The debate over high fructose corn syrup: whether or not it is bad for people, or to what degree it is bad for people, has been dragging on for over a decade. For the average consumer there is simply no clear answer, and researching the subject can often lead to some confusing contradictions. The reason it is so hard to get a straight answer from any source is that, as might be inferred , there is a significant amount of politics going on behind the scenes. Economics and profit are a huge motivator for government and corporate entities to keep people in the dark about what they are really putting in their own bodies, but, in the spirit of fairness, the misinformation is coming from both sides. In order to unravel the truths of this mysterious product, we must first get down to the very basic, molecular structure of it. What, exactly, is high fructose corn syrup?

First of all, it must be understood that there are several different forms of sugar that can combine and react to form different food products. The first is called glucose, and this is an important carbohydrate that your body uses for energy. It is found in foods such as grains, pastas and vegetables. Another type is called fructose. This is a simple sugar that is much sweeter than glucose and is found in things such as fruit, honey, and flowers. It is important to note that both these forms of sugar are naturally occurring. So is sucrose, a third form of sugar that is a compound, or disaccharide, of fructose and glucose. Sucrose is also another name for what we would know as white table sugar, or what we pour, half-awake, into our coffee in the morning. Glucose and fructose are also the two ingredients that make up high fructose corn syrup. Sucrose is a 50/50 combination of the two, while HFCS is either 45% fructose and 55% glucose, or 55% fructose and 45% glucose. The former, known as HFCS-45, is less sweet than sugar and is generally used in baked goods. HFCS-55, which is sweeter than sugar, is used in products like soft drinks. So on a structural level, HFCS is almost identical to white sugar. The difference is, HFCS does not happen naturally.

In 1957, scientists discovered an enzyme that could convert the naturally-occurring glucose found in corn (not a naturally sweet food) into fructose, resulting in an extremely sweet substance that would then be remixed with glucose to form what we now know as HFCS. This coincided with a serendipitous time in American industry in which corn production was becoming subsidized, meaning that corn farmers were profiting from producing as much corn as possible, regardless of whether their product was actually needed. Before the discovery of the fructose producing enzyme, much of this excess corn was being shipped to food deprived nations in Africa; however, this practice came to a grinding halt after the implications of this new sweetener came to light. HFCS, after its initial development, was cheap to produce; much cheaper than cane or beet sugars, and after sugar became even more expensive because of tariffs implemented in the mid 1970s, HFCS went on the market as a main-stream alternative to traditional sweeteners, and spread like wildfire into a wide variety of food products that include the very obvious, like Coke and Pepsi, to the downright alarming, such as bread and spaghetti sauce. HFCS was an insidious product whose versatility and low cost gained it access into more food products than the public may care to imagine. But after enjoying a few robust decades of industrial success, high fructose corn syrup came up against some quite serious accusations.

For one thing, the time in which HFCS started showing up in everything (the early 1980s) coincided with the beginning of a steady rise in type 2 diabetes and obesity in the US. It is important to note that this is a correlation statistic, and does not necessarily that HFCS was the sole cause of this trend. However, several studies have been conducted whose results add validation to the obesity theory. For example, a 2010 Princeton University study found that male rats who were fed a supplemental diet of HFCS flavored water (in a concentration about half the intensity of normal soft drinks) gained significantly more weight than male rats who were fed a supplement of sucrose-flavored water. In addition to the weight gain, the HFCS rats were also found to have increased levels of triglycerides, a type of blood fat that in humans are linked to a wide variety of health conditions including diabetes, cancer, and coronary artery disease. Pretty soon, links between HFCS and health decline and disease were so prevalent in mainstream media that the product came to be known to the public as nothing short of a toxin, and a menace to the health of Americans, especially young children.

In an attempt to counteract this bad reputation, the Corn Refiners Association launched its “Sweet Surprise” campaign, the focus of which was that HFCS is “made from corn”, “natural”, and “fine in moderation”- which was met, predictably, with outrage from HFCS opponents who called the campaign deceptive, condescending, and downright untrue. Here are some of the most common “facts” or “myths” you may have heard, and the truth behind them.

