Jay L. Wile's Blog, page 29

Sometimes, It’s the “Deniers” Who Are Right!

Nobel Laureate Dr. Daniel Shechtman

(click for credit)

Nearly six years ago, I wrote about Dr. Daniel Shechtman. He had recently won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and I wanted to highlight him because had the term been popular in his day, he would have been called a chemistry denier. His own research demonstrated the existence of quasicrystals, despite the fact that the science of the day said (quite conclusively) that they couldn’t possibly exist. He faced a lot of opposition from his fellow scientists, even though all he was doing was following the data.

Although the term “denier” wasn’t fashionable at the time, two-time Nobel Laureate Dr. Linus Pauling famously said:

There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.

Despite the fact that the head of his own research group asked him to leave because of “bringing disgrace” to the team, Dr. Shechtman persevered, and he was eventually vindicated. Even though science conclusively said that quasicrystals don’t exist, Dr. Schechtman showed that they did.

I recently learned from one of my chemistry colleagues that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences wrote an article about Dr. Schechtman’s story. It is called Crystals of Golden Proportion, and if you have any interest in chemistry, you might find it worth the read. I certainly did.

The article discusses the ridicule Dr. Schechtman received from his fellow scientists, and then it makes this statement:

Dan Shechtman’s story is by no means unique. Over and over again in the history of science, researchers have been forced to do battle with established “truths”, which in hindsight have proven to be no more than mere assumptions…Keeping an open mind and daring to question established knowledge may in fact be a scientist’s most important character trait.

I have said the same things many times. Unfortunately, this obvious truth is lost on most people, including most scientists. If a scientist dares to question established truth, he or she is immediately labeled a “denier.” If you point out the uncertainty in our understanding of global climate, you are a “climate change denier.” If you question the “accepted” age of the earth, or flagellate-to-philosopher evolution, you are a “science denier.” As the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences admits, however, the “deniers” are right in many cases, and established scientific “truths” are sometimes just incorrect assumptions.

Science would be better served if more people (including more scientists) understood this.

One of the Most Important Aspects of Global Climate Is Still Completely Undetermined

Proxy temperature record (blue) and this study’s projection (orange) for the Northern Hemisphere.

One of the least understood things about global warming (aka “climate change”) is how much of it can be caused by people. Several studies have attempted to answer this question, and they produce radically different results. Some indicate that human industry is one of the most important factors in how global temperatures are changing. Other studies conclude that human industry has a very small effect on global temperatures. Who is right? I don’t know, and I honestly don’t think anyone does.

How can I say that? Because I read the scientific literature and use the information I find there to draw my conclusions. The information in the scientific literature has little relationship to the nonsense that is peddled in the media and most of today’s institutions of education. The fact is that no one understands some of the very basic aspects of climate, and a recent study highlighted this in an enlightening way.

The study is interesting in its own right, because it attempted to use artificial neural networks (ANNs) to “learn” about how climate changes naturally. I have no idea how reasonable their method is, but it did produce some interesting results. More importantly, the paper presented a table that shows exactly how little we currently understand about the way carbon dioxide affects global temperatures.

In the study, the researchers used climate proxy data to produce about 1000 years of climate records, stopping in the 1990s. If you don’t recognize the term, a “climate proxy” is something that can be measured today but is indicative of climate in the past. For example, since trees form a ring each year (most of the time), it is pretty easy to determine what year each ring formed. The ring’s physical characteristics are governed by the weather, so you can analyze the tree ring to get an idea of the temperature that year. Now, of course, this is a difficult process and probably results in a lot of error, but nevertheless, it is at least one way to get information about climate in the past.

Well, the researchers gave their ANNs this climate proxy record, but stopped it at 1830. Presumably, human beings weren’t influencing climate heavily back then, so they say that by stopping the data at 1830, they were giving the ANNs a chance to “learn” how the climate changes naturally. They then had the ANNs project how the temperatures should change from 1830 to the mid 1990s. When they compared the proxy data from that same time period to the projections made by the ANNs, the results were amazingly consistent, as illustrated by the graph at the top of the post. Remember, the ANNs didn’t have the data from 1830 to the 1990s. They just used the pre-1830 data to project what the temperatures should be. Nevertheless, they produced remarkable agreement with the data!

