Saturday, 11 March 2017
I.D is already mainstream? II
Light Sails: In Fast Radio Bursts, Harvard Scientists Seek Evidence of Intelligent Design -
Evolution News
Some critics of intelligent design — the less serious ones — maintain that seeking to detect design in nature is akin to searching out fairies and unicorns. Tell that to Avi Loeb and Manasvi Lingam, researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Their forthcoming paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters is “Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Light Sails.” It applies what is manifestly (albeit not by that name) a design filter to evaluating a mysterious phenomenon in distant space. So-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) could be natural. Or they could be an artifact of non-human intelligence, an unknown technology in use to power enormous alien spacecraft in “sailing” across the stars. Distinguishing nature from artifact is the main point on the agenda of all intelligent design research, whether it’s called that or not.
A statement announcing the publication is fascinating:
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has looked for many different signs of alien life, from radio broadcasts to laser flashes, without success. However, newly published research suggests that mysterious phenomena called fast radio bursts could be evidence of advanced alien technology. Specifically, these bursts might be leakage from planet-sized transmitters powering interstellar probes in distant galaxies.
“Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven’t identified a possible natural source with any confidence,” said theorist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking.”
As the name implies, fast radio bursts are millisecond-long flashes of radio emission. First discovered in 2007, fewer than two dozen have been detected by gigantic radio telescopes like the Parkes Observatory in Australia or the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. They are inferred to originate from distant galaxies, billions of light-years away.
Loeb and his co-author Manasvi Lingam (Harvard University) examined the feasibility of creating a radio transmitter strong enough for it to be detectable across such immense distances. They found that, if the transmitter were solar powered, the sunlight falling on an area of a planet twice the size of the Earth would be enough to generate the needed energy. Such a vast construction project is well beyond our technology, but within the realm of possibility according to the laws of physics.
…
[Lingam and Loeb] asked, why build such an instrument in the first place? They argue that the most plausible use of such power is driving interstellar light sails. The amount of power involved would be sufficient to push a payload of a million tons, or about 20 times the largest cruise ships on Earth.
“That’s big enough to carry living passengers across interstellar or even intergalactic distances,” added Lingam.
The Washington Post points out that space sails are an idea explored in science fiction. They mention a short story by Arthur C. Clarke (“Sunjammer”) and a 2002 Star Wars installment (Attack of the Clones). So is this just a case of more fairies and unicorns? Obviously not. Avi Loeb is known for his out-of-the-box thinking. But he is a highly regarded astrophysicist. The science seems sound. Solar sails, indeed, are probably the easiest way to imagine travel to the stars.
As the Post concedes, NASA is already on the verge of employing light sails, on an appropriately modest scale.
Solar sails are poised to jump into real life, too, in 2018. Two years ago, NASA announced its Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, which will use a reflective sail to travel toward a lump of space rock.
And if the technology of light sails seems beyond our present ken, that should come as no surprise. Do you think Aristotle could even begin to conceive of a TV remote? Or a cell phone? Not likely. So on what grounds do we suppose that advanced aliens would employ technologies easily comprehensible to us?
Even without evaluating the physics of FRBs in relation to the Lingam & Loeb hypothesis, it’s good to observe their use of a design-filter mode of reasoning. Seeing intelligent causation not as fantastic or inherently suspect, but another genuine causal possibility reached by objectively sifting evidence, is the first step to setting science free from its slavery to materialism.
In short, there’s no magical thinking in light sails. Only good ID science. Their hypothesis is speculative, but thoughtful and serious. It also rests on a good deal less evidence than the argument for design in our familiar world of terrestrial biology.
- See more at: https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/03/light-sails-fast-radio-bursts-harvard-scientists-seek-evidence-intelligent-design/#sthash.u7Ed3AIb.dpuf
Evolution News
Some critics of intelligent design — the less serious ones — maintain that seeking to detect design in nature is akin to searching out fairies and unicorns. Tell that to Avi Loeb and Manasvi Lingam, researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Their forthcoming paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters is “Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Light Sails.” It applies what is manifestly (albeit not by that name) a design filter to evaluating a mysterious phenomenon in distant space. So-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) could be natural. Or they could be an artifact of non-human intelligence, an unknown technology in use to power enormous alien spacecraft in “sailing” across the stars. Distinguishing nature from artifact is the main point on the agenda of all intelligent design research, whether it’s called that or not.
A statement announcing the publication is fascinating:
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has looked for many different signs of alien life, from radio broadcasts to laser flashes, without success. However, newly published research suggests that mysterious phenomena called fast radio bursts could be evidence of advanced alien technology. Specifically, these bursts might be leakage from planet-sized transmitters powering interstellar probes in distant galaxies.
“Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven’t identified a possible natural source with any confidence,” said theorist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking.”
As the name implies, fast radio bursts are millisecond-long flashes of radio emission. First discovered in 2007, fewer than two dozen have been detected by gigantic radio telescopes like the Parkes Observatory in Australia or the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. They are inferred to originate from distant galaxies, billions of light-years away.
