Tag Archives: University of North Texas

Awe, science, and God

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Having been brought up in a somewhat dogmatic religion, I was a bit resistant when I saw ‘religion’ mentioned in the news release but it seems I am being dogmatic. Here’s a definition from the Religion Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),

Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements. However, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.[1][2]

This research into science and God suggests that the two ‘belief’ systems are not antithetical. From a July 18, 2019 Arizona State University (ASU) news release (also on EurekAlert but published on July 17, 2019) by Kimberlee D’Ardenne,

Most Americans believe science and religion are incompatible, but a recent study suggests that scientific engagement can actually promote belief in God.

Researchers from the Arizona State University Department of Psychology found that scientific information can create a feeling of awe, which leads to belief in more abstract views of God. The work will be published in the September 2019 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and is now available online.

“There are many ways of thinking about God. Some see God in DNA, some think of God as the universe, and others think of God in Biblical, personified terms,” said Kathryn Johnson, associate research professor at ASU and lead author on the study. “We wanted to know if scientific engagement influenced beliefs about the existence or nature of God.”

Though science is often thought of in terms of data and experiments, ASU psychology graduate student Jordan Moon, who was a coauthor on the paper, said science might be more to some people. To test how people connect with science and the impact it had on their beliefs about God, the researchers looked at two types of scientific engagement: logical thinking or experiencing the feeling of awe.

The team first surveyed participants about how interested they were in science, how committed they were to logical thinking and how often they felt awe. Reporting a commitment to logic was associated with unbelief. The participants who reported both a strong commitment to logic and having experienced awe, or a feeling of overwhelming wonder that often leads to open-mindedness, were more likely to report believing in God. The most common description of God given by those participants was not what is commonly found in houses of worship: They reported believing in an abstract God described as mystical or limitless.

“When people are awed by the complexity of life or the vastness of the universe, they were more inclined to think in more spiritual ways,” Johnson said. “The feeling of awe might make people more open to other ways of conceptualizing God.”

In another experiment, the research team had the participants engage with science by watching videos. While a lecture about quantum physics led to unbelief or agnosticism, watching a music video about how atoms are both particles and waves led people to report feeling awe. Those who felt awe also were more likely to believe in an abstract God.

“A lot of people think science and religion do not go together, but they are thinking about science in too simplistic a way and religion in too simplistic a way,” said Adam Cohen, professor of psychology and senior author on the paper. “Science is big enough to accommodate religion, and religion is big enough to accommodate science.”

Cohen added that the work could lead to broader views of both science and religion.

Morris Okun, Matthew Scott and Holly O’Rourke from ASU and Joshua Hook from the University of North Texas also contributed to the work. The study was funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Science, God, and the cosmos: Science both erodes (via logic) and promotes (via awe) belief in God by Kathryn A.Johnson, Jordan W.Moon, Morris A.Okun, Matthew J.Scott, Holly P.O’Rourke, Joshua N.Hook, Adam B. Cohen. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume 84, September 2019, 103826 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103826

This paper is behind a paywall.

I noted the funding from the John Templeton Foundation and recalled they have a prize that relates to this topic.

2019 Templeton Prize winner

A March 20, 2019 article by Lee Billings for Scientific American offers a profile of the 2019 Templeton Prize winner,

Marcelo Gleiser, a 60-year-old Brazil-born theoretical physicist at Dartmouth College and prolific science popularizer, has won this year’s Templeton Prize. Valued at just under $1.5 million, the award from the John Templeton Foundation annually recognizes an individual “who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” [emphasis mine] Its past recipients include scientific luminaries such as Sir Martin Rees and Freeman Dyson, as well as religious or political leaders such as Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

Across his 35-year scientific career, Gleiser’s research has covered a wide breadth of topics, ranging from the properties of the early universe to the behavior of fundamental particles and the origins of life. But in awarding him its most prestigious honor, the Templeton Foundation chiefly cited his status as a leading public intellectual revealing “the historical, philosophical and cultural links between science, the humanities and spirituality.” He is also the first Latin American to receive the prize.

Scientific American spoke with Gleiser about the award, how he plans to advance his message of consilience, the need for humility in science, why humans are special, and the fundamental source of his curiosity as a physicist.