Based on their results, then, the authors say that the vast majority of the temperature changes we have seen from 1830 to the 1990s is natural. I have no idea whether or not their analysis is strong enough to make such a statement, and even so, the study says nothing about the past 20 years of temperature changes. However, in their paper, they estimate the equilibrium climate sensitivity and compare their estimate to those made by other studies. That’s the really fascinating aspect of their paper.

If you don’t know what “equilibrium climate sensitivity” is, then you are not educated about global warming (aka “climate change”). It is the single most important concept related to carbon dioxide and temperature, and it is also the most hotly debated in the scientific literature. The term refers to what happens to global temperature when the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles. Right now, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is about 45% higher than pre-industrial levels. Based on current emissions, it is thought that the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere will double pre-inustrial levels in 60-80 years.

Obviously, then, the equilibrium climate sensitivity is a big deal. If a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes a 5°C change in global temperatures, we have a lot of problems. If it produces a 0.5°C change, that probably isn’t a big deal. So what is the equilibrium climate sensitivity? No one knows, and this paper does an excellent job of demonstrating that fact.

Based on their ANN projections, the authors of the study estimate that the equilibrium climate sensitivity is 0.6°C – 0.8°C. I have no idea whether or not that’s reasonable based on their methodology. However, they compare their estimate to other estimates from the scientific literature. They present 19 different published studies (including theirs) that have estimated the equilibrium climate sensitivity, and the estimates range from 0.33°C all the way to 3.2°C. To give you an idea of how wildly the studies vary, here is a graph that counts the number of studies that estimate the equilibrium climate sensitivity to be in a certain range:

If we can’t pin down the equilibrium climate sensitivity any better than that, then the science of global warming is definitely not settled!

In light of the above graph, it is interesting to look at the statement made about equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) by the IPCC in 2014:

…there is high confidence that ECS is extremely unlikely less than 1°C and medium confidence that the ECS is likely between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C.

That’s definitely not what I see in the above graph. Instead, it seems that you can’t say anything about the equilibrium climate sensitivity based on these 19 studies.

In a nutshell, that’s the problem I have with the pronouncements about global warming (aka “climate change”) made by the High Priests of Science. The pronouncements indicate that we know pretty much everything that’s going on, while the data indicate that we don’t.

The Current Hurricane Activity is Not Unusual From a Scientific Perspective

NOAA’s GOES satellite image on Sept. 8, 2017. It shows Hurricane Irma (Caribbean Sea), Tropical Storm Jose (Atlantic Ocean), and Tropical Storm Katia (Gulf of Mexico).

Hurricane Harvey devastated Texas, and hurricane Irma is currently pummeling Florida. In Texas, the death toll is at least 70, and so far, Irma has killed five people. In addition, two other tropical storms are brewing, one in the Atlantic ocean and one in the Gulf of Mexico. Reading social media and the less-responsible news outlets, you would think that this kind of weather is unprecedented. You would also think that it is all the result of carbon dioxide emissions causing global warming, aka “climate change.” While the human devastation is real and cannot be ignored, science tells us that these events are not unusual, and they are probably not related to human activity in any way.

Let’s start with hurricane Irma. Unlike you may have been told, it is not the most powerful hurricane that has been observed. In fact, that distinction belongs to hurricanes Patricia (2015) and Nancy (1961), which each occurred in the Pacific ocean. Their winds of 215 miles per hour are the highest ever recorded. Of course, Pacific hurricanes do tend to be pretty strong, but Irma isn’t even the most powerful Atlantic hurricane. Allen in 1980 had the highest wind speeds of any Atlantic hurricane (190 mph). Currently, Irma (with wind speeds of 185 mph) is tied for second, along with Wilma in 2005, Gilbert in 1988, and the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.

But what about three hurricanes in the Atlantic at one time. Surely that’s unprecedented! Nope. In 1998, there were four Atlantic hurricanes at once. Indeed, three hurricanes at once is something that happens roughly every 10 years. Why haven’t you heard that? One reason is that all three rarely make landfall in populated areas. The other reason is that it doesn’t help with the “global warming is going to kill us all” narrative.

