KOI-701.03, an as yet unconfirmed, Earth-like world probably in the habitable zone of its Sun. KOI-703.03 visualized in Celestia (click to embiggen).
On this Thursday at 18:00 UT
NASA will hold a press conference on a recent discovery by the Kepler, the
exoplanet discovery telescope. I don't know what to expect, on the basis of past performance they will probably announce a tidally locked super-Earth in the habitable zone of a Red Dwarf as if we have found a second Earth (or maybe they will confirm KOI-701.03 really is in the habitable zone of a reasonably sun like star).
Still, despite coming hard on the
heels of the 50 new exoplanets found by
HARPS, the existing
bonanza of Kepler worlds and discovering the atmospheric composition of some exoplanets, one can hardly suppress a thrill at the prospect of learning something new about the plethora of extrasolar worlds we have found.
One wonders how William Dembski feels after proclaiming in 1992:
"Dawkins, to explain life apart from a designer, not only gives himself all the time Darwin ever wanted, but also helps himself to all the conceivable planets there might be in the observable universe (note that these are planets he must posit, since no planets outside our solar system have been observed, nor is there currently any compelling theory of planetary formation which guarantees that the observable universe is populated with planets)"
Three years later the first exoplanet was confirmed, and the
current count stands at 677.
Exoplanets visualized at "Data is Beautiful" for Wired.
It's not the first time a pundit has been wrong, after all the philosopher Auguste Comte claimed that we would never know the composition of the stars, yet 25 years later the spectroscope revealed the elements they were made of (and in 1814 Frauenhoffer had seen the spectral lines that would reveal the stars secrets when chemistry improved).
But it's not the fact the Dembski was wrong (or Paul Nelson,
who quoted him approvingly in 1993), but the way that they were wrong. The claim is that "Darwinists" posited a plethora of worlds to fulfil the needs of evolutionary theory, without any strong evidence. Yet Dembski and company couldn't be more wrong.
The 55 Cnc system (excluding the outermost planet), 55 Cnc e is marked by the red cross near the sun.
Note that Dembski says "nor is there
currently any compelling theory of planetary formation which
guarantees that the observable universe is populated with planets". You might think this hedges his bets a bit, with the qualifications "compelling" and "guarantees", but it doesn't
By the 60's the dominant theory of planetary formation was a variant of the
nebular hypothesis, which with further modification became dominant in the 1970's.
It was abundantly obvious even in the 60's that the implication of this hypothesis was that planet formation would not be a rare event (for example the RAND corporation study "
Habitable Planets for Man" published in 1964 used this model as a basis for estimating the number of stars with planets).
Then there was stellar rotation. In the solar system, most of the angular momentum is in the planets, and the sun has most of the mass but just a fraction of the angular moment momentum because during planet formation the momentum of the spinning protostellar disk is transferred to the planets. Most sun-like stars have angular momentum like the Sun's suggesting that the majority of these systems had planets.
Dust disk and exoplanet around Beta Pictoris, image source, Wiki Commons..
Observations in the early 80's of dusty disks around young T-Tauri stars and then dust disks around stars like Beta Pictoris were in line with the nebula hypothesis and strengthened the case that planets were common.
George Wetherill's classic paper "
The Formation and Habitability of Extra-Solar Planets" did not come out until 1996, but his work in 1988, 19989 and
1991 on planet formation made scientists confident that solar system equivalents were not rare in the galaxy.
Certainly, when Dawkins published "the Blind Watchmaker" in 1986, there was a compelling theory of planetary formation, along with astromomical observations which guaranteed that there would be planets around other suns. When Dembski wrote his words in 1992, astronomers were busy designing the very instruments that would reap a harvest of extrasolar planets just a few years later.
Dembski was trying to claim that "Darwinists" make things up to bolster their arguments. Yet Dembski was doing what he criticised "Darwinists" for. If he had taken a few moments to read the astronomical literature, or even asked an astronomer, he could not have made his statement.
Based on the Kepler data of 2010, we can say that around 50% of Sun-like stars have planets, and there may be at least one million Earth-like planets in habitable zones in the Milky-Way alone. And that is probably an underestimate. Some good resources are the
Exoplanet encyclopaedia, Exoplanet.org (with the
exoplanet data plotter) and the
Habitable Zone as well as
my posts on exoplanets.
UPDATE: NASA's big announcement was
a planet orbiting a binary star, a bit like Tatooine, if Tatooine was a frigid gas giant. It could have a habitable Moon though.