HFCS is sweeter than regular sugar. This point is often brought up to support the idea that HFCS is harder to stop eating than other sugars, which leads to obesity and other related diseases. Surprisingly, this is not true. In fact, high fructose corn syrup was specifically engineered to be as close to the taste of regular sugar as possible- this way, HFCS would serve as a cheap replacement while still maintaining the flavor that consumers were used to. It is also true that HFCS is structurally almost identical to sucrose, an oft-cited fact from the Corn Refiners to support the idea that there is really no difference between HFCS and “regular sugar.” However, when they go one step further and state that your body cannot tell the difference between the two, this is were the truth may be getting warped. HFCS-55, the kind found in soda among other products, has ten percent more fructose than regular sugar. This may not seem like a big difference, but when the amount of HFCS that the average American consumes is taken into consideration (42 pounds a year) this becomes a considerable addition of fructose to an individual’s diet. Unlike glucose, which can be metabolized by virtually any part of the body, fructose can only be metabolized by the liver, and the liver has a limit on how much fructose it will metabolize. The unmetabolized fructose then gets turned into triglycerides, which as we said previously, is an excess presence of fat in the bloodstream. In short, not good news for your body. So, although HFCS is not that much sweeter, and is almost identical in structure to sucrose, that small percentage more fructose that HFCS possesses does make an unhealthy difference to your body. Furthermore, HFCS has also been linked to insulin resistance, meaning that the signals that your body releases to let you know that you are full and to stop eating are ignored, making it easier for the consumer to overeat.

The argument that HFCS is fine in moderation is all well and good on paper or in a Corn Refiners advertisement. But the prevalence of HFCS in America’s food supply negates this sentiment from the beginning. It may be fine in moderation, but almost no one is eating it that way. Conceivably, the people who are consuming the most HFCS are the most unaware of how much of it they are consuming. It’s in meat as a preservative, in bread to make it browner and more appealing, and in spaghetti sauce to enhance flavor. All this extra fructose is making its way into all of our bodies and bloodstreams. The greatest truth to be learned in the HFCS debate is that we have to be aware as individuals of exactly what we are consuming. The facts are out there, but they take effort to find. High fructose corn syrup may not be poison, but, just like sugar, it isn’t healthy either, and much about it remains uncertain. In the end, when it comes to HFCS, we must simply use our best judgement.

The Decline Effect

In the 1980s, psychologist Jonathan Schooler conducted a study which led to the development of the theory of verbal overshadowing. In the experiment, college students were told to observe a video of a bank robbery, during which the viewers  were given a good look at the robber’s face. Half of the subjects were asked to give a verbal description of the robber immediately after the video was played; half were not. All of the subjects were then asked at a later time to describe the robber. Contrary to popular belief at the time, the test subjects who were initially asked to verbally describe the robber did much worse later on than the ones who did not describe the robber. The scientific community caught on to this idea quickly after its publication, and it has now been cited over 400 times- in short, it is an important and reputable concept in modern psychology. Yet Schooler noticed something troubling in the midst of his success- his experiment was proving impossible to replicate. Each time he tried to replicate the study, the effect size- that is, the number of positive test results- declined dramatically, first by thirty percent, then by another thirty. Schooler was completely baffled by this, as he could find no errors in his experimental methods. This decreasing support for scientific claims over time is known as “the decline effect,” and is actually a common occurrence in experiments across a variety of scientific fields. Faced with this mounting evidence and the frustration of his experimental evidence slipping away from him, Schooler started speculating as to why the decline effect was happening to him, and came up with some pretty radical ideas. Here is quoted from a recent radio interview: “I say this with some trepidation, but I think we can’t rule out the possibility that there could be some way in which the act of observation is actually changing the nature of reality.” That is, by conducting experiments, we are in fact changing the subject of the experiment itself.

This point of view echoes the tone of the first article I read about the decline effect: a piece published back in December in the New Yorker entitled “The Truth Wears Off.” Jonah Lehrer, the author, presents the decline effect as a mysterious and troubling development that calls into question the very nature of scientific pursuit. Is there something wrong with the scientific method? If seemingly solid experimental results gradually fade over time, how are we supposed to discern the difference between truth and falsity? Can we ever really “know” anything? The implications of this decline effect seem to be both disturbing and baffling.

