TheosophySanDiego

Almost five centuries B.C. Leucippus, the instructor of Democritus, maintained that Space was filled eternally with atoms actuated by a ceaseless motion, the latter generating in due course of time, when those atoms aggregated, rotatory motion, through mutual collisions producing lateral movements. Epicurus and Lucretius taught the same, only adding to the lateral motion of the atoms the idea of affinity -- an occult teaching.

By "centre," a centre of energy or a Cosmic focus is meant; when the so-called "Creation," or formation of a planet, is accomplished by that force which is designated by the Occultists LIFE and by Science "energy," then the process takes place from within outwardly, every atom being said to contain in itself creative energy of the divine breath. (The Secret Doctrine 1:12)

"Occultism tells us that every atom, like the monad of Leibnitz, is a little universe in itself; and that every organ and cell in the human body is endowed with a brain of its own, with memory, therefore, experience and discriminative powers. The idea of Universal Life composed of individual atomic lives is one of the oldest teachings of esoteric philosophy, and the very modern hypothesis of modern science, that of crystalline life, is the first ray from the ancient luminary of knowledge that has reached our scholars.

...we intend to prove that modern science, owing to physiology, is itself on the eve of discovering that consciousness is universal — thus justifying Edison's "dreams." But before we do this, we mean also to show that though many a man of science is soaked through and through with such belief, very few are brave enough to openly admit it..." (H. P. Blavatsky, Kosmic Mind)

http://www.theosophical.ca/KosmicMind.htm

Scientists discover exotic quantum state of matter

A team of scientists from Princeton University has found that one of the most intriguing phenomena in condensed-matter physics -- known as the quantum Hall effect -- can occur in nature in a way that no one has ever before seen.

Writing in the April 24 issue of Nature, the scientists report that they have recorded this exotic behavior of electrons in a bulk crystal of bismuth-antimony without any external magnetic field being present. The work, while significant in a fundamental way, could also lead to advances in new kinds of fast quantum or "spintronic" computing devices, of potential use in future electronic technologies, the authors said.

"We had the right tool and the right set of ideas," said Zahid Hasan, an assistant professor of physics who led the research and propelled X-ray photons at the surface of the crystal to find the effect. The team used a high-energy, accelerator-based technique called "synchrotron photo-electron spectroscopy."

And, Hasan added, "We had the right material."

The quantum Hall effect has only been seen previously in atomically thin layers of semiconductors in the presence of a very high applied magnetic field. In exploring new realms and subjecting materials to extreme conditions, the scientists are seeking to enrich the basis for understanding how electrons move.

Robert Cava, the Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry and a co-author on the paper, worked with members of his team to produce the crystal in his lab over many months of trial-and-error. "This is one of those wonderful examples in science of an intense, extended collaboration between scientists in different fields," said Cava, also chair of the Department of Chemistry.

"This remarkable experiment is a major home run for the Princeton team," said Phuan Ong, a Princeton professor of physics who was not involved in the research. Ong, who also serves as assistant director of the Princeton Center for Complex Materials, added that the experiment "will spark a worldwide scramble to understand the new states and a major program to manipulate them for new electronic applications."

Electrons, which are electrically charged particles, behave in a magnetic field, as some scientists have put it, like a cloud of mosquitoes in a crosswind. In a material that conducts electricity, like copper, the magnetic "wind" pushes the electrons to the edges. An electrical voltage rises in the direction of this wind -- at right angles to the direction of the current flow. Edwin Hall discovered this unexpected phenomenon, which came to be known as the Hall effect, in 1879. The Hall effect has become a standard tool for assessing charge in electrical materials in physics labs worldwide.

In 1980, the German physicist Klaus von Klitzing studied the Hall effect with new tools. He enclosed the electrons in an atom-thin layer, and cooled them to near absolute zero in very powerful magnetic fields. With the electrons forced to move in a plane, the Hall effect, he found, changed in discrete steps, meaning that the voltage increased in chunks, rather than increasing bit by bit as it was expected to. Electrons, he found, act unpredictably when grouped together. His work won him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1985.

Daniel Tsui (now at Princeton) and Horst Stormer of Bell Laboratories did similar experiments, shortly after von Klitzing's. They used extremely pure semiconductor layers cooled to near absolute zero and subjected the material to the world's strongest magnet. In 1982, they suddenly saw something new. The electrons in the atom-thin layer seemed to "cooperate" and work together to form what scientists call a "quantum fluid," an extremely rare situation where electrons act identically, in lock-step, more like soup than as individually spinning units.

