Oops, That "Europa Water Plumes" Phantasm Sent NASA on a 5-Billion-Dollar "Wild Goose Chase"

 On October 15, 2024 I published a post entitled "NASA Just Launched a $5,000,000,000 'Snowball's Chance in Hell' Mission," which you can read here. I started out the post like this:

"Hurricane Milton delayed the launch of NASA's Europa Clipper mission, which occurred  on Monday. It's too bad nature can't whip up some time warp that would allow going back in time to cancel the ill-conceived mission, which will almost certainly be a waste of 5 billion dollars that won't produce any very important scientific results."

The Europa Clipper mission is heading for Europa, a moon of Jupiter. In the post I explained why there is no need for a basic investigation of this moon. Europa has already been photographed by previous space missions, and we already know what it looks like. The surface of Europa has no very interesting features, because it is solid ice. Below is a photo of Europa. 

Europa (Credit: NASA)

The diagram below shows a cutaway view of Europa, which has a liquid salty ocean underneath a layer of solid ice that is at least 6 miles (10 kilometers) thick. The water plume on the top right is marked as a "hoped-for" feature.

In my post I described the wacky "throw ink at the wall and hope it spells correctly" gamble that is at the center of the Europa Clipper mission:

"But NASA scientists have a loony kind of 'bet all your retirement savings on a 9-digit lottery number' idea about how the Europa Clipper spacecraft might detect life. The scientists hope that it might be able to fly through a water geyser erupting on Europa, and sniff signs of life in water vapor. A NASA video told us that Europa 'might be erupting plumes of water,' and that 'if that's true, then we could fly through those plumes with the spacecraft.'  There are two reasons why there is virtually no hope that such a thing would ever succeed in detecting life."

I discussed the first reason, which is the gigantic improbability that life could accidentally arise from non-life. I then discussed the second reason, which is the gigantic improbability of Europa Clipper detecting life on Europa even if it exists in Europa's ocean under its ice. I wrote this:

"There is another reason the 'sniff life from a water geyser's vapor'  would have virtually no chance of succeeding. The evidence that water plumes even occur on Europa is only borderline, with some research casting doubt on the evidence. If water plumes occur on Europa, they seem to occur only very rarely and for a short time. The paper here suggests plume 'ballistic timescales of only 1000'  seconds, making the chance of a spacecraft flying through a plume incredibly unlikely (less than the chance of me dying from stray gunfire).  Europa's suspected ocean (the only place where life could exist) is 10 to 25 kilometers below a layer of ice, making it all but impossible that geysers could shoot out microbes through such an ice layer." 

Recently there was published a new paper suggesting I was right on the topic. It is a paper entitled "Europa’s Lyman-α emissions from HST/STIS observations." The HST referred to is the Hubble Space Telescope. The paper states, "We find evidence to support a persistent hydrogen exosphere at Europa, but no evidence of localized water vapor." A Universe Today article on the paper has the headline, "It Looks Like Europa Doesn't Have Plumes of Water Vapour After All." 

Oops, it seems like NASA has wasted 5 billion dollars on the silliest of wild goose chases, by sending a robotic spaceship to one of Jupiter's moons, to sniff water vapor plumes that don't exist. All that is likely to come from the Europa Clipper mission is some nice close-up photos of ice cracks.  It will be the kind of basically worthless result that would have occurred if some billionaire had launched drones to Antarctica, to get photos of barren ice cracks. You might compare the Europa Clipper mission to a project that puts super-expensive odor detection equipment in every reported haunted house, with the goal of sniffing ghost smells. 

It seems the Europa water-vapor plumes are one of the many chimeras conjured up by overeager scientists trying to create evidence of things they eagerly hope for. Scientists have endless ways to conjure up such illusory fancies, as I explain in my post "Scientists Have a Hundred Ways To Conjure Up Phantasms That Don't Exist." Such mirages tend to arise more often whenever there is something that scientists eagerly long for. In this case you had scientists eagerly hoping for a pathway that might allow for a detection of extraterrestrial life in the solar system. So they put their eager hopes in the driver's seat.  To read about some of the sociology at play when such goofs occur, read my post here entitled "The Social Construction of Eager Community Mirages."

Postscript: In an interview talking about the recent release of UFO-related information, astronomer Avi Loeb cites another case of a multi-billion dollar "wild goose chase" in which eager hopes were in the driver's seat:

"The physics community was advocating for a new symmetry of nature: Supersymmetry. Ten billion dollars were invested in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, in part to search for this symmetry. We did not find it. So, it’s not always true that the mainstream knows what it’s talking about."

Many Physicists Prefer Design Explanation of Cosmic Fine-Tuning

"The cosmological constant must be tuned to 120 decimal places and there are also many mysterious ‘coincidences’ involving the physical constants that appear to be necessary for life, or any form of information processing, to exist....Fred Hoyle first pointed out, the beryllium would decay before interacting with another alpha particle were it not for the existence of a remarkably finely-tuned resonance in this interaction. Heinz Oberhummer has studied this resonance in detail and showed how the amount of oxygen and carbon produced in red giant stars varies with the strength and range of the nucleon interactions. His work indicates that these must be tuned to at least 0.5% if one is to produce both these elements to the extent required for life."  -- Physicists B.J. Carr and M.J. Rees, "Fine-Tuning in Living Systems." 

