the evolving mind

Many people believe that a theory is all about explanation. And we can judge a theory by how much the explanation makes sense. To us. They may even use terms like rational and logical to describe the theory they prefer. And they could be spot-on, even if the theory is wrong. For if the gauge of correctness is a fit with all the other thoughts we hold, what is illogic in one mind is fully logical in another.

Evolutionary theory and Creationism are a perfect case in point.

It is for this reason that I have reservations about skeptics and atheists speaking of themselves as being more rational and reason-driven. These groups will point out the absurdities in the other position, in effect, saying, see, according to our other thoughts, these here thoughts under the spotlight just don’t fit.

What is missing from simple theorizing is the crucial component beyond mere explanation. Explanation goes only so far. A strong theory, a good theory, allows for testable predictions. And is supported by the results of those tests.

And with this additional, essential element to theories,  Bam!–suddenly evolution and Creationism are not potentially equally reasonable. One allows for testable predictions galore, and has passed thousands of such tests, the other . . . nope.

What seems rational to one mind can seem irrational to another. But put the ideas to a test, and you then have a way to objectively determine the worth of each. In a sense, by doing so you will place both minds on the same playing field.

Of course, some people will shun tests, saying that science operates under its own biased presumptions, so will yield biased results. These people are beyond hope, frankly. All you can really do is explain that a scientific test merely confirms a hypothesized pattern in nature. If you don’t believe in science you are basically refuting that there are measurable regularities in our universe. If that were the case, we could understand nothing about it. Nothing. So tell these people to go ahead and cherish their void of understanding.

Per usual, a recent news release got me started on the topic. The article: Atom Interferometer Provides Most Precise Test Yet of Einstein’s Gravitational Redshift.

The news: Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (the General form vs. the Special) has passed another test.

While airplane and rocket experiments have proved that gravity makes clocks tick more slowly — a central prediction of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity — a new experiment in an atom interferometer measures this slowdown 10,000 times more accurately than before, and finds it to be exactly what Einstein predicted.

The result shows once again how well Einstein’s theory describes the real world. [bold mine]

The real world.

So no, the value of Einstein’s theories is not in how far-out and mind-bending the thoughts they generate are, nor in how much they support what we want to believe. Certainly, that is some of the appeal, and yes, the on-the-frontier-element makes some theories more exciting than others. But the true gauge of theories such as Einstein’s, that which gives them real weight, are the predictions they allow us to make and test. In the case of relativity, these tests have been passed with greater and greater precision.

Technorati Links: creationism, relativity, theories

Oh lard. Not another physicist waxing poetic about how the conditions of the universe had to be just as they are for human intelligence to evolve (a.k.a., the anthropic principle). To me, this borders on superstitious thinking: taking one incidence (our universe) and finding meaning in it.

Across the Multiverse: Physicist Considers the Big Picture.

In my opinion, the anthropic principle involves taking a narrow view of the big picture.

Jenkins and co-writer Gilad Perez, a theorist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, discuss a provocative hypothesis known as the anthropic principle, which states that the existence of intelligent life (capable of studying physical processes) imposes constraints on the possible form of the laws of physics.

“Our lives here on Earth — in fact, everything we see and know about the universe around us — depend on a precise set of conditions that makes us possible,” Jenkins said.

Consider this scenario: on her birthday a woman goes to a bar with friends to celebrate — something she rarely does — and has too much to drink. Which is also something she rarely does. The woman is coaxed into playing a game of pool/billiards, although she is very bad at it. On her last turn of the game, she hits an expert-level shot to win it all. On her birthday! Was it meant to be? Change one of many variables and that specific outcome would not have occurred. Never. Not on her birthday, with friends, playing pool of all things. And winning. Drunk.

We could certainly excuse the woman, stumbling home happy, declaring “it was meant to be.” Although it is clearly a form of superstitious thinking. Just as, had she missed a very easy shot at the end of the game to lose it, declaring “it was meant to be” would likewise be superstitious thinking.

As for the manifold contingencies involved in our having evolved — I find no great significance in it.

