Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 66

Fun! Are these the most realistic CGI dinosaurs ever?

Gizmodo says they are:

… Now, I suggest you compare all that you’ve seen about dinosaurs before to Apple TV+’s newest five-part series, Prehistoric Planet, which shows the true lives of dinosaurs as they were 66 million years ago, to our best current understanding.

There are reptiles that need back scratches, hadrosaurs harried by mosquitos, and pterosaurs stressed out about finding a mate. In other words, Prehistoric Planet makes it apparent how similar (in some ways) dinosaurs are to us. And it makes those depictions super-real using top-of-the-line CGI and the work of over 1,500 people, including paleoartists, CGI artists, paleontologists, cinematographers, and more (like Sir David Attenborough, who narrated the series).

Isaac Schultz, “These 13 Images Depict the Most Realistic CGI Dinosaurs Ever” at Gizmodo (May 29, 2022)

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Researchers: How plate tectonics, mountains and deep-sea sediments have maintained Earth’s ‘Goldilocks’ climate

In an article summarized at The Conversation, recent research affirms the suite of conditions involving plate tectonics and resultant mountain-building, coupled with erosion and volcanic activity, that has helped to maintain a habitable climate on our planet.

For hundreds of millions of years, Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled with natural fluctuations in the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere.

Our new research published in Nature, shows how tectonic plates, volcanoes, eroding mountains and seabed sediment have controlled Earth’s climate in the geological past. Harnessing these processes may play a part in maintaining the “Goldilocks” climate our planet has enjoyed.

To better understand how tectonic plates store, move and emit carbon, we built a computer model of the tectonic “carbon conveyor belt”.

The carbon conveyor belt

Tectonic processes release carbon into the atmosphere at mid-ocean ridges – where two plates are moving away from each other – allowing magma to rise to the surface and create new ocean crust.

At the same time, at ocean trenches – where two plates converge – plates are pulled down and recycled back into the deep Earth. On their way down they carry carbon back into the Earth’s interior, but also release some CO₂ via volcanic activity.

The Earth’s tectonic carbon conveyor belt shifts massive amounts of carbon between the deep Earth and the surface, from mid-ocean ridges to subduction zones, where oceanic plates carrying deep-sea sediments are recycled back into the Earth’s interior. The processes involved play a pivotal role in Earth’s climate and habitability.  Author provided image.

Our model shows that the Cretaceous hothouse climate was caused by very fast-moving tectonic plates, which dramatically increased CO₂ emissions from mid-ocean ridges.

In the transition to the Cenozoic icehouse climate tectonic plate movement slowed down and volcanic CO₂ emissions began to fall. But to our surprise, we discovered a more complex mechanism hidden in the conveyor belt system involving mountain building, continental erosion and burial of the remains of miscroscopic organisms on the seafloor.

The hidden cooling effect of slowing tectonic plates in the Cenozoic

Tectonic plates slow down due to collisions, which in turn leads to mountain building, such as the Himalayas and the Alps formed over the last 50 million years. This should have reduced volcanic CO₂ emissions but instead our carbon conveyor belt model revealed increased emissions.

We tracked their source to carbon-rich deep-sea sediments being pushed downwards to feed volcanoes, increasing CO₂ emissions and cancelling out the effect of slowing plates.

So what exactly was the mechanism responsible for the drop in atmospheric CO₂?

The answer lies in the mountains that were responsible for slowing down the plates in the first place and in carbon storage in the deep sea.

As soon as mountains form, they start being eroded. Rainwater containing CO₂ reacts with a range of mountain rocks, breaking them down. Rivers carry the dissolved minerals into the sea. Marine organisms then use the dissolved products to build their shells, which ultimately become a part of carbon-rich marine sediments.

As new mountain chains formed, more rocks were eroded, speeding up this process. Massive amounts of CO₂ were stored away, and the planet cooled, even though some of these sediments were subducted with their carbon degassing via arc volcanoes.

This recent research adds another component to effectiveness of the well-known carbonate-silicate cycle, one of many design features of our planet that set Earth apart as uniquely suitable for sustaining life.

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How Can Black Holes Point to the Creator?

Astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink reminds us that the theoretical prediction of black holes and their subsequent discovery highlights the comprehensibility of the universe by human minds–even relating to phenomena far beyond anything in our experience.

In an interview with Christianity Today, titled, “How Black Holes Radiate God’s Glory“, Zweerink addresses physics and profound questions relating to these mysterious and extreme end-states of massive stars.

Dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 seen through the NASA Hubble Space Telescope. The bright region at the center, surrounded by pink clouds and dark dust lanes, indicates the location of the galaxy’s massive black hole. Image: Science: NASA, ESA, Zachary Schutte (XGI), Amy Reines (XGI) / Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

There has been a burst of research on black holes in recent days. Three scholars from Norway, Brazil, and Canada say they’ve found the “smoking gun for the quantum structure of black hole horizons” in gravitational wave echoes. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reports evidence black holes are devouring thousands of stars. And two more scholars from the United Kingdom and the United States have proposed that “quantum hair” can resolve the black hole paradox first described by theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

According to Reasons to Believe astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink, the new research raises new questions, showing us that “the more we learn, the more we realize how much more there is to learn.” CT asked him why physics isn’t finished and what that can teach Christians who, like the psalmist, “consider your heavens, the work of your fingers” (Ps. 8:3).

What do black holes tell us about God?

It’s not like, “Black holes, therefore God.” But the theory of the universe that we have—the theory that said black holes should exist before anyone knew to even think about them—is predicated on the idea that our universe ought to be understandable. It ought to be coherent. It ought to be the same out in the distant reaches of the universe as it is here.

That points to the Creator. That tells us something about the Creator.

Look at how we get to black holes in the first place. Albert Einstein, back in 1915, recognized that as you move through the universe, from big stuff to small stuff and very fast stuff to very slow stuff, the laws of physics seemed to change. The way electromagnetism behaved was different from the way gravity behaved, and Einstein looked at that and said that doesn’t make sense. The laws of physics ought to be the same no matter how you look at them.

It was that philosophical idea that led him to develop his general theory of relativity. And if general relativity is right, then there should be these things called black holes.

The insight or genius of general relatively is that space and time, instead of being abstractions or kind of empty spaces, are now understood as these dynamic quantities. As energy moves through space and time, it actually warps space and time, and they could become so warped that they would rupture. If you get a star that’s massive enough, the gravitational pull is so strong that it collapses on itself and that’s a black hole. So people started thinking about black holes theoretically and eventually found evidence. We even found that in the center of our galaxy there is this massive black hole.

The connection here is that when we look at creation, we expect to see an orderly, coherent creation. For Einstein, it is a philosophical idea that ultimately derives from the notion that there is a unified order. And that’s what you would expect if there is a God who created it.

Zweerink addresses more questions in the interview and ends with these thoughts:

Every time we solve one of these big questions and put the answer out there, we run into a whole new set of questions that we didn’t know existed! Compare our understanding of the universe now to when Isaac Newton was talking about his theory of gravity. We know so much more about what’s going on than we did back then. But there are also so many more questions that we don’t have answers to.

It’s almost like, the more we learn, the more we realize how much more there is to learn. You can start to see that we will never exhaust this. We’re going to be able to study creation forever. There will be new questions that we haven’t even thought to ask.

And this, again, points to the Creator. That’s where I see a connection to theology. Because that same thing is true about studying God’s revelation and Scripture and God. We’ve got a lot of the big picture in place, but there are also new questions and we will never be done. We will never exhaust the subject. That moves me personally to awe and to want to worship.

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At Mind Matters News: Do ants think? Yes, they do — but they think like computers

Computer programmers have adapted some ant problem-solving methods to software programs (but without the need for complex chemical scents):

Navigation expert Eric Cassell, author of Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts (2021), offers some insights in the book into how ants organize themselves using what amount to algorithms, without any central command…

Ants are remarkably consistent in their lifestyle: All of the roughly 11,000 species of ants live in groups, large or small. There are no known solitary ants. Living in groups requires a social group lifestyle that includes “agriculture, territorial wars, slavery, division of labor, castes, consensus building, cities, and a symbolic language.” (p. 85) How is this to be managed by ants with very small brains (200,000 to 250,000 neurons*) and very limited individuality? …

Ants communicate mainly by pheromones, scents that provide information. In their book, The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies (2008), Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson (1929–2021) identified twelve areas of communication mediated by pheromones, including “alarm, attraction, recruitment, grooming, feeding, exchange of fluids and solid particles, group effect, recognition of nestmates, caste determination, control of other individuals competing for reproduction, territoriality, and sexual communication” (p. 90). What makes pheromones a complex communication system is that most emissions are of several pheromones mingled rather than one only. Some signals are recognized by all ants in the vicinity, others only by the species, and others are specific to a colony. One evolutionary biologist describes the processing of pheromones as equivalent to AND gates and STOP in a computer system. (p. 91). So the ant is not so much thinking what to do as responding to an AI-like signal.

News, “Do ants think? Yes, they do — but they think like computers” at Mind Matters News (May 30, 2022)

Ant researcher Deborah M. Gordon calls it the … aw, you guessed! … the anternet.