 Prior to Darwin, William Paley made a famous analogy in his book Natural Theology, the analogy of a someone walking along a beach and finding a watch. Paley argued that it would be unreasonable for any such person to deny that such a thing (with so purposeful an arrangement of so many parts) was a product of design; and that it is just as unreasonable to deny that the purposeful arrangement of parts we see so abundantly in biological organisms is the product of design. The untrue legend arose that Darwin answered Paley's argument; but he did not. Darwin never mentioned Paley's famous analogy in any of his chief writings. Darwin never credibly explained how some fine-tuned arrangement of very many parts to meet a particular functional end could be naturally achieved. Darwin's paid almost no attention to the huge fine-tuned complexity and component interdependence in organisms. 

In the twentieth century, the evidence for what looks like purposeful design in organisms increased enormously, as scientists discovered the enormous organization and component interdependence of hundreds of types of human cells and thousands of types of protein molecules, very high levels of functional complexity Darwin knew nothing about. In the late twentieth century, it began to become clear that there was a second gigantic basis for believing in design in nature: the fine-tuning of the universe's fundamental constants and laws. It turns out that the universe must be very specially arranged for there to be any possibility of there being creatures such as human beings and civilizations such as our civilization. The table below helps to show some of the requirements. The color coding helps to show how the same things recur as requirements for multiple things. 

In 2024 a poll was taken at the Black Holes Inside and Out conference in Copenhagen. 85 physicist attendees filled out a survey, with the results described in the "Copenhagen Survey on Black Holes and Fundamental Physics" paper here. One of the questions was framed as follows: "In your opinion, what explains the values of physical constants of nature and the claimed anthropic coincidences?"  The wording of the questioning was biased, with the phrase "anthropic coincidences" tending to suggest a "just chance" explanation. Despite the wording, a small but significant fraction of the physicist respondents expressed support for an "intelligent designer" answer. 

The results were these:

About 3% of the physicist respondents preferred an explanation of "an intelligent designer." The most popular explanation was the non-explanation of "brute facts." Someone appealing to brute facts is someone basically saying, "There is no explanation."

The authors of this survey have since done a more recent survey, asking some of the same questions, but polling a much larger group of physicists. They give their results in the paper "Big Mysteries Survey: Physicists’ Views on Cosmology, Black Holes, Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Gravity," which you can read here. The authors of the paper start out by stating this:

"In the summer of 2024, a survey was conducted at the Black Hole Inside Out Conference in Copenhagen to assess physicists’ views on a range of ongoing controversies. Eighty-five scientists responded. One year later, the authors collaborated with the American Physical Society’s Physics Magazine on a substantially larger follow-up survey, which polled 1,675 participants from the magazine’s readership and the members of the American Physical Society. The Physics Magazine survey therefore provides a broader view of attitudes within the physics community and allows comparisons with the more focused conference-based Copenhagen sample."

Figure 1 of the paper tells us that 70% of the respondents identified themselves as researchers, with only 21% identifying themselves as "a science enthusiast" or "other."

Question 6 of the survey was framed as below

Question 6: Anthropic Coincidences

Question. The values for nature’s physical constants—from the strength of nuclear forces to the mass of the electron—are not determined by current theories, It has been suggested that if these values had been slightly different, the universe would likely not have formed complex structures and—eventually—life. This idea has led some to call for other physical or even metaphysical hypotheses to explain the apparent 'coincidence' that these constants are tuned to life-permitting values. Others have however questioned if such arguments are on sound footing. In your opinion what explains the values of physical constants and these so-called anthropic coincidences?

Like the corresponding question in the previous survey, this question is biased. Its heading of "Anthropic Coincidences" rather seems designed to suggest in respondents the idea of mere chance or coincidence being involved. Nonetheless, a substantial fraction (9%) of the respondents selected "explained by an intelligent designer" as their answer to the question posed above. The responses are given below:

I may note that the paper documenting this poll makes no claim that it was a secret ballot poll, and makes no mention that the respondents were guaranteed that their responses would be kept confidential. In polls such as this, we can assume that any controversial answer would get a much higher response under circumstances in which the secrecy of a person's response would be guaranteed. 

