Category: Modern Science

What is the Relationship between Christianity and Science? Ask These Two Scientists.

Nobel laureate Dr. Arthur Leonard Schawlow (left) and likely future Nobel laureate Dr. Henry F. Schaefer, III (right).
Nobel laureate Dr. Arthur Leonard Schawlow (left) and likely future Nobel laureate Dr. Henry F. Schaefer, III (right).

Once again, there has been a long pause in blog entries because I am working hard to finish my new high school chemistry course so it will be ready for those who want to use it during the upcoming academic year. I just finished the rough draft of the course, and my reviewers are running ahead of schedule. Thus, it looks like the course will be ready on time. I truly hope it meets the needs of homeschoolers who want a college-preparatory, scientifically-sound, and homeschool-friendly general chemistry course.

Even if you aren’t in need of a high school chemistry course, you might be interested in the way that I start and end my text, because it involves the views of two people who know more about science than I ever will know. I start with Dr. Arthur Leonard Schawlow, who shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for his work on laser spectroscopy. In addition to that high honor, Dr. Schawlow was awarded the National Medal of Science, the Stuart Ballantine Medal, the Young Medal and Prize, and the Frederic Ives Medal. As a fitting tribute to him, the American Physical Society established the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science.

As part of a project developed by Dr. Henry Margenuau and Roy Abraham Varghese, Dr. Schawlow was asked, “What do you think should be the relationship between religion and science?” Here is his part of his reply:1

But the context of religion is a great background for doing science. In the words of Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” Thus scientific research is a worshipful act, in that it reveals more of the wonders of God’s creation.

I strongly agree with Dr. Schawlow. Using science to study God’s creation is what led me to believe in Him, and every time I learn something new about His creation, I am filled with awe and wonder.

I use Dr. Schawlow’s quote in the introduction to my chemistry book to let students know that science is more than just an academic exercise. It is a way to come to a deeper appreciation of God’s majesty and power.

Continue reading “What is the Relationship between Christianity and Science? Ask These Two Scientists.”

Coral Islands Adjust to Rising Sea Levels

This is a picture of the Maldives cabinet meeting that took place on October 17th, 2009. (click for credit)
This is a picture of the Maldives cabinet meeting that took place on October 17th, 2009.
(click for credit)

On October 17th, 2009, the cabinet of the Republic of Maldives held a meeting underwater. Outfitted with scuba gear and using hand signals to conduct the meeting, they signed a document calling on all countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. Why would they do such a thing? The average elevation of their country is a mere 1.5 meters above sea level, making it the lowest-lying country in the world. Thus, they consider themselves the most at-risk nation when it comes to rising sea levels. Since many think that human-produced carbon dioxide is warming the planet and contributing to sea level rise, they wanted to make it clear that if the world doesn’t do something to curb emissions, their island nation could soon be underwater.

It is well known that sea levels have been rising since the end of the 1700s1, but we don’t know how much of it is caused by human-induced global warming and how much is part of the earth’s natural climate variability. Some claim that sea level rise has accelerated due to human-induced global warming, while others claim that it has remained fairly constant for the past 100 years or more. Hopefully, more research will allow us to get a better handle on how much of the rise in sea level is natural and how much (if any) is caused by human activity.

Nevertheless, let’s grant the Republic of Maldives its assumptions. Let’s say that rising carbon dioxide levels are heating up the planet, melting its ice reserves. This is causing sea levels to rise, and as a result, nations like the Maldives are at risk. They could literally be underwater if something doesn’t change soon. There is a serious problem with this scenario. The Republic of Maldives is made of a collection of atolls, ring-shaped coral reefs that can form lovely islands. Coral reefs, of course, are made of living organisms (corals) and their remains. We know that living organisms respond to changes in their environment.

We now know that the corals which form atolls respond to rising sea levels by raising the level of the atoll.

Continue reading “Coral Islands Adjust to Rising Sea Levels”

An Investigation of Temperature Data Adjustments

The difference between the adjusted data and the measured data in the NOAA's US temperature data set.
The difference between the adjusted data and the measured data in the NOAA’s US temperature data set.

