My November/Winter 2008 or 2009 'To Do' list

It has been a busy few weeks, some of which will be relevant to future posts here. I thought I'd post some notes on events and topics I hope to cover over the next few weeks. I just finished attending a small science workshop related to my day-job so my evenings are now a bit more open.

• This past Saturday (October 25), I attended a conference in Washington DC sponsored by Reasons To Believe, titled “What Darwin Didn't Know”. Reasons to Believe is an organization of Old-Earth creationists (OEC). I'm not sure how I feel about OEC. In some regards, I think they are a sign of hope that more Christians can accept modern science with their theology. For the most part, I have few issues to argue with them on astrophysical evidence since they agree with modern astronomy and geology that the Earth and universe are billions of years old. However, even as someone with no professional training in biology, I found some of their claims in biology, particularly in regards to their version of 'Intelligent Design', to be very questionable. Some of the arguments they promoted are not that far from Young-Earth creationism claims. I've got many pages of notes from this day that I hope to add to this blog over the next few weeks. I just finished reading Hugh Ross' “A Matter of Days” and also purchased “The Creator and the Cosmos” and “Creation as Science”, also by Ross. I'll probably post a review sometime in the future.
• I've actually been contacted by John Hartnett over my posts on his cosmology claims. He graciously sent me a copy of the latest version of one of his papers I'm commenting about and mentioned another paper under review. I need to follow-up on some of those issues. To reproduce Hartnett's work and examine other issues he does not mention, I've been rewriting my old time-series analysis codes. These programs were originally written in a programming language called IDL on a VAXStation under VMS. I'm re-writing them to run in Python on modern hardware. I'm also modifying them to handle spatial analyses (1-D and maybe even 3-D) and have encountered some discrepancies. I'm not yet certain of the cause of the discrepancies so I'm expanding my code testing scenarios. While the latest version of the Hartnett's paper seems to have backed away from a claim of strict redshift quantization, other creationists still invoke it. Once my software revisions are complete, I expect my software will still get some rather extensive use in this area. Some might ask why I don't use the same software as Dr. Hartnett, which he reports is Mathematica. The main reason is that science hinges on reproducibility. Since the algorithms should always be identical, in principle, it should not matter which tools are used. This provides additional validation of the analysis techniques and the tools.
• In what is certainly the most interesting inquiry I've received in quite some time, I've had a creationist who presented at the '2008 International Conference on Creationism' ask me to examine his cosmological model and offer my criticisms. I may post some details on this discussion in the future.
• When I heard about Barry Setterfield's revisions to his claims of a variable speed of light and integration with plasma cosmology (see my previous posts), I conducted a web search to see if others had posted on the topic. In the process, I stumbled across a response to my article, “The Electric Sky: Short-Circuited” on one of the Electric Cosmos forums. I hope to include responses to this in the near future.

So that's what's backlogged on my To Do list for November/Winter 2008/2009. I wonder if I'll complete it all...

Setterfield G

Here I'll continue my examination of Setterfield's new publication, “Reviewing A Plasma Universe With Zero Point Energy”, in the Journal of Vectorial Relativity 3, 1-29 (2008).

Fails to compare his model to data
In the last draft of the “Issues on Barry Setterfield's Claims of a Recently Decaying Speed of Light, 2nd Edition”, available here, I examined one of the latest functions Setterfield claimed represented the speed of light with cosmic (dynamical) age, which corresponded to his young-universe 'interpretation'. For bookkeeping purposes, I designated all the different functions from Setterfield by letters. I had labeled one of the latest functions Setterfield E.

where T ranges from [0...1] and represents the time relative to the total age of the Universe. T=1 corresponds to the time of creation and gives the speed of light as infinite. But T=0 corresponds to the present day, and gives the nonsensical result that the speed of light equals ZERO!

T is chosen to be dimensionless, but it would be useful to clarify it as scaled relative to the (young) dynamical age

where t is measured from the present time into the past and the greek letter τ is the total age of the universe.

