the help of his commandments, and much more that society forbids him to do with the help of his laws. It is also characteristic of man that what we call good, kind deeds. This, in turn, means that a person by nature is not good and not evil, not bad and not good, he is simply the way he is, the way he should be, so that not only he himself, but his kind, could survive in this harsh world. If we are inclined to kill, steal, deceive, commit adultery, and also to other, both bad and good deeds, then we need to perform them in certain life situations, to survive. Therefore, we should not evaluate our actions as good or bad, since they are all inherent in our nature, we need to understand their necessity for us in certain situations. We cannot completely change our nature, and probably should not, but we can supplement it, complicate it, improve it, develop it, and we can control it. But most importantly, we must subordinate our nature to ourselves, so that it does not rule us, but we do it. Then our behavior will be as rational, prudent, practical and adequate as possible, and therefore reasonable.
So as you can see, friends, our behavior can tell us who we are by showing us why we are. Our actions tell us about our capabilities, and our capabilities indicate our needs, for the satisfaction of which we perform these actions. And our needs are determined by the need to maintain life. Therefore, a person most often does something not because he wants to do it, but because he must and, most importantly, can do it. In some situations, we, due to our personal qualities, can be evil and cruel, in others, kind and sympathetic, ready to help our neighbor. We react to external stimuli and act according to our nature and our capabilities. And depending on who we have become in the course of our lives, our capabilities and abilities can vary greatly, and usually do. This means that we can behave differently in the same situations. We are different, friends, despite our nature, which is the same for all of us, and we have always been and will be different. A person is formed as a person under the influence of natural and social factors, so we are relatively easy to adapt and adapt to almost any conditions. But someone does it better, someone worse. We also tend to adapt the world for ourselves, creating a human situation, that is, an environment that suits us, in which we are comfortable and safe to live. We have, or rather may have, both the desire and the possibilities for this. And again, depending on the level of development that determines a person’s capabilities, he either wakes up with a desire to change everything around him, or not. The more primitive the creature, the weaker it is, and the weaker it is, the more often it is forced to adapt to external conditions, rather than change them. Therefore, a person adapts to everything that he cannot change. That is, it's not about desire, it's about opportunities. The ability to adapt makes us more tenacious, and the ability to adapt speaks of great strength and high level human development. This is how the nature of a person can manifest itself in different ways, the basis of which is unchanged, but a person develops certain personal qualities in himself in the process of life, or life develops them in him, with the help of various life scenarios. Also, in the process of life, a person, if he is constantly engaged in self-development and self-improvement, discovers in himself more and more new opportunities inherent in his nature. That is why it is so difficult to say what it is - human nature in its holistic form, because there is no limit to human perfection, which means that we will always learn something new about ourselves and our capabilities.
From the need to survive in our world, which is very unfriendly to humans, our basic instinctive needs also follow, which are the same for all of us. Our worldview and understanding of the world may be different, but the basic, or rather, primary needs are the same for everyone, and every person on this planet strives to satisfy them. This is the need for food, water, security, sexual satisfaction, in general, everything that a person needs for survival and procreation. This is followed by more sublime, secondary needs that a person begins to experience as he meets his basic needs [physiological needs and the need for security, that is, to guarantee the satisfaction of physiological needs]. Familiarize yourself with the pyramid of needs of Abraham Maslow, in my opinion, it perfectly demonstrates not only what needs may be due to the specific behavior of a particular person, but also what level of development this or that person or group of people is at, depending on their aspirations and capabilities meet one or another of their needs. The hierarchy of needs shows us what the nature of a person as a whole [known to us] is and how it manifests itself in different people, depending on their development, lifestyle, environment, opportunities. It is easier for a more developed person to satisfy his needs, especially the lower ones, so he is more calm and less aggressive. It should also be said that the higher the intelligence of a person, the more veiled and thoughtful will be his desire to satisfy his needs, and therefore more successful.
