Damn it. Scientist have worked so hard to get the wonderful evolutionary biology, and they can describe the development of life successfully with it. So good, actually, that the absurd creationists try to cover up their religious worldview in scientific-sounding terms by re-branding their ignorance “Intelligent Design”. While that works as well as promoting the virgin Maria’s immaculate conception as an alternative to in vitro fertilization, everybody has something to argue about and some discussions with reality-resistant people can be quite funny from time to time. But that is over now!
The reason: Laucence Topliffe has written a book, and an email to me. A book that ends the whole debate. That’s why it has the cautious title “The Irrefutable Proof of Intelligent Design” and I should buy it for 18.50 US Dollars. He does not reveal what is insdide, but does this with a lot of words:
I thought you might be interested in this new book on Intelligent Design.
Hm… well, it depends …
It proves beyond any doubt, once and for all, that intelligent design must be true.
… no, thanks. I don’t think so.
The knowledge in the book is not covered by either side and when it is included in the discussion, it inevitably leads to only one conclusion.
Oh, a new argument? What is it?
The premise is that human beings have an ability that cannot be the result of evolution alone. Also, humans are the only being on Earth that has this ability and it is impossible for any other being on earth to develop it. This is not known by very many people.
Ok. But tell me, what is the argument?
It is not necessary to use the idea of irreducible complexity or any other scientific research to conclude that ID is true. It is also not necessary to try to rely on belief or the bible. One only has to know what’s in the book.
I’m afraid he will not reveal more …
You will discover something about human beings that I think you don’t know anything about, or if you do know don’t realize the implications.
Anyway, I have a feeling what the “argument” will be about. Laurence Topliffe looks like a big fan of transcendental meditation, and he seems to run the website www.forworldpeace.info. This movement, some kind of religion, was a fashion when the Beatles were following it. Since then it lost most of it’s followers. Wheather that is related to a reduced cannabis consumption or the diversification of the esoteric sector, or some other reason I don’t know. But it is all about consciousness. On the site selling the book there is a picture with the following sentences, which tells us a little bit more about the theme of the text: “Evolution alone would not result in a brain that has the abilities that only humans have. Humans have the ability to contact directly the home of the Laws of Nature, an infinite field on consciousness.” That seems to be a rather simple-minded field of consciousness, because Topliffe also offers T-Shirts besides the book, with statements like “Human beings were designed by an intelligence” or the shrewd “Intelligent Design is true”. Whoever wears this kind of T-Shirts has to have arrived at another state of consciousness.
The Email goes on:
I guarantee that you will not be disappointed in what you discover. The title of the book is absolutely correct. You will not be able to refute the proof. You will be forced to agree that an ability that humans have could not have happened or developed through evolution alone. The only way humans could have this ability is that at some point in the processes that resulted in human beings, design was necessary. You may feel that you do not need the knowledge in this book but you will realize you did after you read it. I’ll even give you your money back if you can solidly refute the conclusion.
Dear Laurence Topliff, I have a counter-proposal: You send me the book for free and I pay for it when it really convinces me of Intelligent Design. When the argument is as good as you say, that will be no risk, right?
But, wait a second. As a sceptical scientist I did my homework in in the philosophy of science. You can never prove a theory to be 100 percent correct. For that, you would have to rule out each and every alternative, even those nobody has thought of. That is simply impossible (especially on 137 pages). Even the theory of evolution can not be said to be 100% true. The possibility of falsification is what defines a scientific theory.
There you go. I already refuted the conclusion, without having to look into the book. So, do I get the money for the book before even buying it?
The Photokina, one of the biggest trade shows for photography, will take place in Cologne from September 21 to 26. As Cologne is only half an hour away, I will probably go there, even though I am not too technology-oriented. Two years ago I was at the Visual Gallery, which was impressive. As the admission to the exhibitions is free, I will go there. But I am not yet sure I I also go to the trade fair. It probably depends: If i win a free ticket, I’ll go. The good thing is that there are plenty of opportunities to win free tickets, which I want to share with you. The dates in brackets give the respective deadlines.
Photoappar.at: Ralf-Jürgen Stilz hast 5 one-day tickets, you only have to ask him a question about lomography in the comments (in German, probably). (August 11 2010)
BlogTimes.info: Ronny has 10 tickets, but to have tha chance to get one you need to edit a photo he offers for download in DNG format. (August 31 2010)
The same holds true for the five day passes of Martin from visuelleGedanken. (15. August)
Answer the question “What do you look forward to most at this photokina” at fotoTopic and maybe you win one of ten tickets. (August 20)
If you send them 7 reasons why you use DiaShow 7, you might get one of the 150 day tickets from the Das AquaSoft Blog. (August 31)
EIZO gives away one two-ticket-set per week. (September 19)
The tanala Foto GmbH does the same among all it’s Facebook fans.