…

You’ve written and spoken eloquently about nature of reality and consciousness, the genesis of life, the possibility of life beyond Earth, the origin and fate of the universe, and more. How do all those disparate topics synergize into one, cohesive message for you

To me, science is one way of connecting with the mystery of existence. And if you think of it that way, the mystery of existence is something that we have wondered about ever since people began asking questions about who we are and where we come from. So while those questions are now part of scientific research, they are much, much older than science. I’m not talking about the science of materials, or high-temperature superconductivity, which is awesome and super important, but that’s not the kind of science I’m doing. I’m talking about science as part of a much grander and older sort of questioning about who we are in the big picture of the universe. To me, as a theoretical physicist and also someone who spends time out in the mountains, this sort of questioning offers a deeply spiritual connection with the world, through my mind and through my body. Einstein would have said the same thing, I think, with his cosmic religious feeling.

…

If you’re interested, this is a wide ranging profile touching on one of the big questions in physics, Is there a theory of everything?

For anyone curious about the Templeton Foundation, you can find out more here.

Tiger escapes from an impenetrable cage—carbon atoms show quantum effects

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The likelihood of a tiger escaping from a cage using quantum effects is incredibly small. Things seem quite different for carbon. © Fotolia, Bubbers

I’ll get to the tiger reference in a moment, first, here’s a July 12, 2017 news item on Nanowerk announcing the research that inspired the tiger reference (Note A link has been removed),

Chemists at Ruhr-Universität Bochum have found evidence that carbon atoms cannot only behave like particles but also like waves. This quantum-mechanical property is well-known for light particles such as electrons or hydrogen atoms. However, researchers have only rarely observed the wave-particle duality for heavy atoms, such as carbon.

The team led by Prof Dr Wolfram Sander and Tim Schleif from the Chair for Organic Chemistry II together with Prof Dr Weston Thatcher Borden, University of North Texas, reports in the journal Angewandte Chemie (“The Cope rearrangement of 1,5-Dimethylsemibullvalene-2(4)-d1: Experimental evidence for heavy-atom tunneling”).

“Our result is one of few examples showing that carbon atoms can display quantum effects,” says Sander. Specifically, the researchers observed that carbon atoms can tunnel. They thus overcome an energetic barrier, although they do not actually possess enough energy to do that.

A July 12, 2017 Ruhr-Universität Bochum press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, expands on the theme and makes sense of the tiger analogy,

Wolfram Sander explains the paradox: “It’s as though a tiger has left his cage without jumping over the fence, which is much too high for him. But he still gets out.” This is only possible if he behaves like a wave, but not if he behaves like a particle. The probability of an object being able to tunnel depends on its mass. The phenomenon can, for instance, be observed much more easily for light electrons than for relatively heavy carbon atoms.

The researchers investigated the tunnel reaction using the Cope rearrangement, a chemical reaction that has been known for almost 80 years. The starting material for the reaction, a hydrocarbon compound, is identical to the product molecule. The same chemical compound thus exists before and after the reaction. However, the bonds between the carbon atoms change during the process.

In their experiment, the Bochum-based researchers marked one of the carbon atoms in the molecule: They replaced the hydrogen atom bonded to it with the hydrogen isotope deuterium, a heavier version of hydrogen. Molecules before and after the Cope rearrangement differed in terms of the distribution of the deuterium. Due to these different distributions, both molecular forms had slightly different energies.

Reaction shouldn’t actually take place

At room temperature, this difference has little effect; due to the plentiful supply of thermal energy in the surrounding area, both forms occur equally frequently. However, at very low temperatures under ten Kelvin, one molecule form is significantly preferred due to the energy difference. When transitioning from room temperature to extremely low temperatures, the balance has to move from an equal distribution of both forms to an uneven distribution.

This transition cannot, however, occur in the classic way – since, when rearranging from one form to the other, an energy barrier has to be overcome, although the molecule itself does not have the energy for this and the cold environment is also unable to provide it. Although the new balance should not occur in the classic way, the researchers were nevertheless able to demonstrate it in the experiment. Their conclusion: the Cope rearrangement at extremely low temperatures can only be explained by a tunnel effect. They thus provided experimental evidence for a prediction made by Weston Borden over five years ago based on theoretical studies.

Solvents influence ability to tunnel

At Ruhr-Universität, Wolfram Sander undertakes research in the cluster of excellence Ruhr Explores Solvation, where he concerns himself with the interactions of solvents and dissolved molecules. “It is known that solvents influence the ability to tunnel,” says the chemist. “However, so far it has not been understood how they do that.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

The Cope rearrangement of 1,5-Dimethylsemibullvalene-2(4)-d1: Experimental evidence for heavy-atom tunneling by Tim Schleif, Joel Mieres-Perez, Stefan Henkel, Melanie Ertelt, Weston Thatcher Borden, Wolfram Sander. Angewandte Chemie, 2017, DOI: 10.1002/ange.201704787, International Edition: 10.1002/anie.201704787

This paper is behind a paywall.

