Modern Science Archives : Page 31 of 53 : Proslogion

Accelerated Radioactive Decay

alpha_decay — 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

Continue reading “Accelerated Radioactive Decay”

An Insect with Gears

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.

Continue reading “An Insect with Gears”

Relationships in Nature Go Deep – Really Deep!

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.

Continue reading “Relationships in Nature Go Deep – Really Deep!”

The Atomic Bomb and the Brain

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.

Continue reading “The Atomic Bomb and the Brain”

People Weren’t The First to Develop an Internet!

mycorrhizae1 — 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.

As anyone who has read this blog for a while knows, I am fascinated by such relationships. I have blogged about them many, many times before (see here, here, here, here, here, and here, for example). In fact, I have blogged about this specific kind of mutualistic relastionship before. It is called a mycorrhiza, and it is very, very common in nature.

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.

Continue reading “People Weren’t The First to Develop an Internet!”

The Blue Planet

Astronomers call earth “the blue planet,” because when you look at it from space, it often appears blue. That’s because most of the earth is covered with water, which reflects blue light better than the other colors of light. So when white light from the sun hits the earth, more blue light is reflected than any other color (as long as there isn’t an enormous amount of cloud cover).

The Cassini space probe that is currently in orbit around Saturn recently had a chance to photograph the earth. It appears as the tiny blue dot pointed out in the photo above. Please click on the photo to get the full-sized version. It really is magnificent. At the time the photo was taken, the earth was 898 million miles away from the Cassini space probe. Nevertheless, it appears as a vivid blue dot on a mostly dark background. In addition, if you “zoom” in close enough, you can actually see the moon orbiting the earth:

cassini1 — The earth (left) and moon as seen from 898 million miles away.
(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute) Click for a full-sized version.

Notice the differences between the earth and the moon. The moon is smaller, but more strikingly, it appears a stark white next to earth’s blue.

The earth has been intricately designed as a haven for life. Its blue color is a beacon proclaiming that, and the beacon can be seen from nearly 900 million miles away!

My New Elementary Science Series

I swore I would never do it. I would never write an elementary science course. After all, I have no experience with the age group. We adopted our only daughter when she was in her teens. I have taught at the university level and the high school level, but never at the elementary level. I simply couldn’t imagine any scenario in which I would write an elementary science series.

Well, God clearly has a sense of humor, because over the past three years, I have been doing just that! It wasn’t my idea. Honestly. When I left my previous position three years ago, I tried to write a math program. I worked hard on it for about two months, and when I looked at it critically, I realized that it just wasn’t very good. I showed it to a math teacher I respect and admire, and he quickly agreed!

As I prayed about what I should be doing, a conversation I had with a brother in Christ kept coming back to my mind. He suggested that I should write an elementary science course that used the days of creation as detailed in Genesis to introduce scientific concepts. The more I prayed about it, the more comfortable I became with the idea, so I started writing a course I originally called Science in the Creation Week, a title my lovely and patient wife never liked.

I decided to change the title of the course when I started seriously praying about what the rest of the series would cover. It seemed to me that the Lord was leading me to write a series that introduced scientific concepts in historical context. Since the creation account in Genesis is the beginning of history, it made sense to call the course Science in the Beginning. Now that I have spent three years writing, I can present an overall plan for the series.

Continue reading “My New Elementary Science Series”

Proof of Heaven

Dr. Eben Alexander is an academic neurosurgeon. He has taught at esteemed institutions such as the Duke University Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He has also done surgery at world-renowned hospitals like Boston Children’s Hospital, the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, and Massachusetts General Hospital. Obviously, his academic credentials are impeccable, and he seems to be a very well-respected surgeon by many health care professionals. Of course, the reason I am telling you about him is that he wrote a book called Proof of Heaven, in which he details a Near Death Experience (NDE) he had. This NDE radically changed him from a materialist who believed that the human mind is simply a product of the brain’s physiology to a theist who believes that our consciousness is a supernatural gift from our Creator.

