Fine tuning

From Astrobiology: Life on early Earth seems to have begun with a paradox: while life needs water as a solvent, the essential chemical backbones of early life-forming molecules fall apart in water. Our universal solvent, it turns out, can be extremely corrosive. … In recent years the solvent often put forward as the eligible alternative to water is formamide, a clear and moderately irritating liquid consisting of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Unlike water, it does not break down the long-chain molecules needed to form the nucleic acids and proteins that make up life’s key initial instruction manual, RNA. Meanwhile it also converts via other useful reactions into key compounds needed to make nucleic acids in the first place. Harvard Read More ›

Re the ENV post, Question for multiverse theorists: To what can science appeal, if not evidence?, from experimental physicist and our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon: — It is part of the 21st century deconstruction, that it is not enough to oppose the truth, but it is necessary to undermine even the possibility of holding the truth. In physics it is the multiverse. In psychology it is the denial of free will or consciousness. In biology it is denial of teleology, the necessity of naturalism. In ethics it is not “situational” anymore; it is the desire to see all ethics as “oppressive”. Consider the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on fine-tuning. I tried reading it, and it echoes the same Read More ›

From Mary-Jane Rubenstein at Nautilus: What if God is the creatively emergent order of nature itself? In this case, the difference between pantheism and atheism might be emotional. Einstein, a professed pantheist, wrote that he experienced a “cosmic religious feeling,” a persistent awe at the “sublimity and marvelous order” of the universe. He was not alone. For the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, religion was a feeling of the whole universe at work in each part of it. Or perhaps the difference between pantheism and atheism is ethical. As neo-pagans, ecofeminists, radical environmentalists, new animists, and even some biologists have suggested, the Western opposition between God and world seems to have endorsed our exploitation of nature. So if God is the Read More ›

From Jay Richards at Evolution News & Views: On August 21, we Americans get to see a total solar eclipse. As I mentioned in a previous piece, we can see solar eclipses only because our planet, our Moon, and our Sun sometimes come together in a straight line in space. When the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, those in the Moon’s shadow see an eclipse. But the story doesn’t end there. A rare alignment of events allows Earthlings to witness not just solar eclipses, but what we might call perfect solar eclipses. Our Moon just barely covers the Sun’s bright photosphere. Such an eclipse depends on just the right sizes, shapes, and relative distances of the Sun, Moon, Read More ›

Make it look like you are working… From Time and Date, how much eclipse you can see from where you live and the date of the next eclipse (moon). Here’s a compendium of historical eclipse information from LiveScience, including: One of the greatest eclipse observers in history was the Persian scholar Ibn al-Haytham, also known by the Latinized version of his name, Alhazen. Born in Basra, in what in now Iraq, Al-Haytham spent most of his life in the Egyptian city of Cairo during the Fatimid Caliphate in the 11th century A.D. His great invention was named “Al-Bayt al-Muthlim” in Arabic (which translates to “the dark room” in English) — the earliest known “camera obscura,” where a bright external image, such Read More ›

The people who thought up the question probably didn’t realize that the concept could be used to argue for design in nature. After all, a mortal world cannot by definition be perfect, so if this is the best one, well … From Oliver Burkeman at the Guardian: “Once upon a time, it was of great survival value to be worried about everything that could go wrong,” says Johan Norberg, a Swedish historian and self-declared New Optimist whose book Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future was published just before Trump won the presidency last year. This is what makes bad news especially compelling: in our evolutionary past, it was a very good thing that your attention could be Read More ›

Trivia to most of us but, in an era of increased space exploration, something to consider. From Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience: Gravity’s smothering hold on Earth’s inhabitants means that eighty to ninety percent of the mass of current rockets must be taken up by the actual propellant burned to lift the rocket into space! According to Pettit, this means that sitting atop a rocket is more precarious than perching oneself atop a bottle of gasoline. It also means that there isn’t much room for stuff like food, computers, scientific experiments, and astronauts. Despite these drawbacks, we should count ourselves lucky. “If the radius of our planet were larger, there could be a point at which an Earth escaping rocket could Read More ›