Loeb and his co-author Manasvi Lingam (Harvard University) examined the feasibility of creating a radio transmitter strong enough for it to be detectable across such immense distances. They found that, if the transmitter were solar powered, the sunlight falling on an area of a planet twice the size of the Earth would be enough to generate the needed energy. Such a vast construction project is well beyond our technology, but within the realm of possibility according to the laws of physics.
…
[Lingam and Loeb] asked, why build such an instrument in the first place? They argue that the most plausible use of such power is driving interstellar light sails. The amount of power involved would be sufficient to push a payload of a million tons, or about 20 times the largest cruise ships on Earth.
“That’s big enough to carry living passengers across interstellar or even intergalactic distances,” added Lingam.
The Washington Post points out that space sails are an idea explored in science fiction. They mention a short story by Arthur C. Clarke (“Sunjammer”) and a 2002 Star Wars installment (Attack of the Clones). So is this just a case of more fairies and unicorns? Obviously not. Avi Loeb is known for his out-of-the-box thinking. But he is a highly regarded astrophysicist. The science seems sound. Solar sails, indeed, are probably the easiest way to imagine travel to the stars.
As the Post concedes, NASA is already on the verge of employing light sails, on an appropriately modest scale.
Solar sails are poised to jump into real life, too, in 2018. Two years ago, NASA announced its Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, which will use a reflective sail to travel toward a lump of space rock.
And if the technology of light sails seems beyond our present ken, that should come as no surprise. Do you think Aristotle could even begin to conceive of a TV remote? Or a cell phone? Not likely. So on what grounds do we suppose that advanced aliens would employ technologies easily comprehensible to us?
Even without evaluating the physics of FRBs in relation to the Lingam & Loeb hypothesis, it’s good to observe their use of a design-filter mode of reasoning. Seeing intelligent causation not as fantastic or inherently suspect, but another genuine causal possibility reached by objectively sifting evidence, is the first step to setting science free from its slavery to materialism.
In short, there’s no magical thinking in light sails. Only good ID science. Their hypothesis is speculative, but thoughtful and serious. It also rests on a good deal less evidence than the argument for design in our familiar world of terrestrial biology.
- See more at: https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/03/light-sails-fast-radio-bursts-harvard-scientists-seek-evidence-intelligent-design/#sthash.u7Ed3AIb.dpuf
Origin of life science tosses up yet another Just so story
Cranky young sun kickstarted life? No.
Unless you believe New Scientist::
Giant flare-ups from the young sun might have kept early Earth warm – and any life nicely fertilised. By splitting inert nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere, charged particles from the sun could have sparked chemical reactions that heated the planet and could be the precursor for life.
This suggestion is the latest attempt to solve a famous paradox known as the “faint young sun” problem. About 4 billion years ago, the sun was only 70 per cent as bright as it is today, which should have made the Earth a frozen snowball. But geological evidence shows that ancient Earth was warm enough for liquid water. The same holds true for Mars.
Now, Vladimir Airapetian of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland suggests that blasts of protons from the hyperactive young sun could be the answer .More.
Physicist Rob Sheldon writes to say,
This is a bit close to my field: magnetospheric particles, flares, etc. But its claim is rubbish:
a) The number of nitrogen molecules “split” by solar protons is miniscule, because we’re talking maybe 10 protons/cubic centimeter. This is ultra-high vacuum in any other location on the surface of the planet. And all that split nitrogen is high up in the ionosphere–unlikely to ever diffuse down to sea level.
b) Sea-level lightning splits nitrogen and generates the majority of the NOx in the Earth, which is gratefully used by life, the density of nitrogen being some 17 orders of magnitude larger here than in solar flares.
c) But to sustain life, neither flares nor lightning is important, life does it alone from nitrogen fixing cyanobacteria in the oceans or root-nodules of legumes. Nitrogen fixation is then one of those “irreducibly complex” problems for evolution.
But what this article does reveal–like so many Darwinian “breakthroughs”–is that nitrogen is a real problem for Origin-of-life (OOL). Every protein and nucleobase has nitrogen in it, which needs to be “fixed” or chemically bound for life to start, because fixed nitrogen is unstable. That is because the N2 gas that fills our atmosphere (“unfixed”) is so extremely stable, as organic matter decomposes in our garden, it loses nitrogen to the atmosphere, which never comes back. That’s why coal has no nitrogen content. Other than fresh organic stuff, (or mined organic stuff such as guano) farmers have to put (fixed) nitrogen back in the soil as “nitrates”, a popular version being “ammonium nitrate”, which is now made synthetically using the Nobel-prize winning “Haber-Bosch” high-temperature catalyst process.
So what OOL needs, in addition to energy sources, entropy barriers, miscible membranes, hot-springs etc, is some way to get fixed nitrogen in the environment as well. This article wants to tie it into solar flares and thence to a young sun to make OOL on Earth more likely. In contrast, Miller-Urey argued for lightning, which is indeed, far more efficient than solar protons. This fellow is either cheerleading for Darwin, or advertising his (overly-simplistic) 2-D computer modeling codes (having done some 3-D magnetosphere models ~20 years ago.) But that’s the way this
game is played–no matter how insignificant your result, if you want the media to notice your press release, claim it either supports Darwin or global warming or both.
