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Fine tuning

Can ID be an argument for religion?

This is philosopher and photographer Laszlo Bencze’s view: I have just finished my fifth reading of Robert J. Spitzer’s book, New Proofs for the Existence of God. In this book Spitzer set himself the task of exploring how far natural theology can take us towards understanding God. The first part of the book deals purely with science, particularly cosmology. In it he discusses the Big Bang; the extreme fine tuning of the of the universe which makes possible the existence of stars, planets, and life; General Relativity; string theory; and quantum physics. This part of the book reads like a science text. In the second part of the book he takes a purely philosophical approach using only the tools of Read More ›

700 quintillion reasons to deny Earth is unusual

From Discover: Earth May Be a 1-in-700-Quintillion Kind of Place One of the most fundamental requirements for a planet to sustain life is to orbit in the “habitable zone” of a star — the “Goldilocks” region where the temperature is just right and liquid water can exist. Astronomers have, to this point, discovered around 30 exoplanets in the habitable zones of stars. Simply extrapolating that figure based on the known number of stars suggests that there should be about 50 billion such planets in the Milky Way alone. Probability seems to dictate that Earth-twins are out there somewhere. But according to Zackrisson, most planets in the universe shouldn’t look like Earth. His model indicates that Earth’s existence presents a mild Read More ›

Breaking: Earth special after all

From Scientific American: More than 400 years ago Renaissance scientist Nicolaus Copernicus reduced us to near nothingness by showing that our planet is not the center of the solar system. With every subsequent scientific revolution, most other privileged positions in the universe humans might have held dear have been further degraded, revealing the cold truth that our species is the smallest of specks on a speck of a planet, cosmologically speaking. A new calculation of exoplanets suggests that Earth is just one out of a likely 700 million trillion terrestrial planets in the entire observable universe. But the average age of these planets—well above Earth’s age—and their typical locations—in galaxies vastly unlike the Milky Way—just might turn the Copernican principle Read More ›

Michael Denton: The laws of nature are uniquely fine-tuned

At Evolution News & Views, Michael Denton, author of Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis (2016), offers, Natural Life: Cosmological Fine-Tuning as an Argument for Structuralism After being in the cold for most of the past 150 years, overshadowed by the “cult of the artifact,” the traditional notion that life is an integral part of the natural order has found renewed support in the revelation of 20th-century physics and cosmology that the laws of nature are uniquely fine-tuned to a remarkable degree to generate environmental conditions ideal for life as it exists on earth. The 20th-century cosmological evidence that the universe is fine-tuned for life is based on the observation that if the various fundamental forces and constants which determine Read More ›

Defects of computer models of solar system

Physicist Rob Sheldon writes to respond to the claim that Jupiter does not shield Earth: Kevin Grazier, PhD, at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, describes the study in which he simulated the evolution of tens of thousands of particles in the gaps between the jovian planets for up to 100 million years. Based on the results, Dr. Grazier concludes that the widely reported shield role attributed to Jupiter is incorrect. More. Sheldon notes, While I have the greatest respect for people who run tens of Newtonian mechanics simulations of 10,000 bodies for 100 million years, the models only give results that were programmed into the simulation. If, for example, tomorrow someone were to find that the magnetized solar Read More ›

How do dark energy and dark matter relate to ID?

Rob Sheldon writes, in response to a reader who asked that question that it function as a way of getting rid of the idea of design in nature: 1. Dark Energy. Antithetical to ID, dark energy is a proposed, but completely speculative solution to the question of how the universe can appear to be so finely tuned. By invoking a free parameter that can substitute for a designer, the hope is that the fanciful name, the concept (anti-gravity), the impersonality of it all will discourage anyone from attributing intelligence or design to this fine tuning knob. 2. Dark Matter — the yet-unobserved proposed source of correctly observed gravitational attraction, this could be something as innocuous as comets, black-eyed peas, and Read More ›

Paper: Jupiter doesn’t shield Earth, comets kickstarted life

From ScienceDaily: Not only is the ‘Jupiter as shield’ concept, implying that the planet shields Earth from comet impacts, not true, but perhaps Jupiter’s most important role in fostering the development of life on Earth was just the opposite — delivering the volatile materials from the outer Solar System needed for life to form. This new simulation study, and the previously underestimated role that Saturn may have also played in the evolution of life on Earth. … In “Jupiter: Cosmic Jekyll and Hyde”), Kevin Grazier, PhD, at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, describes the study in which he simulated the evolution of tens of thousands of particles in the gaps between the jovian planets for up to 100 Read More ›

Forbes: Our solar system is like waterfront property

It’s scarce, and they’re not making any more of it. From Bruce Dorminey at Forbes: As Robert Wittenmyer, an astronomer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and the paper’s lead author told me, NASA ’s Kepler space telescope has shown us that small planets appear to be ubiquitous. But he says very few observers are looking at what he terms the other half of the question, the long-period gas giants. The findings are important because conventional theories of planet formation have usually dictated that gas giants like Jupiter parked in a stable, rather distant, orbit from its parent star were thought to be key to the onset of life on closer-in Earth-like planets. … “You could certainly Read More ›

Our Moon formed in collision with embryo planet?

