Posted on 04/07/2006 4:16:49 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Even as the evolution wars rage, on school boards and in courtrooms, biologists continue to accumulate empirical data supporting Darwinian theory. Two extraordinary discoveries announced this week should go a long way to providing even more of the evidence that critics of evolution say is lacking.
One study produced what biblical literalists have been demanding ever since Darwin -- the iconic "missing links." If species evolve, they ask, with one segueing into another, where are the transition fossils, those man-ape or reptile-mammal creatures that evolution posits?
In yesterday's issue of Nature, paleontologists unveiled an answer: well-preserved fossils of a previously unknown fish that was on its way to evolving into a four-limbed land-dweller. It had a jaw, fins and scales like a fish, but a skull, neck, ribs and pectoral fin like the earliest limbed animals, called tetrapods.
[big snip]
Another discovery addresses something Darwin himself recognized could doom his theory: the existence of a complex organ that couldn't have "formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications," he wrote in 1859.
The intelligent-design movement, which challenges teaching evolution, makes this the centerpiece of its attack. It insists that components of complex structures, such as the eye, are useless on their own and so couldn't have evolved independently, an idea called irreducible complexity.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
It sure looks like you phrased this wrong. It is when they are energized that they CAN give off photons, as they return to the orignal energy state in which they began.
The electron is not PART of the electron, intrinsically.
A photon represents a certain packet, or quantum, or discrete, known quantity of energy which can be absorbed by the electron during its journey through life :-)
When the electrons in a molecule are excited to a higher energy level, they will give off or release a photon in the process of reverting to their original energy level. That photon corresponds to the difference in energy between the two energy levels.
Have you considered looking in an introductory Chemistry textbook (or even Wikipedia) and looking at Lyman series, or googling for Ballmer series?
The photon represents a release of energy when an electron lowers its energy; you can have the electron absorb a photon when it jumps to a higher energy state as well. See for example atomic absorption spectroscopy...
It gets far more complicated that the introductory stuff, of course...and in molecules the situation can get much more involved. But the principles are covered well enough for now by the introductory stuff.
Cheers!
Very interesting speculation, Slingshot. It seems you're saying that an open system is one in which the most fundamental physical law of the universe has no effect -- that would be the first law of thermodynamics. It is difficult to imagine what such a system would "look like." The first law has been interpreted as representing the basic symmetry of the Universe, and the second law, what facilitates the "symmetry breaking" necessary for things to come into existence. The second law is also that which gives us "the arrow of time": existence, unlike many physical processes, is not reversible in time....
You wrote that an open system would be one in which more energy can come out of the system than was put into it. Which just reminds me: I wonder where virtual particles "come from."
Anyhoot, your speculation or conjecture raises huge issues Slingshot! Will think about it some more.
Thanks so much for writing!
In understand the electron is the only entity in the universe that is not divisible into finer parts. This makes it rather unique....
Great, informative post, grey_whiskers! Thanks for the suggestions for further investigation (Lyman series, Ballmer series). And thank you so much for writing.
Conservation laws are obeyed whether or not systems are open or closed. An open system can exchange matter and energy with the surroundings, but the amount of matter and energy entering from the surroundings is exactly equal to the amount leaving.
I tried to reply and had a message come up that said I needed to correct a statement. I don't know how to correct it.
Thanks for the information, RWP! Very helpful. So how do we answer the question is the Universe in toto an open or a closed system? With what is it exhanging matter/energy? IOW, what is its "surroundings?"
I'm not following you here, Slingshot. You tried to post and got a message that said you needed to correct a statement??? Strange. Maybe just try again?
Dark energy/matter(DEM).?.. Could be DEM is what space is.. and even more mixed into "Light energy/matter(LEM)".. Is it possible that DEM is all around us.. and is where electricity comes from and goes back to(maybe).?.. Metaphorically LEM is the painting we can see/sense as humans, DEM is the other side of the painting.. i.e. The painting(LEM) appearing to one set of "dimensions" but when viewed front and back(DEM) (so to say) other "dimensions" are apparent/included..
LEM = being everything we know about and are aware of.. DEM = the reciprocal base of LEM.. both being the whole.. The whole of what energy/matter is... a closed system... LEM being an open system and DEM being an open system too.. but both together are closed..
