AST 105IN ANSWERS TO HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT 3Chapter 2, “The Science of Life in the Universe”“Science or Nonscience?”20. An extraordinary claim, certainly, but scientific. It is a naturalistic claim, so can be study, at leastpotentially, by science. The process of discovery in this instance has already begun, with hints of largebodies of subsurface liquid water picked up by the two Voyager spacecraft at the start of the 80's and, inthe late 90's stronger, visual evidence by the Galileo spacecraft. 21. Nonscience, clearly, because of the supernatural/imaginative nature of the subject. Scientific thought canonly study what is physically real, i.e., natural. “Evidence” on those ghost-hunting TV shows? Television isnot where genuine scientific discovery is presented for the first time. Enjoy them for entertainment. See ifyou can raise skeptical questions as you watch, but otherwise, viewers are at the mercy of the editors andthe amateur, on-air investigators.24. This is an astrologically based claim, so–nonscience. We’re in the realm of pseudoscience here. But, exceptfor “scientific” creationism (Intelligent Design), pseudosciences are not supernaturalistic, This #24exemplifies a way to describe how pseudoscience differs from science. This claim can be tested, but onlypartially through statistical analysis. Interviewing a large number of people, demographically chosen (topreclude other influences confusing the results), and tallying up the # of musicians per sign will, utilizingthe correct statistical analyses, show whether there is a statistically significant higher number of musiciansborn under the sign of Taurus. BUT–AND HERE IS A MAJOR POINT–“correlation does not provecausation”). That is, if two things are found to correlate, before claiming it understand the correlation, oneneeds to have an underlying theory to explain the correlation. The correlation may in fact be indirect,involving some other factor, for example. In other words, you need to know the cause and effectmechanism. And how is the only way to demonstrate that? Do science, but in this case, we can’t. Becausethere is no cause and effect (theory) proposed to explain what is going on here. We scientists haven’t foundanything in nature that would lead to musicians tending to be born under the sign of Taurus and astrologershave proposed no mechanisms that hold water. And there we find why astrology is a pseudoscience. Itsbaselessness is of no concern to practitioners of it. Taking advantage of little known psychological aspectsof their counseling, they can be helpful to people without a real underlying foundation.25. Mostly Nonscientific. The claim meets the scientific requirement of being naturalistic, but how would onetest it? What aliens? How can we study what they allegedly do? Studying the people abducted is possible,but forget interviewing them–“...without the people ever realizing they were taken. There might be somephysical effects of the abductions and time travel, a la in Michael Chrichton’s Timeline, but for those to behelpful, they must be unambiguously interpretable.26. This is all science. This claim is spoken in mathematics, the language of science. It is a claim based on atestable theory, in fact, a very well tested theory indeed.27. God no, as it were, this isn’t scientific. It’s a religious claim futilely attempting to explain the naturalworld. Futile because it only begs the question. If one accepts that God is real, then further accepts thatGod made the laws, Ok. But one is still no closer to asking the real scientific questions: How did God do it?How did He/She/It make those laws come about and create everything? The Bible is silent on these obviousquestions to ask.Quick Quiz (QQ)35. b36. c37. a38. bChapter 3.4, “A Universe of Matter and Energy”Does it Seem Reasonable?26. Not reasonable. The planet “target” is sooo small as to be beyond insignificant. More like infinitesimal.27. Not reasonable. There is just too many. At about one name per second, how long would 100 billion secondsbe? I don’t know, but a million years might be in the ballpark!28. Reasonable. We’re doing it all the time and can only get better at it.29. Not reasonable. Gold can separate itself from its rocky matrix (ore), but the rock is still around it. There isno conceivable natural process that would get rid of all the other refractory materials and leave oneelement, much less the relatively rare gold, as the sole constituent of a planet.Quick Quiz (Remember, no rationalizations needed for Quick Quiz responses.)44. cQuantitative Problems58a. Closest distance is 56 x 10 km. This is a distance = rate times time problem. The time is the distance6divided by the rate. So, dividing 56 x 10 km by 3 x 10 km/s yields 18.7 x 10 or 187 s. Seconds is not so6 5 1relevant a unit here, so we should convert to minutes (or minutes and seconds). This conversion reduces ouranswer by a factor of 60, yielding 3.12 minutes. Even better, convert to minutes and seconds. The quickand easy way is to recognize that 60 goes into 187 3 times with a remainder of 7. So 187 s = 3 m 7 s. Thegrind it out way is to determine how many seconds are represented by the 0.12 minutes beyond 3. Thatwould be 0.12 of the way to 60 s or 7 s. b. The process is identical here for 400 million km. Here, the time is 400 x 10 km ÷ 3 x 10 km/s = 133.3 x6 510 s or 1333 s. Seconds are even more inappropriate here, so we divide by 60 to get 22.22 m or 22 m 13