At 05:57 AM 4/26/00 +0000, glenn morton wrote:
>The only real piece of data Schaeffer presented that might point to a
>creator was the need for the water molecule to have precisely 1.84 Debye
>units for the dipole moment. He didn't explain it--just said it. Here he
>had some real evidence and left it lying on the rug like an unexplained
>stain.
I heard back from Fritz Schaefer on what he meant by this. He was just
referring to the fact that life as we know it depends on water being a
liquid in the range of conditions at which our biochemistry takes
place. Change the dipole moment and maybe water freezes or boils at our
body temperature. My feeling is that that isn't a constraint where it
needs to be precisely 1.85, but might constrain you to +-0.2 or some range
like that. So it doesn't strike me as a very strong argument.
That does bring up a related question I have wondered about. I get the
impression that the biochemistry of animal life is tuned to a fairly narrow
range of temperatures -- make things hotter by 20 K or so (don't hold me to
that number) and enzymes and proteins break down, make things colder by 20
K and reactions don't go fast enough. To what extent is that temperature
range a fundamental constraint, or is it conceivable that our biochemistry
could work (just with slightly different enzymes, etc.) at substantially
different temperatures? If we still could have evolved if liquid water was
50 K hotter or 50 K colder, then I think the anthropic argument on water's
dipole moment pretty much vanishes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Dr. Allan H. Harvey | aharvey@boulder.nist.gov |
| Physical and Chemical Properties Division | "Don't blame the |
| National Institute of Standards & Technology | government for what I |
| 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80303 | say, or vice versa." |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Apr 27 2000 - 10:58:51 EDT