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Short Gamma-ray Bursts Traced to Colliding Stars
Astervitude writes "Collisions of the cosmic kind could be the source of one of nature's most lethal explosions. Astronomers have traced the origin of short-duration gamma-ray bursts, or GRBs, to the merger of neutron stars or other dense bodies. Space.com has a report on the scientific detective work that led to the solution of what has been described as a 35-year-old mystery. "Our observations do not prove the coalescence model, but we surely have found a lady with a smoking gun next to a dead body," said Shri Kulkarni, one of over two dozen astronomers who discovered and investigated two short-duration bursts that took place last May and July. Unlike short-duration GRBs, long-duration GRBs are believed to be produced when extremely massive stars collapse and explode as supernovas."
The Science Channel has recently (by coincidence?) been showing a lot of programs talking about stars and the sun, and a very common topic has been Gamma Ray Bursts.
I just think it's weird how some things seem like a trend some times.
The idea of neutron stars colliding is a very old theory but this seems to shed new light on the possibility of it being the main cause.
$fortune
Tomorrow has been canceled due to lack of interest.
It should be noted that ordinary fusion reaction stars (giants, main sequence stars, and dwarfs) don't collide, because they're massive enough not to change direction easily from their usual trajectories (away from each other, as the universe expands), but not massive enough to actually have the gravitational force to be drawn towards other stars. I can only suppose that neutron stars have sufficient mass to bring about such a collision.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Before becoming a blackhole any star will explode explode due to fusion of heavy atoms, the heavier they are more energy they will release. like the heavy metals
It's actually about colliding neutron stars...
:-)
Anyway, it is curious that no gamma-ray bursts occured in our galaxy (yet). It is supposed that such an even would generate enough gamma rays to wipe out the ozone layer, and cause life extinction on earth.
Wait... why dinosaurs dissapeared again?
The proof offered for the existence of blackholes doesn't convince me. Just because there is a solution to the GR equations doesn't make it physically real.
Unfortunately these ideas are so institutionalized that there won't be much respect paid to challengers.
The end part of the article notes that the upcoming LIGO observatory might see the first detection of gravitational waves, corresponding with a GRB event! Evidentially Einstein modeled the emission of gravity waves during a collision between Neutron stars. This is interesting because we don't really know much about gravity; e.g. if it is a wave or a constant. More info on LIGO is available here.
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I can only suppose that neutron stars have sufficient mass to bring about such a collision.
Actually, that's an understatement.
According to the wikipedia, a neutron star is about 1.5 times massive as the sun... and that would be about 1.5 × 2x10^30 kg = 3x10^30kg, but ONLY 12 miles in diameter. One can just imagine the gravitational force these things have.
I'd appreciate it if someone made calculation: If two neutron stars are say, 10,000 km far from each other, what will be the acceleration? (remember, the greater the mass, the greater the acceleration). And what speed will they have when they collide? Finally, what will be the kinetic force at the time of impact?
Then imagine a cogent response next time.
Got a better explanation for the evidence?
I'd think the loss from gravitational waves would be miniscule unless they were very close to each other. Which, granted, NS can do, being small and dense and all -- but how do they get that close to begin with?? Are we thinking some hideously close binary where the two stars start out mere dozens of AU apart? Inquiring minds want to know...
>The proof offered for the existence of blackholes doesn't convince me. Just because there is a solution to the GR equations doesn't make it physically real.
people don't believe they exist just because of a GR solution.
they were predicted before GR but believed to be a mathematical trick that would need perfect conditions to form (perfectly symmetrical mass distribution). GR just changed that by removing these conditions (the generation of gravitational waves by mass distributions with a quadrupolar moment means).
anyway, you make it sound like it's just a case of GR for black holes. it's not - it's a huge amount of theory and observations that are all consistent. if you want respect then the first thing to do is acknowledge this work exists, and the second is to provide an alternative explanation that works at least as well.
