Shut up and Dance!

Who doesn't love music? Everyone, extrovert or introvert, from Europe to the Amazon rain forest, likes music, and why wouldn't we? Music can inspire us, excite us, effect our emotions and importantly, make us dance! But what is dancing? And why have cultures that all developed separately around the world all developed both music and dance? Read on a bit and I'll tell you why.

So if we're asking why do we dance, we pretty obviously need to know why we make music? As music and dance go hand in hand and with music being the world's leading cause of dance, it's a pretty integral factor.

Music is a funny thing, if you think about it, it is a bunch of pretty unusual sounds, all in the same key (the soundwaves are oscillating harmonically), in set predictable patterns, with the optional addition of one or more humans singing along to words that convey a message when listened to.

Maybe a better way to understand the purpose of music is to understand where it came from. Nowadays music seems to be all about love and largely promiscuity, with a nice sprinkling of depression and general emotional turmoil mixed in for some variety. But at heart, it is still telling a story, and as we go backwards in time this trend becomes stronger and stronger. Even if we look back to the 60s and 50s we see an ever increasing amount of sings following a lyrical pattern with more story than nowadays and where the repeated section (or chorus) is more used for conveying one particular part of the story or as emphasis for effect in a similar manner to writers.

Rewind even further to the dark ages and nearly all of the songs were of great deeds or kings and nights and notable battles of the time, probably one of the more interesting things for people of those times and in an extremely similar manner to the songs in Game of Thrones (other than the awesome theme song) like "The rains of Castamere" which depicts a small war an annihilation of a lesser house.

At this point it is blindingly obvious that music did not evolve as a few humans passed the time by making weird noises, but as people telling stories, and people adding emphasis to certain parts, and making the stories more exciting with sounds until eventually, much like how we evolved from our bacterial buddies, music evolved to the incredible phenomena that it is today, a sort of inevitable branch of the art of language developed by our ancient ancestors.

And NOW we can have a bit of a clue as to what dancing really is, because much like how music has aspects of its original purpose - storytelling, still around today, so does dancing. Lets give it a thought, what do we do when we dance? We move right? But for a lot of songs those movements aren't random, but particular movements associated with that song (Notable mentions are "Twist and Shout", "Gangam Style", "Cha Cha Slide" and the last song in dirty dancing with the really cool dance to it.) Remind you of anything? Dancing may very well be the result of reenactments of stories, and visual aids to storytellers, evolving over time in a similar manner to music.

And as if we needed any more evidence we need look no further than South Africa, a land rich in culture, where many ancient tribes of people still thrive to this day, and The Zulu and the Ndebele tell stories of their history of war victories through tribal dances. 

So there we have it, dancing has evolved from an aid to storytelling, similar to pantomime, to the eventual, wonderful thing that it is today. Our world today is generally extremely divided but there are some things we cannot escape, our basic human needs, our desire to be around other people, and our love of both music and dance. So in summary, we need to remember the seeds that our ancestors planted tens of thousands of years ago and recall our similarities instead of our differences as our world becomes divided by class, religion and frankly unjustifiable wars. Also, SHUT UP AND DANCE.


See you all again soon and once more, thank you so much for reading :)

Its a Small World

Hello all. Who's ever felt alone? Most of you I guess. As the fantastic TV show known as scrubs states, humans aren't meant to be alone. But are we alone really? Through social networks, interpersonal connections and families we are all connected to one vast web of humanity, all 7 billion of us!

But the shocking part about this is how close you are in this web to everyone else, you are most likely only a couple of people apart from a scrap dealer in Beijing, or a banker in Vermont.

There was a massive hype about this a while back, during which it became known as the "six degrees of separation" or the idea that any two people on this planet, statistically should be able to be connected through a maximum of 6 different people.

But how accurate is this? How about we think about Twitter, if on twitter we assume that every person followed by someone has at least 50 people that the person looking does not have, then after 6 people we would arrive at 50 to the power of 6 people which is in fact 15625000000 people! Or to put in simpler terms, 15.625 Billion people!!! Which is double the number of people on Earth at this moment. Even if we settled for 45 we would still arrive at over 8 Billion, and still more than today.

