I’ve subscribed to Scientific American for years. Much of its content is beyond my ken. Still, it’s a rich source of reminders that we don’t know everything about God’s creation, let alone fully understand what we do know.
Here are a few things I noted in the June 2005 issue.
• The constants of nature, for example the velocity of light, may be changing
with time. Research into string theory suggests that the universe may have as many as eleven dimensions, implying that "the constants we observe may not, in fact, be the truly fundamental ones. Those live in the full higher-dimensional space, and we see only their three-dimensional “shadows.” (p. 57, emphasis added).
Ed.: Some speculate that Jesus’s resurrection may have had something to do with other dimensions. See, for example, this Q&A
with the host of the recent ABC News 20/20 special on the resurrection
— scroll down to the comment attributed to scholar Paul Maier.
• Anti-matter is a fixture of the Star Trek future, but it
doesn’t exist in nature, and we don’t know very much about it.
Researchers are working on ways of manufacturing the stuff. “[T]he
conflagration of a single gram of antimatter particles merging with
their normal matter siblings would release energy equivalent to about
40 kilotons of TNT, or enough to power nearly 5,00 households for a
year.” (p. 79)
• Damage to the language center of the brain may enhance mathematical abilities (p. 28).
Ed.: The brain is so important, yet we know so little about how it works.
• Hydrogen sulfide is extremely toxic, but it seems to play some
sort of role in putting animals into suspended animation. Studies into
this area may someday prove useful in medicine (p. 55)
• Free radicals may have something to do with the cardiovascular dangers associated with sleep apnea (p. 25).
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