How to make irony:
First, know that Kansas is the leading producer of helium on Earth, providing 2/3 of the global supply.
Second, understand that most of the helium on Earth comes from a) the breakdown of radioactive nuclei; a process which takes tens of thousands to millions and even billions of years, and b) the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.
Third, note that both these timescales are > 6000 years.
Fourth, mix all the above ingredients. Shake well, and enjoy the delicious irony.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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December 24th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
It’s also the home of Mike Everhart’s the “Oceans of Kansas” wedsite, the best place on the web for information about the inland sea that stretched from the gulf of Mexico to the Arctic in the Jurassic and Cretaceous…also more than 6,000 years ago. There are brilliant points of light in the darkness.
December 24th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
I understand how radioactive decay produces terrestrial helium, but how do we get helium from the big bang? How does “that” helium end up underground?
December 24th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
“Second, understand that most of the helium on Earth comes from a) the breakdown of radioactive nuclei; a process which takes tens of thousands to millions and even billions of years, and b) the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.”
Or, you can believe that the magic invisible sky man made it.
December 24th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
dogscratcher, the vast majority of helium on Earth is the result of radioactive decay. I put in the Big Bang because it produced all the hydrogen, and some of the helium in the Universe, and virtually no other element (there was a tiny bit of lithium in there). Some of the helium in the Earth may be from the BB, but there’s no way to know which ones. So I threw it in as a “gimme”.
December 24th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
I was surprised to learn about how we in Kansas are responsible for 2/3 of the global Helium gas supply. I’ve personally visited our old salt mines, the Jefferson coal power plant, lots of our natural history museums, the Cosmosphere and space/aviation/aeronautical museums, I have a few native Kansas fish fossils, I’ve visited historic farmsteads like the MaHaffe… yet somehow all knowledge of this helium thing eluded me. Whadya know.
December 24th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
The more I read this blog, the more I get disgusted by the anti-religious sentiment. The people who read this blog, I’m assuming, aren’t the type that would be won over by such conclusions anyway.
Not everyone out there is a wacko, and some of us who come here just want to hear science.
December 25th, 2006 at 12:30 am
didn’t the government preserve these fields during WWII?
December 25th, 2006 at 2:40 am
To Andrew Conkling, for my part at least, the sentiment here isn’t particularly anti religious, it’s anti the wacko-religious who ignore all scientific evidence and insist that the earth is only 6,000 years old; that evolution is “only” a theory (thus showing that they don’t understand the meaning of the word in a scientific context); that are sneakily trying to undo the separation of church & state.
I could go on but I’ve eaten well today, had a couple of red wines and am feeling quite benevolent
Add to that the heating being on because it’s been the coldest Christmas Day here in Melbourne (14°C max currently 11) since 1935 and my eyelids are starting to droop…zzzzzzzzz
December 25th, 2006 at 6:18 am
It’s just that when people are absolutly certain, about an absolute “truth”, but are evidently wrong, they become sooooo easy to make fun of.
PI is 3 damit!!!
December 25th, 2006 at 7:35 am
Andrew, you have to realize that religion gives a lot to be anti-religious about. If one skips over the departure from logic, the ignorance of reason, and the total lack of evidence supporting any religion for a moment and looks at how religions tend to treat ANYONE not of that flavour of IPU belief, there’s enough fodder to make a person anti-religious.
You, personally, might be a happy, healthy, friendly, [insert religious affiliation here], but that doesn’t mean that your are an example of the overall posture of your religion.
Right now, Christians all across the US (and to a lesser degree, Canada as well) are working to insinuate Christianity into public schools, to slow, reverse, and discredit accepted, well-researched, solid scientific progress and knowledge, and to marginalize anyone who doesn’t buy into the dead-guy-on-a-stick theory. Some of them even believe that if you can’t come around to their way of thinking, you are unworthy of being an American and should be jailed/deported/not offered the protections of the Constitution/etc.
