This is part of a stained-glass window called "Education." It is found in room 102 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale University, and it portrays science and religion in harmony. (click to see the entire piece)
You hear it all the time. Science and Christianity are in conflict. For example, Dr. Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote:1
The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.
The problem, of course, is that such statements are demonstrably false. Indeed, as I have written before, historical scholarship has shown that modern science is a product of Christianity (see here and here).
I recently ran across an excellent essay by Dr. Michael Keas that makes this point very well. I strongly recommend that you read it in its entirety, but there are two quotes from it that I would like to highlight.
The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel – the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.
Popular Sciencetitled its report, “The National Ignition Facility Just Got Way Closer To Fusion Power.” Right under that headline, one reads:
In a major first, an experiment in the California lab got more energy out of its fuel than went into the fuel. We’re one step closer to ignition, when the reaction becomes self-sustaining.
Before you start having dreams of clean, limitless power, however, you need to know what actually happened at the National Ignition Facility. So let’s start from the beginning to find out what all the hype is about.
This is an artist's conception of Voyager 1 traveling through space. (public domain image)
The earth and the other seven planets (in case you didn’t know, Pluto is no longer considered a planet) orbit the sun, which is a very special star. Nevertheless, it is just one of probably more than a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the universe. Each of these stars has a gravitational field, and at least several of them have planets orbiting around them. In other words, each star has its own solar system.
Well, at some point, our solar system has to end and interstellar space (the space between the solar systems of different stars) has to begin. But where, exactly, is that? The robotic spacecraft known as Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are trying to answer that question. They were both launched into space in 1977 (Voyager 2 was launched 16 days earlier than Voyager 1), and they have been traveling away from earth ever since. While they still have fuel, they don’t use it to propel themselves forward. Where they are, the sun’s gravitational field is so weak that they experience essentially no resistance to their travel, so they just keep traveling with the speed their engines gave them long ago. The only thing they use their fuel for is to change orientation, a process called “attitude adjustment.”
Even though Voyager 1 was launched later, it picked up a bit more speed than Voyager 2, so it is farthest away from the earth and the sun. As of the time this article was written, Voyager 1 was more than 18,800,720,000 kilometers (11,682,230,000 miles) from the sun. That’s a long way, but is it far enough to be considered out of our solar system? The surprising answer is that we aren’t really sure!
This is a magnified image of a fungus from the same genus as the one discussed in the article.
(Public domain image)
In 2008, plant pathologist Dr. Gary A. Strobel and his colleagues published a paper about an odd fungus (Gliocladium roseum) they found in a Patagonian rainforest. It is endophytic, which means it lives within a plant and takes nutrients from the plant, but it is not a parasite. Other endophytic fungi have been shown to produce all sorts of benefits to plants, including giving them much-needed chemicals and allowing them to communicate with one another, so this fungus probably gives some benefit to the plants in which it grows. However, that wasn’t the focus of Dr. Strobel’s paper. Instead, he and his colleagues noted that this fungus actually produced a wide variety of chemicals, including those found in diesel fuel! As the authors stated:1
The hydrocarbon profile of G. roseum contains a number of compounds normally associated with diesel fuel and so the volatiles of this fungus have been dubbed ‘myco-diesel’.
The prefix “myco” means “fungus,” so the authors basically were calling some of the chemicals that G. roseum produces “fungus diesel.”
Well, it seems that Dr. Strobel and his colleagues have been busy trying to coax G. roseum to make more “fungus diesel,” and they have produced some rather dramatic results. They built a tabletop device they call “The Paleobiosphere”2, which is supposed to mimic the conditions under which oil might form. It consists of two layers of shale, a type of rock that often contains oil. Sandwiched in between those two layers is a mixture of the fungus as well as leaves from maple, aspen, and sycamore trees. The container is flooded with water periodically, and in a mere three weeks, the shale layers contain a rich mixture of chemicals that is very similar to the oil found in the shales of Montana!
