Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 500

No, seriously: Physicist longs for explanation of the arrow of time that explains as much as Darwin does

passage of time, imaged/S. Sepp

A theoretical physicist seeks to explain the low entropy of the universe’s initial state:

A common assumption among scientists today is simply that, for some as yet unknown, possibly quantum-mechanical reason, the universe just did begin in such a state. This is the “past hypothesis.” It invokes the fact that all standard explanations in physics involve both laws and initial conditions: The outcome of any laboratory experiment is determined both by laws and by the conditions under which it is started. The past hypothesis extends this traditional way of thinking to the whole universe. It relies on law and on an initial condition.

But the reliance on an unexplained initial condition to explain two of the most striking features of the universe—the growth of entropy around us alongside the steady growth of structure in the universe at large—leaves Penrose and others like myself dissatisfied. What drives scientists is the desire to explain and understand phenomena. We all want to emulate the way Charles Darwin explained so much with just four words: evolution by natural selection.Julian Barbour, “The Mystery of Time’s Arrow” at Nautilus

Barbour and his colleagues have come up with theory for the arrow of time based on law alone, which he goes on to explain.

It is interesting that he invokes Darwin, whose theory is based on randomness alone (natural selection acting on random mutations).

Actually, Darwin and his followers simply imposed a vision on the natural world: In their vision, masses of complex, specified information simply arise naturally in the struggle among life forms, though we have yet to identify a single example. (The equivalent of the multiverse in physics?)

Evolutionary biologists are now quick to tell us that Darwinism is passé, even as they continue to pay homage to its enforcers. Darwin’s followers’ real genius has been cultural: They harnessed a social revolution against the idea of cosmic order and called it biology.

Darwinism seems like an explanation because it is an interpretation of life the way adherents understand it—which is a rather different enterprise from an explanation in science.

It will be interesting to see how Barbour’s thesis fares, considering his choice of patron.

See also: Arrow of time points to missing dark matter

Cosmologist tells us how time got its arrow Something is wrong here. Just recording, just recording…

Studying time’s arrow with philosophers

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Did time’s arrow originate in a quantum source?

Is There Any New Research Worth Noting On The One-Directional Dimension Of Time?

and

One theory on the origin of time: It’s all in our heads

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Sabine Hossenfelder: Can gravitational wave interferometers tell us if we live in a hologram universe?

Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, That is, a universe that is actually just a reflection of one with more dimensions.

Maybe recently developed techniques can do that, she says, but the history she recounts is not promising:

The major problem with using holographic arguments for interferometers is that you need to specify what surface you are talking about on which the information is supposedly encoded. But the moment you define the surface you are in conflict with the observer-independence of Special Relativity. That’s the issue Hogan ran into, and ultimately was not able to resolve.

Verlinde and Zurek circumvent this problem by speaking not about a volume of space and its surface, but about a volume of space-time (a “causal diamond”) and its surface. Then they calculate the amount of fluctuations that a light-ray accumulates when it travels back and forth between the two arms of the interferometer…

The authors of the paper have been very patient in explaining their idea to me, but at least so far I have not been able to sort out my confusion about this. I hope that one of their future publications will lay this out in more detail. The present paper also does not contain quantitative predictions. This too, I assume, will follow in a future publication.

But if Hogan’s null result demonstrates anything, it is that we need solid theoretical predictions to know where to search for evidence of new phenomena. In the foundations of physics, the days when “just look” was a promising strategy are over. Sabine Hossenfelder, “Is the universe a hologram? Gravitational wave interferometers may tell us.” at BackRe(Action)

It’s actually a good thing if theses in physics don’t gain currency just because they make good TED talks. That could be part of their problem.

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See also: How is the hologram universe coming?

Astrophysicist Niayesh Afshordi Explains The Holograph Universe To Suzan Mazur At Oscillations

and

“Substantial evidence” claimed for universe as a hologram

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Learning more about the asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs

It was “six miles wide” and when it hit 66 million years ago, abruptly ending the Cretaceous period, it hollowed out a crater 18 miles deep. But that’s not all:

Some of the ejecta escaped Earth’s gravitational pull and went into irregular orbits around the sun. Over millions of years, bits of it found their way to other planets and moons in the solar system. Mars was eventually strewn with the debris—just as pieces of Mars, knocked aloft by ancient asteroid impacts, have been found on Earth. A 2013 study in the journal Astrobiology estimated that tens of thousands of pounds of impact rubble may have landed on Titan, a moon of Saturn, and on Europa and Callisto, which orbit Jupiter—three satellites that scientists believe may have promising habitats for life. Mathematical models indicate that at least some of this vagabond debris still harbored living microbes. The asteroid may have sown life throughout the solar system, even as it ravaged life on Earth.

