AI and the Genome

In this episode, biochemist Fuz Rana describes recent insight from two investigators who make the case that genomes are generative AI systems. The architecture and operation of biochemical information is far more sophisticated and complex than previously recognized and points to purposeful design.

Earth’s Past Temperature

Two new studies on Earth’s past climate have provided important data for predicting Earth’s future climate, as well as exoplanet habitability. Oxygen-18 measurements from shale, iron oxide, carbonates, and chert show that Earth’s climate was warm from 2.0–0.5 billion years ago. Then a drop in global mean surface temperature (GMST) occurred 500 million years ago to a decline in atmospheric carbon dioxide. An integration of geological data with climate model simulations shows that GMSTs varied from 11–36°C over the past 485 million years, a much larger range than previous reconstructions. Temperature changes were especially dramatic at high latitudes. During the Phanerozoic, Earth spent more time in warm climate states than cold ones and atmospheric CO2 was the dominant control on climate. Throughout the past 2 billion years, atmospheric CO2 played the most important role in compensating for increasing solar luminosity.

Links and Resources:

• Hot and Cold Earth Through Time

• A 485-Million-Year History of Earth’s Surface Temperature

• Oxygen Isotope Ensemble Reveals Earth’s Seawater, Temperature, and Carbon Cycle History

• The Genomic Code: The Genome Instantiates a Generative Model of the Organism

Join Jeff Zweerink and Kevin Birdwell as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, including the reality of God’s existence.

Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis

Virtually all public discussion about climate changes focuses on greenhouse gases—usually only carbon dioxide. Clearly greenhouse gases impact the climate, but scientific research demonstrates that the climate system is far more complicated than any single set of gases could describe. Specifically, one of the dominant drivers of the climate may be Earth’s capacity to transport energy from the tropics to the poles. This episode describes the winter gatekeeper hypothesis and its consequences for the global climate.

Links and Resources:

• The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (VII). A Summary Plus Q&A
• Solving the Climate Puzzle. The Sun’s Surprising Role

Nuclear Power and Climate Change

One undeniable question accompanies any discussion about climate change: How much power do we need and what existing technologies are capable of generating that power? Most technologies capable of producing sufficient power for the world’s energy needs also emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. Technologies emitting fewer greenhouse gases don’t produce abundant power—except for nuclear power. In this episode, atmospheric scientist Kevin Birdwell and astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink discuss how current and future nuclear power technologies dramatically impact our ability to generate adequate power for humanity in an environmentally friendly way.

Links and Resources:

• Safe, Clean, Proliferation Resistant and Cost-Effective Thorium-Based Molten Salt Reactors for Sustainable Development
• Time Warp: Molten Salt Reactor Experiment—Alvin Weinberg’s Magnum Opus

Join Hugh Ross in this breaking News of the Day episode of Stars, Cells, and God. Hugh describes a search for dark photons, a candidate for comprising a large fraction of the universe’s dark matter. The search consisted of comparing a detailed map of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) with a catalog of more than 500 million galaxies.

• Dark matter makes up 24.5% of the universe.
• Probability of ordinary photons from the CMBR morphing into dark photons peaks when they pass through the plasma of electrons surrounding galaxy clusters.
• Loss of CMBR photons will be correlated with galaxy cluster positions and would make the CMBR map look more splotchy.
• The search team accounted for other effects known to distort the CMBR map.
• The search team found no evidence for dark photons. They placed an upper limit on dark photon contribution to dark matter more than 10 times lower than previous analyses.
• Future comparisons of the CMBR map with positions of denser, older galaxies will yield more stringent limits on dark photons.
• Axions remain as the leading candidate particles to comprise the majority of the universe’s dark matter.

Links & Resources

• Dark Photon Limits from Patchy Dark Screening of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• News of the Day episode: Dark Matter Particles?

Interview with Physician Raj Kumar Songa

In this episode of Stars, Cells, and God, Hugh Ross interviews Raj Kumar Songa, a physician specializing in internal medicine. Raj is a Reasons to Believe Scholar Community member and serves on the board of directors of RTB APAC (Asia-Pacific). He lives in Hyderabad, India, where in addition to his medical practice he heads up several enterprises, including a Christian bookstore. He also serves as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

In this interview Raj shares his testimony of how he became a follower of Jesus Christ, his role in launching RTB APAC, biblical principles of giving, and the responsibility of all Christians to use the wealth they create to further the kingdom of God.

A Medical Analysis of the Hallucination Hypothesis

Join Fazale “Fuz” Rana and Dr. Joe Bergeron as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, including the reality of God’s existence.

Jesus’s disciples experienced something that made them believe Jesus bodily resurrected from the dead after a grisly death by crucifixion. As a naturalistic explanation to explain away the biblical narrative, critical scholars have proposed that Jesus’s disciples were hallucinating when they saw the resurrected Jesus. This has been referred to as the hallucination hypothesis. Dr. Bergeron provides a medical analysis of hallucination hypotheses and explains why they are unsupportable and inconsistent with current medical understanding.

Links and Resources:

• The Crucifixion of Jesus: A Medical Doctor Examines the Death and Resurrection of Christ

Aquinas’s Fifth Way

Join Jeff Zweerink and Kyle Keltz as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, including the reality of God’s existence.

Modern scientists often dismiss Aquinas’s Five Ways as being outdated, irrelevant, or even invalid. However, when properly understood, the Five Ways show a remarkable similarity to how we think and approach science and they provide profound insight into explaining the universe. In this episode, astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink and philosopher Kyle Keltz clear up some misconceptions about the Fifth Way and design arguments while also showing how scientific advances over the last four centuries provide strong support for the premises of the Fifth Way.

Links and Resources:

• Dr. Kyle Keltz has written two papers on Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways, focusing on the Second Way and Fifth Way. They will be available at reasons.org in early 2025.

Join Hugh Ross in this breaking News of the Day episode of Stars, Cells, and God. Hugh describes an analysis by an international team of 44 astronomers of a survey of trans-Neptunian objects. This analysis reveals strong evidence for the existence of a sixth belt of asteroids/comets in the solar system. Here are some takeaways:

• The Kuiper Belt asteroids/comets orbit at 35–55 times Earth’s orbital distance from the Sun.
• The asteroids/comets in the newly discovered belt orbit at 70–90 times Earth’s orbital distance from the Sun.
• There appears to be a gap from 55­–70 times Earth’s orbital distance from the Sun where very few asteroids/comets exist.
• If this discovery of a new asteroid/comet is confirmed, it will enable astronomers to develop a much more detailed Grand Tack model for the early migration of solar system planets.
• A more detailed Grand Tack model will reveal even more evidence for the exquisite fine-tuning of the solar system that makes advanced life possible on Earth.

Links and Resources:

• Candidate Distant Trans-Neptunian Objects Detected by the New Horizons Subaru TNO Survey
• Hugh Ross, Designed to the Core