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Time may feel smooth and continuous, but at the quantum level it behaves very differently. Physicists have now found a way to measure how long ultrafast quantum events actually last, without relying on any external clock. By tracking subtle changes in electrons as they absorb light and escape a material, researchers discovered that these transitions are not instantaneous and that their duration depends strongly on the atomic structure of the material involved.

Time may feel smooth and continuous, but at the quantum level it behaves very differently. Physicists have now found a way to measure how long ultrafast quantum events actually last, without relying on any external clock. By tracking subtle changes in electrons as they absorb light and escape a material, researchers discovered that these transitions are not instantaneous and that their duration depends strongly on the atomic structure of the material involved.

Why are planets rarely found orbiting a pair of stars? UC Berkeley and American University of Beirut physicists find that general relativity makes the orbit of a tight binary pair precess. As the orbit shrinks because of tidal effects, the precesion increases. Eventually the precession matches the orbital precession of any circumbinary planet, creating a resonance that makes the planet’s orbit wildly eccentric. The planet either gets expelled from the system or is engulfed by one of the stars.

The lines worn into an engraved limestone object from the Netherlands are consistent with the idea that it was a Roman game board, according to an AI analysis

In contemporary critical discourse on Islam, significant attention is often devoted to the violence associated with this religion—whether through the history of Arab-Islamic conquests, modern terrorist acts committed in the name of Allah, or Quranic verses calling for religious warfare and corporal punishments. For many critics of the foundational sacred texts of Islam, the physical violence endorsed in these scriptures appears to be the most obvious problem to demonstrate and denounce. 

Thus, for example, when Allah states, in verse 34 of surah 4 of the Quran, that husbands must strike disobedient wives, one should easily conclude that domestic violence is compatible with Islam. Likewise, when Allah states, in verse 2 of surah 24, that those who engage in sexual intercourse outside of marriage must be punished with one hundred lashes, it should be concluded that private sexual life is subject to surveillance and even sanction in Islam.

I am, of course, able to distinguish between the sacred texts of Islam and those who believe in them. A religion should not necessarily be held responsible for the behavior of its followers. However, everything Allah says in the Quran necessarily commits Islam, since the only official and supreme author of Islam, capable of defining what Islam is or is not, is Allah himself. This paradigm is the founding dogma of the Quran, which is claimed to be, from the first to the last verse, the word of a perfect God who neither lies nor errs, valid at all times and in all places until the Day of Judgment. It is therefore impossible, for example, to reform the criminalization of freedom of conscience in Islam, because, according to the Quran, Allah has declared that those who do not believe in the Quranic verses (surah 4, verse 56) or in Allah and His Prophet Muhammad (surah 48, verse 13), will be eternally tortured in Hell after death. 

This eternal promise, which will be fulfilled at the end of times, cannot logically be revoked by any human, temporal, or earthly decision preceding that end. Moreover, reforming Islam would amount to asking inherently weak, flawed, and sinful humans (surah 4, verse 28) to contradict and disavow Allah, the best of judges (surah 7, verse 87), who sent down a book whose verses are perfect (surah 11, verse 1); such a request is absurd from the perspective of this religion.

Most of the peaceful and Westernized Muslims I have encountered in my life rarely seem shaken in their faith by the most violent Quranic passages that call for hatred and punishment of innocent people condemned merely for their freedom or differences. The apparent casualness of peaceful believers in the face of their god’s warlike words often has a psychological root: cognitive dissonance.

The contradictions and scientific errors of an infallible god, supposed to know everything and never err, are harder to dispute.

Faith in Islam rests, among other things, on the belief that the Quran is a perfect text revealed by a just God who fights injustice. Yet for a Muslim living in a modern Western society where nonviolence, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights are sacred values, the violence advocated by Allah in the Quran contradicts the ideal of peace, which is the most consensual political and social argument possible. To resolve this dissonance, the peaceful Muslim generally adopts the strategy of avoidance. And what better way to deny the cause or consequence of a problem than to deny its very existence—or worse, to present it as a benefit? 