Setterfield must have finally realized that blunder, since in his latest publication he has changed his function to

or, defining a constant of proportionality,

where c0 is the modern value for the speed of light, and we define the Greek letter ζ to be the dimensionless speed of light, chosen so that the value today is equal to unity or 1. I'll call this function 'Setterfield G'. (I had found an older function which I labeled 'Setterfield F' so that letter was already spoken for. Setterfield F appears on the graphs on the previous article.).

To compute the apparent age of the universe in Setterfield's new model, we must integrate the light travel time from the creation of the universe, T, to today, T=0. (Setterfield choses a mathematically reversed sense for time, increasing into the past, which creates a sign flip on our math.)

or

To get an apparent travel time assuming a modern speed of light, divide both sides by c0 to get

where K' is K τ and corresponds to Setterfield's equation 33. If we compute this for T=1 corresponding to the creation time, this gives the apparent age of the universe, in the atomic time scale:

or

Let's plug in some rough numbers using Setterfield's own prescription for computing the constant. If the (young) dynamical age of the universe, τ, is 7000 years in Setterfield's model, and the atomic age is 14 billion years, then K = 7.78e5.

But wait, K must be the exact same K value used for the speed of light earlier! If we use it in that equation, it tells us that the speed of light today (T=0) must be 778,000 times the current speed of light!

To get the correct value for the speed of light today, we must set K=1. But if we install that in the equation above, then we get the apparent age of Setterfield's universe is only about 18,000 years!

Setterfield's model is easily demonstrated to be mathematically and physically inconsistent!

This is a basic error that a high school physics or calculus student shouldn't make.

Did anyone do even a basic check of the math in this paper? Is such carelessness representative of the referee process at JVR?

Barry Setterfield joins the Electric Cosmos?

A reader of my work has recently pointed me to a major update in the work of Barry Setterfield. (I wonder if this also means that many of my links into Setterfield's site will now be broken?) It seems Mr. Setterfield has subjected his theory to a fairly major rewrite and in the process, has integrated many more aspects of the "Electric Universe" claims into his work. See Reviewing A Plasma Universe With Zero Point Energy? available at Setterfield.org. This means that my detour in dealing with some Electric Universe claims was fortuitous.

In Reviewing A Plasma Universe With Zero Point Energy, I see Setterfield repeats his same old errors.

Setterfield does not address any of the issues raised by myself or Dr. Jellison about his claims. I have found some reference to the issues raised elsewhere on his site. He mostly tries to dismiss the results as "conceptual errors" on my part. Let's see how many basic errors in math and data analysis Mr. Setterfield makes.

Fails to compare data to his model
Figures 1-5 of Setterfield's Review plots values of various physical constants subject to some variation in Setterfield's model. Yet none of these graphs display error bars on the points plotted. Nor does Setterfield plot the variation predicted by his model. For example, my Figures 1 & 2 below are plots of measurements of the speed of light (points with error bars) compared with plots of the various models for a changing speed of light which Setterfield has proposed over the years (lines). The data plotted here are collected from Setterfield's own site (History of Speed of Light Experiments).

Click image to see higher resolution

Figure 1: Plots of measured speed of light compared to Setterfield's models (1750s to the present)

Click image to see higher resolution

Figure 2: Plots of measured speed of light compared to Setterfield's models (1830s to the present) with tighter view on more recent measurements.

Notice that many of the measurements Setterfield chooses to ignore (black) lie above and below the model fit and give very poor agreement with Setterfield's models. Even more telling is the scatter above and below the modern accepted value in Figure 2. This behavior is more indicative of systematic errors in the measurment, not an actual trend. No wonder Setterfield is so reluctant to display his model fits with data!

On Setterfield's main page, he claims to "Let data lead to theory". Here we see a high-school math level example where he violates this claim.

Surprisingly, Setterfield makes no comments in this Review indicating that his theory would predict a variation of radioactive decay rates with Earth's orbital distance! Let's see if a revision includes this claim!

You might also note that I don't include Setterfield's latest model for the change in the speed of light in historical times. We'll see the problems with that in the next installment...

Creationist Astronomy debunking videos!

Here's some links to more YouTube videos debunking creationist astronomy claims.

