Cumberland-Times Sky Columns
May 2006

May 7: HOW DO SCIENTISTS FIND AGES
May 14: THINK OF MATH AS A TOOL
May 21: RELATING BELIEF & SCIENCE
May 28: TURNING CROPS INTO FUEL

May 7: HOW DO SCIENTISTS FIND AGES?

How do scientists know how old is the Universe? The Earth? our local Allegheny Mountains? Many feel that unless a human actually witnesses the formation of the above, then any scientific age is just a guestimate. These same folks point to the Bible's genealogy of Adam's family and conclude that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old. So who is right? Beliefs are painful to change and beliefs really can't be imposed by any authority. But science doesn't require anyone to believe in their data, just have some respect for process of how science works.

The scientific method for most scientific research goes like this... Identify which phenomena you want to study and try to explain. Then make careful measurements of this phenomena, the more measurements the better to minimize any errors in any one event. This is to followed by careful analysis of your data using plots, graphs, statistics, etc. After some thought, a scientist will try to come up with a testable explanation of the phenomena. For an explanation to be testable, it has to be used to make a prediction for the future. Once again, the more predictions the explanation or hypothesis can make, the better. Then we wait and see if the predictions are borne out by nature or by experiments in the laboratory. If the hypothesis seems to be working, do more predictions and tests. Then and only then, do you write an account of your research and submit it to an official journal where it will be reviewed by a team of anonymous experts in your field. They scrutinize your work to be sure that there are no omissions or blunders. If there are mistakes, they communicate back to the editor who will tell you to make revisions. Then you wait. Typically 6-12 months, after the paper was first seen by the editor will your paper appear in the scientific journal. This procedure of peer review is what gives science its credibility. This is marked contrast to politics where statements are made frequently, often using emotionally charged language to anger or persuade. Often no real numbers and independently corroborated evidence are cited. Is it any wonder that many good men/women in political office are not regarded well?

The age of our local Allegheny Mountains is about 250 million years. This number is based on plate tectonics, the known motion of the giant crustal plates on which we ride. For 1/4 billion years ago, the continents of North America and Africa collided, causing a corrogation of our local crust. Plate tectonics causes a motion of the plates about 5 cm or 2 inches per year. This can be verified by the laser reflectors left on the moon and very accurate timing of laser beams fired shot to the moon and back from observatories on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The upturned strata from earlier eras can be seen at the Sidling Hill cut on I-68.

The age of the Earth is estimated to be 4.55 billion years. Here we use the ages of the oldest rocks on the Earth, dated by radioactive decay and the known half lives of radioactive isotopes such as Potassium-40 (the source of 1% Argon in our atmosphere), Uranium-238 (the most common form of Uranium). The oldest rocks would not be as old as the Earth itself as the crust of the Earth was molten for millions of years before these first rocks were formed. The above date is from the ages of the oldest meteorites recovered, that quickly cooled from the original materials from which the planets and sun formed.

The age of the Universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years. This age is based on the motion of the distant galaxies, that were propelled outward by the universe's explosive origin. (Galaxies are star kingdoms of billions of suns; our sun is just another star among billions in our galaxy.) If we trace back in time the motion of these galaxies, then they were essentially in the same place some 13.7 billion years ago. This age estimate includes the acceleration of the universe's expansion discovered in the late 1990's by the Hubble Space Telescope. The visible matter in the universe is dwarfed by dark matter, that lies between the galaxies and around the galaxy clusters. The acceleration of the universe's expansion is caused by dark energy, which is responsible for a repulsive force that strengthens with distance. What is the nature of the dark matter and dark energy is one of the great mysteries of science. It may take decades before any consensus is developed among scientists.

May 14: THINK OF MATH AS A TOOL

One of the most important things about approaching Mathematics is to have a positive attitude. Mathematics is the most powerful tool developed to solve a wide array of problems from growing a garden to understanding the large scale structure of the universe. Fortunately most of us don't need to be wizards in solving differential equations and tensor calculus. The kind of math most of us will find helpful is readily accessible in books in our free public libraries.

There are some charming books on math in the Allegany Library System that will engage the most math phobic individuals. Below are 2 juvenile books that may treat math topics as a game; but these books can make mathematics much more 'beginner friendly' than the usual concise treatments in standard math textbooks. Adults should not be afraid to check these books out for you can always share the book and ideas with your children, younger cousins, nieces, nephews and even grandchildren.

