Do Bluetits Remember?

We have seen four springs living in our current house and 2010 was the first without Bluetits nesting in the box hanging from the brickwork. There is a sense of anticipation each year as the winter thaws and we wait expectantly. The endeavors of these tiny birds, and they do get tinier as the endeavor takes its toll, never fail to amaze us. Yet this year we were left disappointed.

Could it be that our regular family have sworn never to return? 2009 was a harrowing year.

There was one little fledgling that didn't make it. Perhaps it was the runt of the litter, perhaps it was genetically predestined not to make it, but when this baby Bluetit emerged from the security of its wooden cradle its first flight ended up on the hard floor of our patio. The plight was softened by the frantic fluttering of its wings, but once down there was no way of getting back up. Its only hope was to hide. It hid behind our plant-pots and it hid behind overhanging shrubs but by far the best place it found was between the folds of our deflated paddling pool. It stayed there for two days and nights yet encouragingly its parents refused to abandon it. They still nursed it, collected grubs for it, sang for it and waited upon it. We watched on, hoping that all this care would give it the strength to fly off one day.

That time came on the third day and it boldly hopped out of its hiding place...

... only for our neighbour's cat to hop out from behind the bushes and swallow it down whole.

The shrieks that went up in our household were enough to send the moggy scampering but the damage was already done. All that was we could do was watch the heartbreaking sight of the fledgling's parents singing for their child, searching for it in all the usual hiding places, staring in bemusement.

Nature red in tooth and claw.

An improbable bang

The Big Bang defies probability. How could an accident produce something so ordered? Roger Penrose tells us just how unlikely it is that we should have a universe that is compatible with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics

This now tells us how precise the Creator's aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of

one part in 10 to the power of 1230.

This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full. Even if we were to write a "0" on each separate proton and each separate neutron in the entire universe - and we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure - we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed.

Its important to say that Penrose's use of 'Creator' here is not in any theistic sense.

Walking the Planck

Max Planck, a German physicist who died in 1947, is regarded as one of the fathers of Quantum Theory – the branch of physics which deals with the tiniest packets of matter that have a kind of dual personality, behaving like both a wave and a particle. Its an intriguing world where nothing is certain and some things are impossible to measure.

Bearing his name is the concept of the 'Planck length'. This minute distance is the length at which we enter the quantum world and therefore is the smallest measure of length that actually means anything. Below this distance space, time, gravity and all of conventional physics dissolve away.

Following on from this is the 'Planck time'. This is the length of time it would take a photon of light to travel the 'Planck length' – and its 10 to the power of -43 seconds! In a similar way to the Planck Length any time less than this is effectively meaningless, for the reasons given above.

The Planck time has deep philosophical implications. It means that the Universe effectively 'began' at this age, this is actually when time began. It also means that we cannot be sure of anything that happened 'before'*. Therefore, any world view that depends on determining what might have occurred prior to the Plank Time is on very shaky ground.


* NB Even the word 'before' is inappropriate here. Its like asking whats south of the South Pole!

A 10 dimensional universe

Superstring theory calculates that the universe has ten dimensions. Very early on there was an amicable split. Four dimensions expanded and went on to produce the observable universe's space and time (3+1 dimensions). The other six shrivelled up so as to be invisible, although they still exist. As Dean Overman remarks in 'A case against accident and self-organization':

For the purpose of the formation of life, this split was fortunate, because carbon-based life could not exist in any other than three spatial dimensions. Gravity would not allow for stable planetary systems unless it functioned in three spatial dimensions because it follows an inverse square law which requires the force of gravity to decrease as distance increases. In four spatial dimensions, the force of gravity would fall to a fraction of one-eighth its power (rather than one quarter) for every doubling of distance, and in five spatial dimensions, the force would fall to one-sixteenth its strength for every doubling of distance. Moreover, in more than three spatial dimensions, the force of electromagnetism would not function in a manner which would allow for life, because electrons would either spiral away from or into the nuclei.

Lego DNA

The problems with trying to piece together a plausible mechanism for the origin of life multiply up. Its not just about thinking up possible scenarios where the various complicated molecules could be manufactured and thrown together. Scientists also have envisage a scheme that explains the origin of the whole system of genetic information with its unique language, replicating systems, translation devices.

This video provides a great animated version of what some of that entails. Looks like Lego DNA to me!

An Anthropic Biological Principle?

For a while now I've been wondering if there is a biological parallel to the Anthropic Principle in physics (i.e. that the universe has a number of physical properties that are fine tuned to a level that allows life to exist).

An example of this could be the properties of a chemical like DNA polymerase.

For evolution to occur organisms need to be able to replicate themselves exceptionally well, but not perfectly. If they are not good enough at this process then there is no hope of any useful genetic information being passed down from generation to generation. On the other hand if they are too good at it then there is no room for error – errors that have the potential to bring about innovation and thereby evolution.

One of the biggest players in this process is DNA polymerase. This clever piece of kit is responsible for the putting together of new DNA strands and even has the ability to proof-read the code as it goes along. This, together with other factors, means that the copying process is over 99.9% accurate - just right.

It would be interesting to know how bad this copying process could get and still be viable for life, but certainly there can't be much margin for error.