I think their point was that there isn't anything humans could do during the night. Stars might give some light, but without a full moon you really can't do anything at night without lights.
i mean yeah, but even then starlight is basically fuck all. The moon overpowers those, it just makes the sky look pretty. That's it.
Cloud cover would be primarily lit by moonlit. And even then, moon light is very dim. Just look at early moon light towers used to light up residential areas early in the electrification period.
It's literally the difference between being in your home, at night, and you can't see shit. Vs you can just barely make out where things are, and navigate properly.
Also semantic point, light pollution is not "dark" that's why you can't see any stars. Ever looked at a highway lit with LEDs recently? They have tons of light pollution that can be seen as what's referred to as "sky glow" My point here being, when you go outside in a light polluted area at night, it's literally not dark.
I study circadian rhythms (the process that is responsible for getting us to sleep in the night). Specifically, how circadian rhythms influence how easily we catch diseases, but that part is less relevant to the question.
So since Earth rotates and has day/night cycles, life on Earth evolved to try to predict when the day and night comes. That's what circadian rhythms do. This is really important, since day and night aren't just associated with lightness/darkness. Day and night are associated with a ton of different environmental differences. For instance, it's colder at night, so animals need a way of keeping warm at night. There's more UV light at day, so animals need a way of resisting DNA damage in the day. There's some evidence that the bacteria in the air are different at day vs. at night, so animals will need to have different levels of immune system alertness.
We as humans live in artificial houses with artificial lighting, so we can lose track of why this is really important. But if you've ever went camping or tried to stay out at night you'll probably understand why it's really important for animals to be able to predict the time.
Circadian rhythms end up getting reinforced on a community level, since if it's easier to see in the day, an animal is more likely to forage in the day. Then predators will notice that prey is more plentiful in the day, so it will also be more likely for predators to hunt in the day as well.
Anyways, the end result of all of this is that animals have a huge evolutionary pressure to pick either the day or night to be their active period, which is the time where they look for food and in general just be awake. And whatever they don't pick, that's their rest period, the time where they sleep and recover.
But how do animals know that their circadian rhythms are predicting the correct time? Imagine a mouse in its burrow - it wouldn't be able to tell what time it is just by looking at the sky. And even just stepping out for a second to check would be very dangerous if it ended up being the wrong time. Animals need a way of reading what time it is when their out and about and then correcting their circadian rhythms if the rhythm is inaccurate. There's a lot of different measurements that animals use to read the time, but the key here is that the measurements that they pick must change significantly between day and night. In other words, it must be a very obvious signal, like "oh, I see this signal, so there is no doubt that the time is day."
Vast majority of the time, the most obvious signal ends up behind light. And it makes sense - if you see bright light, that is the clearest indication that it is day outside. So for many animals, light is the primary measure that animals use to read the time.
So to wrap back around to your question, it's not necessarily that light ruins sleep because evolution just decided to go "nae nae," it's because predicting time is incredibly important for keeping animals and humans alive, and up until very recently, light has simply been the easiest and best proxy for the time
And to answer your bonus question, yes, other animals have their sleep messed up by light too
Does this mean humans in far north climates have different methods of determinating sleep times? Because I'm originally from close to the equator and I'm the summer I'll be awake until near midnight when at least we get some dusk, but the nightless days really screw me up
Ah, so this goes more into the nuance of what exactly determines the time of the circadian clock. It is very well documented that animals in the arctic circle still have circadian clocks even if it's perpetual light or dark. I left out for simplicity that the level of light matters - that is to say, if there's a time where it's slightly dimmer and a time that's slightly brighter, that is enough to adjust the circadian clock to the correct time. The adjustment process will be slower and weaker than usual, but it does happen.
Also, I hinted that animals do take in multiple measurements to determine the correct time, and that plays a role in this case. In general, light tends to be the measurement that animals will default to, but where light variation doesn't exist, animals can and do utilize other measurements to determine the time. Eating (among other things) turns out to be a relatively strong signal, so circadian rhythms end up being somewhat self-reinforcing. After all, I would expect that you only eat when you're awake.
