Colliding Universes

Blog on hold till November 30

2011-02-02T23:59:00.001-05:00

Because I am writing a book and working for a living, I have regretfully decided that the only time management solution is to put this blog on hold until November 30, 2011.

I thank all regular readers and occasional donors.

Always glad to share a good read and thoughts thereon. The blog search box at the top left will give you access to all past stories.

I will still be blogging at Access Research Network (bottom row of headlines), Salvo, and Uncommon Descent.

Good luck to all in the happy hunting ground of materialist nonsense that so much pop science has become.

Exoplanets expert thinks intelligent beings rare in galaxy

2011-02-02T21:00:00.000-05:00

Here, Space.com's Mike Wall interviews astronomer Geoff Marcy on "Life on other planets?" (2/1/2011):

Leading expert weighs in

Marcy has had a hand in finding more alien planets than anyone else. He helped spot 70 of the first 100. He also found the first multiplanet system around a sun-like star, and he discovered the first planet that transits — or passes in front of — its star from our perspective on Earth

[ ... ]

Space.com: Our solar system is so young, compared to the universe. And the universe is so big. So there's been lots of time and opportunity for advanced civilizations to get started, and to try to contact us. Some people think that the fact that we seemingly haven't been contacted means that we may well bealone in the universe.

Marcy: Well, you have to fold it in. The absence of an intelligent radio or television wave from any advanced civilization represents one indication, not a proof, that maybe habitable planets that sustain Darwinian evolution for a billion years —maybe they're rare. Maybe.

Space.com: What do you reckon? Do you have a gut feeling about this?

Marcy: I do. If I had to bet — and this is now beyond science — I would say that intelligent, technological critters are rare in the Milky Way galaxy. The evidence mounts. We Homo sapiens didn't arise until some quirk of environment on the East African savannah — so quirky that the hominid paleontologists still can't tell us why the australopithecines somehow evolved big brains and had dexterity that could play piano concertos, and things that make no real honest sense in terms of Darwinian evolution.

The whole is worth reading. He thinks $billion should do the trick.

New atheism, civil rights, and Martin Gaskell

2011-02-02T16:45:00.002-05:00

Here's Richard Dawkins, as a friend puts it, "coming out ... as a religious bigot" in analyzing the Martin Gaskell case ("potentially evangelical" astronomer settles for $100K):

The University of Kentucky has caved in and agreed a settlement, out of court, with the allegedly creationist astronomer Martin Gaskell. ...

[ ... ]

If Martin were not so superbly qualified, so breathtakingly above the other applicants in background and experience, then our decision would be much simpler. We could easily choose another applicant, and we could content ourselves with the idea that Martin's religious beliefs played little role in our decision. However, this is not the case. As it is, no objective observer could possibly believe that we excluded Martin on any basis other than religious...
A smoking gun, it would seem, ...

- Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Jan 24, 2011)

He then goes on to make a case for discriminating against job applicants on the basis of religious beliefs (other than atheism).

Curious thing about the new atheists: One thing they'll sure get rid of is civil liberties as commonly understood.

I was giving a talk at a church recently, and the adult education leader told me that many older churchgoers worried about whether their children and grandchildren would have jobs. They remember a more sane and tolerant society, but don't know how to get back there. I hate having to tell them that the answer begins with losing all interest in the question of whether people think they are nice. They could end up being just nice enough to make sure their grandchildren can't get jobs unless they disown them. (Historically, that has happened before.)

Scientist? Take the peer review pressure off at the Journal of Universal Rejection

2011-02-01T10:03:00.000-05:00

Here the Journal promises to save you masses of bother by guaranteeing to just reject your submission up front:

The founding principle of the Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR) is rejection. Universal rejection. That is to say, all submissions, regardless of quality, will be rejected. Despite that apparent drawback, here are a number of reasons you may choose to submit to the JofUR:

You can send your manuscript here without suffering waves of anxiety regarding the eventual fate of your submission. You know with 100% certainty that it will not be accepted for publication.

There are no page-fees.

You may claim to have submitted to the most prestigious journal (judged by acceptance rate).

The JofUR is one-of-a-kind. Merely submitting work to it may be considered a badge of honor.

You retain complete rights to your work, and are free to resubmit to other journals even before our review process is complete.

Decisions are often (though not always) rendered within hours of submission

There. Now you can go back to trying to find that elusive particle of dark matter. Then, Nobel assured, fame and fortune in sight, you can publish in the Journal of Fizzics if you want to.

Hostility to life is norm for exoplanets, senior astrophysicist says

2011-01-31T18:32:00.000-05:00

Artist's conception of Kepler-10b, NASA

In “Kepler-10b - The first extrasolar system rocky planet”, British physicist David Tyler notes,

The presumption that there are millions of Earth-like planets in habitable zones is based on theory that is not supported by evidence. This point has recently been made by Howard Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard. He has made the claim that "we are alone in the universe" after an analysis of the 500 planets discovered so far showed all were hostile to life.

"Dr Smith said the extreme conditions found so far on planets discovered outside out Solar System are likely to be the norm, and that the hospitable conditions on Earth could be unique.
"We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different from our own. They are very hostile to life as we know it," he said."

never mind rare Earths, there aren’t any spare Earths, period. Better take care of the one we got.

Telic Thoughts weighs in on Coppedge case

2011-01-31T05:05:00.000-05:00

Bradford for Telic Thoughts comments on the Coppedge case:

Another issue merits attention. Coppedge is not merely a creationist, he is a Christian version of one. There are Muslim creationists and creationists of other non-conventional religious persuasions when assessed by American cultural norms. That group falls within a different category within the tortured minds of PC advocates. We need to practice diversity when dealing with them. Understanding. Tolerance. The contradiction is nauseating but perhaps explainable.

Oh, but this is common, Bradford. In Canada, for example, anti-Semitism isn’t tolerated - except when it is Islamist anti-Semitism. The political motivation is obvious: Islamists, like leftists, restrict intellectual freedom, so they are useful to the left. (Though, in fairness, many bystanders here are starting to wake up, led by courageous younger Jews.)

PC is a very successful strategy of the new hard left. Tolerance means nothing more than what the NHL choose to tolerate, in the process of limiting free or thoughtful inquiry. As Theodore Dalrymple has pointed out, PC's real value is forcing most people to lie. They are morally ashamed of themselves for succumbing so readily to making cowardice a virtue, make nervous little jokes, and blame anyone who expressed honest opinions for bringing the storm on themselves.

Bradford offers,

IDists have been tagged as wedge practitioners by critics. But the dubious charge never had substance. If some IDists did have a wedge strategy in mind they were clearly ineffectual. Take notes from the pros. PCers are experts at wedging.

Yes, the political correctness thugs assume, as do most humans, that everyone thinks as they do. If PC enforcers turn any institution they take over into a stinkpot of closed, mediocre minds, it goes without saying that everyone else must want to do the same, but they got there first.

Smart on the Telic guys’ part to take an interest, because they are next. In a PC environment, even asking questions, other than the prescribed ones leading to the approved answers, is a sure sign that you are trouble.

What if scientism had to pay its own bills?

2011-01-30T19:07:00.002-05:00

Here's commentator David Klinghoffer's comments on the purging of astronomers Gaskell and Gonzalez and NASA mission specialist David Coppedge, among others, for doubting the Central Dogma of biology:

For years I've collected accounts of scientists who voiced doubts about Darwin and ended up paying a high price. In February, the University of Kentucky will defend itself in court in a discrimination case brought by astronomer Martin Gaskell, now at the University of Texas. He argues convincingly that he was turned down to direct Kentucky's observatory because of remarks on his personal website noting reservations about Darwinian theory and an openness to intelligent design.

Gaskell's attorneys present records of email traffic among the faculty search committee. Professors falsely tarred Gaskell as a "creationist" while a lone astrophysicist on the committee protested that Gaskell stood to be rejected "despite his qualifications that stand far above those of any other applicant."

The case resembles another at Iowa State University. Astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez was refused tenure, despite a spectacular research publication record, because of a book he co-authored arguing that earthly life is no cosmic accident. Again, email traffic told the tale. The department chairman had instructed faculty that intelligent design was a litmus test for tenure, "disqualify[ing] him from serving as a science educator."

[ ... ]

This year, a top-level computer specialist on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Cassini mission to Saturn, David Coppedge, sued JPL for discrimination after being demoted for circulating among colleagues a couple of DVDs favoring intelligent design.

- "'Science Says' Is Now Just Another Special Interest Claim" (Human Events, January 6, 2011) January 30, 2011

Interestingly, Gaskell ($100, 000 settlement) and Gonzalez (new observatory) didn't do so badly out of it, and one hopes Coppedge will also land on his feet.

The key thing to see here, in my view, is that the scientism lobby can't hope to both treat science as their private game park and expect public funding. Or can they? Let's see what the Coppedge case brings.

Cassini flies past fizzy ocean on Saturnian moon

2011-01-29T11:16:00.000-05:00

Here:

Cassini found the little moon busily puffing plumes of water vapor, icy particles, and organic compounds out through fissures (now known as "tiger stripes") in its frozen carapace. Mimas, a nearby moon about the same size, was as dead as researchers expected, but Enceladus was precociously active.

Many researchers viewed the icy jets as proof of a large subterranean body of water. Near-surface pockets of liquid water with temperatures near 32o F could explain the watery plumes. But there were problems with this theory. For one thing, where was the salt? In 2009 Cassini's cosmic dust analyzer located the missing salt – in a surprising place.

"It wasn't in the plume gasses where we'd been looking for it," says Matson. "Instead, sodium and potassium salts and carbonates were locked up in the plumes' icy particles.* And the source of these substances has to be an ocean. Stuff dissolved in an ocean is similar to the contents of these grains."

The latest Cassini observations presented another intriguing discovery: thermal measurements revealed fissures with temperatures as high as -120o Fahrenheit (190 Kelvin).

More heat out there than we think could mean a lot of things.

(This was Coppedge's project, of course.)

So what will you do when they come for you?

2011-01-28T07:39:00.002-05:00

David Coppedge

Nathan Black reports for Christian Post "Intelligent Design Proponent Fired from NASA Lab" (Jan. 26 2011).

David Coppedge is an information technology specialist and system administrator on JPL’s international Cassini mission to Saturn, the most ambitious interplanetary exploration ever launched. A division of California Institute of Technology, JPL operates under a contract with the federal space agency. Coppedge held the title of “Team Lead” System Administrator on the mission until his supervisors demoted and humiliated him for advancing ideas that superiors labeled “unwelcome” and “disruptive.”

He favoured intelligent design and talked about it, and one superior didn't like that.

There was no workplace policy that forbid discussing private opinions at work, and claims that Coppedge harassed fellow employees proved unsubstantiated.

Here's columnist David Klinghoffer on the case:

What did Coppedge do to get himself in trouble? He occasionally chatted with interested colleagues about the scientific case for intelligent design, he passed around a couple of pro-ID DVDs, which made good sense since JPL's officially defined mission includes the exploration of questions relating to the origin and development of life on earth and elsewhere. His supervisor severely chastised him for this, humiliated and demoted him.

Now he's been fired. JPL claims it was a cost-cutting measure. ... The truth will emerge when Coppedge's lawsuit comes to trial, but the appearance here certainly suggests a final strike at Mr. Coppedge for his offense of introducing fresh ideas to co-workers.

In the light of this case and the recent, similar Martin Gaskell case, one hardly knows what to make of doubt that Ben Stein was right. There is an Expelled factor. Today, you can doubt anything except Darwin, and you must contrive not to know about or speak of the growing mass of evidence that contradicts the stuff government forces students to learn in tax-funded schools.

But there is no freedom for adults either, it turns out. Darwinism today has nothing to do with the science and everything to do with protecting the cultural status of an icon that has given government everything from compulsory sterilization to scientific racism to ... the right of tax-funded institutions like JPL to run inquisitions powered by devotion to that icon.

Sadly, Klinghoffer writes,

It's bad enough when private universities clamp down on the free exchange of ideas. But public institutions have often seemed to be the worst offenders of all in this respect, and that is something taxpayers have every right to protest.

Klinghoffer suggests that Americans phone: 202-358-1010 or e-mail Charles Bolden, charles.bolden@nasa.gov Yet will they?

I've covered ID stories for about a decade now, and on the way, I learned something interesting: What is keeping Darwinism alive right now is not evidence; the evidence is leaning sharply against Darwin's "information for free" mechanism.

What keeps Darwinism alive is the awful passivity of the taxpayers who doubt it, yet continue to fund its long, persecutory march through the institutions.

Christians are the worst, incidentally.

They see naked Darwinism in all its hideous glory, watch fellow Christians harassed and fired (often by people who make no pretense to be anything other than anti-Christian, using "science" as a vehicle).

And then? They turn on the Glory Hallelujah! Show, featuring "our spirit-breathed hostess Fluffelle"? Or maybe they go to a big meeting with Harry Hi-Power about it and thus dissipate any useful energy they could have otherwise exercised.

It's escapism. True motivation comes from within! Every citizen who is aware and cares already has the power to change things, without listening to a single burble from Fluffelle or Harry Hi-Power. Harassing Darwin doubters at work should cost bureaucrats their jobs and lawmakers their seats because it offends basic principles of justice.

Spend no money. Just read responsible sources on a case like this and then pick up the phone. If you are an American, I think it is already your right, at least so far.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

On the other hand, the people who wrote those lines did not think that "our brain are shaped for evolutionary fitness, not for truth." Make no mistake; as Darwin's boys win by default, it becomes a different world.

Note: Forty-five years ago when I was young, Christians really did organize to fight segregation. And it was a highly effective, law-abiding movement - as long as traditional Christians were the bulk of the activist leaders. I should know because I was a local organizer at a high school in Toronto (a multicultural city even then) where institutional racism was as popular as a crushed glass Sundae. But later, Christians retreated to various entertainments, worried that some people would say bad things about them if they exercised their rights as good citizens, and society took some very different turns all round. This is one.

If you are even reading this, you like to think for yourself. Either speak up now or don't expect any help when your turn comes.

Galaxies produced in "cosmic blink of an eye"?

2011-01-27T11:39:00.000-05:00

Adam Mann reports at Nature News (26 January 2011) that "Oldest galaxy is lone ranger: Discovery of the most distant known object hints at empty early Universe." (26 January 2011)

Astronomers have glimpsed the most distant galaxy ever detected — a lone object 13.2 billion light years from Earth. The discovery implies that the fledgling Universe was emptier than was previously imagined.

[ ... ]

The near-barrenness of this epoch stands in contrast to a period roughly 650 million years after the Big Bang, in which the team has found around 60 galaxies.

The results suggest that in fewer than 200 million years — a cosmic blink of an eye — large galaxies rapidly built up from smaller ones, and the rate of star formation increased tenfold. "It's telling us that there is a very dramatic change taking place at this time period," says Garth Illingworth, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a co-author of the paper.

The sparseness of galaxies raises a mystery.

It's almost as if a blueprint was unfolding, but no ... Actually, it would be interesting of some design-oriented and non-design-oriented astronomers made sealed predictions abut this stuff and see who is closer to the mark.

4% solution: Ultimate Copernican revolution is “We’re different”?

2011-01-26T12:25:00.001-05:00

In “The challenge of the great cosmic unknowns” ( New Scientist 24 January 2011),

Dan Falk reviews Richard Panek’s The 4% Universe: Dark matter, dark energy, and the race to discover the rest of reality:

As he nears the present day, Panek weaves together two separate yet closely related storylines. In the first, he takes us to sophisticated laboratories around the world where researchers are trying to isolate particles of dark matter. Their best guess is that dark matter is made of WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), which were created at the time of the big bang and are now fiendishly difficult to detect.

In the second storyline, we join the hunt for dark energy, which began in the late 1990s when two teams of researchers studying distant supernova explosions reached a stunning conclusion: that the expansion of the universe is not slowing down, but speeding up.

The Amazon site features an interview with Panek:

Q: Sounds like science is a pretty straightforward process of discovery and follow-up.

Panek: Straightforward, maybe. Pretty, no. As I show in The Four Percent Universe, the discoveries involved a lot of behind-the-scenes rivalries that sometimes turned ugly—rivalries that continue to this day. But in a way, these rivalries have been good for the science. When scientists who would like nothing more than to prove one another wrong wind up agreeing on a weird result, their peers can’t help but take the result seriously. Astronomers hate to say it—they’re as superstitious as anyone else, and they think they’ll jinx their chances—but there are Nobel Prizes at stake here.

Q: So this is real. Astronomers actually believe that 96 percent of the universe is "missing"?

Panek: Yes. They call it the ultimate Copernican revolution. Not only are we not at the center of the universe, we’re not even made of the same stuff as the vast majority of the universe.

Hmmm.

New proposed explanation for the double slit experiment

2011-01-25T06:00:00.001-05:00

In "Which-way detector unlocks some mystery of the double-slit experiment" (January 21, 2011),
Lisa Zyga reports at Physorg:

- One of the greatest puzzles of the double-slit experiment – and quantum physics in general – is why electrons seem to act differently when being observed.

[ ... ]

Overall, the results suggest that the type of scattering an electron undergoes determines the mark it leaves on the back wall, and that a detector at one of the slits can change the type of scattering. The physicists concluded that, while elastically scattered electrons can cause an interference pattern, the inelastically scattered electrons do not contribute to the interference process.

