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I'm a Ph.D. student in experimental condensed matter physics. My research mainly uses X-ray and neutron scattering techniques to probe the microscopic dynamics and structure of nano-confined materials. The main project for my doctoral work is a set of neutron scattering studies of liquid helium confined in porous media. A B-movie enthusiast, I'd rather watch Sorority House Vampires from Hell or War of the Robots than the latest blockbuster. So much the worse for me.

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This space is allocated for musings about science, life, and society. I am writing mostly as a student and an amateur, so I ask for forgiveness from the real experts who might stumble across this. I hope to learn something by talking with others, or at least occasionally de-pressurize my opinionated soul.

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Isaac Newton and Intelligent Design

Isaac Newton was something of a theologian, and drafted A Short Schem of the True Religion.  He argues against atheism on grounds that would today be called 'Intelligent Design':
Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had many professors... Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom & the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, & within transparent juyces with a crystalline Lens in the middle & a pupil before the Lens all of them so truly shaped & fitted for vision, that no Artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light & what was its refraction & fit the eys of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These & such like considerations always have & ever will prevail with man kind to believe that there is a being who made all things & has all things in his power & who is therfore to be feared.  [my emphasis]
Of course, Newton was working before the advent of the Theory of Evolution.  At the time Newton was writing, there was no plausible natural mechanism that could produce eyes "after the most curious manner" and make use of the refraction of light.

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