Sunspots 995

 

Things I have spotted that may be of interest to others.

Discover Wildlife reports on a fish with a hole in its head, and what that hole probably does. Photos included.

National Public Radio reports that a Texas A&M professor has been told to not consider Plato in his philosophy class.

Gizmodo reports that rich people, world-wide, are responsible for a large portion of greenhouse gasses emitted.

A BigThink writer discusses the question "Why does something exist instead of nothing?" (The writer says that there is no possible scientific answer to this question.)

BisThink also discusses the state of particle physics, with discussion and diagrams.

ZDNet tested six chatbots, and found that all of them made a serious error on at least one of the tasks posed by the author.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 699

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

The Arts: Christianity: Christianity Today on why the news isn't as important as most of us seem to think it is.


Finance: (or something) China is to open the world's longest over-ocean bridge today, according to National Public Radio.

History: (or something) From the New York Times, a map of every building in the US, with some accompanying text.

Humor: (or something) Relevant reports that a man ordered two glasses of water in a restaurant, and left a $10,000 tip.

Politics: Christianity Today has reported on a survey of evangelical voters. Sojourners has criticized the methodology of the survey.

Women are often treated badly in South Korea, according to National Public Radio. One symptom is that voyeurs place spy cameras in public bathrooms.

Science: Christianity Today also has an essay on how, and why, God seems to stay hidden -- not immediately visible.

Earther reports that climate change is expanding tick infestations on moose in New England, killing lots of moose.

Sports: (and science) A professor at the University of Illinois has produced the physics of baseball.


The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, I believe, it is public domain.

Thanks for looking!

Genesis 1:1 in terms of today's science

Genesis was communicated for the culture of its time. It says nothing about bacteria, cells, atoms, or galaxies. That doesn't mean, of course, that God didn't know about these things!

Ken Schenck has reverently re-written Genesis 1:1 in terms of modern science. (The result will be more meaningful, the better science background you have. Schenck, who is Dean of a School of Theology, has a fine background in science.) In case you are wondering, Schenck's essay says nothing about how old the earth is, nor about the origin of humans. It's about the origin of everything, from nothing.

Thanks for reading. Read Schenck!

A century of General Relativity, proposed by Einstein

November, 2015, is the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's presentation of his General Theory of Relativity. This theory gave impetus to other ideas, including an expanding universe, black holes. As the Wikipedia says, this theory is still the best current description of how gravity works, 100 years after its proposal. (However, most of us, including some scientists, don't talk about gravity that way. We speak of it as if Isaac Newton had explained it. He was almost right.)

New Scientist has a timeline of the most important events related to this theory, since that time. We are not yet certain about what is going on with dark matter, and we have no "theory of everything" relating General Relativity with sub-atomic structure, but some amazing discoveries have occurred, in the century following 2015. The Atlantic also celebrates, pointing out that GPS satellites wouldn't work correctly if they weren't corrected for the effects of General Relativity.

See this post on the Big Bang, which is by no means necessarily a disproof of God's creativity.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 528

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:


Christianity: A list of virtues you should pray that your children develop.

Benjamin L. Corey points out that God hadn't destroyed the US long before the legalization of homosexual marriage, but there had been plenty of reasons why He might have.

Health: National Public Radio reports that lots of us lie to our dentists, claiming that we floss our teeth, when we don't.

Humor: (If they are on someone else's lawn) NPR also reports that the man who is responsible for pink plastic flamingos has died.

A free on-line crossword puzzle generator. (Also for use by classroom teachers.)

Science: Wired reports on the possibility of using yeast organisms to make medical opiates.

Wired also reports on what several common food additives look like before they are added to our food.

And Wired reports on the science of how light is made. (LED, fluorescent, incandescent and fire.)


Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 451

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:
The Arts: Wired has posted photos of famous museums, made from gingerbread and other sweets.
 
Computing: Did you get taken in by one of these 2013 Internet hoaxes?
Humor: (Only humorous if you aren't having a problem, and I don't have a regular category for this one.) The history of toilet paper, and its predecessors.
Philosophy: The Skeptical Zone presents a mathematical proof that "naturalist science can be no threat to faith in God." Not everyone agrees, of course!
Science: National Public Radio reports on a gene that makes Hispanics more likely to have diabetes.
NPR also reports on what happens to you if you fall into a black hole. It's an important question, for physics.
 

