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Biology

People can sense Earth’s magnetic field, brain waves suggest

By Guest Post March 27, 2019

By Maria Temming

A new analysis of people’s brain waves when surrounded by different magnetic fields suggests that people have a “sixth sense” for magnetism.

Birds, fish and some other creatures can sense Earth’s magnetic field and use it for navigation (SN: 6/14/14, p. 10). Scientists have long wondered whether humans, too, boast this kind of magnetoreception. Now, by exposing people to an Earth-strength magnetic field pointed in different directions in the lab, researchers from the United States and Japan have discovered distinct brain wave patterns that occur in response to rotating the field in a certain way.

These findings, reported in a study published online March 18 in eNeuro, offer evidence that people do subconsciously respond to Earth’s magnetic field — although it’s not yet clear exactly why or how our brains use this information.

“The first impression when I read the [study] was like, ‘Wow, I cannot believe it!’” says Can Xie, a biophysicist at Peking University in Beijing. Previous tests of human magnetoreception have yielded inconclusive results. This new evidence “is one step forward for the magnetoreception field and probably a big step for the human magnetic sense,” he says. “I do hope we can see replications and further investigations in the near future.”

During the experiment, 26 participants each sat with their eyes closed in a dark, quiet chamber lined with electrical coils. These coils manipulated the magnetic field inside the chamber such that it remained the same strength as Earth’s natural field but could be pointed in any direction. Participants wore an EEG cap that recorded the electrical activity of their brains while the surrounding magnetic field rotated in various directions.

This setup simulated the effect of someone turning in different directions in Earth’s natural, unchanging field without requiring a participant to actually move. (Complete stillness prevented motor-control thoughts from tainting brain waves due to the magnetic field.) The researchers compared these EEG readouts with those from control trials where the magnetic field inside the chamber didn’t move.

Joseph Kirschvink, a neurobiologist and geophysicist at Caltech, and colleagues studied alpha waves to determine whether the brain reacts to changes in magnetic field direction. Alpha waves generally dominate EEG readings while a person is sitting idle but fade when someone receives sensory input, like a sound or touch.

Sure enough, changes in the magnetic field triggered changes in people’s alpha waves. Specifically, when the magnetic field pointed toward the floor in front of a participant facing north — the direction that Earth’s magnetic field points in the Northern Hemisphere — swiveling the field counterclockwise from northeast to northwest triggered an average 25 percent dip in the amplitude of alpha waves. That change was about three times as strong as natural alpha wave fluctuations seen in control trials.

ROTATION REACTION When downward-pointing magnetic fields were rotated counterclockwise, from northeast to northwest, researchers saw a significant dip in participants’ alpha brain waves (left). Alpha waves are similarly dampened when someone receives sensory input like a sound or smell. This response was not seen when downward fields rotated clockwise (center) or were held steady (right).

Curiously, people’s brains showed no responses to a rotating magnetic field pointed toward the ceiling — the direction of Earth’s field in the Southern Hemisphere. Four participants were retested weeks or months later and showed the same responses.

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Apologetics

More than 1,000 scientists sign ‘dissent from Darwinism’ statement

By Guest Post February 12, 2019

by Brittany Slaughter

Earlier this month, a long list of Ph.D. scientists who “dissent from Darwinism” reached a milestone — it crossed the threshold of 1,000 signers.
“There are 1,043 scientists on the ‘A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism’ list. It passed the 1,000 mark this month,” said Sarah Chaffee, a program officer for the Discovery Institute, which maintains the list.“A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism” is a simple, 32-word statement that reads: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

Launched in 2001, the list continues to collect support from scientists from universities across America and globally. Signers have earned their Ph.D.s at institutions that include Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania. Others on the list earned their doctorates at Clemson, UT Austin, Ohio State, UCLA, Duke, Stanford, Emory, UNC Chapel Hill and many others universities. Still other signers are currently employed as professors across the nation.

Those who sign it “must either hold a Ph.D. in a scientific field such as biology, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, computer science, or one of the other natural sciences; or they must hold an M.D. and serve as a professor of medicine,” according to the institute.