Would the explosion at the end have be when the majority of the neutron star mass hits the black hole's event horizon?
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
The merger of two dense bodies causes gamma-ray bursts?
Wow! Now I can get rich selling lead underwear the next time there's a Microsoft/AOL merger hoax
There is a lot of experimental evidence for black holes, evidence not well explained by any other known theory. Even after black holes were found to be a possible solution to the GR field equations, people were hesitant to accept them as a "physical" solution. It was only a large body of evidence that has convinced us that they exist.
Despite what you may believe, physicists will listen to challenges to almost any theory (and are proven wrong on a regular basis, science advances!). However, if you just say something can't happen because it is patently silly, without providing a compelling alternative explanation of loads of experemental results, you will be dismissed out of hand. Also, the longer and more successfully a theory has been used, the more substantial evidence against it you will need. Black holes have only been accepted for a short period of time, but if you challenge conservation of energy be prepared. Extraodinary claims require extraodinary evidence.
Also, frequently an outsider to a field will have an alternate theory rejected immediately not because it is absurd but because the experts have already thought of it, done the calculations, and shown that that explanation is inadequate.
Of course, scientists make mistakes, too, but not usually for long in the face of strong evidence.
What are you talking about? Fusion only produces energy in elements lighter than Iron, and fission only produces energy in elements heavier than Iron. Iron is the most tightly-bound nucleus (most eV / nucleon) - If you fuse it with another nucleus, the nuclear binding energy of the result will be higher than what you started with, and you lost energy. Furthermore, the energy yield from fusion is highest with hydrogen & helim and decreases rapidly as masses increase.
If you'd like to learn more, type "nuclear binding energy" into Google.
Looks like someone hasn't done his research.
Fusing elements heavier than iron require more energy than they release. Didn't you wonder why we've been trying to fuse light elements like hydrogen and helium, and not plutonium?
"Our observations do not prove the coalescence model, but we surely have found a lady with a smoking gun next to a dead body," said Shri Kulkarni
Looks like the Sin City DVD has been getting a lot of play time down in the lab....
Collisions of the cosmic kind could be the source of one of nature's most lethal explosions
Amazing! And here I thought collisions of the microscopic kind caused the most lethal explosions...
What is the typical frequency? (i.e. 1x per galaxy per 100k years)
What is a typical duration?
How close would you have to be to one to receive a lethal radiation dose?
http://www.wonderquest.com/black-holes-proof.htm
Summarizes very neatly the default hypothesis that they exist
This leaves aside the problem of coming up with a better theory than GR (which has been extensively tested)
After all, the theory of black holes has been contested vigorously from its inception http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrasekhar_limit
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6193
Two examples of a reasonable approximation to proof: ... Here they seem to have shown that MACHOs and WIMPs do not fit the bill. i lkyway_021016.html
Massive black holes
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/blackhole_m
And for a stellar mass black holee ath_spiral_010111.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/d
Before becoming a blackhole any star will explode explode due to fusion of heavy atoms, the heavier they are more energy they will release. like the heavy metals
This is false. Fusion of atoms only releases energy if the atoms are light. Above a certain nuclear size (greater than Iron) fusion takes energy.
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~ejb/faq.html
especially the portion that said ...."
In practice, over the few seconds that a gamma ray burst occurs, it releases almost the same amount of energy as the entire Universe! "
The article posted on Slashdot is on the short and hard type
Just been reading a brief history of time, 10th anniversary edition today. And i could swear this is spoken about in the book.
Then again I could be wrong, a lot of it is over my head.
...with the Electric Universe theory?
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
Before becoming a blackhole any star will explode explode due to fusion of heavy atoms, the heavier they are more energy they will release. like the heavy metals
... sometimes it gets its wish).
