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ElShamah - Reason & Science: Defending ID and the Christian Worldview

Otangelo Grasso: This is my personal virtual library, where i collect information, which leads in my view to the Christian faith, creationism, and Intelligent Design as the best explanation of the origin of the physical Universe, life, biodiversity


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Water is fine-tuned for life

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1Water is fine-tuned for life Empty Water is fine-tuned for life Fri Feb 21, 2014 9:35 am

Otangelo


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Water is fine-tuned for life

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1532-water-is-fine-tuned-for-life

Water is finely-tuned for life
An example of cosmic fine-tuning is with respect to the physics of water and ice. Normally a solid for some particular substance will tend to sink in the liquid state of that same substance. In other words, the solid-state is denser than the liquid state. However, there is one important exception to the rule. Just based on our knowledge that solids sink in their liquid equivalents that ice cubes should sink in a glass of water. Of course, we know,  that ice floats on water. If that weren’t the case, life would/could not exist, and we probably wouldn’t be here to talk about it. Why? If ice sank in water, all the bodies of water would freeze solid from the bottom up,  leaving a thin film of liquid water on the surface. That scenario would play havoc with the origin of life as we know it. There would be a near-permanent ‘Snowball Earth’. Considering the biological importance and relevance of ice floating on water relative to the other way around, we should thank this particular exception to the rule. The question is, why is it so?
https://www.closertotruth.com/series/why-cosmic-fine-tuning-demands-explanation

Lisa Grossman Water's quantum weirdness makes life possible 19 October 2011
WATER’S life-giving properties exist on a knife-edge. It turns out that life as we know it relies on a fortuitous, but incredibly delicate, the balance of quantum forces. Water is one of the planet’s weirdest liquids, and many of its most bizarre features make it life-giving. For example, its higher density as a liquid than as a solid means ice floats on water, allowing fish to survive under partially frozen rivers and lakes. And unlike many liquids, it takes a lot of heat to warm water up even a little, a quality that allows mammals to regulate their body temperature. But computer simulations show that quantum mechanics nearly robbed water of these life-giving features. Most of them arise due to weak hydrogen bonds that hold H2O molecules together in a networked structure. For example, it is hydrogen bonds that hold ice molecules in a more open structure than in liquid water, leading to a lower density. By contrast, without hydrogen bonds, liquid molecules move freely and take up more space than in rigid solid structures.

Yet in simulations that include quantum effects, hydrogen bond lengths keep changing thanks to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which says no molecule can have a definite position with respect to the others. This destabilizes the network, removing many of water’s special properties.  How water continues to exist as a network of hydrogen bonds, in the face of these destabilizing quantum effects, was a mystery. In 2009, theorist Thomas Markland, now at Stanford University, suggested a reason why water’s fragile structure does not break down completely. They calculated that the uncertainty principle should also affect the bond lengths within each water molecule, and proposed that it does so in such a way as to strengthen the attraction between molecules and maintain the hydrogen-bond network. “Water fortuitously has two quantum effects which cancel each other out.

Until recently, though, there was no way to discover whether there is any variation in bond length within the water molecule. Now, Salmon’s team has done this. Their trick was to use so-called heavy water, in which the molecule’s two hydrogen atoms are replaced with deuterium. This isotope of hydrogen contains a neutron as well as a proton. The extra bulk makes it less vulnerable to quantum uncertainties. It’s like turning the quantum mechanics half off.
Salmon and colleagues shot beams of neutrons at different versions of water, and studied the way they bounced off the atoms – a precise way to measure bond lengths. They also substituted heavier oxygen atoms into both heavy and normal water, which allowed them to determine which bonds they were measuring. They found that the hydrogen-oxygen bonds were slightly longer than the deuterium-oxygen ones, which is what you would expect if quantum uncertainty was affecting water’s structure “No one has ever really measured that before,” says Benmore. “Water fortuitously has two quantum uncertainty effects which cancel each other out” We are used to the idea that the cosmos’s physical constants are fine-tuned for life. Now it seems water’s quantum forces can be added to this “just right” list.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-900-waters-quantum-weirdness-makes-life-possible/

Anita Zeidler Oxygen as a Site Specific Probe of the Structure of Water and Oxide Materials 30 SEPTEMBER 2011
https://sci-hub.ren/10.1103/physrevlett.107.145501

Michael Denton The Miracle of the Cell page 103, 2019
All the evidence suggests that the range of viscosities and diffusion rates of water must be very close to what it is, within a range of about 0.5 mP-s to 3 mP-s. at the fitness of the viscosity of water must fall within such a narrow range highlights just how fine-tuned is the natural order for life. The viscosity of common substances varies greatly. 21 Measured in millipascals-seconds, the the viscosity of air is 0.017, water 1.0, olive oil 84, glycerin 1420 and honey 10,000. 22 The total range of viscosities of substances on our planet is more than twenty-seven orders of magnitude, from the viscosity of air to the viscosity of crustal rocks. 23 Thus, the range of life-friendly viscosities is a tiny, vital band within the inconceivably vast range of viscosities in nature.
https://3lib.net/book/6147845/318a4f

Anders Nilsson The structural origin of anomalous properties of liquid water 08 December 2015
Water is the most important liquid for our existence and plays an essential role in physics, chemistry, biology and geoscience. What makes water unique is not only its importance but also the anomalous behaviour of many of its macroscopic properties.… If water would not behave in this unusual way it is most questionable if life could have developed on planet Earth. 
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9998

The expansion of water upon freezing is vital to life on Earth. It is what causes ice to be less dense as a solid than as a liquid. This means that ice floats in liquid water. Hydrogen bonding is once again the source of this rare property. Water freezes when its molecules are no longer moving around enough to break their hydrogen bonds. When water freezes it becomes locked into a crystalline lattice, and each water molecule bonds to four neighboring molecules. The hydrogen bonds allow for the molecules to be kept far enough apart so that ice is less dense than liquid water at 4 degrees Celsius.This may not seem like a very important property, but the fitness of the environment would drastically change if water was less dense than ice. All of bodies of water would eventually freeze over if ice did sink, essentially making life on Earth impossible.
https://apbiologychapter3.weebly.com/expansion-upon-freezing.html#:~:text=The%20expansion%20of%20water%20upon,ice%20floats%20in%20liquid%20water.&text=The%20hydrogen%20bonds%20allow%20for,water%20at%204%20degrees%20Celsius.