In general, our whole life comes down to satisfying our needs, and can differ only in what needs at one time or another of our lives each of us strives to satisfy. From this point of view, we are not much different from animals, except that only as we develop we awaken in ourselves new, higher needs and, thanks to our intellect, we can find more opportunities to satisfy them. In this sense, we, as I have already said, have unlimited potential for expanding our capabilities. So it is still unknown how much we can change the world, but that we will strive for this is beyond doubt. After all, in addition to needs, a person also has desires that have gone far ahead of his capabilities, and they pull a person up to that stage of development, being at which he can fulfill these desires. In this sense, human nature is unique - we can want what is not there, but what we guess about, what we dream about. So dreams, as a higher form of need, also motivate us to take action. Curiosity and the desire to change the world, and at the same time oneself, is an integral feature of human nature. And this is not surprising. After all, the energy potential of a person is very high, so it is natural for him to strive for maximum action, after which, depending on the capabilities of each individual person, the world can change dramatically, both for the better and for the worse.
In general, friends, the nature and essence of a person is known through careful observation of different people, the study of their culture and history, traditions and laws, as well as through self-observation, because some part of human nature is manifested in each of us. Those qualities that a person has and which are manifested in him in certain situations are an integral part of his nature, and the more primitive a person is, the easier it is to understand his innate, unchanging essence, which changes the more the more actively a person develops, improves, and consequently complicates its behavior and habits. The very tendency of a person to change his life and complicate his behavior is also his natural quality. Therefore, what we call the human mind is undoubtedly present in it, but it requires development, since the higher the rationality of a person, the more adequate to the existing reality he behaves. And as you and I know, a person is not always adequate in his behavior, which in turn means that human nature is unreasonable, but it is in our power to make ourselves enough sentient beings, using the potential inherent in us.
The most interesting and, perhaps, important thing in human nature is that it, this nature, can be adapted to almost any lifestyle. Man is a suggestible being, you can suggest anything to him, thereby creating in him the so-called “second nature”. The second nature is the first nature modified, or better to say, supplemented by man. That is, the second nature is a set of sensory, cognitive, and operational traits acquired in addition to basic personality. It can be said even more simply - the permanent qualities of the personality that are acquired are the second nature of man. A person, as a rule, considers the qualities he has acquired as a natural part of his personality, like everything that is given to him genetically. Thus, a person, thanks to suggestion and self-suggestion, can consider as part of his nature such moments in his behavior, and such his desires and needs that are not characteristic of him by nature, according to his “first nature”, but which he acquired and developed during life. For example, the "second nature" of a person is his cultural education, as well as his professional skills and demeanor, which he has developed in himself. The second nature of a person is expressed in such situations, for example, when a person begins to associate himself with his activities, with his cultural and mental merits, as well as with his hobbies and achievements. As for suggestions, it is possible, for example, to inspire a person with the idea that sex is a sin and it is a sin to engage in it, and therefore it is not necessary. And a person who believes in this will not have sex, thus going against his own nature, that is, against his first nature. You can also inspire a person with the idea that he is a certain person who has certain qualities, for example, you can inspire him that he is a slave, born to serve his master. And this role accepted by a person will become his second nature, and he will behave accordingly to this role. So, friends, a lot depends on what other people inspire us and what we inspire ourselves in our life, maybe even everything. Each of us will be in this life what other people or ourselves make us. Human nature is quite flexible and even to some extent unpredictable, because we still don’t know much about what a person can be if we create certain conditions for him or subject him to certain tests, or if we inspire him with something like that, which will completely change his personality and behavior. Therefore, it is very important to pay serious attention to everything that enters our head in order not to allow thoughts, emotions, opinions, actions, values and goals that are abnormal for us to become normal.
So far, we know about human nature only what people have been able to learn about it throughout their history and what we ourselves can see by observing human behavior. But we still do not know much about ourselves, since a person is not fully known, and it is not known whether he will ever be fully known at all, especially by himself. However, we can conclude that human nature is fundamentally unchanged, our basic needs and primitive ways of satisfying them have not changed throughout our history. This in turn means that every newly born person is like clean slate, on which you can draw anything, regardless of who his ancestors were. By nature, all people are almost the same, they all have the same instincts that control them and determine their needs. Any qualities inherent in one person, under certain circumstances, can be inherent in another person. Whatever one person can do, other people can, if they make the necessary efforts. From this we can draw a very simple, but very useful conclusion for us - by ourselves we can partially know other people, just as well as how well we know ourselves, and by other people we can understand what a person can be like, what qualities are inherent in him by nature, what abilities he has and therefore, we can understand what kind of person we are capable of becoming. That is, everything that is in other people is in each of us, in an active or passive state. And everything that is in us is also in other people. A completely logical conclusion follows from this - do not judge, so that you will not be judged, for what is inherent in others is inherent in you, and under certain circumstances you can behave the way those whom you condemn behave.
