Comments of the Week #62: from the dark ages to confirming relativity [Starts With A Bang]

“Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.” -Georg C. Lichtenberg

There was so much action on Starts With A Bang this week, from darkness to the brightest lights, that it’s going to be a bear choosing what to highlight from the comments. Here’s what this past week saw:

• The Universe’s dark ages (for Ask Ethan),
• The logic that stumped Brooklyn Nine-Nine (for our Weekend Diversion),
• The largest eruption in the known Universe (for Mostly Mute Monday),
• How to travel faster than light without really trying (a great piece from Brian Koberlein),
• Will the LHC be able to test String Theory? (a great answer from Sabine Hossenfelder),
• Jupiter, Io and a cosmic zamboni,
• The legacy of Sally Ride (for our first Throwback Thursday), and
• When we changed the laws of gravity (for a bonus Throwback Thursday).

In addition to these, I had a new piece over at Forbes:

• Saturn’s Spectacular Sights Stun Skywatchers, On Earth, In Orbit And At Saturn Itself.

There’s so much to cover, so let’s not delay; let’s go right into your Comments of the Week!

Image credit: Pearson / Addison-Wesley, via Christopher Palma at http://ift.tt/1zWO0nr.

From John Gaudreault on the expanding Universe during the dark ages: “Given the of the concept of the expansion of space “lengthening” the wavelength of the light and given your illustration of the balloon analogy, the X and the Y and the Z axis would all stretch the same amount as space expanded and therefore the frequency would not change.”

There is a mistake in this reasoning. We’re used to frequency — like you see it, above — being the number of waveforms/wavelengths that vibrate in a certain amount of time between two fixed points. Unlike a guitar string, where he wave propagates at different speeds depending on the tension in the string, blue light, yellow light and red light (in fact, light of all wavelengths) always all propagate at the same speed: the speed of light.

Image credit: The Learning Company.

But because of this, there’s a simple relationship between the speed of light (c), wavelength (λ) and frequency (f): c = λf. In fact, this relation is true for any wave; simply replace “c” with the velocity (v) of the wave. If you stretch space, you lengthen the wavelength, but the speed of light does not change. Because of this, you must decrease the frequency, which is eminently consistent with what we observe.

It’s important to note that this reaction is reversible; if we had our space contract instead of expand, the wavelength would shorten again and the frequency would go back up. Although it appears to be unlikely, this is not physically ruled out as far as what will happen in the far future. But don’t be fooled: this expansion isn’t happening everywhere. It occurs only in regions where gravitational inhomogeneities haven’t overwhelmed the expansion of the Universe. So, in other words, it isn’t happening within our local group!

Image credit: E. Siegel.

From Tim on the logic of the 12-islanders-on-a-see-saw problem: “What I like about this problem is that it parallels, in an accessible way, the kind of thought processes needed to design a particle physics experiment.”

A particle physics experiment is a lot trickier, because a lot of the time you don’t know what causes the think you’re observing. Many signals are ambiguous, in that they could have arisen from various causes, and it’s only by accumulating large amounts of data and quantifying what you get that you could, in practice, determine which portion of the signal was caused by which particle/branch/decay.

Actually, now that I come to think of it, maybe that is like this problem after all! Longtime reader Cleon Teunissen of the Netherlands had sent me a remarkable solution over email. Consider labelling the islanders 1-through-12, and performing the following three weigh-ins:

1	4	6	7					5	9	10	12
2	5	4	8					6	7	11	10
3	6	5	9					4	8	12	11

Think about how this breaks down by considering the islanders in groups of three: 1-3, 4-6, 7-9 and 10-12.

Image credit: E. Siegel, based on work by Cleon Teunissen.