But surely global warming is contributing to these hurricanes in some way. Well, if it is, there is certainly no way you could tell that from the data.

An excellent summary of global hurricane activity was published in Geophysical Research Letters back in 2011. Here is one of the graphs it presents:

The top data points represent the frequency of all tropical cyclones worldwide since 1972. The bottom data points are only for those tropical cyclones that became hurricanes. The red lines are linear fits to the data. Notice that there is no discernible trend. If hurricanes were related to carbon dioxide emissions, you should see some sort of trend in this graph.

But wait a minute. Perhaps carbon-dioxide-induced warming isn’t increasing the number of hurricanes. Perhaps it is just increasing their power. Once again, the data say otherwise. The same study showed how the total accumulated energy in global cyclones has varied with time:

The top data points represent the accumulated energy in all cyclones around the globe, while the bottom data points represent the same quantity for cyclones only in the Northern Hemisphere. If carbon dioxide emissions were making hurricanes more powerful, there should be an upward trend in these graphs. Once again, however, there is no discernible trend.

When people try to use the hurricanes that are happening now to support the idea that human beings are causing global warming, they are not only displaying their ignorance about history. They are also displaying their ignorance about science.

These Footprints Will Probably Inspire Some Impressive Storytelling

Two of the recently-discovered hominin-like footprints that are thought to be too old and in the wrong place.

The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History tells us the story of human evolution as if it has all been figured out:

One of the earliest defining human traits, bipedalism — the ability to walk on two legs — evolved over 4 million years ago. Other important human characteristics — such as a large and complex brain, the ability to make and use tools, and the capacity for language — developed more recently…Early humans first migrated out of Africa into Asia probably between 2 million and 1.8 million years ago. They entered Europe somewhat later, between 1.5 million and 1 million years.

Of course, any serious scientist knows that what little data we have on such matters don’t support the confident tone used by the Smithsonian. Indeed, a recent study published in Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association indicates that at least some of what The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History says is wrong.

The study focuses on several footprints (two of which are shown above). The authors say that the footprints most likely come from a hominin, which is a general term that refers to humans and their supposed evolutionary ancestors. Why do they think the tracks belong to a human ancestor? They state:

The tracks indicate that the trackmaker lacked claws, and was bipedal, plantigrade, pentadactyl and strongly entaxonic.

As far as we know, this set of characteristics appears only in humans and their supposed evolutionary ancestors.

Bipedal, of course, means walking on two legs. Plantigrade means walking on the soles of the feet. When referring to the foot, pentadactyl means five-toed, and entaxonic refers to the inner toes being more developed than the outer toes. While some animals can have one or two of these characteristics (bears, for example, can be bipedal for short periods of time and are plantigrade), only people (and their supposed evolutionary ancestors) have all of those characteristics.

Why do these footprints challenge what The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History confidently tells us? First, they are supposedly 5.7 million years old. The authors are pretty certain about this, because the standard interpretation of the rocks that the footprints are found in, along with some microorganism fossils in those rocks, indicate that they are 3.5 to 8.5 million years old. However, the footprints were made before the Mediterranean Sea was supposed to have dried up for a while starting 5.6 million years ago. Thus, the “youngest” they could be is 5.7 million years old. Second, they are in Greece. If bipedalism evolved over 4 million years ago and humans came out of Africa about 2 million years ago, there shouldn’t be any 5.7-million-year-old tracks like these in Greece.

So what do the authors say about this apparent problem? They present two possibilities. First, this could be an early hominin. Of course, if that were the case, The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History would have to say that it (or one of its descendants) wandered into Africa and evolved some more, so that humans could then come back out of Africa 2 million years ago. Second, this could just be some unrelated primate that happened to evolve hominin-like feet and bipedalism.

I suspect that both explanations are wrong, since I don’t think the earth was around 5.7 million years ago, and I don’t think that humans evolved. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see what storytelling will take place in order to force these footprints into compliance with today’s evolutionary narrative.

Trigonometry from The 18th Century BC!

Plimpton 322, a mathematical table that is thought to have been made about 1800 BC.