Image source (public domain)

Beauty and science: quotations from others

The quotations below are about the relationship between beauty and science. They were written, or said, by a variety of people, some overtly Christian, such as John C. Polkinghorne, some not, such as Einstein or Feynman. Most of the publications are secular, including those from Yale University Press and Cambridge University Press, Physics Today, and the New York Times.

Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate, wrote: “What is it about nature that lets this happen, that it is possible to guess from one part what the rest is going to do? That is an unscientific question: I do not know how to answer it, and therefore I am going to give an unscientific answer. I think it is because nature has a simplicity and therefore a great beauty.” “Seeking New Laws,” pp. 143-167, in Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, New York: Modern Library, 1994. Quote is from p. 167. I have read all, or nearly all, of Feynman’s popular writing, and seen no evidence that he believed in God at all.

The world, you might argue, does not need yet another subatomic particle. But even particle physics has not been about particles for a long time, physicists say. Rather it is about the relationships between particles, the symmetries that nature seems to respect, in short, about the beauty that physical laws seem to embody. Dennis Overbye, "After Triumph and Disillusionment, Wonder Re-enters the Story," New York Times, July 27, 2004

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living. . . . I mean the intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts and which a pure intelligence can grasp. Henri Poincaré, as quoted by S. Chandrasekar, "Beauty and the quest for beauty in science," Physics Today, July, 1979, pp. 25-30, p. 25. Source not given.

We live in a world whose physical fabric is endowed with transparent rational beauty. Attempts have been made to explain away this fact. No one would deny, of course, that evolutionary necessity will have moulded our ability for thinking in ways that will ensure its adequacy for understanding the world around us, at least to the extent that is demanded by pressures for survival. Yet our surplus intellectual capacity, enabling us to comprehend the microworld of quarks and gluons and the macroworld of big bang cosmology, is on such a scale that it beggars belief that this is simply a fortunate by-product of the struggle for life. Remember that Sherlock Holmes told a shocked Dr. Watson that he didn't care whether the Earth went around the Sun or vice versa, for it had no relevance to the pursuits of his daily life! John C. Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. pp. 2-3.

Thus, the perception of the world's beauty as a reflection of God's glory is incomplete without the awareness that underlying the beauty and wonder of earthly nature is the omnipresent, restless operation of electromagnetic phenomena. These phenomena can be seen as a reflection, an analogue, of God's indwelling. This very thought, in itself, possesses an inherent aesthetic value.

Moreover, the appreciation of the beauty that the EMI [Electromagnetic Interaction] contributes to nature is wanting without the realization that the mathematical equations that describe the EMI have a timeless beauty. The elegant symmetry of Maxwell's equations and the inspired simplicity of Dirac's equation bestow an abiding aesthetic flavor to the texture of the microscopic underworld. Dirac and Heisenberg among many other theoretical physicists have throughout their careers expressed how they have been guided by the criteria of beauty and simplicity in their work. - Lawrence W. Fagg, Electromagnetism and the Sacred: At the Frontier of Spirit and Matter (New York: Continuum, 1999) p. 120.

For the theist, the rational beauty of the physical world is not just a brute fact, but a reflection of the mind of the Creator. Aesthetic experience and ethical intuitions are not just psychological or social constructs, but intimations of God's joy in creation and of his just will. Religious experience is not illusory human projection, but encounter with divine reality. There is an integrating wholeness in the theistic account which I find intellectually satisfying, even though it must wrestle with the mystery of infinite Being.

The theist and the atheist alike survey the same world of human experience, but offer incompatible interpretations of it. My claim would be that theism has a more profound and comprehensive understanding to offer than that afforded by atheism. Atheists are not stupid, but they explain less. - John C. Polkinghorne, The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker. The Gifford Lectures for 1993-4, p. 70. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994

That seems even clearer to us when we recognize that it is mathematics which gives us the key to unlock the secrets of nature. Paul Dirac spent his life in the search for beautiful equations. That is a concept not all will find immediately accessible, but among those of us who speak the language of mathematics, mathematical beauty is a recognizable quality. It is hard to describe but easy to recognize -- like most other kinds of beauty. Its essence lies in a certain economy and elegance that leads to the mathematical property of being 'deep.'… Time and again we have found that it is equations with that indispensable character of mathematical beauty which describe the nature of the physical world. - John C. Polkinghorne, Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 79-80.

