Oxford mathematician John Lennox offers some thoughts, speaking as a guest of the Claremont Center for Reason, Religion, and Public Affairs
Chemistry
Even bird droppings can confute science expectations
Apparently, bird droppings are not corrosive or hard to remove because of uric acid because there is little uric acid in them. As the wag once said, it’s not what we know that’s the problem; it’s what we know that ain’t so.
Most chemistry papers retracted for serious, not trivial problems
Trust science? No. Trust but verify.
Something new to learn about water?
Who will be surprised if the odd new phases turn out to relate in some way to the fine-tuning of the universe? Don’t know. Just wondering.
Shedding light on water’s weird qualities
Researchers: Both highly ordered and disordered tetrahedral arrangements give water its “peculiar properties.” The paper’s title spells this out: “Water-like anomalies as a function of tetrahedrality.”
ID-friendly scientist’s book features three Nobel Prize winners’ endorsements
Marcos Eberlin’s new book is now available at Amazon. Digging through the files, we came across the fact that in 2017, a conference at which he was to speak had to flee Portugal for Spain.
Globally famous chemist James Tour on the origin of life
Talk: What if the discoveries of science actually lend support to belief in God?
Burning a brick in Fluorine — physical/chemical properties in action
In the demonstration below, a bit of acetone has been put on the corner of the brick to get the process started: This demonstrates the remarkable effects of inherent, embedded, intelligible structural, quantitative properties of fluorine and other elements and molecules. With lesser materials, we can see similar, even more spectacular effects: Notice, the table Read More…
Remembering quasicrystals as formerly an object of ridicule
It’s conventional to recall a famous person putting down an idea that turns out later to be correct. In reality, the majority of putdowns come from people who would never have an original idea themselves, who are frightened by the concept in principle.
Rob Sheldon on the Canadian lab “solving” the origin-of-life problem
Only a physicist could look at an insoluble biochemistry problem and say, “We’ve built a chamber which we can change the temperature and gas content. PV=nRT, and poof!
Can a computer simulation show that helium compounds exist on Earth?
That could impact our understanding of early Earth. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe but finding it on Earth is tricky. So researchers resorted to a computer simulation and found a promising possible compound: Helium-bearing compounds have, until very recently, been considered unlikely to exist under the physical conditions on or Read More…
“Undeniable” author Doug Axe on the recent “directed evolution” Nobel for chemistry
Doug Axe, Intro of recalls current CalTech winner Frances Arnold: In a conversation in her office one day, I said that I wanted to do work on protein evolution. She was skeptical, for pragmatic reasons. “Is that the kind of work that people will want to fund?”, she asked. I smile recalling that, but up Read More…
Prime numbers are not “nearly as scattershot” as previously thought
From researchers at Princeton: The seemingly random digits known as prime numbers are not nearly as scattershot as previously thought. A new analysis by Princeton University researchers has uncovered patterns in primes that are similar to those found in the positions of atoms inside certain crystal-like materials. The researchers found a surprising similarity between the sequence of Read More…
Bacteria make complex antibiotics that give chemists “cold sweats”
From Josh Bloom at American Council for Science and Health: I recently wrote about three of the deadly neurotoxins being produced by cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae) during an ongoing algae bloom in South Florida (See Florida’s Deadly Algae Bloom – Why Is It So Dangerous?). The toxins range from structurally simple and easy for organic Read More…
What is Randomness? Part 2: Directionality
From David Nguyen at Think Tank Learning: See also: What is Randomness? Part 1, with David Nguyen: Contextual bias