... its gone forever (for that star anyway). Suddenly, gravity has the upper-hand, and in a big way. The entire star begins to contract in on itself, approaching relativistic speeds as it nears the core. The inner core of the star is already highly dense post-fusion material, lots of iron, silicon, oxygen, neon, etc. The outer portion of the star was mostly the light and fluffy stuff: hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, ... But there's a whole lot of it. So, when all this "stuff" comes rushing back in and hits what amounts to an immovable object, it "bounces." Really really hard. So hard that the fundamental forces of nature momentarily cease to exist as we know them. So hard that the energy produced illuminates large sections of galaxies.
That isn't really the primary (theoretical, of course) reason that massive stars "explode" (keep in mind, this is nothing like an explosion as any human understands it). However, the continuing fusion of heavier elements, up to iron, is thought to be the reason for numerous changes a late-lifecycle star experiences.
Once a massive star reaches the point where the majority of exothermic fusionable material consists of silicon, it has very big problem on its "hands." It's got about a day to live. silicon fuses at about 2.7e+9 K (optimimally), so that's one hell of a last day, and an unbelievable amount of iron production (thank the stars for your iron). Now, this entire time the star has been increasingly putting out more and more energy; that energy has tremendous pressure and serves to balance the star's own gravitional force which seeks to collapse it as closely to a point-source as possible (and it is, of course, theorized
At some very critical moment on the last minute of the last hour of that last day, there is no longer enough remaining silicon to keep the reaction going (some of the iron is fusing, but it's endothermic so it's only making the situation worse). Once this magic point is hit, fusion drops off very very rapidly, the remaining lighter-than-iron elements simply won't fuse without enough energy and once its gone
The details that actually occur in those few nanoseconds and microseconds are not completely understood, but it is understood that a great many bizarre interactions take place. The closest anyone can come to understanding this by way of simulation is in a particle accelerator. For one brief moment, this former mega-sized celebrity of a star takes on the apparition of the big bang; unification of forces and other outlandish stylings that no mortal human will ever witness up-close (or would want to if you're half-sane).
So, what really causes supernovae? Gravity winning.
there are cases where the observations are such that no other solution per the proven theory seems plausible
r /gravastar.htm
There are alternatives, for example the gravastar:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/g/g
Such alternatives would yield the same observations.
There are major problems with current black hole theory - for example, the information paradox, and the central singularity. I think it is pretty reasonable to state that current black hole theory is at the very least incomplete, if not actually wrong.
What this implies is that astrophysics, as practiced, is no more science than, say, sociology. Whenever current astrophysical theories are falsified by observation, a fundamental law gets tossed instead. Lately we have "dark matter" (6x as much of it as the visible universe), "dark energy" (18x as much!), "inflation", and distant galaxies producing hundreds of times more light than similar modern ones. All are futile attempts to rescue the Big Bang from the oblivion it earns by being, finally, irreconcilable with observation. (E.g. light-element ratios; gravitational lensing measurements of galactic mass; fractal, filamentary arrangement of galactic superclusters; preferred direction of cosmic microwave background anisotropy; shall I go on?)
For all the claims of evidence for the role of neutron stars and black holes in galactic-scale events, it all amounts to negative evidence: those are the only way to concentrate enough energy when the only forces you are willing or equipped to work with are gravitation, fusion, and shock waves. Even so, multimillion-degree "hot gases" in free space and 10^14 eV cosmic rays remain beyond their capacity. Current flow in interstellar plasmas easily propagates and concentrates such energies, without reliance on untestable physical laws and ghosts. However, such work can, as a rule, only be published in Plasma Science journals not read (and perhaps not readable) by astrophysicists.
[p.s. read this quick; /. moderators prefer to prevent discussion of failures of mainstream cosmology and astrophysics.]
"A *LADY* with a smoking gun..."? Why a lady? You're saying that only women are killers? That's sexist and you're a pig!
How long do you think before God posts the MPEGs on his web site?
Actually I have a pretty good idea of what's on his site looks like. They'll be somewhere between pages about playing with metallic sodium and his beer recipes.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Fission splits up big atoms into smaller (lower atomic number) ones, so you can't get heavy elements from fission. Fusion is the only process that creates heavy elements. True, fusion to create elements heavier than iron loses energy, but that's why stars die after they start such reactions.