• If 1 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: left (right), equal, equal.
• If 2 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: equal, left (right), equal.
• If 3 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: equal, equal, left (right).
• If 4 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: left (right), left (right), right (left).
• If 5 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: right (left), left (right), left (right).
• If 6 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: left (right), right (left), left (right).
• If 7 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: left (right), right (left), equal.
• If 8 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: equal, left (right), right (left).
• If 9 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: right (left), equal, left (right).
• If 10 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: right (left), right (left), equal.
• If 11 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: equal, right (left), right (left).
• If 12 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: right (left), equal, right (left).

Note that there are, with three possible outcomes (left, right, equal) and three weighings, there are only a total of 3 × 3 × 3 = 27 outcomes, and this accounts for 24 possibilities, demonstrating that you cannot solve for more than 12 islanders, total, using the see-saw only three times. (Consider, also, that equal, equal, equal tells you nothing about who could be lighter or heavier.)

This is a lot of unnecessary people on the see-saw, but it’s nice to have a single foolproof method, and something I thought was a worth addition to my labor-intensive solution!

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, STScI, and B. McNamara (University of Waterloo) / NRAO, and L. Birzan and team (Ohio University).

From See Noevo on the largest eruption in the Universe: “I thought black holes couldn’t emit anything.”

That’s true, if by “emit anything” you mean “from inside the event horizon to outside the event horizon.” But everything you’re seeing in this image was emitted from outside the event horizon and remained outside the event horizon at all times. Just because much of the emitting matter wound up, afterwards, inside the black hole, doesn’t pose a problem for this type of phenomenon. Note that this applies to all quasars, AGNs, blazars, magnetars, active black holes and microquasars everywhere in the Universe.

Image credit: Lucasfilms / 20th Century Fox.

From Ken Ziebarth on “breaking” the speed of light: “The one I like is sweeping your laser pointer across the moon. The edge of its beam moves across the lunar surface faster than c!”

Of course, that’s merely an optical phenomenon, not anything truly breaking the cosmic speed limit. Then again, so was every example in the post Brian wrote: nothing ever exceeds c, which is exactly the way it should be.

Michael Kelsey was good enough to point out that there was a post on this topic just two months ago, as Sabine graced us with an excellent writeup of what we call Photonic Booms.

Image credit: Sabine Hossenfelder.

I still can’t think that in my head without hearing Guile from Street Fighter 2’s voice.

Image credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation, via http://ift.tt/1KA4lCM.

From Sinisa Lazarek (and seconded by Denier and thirded by Ragtag Media): “Another great article by Sabine! Wish she was at Perimeter talking more on LQG instead of Lego-land lecture. Loop [Quantum] Gravity…. which for reasons unknown to me, is sadly never covered on this blog.”

I am very lucky to have Sabine contributing here, and I agree that she writes great articles. (I was extra lucky to get two from her this month!) She and I have corresponded about which idea for quantum gravity I prefer the best, and it’s neither string theory nor LQG but Asymptotic Safety. It will be a lot of work — and it’s way too long for a comments-of-the-week snippet — but I will consider doing the next Ask Ethan on quantum gravity, which will be hard but I’ll try my best. If that’s what you really want, by the way, I highly recommend submitting your questions/suggestions for a column on it; I’ll consider every unique submission on it I receive as a “vote” saying it’s what you want! (And yes, Ragtag, I will know if you send multiple entires in!)

Image credit: NASA Planetary Photojournal, via http://ift.tt/1cjxPWH.

From Cleon Teunissen on Io’s surface and Jupiter’s tides: “Interestingly, like our Moon Io is in tidal lock; Io rotates around its axis with the same period as its orbit around Jupiter.
As mentioned by Ethan: besides the tides of the oceans the Earth has a solid Earth tide as it rotates relative to the Sun and Moon.
Io doesn’t have that kind of tide, as Io is in tidal lock. In the case of Io the periodic deformation is due to the fact that Io’s orbit is not quite circular. As Io moves closer and further away from Jupiter the magnitude of Jupiter’s tidal effect changes.
The wikipedia article about Io also mentions that the change in tidal bulge from closest-to-Jupiter to farthest away may be as much as 100 meters (the radius of Io is about 1800 kilometer)
The amount of change of tidal bulge causes internal deformation, the friction heats Io up.
I wonder: is the amount of tidal bulge change large enough to crack Io’s surface? I estimate it’s still within the range of elastic deformation. (Just as on earth a rock surface does not necessarily crack when there is an earthquake. Mostly the size of the seismic waves is within the range of elastic deformation that the rock is capable of.)
Of course, the surface of Io is continuously cracked allright: by vulcanism.”

