Music the key to physics?It’s long been known that physics can help us understand music. For example, the ancient Greeks understood that doubling a note’s frequency makes an octave. But can music teach us anything about physics?George Gibson thinks it can. The University of Conneticut professor delivered a talk on “Physics and Music” to a packed room here at U of T last Thursday. Gibson is an accomplished pianist who gave up a potential career as a performer to study physics.Many of the greatest minds in physics have seen connections between physics and music, he said. Kepler believed the regular motions of the solar system were governed by a mysterious “music of the spheres.” Fourier was inspired by the phenomenon of overtones to develop his mathematical analysis of frequencies. And Heisenberg held that there is “a path to the central order” of nature “in the language of music.”Is all this just coincidence, or is there some deeper connection between physics and music? Gibson offered no definitive answer, but he speculates that the connection may lie “deep in the brain” in the way we process information.Science is “rooted in prediction,” he said, and “the ability to predict is based on seeing patterns.” Perhaps the same parts of the brain are used to recognize patterns in both science and music, he said.–David ShigaFireflies make glow-in-the-dark cancer detectorFireflies are lighting a path to discovering even the tiniest amounts of cancerous cells. A recent discovery indicates that the firefly genome codes for a glowing protein that can help detect the spread of prostate cancer, the second leading cause of death among American men. A mixture of ingredients, including the glowing firefly protein, has been used to detect antigens that are exclusively found on the cancerous cells of the prostate. Once the antigens have been located, the firefly gene is transferred to the cancerous cells, causing them to glow. Researchers hope this knowledge will be useful in developing a treatment for prostate cancer.Source: Scientific American–Camille McLennon