Now I know what you're thinking, this is a bit far fetched, not every person has 50 people I don't know and there's no way that it could be that simple, besides this is a bit groundless so far. Well back in May of 2011 Facebook studied this phenomenon itself and what they found is pretty damn remarkable. On Facebook back in 2011 there is an average of 3.74 degrees of separation between 2 people! So not only is there solid evidence for this theory, there is solid evidence that it is in fact, decreasing and that the world is becoming more connected.

What Facebook did not account for however is that not everyone has Facebook and that people also use different means of communication. One person is increasingly likely to be signed up to different social networks and are likely to have different friends who are different types of people on these social networks. Although I could not find any research that managed to incorporate this effect, and the effect of our real life friends and family aswell, the only possible effect would be that it would further decrease the degrees of separation.

So there you all have it. Not only are we never truly alone, we are never truly disconnected, so next time you feel alone or insignificant just remember that you're most likely only a few people away from your hero, the person you might marry, the creator of pikachu and myself!

This world is full of wonders, one of them is you, and the others are a lot closer than you realise.

(also shoutout to Amy)

For any of you who are interested I'll post the link to the video I watched below, as well as a website which allows you to map degrees of separation specifically from Kevin Bacon's acting career. and as always, thanks for reading guys :)

http://9gag.com/tv/p/aM8jxR/the-science-of-six-degrees-of-separation

https://oracleofbacon.org/

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System

Hi Guys, I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while but I'm hoping that this will make up for it. In the time that I wasn't posting, I was on Tumblr writing a mini series about the solar system, which I hope will entertain and inform you all on the wonders of our planetary neighbors, I would also like to add that as it was inspired by the photos of Pluto, I started at the outside and worked inwards, meaning that after the Mars Post, there is a significant drop in quantity. Anyways I guess I should include my outro here as I already uploaded them all in order. The Solar system is massively more magnificent than any human can truly comprehend. One day it may be possible for our descendants to go swimming in the mists of Saturn or to dive deeply under the seas of Ganymede. However at the end of the day we're in the best age of humanity, because what they may take for granted, we have the unrivalled satisfaction of discovering. And with that enjoy my friends, see you soon :)

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Mercury

Here we have Mercury. This is the smallest planet to our solar system and yet is one of the most interesting, purely because being so close to the sun has made it so unique. its slow rotation and fast orbit means that the side facing the sun doesn’t change much (about 3 every 2 orbits) and as a result, the one side can be 427 degrees, while the other can be a, substantially cooler, -173 degrees!

It also has a unique kind of atmosphere, where although solar winds are always blowing it away, they are also constantly replenishing it, through radioactive decay and micrometeors causing dust. It is also very closely the second densest planet with about 5.4g per cubic centimeter.

Its extreme closeness to our sun also makes this planet extremely challenging to study, however two probes have managed to visit mercury, including messenger (a nice reminder of the god for which mercury was named) and together those two probes have mapped out the surface.

It is also the most cratered planet in our solar system, the rocky planets that can suffer craters from meteors usually self heal through geological processes but due to its geological quirkyness, mercury does not. Many of its craters are named after famous humans such as authors and scientists. As well as this, unusual readings mean that it is thought to have a molten core which is extremely unusual for a rocky planet of any size.

This extremely small, fast moving planet is by far one of the more interesting as it has preserved the history of our solar system in its craters where various information on impacts may be found. It is also an oddity as planets go, even in our solar system. Making it seem all the truer that great things come in small packages.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Venus

Next up we have our closest planetary neighbor, Venus. The acidic, boiling hot, toxic, generally deadly planet sized wasteland which was ironically named after the goddess of love (nice going Romans). It is often referred to as the sister planet of Earth, as they are incredibly similar in size (only 638 km in difference) and they are both very close together. Because of this it is also the second brightest object in the night sky after the moon and can even be seen in the day on occasion. Its usefulness, in ancient times earned it the names morning star and evening star, as it could sometimes be seen before sunrise, and sometimes just after sunset.