Jonathan Sarfati The wonders of water December 1997
Insight into ice
A vital and very unusual property of water is that it expands as it freezes, unlike most other substances. That is why icebergs float. In fact, water contracts normally as it is cooled, until it reaches 4°C (39.2°F), when it starts to expand again. This means that icy-cold water is less dense, so tends to move upwards. This is very important. Most liquids exposed to cold air would cool, and the cold liquid would sink, forcing more liquid to rise and be cooled by the air. Eventually all the liquid would lose heat to the air and freeze, from the bottom up, till completely frozen. But with water, the cold regions, being less dense, stay on top, allowing the warmer regions to stay below and avoid losing heat to the air. This means that the surface may be frozen, but fish can still live in the water below. But if water were like other substances, large bodies of water, such as North America’s Great Lakes, would be frozen solid, with dire effects on life on earth as a whole.
https://creation.com/the-wonders-of-water

Guillermo Gonzalez, Jay W. Richards: The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery 2004 page 33
Life also needs a solvent, which provides a medium for chemical reactions. The best possible solvent should dissolve many types of molecules, transporting them to reaction sites while preserving their integrity. It should be in the liquid state since the solid state doesn’t allow for mobility and the gaseous one doesn’t allow for sufficiently frequent reactions. Further, the solvent should be liquid over the same range of temperatures where the basic molecules of life remain largely intact and in the liquid or gaseous state. Water, the most abundant chemical compound in the universe, exquisitely meets these requirements. In fact, water far exceeds these basic requirements for life chemistry.  First, water is virtually unique in being denser as a liquid than as a solid (the element bismuth is another substance with this property). As a result, ice floats on water, insulating the water underneath from further loss of heat. This simple fact also prevents lakes and oceans from freezing from the bottom up. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to alter such a situation once attained. If ice were to sink to the bottom, it would remain there, unable to melt, separated from the Sun’s warmth. Surface ice also helps to regulate the climate by altering Earth’s ability to absorb or reflect sunlight. Second, water has very high latent heats when changing from a solid to a liquid to a gas. So more heat is needed to vaporize one gram of water than the same amount of any other known substance at ambient surface temperature (and higher than most others at any temperature). This means that it takes an unusually large amount of heat to convert liquid water to vapor. Similarly, vapor releases the same amount of heat when it condenses back to liquid water. As a result, water helps moderate Earth’s climate and helps larger organisms regulate their body temperatures. This characteristic also permits smallish bodies of water to exist on land; otherwise, ponds and lakes would evaporate more easily. In all three cases, if a gram of water evaporated with less heat, it would remove less heat from a surface. It’s probably no coincidence that water is found in all three states at Earth’s surface, and that the mean surface temperature is near the triple point of water—a unique combination of pressure and temperature where all three states can coexist. Not only does this provide a diverse set of surfaces, but it also best exploits water’s anomalous properties for regulating the temperature. Third, liquid water’s surface tension, which is higher than that of almost all other liquids, gives it better capillary action in soils, trees, and circulatory systems, a greater ability to form discrete structures with membranes, and the power to speed up chemical reactions at its surface. Finally, water is probably essential for starting and maintaining Earth’s plate tectonics, an important part of the climate regulation system. Frank H. Stillinger, an expert on water, observed, “It is striking that so many eccentricities should occur together in one substance.” While water has more properties that are valuable for life than nearly all other elements or compounds, each property also interacts with the others to yield a biologically useful end. Michael Denton describes one of these ends, the weathering of rock:

Take, for example, the weathering of rocks and its end result, the distribution of vital minerals upon which life depends via rivers to the oceans and ultimately throughout the hydrosphere. It is the high surface tension of water which draws it into the crevices of the rock; it is its highly anomalous expansion on freezing which cracks the rock, producing additional crevices for further weathering and increasing the surface area available for the solvation action of water in leaching out the elements. On top of all this, ice possesses the appropriate viscosity and strength to form hard, grinding rivers or glaciers which reduce the rocks broken and fractured by repeated cycles of freezing and thawing to tiny particles of glacial silt. The low viscosity of water confers on it the ability to flow rapidly in rivers and mountain streams and to carry at high speed those tiny particles of rock and glacial silt which contribute further to the weathering process and the breaking down of the mountains. The chemical reactivity of water and its great solvation power also contribute to the weathering process, dissolving out the minerals and elements from the rocks and eventually distributing them throughout the hydrosphere. This chemical and mechanical distribution of vital elements is an important part of chemical weathering, which is also an important part of Earth’s climate regulation system 
https://3lib.net/book/5102561/45e43d

The Chemical Revolution of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
We owe the modern names for the elemental building blocks of water – hydrogen and oxygen – to Antoine Lavoisier, one of the greatest of the pioneering eighteenth-century chemists. Great though he undoubtedly was, however, he made a fundamental error in naming these two elements that persists to this day. He named hydrogen, entirely appropriately, from the Greek ‘hydro’ (meaning water) and ‘genes’ (meaning creator). Oxygen, however, with its Greek root of ‘oxys’ (meaning acid), incorrectly suggests that oxygen is a component of all acids. It would have been more accurate to call hydrogen ‘oxygen’, in that the majority of common acid-base chemical reactions involve the transfer of protons, which are the nuclei of hydrogen. But Lavoisier’s names have stayed with us, so oxygen will forever be ‘the acid giver’, which it isn’t. By 1804, the final elemental description of water was given in a paper by the French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. Together, they demonstrated that water consisted of two volumes of hydrogen to one of oxygen, and thus gave the world the most widely known of all chemical formulae: H2O. If Lavoisier had got it right, we’d call water O2H rather than H2O. Such is history. 2

This shouldn’t be surprising when you consider that hydrogen and oxygen are two of the most abundant atoms in the Universe. Hydrogen forms 74 per cent of all the elemental mass. The second lightest element, helium, comprises 24 percent. These two elements dominate because they were formed in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the cosmos, at around 1 per cent by mass. Most of the rest is carbon; all the other elements are present in much smaller quantities. All of the oxygen and carbon atoms in the Universe today, including all of those in your body, were produced in the cores of stars by nuclear fusion and scattered out into space as the stars died. Apart from helium, which is satisfied with its full inner shell of two electrons, these atoms have an affinity for each other because of their desire to pair up their solitary electrons. As a result, they tend to form molecules. After the hydrogen molecule (H2) and carbon monoxide (CO), water is the third most common molecule in the Universe.
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/lavoisier.html

Water is fine-tuned for life ZelPikb

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032116000502
A.E. Kabeel, Z.M. Omara, F.A. Essa and A.S. Abdullah
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2016, vol. 59, issue C, pages 839-857

Water is fine-tuned for life 92113910


1. A privileged planet, Gonzalez , page 33
2. WONDERS OF LIFE, Brian Cox, page 37



Last edited by Otangelo on Tue May 31, 2022 7:02 am; edited 17 times in total

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com

2Water is fine-tuned for life Empty Re: Water is fine-tuned for life Wed Apr 02, 2014 1:27 pm

Otangelo


Admin

http://www.intelligentdesigntheory.info/unique_properties_of_water.htm

Twenty Three Unique Properties of Water

There are many unique properties of water, including the density of water, the chemical and the physical properties of water. These are properties that water should not have according to what we presently know about chemistry and physics. These characteristics strongly point to water as the result of Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design Theory should be taught in school.

The fact that God put certain processes in water to preserve our lakes for six thousand years cannot be taught in public schools. So after hundreds of billions of dollars wasted over the past thirty-six years, the scientific community has failed to restore all but a few lakes, while this author has restored over three thousand lakes, ponds, reservoirs and rivers by utilizing and accelerating these processes for water pollution control.

Water evaporates and goes up into the atmosphere to return to earth as rain thousands of miles away. As a result, water is distributed throughout the earth, producing life. A few of the billions of water molecules that Jesus drank at the well in Samaria two thousand years ago may be flowing in your bloodstream today.