After a year of thinking, Robert Laughlin, now at Stanford University, devised a model that resembled a storm at sea in which the force of the magnetic wind and the electrons of this "quantum fluid" created new phenomena -- eddies and waves -- without being changed themselves. Simply put, he showed that the electrons in a powerful magnetic field condensed to form this quantum fluid related to the quantum fluids that occur in superconductivity and in liquid helium.

For their efforts, Tsui, Stormer and Laughlin won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1998.

Recently, theorist Charles Kane and his team at the University of Pennsylvania, building upon a model proposed by Duncan Haldane of Princeton, predicted that electrons should be able to form a Hall-like quantum fluid even in the absence of an externally applied magnetic field, in special materials where certain conditions of the electron orbit and the spinning direction are met. The electrons in these special materials are expected to generate their own internal magnetic field when they are traveling near the speed of light and are subject to the laws of relativity.

In search of that exotic electron behavior, Hasan's team decided to go beyond the conventional tools for measuring quantum Hall effects. They took the bulk three-dimensional crystal of bismuth-antimony, zapped it with ultra-fast X-ray photons and watched as the electrons jumped out. By fine-tuning the X-rays, they could directly take pictures of the dancing patterns of the electrons on the edges of the sample. The nature of the quantum Hall behavior in the bulk of the material was then identified by analyzing the unique dancing patterns observed on the surface of the material in their experiments.

Kane, the Penn theorist, views the Princeton work as extremely significant. "This experiment opens the door to a wide range of further studies," he said.
The images observed by the Princeton group provide the first direct evidence for quantum Hall-like behavior without external magnetic fields.

"What is exciting about this new method of looking at the quantum Hall-like behavior is that one can directly image the electrons on the edges of the sample, which was never done before," said Hasan. "This very direct look opens up a wide range of future possibilities for fundamental research opportunities into the quantum Hall behavior of matter."

