Monthly Archives: January 2016

Stormy Dreams: Cyclone Basketball 2016

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I had a nightmare: Fred Hoiberg abandoned Iowa State to become head coach of the Chicago Bulls.

hoi-bulls

It had to be a dream. What are the odds Iowa State’s most beloved son, a legend, nicknamed The Mayor of Ames (seat of the Cyclones) would duplicate Tim Floyd’s abandonment?

floyd_net

Certainly, Hoiberg would remember that Floyd’s arrival in Chicago coincided with Michael Jordan’s second retirement and the end of Phil Jackson’s tenure in Chicago. Floyd resigned  from the Bulls midway through his fourth season in Chicago with a record of 49-190. Floyd gave it another go in the NBA with New Orleans (2003-2004); the Hornets fired him after losing in the first round of the playoffs. Looking back at an NBA career record of 93-235, Floyd once remarked, “I wasn’t very good at it.”

Floyd was 81-49 as a Cyclone. Other than Hoiberg (0.671), Floyd (0.633) is Iowa State’s winningest coach.

Hoiberg would never forsake his hometown to chase a dream without a precedent of success. Several NCAA coaches–other than Floyd–have tried the NBA switch, but none made deep playoff runs.

Then, the dream got worse: Injuries to star players crippled the Bulls’ roster and the team’s leader made negative comments in the media about Holberg’s coaching–or lack thereof.

There was a bright side to Holberg’s departure from Ames, though. He left a strong roster and a team predicted to make the 2016 Final Four. AP ranked Iowa State high in the preseason:

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If you’re not #1, everything’s relative. Kansas was ranked higher–as usual–but the Cyclones were still ahead of Oklahoma, so the season looked encouraging.

After a few heady weeks beating up on weak teams and narrowly escaping intrastate rival, Iowa; the Cyclones rose to #4:

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Kansas was still looming near the top though.

Then, the dream turned nightmare. The Cyclones lost to Northern Iowa… In front of a home crowd… At Hilton Coliseum… Hilton Magic? Iowa State dropped out of the top ten while Kansas and Oklahoma held positions in the top four:

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I wish I could say the nightmare ended on a high note, but Iowa State’s loses started to accumulate: Oklahoma came from behind to beat the Cyclones in Norman; then, Iowa State lost to Baylor, at Hilton. Iowa edged over Iowa State in the AP Poll:

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Fortunately, I started to wake up when the Cyclones dropped another road game to Texas, and Kansas and Oklahoma became #1 and #2:

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I didn’t go back to sleep. I was afraid the nightmare would resume. What could have been next? Maybe the Hawkeyes would crack the top ten as Iowa State dropped out of the top 25? Perhaps the Cyclones might finish in the bottom half of the Big 12, and then lose during the first round of the NIT?

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Oklahoma comes to Ames on Monday, January 18; the same day AP updates their NCAA rankings…

If you liked this post, give Cy-eye the Hawk-clone a try.

Stars on Earth

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Sun worship is at least as old as the Great Pyramids. It’s tough to trace the development of sun deities in Egypt and other ancient cultures, and it’s even more difficult to say for certain how sun worship continues to influence modern theology, and science. Here is one of many possible depictions of Ra–apparently, the first Ancient Egyptian sun god:

ra

At some point, Ra combined with the sky god Horus:

horus

Pharaoh Akhenaten tried to streamline the Egyptian pantheon to a single god, Aten:

aten

Akhenaten was King Tut’s father. Akhenaten attempted what appears to be a revolutionary theological simplification; he even moved the ancient Egyptian capital to facilitate a complete cultural transformation. Akhenaten failed to convince his people of the need to abandon all the other deities, and after his reign, Ancient Egypt returned to a more traditional pantheon.

Sun worship wasn’t confined to the fertile crescent: Spanish conquistadors found the Aztecs paying homage their version of the sun god, Huizilopochtli. The Aztecs practiced mass human sacrifice on the conquered tribes that circumscribed their borders. It seems Huizilopochtli had a flair for ornamental fashion:

huitzilopochtli

The Aztecs apparently believed Huizilopochtli died each day at sunset evidenced by the blood stained western sky. Huizilopochtli needed large volumes of human blood to facilitate his rebirth the following morning. This is one of the more interesting theologies I’ve encountered during my slapdash study of religion, archaic and modern. Unfortunately, it’s also the most frightening:

human_sacrifice

Modern science confirms the importance of the sun. Our star makes up over 99% of the solar system’s mass. Earth’s free energy is based on photosynthesis. The calories that power human activity, initially made an eight minute journey across the vacuum of space as photons (particles of light), and then, plants converted the light into more usable energy. Eventually, that energy worked it’s way up through the food chain.