Right now, Muslims all across the middle east are working to stamp out competing views like Christianity, and science. They believe that if you can’t come around to their way of thinking you should be put to the sword. To even suggest that God didn’t make helium magically appear could get you killed in some places.
I could drag that out paragraph after paragraph, but I think the point is clear. Frankly, BA takes it pretty easy on religion – much easier than it deserves, IMO.
December 25th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Andrew:
The enlightened squid said it pretty well. I’ll just add that however well-intentioned, the request to just “hear science” without any judgment of religion is more than a little hypocritical. Science—or, more generally, evidence-based inquiry—can and is employed to investigate religious claims. They come up wanting. When that happens, people discuss it and form informed opinions about the worth of religion.
That’s how it works. You don’t get to declare some areas of inquiry out of bounds. You don’t get to section off a portion of your favorite fairy stories and, by expressing an interest in science, inure yourself from any unpleasant opinions about them, no matter how reasonably arrived at. Fervent irrational belief (or membership in a certain social club—however best describes your conception of religion) doesn’t give you the authority to call the shots about what other people are allowed to say, or even about what it is polite to say. If you prefer a nice, non-threatening discussion with velvet ropes around it, you may find Sunday School more appropriate.
December 25th, 2006 at 9:51 am
For the record, Kansas voters threw enough of the wackos out of office in November to return some sanity to the discussion. Admittedly some nitwits remain, sniping at the edges, but they’ve been reduced to the pitiful task of trying to rationalize defeat. In a week, the Kansas Science Taliban loses its majority on the State Board of Education, and life will return to something like normalcy.
I believe California enjoys the distinction of not only being home to the LaBrea Tar Pits, but also eccentric billionaire Howard Ahmanson, one of the driving forces behind funding for DI, as well as Phillip Johnson, one of the authors of the notorious “Wedge” Document, both of whom have apparently managed to wage their own war on science and reason without benefit of voter consent.
December 25th, 2006 at 11:23 am
As a graduate of the doctoral program in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas, I find this type of Kansas bashing troubling. Yes, there are lots of fundamentalist wackos in Kansas. But remember that the Discovery Institute is in Seattle, ICR is in southern California, Dover is in PA, Carl Baugh is in Texas, Ken Hamm is in Kentucky, and Hovind is in Florida. Look in your own backyward before trashing Kansas. The real irony is that Kansas is home to one of the greatest research centers in evolution and paleontology.
December 25th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Oxen being gored are never comfortable. If this is the kind of reaction a mild-mannered post by BA gets from those who would defend religion, I’d wonder what they do when there’s a REAL attack on their religious beliefs?
This was no attack. It was an observation of irony. There’s an unsubtle difference. I invite those who see “attacks” behind every display or irony or disagreement to learn the difference.
What the Enlightened Squid and other said (or hinted at) about the overweening tendencies of religious whack-jobs: word.
December 25th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Oh, and for the record, just as I defend others’ rights to believe what they wish, I also expect all others to respect differening opinions, even if said opinions happen to be getting too close to the oxen for comfort.
December 25th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Mythology is one Way to rationalize the Why of our existance.
Science is our only useful Way of understanding the How of our existence.
Mythology assumes there is a Reason for our being,,,such an assumption may be totally unwarrented.
We wish to believe we are special, deserving of this ability to understand. Therefore, there must be some ONE who defines this reason,,,
Perhaps the only One who can make such a case, is the one asking the question.
One cannot bash a geographical area(Kansas, Penn, etc.). We can however, bash those few individuals who are intent upon shoving their opinions down our throats. Resistance to dogma has been the hallmark of progress since our beginning as an introspective species. Hopefully, that resistance will continue into the indefinite future.
As we continue our progress into that indefinite future, we may find, we ARE the ONE that defines our reason for being. It is likely there is NO singular intelligence directing everything but our belief in the possibility of such gave us a direction to go. That may be the only real value of any religion,,,
Happy holidaze to all and to all a good night,,,
Peace,
GAry 7
December 25th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
interesting thoughts!