Back in 1922, G.A. Plimpton bought the tablet shown above from an archaeologist named Edgar Banks, and it has become known as “Plimpton 322.” According to an analysis of the writing, it is of Babylonian origin and probably dates back to the 18th-century BC. It has been known for a while that Plimpton 322 is a mathematical table that contains ratios related to triangles. However, there were aspects of the table that didn’t make sense, at least until recently. According to a study published in Historia Mathematica, it is actually the world’s oldest trigonometry table!

For those of you who didn’t take (or don’t remember) trignonometry, it is a branch of mathematics that deals with triangles. I was first introduced to it in high school, as part of my “college preparatory” mathematics education. One thing that initially struck me about this branch of mathematics was the fact that there were times you had to use a lookup table (or a calculator) in order to get the results you needed. I had never before done math like that. Sure, calculators made some math faster and certainly cut down on errors. However, for some trigonometry problems, you simply couldn’t get the answer without looking up numbers in a table or using a calculator.

Once I studied chemistry and physics at university, trigonometry became a pretty constant companion. In physics, you use it to analyze vectors, which are one of the most fundamental aspects of that scientific discipline. In chemistry, you use it to study molecular structure. Over time, I got really adept at using my calculator to solve trigonometry-related problems. Interestingly enough, however, this tablet represents a completely different means by which you can do trigonometry.

In the trigonometry we use today, angles are important. However, in this Babylonian trigonometry, angles aren’t used. Instead, only the length of a triangle’s sides are used. Indeed, in figuring out what this tablet means, the authors actually state:

First we abandon the notion of angle, and instead describe a right triangle in terms of the short side, long side and diagonal of a rectangle.

I am sure it is easy for mathematicians to do such a thing, but it is hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that you can do trigonometry without angles. However, they show that when you look at the tablet that way, it is clearly a lookup table that gives you everything you need to make specific trigonometry calculations. Why would the Babylonians be using such a table? The authors refuse to speculate, but most likely, the Babylonians were using trigonometry to survey fields and build structures like temples and palaces.

There are two other really interesting things about this table. First, it predates what historians thought was the earliest form of trigonometry, which was developed by the Greek mathematician Hipparchus in the second century BC. That means the Babylonians, not the Greeks, can be credited as the first to investigate this mathematical discipline.

Second, this roughly 3,700-year-old tablet represents, in some ways, an improvement on the trigonometry that we do. That’s because our trigonometry, which is based on lookup tables and calculators, is really an approximation. For example, if the answer is one-third, a lookup table or a calculator will usually have something like 0.3333. While that’s an excellent approximation of one-third, it is not exact. Only the fraction 1/3 is an exact representation of one-third. Well, it turns out that this table has only exact representations. While there is no practical difference between a really good approximation and an exact value, from a mathematical point of view, an exact value is more elegant. So if nothing else, this table is more mathematically elegant than our modern tables and our modern calculators.

If you’ve ever had the misguided notion that ancient people were “ignorant savages,” finds like this one should make you change your mind!

Knowing Science Doesn’t Mean Following the Scientific Consensus

The study being discussed indicates that people with a strong knowledge of science don’t necessarily follow the scientific consensus. (click for credit)

Some people get distressed over the fact that there are those of us who don’t blindly follow whatever is advertised as the “scientific consensus.” The distress becomes so great that such people often have to come up with some kind of explanation for this non-sheep-like behavior. For example, in response to a 2014 poll that indicated Americans are skeptical about human-caused global warming, evolution, and the Big Bang, Nobel Laureate Dr. Randy Schekman said:

Science ignorance is pervasive in our society, and these attitudes are reinforced when some of our leaders are openly antagonistic to established facts.

I read and hear this idea a lot. If you don’t automatically accept what the High Priests of Science say, you obviously don’t know or don’t understand science. While such an idea might be comforting to those who don’t wish to think for themselves when it comes to scientific issues, it doesn’t have any basis in reality. Indeed, some of the most intelligent, well-educated people I know do not believe in evolution (in the flagellate-to-philosopher sense), do not think the earth is billions of years old, and do not think that humans are causing significant global warming.