And that's what I want to tell you in the end, dear friends. Regardless of our nature, we can become whoever we want to be in this life. Man invents himself, according to his own desire. His, this desire, you only need to have. And even if human nature is unchanged, nevertheless, firstly, it is not fully understood and therefore we do not know what else we can be capable of, in addition to what we already know and what we know about ourselves, and secondly, it in no way prevents us from changing ourselves and our behavior, both as necessary and depending on our desires. Remember, you will be who you choose to be in this life. So do not deprive yourself of the opportunity to determine your own destiny.
This is completely unfair, especially given that the cosmos knows exactly what it is doing. From a physics point of view, there are some very attractive, promising theories that start the answer to the question above, but we don't and probably won't know which one is right. Perhaps it was born out of an inherently unstable "nothing". You should know that emptiness is not actually empty, matter and energy are spontaneously born and die in it, at least in the form of quantum fluctuations. Perhaps our universe is not the only one of its kind, but one of a practically infinite number. Perhaps all this is just. A lot of our ignorance comes down to the fact that we are still waiting for the next generation. space measurements, which will confirm or disprove the latest theories, we also need more flexible and comprehensive theories, and not just mathematical elegance. In general, we do not know why all this exists and even happens. Usually "why" always exists.
We don't know what dark matter and dark energy are.
Big problems mean even bigger problems. Ordinary matter, of which we are made, planets, stars and sausage sandwiches, is about 4.9% of all the matter that fills the universe. 26.8% of matter is "dark," and we know this because, on large scales, cosmic material is moving faster than it should, and galaxies behave as if they are controlled by a huge mass of particles invisible to us. And we have no idea what these particles are. This is bad, but the situation is even worse with dark energy. Something is causing the universe to expand faster and faster. It shouldn't be like that. Until 5 or 6 billion years ago after the Big Bang, the expansion of the universe was stable, but something interfered, some invisible component, perhaps some kind of dense vacuum energy that fills space as it grows. What's this? We do not know. We have a lot of assumptions, which is basically a good idea to assume something about 68.3% of the universe.
We don't know if there is life anywhere else
This question is incredibly interesting already because events can be assumed and located regardless of the answer. Here we are, beings on a planet full of flourishing life, carefully adapting to the physical and chemical conditions of life for the last 5 billion years. We also know that there are an awful lot of planets in the universe, and many of them could also host life. However, we do not know for sure if we are alone. And no hints. This is problem. It's a good problem, as I said, regardless of the answer, but few people move around trying to find the answer to this question. Although too much may depend on its resolution.
We probably don't quite understand the quantum world
Indeed, our current quantum physics in theory (and in practice) works wonders, describing atoms and molecules along with the bizarre nature of entanglement and qubits. But that doesn't mean we're quantummech gurus. Rather the opposite. It is enough to read summaries on quantum issues to understand that the most fundamental aspects of the quantum nature of the universe still cause headaches and disagreements. People keep coming up with formulations of how quantum mechanics defines us, or doesn't define us. The problem is exacerbated when quantum physics plunges into the realm of soft, warm, and wet biology. Not to mention black holes and .
We don't understand our own biology
It's not an exaggeration to say that we don't understand how every detail of ours works. If we understood (and we are moving in this direction), we would cope with disease, death, begin to grow limbs and restore memory. We could master genetic engineering at the level of demigods and understand how to make the brain work hundreds of times faster. If you want a good example of our ignorance, let there be microflora. There is a joke that if aliens find us, they will not understand with whom to start a conversation: with the bacteria that inhabit us, or with us? Ten trillion human cells are supplemented, used, saturated with hundreds of trillions of microbes - we carry a kilogram of bacteria and archaea with us and cannot live without them. They're in our guts, lungs, noses, everywhere. We're just cruise ships for germs.