At the time of creation, eight of what I call the H2 hydrogen atom in Section 9 combined to make the oxygen atom. When one more H2 hydrogen atom and the oxygen atom combined to make the water molecule, it was necessary for this molecule to possess at least twenty-one anomalies, properties that the laws of chemistry and physics says it should not have, in order to produce and perpetuate life. It follows that water is an extremely complex and important part of the web of life, and is probably the reason why Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as 'living water.' The more we learn about the role of water in photosynthesis, the more we realize that, as in Genesis 1, the Spirit of God still moves upon the face of the waters.

Anomalies of water:

Materials That Dissolve in Water

1)         Water has an unusual ability to dissolve other substances.

Dielectric Strength

2)         Water has an anomalously high dielectric constant (Table 3 below).
Colloidal

3)         Water has the ability to form colloidal sols.

Hydrogen

4)         The water molecule can form hydrogen bridges with other molecules.

These four anomalous properties give water the ability to transport minerals and waste products in water bodies, plants and animals.  It gives water the ability to hold oxygen for animal life, and carbon dioxide for plant life.

The unique dipole moment of water establishes the enormous extent of permanent-polarized bonding (ionic bonding), and the angle between chemical bonds.  These determine the water's ability to create the multitude of necessary molecules involved in every life process.  For example, intra-molecular hydrogen bonding between the hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms in N--H bonds enables molecules to fold into proteins having specific three-dimensional shapes essential for biological activity.  If the angle between hydrogen atoms in the water molecule were different, there would be no complex life-giving molecules, and no life on earth.

Water Flow

5) The Directional Flow of Water: Water flows. When it rains, water comes down to the earth to nourish all life. It then flows towards streams and rivers to the sea where it evaporates and goes back into the atmosphere to repeat the cycle. The unidirectional flow of water in the evaporation/condensation cycle enables water all over the earth to continuously cleanse itself.

Because of the evaporation/condensation cycle that perpetuates life on earth, water tends to generally flow in the same direction. Because of this cycle, not only does man look up to heaven from whence comes his help, but so does virtually every other living organism. Many creatures were given fascinating features, such as anchors, moved by delicate threads spun out from their toes; or suction cups or sticky substances because water flows. Some organisms strain water by means of nets which they have grown or spun. Other organisms have special features of their mouths so they can obtain food with little expenditure of energy.

Because water flows, it is oxygenated and purified, and picks up nutrients for plant and animal life. Because water flows, currents carry fresh water to the equator and to the poles. Lakes near the equator have a higher oxygen demand, and accordingly are freshened by heavier rainfalls, hurricanes, typhoons, winds and wave action than lakes with lower oxygen demand.

Contraction

6) Water anomalously contracts at 3.9oC.  This causes an inversion and restoration of water bodies.  It takes surface oxygen down to the bottom and raises bottom toxic gases to the surface to be neutralized and exhausted. Water is not supposed to be most dense as a liquid at 4o C, or about 40o F. All other liquids are most dense when they reach the freezing or solid state. Because of this anomaly, we have spring and fall turnover of lakes in the temperate climates.

Without spring and fall turnover, oxygenated surface water would not go to the bottom of lakes twice a year to enable life to exist at the lake bottom so that organic sediment could be biodegraded, bottom toxic gases brought up to the surface and removed, and fish to spawn and feed on bottom-feeding insects. Without this turnover, there would be no life in our lakes. In the sub-tropic and tropic zones on earth, spring and fall turnover is replaced by hurricanes, typhoons, monsoons and torrential rains (another coincidence or Intelligent Design?).

Expansion

7) Water is one of the only compounds that expands when it freezes.  If it contracted as other compounds do, ice would sink and destroy life. Without this anomaly, ice would sink to the bottom of lakes, and the lakes in the temperate and arctic climates would be frozen from the bottom up.

Ice and Steam

8)Water has an unusually high melting temperature of 0oC instead of -80oC.  Its boiling temperature is +100oC, instead of about -70oC.   Graphs of adjacent molecules in the Periodic Table of Elements show a straight line relationship of melting and boiling points far below 0oC.  As examples, the hydrides of chlorine and fluorine have this same dipole characteristic, but fall smoothly on the graphs. 15

According to water's neighboring molecules in the Periodic Table of Elements, ice should melt somewhere around -100o C instead of 0o C and should boil at about -80o C instead of 100o C. If it did as it should, all water would be in the gaseous state and there would be no life on earth.

The water molecule has a unique dipolar nature.  This enables hydrogen atoms that are bonded covalently to the oxygen atom of one molecule to bond to the oxygen atom of adjacent water molecules.  These interactions must be disrupted to boil water and therefore causes its boiling point to be much higher than it would be if there was no hydrogen bonding.  Without this anomaly, there would be no liquid water or life on earth at earth temperatures.

Dielectric Strength

9) Water has an extremely high dielectric strength compared to other liquids. This gives water the ability to dissolve compounds that other liquids do not have. This peculiar nature of water permits all living organisms to transport minerals and waste products to the necessary parts of their bodies. If water could not readily dissolve compounds, there would be no life on earth.

Surface Tension


10) Water has a surface tension 2 – 4 times the surface tension of most organic liquids. Surface tension is highest for pure water. This enables insects called neuston to walk and live on the surface of water in low-nutrient water bodies, where they would starve if immersed in the water. This anomaly permits life when the water nutrients are too low to support life. This helps add nutrients to the subsurface water so that it will support life and insects and so that fish can then live below the surface.

Surface tension of water decreases when there are nutrients in the water.  Water changes its surface tension to not support neuston when nutrients in the subsurface water can support life.  This prevents further nutrient influx to the water from neuston and helps protect subsurface species from destruction by excessive nutrients.

Specific Heat

11) Another self-protective anomaly of water is its very high specific heat compared to other materials. Specific heat is the amount of heat required to raise its temperature. This means that it is more difficult to raise the temperature of water compared to other substances. For example, the specific heat (the amount of heat in calories required to raise the temperature of 1 gm of material 1 0 C) for water is 1.0, while the specific heat for rocks is only about 0.2.  If water is frozen, its specific heat becomes half, so ice tends to warm easily. If it is liquid, it tends to be more difficult to raise the temperature. To boil, it requires a specific heat of 80. Because of this phenomenon, water tends to remain near the most desirable temperature for life on earth regardless of drastic changes in atmospheric temperatures. The anomalously high specific heat of water and the right quantity of water stabilizes earth's temperature.

Evaporation

12) Water has an extremely high heat of evaporation of water compared to other liquids. The extremely high heat of evaporation causes evaporative cooling to increase in plants, animals and water bodies as temperature increases. The high evaporation rate cools plants and animals, protecting living organisms from over-heating. Its high evaporation and condensation rates match required rainfall for most of the earth.

Density

13) Warm water is less dense than cold water. Because of this, warm water floats on the surface of lakes, rivers and the oceans insulating the main portion of the water bodies from being over-heated by the sun and from killing its living organisms. In combination with its anomalously poor conductivity, the floating warm water insulates water bodies and living organisms against excessive heating.

Conductivity

14) Water is a poor conductor of heat compared to most other materials. The anomalously poor conductivity of water protects living organisms from freezing or boiling. This also protects the main portion of the water bodies from being over-heated by the sun and from killing its living organisms.