Andromeda's Wake: Creation Astronomy Propaganda Debunked


cdk007: Why Young Earth Creationists Must Deny Gravity

Creationist Junk Debunked

I'm making a slight diversion from my creationist astronomy activities to promote some excellent creationist busting by others.

Here is a link to a series of videos which examines creationist claims as violations of the Ninth Commandment. In case you're a little rusty, it's “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” in the Protestant tradition (see Ten Commandments).

Be sure to check out more of the videos in this series by Potholer54debunks.
Creationist Junk Debunked.

Now some creationists might claim that 'evolutionists' or 'Darwinists' aren't their 'neighbors'. What does Jesus say about who is and isn't your neighbor? Easy enough to check:

• Matt 5:43-47.

  “You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy'. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

  
  Note that Jesus is telling his followers that it is how you treat people different from yourself which determines if you are one of his followers. I suspect that those so-called christians who helped generate the recent statistic that atheists are the most despised group in America may be at the head of the pack leading into Hell.


• Also consider Luke 10:25-37, aka the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Do you know what Jesus says about the status those who invoke his name while violating 'the will of the Father'? Check out Matt 7:15-23:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut own and thrown into the fire Thus you will know them by their fruits.
Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord', will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, 'Lord Lord did we not prophesy in you name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.'

Jesus points out that it is your actions, far more than your words, that tell the true status of your faith.

Methinks Hell will be full of creationists!

References

• The Harper Collins Study Bible. New Revised Standard Version. 1993.

John Hartnett's Cosmos. 2. Methodologies

My original plans for the second entry in this series has undergone significant revision. I had originally planned to focus on a summary of Hartnett's general analysis errors, but in collecting references, I discovered how the problems I had identified with Hartnett's analysis were just the tip of the iceberg.

The quantized redshift (QR) 'community' has become increasingly insular and isolated - generally referencing only papers of other advocates and avoiding rigorous tests of their methodologies. Hartnett continues this 'tradition' by only referencing older works which have since been superceded. The 'tests' of his methods which he mentions in his papers are also particularly weak. The key issue is that a 1-D power spectrum installs an implicit assumption of spherical symmetry in a dataset, since is it only measuring radial separation. It is no surprise that such a method implies concentric shells centered on our galaxy.

The main astronomical community was initially curious about suggestions of a possible new property of the extragalactic redshift. However, they quickly abandoned interest in the idea when it was demonstrated that noise and clumping in the galaxy distributions could create large peaks in simple 1-D power spectra. These simulated peaks were equivalent to the peaks 'discovered' by the QR advocates (Newman Haynes & Terzian 1989, 1994, Kaiser & Peacock 1991, Newman & Terzian 1995, 1996).

One positive consequence of the quantization claims is that it did spur more research into determining just what information could be extracted from such analyses on the large extragalactic surveys which were being conducted. The ability to determine statistics of large-scale structure in the cosmos is important for comparing observations with large cosmological simulations which were also under development.

Kaiser & Peacock (1991) performed an extensive series of analyses developing simulated datasets which demonstrated how the power spectral peaks in works such as Broadhurst et al (1990) could be generated by clumping of otherwise random galaxy distributions. They also demonstrated how the one-dimensional sampling of a three-dimensional dataset can alias power into other frequencies, further confounding interpretations.

While Hartnett acknowledges the work of Kaiser & Peacock (1991), he claims the conclusion of this work, quoting Kaiser & Peacock, “did not prove that unconventional pictures for large-scale structures were ruled out.” Technically true, but deceptive. Kaiser & Peacock (1991) work really meant that the 1-D approach had insufficient sensitivity to identify real peaks in the distribution.

But this type of problem means is you look for a more powerful test...

Methodologies for analyzing these power spectra in full 3-dimensional form were quickly developed, Baumgart & Fry (1991) and Feldman, Kaiser & Peacock (1994) were some of the earliest in this efforts. One of the more important issues which these tests needed to deal with was the fact that even the most recent sky surveys did not uniformly sample the sky, in terms of direction, and even distance. This issue created 'window functions' which could alias power into other frequencies, creating problems for interpretation (Feldman Kaiser & Peacock 1994). More recently, tutorial-style publications have described more details of the 3-D analysis process (Hamilton, 2005a,b).