Evolution News and Views posted a response to this article, my response
is here.
KOI-701.03, an as yet unconfirmed, Earth-like world probably in the habitable zone of its Sun. KOI-703.03 visualized in Celestia (click to embiggen).
Exoplanets visualized at "Data is Beautiful" for Wired.
It's not the first time a pundit has been wrong, after all the philosopher Auguste Comte claimed that we would never know the composition of the stars, yet 25 years later the spectroscope revealed the elements they were made of (and in 1814 Frauenhoffer had seen the spectral lines that would reveal the stars secrets when chemistry improved).
But it's not the fact the Dembski was wrong (or Paul Nelson, who quoted him approvingly in 1993), but the way that they were wrong. The claim is that "Darwinists" posited a plethora of worlds to fulfil the needs of evolutionary theory, without any strong evidence. Yet Dembski and company couldn't be more wrong.
The 55 Cnc system (excluding the outermost planet), 55 Cnc e is marked by the red cross near the sun.
Note that Dembski says "nor is there currently any compelling theory of planetary formation which guarantees that the observable universe is populated with planets". You might think this hedges his bets a bit, with the qualifications "compelling" and "guarantees", but it doesn't
By the 60's the dominant theory of planetary formation was a variant of the nebular hypothesis, which with further modification became dominant in the 1970's.
It was abundantly obvious even in the 60's that the implication of this hypothesis was that planet formation would not be a rare event (for example the RAND corporation study "Habitable Planets for Man" published in 1964 used this model as a basis for estimating the number of stars with planets).
Then there was stellar rotation. In the solar system, most of the angular momentum is in the planets, and the sun has most of the mass but just a fraction of the angular moment momentum because during planet formation the momentum of the spinning protostellar disk is transferred to the planets. Most sun-like stars have angular momentum like the Sun's suggesting that the majority of these systems had planets.
70 Comments
jlesow · 14 September 2011
I would be more optimistic if we found lots of Jupiter like planets in Jupiter like orbits.
Ian Musgrave · 14 September 2011
Well, we'd have to wait around 33 years to confirm a Jupiter size object in a Jupiter like orbit (usually 3 orbits are needed for confirmation), still the new data have a lot more small objects in more solar-system like orbits, hot Jupiters no longer dominate (try playing with the plotter for an idea of the size distributions)
harold · 14 September 2011
The expected frequency of other planets in the universe with something we would recognize as life is given by -
A) (Number of planets in the universe we can observe sufficiently closely to see if what we can recognize as life is there)
Multiplied by
B) (Probability that life has ever existed on such a planet, up to time of human observation)
Multiplied by
c) (Probability that if life ever was present, life, or definitive remnants of life, are still present at time of human observation).
Currently, we have crude but improving estimates for "A)" but no estimates at all for "B)" or "C)".
If "A" is large, then the expected frequency is large, unless B*C is very small, but since we have no estimates for "B" or "C", that is not very meaningful.
The only way we can gain good estimates for "B" or "C" is by either finding life enough times to have a fair sample that we can generalize from, or by coming up with some kind of model of abiogenesis that is so good that it allows some kind of reasonable estimate of one or both of these parameters.
If we do find recognizable life and survive doing so, that will falsify many claims made by DI types, but they will simply deny having made those claims, and argue that the new life is "more evidence for design" (with the implied agenda - "and evidence for design is proof that the United States must be transformed into a brutal authoritarian theocracy with a harsh economic system that produces third world conditions").
harold · 14 September 2011
harold · 14 September 2011
jlesow · 14 September 2011
The prevalence of big planets in close orbits seems, at face value, to rule out earth like planets in suitable orbits. I'm no astronomer, but current theories suggest that you need a Jupiter to sweep and stabilize a system for earth like planets.
It's not like we really know for sure.
But it's wonderful to be learning stuff like this. I've always been a science futurist, at least since the late 50s. Two really big things I never, never anticipated happening in my lifetime: Genetic engineering, and discovery of planets outside our solar system.
dalehusband · 14 September 2011
https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkDp_xo0moKWxtwldHdblYB7LXvm8qaRoo · 14 September 2011
Ah yes, the Habitable Zone. A concept introduced by astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for (pseudo) Science and (faux) Culture.