Almost a year ago, I wrote about a problem with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) temperature data. It seems that for at least some weather stations in their network, automated adjustments to the data have been inserting a warming trend where the actual data show no such trend. This, of course, is a problem, since these data are often used to analyze claims made by scientists in the global warming debate. Further investigation of this issue has led to even more concerns.

Consider, for example, the graph at the beginning of this post. It is produced from the data at the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN). The graph shows what you get when you subtract the raw data (what is actually measured) from the adjusted data (what is actually displayed) for several of the temperature stations in the network. If the adjustments had no overall effect on the trends given by the raw data, the graph should show a line that wiggles above and below zero. From 1900 to about 1940, that’s roughly what you see. During that time period, then, we can be fairly confident that the adjustments aren’t affecting the overall trend given by the data.

Notice what happens after about 1940, however. The difference rises significantly as time goes on. What does that mean? It means the adjustments are increasing the temperature data more than decreasing them. In other words, the adjustments are making the more recent years hotter than the raw data indicate they were. In addition, the more recent the year, the warmer the adjustments are making it seem. This, of course, is a troubling result. The USHCN’s data are often used to show that the average temperature of the U.S. has been increasing over time. However, if the above graph is accurate, at least some of that warming trend is not the result of actual measurements. It is the result of adjustments that have been made to the data.

Now please understand that the very nature of the USHCN makes adjustments necessary. The data come from a system of weather stations, and the problem with such a system is that every once in a while, there is a glitch. Sometimes, there is a power outage at a station. Sometimes, there is a communication error. Sometimes, the station is down for maintenance. As a result, there are times when the station doesn’t report any data at all. This would be a problem, because it would skew the data. To fix this problem, there is a computer code that estimates the temperature that the station would have sent if it had been sending data at the time. This is necessary to keep missing data from causing a problem, but if the estimate is severely wrong, the “fix” might be worse than the missing data.

If the graph at the top of this post is accurate, it seems to me that might be the case.

Continue reading “An Investigation of Temperature Data Adjustments”

An Interesting Article From a Formerly Anti-Vaccine Mother

Tara Hills (the mother in this picture) explains why she is no longer anti-vaccine. (click for credit)
Tara Hills (the mother in this picture) explains why she is no longer anti-vaccine. (click for credit)
I ran across an interesting article on my Facebook news feed yesterday. The author (a mother of seven) wrote it from hospital* quarantine, because all seven of her children have pertussis, which is better known as “whooping cough.” While her older ones are getting better, her younger ones are still struggling. What is so important that she thought she should write the article now? Because she wants people to know that had she vaccinated her children, she most likely wouldn’t be where she is right now. She had been convinced that vaccines pose too much risk and too little benefit, but now she understands how wrong such a notion is. She hopes to help others learn from her mistake.

Ironically, she had already been convinced that the anti-vaccine movement was wrong before her kids ended up in the hospital. In fact, she and her family doctor had worked out a catch-up vaccination schedule for all her kids, but before they could start it, pertussis raged through her household. Here’s how she expresses it:

…the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m writing this from quarantine. For six years we were frozen in fear from vaccines, and now we are frozen because of the disease.

She expects some backlash from the anti-vaccine community, and some gloating from the pro-vaccine community. However, I applaud her for making her story known. I hope others will read it and benefit from it. As she says:

Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk. I want them to know that we tried our best to protect our kids when we were afraid of vaccination and we are doing our best now, for everyone’s sake, by getting them up to date. We can’t take it back…but we can learn from this and help others the same way we have been helped.

This mother isn’t the first to experience tragedy because of misinformation about vaccines. A mother named Tammy contacted me several years ago and said:

Thank you for your vaccine stance and research! I am a mother who had heard some “horror stories” and was wary of vaccines. As a result, my 3 year-old daughter (now 7) went deaf in one ear due to complications of chickenpox. I have since immunized my younger son (& dear daughter has been immunized against all other known diseases for which vaccines were appropriate).