You’re asking (and pretty much answering for yourself) what seems like two separate questions. Here are some facts we are certain of: Io does experience tides; these tides are affected by the orbits of the other Jovian moons; Io is tidally locked to Jupiter but has an elliptical orbit, so stretches and is squeezed by up to ~100 meters; this heats up the interior of Io tremendously, so that we think the entire core is fully molten.

But what about the surface of Io? The best we have is imagery from Voyager 1 and Galileo, which is the highest resolution stuff we’ve got:

Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech, Voyager 1 spacecraft.

At this resolution, we can’t see cracks in the surface. My guess is that they’re there, but it’s only a guess. But it’s also conceivable that any weakness in the surface that would potentially lead to a crack would give way to a full-scale eruption before any cracking occurs.

This is a question that the data is not sufficient to answer, as far as I know. The deformation stresses are certainly sufficient to crack Io’s surface, but it’s plausible that something else — volcanism — beats the cracking effect of the moonquake to the punch. I was hopeful that the next NASA mission to Jupiter, JUNO, would answer questions like this, but it’s a Jupiter-only mission, not designed to probe its moons. We’ll have to wait for the next one!

Image credit: NASA, via http://ift.tt/1J9IMZr.

From Denier on Sally Ride: “Sally Ride was smart, driven, and accomplished what she set out to accomplish. Period. She is admirable and I’m glad you recognize that. And glad Google recognized that. It is with great pride that those of us here in San Diego could say that our community includes people such as Sally Ride.
That being said, what does Sally Ride’s sexual preference have to do with anything? Seriously, WTF?”

Well, let’s consider what her sexual preference has to do with anything. As of Sally Ride’s death in 2012, there were 330 American men and women who had gone into space. Guess how many of them were openly gay, lesbian or bisexual?

Did you guess zero?

It was zero. Now 219 of those 330 were former military, which only ended policies such as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2011, so that accounts for a full 2/3 of the astronauts. But it doesn’t change this fact: Sally Ride — upon her death — became the only openly non-100%-heterosexual American in space.

Image credit: Susan Walsh / AP.

But maybe that wouldn’t be enough to convince you that it matters. Instead, consider this report from Natalie Wolchover:

Although NASA does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, Michael Cassutt, author of five books and hundreds of articles about human spaceflight, said coming out would until recently have been “a career-wrecker” for an astronaut. “Not for any formal reason, but in the same way that any medical issue or even some kind of notoriety has been an astronaut career-wrecker… Any issue that detracts from the mission is or has been the kind of thing an astronaut wants to avoid. It isn’t NASA politics; it is NASA politics as practiced at the astronaut office.”

So maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but the fact is that if you want to work as an astronaut, thee’s an unwritten “code of conduct” that you can’t be a distraction from the mission, and it appears that even today, being openly gay, lesbian or bisexual would be perceived as a distraction. Perhaps we still have a ways to go.

Image credit: public domain photo.

And finally, from Fry on relativity, Einstein and then some: “As much as E=mc^2 looks elegant, it also strikes me as “too simple to be useful”.”

On the contrary, I think it’s exactly simple enough — and no simpler — to be eminently useful. You go on to say that this is the equivalence between energy and rest mass, and that’s absolutely right. Many people denote that “m” in E = mc^2 as m₀, to specifically refer to rest mass. This is particularly useful when we talk about particle creation/annihilation, physics in the center-of-mass reference frame, and reduction to non-relativistic terms.

