I still receive and read paper magazines, and maybe I will defend that on some future blog. I don’t always have time to read them, and certainly don’t want them lying about, so I stack them in a magazine rack and periodically (pun?) go through it. Yesterday I found three unread issues of Scientific American.

How did I get so far behind? I love science! I considered skipping one, but decided to at least skim them all. Being slightly OCD, I started with the oldest one, which contained a gem.

For decades, a small number of scientists have postulated, and striven to prove, that nerve propagation is primarily via sound waves rather than electricity. This research has been gaining momentum this century, due to a growing number of researchers who are interested in it and significant improvement in our ability to measure tiny amounts of movement.

What scientist now agree on: Nerve conduction has both a mechanical–sound waves cause physical distortion–and an electrical component, and nerve cell membranes are piezoelectric, meaning they respond to both pressure and charge. What scientists don’t agree on: Which effect is primary.

If the physical changes are primary, a lot of unanswered questions in medicine are suddenly explained, for example, the similar response of the body to chemically quite disparate anesthetics. A lot of answered questions, or at least decades-old explanations of how things supposedly work, will need revisiting.

Many more scientists are currently on Team Electric, mostly I think because it is hard to accept that so much of what you were taught was wrong. I don’t have a career invested in this, so I am free to be overjoyed by it, and I’m not kidding. I am exhilarated. I love it when science overturns, or at least seriously questions, settled thought, especially when the new idea makes a lot of sense.

Why did science favor the electrical theory originally? Fifty years ago, it was easier to measure small electrical changes than small physical ones, so someone did, and got a Nobel prize for it. Since the theory seems to work a lot of the time, most people did not question it.

Human nature.

What if I had discarded the magazine? I feel so lucky!