I doubt that you’ll see this reported in many news outlets, but way back in 2007, Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski, a research professor in the Department of Oceanography at the Naval Postgraduate School, stated that based on his research, the Arctic would be ice-free by the summer of 2013. His prediction was based on a “high-resolution regional model for the Arctic Ocean and sea ice forced with realistic atmospheric data,” and he thought it might be a bit conservative. In fact, he said:
Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007…So given that fact, you can argue that maybe our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.
Well, as you can see from the graph above, Dr. Maslowski’s “too conservative” prediction has failed miserably. Not only is there ice in the Arctic, there is significantly more ice than there was in 2012. Now, of course, the amount of ice is still way below the average, but it is also way above zero, the prediction that Dr. Maslowski thought might be “already too conservative.”
One mode of radioactive decay is alpha decay, where an unstable nucleus spits out two protons and two neutrons bound together as a helium nucleus, which is also called an alpha particle.
(public domain image)
When I first heard about the idea that radioactive decay might vary from the smooth, constant-half-life behavior that is typically observed, I was more than a little skeptical. As a nuclear chemist, I am well aware of how much energy it takes to affect nuclear processes. Since those energies are not generally attainable except with the use of a particle accelerator, a magnetic containment system, or some other high-powered device, it seemed absurd to think that variable radioactive decay was anything other than the mad wish of those who didn’t like the conclusions of radiometric dating. However, over the years, the data have convinced me otherwise. I written a couple of posts about variable radioactive decay (see here and here), and it seems clear to me that it does happen, at least under some circumstances.
Recently, I came across another study on variable radioactive decay. It is actually a follow-up to a previous study,1, and it explores the alpha decay of uranium-232. As shown in the drawing above, alpha decay is one specific type of radioactive decay in which an unstable nucleus attempts to reach stability by spitting out two protons and two neutrons. Those four particles are bound together to form the nucleus of a helium atom, which for historical reasons is also called an alpha particle. It turns out that when uranium-232 does this, the resulting nucleus still isn’t stable, so a long series of further alpha decays occur, eventually producing lead-208, which is stable.
The authors of the study I am writing about weren’t interested in the subsequent decays. They looked specifically at the alpha decay of uranium-232. Under normal circumstances, this decay has a half-life of 69 years.* This means if I start with 200 uranium-232 atoms, after 69 years, only half of them (100) will remain. The other half will have decayed away. If I wait another 69 years, only half of those (50) will remain. In another 69 years, half of those (25) will remain. In the end, this is typically how radioactive decay works: the number of radioactive atoms ends up decreasing by half over every half-life.
The results of the study seem to indicate that a tabletop device involving a laser and gold can end up decreasing the half-life of uranium-232 by as much as a factor of 435,494,880,000,000!2
The video above shows you the jumping prowess of a juvenile Issus coleoptratus, a species of plant hopper. As its name implies, this insect hops from plant to plant, eating sugar directly from the veins of the plant’s leaves. Believe it or not, jumping is a rather difficult way to travel, because once you are in the air, you don’t have a lot of control over your body’s movement. As a result, the jump itself is very important. Not only must it be aimed correctly, it must happen so that the body stays upright throughout the time it is in the air.
That latter task can be a bit difficult. Imagine, for example, if an insect pushes off really hard with one leg, but not very hard with the other leg. This imbalance would cause the body to start spinning in the air, which would make for horrible aerodynamics and a very difficult landing! The same thing would happen if the pushes were not timed very well between the legs. If one leg started pushing sooner than the other, the insect would once again go spinning out of control. Most jumping insects are designed to deal with this by having their jumping legs arranged on either side of the body. This gives them a larger margin of error when it comes to both the timing and the force of each leg. This is convenient, but it also inherently limits how high and far the insects can jump.
For species of insects that must jump really high and far, the legs must be right under the body. This maximizes the amount of force that goes into the jumping motion, but it also allows for only a tiny margin of error in terms of the timing and relative force of each leg. As a result, these species must coordinate their jumping legs very, very precisely.
