Singularity shots is a roundup of beautifully curated notes about science, technology, and all the mesmerizing things indistinguishable from magic. Delivered as 2-minute shots, every 2 days, because we know you are busy. Read on and subscribe as we dissect the world, unfold ancient code and walk you towards wisdom. We read through hundreds of articles each day and find you these treasures and write about them as these small shots so that you always have something awesome to read when you are in the subway, getting comfy in the bed for lights-out, or riding in an Uber.
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I know that our brains are hardwired to listen to stories. So obviously, it is better to talk about the most important discoveries of our lifetime as stories; instead of boring seminars. This is what this newsletter intends to do; tell stories that inspire awe and attract more people towards that path of knowledge.
Did you know?
We are still bathing in the afterglow of our creation epic.
Per se, Big bang is not really proven. It is scientific language- but our classical physics doesn't work in that realm. Equations produce gibberish. Einstein's general relativity breaks down and things turn into Chaos as we approach Big bang. We can use these equations to predict and calculate anything else in the Universe, from the movement of our vehicles, tracking our satellites, launching our rockets, sending rovers to the moon, calculating the end of the Universe, and literally everything. As we travel back the chronology of the creation epic of the Universe, there is a point in space and time where and when everything breaks down. But, there are numerous stages after the big bang - which we have proven with experimental data. All we can do is - extrapolate backward with available data - the expanding universe, and eventually reach a singularity beyond which there is no space and time.
That's when it occurred.
Approximately 13.7 Billion years ago.
In the beginning, there was a singularity of infinite density. Then, due to quantum fluctuations we only have a faint idea about, the singularity exploded, creating a super-hot furnace of a trillion degrees and it expanded rapidly. After numerous epochs through which the universe cooled down and became transparent, the gamma radiation - the highest and most energetic in the electromagnetic band- released during the big bang traveled outwards, through an expanding universe. Eventually, after having stretched along their wavelengths because of the expansion of the Universe, the waves lost the energy and transformed to the lowest in the band - microwaves. These fragile Microwaves flooded the infinite universe as evidence to the big bang. They permeated the entire Universe undetected until life formed on earth, the brain structure evolved through 500 million years and manifested in a species capable enough to harness the logic and create instruments sharp enough to observe it.
On a dark night, just point your mobile phone torch at the sky and shine it. The photons emitted from your torch lies in the Visible spectrum of the EM band. That’s why you can see the light. After traveling a distance - it will lose its energy and go down the EM band- and ultimately reach the lowest energy levels- microwaves and radio waves. As microwaves, they will travel to the edge of the Universe. Every light we have shone, every degree of heat our body radiates - unless they have been absorbed or reflected- all are traveling towards the edge of the Universe - and they will continue to do so even long after humanity is gone from the face of the Earth.
Let's come back to our story. 13.7 Billion years after the big bang, on a small planet called Earth, two young radio astronomers at AT&T Bell Labs had been hoping to use a giant radio horn, built for pioneering satellite communications, to detect the halo of cold gas they believed surrounded our Milky Way.
All they picked up was static. Both of them initially thought the source was New York city. But, after moving the giant radio horn away from the City, they still registered a signal.
"Next, they wondered whether the static was coming from a recent nuclear bomb test, which had injected radio-emitting electrons high into the atmosphere. But the signal did not fade with time, as would be expected of such a source. They wondered whether the static might be coming from a radio source among the planets and moons of the Solar System. But, as the months passed and the Earth traveled in its orbit around the Sun, the static did not vary." - The afterglow of creation, Marcus Chown.
Collaborating with a few fellow scientists, they knew that this was a universal phenomenon. It was the very first evidence collected of the Cosmic Microwave Background.
Remember the times when we used to switch on our old analog televisions and there were static ? or when we used to tune the radio and heard the static? The old "Hizz" on your radio and the grey grains on the old CRT televisions?
They are the remnants of the big bang that created the Universe 13.7 Billion years ago. The radiation from the stars, the ruptures inside the sun, the noise of neutron stars colliding 5 Billion light years away, the black holes in an alien galaxy and the microwaves from the Big bang itself- all these noises combines to create the static.
It's your embryonic fluid and you still bathe in it - unknowingly. You never left the womb. You are just a signal, a piece of energy that was trapped inside a decaying piece of organic matter- standing and wondering on a rock that speeds through the universe at high speed.
The matter that makes up you - the atoms. were also created milliseconds after that explosion. You came from the same explosion. Every second, you bathe in it. You have heard the big bang. You have seen the big bang. In mysterious ways, we all have seen the explosion that made us. Next time you look at the sky, let your mind wander and expand. Breathe.
Series (Newly started)
Editing the operating system of life #1
To start with, let's talk about genome sequencing. A genome is a genetic material that consists of our DNA. Inside the DNA, there are "codes" written in a chemical language consisting of 4 bases, just like binary programming languages have two - 1s and 0s. We can represent information by arranging these codes in special ways. Human behaviors are also written as codes and they are present in these DNA sequences. In there, you have your base behaviors, the color of your eye, your short temper, all the genetic diseases you will develop in your lifetime and a hell lot of other information. It is a blueprint of your life, stored inside your cells long before you were even born. The process of determining the order of these 4 bases, is called DNA sequencing. DNA sequencing is essentially translating information in a way we can understand it. Like converting from one language to another. Starting from the 70s, The scientific community used to sequence genes and publish them, in an effort to invite collaborations. It's like sharing a script online and asking others to collaborate. In 1977, the first genome was sequenced, and it was that of a Virus.
As research progressed, on a crazy night in 1987, scientists Yoshizumi Ishino and colleagues at Osaka University in Japan peered down their equipment to find a mysterious code in the microbe they were studying.
Days later, they published the sequence of a gene called "iap" belonging to a microbe called E. coli. E - coli is a microbe present in our gut.
To properly understand the inner workings of this gene, the scientists also accidentally sequenced some DNA surrounding the gene. They hoped to find spots where external proteins could land, turning iap ON and OFF. But instead of a biological switch, they found something else that haunted their minds for years to come.
Near the iap gene lay five identical segments of DNA. DNA is made up of building blocks called bases, and the five segments were each composed of the same 29 bases. These repeat sequences were separated from each other by 32-base blocks of DNA, called spacers. Unlike the repeat sequences, each of the spacers had a unique sequence.
So, the 5 segments were identical and each spacer in between them were unique.
A genetic sandwich. Nobody had seen anything like that before. So they shrugged at the esoteric fabric of code and wrote down in their books.
“The biological significance of these sequences is not known,”
This story will continue in the next edition….
With Love,
Ashif Shereef.