Join Hugh Ross and Jeff Zweerink as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, including the reality of God’s existence.

Crust Thickness and Life

A team of five geophysicists demonstrated that the level of oxides in basalt primary melts are a good proxy for the thickness of Earth’s crust. They then supervised a machine-learning algorithm to analyze global geodatabases (e.g., EarthChem and GEOROC) of basalts to determine the variation of the thickness of Earth’s crust spanning the past 3.8 billion years. Their analysis revealed five features of Earth’s crust that led to supercontinent cycles and plate tectonics that are highly fine-tuned for complex life on Earth

Antimatter Feels Gravity

When Einstein first published his general theory of relativity, scientists did not even know about antimatter—which was discovered almost 15 years later. Since then, scientists have speculated about how antimatter behaves in gravitational fields. Most think that it behaves just like normal matter. However, gravity’s weakness compared to electromagnetic forces has prevented any direct test to see if antimatter falls like normal matter. Recently, the ALPHA collaboration was able to isolate enough atoms of antihydrogen (antimatter counterpart of hydrogen) to demonstrate that the atoms behave like normal hydrogen atoms in a gravitational field. This result demonstrates two things. First, it provides even more evidence for the constancy of the laws of physics. Second, it shows that scientists are willing, able, and driven to test fundamental parts of theories rather than simply accept them without data.

Links and Resources:

• Lithospheric Thickness Records Tectonic Evolution by Controlling Metamorphic Conditions