Two other mothers have written me with similar stories (here and here).

Now please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. I am not saying that children should be vaccinated because of the experiences of these four mothers. I am saying that children should be vaccinated because the science is very clear: vaccines are both safe and effective for the vast majority of people. Anecdotes like these simply illustrate the importance of making the correct decision.

Please see Jo’s comment below. They may not be in hospital quarantine, even though the article makes it sound that way.
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Gentle Herbivore? Think Again!

This is a white-tailed deer. Other members of its species have been caught eating birds!
This is a white-tailed deer. Other members of its species have been caught eating birds!

In order to make sense of the living world, biologists attempt to classify the organisms they find in creation. No classification system is perfect, of course, because creation doesn’t conform itself to the definitions that we invent. A classic example is a slime mold, which I have discussed before (see here, here, and here). These interesting organisms resemble fungi during part of their lifecyle, but they resemble colonies of single-celled organisms (called protists) during other parts of their lifecycle. So, are they fungi, or are they protists? Well, they used to be classified as fungi, but later on, biologists began classifying them with the protists. Either way, however, there are problems, because slime molds simply don’t fit well into either category.

Such problems are to be expected when you are trying to make sense of the incredibly diverse creation that God designed. However, there are some classification schemes you would think should be fairly reliable. For example, animals are generally classified into one of three groups: herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. What is an herbivore? Here’s how an article from Northwestern University defines it:

A herbivore is an animal that gets its energy from eating plants, and only plants.

The website lists several examples of herbivores, one of which is a white-tailed deer. Montclair State University has a “Whitetail Deer Fact Sheet” that says:

Whitetails, like all ungulates, are strictly herbivores and have teeth that are adapted for chewing.

This, of course, makes perfect sense. After all, the ungulates (a group of animals that includes horses, cattle, sheep, giraffes, camels, deer, and hippopotamuses) have a digestive system that seems optimized for plant matter. No matter how obvious this classification seems, however, it turns out that it’s at least a bit wrong!

Continue reading “Gentle Herbivore? Think Again!”

More Examples of Organisms Changing the Products of Their Genes!

This is an example of the squid that was studied in the experiment that is being discussed. (click for credit)
This is an example of the squid that was studied in the experiment being discussed.
(click for credit)

Almost three years ago, I posted an article about an octopus that actually changes the products of its genes so it is better suited to its environment. I had never heard of such a thing before, and it seemed fantastic to me. After all, when I was at university, I was taught the central dogma of molecular biology:

DNA —-> RNA —–> Protein

In other words, DNA carries a set of “recipes” that tell your cells how to make the proteins they need to make. That recipe is copied by another molecule, RNA, and the copy is transported out of the nucleus of the cell to a ribosome, where the copy is then translated into a protein. At that time in history, biologists thought that there was one gene for every protein.

As scientists learned more about the marvelous design of DNA, they found that the idea of one gene producing one protein was far too simplistic. In plants and animals (and many microscopic organisms as well), the genes are interrupted by stretches of DNA called introns. At first, geneticists lumped introns into the category of junk DNA, an evolution-inspired idea that couldn’t be more incorrect (see here, here, here, and here, for example). However, molecular biologists eventually found out that the introns are an integral part of a multi-layered data storage system that allows a single gene to code for up to tens of thousands of different proteins through a process called alternative splicing.

Essentially, the introns divide a gene into several “modules of information.” The cell can chop up the RNA copy and splice those modules together in different ways. Each different way the modules are spliced produces a different protein. Once alternative splicing was figured out, the idea of one gene producing one protein was discarded. One gene can, in fact, produce lots and lots of different proteins. However, even in alternative splicing, the information contained in the DNA is preserved. Each individual module of information codes for a specific part of a protein, and if you look at that specific part of the protein, it is made exactly the way that module of information says it should be made.