Of course, the people I know don’t necessarily make up a representative sample of the population as a whole. As a result, I was very interested to read a study that was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The authors of the study analyzed the 2006 and 2010 results of the General Social Survey, which attempts to determine the views of the American people on a wide variety of issues. At the same time, it tries to get a general sense of each individual’s level of education on those issues. The results of their study seemed very surprising to the authors, but they weren’t at all surprising to me.

Because the General Social Survey not only asks the participants about their education but also asks specific science-related questions, the authors were able to rate each person on a “scientific literacy” scale. The higher the person’s score on that scale, the more educated he or she was on scientific issues. The authors then correlated the scientific literacy of the person with his or her beliefs about the Big Bang, human evolution, climate change, the safety of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), the safety of nanotechnology, and stem cell research. As far as I am concerned, here is their “take-home” message:

Participants’ general educational attainment and science education were at best weakly related to their acceptance of the scientific consensus.

In other words, those who know the science don’t necessarily agree with what is advertised as the “scientific consensus.”

Instead of scientific literacy, the authors found that political and social views correlated strongly with whether or not a person accepted the scientific consensus on four of the issues studied. Conservatives were less likely than liberals to agree with the scientific consensus on the Big Bang, human evolution, climate change, and stem cell research. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups on GMOs and nanotechnology.

But here’s the really interesting result: the more scientifically literate the person was, the more polarized he or she became on those issues. In other words, liberals became more likely to accept the consensus the more scientifically literate they were, while conservatives were more likely to reject the consensus the more scientifically literate they were. This, of course, argues strongly against the notion that only ignorant people reject the scientific consensus.

Indeed, the biggest effect that scientific literacy had was on the issue of global warming. Liberals and conservatives with low scientific literacy were equally likely to believe the consensus that global warming has been significantly amplified by human activity. However, as scientific literacy increased, liberals became more likely to believe in the consensus, and conservatives became less likely to believe in the consensus.

Of course, this distressing news had to be interpreted, so the authors suggested two explanations. Perhaps, they mused, people first decide what they want to believe, and then the more scientifically-literate people feel more comfortable in arguing for that position. The authors also suggested that people with more scientific knowledge might be able to find a few obscure facts that help them hang on to their beliefs, despite what the majority of the data indicate.

I think I have a better explanation, however. Those with more scientific literacy are more likely to investigate issues for themselves and come up with their own conclusions. Those conclusions then help to inform their political and social beliefs. That’s certainly how it works for me. It would be much easier for me professionally if I blindly followed the scientific consensus on each issue. However, I can’t do that and maintain my scientific integrity. Thus, I investigate the issues myself and come to what I think is the best scientific conclusion. Those conclusions then affect how I live and how I vote.

If nothing else, research like this argues strongly against the absurd notion that those who reject what is advertised as the “scientific consensus” are ignorant when it comes to science.

Thoughts and Pictures from the Eclipse

The International Space station (the structure in the center of the image) photobombs the 2017 eclipse. (NASA image)

I remember the 1994 eclipse. I was on the faculty at Ball State University, teaching chemistry and physics. I told all my students about the eclipse, and when it came time to view it, I joined a few of the university’s staff watching the eclipse with welder’s goggles, pinhole viewers, and even natural pinhole viewers made by the foliage of the trees. As we watched, a few people joined in. Most of them had no idea that the eclipse was happening until they saw us looking at it.

Well, the 2017 eclipse was very different! Because of social media, a lot more people knew about and planned for the eclipse, so my Facebook feed was filled with awesome photos of people watching the eclipse, the eclipse itself, and the effects that the eclipse had on the surroundings. While I agree that social media has a lot of negative effects on our culture, it also has some positive effects, and the eclipse highlighted one of those. Social media has made it much easier to “get the word out” on a variety of issues, including science-related events that people can experience.

I thought I would share some of my photos of the eclipse as well as some better ones, providing “color commentary” as I go. Before I do that, however, I would like to just make a comment about how some people, like Eric Metaxas, view an eclipse as evidence for God’s existence. The argument goes something like this: the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, but it is also 389 times farther from the earth. As a result, they each take up roughly (not exactly) the same amount of space in the night sky. Without this pleasant “coincidence,” a total solar eclipse could not happen. Of course, it is no coincidence. It is another piece of evidence for the fact that our solar system is designed.

