Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 19

About the fine-tuning of the Solar system: By Isaac Newton

Who are the scientists of the rank of Isaac Newton today, professing God as Newton did at his time?

The universe, our galaxy, our solar system, and the Earth–Moon double planet system demonstrate clearly some remarkable evidence of highly intelligent design. If we consider them separately, each characteristic appears to be highly improbable due to random chance. When taken all of them together, the probability of random chance becomes as small as to be impossible. An alternative thought, designed by an intelligent creator is a more realistic explanation to many civilized people. Either way, we must admit that we are nothing but a product of a miracle—either a miracle of chance or a miracle of design.

Isaac Newton

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1939-isaac-newton

Fine Tuning of the Solar System

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1416-fine-tuning-of-the-solar-system

Origin, formation, and fine-tuning of the solar system

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2553-origin-formation-and-fine-tuning-of-the-solar-system

The moon, essential for life on earth

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2548-the-moon-essential-for-life-on-earth

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At Phys.org: Alpine lake bacteria deploy two light-harvesting systems

Christopher Packham writes:

Though humans, along with other vertebrate and invertebrate organisms, don’t photosynthesize, we’re definitely the downstream beneficiaries of the life forms that do. Phototrophic organisms at the bottom of the food chain convert abundant sunlight into the energy that ultimately powers all other life.

The two metabolic systems for harvesting light energy are fundamentally different. The most familiar is the chlorophyll-based photosynthesis by which plant life uses light to power the conversion of carbon dioxide and water into sugars and starches; the other system consists of proton-pumping rhodopsins.

Microbial rhodopsins, retinal-binding proteins, provide ion transport driven by light (and incidentally, sensory functions). It’s a family that includes light-driven proton pumps, ion pumps, ion channels and light sensors. Microbial rhodopsins are found in archaea, bacteria and eukaryota and are widespread in oceans and freshwater lakes.

Lake Gossenköllesee is located in the Tyrolean Alps. Credit: Christopher Bellas

Generally speaking, species tend to pick one or the other metabolic system, the PC/Mac dichotomy of phototrophic organisms. However, a multi-institutional team of molecular biologists now reports finding an alpine lake bacterium that uses both bacteriochlorophyll-based photosynthetic complexes and proton-pumping rhodopsins. Their study is published in PNAS.

Based on flash photolysis measurements, the authors report that both systems are photochemically active in Sphingomonas glacialis AAP5, found in the alpine lake Gossenköllesee, located in the Tyrolean Alps. Specifically, in low-light conditions between 4 and 22 degrees Celsius, the bacterium expresses bacteriochlorophyll, and in light conditions at temperatures below 16 degrees Celsius, expresses xanthorhodopsin, a proton pump.

S. glacialis uses harvested light to synthesize ATP and to stimulate growth. The authors write, “This indicates that the use of two systems for light harvesting may represent an evolutionary adaptation to the specific environmental conditions found in alpine lakes and other analogous ecosystems,” namely a response to large seasonal changes of temperature and light.

As the authors note, bacteriochlorophyll-based systems are large, complex and pigment-driven, requiring complex molecular machinery for synthesis, assembly and regulation. But once assembled, they comprise a “set-it-and-forget-it” system that functions even under low-light conditions. Rhodopsins, on the other hand, are far simpler and less expensive to express; their disadvantage is that they are only assembled and function in the presence of higher irradiance levels.

Loaded with all the genetic hardware for both chlorophototrophy and retinalphototrophy, these photoheterotrophic little guys have a reduced need for aerobic respiration and can therefore use available carbon for growth, a scarce commodity in the alpine lake environment they call home.

Full article at Phys.org.

“As the authors note, bacteriochlorophyll-based systems are large, complex and pigment-driven, requiring complex molecular machinery for synthesis, assembly and regulation.” A statement such as this, acknowledging complex, functional systems of molecular machines necessary for photosynthesis, is scientifically incompatible with the suggestion that “light harvesting may represent an evolutionary adaptation.”

Unguided natural processes degrade complex, functional systems over time. The spacetime history of the universe is woefully insufficient to randomly produce such complex, functional molecules. Yet again, researchers have claimed godlike powers for nature. Deifying nature has no place in modern science, since we know that nature itself is subject to laws that regulate its workings. The light-harvesting capabilities of bacteria represent the work of intelligent design, consistent with the role of God as Creator.

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At Reasons.org: Why Would a Good God Allow Destructive Hurricanes?

Biochemist Fazale Rana writes:

Hurricanes and the Problem of Natural Evil
In the wake of these types of natural disasters, it’s understandable for people to ask, “Why?”

Why would God create a world with natural disasters that cause so much devastation and death?Why wouldn’t God intervene to prevent tragedies from happening? Hurricane Humberto, as captured by a NOAA satellite September 15, 2019. (NOAA Satellites)

For some skeptics, these questions count as sufficient reason to reject belief in God. If God, is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, surely, he would never create a world with natural phenomena that cause innocent people to suffer and die. They reason that God’s existence is logically incompatible with a world replete with natural disasters. Theologians and philosophers refer to this complaint as the problem of natural evil.

Other skeptics conclude that perhaps the problem of natural evil isn’t sufficient to reject belief in God but it is sufficient to question his goodness. These skeptics complain that they could never worship a God that would sit idly by and allow people to suffer through natural disasters such as hurricanes.

