Daylight Atheism » Planetary Science

A Confluence of Holidays

Ebonmuse — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 11:50:50 +0000

This year, there's an interesting calendrical coincidence: Today is both Earth Day and Good Friday. That being so, I thought it would prove enlightening to compare these two holidays and the messages they respectively send to their practitioners.

One of the holidays on this date is to commemorate the gory death of a Jewish mystic some two thousand years ago, a dimly remembered event in an obscure corner of a long-vanished empire - an event which, we're told, takes precedence over everything ... [visit site to read more]

Is There Life on Mars and Venus?

Ebonmuse — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 10:53:28 +0000

You may have heard that the scientific community is buzzing with excitement over the discovery of Gliese 581g, an Earth-sized planet circling the red dwarf star Gliese 581, 20 light-years from Earth in the constellation Libra. Five other planets orbiting this star were already known, but what's exciting is that the new one is smack in the middle of the star's habitable zone, making it the best candidate ever discovered ... [visit site to read more]

The Case for a Creator: A Universe Not Made For Us

Ebonmuse — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:59:43 +0000

The Case for a Creator, Chapter 7

The final section of this chapter concerns Gonzalez's argument that the Earth is uniquely designed to make scientific discovery possible. His argument is that our planet is fine-tuned not just to allow the existence of life, but to allow us to find out important facts about the nature of the universe that wouldn't be possible to discover if we lived anywhere else. (As an aside, it's asinine for Strobel and his interviewees to celebrate how perfectly ... [visit site to read more]

The Case for a Creator: Hot Jupiters

Ebonmuse — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:35:43 +0000

The Case for a Creator, Chapter 7

In chapter 3, I chastised Jonathan Wells, a trained biologist, for making deceptive arguments whose answers he unquestionably already knows. I have to send a similar criticism Guillermo Gonzalez's way, because in this chapter, he makes an argument that any beginner student in astronomy would be able to answer easily.

The argument has to do with the nature of extrasolar planets, of which we currently know visit site to read more]

The Case for a Creator: A Parade of Horribles, Part II

Ebonmuse — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:59:24 +0000

The Case for a Creator, Chapter 7

Earth's Size

Gonzalez's next assertion strikes me as highly dubious. He claims that, if the Earth were larger than it is, the higher surface gravity would tend to smooth out mountains and ocean basins, producing a perfectly spherical planet with little surface relief. (He provides no numbers on how much bigger the planet could be before this happens.) This would result in a "water world" whose surface was evenly covered by a shallow ocean, ... [visit site to read more]

The Case for a Creator: A Parade of Horribles, Part I

Ebonmuse — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:01:10 +0000

The Case for a Creator, Chapter 7

Most of chapter 7 focuses on Guillermo Gonzalez's "privileged planet" hypothesis. This argument, as he uses it here, consists of listing every way in which our planet or our solar system could have been different, and concluding that every single one of them would be completely fatal to life.

Throughout this chapter, neither Strobel nor Gonzalez ask any of the obvious follow-up questions, such as whether different kinds of life could exist in ... [visit site to read more]

The Age of Wonder

Ebonmuse — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:11:10 +0000

If you search the internet, it's not hard to find New Agers and others who think that the dawning of the age of reason was a mistake. They envision a more "holistic" approach, one that properly pays heed to the mystery and complexity of existence, and castigate science for being cold, unfeeling, heartless in its probing, reductionist scrutiny of the natural world. For example:

The reason things are advancing so slowly... is ... [visit site to read more]

TV Review: Planet Earth

Ebonmuse — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:15:08 +0000

I recently finished watching Planet Earth, the award-winning BBC nature documentary series narrated by David Attenborough. As its title implies, Planet Earth is an effort of considerable ambition: the filmmakers set out to produce a series that would provide a survey of our world's natural grandeur and biodiversity. To a remarkable extent, I think they succeeded. Of course the full richness of Earth's biosphere could not be exhaustively chronicled, but this series touches on many ... [visit site to read more]

February 2008 Science Updates

Ebonmuse — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:56:27 +0000

There's been so much important news pouring in this month that it's hard to keep up with it. But despite the flood of information, there've been a few especially significant discoveries that I think shouldn't be overlooked. There are three that I thought deserve special notice:

• On February 13, astronomers announced the discovery of a new solar system that resembles our own more closely than any exoplanetary ... [visit site to read more]

Other Shores

Ebonmuse — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:40:22 +0000

When we were young, we looked up at the twinkling lights in the night sky and wondered. Most of them were immovable, fixed stars rising and setting in the same place every night as if pinned to the dome of the firmament. However, a very few of those lights were not so steady. Instead, they seemed to meander, moving perceptibly across the sky from night to night - sometimes even changing course and moving backwards for a ... [visit site to read more]