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August 16, 2019
Each planet in our solar system possesses unique and fascinating features. Earth hosts an abundant, dazzling array of life. Mars houses the largest volcanoes and a canyon so vast it would span North America from ocean to ocean. Saturn would float—if you could find a bathtub big enough. But Jupiter stands out, with a 400-year-old storm encompassing a region large enough to contain two Earths, and enough gravitational pull to cause volcanic activity on one of its larger moons. Additionally, Jupiter serves as a shield, minimizing the number of asteroids that hit Earth and cause mass extinctions of life. As scientists find planetary systems around other stars, they naturally want to know whether these systems host similar Jupiter-like planets. After nearly three decades of planet hunting, it looks like Jupiters may be rare.
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Exoplanets
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Solar System Design
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June 28, 2019
In May 1997, an IBM chess-playing computer called Deep Blue defeated a grandmaster human chess player (under regular time controls) for the first time in history. It took four decades for computer programs and hardware to advance from their first victory in the mid-1950s to besting a world champion. In the twenty plus years since, however, chess programs running on relatively common hardware (like that used in smartphones) could routinely beat even the best human players.
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June 21, 2019
AP News recently ran an article with the headline “New Study Says Universe Expanding Faster and Is Younger.” Numerous other media outlets echoed the story, adding that the universe may be a billion years younger—as young as 12.5 billion years old. Is this just science changing its mind again? How could researchers be so wrong? A little historical insight coupled with some scientific background help show why scientists are excited about this seemingly large discrepancy.
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Science in the News
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Old Earth Creationism
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Big Bang Theory
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Bible
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May 31, 2019
Two questions fascinate me: (1) Does life exist in the universe beyond the confines of Earth? (2) Will we ever create artificial intelligence here on Earth? If you seek an answer in movies, books, and art, you get a resounding “YES!” to both questions. However, the scientific and theological issues surrounding these questions are far more difficult to sort out. After writing a book asking Is There Life Out There?, I would now like to turn to the second question. As an introduction, we need to define some terms.
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May 3, 2019
When Albert Einstein first proposed his general theory of relativity, it transformed the way scientists thought about space and time. Specifically, the theory predicted that mass could be so compressed that it would rupture the fabric of space-time. Scientists called these things black holes. Over the last hundred years, numerous experimental and theoretical findings have affirmed the existence of black holes, but to date scientists had not imaged one. That changed with a first-ever radio image of galaxy M87, which revealed the shadow of an enormous black hole at its center. This first astronomical image of the black hole shadow highlights a number of cool things about black holes and carries worldview implications.
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Laws of Physics
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Cool Science
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April 19, 2019
In his book A Universe from Nothing, Lawrence Krauss makes no bones about his belief that science provides great contributions to our fundamental knowledge. By contrast, he views input from theology (and philosophy to some extent) as largely useless. Similarly, Stephen Hawking declares, “philosophy is dead,” in The Grand Design.1 Other scientists have publicly echoed these sentiments and probably many more do so privately. Will people view science as useless someday?
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Theology
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Science & Faith
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Science
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Faith & Reason
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April 12, 2019
What comes to mind when you think of water? Personally, water reminds me of some of my favorite activities: canoeing down the spring-fed rivers of southern Missouri, bass fishing in Ozark lakes, watching the torrential downpours of thunderstorms, and deep-sea fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond the fun and enjoyment water provides, it also plays a critical role in Earth’s capacity to host life (as well as the biochemical processes required by life). Consequently, astronomers ardently search for planets capable of hosting water—and those searches have paid dividends.
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Life on Other Planets
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Exoplanets
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February 15, 2019
If only space travel were as easy as depicted in Star Wars or Star Trek! Traveling a few thousand times the speed of light onboard the Enterprise or a hundred times faster by jumping to lightspeed enables these fictional ships to traverse stellar distances in fractions of a day. Unfortunately, the real world poses much greater constraints. Even cruising at one-tenth the speed of light (well beyond our current or imaginary technology), the trip to star system Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighbor, would take nearly 45 years. Some of the latest research reveals the damage even a few months in space causes to the human body. By contrast, Earth’s environment seems ideally suited for humans.
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UFOs & Extraterrestrials
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Earth Design
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August 31, 2018
Many people who witnessed the great eclipse of 2017 will remember it as a wondrous spectacle. But one amateur astronomer saw the event as an opportunity to reproduce measurements of the celebrated general theory of relativity, which provides the basis for understanding cosmological models of our expanding universe.
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Laws of Physics
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Einstein
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Sun
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Cool Science
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August 24, 2018
Earth’s neighbor Mars has created a lot of discovery-driven headlines lately. In one, scientists found seasonal variation of methane in the atmosphere. In another, 3-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks contained “tough” organic material. In a third, researchers think the planet’s surface hosts valleys that look a lot like stream networks seen here on Earth. But undoubtedly, the evidence indicating the existence of a large, subsurface lake at Mars’s south pole generated the most buzz. Each of these discoveries was hailed as signs that Mars once supported life—or might still today. While the question of whether life ever lived on Mars remains unanswered, all these discoveries ultimately point to the amazing design behind Earth’s capacity to support life.