In order to survive in the 21st century where fact-checking scrutinizes religious texts as thoroughly as political discourse, apologists of Islam have mastered the art of reinterpreting Quranic verses. These rhetorical sleights of hand—transforming every instance of the verbs “kill” or “fight” in Allah’s speech into a plea for tolerance and dialogue—obviously comfort peaceful and Westernized Muslims in their idealistic—yet illusory—vision of Islam. Many Muslims who follow a “religion of peace, love, and tolerance” will tell themselves that “The unbelievers to be fought must have been violent people against whom Allah called for self-defense” or “The domestic violence encouraged by Allah must surely consist of using purely symbolic violence through oratorical eloquence to bring reason to an unreasonable wife.”

As an ex-Muslim who has devoted many years to studying the logic and meaning of Quranic verses, I argue that it is more effective to discuss faith with other Muslims by speaking of science rather than violence. Muslims today often dismiss criticisms of the violence in Allah’s words as merely subjective, whereas science, facts, evidence, and even mathematics are seen as more objective.

The best apologists for Islam have certainly developed a whole arsenal of sophisms to relativize or justify the slightest violent word in the Quran, but the contradictions and scientific errors of an infallible god, supposed to know everything and never err, are harder to dispute. For this reason, in my book 100 Contradictions and Scientific Errors in the Quran (which is my best-known work, here in France), I have thoroughly identified and analyzed an encyclopedic list of the 100 greatest lexical, scientific, narrative, mathematical, dialectical, and historical contradictions found in the Quran. I present two of them here, starting with a Quranic narrative contradiction. Allah, in the Quran, sometimes recounts the same historical event in two different surahs, such as when He announces to Zachariah through His angels that the latter will have a son, named John. But in both of these surahs the human behind Allah’s pen made the mistake of presenting the event with verbatim quotations, specifically first-person statements. 

The discrepancy between these verbatim quotes demonstrates that if the author of the Quran can contradict his own work, even his most fervent believers can do so as well.

So what did Zachariah reply when Allah sent him the announcement of John’s birth? According to verse 40 of surah 3, Allah claims that Zachariah, surprised, responded: “My Lord, how will I have a boy when I have reached old age and my wife is barren?” Yet in verse 8 of surah 19, Allah claims that Zachariah at that same moment said: “My Lord, how will I have a boy when my wife is barren and I have reached extreme old age?” These two Quranic citations, between surahs 3 and 19, supposedly quoting the same statement made by Zachariah during a unique and precise event, should have been word-for-word identical. However, they invert the order of the two arguments relative to one another and feature a differing adjective—present in one but absent in the other. Each version of the historical and factual truth contradicts and invalidates the other, even though both are meant to be equally divine. The discrepancy between these verbatim quotes demonstrates that if the author of the Quran can contradict his own work, even his most fervent believers can do so as well.

Let us take another example of incoherence in the Quran, which leaves little room for subjectivity: mathematical errors. Several of Allah’s Quranic instructions regarding the calculation of inheritance shares are simply impossible to apply, as they contradict one another. For instance, in verse 12 of surah 4, Allah affirms that if a person dies without leaving any parent or child, but has a brother or a sister, then each of them is to receive one sixth of the inheritance: “And if a man or woman dies leaving no father, no mother and no child, but has a brother or a sister, then for each one of them is a sixth.” 

Let us now consider the two only possible interpretations of this instruction, which contains a subtle ambiguity that is difficult to discern at a glance. First, let us assume that the word “or” in the phrase “a brother or a sister” implies there is only one heir—either a brother or a sister. This would mean, according to verse 12 of surah 4, that Allah grants “a sixth” of the inheritance to the sister of a deceased person with no parent or child. However, later in the same surah, in verse 176, Allah states that the sister of a deceased person without parent or child must receive “half” of the inheritance: “Say Allah gives you a ruling about one who dies leaving no father, no mother and no child: if someone dies and has no child but has a sister, she shall have half of what he leaves.” This creates a blatant contradiction: in the same inheritance scenario, a single sister receives either one sixth or half of the estate.

