Expert: Daniel Mazur - 1/26/2010

Question
QUESTION: Hi Daniel,

This is not a physics question as such. It's about darwin's theory and the evidence against it.
I could have very well asked this to a biologist but i would have got a pro darwinistic answer from him and i would get an opposite reply from a religious guy. So i'd really like you to share your views about it.

I just came across some evidences that disprove darwin's theory. Of course ive got no clue about anything in biology, so i dont know which side to stick to, i.e. pro darwinism or anti.
Both sides have pretty strong arguments...

Is darwinism really not that true as most of the lay people think???

Also coming a bit towards physics, i have read about how this uiverse is "finely tuned"....and how there are many scientists out there..who support the idea of creation...
All of this has kind of put me in an absurd state of mind...

Well, this is what I think about the whole creationism thing. I feel that our entire thinking, i.e. all human thought, all the words in human language etc. are compleely shaped up by the environment we live in. In this universe, something doesnt pop out of air, just like that. It needs to be "created". Now we simply observed this fact all throughout our formative years , when the brain was taking shape. And now we try to apply it to everything we can. the concept works for all the objects here on planet earth and all the stuff "within" the universe as far as we know...but that doesn't necessarily mean that it also works for the entire universe as a whole...does it..???

Suppose there really was a world of harry potter (if you've read the book) , where things just popped out of nowhere. and if we grew up in that place, the fact that stuff pops out of thin air would have been "obvious" for us!! we would have never asked a question as to where something came from ...in that place...that question would be senseless over there...and it wouldnt be too obvious...!!

Also as far as the "fine tuning" is concerned, let me draw an analogy to explain what i think. lets suppose we are blowing soap bubbles. now every time we blow, it isnt necessary that the entire soap film goes into making the bubbles or all the bubles that are formed survive for some amount of time. it so happens that ocassionally, the speed of the air coming out of our mouths is such that it leads to a bubble forming with the right pressure and thickness of the soap film and which survives succesfully for a great amount of time before bursting away....it survives that way, coz sometimes we get that "finely tuned" mixture of pressure, thickness etc...!!! couldnt it work the same way for our universe..??? couldnt there be mechanism at work "beyond this universe" (whatever that means), that lead to the formation of universes like ours...?? also as i said....that all of human thought and logic and obviousness has been derived from certain ways of functioning of this universe only, couldnt it be that when we "logically explain" something, we are kind of moving in a circle..??? i.e. arent we then trying to explain the universe in terms of certain things that also have been derived from this universe itself...??? i.e. trying to explain the universe in terms of the universe itself...???!!!

and also, is there any possible way to test string theory?? any possible way that you could thik about as an experimentalist...??? also will the lhc experiment in any way test anythig related to the string theory..??? Also i heard about this project of NASA and ESA ...called LISA....its a system of three laser satellites...i assume that you do know about it... i read somewhere that it is going to show us the moment of big bang and perhaps even further...!!! what does that mean???


Thanks,
shikhin


ANSWER: Hi Shikhin,

that's a lot of questions bundled up together. And as you rightly observed, they are not physics questions as such. I will answer to my best conscience, we may be in a disagreement in something and there will be no way to settle it. Precisely because it is not physics.

Before we start judging darwinism and creationism, we must define the scope of science. You and I did so in past, I will only re-capitulate that science is based on observation, logical methods (deduction and induction) and reproducibility of results. Not everything included in a scientific theory has to be observable, but if a theory *claims* to be applicable to the reality of Nature, then it must offer observables on which the theory could be tested.