The asteroid was vaporized on impact. Its substance, mingling with vaporized Earth rock, formed a fiery plume, which reached halfway to the moon before collapsing in a pillar of incandescent dust. Computer models suggest that the atmosphere within fifteen hundred miles of ground zero became red hot from the debris storm, triggering gigantic forest fires. As the Earth rotated, the airborne material converged at the opposite side of the planet, where it fell and set fire to the entire Indian subcontinent. Measurements of the layer of ash and soot that eventually coated the Earth indicate that fires consumed about seventy per cent of the world’s forests. Meanwhile, giant tsunamis resulting from the impact churned across the Gulf of Mexico, tearing up coastlines, sometimes peeling up hundreds of feet of rock, pushing debris inland and then sucking it back out into deep water, leaving jumbled deposits that oilmen sometimes encounter in the course of deep-sea drilling.Douglas Preston, “The day the dinosaurs died” at New Yorker

If the ejecta traveled so far, perhaps crises of this type might help explain some of the odd genomes we encounter.

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One approach to the extinction is “dino diminuendo” — they were dying out anyway; the asteroid deep-sixed them much quicker. See, for example:

Smithsonian: The Asteroid Strike Was Only One Factor In Dinosaur Extinction

The Atlantic: “Nastiest feud in science” erupts over dinosaur extinction theory

In the past, the field has been littered with speculations such as that dinosaurs were dumber than mammals and did not look after their young. But we now know that some dinosaurs did look after their young and that the capacity to do so is much older than formerly thought. Also that placental mammals are not uniformly smarter than all other life forms.

Extinction: Had the dinosaurs been dying out before the big K-T extinction?

Dino diminuendo (They were dying out before the asteroid hit.) That might help account for why all dinosaurs disappeared but only a large proportion of other vertebrates.

Smoking did not kill the dinosaurs, but dark matter might have contributed

Dinosaurs doomed by egg-laying?

Size helped largest dinos survive longer?

Do mass extinctions happen every 26 million years or so?

Study: Two years’ darkness provides clue to total dinosaur extinction

and

We can’t understand evolution without understanding stasis and extinction

What we think it must have been like:

and

Also:

(You don’t need to work today, do you?)

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Was a theory of everything bound to fail?

In response to Sabine Hossenfelder’s recent book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, Mathematical physicist Wolfgang Smith raises a fundamental question:

One is reminded of Goethe’s memorable dictum “In der Beschränkung zeigt sich der Meister”: could it be that the prowess of science derives ultimately from its Beschränkung, its limitation? And does this not, finally, entail that the quest for a “theory of everything” is bound to fail? For my part, I am persuaded that such is indeed the case: in the final count, physics “works” precisely because it is not a “theory of everything.”

The reason why “no one understands quantum theory” resides thus in the measuring problem. And what renders this conundrum insoluble to the physicist is the fact that “strictly speaking, within quantum theory itself there is no decoherence.” Here we have it: the very Beschränkung, it turns out, which bestows upon the physicist his sovereign power to comprehend the physical universe, renders the measuring problem insoluble — i.e., to the physicist! — by restricting his vision to the realm of the physical as such. Wolfgang Smith, “Lost in Math: The Particle Physics Quandary” at Philo-Sophia Initiative

It’s worth considering: A theory of everything might not be possible. If reality truly is constructed of disparate natures, no theory from inside would explain it all.

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham Follow UD News at Twitter!

See also: Sabine Hossenfelder: How you can help science out of a rut

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Forbes’ cosmology commentator: Maybe we ARE alone

Alien tripod by Alvim Corréa, 1906 French edition of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds”

Given that there isn’t any evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations:

The answers may be out there, but we must remember the most conservative possibility of all. In all the Universe, until we have evidence to the contrary, the only example of life might be us. Ethan Siegel, “What If It’s Just Us?” at Forbes

He goes through the usual potted history of life on Earth, omitting (they always do) to notice that the human mind is a quite different sort of development than, say, sexual reproduction or flight. It;s the mind that prompts us to even ask questions about ET, yet no one has any idea what consciousness even is.

We’ll see what happens. Most people in his position go back to inventing the space aliens again.

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See also: Tales of an invented god

and

What Taragana

Pest insect gets plants to transmit false information to other plants

Whitefly/ CC BY-SA 3.0

The sapsucking pest, well known to tomato gardeners as the whitefly (Bemisia tabaci,), causes plants to emit odors that warn other plants against pests other than insects:

Plant defense chemistry often poses this one-or-the-other dilemma. To put up a good fight against insects, plants typically rev up a system of defenses controlled by the hormone jasmonic acid, or JA. But throwing that system into full gear suppresses the defenses controlled by salicylic acid, SA, which are more useful against pathogens.