I decided to read the book because I have always been skeptical of NDEs. At the same time, however, I really haven’t done much reading about them. My skepticism, then, is based largely on ignorance, and I am happy to admit that. It seemed to me if anyone could provide a good, scientific analysis of a NDE, it would be a neurosurgeon who actually experienced one. I read the book, hoping to be persuaded by the evidence. However, I have to say that I finished the book a bit more skeptical about NDEs than when I started.

In brief, Dr. Alexander came down with a very rare case of Escherichia coli meningitis, which he maintains completely shut down his cortex, the portion of the brain that is associated with “higher” functions such as thoughts and actions. He maintains that for all intents and purposes, he had no consciousness, since the part of the brain associated with consciousness was simply shut down by the bacteria that were attacking it. Despite this complete lack of higher brain function, he had a vivid experience of completely different places: An underworld he calls “The Realm of the Earthworm’s Eye View” (p. 30), a glorious land of beauty he calls “The Gateway” (p. 38), and the realm of God Himself, which he calls “The Core” (p. 45).

Continue reading “Proof of Heaven”

The Inquisition Strikes Again – Twice!

In March of this year, I wrote a post about an article that would later appear in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Histochemica. It was an exciting report about soft tissue recovered from a fossilized Triceratops horridus horn. Unfortunately for the lead author, Mark Armitage, it was too exciting for the High Priests of Evolution. According to Creation Ministries International:

Until recently, Mark served as the Manager for the Electron and Confocal Microscopy Suite in the Biology Department at California State University Northridge. Mark was suddenly terminated by the Biology Department when his discovery of soft tissues in Triceratops horn was published in Acta Histochemica.

He is currently seeking relief in a legal action for wrongful termination and religious discrimination by the University.

Now, of course, the exact details of why Armitage was fired from California State University Northridge are not publicly known. However, the timing of the event speaks volumes. It’s not every day that a university employee gets fired right after publishing a paper in a peer-reviewed journal!

If the article was the motivation for Armitage’s termination, it wouldn’t surprise me. As more and more evidence against the ruling scientific dogma of the day continues to accumulate, the only thing the fervently faithful can do is call out the Inquisition in an attempt to squelch that evidence.

That’s what happened when Grand Inquisitor Jerry Coyne decided that Dr. Eric Hedin at Ball State University had to be silenced. He called in the attorneys and forced the university to cancel a course that introduced students to Intelligent Design, as well as the arguments against it. Obviously, the university had to give in to the attorneys, since there was no way it could afford to face an easily-avoided lawsuit. The only good news that comes from this Orwellian situation is that Dr. Hedin will not be fired.

Of course, squelching competing ideas is incredibly anti-science, and it never works. The evidence will win out, and science will eventually correct itself. Thus, the High Priests of Evolution are fighting a losing battle. The only thing their Inquisition can do is delay the inevitable.

More Anti-Science Behavior From Bill Nye

Not long ago, I wrote a post discussing the anti-science views of “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” In that post, I discussed how anti-science it was for Nye to tell people to blindly accept the scientific consensus and stop arguing about whether or not life is the product of evolutionary processes. Well, I recently came across another example of Nye’s anti-science actions. He has no problem lending his name to an experiment that was brazenly faked.

At the 0:47 mark in the the video above, Nye suggests a “simple experiment” to show that carbon dioxide causes global warming. He says to put two thermometers into two identical bottles, add excess carbon dioxide to one bottle, put both bottles under identical heat lamps, and watch the thermometers. Over time, you will see the temperature in the excess-carbon-dioxide-containing bottle rising more quickly than the temperature in the bottle that contains no excess carbon dioxide. The video he is narrating supposedly shows the experiment and its results, proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that carbon dioxide causes global warming.

Now before I start discussing the article that shows that the experiment was faked, I want to make a quick point. I have students do a similar experiment in my award-winning text Exploring Creation with Physical Science. Unlike the one in the video, the experiment I have the students do works for most students, because carbon dioxide does, indeed, trap infrared light and produce an increased temperature in its surroundings. However, the “simple experiment” shown in the video does not demonstrate this, and anyone with a reasonable knowledge of the physical sciences should understand that.

Continue reading “More Anti-Science Behavior From Bill Nye”