This puts a strong limit to the scope of science with respect of Universe: Contemporary science cannot directly nor consistently reach beyond space-time, cannot say what is beyond the end of the Universe, cannot say what was in place of Universe before its beginning. All we can do is keep coming up with ideas, but until we can *observe* something beyond space-time, these ideas will not belong to natural sciences. Yes, I am saying that discussion of whether Universe was created by an intelligent designer, or it was a one-off explosion of nothingness or its evolution is a part of a never-begun-never-ending oscillation in a multidimensional space, this discussion is NOT SCIENCE. You asked about this and here is my answer: choose, what you want to believe about the beginning of the Universe and what lies beyond it. There can be no scientific answer to this. We have no observables that could not be thoroughly explained using reality INSIDE the Universe, and that is as good as NOT having ANY observable for the OUTSIDE of the Universe at all.

I discussed matters *outside* our Universe in the paragraph above, from this paragraph onward I will only speak about the *inside* the Universe. Regarding any evidence against darwinism, I do not know about any. You should point me to some resources and I can have a look, how they'll appeal to me. In the entire darwinism vs creationism debate we need to remember a few key points and one is the principle of "minimal number of free parameters". When building a theory or even just a "working hypothesis" for something, we consider this principle: if the same set of observables can be completely explained by two theories, which differ in the number of parameters (unknowns) necessary, then the one with LESS unknowns is considered the correct one.

There comes the current problem with a Creator operating inside the Universe: nothing in the Universe known so far shows that a Creator is (or was) necessary for anything inside it to happen. If you point at something and say "this could not have happened by evolution", I can immediately say that you cannot be scientifically sure of it. Scientifically, because everything I know of can be explained without a Creator just as well as with it (or him or her...). The principle of "minimum of free parameters" always excludes the "intelligent designer" hypothesis on the basis of containing one more parameter than necessary. I would really like to see something that you refer to as strong evidence against darwinism. In my scientific experience, however, everything that exists in the Universe can be explained, given enough time and space.

Creationists frequently and incorrectly use an argument like: "this could not have developed by *chance* and this is why darwinism must be wrong". Compare this sentence with the (correct) sentence in the previous paragraph and you'll see the key misconception: Darwinism (evolution) is in reality the exact OPPOSITE of chance and accidents!!! Let me elaborate.

What is evolution: Let's say we have an aqueous solution of chemicals, treat it continuously through some cycle of temperatures, illumination (every part of spectrum controlled separately), particle radiation (likewise), magnetic field, electric field, the walls of the container will have patches of surface with different roughness.... There are MANY parameters, and no currently feasible computer model can include more than a few of them. We leave the solution alone (we won't interact with it, we will only observe). We will observe something different in 1 hour after start, different after 1 day, 1year, 1000 years, 10^6 years, 10^9 years,... A system that was simple enough to begin with (pure water for example) will reach some state of equilibrium reasonably fast and stops evolving. Most systems - and ALL that may be relevant in considering the history of the Earth - will keep changing "forever" into something new that was not there before. The word "forever" does NOT mean forever, it just means "for longer time than the current estimates of the age of the Universe".

These changes don't happen by chance. Yes, it is chance, whether one particular molecule meets another particular molecule, but this does NOT make the evolution, this does NOT make the history. Evolution is that MOST molecules of one type meet SOME molecules of the other type. Let me draw an analogy with lotteries. The winner is the one, whose number got drawn. This person suddenly can buy a castle, a yacht, an island... but what effect does this have on society? Zero. History is made by the losing majority. Imagine that there would be a lottery, where EVERYONE wins that kind of money except those few, whose numbers are drawn. If everyone had suddenly a huge amount of resources, the effect on history would be enormous. To sum up, evolution is not about history following a chain of accidents. Evolution is following the direction of the probability of huge statistical ensembles, which MOST of the time evolve in the direction of the HIGHEST probability. This is not so evident in Mankind, which consists of some 10^10 individuals. If you go back to the simple stuff and the argument whether cells could or could not have evolved from molecules free-floating in a sea shelf, there we are talking about 10^35 entities in a mere cubic kilometer of water! The law of averages and "highest probability" is dominant there. Even when partitioned into necessary "microclimates" that would correspond to subsystems experiencing pretty much the same values of all physical observables, the micro-ensambles would contain more than 10^20 entities. And as there will be QUADRILLIONS of these sets of 10^20 molecules, it can easily be the MAXIMUM probability path that at least in a few of these sets the molecules will start to bundle up to form a much more stable (or enduring in all senses of these words) form of existence. Ergo, something like cells.