Apparently still pursuing academic freedom at Grove City College, although not so much in the spotlight anymore.
https://me.yahoo.com/a/JxVN0eQFqtmgoY7wC1cZM44ET_iAanxHQmLgYgX_Zhn8#57cad · 14 September 2011
https://me.yahoo.com/a/JxVN0eQFqtmgoY7wC1cZM44ET_iAanxHQmLgYgX_Zhn8#57cad · 14 September 2011
I would note, too, that the press conference likely is being staged in part to keep Kepler funded. Star variability has been found to be greater than expected, which makes finding planets in longer orbits more difficult during the time period thus far allotted to Kepler's operation. Missions have often been able to expect to be extended so long as the instruments are working well and the work is deemed reasonably important, but in this time of tight budgets it's not so certain that Kepler will continue.
If they managed to get an especially tantalizing find, this will make the needed mission extension more probable.
Glen Davidson
rossum · 14 September 2011
Nick Matzke · 14 September 2011
Karen S. · 14 September 2011
This is all so cool.
Mike Elzinga · 14 September 2011
Whenever Dembski and any other ID/creationists make comments like that one, it is blatantly obvious they are just blowing smoke and trying to sound like they are the “most interesting men in the world.”
But physics and chemistry are the simplest of the scientific disciplines; and math is the basic tool used by these disciplines. If ID/creationists constantly mangle these basics whenever they make their pompous proclamations about what can or cannot be in geology, astrophysics and biology, then there is no hope that they can understand anything that happens in these fields that deal with systems of greater complexity.
And then we have these pretentious pseudo-philosophers like Stephen Meyer inventing “philosophical” rationalizations for why ID/creationism should have equal or higher scientific status than science itself.
These people have constructed pseudo-history, pseudo-philosophy, and pseudo-science as a complete package that all locks together with their sectarian pseudo-religion; and they are now pushing it through pseudo-universities and attempting to enforce it all with the socio/political actions of extreme, well-funded Right Wing organizations.
It’s easy to laugh at this stuff when one understands just how ludicrous it all is. But the fact that so many people are still fooled by this crap makes in not so funny.
richardpenner · 14 September 2011
Is there a working definition of "pseudo-philosophy" ? Pseudo-mathematics is all bound up in "ain't it cool" and claims of numbers having extra-mathematical significance and disregard of even primitive concepts of proof. Pseudo-science is about aping the language and appearance of science without a fundamental intellectual honesty about bringing hypotheses into confrontation with experiment. Both pseudo-mathematics and pseudo-science attempt to usurp the authority of reliable mathematics and science for an individual's claims.
But, as I am acquainted only with David Berlinski's ridiculous attempt to be portrayed with steepled fingers and reclining in a couch while making pretentious claims about what I do and do not know, I don't understand the difference between pseudo-philosophy and the benefits of philosophy.
Aristotle's reputation as a philosopher and his rejection of empiricism cause me to wonder where the dividing line is, since I have a hard time dividing intellectual honesty from empiricism.
eric · 14 September 2011
Paul Burnett · 14 September 2011
DavidK · 14 September 2011
I think Gonzalez is not the originator of that term. It was a concept frequently used when discussing life on earth and its position between Venus and Mars, kinda like the three bears, we were in the just right zone. He doesn't deserve creadit for using this term, sorry.
Matt G · 14 September 2011
Ian Musgrave · 14 September 2011
Ian Musgrave · 14 September 2011
jandmkidder · 14 September 2011
What I don't understand is why anyone would have thought that there WOULDN'T be planets around some of these stars. It stands to reason that if our star has orbiting planets, there would be other planets out there.
Ian Musgrave · 14 September 2011
Ian Musgrave · 14 September 2011
fnxtr · 14 September 2011
Gotta say I agree with Karen S., this is like 27 kinds of awesome. :-)
386sx · 14 September 2011
fnxtr · 14 September 2011
richardpenner · 14 September 2011
Roger · 15 September 2011
stevaroni · 15 September 2011
Rolf · 15 September 2011
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 15 September 2011
Karen S. · 15 September 2011
harold · 15 September 2011
eric · 15 September 2011
harold · 15 September 2011
Karen S. · 15 September 2011
Harold,
You have described fundamentalism perfectly.
