Soon American Thanksgiving arrives and a change to note a few things I'm thankful for. This year I'll pick two examples that celebrate tiny asymmetries in nature: our existence and women's sports.
First the universe as we know it. There are several asymmetries in physics that allow us to exist. Two important ones are the amount of antimatter and matter produced in the very early universe and the mass difference between up and down quarks. The matter-antimatter imbalance is easy to think about, but is still one of those fundamental unsolved problems. During the first fractions of a second after everything started particle-anti-particle pairs would be popping in and out of existence at a furious rate. As the universe expanded all that would be left would be pure energy. But something interesting happened. This oscillation slightly favored these oscillating particles to decay as matter particles than antimatter. The asymmetry isn't huge - a part in a billion or so - but we wouldn't be here without it. There are a number of conjectures about the mechanism, but nothing solid.
So the early universe favored matter. Things like electrons and quarks that make up atoms. The neutron has two down and one up quark, the proton two up and one down.1 It turns out down quarks are slightly more massive than up quarks. That means the neutron is more massive - about a tenth of a percent than the proton. On its own the neutron is unstable, decaying into a proton, electron and antineutrino in about fifteen minutes. If the proton was more massive it could decay into a neutron, positron and neutrino. In the heavier proton universe everything would quickly be just neutrons, electrons and neutrinos.. It would be impossible for atoms to form .. no stars, no planets, no us..
What about the radioactive free neutrons in our universe? There's the strong interaction - an interaction resulting from another asymmetry that binds neutrons and protons together at very close ranges. The binding energy prevents the neutron from decaying so we can have atoms that are more complex than hydrogen..
So onto another asymmetry that occurred over thirteen billion years from the beginning - the genetic difference between males and females. Within any given species the differences are very small. They turn out to be profound. Male and female humans have some important differences that can be described as a small asymmetry. This results in two sexes (with some mostly rare differences). There are also a number of genders which aren't related to the genetic asymmetry. Some societies tend equate sex and gender but others, like some North American First Nation Peoples, recognize well over a dozen. I'm solidly with the later group and believe there shouldn't be unfair discrimination.
This is where Title IX is important. A major result of the law was an explosive growth in women's sports in the US. Now fifty years in, the strength of women's sport in American schools has fundamentally changed women's sports globally. Women's sport should be protected category. Biological males receive enormous physical advantages during puberty largely from the hormone testosterone. Biological males that have their testosterone levels reduced to near zero after puberty still have almost all the performance advantage (70 to well over 90 percent) an untreated biological male would have.
A good friend is an Olympian and I've become more familiar with some parts of elite women's sport. A number of biological males are declaring themselves to be trans women.2 While this may or may not be entirely gender identification, these biological males have an advantage over biological females in the vast majority of sports. In sport there three fundamentals people talk about: safety, fairness and inclusivity. Using that order is protective of biological females. Unfortunately some sports and people argue inclusivity and remove fairness and safety.3 The result has been second rate biologically male athletes denying biologically female athletes medals and scholarships and, in some cases, increased injury rates. There's also some intimidation from sponsors to prevent women from speaking up.
But in each category - male and female -you can find what makes sport exciting.
Asymmetries are why we're here. They can also produce social challenges.
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1 I've taken some license here:-)
2 Sports physiologist Ross Tucker has made several podcasts on this that make a good introduction to the biology. The first 35 minutes or so of this podcast episode offer one of the best explanations of the Caster Semenya affair.
3 Some argue that there are women taller and stronger than many men. The argument doesn't hold water. Consider age and weight categories in many sports. They exist to promote fairness and safety. While Sarah stands 196 cm and can lift more than twice her body weight, elite male volleyball players have a strong physical advantage over her. There are male and female distributions for height, weight, strength, lung capacity, blood flow, endurance, etc. In fact, in the longest ultra endurance events - ultra-marthons over 100 miles - women turn out to have an endurance advantage that becomes more significant by 150 miles. If these became popular there should probably be different categories for biological males and biological females.
