Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagSteve Meyer

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Amazing Exoplanets

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life 19

One current focus for exoplanet research is on the way life is known to alters its environment in order to remain in existence — the Gaian Habitable Zone

In our universe: “Billions of celestial objects revealed in gargantuan survey of the Milky Way”: “The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objects—arguably the largest such catalog so far”: “Most of the stars and dust in the Milky Way are located in its disk—the bright band stretching across this image—in which the spiral arms lie. While this profusion of stars and dust makes for beautiful images, it also makes the Galactic plane challenging to observe. The dark tendrils of dust seen threading through this image absorb starlight and blot out fainter stars entirely, and the light from diffuse nebulae interferes with any attempts to measure the brightness of individual objects. Another challenge arises from the sheer number of Read More ›

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Exoplanets or Extrasolar planets with stars on background nebula, 3D illustration

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life 18

We are starting to find more different kinds of exoplanets and an unexpected source of water on Mars

In our universe: Time travel? “How a Rotating Universe Makes Time Travel Possible” At Universe Today, Stony Brook astrophysicist Paul Sutter notes that mathematical philosopher Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) wrote a model for Albert Einstein (1879–1955) of a universe that allows time travel into the past: “Gödel constructed a relatively simple and artificial model universe to prove his point. This universe is rotating and contains only one ingredient. That ingredient is a negative cosmological constant that resists the centrifugal force of the rotation to keep the universe static. / Gödel found that if you follow a particular path in this rotating universe you can end up in your own past. ” (January 11, 2023) Our universe, as it happens, is not Read More ›

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The Big Bang

A Recent Big Bang Debate: Sheer Politeness Underscores Shakeup

Takehome point: “Everyone would be keen to abandon the theory if there’s a better alternative, nobody’s married to the Big Bang theory”

Scientific American told readers recently that the James Webb Space Telescope is “breaking the Big Bang paradigm” so we can be fairly sure that astrophysicists have a lot of questions. The October 1 debate at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in London represented a variety of views: There are those, like Sabine Hossenfelder, who think that physics will probably never be able to tell us how the universe came about and argue that we should think of the Big Bang theory as little more than another creation myth. And then there is Eric Lerner. The author of a recent article “The Big Bang Didn’t Happen” that went viral, Lerner articulated a challenge to the current scientific consensus in cosmology that caused quite Read More ›

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Pray.

Why Should We Believe Atheists on the Subject of God?

Logic and evidence both point to the existence of God, whatever atheists may think

Noting a recent article by philosopher Steve Meyer at The Federalist, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor comments, The public square is replete with books and articles written by atheist scientists claiming that cosmology or genetics or evolution properly understood disproves the existence of God. These atheist scientists profoundly misunderstand the implications of their science; they couldn’t be more wrong. As in his new book, The Return of the God Hypothesis, Dr. Meyer points to three particularly clear advances in modern science. Michael Egnor, “The God Hypothesis Versus Atheist Science Denial” at Evolution News and Science Today (April 5, 2021) The three arguments he addresses are ● The Big Bang: “The existence of a moment of beginning of our universe in an almost Read More ›