None of the answers other than "explained by an intelligent designer" have high credibility. Specifically: 

• The first answer in the list above is the mangled claim that "the values of the constants are set by a principle (such as the 'naturalness' principle forbidding a theory to have independent, fine-tuned parameters)." The offered example makes no sense. The issue is why our universe has fine-tuned constants. You don't explain that by appealing to some principle involving theories. 
• The most popular answer ("they are brute facts that need no further explanation") is just an "I have no explanation" answer. 
• The "explained by anthropic selection in a multiverse" answer is witless. There is no evidence and can never be any evidence for any such thing as a "multiverse," some vast collection of other universes. The only universe we can ever observe is our own universe. There is no credibility in the idea of "anthropic selection." If a multiverse existed, it would not do any such thing as "anthropic selection" in the sense of selecting creatures like us, living in civilizations and enjoying long lives and having the ability to speak languages. It would be true that only observers could observe, but it would be almost infinitely more likely that chance would produce low-intelligence observers with very short lifespans not enjoying all of the conveniences we enjoy such as a pleasant planet, long lives, and metal abundances allowing long-lasting civilizations. And a multiverse would do nothing to explain why our universe was so lucky (as opposed to some universe). For a full discussion of the fallacies in trying to evoke a multiverse to explain our universe's fine-tuned features, see my posts here and here. 
• The "explained by a Darwinian process occurring in the cosmos (e.g. baby universes inside black holes)" answer is a reference to Lee Smolin's very silly, groundless and extremely speculative theory he called "cosmological natural selection." In a 2004 paper (page 38) Smolin said that the theory made a prediction, the prediction that "the upper mass limit of neutron stars is less than 1.6 solar masses." This prediction failed. The most massive known neutron star is PSR J0952-0607, which has a mass of approximately 2.35 times of the mass of the sun. 

The word "beachhead" is a military term referring to an initial position on an enemy-dominated territory, a position serving as a foothold for further expansion. We can describe the situation in regard to belief in intelligent design among physicists like this: the idea of an intelligent designer behind cosmic fine-tuning is an idea that now has a foothold or beachhead among physicists. We should not be surprised at all if this foothold is followed by a much greater expansion. The beachhead may turn into a breakout, maybe even something like the breakout of Patron's Third Army in August, 1940, arising from the beachhead at Normandy.  Today's 9% physicist belief in intelligent design could easily expand to be 20% or 30% within a few decades. 

A similar poll questions was answered by academic philosophers. As discussed in my post here, in that poll, more philosophers said they believed in a "design" explanation for "cosmological fine-tuning" than the percentage believing in "multiverse" as an explanation. This was despite the fact that academic departments of philosophy have long been environments in which atheistic thinking is predominant. 

The idea of pondering only the fine-tuned physics of our universe when considering the explanation for such fine-tuning is an approach that is defective. The more sensible approach is to consider the collective weight of all the cases of fine-tuning that we observe in nature, which include things that are tangible (such as human bodies) and things that are intangible (such as fundamental constants of physics). 

We now have more than 50 years of work in modern physics establishing how the habitability of our universe depends on just-right characteristics of numerous laws and fundamental constants of the universe. I document in my post here some of the physics papers that documented this reality in the 1970's. Work of this type continues. A 2023 paper by a physicist states the following:

"The values of some fundamental physical constants are considered to be finely tuned and balanced to give our observable world. Examples include finely tuned balance between quark masses needed to produce protons and neutrons ...and production of heavy nuclei in stars, which depends on the finely tuned balance between the fine structure constant ...and the ratio of the proton mass ..and electron mass...These and other examples suggest a narrow 'habitable zone' in parameter space...where essential biochemical elements can form... For this reason, fundamental constants are referred to as 'biofriendly' or 'biophilic' ....We need to tune the same fundamental constants setting α and β (ℏ, e, c, me, mp) that, importantly, involves tuning, which is additional and different to tuning involved in fixing α and β....We can conjecture that multiple independent tunings were involved. This includes tuning fundamental constants to produce heavy nuclei and additional tunings needed for other observed sustainable structures to emerge." -- Kostya Trachenko, "Constraints on fundamental physical constants from bio-friendly viscosity and diffusion" (link).

Scientist Flubs and Flops, #16

 

Tyson's False Claim That "'We're Made of the Most Common Ingredients in the Universe"

 The record of astronomers in estimating the number of extraterrestrial civilizations is a poor record. Moreover, in discussing some of the questions relevant to such an estimate, astronomers have long been guilty of misspeaking.

An example of such an astronomer who made great mistakes at such a task was Carl Sagan. Eager to promote the idea that extraterrestrial cultures were abundant  in our galaxy, Sagan again and again misled his readers and those who listened to him in interviews.  Making a grotesque misrepresentation of the complexity of the bodies of human beings, Sagan often repeated the slogan "we are all star stuff." Human bodies are enormously organized marvels of fine-tuned arrangement  that are the opposite of "stuff" (a word meaning something disorganized). The degree of organization in your body makes the degree of organization in the James Webb Space Telescope look trivial in comparison.

Sagan also repeatedly misled his readers and listeners by making the false claim that "the stuff of life" is scattered throughout the universe. The truth is that the lowest building components of living things are amino acids, which have been found in only the tiniest trace amounts in outer space, such as 1 part per billion on comets or interstellar molecular clouds. 

In his book Intelligent Life in the Universe, Sagan dogmatically proclaimed on page 418 that "The number of extant civilizations substantially in advance of our own in the Galaxy today appears to be perhaps between 50 thousand and one million." The claim was as arbitrary and poorly established as Senator McCarthy's claims in the 1950's about there being 205 registered communists in the US State department. Just as McCarthy kept changing his estimate about the number of communists in the State Department, Sagan kept changing his estimates of the number of civilized planets in our galaxy. He would repeatedly claim that there were a million civilizations in our galaxy, and some of the times he made such estimates, he would try to suggest that whatever estimate he made was the estimate made by most astronomers, although he never gave any evidence to back up such a claim about a  majority of astronomers agreeing with him, and never even backed up any claim that a large fraction of astronomers agreed with him. The failure of 60+ years of efforts to detect radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations makes Sagan's estimates seem way off the mark. 

Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson "put on the mantle" of Carl Sagan when he hosted the retread of Sagan's TV series Cosmos. And Tyson has repeated some of Sagan's errors. In a recent interview with the Daily Mail, Tyson starts out by falsely claiming that everyone who has studied the question of extraterrestrial life believes in extraterrestrials. He states, "Anyone who's studied the problem would answer without hesitation that we are not alone." To the contrary, a large fraction of those who have studied the issue of extraterrestrial life are pessimistic about the chances of extraterrestrial life, because of the extremely high organization and functional complexity of even the simplest living cells, a state of organization we would never expect chance to produce from lifeless chemicals. 

Life originating from non-life has zero observational or experimental basis in physics, chemistry, biology or astronomy. No experiment realistically simulating the early Earth has ever even produced the amino acids that are the building components of protein molecules. The Miller-Urey was not such an experiment, for reasons discussed here. 

In the most recent poll asking astrobiologists about whether they believed in intelligent extraterrestrials, roughly 40% failed to answer that they agreed that intelligent extraterrestrials exist. There has always been widespread skepticism among many scientists that intelligent extraterrestrials exist, based on factors such as the very high organization of even the simplest self-reproducing cell. So Tyson misleads us when he says, "Anyone who's studied the problem would answer without hesitation that we are not alone." This is as false as claiming that anyone who has pondered whether God exists would agree without hesitation that God exists. Intelligent life may be very common in the universe, but its chances of arising elsewhere without the assistance of some purposeful agency seem slim.   

Tyson's very next statement in the interview is an equally false statement. He states, "'We're made of the most common ingredients in the universe." This is not at all true. None of the things depicted below are common in outer space. 

A Google Gemini infographic

There are two ways to look at whether that statement is true: to look at the question from the standpoint of elements, and to look at the question from the standpoint of molecules. The universe is 74% hydrogen and 24% helium. All other elements make up less than 2% of the universe's mass. Human bodies have no helium, and no free hydrogen. By weight the hydrogen in your body makes up only about 10% of your body. So from an element standpoint, it is not at all true that you are made of the most common ingredients in the universe. 

But what about from a molecular standpoint? The most common molecule in the universe by far is a molecule consisting of nothing but two hydrogen atoms. That molecule is not found in our bodies. The next most common molecule in the universe is carbon monoxide, which is not found in appreciable amounts in the human body. Water is believed to be the third most common molecule in the universe, and water is found abundantly in the human body. But water is 100 times less common in the universe than carbon monoxide. 

From a structural standpoint, the real "ingredients" of our body are protein molecules, things that are not found in any abundance outside of planet Earth. Each protein molecule is a very complex special arrangement of hundreds or thousands of amino acids. Amino acids are very rare outside of planet Earth. They are so rare they have never been discovered on Mars.

So Tyson misinforms us badly when he says, "We're made of the most common ingredients in the universe."  It is misleading to describe a human as "made of ingredients," a phrase that misleads us by suggesting that internally we are simple, like some soup of structural simplicity. Materialist astronomers want you to believe that physically you're nothing very special. The facts of science teach us the exact opposite: that a human body is a state of fine-tuned hierarchical organization 1,000,000,000,000,000 times more impressive than any state of organization yet discovered outside of planet Earth. 

Appendix:  The simplest amino acid is glycine. There is no robust evidence that glycine exists in any appreciable amounts in interstellar space.  Recent claims to have found glycine after a soil sample retrieval from an asteroid in the solar system do not count as such robust evidence, both because such an asteroid is not in interstellar space, and because the amounts supposedly detected are so minute they can credibly be accounted for by assuming terrestrial contamination (as I discuss here). 

In the 2006 paper here we read about an apparent false alarm regarding the detection of the amino acid glycine in interstellar space:

"The early searches for glycine were all negative, but two years ago Kuan et al. (2003) reported detection of a number of glycine lines, some 27 in several astronomical sources. Unfortunately, this claim has not been confirmed. The amount of glycine claimed by Kuan et al. is in conflict with previously published upper limits (e.g. Combes et al. 1996; Ceccarelli et al. 2000), and glycine lines which should have appeared were not found. In a detailed analysis of the evidence, Snyder et al. (2005) recently concluded that few, if any, of the lines attributed by Kuan et al. to interstellar glycine were actually from that molecule. The spectroscopic data on which the claim of Kuan et al. was based have not been published or made available to other workers, and there is now a fairly wide consensus among radio astronomers and laboratory spectroscopists that glycine has not yet been found in space."

A more recent 2022 paper tells us this: "The simplest amino acid, glycine (NH2CH2COOH), has been searched for a long time in the interstellar medium, but all surveys of glycine have failed." 