For comparison: Our computers now are at best computing systems of some 10^6 idealized (!) entities to see bits of their evolution and this takes those computers days or months. There is just NO WAY anybody will be able to prove or disprove evolution in a foreseeable future. And "disproving" is just what this "creation vs. evolution" debate boils down to, scientifically.

What I have written here (oh my, I've been here for this long?) is that evolution has NOTHING to do with accidents the way presented by creationists. Indeed, some evolutionists even speak about "Intelligent design by means of evolution"! This embraces the idea that most of evolution is, what is BOUND to happen. It is the highest probability that rules, not sparse accidents. And the Creator is nowhere to be seen... or rather is all around us! The Creator in the Earth-bound sense is the set of initial conditions: the abundance of elements on Earth, Earth's orbital position around a reasonable Sun, nowhere near a black hole, all the fluctuations of physical observables that were built into the Earth as our cradle... by some chance. But again Earth was (on the scale of the whole Universe) only one of 10^?? (no idea how many) planets and in that enormous number there was BOUND to be one that had the conditions just right for organic life as we know it. If we simply accept that Earth must have been the case of a very high probability for this (this cannot be disproved), then we don't need any Creator acting inside our Universe. Obviously, a Creator cannot be disproved either, but it (Creator itself) is always the redundant parameter, for which scientists dismiss the theory for the time being.

Now much more briefly to your individual questions:
[Q]i have read about how this uiverse is "finely tuned"[/Q]
Depends the exact context of "finely tuned". Obviously, if the Universe did not have parameters that in principle allow our existence, then the Universe would be here just the same, only we wouldn't be here to discuss it! Maybe "we" would be clouds of self-sustaining plasma and would be amazed at how "finely tuned" our Universe is for our (plazmatic) existence! These are just words, there is nothing special in the Universe being "fine-tuned" for us or our kind of existence.

[Q]....and how there are many scientists out there..who support the idea of creation...[/Q]
This is an outright lie. Propaganda. Practically unverifiable claim to justify the b...s..t preached by those using such a sentence. In medieval times the line of reasoning of many authorities was that "many philosophers support the idea of flat Earth". This claim means nothing, there are no facts in such a statement, it is just play for power. The (scientific) truth is that MAJORITY of scientists agree that the idea of Creator is redundant. True scientists admit that future experiments may prove them wrong, but by the current state of human knowledge a Creator is NOT needed to explain anything in the Universe.

[Q]In this universe, something doesnt pop out of air, just like that. It needs to be "created".[/Q]
I don't understand this paragraph at all. Either it's too deep for me to get it or... I think you are TRYING to ask, whether we can extrapolate our experience from INSIDE of the Universe (that everything comes from something else, whether we call it evolution, creation,...) to an assertion that the Universe also must have been made of something that came before it and that there had to be some "force" behind the Universe's creation. Is it so? My answer is that this is not science, this is philosophy, so you can equally well elaborate any idea that occurs to you.

[Q]Suppose there really was a world of harry potter ...[/Q]
I've read (actually mostly listened in audio) H.P. books countless times. So I can say that YES things would seem obvious to us there that seem like miracles (broken conservation laws, etc.) now. This is nicely narrated by Rowling in the character of Arthur Weasley, who in the other world does not understand the physical world of the Muggles. Example: His life's ambition is to find out, how airplanes stay up!
As this is such a relaxation for me, let me point out that even Rowling's "magical universe" has its laws and apprentices need to learn them in order to handle the magical essence in the universe properly. It is exciting to think "what if things could just pop up into existence and non-existence", but if we go too far and imagine a universe, where "anything can happen regardless anything", we find it rather dull.