A friend writes, "Not sure this trumps the Copenhagen Interpretation and Schrodinger's Cat, but interesting for QM physics buffs."

Tethering the drifting balloons of imaginative cosmology ...

2011-01-24T15:00:00.001-05:00

Claus Beisbart asks, "Can we justifiably assume the Cosmological Principle in order to break model underdetermination in cosmology?"

(I think he means something like this: Many proposed models of the universe today begin by assuming that basic observations so far are untrustworthy for other parts of the universe or multiverse - which justifies a number of theories that would otherwise be considered entertainment, not science. He hopes to use the Cosmological Principle as a ground rule.

The Cosmological Principle holds that

isotropy for all observers (all places in the Universe) implies homogeneity for all observers. ... A corollary to the cosmological principle is that the laws of physics are universal.

In other words, if it looks the same in all directions, that's because it really is the same, and the known laws of physics apply elsewhere in the universe.

Beisbart's Abstract

If cosmology is to obtain knowledge about the whole universe, it faces an underdetermination problem: Alternative space-time models are compatible with our evidence. The problem can be avoided though, if there are good reasons to adopt the Cosmological Principle (CP), because, assuming the principle, one can confine oneself to the small class of homogeneous and isotropic space-time models. The aim of this paper is to ask whether there are good reasons to adopt the Cosmological Principle in order to avoid underdetermination in cosmology. Various strategies to justify the CP are examined. For instance, arguments to the effect that the truth of the CP follows generically from a large set of initial conditions; an inference to the best explanation; and an inductive strategy are assessed. I conclude that a convincing justification of the CP has not yet been established, but this claim is contingent on a number of results that may have to be revised in the future.

A friend comments, "This is a very good article. The author also has done some work in
cosmology with Buchert, so he is a reliable guide in physics as well as philosophy."

Christian cosmologist says universe not fine-tuned for life: A response

2011-01-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

Here's Rob Sheldon again, on the recent paper by Christian cosmologist Don Page on why our universe is not fine-tuned for life:

a) "fine-tuning" is in the eye of the beholder. All Page demonstrates is that his eye is different than yours. Hence the only real question is whether "fine-tuning" exists at all, not what its magnitude is. If it does exist, no matter what its size, then the universe is "special", "indeterminate", and "not necessarily so". So "fine-tuning" is a scientist's placeholder for a philosopher's contingency.

b) "Optimality" is in the mind of the beholder, depending on what the beholder knows. The "optimum" shape for a human is a sphere, if we are trying to achieve 98.6F on a planet that averages 40F. Obviously, we've left a lot out of our calculations, and equally obviously, we will never know if we left out some crucial factor. Thus we never know if our "optimum" solution is global (contains all relevant factors) or local (misses some). Drawing global (e.g., theological) conclusions from some local guess is sheer hubris, and should be laughed to derision.

c) Lambda =10^-122 Planck units means that the observations are only about 122 orders of magnitude off from what theoretical physics would estimate for this number (the Planck units.)

Let that soak in for a moment. Dembski's universal probability bound is 150 orders of magnitude, only slightly greater than this number. The 10^122 ratio of theory/observed has been called the biggest unsolved problem in physics.

It is also orders of magnitude smaller than typical error bars on other physical constants. So distinguishing it from 0.0 is more an article of faith than of science. Therefore making conclusions about revelation (what God did as observed by science) using theology (how God should work as assumed from theory) may be a fine thing for seminarians, but makes lousy science.

I'm on a hobby horse here, but putting assumptions in our method that turn out to determine our conclusions is a no-no that should invalidate a science paper. One of the many ways that peer-review has failed, is that logical nonsense doesn't get flagged any more. Science should be inductive, not deductive, and when our conclusions are contained in our assumptions, we're being deductive.

For Page to conclude that lambda =/= 0, he had to assume a model with Lambda in it to start with. Einstein inserted Lambda to get a steady state universe, and removed it when Lemaitre's expanding universe was shown to be a simpler solution. It has been reinserted to (a) explain a small anomaly with Type Ia supernovae intensities and (b) solve a "flatness" contingency problem. So if we invented it to solve the metaphysical contingency problem [and I purposely discount (a)], we cannot therefore claim that its observed existence solves the contingency problem.

d) The baryon density, which is the middle term of this deductive syllogism that goes from cosmological constant to contingency, is itself another controversial subject. The cosmological constant is all about dark energy, baryon density is all about dark matter, while "fine tuning" is all about contingent creation. Page has managed to combine the three most controversial subjects in cosmology into a logical syllogism and claim some sort of deductive power. This ought to be scientifically humorous.

The more uncertainty we add into model, the more certain our specific model must be wrong (the ratio of actual solutions/possible solutions --> 0). The fact that global warming models do not include clouds, cosmic rays, precipitation, past climate or repeatability does not mean that climate change is inevitable and deniers are being dogmatic. So also the fact that dark energy assumptions change dark matter assumptions which affect contingency assumptions should tell us our conclusions are woefully uncertain and most probably wrong.

So, did the 1976 NASA mission find evidence of life on Mars? Has anybody?

2011-01-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Friend Rob Sheldon writes,

First of all, the 1976 Viking lander did NOT find organics on Mars. This is not just because the mass-spectrometer they flew was 3 orders of magnitude too insensitive to find organics from either the Atacama desert or the dry valleys of Antarctica, but also because sulfur poisoned the palladium foil that was intended to concentrate the organics for analysis.

The labelled-release experiment of Gil Levin, however, did find evidence of bacterial metabolism. You can read the papers on his website: http://mars.spherix.com/mars.html. It was tested against soils in Antarctica and Atacama, and in both cases found microbes unlike Carl Sagan's mass spectrometer. Carl ran interference and made sure Gil's work didn't get published, but I've told that story elsewhere.

But being a mass spectrometer, and being designed for low-molecular weight gases, Sagan did NOT find perchlorates in the soil either. They would have seen them had they been there. They would have seen the chlorine too--it has an unmistakeable signature. And it would sorta have explained Levin's data because the perchlorate would have oxidized the organics to produce CO2. But they didn't see it. Nothing. Nada, despite there being good explanation if it had existed.

So Carl Sagan argued for super-metallo-peroxides. Why? Because they would produce hydrogen peroxide when water was added, which presumably would evolve carbon dioxide as measured in Gil Levin's experiment without leaving a telltale signature in the mass spec. This theory persisted despite not finding any hydrogen peroxide in the atmosphere which the chemistry required.

So once again. The results of Viking were no organics due to insensitivity and poisoning, and certainly no perchlorates.

Fast forward 32 years to 2008, and we have the Phoenix lander that decided NOT to use mass spectroscopy, but wet chemistry to determine the makeup of Mars soil. In my mind, I can't find a single reason why this is a better measurement. It's less sensitive, less accurate, less general, less power-efficient, less lightweight, less robust, etc. But nothing in the Mars program makes sense without understanding the politics, so I just assume there was someone who had the ear of a congressman. Well, in order to prep the spacecraft for detecting organics, they had to remove finger prints (or as my mechanical engineer used to say, fried chicken grease) from the satellite. How did they do this? Why, with a perchlorate wash of course.

Do you suppose...Nah, the team reported, it couldn't possibly be contamination. Why, it agreed with the Viking results!

Arguments for multiverse mutually exclusive?

2011-01-22T17:14:00.000-05:00

Some of us have long wondered when it would become more generally apparent that most "multiverse" stuff is really just playing games around theories. Maybe now?

In Nature (19 January 2011), "George Ellis reminds us that Brian Greene's beguiling book on parallel worlds is more theory than fact.

The book is The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos (Allen Lane: 2011), and Ellis comments,

... Greene's nine types of multiverse are as follows. First, if space extends forever, an infinite number of domains similar to ours might lie beyond the part of the Universe that we can see. Second, some versions of inflationary theory — the idea that the newborn Universe had a fleeting period of super-fast accelerating expansion — predict the existence of innumerable other universes, with different characteristics from our own. Third, string theory, the pre-eminent theory of quantum gravity, suggests that our Universe might be one of many four-dimensional 'braneworlds' floating in a higher-dimensional space-time.

This option is developed further in the fourth and fifth proposals, which involve cyclic universes, or variations on physical parameters that are possible in the string-theory landscape. The sixth is a quantum mechanics idea that many worlds simultaneously exist as branches of the wave function of the Universe. The seventh suggests that the Universe is a holographic projection. The eighth states that we live in one of a set of artificial universes created as simulations on a super-advanced computer. The ninth argues that it is a philosophical necessity that every possible universe must be realized somewhere, in “the grandest of all multiverses”.

By presenting this plethora of theories, Greene gives the impression that the multiverse is on a sound scientific footing, but these nine arguments are mutually exclusive.

Yes but, in a multiverse, "mutually exclusive" is meaningless by definition.

More from the “They Thought the Earth Was Flat” file ...

2011-01-20T07:02:00.000-05:00

antikythera, main hub (Wiki Commons)

Here we learn,

A mechanical instrument made from bronze and wood in ancient Greece was a calendar for predicting solar eclipses and the dates of the Olympic Games, scientists have discovered.

X-ray analysis of the device, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, has revealed that it marked the timing of sporting events around Greece – including at Olympia. It was made in the 2nd century BC. The device was found by sponge divers in 1900 off the island of Antikythera.

[ ... ]

The mechanism ran on a complicated set of dials and bronze gears and was decorated with elaborate but indiscernible inscriptions.

- Steve Connor, "Ancient device was used to predict solar eclipses and Olympic dates", Belfast Telegraph (26 November 2010). Read more.

Did you know?: They didn’t know where babies come from either.

Breaking, breaking: University of Kentucky Pays “potentially evangelical” astronomer $100, 000 settlement

2011-01-19T15:39:00.002-05:00

University of Kentucky Pays $100,000+ to Settle Gaskell Discrimination Lawsuit

According to news articles, the University of Kentucky (UK) has settled the discrimination lawsuit filed against it by Martin Gaskell, an astronomer who was denied a job due to his perceived doubts about neo-Darwinian evolution. The case was scheduled to go to trial on February 8th, but today counsel for both sides filed a joint motion to dismiss the case pursuant to the settlement. According to the Associated Press:

The university has agreed to pay $125,000 to Martin Gaskell in exchange for Gaskell dropping a federal religious discrimination suit. Gaskell claimed he was passed over to be director of UK's MacAdam Student Observatory in 2007 because of his religion and statements that were perceived to be critical of evolution.

Court exhibits showed Gaskell was a top candidate, but some professors called him "something close to a creationist" and "potentially evangelical" in e-mails.

Gaskell was represented by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which said:

"The standard of suspicion -- rightly described as a 'McCarthyism of the Left' by one UK professor -- applied by some to Gaskell because of his religious writings and statements should have no place in universities of all places," Manion added. "The ease with which some of the people involved in this process were willing to tar Gaskell with the labels of 'scientific creationist,' 'evolution-basher,' and other pejoratives based on half-remembered hearsay and extremely selective reading of his non-professional writings was truly disturbing to witness. We can only hope that this case will send a message throughout academia that religious intolerance is just as unlawful as other forms of prejudice and bias."

For more, go here.

Interesting: In general, the astronomers haven’t done too badly out of the Darwin troll attacks. Guillermo Gonzalez got a new observatory and Martin Gaskell got a nice (unintended) ssendoff.

Will the University of Kentucky be adding the cost of Darwin troll maintenance to their budget soon?

To be fine tuned for life, the universe should have been tuned differently?

2011-01-19T11:54:00.000-05:00

At Slashdot “News for Nerds.Stuff that Matters” we learn:

eldavojohn writes
"A common argument one might encounter in intelligent design or the arduous process of resolving science with religion is that the physical constants of our world are fine tuned for life by some creator or designer. A University of Alberta theoretical physicist claims quite the opposite when it comes to the cosmological constant. His paper says that our ever expanding universe has a positive cosmological constant and he explains that the optimum cosmological constant for maximizing the chances of life in the universe would be slightly negative: 'any positive value of the constant would tend to decrease the fraction of matter that forms into galaxies, reducing the amount available for life. Therefore the measured value of the cosmological constant, which is positive, is evidence against the idea that the constants have been fine-tuned for life.'" [Links at site.]

Well, when we find a good many of Stephen Hawking’s other universes, we can see whether any are negatively constanted, and if so, whether they have more life.

Word on the street: The clock did SO start at the Big Bang!

2011-01-18T15:21:00.000-05:00

Here Edwin Cartlidge reports,

Our view of the early Universe may be full of mysterious circles — and even triangles — but that doesn't mean we're seeing evidence of events that took place before the Big Bang. So says a trio of papers taking aim at a recent claim that concentric rings of uniform temperature within the cosmic microwave background — the radiation left over from the Big Bang — might, in fact, be the signatures of black holes colliding in a previous cosmic 'aeon' that existed before our Universe.

[ ... ]

Penrose, however, thinks that the Universe's great uniformity instead originates from before the Big Bang, from the tail end of a previous aeon that saw the Universe expand to become infinitely large and very smooth. That aeon in turn was born in a Big Bang that emerged from the end of a still earlier aeon, and so on, creating a potentially infinite cycle with no beginning and no end.

Now Gurzadyan and Penrose's idea is being challenged by three independent studies, all posted on the arXiv server within the past few days, by Ingunn Wehus and Hans Kristian Eriksen of the University of Oslo2; Adam Moss, Douglas Scott and James Zibin of the University of British Columbia3 in Vancouver, Canada; and Amir Hajian of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto, Ontario4.

- “No evidence of time before Big Bang: Latest research deflates the idea that the Universe cycles for eternity.” Nature News (10 December 2010)

Sounds like bash Roger (“eternally cycling universe”) Penrose”time again (he’s fronting the view they oppose, that things happened before the Big Bang).

Best guess: Penrose gets all the press because the pop sci public needs new universes.

Why cosmologists should avoid being armchair philosophers

2011-01-17T16:41:00.000-05:00

Is it just my imagination or a recent development that reviewers of books like Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design are starting to ask some hard questions about materialist science parading as philosophy or theology?
Michael Turner, for Nature,says the authors

offer a brief but thrilling account of some of the boldest ideas in physics—including M-theory and the multiverse—and what these have to say about our existence and the nature of the Universe.” Turner continues: “In searching for the holy grail, Hawking and others pinned their hopes first on super-gravity and then on string theory. Both are now seen as different regimes of a grander mathematical framework called M-theory, where M is yet to be determined—is it master, miracle or mirage?

When they’re riffing off C. S. Lewis’s question about Jesus, “lunatic, liar, or Lord?” you can be sure they’re not taking you seriously.

Plus, The Economist sniffed,

It is hard to evaluate their case against recent philosophy, because the only subsequent mention of it, after the announcement of its death, is, rather oddly, an approving reference to a philosopher’s analysis of the concept of a law of nature, which, they say, “is a more subtle question than one may at first think.” There are actually rather a lot of questions that are more subtle than the authors think. It soon becomes evident that Professor Hawking and Mr Mlodinow regard a philosophical problem as something you knock off over a quick cup of tea after you have run out of Sudoku puzzles.

Yes indeed. One can’t trash philosophy and then expect to score points by employing it.

Origin of life: “If pigs could fly” chemistry slammed

2011-01-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

A rabbi friend reminds me of the late Leslie Orgel, origin of life pioneer, who seems to have been well aware of the difficulties his materialist constraints created.

Responding to Shapiro's harsh criticism of the “RNA first” theory and his proposal of the “metabolism first” scenario as a more likely approach to a naturalistic origin of life:

Theories of the origin of life based on metabolic cycles cannot be justified by the inadequacy of competing theories: they must stand on their own...solutions offered by supporters of geneticist or metabolist scenarios that are dependant on "if pigs could fly" hypothetical chemistry are unlikely to help."

Coffee!! Early modern scientists had fun!

2011-01-17T06:00:00.002-05:00

Spain-based writer Chris Wright notes in “Measuring hell: Was modern physics born in the Inferno?” (Boston Globe, January 9, 2011):

Given his devotion to empirical fact, it seems odd to think that Galileo's most important ideas might have their roots not in the real world, but in a fictional one. But that's the argument that Mount Holyoke College physics professor Mark Peterson has been developing for the past several years: specifically, that one of Galileo's crucial contributions to physics came from measuring the hell of Dante's Inferno. Or rather, from disproving its measurements.

Okay, but Dante was writing an epic, for which Inferno was the first big backdrop. Like modern sci fi filmmakers, he fuzzed the physics a bit.

So? Hell is a spiritual reality, but staging a drama that includes characters touring hell, Dante’s gotta make a scene. Like I told Larry Krauss, who was grousing recently about Trek physics, people don’t go to big box office to learn physics, and in Dante’s day, they didn’t read epics for that either.

But wasn’t a waste of time:

Debating the mechanics of the Inferno might sound like intellectual horseplay, the 16th-century equivalent of MIT cafeteria debates about the viability of "Star Trek" teleporters. But there was more to the lectures than this. The insights Galileo gleaned from analyzing Dante's measurements in fact anticipated a vital principle of structural engineering. By asserting that you cannot create a giant Lucifer by super-sizing the model of a man - that increasing an object's magnitude would create a whole new set of structural and material imperatives - Galileo was paving the way for the construction of everything from ocean liners to skyscrapers to Macy's parade floats.

