Evidence against abiogenesis/evolution

[True_Blue]

If you do start a new thread then please use the unit of measure adopted by all physicists: Tesla. Your own measure of strength is much too subjective.

K, I'm not an expert on magnetic fields, so perhaps you can help me find a suitable measure of magnetic field strength. I need a measure of the power of the field that doesn't reflect dilution over time and distance. There's something not quite right about Tesla or Guass as a measure of "strength" that I'm looking for. Consider this article:

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/14-tesla-magnet.html
"Is there a more rewarding thrill than to break a record? Whereas most of us must content ourselves with breaking personal bests, earlier this month the scientists and engineers of Berkeley Lab’s Superconducting Magnet Group experienced the rush of shattering a world record. The team’s newest niobium-tin dipole electromagnet reached an unprecedented field-strength of 14.7 Tesla. This is more than 300,000 times the strength of Earth’s magnetic field."

Tesla is definitely not the measure I'm looking for, as should be apparent by the article (lab magnet not greater than earth magnet). I suspect that measuring the underlying electric current generating the earth's magnetic field in terms of joules, which has components of mass, area, and time is closer to the metric I'm looking for. In fact, I'm positive the joules is the best metric.

Here's what I suspect is occurring with the magnetic field--the "organized" dipole portion of the magnetic field is losing strength at a non-linear rate, asymptotically approaching zero according to the 2nd Law. Under the 1st Law, that organized dipole energy is being transfered to the non-dipole component of the magnetic field, resulting in conservation of energy, with the overall system becoming increasingly less "organized." But because the mantle is not a closed system, over time, energy dissipation reduces the overall amount of energy when one adds the dipole and non-dipole energies together.

 

[True_Blue]

A lot of you have been criticizing my approach to science. When it comes to an engineering, scientific, or economic idea, I always try to go back to first principles. For example, when Chaos Theory became popular in the mid-1990s around the time of Jurassic Park was released, I rejected the theory out of hand without giving it a second thought. A theory approximated by the concept that a flapping butterfly's wings could cause a tornado is meritless and needs no additional study (violates 2nd Law). As a disclaimer, chaos theory has been defined in different ways, and different people have different conceptualizations of what it means. So I will simply conclude that Chaos theory is NOT INCORRECT to the extent that it obeys the 2nd Law.

 

[AintNoMonkey]

(violates 2nd Law).

How, exactly?

 

[Nathan45]

A lot of you have been criticizing my approach to science. When it comes to an engineering, scientific, or economic idea, I always try to go back to first principles. For example, when Chaos Theory became popular in the mid-1990s around the time of Jurassic Park was released, I rejected the theory out of hand without giving it a second thought. A theory approximated by the concept that a flapping butterfly's wings could cause a tornado is meritless and needs no additional study (violates 2nd Law). As a disclaimer, chaos theory has been defined in different ways, and different people have different conceptualizations of what it means. So I will simply conclude that Chaos theory is NOT INCORRECT to the extent that it obeys the 2nd Law.

Let's do a thought experiment:

You have a bowling ball precariously positioned on top of a 1CM thick wood pole, made of bamboo.

A butterfly flapps its wings. This causes the pole to bend slightly in the wind, the bowling ball falls off. It would probably have fallen off anyway, but the direction it fell is modified slightly by the butterfly.

The bowling ball lands on the detonator for a nuclear bomb. The bomb explodes.

So here you have a butterfly here who caused a nuclear explosion. This has nothing to do with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

but lets take it further:

Let's say that 1 week prior to this event, the butterfly was hit by a raindrop and forced to change it's direction, disorienting it.

If it hadn't done this, it wouldn't have been flapping at the appropriate time when the bowling ball hit the nuclear detonator. It may not even have been in the area, since it's decisions on where to fly are arbitrary, the raindrop may have disoriented it enough to make it fly off in a different direction, and it just so happened that it made it fly off into the direction of the bowling ball, so it could flap it's wings at that exact microsecond.

So the point is that small changes in the past can have huge effects on the future.

I mean, imagine a scientist had a spark of insight by seeing an apple fall from a tree. What if he had never seen the apple? Well, he never would have been famous!

So the point of chaos theory is that things that seem insignificant can actually be the determining factor in whether or not signfiicant events occur at a later date.

