Engineers Have an 'Ear' for Natural Design | The Institute for Creation Research

Engineers Have an 'Ear' for Natural Design

The human ear is an amazing device. In a recent press release, an MIT engineer said that the ear is “like a super radio with 3,500 parallel channels.”1 In fact, its design inspired the development of a new space and energy-saving radio receiver chip.

MIT researchers mimicked the inner construction of the human ear to invent the radio frequency cochlea, or RF cochlea, which might someday enable cell phones and other devices to receive cellular, Internet, radio, and television signals. However, though the researchers employed natural design in the RF cochlea, they did not employ natural logic in considering the origin of that design.

The human cochlea’s intricate structure solves a host of technical problems by accurately capturing a wide range of sound waves and converting them into a reliable electrochemical signal by use of a specialized membrane linked into a long series of hair cell detectors. In the RF cochlea, electronic inductors and capacitors mimic the fluid-filled membrane in human cochleas, and transistors mimic the cochlear hair cells. The engineers embedded these features into a tiny silicon chip, which works faster and requires much less power than previous synthetic electromagnetic spectrum analysis technologies.

MIT researcher Rahul Sarpeshkar and his team of experts work in the field of bioelectronics, which utilizes specific design principles found in living systems. Some of the principles incorporated into the RF cochlea were special-purpose architectures, analog preprocessing before digitization, exponential computing power, and an effective balance between the costs of computation versus communication.

In a news release, Dr. Sarpeshkar said that “engineers can learn a great deal from studying biological systems that have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to perform sensory and motor tasks very efficiently in noisy environments while using very little power.”1 But what does a long time span actually accomplish within biological systems?

Biological systems relentlessly break down. Even with DNA and tissue repair mechanisms in place, hearing loss occurs in individuals of all vertebrate groups over just one lifetime. And mutations stack up over the course of multiple lifetimes, which eventually leads to mutational meltdown.2 The long periods of time considered necessary for evolution actually hurt and do not help the theory. With more time comes more degeneration, not more organization.

Engineers can learn a great deal from studying today’s copies of the biological systems that were created roughly 6,000 years ago. These systems perform sensory and motor tasks very efficiently while using very little power. Both Dr. Sarpeshkar’s inventions and the original biological systems he copied share the same design principles.

But they share another fundamental similarity: they were purposefully and ingeniously designed. Clearly, the intimate knowledge of operational design principles that makes these researchers’ inventions possible radically contrasts with their failure to understand the origins of those very same principles.

References

  1. Trafton, A. Drawing inspiration from nature to build a better radio: New radio chip mimics human ear, could enable universal radio. Massachusetts Institute of Technology press release, June 3, 2009, reporting research published in Mandal, S., S. M. Zhak, and R. Sarpeshkar. 2009. A Bio-Inspired Active Radio-Frequency Silicon Cochlea. IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. 44 (6): 1814-1828.
  2. Parker, G. 1980. Creation, Mutation, and Variation. Acts & Facts. 9 (11).

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on June 19, 2009.

The Latest
NEWS
Slowing Plates Support High Flood Boundary
Flood geologists have predicted that plate motion slowed at the end of the Flood year, and now conventional scientists are finding it to be true. A...

NEWS
Microscopic Ingenuity: Stentor and the Case for Intelligent Design
What if the smallest creatures held the biggest clues to life’s design? A 2025 study in Nature Physics investigates the remarkable behaviors of...

CREATION PODCAST
Dr. Jeff Tomkins | A Scientist's Journey to Creationism | The...
ICR’s science staff have spent more than 50 years researching scientific evidence that refutes evolutionary philosophy...

NEWS
Early Fish Evolution?
The discovery of a new species of a plant or animal would probably not spark much excitement to the non-scientist. But in this case, the conditions...

NEWS
Make Plans to Attend Our Estate Planning Workshop at the Discovery...
Did you know that up to 75% of Americans over 18 have no retirement or estate plans? Don’t wait to prepare for the future. Join us on Saturday, October...

NEWS
Fossil Confusion in Ethiopia: Are Evolutionary Trees Built on...
A new study published in Nature describes the discovery of 13 fossilized teeth from the Ledi-Geraru site in Ethiopia. They have been dated to between...

NEWS
The Only Mesozoic Dragonfly in Canada—Is a Dragonfly
In 2023, an undergraduate student from McGill University discovered a new dragonfly species in Alberta, Canada. In fact, “This is the first ever...

CREATION PODCAST
Dr. Jake Hebert | Journey to ICR | The Creation Podcast: Episode...
ICR’s science staff have spent more than 50 years researching scientific evidence that refutes evolutionary philosophy...

NEWS
Oldest Evidence of Butterflies
Insects such as the ubiquitous butterfly belong to the huge phylum Arthropoda (creatures having paired, jointed appendages and a chitinous exoskeleton)....

NEWS
Another Big Mistake in Evolution
The strange and wonderful coelacanth1 has long been a challenge to evolutionists. The coelacanth has long been hailed as an ancestor...