The pathogen prep may not be a complete waste of effort for the plants. Whiteflies function like mosquitoes for plants, spreading viruses and other diseases. Even drops of whitefly pee, sometimes called honeydew, attract sooty mold.Susan Milius, “A major crop pest can make tomato plants lie to their neighbors” at ScienceNews

Of course, the strategy mainly benefits the whitefly. The article goes on to talk about information based strategies to fight back. Will that be a key part of pest control in the future? A war of information?

The world of life is probably mostly information, not matter. And what is the source of information?

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See also: See also: Plants turn out to have a “nervous system” It’s constructed differently from an animal one.

and

Can plants be as smart as animals? Seeking to thrive and grow, plants communicate extensively, without a mind or a brain

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The internet speeded up plagiarism without changing it

And AI is not a simple fix:

Are sophisticated programs to detect plagiarism the long-sought answer? Not really, according to an analyst of fifteen years’ experience with them.

Deborah Weber-Wolff notes that algorithm-based systems produce results that are “are often hard to interpret, difficult to navigate, and sometimes just wrong,” including false positives and false negatives. But a second opinion is rarely sought. If the system produces an “originality score,” evaluators may ignore signals of plagiarism that were not detected by the algorithm, such as an abrupt change in style. Mind Matters

We’re still looking for the system that is smarter than anyone who will come along and invent another, smarter system.

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See also: AI dangers that are not fake news: Total surveillance should worry us more than an AI news writing machine Those who control a new communications technology typically have a great advantage over those who don’t—whether that technology is an alphabet, an abacus, a printing press, a telegraph, a telephone, or a software communications program.

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Human experience is what makes sense of the written word

If thoughts were data, machines could write:

He makes another point that is often drowned out by deafening AI hype: Most such technical advances appropriate the low-paid labor of countless human beings. For example, thousands of stories online are blended to produce an algorithm that spits out copy in response to opening sentences fed to it. Steven Poole ripostes, “When a human writer commits plagiarism, that is a serious matter. But when humans get together and write a computer program that commits plagiarism, that is progress.”

This is also true of AI translation and machine vision. Because all these areas are so new, the right questions about fair distribution of social rewards have yet to be asked. Mind Matters

The fact that creativity does not follow computational rules may well be a ceiling for machine writing and it is not made of glass.

See also: AI can write novels and screenplays better than the pros! #2 in Top Ten AI hypes of 2018 (Robert J. Marks)

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Burning a brick in Fluorine — physical/chemical properties in action

In the demonstration below, a bit of acetone has been put on the corner of the brick to get the process started:

This demonstrates the remarkable effects of inherent, embedded, intelligible structural, quantitative properties of fluorine and other elements and molecules.

With lesser materials, we can see similar, even more spectacular effects:

Notice, the table of standard electrode potentials of selected ions:

HT, savvy-chemist blog

A world that exhibits lawlike, reliable properties that are structural and/or quantitative shows how such properties are integrated into the fabric or architecture of being. END

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Rocks on super-Earths may flow too close to the surface for life

types of planets Kepler found/NAA

Thstis the “toffee planets” hypothesis:

Super Earths—sometimes rocky exoplanets that are bigger than our pale blue dot but smaller than massive ice giants such as Neptune—have comparatively strong gravitational fields. Thanks to this extreme gravity, some scientists suspect, rocks on such worlds would flow far closer to the surface.

This arrangement would mean rocks that snap, fracture and break might only be found in thin veneers on these exoplanets’ crust. If these rocky super Earths have thick, Venus-like atmospheres or are especially close to their parent star, they might exhibit no familiarly brittle geology at their surface at all. Instead, says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at North Carolina State University and lead author of a study on the Super Earths, their surface rocks would be strangely malleable over long timescales, flowing a bit like the stretchy, sugary confections on offer in any earthly candy shop.Robin George Andrews, ““Toffee Planets” Hint at Earth’s Cosmic Rarity” at Scientific American

It could be worse:

Things have become even more complicated with the discovery by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) of a brand-new confirmed rocky super Earth, HD 213885b. Byrne’s calculations suggest that this newfound world might be a toffee planet, with a brittle layer just more than two miles thick. The problem is that the radiation from HD 213885b’s parent star is akin to that of 55 Cancri e, another known rocky super Earth whose dayside is entirely molten.

“If HD 213885b is similarly hot, then any lack of rigidity at the surface won’t be from relatively higher surface gravity so much as the floor being lava,” Byrne says. It’s not quite a toffee planet, then, but something very close.

Mayp1 be, he suggests, “fondue planets” are a thing, too.Robin George Andrews, ““Toffee Planets” Hint at Earth’s Cosmic Rarity” at Scientific American

Wherever you thought you were on that planet, you would soon be somewhere else. But it’s not really anywhere, is it? Advice: Stay home on solid Earth.

See also: Hugh Ross: The fine-tuning that enabled our life-friendly moon creates discomfort

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