What is the sun, scientifically? The sun is one of billions of stars in our galaxy, The Milky Way. Our galaxy is one of billions in the universe. There are approximately a billion trillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the universe. Many are similar to our sun; most are different. All stars are similar in one way: They fuse hydrogen atoms to generate even more energy; immense quantities of heat energy raise the temperature and push together hydrogen atoms.

Most observable mass in the universe is concentrated in nuclei. Hydrogen is the most common type of atom; a large portion of the universe’s mass looks something like this hydrogen atom:

hydrogenatom

Actually, it doesn’t really look anything like that, but it’s a great model that helps us predict how hydrogen behaves, which is a primary goal of science.

If we add a lot of energy to a large concentration of hydrogen, the electrons escape the nuclei creating a mixture of charged particles, positive and negative, called plasma. It’s important to recognize that a hydrogen nucleus and a proton are essentially the same thing. There are other possible nuclear arrangements for hydrogen; we call them isotopes, but most hydrogen is protium.

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It’s common for hydrogen to concentrate at distant intervals in space and time. As hydrogen concentrations grow under gravitational pressure, their temperatures increase. Temperature is a measure of how fast the particles move in a substance. (The specifically correct definition of temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules of a substance, but that’s not important to discuss here.)

Protons, like all charged particles, repel other particles, or groups of particles, with positive charge. Protons exert forces on each other that keep them from “touching”each other. As the protons move faster and faster, they get closer and closer. Eventually, they move so fast that they “touch”.

Protons and neutrons inhabit the nucleus, so they are termed nucleons. Nucleons have a kind of velcro covering their surface. Do nucleons really have velcro on them? No. Nucleons don’t have surfaces the way we experience them with our senses. We’re constructing a model that will help us predict behaviors of small unseeable things, not to paint a perfect picture of subatomic particles.

The mythical velcro on nucleons creates strong attachments to other velcro covered things. The velcro represents a phenomenon called strong nuclear force (SNF). Strong as SNF may be, it has a profound weakness: like velcro, SNF has minimal reach, it only acts on other nucleons, and those nucleons must be very close. Once SNF is in play, it’s about 100 times stronger than the electro-repulsion, so it’s possible to build some rather large and complicated nuclei. SNF attracts all nucleons. Here is an image of the largest naturally occurring nucleus, Uranium-238:

u235

The weirdest thing about nucleons is that their mass changes depending on how many there are and what kind of nucleons are near. If we could–we can’t, by the way–break apart the Uranium nucleus into its 238 nucleons, they would add to a different, higher total mass. It seems this would allow the creation or destruction of mass, but it doesn’t because we know, thanks to Einstein, energy and matter are interchangeable. If there is less mass after the nucleon dispersal, then a commensurate amount of energy took its place. Mass increases require the addition of energy.

The mass of two isolated deuterium (see hydrogen isotope images above) nuclei have more mass of the same four nucleons in a helium nucleus:

helium

That means if we push two deuteriums together, energy is created to compensate for the mass lost. We can calculate the precise amount of energy released using the famous formula, E=mc². Take mass and multiply it by the speed of light, and then multiply that product by the speed of light again. Since the speed of light is a large quantity, a small amount of mass equates with much more energy.

It all sounds simple but the trick is getting enough heat energy to raise the deuterium temperature high enough so the hydrogen nuclei can get close enough for SNF to take over. That why it’s called a thermonuclear fusion; thermo means heat.

Fusion creates the tremendous release of energy in a hydrogen bomb.

fireball

That’s not a setting sun, it’s a hydrogen bomb’s rising fireball. Scientifically speaking, a hydrogen bomb is a man-made star.

Here is a video of the history’s largest artificial release of energy. The Soviet Union detonated the Tsar Bomba on October 30, 1961.