So, how should Christians respond to these serious challenges to God’s existence and goodness?

The Primacy of the Gospel
For Christians, the ultimate response to the problem of evil—whether it’s natural or moral evil—is the gospel. 

Note: The Gospel – God’s response to human suffering – is sufficient to overturn any complaint that God is uncaring or unable to deal with evil. But here let’s address a few scientific explanations for hurricanes and the suffering that often results.

Five Benefits Provided by Hurricanes
Digital meteorologist Jonathan Belles has identified five good things that hurricanes do.1

Hurricanes:

Bring rainfall. Hurricanes efficiently produce rainfall, often bringing rain to inland regions. These inland rain showers can help bring relief to areas suffering from drought.Replenish inland plant life. The high winds from hurricanes thin out vegetation, spurring new growth. Hurricanes also deposit nutrients and sediment in these places. These deposits contribute to new growth. The high winds associated with hurricanes also disperse seeds and spores inland, much farther than they would otherwise travel.Break up red tides. Red tides result from the unchecked growth of algae and bacteria. These microorganisms consume oxygen near the ocean surface and produce toxins that prevent other organisms from living in the red tides. Because hurricanes churn and mix the ocean waters, they break up the red tides and help oxygenate these dead zones.Replenish barrier islands. These islands located just offshore protect coastal regions and ecosystems from storm surges and flooding. Beach dunes and vegetation on barrier islands buffer the energy from waves before they collide with the mainland. Hurricanes pick up large amounts of sand and sediment (containing nutrients) and deposit them on the barrier islands, replenishing the beach dunes and making it possible for the vegetation on the barrier islands to flourish.Help balance global heat. One of the biggest benefits hurricanes provide is redistributing heat away from the equator toward the planet’s poles. Due to Earth’s axial tilt, the equator has higher temperatures than the poles. The equator receives more solar energy than any other latitude and the heat of the equator’s oceans rises into the atmosphere. Owing to their size and because they interact with the upper levels of the atmosphere, hurricanes efficiently move heat away from the equator. Hurricanes leave cooler waters in their wake.

Humans Contribute to the Damage Caused by Hurricanes
In light of the benefits hurricanes afford, it becomes reasonable to accept why God would create a world with hurricanes. It’s also important to recognize that in many instances, the pain and suffering and destruction of property caused by natural disasters is better understood as moral evil, not natural evil. To put it differently, human moral failings and lack of wisdom often cause pain and suffering, masquerading as natural evil.

This is certainly the case when it comes to the destruction caused by hurricanes. 

For example, in the United States, an increasing number of people have been relocating to coastal areas that, in turn, make them vulnerable to hurricanes, tropical storms, and tidal flooding. As a case in point, from 1970 to 2020 the population of Fort Meyers, FL (which was devastated by Hurricane Ian), grew by over 600 percent to a population of over 760,000 people. The people who took up residence in the Fort Meyers area (Southwest Florida) knowingly and willingly developed residential and commercial properties over the past five decades that were directly in harm’s way. Living and working in this region is attractive for several obvious reasons. But the consequence of settling in greater Southwest Florida is the inevitable property damage and loss of life from hurricanes.

In other words, much of the death, damage, and destruction caused by hurricanes isn’t God’s fault, but reflects a lack of wisdom on our part. In some instances, it reflects our moral failings because of our unwillingness to ensure that the poor among us are safe from the dangers associated with natural disasters.

Why Doesn’t God Just Step in and Prevent the Damage Caused by Hurricanes?
Assume that God routinely intervened to prevent the damage and devastation caused by hurricanes (and other natural disasters). By necessity, in each instance, he would have to violate the very laws of nature he put in place. According to Christian theology, God established these laws to govern the universe.

Disastrous events arise from the laws of nature. They are a by-product of these laws. The benefits that result from hurricanes, for example, also cause destruction. In this sense, we could think of natural disasters as the result of trade-offs. And trade-offs are inescapable in any universe governed by constant natural laws. 

So, why would God stand idly by and allow these consequences to unfurl? Why wouldn’t he violate the laws he put in place if it means that fewer people would suffer?

This violation would have several consequences. For example, cause-and-effect relationships would break down. Nature would be unpredictable. And if nature is unpredictable, science would be impossible.

The same would be true for moral laws. In a universe where God frequently intervenes, morality is impossible. In his classic work Faith and Reason, philosopher Ron Nash writes:

“The existence of a lawlike and orderly creation is a necessary condition for a number of divine objectives. . . . it is also reasonable to believe that God placed these free moral agents in a universe exhibiting order. One can hardly act intentionally and responsibly in an unpredictable environment.”4

Nash goes on to say:

“If the world were totally unpredictable, if we could never know from one moment to the next, what to expect from nature, both science and meaningful moral conduct would be impossible. While we often take the natural order for granted, this order and the predictability that accompanies it function as a necessary condition for free human action. . . . One reason people can be held accountable when they pull the trigger of a loaded gun is the predictability of what will follow such an action.”5

As Nash points out, unchanging natural laws make the universe (and its phenomena) intelligible. If the laws of nature changed from day to day—or at the Creator’s whim—it would be impossible to know anything about the world with any real confidence. The universe’s orderliness leads to predictability—the most important condition for a rational investigation of the world.