But in general, circadian rhythms and the ways that animals adjust their rhythms to the correct time is a huge rabbithole
I live on a quite a northern latitude. Finland, but the very southern end of it. (The Arctic circle only starts about at the most northern 1/3 of Finland)
I'll upload two pictures, taken from the same spot at different times.
Second one is pretty exactly dusk, yeah. Or 8 minutes after, technically.
The first one is dawn. Two hours apart and apparently in the same place, more or less.
And Uusimaa would fit, yeah, but I'm in Varsinais-Suomi. Same thing latitude wise though, but dawn and dusk are two minutes earlier in Helsinki than in Turku.
Due to being a "night owl" myself, I guess I've always been a little doubtful regarding circadian rhythms myself; but your explanation did a great job of boiling it all down to the most significant component parts. Thank you! I really liked your summary!
As a fellow night owl that gets pretty deep into the late night, I've had the idea that it is actually good to have a small percentage of the population awake while most of the others sleep to help keep watch. I don't have any way to prove this, but it's something that I feel makes sense.
I'm pretty sure that's the general hypothesis in the field, but as you might imagine, it'll be very difficult to prove. There was a study done sometime (I don't fully remember when) where researchers collected data on when people go to sleep and when they wake up, and they found that there was a remarkably normal distribution in the population for when people wake up and sleep.
My personal interpretation is that chronotypes (what you call early birds and night owls) are genetic in some way, but I don't specialize in this area, so don't take my word for it
No need to use quotation marks - it is scientifically confirmed that night owls and early birds exist (among a number of other, less-well-known circadian types). We call them chronotypes, and it's an active field of study. Unfortunately it's not something that I specialize in, so I can't comment too much on it.
However, it is very well acknowledged in the field that modern society is built on an early bird schedule and that completely screws over night owls. (To my memory, night owls tend to score lower on tests, pursue higher education less than early birds, tend to be less promoted and generally less successful than early birds. Inversely, night owls tend to do better in evening classes than early birds.)
However, it is very well acknowledged in the field that modern society is built on an early bird schedule and that completely screws over night owls. (To my memory, night owls tend to score lower on tests, pursue higher education less than early birds, tend to be less promoted and generally less successful than early birds. Inversely, night owls tend to do better in evening classes than early birds.)
Makes sense. As a kid up until 4th grade I used to go to school in the afternoon and I used to have good grades, 5th grade onwards I started going to class very early in the morning, my grades plummeted immediately and I started to hate school.
Sorry to piggyback onto your comment, and I know you can't give medical advice, but I wonder if you have any insight into a problem I have with sleep.
I'm early 40s now. One of my earliest memories, aged around 4, is not being able to fall asleep. I've tried EVERYTHING over the years. Sleeping pills are a guarantee if things are getting squirrelly, but give me severe rebound insomnia the next day. When I do fall asleep, it's like I can sleep for way longer than is normal (so either cause of sleep debt or poor sleep quality).
I've always joked that maybe I should be on a planet with a 28 hour day. But I also know that my lack of normal sleep is potentially storing up huge problems like increasing my risk of cancer, heart disease etc.
Melatonin kind of helps. But no matter what I do... My sleep pattern goes out of synch.
I've gone through school, 'normal' 9 to 5 jobs, relationships, all a big struggle as I have to perform at a normal level despite not having slept for 24+ hours fairly regularly.
I can do everything 'right' (no light in the evening, exercise, healthy diet, no excitement in the evening, no caffeine, mild sleep supplements) and still find myself unable to sleep. What the frick is wrong with me... Am I doomed to continue like this? I just want to sleep like a normal human being!
You're right, I can't give medical advice. But having abnormally long or short circadian days is a known thing - called circadian diseases. It's not really my specialty, so I can't comment too much on it, but my understanding is that many of them are genetic. These genetic variations can cause the circadian clock to run slower or faster than normal (which happens to be adjacent to what I study, so I can talk about it in excruciating detail if desired)
The Familial Advanced Sleep Phase Syndrome (FASP) is one such genetic circadian disease that gets a lot of attention among the circadian field, but you almost certainly don't have it, since FASP makes your clock run shorter than 24 hours, whereas you seem to imply that yours runs longer.