This post is the last of a three-part series; here are links the two preceding posts: The Atom Bomb Goes Nuclear; Doomsday Machines.

Doomsday Machines

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We all love a movie about a mad scientist that creates the means to end humanity, posthaste. James Bond, for example, has faced a long line of literary megalomaniacs with apocalyptic designs.

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The Star Wars Saga frequently entails a climax with selfless warriors swarming around a huge embodiment of a maligned, civilization-destroying power–“Starkiller Base” is the most current example in The Force Awakens.

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Throughout much of history, humans have only been able to imagine that level of destructive power. Now, we live not with a singular, hulking manifestation of doomsday destruction, but instead, with a proliferating and compartmentalized technology that has a similar aim. The hydrogen bomb, as it’s termed in media, could truly end human civilization or at least make those who survived a thermo-nuclear war wish humanity was finished.

It’s beyond anticlimactic to inform billions of humans that our civilization’s climax passed before most people on Earth in 2016 were even born. Oppenheimer indicated his suspicion that the apocalypse might be near when his team detonated the first “atom” bomb in a New Mexican desert. During a TV interview, he quoted an ancient Hindu text: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

It was, at the very least, an annoying grammatical construction. Originally written in Sanskrit, a nearly dead language, Oppenheimer would have struggled to find more apocalyptic words to usher in the nuclear age. Oppenheimer had the peculiar distinction of being a fluent reader of Sanskrit, so we should assume his translation is a good as it gets.

Oppenheimer didn’t trace his ancestry to South Asia–both of his parents were areligious Jewish-German immigrants to USA–but he was obviously intrigued by Vedic Theology. Oppenheimer’s statement was haunting. To make it easier for me to comprehend Oppenheimer’s words, I assume “become” is more of a noun than a verb making “become death” an embodiment as opposed to a process.

Oppenheimer was JV, or perhaps we should say a warm up for the main act, Edward Teller.

teller_edward

Teller was the principle progenitor of the Teller-Ulam configuration. Evidently, the process was first brainstormed by the famous nuclear physicist, Enrico Fermi. In the interest of keeping this explanation as simple as possible, let’s just say Teller-Ulam uses a fission bomb–media and popular culture like to call it an atom bomb–to trigger a larger fusion explosion.

The “hydrogen bomb” is an apt and precisely correct name. The fuel is hydrogen, the simplest atom. The process is challenging not in its complication, but in the energy necessary to light the fuse, so to speak. Without the mastery of fission weaponry, fusion bombs are impossible–until we have an alternative to Tellar-Ulam. To create a hydrogen bomb, just “push” a bunch of hydrogen nuclei together to form half as many helium atoms. Helium is the second simplest atom.

USA detonated Ivy Mike, the first hydrogen bomb, on November 1, 1952 near the Marshall islands.

ivy_mike

To say Ivy Mike had a ten megaton yield is meaningless to most. I might deepen your confusion if I were to say that’s the same as 10,000 kilotons. Let’s use a clarifying example: Little Boy, the fission bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was 15 kilotons.

hiroshima

Here is a video from the documentary Hiroshima that will put August 6, 1945 into a more humane perspective; it’s over eight minutes but worth the time investment.

Once again, to make it as simple as possible, Ivy Mike had the energy of nearly 667 Little Boys.

Why are fusion weapons (aka hydrogen bombs) so much more energetic than fission weapons (aka atom bombs)? It has to do with the peculiar nature of strong nuclear force and how it changes mass into energy under  certain circumstances…

If you liked this post, you might enjoy this one, too: Hunter Gatherers in the Quantum Age.

 

 

The Atom Bomb Goes Nuclear

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After Little Boy exploded 600 m (2000 ft) above Hiroshima, people in the 1940’s said “USA has the atom bomb.”

ATOM BOMB

To call Little Boy an “atom” bomb wasn’t wrong but it’s not precise. Here’s a simple model of the atom with the fewest number of parts, Hydrogen.

hydrogenatom

The defining characteristic of Hydrogen is the single proton in the nucleus. Hydrogen has other isotopes–the same number of protons, different number of neutrons.

hydrogen_1-2-3

A nucleon can be a proton or a neutron. The nucleon number doesn’t affect the chemical properties of an atom; only the proton number can change how an atom interacts with other atoms. Most of the time, there are the same number of electrons “orbiting” as there are protons in the nucleus. The number of electrons determines how an atom reacts with other atoms. Essentially, chemistry is the study of how the electrons of different atoms interact. These atom interactions are commonly called chemical reactions.