While I think that nature explodes with evidence of design, I am not sure this is really one of those evidences. Sure, it represents an interesting example of “balance” between natural variables, and it certainly makes for an awesome sight. But honestly, it’s only four parameters (two distances from earth and two sizes). It’s not all that improbable for four different parameters to be balanced as a result of mere chance. In addition, those parameters are somewhat constrained, because we need a large moon for healthy oceans that can support life and a reasonably small, “gentle” star for our energy source. So while I think that the moon and the sun both provide strong evidence for the idea that our solar system is designed, I don’t think the fact that they can produce a total solar eclipse does.

Now let’s see some pictures!

As I discussed in a previous post, I think the safest way to view an eclipse is with some sort of projection viewer. In my elementary course, Science in the Beginning, I have students build such a projector using binoculars so that they can look for sunspots. I set up something very similar to view the eclipse:

This picture shows the moment that I could first see the eclipse starting:

This one shows it progressing:

This one shows the maximum coverage that we could see where we were at the time (Montana):

Of course, my amateur photos don’t do the eclipse justice, so I also want to show better ones, like the one at the top of the post, where NASA catches the International Space Station passing between the earth and the sun during the eclipse.

Here’s a photo (click for credit), showing the total eclipse as seen in Corvallis, Oregon. This is often called the “diamond ring effect,” caused by the fact that the moon’s surface is rugged, allowing a bead of light to pass through the eclipse.

I want to end with what I think is the coolest one. It’s not of the eclipse itself, but of the moon’s shadow as seen from the International Space Station:

The dark spot you see is the core of the moon’s shadow being cast on the earth. It is called the umbra, and wherever it lands, you see an eclipse.

One Reason The Argument from Morality Might Be Persuasive

Allegory of Goodness by 16th-century Italian artist Jacopo Comin, who became known as Tintoretto.

As I have noted previously (see here and here, for example), I consider the Argument from Morality a very, very weak argument for God’s existence. Nevertheless, many philosophers who are much deeper thinkers than me champion the argument, and in many of the accounts of atheists who became Christians, the Argument from Morality was at least a factor in them accepting the Truth.

I have read several books and internet articles on the issue, but I have not read a single defense of the Argument from Morality that has been even moderately convincing to me, despite the fact that I do believe that God is the only source of morality. As a result, I have often wondered why the Argument from Morality has so much apparent power. One possible reason is that I am totally clueless on what makes a good argument for God’s existence. However, I recently ran across a study that might provide an alternate reason.

It was published in Nature Human Behavior, and it explores the preconceptions that people have when it comes to morality. The authors studied nearly 3,800 people in 13 different countries, and they found that in the vast majority of those countries, the participants were much more likely to believe that an evildoer is an atheist.

The study is interesting on many levels, but I will touch on two of them. First is a technical issue that I found fascinating. The study consisted of several questions, many of which dealt with the participants’ demographics and basic beliefs. However, there was also an “attention check” question that was worded this way:

Here is a different type of question. SKIP THE NEXT QUESTION. It is only included to ensure that you are paying attention and reading directions. Do not leave an answer for the question about US presidents.

Who is the current President of the United States of America?

a) Barack Obama

b) Mitt Romney

c) Steve Perry

d) George Washington

It kind of reminds me of a test I was given in elementary school. We were told to read the directions carefully, and those directions said to ignore everything below the directions and watch the rest of the class. The few students who didn’t read the directions started doing crazy things like barking, flapping their arms, and hopping around their desks – all of which were commands given below the directions.

So anyway, the interesting thing was that 13% of the participants ignored the directions and answered the question! All of their responses were removed from the results of the study, since they obviously weren’t paying attention. That makes sense, of course, but I am just amazed that the percentage was so high!

Now to the meat of the study. The main question involved a short story about a boy who harms animals for amusement. He eventually loses interest in harming animals and escalates to people. So far, he has murdered and dismembered five homeless people. The participants were then asked to answer the following question:

Which is more probable?