[Q].it survives that way, coz sometimes we get that "finely tuned" mixture of pressure, thickness etc...!!! couldnt it work the same way for our universe..???[/Q]
Again, you're looking at the Universe from the outside. Yes, our Universe could be one out of very many, each with somewhat different values of universal constants. But again we have no observables to test this idea against. Again, this is philosophy, not natural science. What I've written about fine tuning above can easily be a part of your suggestion, but my statements will also work if our Universe is (no way to test it so far) the only one across all imaginable dimensions.

[Q]is there any possible way to test string theory??[/Q]
The last I've heard is that the lack of testable predictions is the biggest weakness of the string theory. If I had an idea how to do it, you'd see me on TV chatting to the Swedish king at a Nobel Prize ceremony. The LHC will not test the string theory, because the theory is still so general that it can work with or without the Higgs boson.
Corollary: As a materials physicist I might point out at this point that "Higgs" is just a fancy name given to something that theoretically was completely worked out fifty years ago when trying to explain properties of liquid helium. Higgs just took that theory and saw the correspondences, so he revamped the idea using the jargon of particle and high-energy physics and now he has a (still hypothetical) particle named after him.

[Q]LISA....i read somewhere that it is going to show us the moment of big bang and perhaps even further...!!! what does that mean???[/Q]
The official NASA page (lisa.nasa.gov) says that LISA would observe ... sources of gravitational waves of low frequencies... and possibly the whispers of waves generated shortly after the Big Bang. I don't know, what you take as source of your information, but compared to the official statement your source hugely exaggerates. There is a world of difference between "shortly after the Big Bang" and "the moment of big bang", where the latter is either too vague or too ambitious by comparison. The "perhaps even further" seems a complete work of fiction, which still may have been generated by a renowned scientist, but only in a struggle to secure or justify funding for his (her) research. We scientists sometimes need to "commercialize" or "market" our research, so that it sounds more appealing for funding agencies (governments usually) and so they decide to (continue to) feed us. This statement "perhaps even further" is laughable in a purely scientific context.

So here you have my views and some answers.

Cheers!
Daniel



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: HI Daniel,

Thnaks so much for the reply.
You asked for some links that provide arguments and evidences against darwinism. Though there are many of them, I'll post one link that more or less summarizes the arguments of the other side.

http://www.changinglivesonline.org/evolution.html

One argument that interests me the most is the non-availibility of fossils or other evidences for existence of even a single transitional species or organism.

Another website

http://www.allaboutcreation.org/evidence-against-evolution-faq.htm

quotes

"Now, after 150 years of searching for fossils since Darwin, zero transitional fossils have been found of the millions of fossils collected"

Is it really so?? Also i read at some other site that advances in the field of molecular biology absolutely go against darwinism.

Also coming to my paragraph that you say you didnt understand,
I was just trying to put my views forward, which I'll again do.
What I meant was that basically when we try to "reason" stuff out we use the concept of "reasoning" to do that, which in turn has been derived by us from the workings of this universe itself. What that means is that this universe allows the concept of "reason", that over time we discovered that stuff and events in this universe have a cause, an event in the past that leads to a particular event that we observe. Or in other terms , everything has a reason for it.

so this fundamental fact of the universe, that all events have a pre-event that lead to those events, or in usual terminology, "reason", this fundamental property of the universe has been picked up by our senses, and we use fundamental facts like this of the universe itself to explain it.
Similarily , even a word like 'logic' is a fundamental fact of the universe that we use just the same way we use mathematics which too is a fundamental property of the universe.

So when i said that perhaps we are moving in a cycle, i basically meant we are just using the fundamenal facts of the universe to explain itself. or in other words, we are just using this universe to explain the universe itself.
It wasn't a question as such. And i do not know what implications this "cyclic process" might have.....but its just a thought that i wanted to share and have your views on....