SLC · 15 September 2011
Actually, theories as to how planetary systems form have been around for some 400 years, starting with Swedenborg, Kant and Laplace in the 18th Century, which proposals were refined by von Weizsacker and Kuiper in the middle of the 20th century. As a matter of fact, if the theory they proposed is correct, then most stars, at least those that have only one component, should have planetary systems (planetary systems revolving around multiple star systems are generally unstable over long periods of time because of non-central forces). Dr. Dumbski merely demonstrated his ignorance of the history of astrophysics.
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 15 September 2011
~ 4.55 Ga bp: Planet formation starts.
~ 4.04 Ga bp: Latest formation of 1st crust (Jack Hill zircons).
~ 4.36 Ga bp: Earth-Moon impactor.
~ 4.35 Ga bp: Latest presence of liquid water (Jack Hill zircons).
~ 4.31 Ga bp: Latest date for the first gene family (gene family clock).*
~ 4.28 - 4.25 Ga bp: Earliest putative trace fossils (potential earliest dating of the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt @ 4.28 Ga bp, unpublished data on a sulfur cycle; Jack Hill diamonds @ 4.25 Ga bp).
Since some researchers place Earth planet formation at ~ 30 Ma and Earth 1st crust formation at ~ 10 Ma, all these dates are possibly still consistent! Note that the Late Heavy Bombardment is survivable in recent models of the actual process, since cells proliferate and repopulate faster than all realistic impact rates can sterilize. Life is a plague on a planet. =D The current "best" estimate for abiogenesis time may be ~ 40 +30/-40 Ma. That is an order of magnitude less than needed to establish ease of abiogenesis without having to wait for astronomic observations of other biospheres.-
* This is another toy model of mine. It derives from the (still early) work on fairly steady gene family event rate; sum of birth, transfer, duplication, loss. ["Rapid evolutionary innovation during an Archaean genetic expansion", David et al, Nature 2010.] It ranges from ~ 0.4 events/Ma to ~ 1.6 events/Ma. They assume a date for the LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor), from the trace record, of ~ 3.85 Ga. The model is self-consistent however, and accords with dates for end of Late Heavy Bombardment (the Archaean Expansion, AE) and atmosphere oxidation (electron transfer redox metabolism). Moreover, before the AE there is only a steady gene family birth rate. Let us assume that steady rate of ~ 0.4 events/Ma. Their LUCA is estimated to ~ 180 gene families. [Supplement fig 6.] (It is estimated that the LUCA had ~ 1 000 - 4 000 genes, comparable to todays prokaryote average.) This gives a latest date for the first gene family of ~ (4.55 - 3.85)*103 - 180/0.4 ~ 240 Ma from Earth accretion. Or ~ 4.31 Ga.Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 15 September 2011
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 15 September 2011
Dave Lovell · 15 September 2011
This article/paper suggests there is indirect evidence of the previous existence of planets of earth like composition from the emission spectra of their (now) white dwarf stars that have swallowed them up.
http://www.universetoday.com/88181/white-dwarf-stars-consume-rocky-bodies/
Or the full paper
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.1565v1
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 15 September 2011
Rolf · 15 September 2011
Mike Elzinga · 15 September 2011
ID/creationist have a habit of looking at excruciating details of evolutionary processes and attaching probabilities based on uniform random sampling to them. By doing this, they can make anything look impossible.
But one doesn’t have to look at such detail in order to learn what happens. One of the fundamental facts of nature is that matter clumps
In the case of gravitating matter that forms planets, one can simply calculate the self-gravitational potential energy of a sphere. This turns out to be
U = - (3/5) G M2/R
Where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass, and R is the radius.
One can go farther and equate this to the kinetic energy of the molecules making up the sphere when the sphere is just at its melting point; and one can determine the minimum size of a planet made of whatever material is clumping.
Furthermore, one can use the virial theorem which says
<T> = - (1/2)<U>
for particles having gravitational interaction, to estimate the ignition temperatures for the fusion of gravitating matter.
This gets the big picture. Then one includes the outward radiation pressure and the cross-sections for the interactions of photons and neutrinos with matter to estimate the stable regime in which a star will burn, once fusion starts; and how long it will burn.
The main reasons that astrophysicists dig into the details of solar system formation is to learn the details about the distributions of matter within an entire clumping system. Our particular solar system provides a single data point on what can fall out of such clumping.
But just because life exists within a particular region of this solar system doesn’t mean that there can’t be literally billions of other clumping systems that also produce living systems of some sort.
ID/creationists commit the usual “lottery winner” fallacy when demanding that our solar system be THE targeted formation that is impossible to achieve. This fallacy is a fundamental tool in the “arguments” that they use against any science whatsoever.
