The Dawn Treader

"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
~ Dr. Carl Sagan

Dr. Sagan was a strong believer in the Copernican principle.  I was in  agreement with him at one point in my life.

Alas, the Copernican principle has fallen on hard times.  Ironically, we have Sagan's pet project, SETI, to thank for much of the scientific discovery that is eroding the now outdated assumption that our planet is ho-hum and our star is humdrum.  The ?  Most stars  in the galaxy are formed in dense nebula clusters like the Orion cluster.  Turns out, after observing the Orion nebula cluster closely, that fewer than 10 percent of the stars have enough surrounding dust to form Jupiter like planets.  To an astrobiologist, that's a problem.  Giant planets like Jupiter play an important role in fostering life on rocky planets like earth.

So, take those 10 billion trillion stars and scratch out 90 percent of them as possible life sites.  If Jupiter like planets were the only requirement for fostering life on a neighbor planet, then the numbers would still swing towards Copernicus.  Of course, there are a lot more things that need to happen besides this one parameter.

The odds just went to a trillion trillion trillion to one.  So much for humdrum ;)   Be sure to thank God one more time for our special star.

What do public schools teach about Darwinian evolution?  I know it varies from school to school, but my tenth grade biology class is so far in the rear view mirror that I don't recall evolution being talked about.  I got a good grade in the class, but maybe I was day dreaming during that lecture ;)

Anyway, I thought I would ask someone who is in the tenth grade.  I asked a student (who shall remain nameless) who is completing biology in a public school to comment on her recent experience.

I am sure you have heard the same thing I have.  Drink eight 8 0z glasses of water a day.  It will cleanse your system and help you lose weight.  Right?

Well, maybe not ...

Science now suggests that drinking a lot of water is a really good idea for ... well ... thirsty athletes.  Go figure.  For the rest of us, science has shown that drinking 64 oz of water a day produces tons of trips to the bathroom.

“Science is not about learning the truth. It is about making our beliefs less false.”
-- Physicist James Gates Jr. on NPR’s “Speaking of Faith” (March 18, 2007)

I came across this thought provoking quote.  Agree?  Disagree?

"We are led inexorably to a very strange conclusion. The window during which intelligent observers can deduce the true nature of our expanding universe might be very short indeed. "

~ Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer

Uber-cosmologists Krauss and Scherrer point out an interesting fact about our ever accelerating expansionary universe.  There will come a point where scientists on earth will not be able to detect other galaxies.  They won't be able to see beyond the Milky Way.  It will be impossible due to the stretching properties of dark energy.  Not only will we seem to be alone, but the wealth of observational data that led to the discovery of an expanding universe will disappear too!  Hubble's redshifts?  Gone.  Cosmic background radiation?  Gone.  Chemical traces of early gases like deuterium?  Gone.

We live in a unique time in the history of the universe.  We are able to observe so much about past.  Future cosmologists, however, will be shrouded in ignorance.  It is quite conceivable that they will know less than us about the origins of the universe.  The history of the big bang will exist only in archives handed down from prior generations.  The question is, will they believe the archives or dismiss them as primitive, unenlightened thinking.

Will their chronological snobbery, like the chronological snobbery that exists in today's progressive mindset, blind them to the truth?

The annual Perseid shower occurs each August when the Earth passes through dust left by comet Swift-Tuttle, which last flew around the sun in December 1992.  Best viewing time will be 1 AM.  This year should be good because there won't be moonlight to obscure the show.  The Baltimore Sun has a nice write up.

Also, the International Space Station is visible at night.  Go the NASA web site to see when it will next cross over your night sky.

The largest supernova ever witnessed on earth occurred this past fall.  It was originally spotted on a small 18 inch telescope by Dr. Robert Quimby.  Quimby developed software to scan and look for supernovas.  One morning, last September, Quimby got up with his coffee and looked at the scan results from the night before.  A new dot appeared in the Perseus constellation.  He yawned and reported the new supernova to his friends for further research.  Little did he know then that it would turn out to be the greatest supernova ever studied on earth.

"Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.

The new planet seems just right - or at least that's what scientists think."
AP Article

Or, maybe not.  A "response" to discoveries like this written by an astronomer.

A thoughtful commenter (Steve) posted a link to a recent NPR interview on the Diane Rehms show with Dr. Francis Collins.  Steve asked what I thought.

Push the clock back even further.