Typically, historians have dismissed these lectures as an inventive but relatively unimportant flourish on Galileo's part, a mere prelude to his subsequent theories concerning so-called scaling laws. But Peterson sees the lectures as being central to the Italian's greatest contributions to the history of thought. In applying mathematical models to Dante's hell, he argues, Galileo was laying the groundwork for what would become theoretical physics. "This was not just a clever entertainment," he says, "but something deeper, something closer to the mystery of what made the Scientific Revolution."

More coffee.

Antimatter in the air on a stormy day?

2011-01-16T18:00:00.000-05:00

Artist's conception of antimatter in storm (NASA)

NASA Science News for Jan. 11, 2011suggests that "thunderstorms may be making antimatter:

Scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.

Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed inside thunderstorms in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF) associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 TGFs occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected.

"These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams," said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He presented the findings Monday, during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

[ ... ]

The GBM has detected gamma rays with energies of 511,000 electron volts, a signal indicating an electron has met its antimatter counterpart, a positron.

In which case, it is annihilated. Experimental physicists recently created 38 antihydrogen particles and preserved them for 1/10 second; here's how they kept them from mutual annihilation in a matter-based environment.

Of course, capturing one in the wild ...

Origin of life: Simple cells inevitable?

2011-01-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

A friend flags Nick Lane's "Chance or Necessity?: Bioenergetics and the Probability of Life" (Journal of Cosmology, August 2010, Vol 10, 3286-3304, suggesting that it represents a significant step in the history of origin of life research. Lane thinks bacteria would "naturally" emerge on wet, rocky planets, but that more complex life forms are a matter of chance.

Lane pin his hopes on "white smokers", that is, alkaline hydrothermal vent systems, of which he writes,

... alkaline hydrothermal vent systems should be seen as not merely the most promising setting for the origin of life, but as the only model that makes the emergence of life look like a probable and deterministic outcome of geology, geochemistry and thermodynamics (Table 1). Alkaline vents are electrochemical reactors that provide integrity, concentration, catalysis, replication and a suitable environment for selection. It is hard to imagine life not emerging in such a system, especially if one pictures the oceanic crust as host to practically contiguous vent systems, as might indeed have been the case (Russell and Arndt, 2005). One could even imagine a natural selection of vents, in which life emerges from the system with the best balance of H2, flow and catalysis, perhaps going on to infect nearby systems.

The abstract reads,

Abstract: The emergence of life is probable on any wet, rocky planet. Serpentinization gives rise to alkaline hydrothermal vents that form: (i) simple organics; (ii) catalysts that direct primordial metabolism (iii) micropores with cell-like properties; and (iv) proton gradients equivalent to the proton-motive force. Thermodynamic constraints dictate that all anaerobic chemolithotrophic cells must depend on chemiosmotic coupling, explaining the near-universal use of proton gradients today. But proton gradients also limit the evolutionary potential of prokaryotes. Only a rare and stochastic event, an endosymbiosis between prokaryotes, permitted the evolution of morphologically complex life on Earth, as only such an endosymbiosis made it possible for chemiosmotic coupling to be controlled by multiple small genome outposts across a wide area of internal membranes. This leap in bioenergetic capacity in turn enabled the expansion in cell volume and genome size characteristic of eukaryotes. The origin of life and evolution of prokaryotes is therefore deterministic and probable (necessity), while the evolution of more complex eukaryotic life is stochastic and improbable (chance). These bioenergetic principles are likely to apply throughout the universe.

I'm not sure why my friend thinks this is so significant. Didn't it used to be black smokers? But the good thing about this particular theory is that Lane spells it out clearly enough that we can know if it is not demonstrable. None of the usual mights and maybes for him.

Jathink? Guy says materialism "not the most viable philosophy", and keeps job!

2011-01-15T12:00:00.003-05:00

Computational physicist Vlatko Vedral reviews Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen's new collection of essays at physicsworld.com in "An inordinate fondness for bits" (Jan 11, 2011). In Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press 2010), he says,

Each article explores the hypothesis that information is at the root of everything. And I mean everything – from atoms to, perhaps, a deity.

Well, that last'll get attention.

Hmmm. Are the contributors trying to mock the intelligent design guys, but they lost the plot somewhere? Well,

The collection starts with historical essays by philosopher of science Ernan McMullin and philosopher-theologian Philip Clayton, who write about materialism (the worldview that states that the only thing that really exists is matter and that all other phenomena are just interactions between different pieces of matter) and its receding hold on philosophy. The stage being set, Davies and fellow physicist Seth Lloyd then present a physics perspective on information. Davies is without a doubt one of the best popular-science writers in the world, and his article demonstrates why. In it, he explains why, in light of modern physics discoveries, materialism is not the most viable philosophy. Lloyd then expands on this idea by introducing the notion that the universe is a giant information-processing device. This is a view that has emerged from my own field of research – quantum computation – and Lloyd is one of its most prominent advocates.

Hold that thought. Materialism is "not the most viable philosophy"?

Well, why did Baptist U Baylor shut down Dembski and Gordon's Polanyi Center in 2002 for sponsoring a conference where lots of learned folk said substantially the same thing? Why was it big time heresy among ... the Baptists when atheist Vedral is okay with it?

Alas, theo-weirdness soon kicks in:

The pinnacle of this "theological" section, however, is the proposal by Keith Ward that deity is a form of information-theoretic principle. Ward's proposal is related to the observation that the universe walks a fine line between total disorder and compete order. Logically, it would seem that disorder is a more natural state of affairs if things were left to themselves, and so to get some order out we clearly need an extra guiding principle. And this extra principle, Ward suggests, is synonymous with God – albeit a very different sort of God than an all-powerful creator. Now, there is a definition of God with which I might almost agree!

Naturally, I wish the editors had dumped the "theological" dreck with which atheist Vedral "might almost agree." It prompts the question, "Why isn't Bill Gates God? Oh wait, he is. Or no wait again, let me check my notes on who's God.

But seriously, if it has now become okay to say that materialism is not the most viable philosophy, what is the world coming to?

What I'd like to know is, how will materialists find a way to pervert that observation so that it doesn't mean what it says? And what "information-theoretic" yes men (former materialist yes men) will we be hearing from soon?

Origin of life: How will we know we arrived if we don't know where "arrived" is?

2011-01-15T06:00:00.001-05:00

Microbial mats at Yellowstone, US Parks

Via Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. at Physorg, we learn,

Biologists have been unable to agree on a definition of the complex phenomenon known as "life." In a special collection of essays in Astrobiology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., leaders in the fields of philosophy, science, and molecular evolution present a variety of perspectives on defining life.

Here are two representative ones:

Antonio Lazcano, National Autonomous University of Mexico, and colleagues present an historical perspective of the many definitions of life put forth over the years and why they have been unsatisfactory, in the essay, "The Definition of Life: A Brief History of an Elusive Scientific Endeavor."

Steven Benner, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution and The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology (Gainesville, FL), explores the various definitions of life popular in the astrobiology community and how each is connected to a "theory of life." In the essay "Defining Life," Benner describes how chemical structures capable of Darwinian evolution might be useful as universal biosignatures.
See also this:
In the search for life beyond Earth, we should not expect to find life forms we're familiar with. Determining whether something completely alien is 'alive' could be a challenge, so a universal definition of life is needed. Biologists have yet to agree on a definition, but a new theory attempts to provide a solution.
Why does all this remind me of an episode of The Twilight Zone?, where people go over and over things, but ...

Exoplanets: Aren't we at risk of running out of gee whiz adjectives?

2011-01-14T21:00:00.001-05:00

From "Rocky exoplanet milestone in hunt for Earth-like worlds" (Jason Palmer, BBC News, 10 January 11), we learn,

Astronomers have discovered the smallest planet outside our Solar System, and the first that is undoubtedly rocky like Earth.

Measurements of unprecedented precision have shown that the planet, Kepler 10b, has a diameter 1.4 times that of Earth, and a mass 4.6 times higher.

However, because it orbits its host star so closely, the planet could not harbour life.

The discovery has been hailed as "among the most profound in human history".

One can't help wondering why, actually. Well, because

"We want to know if we're alone in the galaxy, simply put - and this is one link in the chain toward getting to that objective.

"First we need to know if planets that could potentially harbour life are common, and we don't know if that's true - that's what Kepler is aiming to do."

Okay, but can we please leave the "most profounds" (the phrase is used twice in a short report) out for now?

Otherwise, what phrases will we haveleft when we find an extrasolar planet that can host life?

While we are at it, the phrase "a planetary missing link", used in the story, doesn't really work. If the conv-

NASA artist's conception of Kepler 10b

entional explanation of planet formation is correct, Kepler 10b isn't a long-sought link between one planet and another. And if we do find a planet that harbours life, it won't be a link either - any more than Earth is a "link" between Venus and Mars.

A friend writes to say,

We had total failure at finding Earth-like planets that might support our Darwinian assumption (and massive expenditure) that we are not unique in the universe. But now we've found something other than a giant-gas planet so we are less discouraged than before. But it turned out to be a solid chunk of iron at 1300 degrees orbiting a few solar radii above the star, so it isn't what we were looking for, which is discouraging again. But we'll call it "rocky" anyway and maybe our luck will return.

One hopes so. A summer planet would be nice. But not that one.

Influential atheist cosmologists, and why they might not matter

2011-01-13T15:31:00.000-05:00

On a recent list of the 25 most influential atheists, three key cosmologists come up.

# 5 Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is one of the world’s great theoretical physicists. His trade-press book A Brief History of Time took the world by storm in the late 1980s. In it he raised the prospect of a self-creating universe, which he has since developed at length. The theme he keeps pounding is the extraneousness of the God hypothesis.

Wrote a bit about him. With his new take on M-theory, he is now mainly famous for staying famous. But that’s still pretty famous.

# 9 Steven Weinberg

The premier living Nobel laureate physicist, Steven Weinberg is one of the great scientists of our time. He is also a remarkably good writer, as demonstrated in his popular books on physics, which advance an atheistic view of the universe. According to him, science’s greatest cultural achievement is to eradicate religion.

Never tracked him much. His “pointless” universe seems like too much religion in science class to me (and he now admits it was a foolish thing to say).

He’s right. Just because he has religion on the brain ... Don’t bet on his fellow atheists making an issue out of whether other religions get equal treatment with his in tax-funded schools.

# 11 Lawrence Krauss

When the television networks need a well-credentialed and well-spoken scientist to discuss the relation between science and religion, Lawrence Krauss is their man.* A physicist with solid credentials as well as a ready pen, who has written a string of successful popular science books, Krauss has effectively used this platform to promote atheism.

Clashed with him, actually. I disagreed that sci fi film makers created a big problem by using unrealistic physics. Hello? That’s why it’s called science fiction.

Well you should have heard him in response ...

(*Now that sounds to me like damning with faint praise, but I digress.)

It all raises an interesting question: What would cosmology look like if there wasn’t an obsessive need to come up with a cosmology that bypasses a beginning, which suggests an argument for the existence of God?

Today’s cosmology strikes me as a carnival of improbable ideas festooned with equations.

Look, when physicists concentrate on physics, I don’t know near enough to critique it. These guys make my job easy, that’s for sure. With luck, I'll get a book out of it.

Sugars for life: About face! Left turn!

2011-01-12T08:22:00.000-05:00

A friend observes this item from Science News Daily,

ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2011) — Certain molecules do exist in two forms which are symmetrical mirror images of each other: they are known as chiral molecules. On Earth, the chiral molecules of life, especially amino acids and sugars, exist in only one form, either left-handed or right-handed. Why is it that life has initially chosen one form over the other? [ ... ]

…has for the first time obtained an excess of left-handed molecules (and then an excess of right-handedones) under conditions that reproduce those found in interstellar space. This result therefore supports the hypothesis that the asymmetry of biological molecules on Earth has a cosmic origin.

[ ... ]

The excess, which was over 1.3%, is comparable to that measured in primitive meteorites. The researchers thus succeeded in producing, under interstellar conditions, asymmetrical molecules of life from a mixture that did not contain chiral substances. This is the first time that a scenario that explains the origin of this asymmetry has been demonstrated using an experiment that reproduces an entirely natural synthesis.

My friend sniffs, “the production of a small (1.3%) excess of one over the other ( and then the opposite result) is a crowning achievement in a field where any success of any kind is a towering feat.”

Caution is needed. One can get 1.3% in almost any direction, at least once, before the wheels fall off.

Past life forms on a moon of Saturn?

2011-01-11T18:00:00.001-05:00

Jonathan Amos reported for BBC News on an ice volcano on one of Saturn’s moons (“Ice volcano' identified on Saturn's moon Titan”, 14 December 2010):

Scientists think they now have the best evidence yet for an ice volcano on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

The Cassini probe has spotted a 1,500m-high mountain with a deep pit in it, and what looks like a flow of material on the surrounding surface.

The new feature, which has been dubbed "The Rose", was seen with the probe's radar and infrared instruments.

Rose volcano on Titan, NASA
Titan has long been speculated to have cryovolcanoes but its hazy atmosphere makes all observations very difficult.

Researchers are now wondering how active this mountain might be, and what sort of lava it could spew.

"Much of Titan's outer material is water-ice and ammonia, and so that's certainly one possible material that could melt at low temperatures and flow on the surface," explained Dr Randy Kirk, a Cassini radar team-member from the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Some of us kept wondering where the “life on Titan” hook would come in, and a friend spotted it here, at the very end:

Might cryo-lavas have dredged up indications of fossils or chemical remains of sub-surface life?

Well, maybe, but then space aliens might have used our DNA to hide messages too ...

One so much wishes that all the research would pay off soon, that some evidence of life elsewhere would actually be found. Primitive life would, in my view, be rather more interesting than the “Take me to your leader” crowd of science fiction.

Notice to extraterrestrials: We have enough politicians and others who know how to run the world here already. Why not take some home with you as souvenirs?

Before the Big Bang: Loop quantum gravity?

2011-01-11T12:00:00.001-05:00

Big Bang,Wikimedia Commons

In “The Birth of Time: Quantum Loops Describe the Evolution of the Universe” (ScienceDaily, Dec. 17, 2010), we learn

What was the Big Bang and what happened before it? Scientists from the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw have attempted to answer the question. Within the framework of loop quantum gravity they have put forward a new theoretical model, which might prove useful for validating hypotheses about events prior to the Big Bang. This achievement is one of the few models describing the full Einstein's theory and not merely its greatly simplified version.

The model invokes quantum loop gravity:

The real answer to the mystery of the Big Bang lies in a unified quantum theory of matter and gravity. One attempt at developing such a theory is loop quantum gravity (LQG). The theory holds that space is weaved from one-dimensional threads. "It is just like in the case of a fabric -- although it is seemingly smooth from a distance, it becomes evident at close quarters that it consists of a network of fibres," describes Wojciech Kaminski, MSc from FUW. Such space would constitute a fine fabric - an area of a square centimetre would consists of 10^66 threads.

Question: If unified quantum theory is the real answer to the mystery of the Big Bang, won’t it end up being the next mystery? Of course, that will hardly be bad for the people who developed the theory.

It’s a bit difficult to picture a one-dimensional string, but we keep trying.

Cosmology’s little wars: what’s a universe or two, or many?

2011-01-11T06:00:00.010-05:00

Cosmic microwave background - the battleground

Some friends were talking about a recent story in Technology Review’s Physics ArXiv blog, “Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes” (12/13/2010).

The idea is that astronomers have found evidence that our cosmos was "bruised" in collisions with other universes:

Last month, Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford and Vahe Gurzadyan at Yerevan State University in Armenia announced that they had found patterns of concentric circles in the cosmic microwave background, the echo of the Big Bang.

This, they say, is exactly what you'd expect if the universe were eternally cyclical. By that, they mean that each cycle ends with a big bang that starts the next cycle. In this model, the universe is a kind of cosmic Russian Doll, with all previous universes contained within the current one.

That's an extraordinary discovery: evidence of something that occurred before the (conventional) Big Bang.

Today, another group says they've found something else in the echo of the Big Bang. These guys start with a different model of the universe called eternal inflation. In this way of thinking, the universe we see is merely a bubble in a much larger cosmos. This cosmos is filled with other bubbles, all of which are other universes where the laws of physics may be dramatically different to ours.

Tentative evidence for the latter proposition is said to have been found in the cosmic microwave background, though it might, researchers admit, be just a trick of the eye.

Indeed, for so momentous a discovery (evidence of other universes?), it attracted little attention.

Astrophysicist friend Rob Sheldon comments:

Penrose and Gurzadyan found these circles in the microwave background radiation (CMB) and attribute them to things that happened before the Big Bang (a time before time), using it to disprove inflation universe models. Well that got the inflation guys unhappy, who are, after all, the majority of cosmologists. So some young guy without a reputation to defend decides to take them on and claim that these circles are proof of inflation in a multiverse (a space beyond space), claiming instead that this disproves Penrose.

Neither Penrose's "aeons" require circles, nor multiverse "D-branes" require circles, so you're seeing a lot of post-facto theorizing here, ...

