Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

Physics

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 16, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics
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At Popular Mechanics: The universe is a “machine that keeps learning”

Denyse O'Leary
April 16, 2021
Cosmology, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics
It sounds as though some would like to hold onto the name of Darwinism while — in reality — adopting panpsychism. That would be consistent with other trends we've noted. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 12, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Is a new “muon” finding evidence for a fifth force of nature? Rob Sheldon weighs in

Denyse O'Leary
April 12, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Sheldon: I hate to disappoint you, but most of my gut reaction is negative... In fact, this 40-year stasis in particle physics has meant that two generations of graduate students have never had a successful breakthrough experiment, or confirmed a new theory. The field, as Sabine Hossenfelder reminds everyone, is littered with wrong papers. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 7, 2021
Categorized
Culture, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Physics
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Is this the beginning of deplatforming Stephen Hawking or of an honest evaluation?

Denyse O'Leary
April 7, 2021
Culture, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Physics
Seife: Hawking managed to convince the public that his opinion always mattered. "[H]is comments attracted exaggerated attention even on topics where he had no special expertise," wrote Martin Rees, a close friend and colleague of his, "for instance philosophy, or the dangers from aliens or from intelligent machines." His overweening confidence—and his stubbornness—cost him respect from many of his colleagues, especially late in his career. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 7, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Culture, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Stan Robertson’s paper on black holes is free for download

Denyse O'Leary
April 7, 2021
Cosmology, Culture, Intelligent Design, Physics
One factor that one needn’t be a physicist to see is that black holes became a “thing” in popular culture, in a way that “red dwarfs” and “white dwarfs” never did. No one says that red dwarfs, for example, are a gateway to another universe. That sort of thing may affect people’s willingness to evaluate the evidence base critically. Cf Darwinism. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 6, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Rob Sheldon takes aim at black holes: How much is really known?

Denyse O'Leary
April 6, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
It is most unfortunate that both scientists themselves and the popular press discuss black holes (bh) as if they are (a) a scientifically defined object; and, (b) an experimentally observed one. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 5, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Sabine Hossenfelder asks, Should Stephen Hawking have won the Nobel? Rob Sheldon weighs in

Denyse O'Leary
April 5, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Rob Sheldon: Hawking did not get the Nobel, however, because he hung his hopes on the radiation emitted by BH--the so-called "Hawking radiation". And it was never observed. Sabine tries to explain why. But one argument that Sabine doesn't make, is that Hawking radiation may never have been observed because BH are themselves never observed. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
April 1, 2021
Categorized
Biology, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Rob Sheldon: Biologists’ use of the term “half-life” shows just how tenuous many of their propositions really are

Denyse O'Leary
April 1, 2021
Biology, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Physics

Recently, our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon took issue with the use of the term “half-life” to describe the survival of DNA in fossils. He says the term has a specific meaning with respect to radioactive decay that just does not apply to other events in nature. In the biology paper at issue, with “half-life” in the name, the authors explain and use the concept in connection with radiocarbon dating: Abstract: Claims of extreme survival of DNA have emphasized the need for reliable models of DNA degradation through time. By analysing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 158 radiocarbon-dated bones of the extinct New Zealand moa, we confirm empirically a long-hypothesized exponential decay relationship. The average DNA half-life within this geographically constrained Read More ›

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 30, 2021
Categorized
Biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Does DNA really have a “half life”? Physicist Rob Sheldon is skeptical

Denyse O'Leary
March 30, 2021
Biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Physics
Sheldon: "As a physicist, I would like to point out that biologists are misusing the word "half-life". DNA does NOT have a half-life of 521 years. Radioisotopes have a half-life, because the nucleus is unstable to natural decay through the weak force (for isotopes of interest)." He goes on to say that the weak force of the universe "is unaffected by temperature, pressure, time, or chemicals." Not so for DNA. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 13, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Sabine Hossenfelder reassures us that Schrodinger’s cat is still not dead

Denyse O'Leary
March 13, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Hossenfelder: It’s no secret that I myself am signed up to superdeterminism, which means that the measurement outcome is partly determined by the measurement settings. In this case, the cat may start out in a superposition, but by the time you measure it, it has reached the state which you actually observe. So, there is no sudden collapse in superdeterminism, it’s a smooth, deterministic, and local process. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 7, 2021
Categorized
Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Multiverse, Physics, theism
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At The Conversation: Can the laws of physics disprove God?

Denyse O'Leary
March 7, 2021
Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Multiverse, Physics, theism
This seems to be a rather light piece intellectually but it gives some sense of what the wine bar would be saying about God and science if COVID-19 crazy hadn’t put it out of business: "But God isn’t a valid scientific explanation. The theory of the multiverse, instead, solves the mystery because it allows different universes to have different physical laws. So it’s not surprising that we should happen to see ourselves in one of the few universes that could support life. Of course, you can’t disprove the idea that a God may have created the multiverse." Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
March 4, 2021
Categorized
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
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Ethan Siegel: Failure to replicate a dark matter experiment is “an incredible success” for the scientific method

Denyse O'Leary
March 4, 2021
Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Physics
Siegel offers an inside look at the details. While the finding is doubtless a success for the scientific method, it must be frustrating for those physicists who need dark matter to exist in order to make cosmology understandable — but can’t find any. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
February 28, 2021
Categorized
Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Neuroscience, Physics
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A science writer offers some interesting thoughts on free will

Denyse O'Leary
February 28, 2021
Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Neuroscience, Physics
It’s interesting that a science writer sees through the most fundamental materialist rot. Unfortunately, it sounds as though he hopes to replace it with a different one. Read More ›