Osmosis and Capillary Force


15) Water also has the ability to pass through cell membranes and climb great heights in plants and trees through osmosis and capillary force. Osmotic pressure and capillary action enable water to climb hundreds of feet to the tops of the highest trees.  The mystery of osmosis enables plants to feed, and plants and animals to carry on a multitude of life processes.  Osmosis enables marine creatures to absorb fresh water in an increasing salt-water environment.  Then an increase in cell pressure causes the osmosis to reverse itself and preserve the life of the creature.  The same mysterious action takes place on a micro-scale within the bodies of all creatures.

Viscosity, Relaxation Time and Self-diffusion:

16, 17 and 18) Three more anomalies of water are an excessive decrease in viscosity, decrease in molecular relaxation time, and increased rate of self diffusion with temperature rises.  These also protect plants, animals, and water bodies against excessive temperatures by improving circulation.

Carbon Dioxide

19) Another characteristic of water is its ability to enable carbon dioxide to be released from bicarbonates to support plant life.  Water enables carbon dioxide to attach to carbonates. It is then carried in the bloodstream to capillaries in the lungs and exhausted to keep animals alive.  It can be carried to plants in soil and water to perpetuate plant life.

All of these anomalies of water protect not only the water bodies on the earth, but also protect the lives of all living organisms as it flows through the organisms performing its necessary life-giving functions. This strange behavior of water was built into the protons and electrons that made water at the time of creation. These anomalies of water must have been planned by an extremely intelligent Creator, rather than by accident as perceived by the mainstream scientific community.

Water has many more characteristics that result in life.  The unique physical properties of water, the chemistry of water, the density of water are anomalies that strongly suggest that an Infinite Intelligence created water.  If only one of these functions were missing, there would be no life on earth.

Sound and Color

20. Water is one of God's greatest inventions. Without all the anomalies that He put in water, there would be no life. The sound and color of water is water giving praise to God, just like the sound of birds, and the color and majesty of flowers and the beauty of all creatures. All these things cause humans to subconsciously give praise and awe to God. People flock to beaches to listen to the roar or the lapping of the waves, which is God's way of oxygenating the oceans so all the sea creatures can live. People go to the bases of waterfalls to hear the water. They rest beside bubbling streams. They love the sound of raindrops. They even love the quietness of falling snow flakes. Think of the beautiful sunsets and sunrises on lakes, and the beautiful transparent, green and blue colors of water as light shines through it.

Sound travels through sea water about 4.5 times as fast as it travels through air (1531 m/s vs. 343 m/s), and is much louder than in air. At 1531 meters, that's 16.7 football fields in one second! This gives fishes an opportunity to escape danger, and enables many sea creatures such as dolphins and whales to communicate over very long distances, even thousands of kilometers. At 500 Hz, 20o C water, Sonar is used to find objects up to 10 km away. The attenuation of sound in water depends on many factors such as frequency, intensity of the sound, depth, temperature, water chemistry, background sounds, and scatter such as from a school of fish. Dolphin seek out retarded children and the 8 Hz sound that they make seems to promote healing. Therefore dolphins have been used to heal brain-damaged children:
http://lightworkers.org/video/146652/8-hz-healing-sound-dolphins
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/wisdom-of-the-wild/dolphin-healing/859/
http://www.operationsunshine.org/html/dolphin_healing.html


On dry land, the sound of ocean waves converts moist, sticky grayish-tan sea salt into dry white salt granules. This can be demonstrated away from the sea by placing commercial grade sea salt near a recording of ocean waves in a laboratory. Other sounds do not affect the salt. Does this mean that Intelligent Design has provided a means for humans and animals to utilize sea salt in their diets?

The sound of rain (2 -10 Hz) is used by sleep therapists to help people sleep. When you listen to the sound of water and see the beautiful colors of water, think of our Intelligent Designer who gave water all of its unique properties.

Light

21. Light sends electromagnetic waves through water, causing many crystalline patterns and photosynthesis. Passing water through a magnetic field reorients water hardness, eliminating scaling in pipes and cooking utensils. Thoughts change the crystalline patterns of water that sends electronic waves through human and animal bodies. Good thoughts produce good results like health and happiness and bad thoughts produce bad results, such as poor health.

Clouds

22. Water attracts itself. Clouds hold billions of watts of electric energy. Each molecule of water in a cloud attracts every other molecule in the cloud. Even if all the molecules have a negative charge on them and every molecule should repel every other molecule, or every molecule in the cloud has a positive charge on them and every molecule should repel every other molecule, the molecules collect themselves in a cloud contrary to the laws of electronics. As a result, a single lightning bolt discharges billion of watts of electricity to produce life on earth.

Intelligent Design Made Water like a Complex Computer

23. Water is much more complex than simply an H2O chemical molecule. God gave water the ability to transfer knowledge from one molecule to another. God gave water the ability to support all life. All plants, animals and humans are made up mostly of water, especially the brains. God made water like a complex computer that passes knowledge throughout your body. Water can be programmed like a computer. Water has a memory, as has been confirmed in homeopathy. Each water molecule in your body causes every other molecule in your body the carry the same information throughout your body and cause your body to act accordingly. You can program the water in your body for your good by telling yourself five times, three times a day what you want it to do. The following are modifications after the book by Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics, 1960.

Do you want to live in heaven with God forever after you die? Tell yourself five times, three times a day that you love Jesus and Jesus loves you. Tell yourself that Jesus paid for your sins with His blood, and that your sins are forgiven because you believe in Jesus. Tell yourself five times, three times a day that Jesus is the bread of life that came down from heaven and was broken for you to give you eternal life.

Do you have low self-esteem? Tell yourself five times, three times a day, "I like myself."

Do you want to be popular and successful in life? Tell yourself five times, three times a day, “I have unconditional warm regards for all people at all times, and thoroughly enjoy my friendship with them.” God made the water in your body to act according to what you program it to do.

Do you want to be healthy? Tell yourself five times, three times a day, “I am perfectly healthy in all ways, and thoroughly enjoy my good health through Jesus Christ who strengthens me.” God made water so that it can heal you.

Do you want to be successful in business, science, politics, music or whatever interests you have? Tell yourself three times, five times day, “I am completely successful in all that I undertake to do.”

Do you want to have a good memory? Tell yourself five times, three times a day, “I have excellent memory, and remember all things.”

God made water with unique properties to act like a computer so that you can program it for your good to act in your body for whatever you want to accomplish in life. This is the reason why there is life on earth. Water has the ability to produce life and to cause things to grow, and to cause human bodies to think and possess a living soul. Think of the lilies that are mostly water, and how they grow. They toil not, and yet they are arrayed much more beautifully than Solomon was in all his glory. Think of the fish and the cattle that are mostly water.

God, through Intelligent Design gave water much more than 23 unique properties, including the density of water and the chemical and the physical properties of water and the ability to act like a computer and the fourth dimension of water called the Exclusion Zone. See Related Links for more information.



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3Water is fine-tuned for life Empty Re: Water is fine-tuned for life Wed Apr 15, 2015 9:33 pm

Otangelo


Admin

How are the amazing, life permitting properties of water better explained, through intentional creation, or a random lucky accident ?