The key thing to remember is that the circadian clock is not psychological. There is an actual, physical, molecular clock running in your brain and in nearly all the cells in your body. If this clock has imperfections, then that will directly lead to consequences in your circadian rhythms and your sleep cycle. The circadian clock is a real thing that people with the right equipment can measure and read. It wouldn't even be particularly hard - just a blood sample or a swab would be sufficient. To be honest, I myself would like to study your cells to see if there really is anything out of place, but that would probably break so many research and ethics rules.
Anyways, to answer your question, I would recommend getting a medical opinion - it might be worth specifically bringing up that you suspect you have a circadian disease. I'm not too sure about treatment options, since my impression has generally been that we kind of don't have any treatments for circadian diseases. But it's not really my specialty, so maybe there is. My memory is that melatonin is a masking cue, which basically means that it makes you sleep but it doesn't actually affect your circadian clock (which probably explains your poor experience with melatonin).
Thank you so much for the detailed response, I really appreciate it. Over the years I've looked into this a lot but you've given me some really useful new information!
Health care in the UK, especially for lesser known genetic diseases, can be a bit of a lottery... I moved up the country 6 months ago, and within a month had been tested & diagnosed for a generic mutation called FMF (familial Mediterranean fever). My dad / sister both have it but despite nearly a decade of requests I was unable to get a doc to investigate it. So far up here the gp response has been a referral to a website for cognitive behavioural therapy.
I'll push on though and see if there's anything more they can investigate. Thanks again for the info :)
Thanks, I do suspect I have delayed phase sleep disorder. It's good to know I'm not alone. Do you have any coping strategies?
My coping strategy is 'modafinil to keep me from not being a zombie when particularly sleep deprived', and 'zopiclone for if I have been up longer than I should and it's early enough to push me back into normal sleep pattern'. But of course I'm very wary about doing that more than twice in a row, so it's never enough to establish 'normality'.
I'm a shell of a human, haven't been properly employed for some years, never managed a "normal" schedule or any kind of routine really. I used to have a shift job, but then that became impossible to do as well. In the army I got myself a role that allowed me to shift my personal schedules quite a bit.
But yeah, no, it has ruined my life and ever since I told tve doctors I tried weed as a coping strategy (for sleeping and eating, it's good), I can't really get any help from the public doctors, since I live in such a backwards country that weed is still comparable to doing iv-opiates basically.
I take melatonin and zolpidem. Melatonin around midnight so it would always be the same but ambien when I go to bed.
Doesn't really help.
If I lived ina country with less social secvurity, like the US, I probably would've ended up on the streets several years ago. I'd probably have killed myself or some other people by this point.
Now I'm just a wreck of a person waiting of some moronic bureaucratic bullshit while everyone else gets to have a life and I don't.
Tbf mine might be "non-24 and not just a delayed sleep-phase", but despite me now having actual sleep data from more than 6 months, I can't even get the sleep studies place to accept my doctors referral there. Makes me so fking angry I'm gonna have a seizure again
I feel really lucky that I get some government support because I have autism / bipolar. It's not much, but the specific benefit I receive also allows me to do some work... and I'm also very lucky to be self employed in a field I enjoy (writing music). So I'm certainly not rich or even that comfortable, but it does allow me to morph my days and nights to suit my unnatural rhythms.
One thing I find about lack of sleep... it makes me really emotional, grumpy, increases likelihood of a depressive state. For me, it's SO important to almost literally inject happiness. If we have a condition that takes away our happiness, it's really crucial to create happiness in any way possible. Binge funny TV shows, go for a walk, watch some standup comedy, call a friend (not at 2am unless they're also a night owl haha), make some art (doesn't matter if you're good at it), try learning a new skill, play a game, join a volunteering group. Those are my go-to activities, probably different for you.
Also, and I know it'll sound trite, but I got into a couple of things during lockdown that made a big difference to my overall happiness; Buddhist and Stoic philosophy. I'm not a Buddhist, probably never will be. I definitely have a long way to go in applying Stoic principles. But they have really improved my life. Meditation is very hard at first but incredibly beneficial. If I could recommend a couple of books (one is an audiobook and for me was more transformative than Buddhist principles)... if you've never used Audible, you can sign up for a month trial and keep the audiobook you select, no charge if you cancel within 28 days.
