2018

Dark energy. Even the name is intriguing. Isn’t it a line of cosmetics already? But the evidence base is getting murkier all the time. The conjecture, if true, would mean the density of dark energy in our universe cannot be constant, but must instead take a form called “quintessence” — an energy source that will gradually diminish over tens of billions of years. Several telescope experiments are underway now to more precisely probe whether the universe is expanding with a constant rate of acceleration, which would mean that as new space is created, a proportionate amount of new dark energy arises with it, or whether the cosmic acceleration is gradually changing, as in quintessence models. A discovery of quintessence would Read More ›

At one time, it wathought that the mechanisms by which water transports the H+ and OH− ions were mirror images of each other, though in recent years, asymmetry was glimpsed: A team of scientists has uncovered new molecular properties of water—a discovery of a phenomenon that had previously gone unnoticed. Liquid water is known to be an excellent transporter of its own autoionization products; that is, the charged species obtained when a water molecule (H2O) is split into protons (H+) and hydroxide ions (OH−). This remarkable property of water makes it a critical component in emerging electrochemical energy production and storage technologies such as fuel cells; indeed, life itself would not be possible if water did not possess this characteristic. Read More ›

Moshe Averick, author of The Confused World of Modern Atheism (Mosaica Press, 2016), asks us to look at the facts: For those who lean towards secularism in the Western world, it is the Scientist who has taken over the role of the priest, clergyman, and medicine man. Men and women of Science are looked upon with a sort of awe and have been conferred with something akin to a demi-god status. They are the holders of hidden “mystical” knowledge and perform magical technological and medical feats. The simple fact, of course, is that scientists are no different than anyone else. … For those who actually believe that scientists – homo scientistus – exist on a higher, exalted plane than the rest of Read More ›

Recently, we noted the peculiar state of affairs by which atheists, who appear to dominate Top Science, have disproportionately progressive views and yet seem oblivious to the current progressive war on science. Here are two more shots at math: Rochelle Gutiérrez Title: Mathematx: Towards a way of Being The relationship between humans, mathematics, and the planet has been one steeped too long in domination and destruction. What are appropriate responses to reverse such a relationship? How do we do work now (inside and outside of schools) that will reverberate and touch the lives of future generations? Drawing upon Indigenous worldviews to reconceptualize what mathematics is and how it is practiced, I argue for a movement against objects, truths, and knowledge Read More ›

New Scientist is now rehabilitating the Neanderthals. We once thought of Neanderthals as crude and unintelligent – not any more. Archaeological evidence suggests they were capable of symbolic thought, had some capacity for speech, and probably carried out elaborate burial rituals. They may even have taught modern humans new skills when the two species met and interbred. … Contrary to expectations, some Neanderthals were even vegetarian. Others seasoned their food with wild herbs. And they were making porridge 32,000 years ago, long before farming was invented. New Scientist Staff, “New Scientist Live: the sophisticated home life of Neanderthals” at But let’s be clear about one thing. The reason “we once thought of Neanderthals as crude and unintelligent” was the Darwinian Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The vocal tract and larynx is similar in form and function amongst virtually all terrestrial mammals, including humans. However, relative to humans, non-human primates produce an extremely limited range of vocalisations. Published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, the new research investigates whether the reason primates are incapable of producing speech is because they lack the brain mechanisms needed to control and coordinate vocal production. … The academics, from Anglia Ruskin University and Stony Brook University, found a positive correlation between the relative size of cortical association areas and the size of the vocal repertoire of primates, which can range from just two call types in pottos to at least 38 different calls made by bonobos. Lead author Read More ›

People will take ownership of their own data, cutting out the giant “middle man.” George Gilder is an early sympathizer of intelligent design and taken his lumps for that. It wasn’t how the media wanted to perceive a tech sector guru. His most recent book, Life after Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy, offers a more hopeful view of the world after AI, based on the creativity of uniquely individual human beings. Gilder thinks that the enormous tech companies will be replaced by flattened hierarchies in which people take ownership of their own data, cutting out the giant “middle man.” He calls the successor era he envisions the “cryptocosm,” referring to the private encryption Read More ›

