Super Facts – The goal of this blog is to create a long list of facts that are important, not trivia, and that are known to be true yet are either disputed by large segments of the public or highly surprising or misunderstood by many.

Implications of the 23AndMe Bankruptcy

This post is not a super fact post but it contains some other important information. 23AndMe, the large personal genomics and biotechnology company just went into bankruptcy. This has implications for its 15 million customers including me and my wife. In fact, it is advised that you delete your data from their website, and I will tell you how to do that.

About 23AndMe

23AndMe, founded in 2006 provides a direct-to-consumer genetic testing service in which customers provide a saliva sample that is analyzed to generate reports relating to the customer’s ancestry, genetic predispositions, inherited health conditions and other health related topics. Who doesn’t want to know something about their ancestry going back possibly thousands of years? Who doesn’t want to know about genetic timebombs in their DNA? I took the test, and my wife took the test, our daughter took the test, other family members took the test, and it was fun and very interesting, and a good conversation starter. For example, I found out that I am practically a Neanderthal, well maybe not exactly.

Geneticist sequencing human genome Asset id: 2479929725 by FOTOGRIN

What we did not think about is that 23AndMe represented a significant privacy risk. This is data that can be misused in various ways. You can be discriminated against based on this data, you can be denied employment, insurance companies can use it to deny you health insurance, you can be subject to surreptitious testing without your consent. Not to mention familial complications, such as infidelity, and people finding out who their real parents are, and relatives were. In the wrong hands this data is dangerous.

In October 2023 hackers stole 7 million people’s data. Stolen information included people’s names, addresses and genetic data and was sold online. This made the economic difficulties the company was in even worse. Yesterday the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and their founder and CEO resigned. Now people are rightfully worried about their data.

Ancestry from 23AndMe

However, the information we got from our genetic tests was interesting and fun. I found out that my ancestry was 99.8% Northwestern European, 85.3% Scandinavian/Sweden/Norway, 14.4% Finnish, 0.1% other Northwestern European, and 0.2% Siberian. Not surprising since my family have lived in northern Sweden and northern Finland since at least 1628 according to the ancestry records. Other people in my family were a lot more mixed than that. I can add that I also thought it was fun to on occasion find second cousins or third cousins whose existence I was unaware of.

I also found out that I had strong Neanderthal ancestry. The report says I have more Neanderthal variants than 99% of customers. On the 23AndMe website there was a forum, or club for people with strong Neanderthal ancestry, so I joined. However, some people were taking it a bit too seriously and after I while I did feel comfortable in the Neanderthal club, so I left.

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal by Natural History Museum. Werner Ustorf, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Fun Facts from 23AndMe

I was happy to find that I did not seem to have any hereditary predisposition for any illnesses among the ones they listed. Well, I have the typical predisposition for type II diabetes. I was happy to see that I am not predisposed to get Alzheimer’s, which I was worried about, since I have a couple of relatives with that condition.

The most fun and perhaps least important aspect of the genetic testing was the non-health related predispositions. For example, regarding “ice cream flavor preference” my genes says that I am “more likely to prefer vanilla over chocolate ice cream”. My wife got the opposite, and this is correct. I love vanilla, she loves chocolate. I am less likely than average to be afraid of heights and less likely to be motion sick.

Our eye colors, finger and toe lengths, propensity for dandruff, cheek dimples, hair texture and thickness, earwax type, freckles, bunions, the DNA analysis got it all right. By the way I am good at smelling asparagus, just like my DNA test says. The one thing that my DNA test got wrong was that the most likely time for me to wake up in the morning is 6:53AM. The DNA test got my wife’s wake up time correct, but I am not waking up at 6:53AM.

Deleting your data from 23AndMe

OK this is a lot of fun and maybe useful, but the big question is do we want this information in the wrong hands. I’ve mentioned a few ways in which this data can be misused but there may be many more ways this data can be misused that I have not thought about, that no one has yet thought about. Therefore, I deleted all our data from 23AndMe today. If you are a member of 23AndMe I suggest you do the same. Below I am giving you the instructions for how to delete your data from 23AndMe.