A few years ago we had a press release from EurekAlert!, a source that  often recycles misleading or dubious press releases from various institutions and universities. The press release was entitled "An amino acid essential for life is found in interstellar space." The press release refers to a paper "A search for tryptophan in the gas of the IC 348 star cluster of the Perseus molecular cloud." In the paper the lone author of the paper (Susana Iglesias-Groth) makes no confident claim to have found tryptophan in interstellar space; and the title refers to a search, not a finding. She merely claims to have got some spectrum readings that she claims are compatible with tryptophan. Spectrum readings from very distant space are very often subject to multiple different interpretations. The Perseus molecular cloud is 1000 light-years away, and trying to use spectrum readings to detect a molecule existing only in trace amounts is a dicey business with a large chance of error. 

All reports of detecting amino acids in asteroids, comets or interstellar space are reports claiming detection at the tiniest trace amounts levels such as 1 part per billion. Amino acids are emphatically not some "of the most common ingredients in the universe." 

A Great Tool for the Serious Scholar of the "Spookiest Years"

"The first fact capable of proof is this: that during the last 18 years, while physical science has been progressing with rapid strides...a continually increasing number of persons maintain their belief in the existence of beings of the nature of those we have hitherto postulated as a bare possibility. All these persons declare that they have re­ceived direct and oft-repeated proofs of the existence of such beings. Most of them tell us they have been convinced against all their previous notions and prepossessions. Very many have previously been materialists, not believing in the existence of any intelligences disconnected from a visible, tangible form, nor in the continued existence of the mind of man after death. At the present moment there are at least three millions of persons in the United States of America, who have received to them satisfactory proofs of the existence of invisible intelligences ; and in this country [England] there are many thousands who declare the same thing. A large number of these persons continually receive fresh proofs in the privacy of their own homes, and so much interest is felt in the subject that two periodicals are supported in this city, several on the continent, and a very large number in America, which are exclusively devoted to disseminating information relating to the existence of these invisible intelligences and the means of communicating with them. A little enquiry into the literature of the subject, which is already very ex­tensive, reveals the startling fact, that this revival of so-called supernaturalism is not confined to the ignorant or superstitious, or to the lower classes of society. On the contrary, it is rather among the middle and upper classes that the larger proportion of its adherents are to be found; and among those who have declared themselves convinced of the reality of facts such as have been always classed as miracles, are numbers of literary, scientific, and professional men, who always have borne and still continue to bear high characters, are above the imputation either of falsehood or trickery, and have never manifested indications of insanity." -- Alfred Russel Wallace,  co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection, "The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural," 1866, page 10 (link).

The evidence for paranormal phenomena is extremely deep and diverse, consisting of reports of a wide variety of phenomena 

In my first 17 installments of my previous series of "Spookiest Years" posts, I gave a history of the astonishing spiritual manifestations reported between 1848 and 1889, which you can read in my posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, 

here, here, here, here,  here, here, here, here, here and here . The whole series can be read in a single free online book here, which allows the convenience of reading the whole series by finger-swiping, after you have pressed the [] icon at the bottom. One minor disadvantage of reading the online book is that it is in reverse chronological order. 

In general I followed a rigorous standard in writing that series: the standard of always searching for the earliest publication reporting some particular event. So, for example, if it was reported that some astonishing paranormal event occurred in a particular city on one particular day, I would make every effort to get the earliest available report claiming such a thing.  

There is no substitute for studying the earliest available observational report of some occurrence. If you are repeating second-hand or third-hand or fourth-hand accounts, there is too much of an opportunity for error.  Second-hand or third-hand or fourth-hand accounts are particularly prone to error when they involve summaries of observational reports rather than full direct quotations of such reports.  There might be embellishments of the original report which grow with each retelling. 

After writing the posts above, I discovered a very valuable resource for serious students of the spooky phenomena reported in the nineteenth century.  The resource is the SSOC page here, which is part of the site at www.iapsop.com. We have a link to hundreds of books and documents, most of which pertain to paranormal phenomena. Each of the books and documents can be directly read for free from this page, without any paywalls or sign-ins. One great thing about the page is its chronological sorting. All of the books and documents are in chronological order. So, for example, if I want to see exactly what was being written about paranormal phenomena in the year 1850, I need merely scroll to the books in the list with a publication date of 1850. The page includes links to almost every English-language book written about the paranormal during the years 1800 to 1920, including many books written by skeptics. 

One of the advantage of a resource such as this page is that the serious scholar can discover the utter enormity of the written testimony in favor of the reality of paranormal events between the years 1848 and 1880. We have links to very many books describing such manifestations, and these books make up a total of very many thousands of pages. And such testimony is only a fraction of the written testimony that appeared at this time, because most of the testimony is contained in periodicals and newspapers that you can read at www.iapsop.com. Such newspapers often offer the best type of first-hand eyewitness testimony, such as testimony signed by multiple named witnesses who describe in the greatest detail events they saw at a particular named location on a particular named day, with the day typically being a few weeks prior to the date of publication, and the account very often written on the same day the events were seen.  