As romantic as all of the names and coincidences may sound it doesn’t change the fact that Venus is effectively a planet sized death trap. The atmospheric pressure on Venus is equivalent to 92 times that on earth which is the same as in the deep sea. This means that any humans on the surface would simply be squished and that is if the rest of it didn’t kill them first.

Venus is a fair amount closer to the sun than Earth, however it experiences unexpectedly high surface temperatures due to its thick atmosphere of sulfuric acid and carbon dioxide.This is an example of a runaway greenhouse effect where more and more heat is trapped by the sun, which means that the surface temperature of Venus is a cosy 462 degrees and the fact that there is no seasonal variation really does not help.

Despite this (and by the power of human stubbornness) various probes have actually been sent to Venus and several Russian landers actually landed on the planet (where each of them have been promptly destroyed). The most successful mission to date has been Venera 13 which managed to survive 2 hours on the surface of the planet, despite being designed to last 30 minutes) and has also sent back colour photographs of the surface of the planet.

This sister to Earth is fascinatingly deadly, and due to its unique atmosphere and composition, gives extremely interesting data for our scientists to study. However it is also a sharp reminded of how dangerous our solar system is, that even our own “sister planet” would kill us in only a matter of seconds.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Earth

Look where we’ve finally arrived. I’ll admit that ever since I started writing these posts I have both been excited to write this part, but baffled as to what I should include. Our planet is one which is truly unique to us, even with the discovery of a new “superearth” (otherwise known as kepler 452b), our planet remains unique because of one simple factor. Us, the birds outside, the earthworms beneath your feet. Life.

Earth is the largest rocky planet in our solar system. It is also the densest with a Deity of about 5.5 grams per cubic centimeter approximately. Surprisingly it rotates exactly once a day and shockingly it orbits our sun exactly once per year. Although the rotation is currently in the process of slowing down which means that it adds an extra 17 milliseconds per day per 100 years.

Our moon is also pretty special as it is the largest in relation to its planet out of any in our solar system and it is also Earth’s only moon. It is thought to have been created when a few billion years ago, a younger earth collided with a planet about the size of Mars. The debris formed the current Earth and our beloved moon.

But what makes Earth really unique is the sheer amount of life that has flourished there. We have studies thousands of exo planets and have yet to find one where life is likely to be as abundant as Earth. Because not only has life formed on Earth, but life has thrived, for millions and millions of years life has prevailed, our delicate complex carbon structures refusing to be destroyed by meteorites, volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts and while our Earth has grown mountains and created whole continents since the first slimy little thing crawled out of the sea there has always been life. And likely as not there will always be life, until the planet itself dies.

If that doesn’t make it the most incredible place we know then I don’t know what does.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Solar System - Mars

This planet should be a familiar sight for anyone. The red planet, AKA Mars is a massive focus of astronomers and astrobiologists alike as it lies in our sun’s habitable region and there is strong evidence that is once contained flowing water and was very like earth. This also implies a very strong possibility of there having been life on mars at some point or another.
Because of this everyone on Earth is raving over mars with a rover (that has its own twitter page https://twitter.com/marscuriosity ) currently rolling around looking for life and taking selfies and another mission planned for next year to send an european rover to mars. However despite all of these successes only 18 of the 40 missions to Mars have actually been successful.
Something lesser known however is that there are bits of Mars right here on earth. Due to violent collisions with Mars, meteorites have ejected rocks off the planet into space which have traveled for a very long time before crashing into our very own little lump of space rock. This means that scientists could study mars before they even got there in the first place!.
This red lump of rock has the largest dust storms in the universe (which is saying something considering half of our planets are basically made of dust) and its reddish tinge is given by iron rich minerals on its rocky surface.
We may well never know if life inhabited Mars all those millions of years ago, but there almost definitely will be soon, with NASA planning to spend volunteers to live on mars around the year 2030. This planet may be past its glory days, but that doesn’t mean its rusty surface is any less remarkable.