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The treasures of the snow
Do pretty crystals prove that organization can arise spontaneously?
by Martin Tampier
Snow crystals are some of the most beautiful shapes that nature has to offer, and
no two flakes are alike. Many evolutionists have tried to claim the order of a crystal
forming due to atomic structures as proof for “something coming out of nothing”,
due simply to natural laws. But closer examination of this argument shows it does
not hold up to scientific scrutiny.
Modern snowflake research
Several scientists are trying to grow their own crystals to understand and direct
their development. Applications of this research reach way beyond meteorology, with
the aim of controlling the growth of other crystals, such as silicon structures,
for the semiconductor industry.
[Snowflake] shape is due to the properties of their building blocks, the water molecules
(H2O).
So why do snow crystals form this shape? Does it require special design? No, their
shape is due to the properties of their building blocks, the water molecules (H2O).
These are bent and polar (i.e. with positively and negatively charged ends). When
they come together in solid form, they tend to form the lowest-energy structure
they can,1 which is crystals
with hexagonal (six-fold) symmetry.2
By contrast, carbon dioxide (CO2), a linear and more symmetrical molecule,
forms cubic crystals in its solid form (“dry ice”).
We now know that not only temperature, but also humidity influences crystal formation
and shape. The beautiful six-legged star-like crystals grow in air warmer than -3°C.
Between -3°C and -10°C, snow falls as little prisms. Between -10°C and
-22°C, it is little stars again, and below that, prisms once more.
Nevertheless, scientists still cannot tell exactly why snow crystal shapes change
so much with temperature. These shapes depend on how water vapour molecules are
incorporated into the growing ice crystal, and the physical processes governing
crystal growth are complex and not well understood yet.3
Snowflakes—proof of evolution?4
Photo by Martin Tampier
Sometimes evolutionists claim that snowflakes show that order can arise from disorder,
and more complex structures from simple ones, based purely on the inherent physical
properties of matter. Therefore, the reasoning goes, life could have arisen from
simple molecules that organize themselves in a way that ultimately leads to more
complex structures, and eventually the first living cell.5
The organization in proteins and DNA is not caused by the properties of the constituent
amino acids and nucleotides themselves, any more than forces between ink molecules
make them join up into letters and words.
But crystals are nothing like a living cell. Formed by the withdrawal of
heat from water, they are dead structures that contain no more information than
is in their component parts, the water molecules. Life forms, on the other hand,
came into existence, evolutionists believe, through the addition of heat
energy to some postulated primordial soup. Not only are these processes very different,
but life requires the emergence of new information (a code) in order to take over
the functions of organization and reproduction of a cell. There is therefore no
analogy between snow crystals and the far, far greater complexity of living organisms.
More importantly, the organization in proteins and DNA is not caused by the properties
of the constituent amino acids and nucleotides themselves, any more than forces
between ink molecules make them join up into letters and words. Michael Polanyi
(1891–1976), a former chairman of physical chemistry at the University of
Manchester (UK) who turned to philosophy, confirmed this:
Fun stuff
An excellent snowflake website is www.snowcrystals.com.
You can download and use many snowflake photos to create your own calendar, greeting
card or other present. Apart from beautiful photos, the site will tell you just
about everything you ever wanted to know about snowflakes.
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“As the arrangement of a printed page is extraneous to the chemistry of the
printed page, so is the base sequence in a DNA molecule extraneous to the chemical
forces at work in the DNA molecule. It is this physical indeterminacy of the sequence
that produces the improbability of occurrence of any particular sequence and thereby
enables it to have a meaning—a meaning that has a mathematically determinate
information content …”.6
Snow crystals are not direct evidence for creation, either. Nevertheless,
the philosophical argument can be made that a universe without God cannot logically
be expected to create such order out of disorder.7
So when we observe order and design in the universe, as exemplified by the six-cornered
snowflake, doesn’t this demand a Creator who supplies this order and design?8
Of course, the physical properties of water are known to be necessary preconditions
for life to exist on Earth, which testifies to a Creator who conceived the universe
and its physical laws as conducive to life.9
For example, snow forms an insulating layer on the ground that protects plants and
animals below it from the much harsher temperatures above. But whereas this could
have been achieved with very simple shapes, such as round or square disks, the lavish
beauty and variety in snow crystals shows God’s loving creativity in making
snow not only very useful, but also wonderful to look at! As even evolutionists
admit, “One could almost convince oneself that snowflakes constitute a demonstration
of supernatural power.”5
No two alike?