Most bombs create energy from interactions between the electrons–chemical reactions–and since electrons are part of the atom: All bombs, are atom bombs.

What made Little Boy different from all the other bombs detonated throughout history? First off all, Little Boy was the second atom bomb. Trinity Test was first.

trinity

Of course, atoms were involved in the energy release during Trinity and Hiroshima, but virtually none came from electron interaction. The energy source was the nucleus.

Little Boy used a much larger atom than Hydrogen: Uranium-235 (Trinity used Plutonium, another atoms with a fissionable nucleus). Uranium’s proton number is 92; the 235 stands for the number of nucleons. If you take the number of protons and subtract it from the number of nucleons, it will give you the neutron number. Here’s a model of U-235. (This isn’t what U-235 really looks like; no one can say for certain because it’s so small that we’ll never be able to see it in the way we see a spherical collection of small balls.)

u235

It’s somewhat correct to say the atom bomb gets its energy by splitting the atom. First of all, we split the nucleus; it’s true that the electrons end up coming along in the process, but what’s taking place with the electrons is irrelevant once we start tinkering with the nucleus. We don’t really split the nucleus either. The goal isn’t to break the nucleus apart like a rack of billiard balls. What we need to do is destabilize the nucleus so it falls apart. We destabilize the nucleus by facilitating a neutron absorption to a U-235 nucleus.

u236

Protons have positive charge and neutrons are changeless. Like charges repel more strongly the closer they are to each other. In a nucleus, the protons are extremely close; they should accelerate away from each other, not maintain a tight, orderly arrangement. This is how we know there must be some other, attractive force in play. It’s called strong nuclear force (SNF). As the name indicates, SNF is quite strong: more than 100 times stronger than the repulsive forces between protons. As of now, SNF is the strongest force we know.

Adding a neutron creates U-236, an unstable nucleus that falls apart quickly. U-236 is unstable because repulsion between protons briefly gains an advantage over the SNF binding all nucleons; this drives the nucleus apart and into smaller, stabler fragments. Energy is released because the new particles move away with relatively more kinetic energy.

The explanation for where the energy comes from is abstract. SNF is so strong, and peculiar in nature, that it can change mass into energy, or energy into mass depending on the arrangement of the nucleons and the type of nuclei they form. The fission of U-236 causes a nuclear rearrangement that releases energy.

u235_fission

The fission byproducts are often unstable, radioactive. The squiggly arrows with a greek letter gamma at the heads represent gamma decay–one of three types of radioactivity. It’s these byproducts that create the infamous radiation sickness long after the blast fades.

The fission of a single nucleus doesn’t produce much energy. But if each neutron flying away from a preceding fission finds another U-235, there can be a chain reaction.

chain_reaction

There were over a billion-trillion U-235 nuclei in Little Boy. Although each nucleus was part of an atom, it’s more precise to call Little Boy a nuclear bomb because the energy arises almost exclusively from the rearrangement of nucleons and the creation of smaller nuclei.

If you liked this post, you might like this one, too: An Electron Story.

Cy-eye the Hawk-clone

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Let’s hear it for the Iowa State Hawkeyes! Or is it the Iowa Cyclones?

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While the nicknames, Hawkeyes and Cyclones, should be easily distinguished, Iowa State University and the University of Iowa’s mascots are justifiably confused by outsiders: one of them is a bird, and the other… is a bird, too. Here’s Herky, Iowa’s mascot, in stocky, glowering, uppercut form.

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The first image of this post is of Cy the Cardinal. It’s one of the more amiable depictions of Iowa State’s mascot. This was Iowa State’s logo during the Criner-Walden era (1983-1994). Although it may not be apparent to non-Iowans, the “I” towering above Cy looks suspiciously like the “I” on Herky’s jersey. Outlining Cy’s “I” with black was a curious choice considering the primary intrastate rival’s colors are gold and black.

Whether or not Criner picked or even designed this logo is difficult to know. He wasn’t in Ames for long: Iowa State fired Criner at the conclusion of his fourth and only winning season at 6-5. Actually, he was 5-4 because he got fired with two games to go. Chuck Banker took over and split the last two games. Banker is the only Iowa State football head coach to go 0.500 since Earl Bruce.