You can make it more complicated and more useful, but often the key to being good at physics (or life in general) is to recognize what’s important in a given situation and what’s unnecessarily overcomplicating matters. In some cases, the full E = sqrt ( m^2 c^4 + p^2 c^2 ) is more useful, in others, E = mc^2 gives you everything you need. When Newtonian gravity and GR give indistinguishable predictions, which one will you use? Because I know what I’m choosing!

Thanks for a great week, everyone, and while I expect to see you all next week, make sure you come back tomorrow for a special announcement! I’ll see you all then!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1J9IPob

“Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.” -Georg C. Lichtenberg

There was so much action on Starts With A Bang this week, from darkness to the brightest lights, that it’s going to be a bear choosing what to highlight from the comments. Here’s what this past week saw:

• The Universe’s dark ages (for Ask Ethan),
• The logic that stumped Brooklyn Nine-Nine (for our Weekend Diversion),
• The largest eruption in the known Universe (for Mostly Mute Monday),
• How to travel faster than light without really trying (a great piece from Brian Koberlein),
• Will the LHC be able to test String Theory? (a great answer from Sabine Hossenfelder),
• Jupiter, Io and a cosmic zamboni,
• The legacy of Sally Ride (for our first Throwback Thursday), and
• When we changed the laws of gravity (for a bonus Throwback Thursday).

In addition to these, I had a new piece over at Forbes:

• Saturn’s Spectacular Sights Stun Skywatchers, On Earth, In Orbit And At Saturn Itself.

There’s so much to cover, so let’s not delay; let’s go right into your Comments of the Week!

Image credit: Pearson / Addison-Wesley, via Christopher Palma at http://ift.tt/1zWO0nr.

From John Gaudreault on the expanding Universe during the dark ages: “Given the of the concept of the expansion of space “lengthening” the wavelength of the light and given your illustration of the balloon analogy, the X and the Y and the Z axis would all stretch the same amount as space expanded and therefore the frequency would not change.”

There is a mistake in this reasoning. We’re used to frequency — like you see it, above — being the number of waveforms/wavelengths that vibrate in a certain amount of time between two fixed points. Unlike a guitar string, where he wave propagates at different speeds depending on the tension in the string, blue light, yellow light and red light (in fact, light of all wavelengths) always all propagate at the same speed: the speed of light.

Image credit: The Learning Company.

But because of this, there’s a simple relationship between the speed of light (c), wavelength (λ) and frequency (f): c = λf. In fact, this relation is true for any wave; simply replace “c” with the velocity (v) of the wave. If you stretch space, you lengthen the wavelength, but the speed of light does not change. Because of this, you must decrease the frequency, which is eminently consistent with what we observe.

It’s important to note that this reaction is reversible; if we had our space contract instead of expand, the wavelength would shorten again and the frequency would go back up. Although it appears to be unlikely, this is not physically ruled out as far as what will happen in the far future. But don’t be fooled: this expansion isn’t happening everywhere. It occurs only in regions where gravitational inhomogeneities haven’t overwhelmed the expansion of the Universe. So, in other words, it isn’t happening within our local group!

Image credit: E. Siegel.

From Tim on the logic of the 12-islanders-on-a-see-saw problem: “What I like about this problem is that it parallels, in an accessible way, the kind of thought processes needed to design a particle physics experiment.”

A particle physics experiment is a lot trickier, because a lot of the time you don’t know what causes the think you’re observing. Many signals are ambiguous, in that they could have arisen from various causes, and it’s only by accumulating large amounts of data and quantifying what you get that you could, in practice, determine which portion of the signal was caused by which particle/branch/decay.

Actually, now that I come to think of it, maybe that is like this problem after all! Longtime reader Cleon Teunissen of the Netherlands had sent me a remarkable solution over email. Consider labelling the islanders 1-through-12, and performing the following three weigh-ins:

1	4	6	7					5	9	10	12
2	5	4	8					6	7	11	10
3	6	5	9					4	8	12	11

Think about how this breaks down by considering the islanders in groups of three: 1-3, 4-6, 7-9 and 10-12.