And on the game I know. Male and female volleyball at the elite level have developed different strategies and tactics as a result of the physical differences. In my mind the women's game involves more finesse, tactics and strategy, while the men's game is more powerful.
manpo-kei, gold plated teaspoons and home runs
A friend had been struggling to find regular physical activity for a few years. She complained enough about a lack of motivation that her brother gave her a low-end Fitbit for Christmas. Somehow the pedometer function clicked for her. Being able to see the numbers of steps was as motivating for her as filling in circles on an Apple Watch is for other people. On top of this she'd heard about the magic 10,000 step number. Initially the goal was beyond her, but she was motivated and within a couple of weeks she was there. She's kept it up and regularly does 15,000 a day along with increasing her speed. Her blood pressure is down from last year's number and she feels healthier.
The NY Times recently ran an article on some inaccuracies in smart watches. It doesn't surprise me. I've been around Olympic programs and athletes for a few years and know some horror stories about the over-reliance of data when you don't know it's accuracy or the context of the measurement or its use. Like anything else with data, you need to know why, what and how you're measuring, manipulating, and finally interpreting and using the information. In sport that turns out to be difficult. There are a number of interesting approaches to deal with the issues, but that's another post.
The NY Times piece and elite training experience suggest broad trends over time are much more important than local accuracy and precision If you're trying to improve your fitness level or play amateur level sports, the motivation from a smartwatch can make a big difference. If you're an elite athlete there are many other things to consider and it's likely you're taking advantage of them.
The notion of broad trend over local accuracy has utility in many areas. One that frustrates me is building carbon dioxide removal technology. It's something of a delaying tactic being cheerleaded by the petrochemical and coal industries. In reality it's extremely expensive, requires a large amount of energy and diverts funding from much more effective technologies and behaviors. Currently four 1 million ton class plants are on the drawing board. With luck each could remove a million tons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2030 or so with a projected cost of about a billion dollars each. So how much of an impact is that?
A million tons of carbon dioxide is about 1/40,000 of current yearly emissions. That's roughly the same ratio as a teaspoon to a bathtub full of water. Imagine running the tub and in the time it takes to fill it, you can remove a teaspoon of water. The bathtub keeps running.. in the time another tub of water comes out of the spigot, you can remove a second teaspoon. And then a third, forth and so on.
We currently have many deployable technologies and behaviors that will turn the tap down much more than a teaspoon worth for far less money. When we're finally down to the point where we're only putting a gallon or so of water into the tub each year, then it might make sense to deploy a number of teaspoons to make a difference for where it's difficult to turn the tap (aviation and shipping for example)
Spend some money and talent learning how to improve the process, but don't count on it in the near term as it isn't, and will never be, a silver bullet. Nothing it. all we can hope for is silver buckshot and using as much as we can possibly afford. It makes sense to use the buckshot with the greatest cost/benefit ratio - things like wind, solar, better power grids, efficient transportation (full sized EVs don't count!), and any number of energy thrifty behaviors.
And finally home runs and climate change. Recently a paper made the major news outlets with projections that climate change will have an impact on Major League Baseball home runs: "Several hundred additional home runs per season are projected due to future warming." The paper is poorly done .. basically a sensitivity analysis based on a single variable. I won't give it the credibility of a link. Something that doesn't work in the real world with something as complex as baseball. I have a some expertise in the fluid dynamics of balls flying through the air and would argue the effect is small. In fact they note the same thing, but word the conclusion to make it appear there is an effect and climate change impacts everything. This is pure clickbait for news organizations and probably has the impact of diverting attention from much more serious issues associated with global warming. It's trivial to see the home run impact is insignificant, but a poorly done analysis can lead to fuzzy thinking and even harm.
Posted at 07:50 AM in building insight, critical thinking, general comments, society and technology, sports | Permalink | Comments (0)
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