Actually, smaller snowflakes that take the shape of hexagonal prisms look pretty
much the same. On the other hand, larger, star-shaped crystals are all different.
To understand why, think of how many different ways 15 books can be arranged on
a bookshelf. You have 15 choices for the first book, 14 for the second, 13 for the
third, etc. The total number of possibilities is thus 15 × 14 × 13 …
(15!), or over a trillion ways to arrange those books. Crystals can easily have
100 or more features that can be recombined in different ways—leading to at
least a staggering 10158 different possibilities. This is 1070
times the number of atoms in the entire universe!1
- Adapted from www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/alike/alike.htm.
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The Snowflake Man from Vermont
Astronomer Johannes Kepler seems to have been the first scientist to examine snow
crystals. He wrote a booklet on the subject in 1611.1 But the real ‘Snowflake
Man’ was Wilson Alwyn Bentley, born 1865 in Vermont, USA. Bentley was the
first to photograph snowflakes.2 He published more than 5,000 photographs,
and wrote numerous articles on snow, rain, dew and other natural phenomena related
to water and precipitation.
WA Bentley was the first to photograph snowflakes. He dedicated his life to studying
snow, dew and rain and although he was a farmer without formal scientific training,
he was years ahead of his time with his meteorological hypotheses.
Bentley relates that it was his mother who instilled the love of scientific investigation
into him: he was home schooled until he was 14 years old, and in his quest for learning
he even read an encyclopedia! ‘It was my mother that made it possible for
me, at fifteen, to begin the work to which I have devoted my life. She had a small
microscope, which she had used in her school teaching. When the other boys of my
age were playing with popguns and sling-shots, I was absorbed in studying things
under this microscope: drops of water, tiny fragments of stone, a feather dropped
from a bird’s wing, a delicately veined petal from some flower. But always,
from the very beginning, it was snowflakes that fascinated me most.’
Bentley knew nothing about photography and for the longest time could not manage
to take pictures of snowflakes. But through persistence and learning by trial and
error he learned how to work rapidly before the ice crystal changed shape, how to
use transmitted light by pointing the camera to the sky, and how to get sharpness
of detail on the crystal by using a large f-stop. Finally, during a January snowstorm
in 1885, he obtained the first photomicrographs ever taken of an ice crystal.
He kept detailed meteorological records, and pondered over the meaning of the shapes
and sizes of the crystals and why they often varied from one storm to the next.
Starting in 1898, he published his findings in scientific journals. Bentley greatly
contributed to what is today common knowledge, i.e. that temperature changes and
movements in the storm clouds impact on the form and type of the crystals formed.
With his research, he was years ahead of the meteorological thinking of his time.
Bentley loved people, but was misunderstood by them, and the scientific world appreciated
(or caught up with) the value of his work only much later. When he convened a meeting
in his hometown to present on his work, only six people attended.
One of his National Geographic (Jan. 1923) articles, ‘The magic beauty
of snow and dew’, is accompanied by over 100 photomicrographs of ice crystals,
frost patterns, and dew.3 In it, he refers to the Bible and says the
beauty of snow was known long ago, for the book of Job asks, ‘Hast thou entered
into the treasures of the Snow?’
Although his photos were sold for jewellery and other purposes, Bentley did not
become rich through his work. But he said that he would not change places with Ford
or Rockefeller: he felt he was serving the Great Designer; capturing the evanescent
loveliness which, but for him, would be unappreciated—even unseen by most
of his fellow men. And with that role he was content.
When he died of pneumonia in 1931, his obituary read, ‘Truly, greatness blooms
in quiet corners and flourishes under strange circumstances. For Wilson Bentley
was a greater man than many a millionaire who lives in luxury of which the ‘Snowflake
Man’ never dreamed.’
References
- Kepler, J., A new year’s gift or on the six-cornered snowflake, Frankfurt
on Main, 1611; believed to be the first scientific reference to snowflakes.