However, Lehrer’s article doesn’t exactly hold up under close examination. In fact, it received an almost immediate backlash from the scientific community, expressing nothing short of outrage at the conclusions drawn in the New Yorker article. Here are some explanations that scientists have given to refute the mysterious and disturbing decline effect that Lehrer presents in his article:

1) Regression to the Mean: this refers to the statistical “averaging out” of data over time. For example, in the case of Schooler’s study, there might have been some factor at play which the experimenter was not aware of, but that nevertheless affected the experimental results; this could be anything from a demographics factor (age, race, gender), to something almost unnoticeable, such as the color of the walls in the room that the subjects were taking the test in. This factor could skew the data a certain way, showing results that seem significant but may simply be an anomaly. But, if this experiment is repeated a number of times after the initial experiment, the skewed data from the first experiment will even itself out, and effectively disappear. This may be a less intriguing, but perhaps more reasonable, explanation for the decline effect as it appears in experiments such as Schooler’s.

2) Publication and Psychological Biases- the apparent decline effect can also be attributed to the fact that not all experimental results have a balanced chance of being brought to public awareness. Science and medical journals are far more likely to publish experiments that have positive results that seem to be groundbreaking than negative ones that seem to rain on the scientific breakthrough parade. Therefore, an experiment that gets a lot of press may not have solid results at all, which would be apparent in any immediate replications of the study. However, these replications may not be publicized, and therefore the shakiness of the initial experiment is not exposed until years later, when it has been thoroughly cemented as scientific “fact”. Also, the experimenters themselves, being human after all, may unintentionally, perhaps even subconsciously, skew their own data to essentially see what they want to see. The availability error is a term describing a human being’s tendency to only see information that is most psychologically available to them. Say you need a car and purchase a Toyota Tercel; suddenly, there seem to be Toyota Tercels everywhere on the road when previously you hardly saw any. This is because, by way of ownership, the Tercel has become more psychologically available: you notice it more. The same can happen, despite their best efforts, to scientists. Say you are looking for evidence to support your theory that animals mate more frequently with members of their species that are symmetrical. You are immediately more inclined to notice animals with symmetry in your study, which means you may end up disregarding evidence you find that doesn’t support your theory. These are biases that only become apparent when they are replicated, perhaps by other scientists, years later.

3) Many rebuttals to Jonah Lehrer’s article have also cited this fact as an example of why the decline effect is intuitive, rather than mysterious: the decline effect does not happen in physics, the area of science that most resides over the hard rules and facts that guide our reality. Instead, it is happening in fields such as psychology, medicine, and ecology. The subjects that these fields study are constantly changing: it is their nature. The generation in which our parents were born are psychologically, and even in some respects physiologically different than our own. How can we expect drugs and pharmaceuticals that were effective fifty years ago to affect the next generation in exactly the same way? In this way, the decline effect is true, but it is not at all baffling when we take the time to think about it. The nature of human beings, and every other organism on this planet, is not to remain static. We are constantly changing and evolving, and science accounts for this. This is why subjects continue to be studied, and why experiments are replicated. Because the world changes, and we are just trying to keep up with it. There is nothing inherently wrong with the decline effect, it is simply part of the scientific process.

So, what does this leave us with? On one hand, we have an interpretation of the decline effect as a mysterious and troubling phenomenon, one that leaves us questioning the very nature of knowledge and reality. On the other, a considerably less seductive explanation whose collective response to Lehrer’s article seemed to be “duh. We know.” But although the decline effect seems to be less mysterious than some may spin it, what certainly remains true is that the world itself is still a mysterious place. Sciences such as ecology and psychology, as we said, run up against the decline effect more often. It does seem plausible that by observing ourselves, and the physical world around us, we are in fact changing what we study in subtle ways. We are, after all, part of what were are observing.  Spooky? Not quite. Fascinating? Definitely.

Read more arguments about the decline effect.

There is a lot about our universe that we can’t explain. Science acts as an opposing force to this fact. Science came into existence and continues to thrive because of the human drive to discover and explain everything in our world that may yet elude us. But sometimes, every so often, science stumbles onto a paradox: some things just cannot be measured and explained. The “why” of this statement may seem a bit esoteric, but stay with me: sometimes, purely through measurement and observation, we actually change what we are trying to observe. How can we conclusively determine anything about an ever-changing experimental subject? In this two part article, I will give you a couple of the most interesting examples of this phenomenon. These subjects are not easy to understand, but they are definitely worth stretching your brain over. First up: quantum physics.
 