Image credit: E. Siegel, based on work by Cleon Teunissen.

• If 1 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: left (right), equal, equal.
• If 2 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: equal, left (right), equal.
• If 3 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: equal, equal, left (right).
• If 4 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: left (right), left (right), right (left).
• If 5 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: right (left), left (right), left (right).
• If 6 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: left (right), right (left), left (right).
• If 7 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: left (right), right (left), equal.
• If 8 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: equal, left (right), right (left).
• If 9 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: right (left), equal, left (right).
• If 10 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: right (left), right (left), equal.
• If 11 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: equal, right (left), right (left).
• If 12 is heavier (lighter), the three weighings will tilt: right (left), equal, right (left).

Note that there are, with three possible outcomes (left, right, equal) and three weighings, there are only a total of 3 × 3 × 3 = 27 outcomes, and this accounts for 24 possibilities, demonstrating that you cannot solve for more than 12 islanders, total, using the see-saw only three times. (Consider, also, that equal, equal, equal tells you nothing about who could be lighter or heavier.)

This is a lot of unnecessary people on the see-saw, but it’s nice to have a single foolproof method, and something I thought was a worth addition to my labor-intensive solution!

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, STScI, and B. McNamara (University of Waterloo) / NRAO, and L. Birzan and team (Ohio University).

From See Noevo on the largest eruption in the Universe: “I thought black holes couldn’t emit anything.”

That’s true, if by “emit anything” you mean “from inside the event horizon to outside the event horizon.” But everything you’re seeing in this image was emitted from outside the event horizon and remained outside the event horizon at all times. Just because much of the emitting matter wound up, afterwards, inside the black hole, doesn’t pose a problem for this type of phenomenon. Note that this applies to all quasars, AGNs, blazars, magnetars, active black holes and microquasars everywhere in the Universe.

Image credit: Lucasfilms / 20th Century Fox.

From Ken Ziebarth on “breaking” the speed of light: “The one I like is sweeping your laser pointer across the moon. The edge of its beam moves across the lunar surface faster than c!”

Of course, that’s merely an optical phenomenon, not anything truly breaking the cosmic speed limit. Then again, so was every example in the post Brian wrote: nothing ever exceeds c, which is exactly the way it should be.

Michael Kelsey was good enough to point out that there was a post on this topic just two months ago, as Sabine graced us with an excellent writeup of what we call Photonic Booms.

Image credit: Sabine Hossenfelder.

I still can’t think that in my head without hearing Guile from Street Fighter 2’s voice.

Image credit: © WGBH Educational Foundation, via http://ift.tt/1KA4lCM.

From Sinisa Lazarek (and seconded by Denier and thirded by Ragtag Media): “Another great article by Sabine! Wish she was at Perimeter talking more on LQG instead of Lego-land lecture. Loop [Quantum] Gravity…. which for reasons unknown to me, is sadly never covered on this blog.”

I am very lucky to have Sabine contributing here, and I agree that she writes great articles. (I was extra lucky to get two from her this month!) She and I have corresponded about which idea for quantum gravity I prefer the best, and it’s neither string theory nor LQG but Asymptotic Safety. It will be a lot of work — and it’s way too long for a comments-of-the-week snippet — but I will consider doing the next Ask Ethan on quantum gravity, which will be hard but I’ll try my best. If that’s what you really want, by the way, I highly recommend submitting your questions/suggestions for a column on it; I’ll consider every unique submission on it I receive as a “vote” saying it’s what you want! (And yes, Ragtag, I will know if you send multiple entires in!)

Image credit: NASA Planetary Photojournal, via http://ift.tt/1cjxPWH.