The basics of the proper methods have been around over a decade.

Hartnett completely ignores these modern tests. Why does Hartnett limit his work to a one dimensional analysis when he has read the documentation (Kaiser & Peacock 1991) of the flaws in his methodology??

Consider Hartnett's behavior from a more personal analogy: Would you go to a doctor who insisted on conducting tests that could not conclusively identify your ailment? Suppose they insisted on using the inconclusive tests even when better tests were available?

Others have completed these power spectra calculations on the 2dFRS and SDSS 5th data release using modern methods (Cole et al 2005, Percival et al. 2007). Not surprisingly, their results show no evidence of claimed periodicity.

References

• W. I. Newman, M. P. Haynes, and Y. Terzian. “Double galaxy redshifts and the statistics of small numbers”. Astrophysical Journal, 344:111–114, 1989.
  
• T. J. Broadhurst, R. S. Ellis, D. C. Koo, and A. S. Szalay. “Large-scale distribution of galaxies at the Galactic poles.” Nature, 343:726–728. 1990.
  
• N. Kaiser and J.A. Peacock. “Power-spectrum analysis of one-dimensional redshift surveys” ApJ 379, 482 (1991)
  
• D. J. Baumgart and J. N. Fry. “Fourier spectra of three-dimensional data”. Astrophysical Journal, 375:25–34, July 1991.
  
• W.I. Newman, Martha P. Haynes, and Y. Terzian. “Redshift data and statistical inference”. Astrophysical Journal, 431:147–155, 1994.
  
• H. A. Feldman, N. Kaiser, and J. A. Peacock. “Power-spectrum analysis of three-dimensional redshift surveys”. Astrophysical Journal, 426:23–37, May 1994.
  
• W. I. Newman and Y. Terzian. “Power spectrum analysis and redshift data”. Astrophysics & Space Science, 244:127–142, 1996.
  
• A.J.S. Hamilton. “Power Spectrum Estimation I. Basics” ArXiv Astrophysics e-prints, March 2005.
  
• A. J. S. Hamilton. “Power Spectrum Estimation II. Linear Maximum Likelihood”. ArXiv Astrophysics e-prints, March 2005.
  
• S. Cole, W. J. Percival, J. A. Peacock, P. Norberg, C. M. Baugh, C. S. Frenk, I. Baldry, J. Bland-Hawthorn, T. Bridges, R. Cannon, M. Colless, C. Collins, W. Couch, N. J. G. Cross, G. Dalton, V. R. Eke, R. De Propris, S. P. Driver, G. Efstathiou, R. S. Ellis, K. Glazebrook, C. Jackson, A. Jenkins, O. Lahav, I. Lewis, S. Lumsden, S. Maddox, D. Madgwick, B. A. Peterson, W. Sutherland, and K. Taylor. “The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: power-spectrum analysis of the final data set and cosmological implications”. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 362:505–534, September 2005.
  
• W. J. Percival, R. C. Nichol, D. J. Eisenstein, J. A. Frieman, M. Fukugita, J. Loveday, A. C. Pope, D. P. Schneider, A. S. Szalay, M. Tegmark, M. S. Vogeley, D. H. Weinberg, I. Zehavi, N. A. Bahcall, J. Brinkmann, A. J. Connolly, and A. Meiksin. “The Shape of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 Galaxy Power Spectrum”. Astrophysical Journal, 657:645–663, March 2007.
  

John Hartnett's Cosmos. 1. Introduction

This is the first entry in what will certainly be a multi-part series of articles on the claims of Australian creationist John Hartnett (see Hartnett's entry in Conservapedia). Since my first piece on Hartnett's work appeared (My Visit to the Creation Forum at McLean Bible Church and a Review of "Hubble, Bubble, Big Bang in Trouble"), I have received a number of inquiries about his work.