(Bruce left Iowa State after six seasons for Ohio State in 1978. In Bruce’s first year as a Buckeye, his team was undefeated in the regular season and lost the national championship by a point in the 1980 Rose Bowl. Bruce is the only Iowa State football head coach elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.)

I remember Criner as funny lookin’. 

criner

Although an unremarkable coach succeeded Criner, his legacy seems largely lost. His tenure ended well before the internet age. The most interesting thing about Criner is the dearth of Iowa State vintage photos on the web; the only one I found is posted above. Wikipedia has more information about his time at Boise State than Iowa State. This article in the LA Times indicates his program might have been on the unethical side.

Iowa State fans endured eight mostly mediocre seasons under Jim Walden; his team failed to win a game in his eighth and final year. Walden resigned before the season’s end and offered the following advice to future Cyclone head coaches: “If you stay, you’re going to lose and you’re going to get fired.”

walden

High-domed baseball caps and aviators with dainty straps while chewing a hunk of tobacco might have been macho in the wake of Ronald Reagan’s Presidency, but looking back from 2016, it seems pretty dorky.

As the above photo shows, Walden served as head coach when Iowa State paraphernalia entered a fashion crisis. Cardinal, Iowa State’s primary color, temporarily veered toward something bordering on fluorescence; gold, the secondary color, became bright yellow to match the obnoxious red. Cursive must have been en vogue: Not only did the Walden’s hat have a scripted “Iowa State” but a cursive “Cyclones” was embossed via a cheap looking sticker onto yellow–er, I mean gold–helmets.

cursive_cyclone_helmet

Does that say “Jimi Wacker” written with a black Sharpie? Probably not. I’ve never signed a helmet before and I doubt it’s easy. I’m assuming that’s Jim Walden’s signature. I bet that helmet sells for a fortune on eBay.

Although Cy is a cardinal, Iowa State’s nickname is not the Cardinals–sensible as this may seem– it’s the Cyclones. A fierce moniker, for sure, with a history so old it originated when North Americans called tornados, cyclones. (Just as a point of reference, tornados were still called cyclones when The Wizard of Oz hit cinemas in 1939. Are they still called cinemas?)

Evidently, Northwestern’s football team visited Ames–Iowa State’s base–120 years ago and was drubbed by the… Wait for it… CARDINALS! Yup, back in late days of 1895, The Iowa State Cardinals roosted in Ames. The Cardinals beat Northwestern badly (36-0) and the Chicago Tribune reported that the Wildcats had been  “struck by a cyclone”. The nickname stuck. It seems tornados (aka cyclones) ravaged the upper midwest more than usual during that year and this was probably a contributing factor in the adoption of a weather phenomenon as a nickname.

(Glenn “Pop” Warner was Iowa State’s coach when the university dumped a delicate, pretty bird in favor of a more violent nickname. Yes, thee Pop Warner.)

Astute readers should have recognized by now that there’s a difference between a nickname and a mascot. Here’s a contrasting example that will help you see the difference, or similarity in most cases: Iowa’s mascot, Herky, is a Hawk. Iowa sports teams aren’t called the Herkies: Iowa’s nickname is the Hawkeyes. Herky, actually being a Hawk, makes the conceptual framework easier to manage. Cy, on the other hand, is not a cyclone. Wait a minute…

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Above is one of Iowa State’s more aggressive logos (notice the uppercut pose and compare to Herky above). Cy became a muscular, meteorlogical abstraction from 1995 until 2006. I would stop short of calling Cy a cyclone, but this image seems to indicate a rather ambitious conceptual leap in reconciling the disconnect between Iowa State’s mascot and nickname.

By the way, 1995-2006 was the McCarney era at Iowa State. It was somewhat of a golden age for collegiate football in Ames. During his tenure, Dan McCarney, Iowa State’s longest serving coach, led the Cyclones to five mediocre bowl berths–he won two. In those five years, blessed with postseason play, Iowa State managed to tie for first, tie for second, and tie for third three times in the Big 12-North. (What are the odds anyone could tie for anything in five out of 12 years?)