- Banchard, D., The snowflake man. Weatherwise 23(6): 260–269,
1970.
- Bentley, W., The magic beauty of snow and dew, National Geographic Magazine
43(1):103–112, January 1923.
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A reader’s commentDr Richard Meiss, USA
As one who has photographed snowflakes (with great difficulty), I appreciate hearing about the accomplishments of the Snowflake Man. Dr Jonathan Sarfati responds:
Hi again Dr Meiss.
Glad you liked the snowflake pics.
But regarding the structure of proteins, you say “the organization in proteins … is not caused by the properties of the constituent amino acids … themselves … ” Actually, this is not the case. Both the secondary (alpha helix, beta sheet) structure and the tertiary structure are in fact determined by the nature of the individual amino acids in the chain. For instance, alanine and leucine promote alpha helix formation, while proline and glycine discourage helix formation.
What you say is totally right (as far as it goes). Similarly with features like hydrophobic interactions between aliphatic side groups, and disulphide linkages between cysteine residues. I would go even further, and say that the rotational abilities of the vital ATP-synthase motor, for example, can be explained mechanistically by the arrangements of the amino acids, as can all the other enzymes (I don’t think you would have a problem with that). We are not vitalists. Vitalism was never a biblical idea. Rather, the Bible teaches that God finished creating after Day 6.
But this wasn’t the point of the article. As the Polanyi quote made clear, we were not talking about the interactions between the amino acids in the fully formed protein, but the formation of the sequence of the acids. Yes, one can explain alpha helix formation by a sequence of alanine and leucine, but there is nothing in alanine or leucine that will make them bond preferentially to other amino acids in a particular way. The sequence is imposed from outside by the order in the DNA read by decoding machines—the instructions for which are encoded in the DNA.
To put it another way, I would explain the superlative 1021 rate enhancement of a certain phosphatase enzyme totally by the chemical properties of the amino acids and their spatial arrangement, and the resulting free energy drop in reaction intermediates. But this enzyme was not the result of condensing amino acids together: the properties of the amino acids simply would not produce the required sequences.
This was a Creation mag article, so there was limited space as well as a need to simplify to some extent. There is more detail in this article Some thermodynamics criticisms—and answers (#2), which was one of the related articles at the bottom. In an older article Naturalism, Origins and Operational Science, I explained:
To explain further: the laws that govern the operation of a computer are not those that made the computer in the first place. Lerner’s anti-creationist propaganda is like saying that if we concede that a computer had an intelligent designer, then we might not analyse a computer’s workings in terms of natural laws of electron motion through semiconductors, and might think there are little intelligent beings pushing electrons around instead. Similarly, believing that the genetic code was originally designed does not preclude us from believing that it works entirely by the laws of chemistry involving DNA, RNA, proteins, etc. Conversely, the fact that the coding machinery works according to reproducible laws of chemistry does not prove that the laws of chemistry were sufficient to build such a system from a primordial soup.
Regards
Jonathan Sarfati
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Related articles
Further reading
References and notes
- According to the Laws of Thermodynamics: by forming the lowest
energy structure, the maximum amount of heat is released to the surroundings, increasing
overall entropy. Return to text.
- Vardiman, L., Microscopic masterpieces: discovering
design in snow crystals, Institute for Creation Research, 1 Dec 2007; icr.org/article/3555.
Return to text.
- See snowcrystals.com. Return to text.
- See also Sarfati, J., By Design: Evidence for nature’s
Intelligent Designer—the God of the Bible, pp. 227–229, Creation
Book Publishers, Australia, 2008. Return to text.
- E.g., Bailey, D., Evolution and Probability, Report of
National Center for Science Education 20(4), 2001.
Return to text.
- Polanyi, M., Life’s irreducible structure, Science
160(3834):1308–1312, 1968; p. 1309. Return
to text.
- See Sarfati, J.,
Why does science work at all? Creation 31(3):12–14,
2009. Return to text.
- As argued by Vardiman, Ref. 2. Return to
text.
- Sarfati, J., The wonders of water,
Creation 20(1): 44–47, 1997; creation.com/water.
Return to text.
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