The coherence of an engineered world
D. Halsmer, J. Asper2, N. Roman2 & T. Todd2

The incredible properties of water and carbonic acid

Carbonic acid is to be thanked for the constancy of the alkalinity of both blood and the oceans. The common but vital reaction of carbonic acid is fairly simple (CO2 + H2O → H2CO3 → H+ + HCO3 -). This reaction can go either direction, forming a stable system. It acts as a great buffer against a fluctuating acidity by allowing excess acid to automatically be carried by the blood and then out of the lungs.  The chemist cannot rival its efficiency . Michael Denton describes it as a “solution of breathtaking elegance and parsimony” . The remarkable properties of water are numerous. Its very high specific heat maintains relatively stable temperatures both in oceans and organisms. As a liquid, its thermal conductivity is four times any other common liquid, which makes it possible for cells to efficiently distribute heat. On the other hand, ice has a low thermal conductivity, making it a good thermal shield in high latitudes A latent heat of fusion only surpassed by that of ammonia tends to keep water in liquid form and creates a natural thermostat at 0°C. Likewise, the highest latent heat of vaporization of any substance – more than five times the energy required to heat the same amount of water from 0°C to 100°C – allows water vapor to store large amounts of heat in the atmosphere. This very high latent heat of vaporization is also vital biologically because at body temperature or above, the only way for a person to dissipate heat is to sweat it off .

Water’s remarkable capabilities are  not only thermal.

A high vapor tension allows air to hold more moisture, which enables precipitation. Water’s great surface tension is necessary for good capillary effect for tall plants, and it
allows soil to hold more water. Water’s low viscosity makes it possible for blood to flow through small capillaries. A very well-documented anomaly is that water expands into the solid state, which keeps ice on the surface of the oceans instead of accumulating on the ocean floor. Possibly the most important trait of water is its unrivaled solvency abilities, which let it transport great amounts of minerals to immobile organisms and also hold all of the contents of blood. It is also only mildly reactive, which keeps it from harmfully reacting as it dissolves substances. Recent research has gone into understanding how water acts as an efficient lubricator in many biological systems from snails to human digestion. By itself, water is not very effective in this role, but it works well with certain additives, such as some glycoproteins . The sum of these traits makes water an ideal
medium for life. Literally every property of water is suited for supporting life. It is no wonder why liquid water is the first requirement in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. All of these traits are contained in a simple molecule of only three atoms.

One of the most difficult tasks for an engineer is to design for multiple criteria at
once.


As engineering professor Henry Petroski notes, “All design involves conflicting objectives and hence compromise, and the best designs will always be those that come up with the best compromise” . Satisfying all of these criteria in one simple design is an engineering marvel. Also, the design process goes very deep, since many characteristics would necessarily be changed if one were to alter fundamental physical properties such as the strong nuclear force or the size of the electron. Paul Davies comments on the subject:
It happens that water combines in one substance several key qualities (thermal, mechanical, chemical) that life exploits and indeed that are indispensable to life as we know it. What are we to make of this? Is it just a lucky fluke that the same stuff that has an anomalous expansion property when it freezes (enabling ice to float) also has superlative solvent properties or unusually high surface tension and/or efficient tectonic lubrication qualities, for example? The molecular shape of water explains most of its incredible thermal properties. The molecule is a triangle at a 104°30’ angle. The electron of each hydrogen atom is pulled towards the oxygen atom, exposing the positive proton nucleus of the hydrogen atoms a bit. The nucleus of the oxygen atom is overcompensated, leaving its exposed shoulder with a negative charge. The water molecules are therefore able to become weakly coupled and re-coupled (a hydrogen bond). The lower density of ice is because the crystal structure opens up and the coupling effect is reduced in ice. hydrogen bonds play other vital roles in organisms. For example, the strands of DNA are joined by hydrogen bonds, which are strong enough to hold together but weak enough to unzip when it is time for replication, a very beautiful design .

Physicists discover new quantum state of water

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/feb/04/physicists-discover-new-quantum-state-of-water

"I think that the quantum mechanics of protons in water has been playing a role in the development of cellular life all along but we never noticed before," he says.


Hydrogen, oxygen and carbon

Conveniently, the three elements in water and carbonic acid are the same ones which have the ability to create compounds with the incredible amount of variety and complexity necessary for life. Henderson comments on this: That the very elements which make up water and carbonic acid, and apparently they alone, should posses this wonderful property [complexity, variety] is, when taken together with the physical properties of water and carbonic acid and their place in cosmic evolution as constituents of the atmosphere, a fact which cannot lightly be set aside.  Hydrogen, oxygen and carbon rank one, three and four in prevalence in the universe (helium is the other). The explanation has to do with fusion
within stars. Early reactions start with hydrogen atoms and then produce deuterium (mass 2), tritium (mass 3), and alpha particles (mass 4), but no stable mass 5 exists. This limits the creation of heavy elements and was considered one of “God’s mistakes” until further investigation. In actuality, the lack of a stable mass 5 necessitates bigger jumps of four which lead to carbon (mass 12) and oxygen (mass 16). Otherwise, the reactions would have climbed right up the periodic table in mass steps of one (until iron, which is the cutoff above which fusion requires energy rather than creating it). The process would have left oxygen and carbon no more abundant than any other element. One might wonder why Beryllium (mass 8 ) is not more prevalent. This is because it too readily reacts with helium to create carbon. Stability is an important consideration here, and it is also a very important feature of most engineered systems. Energy resonance levels are the major determinant of stability. Resonance here refers to how beryllium and helium have a combined  energy almost exactly equal to an excited carbon atom. Cosmologist Fred Hoyle actually predicted carbon’s resonance level based solely on the anthropic assumption that it was necessary in large quantities for life. He was later proven correct. If the resonance level of carbon was 4% lower, essentially no carbon would form. If it was 0.5% higher, almost all carbon would react and become oxygen .

An interesting engineering analogy here would be LEGOs®. The reason why LEGOs are so useful and fun is because they stay together when assembled into an object. On the other hand, they also can be broken down and reassembled when desired. In order to make this possible, engineers in Denmark had to carefully design the perfect interference fit. If the fit is too tight, the pieces will never attach or never come apart, while if it is too loose, they will never stay together. LEGOs are actually manufactured to a tolerance of 2 μm. In thesame way, if the “fit” of carbon had been 4% “tighter,” it would have rarely ever formed, and if it had been 0.5% “looser,” it would have rarely stayed together. Though he remained agnostic, Hoyle’s prediction of carbon’s resonance level must have surprised even him, because it led to some interesting quotes: A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.  And also:
I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars.

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4Water is fine-tuned for life Empty Re: Water is fine-tuned for life Wed Jul 29, 2015 4:51 am

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http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150316/ncomms7490/full/ncomms7490.html



we generalize the notion that the translational diffusion of ​water molecules on a protein surface promotes the large-amplitude motions of proteins that are required for their biological activity.