They also don’t seem to know that technology continues to advance and that the current technology for detecting and characterizing exoplanets is very recent.
John · 15 September 2011
Regarding the existence of a "galactic habitable zone", Nick, at least from a DI perspective, I think it might be a worthy chapter to a potential textbook on Klingon Cosmology that Dembski and Behe ought to be writing, not their mendacious pseudoscientific crap.
DavidK · 15 September 2011
Another factor to consider regarding this so-called "habitable zone." It is based on the existence of earth type life, and primarily humanoid at that. There is no factor in any equation to deal with forms of life that do not require an earth-like environment. That is one primary reason that NASA gets excited about Mars, and satellites like Europa, etc. We tend to get so hung up on the image of us, especially fundamentalists, for whom this whole universe was made, or so they claim. Talk about egos.
DavidK · 15 September 2011
Speaking of which, I just ran across this item:
Scientists Take First Step Towards Creating 'Inorganic Life'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110915091625.htm
raven · 15 September 2011
Paul Burnett · 15 September 2011
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this yet, but Mormons believe in multiple planets, where a good Mormon can become a god to their own planet of humans. "Mormon cosmology teaches that the Earth is not unique, but just one of many inhabited planets..." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_cosmology#Other_worlds_and_extraterrestrial_life
xubist · 16 September 2011
Given the known fact that the Bible has passages for every topic and every occasion, it shouldn't surprise anybody that there's at least one passage in Scripture which can easily be interpreted as saying that there's lots of planets inhabited by sentient life: "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." (John 10:16)
Ron Okimoto · 16 September 2011
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 16 September 2011
Fortuitously, a reading of Dynamic of Cats updates on an ongoing planetary conference, I caught up with the situation in the multistellar exoplanet field (not a direct interest of mine) as well as Kepler's last data release.
In posts and comments, Sigurdsson points out that the now released Kepler-16b is only the the second verified circumbinary planet discovered. Earlier detections, that I was vaguely remembering, remains as unconfirmed: HW Virginis, DP Leonis, HU Aquarii, NN Serpentis, and UZ Fornacis. (Also, I assume there are some systems to add to the multistellar count where the other stars orbits far out.)
While I don't have an age of Kepler-16b yet and so don't know how long it has been stable, the first known circumbinary is very old: PSR B1620-26 b, the 'Methusaleh' planet or the oldest known one! The neutron pulsar and white dwarf stars, and the planet orbiting some 23 AU out, are nearly as old as the universe at 12.7 Ga age.
Since we are discussing how erroneous anti-scientists can be, Kepler's latest data release of 1781 exoplanet candidates is claimed to be, as (# of candidates)x(# of planets in system):
~ 1500x1, 218x2, 75x3, 25x4, 8x5, 2x6, 0x7, (Sun)x8.
I'm putting our system in there for fun, it should be weighted in appropriately.
But likely some of the multi-planet candidates have Mercury sized bodies too. Or rather, if we would put Sun in that list, it would place at 6 planets (Mercury and Mars are hard targets).
Either way, our system doesn't look unique anymore.
I read on Planetary Society blog that the current best hypotheses for the Pluto-Charon system is an impactor (and for Deimos-Phobos-equatorial very elliptical impact scars-Mars too), so even the Earth-Moon system is with precedent now.
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 16 September 2011
About habitable zones, they are like the species concept, helpful tools but rather fuzzy.
In fact, I think I read in the flurry of articles after the Kepler release that since planetary system evolution are so dynamic (and certainly planet and atmosphere evolution too!), it looks like eventually some more dynamic concept will modify or replace it.
A stellar or galactic habitable zone are heuristic in the way they take a known working biosphere and extrapolate the necessary conditions in a perturbation analysis, what we can change and still have conditions for life as we know it.
It is strengthened though by some side facts. We have only observed one kind of life which is biochemically based. And the conditions for habitability of cellular life is maximized (maximal productivity) for the temperate region of a liquid environment (100 % moisture, 20-40 degC). In that regard it should be a good start for a search for other biospheres.
It bears here, as it is a popular idea among those who a priori wants to see us as unique, to note that the galactic habitable zone concept could be blown wide open by a reconciliation between Kepler and Harps data. HARPS finds planets are much more frequent than Kepler, maybe 2-3 times as many. The answer seems to lie in that there are two different types of superEarth populations, hard core terrestrials and fluffy gas planets, and different methods have different bias on those.
