2 Interesting Science Items

Here are a couple of interesting articles.

The first is about a scientist who has observed evolution in the lab. The scientist has been growing E. coli for 20 years (over 44,000 generations). He noticed one strain that developed the ability to metabolize an ingredient in the culture medium that other E. coli cannot. He found that a mutation happened around generation 20,000 that later allowed other mutations accumulate that lets the bacteria eat a new food. It is an example of a several mutations accumulating that results in no benefit until it finally hits.

The second is a discussion of global warming in the context of solar activity. The crux of the matter is that at least half of the warming seen this century can be directly attributed to changes in the solar output. The poster also emphasizes that the change in temperature is the result of such a small change in the input and output of energy into or climate system that it is hard to say what caused it. Basically a .3% change in the output of the sun could account for all of the warming trend seen. It is interesting to consider the vast amounts of energy going into the earth and leaving the earth. The temperature is a result of the balance of what goes in and out. There are so many variables and the amount of change is so small, I have a hard time believing the models are accurate and outside the margin of error.

LDS Membership as Percentage of World Population

In Sunday School, we discussed the statement this statement from Joseph Smith about the LDS church:

"I want to say to you before the Lord, that you know no more concerning the destinies of this Church and Kingdom than a babe upon its mother's lap. You don't comprehend it...It is only a little handful of Priesthood you see here tonight, but this Church will fill North and South America—it will fill the world...It will fill the Rocky Mountains."

The statement made me curious of how the LDS church membership growth has fared against general world population growth. So I looked up some numbers and prepared this chart. It looks like LDS church growth has outpaced world population growth for all of its history. However, church growth has declined somewhat recently which may account for the decline in growth rate starting in 1990.

To be honest, I was pleased at how well the church growth rate has compared against world growth. Before I checked the numbers, I expected the rate to be much lower, with the church just barely exceeding world population growth. However, the church has fared pretty well in growing vs population. .19% of the world population in 2007 is quite a feat when you figure a world population of 6.6 billion.

I used the HYDE data I found on this site. I chose the HYDE data because it had a number for each decade from 1820. The LDS church member statistics were produced by the Deseret News and are availible here.

On that site, I found a graph of the LDS church growth percentage, which I found interesting. LDS Church growth rate varied widely year to year, but generally increased from 1860-1900. The rate generally declined from 1900-1950. It then generally increased again from 1950-1990. It has been in a declining trend since 1990. These are rough estimates, I didn't run any analysis of the numbers.

One interesting thing to note is many of the LDS splinter groups (like the FLDS) trace their doctrine and culture to the 1900s, the point where growth rate started to decline. Those groups seems to be culturally and doctrinally stuck in the 1900s. Many of the cultural attitudes of the current church seem, in my opinion, to be based in the 1950s, which marks the transition from a declining trend to increasing. It would be interesting to see if the newer splinter groups are "stuck" in the 1990s, when the trend once again st


Here is the chart of LDS growth rate as percentage of membership.Here is the table of data I used for my chart.

Year	World Population	LDS Membership	Percentage
1820	1,069,841,690	0	0.0000%
1830	1,138,392,564	280	0.0000%
1840	1,192,729,394	16,865	0.0014%
1850	1,244,327,949	51,839	0.0042%
1860	1,270,044,073	61,082	0.0048%
1870	1,309,430,136	90,130	0.0069%
1880	1,397,685,022	133,628	0.0096%
1890	1,516,025,314	188,263	0.0124%
1900	1,633,848,213	283,765	0.0174%
1910	1,753,594,443	398,478	0.0227%
1920	1,888,034,127	525,987	0.0279%
1930	2,073,363,421	670,017	0.0323%
1940	2,299,541,939	862,664	0.0375%
1950	2,528,313,293	1,111,314	0.0440%
1960	3,035,624,545	1,693,180	0.0558%
1970	3,696,590,163	2,930,810	0.0793%
1980	4,442,296,596	4,639,822	0.1044%
1990	5,279,521,283	7,761,179	0.1470%
2000	6,085,574,386	11,068,861	0.1819%
2005	6,464,751,609	12,560,869	0.1943%
2007	6,615,854,053	13,193,999	0.1994%
2010	6,842,925,208	14,000,000	0.2046%

By the way, MS Excel 2003 was a beast to work with. It does not accept dates before 2000 which made the charts inaccurate. I had to download OpenOffice to get an accurate chart. I've heard that Excel 2007 corrects this, but I was pretty miffed at my Excel problems. Since win2k, I've like MS (except WinME was a crime).