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5Water is fine-tuned for life Empty Re: Water is fine-tuned for life Tue Jun 06, 2017 12:51 pm

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Water

Water is the matrix in which life exists. Most living organisms have a lot of water in them. Humans are over 70% water.
Water has the following unique properties, which make it wonderful for life:

  • high heat capacity


  • good insulation ability when solid, but not so good as a liquid


  • better conductor of heat than many other liquids (by a factor of 4)


  • ability to float when it freezes and to expand when cooled below 4° C and also upon freezing


  • almost universal solvent


  • low viscosity


  • density of 1 kg/m3


  • ability to absorb a lot of heat when it evaporates (latent heat of evaporation)


  • ability to absorb a lot of heat when solid water melts (latent heat of freezing)


  • transparency to visible light


  • high surface tension


  • proton conductance




Proton conductance is unique to water and important in the vital life processes photosynthesis and phosphorylation.
The surface tension of water allows capillary action to occur, enabling water to carry nutrients up the trunks of tall trees to their leaves. Also, surface tension enables water to go deep into cracks in rocks where another unique property of water, expansion upon freezing, weathers the rock and helps create soil.
The low viscosity of water makes blood circulation and molecular movement inside a cell much easier; yet, if it were much lower, the fragile cellular mechanisms would be weakened.
Another property of water, its awesome ability as a solvent, dissolves the minerals out of rocks, which then can be absorbed by plant roots. Most rocks of earth’s crust consist largely of silicates, which are perfect for creating soil; soil, of course, is useful for plant life (and ultimately for animals and humans, too).
Another property of water protects plants from freezing— the insulating properties of solid water: frost, ice, and 3 snow. But, the thermal conductivity of liquid water is not a problem. It is a benefit, serving a useful purpose for life! The relatively high thermal conductivity of water allows it to transfer heat from the core of the body to the surface, where evaporation cools the organism.
Water’s high latent heat of evaporation, the amount of heat released when water evaporates, is one reason perspiration cools so well.
Another property of water helps keep organisms cool: the high heat capacity of water, that is, the ability of water to absorb large amounts of heat without changing temperature. This helps stabilize body temperature, which is important for temperature-dependent biochemical reactions.
Another benefit of water’s high heat capacity is that it allows the oceans to moderate the weather and the climate by maintaining the temperature in a range of approximately 0–100° C, the range in which water is a liquid, making life possible on earth, unlike places like the moon.

1. http://www.tasc-creationscience.org/content/amazing-coincidences-life

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6Water is fine-tuned for life Empty Re: Water is fine-tuned for life Fri Jun 09, 2017 12:17 pm

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For the world to evolve life, it must, first and foremost, have expanses of liquid water.This was at first thought to require a large rocky planet with a hot core, thick atmosphere and surface oceans – a terrestrial planet.The factors that control whether ground water is liquid are the surface temperature and pressure of the planet.


1. Life in the Universe A Beginner’s Guide, page 60

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Structure and hydrogen bonding at the limits of liquid water stability

Liquid water exhibits unconventional behaviour across its wide range of stability – from its unusually high liquid-vapour critical point down to its melting point and below where it reaches a density maximum and exhibits negative thermal expansion allowing ice to float. Understanding the molecular underpinnings of these anomalies presents a challenge motivating the study of water for well over a century. Here we examine the molecular structure of liquid water across its range of stability, from mild supercooling to the negative pressure and high temperature regimes. We use a recently-developed, electronically-responsive model of water, constructed from gas-phase molecular properties and incorporating many-body, long-range interactions to all orders; as a result the model has been shown to have high transferability from ice to the supercritical regime. We report a link between the anomalous thermal expansion of water and the behaviour of its second coordination shell and an anomaly in hydrogen bonding, which persists throughout liquid water’s range of stability – from the high temperature limit of liquid water to its supercooled regime.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18975-7

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8Water is fine-tuned for life Empty Re: Water is fine-tuned for life Sun Dec 05, 2021 4:25 pm

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Michael Denton: THE WONDER OF WATER page 109

Photosynthesis
THE END of drawing water through the soil to the roots of plants and up the trunk of a tree is to bring the life-giving properties of water and the dissolved nutrients it carries to the leaves where one of the most important chemical reactions on Earth takes place—photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, light-absorbing molecules such as chlorophyll capture energy from sunlight. The chlorophyll is found in tiny organelles in leaf cells called chloroplasts. Light raises electrons in the chlorophyll to higher energy levels, and the chloroplast uses these high-energy electrons (e - ) to split water (H 2 O) into hydrogen (H + ) and oxygen. The oxygen (O 2 ) is released into the atmosphere, and the leaf cells absorb carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). The chloroplast then chemically combines hydrogen and carbon dioxide to make sugars and other carbon compounds. Photosynthesis is a very remarkable process, which may require exploiting the exotic process called quantum tunneling. Strictly speaking, this type of photosynthesis should be termed oxygenic photosynthesis. It is the type of photosynthesis carried out by green plants. Other types of photosynthesis utilize energy from light to synthesize organic compounds, but they do not involve the splitting of water and the release of oxygen. All advanced life forms depend on the oxygen liberated in oxygenic photosynthesis. And all advanced terrestrial organisms depend not just on the oxygen generated by photosynthesis, but also on the biofuels that land plants synthesize during the process. As everyone learns at school, the energy that drives the process is derived from visible light. There is nothing contingent about this, because only electromagnetic radiation in the visual region has the right energy level for activating organic molecules for chemical reactions. Radiation in the infrared and microwave regions is less energetic than light in the visible region and too weak to promote the necessary chemical reactions. On the other hand, radiation in the far-ultraviolet (UV), gamma, and X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum is too energetic, causing major disruptive changes—stripping electrons from atoms and molecules, ionizing them, breaking chemical bonds, and leading (for example) to mutations in DNA. (Fortunately, our atmosphere prevents all this energetic radiation except some UV from reaching the ground.) Although it is common knowledge that photosynthesis depends on the energy provided by visible light, it is not widely understood that visible light constitutes only an infinitesimally tiny fraction of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The wavelength of the longest type of electromagnetic radiation is unimaginably longer than the shortest by a factor of 10^25, or 10,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000. Some idea of the immensity this figure represents can be grasped by the fact that the number of seconds if one supposes that the formation of the earth occurred 4 billion years ago, is only about 10^17 .” So how much of that real estate is visible light? “If we were to build a pile of 10^25 playing cards, we would end up with a stack stretching halfway across the observable universe,” and the visual region would be “equivalent to one playing card” in that stack.


Although the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation in the cosmos varies over such a colossal range, seventy percent of the electromagnetic radiation emitted from the surface of the Sun is concentrated in the exceedingly narrow radiation band extending from the near ultraviolet (0.30 microns) through the visible light range into the near-infrared 1.50 microns). In other words, the Sun puts out most of its radiation in the range useful for photosynthesis. And this is true of many stars in the universe, which is why the night sky is ablaze with pinpoints of visible light. In effect, the cosmos is flooded with the “right light” fit for photosynthesis.

The Transparency of Water 
THESE CONSIDERATIONS of the immense range of EM radiations and the tiny region fit for photobiology brings us to perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of water’s unique fitness for life discussed so far: Water strongly absorbs electromagnetic radiation in every region of the spectrum except for the visible region, the only region in the entire spectrum useful for photobiology. Water, in one of the most staggeringly fortuitous coincidences in all nature, lets through only the right light in an infinitesimally tiny region of the EM spectrum—the one playing card in the stack of 10^25 stretching half way across the universe

Water is fine-tuned for life Sem_tz25
ABSORPTION OF EM RADIATION BY WATER. EM RADIATION < 10 NANOMETERS ( X RAYS), BETWEEN 10 – 400 NANOMETERS (UV) , MORE THAN 1MM (MICROWAVES).