My statement wasn't clear. I don't mean that GR is the is the only thing supporting black holes.
Your demands are very high. Providing alernative theories/explainations for observational data most physicists don't know exist is quite out of my reach. (after all physics has gone under the same brutal specialization that other fields have)
By the same token, I could criticize your statements as dubiously adherent to an entrenched model that you probably know far less about than you're letting on.
Conservation of energy is already violated according to current annihilation theory. When a positron and electron "annihilate" the energy of the outgoing photons does not include the intrinsic angular momentum energy of the electrons. It dissapears, supposedly.
The greater the mass, the greater the force, not the acceleration. Go and get a cannon ball and a ping-pong ball and drop them from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. (Caveats: blah, blah, air resistance, blah, blah, higher order relativistic effects, blah, blah, apocryphal story, blah, blah...)
Force of attraction = G * m_1 * m_2 / r^2
Thus, acceleration of first body = G * m_2 / r^2 which is proportional to the mass of the second body. Similarly the acceleration of the second is proportional to the mass of the first. I think this is what the GP meant - heavier stars, more accn.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Astronomers have traced the origin of short-duration gamma-ray bursts But I'd be pretty warry about making anyone from that region of space angry.
It doens't disappear, it just pushes the universe. ;)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Or did you miss the recent discovery that gravity does not exhibit quantum effects? It was actually posted on here a few months ago.
That's not to say we will never have a quantum gravity theory, but simple 'gravitons' seem unlikely. Gravity just does not work like the electronuclear forces.
A lot of people have built a quantum gravity house of cards, but those people seem likely to be disappointed.
And the information paradox has, as far I know, has been solved by Hawking's discovery that black holes can 'emit' energy.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
This is not correct. Both total energy and total angular momentum are conserved in particle-antiparticle annihilation.
Erm, the problem with gravstars is we know there is no 'quantum gravity' theory even slightly likely to appear in a reasonable amount of time.
That is like saying that electrons can't exist because we don't understand what they are! Just because we don't have a theory of quantum gravity does not mean that gravity does not exhibit quantum effects.
Or did you miss the recent discovery that gravity does not exhibit quantum effects? It was actually posted on here a few months ago.
I did. URL?
That's not to say we will never have a quantum gravity theory, but simple 'gravitons' seem unlikely. Gravity just does not work like the electronuclear forces.
This statement is directly contradicted by the most popular approaches to unification - loop quantum gravity and string theory. String theory states explicitly that there are simple gravitons and they do work like the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces - they are simply different string vibration modes.
And the information paradox has, as far I know, has been solved by Hawking's discovery that black holes can 'emit' energy.
That is not even published, and many are doubtful. Hawking has been wildly wrong many times before.
By the same token, I could criticize your statements as dubiously adherent to an entrenched model that you probably know far less about than you're letting on.
You could, but you'd still be in the uncomfortable position of finding (if you ever bothered to do your own investigation into the matter) that GP's theories fit very well with our current understanding of the universe, and that you don't have a better alternative. It's a "put up or shut up" kind of deal.
Stars don't ever really start such reactions in the first place. I believe there can be trace amounts of nuclei heavier than iron produced in a star, but almost all heavier nuclei are created in a supernova, when atoms are hit with a ton of neutrons. So production of the heavy elements (ie supernova) has little to do with the burning that goes on prior to it.
According to the notes I took in Astrophysics a couple days, ago, when the core collapses, it goes from R ~ 7000km -> R = 50km in under a second. Pretty quick contraction...
/....
I never thought I'd use physics notes for a post on
I think the anon poster above me is right. Do you have a link stating this?
And the information paradox has, as far I know, has been solved by Hawking's discovery that black holes can 'emit' energy.
Sorry for previous comment - I assumed you meant Hawking's recent conjecture that black holes can emit information.