Log into your 23andMe account. You may need to reset your password.
Go to your profile and locate the little menu up on the far top right. Select Settings.
Scroll to the “23andMe Data” section at the bottom of the page and click View (button). If you want to download your data, select what you want to download. I downloaded the “reports summary”, which is a pdf file. I also downloaded ancestry composition raw data, which is a large CSV file compressed into a zip file. Finally, I downloaded family tree data, which is in json format.
Scroll to the “Delete Data” section and click Permanently Delete Data. This is a Red button at the bottom.
Confirm your request: You’ll receive an email from 23andM. Click the link/button in the email to confirm.

Important Note : I am back from my ski vacation, and I once again respond to comments posting and visiting other people’s blogs.

To see the Super Facts click here

Quasar TON 618

This is a submission for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday

Image by Kevin from The Beginning at Last

Kevin’s artistic picture above reminds me of a Quasar, a supermassive black hole emitting enormous amounts of energy.

What is a Quasar ?

A Quasar is a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy that is emitting enormous amounts of energy. The quasar is the supermassive black hole plus its accretion disk, the gas it is feeding on and the radiation it emits. The quasar is actively feeding on gas and stars and emitting enormous amounts of radiation in the process. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as the Milky Way, and millions of times greater than the largest and most luminous stars in the known universe.

Supermassive black hole at the center of a quasar. Singularity in space devouring matter and light. From Shutterstock Asset id: 2484018599 by Nazarii Neshcherenskyi.

TON 618

TON 618 is a hyper luminous Quasar known to house one of the most massive black holes ever discovered, with an estimated mass of around 40 to 60 billion solar masses. Its luminosity is estimated to be 140 trillion times that of the Sun. The diameter of TON 618 is 780 billion kilometers or 82.6 light-years. Keep in mind that the distance to the moon is 1.3 light seconds and 82.6 light years is more than two billion times larger than that. Our sun is gigantic with a diameter 109 times larger than the diameter of earth. 1.3 million earths could fit inside the volume of our sun. However, in comparison to TON 618, our sun is a lot less than tiny. The diameter of TON 618 is 561 million times larger than that of the sun’s diameter and 177 octillion (an octillion is 27 zeros) suns could fit inside the volume of TON 618. In other words, we are comparing a dust particle to planet earth size wise. I am pretty sure you are not going to be able to imagine this.

Quasar in deep space. Elements of this image furnished by NASA. Asset id: 1758938918. by NASA images.

When TON 618 was discovered in 1957, quasars and supermassive black holes were not yet recognized and understood by astronomers. The word quasar inspired shock and awe in every nerd on the planet. The concept of quasars, or quasi-stellar radio sources, wasn’t fully recognized until 1963. When I was a kid in the 1970’s there was a lot of speculation as to what these gigantic ultra bright but far away objects could be. TON 618 is located 18.2 billion light years away. Considering that the reachable limit of the Universe is 16.5 billion light years even if you travel at the speed of light, you could never travel to TON 618 (barring the warp drive in Star Trek).

The Event Horizon

When we are talking about the diameter of a black hole we are not talking about a sphere with a solid surface. The black hole is a sphere, or an oval, wherein gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not light, not anything. It’s truly black. As you approach the event horizon you become invisible, space deforms, and from the perspective of an outside observer, time appears to stop for someone reaching the event horizon of a black hole. Time will continue for someone falling in, well in some sense. You’ll be transported beyond our universe and time as we know it. We can guess but we can’t really know.

Black Holes

Black holes are invisible. They are truly black. However, we can see them if they are consuming matter. The matter close to black holes will heat up and glow. The closer to the event horizon the redder it is. It is called an accretion disk as in the depiction above. There are an estimated 100 million black holes in our galaxy, the Milky Way. At the center of the Milky Way is a super massive black hole called Sagittarius A-star. It is 4 million times more massive than our sun. There are supermassive black holes located at the center of most large galaxies. The supermassive black holes are considered to play a crucial role in the formation of galaxies.

3D illustration of giant Black hole in deep space. High quality digital space art in 5K – realistic visualization. Stock Illustration ID: 2476711459 by Vadim Sadovski.

Black Hole Animation

Below is an animation created by NASA that depicts what an observer falling into a black hole would see. The video is about 4 minutes long.