Takehome: Navigation expert Eric Cassell points out that algorithms have made the ant one of the most successful insects ever, both in numbers and complexity. Computer programmers use some of the same basic structures.

You may also wish to read: How do insects use their very small brains to think clearly? How do they engage in complex behaviour with only 100,000 to a million neurons? Researchers are finding that insects have a number of strategies for making the most of comparatively few neurons to enable complex behavior.

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At Mind Matters News: Information theory: Evolution as the transfer of information

Information follows different rules from matter and energy, which might change the way we see evolution:

A new model of evolution relies on information theory, which is itself interesting because information is governed by different rules from matter and energy. For example, it is created by ruling out possibilities, it is relational, not causal, and it is not reduced by being shared. It is also immaterial. For example, Einstein’s bomb equation, e = mc2, had a huge impact on the world but by itself, it is an immaterial idea.

Information can be stripped of all matter and appear in a variety of media: I could phone and tell you the winning lottery number or send you an email or a letter about it or discuss it on radio or TV. Vastly different material media; same information.

Reinterpreting evolution as a transfer of information will lead to both different questions and different answers.

The authors of the paper, marine researcher Rasmus Skern-Mauritzen and forester Thomas Nygaard Mikkelsen make clear that they understand information to be immaterial.

News, “Information theory: Evolution as the transfer of information” at Mind Matters News (May 29, 2022)

The is open access.

Takehome: A pair of researchers have introduced an Information Continuum Model of Evolution (ICM) which takes into account the fact that information is immaterial.

You may also wish to read: Why AI can’t save us from ourselves — if evolution is any guide Famous evolutionary theorist E. O. Wilson’s reflections help us understand. If selfishness and a sense of superiority are really the driving force of humanity than AI could only be a source of problems. (J. R. Miller)

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From SciTech Daily: Don’t Miss Prime Viewing of Mars-Jupiter Conjunction

The next couple of nights will offer early-morning sky-watchers the opportunity to view our nearest planetary neighbors (going outward from the sun) appearing to be separated by only about the width of a full moon. The lunar phase will be new on May 30th, so moonlight will not interfere with viewing the Mars-Jupiter conjunction (weather conditions, on the other hand…)

Superimposed Hubble images of Jupiter and Mars. Credit: Jupiter: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), Mars: NASA/ESA, J. Bell (Cornell U.) and M. Wolff (SSI)

Rick Smith, of NASA, writes:

Most stargazers will have a prime viewing opportunity to observe the planets Jupiter and Mars draw incredibly close in the predawn sky on the nights of May 27-30.

Approximately 45 minutes before local sunrise, the two planets will appear 20 degrees or so above the horizon in the eastern-southeastern sky, against the constellation Pisces. This Mars-Jupiter conjunction will be visible, barring local weather issues, in the predawn hours each morning from May 27 to May 30. The conjunction will peak at 3:57 a.m. CDT on May 29.

“Planetary conjunctions traditionally have been more the stuff of astrology than serious astronomy, but they never fail to impress during observations, particular when the gas giants are involved,” said Mitzi Adams, an astronomer and researcher at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

During such a conjunction, two planets appear close together in Earth’s night sky. In the case of Earth’s solar system, conjunctions happen frequently because our sister planets travel around the Sun in a fairly similar ecliptic plane, often appearing to meet in our night sky despite being millions of miles away from one another.

At their closest point, Mars and Jupiter will be separated by no more than 0.6 degrees. Astronomers routinely use degrees to measure the angular distance between objects in the night sky. To observers on the ground, the distance between the two planets will be no more than the width of a raised finger, with Mars appearing just to the lower right of the massive gas giant.

Mars and Jupiter are millions of miles away from us, of course – more than 136 million miles will separate Earth and Mars at the time of the conjunction, with Jupiter nearly four times further away. Even so, Jupiter will be the far brighter of the two.

Adams and Sterling [NASA astronomers] look forward to spotting the planetary conjunction. “It’s thrilling to look up and recognize that these two worlds represent the breadth of NASA’s planned and potential goals for science and exploration,” Adams said. “As NASA prepares to send the first human explorers to the planet Mars, the possibilities could be virtually limitless for groundbreaking science discoveries among Jupiter’s fascinating moons.”

“This conjunction brings together two vastly different worlds, which both hold incredible promise to help us better understand our solar system, humanity’s place in the cosmos, and where we may be headed as a species,” Sterling added.

“Get outside before sunrise on May 29 and see them for yourself – and imagine all we’ve yet to learn from them,” he added.

SciTech Daily

Human explorers on Mars, long a science fictional vision, could soon become reality, according to NASA. How might this accomplishment affect our human cultural identity?

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At Intelligent Design Academy: Chemical evolution of amino acids and proteins ? Impossible !!