The emission of energy does not help the information problem, as the energy emitted bears no relationship to the material that made up the black hole.
The way I could concieve two neutron stars coming together would be stars A and B travelling on roughly parallel paths through the galaxy, and gravity pulls them together.
Not possible! If they are not aimed squarely at each other -- which is damn unlikely -- then they are in a mutual orbit. Could be a closed orbit, circle or ellipse, or it could be an open orbit, e.g. one executes a parabola or hyperbola about the other. But the important point is that every possible orbit is perfectly symmetrical about periastron (point of closest approach). If star A comes from light-years away to pass near star B, then star A must fly away to light-years away after the passage. There's no way that Newtonian gravity by itself can turn an open orbit into a closed orbit, i.e. for star A to fly in from far away and "spiral into" star B.
See, this happens on Earth because friction can slow one object down, and cause one object to spiral into another. I suspect you're unconsciously assuming friction. But there isn't friction in outer space. Except for -- and this is what we're talking about -- gravitational waves, which indeed are a form of "friction" associated with orbital motion.
That just isn't true. Electric fields can and do contain angular momentum as well as linear momentum and energy. In the paraxial apprximation, the circular polarizations are angular momentum eigenstates, and higher order modes can carry additonal angular momentum. Decay of positronium conserves total angular momentum, which includes the intrinsic (spin) angular momentum of the leptons as well as the orbital angular momentum about their common center of mass.
Furthermore, angular momentum and energy are two different conserved quantities (though they are strongly linked in relativity), so in the unlikely event that angular momentum was found to not be conserved, it would not necessarily violate conservation of energy.
Great post. But I had to look twice near the end:
The details that actually occur in those few nanoseconds and microseconds are not completely understood, but it is understood that a great many bizarre interactions take place.
I misread "interactions" as "incantations", and imagined the resulting neutron star looking something akin to the eye of Sauron...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
"By the same token, I could criticize your statements as dubiously adherent to an entrenched model that you probably know far less about than you're letting on."
If you get tired of posting here, I'm sure the ID'ers would welcome your support.
Simple fact is, theories that get entrenched tend to do so for a reason-- they fit the currently available data, and nobody's come up with a better explaination yet. If you don't like the current explaination (presence of ether circa 1901, black holes, evolution, etc), feel free to propose an alternative theory that accounts for current data, can make positive predictions of future experimental or observational results, and can be negated. Contrary to a lot of the BS I hear from electric universe/ID/etc folks, when an alternative theory that fulfills these conditions is brought forward (i.e. special & general relativity), it tends to take off like lightning after a few years, not beaten away by the establishment forever.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
However, the basic concept was that they had figured out a way to cancel out normal graviational effects, so could measure the gravity of tiny objects. Even past the normal scale of quantum effects exhibited by other forces, they didn't notice any quantum effect for the gravity.
Sadly, I can't seem to find this anywhere. Grumble.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
However, I think too early to to figure out what happens inside a blackhole/gravstart, which as far as I can tell is the only difference between the two.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The Chandra X-ray Observatory http://chandra.harvard.edu/ priovides a wealth of information and help visualizing these phenomena. While the following link depicts orbiting white dwarfs (not as massive as neutron stars) swirling closer together, traveling in excess of a million miles per hour producing gravity waves...t ions.html
Animation of White Dwarf Gravitational Wave Merger
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2005/j0806/anima
"Open Source: The difference between trust and antitrust."
The emission of energy does not help the information problem, as the energy emitted bears no known relationship to the material that made up the black hole. ;)
No sorry - it definitely bears no relationship at all - it is purely an interaction between the vacuum and the warped space of the event horizon. It is entirely and provably random.
You're almost certainly misinterpreting something. There is still no experimental evidence for or against quantum gravity. At best, you might be thinking of the large-extra dimension experiments.
Quantum gravity is largely irrelevant to the formation of gravastars. The problem with them is that they require stellar matter to behave in a very specific and peculiar way upon compression, and we have no reason to believe that it actually behaves that way.