And AFAIU these terrestrials doesn't seem to follow the metallicity trend seen in other planet populations. (They likely form in different ways, and metallicity of the protoplanetary disk could affect these differently.) I wish I had ready references, but these last weeks have been crazy with new observations and hypotheses, and a layman has only so much time...
Terrestrials can potentially be as numerous regardless of the star's metallicity. If that is so, the idea of a GHZ becomes restricted to preclude regions with too much environmental radiation (perhaps the core regions and some other dynamical areas that comes and goes), I think. The other conditions would be satisfied with the SHZ.
harold · 16 September 2011
Of course, all of this raises questions about the definition of what we could hypothetically recognize as life.
Here on earth, biology concerns itself with cellular life, viruses which are dependent on and seem to have descended from cellular life (if there ever were virus-like pre-cellular replicators, they are now long extinct or undetectable and current viruses all depend on cellular life in a parasitic fashion), and things that interact with cellular life and viruses.
Cell Theory is one of the stronger theories in biomedical science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_theory.
There is a wide gap between self-replicating molecules in solution and a living cell.
At least the following seem to be characteristic of all living cells -
1) Multi-layer membranes with transmembrane proteins.
2) Maintenance of different intracellular and extracellular ionic concentrations via membrane proteins. This is less well-studied in prokaryotes, for a variety of reasons, but is implicitly likely to be an important early aspect of life. Models of cells that lack this can probably be conceived but it is now associated with very basic processes.
3) Some sort of protein cytoskeleton - once better characterized in eukaryotes but now unequivocally present in prokaryotes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prokaryotic_cytoskeleton
4) The full component of DNA genome and all RNA types and enzymes involved in DNA replication, transcription, and translation.
5) The preference for L-enantiomers of amino acids.
All of these features seem to be present in all terrestrial cells, so the ultimate dream of abiogenesis focused on terrestrial life would probably be a model that accounted for how all of them could arise, and how pro-cells might be able to survive without them. That is, a "simplest possible terrestrial cell" would seem to require all of these features, to be an example of modern cellular life.
So there are a lot of very, very interesting questions.
I'll bother to mention that "it's complicated so let's just say that it was all done by magic" is an anti-scientific attitude.
apokryltaros · 16 September 2011
TomS · 16 September 2011
"There was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words." (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone)
ID doesn't rise to the level of "magic" in describing the method used.
weldonelwood#ca23d · 16 September 2011
FL · 16 September 2011
apokryltaros · 16 September 2011
apokryltaros · 16 September 2011
Also, FL, tell us how Intelligent Design and Young Creationism help scientists find Earth-like planets?
And just for the record, tell us again why we should bother to trust the bobbleheads at the Discovery Institute say about science to begin with?
Ian Musgrave · 16 September 2011
Dave Luckett · 16 September 2011
FL wouldn't know methodological bias from a hole in the ground. The propagandists of the DI might, but they make their living by lying to the ignorant, usually by omission - just like this. Because they're very good liars, they succeed wonderfully - right up to the moment when the facts rudely intrude. And then it all comes crashing down.
Dave Luckett · 16 September 2011
Oh, and Ian, they didn't "fail to understand" what you wrote. They deliberately mangled, misrepresented and mutilated it, and then they lied about what they'd done.
Mike Elzinga · 16 September 2011
ID/creationist theory of magnets:
Place two bar magnets randomly on a dinner plate. What is the probability that the magnets will be found end-to-end?
ID/creationist answer:
There are four ends to consider. So there are two ways one magnet can have its end lined up with the end of the other magnet, and since the other magnet also has two ends, there appears to be 4 possibilities at first glance. But it is not one chance in four because each magnet can have random orientations. So divide the circle of orientations into 360 x 10500 parts for each magnet.
Then there are (360 x 10500)2 possibilities for just orientation alone.
But there are also essentially infinite numbers of positions of the magnets on the plate; only a few of which would have the circles centered on and having the diameters of the magnets touching each other.
So the probability that the magnets will be found end-to-end is obviously much smaller than 10-500 therefore it is impossible that the magnets will be found end-to-end.
Eric Finn · 17 September 2011
SWT · 17 September 2011
apokryltaros · 17 September 2011
harold · 17 September 2011
harold · 17 September 2011
Should be "possibility" not "probability". Late morning caffeine deficiency.