Source: Princeton University

This news is brought to you by PhysOrg.com

	Darwinists are famous for using the blanket statement that intelligent design is the result of "blind faith." It's easy to write that, but is it true? When Brian Trent made the bald assertion that intelligent design "inputs supernatural claims that rely on blind faith," (Brian Trent, Darwin's Day and Evolution's 'Alternatives'," American Chronicle, February 19, 2007 (1)) it carries little weight, lacking as it does, any evidence to support it. For one, intelligent design does not try to identify whether the designer is natural or supernatural. While many ID proponents (myself included) may believe the designer is the God of the Bible, that belief, being unscientific, is irrelevant. The theory of intelligent design does not address religious questions about the identity of the designer. Many leading ID - theorists, such as Michael Behe and the Of Pandas and People textbook at the heart of the Dover case, make this point clear. As the Pandas textbook states, "All it implies is that life had an intelligent source."(2) As will be demonstrated below, the inference to intelligence causation is a scientific claim. But intelligent design does not try to specify whether that intelligence was natural or supernatural. Because "creationism" always specifically invokes the supernatural, there is no legitimate basis for Trent's labeling of intelligent design as "creationism." ID and the Scientific Method In particular, Mr. Trent asserts that an organization of which I am president, the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center, claims "upfront that beliefs rooted in blind faith should be considered on even ground with science." This is highly misleading. Unlike Mr. Trent, our organization does not denigrate the 90% of Americans who have faith-based beliefs. But our website also makes it clear that intelligent design is not derived from faith, rather it is a scientific theory which uses the scientific method to make and substantiate its claims: "[S]cientific understanding begins with observations. Scientists then make a hypothesis to explain those observations. The hypothesis should make predictions which can be tested via experiments. If the predictions of the hypothesis are verified, it is concluded that the hypothesis is supported by the scientific data. That conclusion is an observation in-and-of itself, which can form the basis for further hypotheses, experiments, and conclusions."(3) Intelligent design uses precisely this scientific methodology to form the tentative conclusion that life was designed. Our website clearly explains this point: "i. Observation: The ways that intelligent agents act can be observed in the natural world and described. When intelligent agents act, it is observed that they produce high levels of "complex-specified information" (CSI). CSI is basically a scenario which is unlikely to happen (making it complex), and conforms to a pattern (making it specified). Language and machines are good examples of things with much CSI. From our understanding of the world, high levels of CSI are always the product of intelligent design. "ii. Hypothesis: If an object in the natural world was designed, then we should be able to examine that object and find the same high levels of CSI in the natural world as we find in human-designed objects. "iii. Experiment: We can examine biological structures to test if high CSI exists. When we look at natural objects in biology, we find many machine-like structures which are specified, because they have a particular arrangement of parts which is necessary for them to function, and complex because they have an unlikely arrangement of many interacting parts. These biological machines are "irreducibly complex," for any change in the nature or arrangement of these parts would destroy their function. Irreducibly complex structures cannot be built up through an alternative theory, such as Darwinian evolution, because Darwinian evolution requires that a biological structure be functional along every small-step of its evolution. "Reverse engineering" of these structures shows that they cease to function if changed even slightly. "iv. Conclusion: Because they exhibit high levels of CSI, a quality known to be produced only by intelligent design, and because there is no other known mechanism to explain the origin of these "irreducibly complex" biological structures, we conclude that they were intelligently designed." (4) Our website explains that, "only the scientific method, via observations of the natural world, is used to conclude that life was designed. There is no appeal to the supernatural, and no reliance upon faith or divine revelation (including any religious text). This scientific approach is the method that the IDEA Center takes when discussing intelligent design theory."(5) Mr. Trent can disagree with our conclusion that life was designed, but he should not blatantly misrepresent the methodology we use to detect design with the false and unqualified claim that we defer to "blind faith" in our approach to studying the natural world. Since intelligent design relies upon the scientific method, Mr. Trent's assertion that intelligent design is equivalent to the creation accounts of various religions-like Chinese creation myths, Greek fables, or even the Biblical creation account in Genesis-is completely false. None of those "alternatives" use the scientific method to make their claims. Since intelligent design does employ the scientific method, any comparison between it and such religious creation accounts is spurious. Modern-Day Galileos Mr. Trent also writes that "Not so long ago, it was immoral to claim the Earth went around the sun." But he doesn't recognize that there are modern-day Galileos who are being persecuted because they question the Darwinian paradigm. One example is biologist Dr. Richard Sternberg-who holds two Ph.D's in evolutionary biology-but was harassed and intimidated by Smithsonian officials after he allowed a pro-ID article to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. A recent Congressional report subtitled "Smithsonian's Top Officials Permit the Demotion and Harassment of Scientist Skeptical of Darwinian Evolution" found "Officials at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History created a hostile work environment intended to force Dr. Sternberg to resign his position as a Research Associate in violation of his free speech and civil rights."(6) The report concludes that the Darwinists "revealed their intent to use their government jobs to discriminate against scientists based on their outside activities regarding evolution." (7) It seems the persecution of scientists hasn't ended, but now it is the Darwinists who are behaving like the intolerant dogmatists of old. ID and the Schools Finally, Mr. Trent asserts that ID "rants about how students should be exposed to alternatives to evolution." Ignoring the pejorative term "rant," what do leading ID-organizations really say about what should be taught in schools? The IDEA Center does not deal with the educational curriculum, as our main focus is to help students start extracurricular IDEA Clubs where they can have free discussions on intelligent design. But like most leading ID-organizations, the IDEA Center does not think intelligent design should be required in public schools as an "alternative" at the present time. We do think that students should be exposed to the scientific problems with Darwinian evolution, but we strongly feel that alternatives like ID should not be required. That must wait for a future time when the Darwinian hegemony is broken and ideological dogmatists are not allowed to unfairly persecute sympathizers of intelligent design. The bottom line is that the political climate is too hostile at this time to mandate teaching intelligent design without creating more modern-day Galileos like Dr. Richard Sternberg. Citations: (1) Available online at http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=20929 (2) Of Pandas and People, pg. 161. (3) http://www.ideacenter.org/about/mission_affiliations.php (4) http://www.ideacenter.org/about/mission_affiliations.php (5) http://www.ideacenter.org/about/mission_affiliations.php (6) http://www.souder.house.gov/_files/IntoleranceandthePoliticizationofSciencea ttheSmithsonian.pdf (7) http://www.souder.house.gov/_files/IntoleranceandthePoliticizationofSciencea ttheSmithsonian.pdf Article by Steve Renner. Steve Renner is President of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center. author's web site: http://www.americanchronicle.com/AMchronDefault.asp