Yes, one had begun to wonder about that. The research is here.

Go here, here, and here for other responses, and here for Gurzadyan and Penrose’s response.

Coffee!! Flat earth award

2011-01-10T15:00:00.001-05:00

Satan trapped in the ice at the centre of Earth, Wiki Commons

I wonder if, some time, we could give out a flat earth award for people who heedlessly state that "In the Middle Ages, people thought the Earth was flat."

Maybe we could call it the Eratosthenes Award, after the 3rd century BCE Greek who estimated the circumference of Earth:

He knew the approximate distance between Syene [Aswan] and Alexandria, as measured by camel-powered trade caravans. He then measured the angle of the shadow in Alexandria on the solstice. By taking the angle of the shadow (7̊12') and dividing it into the 360 degrees of a circle (360 divided by 7.2 yields 50), Eratosthenes could then multiply the distance between Alexandria and Syene by 50 to determine the circumference.

Remarkably, Eratosthenes (approx 276-194 BCE) determined the circumference to be 25,000 miles, just 100 miles over the actual circumference at the equator (24,901 miles). While Eratosthenes made mathematical errors in his caculations, these fortunately canceled each other out and yielded an amazingly accurate answer. - Geography about.com

Now, the spherical nature of Earth became so much a part of popular culture that when Dante (1265-1321 CE) wrote the most famous poem of the period, the Divine Comedy, he put Hell inside Earth - a convenient location for the worst place in the universe because Earth was considered second worst - the heaviest place, to which everything fell.

I can't decide what the award should be, but maybe someone will donate toward a work of historical fiction - a bodice ripper, perhaps, with lots of castles and shining armour. Fact-based books would be wasted on the recipient.

Coffee!! I get more mail: Extraterrestrials and the super-rich

2011-01-10T06:00:00.005-05:00

A friend reminds me of cosmologist Paul Davies' essay, "Is Anybody Out There?" (April 10, 2010), which provides some interesting information on funding patterns for SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence:

Most of the funding today comes from private donations through the SETI Institute, a private nonprofit founded in 1984 in Mountain View, Calif. The jewel in its crown is the Allen Telescope Array, a $35 million dedicated network of 42 small dishes in northern California, with about $30 million of the funding contributed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The goal is to ultimately increase the network to 350 dishes. Donors on other projects have included David Packard and Bill Hewlett (co-founders of Hewlett-Packard) and Gordon Moore (co-founder of Intel).

The US government hasn't funded SETI since 1993. Davies offers imaginative ways for the super-rich to look for aliens:

On purely statistical grounds any visitation is likely to have been a very long time ago. To pluck a figure out of midair, imagine that an alien expedition passed our way 100 million years ago. Would any traces remain?

Not many. However, some remnants might still persist. Buried nuclear waste could be detectable even after billions of years. Large-scale mineral exploitation such as quarrying leaves distinctive scars that, in the case of Earth, would eventually become obscured by overlying strata but would still show up in geological surveys. Space probes parked in orbit round the sun might lie dormant yet intact for an immense period of time. Scientists could look for such hallmarks of alien technology on Earth and the moon, in near space, on Mars and among the asteroids.

Davies' (not entirely serious, I suspect) suggestions, intriguing as they are, still remind me - I must admit - of a woman doing Internet searches on an ex-boyfriend and turning up accidentally at gatherings and restaurants he has sometimes frequented. And the reality is that, if he had died in the meantime, she might not even be one of the people that anyone would think to notify. So she could be haunting a ghost, to say nothing of haunting her own real life.

Philosopher responds to Hawking's "philosophy is dead" claim"

2011-01-09T15:00:00.001-05:00

Here (John Haldane, "Philosophy Lives", First Things, January 2011)

What is meant by talking about many universes? It might mean unobservable regions of the universe—the one spatio-temporal-causal continuum—or, although this is much harder to make sense of, entirely distinct cosmic setups, wholly discontinuous with the universe we inhabit. The first possibility fails to serve Hawking and Mlodinow’s purpose. Any evidence we could have for these distant regions would necessarily be evidence for situations exhibiting the same orderliness whose existence seemed to call for explanation.

The second possibility—that there are many universes, entirely distinct realities, wholly discontinuous and sharing no common elements—fails also. There can be no empirical evidence in support of the hypothesis, nor could it be derived as a necessary condition of the possible existence and character of the only universe of which we have or could have scientific knowledge.

Hawking and Mlodinow write that the “multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine tuning.” Whether or not it was invented as such, its deployment in this context appears ad hoc, introduced only to avoid the conclusion that the general regularities and particular fine-tuning are due to the agency of a creator.

The basic components of the material universe and the forces operating on them exhibit properties of stability and regularity that invite explanation—the more so given the narrow band within which they have to lie in order for there to be intelligent animals able to investigate and reflect on the conditions of their own existence. Science cannot provide an ultimate explanation of order.

As Hawking and Mlodinow occasionally seem to recognize, far from philosophy being dead, having been killed by science, the deepest arguments in this area are not scientific but philosophical. And if the philosophical reasoning runs in the direction I have suggested, it is not only philosophy but also natural theology that is alive and ready to bury its latest would-be undertakers.

I get mail: Wallace on Mars's canals

2011-01-09T12:00:00.001-05:00

Wallace

Lowell

A friend writes to say that Darwin's co-theorist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) argued strongly for a theistic version of the anthropic principle in his Man's Place in the Universe (1904) anticipating the excellent book by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards The Privileged Planet by precisely 100 years. Interestingly, Wallace argued vehemently in 1907 against Percival Lowell (1855-1916). Wallace insisted that the "canals" [on Mars] were the product of fissures created over long periods of time.

But then, Lowell was seeing science fiction and Wallace was seeing nature. It matters.

Lowell's canals concept, Wikimedia Commons

2010: Scientists on God: Wit vs. insight

2011-01-09T06:00:00.001-05:00

Cleaning out last year’s files, I note where a friend directs me to Herman Wouk on Richard Feynman, here. Friend comments,

Feynman was brilliant, no question, but his quote regarding the "size of the stage" seems illogical, and his remark that calculus is the language of God appears to be simultaneously faux-profound and very likely insincere.

There’s a lot of that about these days. Smart people can sound profound when they’re talking rot, and Feynman seems to have had moments like that:

THE physicist Richard Feynman said, "It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvellous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama."

. Also,

This formidable fellow walked out of the building with me, and said as we were parting: "Do you know calculus?" I admitted that I didn't. "You had better learn it," he said. "It's the language God talks."

Well, as for Feynman’s stage, we’d better see how much is backdrop and how much is Central Casting before we decide.

While we are here, genome mapper Francis Collins insists that the genome, not calculus, is The Language of God. Who’s right? They both are. God is the author of language and speaks all of them, as needed.

From the “What Is Life?” coffee club: What isn’t life

2011-01-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

From Timothy Kusky, Encyclopedia of Earth and Space Science (New York: Facts on File, 2010), 384:

Complex organic molecules including amino acids do not constitute life. After the simple amino acids form, it is no easy task to combine them into larger molecules and complex molecules necessary for life. These need additional stimuli, such as hot acidic water, or ultraviolet radiation, or perhaps lightning. A mechanism for initiating the ability for molecules to transmit information so that they can replicate themselves is also necessary. One idea is that this may have first been done on the surfaces of clay minerals, such as those found in some submarine hot spring environments such as those along the mid-ocean ridges. Somehow, in the early Precambrian, life emerged from these complex organic molecules and simple amino acids, but the origin of life remains one of life's biggest mysteries.

Now, if only people would quit definitively solving the problems every two weeks, we might actually start learning something.

(Note: Encyclopedia can be downloaded for free.)

Hawking’s Grand Design: See, one icon is ALLOWED to diss another

2011-01-08T06:00:00.001-05:00

Good thing, too.

After the breathless praise we’ve heard so far, The Economist review of Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow,’s The Grand Design is hardly the birthday cake I’d come to expect:

The problem is not that the book is technically rigorous—like “A Brief History of Time”, it has no formulae—but because whenever the going threatens to get tough, the authors retreat into hand-waving, and move briskly on to the next awe-inspiring notion. Anyone who can follow their closing paragraphs on the relation between negative gravitational energy and the creation of the universe probably knows it all already. This is physics by sound-bite.

[ ... ]

The main novelty in “The Grand Design” is the authors’ application of a way of interpreting quantum mechanics, derived from the ideas of the late Richard Feynman, to the universe as a whole. According to this way of thinking, “the universe does not have just a single existence or history, but rather every possible version of the universe exists simultaneously.” The authors also assert that the world’s past did not unfold of its own accord, but that “we create history by our observation, rather than history creating us.” They say that these surprising ideas have passed every experimental test to which they have been put, but that is misleading in a way that is unfortunately typical of the authors. It is the bare bones of quantum mechanics that have proved to be consistent with what is presently known of the subatomic world. The authors’ interpretations and extrapolations of it have not been subjected to any decisive tests, and it is not clear that they ever could be.

Once upon a time it was the province of philosophy to propose ambitious and outlandish theories in advance of any concrete evidence for them. Perhaps science, as Professor Hawking and Mr Mlodinow practice it in their airier moments, has indeed changed places with philosophy, though probably not quite in the way that they think.

What chance mathematician David Berlinski wrote this?

Paul Davies on avoiding a hullabaloo when the flying saucers land

2011-01-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

In “Newsmaker Interview: Imponderables Complicate Hunt For Intelligent Life Beyond Earth”, Science (23 April 2010), Yudhijit Bhattacharjee asks cosmologist Paul Davies some questions about the SETI search, in aid of his Eerie Silence book. Two stand out:

Q: Why is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence any different from the search for goblins or unicorns?

P.D.: Good point. Well, when it started out 50 years ago, it was considered a very quixotic enterprise. The pendulum has swung during my career. I often ask around why it is now okay to talk about ET when it wasn't 40 years ago. And people will often cite irrelevant factors like—oh, we've discovered all these planets, and we've discovered that life can exist in a wide array of conditions. But the truth is that we still don't have an acceptable theory of life's origins, we really have no idea whether it was a stupendous fluke that happened only once or whether it pops up all over the place. It's now fashionable to say that the universe is teeming with life, but there is not a shred of evidence.

[ ... ]

Q: You devote a chapter in the book to how governments, the media, and societies need to handle news of the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence, if and when that happens. What are the outlines of the plan?

P.D.: If there's a signal, the scientists should be allowed to evaluate it before there's a hullabaloo. In practice, that will be very hard to achieve without a cloak of secrecy, which I am usually against. But there's one thing on which we are all agreed, which is that we should not disclose the coordinates in the sky of a transmitting source. Because otherwise, any self-appointed spokesperson of humanity could get hold of a radio telescope and start beaming crackpot messages, and present themselves as a spokesperson for mankind, when it is not at all clear whether we should respond. (Paywall)

Okay, but how would the crackpot messages differ from stuff we hear all the time? Presumably, ET has noticed that and is used to it.

Are you sitting down?: The Pope thinks God is behind the universe

2011-01-06T15:38:00.001-05:00

The Pope has gone on record as saying “God was behind Big Bang, universe no accident” (Philip Pullella, 2011 01 06):

God's mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict said on Thursday.

Most of the Yahoo article is the usual pop media sludge (= Pope grudgingly accepts reality while retaining a tiny corner for dumb people to pray in).

However, to their credit, the Yahooligans couldn’t quite bring themselves to say “the Pope supports evolution”. Instead:

While the pope has spoken before about evolution, he has rarely delved back in time to discuss specific concepts such as the Big Bang, which scientists believe led to the formation of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.

Yes, and the Pope has made quite clear where he stands on the only theory of evolution currently on offer, in the public media, Darwinism: He had prayer cards put out in many languages all over Rome a few years ago, saying “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.” Some people have a really hard time accepting the significance of that.

Benedict XVI is not heedless of the politically motivated falsehoods circulated about Catholic teachings, always with the intention of confusing Christians who are trying to be faithful. Recently, some American Catholic-label politicians who tried to claim that the Catholic Church has never been certain in its stand against abortion were rebuked by the Vatican.

In fact, most popular culture isn’t sure whether to acknowledge God or the multiverse, and is simply waiting to see who wins the public relations war: Him or Them.

Remembering 2010: Quantum teleportation advances, yes, but not for heavy suitcases

2011-01-06T06:00:00.004-05:00

Here’s a better explanation of what quantum teleportation means than most, from Casey Johnston at Ars Technica. In “Quantum teleportation achieved over ten miles of free space” (May 2010), he writes,

... "quantum teleportation" is quite different from how many people imagine teleportation to work. Rather than picking one thing up and placing it somewhere else, quantum teleportation involves entangling two things, like photons or ions, so their states are dependent on one another and each can be affected by the measurement of the other's state.

When one of the items is sent a distance away, entanglement ensures that changing the state of one causes the other to change as well, allowing the teleportation of quantum information, if not matter.

Sending information ten miles with no “traditional signal” is quite a feat.

One suspects that that’s the real future: Send information, stay home, and leave the heavy suitcases at home. You won't need so much stuff anyway.

Recalling 2010: About nanotechnology, Mr. Feynman was NOT joking, it turns out.

2011-01-05T06:00:00.001-05:00

In The Wall Street Journal, New Atlantis editor Adam Keiper mused on “Feynman and the Futurists” (January 8, 2010),

On Dec. 29, 1959, Richard P. Feynman gave an after-dinner talk at an annual American Physical Society meeting in Pasadena, Calif. Feynman was not the public figure he would later become—he had not yet received a Nobel Prize, unraveled the cause of the Challenger accident, written witty books of popular science, or been the subject of biographies, documentaries and even a play starring Alan Alda. But the 41-year-old was already respected by fellow physicists for his originality, his crackling intellect, and his roguish charm.

The announced title of Feynman's lecture, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," mystified the attendees. One later told science writer Ed Regis that the puzzled physicists in the room feared Feynman meant that "there are plenty of lousy jobs in physics."

Now there’s a thought for the day.

Actually, Feynman wanted to talk about nanotechnology:

"As far as I can see," Feynman said, the principles of physics "do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom." In fact, he argued, it is "a development which I think cannot be avoided." The physicist spoke of storing all the information in all the world's books on "the barest piece of dust that can be made out by the human eye." He imagined shrinking computers and medical devices, and developing new techniques of manufacturing and mass production. In short, a half-century ago he anticipated what we now call nanotechnology—the manipulation of matter at the level of billionths of a meter.

His speculations went the way of most, but now, a half century later,

... hundreds of companies and universities are teeming with nanotech researchers, and the U.S. government has been pouring billions of dollars into its multiagency National Nanotechnology Initiative.

There is a fringe Trekkie element, to be sure, often confused with the remarkable but real world nanotechnology, best seen as a specialized form of materials science, as Keiper puts it. It aims at “new medical treatments and diagnostic tools, ultraefficient water-filtration systems, strong and lightweight materials for military armor, and breakthroughs in energy, computing and medicine.” Not desk-size magic boxes that produce just anything.

As it happens, the Trekkies chose Feynman for their hero - creating the impression that he was surely joking, one supposes, and reinforcing a tendency to minimize is prescience in this matter.

The astronomer who paid dearly for dissing Carl Sagan settled in at new U

2011-01-04T12:41:00.003-05:00

Refurbishing the observatory

I asked young astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez how things were going, after Iowa State University rejected his tenure in a case that stank to high heaven.

He replied,

Things are going well. I've started an astronomy minor program here at Grove City College and the refurbishment of the college's new (old) observatory is essentially done. Here's our observatory web page.

While it is more difficult to find the time to do research here, I have managed to squeeze out a few papers (2 in 2010).

Remember that, folks. Trolls and their lackeys don't run the world (yet). You can still get in some good research and avoid their odious claptrap.

More on Gonzalez:

Gonzalez on mutual eclipse seasons in three planets during the International Year of Astronomy

Expelled astronomer publishes new paper in Royal Astronomy Society journal

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

The truth hurts - and it can leave you seeing stars too

Study: Sun not special, therefore alien life should be common?

Privileged planet" astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez: Dissing St. Carl Sagan in his own church

Rehabilitating the idea of creation - Big Bang Cosmology

Podcast: Is the earth uniquely situated for scientific observation? Do we live on a privileged planet?On this

episode of ID The Future we have a short clip about the book The Privileged Planet. In the book, authors Jay

Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez suggest that earth was designed for scientific discovery. They introduce a new

idea that more than just being rare in the universe, the earth is ideally located for scientific observation.

Go here to listen.

Recalling 2010: And we thought this sort of thing only happened in science fiction ...

2011-01-04T06:00:00.002-05:00

Tim Radford told us, in The Guardian:

Paul Davies is a cosmologist who turned to the problem of life in the cosmos at least 15 years ago: this is, on my count, his fourth book on the theme. He is chairman of the Seti post-detection task group, a little committee of rationalists prepared to confront one of the most intoxicating and terrifying challenges of all time: if we do hear from ET, Davies and colleagues will be the first to know. This improbable burden could explain why The Eerie Silence may not be his most thrilling book, but is certainly one of his most thoughtful: there is hardly an aspect of the great Seti puzzle that he does not address, in clear, almost laconic vernacular.