There was no such discovery, if by "exhibit quantum effects" you mean "exhibit quantization of the gravitational field". (Well, of course gravity doesn't exhibit quantization on any observed scale, because it's not expected to show up until the Planck scale, which we can't reach. A sub-Planckian experiment isn't going to establish whether or not gravity is quantized, because it's not sensitive enough to detect quantum gravity effects.)
Simple gravitons are unlikely for purely theoretical reasons, although any theory of quantum gravity must behave approximately like a theory of gravitons at low energies. This has little to do with any experimental tests of quantum gravity and less to do with gravastars.
I've heard this result discussed by a number of eminent quantum gravity researchers, and they're very skeptical of Hawking. Not only is his "proof" within the context of an approximation (semiclassical) to a theory (Euclidean quantum gravity) that most people already regard as failed, but he also introduces a small negative cosmological constant as a regulator, which doesn't address the zero CC case of GR or the positive CC of the accelerating universe.
And, no, I'm not misinterpeting something. And I found it! Summary here, article here.
They were trying to measure the quantum effects of gravity, and discovered it didn't appear to have any.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Huh? The reason it would behave that way would presumably be explained by quantum gravity.
Hence theorizing about gravstars is silly without such a theory. And such a theory seems extremely unlikely to appear out of nowhere all the sudden unless another Einstein shows up.
As for information theory, I don't think that's an insurmountable argument against blackholes, whether or not Hawking is right.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
No. Quantum gravity is not even remotely relevant at the energies and densities present in gravastar formation. That's the whole point of gravastars: that their black hole-like behavior is governed by condensed matter effects, not gravatation.
No. Go read the original gravastar paper. Quantum gravity doesn't enter into it.
There are at least three major approaches to quantum gravity that have made significant progress (string theory, loop quantum gravity, and causal dynamical triangulations). A theory of quantum gravity doesn't need to "appear out of nowhere".
I have no idea what this means. Who said that information theory was an insurmountable argument against black holes?
And from your other response:
This is meaningless. With or without this experiment, quantum gravity effeects were undetectable, because we can't reach the Planck scale. This experiment adds nothing to what is already known, namely that all observations of gravity below the Planck scale obey classical general relativity.
In fact, that experiment is largely irrelevant to quantum gravity. It only applies to theories, like large extra dimension models (which are not even theories of quantum gravity), which predict microscale deviations in Newton's law.
For the record, intelligent design does not intrinsically deny the validity of any of the current leading theories or observations regarding the formation of the universe, evolution, or whatever else. It simply asserts that some underlying order (God) is behind the functioning of the universe. Think of it as either an alternative to the anthropic principle (the universe is how it is because we wouldn't be here observe that it is if it were otherwise) or else a rather poor articulation of religious beliefs. Sadly, the loudest proponents do, as I gather you've noticed, seem to share much in common with the electric universe crowd.
Personally, although I see the concepts of intelligent design a feasible and very attractive union of my religious beliefs and modern scientific observation, I don't understand the need to discuss it in public school curricula. Discussing the universe from the viewpoint afforded by scientific observation and theory presents no threat to theology.
I've heard several formulations of Intelligent Design, and I've yet to hear one that doesn't come into conflict w/ basic physics, much less the tons of data we have on cosmology or evolution. The only exception is the purely theistic formulation, that an external Designer set up whatever existed pre-big-bang to such exacting tolerances that it produced, as designed, the universe we observe today. Without getting into the violations of the uncertainty principle in the early universe, this formulation is o.k., in that it's restricting itself to metaphysics and not actually saying anything about how our universe actually works.
As soon as you start allowing the Designer to tinker with the universe in motion (designing Humans, apes, and other such forms of life) you run into serious basic physics issues-- where is the designer? If the Designer is designing the whole universe, how is the Designer transmitting the designs to various places without violating c? What particles transmit the forces from the Designer to the designed? At what energy would be expect to see such particles in collider experiments, and why have they not been observed? If the designer is interacting with matter (i.e. atoms in DNA), and the interaction is not being transmitted by particles, how are the changes being effected? If you can't posit a rigorous theory, can you at least suggest a theoretical framework?
