Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts

Photos of Our Baby Boy

He isn't due to arrive until March of next year, but here are the photos from yesterday's ultrasound. The doctor's said everything looks perfect, and he is measuring about 5 days larger than average.

It's truly amazing the level of detail you can now see in the images. We looked at both legs, arms, hands and feet. We were able to count his fingers, see both nostrils and checked the compartments of his heart. We also verified that he is receiving good blood flow from the umbilical cord and that his stomach, kidneys and lungs are all exactly as they should be. Absolutely amazing.

Click on any of the images for a larger view. 
Our Baby's footprint is 3.74cm long.

This profile view shows us his nose, mouth, hand and knee.


In this profile view, he had pulled his legs over his head and was holding onto them with his hands.



In this 3D image, our boy is laying on his left side, with both his hands under his head. (I sleep this way too.)



Hears a 3D view of our little boys face.


The Cosmological Theory Questioned

Here's an example of when science does not discover what it expects to discover and scrambles:

Scientists cannot find many of the galazies that should exist around the Milky Way galaxy.
According to cosmological theory, says MIT astrophysicist Simona Vegetti, "there should be thousands of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group." That's because the earliest days of the cosmos were not a tidy time, and after the big galaxies came into being a lot of debris ought to have been left behind — "debris," in this case, meaning little galaxies, made partly of what's known as cold dark matter. The fact that we don't see the galaxies, she says, is due to one of three things: Either they're simply too faint to detect, or there's something unusual about the local cosmic neighborhood that would explain why it departs from the larger rule. Or — and this is the troubling alternative — maybe the theory itself, which has been generally accepted for the past 30 years or so, is fundamentally wrong in some way. 
So what does this mean?
The cosmological theory may be fundamentally wrong - as in, incorrect.  

The presented alternatives as to why these galaxies are missing are as follows, with my response:
1. These galaxies are just to faint to detect.  It is hard to believe that some of our closest neighbors would be invisible to the technology that allows us to peer across billions of light years to incredibly distant galaxies.
2. Our galaxy doesn't follow the cosmological rules for some reason. It seems difficult to accept that there may be some mysterious reason why our galaxy might not have behaved as every other galaxy is expected to during its creation.
3. The theory is fundamentally wrong in some way. I think this means that scientists are discovering that they cannot prove one of the fundamental things that should exist if the Big Bang did indeed form our galaxy. They aren't willing to state that they believe the theory is incorrect at this point, just that it may be flawed.

Here are a few unanswered questions that I have after reading this brief article:
1. Have the expected "debris" been seen in other galaxy neighborhoods? If not, then why is this theory even proposed? Does the theory itself exist strictly on the basis that the Big Bang would have had to result in such "debris" existing?

2. If "debris" has been documented elsewhere, were those galaxy neighborhoods larger or smaller in size when compared to the Milky Way? If the answer is yes and the neighborhood is larger than the Milky Way galaxy, then it leads me to alternative #2 above, which naturally points us to alternative #3. If the answer is yes and the neighborhood is smaller, then I fail tun understand why we cannot find our own "debris" and dismiss alternative #1 to land at #3, after a brief time at alternative #2. If the answer is no, then it leads me directly to alternative #3.

From my own personal Christian perspective, I believe that this leads me to the alternative not mentioned, which is that God made it all and placed it all exactly where He wanted it to be. Perhaps the reason they cannot find the "debris", which resulted from quickly moving masses colliding with one another to form galaxies over time, is because it didn't happen that way. Perhaps these galaxies were created in space as they are by a God who wanted to display His magnificence and splendor on a canvas that is wider than mankind ever imagined was even in existence.


"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished..." - Genesis 2:1

"When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" - Psalm 8:3-4

Conception to Birth Visualized

This new research out of Yale University is absolutely incredible.
The complexity of the human body is absolutely breathtaking.
The developmental/growth process of it is unfathomable.

"...so perfectly organized a structure, it was hard not to attribute Divinity to it..."
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:27)


(HT: Justin Taylor)

A Big Mess Disappears?

Guess what?

All that oil that has been spewing out into the Gulf of Mexico for the past several months has suddenly gone missing...

From this ABC News article:
The numbers don't lie: two weeks ago, skimmers picked up about 25,000 barrels of oily water. Last Thursday, they gathered just 200 barrels.


Still, it doesn't mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.
Possible reasons for this?
The light crude began to deteriorate the moment it escaped at high pressure, and then it was zapped with dispersants to speed the process along. The oil that did make it to the ocean's surface was broken up by 88-degree water, baked by 100-degree sun, eaten by microbes, and whipped apart by wind and waves.

I think it is way too early to assume that there might be no long-term effects of this in that environment, but if what some of these scientists are saying is true, then it is truly amazing what is happening in that water.

(HT: Michael Williams)

Does Universal Morality Exist?

Sam Harris at the TED conference: Science Can Answer Moral Questions


I found this talk quite interesting. I had literally no idea who Sam Harris is while watching this video, but I have since learned that he is an avowed atheist who has written some fairly popular books critical of Christian faith. While I would fully disagree with his false opinion that there is no God, I do agree with quite a bit of what he said in this talk.

It sounded to me a lot like this scientist/philosopher was imploring the educated people in the room to finally admit that there is such a thing as absolute morality, which in my mind is a reflection of the fact that there is absolute truth. Perhaps in his endeavors to convince fellow scientists to begin expressing their beliefs in firm statements of truth, Mr. Harris will be granted the understanding that these universal moral truths have an Author who created the universe in which they exist.

This article nicely captured these points from the talk:
We should not feel constrained to assert what we think is an objective truth — that such behavior is wrong — for fear that it will be taken as subjective meddling or demagoguery, Harris argued. There is a moral imperative not to hold one’s tongue but rather to speak out.
...
We can no longer respect and tolerate vast differences of opinion of what constitutes basic humanity any more than we can take seriously different opinions about how disease spreads or what it takes to make buildings and airplanes safe, Harris insisted.
(HT: Abraham Piper)