We don't know how the earth works
Let's dive deeper. Neither man nor robot, no one went deeper into the Earth than a few kilometers, everything else is in charge of probes and physical analyzes that are far from the essence of the matter. It took us ridiculously too long to figure out that the skin of our planet is constantly moving: plate tectonics was not generally accepted until the middle of the 20th century. We are still not sure how the internal dynamo works, how convecting magma rolls generate our planet's magnetic field. At the same time, so much has happened in geophysics over 4.5 billion years that some of our best information about the origin of the planet arrives with meteorites and hides in the craters of other worlds. We don't even know for sure where the moon came from. Maybe there was a giant collision, maybe not. For supposedly smart creatures on a small rocky planet, this is a complete failure.
We cannot prove or solve many of our own mathematical hypotheses and problems
If mathematicians think they can avoid this festival of ignorance, let's just remind ourselves that we have a long list of unproven, unsolved problems and unverified hypotheses. With all this, it has not yet been decided exactly how accurately mathematics describes the world around us and whether mathematics is embedded in the very foundation of the universe.
We do not know how to make artificial intelligence
We mention this because it is an eternal problem. Also because we often write about the development of artificial intelligence (or about its pathetic attempts to get back on its feet). Finally, an attempt to create Artificial Intelligence It is an attempt to understand ourselves. Because in order to create something artificial, you need to know how the original works. While our machines have come a long way, it's still not clear whether services like the YouTube search engine or some other big name can work the same way that ideas pop into our heads. Whether a machine can think at all is the question.
Conclusions? There are a lot of things that we do not know (much more than the examples in this article). But you should not fall into despondency, and ignorance is not strength. In the end, the thirst to discover and the desire to think launched the flywheel of science, and the Universe is the most complex mystery in the history of mankind. Perhaps hundreds of years will pass, and we will not know anything.
Despite all the achievements of science, there are still many blank spots in it. The New Scientist magazine published a list of mysterious phenomena that scientists cannot explain.
1. Placebo effect
Incredible, but true: seriously ill patients are relieved of pain with morphine, and then one day the morphine is replaced with saline. What's happening? Saline solution also relieves pain. It's the placebo effect: somehow a compound out of nothing can have a very powerful effect. Doctors have known about the placebo effect for a long time. But apart from the fact that, apparently, it has a biochemical nature, we do not know anything. One thing is clear: the mind can influence the biochemistry of the body.
2. Horizon problem
Our universe is inexplicably one. Look at space from one edge visible universe to another, and you will see that the background of microwave radiation in space has the same temperature throughout. This doesn't seem surprising until you remember that these two edges are 28 billion light-years apart, and our universe is only 14 billion years old.
Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so it is impossible for thermal radiation to travel between two horizons and balance the hot and cold zones that formed during the Big Bang, establishing the thermal equilibrium that we see now.
From a scientific point of view, the same temperature of the background radiation is an anomaly. It could be explained by the recognition that the speed of light is not constant. But even in this case, we are still powerless before the question: why?
3. Ultra-energetic cosmic rays
For more than a decade, physicists in Japan have been observing cosmic rays that shouldn't exist. Cosmic rays are particles that travel through the universe at a speed close to the speed of light. Some cosmic rays come to Earth as a result of violent events such as supernova explosions. But we know nothing about the origin of the high-energy particles observed in nature. And even that isn't really a secret.
As cosmic ray particles travel through space, they lose energy when they collide with low-energy photons, such as those from the cosmic microwave background radiation. However, the University of Tokyo discovered cosmic rays with very high energy. Theoretically, they could only come from our galaxy, but astronomers cannot find the source of these cosmic rays in our galaxy.
4. Phenomenon of homeopathy
Madeleine Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University Belfast, is a disaster for homeopathy. She opposed claims by homeopaths that a chemical could be diluted to such an extent that the sample would contain virtually nothing but water and still have healing powers.
Ennis is determined to prove once and for all that homeopathy is just talk. In her latest work, she describes how her group in four different laboratories investigated the effects of ultra-dilute histamine solutions on white blood cells involved in inflammation.