TON 618 Animation

Below is an animation of TON 618, a quasar and the largest black hole known in the universe. This video is about 5 minutes.

To see my The Bizarre Reality of Black Holes Super Fact Click Here

To see the Super Facts click here

Note : Today March 14 is Albert Einstein’s birthday, the man who gave us the General Theory of Relativity, which mathematically describes black holes. It is also Pi Day (first 10 digits 3.1415926535), and there’s a rare moon eclipse tonight called a blood moon or a worm moon. Also, Dallas is under a fire warning. Be careful.

Important Note : I am going on a ski vacation tomorrow and I will take a one-week break from blogging as well as a break from reading other people’s blogs.

Natural Disasters Kill Less People Now Than 100 Years Ago

Super fact 35: Natural disasters kill a lot less people now compared to 100 years ago. That is despite a larger population and despite the fact that climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of many types of natural disasters.

This is a super fact because surveys, such as this questionnaire from Gap Minder, show that the vast majority of the public (90%) believe that deaths from natural disasters have increased or stayed the same. Gap Minder is a Swedish highly respected non-profit founded by Hans Rosling that promotes increased use and understanding of statistics. Our World in Data (OWID), a renowned scientific online publication focusing on large global problems largely took its inspiration for Gap Minder and Hans Rosling.

The reason for the fewer deaths from natural disasters is not that there are fewer natural disasters, on the contrary, it is because we are now much better at predicting, handling and recovering from natural disasters. Our warnings systems, rescue systems and healthcare have improved significantly.

The graphics in this article from BBC show that the frequency of natural disasters has increased, and that the cost of natural disasters has increased, and yet the number of deaths has decreased.

The graph below comes from the Gap Minder article. It shows the annual deaths from natural disasters in ten-year intervals starting with 1930. In the 1930’s there were 971 thousand deaths per year from natural disasters and during the period 2010 to 2016 there were 72 thousand deaths per year from natural disasters, an improvement by more than 13 times.

However, it should be noted that there was a huge flood in China 1931 causing an estimated 3 million deaths, and it skews the numbers for the 1930’s interval.

Originally, I set the headline for this super fact to be “10 Times more people died from natural disasters a hundred years ago” but I changed it to “Natural Disasters Kill Less People Now Than 100 Years Ago” because I realized that the 1930’s peak is an outlier because of the 1931 flood. I don’t want my headlines to be click bait.

This graph from the Gap Minder article shows the annual deaths from natural disasters in ten-year intervals starting with 1930. The trend is down.

This does not mean that we should not worry about the increase in frequency and intensity of natural disasters from climate change. First of all, there are no warning systems and healthcare available for Koalas and Elephants, secondly cost matters, and thirdly there is no guarantee that we can keep improving our ability of predicting, handling and recovering from natural disasters enough to match the accelerating risks for natural disasters.

What People Believe Regarding Disaster Deaths

The Gap Minder article above report on a question survey conducted by Gap Minder. They asked large groups of people in 14 countries the following multiple-choice question “How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last hundred years?” The choices were:

A. More than doubled
B. Remained more or less the same
C. Decreased to less than half

Most people answered A, a lot

of people answered B, but only 10% got the correct answer C, decreased to less than half. In other words, if chimpanzees had answered this question by randomly picking an answer, they would have done better than people. This is why I consider this a super fact. Below is a graphics taken from the Gap Minder article that shows how people in different countries responded.

The histogram graphics above show the answers to the question “How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last hundred years?” The correct answer “decreased to less than half” (in green) was rarely picked. The graphics is taken from the Gap Minder article mentioned.

EF3 Tornado in Dallas

In October 2019 an EF3 tornado ripped through our neighborhood. It left a 2-3 miles long trail of destruction. Roofs were lifted off houses, cars and buses were flown around, hundreds of houses were destroyed, bricks were flying around in the wind, trees were uprooted, and tree branches were flying around, and pieces of concrete crashed into buildings and hit steel fences so forcefully that it bent even quarter inch thick steel fences.

Unlike many of our neighbor’s houses, our house stood, but our chimney was smashed by a piece of concrete coming off a neighbor’s house, we had to replace our roof, our garage door, the wiring in the attic, our fence and my grill flew around in the yard. The amazing thing was that no one in the neighborhood died.

