The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Recently, we noted that Dr. Khan, of the Khan Academy education vids, seems to fancy himself a theologian and - on that basis - attacks design in nature in one of them.

(Just in case your kid isn't getting enough religion in Sunday school, Khan thoughtfully provides that too - but is it a religion you accept?)

This revelation left some parents scrambling for an alternative (lucky them if they have any say!) A friend points us to Interactive Biology ("Struggling with Biology? We'll Make it Fun.") for high schoolers.

Here's the teacher behind it:

We all know that there are MANY people out there who don't like biology. Ok, ok, there are even many out there who HATE it with a Passion. I know . . . it's hard to believe - such a fascinating topic with so much valuable information and people actually don't like it. Can you fancy that?

Here's the thing - I have a theory. My theory is that most people who don't like it, don't like it because of the way it was taught to them - A bunch of $100 words ...

Our friend comments,

Unlike Khan Academy, I couldn't find any videos on Darwin or evolution.... just straight biology. What a concept: teaching biology without Darwin. Is that good or bad? (What? You mean no just-so stories?)

Let's hope not. It's nice that we don't currently have the least idea whether Dr. Samuel thinks, BioLogos-style, "God would have/wouldn't have done it that way." Or the other "would haves," "may haves," and "might haves" starring in the endless reruns of the Darwin, Meet Reality Show.

If your kid wants religion at school, tell him to sign up in the Comparative Religion course or the World Philosophy course. Biology is the study of what actually does or did happen, not what we think about God.

Note r. Samuel contacted Uncommon Descent to say that he does not address the Darwin controversies. His note appears with the article.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow UD News at Twitter!

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

From "The flawed multiverse," Alastair I M Rae's Physicsworld (Sep 22, 2011) review of David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World:

According to the quantum-information theorist David Deutsch, our modern understanding of how the world works has provided us with "good explanations" that open up essentially infinite possibilities for future progress. One of these explanations is the idea of the quantum multiverse, which Deutsch discussed in the May issue of Physics World (pp34–38, print version only) and to which he devotes a chapter in his book The Beginning of Infinity.

I believe the many-worlds theory is open to criticism for reasons other than extravagence. One of these concerns probabilities in a situation where both outcomes occur in parallel. If both options are happening, how can it be meaningful to say that one is more probable than the other – as is experimentally the case if the reflector is not exactly 50/50?

As he described in his Physics World article, Deutsch's response is to propose that before the measurement, the photon is not just a single particle but is actually an (uncountable) infinity of identical or "fungible" particles. After interacting with the reflector, an infinite number of fungible photons exist in both output channels, but the ratio of these numbers is finite, so that each has a "measure" proportional to the squared modulus of the wavefunction. Even though an observer knows they are going to evolve into two copies of themself, they can apparently assign relative probabilities to which copy they expect to become. These probabilities are given by the Born rule. [Registration required.]

Rae isn't convinced that this Deutsch fixes - or others - resolve the problem, and is put off by the book's dogmatic tone. He comments,

Deutsch willingly accepts that much of his inspiration comes from the work of Karl Popper, whose mantra "we have a duty to be optimistic" clearly underlies his thinking. However, he would have done well to remember that Popper was often dogmatic, to the point where some wags said that his book The Open Society and its Enemies should have been called "The Open Society by one of its Enemies"!

See also: Information as real and irreducible to physics? – David Deutsch's surprising response

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "'Accelerating universe' could be just an illusion" (MSNBC, September 27, 2011), Natalie Wolchover reports, "If true, theory would rid cosmology of its biggest headache - dark energy":

Now, a new theory suggests that the accelerating expansion of the universe is merely an illusion, akin to a mirage in the desert. The false impression results from the way our particular region of the cosmos is drifting through the rest of space, said Christos Tsagas, a cosmologist at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. Our relative motion makes it look like the universe as a whole is expanding faster and faster, while in actuality, its expansion is slowing down — just as would be expected from what we know about gravity.

If Tsagas' theory is correct, it would rid cosmology of its biggest headache, dark energy, and it might also save the universe from its harrowing fate: the Big Rip. Instead of ripping it to bits, the universe as Tsagas space-time envisions it would just roll to a standstill, then slowly start shrinking.

Folding up nicely, one supposes, into a duffle. And this is simpler:

Tsagas may have shown that the universe either has dark flow or dark energy, but not both. Dark flow is by far the less mysterious of the two: While no one knows what dark energy is, or how we might find it, dark flow is merely movement.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow UD News at Twitter!

by Denyse OLeary
ARN correspondent

From "Salty Water and Gas Sucked Into Earth's Interior Helps Unravel Planetary Evolution" (ScienceDaily Sep. 26, 2011), we learn:

Lead author Dr Mark Kendrick from the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences said inert gases trapped inside Earth's interior provide important clues into the processes responsible for the birth of our planet and the subsequent evolution of its oceans and atmosphere.

"Our findings throw into uncertainty a recent conclusion that gases throughout the Earth were solely delivered by meteorites crashing into the planet," he said.

It's a lot to ask of the meteorites.

Because the composition of neon in Earth's mantle is very similar to that in meteorites, it was recently suggested by scientists that most of Earth's gases were delivered by meteorites during a late meteorite bombardment that also generated visible craters on Earth's moon.

"Our study suggests a more complex history in which gases were also dissolved into the Earth while it was still covered by a molten layer, during the birth of the solar system," he said.

These days, go for the more complex history.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow UD News at Twitter!