To resolve this contradiction, Muslims might then be tempted to adopt the second (and only other) possible interpretation of the word “or” in “[if he] has a brother or a sister, then for each one of them is a sixth,” namely that Allah is referring to two individuals: one brother plus one sister. This would mean that the brother and sister are each to receive an equal share—namely one sixth. Yet, in verse 176 of surah 4, Allah explains that in a situation involving a deceased person, if there are brothers and sisters: “a male will have the share of two females.” 

Rational critique of the Quran, the hadiths, and the Prophet’s biography has become vastly more accessible and widespread than at any time in history.

There is no coherent logic underlying these contradictory instructions. How can Allah explain that a brother must receive the same share as a sister, and then that two brothers must receive the same as four sisters? Either the Prophet Muhammad became confused with the Quran that emerged from his fallible human imagination, or other humans—careless or deceitful—completed the Quran after him as they saw fit, despite the dogma of the Quran’s inviolability which attributes its authorship to Allah alone.

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Until the late twentieth century, intellectual criticism of Islam’s sacred texts by ex-Muslims remained confined to discreet discussions, books of testimonies, or academic works that struggled to find a place in the public debate. But with the democratization of the internet, everything changed. Rational critique of the Quran, the hadiths, and the Prophet’s biography has become vastly more accessible and widespread than at any time in history.

More and more critics of Islam—ex-Muslims or not, anonymous or not—now dare to speak publicly about everything that worries them in Islam: its intolerance toward any dissenting thought, its violence, its misogyny, its scientific absurdities. Yet whether in Islamic countries, Europe, or elsewhere, ex-Muslims who criticize Islam openly remain few and often must live in hiding. Whether they live in countries where apostasy is illegal or in Western countries where they risk social death or even physical violence, many ex-Muslims fear revealing their departure from Islam to their families. Some pretend to remain Muslim.

The “battle of ideas” challenging Islam remains, even today, as stormy in the media as it is perilous to one’s personal safety. According to the sacred texts and legal tradition of Islam, leaving the religion and criticizing its foundations constitutes a religious crime whose legally prescribed punishment may extend up to death. This position derives directly from hadiths—the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad—classified as Sahih (authentic), such as Bukhari numbers 6878 and 6922, in which the Prophet Muhammad, defined by Allah (surah 33, verse 21) as a universal behavioral model for all Muslims, declared: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him!” These sacralized statements, criminalizing the loss of faith in Islam or the conversion of a Muslim to another religion, explain why even today, among the 42 Islamic countries (by constitution or by their predominantly Muslim population), not a single one recognizes or defends the right of a Muslim to leave Islam.

To test it, I want you to imagine rolling up a piece of paper into a tight cylinder. Or, if you happen to be near a source of paper, doing it in real life. The analogy works either way.

There's been widespread agreement that a supermassive black hole resides in the Milky Way's Center. But that may not be true. Researchers say that a dense clump of fermionic dark matter can also explain the motions of stars and gas clouds in the region. Crucially, it can also explain the famous Event Horizon Telescope image of the SMBH.

Ripples in space-time from a pair of merging black holes have been recorded in unprecedented detail, enabling physicists to test predictions of general relativity

I have a busy day and can’t brain otherwise, so I’ll put up a video of the entire T.A.M.I. Show, an epochal rock and roll show, with many greats (see below) from 1964.

Why epochal? Well, for one thing, it introduced a white audience (I can’t see any non-whites in it) to black music, and not just soul music, but the blackest of black music: the music of James Brown, also known as the “Godfather of Soul” or “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business” (he was).  He blew away most of the other performers, who were numerous and themselves good musicians.  Chuck Berry also appears twice (see below), and there was also more standard soul music that must have been new to most of the white students, including Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. I would date this show as the beginning of popularity of black rock and roll, though others might differ.

From Wikipedia:

T.A.M.I. Show is a 1964 concert film released by American International Pictures It includes performances by numerous popular rock and roll and R&B musicians from the United States and England. The concert was held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on October 28 and 29, 1964. Free tickets were distributed to local high school students. The acronym “T.A.M.I.” was used inconsistently in the show’s publicity to mean both “Teenage Awards Music International” and “Teen Age Music International”.