The Cy the Cyclone logo will forever remind me of McCarney:

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Not only did McCarney bring winning records to Iowa State, he took Iowa State “cardinal” away from Walden red and into a deeper hue. Note in the photo above the darkened jerseys–compared to Walden’s pimpin’ hat–and the abandonment of yellow helmets.

McCarney was a burly, intimidating man. He chewed gum with peculiar aggression while frequently losing to conference powerhouses like Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. Also, his era witnessed the rise of new conference forces in Oklahoma State and, gulp, Kansas State. McCarney wore a perpetual scowl while using his headset with photogenic distinction:

mccarney

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McCarney had the advantage of being an Iowa alumni–he was a Hawkeye team captain in the early 70’s–and assistant of legendary former Iowa head coach, Hayden Fry.

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For some reason, as best I can remember, Fry didn’t wear headsets. He didn’t scowl either. Perhaps he delegated to underlings the nuisance of press box communications and self-defeating emotions like anger.

Although it was never overtly discussed, that I know of, there must have been some hope McCarney would bring to Iowa State, the victories Fry brought to Iowa.

McCarney’s winning rate over 12 seasons was just shy of 40% (0.397). After winning Big 12 coach of the year in 2004, McCarney resigned (wink, wink) two years later and took a job at South Florida coaching the defensive line. He then moved to Florida to serve the same function for a far better program. Eventually, McCarney earned another head coaching position at the University of North Texas. He was fired at the end of 2015 after losing 66-7 to Portland State. McCarney’s winning fraction as head coach of North Texas was 0.407, slightly better than his record at Iowa State.

Gene Chizik stormed into Ames with lofty expectations and a commensurately stratospheric salary. After two seasons, he dumped the last four years of his contract and jetted to Auburn. He won a national championship two seasons later with an undefeated team (14-0).

Apparently, Chizik heeded Walden’s parting words of wisdom. His stay in Ames was too short to accrue any meaningful statistics. BUT I will say at 0.208, Chizik is the biggest loser in Iowa State football coaching history.

chizik

Seriously? Who wears a shirt like that?

Unfortunately, Chizik also moved the cardinal and gold back to the bright region of the spectrum. All Iowa State coaches should take a fashion lesson from Iowa’s head coach, Kirk Ferenz:

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NCAA Football: Outback Bowl-Iowa vs Louisiana State

There’s a reason Ferenz gets paid more than Iowa State football’s head coach and Iowa’s Governor combined: KISS (Keep. It. Simple… Sucka!)

Paul Rhoads, raised in central Iowa, followed Chizik and brought a sense of homegrown optimism. Rhoads put his emotions continuously on display.

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Rhoads often dressed like Ferentz and demonstrated that the right shade of “cardinal” could look better than black. Kind of.

Rhoads’ logo says it all though.

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It’s all about the place, not gimmicky nicknames, or mascots that remind us Iowa is, and always will be, the Hawkeye State.

Truly, this is my favorite Iowa State logo. The “I” is now red and outlined in gold. It’s more distinct from Iowa’s “I”. The form is the same though. What was Iowa State going to do? Use a cursive “I”? (Reread the portion of this post about Jim Walden for an answer.)

There’s no reference to Cyclones. Above all, it would be difficult to mix Iowa State and Iowa because this logo doesn’t have anything resembling Herky. The emphasis is powerfully in favor of the “STATE” portion of the school’s name.

The only major drawback to Rhoads’ Logo is that the “I” might be too cryptic for recognition outside of Iowa. The logo does dispel the possibility of non-Iowans mistaking Iowa State for Ohio State–I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me “How are the Buckeyes doin’ this year”–but Illinois, Indiana, and, lamentably, Idaho are real possibilities with a large but ambiguous “I”.

Iowa State fired Rhoads before the last game of 2015. The last several games of the Rhoads’ era were surreal, and depressing.

Matt Campbell is on deck for August 2016.

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Add Donnie Duncan, Earl Bruce and Johnny Majors; that makes nine Iowa State football head coaches in my life (ten including interim Coach Banker). Iowa has had five–only two since 1979, the year Bruce left Iowa State and led Ohio State to the title game.