This species of jewel wasp cannot produce living male offspring with another species because of its bacteria (Click for credit)
It has long been known that the species of jewel wasp pictured above (Nasonia vitripennis) can mate with another species of jewel wasp (N. giraulti), but the male offspring die in their larval stage. This, of course, keeps the species separate. Scientists have always assumed that the death of the male larvae must have something to do with an incompatibility between the two species at the genetic level. However, a recent study indicates that’s not true. The real reason the males die off is because their bacteria are incompatible with them.
Each species has bacteria living in its gut, helping it digest food, fight off infection, etc. However, the actual mix of bacterial species is different in each wasp species. When male larvae that came from the interbreeding of the two species were given antibiotics to kill off those bacteria, the larvae were able to survive. They weren’t incredibly healthy, but they were as healthy as purebred wasps that also had no bacteria living inside them. However, when bacteria from either species were introduced back into the larvae that came from interbreeding, they died! In the end, then, the males don’t die because of genetic incompatibilities. They die because of bacterial incompatibilities. As ant taxonomist Dr. Corrie Moreau commented:1
I would never have predicted that…We were blown away.
So in some way that we don’t currently understand, the bacteria that live in the gut of these two species of jewel wasps so fundamentally affect their development that the wasps cannot survive unless they are compatible with a specific mix of bacteria. Interestingly enough, this isn’t the only case of bacteria affecting the development of an animal.
In this model of the human brain, the hippocampus is depicted in red. (Click for credit)
One of the features of the mammalian brain is a structure called the hippocampus. Since the brain is split in half, every mammal has two hippocampi, one on each side, as illustrated in the drawings of the human brain above. These structures are very important for the formation of memories as well as spatial navigation. The reason I am telling you all this is because an incredibly interesting study was just published in the journal Cell, and it uses the aftereffects of the atomic bombs (both their use and testing) to pin down the specifics of how many new brain cells people make in their hippocampi throughout their adult life.
At one time, it was considered a rather strong scientific fact that adult mammals do not produce new neurons (the cells that make up the basic building blocks of the nervous system). For example, An Introduction to Neural Networks (a textbook published in 1995) puts it this way:1
In mammals, although not in many other vertebrates, central nervous system neurons have an important peculiarity; they do not divide after a time roughly coinciding with birth. When a neuron dies, it is not replaced.
Prentice-Hall’s textbook, Exploring Life Science (published in 1997), tells us what this means for people:2
All the neurons you will ever have were formed by the time you were six months old.
We now know that such statements are incorrect. In a variety of mammals that have been studied, adults produce new neurons in the olfactory bulb (a part of the brain used in the sense of smell) and the hippocampus.3 This new study uses a technique that shows adult humans produce a significant number of new neurons in their hippocampi, but they probably don’t produce new neurons in their olfactory bulbs.
This microscope image shows an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus in a clover plant's roots.
(Click for credit.)
The microscope picture above shows you a clover root (the mostly transparent material in the picture) whose cells have been “infected” with a fungus (the thick, dark material in the picture). At first glance, you might think the fungus is a parasite that takes nutrients from the plant, but that’s not really true. While the fungus does take nutrients from the clover, it also supplies the plant with critical nitrogen- and phosphorus-based chemicals that the plant has a hard time extracting from the soil. This is a mutually-beneficial relationship, which is often called a mutualistic relationship.
About 95% of all vascular plants develop mycorrhizae,1 and these relationships come in many different forms. For example, in the relationship shown above, the fungus forms a highly-branched structure called an arbuscule, which comes from the Latin word arbusculum, which means for “little tree.” This arbuscule is formed inside the walls of the root’s cells, and the fungus is called an arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungus. Such fungi cannot exist by themselves. They can only exist as a part of a mycorrhizal relationship. There are other forms of mycorrhizae as well, but the study I want to discuss is specifically about AM fungi.