When my wife and I lived in New Mexico we enjoyed “rock hounding” — going looking for minerals, crystals, fossils, “raw” semi-precious gemstones, etc. in the desert. Geodes were always fascinating. What was inside that round ball of rock? Layers of agate? A quartz-filled pocket? If today I were to slice into a geode with a diamond-tipped saw blade and find this overt message: It is Friday the 15th, 2010, and your name is Andrew. And the NASDAQ is going to finish the week at 2333.33. . . . sure, then I’d wonder about a “big picture” influencing all the little things going on here on Earth.  Sure, then I’d have grounds for concluding “it” was meant to be.  At least after ruling out a hoax.

Almost humorously, the science article contained this paragraph further down in the body:

“What is surprising about our results is that we found conditions that, while very different from those of our own universe, nevertheless might allow — again, at least hypothetically — for the existence of life. (What that life would look like is another story entirely.) This actually brings into question the usefulness of the anthropic principle when applied to particle physics, and might force us to think more carefully about what the multiverse would actually contain.”

Yes, think more carefully, please.

Trouble is, when physicists go all giddy with their far-out speculations, many readers will take these not with a grain of salt, but will view them as bits of crystalline insight into “the big picture.”

What is the meaning of human life? What is the meaning of a round rock filled with crystals? One question is not so different from the other. Careful — don’t go all superstitious in your thinking. Unless it’s your birthday and you’ve had too much to drink.

Technorati Links: anthropic principle, physics

I guess I have a bucket-list of sorts: there a number of experiences I’d like to have before I “kick it.” High on the list is traveling to Africa to walk the soil of Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. By the time I can afford it, I’ll probably have to bring an aluminum walker. But what the hey, just to be there and imagine the lives of my “deep ancestors” — that would be something.

Further down the list are destinations such as Alaska and Belize. Absent from my bucket list, however, are physical challenges such as sky-diving or planting my flag atop Everest-sized mountains. Though I do enjoy climbing mountains.

That said, I do have some challenges I’d like to confront and possibly overcome in my remaining decades (if all goes well). These are intellectual goals. And although I have no formal 1-2-3 of these, the other day I was made aware that I do have an intellectual bucket-list of sorts by this article:

Entropy Alone Can Create Complex Crystals from Simple Shapes; Tetrahedra Packing Record Broken

In specific, these two sentences prompted my formal commencement of keeping an intellectual bucket-list:

Entropy is a measure of the number of ways the components of a system can be arranged. While often linked to disorder, entropy can also cause objects to order.

In terms of the physics, the hard science of it, entropy is a fully comprehended and documented phenomenon. Yet in terms of how we think about entropy, the language we use to speak about it in general, the philosophy or metaphysics of it, well, the concept is still largely a puzzle. At least to me it is.

I first got to thinking about entropy when chasing the what I would designate as the number one element on my intellectual bucket list: a satisfactory understanding of the nature of time. Entropy is considered one of primary “arrows of time,” one of the reasons why there is a uni-directional flow (so the wording goes) to time.

But what is entropy? For years the working definition of entropy consisted of the measure of disorder in a system. It is a pillar of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which states that in any closed system, disorder can only increase, it cannot decrease. Concentrated energy will always becomes more diffuse over time.

Other understandings of entropy include concepts of energy distribution, probability measures, and even our knowledge of a system.

What is entropy? As a pure physicist might say, “I know it when I measure it.” But what more can we say of it?

The measure of disorder in a given system. Yet, as quoted above, in some cases entropy can increase the order of a system. How can something cause what would actually refute or negate it?

I clearly have some reading and thinking to do before I can cross entropy off my list.

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A new cosmological finding got me thinking about how darn huge the universe is. Ironically, the theme of the piece was about nearness.

Black Hole Found to Be Much Closer to Earth Than Previously Thought

How close is that black hole to us? 7800 light years. Only 7800? My that is close.

Or is it? How close is 7800 light years? With a few back-of-the-envelope computations, let’s see if I can put it in perspective.

The circumference of the Earth is roughly 40,000 km. Time it would take to walk around our planet: about 1000 days. Time it would take to drive around the planet: about 400 hours. Time it would take to fly around the planet: about 40 hours.

Now we get to the unit of cosmic distances: the light-year. Time it takes for a photon to travel the distance of the Earth’s circumference: about 1/10th of a second.

How long does it take for a photon to travel from the Sun to the Earth? About 8 . . . minutes.

The distance between between the Sun and Earth is roughly 150 million kilometers. The Sun is that far away, and still sizable in the sky?! It’s huge!