Using the site I have been able to find some publications I was hoping to find, but unable to find on www.archive.org.  For example, while researching my post on the year 1850, I found a quotation of a very interesting statement by C. W. Hammond reporting the most astonishing phenomena. But I declined to quote the statement, because I had not found the original document. So all I said about the statement was this:

"On page 39 we have a long 1850 statement by a Charles Hammond quoted 'from a pamphlet by D. M. Dewey.' I have not been able to find the original document. "

But now using the SSOC page on www.iapsop.com (http://iapsop.com/ssoc/) I am able to find the original 1850 document by Dewey. So let me quote the very interesting account by C. W. Hammond. He describes getting communications under a tedious system in which the alphabet is recited, and mysterious raps are heard after particular letters were recited, with the corresponding letter being written down. When he refers to "the family" he means the three Fox sisters and their mother. On page 27 of the document, C. W. Hammond states this in a letter to Dewey:

"In compliance with your solicitation, I will proceed to lay before you a brief statement of  what has fallen under my observation, in regard to the 'mysterious sounds' and 'demonstrations,'  purporting to be made by intelligent spirits, who once inhabited an earthly tabernacle....On my next visit I was much-more successful. During the interval I had prepared my mind with certain questions, touching events unknown to the family, and of a remote date. The  sounds told me my age precisely, though my appearance is such as to indicate a difference· of eight or ten years. The names of six of my nearest deceased relatives were given me.  I then inquired, ' Will the spirit, who now makes these sounds, give me its name?' Five sounds directed me to the alphabet, which I repeated until the name of 'Charles' appeared, which answered to an infant child whom we consigned to the grave in March, 1843. To my inquiries, it gave me a true answer in regard to the time it had been in the spirit-land, and also the period since my eldest sister's death, which was nearly eighteen years, the latter fact ·not being recollected then, I found true by dates on my return home. Many other test questions were correctly answered; and yet, notwithstanding . the origin of these sounds seemed inexplicable, I was inclined to impute them to mesmerism or clairvoyance. However, as the spirit promised to satisfy me by other demonstrations when I came again, I patiently awaited the opportunity.

On the third visit, I was selected from a halfdozen gentlemen, and directed by these sounds to retire to another room, in company with the ' three sisters' and their aged mother. It was about eight o'clock in the evening. A lighted candle was placed on a large table, and we seated ourselves around it. I occupied one side of the table, the mother and the youngest daughter the right, and two of the sisters the left, leaving the opposite side of the table vacant. On taking our positions the sounds were heard, and continued to multiply and become more violent until every part of the room trembled with their demonstrations. They were unlike any 1 had heard before. Suddenly, as we were all resting on the table, I felt the side next to me move upward. I pressed upon it heavily, but soon it passed out of the reach of us all, full six feet from me, and at least four from the nearest person to it. I saw distinctly its position ; not a thread could have connected it with any of the company without my notice, for I had come to detect imposition, if it could be found. In this position we were situated, when the question was asked, ' Will the spirit move the table back where it was before ? — and back it came, as though it were carried on the head of some one, who had not suited his position to a perfect equipoise, the balance being sometimes in favor of one side and then the other. But it regained its first position. In the meantime the ' demonstrations' grew louder and louder. The family commenced and sung the ' Spirit's song,' and several other pieces of sacred music, during which, accurate time was marked on the table, causing it to vibrate; a transparent hand, resembling a shadow, presented itself before my face ; I felt fingers taking hold of a lock of my hair on the left side of my head, causing an inclination of several inches; then a cold, death-like hand was drawn designedly over my face ; three gentle raps on my left knee ; my right limb forcibly pulled up, against strong resistance, under the table ; a violent shaking, as though two hands were applied to my shoulders ; myself and chair uplifted and moved back a few inches ; and several slaps, as with a hand, on the side of my head, which were repeated on each one of the company, more rapidly than I could count. During these manifestations, a piece of pasteboard, nearly a foot square, was swung with such velocity before us as to throw a strong current of air in our faces ; a paper curtain attached to one of the windows was rolled up and unrolled twice ; a lounge, immediately behind me, was shaken violently ; two small drawers in a bureau played back and forth with inconceivable rapidity ; a sound resembling a man sawing boards, and planing them, was heard under the table ; a common spinning-wheel seemed to be in motion, making a very natural buzz of the spindle ; a reel articulated each knot wound upon it ; while the sound of a rocking cradle indicated maternal care for the infant's slumbers  These were among many other demonstrations which I witnessed that evening, amid which I felt a perfect self-possession, and in no instance the slightest embarrassment, except a momentary chill when the cold hand was applied to my face, similar to a sensation I have realized when touching a dead body. That any of the company could have performed these things, under the circumstances in which we were situated, would require a greater stretch of credulity on my part than it would be to believe it was the work of spirits. It could not, by any possibility, have been done by them, nor even attempted, without detection. And I may add, that, near the close of the demonstrations at this visit, there was a vibration of the floor, as though several tons in weight had been uplifted, and suddenly fallen again upon it. This caused everything in the room to shake most violently for several minutes, when the force was withdrawn.