Moreover, water is transparent to visible light in her three material manifestations—as liquid, gas, and ice. If water or water vapor in the atmosphere absorbed visible light—the right light for photosynthesis—then photosynthesis would not be possible, and there would be no oxygen or reduced carbon fuels to sustain the metabolic activities of advanced life forms such as ourselves. Water not only lets through the right light, but also (as is obvious from Figure above ) absorbs the kind of light that life needs water to absorb— radiation from the ionizing regions (far UV) and in the mid- and far-infrared and microwave regions (the cooking regions). And water vapor in the atmosphere also absorbs the wrong light in the mid- to far-infrared, microwave, and far UV regions. So while water and water vapor in the atmosphere are letting through the right light for photosynthesis, they are at the same time protecting life on Earth by absorbing the wrong and damaging electromagnetic radiation on either side of the visible region. This is a remarkable coincidence. The factors that determine that water should be transparent to electromagnetic radiation only in the tiny visible region of the spectrum are completely unrelated to those that determine that the energy levels of radiation within this tiny region are just right for photobiology. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it, “Considering the importance of visible sunlight for all aspects of terrestrial life, one cannot help being awed by the dramatically narrow window in the atmospheric absorption... and in the absorption spectrum of water.”

The growth of plants, the mechanism of photosynthesis, and the production of oxygen depend ultimately on an intriguing teleological series of steps, each enabled by a suite of unique properties of water. Each step in the series enables the next, a thing altogether more marvelous ( mira-bile ) than the mere ascent of water to the top of a redwood . If water did not have precisely the suite of properties it possesses, photosynthesis in land plants , and all terrestrial creatures dependent on them, would be impossible. 

Eric Metaxas: Is atheism dead? page 76

More Planetary Fine-Tuning: Water and Sunlight
Until writing this book I was blissfully ignorant of the superlative strangeness of water, so I imagine that the reader confronted with this startling idea may be put off, wondering whether he wishes to wade into what might be a murky chapter full of strained points on a subject too strange to be serious. After all, it’s water. How weird can it possibly be? Having discovered its strangeness only recently, as I say, I am sympathetic to this view. Who among us would ever imagine water could be anything but extremely normal in every way? In this it is very much like air, being everywhere so that we take it for granted. Like air too, in its purest form, it is perfectly clear and essentially odorless and tasteless. What is there to say about it? Is it not the unavoidable standard by which we measure every other liquid? And what does it do other than what we might expect it to do? What curious properties might it have of which we are unaware? We all know that sometimes it evaporates into clouds which eventually rain down on us, and sometimes it freezes into snow or ice, which can melt again and create streams and rivers which run to the sea. It can be very picturesque and comforting, but how in the world can anyone think of the substance as anything more than perfectly ordinary? Just as most of us have not goggled at the seemingly identical sizes of the sun and moon in the sky, nor have gushed with gratitude that Jupiter and Saturn pull giant flying objects away from our heads, we would hardly imagine there is any reason to think much about water. Its centrality to our lives is such a given that it is inevitably and not inappropriately mostly ignored. After all, 71 percent of Earth’s surface is covered with water, and 65 percent of our bodies are water. Our brains and hearts are 73 percent water. If “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and “familiarity breeds contempt,” it seems only natural that we should take it for granted. In the spoiled modernity of the West, few of us have ever been thirsty for long, nor gone without a shower or bath for very long. We are otherwise generally unappreciative of water and indifferent to it. And why shouldn’t we be?

The Wildness of Water, or H2Whoa! 
If you come across The Wonder of Water, by the British Australian biochemist Michael Denton, you will discover things you cannot have imagined, and will almost certainly be shocked into acknowledging how bizarre water is, and how taking it for granted is simply a mistake born of ignorance. And after understanding these things about it, you will likely recognize its existence and abundance on Earth as yet one more suitcase of evidence that the way things are is so dramatically improbable that we must at least wonder—if we are to be intellectually honest—how it can all be possible, and whether a God of infinite intelligence may have made things this way intentionally, perhaps even with an eye simply toward freaking us out when we had enough scientific knowledge to understand such things. If, on the other hand, we could forget we ever had encountered water and could come upon it as for the first time, we could not avoid being astonished by it. In one episode of The Simpsons, the family visits a water park where one of the scarier rides is called “H2Whoa!” I think that as we consider the startling idea that water is deeply strange on a host of levels, calling it “H2Whoa!” might be particularly apposite. For example, let’s start with asking why ice floats. 

Is Sunlight a Happy Coincidence? 
Andrew Parker is a visiting research fellow at Oxford’s Green Templeton College, where he heads up the research team on photonics structures and eyes. So he knows something about sunlight. In The Genesis Enigma, Parker cites a coincidence so bizarre that to him it hardly seems possible, and yet there is no question that it is not only possible but also has been a fact of life on our planet for nearly four billion years. The “coincidence” he has discovered—but cannot get over—has to do with “the sun’s output and the transparency of seawater.” We will describe this in more detail shortly, but to sum things up, Parker says the sun


has a peak in its energy output—in its electromagnetic spectrum— and seawater has a peak in its ability to transmit this electromagnetic spectrum. Strangely enough, and there is no scientific reason for this [Parker’s emphasis], the two peaks converge on the same narrow window of wavelengths—the visible light range. Considering the vast range of wavelengths in the sun’s output, it is indeed a mighty coincidence that this minuscule region is also that which travels best through seawater. To explain this more clearly, we have to go back to when life appeared on our planet. But science tells us that a serious problem reared its head immediately because the energy—or food—on our planet was limited. any life—into the distant future. Nonetheless something happened so that life did not run out of fuel and managed to continue until the present. But what? According to Parker, not very long after the first life appeared on Earth a second kind of life appeared called cyanobacteria, which is just the fancy name for “blue-green algae.” Cyanobacteria are exceedingly tiny single-celled creatures that possess a strange ability that the previous single-celled creatures did not possess. Cyanobacteria are able to extract energy from beyond our planet. So the finite amount of energy on this planet was suddenly no longer a problem, and life could continue here indefinitely. But how did these single-celled creatures perform this extraordinary trick? Through an ability called photosynthesis, they were able to magically tap into an extraterrestrial energy source. In other words, they were able to use the sunlight shining into the water to feed themselves. Cyanobacteria, also called blue-green algae, are microscopic organisms found naturally in all types of water. These single-celled organisms live in fresh, brackish (combined salt and fresh water), and marine water.