Anyway, about LISA, here's the sourse of my info....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkW7lPMhqSI&feature=related

i didnt really understand as to what he was trying to say....he says
"we wanna photograph the universe coming out of the womb...and maybe there is an umblical cord.."

he also says :
"we want a photograph of the 'instant of creation'" i.e. at the instant of big bang itself....

So wether he talks about the "perhaps even further part" or not in his firt statement that i quoted about the umblical cord....he surely talks about the "instant of big bang itself..." and that's why i asked you this question....
because it really sounded like an amazing thing...like a really big thing...but i hadnt heard anything about it as compared to what i heard about the lhc in press or cyberspace...

I dont know wether you know about this guy or not, but he's a pretty popular popularizer of science....
his website : mkaku.org

so is he really just over exaggerating????


Thanks,
Shikhin

ANSWER: Hi Shikhin,

as we are not discussing physics, I will try to be brief this time without omitting anything important:
1) Living things never come from non-living things
This is only true, if we add "... as far as we have directly observed in the material world." Our direct observation is limited by where we are looking and for how long. Really slow processes are beyond the scope of our observational capacity and yet if we are to disprove evolutionary theory, we must make the observation in all the right places continuously for at least a billion years. Like I said before, it is about disproving and this point doesn't do it. In fact there are entities like "information" that have their own life and one can observe some points of evolution there at a much shorter scale than in the material world.
2) The missing links are still missing
Fossils are evidence that certain mutation or species existed. Absence of fossils is not a proof of anything, except that Darwin was wrong in his expectation that the necessary fossils will be gradually collected. There are several reasons, why they are missing, and I am not disturbed by it. Notice that I didn't refer to fossils at all in my previous lengthy answer. Most scientists make a prediction that turns out wrong, even if the essence of their theory was correct. See the next point.
3) Complex systems never evolve 'bit by bit'
Apart from missing definitions (we can define them conveniently to distinguish how much is "a bit" and how much is already "more than one bit"), this is a true statement, yet it does not disprove anything except that Darwin didn't know certain facts of life. In his time people didn't even know, if matter was made of particles or continuum!!! Darwin didn't know anything about genetics, but we do now. We observe that with a change in just one crucial gene in our DNA, a VERY dysfunctional/disfigured individual can develop. In much rarer occurrence the change is to a competitive advantage of the individual and in the right environment THIS can in time become the new dominant genome. Nature works with huge numbers, so if there is one in a billion chance of a positive mutation, the billion mutations dying as a fetus means nothing, because there is still many (in absolute numbers) individuals that receive the positive, advantageous mutation. Ergo, there is NO NEED for bit-by-bit chances to sustain evolution and an absence of the bit-by-bit (let's take it for a scientific fact that bit-by-bit dos not happen) does not have power to disprove evolution, or even make it significantly less likely. Genetic material decays after death, and skeleton decays as well. We cannot collect any genetic material from dead species and mutations - if we could, we would probably come very close to draw those evolutionary trees Darwin was trying to make based on skeletons (fossils). A lot can be said about this, but the bottom line is: this point doesn't matter to evolution, it merely scratches out one theoretically possible pathway.
4) Second Law of Thermodynamics says 'no'
You, Shikhin, should know by now that this is bogus, a utilitarian misinterpretation of the 2nd law of TD. Any high-school graduate majoring in physics can find the flaws in this, so I will leave it to you. Can you spot them?
5) Mutation never produces evolution
This is a lie. Mutation IS producing a new genetic material, because even if between two strands of DNA a difference in one gene, in one pair of purine-pyrimidine exists, they are a different genetic material. And it has been recently shown that every one of us carries about a hundred mutations in our DNA compared to the simple combination of the parents' DNAs! Once more, Nature works with looong times and huge numbers, so large that they are beyond the capacity of people - including those defending statements such as those in this paragraph. Notice they use the 2nd law of TD argument here again...
6) Probability says 'no' to evolution
I have not done the maths for this, so I cannot tell, how exactly they got the number 10^260. I strongly suspect that they used a completely irrelevant model, probably based on RANDOM fluctuations at constant physical observables and zero energy flux. In other words they were most likely counting only the least possible pathway of a protein formation - the possibility that 200 amino acids would flow into one place of a solution and all at once arranged themselves into a protein chain. They themselves say it is the probability of "spontaneous formation", so it must be something like that. Nature never works like that, it works by amino acids joining up in pairs and triplets first, the stable products then join into more triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets and sextuplets (while new pairs alike the first generation keep forming) then again the most stable survive long enough to form longer chains. These chains would then have properties very different from the original amino acids (this is the first principle of chemistry) and they may, by their electrical polarization, photoexcitation etc. become even FASTER to form long chains than the individual acids. This is not in anyone's power to calculate. I must restate my previous answer: Our computers cannot simulate anything near the real world by a long shot. And from personal experience I add that a simple enough model that is calculable so that in a decent time it can result in a single number like 10^260 is just bound to be wrong. Anybody claiming they can calculate the odds of a system of say 10^40 atoms evolving for 10^17 seconds (roughly the age of the Earth) is an indecent bighead and ought to go back to school. Evolution is not a game of chance like you betting in a casino. Evolution is a game of chance FORM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE CASINO OWNER!!! And hope you know that from that point of view there is NO game of chance. Casino always wins...