The universe’s intelligibility makes it possible for human beings to take advantage of God’s provision for us, made available within the creation. As we come to understand the laws of physics and chemistry, the composition of matter, and the nature of living systems, we can deploy that knowledge to benefit humanity and all life on Earth—through technology, agriculture, medicine, and conservation efforts. To put it in theological terms, the intelligibility of the universe allows us to unleash God’s providence as we discover and learn about the creation.

The universe’s intelligibility also makes it possible for us to understand phenomena that cause natural disasters and develop plans and technology to prevent—or, at least minimize—pain, suffering, and devastation.

Taking Human Responsibility
God created a world with hurricanes for good reasons. These powerful natural events benefit all life on Earth.

As human beings, we bear much of the responsibility for the harsh consequences we experience when natural disasters hit. Nevertheless, we become upset and question God’s existence and goodness when he doesn’t violate the laws of nature that he has put in place. Laws he designed to govern, sustain, and provide for the creation.

Still, God is merciful. And he expects the same from people who’ve been created in his image. Even though there’s much blame to go around, when a natural disaster hits, we have an obligation to care for those who suffer, to help them recover, and to do what we can to prevent the loss of life and property when future natural disasters hit. In this way, we serve as his agents to help bring peace and comfort to the hurting.

Full article at Reasons.org.

Resources

Benefits of Hurricanes

“What If There Were No Hurricanes?” by David Rogstad (article)

“Hurricanes and the Climate, Part 1” by Kevin Birdwell (article)

“Hurricanes and the Climate, Part 2” by Kevin Birdwell (article)

Is Natural Evil Really Moral Evil in Disguise?

“Natural Evil or Moral Evil?” by Fazale Rana (article)

“Are Tsunamis Natural or Moral Evil?” by Fazale Rana (article)

“Why Do People Die in Earthquakes? Blame Corrupt Governments, Not God” by Fazale Rana (article)

Endnotes

Jonathan Belles, “5 Things Hurricanes Can Do That Are Actually Good,” The Weather Channel, Hurricane Central, August 29, 2017.PRB, “In Harm’s Way: Hurricanes, Population Trends, and Environmental Change,” (October 20, 2004). PRB, “In Harm’s Way.”Ronald H. Nash,  Faith and Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith  (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1988), 200.Nash, Faith and Reason, 201.

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Bringing famous scientists back to life and listening to them talking about God and science

Bringing famous scientists back to life and  listening to them talking about God and science

For Louis Pasteur, I used free invented text ( see below). The others are 1:1 quotes

I am Louis Pasteur, French chemist and microbiologist renowned for my discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, the latter of which was named after me.  The American Chemical Society polled experts some time ago to identify the most beautiful experiment in the history of chemistry, they responded by giving the highest ranking to my separation of mirror-image molecular forms of tartaric acid, conducted just a year after I gained my doctorate at the Ecole Normale in Paris, in 1845. My experiments paved the way to the discipline of microbiology, as well as the way to the discovery, at the end of the nineteenth century, of nature’s molecular catalysts: enzymes, the key agents of biochemistry.  Living organisms make precise distinctions between chiral molecules. In all living systems, homochirality is produced and maintained by enzymes, which are themselves composed of homochiral amino acids that are specified through homochiral ribose, which is the backbone of DNA and produced via homochiral messenger RNA, homochiral ribosomal RNA, and homochiral transfer RNA. No one has ever found a plausible abiotic explanation for how life could have become exclusively homochiral. in life, the homochirality of amino acids, for example, is synthesized and achieved by specialized enzymes, called aminotransferase, which turn amino acids left-handed homochiral. In nature, however, they exist in racemic, mixed form, left, and right-handed. That is a major, unsolved abiogenesis problem, and has persistet since I discovered homochirality, over 170 years ago. I believe that life only comes from life.  Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him.

Pasteur’s Crystals and the Beauty of Simplicity
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2668-pasteurs-crystals-and-the-beauty-of-simplicity

Homochirality, a unresolved issue
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1309-homochirality

Charles Darwin quotes on God & religious beliefs
https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/evolution/charles_darwin/charles_darwin_quotes.html

The apostle Pauls’s image is based on paintings in the catacombs in Rome:
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1374-how-do-you-know-the-bible-is-true#6074

Based on these paintings, the Landeskriminalamt of North Rhine-Westphalia reconstructed the apostle Pauls’s face.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle

William Whewell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell

John Herschel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Herschel

Working Gears in Plant-Hopping Insect – by evolution, or design?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t3012-working-gears-in-plant-hopping-insect-by-evolution-or-design

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Yet Another Example of How Materialism Blinds its Proponents

Over at the Reasons.org post (see here), UB and JVL are having an exchange that illustrates perfectly how materialism blinds its proponents.