- review of The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? and James Kasting’s How to Find a Habitable Planet (27 March, 2010)

Well, what if Davies did get The Call. What would one say? “What kept you?” doesn’t quite cut it.

Radford sensibly wonders,

Is there silence because extraterrestrials simply do not exist? Are the conditions for the emergence of life so far-fetched, so ludicrously improbable that it happened only once, on one planet orbiting one star in just one galaxy during the whole 13.7-billion-year lifetime of the universe? Or is the universe humming with life, but humming so quietly that we cannot hear it?

and a number of interesting speculations orbit these.

Then we hear,

The scientist in him, says Davies, suspects that humans may be the only intelligent beings in the universe. The philosopher in him hates the idea. "Frankly, it makes me uneasy. I wonder what all that stuff out there is for, when only lowly Homo sapiens gets to see it."

Hmmm. Maybe to provide a work opportunity for otherwise unemployed astronomers? Well, the least they could do then is go for it.

Origin of life spoof

2011-01-03T15:00:00.001-05:00

As we all head back to serious work ...

A friend writes, “In case you missed it here is a snippet of Doug Axe's spoof on the self-replicating ribozymes in this paper:

Biologic Institute Announces First Self-Replicating Motor Vehicle — April 1st, 2009 by Douglas Axe

Researchers at Biologic Institute have stunned the scientific community with the announcement today of a fully functioning automobile capable of replicating itself. Although simple autocatalytic versions of self-replication have previously been demonstrated, the complexity of the system described today—complete with GPS navigation, DVD player, and onboard WiFi—has taken everyone by surprise. In the minds of many, this discovery has forever altered the once fundamental distinction between life and non-life.
Reactions from the automotive industry have, understandably, been less philosophical. One executive, who wished to remain unnamed, characterized the development as “altogether unhelpful.” An assembly plant worker was less restrained: “This is unreal… I just hope they quarantine the [expletive] things before this gets out of hand.”

According to lead scientist Otto Cloner, “In the right kind of environment the process of self-replication just takes off. I still get goose bumps watching it.” The prototype self-replicator is a slightly modified version of the popular Jeep Wrangler—unmanned. When just one of these self-propelled prototypes is placed in an appropriate environment (one lacking any other self-propelled vehicles) magic happens. Or so it seems. Dr. Cloner himself takes the more modest view that “the replicative mechanism is really quite simple when properly understood”.

For more, go here.

For the Institute’s serious work, go here.

2010: A “host” of Rare Earths discovered?

2011-01-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

Artist’s depiction of earth-like planet, NASA.

From Science Central (okay, okay, Fox News), we learned in July that NASA’s Deep Space Camera has located a “host of earths”,

Scientists celebrated Sunday after finding more than 700 suspected new planets -- including up to 140 similar in size to Earth -- in just six weeks of using a powerful new space observatory.

[ ... ]

Astronomers said the discovery meant the chances of eventually finding truly Earth-like planets capable of sustaining life rose sharply.

Friend Ed Sisson writes to say,

This is a typical example of exaggerated reporting. The report is of planets that are earth-size. Size only. Factors not reported, but necessary to make them earth-like: size and nature of the star orbited; orbital location; rotation characteristics, including axis of rotation vis-a-vis the orbital plane, and speed of rotation; atmosphere & other elements composing the planet; magnetic field to ward-off life-damaging radiation; & other factors

Then they talk about "habitable." I suspect their definition of "habitable" means "humans can live on it if they have enough technology & energy resources." Under this definition, Mars is habitable. Perhaps even Venus.

Then they transform "habitable" into "place where life could have evolved."

The problem with this kind of thing is that it gets the ink and grants, but not the habitable planets. Which means that the NASA grant team must always be in the business of raising expectations on slender evidence, and maybe fudging a bit. Which increases the pressure to either find or fudge.

Well, it would be nice, but better we should take care of the planet we’ve got than count our exoplanetary chickens.

Many more stars than we thought, new studies suggest

2011-01-02T18:00:00.000-05:00

From MSNBC we learn that a new study suggests that the universe has 300 sextillion red dwarfs:

A study suggests the universe could have triple the number of stars scientists previously calculated. For those of you counting at home, the new estimate is 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's 300 sextillion.

The study questions a key assumption that astronomers often use: that most galaxies have the same properties as our Milky Way. And that's creating a bit of a stink among astronomers who want a more orderly cosmos.

[ ... ]

A second study led by a Harvard University scientist focuses on a distant "super-Earth" planet and sees clues to the content of its atmosphere — the first of this kind of data for this size planet. It orbits a red dwarf.

Red dwarf stars — about a fifth the size of our sun — burn slowly and last much longer than the bigger, brighter stars, such as the sun in the center of our solar system, said Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum.

- Seth Borenstein, “Starry starry starry night: Star count may triple” (12/1/2010, updated)

The finding is thought of as “alarmist,” if not stinky, and as challenging the idea of a “more orderly universe”.

The issue here is that a traditional dictum of cosmology (not a law, just an assumption) is that the universe looks about the same anywhere we look.

That’s one use of the expression “Copernican principle,” sometimes expressed as “Why should we be any different?”

Actually, there is no particular reason for thinking that we are not different - or that we don’t occupy an unusual position, unless an accepted philosophy like materialist atheism requires it as an article of faith. Otherwise, on the materialist view, all is chaos. Hence the “alarm” noted when the basic assumption doesn’t pan out.

By the way, the Copernican Principle has nothing whatever to do with Copernicus and his sun-centred solar system. It is, rather, a way of linking his “sainted” name to a value-laden materialist assumption he would never have endorsed. He was in fact a Platonist, I am told.

Photo: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScl)

2010 Fourth giant exoplanet strains key theories on planet formation

2011-01-01T06:00:00.001-05:00

From New Scientist, we learn that astronomers are puzzled by the four

The discovery of a fourth giant world around the star HR 8799 is straining the two leading theories of how planets form.

Planets are thought to coalesce from a dusty disc around a young star. One model, called core accretion, says that giant planets form when the dust gathers into a rocky core, which then draws in gas to form a massive atmosphere. Another, called disc instability, says that these planets collapse suddenly from sections of the disc.

HR 8799's four planets, each five to 13 times Jupiter's mass, are too far apart to be explained easily by either model, say Christian Marois of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and colleagues.

Here's a vid:

Graphics time is much too soon for certainty on this one.

See also:

Exoplanets: The planet with 100% life has 0% existence?

Exoplanets: The recent pilgrimage to Darwin's shrine.

Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe or just an ordinary one?

Rare? Solar systems like ours are rare?

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

Serious push to find more exoplanets

Exoplanets: Will intelligence be common or rare?

2010: Primordial soup sent back to kitchen?

2010-12-31T09:23:00.003-05:00

We are told, “New Research Rejects 80-Year Theory of 'Primordial Soup' as the Origin of Life”:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2010) - For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life.

"Textbooks have it that life arose from organic soup and that the first cells grew by fermenting these organics to generate energy in the form of ATP. We provide a new perspective on why that old and familiar view won't work at all," said team leader Dr Nick lane from University College London. "We present the alternative that life arose from gases (H2, CO2, N2, and H2S) and that the energy for first life came from harnessing geochemical gradients created by mother Earth at a special kind of deep-sea hydrothermal vent -- one that is riddled with tiny interconnected compartments or pores."

[ ... ]

"Despite bioenergetic and thermodynamic failings the 80-year-old concept of primordial soup remains central to mainstream thinking on the origin of life," said senior author, William Martin, an evolutionary biologist from the Insitute of Botany III in Düsseldorf. "But soup has no capacity for producing the energy vital for life."

So, soup is mainstream but produces no energy? Well, at least it is now safe to say that. Thankfully, the undersea smokers are hot. The soup isn’t.

Origin of life: O he of simple faith

2010-12-31T06:00:00.001-05:00

I was impressed by the studies made after the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helen's in Washington State, which destroyed all life for many kilometres around. Within a remarkably short time, nasty hot, evil-looking pools around the volcano were teeming with life in the form of bacteria and blue green algae. These are exactly the kinds of organisms that we know from the earliest records of life on Earth. The necessary original formula must have been one of chemistry and heat in a watery environment.

- D. V. Ager, The New Catastrophism: The Importance of the Rare Event in Geological History, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1993, p. 149.

It really does take a lot of faith to think that the most ancient organisms could just appear in the same way that existing organisms spill into a new territory, taking advantage of the fact that the more complex organisms that usually constrain their activities, are temporarily absent.

If “chemistry and heat in a watery environment” were the solution to the origin of life, life would be popping up from nothing far more often than it does.

Hat tip: Stephen E. Jones.

Change your wall charts, chemistry teachers, ...

2010-12-30T16:49:00.002-05:00

Atomic Weights of 10 Elements on Periodic Table About to Make an Historic Change

ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2010) — For the first time in history, a change will be made to the atomic weights of some elements listed on the Periodic table of the chemical elements posted on walls of chemistry classrooms and on the inside covers of chemistry textbooks worldwide.

For more, go here. Free IUPAC .pdf report here.

Origin of life: At least one swish of chemicals must win the lottery ...

2010-12-30T09:00:00.001-05:00

Friend Stephen E. Jones was reading The Origin of Life by Paul Davies (2003) and came up with this nice paragraph:

Many investigators feel uneasy about stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they freely admit that they are baffled. There seems to be two reasons for their unease. Firstly, they feel it opens the door to religious fundamentalists and their god-of-the-gaps pseudo-explanations. Secondly, they worry that a frank admission of ignorance will undermine funding, especially for the search for life in space.

- Paul Davies, The Origin of Life, Penguin Books, London, 2003, p. xxiv

He comments,

An interpretation of this is that origin of life researchers don't tell in public that they are in a crisis, because if they did so, they would give ammunition to Intelligent Design and lose a great deal of money ...

They are die-hard materialists in both senses.

Actually, most people would probably cheer them on if they did find the origin of life, but the reason it is a mystery is their unwillingness to consider whether some features are best explained by design. They want chance to do the legwork, which is somewhat like wanting to get rich on one lottery ticket win.

Do you have to be an American liberal to believe in extraterrestrials?

2010-12-29T10:16:00.001-05:00

Yes, folks, I thought this was Hoax News at work too.

But Michael Medved reports,

These clashing opinions on extraterrestrials amount to more than a trivial split on an arcane topic; they connect, in fact, both logically and emotionally to big conflicts over worldview, culture, politics and America’s role in history.

In Colorado, these conflicts erupted in a recent battle over a proposed Denver commission to investigate visitations from alien life forms. Initiative 300 won enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in November 2010 but lost in a landslide, with conservatives leading the derision of the “ET Initiative,” as a loony waste of taxpayer money. The chief support for “greater transparency” regarding sightings and encounters came from the city’s Bohemian left, with advocates proudly citing the interest in flying saucers from liberal icons like Jimmy Carter and John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff.

Polls show that Americans remain closely divided on attitudes toward extraterrestrials, with a 2008 Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll reporting 56% who believe it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that intelligent life has developed in other worlds. Self-described Democrats (according to the same survey) are far more likely to say they have personally seen “visitors from another world” than are their Republican counterparts, who remain distinctly skeptical.

For more, go here.

A most interesting discussion follows.

Of course the Initiative is a waste of money! If the ETs really wanted to talk to us ... well, like I always advise, in matters of the heart: If he’s there and if he cares, he’ll phone. He knows you want to hear from him. So, if you don’t ...

By the way, I hope it’s not true that Jimmy Carter spent a lot of time thinking about ... flying saucers?? ... when he was president. Didn’t he have, like, “issues” to address? I recall something about the Ayatollah Khomeini holding American hostages back then ... Ring a bell?

For more stories on extraterrestrials, go here.

Note: This sounds kind of preachy,but it is important to distinguish between "space aliens" as above, and the possibility of primitive life on other planets. The latter is a question on which information from science has a bearing; the former an article of faith, based on other beliefs.

More from the “and then rain just sort of fell” thesis on the origin of life

2010-12-29T06:00:00.002-05:00

Stephen E. Jones has noted,

Using information theory, astrophysicist Edward Argyle calculated the probability that a single organism arose on the early Earth by chance. Argyle concluded: “It would seem impossible for the prebiotic Earth to have generated more than about 200 bits of information, an amount that falls short of the 6 million bits in E. coli by a factor of 30,000.”

- Edward Argyle, “Chance and the Origin of Life”, Extraterrestrials – Where Are They?
Cambridge University Press, 199, p. 131.

Photo: Stromatolites, fossils of some of the earliest known life forms, US government, public domain

More coffee!! And news that is, happily, of no consequence to anyone ...

2010-12-28T15:18:00.000-05:00

Major storm on Saturn in progress:

Space Weather News for Dec. 28, 2011
http://spaceweather.com

BIG STORM ON SATURN: Got a telescope for Christmas? Point it at Saturn. A giant storm even brighter than Saturn's rings is raging through the planet's cloudtops. Amateur images and sky maps are featured on today's edition of http://spaceweather.com.

GEOMAGNETIC STORM IN PROGRESS: At the time this alert is being written (mid-day UT on Dec. 28), a polar geomagnetic storm is in progress (Kindex=5). Observers report electric currents in the ground and intensifying Northern Lights over Scandinavia. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras:.

Extraterrestrial life Life is simple All ya gotta do is ...

2010-12-28T12:44:00.000-05:00

The simplest known organism which is capable of independent existence includes about 100 different genes. For each of 100 different specific genes to be formed spontaneously (in 10 billion years) the probability is 2 raised to the power of -100 raised to the power of 100 (or one chance in 10 followed by 3,000 zeroes). For them to be formed at the same time, and in close proximity, the probability is much lower.”

- Michael Hart, "Atmospheric Evolution, the Drake Equation and DNA: Sparse Life in an Infinite Universe" Extraterrestrials – Where Are They? (Cambridge University Press, 1995 pp. 222-223)

Oh wait, let me check my notes.

For other extraterrestrial life stories, go here.

No satellite hookup needed for this show, if the sky is clear

2010-12-19T16:38:00.000-05:00

NASA Science News for Dec. 17, 2010

Northern winter is beginning in a special way. On Dec. 21st, the winter solstice, a lunar eclipse will be visible across all of North America.
The luster will be a bit "off" on Dec. 21st, the first day of northern winter, when the full Moon passes almost dead-center through Earth's shadow. For 72 minutes of eerie totality, an amber light will play across the snows of North America, throwing landscapes into an unusual state of ruddy shadow.
The eclipse begins on Tuesday morning, Dec. 21st, at 1:33 am EST (Monday, Dec. 20th, at 10:33 pm PST). At that time, Earth's shadow will appear as a dark-red bite at the edge of the lunar disk. It takes about an hour for the "bite" to expand and swallow the entire Moon. Totality commences at 02:41 am EST (11:41 pm PST) and lasts for 72 minutes.
If you're planning to dash out for only one quick look - it is December, after all - choose this moment: 03:17 am EST (17 minutes past midnight PST). That's when the Moon will be in deepest shadow, displaying the most fantastic shades of coppery red.

FULL STORY here. And here's the lunar eclipse photo gallery.

Entertain children the old-fashioned way. Don't buy them something. Show them a wonder that belongs to everyone. Then give the money to children's education in developing countries.

Hawking and Mlodinow: Firing God and hiring the multiverse

2010-11-05T21:54:00.004-04:00

British physicist David Tyler comments:

Stephen Hawking has achieved the status of 'celebrity scientist'. He writes books that sell well and has both presented and performed in television series.

His latest book, The Grand Design, co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow, has been reviewed widely by both popular press and scientific journals. According to Michael Turner, who wrote the Nature review, these authors:

"offer a brief but thrilling account of some of the boldest ideas in physics - including M-theory and the multiverse - and what these have to say about our existence and the nature of the Universe."

The media appeared to be stimulated primarily by the claim that physics has made God redundant. "God is unnecessary, science can explain the universe without the need for a creator" (BBC News), "Why God Did Not Create the Universe. There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world - no gods required." (Wall Street Journal). The Guardian responded by conducting a poll among its readers, asking the question:

"Is physicist Stephen Hawking right that physics, not God, created the universe?" This theme is also picked out in the Nature review: "No miracle in the Multiverse". Some might find the argument to be artificially polarised - for did not the pioneers of science link the existence of laws of nature with the reality of a supreme Lawgiver? More recent research has unearthed evidence for the "fine-tuning" of the Cosmos, so the evidences of design have become more prominent with time. Hawking and Mlodinow recognise this when they write:

"Newton believed that our strangely habitable solar system did not "arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature." Instead, he maintained that the order in the universe was "created by God at first and conserved by him to this Day in the same state and condition." The discovery recently of the extreme fine-tuning of so many laws of nature could lead some back to the idea that this grand design is the work of some grand Designer."

This brings us to the heart of the argument presented by Hawking and Mlodinow: they are endorsing M-theory and the Multiverse cosmological model. This is how Turner puts it:

"In searching for the holy grail, Hawking and others pinned their hopes first on super-gravity and then on string theory. Both are now seen as different regimes of a grander mathematical framework called M-theory, where M is yet to be determined - is it master, miracle or mirage? M-theory unifies gravity with the other fundamental forces (weak and strong nuclear and electromagnetism), predicts seven additional dimensions of space and suggests that space and time might be emergent phenomena rather than fundamental. It is exciting and important, but much of it remains to be explored."

