Scripture and Science -- complementary?

Memory and Old Age

Next July I will join the Octogenarian fraternity. I don’t like the idea, but it is certainly better than the alternative. Mentally, I feel like I am still around 50 or so, but my body keeps letting me know the truth! I must face the fact that I simply can’t do the things I once performed with ease. For example, I pick up a tree branch and wonder how I ever picked up and walked with a four foot, twelve inch diameter log, then threw it onto the back of a truck. Does anyone identify?

Memory is another problem. Around ten years ago my doctor asked me how my memory was doing. I said I was not happy with my increasing inability to remember things. He responded that, in that case, everything was fine. He went on to say that he had never met a person with Alzheimer’s that had any problem at all with memory (according to the patient, of course!). Actually, my memory is all still there, but it certainly often takes time to recall seldom used items. Names are a particular problem. It will sometimes be a day later before the name I am after suddenly pops up in my awareness.  Fortunately, my wife is good with names, so she can usually help out with an immediate need. Rarely used words are also a problem. 

As I talk to others, I find that I am not alone. My problems seem to be a function of aging – not experienced by all, but not avoided by many. As I have mulled over the problem, I have finally understood the problem. Computers are often compared to human brains, so let’s reverse the comparison. A computer contains two types of memory: random access memory (RAM) and read only memory (ROM). Things used regularly are held in RAM, and those things seldom used are normally placed in ROM. The primary reason your computer is sometimes quick and sometimes takes time to respond can be explained by where the memory you are accessing is stored. Those things stored in ROM usually take longer to access and bring forward.

What about the brain? It seems to also have a section for RAM and a section devoted to ROM. As you age, RAM gets filled up. Therefore, if something needs to be remembered a bit of memory needs to be freed, so something seldom used is transferred to ROM, becoming harder and slower to access. Those items transferred to ROM are most frequently names and words seldom used in day to day conversation. Not only do they become harder to access, but the less they are used the deeper they move into the ROM memory banks and the longer it takes to access them. 

So, there you have it. That is why you have (or will have) more and more problems with remembering things as you age. That is my explanation and I stick with it!

INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF SOILS

How many of my readers have heard of the International Year of Soils? The year will be ending in 28 days. Why an International Year of Soils? Without soil much of the world would be starving. Yes, we can grow plants in water, but not enough to feed the world. Most plants get their food, water, and support from soil. Most food is grown in soil. Trees grow in soil. Think about where we would be without soil. What would we do for protein? We can get protein from plants in correct form and combination, but most protein comes from animals . . . that live on plants. What would we do for shelter? Trees grow in and on soil, so without soil there would be little wood for construction. What would we do for heat and energy? Coal, oil and gas all originate through plant growth. Wind and Solar energy you say? How would you build the equipment to collect the wind and solar energy? Regardless whether the equipment is made of metal, glass, plastic, or something else, energy is required for production, and that energy originates in plants and, ultimately, the soil. That is the reason for an International Year of Soils!

Each month of 2015 had a theme addressing one aspect of our dependence on soil. Here are the monthly themes and a website where you can access related information. I encourage you to explore these websites if you have not already done so.


January - Soils Sustain Life

 February - Soils Support Urban Life


 March - Soils Support Agriculture

April - Soils Clean and Capture Water

May - Soils Support Buildings/Infrastructure

June - Soils Support Recreation

July - Soils are Living

August - Soils Support Health

September - Soils Protect the Natural Environment

 October - Soils and the Products We Use

 November - Soils and Climate

December - Soils, Culture, and People

HOW DID THE BIG BANG HAPPEN???

Have you ever driven in a “pea soup” fog? I have . . . twice. You creep along, and as one center line dash disappears from sight the next one emerges from the fog. Even fog lights are useless. They can’t penetrate the fog. You may be on a mountain road, as in one of my experiences. You are tense, fearing you might miss that next curve, or it might be sharper than expected. Science can be like that. Your mind creeps along from one idea to another, trying to make sense of the whole. You may finally have a “eureka moment” and the fog disappears, but you are still not really sure how you got there. 

Back to that mountain road, a car suddenly appeared behind me, passed me, and disappeared into the fog. It was as if I were parked. I proceeded down the mountain, expecting to find the car crushed against a tree or a broken guard rail where it had gone over a cliff. There was nothing. The diver had obviously driven the road many times and knew every curve. Scientifically, Stephen Hawking is like that driver. His “fog” is his non-functioning muscles. He has nothing to do but think, and he has become very proficient at thinking. His brain has become comparable to the muscles of a world champion body builder.

Among many problems, Dr. Hawking has directed his brain into the “curves” of the Big Bang theory.  Carefully considering every “curve,” he concluded that this occurred into nothingness – no time, no space, no mass – simply nothing. It was not even comparable to a vacuum, because a vacuum implies space! In reality, this is basically in agreement with the Judeo-Christian explanation of our beginnings. But how can this be? Logic says it shouldn’t happen. Thermodynamics calculations say it can’t happen. Yet it did. Something had to be present, and it had to be in a unique form never attained since. 

My brain power does not approach that of even one a small lobe of Dr. Hawking’s, but allow me to at least consider the possible conditions leading to the Big Bang. 

First, there is a thermodynamic temperature scale, only used by scientists, called the Kelvin (K) scale. Zero Kelvin is considered “absolute zero,” at point at which everything should be frozen; 0^o K = −273.15°C = −459.67°F. Scientists have been able to cool systems close to absolute zero, but it is not even theoretically possible to reach the zero point. Were this possible, a system at absolute zero would still have mass. Therefore, whatever the Big Bang was, it probably occurred within a system at a temperature even below the thermodynamic absolute zero.

Second, in another blog I pointed to Einstein's equation, mass equals energy divided by the speed of light squared (M=E/C², or he stated it as E=MC²).  In other words, all mass is nothing more and nothing less than organized energy. The atom bomb and the subsequent hydrogen bomb supported this theory as being true. Modern research is also supporting the theory. Going back to conditions prior to the Big Bang, if there was no space and no mass, whatever initiated the university had to be energy only. Furthermore, all of the energy had to be potential energy only. The presence of kinetic energy would mean something was moving, which would imply the presence of space. 

If nothing was moving, then even electrons and their components could not be moving. For that matter, electrons or their components could not have even existed because, no matter how small, they would have occupied space – which was non-existent. This leaves with one and only one possibility: immediately prior to the Big Bang event there could be nothing present but some potential energy. How can this be? 

Given that we now have some potential energy floating in nothingness, expansion into a universe means that some kind of spark had to cause a small packet of potential energy to transfer into kinetic energy. This packet would have nudged another small packet of potential energy, and a minute amount of heat would have resulted. Suddenly we have a chain reaction and the potential energy transfers to kinetic energy and space is created. The packets of energy organize into hydrogen atoms, and off we go!

Assuming this is what happened, we still have unanswered questions. Where did the original energy come from? Can energy exist separate from mass? Where did the initial spark come from? Can we ever know? Some physicists hypothesize prior universes and that ours somehow originated from them. That just begs the question, because we would then have to ask how any "parent" universe(s) originated. Jews and Christians have the answer: God did it. But that, in turn, raises another question. Where did God come from? All this is meaningless, because the origin questions are unanswerable.

OK, theoretical physicists, where am I wrong? Or am I just repeating conclusions that you drew long ago?