A bluebird as seen during sunset in western New Mexico or north-eastern Texas. Which means it could be an eastern, a western or a mountain bluebird. Their territories overlap there. Hmm. That light colored area on its breast — that should be a clue. But I’m clueless.

During a drive last weekend, my wife exclaimed, “oh, a blue bird!” Because I had to keep my eyes on the country road that was rolling beneath us at nearly 60 mph, I took her at her word. Sure, blue birds can be seen here in Florida. But generally not near the coast nor in developed areas.

I love the bluebird varieties of the thrush family of birds. Beautiful. I’d love to have some nest in one of the many bird houses on our small piece of property. But it is very, very unlikely. My guess is even were I to provide shelter and abundant food, bluebirds would find the area unsuitable. Perhaps it just wouldn’t “feel right.” Sure, there is food, there is a nesting box . . . but the land, it just doesn’t feel right. Where are the wide-open fields?

Which leads me to this thought: Just as bluebirds likely have inborn preferences about what “feels right” (stimuli-clusters that trip neuronal firings resulting in other psychological events?), isn’t it possible that our kind likely has inborn preferences that extensively influence what “feels right,” whether the feeling be about mate, food, housing, or even truth?

Talking physics here — in the domain where the Large Hadron Collider could prove a useful tool — just what are the most basic elements of the universe, at least those we can know about? What is mass? Time and space: are these elements and events of the universe itself, or relations of these, descriptive only? I, for one, want to know.

The recent ScienceDaily article, Elusive Masses of Up, Down and Strange Quarks Pinned Down, got me thinking. And it didn’t get me thinking that Lewis Carrol must be alive and well, working as a particle physicist. Well, maybe a little.

Although much of this type of physics is rabbit-hole material to me, a couple paragraphs especially intrigued me:

Quarks have an astonishingly wide range of masses. The lightest is the up quark, which is 470 times lighter than a proton. The heaviest, the t quark, is 180 times heavier than a proton — or almost as heavy as an entire atom of lead.

“So why these huge ratios between masses? This is one of the big mysteries in theoretical physics right now,” Lepage said. “Indeed it is unclear why quarks have mass at all.” He added that the new Large Hadron Collider in Geneva was built to address this question.

“It is unclear why quarks have mass at all . . . ” That says it. We still live in a world with the atom half-empty. And what a colorfully intriguing place it is.

Stepping back now. I have long suspected that television sitcoms are better today, are funnier, than in previous generations because more writers are involved. Chances are, when you have a team of brains suggesting plot turns and jokes, the overall quality of those that make it into the script will be better.

Similarly, one of the reason I trust the findings of science over, say, personal anecdotes, intuitions and prophecies, no matter the source, is that doing science involves the input of many minds. Even the renegade working solo in a lab is encouraged to publish in peer-reviewed journals. Resulting in more smart brains getting involved. The renegade will receive feedback from others. The renegade is also encouraged to attend conferences and to engage in dialogue and debate, at least if he/or she is employed by an academic institution.

While we might not call the scientific enterprise collaborative–though sometimes it can be–it certainly has an essential social dimension, one that absolutely thrives on communication. To get more brains involved. And that’s a good thing.

A recent study into Wikipedia, and what make some of the entries more accurate than others, got me thinking about the topic. You can guess one of the findings.

In Who does what on Wikipedia? I learned,

To generate the best-quality entries, she says [co-auther Sudha Ram], people in many different roles must collaborate.

Makes sense. More brains equal more knowledge and differing cognitive skills, leading to higher quality results.

Of course, it is unlikely that simply adding more and more minds to a project will improve the outcome. There is likely a point of diminishing returns. And worse.

However, I think it can be safely said that if you want to improve your own internal Wikipedia, talk to other, informed individuals, read their words. Leave the cave of your own experiences and venture into the thriving marketplace of information and ideas.

We all look at out the world from within our own, individual bunker. So to speak. Each of us has differing personalities, experiences, and educations. Fortunately, we can communicate; we can share. And there are many technological instruments that help to expand our exposure to the wider world. The Internet being one of the most powerful and accessible. While I have no powerful telescope, I can view the images others have captured with theirs. And I can read and hear what astronomers have to say.

And biologists.

And physicists.

And . . . and . . . and.

[photo courtesy of NASA]