Derren Brown - Happy (not sure if you're familiar with this guy, he's a legit mind wizard, almost terrifyingly intelligent and has a long career as a 'mentalist' aka psychological magic)
Thich Nhat Thanh - The Heart Of The Buddha's Teachings
Yeah, sure! This happens to be my field of research.
So I was referring to this particular paper, which unfortunately (to my knowledge) didn't get much follow-up.
Tangentially, there is much other evidence that circadian rhythms have evolved in part to deal with differences in microbial pathogens at the day vs. at night. However, whether it's because the composition of bacteria in the atmosphere is different, or because animals are more likely to get themselves exposed to pathogens when they're foraging, or a mix of both, is unclear. My favorite paper that demonstrates this effect is this one, where the circadian clock affects how strongly the immune system responds to bacteria in the lungs. I'll also include the seminal paper here that first kickstarted the idea that immunology is fundamentally circadian, although frankly I didn't like how the paper was written. It looked at how mice responded to Salmonella infection at the day vs. at night and found a difference in immune response that then led to a difference in how severe the infection got.
To my knowledge, a similar study has never been repeated with other biomes. Which is a shame, since I can almost guarantee that a similar diel cycle exists in virtually every biome.
Yeah, crepuscular animals are weird. They have circadian rhythms (the circadian clock is incredibly well conserved across vertebrates and to a lesser extent, across invertebrates), but I'm not actually entirely sure how their circadian clock work to get them to wake up at dawn/dusk
Yes. It gathers up people from every field working on Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) every two years. It's always very interesting and brings forth a lot on international and interdisciplinary collaborations.
We're diurnal, and have eyes optimised to see maximum colour and detail instead of well in dim light (at least by mammal standards). It makes sense we'd gravitate to fairly dark conditions to sleep, because while nature at night is not perfectly unlit, it's still pretty dark. Darker than a developed-world urban area will ever get, for example.
That being said, many people are completely capable of sleeping in a bright area, myself included.
As for the bonus question, yes, the hormones at least work backwards in nocturnal animals. Melatonin wakes something like a shrew up.
We’re diurnal, and have eyes optimised to see maximum colour and detail instead of well in dim light (at least by mammal standards)
Human variation.
There's two main structures in our eyes.
Rods: take large amounts of any wave length of light
Cones: take in a very small amount of a specific wavelength and only that wavelength
Most of the area (like 95%) are rods. And there's a couple (usually three) types of cones.
Some people have more different types of cones, and can see more differences in color. Some have less types meaning less cones overall even.
But the eye won't just have more blank spots. So it fills in with more rods.
This is actually related to why the further away from the equator people got, the lighter their eyes got.
With longer variation in day/night cycle, it was advantages to let as much light in as possible. That outweighed the downside of too much light during the day, as that could be solved with hat brims, or that age old move where you make a visor with your palm.
By limiting the amount of light going to your rods, your cones get less "washed out" and that's how we get more detail/colors.
But even in a single population, there's going to be a lot of human variation. Rod/cone distribution has a high amount of variability even when genetics are steady. Genetics has a large effect, but it's not like the body always follows directions closely.
I could nitpick some of the details there, but instead maybe I'll just ask what point you're trying to make? A healthy human can still pick out something small way better than a goat.
Optimised just means designed for something at the expense of other parameters. We lost our tepetum lucidum at some point in evolution, probably for the 3x-ish resolution gain, while becoming much more shit in lowlight in the process. That's a tradeoff, but a good one for a tree-based diurnal frugivore.
Cats (for example) still have theirs, which means light as two chances to hit their retina, but means there's an upper limit on how clear an image can be, exactly because there's light bouncing around. It sounds like 20/100 is typical for them, from a quick search. Cats are traditionally thought to be dichromats, as well.
We actually have less genetic variation than most animals. There was a lot of bottlenecking in the paleolithic. And what little we do have is still mostly confined to Africa, because the rest or the world shared common ancestry as we left our original continent.
Like, 1 in 200 people is colourblind, or something? I don't think that's a reasonable argument that we're not trichromats.
