A Christian and a Physicist

I recently gave a couple of talks summarizing some of the work that I do as a nuclear-particle-astrophysicist (name perpetually under discussion) and the impact that the Bible has had on me as a I approach and think about my work.  The talks were given to fellow believers in ministries where people were likely to be or be relationally close to scientists in their everyday lives.  On the last slide, I included a list of things that fellow Christians might consider praying for believers who are scientists.  Many of these things apply to wider academic fields, and indeed, the body of Christ at large.  

• Boldness
• Humility
• Encouragement
• Rest
• Creativity
• Integrity
• Fearlessness
• Wisdom, understanding, knowledge
• Love for fellow believers and fellow scientists, colleagues
• ***A desire for God’s glory
• *Opportunities to witness faithfully
• Protection (spiritual, physical, emotional, financial, reputation, professional, etc)
• To find their identity in Christ
• Balance
• Discernment; including the collaborations they form, the projects they choose, where/how they gain/accept funding, how they present their work, and how their work impacts people, places, and the future
• To be led by the Holy Spirit in this as well as other areas of their lives

Hello Again

I am sitting here with a deep desire in my heart to use this blog to excite and inspire people like me who love Jesus or want to want to love Him better, and who get excited by numbers and patterns and stars and nature.  I am also sitting here realizing how much time has lapsed since I started this blog and since the last entry labeled "Part I" that was supposed to be the lead-in to something that never really got expressed.  I have a lot of words and ideas and the desire to pursue them all is sometimes quite the challenge to reign in.  

Irregularity aside, I hope that those who come across this blog will find something that they can enjoy.  This post is a first step in my intent to start again.  The topics may broaden a bit, or sometimes be oddly specific.  Sometimes I may have to let go of a little bit of perfectionism if I actually want to get them out to post.  Doesn't matter.  Hello again and I hope you will join me as I try to communicate and work out for myself what it means to live life to His glory.

Happy Tuesday, 

D.S.

Shall we begin? Facts, theories, and laws (1)

Some time ago, I had a discussion with several friends regarding the meaning and use of the word “theory” in science.   By the end of this (2-part) blog post, it is my hope that readers will be able to identify the differences between “theories”, “facts”, "interpretations of facts", and “laws of physics”, and that they will be able to pick out key words that will help them to gauge the credibility and weight of a particular idea or concept in science.  

 

• Facts are generally produced by measurement or observation.  These are things such as the sky being blue in the daytime in North America, or that it is easier to crush a clay pot than an iron one.  Generally speaking, the facts themselves are considered pretty objective, in that everyone can see the outcome when a test is performed or a measurement is conducted.  The caveat is that facts are usually interpreted within a specific framework.  We will return to this later.
• Laws are statements that describe a phenomenon or event that occurs every time a measurement or observation is made.  Generally speaking, if you hold some object at shoulder height and then open your hand and let it go, it will fall towards the ground.   Laws don’t describe why the object falls toward the ground - just that it happens, over and over again.  The more carefully we study dropping objects, the more detailed the law can be - we may even be able to describe how quickly it will fall, how much time it will take to reach the ground, and whether or not it will speed up as it falls.  These details still don’t answer the question of why.  Laws are called such because they can be reliably reproduced under a given set of circumstances.  Now, if those circumstances change, eventually we can set up a situation in which these laws break down.
• A hypothesis is an untested idea or hunch about something that has been observed. Many times, these ideas arise from studying laws and making predictions about what would happen under various changes in the circumstances.  A good hypothesis will be testable and falsifiable - that is, you can set up some type of experiment or search that will test the hypothesis, and they hypothesis is set up in such a way that it can be proven wrong.  Often, hypotheses begin to try to answer some of the why questions surrounding laws and facts.  Successful hypotheses (confirmed by experiment) can help bolster confidence that your understanding of some of the why questions is on the right track, because you were able to successfully predict what should happen in a specific case.  It doesn’t necessarily prove, however, that every part of it is correct.
•  A theory is a framework in which you try to make a consistent, coherent interpretation of facts and laws.  It can include or inform hypotheses, but theories are not the same as hypotheses.  Theory will make predictions that can be turned into hypotheses based on previous observations, facts, and laws.  If tests of those hypotheses turn out to be successful, the theory gains credibility.  Well-established theories have been tested over and over again, ideally by making predictions that have been shown to be correct.  This does not mean that the theory is completely true, or that it will never need to be modified as new information comes to light.  It can, however, show that the theory is a good framework from which a basic understanding of the underlying laws can be gained, and that it makes sense to consider the theory a reasonable interpretation of the facts.  
• An interpretation of facts, in the way that I use it here, is the set of things that we assume the facts tell us, based on the coherent picture or framework or theory that we use to explain the facts.  In other words, once we have collected the facts and built a reasonable theory about why they should be so, we begin to look at new facts through the lens of what they would mean in our theory.  