I asked him once about a theory and he said, "when I am evaluating a theory, I ask myself, if I were God, would I have made the universe in that way." If the theory did not have the sort of simple beauty that would be demanded of a God, then the theory was at best only provisional. (Banesh Hoffman, "Working with Einstein," pp. 475-478, in Some Strangeness in the Proportion: A Centennial Symposium to Celebrate the Achievements of Albert Einstein, Harry Woolf, ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980. Quote is from p. 476.) 

The Psalmist said:  1 The heavens declare the glory of God.
The expanse shows his handiwork.
2 Day after day they pour out speech,
and night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language,
where their voice is not heard.
4 Their voice has gone out through all the earth,
their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19, Bible quotations from the World English Bible, public domain)

St. Paul said:  "For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity . . ." Romans 1:20a.

As far as we can tell, God created a universe that is understandable, and beautiful. Physicists, and others, have understood part of the way in which that universe is put together, and what they understand reveals a universe of pattern, of beauty, of, if you please, design. Hebrews 11:3 says that we understand that God created the universe by faith, and it is true that there is no scientific proof for God's creation, but, for those of us who look, even some who have not believed in a personal Creator, the evidence is there.

Thanks for reading. We live in a beautiful universe!

Data remains, but theories come and go: Luminiferous ether

Project Gutenberg, a wonderful organization, publishes a few public domain books, mostly old ones with an expired copyright, every day. I often check to see what's newly available. Today, the offerings included a title which intrigued me, namely The Ether of Space, by Sir Oliver Lodge. (London and New York: Harper, 1909)

I have copied the last sentence of the book, and the summary:

I regard the non-disturbance of the ether of space by moving matter as established.

---

SUMMARY.

The estimates of this book . . . are that the ether of space is a continuous, incompressible, stationary, fundamental substance or perfect fluid, with what is equivalent to an inertia-coefficient of 10¹² grammes per c.c.; that matter is composed of modified and electrified specks, or minute structures of ether, which are amenable to mechanical as well as to electrical force and add to the optical or electric density of the medium; and that elastic-rigidity and all potential energy are due to excessively fine-grained etherial circulation, with an intrinsic kinetic energy of the order 10³³ ergs per cubic centimetre.

You are probably wondering what on (or off) of earth the "ether of space" might be. The short answer is that there is no such thing.

Why, then, you may ask, was Sir Oliver Lodge, who must have been a man of some importance, since he had received a knighthood, writing about it? Why? Because he (and most of his contemporary physicists) had believed that, if light was a wave, something must be waving -- there had to be a medium to carry the light waves. They postulated the existence of a luminiferous aether, or luminiferous ether, as the material which constituted that medium. The proposal for such a substance, permeating space, goes back at least to Newton. ("luminiferous" means "light-bearing.")

By 1887, the Michelson-Morley experiment had sounded the death knell of the idea -- Michelson and Morley had found no evidence that light traveled faster in one direction than another, whereas, if it was traveling through ether, you would expect that it would travel faster if it was going in the same direction that the ether was. Lodge was well aware of the experiment. He wrote:

The experiment thus seems to prove that there is no motion through the ether at all, that there is no etherial drift past the earth, that the ether immediately in contact with the earth is stagnant—or that the earth to that extent carries all neighbouring ether with it.

 Why not just say that there is no evidence that ether exists, and that we might as well discard the idea? (Other physicists had begun to do so by 1909.) Because Lodge had a mistaken world-view. His data were good and useful. His theory was wrong, or at least unnecessary.

Science changes over time, usually in this manner. An experiment comes along that casts doubt on the prevailing theory, and a few brave souls suggest that the prevailing theory may be wrong. But most of the scientists in that field don't change. Eventually, they become irrelevant, or die, and the replacement theory is accepted. (For more on this, see The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn.)

Einstein's view of light required no luminiferous ether, as Newton's had. Newton's data were good, and so were Lodge's. But their theories weren't able to explain everything relevant, and eventually, they were displaced. Einstein's may be, too. We'll see, eventually.

There are parallels in many areas, such as religion and politics, but I'll refrain from going further in those directions. Thanks for reading. If you could, you were using light.

Why do we have stock markets?