UB summarizes:

In 1948 did John Von Neumann take a page from Alan Turing’s 1933 Machine and give a series of lectures predicting that a quiescent symbol system and a set of independent constraints would be required for autonomous open-ended self replication? Yes. In 1953 did Francis Crick, along with Watson, discover the sequence structure of that symbol system, calling it a code? Yes. And in 1955 did he further predict that an unknown set of protein constraints would be found working in the system, establishing the necessary code relationships? Yes. In 1956-1958 did Mahlon Hoagland and Paul Zamecnik experimentally confirm Crick’s (and Von Neumann’s) predictions. Yes. In 1961, did Marshal Nirenberg have to demonstrate the first symbolic relationship in the gene system in order to know it? Yes. In 1969 did Howard Pattee set off on a five decade analysis of the gene system, confirming it as symbolic control of a dynamic process? Yes. Do the encoded descriptions of the constraints have to be physically coherent with all the other descriptions (i.e. self-referent) in order to successfully function? Yes. Is the gene system and written human language the only two systems known to science that operate in this way? Yes. Is the appearance of an encoded symbol system considered in science to be a universal correlate of intelligence? Yes.

All of UB’s claims are true beyond the slightest doubt. Is JVL convinced? Of course not.  He writes:

I’d say you made an error in how you choose to interpret the works of semiotic researchers as supporting ID when they, themselves, do not see their work in that way.

JVL’s point is that if UB is correct about the logical inferences of the researchers’ work, how could that conclusion have escaped the researchers themselves? It does not seem to have occurred to JVL that both things could be true at the same time.  In other words, UB could very well be correct about the logical conclusion compelled by the researchers’ observations, even though the researchers themselves did not come to that conclusion.  How is that possible? Simple. The researchers, like JVL, were blinded by their a priori metaphysical commitments. They literally could not see where their own work was leading.

Examples of researchers who could not see where their own work was heading abound in history. Does anyone think that Copernicus reached his heliocentric conclusions based on original research alone? Of course he didn’t. Men had been observing the planets and the stars for hundreds of years before Copernicus, and he had a library full of their work. All of these prior researchers concluded that their observations supported a geocentric cosmology. Copernicus’ genius was not in making new observations. His genius was in interpreting observations that had been made over the course of hundreds of years through a new paradigm (a paradigm inspired, by the way, by Copernicus’ conviction that God’s design had to be more elegant than the existing system described).

Now, let’s imagine if JVL were responding to Copernicus in 1543:

Copernicus: Ptolemy established the geocentric paradigm when he published the Almagest in 150 AD.  I do not dispute Ptolemy’s observations. I agree with them. Nor do I dispute the observations of all subsequent astronomers who have taken the geocentric view for granted for nearly 1,400 years. Again, I agree with those observations. But I have concluded that even though those observations were correct, the researchers did not reach the correct conclusion from those observations. The earth orbits the sun.

JVL: The researchers on whose observations you are relying did not reach the same conclusion that you do. Therefore, you must be wrong.

Sound farfetched? Not so fast. There were lots of JVLs back in the 16th century who said that very thing. Copernicus was correct. But that didn’t stop people like JVL from pushing back at him on the basis of authority. Indeed, the people who pushed back at Copernicus had an even better argument than JVL does today. After all, Copernicus was trying to upset a paradigm that had been taken for granted for well over a millennium. The authority weighing against him was overwhelming. But he was right and the prior authorities were wrong.

That is why science proceeds by challenging authority, not, as JVL would have it, by meekly submitting to it.

So yes, it is true as JVL says. The researchers UB cites did not understand the significance of their own observations, just as the researchers who preceded Copernicus (many of whom were brilliant men) did not understand the significance of their own observations.

JVL thinks he has a knockdown counter to UB: “The researchers you cite did not reach the same conclusion that you do.” He is wrong about that.

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At Big Think: The 4 fundamental meanings of “nothing” in science

All the things that surround and compose us didn’t always exist. But describing their origin depends on what ‘nothing’ means.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Most of us, when we talk about nothing, refer to a state where the thing we’re referring to doesn’t yet exist. But absolute nothingness, where space, time, and/or the laws of physics don’t exist, is only a philosophical construct, without physical meaning. Does the Universe truly create something from nothing? That depends on what your definition of nothing is, and which of the four definitions you’re using.

Ethan Siegel writes:

The Universe, as we see it today, sure is full of “stuff.” Everything we see, feel, and interact with is made of subatomic particles at the most fundamental level, and they’ve assembled into large structures — humans, planets, stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters — over the Universe’s history. They all obey the same laws of physics, and exist in the context of the same spacetime that everything occupies.

All of the things that we see and experience in the Universe today have only been around for a finite amount of time. The Universe didn’t always have galaxies, stars, or atoms, and so they must have arisen at some point. But what did they come from? While the obvious answer might seem to be “something,” that’s not necessarily true; they may have arisen from nothing. What does “nothing” mean to a scientist in that context? Depending on who you ask, you might get one of four different answers. Here’s what they all mean.

1.) A condition where the raw ingredients to create your “something” didn’t exist. You can’t have galaxies, stars, planets, or humans without the particles necessary to build them. Everything we know of and interact with is made of subatomic matter particles; those are the raw ingredients that our Universe as we know it is built out of.

But how did we wind up with a matter-filled Universe, instead of one with equal amounts of matter and antimatter? That’s the first scientific meaning of getting something from nothing.

The origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry — a puzzle known in the physics community as baryogenesis — is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics today.