Hydrogen. One outcome of the exploration of Pluto and the surrounding area: So, what is this wall? We call it “space,” but space isn’t completely empty. Even in between stars there are some stray atoms and bits of dust. Clouds of neutral hydrogen atoms float through interstellar space, but the sun can affect how they’re distributed. Our local star emits a continuous stream of charged particles, which we call the solar wind. This outward force expands into a “bubble” around the solar system. The neutral hydrogen near our solar system slows down when it hits the solar wind, causing the atoms to build up into a “wall” structure. The researchers are fairly confident in their assessment of the hydrogen wall, Read More ›

f course, once he uses the term “emergent,” it’s game over.  Philosopher Paul Humphreys explains, While atomism is all about burrowing down to basic building blocks, emergence looks upward and outward, to ask whether strange new phenomena might pop out when things get sufficiently large or complex. … Emergence was popular in philosophy of science more than a century ago. Reputable figures such as John Stuart Mill, Henri Bergson and C D Broad suggested that chemistry and biology would struggle to account for the origins of life; perhaps life could only be said to ‘emerge’ from these domains, demanding its own special laws and explanations. Beginning in the 1930s, though, advances in quantum chemistry and the discovery of the structure of DNA Read More ›

I posted a link to the W.E.Loennig interview with English subtitles here July 20, with comments off. Dr. Loennig recently wrote me saying, “At Uncommon Descent, there is generally a civilized discussion, so I would not have closed the comments there. Would it be advisable to repost the link at Uncommon Descent with open comments?” Sure, and I will also repeat the intro from July 20. I think you can assume that Dr. Loennig will read and appreciate your comments. Wolf-Ekkehard Loennig, who worked for 25 years as a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, is now retired but still writes often on the topic of Darwinism and Intelligent Design. You can Read More ›

An interesting new paper on how the genetic code minimizes the impact of mistranslations: Statistical and biochemical studies of the standard genetic code (SGC) have found evidence that the impact of mistranslations is minimized in a way that erroneous codes are either synonymous or code for an amino acid with similar polarity as the originally coded amino acid. It could be quantified that the SGC is optimized to protect this specific chemical property as good as possible. In recent work, it has been speculated that the multilevel optimization of the genetic code stands in the wider context of overlapping codes. This work tries to follow the systematic approach on mistranslations and to extend those analyses to the general effect of Read More ›

Philip Cunningham writes to note for us such moments in the literature: Abstract: (open access) Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution. Here we show that molecules taking part in biochemical processes from small molecules to proteins are critical quantum mechanically. Electronic Hamiltonians of biomolecules are tuned exactly to the critical point of the metal-insulator transition separating the Anderson localized insulator phase from the conducting disordered metal phase. Using tools from Random Matrix Theory we confirm that the energy level statistics of these biomolecules show the universal transitional distribution of the metal-insulator critical point and the wave functions are multifractals in accordance with the theory of Anderson transitions. The findings Read More ›

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor doesn’t mince words: I despise Darwinism. It is, in my view, an utterly worthless scientific concept promulgated by a third-rate barnacle collector and hypochondriac to justify functional, if not explicit, atheism. Richard Dawkins got it right: Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. A low bar, admittedly, but “natural selection” satisfied, and still satisfies, many. Even bright Christians, regrettably. Darwin still has some cache among design advocates — the usual trope is that he provided evidence for common descent and explained microevolution. In this I differ from some of my friends and colleagues sympathetic to ID/Thomism. Darwin’s “theory” is completely worthless to science, a degradation of philosophy, and lethal to culture. As Jerry Fodor Read More ›

David Quammen, author of The Tangled Tree:A Radical New History of Life, a biography of Darwin skeptic Carl Woese, who discovered the Archaea, offers a long reflection at the New York Times on how biology is moving away from Darwinism: Woese was a rebel researcher, obscure but ingenious, crotchety, driven. He had his Warholian 15 minutes of fame on the front page of The Times, and then disappeared back into his lab in Urbana, scarcely touched by popular limelight throughout the remaining 35 years of his career. But he is the most important biologist of the 20th century that you’ve never heard of. He asked profound questions that few other scientists had asked. He created a method — clumsy and Read More ›