Try "Cool Math" by Christy Maganzini, published by Pierce Stern Sloan in 1997 with ISBN 0-8431-7857-4 and a paperback. Chapter One tells us the story of counting (evidence goes back 30,000 years), covering abacuses, the Pythagoreans (who sought to conceal numbers that couldn't be expressed by a certain number of digits), the invention of zero in the Middle East and the superbig number, the googolplex (if you try to write out all its zeroes, the slip of paper would not fit into the known universe!). Chapter Two features sets, Venn diagrams, number patterns, Ulam's Doddle (to find prime numbers), sequences and extrapolation (often misused by political types). Chapter Three deals with binary math (what computers do) while Chapter Four treats Cryptography (sending messages with numbers or letters that only your friends can understand). Chapter Five deals with exponential growth (what human population is now doing), Fibonacci Numbers, and Symmetry. The last Chapter is Six, which introduces one to Topology (important for maps), Probability (what are the odds?) and Sports Statistics (stuff like field goal percentages for basketball & batting averages for baseball hitters).

Another library book is "Arithmetricks" by Edward H. Julius, published by John Wiley in 1995 with ISBN 0-471-10639-9, a paperback. "Arithmetricks" has a subtitle "50 Easy Ways to Add, Subtract, Multiply & Divide". Julius' book begins with basic math tricks for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Then follows master math tricks for the same operations plus tips on estimation.

As a high school student, my favorite popular math book was "One, Two, Three ....Infinity" by George Gamow, still in print by Dover Publishing. A popular book with a morbid title is "The Arithmetic of Life and Death" by George Shaffer, a Ballantine Paperback that covers such off beat topics as "The Value of Being Stupid", "Why There are Meetings", "The Tailgater's Advantage" and "Life After Death". As a general reference for the most common math areas, I suggest "Mathmatics Made Simple" (not really!), by Thomas Cusick, the 6th edition by Broadway Books, ISBN 0-7679-1538-0. I have recommended this book to a number of my science students and they have found it helpful. It has many numerical examples; you can be sure that you understand them if you can duplicate the numbers with your calculator.

May 21: RELATING BELIEF & SCIENCE

Why should scientists' views on God be presented as opposed to the views of car mechanics or servers at fast food snack shops? In the Middle Ages, there was a long tradition of natural philosophers - individuals trained in both science and theology. When Isaac Newton returned to Cambridge after an 18 month absence due to the Black Plague, his advisor Isaac Barrow, gave Newton his position and moved to a faculty position in Theology.

After Darwin, there was a growing separation between science and theology. But Liberal Protestantism didn't reject evolution; some theologians such as Beecher and Warfield saw evolution as operating through God's guidance. Pope John Paul II saw no reason to reject natural selection, provided one acknowledged that humans stood alone with an immortal soul. The explosive origin of the Universe was first proposed by a Roman Catholic priest and astrophysicist, Father LeMaitre in the 1920's. Soon afterwards, Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the Universe, the recoil from this initial explosion.

In 1979, an article in the science journal Nature noted that structures in our universe are highly dependent on key physical constants. If these constants were slightly larger or bigger, than stars would not have formed, only hydrogen atoms would exist, etc. This remarkable fine tuning of the universe became known as "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" after a book of the same title by John Barrow and Frank Tipler (1986). This principle seems to indicate that the universe was designed for life, which now has the ability to view the universe and ask such questions. Could this universe have been made by a Creator who desired some creatures to care for and watch over?

In the 1960's, Physicist Ian Barbour of Carleton College (Minnesota) began to lay an intellectual framework for the interaction between Science and Religion with his book, "Issues in Science and Religion". In later decades, Barbour pioneered process theology where God acts through persuasion and influence, allowing individuals to exercise their own free will, whether for good or bad. Process theology deals better with the existence of evil, allowing for wars, famines, holocausts, etc. Process theology is more compatible with Darwin's evolution where there are many dead ends and most species have died off. Barbour's best known book is "Religion in an Age of Science" (1990).