Unless you believe New Scientist::
Giant flare-ups from the young sun might have kept early Earth warm – and any life nicely fertilised. By splitting inert nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere, charged particles from the sun could have sparked chemical reactions that heated the planet and could be the precursor for life.
This suggestion is the latest attempt to solve a famous paradox known as the “faint young sun” problem. About 4 billion years ago, the sun was only 70 per cent as bright as it is today, which should have made the Earth a frozen snowball. But geological evidence shows that ancient Earth was warm enough for liquid water. The same holds true for Mars.
Now, Vladimir Airapetian of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland suggests that blasts of protons from the hyperactive young sun could be the answer .More.
Physicist Rob Sheldon writes to say,
This is a bit close to my field: magnetospheric particles, flares, etc. But its claim is rubbish:
a) The number of nitrogen molecules “split” by solar protons is miniscule, because we’re talking maybe 10 protons/cubic centimeter. This is ultra-high vacuum in any other location on the surface of the planet. And all that split nitrogen is high up in the ionosphere–unlikely to ever diffuse down to sea level.
b) Sea-level lightning splits nitrogen and generates the majority of the NOx in the Earth, which is gratefully used by life, the density of nitrogen being some 17 orders of magnitude larger here than in solar flares.
c) But to sustain life, neither flares nor lightning is important, life does it alone from nitrogen fixing cyanobacteria in the oceans or root-nodules of legumes. Nitrogen fixation is then one of those “irreducibly complex” problems for evolution.
But what this article does reveal–like so many Darwinian “breakthroughs”–is that nitrogen is a real problem for Origin-of-life (OOL). Every protein and nucleobase has nitrogen in it, which needs to be “fixed” or chemically bound for life to start, because fixed nitrogen is unstable. That is because the N2 gas that fills our atmosphere (“unfixed”) is so extremely stable, as organic matter decomposes in our garden, it loses nitrogen to the atmosphere, which never comes back. That’s why coal has no nitrogen content. Other than fresh organic stuff, (or mined organic stuff such as guano) farmers have to put (fixed) nitrogen back in the soil as “nitrates”, a popular version being “ammonium nitrate”, which is now made synthetically using the Nobel-prize winning “Haber-Bosch” high-temperature catalyst process.
So what OOL needs, in addition to energy sources, entropy barriers, miscible membranes, hot-springs etc, is some way to get fixed nitrogen in the environment as well. This article wants to tie it into solar flares and thence to a young sun to make OOL on Earth more likely. In contrast, Miller-Urey argued for lightning, which is indeed, far more efficient than solar protons. This fellow is either cheerleading for Darwin, or advertising his (overly-simplistic) 2-D computer modeling codes (having done some 3-D magnetosphere models ~20 years ago.) But that’s the way this
game is played–no matter how insignificant your result, if you want the media to notice your press release, claim it either supports Darwin or global warming or both.
Is Russia'a war on religious liberty going to the next level?:The Watchtower Society's commentary.
Ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia Imminent?
On February 21, 2017, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation issued a new order to the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia. The Ministry is now demanding that the Administrative Center provide information on all 2,277 congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout Russia.
The Ministry of Justice issued this latest order while it was conducting an inspection of the Administrative Center, ordered by the Prosecutor General’s Office. During that inspection, authorities focused only on the legal entities that the Witnesses use. These entities include the Administrative Center itself as well as Local Religious Organizations, which congregations use to hold title to properties for religious services. On February 27, 2017, the Ministry of Justice concluded its inspection and reported that the Administrative Center violated the law and showed signs of engaging in “extremist activity.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses around the world are gravely concerned for their fellow believers in Russia. With this second order, the Ministry of Justice has turned its attention to the congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Based on the authorities’ latest actions, the Witnesses believe that the Prosecutor General is moving not only to liquidate all legal entities of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia but also to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout the Russian Federation.
On February 21, 2017, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation issued a new order to the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia. The Ministry is now demanding that the Administrative Center provide information on all 2,277 congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout Russia.
The Ministry of Justice issued this latest order while it was conducting an inspection of the Administrative Center, ordered by the Prosecutor General’s Office. During that inspection, authorities focused only on the legal entities that the Witnesses use. These entities include the Administrative Center itself as well as Local Religious Organizations, which congregations use to hold title to properties for religious services. On February 27, 2017, the Ministry of Justice concluded its inspection and reported that the Administrative Center violated the law and showed signs of engaging in “extremist activity.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses around the world are gravely concerned for their fellow believers in Russia. With this second order, the Ministry of Justice has turned its attention to the congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Based on the authorities’ latest actions, the Witnesses believe that the Prosecutor General is moving not only to liquidate all legal entities of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia but also to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout the Russian Federation.
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