The group points out that signing the statement does not mean these scholars endorse “alternative theories such as self-organization, structuralism, or intelligent design,” but rather simply indicates “skepticism about modern Darwinian theories central claim that natural selection acting on random mutations is the driving force behind the complexity of life.”

According to Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Klinghoffer, the signers “have all risked their careers or reputations in signing.”

“Such is the power of groupthink,” he wrote. “The scientific mainstream will punish you if they can, and the media is wedded to its narrative that ‘the scientists’ are all in agreement and only ‘poets,’ ‘lawyers,’ and other ‘daft rubes’ doubt Darwinian theory. In fact, I’m currently seeking to place an awesome manuscript by a scientist at an Ivy League university with the guts to give his reasons for rejecting Darwinism. The problem is that, as yet, nobody has the guts to publish it.”

In interviews with The College Fix, some of the list’s signers explained why they were willing to go public with their skepticism.

“[Darwin’s theory] claimed to explain all major features of life and I think that’s very unlikely. Nonetheless, I think Darwinism has gotten to be kind of an orthodoxy, that is it’s accepted in the scientific community unthinkingly and it’s taught to kids unthinkingly,” said Michael Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University.

“Getting a list of scientists who point out that they don’t believe the orthodoxy can kind of open up some minds hopefully,” he said.

“It is clearly a growing trend with biology to think that Darwin missed a whole lot of biology and cannot explain a good deal of evolution,” Behe added.

Regarding how his colleagues view the list, Behe said, “Most of my peers are unaware of it, but those who are aware of it don’t like it one bit. They think that anybody who would sign such a list has to have a dishonorable motive for doing so.”

Taking a stand comes with a risk. Scott Minnich, an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho, said he has many times been accused of being “anti-science.”

“I signed this list when it first came out because of this intellectual deep skepticism I have that the random unintelligent forces of nature can produce systems that outstrip our own intellectual capacity,” he told The Fix.

Minnich went on to quote the writer C.S. Lewis: “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Law Giver.”

IMAGE: Gajus / Shutterstock

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Biology

Two Notable Evolutionary Biologists Dismiss the Reigning Theory of Darwinian Evolution

By Terence Gillespie November 16, 2017

Bill Sardi reports . . .

In the process of introducing a new theory on how life began, two notable evolutionary biologists have just dismissed the reigning theory of Darwinian evolution, maintaining it would take many billions of years to accomplish and would extend beyond the very age of the universe, making the current understanding of evolution impossible.

The study of Darwinian evolution, the gradual assemblage of molecules that somehow were constructed and then began replicating themselves out of some imaginary “primordial soup” or “warm pond” as Charles Darwin once described it, has just taken a U-turn.

Today the vast majority of biologists maintain what they call RNA World existed on Earth before modern cells arose. For the past few decades the consensus of molecular biologists is that life originated from RNA — ribonucleic acid, which is a single strand of nucleotides (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine) unlike DNA which is double-stranded, and is bonded with ribose sugars rather than deoxyribose sugars that comprise DNA.

However RNA is more unstable and prone to degradation than DNA and makes a less plausible platform for the origin of life say two eminent researchers. For the very reason of RNAs inherent instability, two researchers now say RNA couldn’t have endured the time it would have taken for evolutionary life forms to appear.

Scientific U-turn

The scientific U-turn is this. According to astrobiologist and (Honorary) professor Brig Klyce, “Virtually all biologists now agree bacterial cells cannot form from nonliving chemical in one step. If life arises from non-living chemicals, there must be intermediate forms. Among the various theories on the origin of life, biologists have reached consensus on the RNA theory (called RNA WORLD), which serves as a messenger to carry out instructions from DNA and initiate and control the synthesis of proteins. But now evolutionary thinkers say life’s first molecule was protein, not RNA.”

“Only one fact concerning the RNA World hypothesis can be established by direct observation: if it ever existed, it ended without leaving any unambiguous trace of itself,” say Peter R Wills and Charles W Carter Jr., authors of the new theory writing in the BioRxIV Beta journal.

Carter and Wills argue that RNA could not kick-start this process alone because it lacks a property they call “reflexivity.” It cannot enforce the rules by which it is made. RNA needed peptides to form the reflexive feedback loop necessary to eventually lead to life forms.

Bill Sardi continues with his thorough report . . .