The Rev. John Polkinghorne was first a theoretical physicist at Cambridge Univerisity, working in the field of particle physics for thirty years. In 1979, he stepped down from his chair and became an Anglican Priest, working in two country parishes. Polkinghorne returned to Cambridge in 1986 to become Dean of Trinity Hall. Polkinghorne's book "Belief in God in an Age of Science" (1998) was used in my spring Honors class in Religion and Science at Frostburg State. Polkinghorne focuses on questions for which science has no easy answers, particularly the order in nature. While science can't prove the existence of God, religion and particularly the New Testament provide a framework for understanding nature.

MAY 28: TURNING CROPS INTO FUEL

If you look at the World Almanac, you can see a steady growth in imported pretroleum since the mid 1980's. In 1985, we imported 37% of our petroleum. Five years later, the petroleum imports had edged up to 42%. In 1997, imports had reached 49%. In 2001, we imported 55% of our petroleum; last year's petroleum imports had grown to 59% of the total petroleum consumed. This addiction to oil as President Bush has pointed out, is particularly risky as we have to rely on countries whose governments are shaky; now some of these countries are being offered better deals for their petroleum by the People's Republic of China (Mainland China).

Why can't we just pump more petroleum out of our U.S. oil wells? Except for the Artic National Wildlife Region (ANWR), we have drilled far more wells in the United States than any other country has drilled in their lands. Our peak year for U.S. oil production was 1970 when we led the world in petroleum (over 10 million barrels per day). Now our wells are producing only half as much. The United States has only 2% of the known oil reserves but we continue to consume about 25% of the world's petroleum. Hydrogen cars are likely 20-30 years into the future. Hydrogen will require a very different way of distribution than gasoline and diesel fuel and a huge amount of investment to make hydrogen readily available across the U.S. What can we do in the meanwhile?

Motor vehicles need liquid fuels that are dense and high in energy content. During World War II, the Germans used wood alcohol or methanol to power their submarines and tanks. Methanol has a sister alcohol named ethanol that is also useful in transportation. The most energy efficient way to make ethanol is through fermentation of crops, such as corn, sugarcane. One bushel of corn can be converted to 2.5 gallons of ethanol; each gallon of ethanol has 76,000 BTU versus 124,000 BTU for a gallon of gasoline. This would cause our miles per gallon to drop by a third if we drove vehicles whose engines were tuned to burn ethanol. But ethanol is cleaner burning than gasoline and does not contribute to global warming.(While the corn was growing, it absorbed much carbon dioxide, now as ethanol is burned, the carbon dioxide is returned to the atmosphere.) Brazil is the leading country in the world to use ethanol in its vehicles; in 2003 Brazil harvested 350 million tons of sugarcane and processed it to produce 3.6 billion gallons of ethanol for its vehicles.

As for our big diesel trucks, soybean oil is a possibility. After the gum and glycerin removed, soybeam oil can power trucks. Diesel trucks can also run on used vegetable oils. (So a truck driver can order some fries and drive off with his truck powered by the same kind of oil that his fries were doused in.)

So corn and soybeans can be energy crops that can be transformed into liquid fuels. But where will the acreage come to grow these fuel crops? We have to examine our national diet and the efficiency of our farm acreage.

The average global caloric intake per person is 2300 Kilocalories. The recommended amount of protein per person is 40 grams a day. In the U.S. our average caloric intake is 3300 kilocalories per day with 100 grams of protein consumed. Two thirds of this protein in the U.S. diet comes from animal products. Around the world, most people's protein comes from legumes and grains. In the U.S. we get most of our protein through hot dogs, burgers, chicken breasts, turkey drumsticks, steaks, etc. Much of this protein is laced with fat, contributing to our national overweight problem. To have all these meaty foods (6 million tons of protein per year), we have to feed the cows, chickens, pigs, lambs about 25 million tons of plant protein. These 25 million tons of plant protein comes from huge fields devoted not to feeding people but to feed Bossy, Chicken Little, etc. If we could drop most of the meat from our diet, then the acreage freed could be used to make biofuel - either ethanol or soybean oil. Then we will be importing less petroleum and eating in an environmentally smarter way. I am not a vegetarian, but my meat servings are small. For every 100 units of energy to grow a pound of hamburger, only 1 unit's energy is eaten (1% efficiency). In contrast, for every energy unit devoted to the growing of corn, the corn has a yield of 2.9 energy units, or 290 X larger than for beef.