Curious about how life began in our Universe?  The Science Dude says put down your dog-eared bibles for a moment, mute the volume on TV’s Joel Osteen or Pat Robertson, and click your mouse on this link from Science Daily.  And please don’t fret; the primary researcher you will meet in this article has a PhD in Physics from Princeton – Albert Einstein’s former hangout, and he works at Utah University.  In other words, if Brian Saam isn’t a good, clean Mormon boy, he’s certainly surrounded by them.

Furthermore, ladies, as you can clearly see, Brian is just as handsome as Joel Osteen, and I’m betting Brian can whup Joel in either chess, public-speaking, or arm-wrasslin’.  Besides inheriting his daddy’s hugely profitable snake-oil business, Mr. Osteen’s resume, in case you weren’t aware, is absolutely bereft of theological degrees, but proudly boasts (surprise, surprise) a belated BA in television production.  The shining white veneers of Joel’s background are apparently only exceeded by the ones in his mouth.  His wife, however… WOW!  As far as Mr. Robertson goes… well, we’ll just let lying – er, sleeping dogs lie.

Okay, so now you’ve scanned the article, found it to be confusing and obtuse, got bored, and now you’re back here hoping for more religious mud-slinging from The Science Dude.  No, The Science Dude has spoken.  It’s Brian Saam’s turn:

"When you have a chaotic system that is characterized by extreme randomness, it paradoxically can produce ordered behavior after a certain amount of time."

Although from this quote you might mistakenly assume Brian is talking about George Bush’s myopic vision of Iraq, he is actually talking about elementary particles whose behavior is governed by quantum mechanics.  What Brian is talking about, is one of the most amazing observations in the history of physics.

Imagine you have four bobblehead dolls sitting on a table top.  A Joel Osteen bobblehead, a Pat Robertson bobblehead, a George Bush bobblehead, and… hmmm, one more… alright, a bobblehead of Satan.

You whack Joel on the head in one direction, and he starts bobbling.  You whack Pat’s head in a completely different direction, and likewise with George.  You give Satan a real good whack, and then you stand back and watch all four heads bobbling in different directions – a random collection of bobbling heads, in other words.  Complete and utter chaos.  If friction could be eliminated, you might watch these bobbleheads bobbling in total randomness for eons.

What Brian Saam discovered, is if the ‘spins’ of Xenon molecules are treated the same way as our bobblehead dolls, they will NOT bobble along in randomness for eons.  In fact, after an extended period of time (a few thousandths of a second is a long time in the quantum world), they begin to demonstrate ordered, interactive behavior:

“Somehow despite the fact these spins have very complicated interactions with each other and started out in completely different orientations, they end up all moving in the same way after several milliseconds.  That's never been seen before in a quantum mechanical system. These guys are dancing together.”

What Professor Saam is saying, is that order can come from chaos, in a completely natural way, at the most fundamental levels in physics.  From here, can the ordered functioning of one-celled creatures – and hence intelligent life itself – be very far away?  Indeed, if there is the ‘invisible’ hand of an Intelligent Designer tweaking the knobs of our Universe, His thumb and forefinger must be located right here, in Brian Saam’s Xenon test tube.  Yes, the Designer has very, very small hands, and we’ll just save the implications of that conclusion for another day.

The Science Dude thus concludes that if you don’t want to be a bobblehead, put away your bibles and start studying science.

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