1. The man is a teacher

2. The man is a teacher and [does not believe in any gods. / is a religious believer.]

Half of the surveys used the “does not believe in any gods” part of what is in the brackets, while the other half used the “is a religious believer” part of what is in the brackets.

Overall, they found that people were more than twice as likely to choose “The man is a teacher and does not believe in any gods” than they were to choose “The man is a teacher and is a religious believer.” So when people were willing to make a judgement of an evildoer’s religious beliefs, they were much more likely to think that the evildoer is an atheist. The numbers varied by country, but in every country but Finland and New Zealand, people were more likely to believe the evildoer was an atheist. Interestingly enough, even atheists were more likely to believe that the evildoer was an atheist, although not by a 2-to-1 margin.

The authors call this “extreme intuitive moral prejudice against atheists.” For me, however, it might be an answer to why the Argument from Morality seems to have so much power. If people think that atheists are more likely to be evildoers, then that inherent bias would make the Argument from Morality more convincing. I would love to find out the persuasiveness of the Argument from Morality in Finland and New Zealand, where this bias doesn’t seem to exist. If my interpretation is correct, people in those two countries shouldn’t find the argument persuasive.

If any social scientists read this article, take that as a suggested research topic!

Resources for The Upcoming Solar Eclipse

The 1999 solar eclipse as photographed through a telescope (and then Photoshop enhanced) by Luc Viatour in France (click for full credit)

As most people are probably aware, there will be a total eclipse of the sun visible from many parts of the United States. It will occur on August 21st, but the exact times depend on where you are. I received a question about how to best enjoy it, so thought I would compile some resources to help people who are interested. First, you can find out exactly when to expect the eclipse by going to this website:

https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in.html

If you put in your city and state, it will tell you when to start viewing the eclipse, when it will be at its maximum, and when it will end. In addition, it will tell you the magnitude, which is the fraction of the sun that will be blocked by the moon. If it doesn’t have your city, just add a comma and the full name of your state, and it will bring up several other cities in that state. Choose the one closest to you.

The next thing to make clear is that YOU SHOULD NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE ECLIPSE! The sun produces a lot of light; too much for your eyes to handle. As a result, when you look directly at the sun, the light-sensing cells in your eyes can be overwhelmed. If they are overwhelmed for too long, they can die. Even though the sun is a lot dimmer during an eclipse, it still produces too much light for your eyes. However, it isn’t as difficult to look at as the uneclipsed sun, so you don’t notice that you are overwhelming your light-sensing cells. This can lead to solar retinopathy, which can cause serious vision problems.

So how can you enjoy the eclipse? This website gives you several different ways to safely view it:

http://www.deepskywatch.com/Articles/how-to-look-at-sun.html

Even without a tripod, it is easy to use binoculars to project the sun.

In my opinion, however, the best way is through projection. In my elementary science book, Science in the Beginning , I show students how to use binoculars to project the sun onto a white surface. Of course, you should never look at the sun through the binoculars! However, you can point the binoculars towards the sun while aiming their eyepieces at a white surface, such as what is shown in the picture on the left. The white circles on the paper are the sun. You can adjust the focus of the binoculars to make the circles nice and sharp. Obviously, having a tripod upon which you can mount your binoculars is best, but as you can see from the picture, you can set up a makeshift holder using heavy books and a ruler.

Interestingly enough, however, you don’t need to make something as complicated as the setup shown on the left or even a pinhole projection camera such as what is discussed in the link above. In fact, a plain kitchen colander will project multiple images of the sun. Just put a colander between a white surface and the sun, as shown in this video. The holes in the colander will project the sun on the white surface, and you can watch multiple images of the eclipse. Adjusting the distance between the white surface and the colander will adjust the focus of the images. Aristotle (384-322 BC) was the first to record this method of viewing an eclipse. He also noted that you can simply look at the ground under a tree that has broad leaves. You will see multiple images of the eclipse happening on the ground, as projected from tiny openings in the tree’s foliage. I confirmed this during the 1999 solar eclipse pictured at the top of this post.

If you decide to use the solar viewing glasses that have become popular, you should definitely test them before you use them. Even if they are made properly, they can be damaged during shipping and storage, and you don’t want to risk looking through damaged glasses. This site discusses how you can make sure your glasses are safe:

https://www.space.com/37698-solar-eclipse-glasses-safety-check.html

I would also recommend cupping your hands around the sides of the glasses to block out peripheral light.