It’s hard to say what the Campbell era will bring, but if history is any guide, I’m sure there will be a new logo to match Campbell’s personality and style. Here is a more obscure logo that’s been in use since Rhoads arrived.

cy_scowl

Campbell looks like Cy in this logo, so maybe he’ll opt to stand pat, or add a tweak or two. As long as he doesn’t take Iowa State back to the bright red and yellow, I’ll be fine.

An Evolving Universe III—The Insurgent

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darwinbyrichmond

This may seem unorthodox coming from a seasoned physics teacher with an engineering educational background: Charles Darwin is the greatest scientist!

Unfortunately, scant evidence exists for my claim and I’ve already stated and supported my position that Isaac Newton is The Greatest in the first part of this stream of posts. A link to part one is in the previous sentence and this link will take you to part two.

Before venturing further into my argument for Darwin’s scientific supremacy, let’s clarify the difference between evidence and proof; the discrepancies are subtle but distinct. Scientists never prove anything. Evidence accumulates in support of a hypothesis until it becomes a theory. A theory is as close to proven as it gets, but theories are forever under the assault of young upstarts, and old veterans. Perhaps the greatest scientific accomplishment discovers evidence overturning or compelling a theory’s modification.

To say, “Darwin is the greatest scientist” is not a theory—it’s not even a hypothesis. It’s an opinion. Perhaps we should call it a belief; there’s a rationale for the claim, but I’d fail to assemble scientific evidence to support the claim. Basically, you would have to settle for this is how I see it and so should you. I would call it a hypothesis, but there’s no apparent means of testing it; so we keep circling back to the statement, Charles Darwin is the greatest scientist, being an opinion or belief.

I should have said, “I believe Charles Darwin will one day be seen as the greatest scientist.” While this is still a long shot, it’s far from impossible.

The reach of physics is vast: energy, atomic structure, exotic particles, gravitation, and the study of the entirety of space and time. It’s no surprise that the greatest scientists are almost exclusively physicists: Newton, Bohr, Einstein, Faraday, Maxwell…

It’s rare for biologists to get on the greatest scientist list not because they lack scientific prowess; the biologist’s domain is too tiny to compete with physicists. Although we hope life exists in other parts of the universe, as of now, every biological principle we have is confined to a narrow shell of water, land and air in the crustal region of the third planet from an ordinary star in a large, but common, spiral galaxy. It’s probable that one day aspiring scientists will flock to a burgeoning field most likely to be called exobiology, but currently, all biologists must focus their studies near the surface of Earth.

Lisa Randall’s new book Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs frequently uses the words (and various derivatives) “evolution” and “universe” in the same sentence. She writes things like:

“Improved technology combined with theories rooted in general relativity and particle physics have provided a detailed picture of the Universe’s earlier stages, and of how it evolved into the Universe we currently see.”

and

“…part of the beauty of the Universe’s early evolution is that in many respects it is surprisingly simple.”

While I’m sure Darwin would be thrilled to learn 21st century particle physicists use language that evolved from his work, it’s doubtful he foresaw such an outcome. Quantum mechanics in general and particle physics in specific didn’t hit full stride until over a half century after Darwin passed away (he died in 1882).

Modern cosmology kicked in shortly after Einstein theorized general relativity in 1915. The idea that the universe could change on a macro level was offensive to Einstein: He manufactured a cosmological constant to maintain a static universe contrary to general relativity’s mathematical prediction of an expanding universe. Ironically, and a bit humorously, Einstein eventually called his cosmological constant the “biggest blunder” of his life. We now recognize the cosmological constant as the first clue that our universe is growing. Einstein was so brilliant that even his misunderstandings qualify for good science.

In 1927, a catholic priest and physicist, Georges Lemaitre, hypothesized the universe arose from a primeval atom. After several decades of accumulating evidence, Lemaitre’s educated guess would eventually become the Big Bang Theory. The theory of an expanding universe appears to have cleared the way for an evolving universe. If the universe can expand, might it also go through changes that are life-like?

I do realize it’s a huge leap from The Theory of Natural Selection to an evolving universe, but it’s not impossible that Darwin stumbled onto something more universal than he thought. Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Perhaps a 157-year-old scientific insurgency may be about to discover a higher gear?

Go back to Part I or Part II.

If you enjoyed The Evolving Universe try these too:  An Electron Story; Hunter Gatherers in the Quantum Age; De-frag Brain; Binary Fraud; Linear, Circular Politics.