Tuesday, February 6, 2024

The information universe Part 13

Music video dealing with what seems to be going on behind the scenes in Quantum mechanics and physics in general. It is part of a series.

Monday, February 5, 2024

What would happen if we put water on Mars?


 It depends on how much water, and whether or not it was in a container.

A few gallons or even thousands of gallons of water in a sealed container would eventually freeze she provided it with heat. If you exposed it to the Martian atmosphere, any water would sublimate and probably come down as snow.

Now if you were talking about a lot more water such as enough to convert the Northern Lowlands into a sea then it would still evaporate over time and rain down as snow. However, adding enough of it would raise the atmospheric pressure to the point where there could be liquid water. In fact, the Hellas Impact Basin is actually deep enough that the atmospheric pressure is high enough for liquid water but it would probably still freeze.

Actually, the main problem with Mars when it comes to water is not necessarily not having enough of it, but the fact that it is too cold for it to be liquid on the Martian surface, along with too low of an air pressure to maintain liquid water.


Saturday, December 2, 2023

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

 Introduction

The Dunning-Kruger Effect has been stated in several ways but the basic concept is that the less knowledgeable you are on a topic the more likely you are to overestimate how good you are. This concept has recently become quite popular for attacking anyone who disagrees with the establishment experts on a topic. It is being abused to shut down discussion by simply claiming you don't know enough to be competent on the topic. In many ways, it has become a way for those pushing it to casually dismiss any line of thinking that challenges their worldview. While insisting that you bow the knee intellectually to the priests they call experts and whose claims they accept on blind faith.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is based on a 1999 psychology paper called:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

by

Justin Kruger and David Dunning

Cornell University

This paper probably would have remained an obscure psychological study had it not been popularized by President Trump's political enemies. It has gone far beyond an attack on him personally to being used against anybody who thinks for themselves and comes to non-establishment conclusions. The funny thing is that most people who refer to the Dunning-Kruger Effect have clearly never read the original paper. Furthermore, even if they have they are taking on faith that the data says what the writers are claiming. They are clearly simply repeating and copying what they have heard or seen elsewhere without a bit of independent thought on the topic.

Friday, December 1, 2023

Planet Seems Too Big for Its Host Star

 



 Astronomers have discovered a plant that is unusually large for its host star. This planet while 13 times the size of Earth orbits a star called LHS 3154 which 1/9th the size of the sun. This planet also orbited the star in just 3.7 Earth days. The key problem for naturalistic theories of planetary formation is that a planet-forming disk around as a low-mass star as LHS 3154 is not expected to have enough solid mass to produce such a large planet. 

Reference: Astronomers spot ‘overweight’ planet that appears too big for tiny host star.

Celestron - SkyMaster Giant 15x70 Binoculars

Refractor Telescope for Adults and Kids

130mm Newtonian Reflector – iPhone/Android Compatible

The Backyard Astronomer's Guide

Astronomy Activity Book for Kids

Smart People Hobby Astronomy - Funny Astronomer Gift T-Shirt


Thursday, November 30, 2023

98% Similarity with Chimpanzee Myth.

 You have probably heard the claim that human DNA is 98% similar to that of chimpanzees. However, this is a typical case of scientific reporting being more friendly to evolution than the actual paper. It ignores several factors that the original paper itself mentions that show the claim is bogus as reported.

The 98% similarity figure is based on a comparison only of parts of human and chimpanzee DNA that can be easily aligned. Then counting only those parts that are single nucleotide differences called substitutions you get about 98% similarity, however, it does not end there. When you include insertions and deletions, that is segments where you insert one or more nucleotides or delete one or more nucleotides from the compared sequence then the similarity drops by 3% to give you a similarity of only about 95%. Now, this is still quite high, but the propaganda value is reduced greatly.

However, it gets worse for the evolutionary interpretation because the segments that are easily aligned exclude the 18% of a chimpanzee genome in 25% of the human genome that does not align. This reduces the actual degree of similarity to only about 74%. This is a far cry from the 98% similarity often claimed by evolutionists.

So why do evolutionists cite the 98% figure as if it were the actual degree of similarity between the DNA of humans and chimps? In most cases it is ignorance. They have never read the actual paper, as a result, the only way they know this figure is by reading it in articles and seeing it in videos. The folks who have fallen into this category are pretty much victims of those who are pushing this idea. The main source of their guilt in this regard is not bothering to check the original source material but just accepting a science-reporting article on blind faith. Ironically this is something that they frequently accuse creationists of doing.

However, what about those who should know better because they have read the original paper but still report the 98% figure? One reason would be they are so biased that all they actually see is the 98% figure and anything else just goes over their head. The other possibility is that the 98% similarity figure has such great propaganda value that they cannot resist repeating it as if it were true despite knowing that it is not. Anyone who falls under this category is simply lying through their teeth.

So, the basis of the 98% similarity figure is that parts of the human and chimp genomes that easily align, while only counting substitutions and ignoring insertions and deletions. The simple fact of the matter is the human and chimpanzee genomes are nowhere near as similar as evolutionists claim. The figure, however, has such great propaganda value but even those who know better apparently cannot resist the urge to use it.

References

Traced: Human DNA's Big Surprise

Genetic Entropy 

An integrated encyclopedia of DNA elements in the human genome