For more, go here.

Vid: The prequel to the Big Bang?

2010-10-30T19:35:00.000-04:00

A friend points to a popular overview of current ideas in theoretical physics on pre-Big Bang cosmology, check out "What Happened Before the Big Bang?" a recent episode of the BBC's Horizon series.

It's on YouTube in six parts, featuring Michio Kaku, Neil Turok, Lee Smolin, Andre Linde, Roger Penrose, and Laura Mersini-Hougton

What do you think? Is this science or wishful thinking?

To comment, go here.

See also:

More demolition teams trying to blow up the Big Bang

Big Bang exploded?: Seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?

For Roger Penrose: "When I say it, it's science; when he says it, it'sreligion!

For Lee Smolin: Can the laws of physics evolve?

and

Like clouds in our coffee ... all these other universes

For Neil Turok: So Stephen Hawking is coming to Canada, sort of

Theory of Everything: Putting failure to find such a theory to good use

2010-10-29T22:43:00.001-04:00

Sure. Why waste a failure?

In "The imperfect universe: Goodbye, theory of everything" (New Scientist, 10 May 2010, Magazine issue 2759), Marcelo Gleiser mourns,

FIFTEEN years ago, I was a physicist hard at work hunting for a theory of nature that would unify the very big and the very small. There was good reason to hope. The great and the good were committed. Even Einstein, who recognised that our understanding of reality is necessarily incomplete, had spent the last 20 years of his life searching for a unified field theory that would describe the two main forces we see acting around us - gravity and electromagnetism - as manifestations of a single force. For him, such a mathematical theory represented the purest and most elegant expression of nature and the highest achievement of the human intellect.

Fifty-five years after Einstein's death, the hunt for this elusive unified field theory continues. To physicist Stephen Hawking and many others, finding the "theory of everything" would be equivalent to knowing the "mind of God". The metaphor is ...
subject to you buying an online subscription to New Scientist.

Maybe it's worth it. I mean, so rich a source of authentic pop culture rebranded as science, how can you resist? If you want to know what politicians and pundits fund and defend and why they do, read NS - on someone else's dime, to be sure.

Why is a theory about the Theory of Everything so important? As soon as you think you've worked everything out, it all changes again. Personally, I'd rather have a sound theory of something in particular.

Gleiser argues, says endorser Stuart Kauffman,

... that there is a profound link in Western science between monotheism and the scientific search for a Theory of Everything. He argues persuasively that we must give up this dream. This may augur a profound transformation in our understanding of the world.”

—Stuart Kauffman, Fellow of the Royal Society, Canada, Author of Reinventing the Sacred

Oh, I see now. Failure to find a theory of everything is repackaged as a reason to give up monotheism. And what if a theory of everything had indeed been found? ... why, wouldn't that be a reason to give up monotheism too?

So, really ...

I can't develop a Theory of Everything because no way could I hope to explain why these people don't get the reason the public doesn't take them seriously. Thus, mine wouldn't be a Theory of Everything.

Comments? Go to Uncommon Descent to comment.

(Note: Also, re Gleiser, back in 2005 he was into the "Who designed the designer?" schtick - as if any series could not just end, as a road ends in a highway.)

Extraterrestrials: They're not there, but they must be !

2010-10-29T08:01:00.001-04:00

Extraterrestrials: They're not there, but they must be !

Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, reviews Paul Davies's latest book, The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence/Are We Alone In The Universe? , which argues that we should expand the hunt for intelligent life:

McKay considers why we should look closer to home — perhaps even in our DNA.

Although supporting the current quest, Davies recommends bold and sometimes bizarre avenues of exploration. For example, if migratory Galactic civilizations passed this way some time ago, they might have posted an alien message in our DNA or depleted our region of the Universe of some resource, such as (undiscovered) magnetic monopoles. Perhaps they left a device in the Solar System as a calling card, and are patiently waiting for us to discover and activate it. There are many places to look, many ways to expand the search.

Davies devotes pages to what will happen if a signal is received and how we should respond. Most readers will find these questions remote and hypothetical — not least because once a signal is received, events are likely to be quickly taken out of the hands of the astronomers.

The greatest joy of The Eerie Silence is the ending, in which Davies gives his own perspective. He splits his personality into three: scientist, philosopher and human. As a scientist, he is sceptical that we will detect extraterrestrial life, yet he finds that possibility plausible as a philosopher and longs for it to be true as a human. Read at least this page, even if you do not have time for the rest of this excellent book.

- Chris McKay, Is there anybody out there? (Nature, 464, 34 (4 March 2010) doi:10.1038/464034a)

Why does all this remind my of a woman wittering alone at home by the telephone (Why doesn't he call? Why doesn't he text?) waiting for a familiar knock on the door and checking her e-mail every two minutes. No one can cure anyone else of this romantic disorder just by talking sense to them. Usually, women cure themselves when they are ready by asking a simple question: What would happen if I just forgot about him and lived my life and was happy?

Well, he's already forgotten her, so ....

But she, at least, knew for sure that he existed.

So, now, what's the matter with Paul Davies? SETI? Why can't they just let go?

And don't tell me that this is all just about finding bacteria on another planet. That's like the lonely, pacing woman claiming she's really only worried about him. Sure.

Comments? To comment,go to Uncommon Descent.

Here's more on extraterrestrial life:

Extraterrestrials: The recent pilgrimage to Darwin's shrine

Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe or just an ordinary one?

Rare? Solar systems like ours are rare?

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

Serious push to find more exoplanets

Exoplanets: Will intelligence be common or rare?

Multiverse: Recent studies suggest that some alternative universes "may not be so inhospitable" - assuming they exist

2010-10-17T01:52:00.003-04:00

In "Looking for Life in the Multiverse: Universes with different physical laws might still be habitable" Scientific American Magazine (December 16, 2009) By Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez make clear what is and is not accepted in science (as they understand it) and why:

The laws of physics-and in particular the constants of nature that enter into those laws, such as the strengths of the fundamental forces-might therefore seem finely tuned to make our existence possible. Short of invoking a supernatural explanation, which would be by definition outside the scope of science, a number of physicists and cosmologists began in the1970s to try solving the puzzle by hypothesizing that our universe is just one of many existing universes, each with its own laws. According to this"anthropic" reasoning, we might just occupy the rare universe where the right conditions happen to have come together to make life possible. Amazingly, the prevailing theory in modern cosmology, which emerged in the1980s, suggests that such "parallel universes" may really exist-in fact, that a multitude of universes would incessantly pop out of a primordial vacuum the way ours did in the big bang. Our universe would be but one of many pocket universes within a wider expanse called the multiverse. In the overwhelming majority of those universes, the laws of physics might not allow the formation of matter as we know it or of galaxies, stars, planets and life. But given the sheer number of possibilities, nature would have had a good chance to get the "right" set of laws at least once. Our recent studies, however, suggest that some of these other universes-assuming they exist-may not be so inhospitable after all. Remarkably, we have found examples of alternative values of the fundamental constants, and thus of alternative sets of physical laws, that might still lead to very interesting worlds and perhaps to life. The basic idea is to change one aspect of the laws of nature and then make compensatory changes to other aspects.

Our work did not address the most serious fine-tuning problem in theoretical physics: the smallness of the "cosmological constant," thanks to which our universe neither recollapsed into nothingness a fraction of a second after the big bang, nor was ripped part by an exponentially accelerating expansion. Nevertheless, the examples of alternative, potentially habitable universes raise interesting questions and motivate further research into how unique our own universe might be.

Well, the supernatural may be "outside the scope of science," but universes whose existence is not demonstrated, which are imagined principally to get out of a jam with the evidence from this universe, are reasonably doubted, despite thought experiments. The tentative tone here is well justified. It should be used more often.

See other multiverse and fine tuning stories:

Multiverse:

Cosmology: If you needn't worry about paying the rent Friday, you can worry about this stuff

Cosmology: Science's leader in things that don't make sense

Cosmology: Crisis of the month: gravitation

Cosmology: Multiverse - getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique.

Cosmology: I seem to have yanked particle physicist Lawrence Krauss's chain

Cosmology: Wow. It takes guts to wage warwith Stephen Hawking. He appeared in Star Trek

Cosmology: Arguments against flatness (plus exposing sloppy science writing)

Cosmology: If the universe has free will, where do I go to file a claim for damages?

Fine tuning:

New podcasts on fine tuning of the universe

Also: Gravity doesn't make sense? Hold on to that thought!

Multiverse: Getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique?

Can the laws of physics evolve?

Like clouds in our coffee, all these other universes

Major media, imagining themselves sober, think there are many universes, not just double vision

The Big Bang exploded; seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?

Could God live in an infinite sea of universes? It depends.

Will the cosmic multiverse landscape ensure the triumph of intelligent design?

Now, remind me again why we need multiverse theory in the first place?

Multiverse theory: Replacing the big fix with the sure thing?

American Physical Society reacts to physicist Hal Lewis's accusation: APA "...has accepted corruption as the norm"

2010-10-17T00:11:00.001-04:00

You'll recall Hal Lewis, 67-year veteran of the American Physical Society, whose departing comments included,

As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

His concern that money was now driving the research agenda could be well-founded - money has that effect.

Now APS has replied:

... relatively few APS members conduct climate change research, and therefore the vast majority of the Society’s members derive no personal benefit from such research support.

On the matter of global climate change, APS notes that virtually all reputable scientists agree with the following observations:

•Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere due to human activity;
•Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming; and
•The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years.

On these matters, APS judges the science to be quite clear. However, APS continues to recognize that climate models are far from adequate, and the extent of global warming and climatic disruptions produced by sustained increases in atmospheric carbon loading remain uncertain. In light of the significant settled aspects of the science, APS totally rejects Dr. Lewis’ claim that global warming is a “scam” and a “pseudoscientific fraud.”

Excuse me. I have now morphed from concerned to confused. If "APS continues to recognize that climate models are far from adequate, and the extent of global warming and climatic disruptions produced by sustained increases in atmospheric carbon loading remain uncertain," what exactly is "settled" about the science? I doubt anyone disputes the basic properties of carbon dioxide, as such. The question is, how much does it matter? That unsettled part is what most people, facing big, legislated lifestyle changes, care about.

Exoplanets: The planet with 100% life has 0% existence?

2010-10-16T20:38:00.002-04:00

A recent news story featured an astronomer whose personal feelings about the chances for life on a recently discovered planet orbiting a star other than our sun were - 100%:

Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today.

"I have almost no doubt about it.”

He might have done with a few doubts about planet Gliese 581 g, which has a 37-day orbit around a dim, red dwarf star. The
latest story is that other astronomers can’t establish that Gliese exists.

Two weeks after one team of astronomers announced finding the habitable planet Gliese 581 g, another team says it can find no evidence of the world in its data.

Last month, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of the first alien world that could host life on its surface. Now a second team can find no evidence of the planet, casting doubt on its existence.

[ ... ]

But it might be too early to claim a definitive detection. A second team of astronomers have looked for signals of Gliese 581 g in their own data and failed to find it.

"We easily recover the four previously announced planets, "b", "c", "d", and "e". However, we do not see any evidence for a fifth planet in an orbit of 37 days," says Francesco Pepe of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. He presented the results on Monday at an International Astronomical Union symposium in Turin, Italy.

Although the Geneva team cannot find evidence for the new planet, they cannot exclude the possibility that Gleise 581 g exists. "We are not trying to prove the nonexistence of a planet," Pepe says. "It's really difficult to prove that something does not exist. We are just saying we do not see a significant signal that is really different from noise."

- Rachel Courtland, "First life-friendly exoplanet may not exist", 1(3 October 2010)

Well, as we, and they, all know, one cannot prove that a physical thing really does not exist. One simply reaches the point where one considers its existence too improbable to spend more time looking.

If Gliese is not found, the episode will demonstrate one important thing: Many people badly need to believe in life on other planets, and many more people are eager to hear them tell about it. The legendary caution of science stands no chance against the onslaught of such yearnings.

See also Exoplanets: The recent pilgrimage to Darwin's shrine.

Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe or just an ordinary one?

Rare? Solar systems like ours are rare?

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

Serious push to find more exoplanets

Exoplanets: Will intelligence be common or rare?

100 per cent chance newly discovered planet has life

2010-10-16T19:44:00.000-04:00

How do we know? Faith in faith alone, the astronomer explained:

"Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today.

"I have almost no doubt about it."

Well, that settles it, I guess.

James M. Kushiner points out, at Mere Comments blog, re "Odds of Life on Nearby Planet '100 Percent,' Astronomer Says":

Did you hear about the astronomer, who said, get this, that the odds of life on nearby planet are 100 Percent? What was he thinking? What do astronomers know about biological life, and, besides, if the odds are 100 percent, then there are no odds--at least if I go to Arlington Race Track and find a horse that has a 100 percent chance of winning, they probably won't be taking bets on him. No odds there.

[ ... ]

I am not saying this planet could not support life. I am just wondering what are the chances that any given astronomer would peg a planet with so many unknowns or uncertainties with a probability of having life on it at 100 percent? Of course, if a news story is in play with a possible headline, I'd up those chances considerably, whatever they are.

If you want to read science, don't read the news.

Read more here. Kushiner is editor of the science and popular culture mag Salvo, pictured above.

Science fiction author asks, why are atheists who write space operas supposed to know best whether God exists?

2010-10-10T00:03:00.002-04:00

Lawyer Hal G.P. Colebatch observes, re atheist science fiction:

A magazine I frequently write for (not this one) recently published a review of a book of essays advocating atheism. The reviewer pointed out with some enthusiasm that a large number of the contributors were science-fiction writers.

This left me somewhat nonplussed. I publish a good deal of science fiction myself, I have also read quite a lot of it, and I am quite unable to see why writing it should be held to particularly qualify anyone to answer the question of whether or not there is a God.

I don't know if it is an actual requirement for the job, but certainly a number of astronauts are believers and Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, is a lay preacher.

I would be inclined to take their feelings about Cosmology with more respect than those of even the best-published science-fiction writer. (The American Spectator, 10.7.10)

Well, at least the astronauts have been there. It’s not just the Saucer City Chronicles all over again.

I tend to be wary of all genre fiction, and am delighted by examples of non-convention bound writing that prove me too pessimistic. But I’d be curious to know why atheists are attracted to science fiction (not necessarily with happy results, by any means), and why there is so little good science fiction out there from a theistic perspective. Any thoughts? Go to Uncommon Descent to comment.

Physicist resigns from American Physical Society, after 67 years, and scorches earth

2010-10-09T23:09:00.003-04:00

Hal Lewis* reminisces for Society president, Curtis G. Callan, Jr. of Princeton University, charging:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence---it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

Lewis is motivated by the Climategate attempt at censorship of dissenting views on manmade global warming:

It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

The really big scandal, in my view, is that Climategate wasn’t treated as a scandal, just business as usual.

But now, what say you physicists among us: Were the good old days really better? Has love of money been the root of all evil? Go to Uncommon Descent to comment.

*bio: Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

Note to readers

2010-08-23T14:20:00.002-04:00

Because I am writing a book, I probably will not be blogging much before December, but expect to see me then, if not before. I did post some new material today. To keep up with my writing, go to Uncommon Descent - Denyse

End of the world news: Most recent update

2010-08-23T12:52:00.002-04:00

End of the world news: Most recent update

We are told by Howard Falcon-Lang, science reporter for BBC news, that the fate of the universe is now revealed by the galactic lens and that the universe will expand forever (19 August 2010):

Knowing the distribution of dark energy tells astronomers that the Universe will continue to get bigger indefinitely.

Eventually it will become a cold, dead wasteland with a temperature approaching what scientists term "absolute zero".

Professor Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University, a leading cosmologist and co-author of this study, said that the findings finally proved "exactly what the fate of the Universe will be".

Hmmm. I thought that pulpit-splintering, Bible-whacking fundamentalists had settled that one along time ago. And I give about as much credit to each view.

Also, don't miss this: "Tantalizing Clues as to Why Matter Prevails in the Universe: Surprisingly Large Matter/antimatter Asymmetry Discovered" from Science News Daily:

A large collaboration of physicists working at the Fermilab Tevatron particle collider has discovered evidence of an explanation for the prevalence of matter over antimatter in the universe. They found that colliding protons in their experiment produced short-lived B meson particles that almost immediately broke down into debris that included slightly more matter than antimatter. The two types of matter annihilate each other, so most of the material coming from these sorts of decays would disappear, leaving an excess of regular matter behind. This sort of matter/antimatter asymmetry accounts for the fact that just about all the material in the universe is made of the normal matter we're familiar with.

Which doubtless explains the absence of really unusual events in my neck of the woods.

So this is a family photo of the whole world? Wow!

2010-08-23T12:33:00.003-04:00

Here is a photograph of Earth and its moon, taken from a distance of 114 million miles, by the U.S. spacecraft Messenger, headed out to orbit Mercury.

Coffee!!: You're lucky enough if you even find the other sock anyway ....

