Fine tuning

A physicst calls it quantum monism but he more or less means the multiverse. The problem, as he sees it, is that “the laws of physics appear to be finely tuned to permit the existence of intelligent beings who can discover those laws—a coincidence that demands explanation”. However, if we accept that there are zillions of universes out there, science loses its power to predict anything: “There is no obvious guiding principle for the CERN physicists searching for new particles. And there is no fundamental law to be discovered behind the accidental properties of the universe.” His proposal? This is where “quantum monism,” as championed by Rutgers University philosopher Jonathan Schaffer, enters the stage. Schaffer has mused over the question Read More ›

There is a creeping scientism in our intellectual climate. We have been led to think that Science is the gold standard of reliable, substantial knowledge and that institutional science and its leaders are the curators of knowledge. This is of course deeply connected to the wider domination of evolutionary materialistic scientism, which compounds the above with the notion that the stuff studied by the physical and chemical sciences is effectively the limit of credibly, reliably knowable reality. Where, let us note that scientism is a part of the defining cluster of naturalism, in both its metaphysical and “methodological” guises. We can readily see that in that ever so humble source, Wikipedia, speaking confidently and comfortably on its own philosophical bent: Read More ›

Around 565 million years ago, just when life was getting seriously underway: The finding, reported online January 28 in Nature Geoscience, supports an idea previously proposed by simulations that Earth’s inner core is relatively young. It also provides insight into how, and how quickly, Earth has been losing heat since its formation 4.54 billion years ago —key to understanding not only the generation of the planet’s magnetic shield but also convection within the mantle and plate tectonics.Carolyn Gramling, “Earth’s core may have hardened just in time to save its magnetic field” at ScienceNews The powerful recent phase protects lifefrom damaging radiation. Paper. (open access) See also: Researchers: The Moon made life on Earth possible and What becomes of science when the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Earth most likely received the bulk of its carbon, nitrogen and other life-essential volatile elements from the planetary collision that created the moon more than 4.4 billion years ago, according to a new study by Rice University petrologists in the journal Science Advances. “From the study of primitive meteorites, scientists have long known that Earth and other rocky planets in the inner solar system are volatile-depleted,” said study co-author Rajdeep Dasgupta. “But the timing and mechanism of volatile delivery has been hotly debated. Ours is the first scenario that can explain the timing and delivery in a way that is consistent with all of the geochemical evidence.” The evidence was compiled from a combination of high-temperature, high-pressure experiments Read More ›

Two independent teams of astronomers recently looked into the matter: Astronomers have detected and measured the mass and/or orbital features of 3,869 planets in 2,887 planetary systems beyond the solar system. This ranks as a staggering rate of discovery, given that the first confirmed detection of a planet orbiting another hydrogen-fusion-burning star was as recent as 1995. What do the characteristics of these systems reveal about potential habitability for advanced life? … The presumption back in 1995 was that astronomers would find many exoplanetary systems where the probability of advanced life possibly existing in that system would be greater than zero. More than twenty-three years later, with a database of 2,888 planetary systems and 3,877 planets, only one planetary system Read More ›

Is it only selective attention that causes us to see order in the universe? There is another, more interesting, explanation for the structure of the laws of nature. Rather than saying that the universe is very structured, say that the universe is mostly chaotic and for the most part lacks structure. The reason why we see the structure we do is that scientists act like a sieve and focus only on those phenomena that have structure and are predictable. They do not take into account all phenomena; rather, they select those phenomena they can deal with. Some people say that science studies all physical phenomena. This is simply not true. Who will win the next presidential election and move into Read More ›

We are told that Earth and Mars are like two siblings who have grown apart: “There was a time when their resemblance was uncanny: Both were warm, wet and shrouded in thick atmospheres. But 3 or 4 billion years ago, these two worlds took different paths”: Long ago, Mars stopped changing, while Earth continued to evolve. Earth developed a kind of geological “conveyer belt” that Mars never had: tectonic plates. When they converge, they can push the crust into the planet. When they move apart, they enable new crust to emerge. This churning of material brings more than just rock to the surface. Some of life’s most vital ingredients are so-called volatiles, which include water, carbon dioxide and methane. Because Read More ›

Get a load of this: More recently, scientists have pointed out that if one tweaks many of the dimensionless physical constants — numbers like pi that are independent of units and simply exist as fundamental ideas — none of the cosmos we see would exist. One of these numbers is omega, the density parameter, which pits gravity’s pull against the expanding push of dark energy. If gravity were stronger, the universe would have long since ceased expanding, and would have collapsed back down in a reverse Big Bang, often called the “Big Crunch.” If dark energy were stronger, then the universe would race away from itself so that no matter would stick together and stars, planets, and people could never Read More ›