Older (Ichthus, Fall 2013) but interesting Rudelius is apparently a Christian (“passionate about connecting students to Jesus Christ”): The first bad argument against the multiverse is, as far as I can tell, a simple misunderstanding of conditional probabilities. The argument proceeds by analogy: suppose you are playing a game of poker, and your opponent deals himself four aces three times in a row. By the third time, you realize that he must be cheating, and draw your pistol. “Hold on a minute,” says your opponent, “In this infinite ensemble of worlds, there is an infinite number of poker games going on right now. And in some of these universes I am bound to deal myself four aces three times in Read More ›

From Ian O’Neill at Space.com, we learn: Is our sun fundamentally different from other “sun-like” stars? This question highlights an ongoing controversy about whether our nearest star is unique or, in fact, an “ordinary star.” Now, an international collaboration of solar physicists thinks it has an answer. Although the sun is very special to Earth and all of the planets in the solar system, it isn’t unique; indeed, it is driven by the same internal mechanisms as other stars, the researchers said in a statement highlighting the findings of a new study. lMore. Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon writes to say, This presser made me laugh. Here’s the punch line: “Although the sun is very special to Earth and all Read More ›

From experimental particle physicist Dr Michael G Strauss at his blog: Barnes goes on to show that Stenger commits the logical fallacy of equivocation. He uses the word invariant (invariance) in LN1 and LN2 as if they mean the same thing, but, actually, they mean two very different things. The invariance in LN1 means the physical laws are the same while that in LN2 is a more technical term with a very distinct meaning of being symmetric. By using the word “invariant” when the appropriate term is “symmetric” Stenger sets up a false equivalence, and without that equivalence his whole argument is destroyed. His conclusion in LN3 does not logically follow. I believe this is why many scientists have indicated Read More ›

From Peter Fisher Epstein at Philosophy of Science: Abstract. According to the Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA), the existence of life in our universe confirms the Multiverse Hypothesis (HM). A standard objection to FTA is that it violates the Requirement of Total Evidence (RTE). I argue that RTE should be rejected in favor of the Predesignation Requirement, according to which, in assessing the outcome of a probabilistic process, we should only use evidence characterizable in a manner available prior to observing the outcome. This produces the right verdicts in some simple cases in which RTE leads us astray; and, when applied to FTA, it shows that our evidence does confirm HM. More. This is what philosophizing comes to these days. There is no Read More ›

The book is Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos: From reviewer Yann Benetreau-Dupin at physics archiv: There are in fact two ways to read this book. One is to see it as a response to Victor Stenger’s 2011 book The Fallacy of Fine-tuning: Why the Universe is Not Designed for Us. On this reading, A Fortunate Universe is a popular-level adaptation of Barnes’s article (Barnes, 2012) with a similar title.2 A second way to read this book is as a didactic work. On this second account, the issue of the fine-tuning of the universe for life is an opportunity to survey a vast array of facts, theories, and problems in Read More ›

From Geraint Lewis at New Scientist: A fundamental concept is coming back to the fore – that the universe may be fine-tuned for life. The idea is that physical laws and constants are inexplicably just right to support it; any different and we wouldn’t be around to ponder this. The notion that this might be so has been around for decades, but has sat on the sidelines, considered idle speculation or even outside the bounds of science. This article is carefully written, so as to undermine the facts and promote multiverse blather. Otherwise, it would not be in New Scientist at all. Underlying all of these potential explanations are serious philosophical questions. Is adopting the multiverse as a solution to Read More ›

From Noson F. Yanofsky at Nautilus: The universe is so structured and orderly that we compare it to the most complicated and exact contraptions of the age. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the universe was compared to a perfectly working clock or watch. Philosophers then discussed the Watchmaker. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the most complicated object is a computer. The universe is compared to a perfectly working supercomputer. Researchers ask how this computer got its programming. How does one explain all this structure? Why do the laws seem so perfect for producing life and why are they expressed in such exact mathematical language? Is the universe really as structured as it seems? More. Not if you want to Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary at Evolution News & Views: Fine-tuning of the universe is so unpleasant a subject for materialists that it cannot really become a controversy. The desired evidence favors a random universe, accidentally spilled. Differing points of view on the findings would, of course, be funded by the government. But the randomness would be agreed upon up front. On the other hand, if evidence matters, our universe appears fine-tuned. In the end it is not really an issue about the evidence. Help! we are drowning in evidence! The universe’s expansion speed is said to be just right for life, the Higgs boson seems to be fine-tuned, and Earth has a “unique” iron signature, just as a few examples. This Read More ›