The Universe is an amazing place, and the way it came to be today is something very much worth being thankful for. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

2.) Nothingness is the void of empty space. Perhaps you prefer a definition of nothing that contains literally “no things” in it at all. If you follow that line of thinking, then the first definition is inadequate: it clearly contains “something.” In order to achieve nothingness, you’ll have to get rid of every fundamental constituent of matter. Every quantum of radiation has to go. Every particle and antiparticle, from the ghostly neutrino to whatever dark matter is, must be removed.

But certain physical entities still remain, even under that highly restrictive and imaginative scenario. The laws of physics are still there, which means that quantum fields still permeate the Universe. That includes the electromagnetic field, the gravitational field, the Higgs field, and the fields arising from the nuclear forces. Spacetime is still there, governed by General Relativity. The fundamental constants are all still in place, all with the same values we observe them to have.

And, perhaps most importantly, the zero-point energy of space is still there, and it’s still at its current, positive, non-zero value. Today, this manifests itself as dark energy; before the Big Bang, this manifested in the form of cosmic inflation, whose end gave rise to the entire Universe. This is where the phrase, “a Universe from nothing” comes from. Even without matter or radiation of any type, this form of “nothing” still leads to a fascinating Universe.

3.) Nothingness as the ideal lowest-energy state possible for spacetime. Right now, our Universe has a zero-point energy, or an energy inherent to space itself, that’s at a positive, non-zero value. We do not know whether this is the true “ground state” of the Universe, i.e., the lowest energy state possible, or whether we can still go lower. It’s possible that we’re in a false vacuum state, and that the true vacuum, or the true lowest-energy state, will either be closer to zero or may actually go all the way to zero (or below).

To transition there from our current state would likely lead to a catastrophe that forever altered the Universe: a nightmare scenario known as vacuum decay. 

4.) Nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire Universe and the laws that govern it. This is the most extreme case of all: a case that steps out of reality — out of space, time, and physics itself — to imagine a Platonic ideal of nothingness. We can conceive of removing everything we can imagine: space, time, and the governing rules of reality. Physicists have no definition for anything here; this is pure philosophical nothingness.

In the context of physics, this creates a problem: we cannot make any sense of this sort of nothingness. We’d be compelled to assume that there is such a thing as a state that can exist outside of space and time, and that spacetime itself, as well as the rules that govern all of the physical entities we know of, can then emerge from this hypothesized, idealized state.

A number of questions arise immediately when we start thinking along these lines, with no definitive answers. They include:

How does spacetime emerge at a particular location or instant, when there’s no such thing as “space” (for location) or “time” (for instant)?Can we truly imagine something being “outside” the Universe if we don’t have space, or “having a beginning” if we don’t have time?From where would the rules governing particles and their interactions arise?

This final definition of nothing, while it certainly feels the most philosophically satisfying, may not have a meaning at all. It could just be a logical construct borne out of our inadequate human intuition.

Everything we know of certainly came from nothing. The key is to understand how.

Complete article at Big Think.

Evidence from cosmological observations, coupled with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and research into the physics of the singularity out of which the universe began most strongly argues that matter and energy, space and time all came into existence from “nothing,” as in the 4th definition. Since this true nothingness could not give rise to something, then the origin of our universe is consistent with that of a Creator whose existence is transcendent to space, time, and matter. The God of the Bible is described in this way as the Creator who also possesses the volition to decide to create the specific, contingent, finely-tuned physical parameters of our physical universe that allow life to flourish on planet Earth.

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At Nautilus: The Ancient Wisdom Stored in Trees

What very old trees can teach us about life, death, and time.

Jared Farmer writes:

What’s the oldest known living thing, and how do we know? Why should we even want to know? The explanation is a history of curiosity and care. It’s about our long-term relationships—spiritual and scientific—with long-lived plants, as long as long can be. It’s all about trees.

A tree is a plant that people call a tree—a term of dignity, not botany.

Although people construct the meaning of “trees” and assign age value to the vascular plants they call “ancient trees,” people cannot themselves create life that grows in place for centuries. Exclusively, solar-powered organisms enact that miracle. Among plants, there are ephemerals, annuals, biennials, perennials—and, beyond them all, perdurables, thousand-year woody life-forms.

INTO ETERNITY: Individual bristlecone pines, such as this one photographed in Utah, can live for close to 5,000 years. By sectioning off dying parts of themselves, they’re able to outlast the rise and fall of human empires. Photo by Anthony Heflin / Shutterstock.

As a rule, gymnosperms (flowerless plants with naked seeds) grow slower and live longer than angiosperms (flowering plants with fruits). Gymnosperms include ginkgo (a genus of one), cycads, and every kind of conifer—including yews, pines, firs, spruces, cedars, redwoods, cypresses, podocarps, and araucarias. All these lineages began hundreds of millions of years before the divergence of angiosperms. In effect, the newer, faster competition forced slow growers to retreat to exposed sites and poor soils, adverse niches conducive to oldness. Five thousand years is the approximate limit for nonclonal living under adversity. In plants, the potential for extreme longevity seems to be an evolutionary holdover from the deep past. Only about 25 plant species can, without human assistance, produce organisms that live beyond one millennium, and they are mainly conifers of primeval lineage. The cypress family contains the most perdurables, followed by the pine family. Many relict conifers hang on in limited, vulnerable habitats. The ice ages didn’t help their cause. In general, neither did humans, with their technologies of fire, domestication, and metalworking. Of some 600 conifer species, roughly one-third are endangered, with many genera reduced to a single species.