Why did no one die? Was it maybe because no one was outside walking the dog, or driving around, because everyone had received the alarm on their mobile phone about the approaching tornado and was therefore sheltering inside in a safe place? Imagine the same thing happening in the 1930’s.

Below are a few photos from that day and here are two links with more photos, link-1 , link-2. On the five-year anniversary of this event NBC news interviewed me about this event. To see the interview click here . My interview is at one minute and ten seconds.

NBC used this photo. A neighbor’s house the morning of October 21^st, 2019. Again, click on the image, or here, to see the interview. My interview is at one minute and ten seconds.

Another neighbor’s house. This house was about 100 yards from our house. It took a direct hit from the tornado.

My wife Claudia asked me to go check on her parents. I drove about 50-100 yards when a neighbor’s roof lying across the road stopped me. I turned around but this time I was stopped by a large pile of trees lying across the street. So, I started walking, but this time I was stopped by a group of firemen telling me that it was too dangerous to be outside. They told me to go back home, and I did. The next day we were able to visit her parents and below is what we saw.

Inside my wife Claudia’s parents’ house. This was the morning after. In the photo we are walking into their house to check on them (that’s my wife).

To see the other Super Facts click here

Scientists Agree that Global Warming is happening and that we are the Cause

Super fact 34: Climate Scientists agree that Global Warming or if you call it Climate Change is happening, and that it is caused by us primarily because of our burning of fossil fuels. There is a long-standing scientific consensus on these two facts because the evidence is conclusive. Typically, studies show an agreement of at least 97% or 98% among climate scientists.

This is a super fact because surveys show that this is not what the public believes and yet it is true. The public incorrectly believes that there is a large disagreement among scientists on this topic. A note, to understand why the evidence is conclusive as to why global warming is happening and is caused by us click here.

Note : I will use the term “global warming” in this review. Whether you call the phenomenon climate change, climate disruption, or global heating, is not important.

The Scientific Consensus

This extensive survey from 2013 of 12,000 climate papers (papers published over two decades) by Dana Nuccitelli and Cook, etc., concluded that 97.1% of climate scientists endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

They also did a science author self-rating which concluded that 97.2% of climate scientists endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. Another conclusion from the survey was that the consensus had increased from around 90%, perhaps less, in the early 1990’s.

A later review of six independent, peer-reviewed studies examining the scientific consensus about global warming have concluded that between 90% and 100% of climate scientists are convinced human-caused global warming is happening. A more recent study (2021) found that as many as 98% of climate scientists are convinced global warming is happening and is human-caused. Numerous other surveys have concluded the same thing.

People’s Beliefs About Global Warming

This 2024 survey from Yale University show that most Americans (61%) understand that global warming is mostly human caused. By contrast, 28% think it is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment. Most Americans (58%) <<Link-6>> understand that most scientists think global warming is happening. This percentage has trended generally upward since this survey began in 2008. By contrast, about one in five (22%) think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether global warming is happening.

The green graph corresponds to “most scientists think global warming is happening (%).” The black graph corresponds to “there is a lot of disagreement among scientists (%)”. The yellow graph corresponds to “Most scientists think global warming is NOT happening (%)”. Graph taken from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

However, only one in five Americans (20%) understand that nearly all climate scientists (more than 90%) think that human-caused global warming is happening. The aforementioned Dana Nuccitelli refers to this in his book Climatology versus Pseudoscience as the consensus gap. Again, this large discrepancy between public perception and reality makes the consensus gap a super fact. Research has shown that this discrepancy has a large impact on people’s other beliefs regarding global warming.

The question was, To the best of your knowledge what percentage of climate scientists think that human-caused global warming is happening? Graph taken from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Why is there a Consensus Gap?

In his book Climatology versus Pseudoscience Dana Nuccitelli explains that a relatively small group of so-called climate skeptics, or more accurately called climate contrarians have received a lot of attention from media. Even though their science is bad, and they’ve published their error ridden papers in obscure or discredited journals, and the fact that their predictions have failed repeatedly many times over, they have had an enormous influence on public discourse. Conservative politicians, and many talk show hosts are blindly devoted to their falsehoods, whilst real scientists are being attacked.