To sum up: None of these points disproves evolution theory, as it exists today, in the slightest. The most they do is showing some Darwin's (and other people's) wrong assertions, but the principle of evolution as a plausible mechanism for the birth of life itself is sound and untouched.

Regarding the rest:
* going in circles when arguing about the nature of Universe - We can, by a thought experiment, create several universes very different from our own - mathematicians do it every day! Including those, where our logic does not operate - we simply invent a different set of logical operations. Yes, you can say that they will always be products of our minds, of this Universe. I don't think there is a definite answer, because in order to get it, we would have to see our Universe from the outside.
* LISA - Michio Kaku on a public program = he is bound to be scientifically imprecise for the sake of our comprehension. The "instant of creation" is as good ad the "instant of Now". What is Now to you? How is Now long? LISA data will be used to test all theories relevant to the theory of gravity, including string theory. As ST is developed with extra dimensions beyond those observable to us, then ST agreement with the data will be an encouragement that those extra dimensions may actually exist. I doubt it will be anything near a proof, but it will be certainly interpreted by some people as such - those, who sacrifice scientific precision to big words and the feeling of self-importance. M.Kaku is constantly in this category, it belongs to the "working of the crowd", no matter if a scientist or a military leader or a politician does it.
One note about the LHC experiment, which you also asked about: there may be something relevant to string theory there after all. If a certain thing is observed it may indicate that gravitons indeed "live" in some spare dimension outside our space-time. This would be consistent with ST. It would, however, be also consistent with other multi-D-universe theories as well.
* mkaku.org - He is a visionary and lives by creating science a show. We need people like that but at the same time, statements of these people must be filtered for exaggeration. Some things envisioned will be possible at some point, some will not. His "umbical cord" of the Universe simply means agreement of measurements with the string theory, which will allow him to boast that "string theory is the right one" even if the data only shows that "ST is not completely wrong". Beware!

Cheers,
Daniel

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi daniel,

Thanks so much for elaborating each of those points.
As for the SDL of thermo. i was not too much concerned about it as i was for many other points.
Yeah, i think I can spot the fallacy. It perhaps lies in there understanding of the concept of entropy. though even i dont understand it that very well....but yes...i dont think that just an "ordered" arrangement is a measure of entropy.
How i interprett it is that it basically is a measure of the various ways in which a system exists. And as you also said, (as in the case of a casino) , the arrangements which have more probablity to exist, are favourable for the system and the system ultimately ends up in that state.

we can also say that while evolving, from simple stuff, we made ourselves more ordered but the overall entropy of the universe increased at the expense of our ordering.