Note: I have read numerous explanations of the following experiment (too many) and I have found that any understandable explanation (i.e. those not written by scientists, for scientists) have the annoying tendency to do one of two things. One: explain the experiment as if the reader is too dumb to ever grasp the concept unless they are deliberately talked down to. Two, using too many explanation points, question marks and interjections such as huh, what, or can you even believe it?!  to try and convey the quite obvious fact that this subject is interesting and mind-boggling. I will attempt in the following passage to do neither of these things. You’re welcome.

The Double-Slit Experiment

Before we get into the details of this famous quantum experiment, we will need a brief definition of what quantum physics is: the study of the universe at a subatomic level. This includes of course everything that is smaller than atom, which to us is almost inconceivably tiny. Here’s an example from Bill Bryson’s book A Short History of Nearly Everything, of exactly how small of a scale we are talking about: “Atoms are tiny-very tiny indeed…it is a degree of slenderness way beyond the capacity of our imaginations, but you can get some idea of the proportions if you bear in mind that one atom is to the width of a millimeter line as the thickness of a sheet of paper is to the height of the Empire State Building.” This is roughly what a millimeter line looks like: -. Also, we are talking about subatomic particles: object smaller than one ten-millionth of a millimeter. When we get down to such minuscule proportions, we are entering an almost entirely different world than the one that human beings occupy- which may be the very first in a long line of paradoxes that come with the territory: how can objects that we are literally made of occupy a world in which the rules of reality are entirely different? There is no conclusive explanation for this, but we  know one thing for certain: they definitely do.

The double-slit experiment was first conceived of by physicist Thomas Young, who in 1801 used this experiment to show that light acted as a wave. Here is the set-up: a source of light is pointed at a barrier in which there is a single slit that will allow some of the light to pass through and create an impression on the wall behind the barrier. After observing this scenario, a second slit is added to the barrier; there are now two openings for the light to pass through. It is important here to note the difference between a particle and a wave, because the two behave quite differently in this experiment. Particles are objects: things that can be ascribed mass and volume, however tiny the number may be. Waves, on the other hand, are a disturbance that often transfers energy through a substance such as water or air. So, in the single slit scenario, if light consisted of particles, it would look something like a solid band of light where the most particles hit, with some scattered particles to the left and right. However, if light acted as a wave, the band of light that hits the back of the wall looks a bit different:



The light does not just hit the back wall like particles would; the nature of a wave is to radiate outward from its source. Because of this, the band of light on the back wall appears as a straight line in the middle, with dimmer light at each side where it radiates outwards.

The experiment gets a bit more interesting when the second slit is added. In the particle scenario, we get two bands that hit the back wall in a predictable way: as two separate, solid lines:

However when waves are directed at the two slits, this is what shows up on the wall:

Instead of two separate bands of light that radiate outwards, we get multiple, alternating bands of darkness and light. The reason behind this is a property of waves called interference. When two waves meet, they can either cancel each other out or combine to become a stronger wave, depending on where each wave is in its cycle. When light is beamed through each slit, it creates two separate wave patterns that inevitably collide and interfere with each other.This is what creates the alternating bands of light: the dark bands are where the waves have canceled each other out, and the bands of light are where they have combined.

These are the full results of the original Young experiment, but only the beginning of the usefulness of the double-slit scenario. In the 20th century, Albert Einstein proposed the photoelectric effect, which asserted that light can be viewed as particles, which he called photons. The photoelectric effect is real, and photons have been proven to exist. This may seem contradictory, because its seemed that Young had already proved that light was a wave a full century ago. But when it came down to it, there was evidence for both sides; light seemed to act as a wave in some cases, and as particles in others. With the development of much more precise technology, science turned back to the double slit experiment in an attempt to get a firmer grasp on the nature of light.