Wired has a most interesting piece, mostly about why stock traders want to trade at as close to light speed as possible, and how that's being accomplished, but the article also raises a fundamental question, and gives a disquieting answer:

"High-frequency trading raises an existential question for capitalism, one that most traders try to avoid confronting: Why do we have stock markets? . . . Trading increasingly is an end in itself, operating at a remove from the goods-and-services-producing part of the economy and taking a growing share of GDP . . ."

I'm not an economist, but I'd suggest a small tax on each stock/commodity/futures/whatever transaction.

Definitely worth a read.

Sunspots 376

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Humor:  (sort of) In case you wondered, 15th century bras, and other underwear, have been discovered.

Science:  Articles from the BioLogos Foundation on "Naming 'the God Particle'," and "What is the Higgs Boson?"

The Arts: (and science) Wired has an article on photos of insects, mostly leaf-cutter ants, by an artist.

Image source (public domain)

The Higgs boson -- what it is, etc.

I'm not a nuclear physicist, but this week's landmark discovery (apparently) of the Higgs boson deserves some mention by me. So does the work of the many scientists and other workers who made this event possible.

Here's an article by Reuters, explaining what the Higgs boson/field is all about. Here's another article from Reuters, about the announcement of the discovery. Here's an article from the Christian Science Monitor, including a photo of Peter Higgs, and a 3 minute 27 video explaining the particle/field. And, of course, there's a Wikipedia article.

Physicists cannot explain why there is a universe at all, or why it has the properties we have found. There is nothing in this discovery that eliminates or rules out the activity of God. As Colossians 1 puts it, "in him all things hold together." ("Him" is Christ.)

Thanks for reading. It's more than the Higgs field that holds the universe (and you and me) together.

Some important equations

In the graphic above, there are ten important equations, some apparently simple, some not so simple.

Equal: Agreeing in quantity, size, quality, degree, value, etc.; having the same magnitude, the same value, the same degree, etc. - from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Project Gutenberg, public domain

The equals sign, which we now take for granted, was first used in 1557, by a Welsh mathematician named Robert Recorde. (See the Wikipedia article on the equals sign.)

Equations used are these: three equations from “simple” arithmetic; Ohm’s law; Einstein’s energy/mass equivalence equation; Euler’s equation; the law of Sines; An equation for compound interest; Slope-intercept formula for a straight line; Newton’s law of universal gravitation.

The largest equation in the graphic, from "simple arithmetic" illustrates one of the main ideas of arithmetic, namely that a thing is equal to itself. Another one uses a zero, which symbol and concept we now take for granted. Zero was invented in India in the 9th century AD. Euler's equation, also known as Euler’s identity, relates perhaps the most important constants of mathematics, e, pi and i, the square root of minus one. There are other ways of representing compound interest, depending on the situation, but the equation used will cover many of them. The law of Sines has been used in astronomy, to measure distances of bodies within the solar system from the earth.

Two of the most important statements in English that use the word equal are:

Philippians 2:6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: (King James version)

and

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - U. S. Declaration of Independence (I know. At the time, all men weren’t considered equal, and women weren’t included. But it was, and is, a great idea.)

Thanks for looking, and, perhaps, thinking. The graphic is a link to a Flickr page, where larger sizes of it should be available.

Do physical laws explain the origin of everything?

Physicists have been looking for a "Theory of Everything" for a long time. No such theory has been universally accepted, to this point.

A recent book, A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, by Lawrence M. Krauss, begins by stating that the author is no fan of a supernatural creator. (p. xi) Then, it goes on to say that "The purpose of this book is simple. I want to show how modern science . . . can address and is addressing the question of why there is something rather than nothing." (p. xiii) And there is an afterword by Richard Dawkins, no less, who congratulates Krauss on his answer to the question of the subtitle, and also writes that
We may not understand quantum theory (heaven knows, I don't), but a theory that predicts the real world to ten decimal places cannot in any straightforward sense be wrong. Theology not only lacks decimal places: it lacks even the smallest hint of connection with the real world.

I found it most interesting that Dawkins referred to heaven, which, he says, he doesn't believe in. But never mind. The New York Times published a review of Krauss's book, which review mentions Dawkins, as well. The author of the review does not question the laws of quantum mechanics, which Krauss believes explain our very existence. But he does write: 

But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.

In other words, Krauss has not really explained nearly as much as he, nor Dawkins, think that he has.

