Richard Dawkins on God

God vs. Science TIME.

Interesting quote from Richard Dawkins, who is usually called an atheist, but actually has a more nuanced view…

My mind is not closed, as you have occasionally suggested, Francis. My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about, nor can you, nor can anybody else. What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up. When we started out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a worthy idea. Refutable–but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don’t see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

…captures how I often feel when faced with Christianity’s colloquialisms. However I think there’s sufficient reason to think that the life, death and New Life of Jesus means more than a personal antidote for sin, a mandate for a Church, or any other particularistic agenda. It includes those things, but is much, much more too. I hope, and have to believe.

Bible Errancy II

Here I discussed oddities of Scripture and promised a follow-on post. That was 2 years ago. In that time I wrote a Part II on a specific issue, but now I’ve been reading the interesting material at this site…

This Good Riddle

…and while I disagree on using the “Book of Mormon” as another witness to God’s Word, I do think there’s something to the author’s idea that what is preserved in the Scripture by two “witnesses” is on a surer footing than anything else vociferously claimed as “God’s Words”. After all God didn’t speak the Words to a prophetic stenographer to record directly, except in some very limited cases – i.e. the books of the Prophets. Instead, in the case of the Torah for example, what we have are an edited mass of documents that were first propagated as a unified body of work in the time of Ezra/Nehemiah.

But what were the sources used by the Redactor, as Ezra is usually dubbed, when he united them as one document? That’s been a scholarly question of great contention since the 18th Century and a vast range of intellectual fashions have informed, and biased, the debate. But let’s look at one approach… taking the text seriously. I’m not saying every mythological fantasy should be validated, but as a first hypothesis when investigating a text, maybe we should assume it might be accurate. One physicist, Colin Humphreys, did this when investigating the Exodus account for himself and produced a coherent reconstruction of the events of the life of Moses.

Miracles of Exodus …a good review at “Physics Today”, by another physicist/priest-trainee.

Miracles of Exodus sneak-peek …courtesy of Google Books.

Miracles of Exodus, a discussion …Troy Brooks looks a little deeper at the book.

Colin Humphreys Interview …a radio interview with Colin Humphreys on the findings of his book.

The Exodus Route advocated by Humphreys

Plus, as a Christian, Humphreys is naturally interested in the events of Jesus’s life. He speculates that the “star of Bethlehem” was actually a comet recorded by the Chinese in 5 BC…

The Star of Bethlehem

…so what am I claiming? God spoke through the people of the Bible, but working within the limitations of His ‘materials’ – the Bronze, Iron and Greco-Roman Hebrew/Jewish people. There’s nothing obviously beyond the times of any of the books of the ‘Bible’ and no modern insights to hint at a Cosmic Intelligence (maybe) but there is a surprising unity to such a disparate work. Many voices, often at odds with each other, but One Voice harmonises them all.

More later…

Limits of Life

Life – but not as we know it – space – 06 June 2007 – New Scientist.

The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems

These two, a “New Scientist” article and a short National Academies Press book, contain some of the more interesting concepts to hit astrobiology in a very long time. They discuss, in understandably limited terms, the limits of what Life might be like without the usual requirements of water, oxygen and even organic compounds – for example, gas-phase enzyme activity, life-in-sulfuric-acid, life using methylforamide, life in super-critical CO2 and life based on silicon in cryogenic conditions.

Let’s step back a bit. A certain Ph.D in Chemistry, one I. Asimov, also had a modest career as an SF writer. A short essay by him appeared in a SETI related magazine, in which he discusses possibilities for life-as-we-don’t-know-it…

Not as We Know it

…to which we can add some more possibilities now.

All this speculation, about which I will elaborate later, does make the Fermi Paradox seem a tad lame.

Neutrino Tricksters?

Solar ghosts may haunt Earth’s radioactive atoms – 24 June 2009 – New Scientist.