Fact sheet.

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At Mind Matters News: Why scientists think there might be life on Europa

Jupiter’s moon Europa, somewhat smaller than Earth’s moon, may have surface water and organic chemicals, researchers say. Looking beyond the promising signs:

Note: Of course, Europa could have all the ingredients for life without life. But here’s a thought: Theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel has pointed out at Forbes: that our universe is fine-tuned for life, for our existence: “The fact that our Universe has such a perfect balance between the expansion rate and the energy density — today, yesterday, and billions of years ago — is a clue that our Universe really is finely tuned.” (December 19, 2019)

So is our solar system, according to astronomer Hugh Ross. His focus is on the good fortunes of Earth — but Europa shares at least some key features with Earth. Perhaps it is fine-tuned too.

Of course, the fine-tuning of our solar system has led to “philosophical disquiet,” as planetary scientists Tim Elliott and Sarah T. Stewart put it at Nature in 2013 — the inevitable question being “Why?”

But finding life in the subsurface oceans of Europa would probably shift the focus from Why? to Where else? in a hurry.

News, “Why scientists think there might be life on Europa” at Mind Matters News (May 28, 2022)

Europa, despite being outside the conventional “habitable zone,” may be a better bet for life than Mars. The launch of the Clipper in 2024 will tell us more.

Takehome: An intelligent design approach to the universe is a better bet for finding life elsewhere than Darwinian randomness is.

You may also wish to read: NASA develops a scale for assessing the chances of ET life We’ve come a long way from mere snatches of (maybe) information to the need for standards in evaluating the expected incoming mass. The idea is to give media some idea of the level of confidence in what the apparent signal might be telling us — biological activity or just chemistry?

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Sabine Hossenfelder: The big problem with quantum theory is chaos

According to theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder,

You’ve probably seen a lot of headlines claiming that quantum mechanics is “strange”, “weird” or “spooky”. In the best case it’s “unintuitive” and “no one understands it”. Poor thing. In this video I will try to convince you that the problem with quantum mechanics isn’t that it’s weird. The problem with quantum mechanics is chaos. And that’s what we’ll talk about today,

Saturn has 82 moons. This is one of them, its name is Hyperion. Hyperion has a diameter of about 200 kilometers and its motion is chaotic. It’s not the orbit that’s chaotic, it’s the orientation of the moon on that orbit.

It takes Hyperion about 3 weeks to go around Saturn once, and about 5 days to rotate about its own axis. But the orientation of the axis tumbles around erratically every couple of months. And that tumbling is chaotic in the technical sense. Even if you measure the position and orientation of Hyperion to utmost precision, you won’t be able to predict what the orientation will be a year later.

Hyperion is a big headache for physicists.…

Take the example of the electron hitting the screen. When the wave-function arrives on the screen, it is spread out. But when the particle appears on one side of the screen, the wave-function on the other side of the screen must immediately change. Likewise, when a photon hits the moon on one side, then the wave-function of the moon has to change on the other side, immediately.

This is what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”. It would break the speed of light limit. So, physicists said, the measurement is not a physical process. We’re just accounting for the knowledge we have gained. And there’s nothing propagating faster than light if we just update our knowledge about another place.

But the example with the chaotic motion of Hyperion tells us that we need the measurement collapse to actually be a physical process. Without it, quantum mechanics just doesn’t correctly describe our observations. But then what is this process? No one knows. And that’s the problem with quantum mechanics.

Sabine Hossenfelder, “Chaos: The Real Problem with Quantum Mechanics” at BackRe(Action) (May 28, 2022)

One must, perhaps, pick one’s chaos.

Meanwhile, you may also wish to read: Quantum randomness gives nature free will. Whether or not quantum randomness explains how our brains work, it may help us create unbreakable encryption codes. Cryptography requires true, unhackable randomness, not just a string of numbers that looks random to us because we don’t know how they are generated. Because the quantum world truly is random, quantum random number generators would truly be random and are a potential solution. (Robert J. Marks)

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From the Intelligent Design Academy: Quantum mechanic communication in cells – A paradigm shift in biology

Quantum biology is where physics meets biology. Both classical physics and quantum mechanics may be operational in cell communication. Each living cell “talks” with other cells with incredible precision and accuracy to maintain synchrony, unity of purpose, and health. Each cell may be envisioned as communicating intelligence. The vehicle for cell signaling and passing information is either chemical reaction, electromagnetic wave or by quantum transfer, or all of the above. Data communication of unbelievable complexity occurs within each cell millions of times a second and among nearby cells and cells at a distance. The speed of communication may be of light for bio-photons or faster or even instantaneous for quantum transfer…

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