It is almost as if they had ninety-three million-mile-long straws and could drink energy directly from the sun. Of course, that wasn’t necessary, because these cyanobacteria could simply float along in the water and let the sunlight come to them. And that sunlight via photosynthesis was turned into food, and the problem was solved. But this is where we bump into the bizarre “coincidence” that knocked Parker for a loop and that he sees as so bizarre that it cannot be a coincidence. That’s because what these cyanobacteria were able to do, and still do, is only possible because of two simultaneous —and totally unrelated—outrageous “coincidences.” Each of these “coincidences” is too much to take in, but the two of them together are simply stupefying and force us to wonder if something else is at work. So let’s talk about each of the two “coincidences.” The first has to do with sunlight. Parker and Denton both explain that the sun emits an impossibly vast variety of electromagnetic energy. We are familiar with sunlight, but that is a very, very tiny part of the electromagnetic energy coming from the sun. That electromagnetic energy ranges from infrared radiation, microwave radiation, and radio waves, which have long wavelengths, to ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays, which have shorter wavelengths. The spectrum of electromagnetic energy emitted by the sun is actually so vast that to appreciate it, we may imagine a deck of playing cards that stretches beyond our atmosphere and all the way to the next galaxy, called the Andromeda Galaxy. That’s  essentially the range of the EM (electromagnetic) spectrum emitted by our sun. And then we learn that visible light—meaning sunlight—is a very, very, very tiny part of that spectrum. To imagine how tiny, we should think about two or three of the cards in the middle of that deck. Remember that the deck of cards representing all the energy coming from the sun is so tall it would stretch beyond the Milky Way to the next galaxy. And the sunlight part of that spectrum is the equivalent of a couple of cards. But this is where it gets dramatically stranger. Seventy percent of all the electromagnetic energy coming from the sun just happens to fall within that impossibly narrow range, represented by two cards in that nearly infinite deck. It is within that tiniest of ranges within that outrageously vast spectrum that the sun puts out 70 percent of all its energy. Of course this is amazing and strange, but far more amazing and strange is the fact that there is no understandable scientific reason for this to be so. It just so happens to be the case, and just so happens to be extremely lucky from the perspective of life on Earth. But as we have said, there is a second and similarly bizarre coincidence, totally unrelated to the first one. It has to do with seawater. Once again, for no scientific reason whatever, the seawater on the surface of our planet just happens to be able to transmit sunlight’s visible energy dramatically better than any other of the vast varieties of energy it emits. We don’t understand why this is. It’s just a strange but true property of seawater that scientists have observed. 

But to make this point more clearly, we have discovered that seawater absorbs almost all the energy that comes from the sun in every part of the vast spectrum of electromagnetic energy. So all the energy in the electromagnetic spectrum—energy with long wavelengths such as infrared radiation, microwave radiation, and radio waves, and energy with short wavelengths such as ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays—is absorbed by seawater. Except for sunlight. For some reason, seawater does not absorb sunlight, but instead strangely allows sunlight to pass through it. We cannot understand why this is so. But when we couple this entirely shocking coincidence with the previous entirely shocking coincidence about sunlight, we may be permitted to wonder what sort of madness we have encountered. What in the world is going on? Like Andrew Parker, Michael Denton repeats the facts simply, so we cannot miss it: 

Water strongly absorbs electromagnetic radiation in every region of the spectrum except for the visible region, the only region in the entire spectrum useful for photobiology. Water, in one of the most staggeringly fortuitous coincidences in all of nature, lets through only the right light in an infinitesimally tiny region of the [electromagnetic] spectrum….

So seawater absorbs almost all of the energy from the sun, except for that impossibly tiny part of the spectrum we call sunlight. That it lets pass through. And that sunlight hits the cyanobacteria in the water, and those cyanobacteria just happen to be able to convert that sunlight via photosynthesis into food. What both Denton and Parker marvel at more than they can properly express, however, is that these two bizarre “peaks” in sunlight and seawater have no scientific reason whatsoever to match up. They have nothing to do with each other. They are each absurdly small points in the spectrum—tinier than we can possibly imagine—and yet for no reason at all that makes the slightest sense, they happen to coincide perfectly. And only because they do was life possible in the past, and is life possible today. Only because of this most bizarre of all coincidences can cyanobacteria draw limitless energy from the impossibly distant sun. And because of the unfathomable convergence of two seeming impossibilities does life on Earth have a limitless source of energy. Of course this outrageously strange phenomenon in our seawater lies at the heart of almost everything else in the life cycle of the planet. The ability of cyanobacteria to take in sunlight through the water isn’t isolated. It is connected to all the life on our planet and formed the foundation of all life that has followed ever since. Parker explains that 

the cyanobacteria extracted not only water from their environment, but also carbon dioxide. In return [the cyanobacteria] gave the atmosphere oxygen. An oxygenated atmosphere is far more conducive to life, and the protective ozone layer that formed [in our atmosphere] guarded the Earth’s surface from the sun’s high-energy ultraviolet rays, which destroy biological material. Not to drop one’s jaw at such things seems at least inappropriate, if not downright rude. Can we not admit that on some occasions pure and unbridled astonishment is the only fitting response? This is what science now tells us is the state of these things. But what are we to make of it? How is it that these things happen to seem so perfectly designed and fine-tuned for life? In many respects, it all seems rather humbling. But what makes it all the more strange is that it is only because of recent advances in science that we can understand these things. As science progresses, more and more such elements of fine-tuning are being discovered, to where they have become such a veritable mountain we can hardly help seeing it, even if we might for one reason or another much prefer not to. Again, the irony of the situation can hardly be avoided: Scientific advances have made it increasingly impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. What to do? We know that sunlight and seawater did not calibrate themselves, nor that natural selection had anything to do with their having these strange properties, nor helped these bizarre properties in each of them to match up so perfectly, like two bullets striking each other with such precision that they both cease moving forward and together drop vertically. The precision of this is like the precision of the collision in which the moon was formed. If either that event or this coincidence had happened in any way ever so slightly differently, life on Earth would not exist. Can we stare at these things long enough to appreciate their miraculousness? Or shall we look away and pretend we’ve never seen any of it? At what point does a thinking person simply say “Uncle” and move on?

Wald, Life and Light, 92–108:

 “Almost all ordinary (“dark”) reactions involve energies of activation between 15 and 65 kilogram calories (kilocalories) per mole. This is equivalent energetically to radiation of wave lengths between 1,900 and 440 millimicrons. [Note: 1 millimicron = 1 nanometer (nm).] The energies required to break single covalent bonds—a process that, through forming free radicals, can be a potent means of chemical activation—almost all fall between 40 and 90 kilocalories per mole, corresponding to radiation of wavelengths 710 to 320 millimicrons. Finally, there is the excitation of valence electrons to higher orbital levels that activates the reactions classified under the heading of photochemistry; this ordinarily involves energies of about 20 to 100 kilocalories per mole, corresponding to the absorption of light of wavelengths 1,430 to 280 millimicrons. Thus, however one approaches the activation of molecules for chemical reactions, one enters into a range of wavelengths that coincides approximately with the photo biological domain… Radiations below 300 millimicrons… are incompatible with the orderly existence of such large, highly organized molecules as proteins and nucleic acids. Both types of molecule consist of long chains of units bound together by primary valences [ordinary chemical bonds]. Both types of molecule, however, are held in their delicate and specific configurations upon which their functions in the cell depend by the relatively weak forces of hydrogen-bonding and van der Waals attraction. These forces, though individually weak, are cumulative. They hold a molecule together in a specific arrangement, like zippers. Radiation of wavelengths shorter than 300 millimicrons unzips them, opening up long sections of attachment, and permitting the orderly arrangement to become random and chaotic. Hence such radiations denature proteins and depolymerize nucleic acids, with disastrous consequences for the cell. For this reason, about 300 millimicrons represents the lower limit of radiation capable of promoting photoreactions, yet compatible with life.”
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