Like, 1 in 200 people is colourblind, or something?
....
Again, you're talking genetics, where it is clearly broken down in 2,3,4.
However like pretty much everything else, it's not that clear cut just because the plans were.
Two people with the same amount of different types of cones are not guaranteed to have the same rod/cone ratio. Even when they have similar genetics for the ratio, things rarely go according to plan as a human develops.
Like, you know that's why facial symmetry is attractive right? It shows that things on both halves went according to plan. Which especially for women is a huge bonus for reproductive health.
Especially for something made up of a whole bunch of small things like rods/cones, it's not even perfect for identical twins.
"Full darkness" isn't even a real thing in nature. It's hard to tell with light pollution, but even in the absolute middle of nowhere with no artificial lights, you're going to be able to see fairly well. Even with no moon, starlight isn't just an expression. And on a full moon it can be surprisingly "bright" if you're just out there for a while.
It's not like climbing into a cupboard, shutting the door, and sealing all the cracks with duct tape.
You may be used to needi g full darkness to sleep, but that's a learned habit. I guarantee if there was nothing you could do, it wouldn't take you long to adapt your "requirement" of total darkness.
but even in the absolute middle of nowhere with no artificial lights, you’re going to be able to see fairly well.
I'm not sure I'd say fairly well. Maybe always well enough to not walk directly into a tree in otherwise open terrain. A full moon will be comfortable to walk around in, but new moons happen just as often, and sometimes the moon is below the horizon.
Source: Have walked around in the country at night.
I mean, my night vision was always better than most...
But growing up as kids we'd be sprinting thru the woods playing tag at like 10pm summer nights, not a single electric light in sight
You're not going to recognize someone 100 yards away, but you're not walking around with your hands in front of your face to make sure you don't run into anything.
If you're under an open sky, or even a primitive shelter, you're not in complete darkness.
Hmm. Are we talking a high canopy, and fairly level ground? I feel like I'd definitely break an ankle if I tried sprinting otherwise.
I never had too much trouble, but sometimes things hiding in tall grass would surprise me, and in heavily treed patches I'd occasionally hit a low branch I didn't notice.
I also have to account for the fact that there was some light pollution, and I could always see skyglow from towns in the distance. I doubt land ever gets close, prehistoric or not, but in the darkest conditions that happen at sea apparently you can't see your own hands.
I feel like I’d definitely break an ankle if I tried sprinting otherwise
Yeah, we played paintball even, but stopped because one guy ran straight off like a 6 foot mini cliff. A couple of us were chasing him and he just disappeared. Was freaky as shit like that scene from LotRs.
I also have to account for the fact that there was some light pollution
Yeah, I'm talking really hillbilly stuff, zero light pollution.
but in the darkest conditions that happen at sea apparently you can’t see your own hands.
A ship gives off a lot of light pollution, but even without that, between the water reflecting and nothing blocking light, it's brighter out there unless there's heavy clouds cover. And even then it's gotta be a lot of clouds and rough waves or else the light would still be refracting some.
Now a watertight compartment on a ship with the light switch on the outside?
Yeah, that's complete darkness. It's not just "can't see your hand in front of your face". It's the absolute and complete absence of light. That's total darkness.
Yeah, we played paintball even, but stopped because one guy ran straight off like a 6 foot mini cliff. A couple of us were chasing him and he just disappeared. Was freaky as shit like that scene from LotRs.
Lol, yup, that sounds right. I did that once, although it was only like 3 or 4 feet, and I didn't like it one bit. Is was a sinkhole or something too, because it was cliff all around, and I had to find a spot to climb out. I didn't visit that area again.
I forget where I heard about the sailing thing now. That would be a 1 on the Bortle dark sky scale, though.
i found i did indeed need to have hands out because i can’t see much at all in deep country at night on a new moon. maybe i just don’t have great night vision.
That's why there's "blue light filters" on electronics these days. That wavelength isnt included with moonlight/starlight.. maybe on a big full moon there's be some.
And why people prefer soft yellowish lights when relaxing and not the bright ass LEDs.
Full darkness is most certainly a thing and is more of a thing then light..light is artificial. Remove the sun...what do you get, full darkness. Light is added, darkness isn't.