Getting a comment to a year-old post is a good sign for spam. And indeed, the comment to my post about astronomical april-fools papers which sneaked behind my filter is kind of spam (translated from German):
Funny, the crazy astronomers. Always there for a good joke. I really like that.
Greetings from a half-knowing Astrologer, from Martin
Month-Horoscopes for free
The last line was linked to http://www.sternzeichen-horoskop/.Yes, without domain ending. I first thought some silly astrologer did not even manage to write his URL correctly. But as many browsers automatically append an ‘.com’, you would end up on the correct site. Is that a way to get past spam filters? If yes, it would quite smart.
The website is full of ads and texts about zodiac signs and weeklzy monthly, even yearly horoscopes. Hm… is that really an astrologer? They use to mislike such general horoscopes a lot.
No, in fact is does not seem to be a true astrologer. I did some research, because there was another reason to be suspicious. The comment is signed with “from Martin”, while the commenter calls himself “Dennis” in the form. The email-adress then fits to the person running the Horoscope-Website, an “Alexander”. Who seems to be a webdesigner rather than an astrologer. I guess he tries to earn some extra-money with website advertisments.
It would have been strange if an astrologer would have tried to advertise on my Blog. Why all the different names? Well, at least I would be too embarrased to use my real name when acting as an astrologer. I think such pseudo-astrologers are still better than te ‘real’ ones. At least they are financed by ads and do not take their customer’s money for their fary-tales. And as the ads on such sites are for astrologers, they even take away some of their money.
But still, I don’t like spam, especially when it is as badly made as this one. So I am contemplating whether I should start billing them for posting spam …
After having hosted the Blog-Telescope recently, I will try to point you to the future ones, too. Today, you find it over at austroscepticus, where Christian takes you to space with the Blog-Teleskop. (Everything in German, though).
There it is finally. Our article about dwarf galaxies and dark matter has been published in the current issue of the German popular science magazine “Spektrum der Wissenschaft“, which is the German version of the Scientific American. The text is about testing the current cosmological standard model using the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. In it, my professor, Pavel Kroupa, and I not only describe how predictions of the Cold Dark Matter model can be compared to the Local Group of neighboring galaxies, but also how new doubts in the existence of dark matter arise from the failed tests. The article is even mentioned on the front page and in the editorial and got 10 full pages, which is a lot.
New food for your feed-reader!
While the article is in German, we also have to offer something to our English readers. Spektrum der Wissenschaft has convinced us to start a new blog on the topic to allow a direct discussion. We decided that this blog should be in Englisch. It got the title “The Dark Matter Crisis - The rise and fall of a cosmological hypothesis“ and can be found at the SciLogs. Besides Professor Kroupa and me, also Anton Ippendorf, a student in our research group also working on dwarf and satellite galaxies will write posts there. Currently I am preparing a blogpost for the Dark Matter Blog on the Bullet Cluster, one of the most often heard arguments against alternative gravity theories like MOND or MOG.
Article as free PDF
If you read German, you can buy the current version of Spektrum der Wissenschaft from today on, it costs 7.40 Euro in Germany and Austria. But if you are only interested in our article, you can also download it as a free PDF.
So, now I am waiting for the reactions. Have fun with the text and our new blog!
Florian Freistetter von Astrodicticum Simplex hat mich gefragt, ob ich nicht einmal das Blog-Teleskop verranstalten möchte. Na klar, die Ehre nehme ich gerne an, trotz unerträglicher Hitze, die bei manch einem Blog schon zum Hitzefrei geführt hat . Somit folgt jetzt eine subjektive und unvollständige Zusammenfassung interessanter Beiträge aus den letzten beiden Wochen der deutschen Astronomie-Blogwelt.
“Meine kleine Astrowelt” hat ein Video entdeckt, dass den Einstieg in die Himmelsbeobachtung erleuchtern sollte.
Daniel Fischer gibt einen ziemlich umfassenden Überblick über die Auswirkungen ein halbes Jahr nach Ende des Internationalen Jahres der Astronomie 2009. Respekt, das muss viel Arbeit gewesen sein …
Leonard Burtscher von “Promotion mit Interferenzen” fragt: Warum Berufsastronom? und gibt drei gute Antworten.
Auf “Lichtecho” findet sich ein äußerst lesenswerter Text von Stefan Taube zum Thema Wasser auf der Venus. Warum auch immer nur vom Mars sprechen?
Ludmilla von “Hinterm Mond gleich links” schreibt über den Anfang des Universums. Nein, nicht den Urknall, sondern darüber, dass auch wir hier auf der Erde ein Teil des Universums sind. Ein Update des Milchstrassenbildes gab es dann auch noch. Ist schon spannend, wie sich die Struktur unserer Galaxie durch neue Erkenntnisse “verändert”.