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Earth Design
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Mars
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Life on Other Planets
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Early Earth
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August 17, 2018
My family vacationed in the California redwoods and the giant sequoias this past summer. Seeing these majestic trees towering above the surrounding landscape invokes a sense of awe and wonder along with a feeling of smallness. Just to give a perspective on the size of a sequoia, I calculated that one tree has enough wood to make 10 billion toothpicks! I still enjoy visiting the scenic groves of sequoias and redwoods, but I am reminded that for much of Earth’s history, nothing remotely resembling such amazing life could exist.
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Earth Design
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Earth's History
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Atmosphere
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June 29, 2018
Back in the summer of 1950, famed physicist Enrico Fermi visited Los Alamos National Laboratory and discussed the possibility of interstellar travel with his colleagues as they walked to have lunch. In the brief exchange, some thought faster-than-light (FTL) travel was possible while others thought not. During lunch Fermi posed his now legendary question: “Where is everybody?” Remarkably, although the question came out of the blue, everyone understood its implications.
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UFOs & Extraterrestrials
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Life on Other Planets
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June 15, 2018
“But wait, there’s more!” This infamous phrase preceded the offer of yet another “great” benefit if you bought a Ginsu knife set or a Popeil Pocket Fisherman. Infomercial producers seemed to know that they needed to provide some unexpected bonus for people to watch the whole sales pitch. And this phrase played on our desire to get something more. Not to be outdone, NASA just declared its own “but wait!”
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Exoplanets
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Cosmic Expansion
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June 1, 2018
A few weeks ago, I highlighted scientific advances of a “self-aware” cyberslug. Not to be outdone, scientists have now developed materials that automatically make mechanical and electrical repairs to themselves when damaged. Does this mean that replicating life in all its glory is just around the corner?
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May 18, 2018
Perhaps our universe isn’t as finely tuned as we thought! We know that life requires stars and planets to form. Overly rapid expansion of the universe would prevent this from happening and a larger amount of dark energy means that the universe expands more rapidly. Yet a recent paper shows that the amount of dark energy in the universe could be hundreds of times larger and yet still permit stars and planets to form. This result seems to reduce the role of fine-tuning, right? Sort of, but not really. In fact, this discovery makes multiverse explanations for the intricate balances that life requires even more difficult to accept—if you demand a purely naturalistic multiverse.
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Universe Design
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Multiverse
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May 11, 2018
Did the universe begin to exist or not? The final paper from Stephen Hawking indicates that the universe did have a beginning. Here are the details.
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Famous Scientists
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Inflation
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Big Bang Theory
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May 4, 2018
Davies basically argues that scientists must largely accept that the laws of physics work without having an adequate understanding of why they work. Nothing about the laws of physics specifies that they must appear the way they do or that they should exhibit the regularity, order, and understandability that they do. As you could imagine, the claim that science is founded on faith produced some rather strong reactions—which you can read in a conversation that took place at the Edge. The responses highlighted three important points.
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Science & Faith
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Laws of Physics
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Cosmology
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April 20, 2018
On September 1, 1859, the Sun experienced an unusually large storm that ejected a massive cloud of charged particles. Seventeen hours later, on September 2, the cloud collided with Earth’s atmosphere, generating one of the most spectacular displays of the aurora borealis ever recorded. Even people in Hawaii and Cuba witnessed the aurora! So much electromagnetic energy coursed through the Earth that telegraph operators across the Atlantic Ocean could operate their equipment without connecting it to any batteries. Estimates of damage caused by such an event today range upwards of $2 trillion just for the United States. Yet, these remarkable events highlight another way that Earth seems designed for us to live here.
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March 23, 2018
What do these movies have in common? Bicentennial Man, Tron, Short Circuit, WarGames, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, D.A.R.Y.L. If you guessed that artificial intelligence is crucial to the plot, and that you must be older than 40 to recognize many of them, you would be correct. Maybe a more current list would include Chappie, Transcendence, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Transformers, and Rogue One. If Hollywood movies are any indicator, we find the concept of self-aware creatures fascinating. So the real-life attempt to make a self-aware “cyberslug” should not surprise anyone.
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Artificial Intelligence
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Image of God
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Human Uniqueness
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March 16, 2018
As announced in the Daily Mail, the renowned Stephen Hawking died peacefully at his home on Wednesday. Since I work for an Christian organization that talks about science-faith issues, I thought quite a bit about what I would say if asked about his passing. Given that Hawking did not believe in God, could I give Stephen Hawking a eulogy—a speech that would praise him highly? Yes, I could.
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