Darwin Media Competes for April Fool Award

They didn’t realize they were taking part in a competition
but our readers can judge the winners for dumbest ideas

 

— Did you hear? Scientists and science reporters are permitted to speculate wildly. April fool! —

What has become of science? Whatever happened to rigorous testing of hypotheses, and rejection of unproven speculations? What became of epistemic modesty and empirical restraint? How did untestable speculations about unobservable concepts go mainstream?

It’s gone. Pranksters have entered the hallowed halls of science and formed symbiotic partnerships with legitimate researchers. They have blurred the line between science and ‘science fiction’ (which was an oxymoron from the outset). Now, editors in Big Science and Big Media let irrational research projects pass through, like infected patients in a clean room, defiling whatever they touch. Peer review has failed. Quality control is gone. Anyone wearing a D-Merit Badge can say whatever they want.

But there’s a double standard. Those who doubt Darwinism are expelled, censored and ignored.

Here is the result. We wish these sample stories were April Fool pranks, but the writers and publishers really believe this stuff is legit in a science publication. This can only mean one thing: the prank is on them.

Here are some contestants for the 2023 April Fool Award in Science. You be the judge.

Aliens could be hiding in ‘terminator zones’ on planets with eternal night (Briley Lewis, Live Science, 22 March 2023). It all starts with imagination. Note to Briley: no space aliens have ever been detected beyond Earth, not even bacteria.

Imagine if one side of the Earth always faced the sun. Half of the planet would be stuck in perpetual daylight, the other shrouded in permanent night.

But for aliens in other solar systems, our doomsday scenario may be their everyday — and life might get along just fine.

Space dust could carry alien life across the galaxy, study suggests (Josh Dinner, Space.com, 22 March 2023). The subtitle titillates with possibility thinking, which used to be verboten in science. “Could the pulverized chunks of asteroid-impacted planets provide evidence of E.T.?”

A “theory” in science is supposed to be a firm explanation based on multiple observational tests using controlled experiments, reproducible by others. It is not supposed to be an empty speculation. Did Josh test any of the “coulds” in the following quote?

Theoretically, fossilized microorganisms or other indications of life could be preserved on planetary ejecta as they careen away from their home planet, pending their survival through the harsh environment of outer space. Some of these debris particles could find their way to the surfaces of other life-sustaining planets, like Earth, where they could potentially establish a foothold — or, perhaps, be studied for evidence of alien life.

Alien mothership lurking in our solar system could be watching us with tiny probes, Pentagon official suggests (Hannah Osborne, Space.com, 25 March 2023). Unseen by earthlings, alien super-intelligences are watching us. It must be a legit idea, because a famous Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, entertained the speculation.

In a draft paper, the pair said it is feasible an extraterrestrial spaceship could be in our galactic neighborhood, exploring the region by the means of “dandelion seeds” — small spacecraft that can gather and send back information, similar to the way humans send out spacecraft to explore planets.

Maybe Loeb got the idea from the Chinese spy balloon that crossed the USA a few weeks ago, gathering information on America’s defense sites, and extrapolated it to the aliens living in his imagination. Reporter Osborne thought the idea was fine for Space.com and put it up without laughing.

There may have been a second Big Bang, new research suggests (Paul Sutter, Live Science, 22 March 2023). Astro storyteller Paul Sutter, the cosmology popularizer whose imagination knows no bounds, uses his eyelids like crystal balls to see things that cannot be observed. Knowing that dark matter is still a huge mystery to his materialistic cosmology friends, he invents a source out of whole cloth. But can he bless this speculation with the honorable word “research”?

Within a month of the Big Bang, a second cosmic explosion may have given the universe its invisible dark matter, new research suggests.

The universe might be shaped like a doughnut, not like a pancake, new research suggests (Paul Sutter, Space.com, 26 March 2023). Is it against the rules to enter twice for the April Fool competition? Readers can decide, but Paul wants to make sure everyone knows he has mastered unscientific speculation. To understand his story, understand that the “flatness” of the universe refers not to shape, but to a finely-tuned balance between expansion and gravity. He refers to a “study” (one of the most indiscriminate terms in all of science). Presumably if somebody did a “study,” they must have aced the test, right? Not here:

The universe could, in fact, be a giant doughnut, despite all of the evidence suggesting it’s as flat as a pancake, new research suggests.