The 20th Century Double Slit Experiment

This time around, the source of light is much smaller: the experimenters are using a machine so precise that it can literally beam one light particle, or photon, at a time through the slit. The wall in back of the slit barrier is also different: it is a photographic plate that can effectively record the mark that each photon makes on impact. So, they repeat the single slit scenario, one photon at a time, and after a while the familiar single slit pattern starts to emerge on the back wall: a band of light, thick in the middle where more photons have hit it, and thinner on the sides where fewer photons have hit. Since the results for the single slit scenario are very similar for both waves and particles, this scenario doesn’t yield particularly useful information. So next, the double slit is introduced.

In this case, the photons are shot at random at the two slits. Since these are individual photons at work, it takes quite a long time for a pattern to emerge, but eventually, the experimenters are able to discern this pattern:



It is the alternating bands of dark and light that is consistent with the wave. But for all intents and purposes, this pattern makes absolutely no sense. The photons were passing through the slits one at a time: meaning logically, they have nothing to interfere with, and should simply hit the back wall in a straight line like they did with the single slit. Experimenters were baffled. What was causing this seemingly impossible interference pattern?

The next thing they did was set up detectors on each slit. This way, they could record which slit each particle was passing through and hopefully better understand exactly what was going on in the process. The result of this experiment only served to deepen the mystery ten-fold: the interference pattern completely disappeared. They were left with two distinct bands consistent with particle behavior. No matter how many times the experiment was repeated, or what was used to record the particles behavior, the results were the same. When the photons were not measured, they made a wave interference pattern; when they were measured, the interference disappeared. Somehow, the very act of observing the particles changed the way they behaved.

To explain these results, science had to come up with some very new and radical interpretations. The most widely accepted theory was developed by Neils Bohr and is known as the Copenhagen Interpretation. Bohr proposed that what was being fired out of the light source was not really a particle or a wave, but something called a Y wave, or wavefunction. The wavefunction behaves like a wave, radiating outward and causing interference. However, it is not a true wave, but rather a wave of probabilities. The photon is not in any particular place at this stage. It is everywhere, and nowhere, at the same time. It only exists as a probability-until you measure it. In the first round of experiments with no detectors at the slits, the measurement does not take place until the particle hits the photographic plate and is forced to “choose” a position. Consequently, the wavefunction goes through both slits, colliding with itself on the other side and creating an interference pattern of probabilities that makes itself apparent when the particle actually hits the wall. However, when the measurement is taken at the slits, the particle is forced to “choose” earlier, and therefore only goes through one slit. It is no longer a probability, but a particle. It hits the wall with no interference, and therefore, there is no interference pattern.

It is important to note that there are still many unanswered questions here. For example, no one really knows what the wavefunction actually is. Also, what exactly is it about measuring a particle that makes it behave differently? What counts as “measurement” and what does not? Remember, we are dealing with what is essentially an entirely different universe than ours. Things jump in and out of existence, and an object can seem to be in two different places at once. This may all reek of some crackpot theory or science fiction tale, but this is a real phenomenon that is studied by real scientists- it is just that a full understanding of it still lies beyond our grasp, and may never be fully explainable.

Diane Van Deren is an ultra runner- a distinction that lives up to its superhuman-sounding name. Ultrarunning is defined as any distance over the standard 26.2 miles of a traditional marathon. She has competed in and won multiple 100-mile trail runs, which can last for days, but this pales in comparison to the Yukon Arctic Ultra, which she won in 2008. This was a race of over 300 miles, in temperatures averaging 30 to 40 degrees below zero, during which she carted 50 lbs of supplies across the tundra for over a week. She has sustained injuries during her races that would have rendered most people unable to walk, but Diane kept running through the pain to the finish line. In short, she is a paragon of endurance; an example of the almost limitless potential of the human body. These accomplishments seem barely attainable by the standards of any human being in the healthiest of conditions, which makes Diane’s story all the more incredible. She is a superhuman athlete whose accomplishments are sharply contrasted by her limitations. For one thing, she has lost a piece of her brain.

When Diane was in her late 20s and pregnant with her third child, she started to suffer from seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy brought on by a grand mal seizure she suffered in early childhood, which resulted in brain damage. She would experience these seizures 3-5 times a week, and for her, there was only one way to combat them: running. Van Deren had always been an athlete, and had started her career as a professional tennis player. She had been a frequent runner as well and occasionally competed in triathlons. But with the onset of her seizures, running took on a whole new meaning for her. Whenever she would feel an aura; a surreal, sometimes tingling sensation that signals the beginning of a seizure, she would put on her running shoes and race out the door. She would run, sometimes for hours, until the threat of seizure felt like it had past. For a while, anyway, Van Deren was able to outrun her seizures.

