## Cross seas: Nature, or design?

Here’s just exactly the sort of thing that happens in nature that drives creationists nuts.  How could this happen without God personally working to confuse and/or delight the photographer?  Not to mention the physicist and mathematician.

Photo from the Twitter feed of Science Porn: “Go home waves you’re drunk. This is called cross sea btw pic.twitter.com/5Cv1UUo8QX”

Where? Somewhere in France, one might gather from the flag on the structure (lighthouse?).

Turns out to be a Wikipedia photo, with this intriguing caption:

Crossing swells, consisting of near-cnoidal wave trains. Photo taken from Phares des Baleines (Whale Lighthouse) at the western point of Île de Ré (Isle of Rhé), France, in the Atlantic Ocean. The interaction of such near-solitons in shallow water may be modeled through the Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation.

Oh, you remember that one, don’t you?  The Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation?

At least we confirmed it was taken in France.

They do everything differently in France, don’t they?

Update:Got an e-mail suggestion that I include the equation itself.  You may certainly click to Wikipedia to find it; here’s what it says over there:

In mathematics and physics, the Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation – or KP equation, named after Boris Borisovich Kadomtsev and Vladimir Iosifovich Petviashvili – is a partial differential equation to describe nonlinearwave motion. The KP equation is usually written as:

$\displaystyle \partial_x(\partial_t u+u \partial_x u+\epsilon^2\partial_{xxx}u)+\lambda\partial_{yy}u=0$

where $\lambda=\pm 1$. The above form shows that the KP equation is a generalization to two spatial dimensions, x and y, of the one-dimensional Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equation. To be physically meaningful, the wave propagation direction has to be not-too-far from the x direction, i.e. with only slow variations of solutions in the y direction.

Like the KdV equation, the KP equation is completely integrable. It can also be solved using the inverse scattering transform much like the nonlinear Schrödinger equation.

Certainly the longest equation ever published at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

### 10 Responses to Cross seas: Nature, or design?

1. James Kessler says:

Ed, can you remove my post that I posted at 1:22 please?

Joe, I have a question for you.

Should churches be required to teach the theory of evolution? and if you want the schools to say there is a designer do you also want the schools to say that no such designer exists?

Nature comes up with great complexity all the time without any intelligent hand in it, Joe. From life to crystals to stars to galaxies…

That something is complex, Joe, is not scientific evidence of some intelligent designer no matter how much you pretend otherwise.

Your belief that there is one is a statement of religious faith…. not science.

Why should we teach religious faith in science classrooms?

You want science to take sides in a religious debate…why? for what purpose? how is science served if it takes sides in that case?

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2. JamesK says:

To quote: What would you expect to see if the designer is intelligent?

Why would you expect science to say there is a designer when it can’t be proven that there is one?

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3. JamesK says:

To quote: You’re hoping to disprove the watch maker by looking at a watch working all by itself without apparent aid?

And Joe continues to be confused in his thinking that God created the universe is something other then a statement of faith.

He so very much wants to pretend that it’s a statement of science.

Since science can’t prove God exists, Joe, then why should science say that God exists and did anything?

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4. Ed Darrell says:

I’m not questioning existence of God. I’m ridiculing denial of evolution. Don’t confuse the two.

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5. lowerleavell says:

What would you expect to see if the designer is intelligent? Him splashing his feet in the water? Or maybe more likely you’d expect a system so complex that it created the longest math formula in bathtub history to even understand it.

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6. Ed Darrell says:

Noting the watches on the surface, noting there is no watchmaker.

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7. lowerleavell says:

You’re hoping to disprove the watch maker by looking at a watch working all by itself without apparent aid?

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8. Ed Darrell says:

Notice the perfect squares in the waves?

Design, done naturally, without a designer.

I know. Intelligent design and other creationists will claim they don’t really mean it . . .

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9. lowerleavell says:

I don’t understand why this would drive creationists nuts.

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10. Ellie says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_sea

Île de Ré – island off the west coast of France. And thanks for this! I’ve learned something new today, plus I love lighthouses.

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