Stars, Cells, and God

The Musings on AI

Musings on AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has already penetrated many areas of our daily life. While AI can bring some benefits, we often don’t understand the long-term effects of AI use. In this episode, Jeff Zweerink and Abdu Murray explore some of the consequences that might ensue as we utilize AI in the legal profession. Of particular interest is the way AI will impact our relationships, not just in legal matters, but in everyday life as well.
Links and Resources:
Can the AI Driving ChatGPT Help to Detect Early Signs of Alzheimer's Disease?
Did Life Exist on Mars? Other Planets? With AI’s Help, We May Know Soon

Life on K2-18b? and Galaxy Formation Models

Life on K2-18b?
Two months ago the Internet blew up with articles and blogs announcing that astronomers had discovered molecules in the atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18b that only living organisms can produce. Those biosignature molecules were dimethyl sulfide and chloromethane. While there is no doubt that methane was detected in K2-18b’s atmosphere and carbon dioxide likely detected, the detections of dimethyl sulfide and chloromethane were marginal at best. Furthermore, astronomers have detected chloromethane in a comet and an interstellar cloud where it is well established that life and life chemistry is impossible, and they found abiotic pathways for the production of dimethyl sulfide. The Internet articles overlooked the physical characteristics of K2-18b and its host star that categorically rule out any possibility of physical life on the planet.
Galaxy Formation Models
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has provided numerous images and results that challenge our current models of galaxy formation. Some astronomers have even used this discrepancy to argue against big bang cosmology. A recent paper provides strong evidence for the formation of spiral-type galaxies forming within the first billion years of the universe (where most models predict much longer formation times). We discuss the importance of this data and the implications for how galaxy formation models will change—particularly becoming more complex. Additionally, we expect that this complexity will reveal even more evidence for design in the universe than is now known.
Links and Resources:
Carbon-Bearing Molecules in a Possible Hycean Atmosphere
Structure and Dynamics of Cold Water Super-Earths: The Case of Occluded CH4 and Its Outgassing
The JWST Hubble Sequence: The Rest-Frame Optical Evolution of Galaxy Structure at 1.5 <z <6.5
 

Christianity, Islam, and Science

Christianity, Islam, and Science
In this special episode, Fuz Rana and Abdu Murray address these questions, and more.
·      Which religion has a worldview that provides the justification for science?
·      Which religion can legitimately lay claim to the scientific evidence for God’s existence?
·      Which religious text displays scientific accuracy?
·      How can science be used to build a bridge between Christianity and Islam?

Biochemical Maxwell Demons and First Australians

Biochemical Maxwell Demons
Maxwell’s demon is a thought experiment designed to illustrate the second law of thermodynamics. In this imaginary scenario, a demon operates a massless door separating two boxes filled with gas molecules. The demon opens and shuts the door to allow certain gas molecules to pass from one box to the other. Eventually one box contains high temperature molecules and the other, low temperature molecules—violating the second law of thermodynamics. Physicists have discovered why Maxwell’s demon doesn’t violate the second law by describing the demon’s activity with information theory.
Recently, a team of biophysicists from Switzerland demonstrated that a special class of transport proteins found in cell membranes behave as literal Maxwell’s demons, making these proteins sophisticated computational devices.
In this episode, biochemist Fuz Rana discusses this work and demonstrates why this discovery evinces a Creator’s role in the origin and design of life.
First Australians
Some scientists have long held that thermoluminescence dating of circular engravings in the Jinmium rock shelter proved that modern humans had colonized Australia 75,000–58,000 years ago. Carbon-14 measurements of charcoal samples found in the same layer as the engravings showed that this date was too old by a factor of 20 times. Other carbon-14 measurements on modern human remains and artifacts found in 26 other archaeological sites in Australia and New Guinea establish that anatomically modern humans first colonized Sahul (an ice age continent consisting of Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania) 47,000–40,000 years ago and that evidence for an earlier arrival by modern humans is very weak. This newly established date for the first colonization of Sahul is consistent with the date of 44,000–40,000 years ago for the arrival of the first humans in Europe. These dates provide support for the biblical claim that there was a rapid, near simultaneous, widespread dispersal of humans from one region some time after Noah’s Flood.  
Links and Resources:
ABC Transporters Are Billion-Year-Old Maxwell Demons
The Cell’s Design
Biochemical Finite-State Machines Point to an Infinite Creator
Early Human Occupation of Northern Australia: Archaeology and Thermoluminescence Dating of Jinmium Rock-Shelter, Northern Territory
Optical and Radiocarbon Dating at Jinmium Rock Shelter in Northern Australia
The Process, Biotic Impact, and Global Implications of the Human Colonization of Sahul about 47,000 Years Ago
A Genomic History of Aboriginal Australia
The Earliest Evidence for Anatomically Modern Humans in Northwestern Europe
A 41,500 Year-Old Decorated Ivory Pendant from Stajnia Cave (Poland)
 