Ephraim Fischbach, searcher for “Hypercharge” fifth force in the 1980s, has produced an intriguing new analysis of radioactive decay data which indicates periodicities in various decay processes that shouldn’t exist. Radioactive decay is held to be “random” – in reality probabilistic because particles tunnel out of nucleii according to what energy they can borrow from the quantum vacuum, and that’s a ‘random’ thing. In operational terms it means radioactives should decay without respecting clocks, thus ideally we shouldn’t see seasonal and shorter term variations. But, of course, we live and experiment in a variable environment that does show such changes, which means most physicists are suspicious of the new results.

Some more related news-bites…

Radioactive Decay and the Earth-Sun Distance …John Cramer’s “Alternate View” article on the work. He also covered Fischbach’s Fifth-Force work in the 1980s.

The mystery of the varying nuclear decay …PhyicsWorld wades into the issue. Quotes Fischbach to the effect that ‘decay constants’ aren’t so constant.

Half-Life (More or Less) … ScienceNews does a similar piece, covering much of the physics community’s reaction.

Implications for C-14 Dating of the Jenkins-Fischbach Effect and Possible Fluctuation of the Solar Fusion Rate …a discussion of the possible ~200 year periodicity in C-14 decay and it’s possible relationship to the “Jenkins-Fischbach effect”. Indicates that archaeological dating by C-14 is thus probably in doubt – though by how much is guess-work. 200 years?

This is very much a “watch-this-space” kind of thing. Recent analysis of “Cassini’s” RTG output, which uses Pu-238, one of the variable isotopes, shows no variability – BUT Fischbach says that maybe due to power-variations from decay being masked by power-variations due to solar variability, which matches neutrino-flux variation in the model. Thus the signals counter-act. Maybe.

Global windfarm for Poverty Living…

Prof: Global windfarm could power entire human race • The Register.

Beware of wind-farm maniacs. Sure the Earth’s winds shift a huge mass of heat energy away from zones of net radiative input around the Equator towards regions of net radiative output around the Poles, but tapping those flows is a non-trivial matter for technologists to achieve. Covering the Earth in wind turbines might be able to supply 7 billion people with a European style energy supply BUT more realistic estimates suggest they’ll need to live like the poorest of the poor to get by. Rubbery figures mean the estimates of energy potential are, at best optimistic, and at worst misleadingly directing green opinion towards infeasible alternatives to fossil-fuels. Only space-based solar and green nuclear power can really supply humanity’s legitimate energy needs in the long-term.

WB-8 Contract details

Classical Values :: The Boys At Talk-Polywell Have Struck Paydirt.

Classical Values blog has posted a summary of discussions at TalkPolywell about encouraging news emerging from the legacy of Dr. Robert Bussard i.e. the Polywell research efforts of Dr. Richard Nebel and colleagues which is aiming at a net-power Polywell Hybrid IEC Fusion Machine – a Bussard Fusor. Seems they’re sufficiently impressing the USN with their results – independently audited too – that they’re getting funding for a new WB (“Whiffle-Ball”) machine to explore the fusion capabilities of Bussard’s designs. Given positive results from the ordered upgraded WB-8 and the plucky experimenters will be building a WB-9 with even heftier ion-guns.

Net fusion will be a clearer goal once all the data are in…

Intelligence helps Universes Reproduce…

K-State math professor looking to mathematical theories for clues on origins and future of life in the universe; Suggests artificial black holes play a big part.

Louis Crane has been working on an extension of Lee Smolin’s suggestion that black-holes are the birthing events of Universes, and Universes are “fine-tuned” to enhance that reproduction via a Cosmic Selection process. The above news-bite and link is a more recent piece, but here’s two more…

Building a Better Black-Hole (October 2007)

Ad Astra Kansas News (Fall 2006)

…all saying much of the same thing: Intelligent Life will learn to make black-holes for interstellar travel, and thus ‘mid-wife’ the creation of Universes (if Smolin & Crane are right.)

But what good is a black-hole? Actually it’s an incredibly efficient way of turning mass into energy. So long as you do it the right way. So what’s the wrong way? Accretion, but for an interesting reason.