A gymnosperm doesn’t so much live long as die longer—or, live longer through dying. The interior dead wood—the heartwood—performs vital functions, mechanically and structurally. In comparison, the thin living outer layer is open to the elements. If damaged by an extrinsic event such as fire or lightning, this periderm doesn’t heal or scar like animal skin. Instead, new cambium covers the injury, absorbing it as one more historical record alongside its growth rings. Thus, an ancient conifer is neither timeless nor deathless, but timeful and deathful. A few special conifers such as bristlecone pine can live through sequential, sectorial deaths—compartmentalizing their external afflictions, shutting down, section by section, producing fertile cones for an extra millennium with the sustenance of a solitary strip of bark. The final cambium has vitality like the first. Longevity doesn’t suppress fecundity. Unlike animals, plants don’t accumulate proteins that lead to degenerative diseases.

The strongest correlation with long life (elongated death) is chemical. Longevous conifers produce copious resins—volatile, aromatic hydrocarbons like terpenes—that inhibit fungal rot and insect predation. Chemically, bristlecone is off the charts. Its high-elevation habitat offers additional protection from enemies, competitors, and fire, given that they tolerate dryness and cold. In habitats with chronic stress, conifers grow slower and stockier. Slow woody growth generates more lignin, another organic polymer with defensive properties. Stress-tolerant plants prioritize stability over size. Their stuntedness is equal parts adaptation and tribulation.

Regrowth is another pathway to oldness, an adaptation that appears in both gymnosperms and angiosperms. Certain single-boughed woody species—notably ginkgo, redwood, yew, olive—can recover from catastrophic damage, even the death of the bole. These trees never lose their ability to resprout and regenerate. At the organismal level, they do not senesce, meaning they don’t lose vitality with age. In theory, such a plant is internally capable of immortality, though some external force inevitably ends its life. With particular species and cultivars, humans can force rejuvenation through grafting, pollarding, or coppicing. Plants that normally die young may live long under horticultural care.

The price of longevity is immobility. At the organismal level, a plant cannot migrate like an animal. Its localism is total. Trees take what comes until something indomitable comes along. Extrinsic mortality may result from a distinct catastrophe, such as fire or gale, or multiple, cumulative stressors. There are limits beyond which even the most deeply rooted organisms can no longer function. Thresholds of water, salinity, and temperature are absolute thresholds.

Does a naturally occurring tree of great age have value in itself? Foresters and forest ecologists have long debated this question. A century ago, technicians used words like “overage,” “overmature,” and “decadent” to describe standing timber past its prime. Commercial managers saw tree life as individual and rotational, and considered postmerchantable growth to be a biological waste of time. Their business—international markets for wood products—encouraged uniformity in age and size. By contrast, forest ecologists studied the communities in, on, and under each tree—each a world in itself—and saw forest life as processual. The cycle of life required dead and dying trees. Today, foresters meet ecologists halfway: Old trees provide nutrient cycling, carbon storage, and other “ecosystem services.”

Perdurables are so much more than service providers. They are gift givers. They invite us to be fully human—truly sapient—by engaging our deepest faculties: to venerate, to analyze, to meditate. They expand our moral and temporal imaginations.

In mythical form, trees appear in creation stories, present at time’s beginning. In graphical form, they represent seasons, cycles, genealogies, algorithms, and systems of knowledge. An olden bough is a bridge between temporalities we feel and those we can only think. This is why Darwin imagined millions of years of evolutionary history as a wide-spreading Tree of Life. Most profoundly, select living conifers—ancient organisms of ancient ancestry—are incarnations of geohistory. Volcanic eruptions, magnetic field reversals, and solar proton events leave signatures in their wood. Through tree-ring science, we see how woody plants register cyclical time and linear time, Chronos (durations) and Kairos (moments), climate and weather, the cosmogenic and the planetary. As multitemporal beings—short, long, and deep time together, in living form—perdurables allow us to think about the Anthropocene without anthropocentrism. They grant emotional access to timefulness. 

Full article available at Nautilus.

The “adaptations” that contribute to trees’ longevity have the hallmarks of design, to enable the organism to weather various threats to its existence. The persistence of these living things is remarkable. The author’s description of some trees reminds me of Tolkien’s description of elves: immortal, but still subject to death by violence. Stewarding Earth’s resources by appreciating the value of these longest-lived keepers of history is commended to us by wisdom.

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At Phys.org: Planetary interiors in TRAPPIST-1 system could be affected by solar flares

Laurence Tognetti writes:

In a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, an international team of researchers led by the University of Cologne in Germany examined how solar flares erupted by the TRAPPIST-1 star could affect the interior heating of its orbiting exoplanets.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This study holds the potential to help us better understand how solar flares affect planetary evolution. The TRAPPIST-1 system is an exoplanetary system located approximately 39 light-years from Earth with at least seven potentially rocky exoplanets in orbit around a star that has 12 times less mass than our own sun. Since the parent star is much smaller than our own sun, then the the planetary orbits within the TRAPPIST-1 system are much smaller than our own solar system, as well. So, how can this study help us better understand the potential habitability of planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system?