To the surprise of the scientists, it turned out that homeopathic solutions (diluted to such an extent that they apparently did not contain even a single molecule of histamine) worked in the same way as histamine. Prior to these experiments, none homeopathic remedy never worked in clinical trials. But the Belfast study suggests that something is going on. “We,” says Ennis, “cannot explain our findings and report them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon.”
If the results turn out to be real, she believes, the consequences could be very significant: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.
5. Dark matter
Take our best knowledge of gravity, apply it to the rotation of galaxies, and you will immediately find the problem: according to our knowledge, galaxies must decay. Galactic matter revolves around a central point as its gravitational pull creates centripetal forces. But there is not enough mass to create the observed rotation in galaxies.
Vera Rubin, an astronomer in the department of terrestrial magnetism at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC, noticed this anomaly in the late 1970s. The best answer that physicists could give was to assume that there is more matter in the universe than we can observe.
The problem was that no one could explain what this "dark matter" is. Scientists still cannot explain it, and this is an unpleasant gap in our understanding. Astronomical observations suggest that dark matter should make up roughly 90% of the mass of the universe, and yet we are remarkably ignorant of what that 90% is.
6. Life on Mars
July 20, 1976 Gilbert Levin sits on the very edge of his chair. Millions of kilometers away, on Mars, the Viking lander took soil samples. Levin's equipment mixed them with a substance containing carbon-14. Scientists involved in the experiment believe that if methane emissions containing carbon-14 are found in the soil, then there should be life on Mars. Viking analyzers give a positive result. Something absorbs nutrients, transforms them, and then releases a gas containing carbon-14. But why is there no holiday?
Because another analyzer, designed to determine the organic molecules that are necessary signs of life, found nothing. Scientists were cautious and declared the findings of the "Viking" false positive. But is it? The results, transmitted from NASA's latest spacecraft, show that in the past, the surface of Mars almost certainly contained water and was therefore favorable for life.
There are other proofs as well. “Every flight to Mars,” says Gilbert Levin, “provides data to support my conclusion. None of them contradict him. Levin is no longer defending his views alone. Joe Miller, a microbiologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, reanalyzed the data and believes the outliers show signs of a circadian cycle. And this with a high degree of probability suggests the existence of life. Whether these scientists are right is still unknown.
7. Tetraneutrons
Four years ago, six particles were discovered that should not have existed. They were called tetraneutrons - four neutrons that are in a bond that defies the laws of physics.
A Caen team led by Francisco Miguel Marquez fired beryllium nuclei at a small carbon target and analyzed their trajectories with detectors. Scientists expected to see four different neutrons hit different detectors. Instead, they found only one flash of light in one detector. The energy of this flash showed that all four neutrons hit the same detector. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that four neutrons accidentally hit the same place at the same time. But this is ridiculously unlikely. At the same time, such behavior is not improbable for tetraneutrons.
True, some may argue that, according to the standard model of particle physics, tetraneutrons simply cannot exist. Indeed, according to the Pauli principle, in one system there are not even two protons or neutrons that could have the same quantum properties. The nuclear force holding them together is such that it cannot even hold two single neutrons, let alone four.
Marquez and his group were so stunned by the results that they "buried" these data in a scientific work, which spoke of a certain probability of discovering tetraneutrons in the future. After all, if you start to change the laws of physics to justify the connection of four neutrons, chaos will arise.
Recognition of the existence of tetraneutrons would mean that the combination of elements formed after the Big Bang is not consistent with what we are now observing. And, even worse, the formed elements become too heavy for space. At the same time, there is other evidence that speaks in favor of the fact that matter can consist of numerous neutrons. These are neutron stars. They contain a huge number of bound neutrons, which means that when the neutrons gather into masses, forces that are still inexplicable to us come into play.
8 Pioneer Anomaly
In 1972, the Americans launched the Pioneer-10 spacecraft. On board was a message to extraterrestrial civilizations - a plate with images of a man, a woman and a diagram of the location of the Earth in space. A year later, Pioneer-11 followed him.