Arthur C. Clarke used a black-hole as the heart of his fictional “Asymptotic Drive” in his 1975 novel, Imperial Earth. An accreting black-hole can convert 5% of the rest-mass energy of infalling matter. Thus it’s capable of an exhaust velocity of 0.33 c, which it uses to good effect doing a continuous boost between Saturn and Earth at 0.2 gee. Black-holes have also appeared as fictional power-sources in all sorts of odd places, including “Star Trek”. Black-holes can also store energy as rotational energy, controlled by giving the hole a large electromagnetic charge and subjecting them to a rotating field. Charles Sheffield uses them like so in his “McAndrews Chronicles”.

A question is: just how mass-efficient is energy release via black-hole accretion? A limiting process for all accreting systems is the Eddington Limit, which is when radiation pressure is sufficient to blow away infalling matter from an object. Plugging in the usual numbers that means the energy output is about 6.4 W/kg of black-hole… worse than an RTG! Not a starship drive. But some accreting systems can be above that Limit via ‘dirty tricks’ i.e. opacity effects.

Consider the Sun. It puts out about 4E+26 joules per second. And it masses 2E+30 kilograms. That’s a power-to-mass ratio of just 0.0002 watts per kilogram – far less than a battery. A bit higher if we factor in the fraction of the Sun that actually produces power (0.08) thus 0.0025 watts per kilogram. Not much better. We’re used to hearing about quasars, which are powered by black-hole accretion, having power outputs of a 100 galaxies or so. How much is that? A galaxy, like our Milky Way, shines with a light of about 30 billion Suns. Thus a quasar putting out 100 Galaxies of power is shining with about 3 trillion Suns of light. How big a black-hole is needed? At 6.4 watts per kilogram at the Eddington limit it’s massing ~100 million Suns. That’s big, but consider the monster at the heart of M87, recently measured at 6.4 BILLION solar masses.

Yet all with a piddling 6.4 watt per kilogram power-output.

Not the way to power a starship. However black-holes also turn their mass into energy via Hawking Radiation and that’s a bit more power dense – with a caveat. Old school semi-Classical quantum mechanics applied to General Relativity means a black-hole drags virtual particles out of the vacuum, making them real. In doing so it loses energy/mass. A black-hole is a very simple astrophysical object, defined by its mass, spin and charge and its ‘size’ is really the size of the Event Horizon it wraps around itself. The size of the horizon determines the temperature of the Hawking Radiation that it radiates as well as how much energy it then radiates over its whole Event Horizon area – but the two are at odds i.e. the inverse of the radius determines temperature, while the radius to the 2nd power is the area. Thus once you do the sums the black-hole gets brighter to the inverse of the 2nd power of the radius, and thus the mass (Rs = 2GM/c2.) The energy is being radiated away so quickly for lower masses that the last 228 tons of mass-energy is radiated away in the last second! That’s an explosion of 4.9 million megatons of TNT equivalent energy as very hard gamma-rays.

A heftier hole, about 1 million tons, radiates at about 356,200 W/kg – better than any current power-plant. But for a really high performance starship we want megawatts per kg. A hole massing 100,000 tons is putting out 356.2 MW/kg… except it’s mostly as hard gamma-rays. A gamma-ray reflecting material would be a big plus.

Back to Louis Crane’s work. He’s using a quantum gravity theory to analyse the behaviour of black holes at such extremes, so the figures I quote will be different to what his analysis derives. Hopefully he’ll figure out the gamma-ray problem for us too :)

Greater Longevity for Planets with Life?

Caltech Scientists Predict Greater Longevity for Planets with Life – Caltech.