I think we ought to just recognize the irony that Phil wanted us to recognize, and not get bound up in the details.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
December 25th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Just a slight addendum. Check out the link, pertaining to the Myth of the Roman god Mythrus(Sp?).
It’s way too appropriate,,,
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/12/merry_mithras.html
Gary 7
December 25th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Here’s a link to a video of Richard Dawkins speaking on the queerness of quantum mechanics. Fascinating,,,
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/12/richard_dawkins_7.html
Gary 7
December 25th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Pastafarians know that his Holy Noodlyness created the Universe and all within. RAmen
December 25th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
RAmen!
December 25th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
When Cthulu awakens He will eat the flying spaghetti monster, and not a pirate in the world can stop him.
December 25th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong, but about a week ago during the physics lecture I heard this:
1) 99.999% of elements with atomic number LESS than that of Iron are produced during the process of thermonuclear [b]synthesis[/b]
2) 99.999% of elements with atomic number BIGGER than that of Iron are produced during the process of nuclear [b]breakdown[/b]
I mean, isn’t helium synthesized from hydrogen? If so, then there is a slight mistake in this passage: [i]Second, understand that most of the helium on Earth comes from a) the breakdown of radioactive nuclei; a process which takes tens of thousands to millions and even billions of years, and b) the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.[/i]
Of course, that’s just being picky. Nicely written, as always.
To Mr. Conkling:
I think you’re mixing up religion and faith. Faith is essential to every human being because that’s the force that keeps us going. Faith is not related to religion nor to science. Neither is ethics. Actually, faith is more related to philosophy than religion.
Religion is an utterly wrong collection of utterly wrong statements that are based upon human imagination and have no ground in REALITY. Religion doesn’t prove anything. Religion doesn’t suggest anything. Religion doesn’t MEAN anything.
In other words, I would agree that Christian philosophy is good. However, Christian religion is an utter nonsense. If it DOES achieve anything, it’s making people blind to the reality. It makes people count on nonsensical extraterrestrial (or should it be extrauniversal?) powers when everything depends on them. It makes people assume stupidest things without any basis. What is worst of all, it makes people EASY TO MANIPULATE, because they lose the ability to recognize truth from lies and reality from fiction. I assume this aspect is very well known to those, who are especially keen to get this religious antiscientific nonsensical crap into science classes…
December 26th, 2006 at 1:27 am
Another question: (if you disregard convection) Doesn’t distilling out the helium and shipping it to the rest of the world leave the remaining air heavier, not lighter?
To carnifex: What is religion? Could you try to define it? Because I think I would be of another opinion than you however you’d define it, based on the conclusions you draw above.
December 26th, 2006 at 1:57 am
Berkeley Says: “Another question: (if you disregard convection) Doesn’t distilling out the helium and shipping it to the rest of the world leave the remaining air heavier, not lighter?”
The helium isn’t “distilled” out of the air (the way, say, nitrogen or oxygen are). It is trapped underground in airtight caverns and interstices (I love that word!) in the crust and is extracted by wells just like natural gas. It is created by nuclear decay processes (I don’t know the exact process, but I’m sure someone here does). Beta radiation is essentially a helium nucleus (two protons and two neutrons) and it just has to grab two electrons from somewhere to create a helium atom.
Any helium that gets into the atmosphere rises to the top where the radiation from the sun and other places energizes the atoms enough to actually leave the Earth completely.
- Jack
December 26th, 2006 at 2:05 am
One thing about Kansas, If I remember correctly after the school board removed evolution from the state assessment requirements they threw the bums out. School boards don’t get much attention until they start acting wacky. I think this is a very good feature of the United States republic which favors representative democracy–you let the people do their jobs if they screw up then it is curtains. It is wrong to blame the entire state.