I have also tested the intelligence of these spirits in every way my ingenuity could invent. On one occasion, I wrote a word on a slip of paper privately, placed it in my wallet, went there, and the sounds, through the alphabet, spelled that word correctly as I had written it. That word was ' Sybil.'

 On the 29th of February, inst., the two youngest sisters made my family a visit. Here the sounds were heard — questions involving subjects wholly unknown to them were answered — a large, heavy dining-table was moved several times — and, on expressing thanks at the table to the Giver of all Good, some six or eight sounds responded to every sentence I uttered, by making loud and distinct sounds in various parts of the room. 

Yours, truly,

 C. Hammond. 

Rochester, Feb. '22, 1850."

Below is another example of some of the evidence of the paranormal that can be discovered at the SSOC page here,  We have a diagram showing an example of a levitation of a table that was witnessed by the author W. J. Crawford:

You can see the diagram on page 8 of the book here. The next page gives us the diagram below, illustrating a change in position of the table the author observed:

You can ponder the type of engineering that would be needed to cause a table to move in such a way.  The starting position (1) could conceivably be produced by having the table suspended by some incredibly thin nylon wire of a type that had not yet been invented in 1919 when the book was published: a wire so thin it would not be noticed by a careful observer. To achieve the transition from position (1) to position (5) you would need to have a mechanically operating trolley system, like the trolleys used to move cameras when filming some types of movie shots. Such a trolley could drag the suspended wire across the room. The problem is that such a trolley would be a mechanical device observable from the ceiling, where anyone could notice it; and no such thing was observed.  

Exhibit A Hinting That Evolutionary Biologists May Be Worshipful Devotees

At the Undark web site (www.undark.org) we sometimes get first-rate examples of science journalism. But a recent article at that site is just an insight as to how bad is the malfunction in a certain branch of academia. It is an article by an evolutionary biologist (C. Brandon Ogbunu), one entitled "What I Learned From Teaching Darwin." 

Throughout the article Ogbunu makes clear that he is a devotee of his 19th century overlord.  The impression of ardent devotion is created very quickly, as we see a photo of a set of six books on a shelf. Instead of being varied, diverse books that would give us broad knowledge, each one of the books on the shelf is "The Origin of Species" by Darwin. It's kind of like what we might expect to see when visiting a fundamentalist, who had a shelf containing nothing but copies of the Bible. 

A properly thinking biologist might write an essay with a title such as "What I Learned From Studying Organisms" or "What I Learned From Studying Cells" or "What I Learned From Studying Anatomy." But evolutionary biologists instead write articles with worshipful titles such as "What I Learned From Teaching Darwin." 

Ogbunu makes these very laughable speculations about what Darwin would say and do if he were living today:

"He would care about the misinformation crisis, climate science, and have opinions about how to live in a world being upended by artificial intelligence and threats to democracy....His computer desktop would have dozens of folders, some with machine-learning papers, others full of ornithology monographs. And he'd read them all."

This is hilarious. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are examples of engineering, being products of software engineering. Darwin had zero interest in engineering. His complete failure to consider matters of engineering are part of the reason he went so badly wrong in his attempt to explain the wonders of the biological world. What we see in the world of biology is endless examples of purposeful engineering. 

A very important principle is that accidents don't engineer things. But Darwin maintained that all of the stupendous wonders of the biological world were the result of accumulations of accidents (unguided random mutations). His deceptively titled book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" did not actually postulate a theory of selection, because "selection" means conscious choice, and Darwin did not postulate conscious choice as an explanation for the wonders of biology.  If Darwin had honestly titled his main work, he would have given it a title such as "On the Origin of Species by Means of Accident Accumulations." That would have correctly described his theory. "The Origin of Species" used the words "accumulation," "accumulate" or "accumulating" 35 times. 

The problem, of course, is that an accumulation of accidents cannot credibly explain stunning engineering results with a great coordinated wealth of fine-tuned interdependent components, such as we see so very abundantly in the world of living organisms. Darwin swept under the rug this problem by never paying any attention at all to the topic of engineering. So it is  absurd to suggest that Darwin would be interested in today's wonders of technological engineering. 

Ogbunu errs in his attempt to persuade us (in the quote above) that Darwin was an eager scholar of everything relevant to his claims. Darwin seemed to spend zero time studying probability mathematics (so relevant to the credibility of his claims). And he also seemed to pay zero attention to all of the very many reports of paranormal or supernatural  phenomena happening in England while he lived, reports also very relevant to the credibility of his claims. The British scientists of his time who paid attention to such reports included Alfred Russel Wallace and Sir William Crookes, both asserting the authenticity of some of these phenomena. 

Near the end of the article, Ogbunu says, "What I aspire to be, more than anything, is an intellectual child of Charles Darwin."  What an unhealthy-sounding statement that is. You can compare it to healthy-sounding statements a person might make, statements such as these: 

• "What I aspire to be, more than anything, is someone who correctly describes reality and someone who speaks the truth and advises wisely."
• "What I aspire to be, more than anything, is a good person who helps others." 
• "What I aspire to be, more than anything, is someone who teaches the facts of nature correctly, and someone who informs people about the most important facts scientists have learned." 