Time it takes for a photon to travel to that black hole: 7800 light years. Not 7800 seconds, not minutes, not hours, not days. Years. That’s far. That’s blow-your-mind far.

And yet, from a cosmic perspective, it’s “much closer” than previously thought. Wrap your mind around that.

Technorati Links: cosmos, physics

Please excuse the following smarty-pants rant.

When I read the article, Astronomers To Gaze Back In Time And Map History Of Universe, I thought, Nope, that’s bullshit, can’t do it.

The physics and philosophy of time is perhaps my greatest interest, so I read the article with interest and care.

Here is what the researchers aim to do -

Making use of an Infrared Array Camera on NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (SERVS) will make a very large map of the sky, capable of detecting extremely faint galaxies. The primary aim is to chart the distribution of stars and black holes from when the Universe was less than a billion years old to the present day.

And the goal?

[to] detect moderately massive galaxies when the Universe was less than 8% of its current age.

Can we call that “gazing back in time?” Strictly speaking, no. As Einstein taught us, there is no ultimate reference frame, a perfect and final x,y,z & t. Instead, there are multitudes of reference frames out there, each equally valid. Einstein further blew minds by demonstrating that time can “flow” at different rates in different frames. There is no single “time” in the universe, there are “times.”

Also thanks to Einstein and the work of other physicists and philosophers, we understand that information is not transmitted instantaneously. At its fastest, information travels at the speed of light. So a person on planet 1 may learn about planet 2 exploding before or after a person on planet 3. In a real sense, looking “back in time” involves receiving information, in our reference frame, that we know took a long time to get here. Rather than looking back in our own time, we are gazing at old information from another time. No clock is sent spinning backwards.

Another analogy: Say you receive a mangled Christmas card your now deceased grandmother sent you five years ago (and apparently got lost somewhere in a postal warehouse). By reading it, are you gazing back in time? Maybe your imagination is. But the card is right there in your own time.

Technorati Links: cosmos, time

Do all fields ultimately reduce down to physics? Will my field, psychology, ever couch its understanding of behavior in terms of neurochemical inertia?

Certainly, when teasing out the most fundamental mechanisms of plant growth and life we meet many chemical processes that border on the purely physical. Recent research into photosynthesis has better revealed the basic, nuts-and-bolts of the processes involved. And they clearly belong in the domain of physics.

[I]n very small-scale systems such as photosynthetic molecules, quantum effects come into play making it difficult for scientists to explain how photosynthetic molecules are able to transport energy with remarkably high efficiency.

Lasers to the rescue! How else to better understand . . . a fundamental element of biological life. Lasers. Specifically, by putting together a combination of high-power laser frequencies, the scientists discovered this, in the words of Dr Ian Mercer -

These new pictures are instantaneous snap-shots of energy being transported between electrons across a protein. Remarkably, the pictures go further in unravelling the complex way the electrons interact. This gives us something akin to a fingerprint for electronic couplings.

Stand back! That broccoli is electric. Cool.

I just wonder when I’ll be able to interpret some of my dreams using a large hadron collider. Or something.

Technorati Links: biology

To the delight of Star Trek fans, physicists have recently advanced the high-science of teleportation. They teleported not physical matter but information over a full 1-meter’s worth of a whopping chasm of space. Which may not seem whopping to you or me or any other incredibly massive creature. Well, incredibly massive when using “measuring sticks” more appropriate for the atomic realm.

The bad news is that less than an atom’s worth of information was teleported. Not even the dot of an “i” in a telephone book or a fragment of a human eyelash. Don’t expect Jet Blue Airlines to start offering teleportation to the Bahamas anytime soon. They’d probably lose your luggage anyway.

Here’s what the researchers succeeded in doing -

Continue Reading »

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the top of dawn –
a pine touched by golden light
on limbs stretching east

For those who have difficulties removing their “scientist” hat, allow me to translate:

this morning I observed
(without adequate blinding, true)
the top, east quadrant of a pine tree
reflecting significantly more light into my eyes
(p < or = .001)
than the other three quadrants.

For those into quantum physics, perhaps I should note that I didn’t observe the light reflecting into my eyes, but rather my observation consisted of light hitting my retinas . . . .

For those into quantum woo, what my haiku is obviously about is the higher truth that Buddhism and quantum theory say the same thing, but differently.

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