Did I say anything.?. ;^)
There's a respected conjecture that the sum of all matter and energy in the universe is zero.
The universe is by definition a closed system. If you call X the universe, and then find X is exchanging matter and/or energy with Y, then the universe is not X, but X+Y.
Bears repeating! Makes perfect sense. Thanks, RWP!
On what is this conjecture based, js1138? Does that mean the Universe is then "zero" itself?
Thanks for the fascinating observation!
Since I know this to be true in my life, it may hold true in the life of others. In that case, start dealing with Him in the way the song goes.
"Live like you were Dieing."
Indeed, for a beginning out of the void - ex nihilo - a sum of zero energy would be expected.
The question is: whether the statement “the total energy of Universe is zero” is a true statement. He says that if the statement is true, then “any cosmological theory in which such a statement has no clear meaning is, at best, incomplete.”
And of course, the statement can have no clear meaning, since “matter” and “energy” have not yet been defined — after a couple millennia of scientific inquiry, I might add. When we do encounter definitions of such terms, we find — as Alamo-Girl has recently pointed out here and elsewhere — that they are defined in terms of each other. E.g., “E = MC2”; and conversely, “M = E/C2.” This is sort of a solipsism; but it seems to be the most/best we’ve got.
It seems we know a good deal about how matter/energy behaves — that is to say, how it acts. But what we still do not know is what matter/energy is. In itself, as itself, for itself so to speak. But this really is an ontological question, and science claims not to be in the ontology business. Still, since one’s epistemology is inevitably rooted in one’s ontology, it seems to me that modern-day science is not entitled to ditch the question. And in fact, it seems few scientists these days have the epistemological discipline of a Niels Bohr; and so they just bury “the ontological issue” in an undisclosed initial premise, and then go on merrily from there.
Note just to get everybody on the same page here: Ontology addresses problems of being and existence; epistemology addresses problems of human knowledge. On a good day, we hope that the two modes of inquiry actually correspond with each other.
So apparently “Barry” wants to dispense with empiricism — which requires us to engage the world “outside ourselves” — altogether and run straight to logicism. (I’m not even sure if that’s a word; but if it’s not, let’s coin a word here.)
That’s just what Hegel, the great 19th-century German Transcendental Idealist philosopher, did in Phaenomenologie, which gave us a “system to end all systems” — dialectical science. In order to make to make this system work, you have to do two things: (1) end history (which requires expunging all human memory of the past, personal and cultural); and (2) refuse to engage the world external to the mind.
But the world is the very thing of which one happens to be ineluctably part and participant — whether one likes it or not. You cannot stop paying attention to it without sacrificing one’s own sense of reality, and thus the basis of one’s own sanity.
Now evidently Marx really resonated to Hegel’s “intuitions”/intimations. I gather he thought, as apparently Hegel did, that he was not “part and participant” of any reality greater than what could be specified within the (limited) confines of his own mind and personal passions. In Marx’s theory, it is actually, really Marx who is the measure of all things, you see. On Marx’s theory at least (we won’t even speak of his bloody-minded epigones here — people like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, et al.).
Our clever friend “Barry” defends his “skepticism” on logical grounds, citing the following axiom (all of whose terms involve universals I might add):
{ P => Q} U {Q +> R} +> {P +> R}Well. Since there are “universal blanks to be filled in,” I propose to do it in the following way, with a hat-tip to Hegel and “Barry”:
{“A Head Without a World”} U [World here, to maintain consistency of terminology] {“Headless World”} => {“The World in My Head”}My thanks to Elias Canetti for suggesting these terms.
Plus “Barry’s” flat-earth example seems to be a bit of a put-up job. For no one today believes the world is flat. Why does he belabor this example?
If “logic is making him do it,” then his logic has lost its connection with reality. And this is unacceptable. At least with regard to sane people. Better to hold one’s tongue, than to speak of things that one cannot possibly know in terms of direct experience of the world “outside one’s head.”
In short, logic detached from the real state of the world is unproductive. Both for the world, and for the thinker using this sort of logic.
Well, them be my thoughts on these issues, FWIW.