In this series, I'll start with a discussion of Hartnett's claims of redshift periodicities. The claim that extragalactic redshifts are distributed in fixed steps, i.e. quantized, is not new. William Tifft of the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona is probably the originator of the modern redshift quantization movement back in the 1970s. If real, such periodicities or quantization would be very difficult to explain for conventional Big Bang cosmology. This is why you find redshift quantization supported by advocates of other alternative cosmologies such as the Electric Universe (see Electric Cosmos).

I choose to examine the redshift periodicities issue largely because my own graduate work focussed on time-series analysis of very noisy datasets and I accumulated a fair amount of experience working with Fourier series, transforms and power spectra.

Dr. Hartnett has published two papers on the Cornell Preprint server covering the topic of extragalactic redshift periodicities. I'll refer to them as Paper I and Paper II.

• Paper I: "Galaxy redshift abundance periodicity from Fourier analysis of number counts $N(z)$ using SDSS and 2dF GRS galaxy surveys" by John G. Hartnett, Koichi Hirano (arXiv:0711.4885)


• Paper II: "Redshift periodicity in quasar number counts from Sloan Digital Sky Survey" by John G. Hartnett (arXiv:0712.3833)

It's interesting that the recently posted third version (v3) of paper I not only has an additional author, but seems to advocate a radically different cosmological model than the second version (v2). In the v2 paper, Hartnett advocated Moshe Carmeli's 5-dimensional cosmological model where the Hubble expansion was made part of the metric. Hartnett published several additional papers based on this model claiming it could explain Dark Matter as well. In paper v3, Hartnett has switched to another model developed by Hirano, Kawabata, and Komiya. This may be because the Hirano et al. cosmology explicitly tries to explain alleged redshift periodicities. This is another reason for me to examine the quantization claims first, as Hartnett appears to be in the process of changing his cosmological model, but quantization is a common component in both of them.

Hartnett is apparently using these works to gain him credibility in the creationist community as a professionally-published cosmologist. In his creationist publications, he has invoked redshift quantization as evidence of Galactocentrism, a feature of his young-universe cosmology. Some graphics similar to those from earlier versions of Hartnett's papers appear in his book Starlight, Time and the New Physics.

Since the advent of the Fast Fourier Transform and the availability of fast personal computers, the ability to compute the power spectral density (PSD) of a dataset has become much easier. Unfortunately, this increased ease of use does not come with an increased understanding of just what the PSD does. In cases with large amounts of low noise data, the PSD can identify well-defined frequencies in the data with relative ease. In other cases, such 'intuitive' understandings of the PSD can easily lead one astray.

Hartnett makes numerous erroneous statements on properties of PSD, suggesting he is relying on his 'intuition' on how the PSD works instead of actually testing the claim. Most researchers, myself included, must demonstrate that our test protocols work for datasets of known content before making such grandiose claims when applying the test to datasets of unknown content. In the abstract for Paper I, Hartnett states that his results "indicate that this is a real effect and not some observational artifact." Yet he has apparently conducted no tests to determine which characteristics of his results are analysis artifacts.

In future entries in this series, I will present an overview of some of Dr. Hartnett's errors in these two papers. In later entries, I'll include some samples of how scientific tests are themselves tested. Some components may be difficult to communicate in this blog since there is limited support for graphics and mathematical notation. Some of these components may take a while to assemble as I may present code snippets (using Python, numpy, scipy, and similar tools) so the reader may explore the analysis themselves. Comments and feedback are certainly welcome.

Radioactive decay rates depend on Earth-Sun distance?

Reports are floating around the scientific blogs (such as at arXiv Blog) about a new paper recently published on the Cornell Preprint server. Evidence for Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates and Earth-Sun Distance, by Jenkins, Fischbach, et al., has created a stir in the physics community. It may eventually rank up there with the Pioneer Anomaly in the 1990s and reports of a Fifth Force in the 1980s.

The results are intriguing as they involve measurements conducted at two different sites, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Physikalisch-Technische-Bundesandstalt (PTB) in Germany, as well as two different isotopes, 32Si (a beta emitter) and 226 Ra (an alpha emitter), respectively. 36Cl (a beta emitter) was used as a calibration source in the BNL experiment. Two independent sites rule out a local variation at the experimental site. The BNL experiment also exhibits this annual variation in the ratio of 32Si to 36Cl, suggesting there must be an isotopic difference in the response of the nuclei to this effect. The authors suggest a solar effect, reported in another paper, Perturbation of Nuclear Decay Rates During the Solar Flare of 13 December 2006.