 

[thaumaturgy]

A lot of you have been criticizing my approach to science. When it comes to an engineering, scientific, or economic idea, I always try to go back to first principles. For example, when Chaos Theory became popular in the mid-1990s around the time of Jurassic Park was released, I rejected the theory out of hand without giving it a second thought. A theory approximated by the concept that a flapping butterfly's wings could cause a tornado is meritless and needs no additional study (violates 2nd Law). As a disclaimer, chaos theory has been defined in different ways, and different people have different conceptualizations of what it means. So I will simply conclude that Chaos theory is NOT INCORRECT to the extent that it obeys the 2nd Law.

Personally I am criticizing your conflation of non-linear rate laws with some fundamental critique of Uniformitarianism.

I believe you have misapplied one concept to critique another.

 

[Quantic]

K, I'm not an expert on magnetic fields, so perhaps you can help me find a suitable measure of magnetic field strength. I need a measure of the power of the field that doesn't reflect dilution over time and distance. There's something not quite right about Tesla or Guass as a measure of "strength" that I'm looking for.

Tesla is definitely not the measure I'm looking for, as should be apparent by the article (lab magnet not greater than earth magnet). I suspect that measuring the underlying electric current generating the earth's magnetic field in terms of joules, which has components of mass, area, and time is closer to the metric I'm looking for. In fact, I'm positive the joules is the best metric.

The only direct measurement you can make is of the magnetic field, measured in units of Telsa or Guass. Inferring the amount of current to generate the measured field will depend on what dynamo model is used, and these models are still being researched.

Here are some links from my bookmarks:

http://geomag.usgs.gov/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetometer
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/stripes.html

 

[variant]

Here's what I suspect is occurring with the magnetic field--the "organized" dipole portion of the magnetic field is losing strength at a non-linear rate, asymptotically approaching zero according to the 2nd Law. Under the 1st Law, that organized dipole energy is being transfered to the non-dipole component of the magnetic field, resulting in conservation of energy, with the overall system becoming increasingly less "organized." But because the mantle is not a closed system, over time, energy dissipation reduces the overall amount of energy when one adds the dipole and non-dipole energies together.

Your argument would be better received if you had a single bit of evidence.

It would be even better received if geophysicists couldn’t measure the magnetic field of the earth billions of years ago.

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/E...c_Field_Over_Three_Billion_Years_Ago_999.html

"The intensity of the ancient magnetic field was very similar to today's intensity," says John Tarduno, professor of geophysics in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Rochester. "These values suggest the field was surprisingly strong and robust. It's interesting because it could mean the Earth already had a solid iron inner core 3.2 billion years ago, which is at the very limit of what theoretical models of the Earth's formation could predict."

 

[Chalnoth]

K, I'm not an expert on magnetic fields, so perhaps you can help me find a suitable measure of magnetic field strength. I need a measure of the power of the field that doesn't reflect dilution over time and distance. There's something not quite right about Tesla or Guass as a measure of "strength" that I'm looking for. Consider this article:

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/14-tesla-magnet.html
"Is there a more rewarding thrill than to break a record? Whereas most of us must content ourselves with breaking personal bests, earlier this month the scientists and engineers of Berkeley Lab’s Superconducting Magnet Group experienced the rush of shattering a world record. The team’s newest niobium-tin dipole electromagnet reached an unprecedented field-strength of 14.7 Tesla. This is more than 300,000 times the strength of Earth’s magnetic field."

Tesla is definitely not the measure I'm looking for, as should be apparent by the article (lab magnet not greater than earth magnet). I suspect that measuring the underlying electric current generating the earth's magnetic field in terms of joules, which has components of mass, area, and time is closer to the metric I'm looking for. In fact, I'm positive the joules is the best metric.

Nope, because there is no simple number to use here. The electric currents in the earth's outer core are just not simple enough to be described by a single number. The best measure would be the magnetic dipole strength, as that is a direct measure of magnetic field strength. The dipole should be used because it's the dominant contribution (the higher multipoles hardly reach out of the Earth at all).

Here's what I suspect is occurring with the magnetic field--the "organized" dipole portion of the magnetic field is losing strength at a non-linear rate, asymptotically approaching zero according to the 2nd Law. Under the 1st Law, that organized dipole energy is being transfered to the non-dipole component of the magnetic field, resulting in conservation of energy, with the overall system becoming increasingly less "organized." But because the mantle is not a closed system, over time, energy dissipation reduces the overall amount of energy when one adds the dipole and non-dipole energies together.