Nor, says the review, do the laws explain why those very laws exist. (Krauss has no such explanation, either, and says so.) In other words, we still do not know, from a scientific standpoint, why there is something, rather than nothing. I don't think we ever will. As the writer of Hebrews put it: 11:3 By faith, we understand that the universe has been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which are visible. (World English Bible, public domain) By faith, not by experiment. Dawkins and Krauss have faith, but it's a faith that there is no meaning, no purpose, to the existence of the universe. Those of us who believe in a supernatural Creator believe that they are wrong, but we can't prove it.

I have previously written on the weirdness of modern physics, here and here.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 357

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Science: National Public Radio reports that scientists at Fermilab believe they have evidence for the postulated Higgs boson, the so-called "God particle."

Wired reports on the possibility that worker bees may have personalities.

Politics: (sort of) National Public Radio says that the U.S. is approaching energy independence, and not because of the efforts of big oil, or the policies of Mr. Obama (or any other President).

Christianity: Ken Schenck says that sermons don't have to be based on scripture, and he has a good example to back up this claim -- the Apostle Paul.

Image source (public domain)

Faster than light?

A (mostly) political columnist, no less, has devoted an entire column to the possible discovery that some neutrinos may travel faster than the velocity of light. As he says, this is a discovery that will change the way we look at the world, in a profound way.

If it's true, that is. Krauthammer seems to think it is. See here for the Wikipedia's take on the experiments. These results had not been reported in earlier, similar experiments.

Thanks for reading.

Stephen Hawking and God, again

Stephen Hawking, famous scientist, and best-selling author, has said, in an interview, that 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story.' He believes, as many do, that human existence ends with death.

Perhaps Hawking is right. I can't prove that he is not.

But statements such as this are not scientific. Hawking has not proved, by experiment, that there is no heaven. He presents no firm scientific evidence for this assertion.

It is interesting that the reason for interviewing Hawking was a lecture he recently gave on M-theory. M-theory is one version of a so-called Theory of Everything, an attempt to explain the physical laws that undergird our universe in one unified scheme. As the Wikipedia article on the theory says, so far, M-theory lacks experimental proof, and ". . . the tangible success of M-theory can be questioned, given its current incompleteness and limited predictive power, even after so many years of intense research."

That doesn't prove that M-theory isn't right. It may be. But perhaps its predictive power is roughly equivalent to assertions about the existence (or not) of a heavenly afterlife. (I would guess that the establishment of M-theory, should that take place, would neither prove or disprove the existence of God.)

For more on Hawking's religious beliefs, see this paragraph in the Wikipedia, or go here.

Thanks for reading.

Russell's teapot

Some time ago, a commenter mentioned Russell's Teapot, and suggested that the idea was pertinent to a post of mine. (See Pete D's first comment on this post.) I had never heard of Russell's Teapot, although I had heard of Bertrand Russell, and I failed to look the matter up right away, which I should have done. I have now done so, and am musing on the topic.

The Wikipedia article on the subject quotes Russell's original statement. Russell's point was that claiming that there is a God, with no scientific proof of His existence, is no more legitimate than claiming that there is a teapot, too small to detect with instruments of any kind, orbiting the sun.

But that's not all. Russell said "since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it. . ." I would claim, and I am not alone, that there is a God, but that I cannot advance any scientific proof of His existence. I claim that I have subjective evidence from personal experience; from observing that sin is in the world, yet most people think that sin and evil is somehow unnatural and wrong; and from the Bible, that God exists. I do not claim that it is not legitimate to doubt God's existence. The validity of my personal experience can be questioned. Sometimes I question it myself. Perhaps our notion that the world is somehow spoiled is mistaken. It is possible that the Bible is a fabrication. In other words, the sentence quoted at the beginning of this paragraph does not apply to my belief, or to that of many other Christians. Just because something cannot be disproved, does not mean that it is not legitimate to doubt its existence.

For example, A could assert that witches can fly. B could respond that she has never seen a witch fly, and even doubt that witches exist. A could counter by asking B to prove that witches do not exist. B could respond that witches have not been found under various circumstances. A could, in that case, respond that there are other circumstances, which B has not experienced, in which witches do exist, and fly. It is not possible for B to examine all possible circumstances, but it is still reasonable for B to doubt that witches can fly.