From Cleon Teunissen on Io’s surface and Jupiter’s tides: “Interestingly, like our Moon Io is in tidal lock; Io rotates around its axis with the same period as its orbit around Jupiter.
As mentioned by Ethan: besides the tides of the oceans the Earth has a solid Earth tide as it rotates relative to the Sun and Moon.
Io doesn’t have that kind of tide, as Io is in tidal lock. In the case of Io the periodic deformation is due to the fact that Io’s orbit is not quite circular. As Io moves closer and further away from Jupiter the magnitude of Jupiter’s tidal effect changes.
The wikipedia article about Io also mentions that the change in tidal bulge from closest-to-Jupiter to farthest away may be as much as 100 meters (the radius of Io is about 1800 kilometer)
The amount of change of tidal bulge causes internal deformation, the friction heats Io up.
I wonder: is the amount of tidal bulge change large enough to crack Io’s surface? I estimate it’s still within the range of elastic deformation. (Just as on earth a rock surface does not necessarily crack when there is an earthquake. Mostly the size of the seismic waves is within the range of elastic deformation that the rock is capable of.)
Of course, the surface of Io is continuously cracked allright: by vulcanism.”

You’re asking (and pretty much answering for yourself) what seems like two separate questions. Here are some facts we are certain of: Io does experience tides; these tides are affected by the orbits of the other Jovian moons; Io is tidally locked to Jupiter but has an elliptical orbit, so stretches and is squeezed by up to ~100 meters; this heats up the interior of Io tremendously, so that we think the entire core is fully molten.

But what about the surface of Io? The best we have is imagery from Voyager 1 and Galileo, which is the highest resolution stuff we’ve got:

Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech, Voyager 1 spacecraft.

At this resolution, we can’t see cracks in the surface. My guess is that they’re there, but it’s only a guess. But it’s also conceivable that any weakness in the surface that would potentially lead to a crack would give way to a full-scale eruption before any cracking occurs.

This is a question that the data is not sufficient to answer, as far as I know. The deformation stresses are certainly sufficient to crack Io’s surface, but it’s plausible that something else — volcanism — beats the cracking effect of the moonquake to the punch. I was hopeful that the next NASA mission to Jupiter, JUNO, would answer questions like this, but it’s a Jupiter-only mission, not designed to probe its moons. We’ll have to wait for the next one!

Image credit: NASA, via http://ift.tt/1J9IMZr.

From Denier on Sally Ride: “Sally Ride was smart, driven, and accomplished what she set out to accomplish. Period. She is admirable and I’m glad you recognize that. And glad Google recognized that. It is with great pride that those of us here in San Diego could say that our community includes people such as Sally Ride.
That being said, what does Sally Ride’s sexual preference have to do with anything? Seriously, WTF?”

Well, let’s consider what her sexual preference has to do with anything. As of Sally Ride’s death in 2012, there were 330 American men and women who had gone into space. Guess how many of them were openly gay, lesbian or bisexual?

Did you guess zero?

It was zero. Now 219 of those 330 were former military, which only ended policies such as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2011, so that accounts for a full 2/3 of the astronauts. But it doesn’t change this fact: Sally Ride — upon her death — became the only openly non-100%-heterosexual American in space.

Image credit: Susan Walsh / AP.

But maybe that wouldn’t be enough to convince you that it matters. Instead, consider this report from Natalie Wolchover:

Although NASA does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, Michael Cassutt, author of five books and hundreds of articles about human spaceflight, said coming out would until recently have been “a career-wrecker” for an astronaut. “Not for any formal reason, but in the same way that any medical issue or even some kind of notoriety has been an astronaut career-wrecker… Any issue that detracts from the mission is or has been the kind of thing an astronaut wants to avoid. It isn’t NASA politics; it is NASA politics as practiced at the astronaut office.”

So maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but the fact is that if you want to work as an astronaut, thee’s an unwritten “code of conduct” that you can’t be a distraction from the mission, and it appears that even today, being openly gay, lesbian or bisexual would be perceived as a distraction. Perhaps we still have a ways to go.