It is not just rightwing media who are using them for their purposes, but mainstream media are giving the contrarians undue attention as well. Sensationalism is one issue. A science contrarian claiming that all the climate scientists are wrong, and that he is the only one who finally got it right is a lot more interesting of a story than a repeat of the consensus. Another issue is false balance. Journalist should not feel that they must give equal time to evidence-based science and nonsense, but that is often the case. To read my review of this book click here.

The Oregon Petition

I am mentioning the Oregon petition because I fell for it myself. The Oregon petition was an official looking petition circulated by climate contrarians, claiming that there is no evidence that human-caused global warming will cause catastrophic heating of earth’s atmosphere and disruption of earth’s climate, and that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere would even be beneficial for plants and animals. It got an impressive number of signatures, 32,000 after some years.

However, it turned out that the signatories rarely had climate expertise, and were not scientists, and the survey listed many falsified names such as the names of the Spice Girls and several fictional characters. Less than 200 of the signatories were climate researchers.

It was a con, but it was touted in a lot of media as the truth. I saw it over and over and I believed it. I was later surprised to learn that it was a con and that a scientific consensus existed on global warming / climate change. Learning that I had been bamboozled on this matter was one of the red flags that prompted me to start doing some fact checking on the issue global warming.

To see the other Super Facts click here

Quick Easy Introduction to Astrophysics

The goal of this blog is to create a list of what I call super facts. Important facts that are known to be true and yet they are surprising, shocking or disputed among non-experts. In a sense it is myth busting. However, it is not the only type of posts I do. This is a review for a popular book on Astrophysics called “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry” by Neil De Grasse Tyson. It is a New York Times best seller and the #1 best seller in Astronomy & Astrophysics on Amazon. It has almost 37,000 ratings/reviews on Amazon and more 194,000 reviews/ratings on Goodreads.

Below is a list of the four formats in which it comes on Amazon.

Hardcover – Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition (May 2, 2017), ASIN : 0393609391, ISBN-10 : 9780393609394, ISBN-13 : 978-0393609394, 224 pages, item weight : 2.31 pounds, dimensions : ‎ 7.3 x 4.8 x 0.9 inches, it costs $6.21 – $13.26 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Kindle – Publisher – W. W. Norton & Company (May 2, 2017), ASIN : B01MAWT2MO, 222 pages, it costs $9.00 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Audiobook – Publisher : Blackstone Audio Inc (May 2, 2017), ASIN : B06XB2PX7G, it costs $10.20 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Audio CD – Publisher : Blackstone Publishing; Unabridged edition (May 2, 2017), ISBN-10 : 1538408015, ISBN-13 : 978-1538408018, it costs $24.95 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.

Front cover of the book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the hardcover version of the book.

Amazon’s Description of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Over a year on the New York Times bestseller list and more than a million copies sold.

The essential universe, from our most celebrated and beloved astrophysicist.

What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.

But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.

While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.

This is my four-star review for Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

The reason I gave the book four stars instead of five is because I felt that if you have an interest in the topic, you will have heard it all before. However, in retrospect that might not be a good reason to deduct a star. After all, the book seems to be targeting people who do not know much about the subject and thus will not have heard it all before.

Quick and Entertaining Overview of Astrophysics

I’ve read a number of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s books and I love them. This book is a compressed version of what he has been explaining in other books. If you’ve already read a number of Neil De Grasse books, or perhaps other popular science Astrophysics books such as those by Stephen Hawking, you will not find much new in this book. However, I think it is a brief but good summary of Astrophysics written for a layman. It is 208 pages, each page having about half as much text per page as a typical popular science book. It is an easy and fairly quick read.

He briefly explains the Big Bang, physical laws, spectra, nebulae, the speed of light, very briefly relativity and quantum physics, the cosmic background radiation, galaxies, gravitational lensing, dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, the composition of the solar system and exoplanets. He covers a lot of ground quickly and he makes it easy to understand without simplifying so much that it becomes misleading. This book is exactly what the title says. However, as I mentioned, if you’ve read a lot on the topic already, especially if it is Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s books, you’ve seen it before. I still think it was very enjoyable though and I still learned something new. He is a very entertaining author.