A new moon formation theory, from ScienceDaily: The moon was formed from a violent, head-on collision between the early Earth and a ‘planetary embryo’ called Theia approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, almost 4.5 billion years ago. … Scientists had already known about this high-speed crash, which occurred almost 4.5 billion years ago, but many thought the Earth collided with Theia (pronounced THAY-eh) at an angle of 45 degrees or more — a powerful side-swipe (simulated in this 2012 YouTube video). New evidence reported Jan. 29 in the journal Science substantially strengthens the case for a head-on assault. … The fact that oxygen in rocks on the Earth and our moon share chemical signatures was very telling, Young Read More ›

More ways to pack tennis balls than atoms in universe?

From New Scientist: How many ways are there to arrange 128 balls? Now Stefano Martiniani of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues have found a clever way around the problem. They say there are 10^250 ways to arrange 128 jammed spheres – far more than the 10^80 atoms in the universe. So how did they do it? More. So were some choices made when the universe came to exist? See also: Copernicus, you are not going to believe who is using your name. Or how. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Why “space” is hard to understand

From Dan Falk at Nautilus: In his popular book The Fabric of the Cosmos, physicist Brian Greene explains that although Einstein’s theory demolished Newton’s absolute space, it gave us something else in its place—a four-dimensional structure known as spacetime—and this, Greene argues, is absolute. You and I might disagree about the duration of a parade, or the distance that the marchers covered—but we’d agree on the total distance through spacetime between the start and end of the parade. This is hard to picture, since we can’t see in four dimensions, but it’s guaranteed by the equations in Einstein’s theory. And yet, this is not Greene’s final word on the matter. Physicists now suspect the “Higgs field,” believed to endow particles Read More ›

Dawkins on arguments pointing to God

Ran across this clip at Christian Post: Atheist author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says the best argument for God he’s ever hard has to do with a deistic God as the fine-tuner of the universe . . . . Dawkins prefaced his answer by making it clear that he is not “in any sense admitting that there is a good argument,” and insisted that “there is no decent argument for the existence of deities.” . . . . “It’s still a very, very bad argument, but it’s the best one going,” he added, noting that a major problem with the argument is that it leaves unexplained where the fine tuner came from. As for evolution, however, he said there Read More ›

Thought you’d heard all there was to know about water as unique?

From Nature: The structural origin of anomalous properties of liquid water Water is unique in its number of unusual, often called anomalous, properties. When hot it is a normal simple liquid; however, close to ambient temperatures properties, such as the compressibility, begin to deviate and do so increasingly on further cooling. Clearly, these emerging properties are connected to its ability to form up to four well-defined hydrogen bonds allowing for different local structural arrangements. A wealth of new data from various experiments and simulations has recently become available. When taken together they point to a heterogeneous picture with fluctuations between two classes of local structural environments developing on temperature-dependent length scales. More. Incidentally, If water would not behave in this Read More ›

Nature: The Exoplanet Files 20 years on

From Nature: What we know about alien worlds — and what’s coming next. The tally of known extrasolar planets now stands at 1,978, with nearly 4,700 more candidates waiting to be confirmed. On 29 November, exoplanet researchers will gather in Hawaii to review these extreme solar systems — and map out a path for the next two decades. Free infographic here. Here’s an interesting new find from May 2014: Goldilocks may not like exoplanets. Maybe that’s because of stuff like this? Radiation nixes most Earth-like planet for life? Researchers: Atmosphere of Kepler-438b would be stripped away. See also: Don’t let Mars fool you. Those exoplanets teem with life! Follow UD News at Twitter!

Larry Krauss on Ben Carson’s “scientific ignorance”

Here: Perhaps his silliest statements have to do with our own solar system. Carson claims that our solar system is perfectly ordered—but, in fact, the motion of the planets is chaotic in the long term, and, although we can predict the motion of comets over the seventy-year period he discusses, for longer time horizons, such as millions or billions of years, the complexity of our solar system makes that practically impossible.More. If it isn’t perfectly ordered, why is there so much life here, but we are forever hearing about endless other habitable planets that turn out probably not to be. Anyway, fine words from a crackpot cosmologist who thinks all scientists should be militant atheists . Election season brings ‘em Read More ›