Same with heat..everything is cold unless heat is added.
Cold and full dark are forever, heat and light are techcially temporary.
“Full darkness” isn’t even a real thing in nature.
And
It’s not like climbing into a cupboard, shutting the door, and sealing all the cracks with duct tape.
So I thought it was pretty clear I meant that to get "full darkness" where you really can't see, requires extra steps to intentionally make it happen. Just that for the vast majority of human evolution, we weren't really capable of it, and would have no reason to even try.
The experience of people working the night shift, who use blackout curtains to sleep during the day, would disagree.
But that's for a relatively highly regimented sleep cycle. If you slept and worked completely at your leisure, you might end up with one shorter sleep period at night, and one even shorter nap during the day. And without any day-night cycle at all, some people naturally adopt cycles of varying lengths.
The experience of people working the night shift, who use blackout curtains to sleep during the day, would disagree.
Wow, I didn't know my own experience disagreed with me...
Or that during my childhood when my dad was swing shift, he was apparently a freak of nature too...
But that’s for a relatively highly regimented sleep cycle. If you slept and worked completely at your leisure, you might end up with one shorter sleep period at night, and one even shorter nap during the day. And without any day-night cycle at all, some people naturally adopt cycles of varying lengths.
Again, human variation is a big thing.
But an individual will change their sleep schedule as they age, which is another supporting point for what I'm saying.
Evolutionary biologists hypothesis that it was so out of an entire tribe of early hominds, at least some members were likely to be awake. It wasn't an inate guard duty rotation. But kids and middle age went to bed early, teens went to bed super late, and by then the elderly were waking up.
If something happened, someone screamed and everyone woke up. And the fires stayed lit all night.
This is untrue - we have explicitly evolved to sleep in the dark. Sleeping in the light is a learned behavior that's more or less an exploitation of a loophole in the circadian clock
The intensity and the wavelength of light influence entrainment.[2] Dim light can affect entrainment relative to darkness.[15] Brighter light is more effective than dim light.[12] In humans, a lower intensity short wavelength (blue/violet) light appears to be equally effective as a higher intensity of white light.[11]
Yes, but your wikipedia link doesn't prove that animals are only sensitive to blue light, only that they are more sensitive to blue light. That is a very well-documented phenomenon. But there is plenty of evidence that red light can entrain circadian rhythms as well, dating well back to the 80's. There has even been a study that identified different mechanisms of entrainment to low-wavelength and high-wavelength light in bacteria, which you can find below. My point is that it is very scientifically irresponsible, and in fact, blatantly wrong, to claim that humans are sensitive only to particular wavelengths of light, when in fact humans and other animals are sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light.
Beyond that, I don't necessarily know why you seem to be claiming that the intensity of the ambient light does not matter for photic entrainment, when this is a highly documented and, in fact, highly studied phenomenon in the circadian field. Yes, the moon reflects light, but this is dim enough that mammalian SCN's can interpret the difference between that and the full daylight. See below for some papers that look into light intensity and their effects on entrainment.
If we're going that far, then no radio or person either. Black holes have disappeared from Hawking radiation, protons have all decayed, and the distribution of energy is so even and so rarified no exchange can happen, so literally nothing can happen.
If we allow a magic radio, we can allow a magic air bubble.
In the unimaginably vast and vacant void, a single plain white half-dome radio drifts, aimlessly.
The eons stretch onward, silence fills the universe.
When the last vestiges of everything have finally ceased, and the universe at last becomes one with nothing, a single, dim, red light inexplicably flickers to life.
A speaker crackles to life, a soft but angry voice emanating from within and stretching across the abyss.
I'm by no means an authority on this subject. At best I'm an enthusiastic amateur, so take my answer with a bucket of salt.
The static on the radio comes from the redshifted heat of the universe expanding. Even if all energy in the universe has evened out, the expansion is still going on, creating the redshifted heat.
However, so much time will have passed that the distances involved will cause this redshift to be even greater. At some point this static will be on a spectrum too low for a radio to pick up.
Also, even if you were able to tune your radio low enough, as the static is now created outside of the observable universe, there's no new noise that can reach you.