I don't argue, and I don't think many Christians do, that the fact that Russell cannot disprove God's existence is an important reason for believing in God. I do think that the inability to disprove God's existence is a defense of belief in God. Not a strong one, but a defense. I agree that there is no scientific proof of God's existence. But, as I said, I believe that there are other kinds of proofs of that existence, and that it is not necessary to have scientific proof of His existence for me, and others, to believe in God. There are some things that a significant number of important mainstream scientists believe, that, so far, at least, lack scientific proof. These include the existence of the Higgs boson, and of universes that are parallel to our own, and string theory.

Hebrews 11:3 says: "By faith, we understand that the universe has been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which are visible." Verse 6, of the same chapter, says "Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to him, for he who comes to God must believe that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him." (WEB -- I'm using the WEB because it is public domain. I can't link directly to a verse in that Bible, because the web site uses frames.) As I understand it, and I may be wrong on more than one level, God offers humans the choice as to whether or not to believe. There is enough evidence, to an honest seeker, to bring about belief, but the evidence must be accepted by faith. Thomas didn't have to feel Christ's wounds to know that he was looking at the Resurrected Lord.

My understanding is that the things that happen in the world, which are the province of science, such as the doings of cells and ecosystems and galaxies and quarks and chemical reactions and photosynthesis and tectonic plates and water drops, are expressions of God Himself. In Psalm 19:1, David wrote:
"The heavens declare the glory of God.
The expanse shows his handiwork."
and in Romans 1:20, Paul said: "For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse." And it isn't just that God is revealed through the existence of created things. As Colossians 1 puts it: "16 For by him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things are held together." (WEB) God, mostly God the Son, made things as they are, and so that they work the way they do. He intimately binds up the test tube, the spectrophotometer, the computer recording the data, the scientist herself, and the means of communicating the results. It's no wonder that the experimenter will not find evidence for God in an experiment.


I also see that there is a sin problem in the world, and in me, and that God alone offers a satisfactory solution, namely the sacrificial death of the incarnated Son of God, validated by His resurrection.


Unfortunately, one thing that helps to keep some people from finding faith in God is that some of us who claim to be Christians don't always live a life consistent with the unselfish teaching of Christ.


One of Russell's great efforts, in collaboration with Whitehead, was "an attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a well-defined set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic." In other words, to prove the legitimacy of mathematics beyond any possible doubt. That attempt, though heroic, failed, with the discovery of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. It is not possible to prove the legitimacy of mathematics beyond any possible doubt. But I use mathematics, and I believe that it is right to do so.

The two, putting math on a completely logical and systematic foundation, and arguing that belief in the existence of God does not make sense, are not the same thing, and not exactly comparable. But, I believe, both efforts were and are futile, even for a man as brilliant as the late Lord Russell.

Thanks for reading. I thank Pete D. for his comment.

Quantum entanglement -- sending information through time

I remember something about the discovery of lasers. The impression was that such devices were large, expensive, and confined to physics labs. Not only that, but they had to do with experimental manipulation of light. How could such a phenomenon be practical? How things have changed! This computer has a laser in its CD/DVD reader/writer, and laser use is very common in North America. There are almost certainly more functioning lasers in North America than there are people in the US, Mexico and Canada.

Perhaps the same development and harnessing of technology will take place concerning quantum entanglement. What is quantum entanglement? The simple explanation is that it means that two particles, separated by large distances, and not physically connected, can, nonetheless, be connected. (See my previous post on the strangeness of quantum physics, in other ways.) This is, I believe, a truthful explanation, as far as it goes, but it does not go very far in explaining what quantum entanglement is all about. I haven't found any simple explanations of quantum entanglement. There is a Wikipedia article on the subject, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an article, too. Neither is exactly simple.

The applications of quantum entanglement seem to be, eventually, these: communication over long distances, more efficient storage of information. A recent article in Wired indicates that there may be another, even weirder application, namely communication with the past or the present. Not time travel. (The Wired article's explanation of quantum entanglement is intermediate between my sentence, in the previous paragraph, and the Wikipedia.)

Thanks for reading!

Sunspots 289

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Science: Wired reports on new analyses of bird song. Birds are said to be be able to improvise parts of their songs.

Nature reports that scientists were able to keep 38 anti-Hydrogen atoms in existence for a short time, which is a remarkable achievement.

Damage to a certain part of the brain can cause people to tell bad jokes, that is, jokes that aren't very funny.

Sports: The University of Connecticut Lady Huskies basketball team may break the UCLA men's team's record, under John Wooden, for consecutive wins during this year, but they almost had their streak ended.

