issues in science 2

Cosmology and space-time mysteria are at the pointy end of science with all that mathematical-physics stuff, but they’re also fuelled by the weirdest speculations. Dark energy, vacuum decay, supersymmetry, the collapsar model, branes – it sometimes seems to a lay person that anything goes. Now a controversial new conceptualisation of the universe as full of bubbles has made its appearance. I’m not going to make any serious attempt to explain this, but it has to do with how gamma-ray bursts and their afterglows might be explained. There are competing theories, and competitors are awaiting the results from NASA’s new Swift gamma-ray observatory over the next couple of years. It’s expected to clear up much in the currently hazy field of gamma-ray burst research.

The concept of altruism has always been slippery as well as fraught. Many just assume that what seems like altruism is really self-interested behaviour cleverly disguised. Yet the evidence, from analysis of the prisoner’s dilemma game among others, increasingly supports the claim that in some circumstances we really do behave in an altruistic way. Given higher order complexities, it’s always arguable whether this flies in the face of evolutionary theory, but adaptive or not it’s something charitable organisations are already looking to take advantage of (adaptive things that they are).

Computed tomography screening is apparently enjoying something of a vogue among wealthy members of the ‘worried well’ set. However, many medicos are claiming that CT scans could quite possibly do more harm than good. These scans involve powerful x-ray beams which are fed through a computer to produce richly detailed cross-sectional images of a patient’s body. The process has been heavily and controversially advertised. There is a small danger from radiation from multiple full-body scans, but the main concern is that unnecessary scans will pick up ‘problems’ not previously known about, with costly follow-up, the tying up of resources and so forth.