2010-08-23T12:01:00.001-04:00

In "Is quantum theory weird enough for the real world?", Richard Webb explains why we might need a new theory of quantum mechanics:

In our day-to-day world, we are accustomed to the idea that two events are unlikely to be correlated unless there is a clear connection of cause and effect. Pulling a red sock onto my right foot in no way ensures that my left foot will also be clad in red - unless I purposely reach into the drawer for another red sock. In 1964, John Bell of the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, described the degree of correlation that classical theories allow. Bell's result relied on two concepts: realism and locality.

Realism amounts to saying that the properties of an object exist prior to, and independent of, measurement. In the classical world, that second sock in my drawer is red regardless of whether or not I "measure" its state by looking at it. Locality is the assumption that these properties are independent of any remote influence.

In the quantum world, these are dangerous assumptions. "It turns out that either one or both of Bell's principles must be wrong," says Brukner. If quantum effects were visible in our everyday world, I might well find that my pulling on a red sock leads to the colour of the sock left in my drawer automatically changing to red.

[ ... ]

A world with this degree of interconnection would be weird indeed. I might find that by selecting a red sock from my drawer in the morning, I had predetermined the colour not just of my other sock, but that of my shirt, underpants and of the bus I ride to work.

( - New Scientist 23 August 2010)

The only time this ever happens in the macro world, in my own life experience, is if someone is fool enough to put dyed clothes in the javel water bleach wash. If you like white, buy it off the rack.

More quantum stories here.

No boundaries? Or no possibility?

2010-08-17T09:13:00.000-04:00

A friend commented on Stephen Hawking's "no boundary" proposal:

The no boundary proposal means that one can picture the origin of the universe as being like the formation of bubbles of steam in boiling water. Quantum fluctuations lead to the spontaneous creation of tiny universes out of nothing.

My friend points out that it is not really 'out of nothing' as Hawking states. Quantum fluctuations require some sort of space-time and energy, even if they different from our own. So we've only traded one problem (get rid of the idea of a beginning) for another (what caused the space-time and energy that gave rise to the tiny universes?).

Basically, something isn't nothing. And nothing comes of nothing.

By the way, here are some varying definitions of "nothing", as seen by a physicist.

Stephen Hawking: Either Star Trek or we are doomed

2010-08-14T05:43:00.001-04:00

Here, famous physicist Stephen Hawking writes,

It's time to abandon Earth, warned the world's most famous theoretical physicist.

In an interview with website Big Think , Stephen Hawking warned that the long-term future of the planet is in outer space.

"It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet," he said.

"I see great dangers for the human race," Hawking said. "There have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go. (Fox News, 2010/08/09)

Well, here's what I see. I see that Stephen Hawking needs a cup of tea, a warm blanket, and a nap.

How am I supposed to mediate between, say, Eric Pianka (too many people are dooming us) and Hawking's view that we won't survive unless we move to another planet?

From anything I know, we'd be best to forget the lot of them.

The fact that insane regimes have nuclear arms is certainly a problem, but it is a solvable one.

We used to solve it in the past by not letting them have them.

PS: Hawking actually appeared on Star Trek. Maybe that is why I thought of it.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Coffee!!: Favourite local quote from yesterday, on ETs

2010-03-06T07:00:00.003-05:00

By Gleaner here at Rob Sheldon’s story on extraterrestrials:

If for some reasons the aliens are actually interested in us, I think they are probably already here, and given a certain level of technology, if would probably be easy to hide from us, even on a daily basis.

Yes, I should think so. Termites do it all the time. So do the rats at a nearby dumpster. (That’s why the rule of thumb is, for every rat you happen to spot, there are a dozen.)

Now, what I’d be interested to know is, the ETs never phone, they never write. Why do we assume they exist?

Most of the reasons I have heard are based on attitudes, values, and beliefs, not science.

For example, why can’t we be alone in the universe? Maybe we just are. One can interpret that fact in various ways.

The least plausible explanation I hear is that we can’t be alone because that would imply we are special. Why? If we don’t know why there isn’t anyone else out there, it’s a meaningless assumption, unless our tradition of thought offers other lines of reasoning as well.

Suppose I am out hiking in the far north, and the proposition is put to me that I cannot be the only human being within a hundred kilometre radius. I protest that that is impossible. “They” must be out there.

As a matter of fact, in Canada’s far north, it is quite possible that I am indeed the only human being currently within a hundred kilometre radius, and there is no They there.

Of course, it would be boring if there are no ETs. But we can’t rule it out. There are no other high intellect creatures on our own planet, despite overblown claims made for great apes.

Well, to riff off Marlene Dietrich, I don’t want to be alone, but must be prepared to get used to it, if it is true.

Uncommon Descent Contest Question 15: Can Darwinism - or any evolution theory - help us predict life on other planets? Winner announced

2009-12-18T14:05:00.001-05:00

Go here for the contest and here for the results.

Uncommon Descent Contest Question 14: Is backwards or forwards time travel really possible? Winner announced

2009-12-18T12:13:00.000-05:00

The question was,

For a free copy of the Privileged Planet DVD, about the unique position of Earth, provide the clearest answer to this second question: Is backwards or forwards time travel really possible, even for particles? Why or why not? What are the consequences if it is true?

Go here for the contest and here for the results.

Uncommon Descent Contest Question 13: The Large Hadron Collider is back up and running, but why? Winner announced

2009-12-17T21:19:00.001-05:00

The question was,

For a free copy of the Privileged Planet DVD, about the unique position of Earth, provide the clearest answer the following question: Nine billion dollars and 15 years later, what is the Large Hadron Collider likely to tell us that is worth the cost and trouble?

Go here for the contest and here for the results.

Cosmology: A memo from the End of All Things Is at Hand Department

2009-12-07T21:27:00.000-05:00

We are advised as follows at New Scientist, in "Dark galaxy crashing into the Milky Way" (22 November 2009):

THE Milky Way's neighbourhood may be teeming with invisible galaxies, one of which appears to be crashing into our own.

In 2008, a cloud of hydrogen with a mass then estimated at about 1 million suns was found to be colliding with our galaxy. Now it appears the object is massive enough to be a galaxy itself.

Called Smith's cloud, it has managed to avoid disintegrating during its smash-up with our own, much bigger galaxy. What's more, its trajectory suggests it punched through the disc of our galaxy once before, about 70 million years ago.

I can't wait till the movie comes out, and I also want to collect the DVD.

More cosmology stories here.

Three new Uncommon Descent contests: Lots of fun for physics buffs

2009-12-03T19:11:00.000-05:00

Win a free Privileged Planet DVD, courtesy the producers, for the best post answering any of the following questions:

Uncommon Descent Contest Question 13: The Large Hadron Collider is back up and running, but why?

Nine billion dollars and 15 years later, what is the Large Hadron Collider likely to tell us that is worth the cost and trouble?

Uncommon Descent Contest Question 14: Is backwards or forwards time travel really possible?

Two physicists have suggested that Hadron's woes are due to particles travelling back in time. Their theory has been received with the amusement one might expect, but it raises an interesting question, one that is a staple of sci-fi literature - is forward or backward time travel possible, even for particles?

Uncommon Descent Contest Question 15: Can Darwinism - or any evolution theory - help us predict life on other planets?

At Britain's Telegraph (November 04, 2009), Tom Chivers advises that "Darwinian evolutionary theory will help find alien life, says Nasa scientist."

Here are the contest rules, not many. Winners receive a certificate verifying their win as well as the prize. Winners must provide me with a valid postal address, though it need not be theirs. A winner's name is never added to a mailing list. Have fun, and enter as many as you like.

Cosmology: We have now identified the evil universe. Stand by to open fire.

2009-11-22T19:18:00.001-05:00

And just when I thought cosmology could not get any sillier, ... Stuart Fox of PopSci (10.16.2009) assures us that "Physicists Calculate Exact Number of Alternate Universes There are 10^10^16 of them (but #1,000,443,163,313,125,343,132 is the evil one)"

For some time, physicists have theorized about the existence of alternate universes. In fact, some models of physics require multiple universes, to explain some rarely observed phenomena. But, other than obvious ones like The Man In The High Castle Universe where the Nazis won WWII, the Earth-295 Age of Apocalypse Universe, and the Terran Empire "Mirror Mirror" Universe, just how many alternate universes are there? Well, some Stanford University physicists have answered that question, and the magic number is: 10^10^16 other realities.

Glad someone else has a sense of humour about all this nonsense.

Large Hadron Collider: If this "backwards time travel" is not a joke, it should be

2009-11-22T16:32:00.002-05:00

Woes of God particle physics

Here's a fun piece on the large Hadron Collider's woes, when a passing bird dropped a piece of bread on it, via Commentary Magazine - "Big Bang Machine Felled by Frenchman from the Future" by Anthony Sacramone (11/16/09):

So efforts by scientists to re-create the big bang — that moment, if one can speak of a moment, as in time, before there was time, or at least a decent wristwatch, when energy, or some hot gooey primordial stuff, spewed out a burgeoning universe, eventuating in the birth of galaxies, the advent of life, and the eventual cancellation of Charles in Charge — have failed once again.

It seems that the quixotic quest to find Higgs Boson, once thought to be the front man for an Air Supply tribute band, but which turns out to be the “God” particle,” has come to a crumbling halt.

First, about a year ago, the Large Hadron Collider (not to be confused with the Medium Hadron Collider and Omnidirectional Shower Head) went phffffff when, shortly upon whiz-banging, hydrogen began to leak from its cooling thingee, ruining a good pair of chinos and an autographed picture of Carol Channing.

Go here for more. The funny part is the explanation offered:

As the narrator of this CNN piece relates:

According to two physicists, the culprit could be the Higgs-Boson Particle traveling back in time to destroy itself.

Hey, I do that all the time, but I generally try to defuse embarrassing social situations and documents, and do not drop bread on anyone. Succeed or fail, I have an advantage over the Higgs Boson particle. I definitely exist.

Golly, I can remember the days when science was not ridiculous. Here's another interesting comment.

Coffee!! Bird drops piece of bread: Adds to Large Hadron Collider (God Machine) woes

2009-11-22T15:11:00.001-05:00

A friend sends me this note about the woes of the Large Hadron Collider, with the caution that one couldn't make this stuff up:

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation.

Hey, Hey, I feel the physicists' pain. Neighbours feed pigeons, squirrels, and feral cats - and guess what? They become a nuisance.

It's one of the most expensive and technologically-complex machines in the world, but that didn't prevent the Large Hadron Collider from coming a cropper thanks to our feathered friends.

The £4.4 billion 'God Machine' overheated after a passing bird dropped a piece of bread into a high voltage installation which was powering a cooling unit.

Scientists looking into a failure of the cryogenic cooling plant found a piece of baguette had caused the malfunction.

You gotta see the bird here with a mouth crammed with - I would say - too much bread. But birds don't have teeth or shopping bags and - Collider? - I guess the bird would only be interested in getting the bread back or maybe getting a whole baguette.

Exoplanets: The recent pilgrimage to Darwin's shrine

2009-11-22T12:30:00.001-05:00

At Britain's Telegraph (November 04, 2009), Tom Chivers advises that "Darwinian evolutionary theory will help find alien life, says Nasa scientist."
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution may give pointers in the search for alien life, says a Nasa astrobiologist. Here, we learn two competing views:

And so the limits of Darwinian evolution will define the range of planets that can support life – at least Earth-like life."

but

... alien life may not be entirely Earth-like. Dr Baross said: "I'd like to point out there are many different ways for non-Earth-like life to not use light or chemical energy but use some other form like radiation energy, wave energy, or ultraviolet energy."

. And then how can we know that the way they proceed is by Darwinian evolution?

We also learn

"I think all of us really believe that rocky planets, like Earth, are going to be found at some point," said Baross.

Well, lots of people have really believed lots of things that never happened. I happen to agree with him re rocky planets, because in a galaxy the size of ours, we will doubtless find lots of things, possibly extraterrestrial life ...

I am a little more concerned about the underlying agenda in some cases. NASA could be undermining its chances via Darwin worship.

Some more exoplanet stories:

Does our solar system occupy a unique position in the universe or just an ordinary one?

Rare? Solar systems like ours are rare?

Astronomer argues that we can test whether Earth is fine-tuned as a science lab

Serious push to find more exoplanets

Exoplanets: Will intelligence be common or rare?

Hat tip The Mustard Seed.

Cosmology: If you needn't worry about paying the rent Friday, you can worry about this stuff

2009-11-22T10:27:00.003-05:00

In "Seven questions that keep physicists up at night" (New Scientist, 23 October 2009) Ivan Semeniuk reports from the Quantum to Cosmos Festival at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario:

Here are the seven questions:

1. Why this universe?

2. What is everything made of?

... But the discovery of dark energy, which appears to be speeding up the expansion of the universe, has created a vast new set of puzzles for which there are no immediate answers in sight. This includes the nature of the dark energy itself and the question of why it has a value that is so extraordinarily small, allowing for the formation of galaxies, stars and the emergence of life.

3. How does complexity happen?

4. Will string theory ever be proved correct?

5. What is the singularity?

6. What is reality really?

7. How far can physics take us?

It strikes me that these questions vary in levels of worth. How complexity happens (3) is an important puzzle; whether string theory is ever proved correct is of interest only to string theorists and skeptics (4). As to how far physics can take us (7), I am not Madam Rosa the psychic, so do not pretend to predict the future.

The "Quantum to Cosmos" festival is online here.

Other cosmology stories at Colliding Universes:

Cosmology: Science's leader in things that don't make sense

Cosmology: Crisis of the month: gravitation

Cosmology: Multiverse - getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique.

Cosmology: I seem to have yanked particle physicist Lawrence Krauss's chain

Cosmology: Wow. It takes guts to wage warwith Stephen Hawking. He appeared in Star Trek

Cosmology: Arguments against flatness (plus exposing sloppy science writing)

Cosmology: If the universe has free will, where do I go to file a claim for damages?

(Note: I wasn't able to keep this blog up recently, due to various projects, but am now back. )

Unmissable Ivy League lectures

2009-09-25T14:48:00.002-04:00

Here are 100 Ivy League lectures I am told you shouldn't miss. Some of the science and medicine ones (#15-30) do look quite interesting. Anyway, it is free.

Okay, okay, some may be missable. That is not my fault.

Lynn Margulis challenges neo-Darwinists and teaches somewhere now - but she has interesting ideas

2009-09-25T12:04:00.003-04:00

And she was once married to Carl Sagan - "consummate egotist" gossip warning.

Here's an intriguing article about origin of life researcher Lynn Margulis in the University of Wisconsin alumni news magazine, "Evolution Revolution" by Eric Goldscheider. We learn, among many other very interesting things,

Symbiogenesis theory flies in the face of an accepted scientific dogma called neo-Darwinism, which holds that adaptations occur exclusively through random mutation, and that as genes mutate in unpredictable ways, their gradual accumulation sometimes results in useful attributes that give the organisms an advantage that eventually translates into evolutionary change.

What tipped Margulis off that new traits could arise in another way was the fact that DNA, thought to reside only in the nucleus, was found in other bodies of the same cell. This realization led to research showing not only how crucial symbiotic relationships can be to the immediate survival of organisms, but also that one of the most significant sources of innovation — indeed, even the origins of new species — occurs when, over time, symbiotic partners fuse to create new organisms.

In other words, complexity at the cell level is not the result of lethal competition from lucky mutants, but rather interactive chemistry that begins as symbiotic relationships between gene sets that together accomplish things that would otherwise have been impossible.

That sounds more plausible to me, though it all but wrecked her career.

Margulis’s observation that constituent parts of the same cell had different genetic histories was largely written off as crank science in 1964 when she started submitting her paper on the topic to academic journals. No one wanted it. After more than a dozen rejections, the Journal of Theoretical Biology published “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells” in 1967, and then something very interesting happened. Requests for reprints started pouring in, more than eight hundred in all. “Nothing like that had ever happened in the Boston University biology department,” Margulis says. Although she was a part-time adjunct professor there at the time, she won a prize for faculty publication of the year. Eventually, a full-time position that lasted twenty-two years followed.

But in spite of, or maybe because of, this modicum of recognition, the scientific establishment viewed her skeptically, if not with outright hostility. Her grant proposals weren’t funded. Margulis tells of being recruited for a distinguished professorship at Duke University, only to have it subverted at the last minute by a whispering campaign.

She ended up at the University of Massachusetts, so at least she had a job.
One thing that mars her theories, in my eye, is is statements like

“Man is the consummate egotist,” Margulis has written. “It may come as a blow to our collective ego, but we are not masters of life perched on the top rung of an evolutionary ladder.” Instead, she likes to say that “beneath our superficial differences, we are all of us walking communities of bacteria.”

. Aw c'mon! I'm always hearing from enviro-fruitcakes and anti-nuclear nutcakes who think humans will soon destroy the planet.

So walking communities of bacteria will destroy the planet? I am sure not getting involved in the squabble over the planet's fate in that case. I can only communicate with creatures that have brains.

A question related to this interesting article will shortly be posted as Contest Question 11 at Uncommon Descent.

Mars: The endless kvetch about life on Mars

2009-09-12T12:42:00.000-04:00

Here is a NOVA show : Is There Life on Mars?