Sports Illustrated on Tim Duncan's legacy (he's still playing, by the way).

The Arts: A church worship leader has decided that the worship team should not just be about the sound, but the visual helps to worship.

Christianity: A writer thinks that the Harry Potter franchise helps combine the best in current culture with Christian living. See here for more by me on the Harry Potter books.


Image source (public domain)

Kepler's world view

Johannes Kepler was one of the greatest scientists of all time. He rose from humble beginnings, and had a hard time getting financial support throughout his career, but, probably more than any other person, even Galileo, was responsible for our current view of the arrangement of the solar system. I recently read Tycho and Kepler - The Unlikely Partnership That Forever Changed Our Understanding of the Heavens, by Kitty Ferguson. (New York: Walker and Company, 2002.) It was a longish book, with a lot of history, but I found it well worth the reading.

The first part of the book was mostly about Tycho Brahe. I won't add much to the one-sentence (if that much) that he gets in science courses, namely "he made very accurate observations of the movement of the planets, which were useful in overthrowing the geocentric view of the solar system," or something like that. I will say that Ferguson makes clear that these accurate observations were obtained purposefully, and that Brahe had to develop his own astronomical instruments in order to get them. She also discusses the difficulty of getting along with Brahe, who became, at least in his own mind, an astronomer equal in status to the rulers of his day. Kepler eventually became an employee, or associate, of Brahe's. (Kepler, unlike Brahe, was not born to a fortune, and his status, and where his support was coming from, were often unclear.)

Ferguson indicates clearly that Kepler's view of the solar system, and the universe at large, as a divinely ordered system, which was there to be understood, became the driving force behind his life's work. The one-phrase summary of Kepler's work is something like "he developed three laws of planetary motion." That is true, as far as it goes, and that alone would have been enough to assure him of scientific immortality, but Kepler did more.

Kepler has been called, with justification, "the world's first astro-physicist."

His story, Somnium, has been called the first work of science fiction ever written.

The Wikipedia article on Kepler, and Ferguson, agree that he was a pioneer in the science of optics, introducing the use of diagrams of light rays. Ferguson (292) also says that he discovered that the image on the retina is upside down and backwards. He was the first to believe that the intensity of light varies inversely as the square of the distance from the source.

Ferguson says that he was probably the first to incorporate logarithms into his astronomical tables. He almost discovered that gravity was a force. He didn't get so far as applying the inverse square relationship to gravity, as Newton came to do.

When Kepler was dying, a pastor asked him the basis of his hope for salvation. He responded, "Solely on the merit of our Savior Jesus Christ, in whom is found all refuge, solace, and salvation." (p. 356 of Ferguson)

He wrote his own epitaph, which said:

I measured the heavens, Now the earth's shadows I measure,

Skybound, my mind. Earthbound, my body rests. (p. 357)

In his most important book, he included this prayer:
It now remains that at last, with my eyes and hands removed from the tablet of demonstrations and lifted up towards the heavens, I should pray, devout and supplicating, to the Father of lights: O Thou Who dost by the light of nature promote in us the desire for the light of grace, that by its means Thou mayest transport us into the light of glory, I give thanks to Thee, O Lord Creator, Who hast delighted me with Thy makings and in the works of Thy hands have I exulted. Behold! now, I have completed the work of my profession, having employed as much power of mind as Thou didst give to me; to the men who are going to read those demonstrations I have made manifest the glory of Thy works, as much of its infinity as the narrows of my intellect could apprehend. My mind has been given over to philosophizing most correctly: if there is anything unworthy of Thy designs brought forth by me—a worm born and nourished in a wallowing place of sins—breathe into me also that which Thou dost wish men to know, that I may make the correction: If I have been allured into rashness by the wonderful beauty of Thy works, or if I have loved my own glory among men, while I am advancing in the work destined for Thy glory, be gentle and merciful and pardon me; and finally deign graciously to effect that these demonstrations give way to Thy glory and the salvation of souls and nowhere be an obstacle to that. Same prayer as above, from Harmonies of the World, by Johannes Kepler, tr. Charles Glenn Wallis [1939], at sacred-texts.com, which, as best I can determine, is copyright-free. The emphasis is in the original.This is from the end of the ninth section, or chapter, of Kepler's book.

Thanks for reading. Especially if you are a scientist, pray Kepler's prayer.