Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

biological evolution

Science Corner: Weltraumgötterdämmerung

All of those are Rocket; this is not an illustration of descent with modification. (Image © Marvel)

This summer’s installment of “If you don’t teach your kids theology, Marvel Studios will” comes in the form of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Sure, it’s not a Scorsesian theological treatise. At times it felt very much like a roller coaster ride–an impression helped along by the fact that just a month ago I was riding an actual Guardians of the Galaxy coaster with filmed story elements featuring the same cast. But every now and again, this technicolor space opera takes a breath between virtuosic cadenzas of violence and Zune tunes for a melodramatic musing. The question weighty enough to pull away from the black hole of bombast: What does a creator owe its creation?
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Science Corner: Dawn – A Proton’s Tale of All that Came to Be

I think some neutrinos did the cover art. (Cover image © InterVarsity Press)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a biophysicist, a writer, a theologian walk into a bar. OK, so that’s not actually how Dawn was written, but the diverse backgrounds of the three co-writers–Cees Dekker, Corien Oranje, and Gijsbert van den Brink respectively–do sound more like résumés for the cast of a niche joke than for collaborators on a novel. And not just any novel, but one that spans 14 billion years–from the instants after the Big Bang until the moment the manuscript was sent to the printers (or so it seems, given the current events mentioned in Chapter 23, “Space”). As the subtitle “A Proton’s Tale of All that Came to Be” suggests, the protagonist of this novel is also unique; I’ve never read a book from the point of view of a subatomic particle before. (Talk about your unreliable narrators; subatomic particles make up everything!) So what does a proton have to say?
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Science Corner: My Genome is my Passport. Verify Me.

I know this image makes little sense; that’s why it amused me so. (Image by Hebi B. from Pixabay)

Last week we took up the topic of where biological information comes from, using some illustrations from experiments in the Quandary Den. If you missed an earlier series, the Quandary Den simulates features of dungeon crawlers or escape rooms. A common feature of escape rooms is a code/password/combination lock puzzle. A password is a pretty straightforward piece of information, so perhaps that’s a good place to try some more hands-on intuition building. We’ll try a few different ways to “crack” a password, all of which could be described as exploration with feedback. Hopefully they’ll help us understand how evolution fits into that broad category, and how biological information relates to language information.
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Science Corner: New Year, New Coronavirus Variant

tree photo
If you cannot take more virology right now, enjoy this image of a tree and go about your day. (Photo by Robert Couse-Baker )

When all is said and done, I expect that 2021 will end with more good news and less news overall about coronaviruses than 2020 had. In the short term, we are going to have more epidemiology and virology to talk about. The topic most interesting to me is the new B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2 (also known by several other alphanumeric identifiers). It was identified in December in the UK and has been found in samples taken there from as early as September. Since then it has be isolated from patients in numerous countries including the United States. Evidence suggests it is more contagious, making it worth knowing something about.
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Science Corner: Size Matters Not

beetle photo
Ever wonder what day-to-day life is like as a beetle? No? Just me. OK. (Photo by plenty.r. )

Last week we got to see from the perspective of a dog exploring in the woods. This week I’m even more excited about the possibility of seeing the world from a beetle’s perspective. We already know that at least some insects can see in the ultraviolet spectrum and some flowers have patterns we cannot see to attract pollinators who can them. We also know that the compound eyes of insects offer a very different view than our binocular vision. But with new miniature self-powered cameras, we can hook a camera up to beetles or comparably sized insects and see where they go, what they do, and with whom they do it. Play the footage back through a VR rig and you basically have the closest to an Ant-Man experience we are likely to achieve for some time.
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