By now, both devices should have already been in deep space. However, in an unusual way, their trajectories strongly deviated from the calculated ones. Something began to pull (or push) them, as a result of which they began to move with acceleration. It was tiny - less than a nanometer per second, which is equivalent to one ten-billionth of gravity on the Earth's surface. But this was enough to move the Pioneer-10 from its trajectory by 400,000 kilometers.
NASA lost contact with Pioneer 11 in 1995, but until that moment it deviated from the trajectory in the same way as its predecessor. What caused it? Nobody knows. Some of the possible explanations have already been rejected, including software bugs, solar wind, and fuel leaks. If the cause was some gravitational effect, then we know nothing about it. Physicists are simply at a loss.
9. Dark energy
This is one of the most famous and most intractable problems in physics. In 1998, astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. Before that, it was believed that after the Big Bang, the expansion of the universe slows down. Scientists have not yet found a reasonable explanation for this discovery. One of the assumptions is that some property of empty space is responsible for this phenomenon. Cosmologists have called it dark energy. But all attempts to identify her have failed.
10. Tenth planet
At the very edge of the solar system, in the cold zone of space beyond Pluto, something strange is happening. After passing through the Kuiper belt - a region of space teeming with ice rocks - suddenly a completely empty space is revealed. Astronomers call this boundary the Kuiper rock, because after it the density of the cosmic rock belt decreases sharply. What is the reason?
The only answer to this may be the presence of a tenth planet in our solar system. Moreover, in order to clear space of debris in such a way, it must be as massive as the Earth or Mars. But, although calculations show that such a body could cause the existence of the Kuiper belt, no one has ever seen this legendary tenth planet.
11. Space Signal WOW
It lasted 37 seconds and came from outer space. August 15, 1977 on a printout of a radio telescope in Delaware, the recorders drew: WOW. And twenty-eight years later, no one knows what caused this signal. The pulses came from the constellation Sagittarius at a frequency of about 1420 MHz. Transmissions in this range are prohibited international agreement. Natural sources of radiation, such as thermal emissions from planets, cover a much wider range of frequencies. What caused the emission of these pulses? There is still no answer.
The nearest star to us in this direction is 220 light-years away. If the signal came from there, then it must be either a huge astronomical event, or an advanced extraterrestrial civilization with a surprisingly powerful transmitter. All subsequent observations in the same part of the sky led to nothing. A signal like WOW is no longer registered.
12. Such fickle constants
In 1997, astronomer John Webb and his team at the University of New South Wales in Sydney analyzed the light coming to Earth from distant quasars. On its 12 billion year journey, light passes through interstellar clouds made up of metals such as iron, nickel and chromium.
The researchers found that these atoms absorb photons of quasar light, but not at all what was expected. The only more or less reasonable explanation for this phenomenon is that a physical constant called the fine structure constant, or alpha, has a different value when light passes through clouds. But this is heresy!
Alpha is an extremely important constant that determines how light interacts with matter, and it shouldn't change! Its value, among other things, depends on the charge of the electron, the speed of light, and Planck's constant. Is it possible for some of these parameters to actually change?!
None of the physicists wanted to believe in the correctness of the measurements. Webb and his group spent many years trying to find errors in their results. But they still haven't succeeded. Webb's results are not the only ones that confirm that there is something wrong with our understanding of alpha.
A recent analysis of the only known natural nuclear reactor operating almost 2 billion years ago in what is now Oklo in Gabon also suggests that something has changed in the interaction of light with matter. The proportion of certain radioactive isotopes produced in such a reactor depends on alpha, and therefore analysis of the fission products preserved in the Oklo soil makes it possible to determine the value of the constant at the time of their formation. Using this method, Steve Lamoray and his colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico suggested that alpha has decreased by more than 4% since the Oklo action. And this means that our ideas about constants may turn out to be wrong.
13. Low temperature nuclear fusion (LTF)
After a sixteen year absence, he returned. Although, in fact, the NTS never disappeared. Since 1989, US Navy labs have conducted more than 200 experiments designed to find out whether nuclear reactions at room temperature can generate more energy than they consume (it is believed that this is only possible inside stars).