Thanks so much for the link, js1138! It really gave me something to chew on.
No question about that, Alamo-Girl. Yet the resultant universe seems to be very energetic. That is, not zero in terms of nominal energetic capabilities, but on an energetic scale astronomically greater than anything we can imagine. All starting from nothing, from "null," and riotously propagating, evolving from there. Always seemingly according to "a rule"....
I was grateful to RWP for suggesting that "our" [closed or open — I still can' decide, LOL!] (universal) system — "X" — should it be found to exchange energy/matter with another system — "Y" — then "X" would have to become "'X' plus 'Y'." This would be, of course, the naturalist answer, be it methodological or materialist in basic persuasion.
What I should have asked RWP but didn't at the time — hope he's here now, I pinged him — is since we're going all-hoopy all over the place these days with "conjectures," may I conjecture that the "system" may interact — exchange matter/energy — with systems that are not "natural?"
To put it another way, what if the physical universe considered as the global system (open or closed, we can dither over that later) interacts — exchanges energy — with another system which is not "natural," but precisely is "beyond" the "natural?" That is to say, that our system "exchanges energy" with God?
Does this mean that we would have to adjust RWP's formula, "X+Y" to accommodate yet another term, "Z?" As in "the Universe is X+Y+Z?"
In which case, we would need to ask whether RWP might be a closet Buddhist or something — for that tradition puts God in the world (i.e., pantheism), where the classical Greek, Jewish, and Christian traditions insist that God is ever "outside" or "beyond" it.
Just asking. It's late, I'm sleepy, and so am going to bed. Tommorrow's another day. And TGIF!
Good night dear friends, sleep well, be rested, and see you soon! May God bless and be with you always.
And thank you so much for writing, dear Alamo-Girl, and for all your kind encouragements.
Actually, the universe seems to be really close to zero in nominal energetic capabilities. The (positive) energy contained in matter and radiation is (exactly) offset by the negative energy in the gravitational fields.
Of a truth, we perceive matter better than antimatter - though both exist and were created in equal number in the big bang model. And likewise, we are more apt to perceive positive energy than negative - positive gravity than negative gravity and so on.
However - a big however - that which is being exchanged may be non-corporeal, non-spatial, non-temporal. Information (successful communication), geometry, forms, universals, mathematical structures, logic (Logos) would not be "physical".
In that case X+Y would be the physical realm (universe/s) and (X+Y)Z would be the cosmos. And of course man would be a microcosmos.
My two cents...
Let us look at a molecule of water H2O.
A free photon is surfing through some water. It just so happens that the photon has a frequency that is a harmonic of the frequency of the electron holding the Hydrogen to the Oxygen.
The Photon will collide with the electron, energizing the electron and giving the electron All its energy.
The electron normally looks like a fuzzy ball. Once the photon stricks it and gives its energy to the electron the electron takes the shape of an hour glass, thus releasing its bond to the Hydrogen and the Oxygen. The electron is now energized and free. The Oxygen and Hydrogen are no longer attached.
The energized electron will not give off its photon and heat until it has been de-energized.
Now the Photon was "absorbed" by the electron. How is it not part of the electron?
As I read what you are stating I perceive that you are saying somethings that are similar to what I am saying except you are telling me to go read elementary Chemistry, when I was the one that said this to you to start with.
What is this need or desire to characterize a person in conversation with you?
Allow me to present a conundrum to you.
I am sure you will have a characterized hand grenade ready and waiting for me.
There is some speculation that a particle of light, a photon, does not have a frequency.
It has what looks like a frequency to us,but in "reality" it is moving in and out of a dimension we can not perceive.
You see, I have been around long enough to observe all sorts of Theories be discharded or revised. Then I wonder why such dogmatic statements of elementary stuff that may not be considered elementary 6 months from now.
It seems this point may have been uppermost in the mind of Socrates as he was developing his concepts concerning asking questions to determine the truth of a matter.
Some History Books in the Libraries of Schools still speak of the Socratic Method. I believe those books are now passe aren't they. Socrates said he knew nothing. Today we seem to be very knowledgable of all things great and small.
There is no awe. There is certainty.
Have a good and restful night and bright tomorrow.
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