Well, the octopus study I wrote about nearly three years ago shows that’s not always true. Some organisms can edit their RNA to make a final protein that is actually different from what the modules of information in the gene actually specify!

Continue reading “More Examples of Organisms Changing the Products of Their Genes!”

Maybe the Sun Doesn’t Affect Radioactive Decay Rates

variable_decay

NOTE: Even more data have been published indicating that the sun does not affect radioactive decay rates.

In previous articles (see here, here, and here), I discussed some very interesting results that were coming from different labs. These results indicated that the half-lives of some radioactive isotopes vary with the seasons. They seemed to imply that the sun was somehow affecting the rate of radioactive decay here on earth. This made the results controversial, because there is nothing in known physics that could cause such an effect.

One criticism of the studies was that weather could be the real issue. Even though labs are climate-controlled, no such control is perfect. Humidity, pressure, and (to a lesser extent) temperature can all vary in a nuclear physics lab, so perhaps the variations seen were the result of how the changing weather was affecting the detectors. However, the authors used several techniques to take changing weather into account, and all those techniques indicated that it couldn’t explain the variations they saw. The authors were (and probably still are) convinced that they were seeing something real. I was as well. In fact, one of my posts was entitled, “There Seems To Be No Question About It: The Sun Affects Some Radioactive Half-Lives.”

Well, it looks like there is some question about it. Two scientists from Germany decided to measure the rate of radioactive decay of the same isotope (Chlorine-36) that was used in some of the previously-mentioned studies. However, they decided to use a different experimental technique. The studies that showed variation in the rate of radioactive decay used a Geiger-Muller detector (often called a “Geiger counter”) to measure the radioactive decay. The two scientists who authored this study used a superior system, based on liquid scintillation detectors. The authors contend (and I agree) that the response of such detectors is much easier to control than the response of Geiger-Muller detectors, so their results are more reliable. They also used a particular technique, called triple-to-double coincidence ratio, that reduces “noise” caused by background radiation. When doing detailed measurements of radioactive decay, this is one of the standard techniques employed.

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Dawkins Demonstrated to be Wrong….Again

This is the center panel from a stain-glassed window entitled, 'Education.' Found in Yale University's Linsly-Chittenden Hall, it shows religion and science working together to educate people.
This is the center panel from a stain-glassed window entitled, ‘Education.’ Found in Yale University’s Linsly-Chittenden Hall, it shows religion and science working together to educate people.
(click for credit)

In 1989, Dr. Richard Dawkins wrote the following in a book review for the New York Times:

It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).

He has since added to that remark, writing:

By far the largest of the four categories is ‘ignorant’

Like much of what Dr. Dawkins writes, however, the actual evidence says something completely different.

Consider, for example, a new study that has been published in the journal American Sociological Review. The authors, Dr. Timothy O’Brien and Dr. Shiri Noy, examined people’s views on religion and science, correlating them with their actual knowledge of science. They found lots of interesting things, but I want to focus on just two of them.

Continue reading “Dawkins Demonstrated to be Wrong….Again”

Scientists Are Still Trying To Figure Out Gecko Feet

The underside of a gecko's foot as seen through glass (click for credit)
The underside of a gecko’s foot as seen through glass (click for credit)

Geckos are lizards that have an uncanny ability to crawl on virtually anything. They effortlessly climb up glass windows without slipping, and they can even crawl on a smooth surface when they are upside down! What gives them this incredible ability? A popular chemistry textbook explains it this way:1

…the gecko uses van der Waals forces to attach itself to surfaces and employs a special technique to disengage from that surface. Van der Waals forces exist between any two surfaces, but they are extremely weak unless relatively large areas of of the two surfaces come quite close together. The toe of a gecko is covered with fine hairs, each hair having over a thousand split ends. As the gecko walks across a surface, it presses these stalks of hairs against the surface. The intimate contact of a billion or so split ends of hairs with the surface results in a large, attractive force that holds the gecko fast. Just as easily, a gecko’s foot comes cleanly away. As the gecko walks, its foot naturally bends so the hairs at the back edge of its toes disengage, row after row, until the toe is free.

