You’ve all suffered through my opinions and biases for the last several months with only the few and far between complaints so I figured I’d go back to, if only for just one piece, to answering some readers questions.
Levi from Jefferson, Oregon asked “What is the oldest fossil ever found?”
That answer changes all the time since we are always making new discoveries, but as of today the oldest fossils we have found are around 3 billion years old.
Now that’s really, really, really old and since the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, the organisms found in them are pretty simple. They are all simple single-celled Prokaryotic organisms like bacteria that inhabited the harsher conditions that the young Earth kept (it sounds funny calling something 1.5 billion years old young).
The more complex land organisms didn’t come around until relatively recently, about 400-500 millions years ago, that’s when plants and animals started waddling around the surface and making all sorts of cool fossils.
Erich from Price, Utah asks “I know what DNA is basically but what are genes and chromosomes?”
Genes are pieces of DNA that contain a very specific set of instructions that tells the body what types of proteins to build.
Those proteins are then used to build everything else in the body. Humans typically have around 20,000 genes while other animals and plants have a huge variety.
For example, a mouse has around 25,000 genes while Rice has 46,000 and a virus has as little as 300.
Genes are found along the rungs or steps of our chromosomes which are different shaped (or length) and are found in different numbers depending on the organism.
Most humans have two sets of 23 chromosomes, while a few humans have an extra or one less (people with Downs syndrome have an extra 21st chromosome). Some animals have more chromosomes than us, like pigeons who have two sets of 40, and some have less like mosquitos, who have two sets of three.
Scientists who study DNA can often tell you which chromosome and where on it certain physical traits or diseases can be found, which is pretty awesome.
James from Salem, Oregon told me this joke “Why can’t you trust atoms? Because they make everything. I appreciate good science jokes and James provided me with a good chuckle, unfortunately James the joke is in error for atoms are not the most elementary of objects.
While everything we can see contains atoms, atoms themselves are made up of smaller materials called elementary particles.
The ancient Greeks first theorized (or at least wrote it down first) that you could divide matter down almost forever until you reached the last indivisible piece, which they called atoms.
The existence of atoms was only confirmed a little over a century ago but it hasn’t stopped some awesome scientists from making a lot of discoveries in quick order.
Most notably to me was the work of J. J. Thomson, who discovered that atoms could be split into parts, showing that atoms have smaller pieces to them.
We have found that atoms contain electrons and hadrons, which we named protons and neutrons. Protons have a very powerful positive charge while electrons carry a negative charge, which keep in orbitals around the nucleus of the atom.
Neutrons carry no charge and give mass to atoms. The reason protons have a positive charge and neutrons do not is because they are themselves made up a smaller particles called quarks. Each have three quarks; protons have two “up” quarks and one “down” and neutrons having two “down” and one “up” quark.
Because of the quarks’ charges (up quarks have a lot of positive charge) the proton is inherently positive. And to make matters even cooler, there are other sub-atomic particles that have little or no interactions with outside particles…ever.
Things like leptons, muons and neutrino’s, but we’ll save those for another article.
At this very moment you have about 60 billion neutrino’s passing through ever square centimeter of you (an area the size of your thumbnail)!
A step back to columns past, to answer readers’ questions
NEW NATHANIEL WOODWARD