But we arent completely ordered too after all. It just looks as if we are. Infact we are more complex than most other things in the universe...courtesy...the biological complexity...that we essentially are.

I dont know which particular argument above to stick to....but i think it's a combination of all of them.....
Am i right???

as for the circular path we might be on....i do understand that there is no definitive answer to that. It was just an interesting thought that i shared. Lets leave it at that since it cannot go anywhere further than our thoughts.

michio kaku:
He sounds amazing when he talks about all those great ideas....i took most of what he says quite literally....primarily because he is a scientist...and they dont exaggerate....but now i realize that sometimes, they do a bit of that...mainly perhaps to pull more people towards science...
Also he has these ideas on parallel universes n all....are they just his fantasies...and thought experiments ...or there are more scientists into that stuff???
and if they are...do you see such ideas hitting mainstream science in the forseeable future???

Thanks a ton,
Shikhin  

Answer
Hi Shikhin,

my apologies for responding this late.

You have put your finger very well on the problem with the Second Law of Thermodynamics! Indeed, The Law (acronym "2.LTD") says that the entropy of an ISOLATED system AS A WHOLE cannot decrease. When we dissect the Universe in parts to simplify our calculations (saying that for example our Solar planetary system is pretty much isolated from the rest), we are making an assumption. The biggest problem with it is that we have tangible evidence that this assumption does not really hold - the perpetual interaction of cosmic rays with Earth's atmosphere is an important aspect of the planet's reality. Example: If we speak of Evolution, we must realize that a single particle of cosmic rays has the potential of killing or cause defects (mutations) in hundreds of molecules at a time. You can try to look up the Pierre Auger Observatory measurements to see, what kind of secondary particle shower a single cosmic particle causes. This means that when discussing Evolution's pros and cons, we cannot simplify the problem by considering the Earth's neighborhood as an isolated system, and therefore the implications of the 2.LTD will NOT hold for this small section of Universe alone.

The other aspect of 2.LTD, or rather of the entropy of the Universe, is that the numbers involved in a truly complete calculation would be behemoth! This is a repetition of what I already wrote - people have no idea, how tiny is the power of our most advanced computational technology when measured against problems like calculating the absolute statistical entropy of the Universe. Only is we had this done, we could go calculate, how big a fluctuation from the average entropy density our carbon-based life form makes and how it compares with other fluctuations we observe in the near Universe. It may (this is only a speculation, nobody could have really calculated this) happen that the mere formation of a planet or a planetary system orbiting a star is in itself far greater entropy fluctuation than the existence of life in some of those systems. In fact people often don't even admit that a complete calculation is necessary, most think that the correct answer can be somehow guessed out of thin air, because We Are the Mankind. In conclusion I dare say that Creationists' subconscious mind setup is: "If something is beyond our brain capacity to comprehend and beyond our manly powers to create and destroy at will, then it must have been designed, created by a being superior to us. The idea that things incomprehensible or unwieldy to us, the Mankind, could have risen by themselves out of nothing, is too scary and/or humiliating to accept."

For Michiko Kaku I can only add that his exaggerations and futuristic visions are still important to us. People need motivation in order to succeed in something. It can be that a lowly motivation results in a great achievement - see for example the Cold War and the boom of space exploration, engineering and space flight that peaked in just two decades with the Man on the Moon. On the other hand Mankind has its dream of controlled fusion as a source of clean energy, and it is SUCH a powerful dream that we've been working on it for 60 years, every decade saying "We will have it in another ten years for sure." I think it is the same with the idea of parallel universes. If we could somehow communicate with another universe (or other universes), it could be possible to use it to circumvent some laws of our Universe, which we don't like. I am talking namely about the speed of light limit and the Heisenberg uncertainty relations.

Nevertheless, this direction of science cannot become mainstream until we have some experimental evidence of such inter-universal communication. Physics is about Laws of Nature and our development cannot rely on anything else but reproducible experimental evidence.

Cheers!
Daniel