Eventually though, her epilepsy became a serious threat to her life, and in 1997, when doctors told her that she was eligible for a lobectomy, she agreed to it. A lobectomy is a type of surgery that removes a section of the brain, specifically, in Van Deren’s case, the part that seemed to be the source of her seizures. All in all, a kiwi-sized portion of her right temporal lobe was taken out. She never suffered another seizure again.

Losing any part of the brain cannot be without consequences, and this was certainly true for Diane Van Deren. Her surgery was a turning point that transformed her into the marvel of endurance that she is today. The right temporal lobe, much of which was removed in the operation, is a part of the brain that is thought to control certain aspects of our memory, as well as our spatial and temporal reasoning. Van Deren no longer has a solid grasp on space or time- for example, she can no longer read maps, and seldom completes her races without a wrong turn. In the Yukon Arctic Ultra, her doctor urged her to bring red tape along with her to mark her trail so she wouldn’t get lost. But more important is how she perceives time. She cited this as the one advantage of her brain injury in a recent interview on Radiolab: “I can really get lost in time.” She can run for hours and have no idea how long she has been going for, or what distance she has covered. Her own body and her breathing rhythm is all she focuses on, and this is what has enabled her to become such an accomplished ultrarunner. The constraints of time and distance are the downfall of many athletes, because these are signals to the brain that it is time to stop running. Van Deren is free from these constraints.

It is clear that her brain injury has had an effect on Van Deren’s ability as a professional athlete, but it is difficult to gauge where the injury’s influence ends and Van Deren herself takes control. After all, she was an outstanding athlete even before the seizures or the operation, and had always been incredibly driven and tenacious. In the words of her neurosurgeon, Mark Spitz: “This kind of surgery has been done on thousands of patients worldwide for decades, and there’s only one Diane Van Deren.” (Goldman, 2008)

New York City’s subway system is unparalleled in many respects: size, complexity, as a never-ending source of frustration for those who use it every day; and there is more going on behind the scenes than most commuters would ever care to imagine. If you happen to live in New York and take the subway regularly, the next time you are on a particularly crowded train, try closing your eyes and picturing an empty car, fully submerged in water on the floor of the ocean. Sea fauna clings to every visible surface, making the subway car almost unrecognizable for its former incarnation. Schools of fish swim back and forth through gaping window frames. This isn’t just a sanity-preserving mental exercise: its a real thing that exists on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, off the coasts of Long Island, New Jersey, and several other East Coast states: the final resting place for many of New York City’s decommissioned subway cars is at a depth of 70 to over 100 feet.

At first glance this seems like a bizarre and harmful form of ocean pollution, but it is actually part of the MTA’s Artificial Reef Project, which, by deploying these structures to the ocean floor, create new habitats for marine life that become beneficial both environmentally and economically. An artificial reef can be made of virtually any kind of large structure; everything from battle tanks to vending machines have been used in the past. How this works: any vertical structure on the flat ocean floor will meet currents which can then create an upwelling full of plankton. This attracts larger fish to the area and the structure becomes a feeding ground. In turn this draws larger predators, which lurk in the hiding places created by the artificial reef. A reef also spells shelter from the open ocean floor for many other creatures. In these ways, the march of time transforms these man-made structures into beautiful blooms of coral, algae and wildlife. Subway cars are particularly ideal for this process because they are too heavy to be moved easily once they are sunk and roomy enough to accommodate a large amount of sea life. It has been estimated that they are durable enough to last for decades underwater.

Since the project began since 2001, NYC transit has donated and sunk 2,500 19 ton subway cars off the coasts of Virginia, Georgia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and South Carolina, including the famous Redbird subway cars, which ran in New York from 1964 to 2003. The program seems to be proving a great success. In Delaware, for example, it was reported in 2008 that the Redbird Reef had seen a 400-fold increase in the amount of marine life per square foot in the seven years that the subway cars had been in place. However, this project has not been without controversy. When New York first offered 1,300 subway cars to various states a decade ago, many environmental groups voiced concerns over the project being little more than cleverly disguised waste disposal which would turn the ocean floor into a junkyard. Asbestos was also cited as a concern, but many experts have said that asbestos only poses a threat when it is airborne, which cannot occur underwater.