When I've asked these questions of those who have suggested ID to me as an alternative theory to our current physical and evolutionary theories of how our universe works, I've only gotten blank stares, or a bunch of mishmash that 1)is non-negatable and 2)progresses from a complete lack of understanding of basic physics and molecular biology. I would truly, truly love to see a formulation of ID that isn't in basic disagreement with the observed way the universe works, but what I've read and heard so far is completely lacking along those lines. I'd be thrilled to be shown to be wrong, please do so if you can.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
I might not consider intelligent design in quite the same fashion as many of it's other proponetns, but, if you're willing to accept my stepping out onto the metaphysics branch, I'd suggest that the Designer, whom I know as God, is Himself independent of the universe He created. Essentially, He exists outside of it and is not bound to it's order, which is part of His creation. In regards to C, my unverifiable conjecture is that it's part of His creation. Remember here, most devout Christians consider God to be omnipotent, which is a pretty dramatic concept. If He can create the rules of physics which govern our lives, why shouldn't He also be able to break them or work around them? And if He's omniscient, neither should uncertainty principle pose any problem?
As far as proposing a rigorous theory, much less some wonderful proof of God's existance, I can't. I really like the line of reasoning about how the existance of a clock hints at the existance of a clockmaker, but it still requires faith. I can point to all sorts of stories in the Bible or modern times about miracles, but those who haven't experienced them will always be able to come up with an alternative explanation. I will, however, paraphrase one Bible verse, from Mark if I remember right, about life that seems to speak directly to this issue: "The truth is given to those who willing to seek it, but it is kept secret from those who don't." We can grab at little strands of the truth all thoughout life, but ultimately, I believe there's a lot more behind it than many people are willing to accept.
Cheers!
I have absolutely no problem at all with going to metaphysics-- my opinion has always been that science has no place in religion, and vice versa. The formulation you're presenting (i.e. God is omnipotent and omniscient, he (or she ;) is capable of instantaneous action at any point in the universe, and no measuring device we can make can detect his actions) has nothing to do with intelligent design; it's the classical religious formulation of God. I do not and have not ever had any problem with anyone who chooses to believe in God. I'm a scientist (Ph.D. in biochemistry, amateur interest in physics) and I do not and will not get into religious discussions with other scientists; God by whatever name, or the lack thereof, is outside the realm of science and therefore pointless to talk about in a scientific context.
My issue with ID, electric universers, etc. is that they're disagreeing with current scientific theories, and attempting to promulgate alternative conjectures that are non-negatable, make no positive predictions, and fail to account for all of the current data in hand. When the holes in their conjecture (these formulations are NOT theories by any scientific standard, for the reasons above) are pointed out, the usual response is that the critic is holding onto the old entrenched theory because of inertia, or an unwillingness to seriously consider something new. Not so! General relativity is accepted as a theory because tens of thousands of physicists have been working for a hundred years, and have yet to poke a major hole in it. Believe me, it's not for lack of wanting to. The first physicist who discovers a fundamental contradiction that negates GR is going to have his or her career made in one moment.
Tens of thousands of evolutionary and molecular biologists have spent over a hundred years taking Darwin's original ideas, and working them into the current theory (that, down deep, has very little to do with Darwin's original hypothesis) that gives us a really good explaination as to how things could have evolved to the current state, and has made very powerful predictions on things like speed of genetic drift & etc. None of these things say anything about religion, though. When religion wants to talk about how things have and continue to work in the real universe we live in, it had better be prepared to back those statements up with some explainations. Otherwise, it's just gonna sound like a first grader's science fair project-- cute, amusing, has potential, but to someone who has worked in the field and is familiar with the currently available data, fundamentally silly.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.