I've not yet heard of any Creation “Scientists” claiming that their theories predict this type of annual effect, but I suspect it is only a matter of time before they do. Reports of even the most miniscule changes in radioactive decay rates excite creationists a great deal since much of radioisotope dating depends on relatively constant rates of radioactive decay. I've examined a number of creationists claims of variation in radioactive decay rates (see Claims of Accelerated Radioactive Decay but have found none that specifically predict variation based on the Earth-Sun distance. Like psychics, such successful predictions by creationists will be ex post facto. Lest the creationists get too excited, it should be noted that both experiments exhibit this variation at the 0.2% level (above and below a constant value), nowhere near large enough to turn a 4.5 billion year old Earth into a 6000 year old Earth.

There are a number of interesting aspects of the Jenkins et al. analysis that hint this is a measuring systematic. One is that the amplitude of the variations seems to vary significantly from one year to the next. It is not perfectly correlated with the Earth-Sun distance. Another interesting issue is that the oscillation appears to cover the same range (0.2%) when examining the 226Ra decay as well as the ratio of the 32Si/36Cl decay. Is the 36Cl calibration source unaffected by this phenomenon? Perhaps 32Si is unaffected and 36Cl has an inverse correlation? If 32Si and 36Cl were identically affected, we would expect them to cancel out. As noted by the authors, there also appears to be a significant phase shift between the Earth-Sun distance and decay variation. This suggests an effect driven by another variable which may be coupled to the annual variation. Finally, the data are from the 1980s so it may be difficult to re-examine some of the techniques used to test for other systematics. Of course, the fact that this process seems to occur over a relatively short annual time scale will make it easier to verify today.

On a similar historical note, it was realized in the 1970s that no one had examined if the Newtonian inverse-square law operated at laboratory distances as well as it worked on solar system scales and larger. Previous researchers had determined the value of Newton's 'G' under the assumption that the inverse-square law was valid. When the historical data were finally examined with that assumption removed, the data suggested that at short ranges, gravity was not an inverse-square law (see Why do we believe Newtonian gravitation at laboratory dimensions? by Daniel R. Long). This launched a search in the 1980s and 1990s for a possible 'fifth force', in addition to the four fundamental forces known to physics.

It is interesting that the second author in the Jenkins paper, Ephraim Fischbach, is one of the researchers involved in the Fifth Force search (see Ten Years of the Fifth Force by Ephraim Fischbach). Interest in a fifth force died down as improvements in measurement technology seem to verify inverse-square at very short ranges (see Laboratory tests of gravity).

I suspect there are similar systematic measuring errors in the current Jenkins work as well. It is nonetheless an intriguing observation that definitely requires verification from other sources.

Moving libraries

The family move is finally complete, or at least the major furniture moving is complete. Currently, the house is loaded with stacks of boxes awaiting their distribution to cabinets and shelves. By the way, if you're ever looking for software to organize your furniture in a floor plan and don't want to spend major dollars or learning time on some overspecialized home planning application, I heartily recommend the Open Source program Sweet Home 3D. While not perfect, it was big help. Since we were moving to a radically different floor plan, we needed a way to test our furniture in the new home layout and Sweet Home 3D worked well for us. We were able to decide which pieces of furniture would fit in each floor and room well before the actual move, making things easier for the movers and ourselves.

My office moved from a basement den in a townhouse, to an upstairs bedroom in a single-family home. There was some sacrifice of total floor space in the move. During the moving process, even the movers expressed concern that the amount of weight in boxes of my books was getting excessive for the room. My main library consists of four sets of shelf wall units, 37"w x 12"d x 72"h, with five shelves each. (Sorry for the English units, but those are the common values of my furniture measurements.)

I've traditionally heard the claim that because modern homes must be able to support the weight of a waterbed, the weight of my books couldn't possibly exceed this. This is a simple physical claim to test and I decided to do a few simple calculations.