The paper is:

“Atmospheric pressure as a natural regulator of the climate of a terrestrial planet with biosphere,” by King-Fai Li, Kaveh Pahlevan, Joseph L. Kirschvink, and Yuk L. Yung

…and its abtract is here at the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” The chief researcher is King-Fai Li, whose publications page is here and well worth a LOOK…

Basically the pressure of an atmosphere enhances the IR-absorbing spread of carbon dioxide molecules, which is how they trap heat so efficiently on Venus, and apparently how a miniscule 380 ppm of CO2 on Earth plays such a key-role on Earth, but 950,000 ppm on Mars isn’t so effective. If the total nitrogen – some 78% of the atmosphere – declined with the rise in solar insolation, then Earth’s average temperature would remain more stable over the next 2.3 billion years compared with previous models (eg. Lovelock or Caldeira & Kasting.) By the end of that period, when a runaway greenhouse finally kicks in, the surface pressure has dropped to ~0.1 of today. So just how ‘habitable’ Earth remains is a different question. Over such a long-span then life would no doubt adapt, but a luckless Time-Traveller might be a tad short of breath.

Another atmospheric processes guru involved in the paper is Joe Kirschvink, whose webpage is a rewarding visit for all who want to dig deeper. He has papers online about Enceladus and the ALH84001 Martian meteorite which maybe had microfossils.

A Miss is as Good as a Mile… Part 1

JPL Small-Body Database Browser.

21 metre wide space-rock 2009 KR21 whizzed past the Earth and Moon at a distance of 285,000 and 150,000 km respectively on June 1st. If it had been but 0.0019 AU or 0.001 AU closer to either, then it would’ve collided. The relative velocity was 12.87 km/s and 13.87 km/s respectively, so it would’ve been a decent collision speed after acceleration in the gravity field of either.

It would’ve entered Earth’s atmosphere at 17 km/s and probably burst quite high in the air from aerodynamic forces, liberating about 168 kilotons of TNT equivalent energy… quite a bang indeed. On the Moon it would’ve struck at 14.07 km/s and exploded with 114 kilotons, digging a decent hole and producing a brief flash that some amateur could spot with a patiently watching automated telescope.

That assumes it’s low density porous space-rock with an average density of water at ~60% porosity. If it was more compact iron/nickel then the explosive punch would be about 8 times higher – a megaton explosion on Earth and the Moon. Iron/nickel meteorites are mechanically very strong and impact the surface with most of their space-velocity intact.

But what if it was something stranger? One possibility is that a significant number of Shadow Matter meteoroids exist. But what is ‘Shadow Matter’ you ask?

see Part 2

Lord Kelvin | On the Age of the Sun’s Heat

Lord Kelvin | On the Age of the Sun’s Heat.

William Thomson was one of the giants of 19th Century physics, playing an important role in all the major innovations of that crowded Century – thermodynamics, electricity, telegraph and geology. Not everything he proclaimed the verdict of physics on was found to be the way he had assumed, but he pushed physical insight to its limits. Famously he is apocryphally said to have claimed physics was over in about 1900 – though no source can ever be found where he says something so short-sighted. He’s also said to have disbelieved x-rays, though what isn’t mentioned is he became a firm supporter of Roentgen’s work after getting his own hand x-rayed. Experiment trumped theory for William Thomson, Lord Kelvin.

Infamously he challenged Charles Darwin over the age of the Earth. But Thomson was correct, within the limits of knowledge of the day, that the Earth couldn’t be as internally warm nor the Sun as bright for as long as Darwin and the geologists wanted… unless both were internally different to what was inferred. Sure enough, heat transport within the Earth proved more complicated than simple heat conduction. Convection of the mantle changes the thermal profile, so that below a certain depth the rate of change in temperature declines at a much slower rate with depth. Similarly the Sun is chiefly powered by a source other than the gravitational contraction that Thomson had invoked – nuclear fusion. But none of Thomson’s work on the Sun – or the Earth – was invalidated, merely extended. A newly forming star is powered by gravitational contraction energy until its core becomes sufficiently dense and hot to initiate proton-proton fusion. And the Earth’s thermal profile is much as Thomson described until it reaches a depth where the mantle softens enough to convect.

So, rightly, Thomson is remembered for his foundational work in thermodynamics and for his principled work in applying new physical insights as they became established. We owe the first successful Trans-Atlantic telegraph cables to him too. Quite an amazing life really.