Und zum Schluss wird noch ein Stern ausgeknipst, drüben bei “Himmelslichter”: In der Nacht vom 8. zum 9. Juli wird ein Asteroid eine kurze … nenne wir es Sternfinsternis verursachen.
Da ich mich im Blog auch immmer gerne mit der Fotogrfie beschäftige gibt es zum Abschluss noch Hinweise auf eine Reihe spannender Bilder: Auf “Asterythms” spielten Geduld und die richtige Position zusammen, das Ergebnis ist ein Foto vom untergehenden Mond mit einem Windrad davor. Windparks scheinen übrigens einen guten Vordergrund abzugeben, so auch für das Bild Leuchtender Nachtwolken auf “Astrofan80’s Blog”. Beeindruckende Astrofotografien von Nebeln kann hingegen Jörg vom “Heuchelheimer Himmelsfähnchen” präsentieren. Eine Vielzahl von Aufnahmen mit Astronomiebezug präsentiert Daniel Fischer stets auf seinem Blog “Skyweek Zwei Punkt Null“, da will ich gar keinen speziellen Beitrag heraus greifen.
Das war es von meiner Seite. Wer mag kann gerne noch weitere interessante Beiträge in den Kommentaren ergänzen.
Two weeks ago my professor and me were interviewed by the Deutschlandfunk, which is a big German Radio Station. The topic, of course, was the new study concerning Dark Matter. The (German) broadcast can be found online as a Podcast and in text. This week we got another Interview request, now from NDR Info. As my professor and the other Co-Author from Bonn are at a conference in the US right now, I was the only one to be interview. You can imagine this made me a bit nervous, but it turned out to be fine.
The broadcast (again in German, sorry), will be aired today between 9 and 10 pm in the NDR Info show “Logo”. It will also be available as a podcast (starting at 39:30 into the file). I am curious what it will be like.
For Monday evening I was asked to talk about the Modified Newtonian Dynamics at our institute’s Astro Club. That’s a regular (voluntary) meeting for the younger physics students*, organized by several very committed tutors. They give easy to understand (and usually German) talks and, if the weather is fine, also observe with the institute’s telescope.
After that I hope to find more time for my work again. And for some posts on black and white infrared photography (film, of course), as I have already shown you two of my infrared photos in the post about faked UFO photos. As an introduction, here is another one. It shows the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
As a transition stage back to some photography blogging, I’d like to point you at a documentary: “The Eye 3D“. It was produced last year, as part of the International Year of Astronomy, and shows the “life and work at cerro paranal” in the Chilenian Acatama desert, where the Very Large Telescope is located.
On their website, you can find some 3D still pictures which you can enjoy if you have one of these red/blue glasses. The trailer below is in 2D, but I think it already gives an impression.
It seems to be press-release time at the institute. Michael Marks, a friend and colleague from the research group reports on his new results. No, it is not about MOND or Dark Matter this time, but the topic is very interesting, too.
Michael performed a kind of galactic archaeology. While ha did not dig in mud or had to get dirty for his work, he was looking at extremely old objects nevertheless. The more than 12 billion year old globular clusters still contain information about the time of their formation. From that, he has deduced new insights into the formation of the Milky Way.
He looked at the correlation between age and mass of the globular clusters. While the clusters are more than 12 billion years old, their ages differ by a few hundred million years at most. But the younger ones have lost more stars than the older. From simulations, Michael knows that forces from the outside (similar to the tides on earth, but way stronger) can make a cluster loose stars. The difference in this loosing of stars between older and younger clusters thus means, that the outside forces became stronger between the times of their formation. The Milky Way grew more rapidly than previously thought. The smooth gas clod, which was going to form the galaxy, clumped within only a few million years, and these clumps then influenced the forming globular clusters.
A wonderful slating review of the new German esoteric-magazine “Happinez” by Jenni Zylka on Spiegel Online. Beautyfully written, but unfortunately in German.
The pictures on this site are solely black and white film photography. I shoot most pictures when travelling to places in europe. Mostly Normandy and Paris in France and German cities like Berlin, Cologne and Bonn. You will find urban scences, landscapes and maybe some street photograpy.
Science and Philosophy
I'm studying physics, astrophysics and philosophy at the university of Bonn in Germany. As my studies take up a lot of my time I'm sure I will post something on these topics, in particular on astronomy. I'll try to keep it generally understandable, but feel free to ask if questions arise.
Scepticism
Applying scientific methods to debunk widespread nonsense is both fun (for some believes it's hard to belive that somebody belives them) and necessary to avoid a reign of stupidity. Thus I plan posts on pseudosciences, criticism of religion and anti-antiscience (defending science from antiscientific attacks like 'Intelligent design').
. Somit folgt jetzt eine subjektive und unvollständige Zusammenfassung interessanter Beiträge aus den letzten beiden Wochen der deutschen Astronomie-Blogwelt.
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