Strange patterns found in echoes of the Big Bang could be explained by a universe with a more complicated shape, and astronomers have not fully tested the universe’s flatness, the study finds.

Quantum effects could be key to the chemistry of life on Titan (Leah Crane, New Scientist, 18 March 2023). All our observations in microbiology show that life processes cease well above -290° F. Titan is so cold, water freezes into boulders as hard as rocks. But so determined is Leah Crane to hold out hope for a population of Titanians to settle there, she opens a loophole just for them.

Saturn’s moon Titan is too cold for many types of chemical reactions, but quantum tunnelling could present a loophole that would allow reactions that are crucial for life.

Quantum effects may be key to potential precursors of life on Saturn’s moon Titan. These effects become more important at lower temperatures, so they may enable chemical reactions that would otherwise be impossible on an icy moon like Titan.

Same Song, New Multiverse

The Conversation has been on a multiverse kick recently. Philosophers have criticized the multiverse as an unscientific and illogical idea: unscientific, because it could never be observed even in principle; illogical, because it means that any event has happened an infinity of times, including clones of you doing everything over and over – which means nobody could know who the real “you” is. Besides, it only relocates the old infinite-regress conundrum out of observational sight. What caused the multiverse? And how could something come from nothing? Let the speculators at The Conversation make their opening statements for the April Fool competition:

Great Mysteries of Physics 3: is there a multiverse? (The Conversation, 25 March 2023). Entrants for the prize are four in this article: Miriam Frankel, Andrew Pontzen, Katie Mack, and Sabine Hossenfelder (the only one who has had the guts to criticize the nutty ideas in her field of cosmology).

The multiverse: our universe is suspiciously unlikely to exist – unless it is one of many (Martin Rees, The Conversation, 15 March 2023). The former UK Astronomer Royal from Cambridge says he has spent decades speculating about things nobody can see or test.

It’s easy to envisage other universes, governed by slightly different laws of physics, in which no intelligent life, nor indeed any kind of organised complex systems, could arise. Should we therefore be surprised that a universe exists in which we were able to emerge?

That’s a question physicists including me have tried to answer for decades. But it is proving difficult. Although we can confidently trace cosmic history back to one second after the Big Bang, what happened before is harder to gauge.

Rees gives respectful consideration to weird beliefs like multiple big bangs, inflation, string theory and multiverses, but would NEVER think of respecting “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Why, that would be unscientific! He cannot even utter the word “creation.” But he can speculate about illogical, unobservable things like the multiverse and call it scientific.

About 15 years ago, I was on a panel at Stanford where we were asked how seriously we took the multiverse concept – on the scale “would you bet your goldfish, your dog, or your life” on it. I said I was nearly at the dog level. Linde said he’d almost bet his life. Later, on being told this, physicist Steven Weinberg said he’d “happily bet Martin Rees’ dog and Andrei Linde’s life”.

Sadly, I suspect Linde, my dog and I will all be dead before we have an answer.

Indeed, we can’t even be sure we’d understand the answer – just as quantum theory is too difficult for monkeys. It’s conceivable that machine intelligence could explore the geometrical intricacies of some string theories and spew out, for instance, some generic features of the standard model. We’d then have confidence in the theory and take its other predictions seriously.

But we’d never have the “aha” insight moment that’s the greatest satisfaction for a theorist. Physical reality at its deepest level could be so profound that its elucidation would have to await posthuman species – depressing or exhilarating as that may be, according to taste.

Is creation by an intelligent God not profound? That profundity is available right now to the human species. Many find that explanation exhilarating. Not Rees.

The multiverse: how we’re tackling the challenges facing the theory  (Eugene Lim, King’s College, The Conversation, 22 March 2023). Lim tries hard to imagine how multiverse theory might some day be testable. Like Martin Rees, he is willing to give respectful attention to string theory, inflation (the Guth Goof), eternal inflation (the Linde goof), and other rampant speculations. But creation by an intelligent God who designed the universe, life and man for a purpose, who told us what He did? Oh, never! Such concepts that do explain the observations must never be uttered by his lips. Why, it might embarrass him in front of his colleagues.

Was there ever a better example of Paul’s statement? “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).

So who wins the competition? Mark your ballots and give us your winner of the 2023 April Fool competition in the comments.