Hominin Burials? and Viscous Fine-Tuning

Hominin Burials?
Were modern humans the first to bury their dead deliberately and ritualistically? Or did hominins that preceded them in life’s history also deliberately inter their dead? These questions bear on the concept of human exceptionalism and, for Christians, the scientific case for the image of God in modern humans.
In this episode, biochemist and Christian apologist Fuz Rana discusses recent work by a research team of collaborators from the US, Spain, Italy, and South Africa that relies on the use of machine learning algorithms to analyze hominin burials.
What did they discover? How do their insights impact the case for human exceptionalism?
Viscous Fine-Tuning
For decades, physicists have recognized that the fundamental constants of our universe (speed of light, fine structure constant, proton-to-electron mass ratio, etc.) appear finely tuned to make the environment suitable for life to exist. Typically, that fine-tuning has arisen in the context of making atomic nuclei or stars or planets. A recent paper shows how the fine-tuning of the fundamental constants applies even to the life-essential processes at work inside the cell.
Links and Resources:
Hominin Skeletal Part Abundances and Claims of Deliberate Disposal of Corpses in the Middle Pleistocene
Rabbit Burrowing Churns Claims about Neanderthal Burials
Does Homo naledi Undermine the Case for Human Exceptionalism?
Constraints on Fundamental Physical Constants from Bio-Friendly Viscosity and Diffusion

Sun's Birth Cluster and More Gravitational Waves

Sun’s Birth Cluster
The quantity of aluminum-26 in primitive meteorites indicates that a nearby core-collapse supernova event occurred during the first 100,000 years of the solar system’s existence. For this to be possible, the solar system’s birth cluster must have contained 2,000–20,000 stars. Additionally, the solar system must have formed in a huge, dense molecular cloud where multiple filaments join to form hubs (the only possible sites where stars with enough mass to become core-collapse supernovae can form) and where dense single filaments stream out from the hubs. Only if the solar system forms in a dense single filament at the just-right distance from a hub will it be enriched with the measured quantity of aluminum-26 without having its system of planets being so disrupted as to rule out the possibility of life. Furthermore, for advanced life to be possible in the solar system, the solar system must be ejected from its birth cluster at the just-right time to a location just inside the Milky Way Galaxy’s co-rotation distance.
More Gravitational Waves
Recently, four different collaborations announced the potential detection of gravitational waves from monitoring the timing of pulsars. If confirmed, this would be the second type of gravitational wave detected, the first being the few-km-long wave found by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and similar instruments. These new waves have wavelengths closer to the distances between stars and most likely originate from mergers of supermassive black holes. We will discuss the detection techniques for these new waves as well as the apologetic implications.
Link and Resources:
Insights on the Sun Birth Environment in the Context of Star Cluster Formation in Hub-Filament Systems
Number of Stars in the Sun’s Birth Cluster Revisited
Giant Gravitational Waves: Why Scientists Are So Excited
Monster Gravitational Waves Spotted for First Time
 