You're wrong. The dipole isn't itself decaying, because it's being driven by convection in the outer core. The convection itself is being driven by the cooling of the Earth's core, which is, naturally decaying. But at an exceedingly slow rate, due to the energy being put back into the system by the Sun and nuclear decays.

 

[Gracchus]

A lot of you have been criticizing my approach to science.

It seems to be a well founded criticism.

When it comes to an engineering, scientific, or economic idea, I always try to go back to first principles. For example, when Chaos Theory became popular in the mid-1990s around the time of Jurassic Park was released, I rejected the theory out of hand without giving it a second thought.

I doubt that you ever gave it a first thought.

A theory approximated by the concept that a flapping butterfly's wings could cause a tornado is meritless and needs no additional study (violates 2nd Law).

And of course, you determined this when all those physicists and climatologists managed to miss that fact.

As a disclaimer, chaos theory has been defined in different ways, and different people have different conceptualizations of what it means.

Perhaps your definition is at fault?

"In mathematics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain dynamical systems – that is, systems whose state evolves with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

Chaotic behaviour is also observed in natural systems, such as the weather. This may be explained by a chaos-theoretical analysis of a mathematical model of such a system, embodying the laws of physics that are relevant for the natural system."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

So I will simply conclude that Chaos theory is NOT INCORRECT to the extent that it obeys the 2nd Law.

And I conclude that you are not incorrect, except when you are.

 

[Chalnoth]

A lot of you have been criticizing my approach to science. When it comes to an engineering, scientific, or economic idea, I always try to go back to first principles. For example, when Chaos Theory became popular in the mid-1990s around the time of Jurassic Park was released, I rejected the theory out of hand without giving it a second thought. A theory approximated by the concept that a flapping butterfly's wings could cause a tornado is meritless and needs no additional study (violates 2nd Law). As a disclaimer, chaos theory has been defined in different ways, and different people have different conceptualizations of what it means. So I will simply conclude that Chaos theory is NOT INCORRECT to the extent that it obeys the 2nd Law.

You can't really conclude it's incorrect when you don't know the first thing about the field. Gracchus already posted a good description of the basic idea of Chaos theory, so I'll leave it at that. I'll just add that chaos theory is an excellent tool for examining systems that are highly nonlinear, and which routinely approach certain types of configurations. Earth's weather is a superb example of such a system, as it's highly nonlinear, and it is driven towards certain types of configurations (e.g. hurricanes, tornadoes, calm skies, and so on and so forth).

 

[Tomk80]

A lot of you have been criticizing my approach to science.

Seems to me that what people are mainly criticizing here is your extreme confidence that you are right, when you are portraying such an extreme amount of ignorance on virtually everything you make a statement about. In other words, it is amazing how you can be so wrong on virtually everything you write.

But then, people who are extremely ignorant also usually overestimate their knowledge on the subject (this has actually been tested scientifically).

 

[Wiccan_Child]

A lot of you have been criticizing my approach to science. When it comes to an engineering, scientific, or economic idea, I always try to go back to first principles. For example, when Chaos Theory became popular in the mid-1990s around the time of Jurassic Park was released, I rejected the theory out of hand without giving it a second thought. A theory approximated by the concept that a flapping butterfly's wings could cause a tornado is meritless and needs no additional study (violates 2nd Law). As a disclaimer, chaos theory has been defined in different ways, and different people have different conceptualizations of what it means. So I will simply conclude that Chaos theory is NOT INCORRECT to the extent that it obeys the 2nd Law.

Oh.
My.
Gods.

The fact that you think chaos theory states that "Butterflies cause tornadoes" makes me aghast. Nothing more needs to be said.

The Butterfly analogy is just that: an analogy. It is an example of how small change in initial conditions can have large change in long-term outcomes. That is the long and short of chaos theory: a chaotic system is one in which the outcome is very sensitive to the initial conditions. The Butterfly example uses weather, which is a very chaotic system.


Somehow I think criticism of your approach to science is justified: you dismiss things without even knowing what they really are.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Any response from True_Blue?

 

[AintNoMonkey]

Any response from True_Blue?

Obviously not.