In 2006, T.A.M.I. Show was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

. . . T.A.M.I. Show is particularly well known for the performance of James Brown and the Famous Flames, which features his legendary dance moves and explosive energy. In interviews, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones has claimed that choosing to follow Brown and the Famous Flames (Bobby Byrd, Bobby Bennett, and Lloyd Stallworth) was the worst mistake of their careers, because no matter how well they performed, they could not top him. In a web-published interview, Binder takes credit for persuading the Stones to follow Brown, and serve as the centerpiece for the grand finale in which all the performers dance together onstage.

It used to be nearly impossible to see this (I watched it on a rented CD), but now much of it, including James Brown’s performance, is on YouTube—for free.  Here’s the set list in the entire concert, in order of appearance (from Wikipedia):

Do NOT miss James Brown, who comes on (with his Famous Flames) at one hour, 17 minutes into the show. As far as I can see, this video incorporates most but not all of the performances, and not in the order listed above. You can scroll through it to see your favorites, but James Brown’s appearance was historic for rock and roll, so don’t scroll past that one. Chuck Berry does a good performance at the start and then again at 13:30.

Scientists have pinpointed a group of bacteria that consistently appear in high numbers in healthy people, suggesting that these could one day be targeted through diet or probiotics

People classed as “overweight” according to BMI can be perfectly healthy. But there are better measures of fat, and physicians are finally using them

People classed as “overweight” according to BMI can be perfectly healthy. But there are better measures of fat, and physicians are finally using them

NASA has taken another step towards greater autonomy for planetary exploration rovers. In December, the space agency used AI to generate waypoints for Perseverance's route on two separate days. The rover drove more than 450 meters without human input.

Origami and space exploration might not seem like they have much in common, but the traditional paper-folding technique solves one massive problem for space exploration missions - volume. Satellites and probes that launch in rocket housings are constrained by very restrictive requirements about their physical size, and options for assembling larger structures in orbit are limited to say the least. Anything that can fold up like an origami structure and then expand out to reach a fully functional size is welcome in the space community, and a new paper published in Communications Engineering by Xin Ning of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and his lab describes a novel use case for the idea - electromagnetic waveguides.

A major theme in communist governments is the idea of central planning. Every five years, the central authorities in communist countries lay out their goals for the country over the course of the next five years, which can range from limiting infant mortality to increasing agricultural yield. China, the largest current polity ruled by communists, recently released its fifteenth five-year plan, which lays out its priorities for 2026-2030. This one, accompanied by a press release of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the country’s state-owned giant aerospace corporation, has plenty of ambitious goals for its space sector.

This post is only partly about uranium, but mostly about motivated reasoning – our ability to harness our reasoning power not to arrive at the most likely answer, but to support the answer we want to be true. But let’s chat about uranium for a bit. In the comments to my recent article on a renewable grid, once commenter referred to a blog post on skeptical science and quoted:

“Abbott 2012, linked in the OP, lists about 13 reasons why nuclear will never be capable of generating a significant amount of power. Nuclear supporters have never addressed these issues. To me, the most important issue is there is not enough uranium to generate more than about 5% of all power.”

This is the flip side, I think, to the misinformation about renewable energy I was discussing in that post. Let me way, I don’t think there is an objective right answer here, but my personal view is that the pathway to net zero that emits the least amount of carbon includes nuclear energy, a view that is in line with the IPCC. There is, however, still a lot of anti-nuclear bias out there, just as their is pro-fossil fuel bias, and pro-renewable bias, and every kind of bias. If you want to make a case for any particular source of power, there are enough variables to play with that you can make a case. However, factual misstatements are different – we should at least be arguing from the same set of verified facts. So let’s address the question – how much uranium is there.