In any case, the subway cars do seem to be providing some much needed refuge and topography for the mid-Atlantic, which has been described in the past as an underwater desert. And they certainly are an eery spectacle to behold.

For more pictures of the Redbird Reef operation, click here

Here are some really staggering numbers for your consideration.

There are around 100 billion neurons (brain cells) currently living in your cerebral cortex. These neurons communicate through electrochemical signals that are transported via synapses, which are structures that serve as the gateway to each neuron

If each of these 100 billion neurons only ever established one synaptic connection with one other neuron, the connections in your brain would easily equal the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

However, our neurons make far more connections than that: an average of between 1,000 and 10,000 synapses exist for each cell. In total, this means that the number of connections in your brain is somewhere in the range of 1000 trillion. Researchers have estimated the number of stars in the universe to be between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion, so for the sake of simplicity, we will say that the number of actual connections in the human brain equals about half of the total stars in the universe.

But the truly astonishing part of this comparison is when we examine the total number of potential connections between neurons in the brain. The example used in this article factors only 1 billion, 1/100th of the actual number of neurons in the brain. According to these calculations, the possible connections total to 3 x 10^5,000,000,000, which is far greater a number than the estimated total mass of the entire universe. In short, there are more potential synaptic connections in your brain than the number of atoms in the universe.

More than a quarter century ago, an event occurred in the small blue-collar town of Centralia, Pennsylvania that would transform this unremarkable location into a tragic legend. Centralia was once a town of over 1000, situated on top of a great expanse of anthracite coal deposits, and as such its industry was mostly dependent on mining. In late spring of 1962, it is thought that a fire that was set to burn trash in the local landfill spread to an open coal seam. From this location the fire quickly jumped into the extensive maze of mines that snaked their way under the borough of Centralia. Most did not realize the severity of the fire until it was far too late, and government action to quell it was both feeble and costly. Boreholes that were drilled to test the extent of the fire only served to provide more fuel in the form of oxygen. The fire continued to spread, expelling noxious gases that slowly started to poison the air and the people living in the town. In 1981, almost two decades after the ignition, the horror of what was actually happening to Centralia was thrust into national light after the earth opened up under 12 year old Todd Domboski, creating a sinkhole of lethal smoke and flames that would have quickly killed him had he not been able to grab onto a nearby root until he was pulled to safety. During this decade, the earth continued to crack and erode, releasing menacing steam billows from the inferno below. Eventually, the government elected to relocate everyone in the town, a solution which was deemed to be less costly than exterminating the mine fire. Today, only 11 people remain in Centralia, squatting in state-owned houses over a hidden landscape of flames, in a town that is no longer listed on any Pennsylvania maps. It is estimated that the fire could still be burning a hundred years from now.

Todd Dombaski, staring at the sinkhole that almost killed him (source: Time magazine)

People are fascinated by Centralia. It is listed on several road trip and urban exploration websites, and there are numerous videos that people have posted chronicling their adventures past the detour sign that keeps people from driving towards the town. Many of these accounts have an edge of urban legend or ghostliness to them. Analogies to hell are rampant. Yet through objective eyes, there seems to be little motivation for visiting this place. The fact that one might find themselves falling through a fiery hole in the earth, namely, but also because on the surface, Centralia is nothing but a vast wasteland of foul smells and occasional steam pockets. The barren landscape has reclaimed most of the town. There is simply little to see there, and little left to talk about. There wasn’t even a single casualty in the whole duration of Centralia’s ordeal.What keeps people coming back then, to explore, photograph and write about Centralia, lies in the power of our own human imagination. There is just something too compelling, too supernatural, about a town that has virtually been on fire for forty years to ignore. There must be a deeper, more chilling story behind it all. Case in point: the movie Silent Hill, based off the video game franchise, drew much of its inspiration from the story of Centralia. Silent Hill is a ghost town shrouded in fog and ash from a fire long ago, much like Centralia, but the difference between fantasy and reality is stark: Silent Hill is a town haunted by evil, nightmarish creatures, a limbo halfway between reality and hell. The “real Silent Hill” is haunted only by an growing air of environmental disaster, and the memories of the uprooted families that once called Centralia their home.