Image credit: public domain photo.

And finally, from Fry on relativity, Einstein and then some: “As much as E=mc^2 looks elegant, it also strikes me as “too simple to be useful”.”

On the contrary, I think it’s exactly simple enough — and no simpler — to be eminently useful. You go on to say that this is the equivalence between energy and rest mass, and that’s absolutely right. Many people denote that “m” in E = mc^2 as m₀, to specifically refer to rest mass. This is particularly useful when we talk about particle creation/annihilation, physics in the center-of-mass reference frame, and reduction to non-relativistic terms.

You can make it more complicated and more useful, but often the key to being good at physics (or life in general) is to recognize what’s important in a given situation and what’s unnecessarily overcomplicating matters. In some cases, the full E = sqrt ( m^2 c^4 + p^2 c^2 ) is more useful, in others, E = mc^2 gives you everything you need. When Newtonian gravity and GR give indistinguishable predictions, which one will you use? Because I know what I’m choosing!

Thanks for a great week, everyone, and while I expect to see you all next week, make sure you come back tomorrow for a special announcement! I’ll see you all then!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1J9IPob

Saturday Space Sight: Soyuz Takes Off

Today’s Saturday Space Sight is a #flashback to last year.

This long expsoure photograph shows the flight path of the Soyuz TMA-12M rocket as it launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, March 26, 2014. The rocket carried Expedition 39 Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, Flight Engineer Steven Swanson of NASA, and Flight Engineer Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos to the International Space Station.

Story and information provided by NASA; Photo: Bill Ingalls/NASA
Follow Armed with Science on Facebook and Twitter!
———-

Disclaimer: Re-published content may have been edited for length and clarity. The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense. For other than authorized activities, such as, military exchanges and Morale, Welfare and Recreation sites, the Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations. Such links are provided consistent with the stated purpose of this DoD website.

from Armed with Science http://ift.tt/1FgfVLK

Today’s Saturday Space Sight is a #flashback to last year.

This long expsoure photograph shows the flight path of the Soyuz TMA-12M rocket as it launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, March 26, 2014. The rocket carried Expedition 39 Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, Flight Engineer Steven Swanson of NASA, and Flight Engineer Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos to the International Space Station.

Story and information provided by NASA; Photo: Bill Ingalls/NASA
Follow Armed with Science on Facebook and Twitter!
———-

Disclaimer: Re-published content may have been edited for length and clarity. The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense. For other than authorized activities, such as, military exchanges and Morale, Welfare and Recreation sites, the Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations. Such links are provided consistent with the stated purpose of this DoD website.

from Armed with Science http://ift.tt/1FgfVLK

Hugo Reading: Not-Novels [Uncertain Principles]

As much for my own future reference as anything else, some thoughts on the bits of the Hugo ballot that aren’t Best Novel (which I’ve already talked about). At this point, I’ve probably read as much of the voter packet as I’m going to (though if I’ve left out something actually good, I could go back and pick it up…). That doesn’t mean I’ve read everything– there are quite a few things on there I’m not going to bother with because, you know, life is just too short– but I’ve read those that seemed worth a shot.

In the short fiction categories, two of the longer nominees were weirdly incomplete. “Flow” by Arlan Andrews and “Championship B’Tok” by Edward Lerner are perfectly fine, but just… stop. I wouldn’t object to reading more in either setting, say if these were the introductory chapters of longer novels, but as self-contained stories, they’re kind of lacking.

“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra is a complete alien-contact story, and good enough in a Heinlein-pastiche sort of vein. It’s maybe a little shaggy, but it’s enjoyable enough. “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt is kind of stupid and pointless, featuring a world where gravity literally reverses itself after the narrator gets dumped. I’m not sure it’s all that much more stupid and pointless than last year’s “The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere,” though, and that ended up winning, so…

“A Single Samurai” by Steven Diamond is built around the nice image of a samurai climbing up the back of a mountain-sized monster in an attempt to kill it, but doesn’t quite pay off, and the bits where the narrator explains samurai stuff were kind of tedious. “Totaled” by Kary English may have been the best of the lot, a brain-in-a-vat story that had some genuine emotional content.