And the universe's expansion is accelerating, so even if you have the most sensitive receiver that can pick up very low frequencies, at some point the waves will be stretched so thin that they'll be essentially nothing. Of course they won't be zero, but where you draw the line for "essentially zero" is up to you.
Not all radio noise is from the CMB. There's also thermal noise, though this would be minimized too if our hypothetical radio at the end of time is near absolute zero.
To narrow the scope and for ease, I take that information as "measurement" from quantum field.
If the many-world interpretation is real, we have multiverses branching off by different measurements as wave function collapse from the same universe (with all of its information). It seems to me that symmetry of information is broken continuously, as wave functions collapse continuously. This lead me to believe that it is beyond our comprehension to theorize and observe said symmetry.
One clarification: electric charge, angular momentum, and color charge are conserved quantities, not symmetries. Time is a continuous symmetry though, and its associated conserved quantity is energy.
Similarly, information isn't a symmetry, but it is a conserved quantity. So I assume you're asking if there's an associated symmetry for it from Noether's theorem. This is an interesting question: while Noether's theorem ensures that any continuous symmetry will have a corresponding conserved quantity, the reverse isn't necessarily true as far as I know. In the case of information conservation, this normally follows naturally from the fact that the laws of physics are deterministic and reversible (Newton's laws or the Schrodinger equation).
If you insist on trying to find such a symmetry, then you can do so by equating conservation of information with the conservation of probability current in quantum mechanics. This then becomes a math problem: is there a transformation of the quantum mechanical wavefunction (psi) that leaves its action invariant? It turns there is: the transformation psi -> exp(i*theta)*psi. So it seems the symmetry of the wavefunction with respect to complex phase necessitates the conservation of probability current (i.e. information).
Edit: Looking into it a bit more, Noether's theorem does work both ways. Also, the Wikipedia page outlines this invariance of the wavefunction with complex phase. In that article, they use it to show conservation of electric current density by multiplying the wavefunction by the particle's charge, but it seems to me the first thing it shows is conservation of probability current density. If you're interested in other conserved quantities and their associated symmetries, there's a nice table on Wikipedia that summarizes them.
This falls a bit outside my wheelhouse but I believe the answer is no. The established symmetries in particle physics are all associated with the quantum mechanical state of a particle (charge, parity, etc) and to my knowledge there isn’t an “information” quantum number.
The closest you might get to this is quantum information theory, where information is encoded in other physical characteristics (spin, parity, energy, etc). In this sense information is more of an emergent phenomenon than a fundamental property.
But isn't entropy an emergent phenomenon, manifesting only at larger, relativistic (by which I mean non-quantum) levels?
Entropy doesn't affect the fundamental symmetries I mentioned in the title. So information may not be fundamental, then?
Man... information is such a weird concept when one stops to look at it, I wonder if a true definition of it is as difficult to pin down as time.
If your lifespan was an hour, every generation that witnessed a sunrise or sunset would freak the fuck out and think the world was ending.
I've always thought of entropy like that, it seems one direction, but only because we're on a comparativly tiny timescale.
Used to subscribe to the "big crunch" theory that it'll just all start over. But the more Penrose and Hawking I read, the more I think the Big Bang just isn't that unique.
There's a lot of signs that the vast majority of existence is dark matter, and with how it interacts with regular matter, I don't think we have sequential big bangs like a single light slowly flashing. I think it's more like fireworks in the sky.
There's probably not anyway to travel through the dark matter to get to another "bubble", and even if we did, that bubbles laws of physics could be drastically incompatible with us.
Like, if you remember the Narnia books it's like that "main world" where it was just an infinite number of ponds and jumping into one shoots you out to some world world everything works better. I think The Magicians kind of ripped off the idea, and by now more people may be familiar with that then one of the least popular (but underrated) books in a children's series from ww2.
Entropy is functionally persistent, but only because everything we can see and interact isnt all there is. There could be multiple other bubbles of matter happening right now, it's just about what frame of reference we have.
[In] the Narnia books it's like that "main world" where it was just an infinite number of ponds and jumping into one shoots you out to some world ... I think The Magicians kind of ripped off the idea.