There is no objective answer to this question. Why not? Because it depends on your definition. Most estimates of how much uranium there is in the world, in the context of how much is available for nuclear power, do not include every atom of uranium. They generally take several approaches – how much is in current usable stockpiles, how much is being produced by active mines, and how much is “commercially” available. That last category depend on where you draw the line, which depends on the current price of uranium as well as the value of the energy it produces. If, for example, we decided to price the cost of emitting carbon from energy production, the value of uranium would suddenly increase. It also depends on the technology to extract and refine uranium. The value of uranium is also determined by the efficiency of reactors.

Right now about 9% of the world’s electricity comes from nuclear, and about 19% of energy in the US. At the current rate of energy production, current producing uranium mines and known resources would last for about 90 years. This is better than most mineral needed to build renewable infrastructure. Right there the “5%” figure quoted above is demonstrably wrong, we are already greater than 5%. Let’s say we doubled the amount of energy produced by nuclear power, and over that same time period there was a 50% increase in energy demand. Current supplies would then last for 45 years, and nuclear would be about 12% of world energy production. Forty-five years would be just fine – that would give us the time to further develop solar, wind, battery, geothermal, and pumped hydro technology. It is conceivable that we could have an all renewable grid by then. It is even possible we might have fusion by then.

But that also assume a couple of things – no new uranium mine discovery, and no significant increases in efficiency. Neither of these things are likely to be true. There are vast known commercially-viable reserves of uranium waiting to be developed. Improved geological techniques are also finding more reserves. Further, newer nuclear designs use uranium more efficiently – there is more burned fuel and less spent nuclear fuel. In fact newer designs can potentially burn the spent fuel from older reactors, further extending the uranium supply. We can also reprocess spent nuclear fuel to make more usable fuel. The figures above also do not count national reserves of uranium, because these figures are not public. Military grade uranium has been and can be repurposed for energy production as well.

Further still – if the acceptable price of uranium increases because of the value of uranium and the cost of energy, and/or the cost of extracting uranium from various sources goes down, then new reserves of uranium become available. For example, there is about 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium in seawater, which is about 1,000 times known terrestrial sources. That’s enough uranium for current use for 90,000 years. Let’s say only 10% of that uranium can be commercially extracted, and our demand increases by a factor of 10 – the supply would still last for 900 years. That is likely longer than fission technology will be needed.

Even putting uranium from seawater aside, known and likely terrestrial sources, combined with advancing nuclear technology, means we likely have enough uranium to burn at double the current rate for 100-200 years, conservatively. In other words – the supply of uranium is simply not a significant limiting factor for nuclear power. So why is this still an anti-nuclear talking point?

That is where we get back to motivated reasoning. Even if we are looking at the same set of facts, they can be perceived as positive or negative depending on your bias. You can say – nuclear only supplies 9% of the world’s power, or that nuclear provides a whopping 9% of world power. Solar has only increased in efficiency by about 10% over the last 30 years (from about 12 to about 22 %), or you can say that the efficiency of solar has almost doubled over this time, while costs have plummeted. You can focus on all the negative tradeoff, or all of the positive benefits of any technology. The same problem can be either a minor nuisance or a deal-killer. You can focus on whatever slice of the evidence is in line with your bias. And of course you can accept as fact things that appear to support your narrative, while questioning those that do not.

We all do this, pretty much all the time. It takes a conscious effort to minimize such motivated reasoning. We have to step back, deliberately try to not care what the outcome is, and just try to be as fair and accurate as possible. We have to ask – but is this really true? What would a neutral person say? What would someone hostile to this position say? It’s a lot of mental work, but it’s good mental hygiene and a good habit to get into.

 

 

The post Uranium and Motivated Reasoning first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A type of cognitive training that tests people's quick recall seems to reduce the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease

Paul Erdős was one of the most prolific mathematicians to ever live, known for showing up at the door of others in the field and declaring they should host and feed him while they do maths together. His radical life should be immortalised by Hollywood in a comedy biopic, says columnist Jacob Aron

One type of friction can waste energy even when two perfectly smooth surfaces move against each other, but researchers are getting a handle on how to attenuate or stop it completely

This could lead to less FDA oversight just when more is needed

The post The peptide craze sweeping America has a fan in RFK Jr first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.