Let’s give an example. Let us say that Jim had a birthday, and Sue baked a cake.  Polly baked a cake on Elliott’s birthday.  Cassidy baked a cake on Katrina’s birthday.  These are facts.  As a matter of fact :), by travelling from city to city, we find that in the United States of America, people often bake cakes and decorate their houses when the birthday of a family member or friend draws near.  The cake is often baked on the same day as the birthday.  This happens over and over again, and we’ve been able to document it.  This is the birthday law.  Note that we can all think of exceptions to this law, so it doesn’t hold under every circumstance - for example sickness, or conflict, or perhaps even personal beliefs or indifference.  Nonetheless, there is a large number of cases with general conditions in which we find this to be true.  So we call it the birthday law.  

Now WHY are cakes baked on birthdays?  This we do not know, and it is not included in the birthday law.  We might even be able to add more information to the birthday law, making predictions of, say, the ethnicities and ages of people who bake cakes on birthdays, or where they live. We could test these hypotheses and add the new information to our description of the birthday law.  But these things still doesn’t really tell us why cakes are baked on birthdays.  

 

We can start to collect all of these hypotheses together to form a theoretical framework.  In this example, we may not have all the answers to why cakes are baked on birthdays, but we can at least begin to assemble our various hypotheses and laws into a theory of birthday celebration.  And I can begin to use this theory to interpret various facts:  If I am in Thistown, USA, and Pedro bakes a cake with sprinkles and candles for his brother Peter, I might assume that today is Peter’s birthday.  Notice that the interpretation of the facts (that the baked cake means that it is Peter’s birthday) is not quite the same as the facts themselves (the actual baked cake), and can be wrong - Peter’s birthday might be tomorrow or might have been two weeks ago.  It also might not be his birthday at all, and they both just happen to appreciate the taste of sprinkles.  We were just interpreting the facts through the lens of our birthday theory.  

 

 

To be continued.  We’ll discuss the keywords next time, but below are a couple of articles that I found to be well-written and helpful in explaining the differences between laws, theories, interpretations, facts, and hypotheses.  I also welcome comments - did you find this helpful? Confusing? Useful? Let me know!

 

---

Bradford, A. (March 17, 2015 10:14pm ET).  What is a Scientific Theory?  Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/21491-what-is-a-scientific-theory-definition-of-theory.html.  Accessed February 13, 2016.

Bradford, A. (March 25, 2015 11:56pm ET).  What is a Law in Science?  Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/21457-what-is-a-law-in-science-definition-of-scientific-law.html.  Accessed February 13, 2016.

Computing Sidebar: TeX stuff

I recently upgraded my setup to Mac OS 10.11, which broke a few things, one of which was my TeX installation.  TeXshop is an open source distribution avaialble for Mac OS X that is installed with TeX Live when you download MacTex from the home page of the TeX Users Group (www.tug.org).  TeX is frequently used (including by me) for publications and dissertations (yay!)