I have used this explanation myself when lecturing about van der Waals forces. It sounds like scientists have the gecko’s climbing ability all figured out, doesn’t it? Not surprisingly, however, the gecko’s climbing ability is even more complex than we imagined. As a result, scientists still haven’t completely figured it all out.

The best way to understand what I mean is to look at a bit of history. Back in 1904, German scientist H.R. Schmidt thought that perhaps the gecko employed electrical charges to stick to surfaces. After all, opposite charges attract one another, so if a gecko could induce its feet to develop one charge and the surface to develop the opposite charge, the resulting attractive force could hold the feet to the surface.

About three decades later, another German scientist, Wolfgang-Didrich Dellit, did a simple experiment to test that hypothesis. He shot X-rays at the air surrounding a gecko’s feet while it was on a smooth metal wall. Those X-rays should have ionized the air around the gecko’s feet and neutralized any charge on the wall’s surface. This would have negated any electrical force between the gecko’s feet and the wall, and the gecko should have fallen off the wall. However, after repeated attempts, he couldn’t get a gecko to even slip.2 As a result, scientists ruled out the possibility that electrical charges had anything to do with a gecko’s climbing ability.

Dellit also tested other possible explanations, including that geckos used suction to hold to surfaces, and each was ruled out. Eventually, electron microscopes were used to analyze gecko feet. Once the toe hairs and their “split ends” were seen, the van der Waals forces explanation given by the chemistry text I quoted above was suggested. In the year 2000, a study in Nature confirmed the explanation. It directly measured the force of a single hair from a gecko’s foot, confirming that van der Waals forces were at play.3 As a result, van der Waals forces have been considered the complete explanation for a gecko’s remarkable climbing ability…until now.

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An Update On The Triceratops Fossil That Contained Soft Tissue

A triceratops skull (click for credit)
A triceratops skull (click for credit)
In March of 2013, I wrote about soft tissue that had been found in the fossilized remains of a Triceratops horridus, which is supposed to be about 65 million years old. One of the scientists who found the tissue and published a paper on it in the peer-reviewed literature1 (Mark Armitage) was subsequently fired from his position at California State University Northridge. He has sued the university, claiming that he was fired because of his religious views. This update isn’t about the lawsuit; I have no knowledge of how that is going. Instead, this update is about the fossil itself.

Samples from the fossil were sent to Dr. Alexander Cherkinsky at the University of Georgia’s Center for Applied Isotope Studies for dating via the carbon-14 dating method. Since the current half-life of carbon-14 is “only” about 5,700 years, there should be no detectable levels of it in the original parts of the fossil, if the fossil is millions of years old. However, Dr. Cherkinsky’s lab found very detectable levels of carbon-14. In fact, there was so much carbon-14 in the fossil that it was given a date of 41,010 ± 220 years.2 This is well within the accepted range of carbon-14 dating, and it is actually younger than other carbon-14 dates reported in the scientific literature.3

While this is an interesting result, it is not as interesting as I would like it to be. I wanted the soft tissue that was found in the fossil to be dated, but it was not. Instead, the fossil’s bioapatite (a mineral found in bone) was dated. According to a 2009 report in the journal Radiocarbon, bioapatite is actually preferable to soft tissue in many cases. As the report states:4

Contamination of the organic fraction in the process of the burial or during museum preservation treatment generally prohibits the use of the collagen fraction for dating. Our investigation has shown that the pretreatment of bone with diluted acetic acid following a proscribed technique allows the separation of the bioapatite fraction from diagenetic carbonates.

Please note that “diagenetic carbonates” refer to contaminants that occur during the fossilization process. The report then gives a method by which original bioapatite can be extracted from a fossil. Dr. Cherkinsky’s lab followed that procedure. Since the lab specifically reported a date for the fossil’s bioapatite, I have to assume that the investigators who actually did the preparation and dating think they were dating the fossil’s original bioapatite, not a mixture of bone and contaminants.

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