“If we take Earth as our starting point, geological activity has shaped the entire surface of the planet, and geological activity is ultimately driven by planetary cooling,” said Dr. Dan Bower, who is a geophysicist at the Center for Space and Habitability at the University of Bern, and a co-author on the study.

“The Earth has radioactive elements in its interior which generate heat and enable geological processes to persist beyond 4.5 Gyr. However, the question arises if all planets require radioactive elements to drive geological processes that may establish a habitable surface environment that allows life to evolve. Although some other processes can generate heat inside a planet, they are often short-lived or require special circumstances, which would advance the hypothesis that geological activity (and habitable environments?) are possibly rare.”

What makes this study intriguing is that TRAPPIST-1 is known as an M-type star, which is much smaller than our sun and emits far less solar radiation.

“M stars (red dwarfs) are the most common star type in our stellar neighborhood, and TRAPPIST-1 has garnered significant attention since it was discovered to be orbited by seven Earth-sized planets,” explained Dr. Bower.

In our study, we investigated how stellar flares from TRAPPIST-1 impacted the interior heat budget of the orbiting planets and discovered that particularly for the planets closest to the star, interior heating due to ohmic dissipation from flares is significant and can drive geological activity. Furthermore, the process is long-lived and can persist over geological timescales, potentially enabling the surface environment to evolve towards habitable, or pass through a series of habitable states. Previously, the influence of stellar flares on habitability has mostly been deemed to be destructive, for example by stripping the protective atmosphere that enshrouds a planet. Our results present a different perspective, showing how flares may actually promote the establishment of a habitable near-surface environment.”

Note: Low-mass M stars (red dwarfs) are known to have elevated levels of ultraviolet flaring and stellar winds, which are deleterious for life (see the quotes below from an article by astrophysicist Hugh Ross).

The MTS team showed that for even the low mass stars that are the quietest at optical wavelengths, the flux of ultraviolet and soft x-rays is sufficient to erode the atmospheres of planets orbiting these stars that reside in the liquid water habitable zone.3 They also demonstrated that these stars emit powerful ultraviolet flares.4

The second recent finding was the result of a detailed three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic modeling of the impact of the stellar wind from the TRAPPIST-1 star on its system of seven planets. The team of five astronomers who calculated the model showed that the TRAPPIST-1 planets experience a stellar wind pressure between 1,000 and 100,000 times greater than the solar wind pressure on Earth.7 They also established that for all plausible planetary magnetic field strengths, the magnetospheres of the TRAPPIST-1 planets would be so compressed that they would not prevent the direct flow of stellar wind particles upon the planetary atmospheres. Consequently, all the TRAPPIST-1 planets have had their atmospheres and surface water stripped away.

It seems that by saying, “Our results present a different perspective, showing how flares may actually promote the establishment of a habitable near-surface environment,” the researchers are closing their eyes to the unsuitable conditions for life on the TRAPPIST-1 planets and overstating any beneficial outcome of high levels of UV flaring. It’s worth realizing that if the energy from stellar flaring is sufficient to noticeably heat the entire planet, it’s more than enough to “cook its goose.”

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UB’s notes on autocatalytic reaction sets vs languages and symbol systems

UB writes:

UB, only way thread, 164: >>My apologies to Origenes, he had asked for my comment, but I was away . . . . I am no expert of course, but thank you for asking me to comment. Frankly you didn’t need my opinion anyway. When you ask “What is the error in supposing something?” you likely already know there is no there there. And someone seriously asking you (like some odd prosecution of your logic) to enumerate what exactly is the biological error or the chemical error in the proposition of something that has never before been seen or recorded in either biology or chemistry — well whatever.

Deacon begins by asking the question, what is necessary and sufficient to treat a molecule as a sign. He is 50 to 150 years late on that question (depending on how one wants to look at it). In any case (setting aside for the moment his reliance on “uncharacterized” chemistry) he doesn’t get to where he is going, and he tells you as much in his Conclusions. He says his exercise “falls well short” of the origin of the code, but he reckons that his exercise offers something more basic. Regardless of what one might feel about proposing unknown chemistry as a “proof of principle”, his paper doesn’t offer the pathway implied by the title of the paper (a title that Deacon chose to honor the work of Howard Pattee, How does a molecule become a message Pattee, 1969). From my perspective, even with the admitted reliance on unknown chemistry, Deacon still doesn’t get from dynamics to descriptions and doesn’t shed any particular light on the problem.

I might suggest you look at Howard Pattee’s own response to Deacon’s paper. I do not know where it is available or if it is behind a paywall somewhere, but I have a copy here in front of me. It has a little bit of a cool tone to it. He begins the paper with (first sentence) “Deacon speculates on the origin of interpretation of signs using autocatalytic origin of life models and Peircean terminology” and in the very next sentence takes a rather direct contrary position.

He begins by offering some background:

The focus of my paper “How does a molecule become a message?” (Pattee 1969) that Deacon (2021) has honored, was a search for the simplest language in which messages were both heritable and open-ended. I was trying to satisfy Von Neumann’s condition for evolvable self-replication. He argued that it is necessary to have a separate non-dynamic description that (1) resides in memory, (2) can be copied, and (3) can instruct a dynamic universal constructor. (I replaced “description” with “message” simply for alliteration.) I concluded (Pattee 1969, 8): “A molecule becomes a message only in the context of a larger system of physical constraints which I have called a ‘language’ in analogy to our normal usage of the concept of message.” A language consists of a small, fixed set of symbols (an alphabet) and rules (a grammar) in which the symbols can be catenated indefinitely to produce an unlimited number of meaningful or functional sequences (messages).