Controlled nuclear fusion would solve many of the world's energy problems. No wonder the US Department of Energy is so interested in it. Last December, after a lengthy review of all the evidence, it said it was open to proposals for new NTS experiments. It's a pretty cool twist. Fifteen years ago, this same ministry concluded that the initial NTS results obtained by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and solemnly presented at a press conference in 1989 could not be confirmed, and thus they are probably false.
The basic principle of NTS is that immersing palladium electrodes in heavy water (in which oxygen is combined with an isotope of heavy hydrogen) can release a large number of energy. The catch is that all accepted scientific theories hold that nuclear fusion is impossible at room temperature.
Quiz game: "What do we know about nature."
Goals:
1. Consolidate children's knowledge of nature.
2. Contribute to the formation of reasonable behavior in children in the forest.
3. Develop the ability to analyze, generalize, compare, draw conclusions, develop evidence-based speech.
4. Cultivate respect for nature.
Game progress
Hello guys! You are ready to take part in the game "What do we know about nature".
Do you guys know that our Motherland is a country of forests. They make up 1/3 of all forest resources on the planet.
Competition of our quiz called "Forest is our wealth".
Each team is asked questions. If the team members find it difficult to answer or their answer is incomplete, the right to answer passes to the opponents or they can make their own additions.
What is the use of the forest?
Trees release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. The forest is also called the "lungs of the earth."
Used as a building material (logs, boards), for construction railways(sleepers).
For the manufacture of paper (cellulose).
Fixing wood (for fixing shafts, faces).
Obtained from waste wood charcoal, tar, weave baskets from birch bark.
You can collect fruits from trees and shrubs (apples, pears, pine nuts, berries).
Name the rules of behavior in the forest.
Do not break branches of trees and shrubs.
Do not damage tree bark.
Do not tear flowers unnecessarily, do not crush the grass.
Cut the mushrooms with a knife so as not to damage the mycelium, do not knock poisonous mushrooms animals need them as medicine.
Do not break the web and do not kill spiders, do not catch other insects.
Do not destroy bird nests and anthills.
Do not catch animals and their cubs, do not take them home.
Do not make noise in the forest, so as not to frighten birds and animals.
Make a fire only on special sites, from dry branches. Leaving to extinguish.
Do not leave garbage behind (take it with you or bury it).
Does a tree grow in winter? (No, it freezes).
How does a tree help you navigate in the forest? ( Mosses and lichens cover the north side of the trees. Resin protrudes more on the south side coniferous tree).
How to determine the age of a tree? (According to annual rings).
Who else can determine the age of the tree rings? (Fish have rings on each scale).
Well done!
The next contest will show us what you know about wild animals.
Each team names one animal and its cub. The team that names the most animals wins. but it cannot be repeated.
Well done, you know a lot of animals and their cubs, but can you portray an animal so that your opponents can recognize it? For this you need acting skills. (Each team depicts 2 animals to the music. Opponents guess. The mark is given both for artistry and for the correct answer).
Competition "Guess who it is?"
Now two questions for each team.
1. Why don't they hunt wild animals in spring? (1. Animals shed, lose their thick and warm undercoat, without it the fur depreciates. 2. Animals have cubs.)
2. Where is it more convenient for a hare to run uphill or downhill? (A hare has short front legs and long hind legs. It is more convenient to run uphill, and from the mountain it rolls somersault over its head.)
3. What animal is called "rod"? (A bear that was kicked out of its den and roams the forest all winter.)
4. Which bird breeds chicks at any time of the year? (Klest, since they feed their chicks with seeds from spruce and pine cones therefore, they have enough food both in winter and in summer.)
The next competition is called "The Fourth Extra".
You need not only to name an extra word, but also to explain why you think so.
Bullfinch, goose, starling, stork.
Boletus, boletus, camelina, fly agaric.
Birch, Christmas tree, aspen, maple.
Fox, hare, bear, elk.
And the last competition of our quiz is called "Collect the picture".
Children are given two identical sets with split pictures under the name "Flood".
Poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
Take care of these lands, these waters,
Even a small bylinochku loving.
Take care of all the animals inside nature, Kill only the animals inside yourself.
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