I hope these resources will help you enjoy the eclipse safely!

It’s REALLY Hard for a Planet to Support Life

The surface of Mars, as photographed by the Pathfinder lander (Image courtesy of NASA)

Dr. Stephen Hawking, one of today’s greatest minds in theoretical physics, stated:

I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.

While the last sentence is obviously offered tongue-in-cheek, the first sentence is a popular view among atheists. Because they believe that life must have come into being solely as a result of natural processes, they are forced to conclude that it must be prevalent throughout the universe. After all, if it happened here, it must have happened on a lot of other planets.

As a result, many atheists are enamored with the idea of finding life on other planets. Indeed, Bill Nye the anti-science Guy says that finding life on Mars or Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons) would:

…utterly change this world. Everybody would think differently about everything.

As I wrote in the post linked above, I can’t imagine that’s true. The people who commented on the article seem to agree. Nevertheless, in many atheists’ minds, it’s a big deal. After all, if life is found on other planets, it becomes easier to believe that there is “nothing special” about life. It’s common throughout the universe, so there is no need to invoke anything other than natural processes to explain its existence.

The problem, of course, is that the scientific evidence speaks strongly against such a notion.

Consider, for example, the planet Mars. Scientists have been trying to find evidence of life on Mars for years. Indeed, the first goal of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program is to determine whether life ever arose on Mars. Since life as we know it requires the presence of liquid water, one of the ways NASA scientists are trying to reach that goal is to look for the presence of liquid water on the planet.

There has been a lot of evidence that liquid water used to flow on the surface of Mars, but recently, NASA found evidence that liquid water is still flowing on Mars, despite its frigid temperatures. The evidence for this is the presence of a class of chemicals called “hydrated perchlorates.” These chemicals have the ability to reduce the freezing point of water significantly, especially at high concentrations. The fact that they are abundant at certain places on the surface of the planet and the fact that they are hydrated (which means water molecules are incorporated into their solid structure) strongly suggest that they are there as a result of recently-flowing, briny water.

Unfortunately, hopes that this water might support some kind of life were dealt a serious blow by a recent laboratory study in which the researchers showed that the very perchlorates which point to the existence of liquid water on Mars are lethal to one of the most well-studied bacteria on Earth, Bacillus subtilis. This bacterium is often used as a “model” for bacterial life, especially the kind that can thrive in variable environments. As the authors state:

We show that when irradiated with a simulated Martian UV flux, perchlorates become bacteriocidal. At concentrations associated with Martian surface regolith, vegetative cells of Bacillus subtilis in Martian analogue environments lost viability within minutes.

In other words, when they simulated the environment on Mars, including the perchlorates, the bacteria couldn’t survive for more than a few minutes. Unfortunately for the “life is common throughout the universe” crowd, it’s actually worse than that. There are two other very common chemicals on the surface of Mars. Iron oxides give the planet its red color, so they are found everywhere on the surface of Mars. In addition, hydrogen peroxide has been found to be very common on the Martian surface. When the researchers added those two chemicals at their measured concentrations, the situation became 10.8 times more lethal!

Now does this mean there is and never was life on Mars? Of course not! It’s possible that there are pockets of underground water that do not contain a lot of perchlorates. It’s possible that there is a life form for which this mixture of chemicals isn’t toxic. It’s also possible that perchlorates weren’t as prevalent in the past, making Mars a more suitable host for life back then.

However, it does strongly indicate one thing: It’s really hard for a planet to support life! Think about it. The very chemicals that were used to indicate evidence for one condition of life as we know it (liquid water) are the same chemicals that seem to make Mars inhospitable to life as we know it. Worse yet, when you add two other common chemicals found on the planet, the whole situation becomes even more intolerable for life.

All the scientific evidence we have indicates that the presence of life depends on a delicate balance of hundreds of different environmental conditions. So far, Earth is the only planet that possesses this delicate balance. No other known planet comes close, and if you are forced to believe only in natural processes, statistics seem to indicate that no other planet ever will come close.