Damage from the Centralia fire

Graffiti on the road to Centralia

A shot from the movie Silent Hill, partially inspired by the town

A few years ago I was deep into a discussion with my boyfriend about our mutual interest in the human brain. “Everything we know about it is so fascinating that its hard to imagine how much we don’t know,” I gushed, “I mean, don’t they say that you only use 10% percent of your brain anyway?” His answer was swift and assured. “No, that’s not true. That’s a common misconception that people have and it drives me absolutely crazy.” Taken aback by such an abrupt dismissal of something I had been led to believe was true, I tried to argue with him but found that I had little information to go on. “Yeah, but how do you know for sure that’s true? There is still so much we don’t know about the brain!”

A truer statement would have been that there was so much that I didn’t know about the brain. According to a howstuffworks.com article, 52% of participants in a recent online survey still believed this piece of “conventional wisdom”: that humans only utilize or have access to 10% of their mental capacity. You might be surprised to know that this is one of the most persistent pieces of misinformation to arise out of the past few centuries. It has managed to permeate the landscape of common knowledge quite effectively despite flying in the face of logic because of a number of different factors, but before we get to that, a proper debunking of the myth is in order.

Brain imaging technology has taught us a lot about the brain. For example, we now know that many functions and thought processes are localized, meaning that they occur mostly in specific regions of the brain (i.e the occipital lobe processes most visual information). However, any complex thought pattern ends up taking place in multiple regions of the brain. Doing something as simple as getting in your car and turning the ignition may simultaneously trigger activity regions across the span of your cerebral cortex. Research into brain activity has never indicated that even a single part of the brain lies dormant 100% of the time, meaning that we are using our entire brain at one point or another on any given day. There is no region of mystery cortex who’s silence is the only thing separating you from genius, success, or telekinetic powers. Furthermore, if 90% of our brain had little to do with our cognitive functioning in everyday life, we would be a lot less vulnerable to the kinds of brain damage sustained by people as a result of injuries or disease. There is no region of our brain that can experience trauma without resulting in some loss of cognitive functioning. Which is not to say that the brain isn’t capable of compensating and recovering from this loss; it is, of course, an incredible organ.
 

The 10% myth is also contrary to the nature of evolution. The brain is a hefty piece of equipment: it weighs an average of three pounds and uses up a full 20% of the body’s energy. If 90% of the brain had gone unused for so long, it would have become a counterproductive attribute and time would eventually have fitted us with much smaller brains. Also consider neurons, the millions of cells that comprise our brain and make thought a possibility: if a neuron is not making connections with other neurons, i.e being used, this means that the brain does not need it. As a result, the neuron will wither and die. This is a natural adaptive process of the brain that happens many times throughout our lifespan. It’s back to the old “use it or lose it” saying about anything regarding our bodies: if we weren’t using 90% of our brain, it would literally go away.

So why does this ridiculous myth refuse to die? It has been held up by a combination of outdated scientific ideas, misquotes, and good old-fashioned deceit for profit. Back in the 19th century, scientists were attempting to learn more about the brain the only way they knew how, which was doing horrible things to animals. They found that stimulating certain regions of dog’s brains resulted in a physical movement, such as the twitch of a paw. Other regions yielded no physical activity, which led the researchers to the false conclusion that these regions were not being used for anything, while in fact they were simply triggering mental processes. Albert Einstein is also frequently referenced as having attributed his genius as a successful access of the hidden 90% of his mental capacity; however, there is no record of him ever having said this. But perhaps most importantly, the idea of having a wealth of untapped potential brain power is quite an appealing concept: it gives us something to attribute all of our shortcomings to. If only we could access that 90% of our brain, we would finally be able to…just about anything could finish the end of that sentence. This sentiment is what many motivational speakers and writers, even proponents of psychic development, have exploited over the years in order to profit off of their programs, despite their teachings having no basis in fact. It is time to put this myth to rest, and, in realizing that 100% of our brain is available to us, start putting it to the best use we can.

“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” - Carl Sagan