Earliest Rope Making and Gullies on Mars

Earliest Rope Making
When did humans first begin deploying fiber technology?
This question is important because fiber technology makes composite technology possible, such as textiles, ropes, baskets, nets, weapons, housing, and boats. It also reflects the capacity for advanced cognition.
An international team from the Philippines, France, and Germany recently published evidence that humans in the Philippines possessed fiber technology around 40,000 years ago. In this episode, biochemist Fuz Rana discusses the scientific and theological implications of this discovery.
What does this advance mean for RTB’s creation model for human origins and the scientific case for the image of God?
Rana will also discuss the ramifications of this discovery for recent claims that Neanderthals invented fiber technology.
Gullies on Mars
Observations of Mars reveal formations that strongly point to the presence of liquid water. While astronomers know that Mars had liquid water in the distant past, these features occasionally make the news cycle as indicating the presence of liquid water more recently. A new study of Martian gullies shows that the water needed for formation indicates a highly disruptive environment for life. These results further highlight Earth’s remarkable ability to host life.
Links and Resources
The Invisible Plant Technology of Prehistoric Southeast Asia: Indirect Evidence for Basket and Rope Making at Tabon Cave, Philippines, 39–33,000 Years Ago
 Direct Evidence of Neanderthal Fibre Technology and Its Cognitive and Behavioral Implications
"Did Neanderthals Invent String?,"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaCTCrwzr1k
Gullies on Mars Could Have Formed by Melting of Water Ice during Periods of High Obliquity

Purpose in Cosmology and Biology

Purpose in Cosmology and Biology
Is the fine-tuning of the universe limited to the constants of physics or does it manifest in other areas of science such as chemistry, biochemistry, and biology? In this episode, David and Fuz describe and discuss the anthropic principle and its theological implications. They also discuss the idea of process structuralism, an evolutionary model that maintains that physical forces—not natural selection—shaped the history of life. How does this view of the evolutionary process intersect with the anthropic principle? And how do these two ideas provide evidence for design and purpose in the universe and life?
Links and Resources:
The Creator and the Cosmos
Fit for a Purpose

God and Information Theory

God and Information Theory
In this episode, we discuss how living things exhibit a high degree of information­—far beyond what can be explained by natural causes. The physics underlying information theory shows us that natural forces will degrade the information content of a closed system over time. Since the origin and progressive complexity of life manifests a dramatic increase in information, we conclude that the existence of living things is consistent only with intelligent design—as ascribed in the Bible to the creative work of God.
Links and Resources:
Is Life an Information Ratchet?
Information and Life’s Origin—A Retrospective View
Physics, Information Loss, and Intelligent Design

Design Proteins and Cosmic Time Dilation

Designer Proteins
Recently, a research team from the University of Washington achieved a milestone in nanotechnology when they used computational methods to design proteins from the ground up shaped into structures that resemble axles and rotors. In turn, they assembled these components into rudimentary protein machines. This proof-of-principle work sets the stage for scientists and technologists to design other machine parts that can be used to fabricate even more sophisticated protein machines.
In this episode, biochemist Fuz Rana discusses this exciting work and explores how it can be marshalled as evidence for a Creator’s role in the origin and design of life.
Cosmic Time Dilation
Time dilation provides direct evidence for the biblically implied big bang creation model. A cornerstone of big bang cosmology is that the universe expands from an infinitesimally small spacetime volume. In such a universe distant galaxies and quasars will be moving away from Earth at high velocities. According to special relativity, clocks moving at high velocities relative to Earth will show time extended by a factor of 1 divided by the square root of (1 – v2/c2), where “v” is the velocity at which the clock is moving and “c” is the velocity of light. Astronomers have observed the cosmic time dilation predicted by the big bang in the light curves of type Ia supernova in galaxies 4–9 billion years away. However, until now, they have not seen it in the very distant universe where the time dilation effect would be 10–60 times greater. Now, a two-decade study of the variability of quasars more distant than 12.8 billion light-years has spectacularly affirmed the expected cosmic time dilation. Thus, it affirms the Bible’s accuracy in anticipating future scientific discoveries and helps establish the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.
Links and Resources:
Computational Design of Mechanically Coupled Axle-Rotor Protein Assemblies
The Cell’s Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator’s Artistry
Molecular Scale Robotics Build Case for Design
On Time Dilation in Quasar Light Curves
What Does the Bible Say about the Big Bang?
A Matter of Days: Resolving a Creation Controversy, 2nd edition, 166–169