Actually I do think all the helium in the earth’s crust is leftover alpha particles from radioactive decay, helium is too volatile to remain otherwise as the earth formed. I think it is possible to exclude big bang helium in certain cases, in particul the isotope helium 3 since radioactive decay produces the helium 4 variety. (checking a table of istopic abundances I can see there is some helium 3 (0.00014%) so a share of the helium is from the big bang)
December 26th, 2006 at 4:19 am
Certainly, Mr.Berkeley. Religion is a set of pseudohypothetical statements about supernatural beings and supernatural forces, which, generally, either reward good behaviour or try to lure human beings into the path of evil. In a short form, religion is “mythology meets ethics of human behaviour”. As mythology is a form of human creativity, it can’t be regarded as nothing else but that. There is nothing scientific in mythology. You can’t take it as a basis for ANY and ALL scientific assumptions. Basically, it is, or, rather, was a placeholder for things human race could not explain, and now, as we learn these things, religion must go away, because it doesn’t meet our modern day requirements. And the only way I see religion is useful is its philosophical system (ie the things you get when you delete all the mythological crap out of the Bible or any other holy book for that matter). However, even then it’s not superior to any other philosophical system, e.g. Kant, Camus, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, you-name-him-or-her.
Religion is just that. Philosophy wrapped in a supernatural coating, which is based on our imagination and has no realistic ground. Or, rather, no ground at all.
Just for the record – I don’t ever regard religious people lesser than me. I just think they’re wrong. And all the stuff I wrote here is actually directed not at the evils of religion, but at its being totally unscientific and therefore inappropriate in science classes or any classes for that matter at all (except philosophy ones).
Best wishes and Merry Christmas. I hope I didn’t insult anyone personally. I’m open to a good-willed discussion.
December 26th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
I’m tired at the Kansas bashing as well.
We have thrown the creationist/ID bums at every turn. We should be commended not vilify. And the reacent elections have doen nothing but solidify the pro evolution, pro education, pro sanity stance. With the Govenor (DEMOCRAT Kathleen Sibelius, stating she would like to change the way the Board of education workd)
Kansas has done EVERYTHIG right. And every lame brain issue the BOE has tried to froce on us has been written by OUT OF STATE idiots…
PLEASE stop bashing Kansas, when the voters hav voted FOR evolution every single time….
December 26th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Excuse me, but what does helium have to do with religion? Sure, it’s stretching it a bit to say that Kansas “produces” helium that has been in the making for a considerably longer time than anything has been called Kansas, but it is a well-established usage of the word “produce” to speak about extracting something from a natural reservoir; people regularly talk about “producing” crude oil, gold or diamonds even when just digging or pumping it out of the ground. Even if one could see a some shred of irony in that, where does the religion-bashing come in?
December 26th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Oops, I meant “alpha” particles, not “beta” in that post a few back. I really shouldn’t be posting after midnight following a day of making merry
- Jack
December 27th, 2006 at 9:39 am
Kansas, Amercian Bible Belt, Mid-west, The UnitedStates generally… Like it ornot you’ve got yourselves areputationfor fundamentalist tomfoolery.
So, yes, its ironic as Phil noted.
To change your image will take time – and a lot of kicking the backsides of the morons who’ve given you this bad rap.
Sounds like the good news is you’ve made a start. Bad news though, is there’s still a way to go.
Hopefully, one day you’ll get to the point where your states name – or your nations won’t instantly conjure up pictures of idiots who believe very silly things.
It may take a while – after all, your country was created by the equivalent of annoying bible-thumpers who were told to sod off by the rest of Europe -and their legacy still shows particularly in regions that are, well, seen as if not actually, less developed, less sophisticated and less cosmopolitian. Still listening to the BA and Sagan and Dawkins and their like is a sign of progress.
December 27th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Uuurghh, the typos! the typos!
I’d love to edit my post above. But Ican’t so I’m justgoing toswear under my breath about it for a while .. Sigh.
BA – please can you find a way of letting us edit these blutzFeed comments posts, please ..