Completely off-topic from symmetries and entropies, but I can't pass up the opportunity to mention that the specific Narnia installment where we see this "main world" and branches is The Magician's Nephew, the sixth out of seven books.
As with Isaac Asimov, I much prefer order of publication.
Woe the poor soul trying to get into Foundation and instead of getting the original trilogy, they start with Prelude To Foundation. I met a guy who did that, in college; he didn't know where to start, at the bookstore thought "Hey... Prelude... sounds like a good place to start!"
For example, if one starts with Prelude To Foundation as the entry point, the reveal of Eto Demerzel being R. Daneel Olivaw in disguise all loses its' punch, while if one reads the original Robot books first, it becomes an astounding reveal, a true "holy shit!" moment, on several levels, the delightful surprise of clearly seeing Asimov kneading together two separate series so intimately and right before your eyes, the narrative doubles in size and scope in the snap of a finger.
The power of that moment, that opportunity that Asimov seized, makes it worthwhile to follow Isaac's mind instead of the plot in chronological order.
It doesn't lose its punch, because he's described all through Prelude To Foundation, it's still a big reveal. And then you read the later books in that context.
Fully-aquatic mammals that I can think of, like whales or dolphins, aren't furry, so I'd say that while fur may be a net positive for animals that spend some time out of the water, it's probably not because of their time in the water.
It'll increase drag, which means that they have to expend more energy to move through the water.
It might have some insulation benefit, but I'm not sure how significant that is in water, and I'd guess that fat is probably preferable in that case.
My guess is that the main benefit is for outside water.
First, thermal insulation, where the fur limits convection of air, so you get air pockets, which doesn't conduct well.
Second, as a disposable, dead layer, it also provides protection against UV light and such. We don't think of living out of water under the direct radiation from the sun as being particularly difficult or the environment harsh, because we casually do it every day, but it was a very hard problem for life to solve.
Ourasphaira giraldae is an extinct process-bearing multicellular eukaryotic microorganism. Corentin Loron argues that it was an early fungus. It existed approximately a billion years ago during the time of the transition from the Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic periods, and was unearthed in the Amundsen Basin in the Canadian Arctic. This fungus may have existed on land well before plants.
I know that when people are moving dolphins and whales around, they keep them covered, partly to keep them wet, but also because they will suffer badly from sunburn if not done. This dolphin had a lot of its skin get destroyed and fall off its body after being exposed to the sun for some hours:
Second, as a disposable, dead layer, it also provides protection against UV light and such. We don’t think of living out of water under the direct radiation from the sun as being particularly difficult or the environment harsh, because we casually do it every day, but it was a very hard problem for life to solve.
Oh yeah, that's a good point! I'd typically be more concerned with the drying out part for a lot of aquatic life, forgetting about the UV exposure issues.
Their fur is very dense, otter fur has more hairs per square inch than any other mammal, a million per square inch, like a hundred times what humans have. The oils excreted into their fur creates a hydrophobic layer that keeps the water on the outside. It's in nowhere near shark skin (which exhibits incredibe hydrodynamics, like we're studying it in labs to better improve aerodynamics of cars and planes, a single bite of food is enough to get a great white shark from California to Japan their skin is so efficient at moving through water), but it's very good at keeping the water out and their movement efficient, their hair does not cause Resistance like human hair does. Our hair hangs out and gets water in it and creates drag, otter hair seals itself around the meat and creates a cylinder, keeping happy warm dry otter inside.
I got the treat of touching/petting a wild otter while it was sedated, it's on of my top 10 experiences. It was not a happy camper when it woke up. It had to be in an ice bath while sedated otherwise it's hair/fur coat would've caused it to overheat while being knocked out because it is incapable of homeostatic regulation while sedated. When it woke up it was a wild otter in an ice bath, lil (haha, huge actually) dude was pissed.
Huh, thanks for the detailed reply! I suspected some of them must have something extra going on to help their time in the water, but wouldn't have thought this!
Were you able to feel how dry the otter was through the sealed fur, or was it sealed enough that you couldn't really tell?
I've never felt one under water, nor did I try to go skin deep when I had my opportunity, but I would guess they're pretty dry under there, I couldn't say for sure though.
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