Fuel cells break free of metal catalysts (graphene instead of platinum) with research from joint Korea-US research team

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Fuel cells—I used to hear a lot about them as there is a company in the region, Ballard Power Systems which specializes in that field. There was a lot of excitement in the late 1990s and into the 2000s and then nothing. Given the hype of the early days, I was expecting fuel-cell-powered-cars by now.  A June 5, 2013 Case Western Reserve University news release on EurekAlert may provide an answer as to why fuel cells have not been adopted more widely,

Researchers from South Korea, Case Western Reserve University and University of North Texas have discovered an inexpensive and easily produced catalyst that performs better than platinum in oxygen-reduction reactions.

The finding, detailed in Nature’s Scientific Reports online today, is a step toward eliminating what industry regards as the largest obstacle to large-scale commercialization of fuel cell technology.

Fuel cells can be more efficient than internal combustion engines, silent, and at least one type produces zero greenhouse emissions at the tail pipe. Car and bus manufacturers as well as makers of residential and small-business-sized generators have been testing and developing different forms of fuel cells for more than a decade but the high cost and insufficiencies of platinum catalysts have been the Achilles heel.

The news release goes on to provide context for the work and details about the new graphene catalyst,

Like a battery, a fuel cell converts chemical energy into electrical energy. It works by removing an electron from a fuel, usually hydrogen or methanol mixed with water, at the cell’s anode, or positive electrode, creating a current.Hydrogen ions produced then pass through a membrane to the cathode, or negative electrode. Here, oxygen molecules from the air are split and reduced by the addition of electrons and combined with the hydrogen ions to form water and heat—the only byproducts.

A better, cheaper catalyst than scarce and costly platinum is required if hydrogen fuel cells and direct methanol fuel cells are to become realistic alternatives to fossil fuels, the authors say.

The technology to make alternative catalysts builds on a simple and cheap industrial process several of the researchers developed to make graphene sheets from graphite.

Inside a ball miller, which is a canister filled with steel balls, the researchers broke graphite down into single-layer graphene nanoparticles. While the canister turned, they injected chlorine, bromine or iodine gas to produce different catalysts.

In each case, gas molecules replaced carbon atoms along the zigzag edges of nanoplatelets created by milling. Not only were the edges then favorable to binding with oxygen molecules, but the bond strength between the two oxygen atoms weakened. The weaker the oxygen bonds became, the more efficiently the oxygen was reduced and converted to water at the cathode.

In testing, a cathode coated with iodine-edged nanoplatelets performed best. A cathode coated with bromine-edged nanoparticles generated 7 percent less current than the commercial cathode coated with platinum, the chlorine-edged nanoplatelets 40 percent less.

In a test of durability, electrodes coated with the nanoplatelets maintained 85.6 percent to 87.4 percent of their initial current after 10,000 cycles while the platinum electrodes maintained only 62.5 percent.

Carbon monoxide was added to replicate the poisoning that many scientists blame for the poor performance of platinum at the cathode. The performance of the graphene-based catalysts was unaffected.

When methanol was added to replicate methanol crossover from the anode to cathode in direct methanol fuel cells, the current density of the platinum catalyst dropped sharply. Again, the graphene-based catalysts were unaffected.

One of the researchers sums up the research (from the news release),

“We made metal-free catalysts using an affordable and scalable process,” said Liming Dai, the Kent Hale Smith Professor of macromolecular science and engineering at Case Western Reserve and one of the report’s authors. “The catalysts are more stable than platinum catalysts and tolerate carbon monoxide poisoning and methanol crossover.”

And, in their initial tests, a cathode coated with one form of catalyst—graphene nanoparticles edged with iodine—proved more efficient in the oxygen reduction reaction, generating 33 percent more current than a commercial cathode coated with platinum generated.

For those who want more,

Facile, scalable synthesis of edge-halogenated graphene nanoplatelets as efficient metal-free eletrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction by In-Yup Jeon, Hyun-Jung Choi, Min Choi, Jeong-Min Seo, Sun-Min Jung, Min-Jung Kim, Sheng Zhang, Lipeng Zhang, Zhenhai Xia, Liming Dai, Noejung Park, & Jong-Beom Baek. Scientific Reports 3, Article number: 1810 doi:10.1038/srep01810 Published 05 June 2013

The paper is open access.