December 27th, 2006 at 11:52 am
I love how I’ve been on both sides of these arguments. I used to be a baptists (I can see a large majority of you cringing at the word) and a creationist. But first and foremost I’ve always been a scientist, even above religion. Now I’ll say I don’t know, I am collecting data be it from Kent Hoven (no I don’t worship or believe all he says but he makes some good points) or from sites such as this and science articles. BA you’re comments here are quite often anti-religious as are your other readers’ and I’ll just say it for you, you can do that, it’s your blog. But what you all don’t seem to see is that you’re no different from the creationists in your thinking. You all overlook niches in your beliefs in some way whether you wanna admit it or not. None of us want to admit that there is too much that we just don’t know to cling so strongly to one thing. There are flaws in even our most basic of understandings such as gravity (hence theories of dark matter and alternate formulas for gravity) and even the most evident things such as light, we can’t even decide if it’s a particle or a wave which are vastly different (at least from our prospective). When someone insists that the big bang has to be the answer they sound just as ignorant as when someone says God has to be the answer. Think about, theorize, collect data, but don’t let yourselves get caught up thinking you actually know.
December 28th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
Well, everyone has cognitive blindspots, I’ll give you that.
But science is a process and not a static thing, and most scientists are aware of that new things can arise that changes the nature of the known. Some don’t but then we can’t expect every person who shows up on this site to have an understanding of epistemology.
Because there are different kinds of knowns belive it or not. If we argue about what is known in _absolute_ terms, we will never get beyond our own self awarness. In absolute terms nothing can be known beyond that something exists that is capable of experiencing that it knows that it exists.
Zen, some kinds of buddhism (and other so called enlightenment teachings) are atheistic “religions” devoted to exploring this fact experientially, and they are surprisingly compatible with skeptisism. They could humoursly be described as methods of being skeptical towards your own existance.
But in practical terms, that will get us nowhere. If I’m hot, I like some ice tea. The absolute nature of my body temperature, or what the essence of ice tea is, removed from all contexts (I.E in the absolute) is really not something that influences my choice of beverage in any way.
So while in absolute terms I can not know that the ice tea exists at all, to function we must move our point of referense into the world that we experience and from that point of reference lots can be known about the ice tea.
This however does not make the god concept any more logical or change the relationship between science and theistic religion, because faith doesn’t carry across the cognitive chasm between the internal and external any better than an observable fact.
What it does do is make it look ridiculus when a person claims that the bible has absolute validity. (Which by extrapolation would mean that the person knows the bibles essential nature through self-reflecting experience, and therefore must infact _be_ the bible)
___
So, while science can not claim absolute knowledge, it can make the claim to have the _best possible_ substantiated knowledge of the natural universe at this particular time. And I can not, even as a holistically inclined skeptic find a reason to doubt that.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
But SCR, the reputation of Kansas being a bible belt state (it’s not) and anti-evolution, is completely undeserved. Not one of the ID/creationist attempts at implementing things in the education system of Kansas succeded. NOT ONE. They were never implemented. We are fighting the good fight, we are winning, and we are being redculed still. No, it’s not ironic. It’s sad that Kansas isn’t being held up as a shining beacon in the cause of evolution, and anti-stupidity. But it’s not and that is what upsets me. We have defeated the IDers at every step, and will continue to do so, although I personally believe with Governor Sibelious and Repersentive Boyda now voted in, the creationists are on a very poor footing now in Kansas.
All I’m asking is that everybody recognize that we are fighting the good fight, in Kansas, and winning. What is ironic, isn’t the fact we produce 2/3rds of the worlds helium. The ironic thing is that Phil’s wife and her family is from Kansas, and he should know all this…. We were bushwacked by a few idiots, lead by people outside the state, and we defeated them… That’s the ironic thing.
December 29th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
I think the real irony is that nearly everyone here condemns stupidity and generalizations [which religions tend to do ALOT] and yet there is this anti-Kansas attitude… THAT is what is ironic. it is a little ironic that the ID gang chose Kansas as a suitable battlefield [poorly thought out I might add] where Kansas is the home of such a mass of evolutionary evidence. Ok maybe it wasn’t ironic just STUPID.
December 29th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
I was just enjoying the conversation and it occured to me to wonder how many Religous people have had their heads lopped off by Scientists. Any?
Lets keep that in mind when people start talking about conflicting ideas and who should be worried about whom.