Reinstalling MacTeX is relatively painless and well described by the instructions on the MacTeX download page (http://www.tug.org/mactex/mactex-download.html), so I will not repeat them here.  However, I did find that upon attempting to run the Tex Live Utility, I was unable to use the utility to update packages, and repeatedly encoutering the error “Listing Failed” under the update section

My problem was that the utility was unable to access the server for the repository that it was attempting to use for the software updates.  After searching blogs on some slightly different bugs and problems (e.g. http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet), I finally resolved the issue by switching to a new repository.  The steps: 

1. Select the menu “Configure" —> “Manage repositories”
2. Choose another repository by double-clicking or whatever you do for your computer to follow a link selection

This should ask you about using the new repository as your home repository as well (I accepted; probably not necessary), and give a confirmation dialog.  I was also prompted to accept an update of the infrastructure of the utility, which I also accepted.  

I recommend restarting the TeX Live Utility after the repository change, and particularly after the update to the infrastructure.

The infrastructure can also be updated by selecting “Reinstall TeX Live Manager” from the “Actions” menu.

Finally, after the repository change and upgrading the utility, I am able to use the utility to update my TeX packages by selecting “Update All Packages” from the “Actions” menu (updating selected packages is also possible).

This fix was performed for Tex Live Utility v1.23 on Mac OSX 10.11.2  (El Capitan).

 

Voila! Happy TeXing!

My Favorite Psalm

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheath his handiwork.

Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. 

There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.

Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.  In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, 

Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.

His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul:  the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.  

The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart:  the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. 

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever:  the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. 

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold:  sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. 

Moreover by them is thy servant warned:  and in keeping of them there is great reward. 

Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.  

Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me:  then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. 

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer."

Psalm 19

Picture credit:  NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, July 14, 2014 (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140714.html)

Life takes GUTs....

The intricacy and unity of the universe is one of the coolest and most amazing things to think about. It's funny how many things "matter but don't" (but do). The strong force keeps the very nuclei of atoms from ripping themselves apart, but acts over distances so short that it's undetectable on macroscopic scales. Gravity holds the galaxies in clusters, but is weak enough in everyday life to be bested, at least temporarily, by a little girl jumping or tossing her doll.
Life is the same. We eat, we sleep, we fight, we play. At the end of it all, the only thing that really matters is what we do with the priceless gift of salvation offered by God's Son, Jesus. But the little things on this side still matter. They can draw people to Jesus or help them find reasons to back away. They can show growth of character or the onset of compromise. The "equations" you live by can unify or unravel in an inconsistent mess...

Quantum Mechanics and the Gospel

In physics, as in mathematics, one often deals with *asymptotes*, defined by Google as "a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance". This concept shows up pretty much everywhere. When you're talking about asymptotes, the bottom line is that basically, you follow this smooth line forever and ever, but it never quite gets you where you're trying to go, never quite reaches that point that it's trying to hit. You approach a value, getting closer and closer, but by less and less, and ultimately, you fail.

For weeks, maybe months, this is the picture that I've gotten in my head when I think of the concept of works righteousness versus grace. You can do all you can do to earn your salvation, but in the end, the Bible says that "all our righteousness is as filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6) . You just won't get there. You just can't do it. There's a huge, unbridgeable gulf between what we can do and what God requires, and unlike in math, you never even get close enough to "assume" you're there and move on.

So what can you do? Nothing, if you just keep following that line. But, chips ahoy! There's hope! It's like ... A quantum leap!

Now we're looking at a little change of metaphors. In quantum mechanics, particles don't go smoothly from one state to another, because contrary to the assumptions of calculus, the energy states aren't continuous - there are only a few, particular, separate states in which it can exist, and it can only change states when the right amount (and nothing less) of energy has been absorbed or released by the system to permit it. Adding less than required and trying to give it a chance to "build up" won't work. (If you like science and aren't familiar with this, check out the photoelectric effect. Its discovery is actually the reason that A. Einstein won the Nobel Prize.) The set of possible energies is discrete. However, though there's a vast and gaping discontinuity between one state and the next, if there is something that can provide what's needed to make the change, it can be made.
And this is the hope that Jesus provides for us. We couldn't do it, but he met the standard and paid the price, fully. Nothing more was needed. The thing is done.

Hollapraize :)