With a few searches on Google, I found that the weight of a water bed can be up to 1800 lbs.

I also discovered that modern homes are built to handle an average "live load" of 40 pounds per square foot. This is a theoretical average load. Your home may vary, but if it is built to many local codes, this should be a safe number to use. To compute the theoretical average load for the room, you must multiply the load average per area by the area of the floor. In my case, this comes out to 10ft x 12ft = 120 square feet. From this we compute a load limit of 40 lbs per square foot x 120 square feet = 4800 lbs. Clearly, my new office would not have a problem with a water bed, but would it have a problem with my library?

I didn't have easy access to a simple scale that could accurately measure the weight of some of my actual books from which I could compute a density. Another search on Google suggests the average density of paper is about 0.03 lbs per cubic inch. If the cabinet were completely full of paper, the weight of each shelf wall unit would be (37" x 12" x 72") x 0.03 lbs per cubic inch = 960 lbs. But the books do not uniformly fill the shelf space. There are small books, medium books, and a few large books and the shelves are spaced to accommodate the largest book on that shelf. There is a lot of empty space in each shelf. I'll approximate the effect of these size differences with the estimate that only about half the volume of each shelf is filled with actual book matter, reducing the total weight of each shelf to 480 lbs.

This gives a total estimated weight for my library of about 1900 lbs. Even here, it exceeds the weight of a water bed. This estimate is also well below the 4800 lbs theoretical design limit of the floor, but my estimated "live load" does not include the weight of a desk, a file cabinet, the computers, and other miscellaneous components (such as myself) in the office. If the shelves were fully packed with books, the total estimated weight comes to over 3800 lbs, which is much closer to the design limit.

I feel a little safer now about loading my shelves, but plans for any additional shelf units in this room will certainly be re-examined. It also may be time to start paring down my collection, perhaps discarding that collection of Scientific American that is (almost) complete back to around 1975. :^(

For more information on these topics, I found sites supporting aquarium hobbyists to be very useful. The most useful resource I found is Residential Wood Framed Floors and Aquarium Weights.

Ardent book collectors and home librarians might want to consider some of the potential limits in their passions. I've not heard of a home collapse due to the weight of a personal library, but I wonder if it has actually ever occurred.

"Is Faith the Enemy of Science?"

As my first topical entry, I need to make a little historical introduction. Last February 11, 2008, Dr. Lawrence Krauss, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Case Western Reserve University gave a presentation at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. The title of the talk was "Science vs. Anti-science: From Washington to the Classroom". Perhaps I will fill a post with a review of the presentation later (it's now a bit dated), but the relevant item is Dr. Krauss concluded his presentation with three statements:

Science is not the enemy.
Faith is not the enemy.
Ignorance is the enemy.

I found those three statements to be a nice, concise summary of the position. As someone who grew up in the southeastern United States, I can understand the importance of religion in the lives of many. I thought it was something the scientific community could reasonably agree with, but I underestimated the subtleties of semantics even for supposedly simple words like 'faith' and 'ignorance'. Consider the perspectives raised in this paper on the Cornell Preprint server:

"Is Faith the Enemy of Science", by Richard MacKenzie (arxiv:0807.3670)

and Dr. Krauss' response:

"Comment on 'Is Faith the Enemy of Science'" by Lawrence Krauss (arxiv:0808.0128)

I've always wondered how much of this 'conflict' is due to the personal interpretations of the terms we tend to use. It's just a little more to consider.

Open for business

I'm finally opening a blog to work in conjunction with my regular web site, "Dealing with Creationism in Astronomy". Why? So many of the projects on my main site become huge, sometimes requiring months to develop. This makes updates few and far between.

My goal here is provide an easier venue for the development of small projects and some news of activity in the creationism and other pseudo-scientific astronomy fronts. The blogging paradigm provides an infrastructure for discussion and feedback. Some of the ideas developed in this blog may then be reprocessed and packaged on the main site.

I hope to maintain at least weekly posts to this blog. That said, I'll already point out that due to moving and switching my Internet service, my posts may be erratic or even non-existent over the next month or so.