Guys like Ogbunu think they are walking in the path of Darwin, but they are not really doing that. Darwin was no parroting devotee of any authority. Darwin made conclusions based solely on what he had learned about nature and his own analysis and reasoning, instead of appealing to the authority of any previous thinker.  Those who keep  parroting Darwin's outdated conclusions are not following such a path of independent analysis of nature, but are instead following the "devotion to an old authority" path that is antithetical to the true spirit of science. 

Well-functioning science ends whenever fervent Darwinism begins. 

Trump's "Sleeping" During Official Events May Be Cardiogenic Syncope Involving Cerebral Hypoperfusion

Recently there have been quite a few different days in which the press reported US president Donald Trump "falling asleep" during televised events in the White House. In the typical event that has occurred, Trump will be seen sitting at a desk, and behind him will be various people talking. As someone else talks, Trump will close his eyes for quite a few consecutive seconds.  Incidents of this type have reportedly occurred quite a few times.  The March 24 article here claims that there have been 13 such events. There have been multiple reports of Trump falling asleep at official events in the weeks since March 24.The latest report has a headline of "Trump, 79, Falls Asleep Seconds After Speaking in White House Event."

The press seems to have been uniform in its coverage of these events, describing them as cases of Trump "napping" or "falling asleep." But let me suggest a novel hypothesis about the cause of these events, one I have not read anyone else suggest. These events may be something more serious. Rather than mere napping, these events may be short events of fainting, caused by a drop in blood pressure. Syncope is the medical term for fainting. There is a type of problem called cardiogenic syncope, and the older a person is, the more likely it is to occur. When cardiogenic syncope occurs, blood pressure may undergo a sharp temporary drop because of some malfunction in the heart, often a heart arrythmia or a temporary deviation from the heart's normal sinus rhythm, or some heart pumping problem. The drop in blood flowing to the brain results in a state called cerebral hypoperfusion, which results in fainting or loss of consciousness. 

The infographic visual below (modified from one generated by Google Gemini) explains how cardiogenic syncope involves a short-lasting dip in the flow of blood to the brain. 

If a person is standing and has an episode of cardiogenic syncope, the result may be a very noticeable collapse. But a person sitting and having such an episode may merely appear to be napping for a short time. I asked Google this: "Can cardiogenic syncope look like napping?" I get this answer from an AI overview: "Yes, cardiogenic syncope (fainting caused by a heart condition) can sometimes look like someone is 'napping,' dazed, or in a deep sleep, particularly if the episode is very brief or occurs while they are already sitting or lying down."

By itself a tendency towards cardiogenic syncope does not have any very grave short-term prognosis. Typically the fainting episodes are brief, and do not cause any permanent brain damage. An old person with such a tendency may well continue to live for years, and may function well. But his chance of sudden cardiac death or heart failure death during those years will tend to be much higher. Whether such a person can continue to do a job well depends on the frequency of the episodes, and what type of job the person does. 

If a very old president were to be having occasional episodes of cardiogenic syncope (fainting uncontrollably now and then), he might well be able to get by without people noticing, particularly if he was careful to avoid events involving prolonged standing, and instead mainly did Oval Office events while seated. Such a president might be  able to do his job well on most days. The problem would be that the cardiogenic syncope would tend to create rare days in which the president was pretty much incapacitated, and incapable of doing his job well.

In Caucasian people cardiogenic syncope involving cerebral hypoperfusion tends to temporarily create a rather white-looking face, a pale face color.  The word for that is pallor. If you do a Google image search for photos of Trump sleeping in the Oval Office, you will not typically see a pale-looking face. But that does not discredit the possibility discussed here, simply because it is widely believed that Trump applies colored makeup all over his face, often leaving his face with a rather orange-looking or bronze-looking appearance. If Trump ever fails to apply that makeup, and there arises TV footage of him "napping" in the Oval Office while having a pale-looking face, that will tend to corroborate the hypothesis suggested in this post. 

Quite a few articles claim to show pictures in which Trump appears to have swollen ankles. Swollen ankles involving edema are a symptom of heart failure, and cardiogenic syncope and heart failure are strongly associated. I asked Google this: "Is cardiogenic syncope associated with heart failure?" I get this answer from an AI overview: 

"Yes, cardiogenic syncope is strongly associated with heart failure. It is a dangerous form of fainting caused by heart-related issues, such as severe arrhythmias or impaired pumping function, and is a major, independent predictor of sudden death in patients with advanced heart failure."

The latest report with a headline of "Trump, 79, Falls Asleep Seconds After Speaking in White House Event" may be particularly suggestive of the hypothesis I here propose. The likelihood of falling asleep is inversely related to a person's alertness and state of mental interest or engagement, with the act of falling asleep much more likely to occur in someone bored or not doing anything important.  So it seems very unlikely that a person would ever fall asleep "seconds after" publicly speaking. Conversely, cardiogenic syncope occurs unpredictably, with its timing having no connection to a person's level of alertness or how socially engaged he was in the past minute.