… and then goes on to offer some ancillary corrections before addressing Deacons model in full (i.e. “Before discussing Deacon’s main thesis, I need to respond to his misleading history of molecular biology”). He then discusses the (three-dimensional) structuralist and the (one-dimensional) informationalist camps in the OoL field, and then under the heading “Deacon’s Model” he concludes:

There are three well-known problems with autocatalytic cycle models: (1) limited information capacity (What are the symbol vehicles?), (2) instability of multiple dynamic cycles (error catastrophe), and (3) no known transition to the present nucleic acid-to-protein genetic code. The only known way to mitigate problems (1) and (2) is to solve (3), that is, to transition from dynamic catalysts to a symbol-code-construction system. Deacon recognizes these problems and his solution to (3) is to “offload” autogen catalyst information to RNA-like template molecules:

“Offloading (or transfer of constraints) is afforded because complementary structural similarities between catalysts and regions of the template molecule facilitate catalyst binding in a particular order that by virtue of their positional correlations biases their interaction probabilities.”

Deacon’s offloading is the inverse of the Central Dogma’s information flow from inactive one-dimensional sequences to three-dimensional active catalysts. Deacon’s offloading information flow is from three-dimensional active catalysts to one-dimensional inactive sequences. His offloading speculations require many vague chemical steps with unknown probabilities of abiotic occurrence. Deacon claims that these are “chemically realistic” steps, but he gives no example or evidence of this inverse process. Adding to the chemical vagueness of offloading, Deacon applies the Peircean vocabulary, icon, index, and symbol, and the immediate, dynamic and final interpretants. This Peircean terminology does not help explain or support a chemistry of offloading, nor does it make clearer how molecules become signs.

It appears to me that speculation of unknown chemistry, mixed with language like “proofs”, is an recognizable problem among both experts and laypeople alike.

Note: Just so no one is mistaken, Howard Pattee is a unguided origin of life proponent, but he strongly believes that the speculation of answers must have a foot in chemical and physical reality. In other words, he believes that genetic symbols have their grounding directly in the folded proteins they specify, but also acknowledges that the triadic sign-relationship (symbol, constraint, referent) is required for the specification of those proteins from a transcribable memory. He doesn’t pretend to have an answer to the problem of the transition from dynamics to descriptions, and he doesn’t write papers like Terrance Deacon.

All of this is highly relevant and worth being on headlined record.

We may note from Wikipedia’s confessions:

In information theory and computer science, a code is usually considered as an algorithm that uniquely represents symbols from some source alphabet, by encoded strings, which may be in some other target alphabet. An extension of the code for representing sequences of symbols over the source alphabet is obtained by concatenating the encoded strings.

Before giving a mathematically precise definition, this is a brief example. The mapping

C = { a ↦ 0 , b ↦ 01 , c ↦ 011 }

is a code, whose source alphabet is the set { a , b , c } and whose target alphabet is the set { 0 , 1 }. Using the extension of the code, the encoded string 0011001 can be grouped into codewords as 0 011 0 01, and these in turn can be decoded to the sequence of source symbols acab.

Using terms from formal language theory, the precise mathematical definition of this concept is as follows:

let S and T be two finite sets, called the source and target alphabets, respectively.

A code C : S → T∗ is a total function mapping each symbol from S to a sequence of symbols over T.

The extension C′ of C, is a homomorphism of S∗ into T∗ , which naturally maps each sequence of source symbols to a sequence of target symbols.

In short, as Wikipedia noted, a code is “a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication channel or storage in a storage medium.”

The example of a storage medium that pops up with the link on “code medium”? DNA:

More from Lehninger:

And, from Crick, in his March 19, 1953 letter to his son, notice, how in the first three sentences on p. 5 of this $6 million letter, he shifts from “is like a code” to “is a code”:

Crick’s letter

Languages, of course, are symbolic systems that express meaningful, functional information through the organisation of representative elements. These can be sounds, glyphs, gestures and more.

Thanks to UB, we have food for thought. END

PS, regrettably, as JVL injected a personality, I think I must also headline UB’s response to the accusation of closed mindedness:

JVL: “ I’m not sure Upright BiPed will grace us with his opinion. He tends to avoid having to admit he might be wrong.

JVL, I gave you researcher’s names, the dates of experiments, and the experimental results. You were forced to agree with all of it. If you’d now like to assert that I’ve made an error in that history, by all means, point it out. I don’t believe you can, and I don’t believe you will. It has to be remembered here that your core position is that the design inference at the origin of life — clearly recorded in the history of science and experiment — is summarily invalidated because the proponents of an unguided OoL simply don’t believe it. Your position (a well-known logical fallacy) deliberately separates conclusions from evidence and destroys science as a methodological approach to knowledge.

I trust, we can now move on to address substance on the merits, instead.

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Tour further replies to his critics

Here:

Let’s add a clip:

And:

Notice the balance of substance vs personalities. END

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