After four decades of fly-by probes, orbiters, landers, and rovers, the quest for life on Mars is as tantalizing as ever. With unique access to the NASA Phoenix and Mars Exploration Rover missions, NOVA shows scientists and engineers in action, directing the operations of spacecraft millions of miles away, as the robotic explorers drill into rock, claw into soil, analyze samples, and trundle across the rock-strewn landscape in search for signs that Mars once or maybe even still harbors some form of life. NOVA goes behind the scenes of the latest NASA missions to the Red Planet to reveal new clues and challenges on the road to answering this ultimate question: Is there life on Mars? See some of the finest images ever taken of the martian surface—including Phoenix's most famous—on the program's companion website.

If it takes this long to figure out, maybe the answer is, no.

Like, how long would it take to figure out if there is life on Earth? Clue: Bacteria live at high altitudes and latitudes that few even notice. Here on the level ground we kill zillions of life forms every time we wash our hands or sterilize a piece of equipment. And no one cares because there are plenty more where they came from.

If a planet has life, you will know, pretty quickly.

My favourite sci-fi writer, Rob Sawyer, writes to say ...

2009-09-12T12:20:00.002-04:00

FLASHFORWARD TV SERIES PREMIERE

The TV series FLASHFORWARD, based on my novel of the same name, premieres in the
United States (on ABC) and Canada (on CTV's A channels) on Thursday, September 24, 2009, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific (7:00 p.m. Central).

UK viewers: watch for it on Five this fall.

I remember interviewing Rob about the novel some years ago. Maybe I was a bit "forward," but ... I couldn't quite contain myself.

I interrupted to ask, "Okay, I have listened to your story and I agree that it is interesting, that people could see where they will be in twenty-five years. But surely in twenty-five years, some - perhaps many - people will just plain die. So what do they see?"

As it turns out, nothing. And that is exactly what happens to his lead character. Who sets out to change his fate ... which many sages say no man can do, however god-like. That goes back to the Epic of Gilgamesh . And I will spoil no more for you. Watch the show.

Cosmology: Science's leader in things that don't make sense?

2009-09-05T09:11:00.001-04:00

Of New Scientist's (02 September 2009 ) list of "13 more things that don't make sense" by Michael Brooks, here, a surprising number relate to cosmology - 7 of 13.

They are, in order of make-senselessness,

1. Axis of evil: Radiation left from the big bang is still glowing in the sky – in a mysterious and controversial pattern

2. Dark flow: Something unseeable and far bigger than anything in the known universe is hauling a group of galaxies towards it at inexplicable speed

4. Fly-by anomalies: Space probes using Earth's gravity to get a slingshot speed boost are moving faster than they should. Call in dark matter

8. Antimatter mystery: The big bang should have created matter and antimatter in equal amounts – so why didn't the universe disappear in a puff of self-annihilation?

9. The lithium problem: The universe only contains a third as much lithium as it's supposed to

10. MAGIC results: High-energy radiation from a gamma-ray burst reached Earth 4 minutes later than the lower-energy rays. That's not how Einstein said it would be

12. Noise from the edge of the universe

New Scientist is a fun read, but based on its treatment of subjects I know a bit about, like non-materialist neuroscience, I wouldn't take it too seriously. Still, these anomalies really are anomalies - at least. Maybe harbingers of big discoveries to come?

New podcasts on fine tuning of the universe

2009-09-02T09:00:00.003-04:00

Two interesting ones here, from the Discovery Institute:

Cosmological Fine Tuning and the Multiverse Model

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews Dr. Scott Chambers, who discusses his current research and his interest in the debate over evolution, which began in college and continues through this day.

Dr. Chambers explains how the evidence for intelligent design from the fine-tuning of the universe and the fundamental constants of physics "smacks of design," and he addresses the multiverse hypothesis.

Click here to listen.

Also, Is the earth uniquely situated for scientific observation? Do we live on a privileged planet?

On this episode of ID The Future we have a short clip about the book The Privileged Planet. In the book, authors Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez suggest that earth was designed for scientific discovery. They introduce a new idea that more than just being rare in the universe, the earth is ideally located for scientific observation.

Go here to listen.

Here are some other stories on the controversy over whether the universe is fine tuned or whether there are many universes:

Gravity doesn't make sense? Hold on to that thought!

Multiverse: Getting comfortable with a zillion of everything that is unique?

Can the laws of physics evolve?

Like clouds in our coffee, all these other universes

Major media, imagining themselves sober, think there are many universes, not just double vision

The Big Bang exploded; seriously, is there room for reasonable skepticism about the Big Bang?

Could God live in an infinite sea of universes? It depends.

Will the cosmic multiverse landscape ensure the triumph of intelligent design?

Now, remind me again why we need multiverse theory in the first place?

Multiverse theory: Replacing the big fix with the sure thing?

(Note: If you follow me at Twitter, you will get regular notice of new Colliding Universes posts, usually when I have posted five or so stories.)

Uncommon Descent Contest Question 9: Is accidental origin of life a doctrine that holds back science?

2009-08-24T09:04:00.000-04:00

For a free copy of Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009), help me understand the following:

Accidental origin of life is the basic thesis of origin of life researchers. Life all just somehow sort of happened one day, billions of years ago, under the right conditions - which we may be able to recreate. But there is a constant, ongoing dispute about just what those conditions were.

Here is the problem I have always had with accidental origin of life: It amounts to spontaneous generation. However, banishing the doctrine of spontaneous generation played a key role in modern medicine's success. If we assume that life forms (for medical purposes, we focus on pathogens) cannot start spontaneously, then they must have been introduced. Hence, we can develop procedures for a sterile operating room or lab.

If life can be spontaneously generated, why isn't it happening now? Conditions for life today are probably as good as they have ever been, and maybe better. For over 500 million years they have obviously been good for complex life forms, and for billions of years they have been good for simple ones.

Go here to enter.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Origin of life: Current efforts to create life, or else find alternative life

2009-07-24T14:25:00.003-04:00

In "Second Genesis: Life, but not as we know it," Bob Holmes (New Scientist, March 11, 2009) provides a summary of attempts to create artificial life (paywall).

We're still stuck with Life 1.0, the stuff that first quickened at least 3.5 billion years ago. There's been nothing new under the sun since then, as far as we know.

That looks likely to change. Around the world, several labs are drawing close to the threshold of a second genesis, an achievement that some would call one of the most profound scientific breakthroughs of all time.

However,

Venter's team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, plans to remove the genome from an existing bacterial cell and replace it with one of their own design. If successful, this will indeed result in a novel life form, but it is a far cry from the ultimate goal of a second genesis, as Venter would be the first to admit.

Other teams, however, are striving directly for that ultimate goal. The most ambitious of them do not even rely on the standard set of molecular parts, but seek to redesign a living system from first principles. If successful, they would provide an entirely new form ...

Meanwhile, others look for a shadow biosphere, an independent type of life sharing the planet with us.

My sense is that the people who use existing manufactured parts will have the best luck with their work.

Here's University of Colorado (Boulder) philosophy prof Carol Cleland'sargument in Astrobiology Magazine (12/01/06) for looking for a shadow biosphere:

The discovery of a shadow microbial biosphere would be philosophically and scientifically important. It is clear that familiar Earth life has a common origin, and hence represents a single example of life. Logically speaking, one cannot generalize on the basis of a single example. If we are to achieve a satisfactory understanding of the general nature of life, we need examples of unfamiliar forms of life.

Also, Holly Hight asks ("Does Earth harbour a shadow biosphere of alien life," Cosmos: The Science of Everything, 16 February, 2009 ):

Finding life that doesn't fit with the types we already know would be a strong indication that life developed more than one time here on Earth, increasing the chances of finding it elsewhere, said Paul Davies, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University in Tempe.

But nobody has ever seriously searched for microorganisms - or any form of life - different from the carbon-based, DNA-centred type of life about which we have long known.

If we do look, Davies said, "It's entirely feasible that we'll find a shadow biosphere," he told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago.

"Our search for life [has been] based on our assumptions of life as we know it. Weird life and normal life could be intermingled, and filtering out the things we understand about life as we know it from the things we don't understand is tricky."

It must be hard to write science fiction these days.

Guillermo Gonzalez on mutual eclipse seasons in three planets during the International Year of Astronomy

2009-07-23T15:55:00.001-04:00

Gonzalez, author of Privileged Planet, has a new academic publication here.

Here's the abstract:

Mutual eclipses in the solar system

Guillermo Gonzalez 1

Copyright © 2009 Royal Astronomical Society

ABSTRACT
Guillermo Gonzalez notes another astronomical reason why IYA2009 is special: mutual eclipse seasons at Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus.

Abstract

Eclipses between the major moons of Jupiter and Saturn are occurring this year. The circumstances of these eclipses are compared to terrestrial solar eclipses. Suggestions for observing these events are presented.

Best-observed solar eclipse in human history?

2009-07-22T19:36:00.000-04:00

NASA Science News for July 20, 2009 advises that

The longest solar eclipse of the 21st century takes place this Wednesday, July 22nd. The path of totality crosses many major cities, setting the stage for possibly the best-observed eclipse in human history.

FULL STORY here.

Origin of life: Quantum mechanics provided the ... ooomph!! ?

2009-07-19T19:37:00.002-04:00

In "The Quantum Life" (Physcisworld.com, July 1, 2009), Paul Davies, astrobiologist and director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University, examines the case for quantum mechanics kickstarting the origin of life (Q-life):

But why should quantum mechanics be relevant to life, beyond explaining the basic structure and interaction of molecules? One general argument is that quantum effects can serve to facilitate processes that are either slow or impossible according to classical physics. Physicists are familiar with the fact that discreteness, quantum tunnelling, superposition and entanglement produce novel and unexpected phenomena. Life has had three and a half billion years to solve problems and optimize efficiency. If quantum mechanics can enhance its performance, or open up new possibilities, it is likely that life will have discovered the fact and exploited the opportunities. Given that the basic processes of biology take place at a molecular level, harnessing quantum effects does not seem a priori implausible.

It's intriguing, the way he attributes to "life" and, elsewhere, "evolution" the attributes of a planning and thinking intelligent agent.

He almost persuades himself but

Although at least some of these examples add up to a prima facie case for quantum mechanics playing a role in biology, they all confront a serious and fundamental problem. Effects like coherence, entanglement and superposition can be maintained only if the quantum system avoids decoherence caused by interactions with its environment. In the presence of environmental noise, the delicate phase relationships that characterize quantum effects get scrambled, turning pure quantum states into mixtures and in effect marking a transition from quantum to classical behaviour. Only so long as decoherence can be kept at bay will explicitly quantum effects persist. The claims of quantum biology therefore stand or fall on the precise decoherence timescale. If a system decoheres too fast, then it will classicalize before anything of biochemical or biological interest happens.

.So we are now into the business of persuading ourselves that, based on a few studies, that would not be the normal fate of Q-life. And in the end,

How would Q-life evolve into familiar chemical life? A possible scenario is that organic molecules were commandeered by Q-life as more robust back-up information storage. A good analogy is a computer. The processor is incredibly small and fast, but delicate: switch off the computer and the data are lost. Hence computers use hard disks to back up and store the digital information. Hard disks are relatively enormous and extremely slow, but they are robust and reliable, and they retain their information under a wide range of environmental insults. Organic life could have started as the slow-but-reliable “hard-disk” of Q-life. Because of its greater versatility and toughness, it was eventually able to literally “take on a life of its own”, disconnect from its Q-life progenitor and spread to less-specialized and restrictive environments — such as Earth. Our planet accretes a continual rain of interstellar grains and cometary dust, so delivery is no problem. As to the fate of Q-life, it would unfortunately be completely destroyed by entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

All this reminds me of a beautiful Edith Wharton short story, "Fern Seed", which I can't find on line, or worse, it might be wrecked by some clueless "ethnicity/class/gender" analysis.

The point of "Fern Seed" is that it looks as though a ghost drove a story character to suicide - but there is no actual evidence. (If you ever think of writing a ghost story, take Wharton as your guide. What make her stories work is: No one can prove anything happened, apart from catastrophic emotional impacts, and yet everyone is sure that something happened.)

Gravity doesn't make sense? ... hold that thought!

2009-07-18T21:19:00.001-04:00

At New Scientist, Michael Brooks tells us "Seven Things That Don't Make Sense About Gravity," including

- If gravity were a tiny bit stronger, the universe as we know it would not exist

- From plants to quail, life of all stripes seems to need gravity to work properly

Uh ... so then gravity doesn't make sense because ... why, exactly? Because there wasn't supposed to be a solution to those problems? Why not?

It reminds me a bit of this earlier kvetching about gravity.

Fine tuning is a big problem for these people.

Cosmology: Crisis of the month - Gravitation

2009-07-14T21:59:00.001-04:00

Cleaning out the In box, I noticed "Study Plunges Standard Theory of Cosmology Into Crisis" (ScienceDaily (May 5, 2009), in which we learn:

“The only solution would be to reject Newtońs classical theory of gravitation,” says Pavel Kroupa. “We probably live in a non-Newton universe. If this is true, then our observations could be explained without dark matter.” Such approaches are finding support amongst other research teams in Europe, too.

It would not be the first time that Newton’s theory of gravitation had to be modified over the past hundred years. This became necessary in three special cases: when high velocities are involved (through the Special Theory of Relativity), in the proximity of large masses (through the theory of General Relativity), and on sub-atomic scales (through quantum mechanics). The deviations detected in the satellite galaxy data support the hypothesis that in space where extremely weak accelerations predominate, a “modified Newton dynamic” must be adopted. This conclusion has far-reaching consequences for fundamental physics in general, and also for cosmological theories.

Astrophysicist Bob Sanders from the University of Groningen declares: "The authors of this paper make a strong argument. Their result is entirely consistent with the expectations of modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), but completely opposite to the predictions of the dark matter hypothesis. Rarely is an observational test so definite."

Well, this is a nice change from speculation.

See also: "Time for a New Theory of Gravitation? Satellite Galaxies Challenge Newtonian Model" (ScienceDaily, Apr. 23, 2009) where some of the same cast of characters note the this problem:

The team of scientists looked at the distribution of these satellite dwarf galaxies and discovered they were not where they should be. “There is something odd about their distribution”, explains Professor Kroupa. “They should be uniformly arranged around the Milky Way, but this is not what we found.” The astronomers discovered that the eleven brightest of the dwarf galaxies lie more or less in the same plane - in a kind of disk shape - and that they revolve in the same direction around the Milky Way (in the same way as planets in the Solar System revolve around the Sun).

Professor Kroupa and the other physicists believe that this can only be explained if today’s satellite galaxies were created by ancient collisions between young galaxies. Team member and former colleague Dr Manuel Metz, now at the Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- and Raumfahrt, also worked on the study. “Fragments from early collisions can form the revolving dwarf galaxies we see today” comments Dr Metz. But he adds that this introduces a paradox. “Calculations suggest that the dwarf satellites cannot contain any dark matter if they were created in this way. But this directly contradicts other evidence. Unless the dark matter is present, the stars in the galaxies are moving around much faster than predicted by Newton’s standard theory of gravitation.”

Most interesting, but I'm not clear on what the "crisis" is.

Oh never mind. By fall, a different crisis.

You never know what'll turn up useful ...

2009-07-13T19:27:00.001-04:00

In "Science, Spirituality, and Some Mismatched Socks" (Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2009)", Gautam Naik explains how "researchers turn up evidence of 'spooky' quantum behavior and put it to work in encryption and philosophy.":

Last year, Dr. Gisin and colleagues at Geneva University described how they had entangled a pair of photons in their lab. They then fired them, along fiber-optic cables of exactly equal length, to two Swiss villages some 11 miles apart. During the journey, when one photon switched to a slightly higher energy level, its twin instantly switched to a slightly lower one. But the sum of the energies stayed constant, proving that the photons remained entangled. More important, the team couldn't detect any time difference in the changes. "If there was any communication, it would have to have been at least 10,000 times the speed of light," says Dr. Gisin. "Because this is such an unlikely speed, the conclusion is there couldn't have been communication and so there is non-locality."

Right, so there is no common-sense explanation of quantum mechanics. About the encryption?

Some researchers are using the uncertain state of photons to solve real-world problems. When encrypting sensitive data such as a bank transfer, both the sending party and the receiving party must have the same key. The sender needs the key to hide the message and the receiver to reveal it. Since it isn't always practical to exchange keys in person, the key must be sent electronically, too. This means the key (and the messages) may be intercepted and read by an eavesdropper. An electronic key is usually written in the computer binary code of "ones" and "zeros." Quantum physics permits a more sophisticated approach. The same "ones" and "zeros" can now be encoded by using the properties of photons, like spin. If someone intercepts a photon-based message, the spins change. The receiver then knows the key has been compromised. MagiQ Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., refreshes its quantum keys as often as 100 times a second during a transmission, making it extremely hard to break. It sells its technology to banks and companies. Dr. Gisin is a founder of ID Quantique SA in Switzerland. The company's similar encryption tool is used by online lottery and poker firms to safely communicate winning numbers and winning hands. Votes cast in a recent Swiss federal election were sent in a similar way.

We live in a mysterious world, where uncertainty is better for security than certainty - but at the quantum level only. The person who left his keys stuck in the front door all night is one dumb bunny and can be grateful that most thieves wouldn't expect to get so lucky, which is why he was the first person to discover the problem in the morning.