I don’t think any of these are brilliant, but I didn’t find any of them strikingly awful, either (“The Day The World Turned Upside Down” comes closest, but remained at “sigh heavily but keep reading” rather than “close the file and move on to the next thing”). I suspect there were probably better stories out there, but I say that almost every year that I read the short-fiction nominees, so…

I also read all four of the “Graphic Story” nominees, which mostly just served to remind me that I don’t really care for most comics. People I respect speak highly of Ms. Marvel, but it’s a superhero comic, an origin story, and reads like a Very Special Episode complete with thunderously obvious point-making, so I just couldn’t get into it. Rat Queens reminded me of the comics that used to run in Dragon magazine back in the 80’s; I guess it was pretty good for that, but I didn’t care about anything that happened. Sex Criminals has a pervasive air of “aren’t we clever?” which, yes, here’s a gold star, go away.

The only one of the lot I might read more of was Saga, and that was at least partly because the included example was Volume 3 of a continuing series, so I didn’t really understand what was going on. I did like the art, though, and what I could figure out was more interesting to me than the others.

I’ll probably end up leaving that category blank when I do my ballot, because it’s just Not My Thing to such a degree that I don’t think voting would be useful.

And that’s pretty much it for that.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1RxXYRA

As much for my own future reference as anything else, some thoughts on the bits of the Hugo ballot that aren’t Best Novel (which I’ve already talked about). At this point, I’ve probably read as much of the voter packet as I’m going to (though if I’ve left out something actually good, I could go back and pick it up…). That doesn’t mean I’ve read everything– there are quite a few things on there I’m not going to bother with because, you know, life is just too short– but I’ve read those that seemed worth a shot.

In the short fiction categories, two of the longer nominees were weirdly incomplete. “Flow” by Arlan Andrews and “Championship B’Tok” by Edward Lerner are perfectly fine, but just… stop. I wouldn’t object to reading more in either setting, say if these were the introductory chapters of longer novels, but as self-contained stories, they’re kind of lacking.

“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra is a complete alien-contact story, and good enough in a Heinlein-pastiche sort of vein. It’s maybe a little shaggy, but it’s enjoyable enough. “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt is kind of stupid and pointless, featuring a world where gravity literally reverses itself after the narrator gets dumped. I’m not sure it’s all that much more stupid and pointless than last year’s “The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere,” though, and that ended up winning, so…

“A Single Samurai” by Steven Diamond is built around the nice image of a samurai climbing up the back of a mountain-sized monster in an attempt to kill it, but doesn’t quite pay off, and the bits where the narrator explains samurai stuff were kind of tedious. “Totaled” by Kary English may have been the best of the lot, a brain-in-a-vat story that had some genuine emotional content.

I don’t think any of these are brilliant, but I didn’t find any of them strikingly awful, either (“The Day The World Turned Upside Down” comes closest, but remained at “sigh heavily but keep reading” rather than “close the file and move on to the next thing”). I suspect there were probably better stories out there, but I say that almost every year that I read the short-fiction nominees, so…

I also read all four of the “Graphic Story” nominees, which mostly just served to remind me that I don’t really care for most comics. People I respect speak highly of Ms. Marvel, but it’s a superhero comic, an origin story, and reads like a Very Special Episode complete with thunderously obvious point-making, so I just couldn’t get into it. Rat Queens reminded me of the comics that used to run in Dragon magazine back in the 80’s; I guess it was pretty good for that, but I didn’t care about anything that happened. Sex Criminals has a pervasive air of “aren’t we clever?” which, yes, here’s a gold star, go away.

The only one of the lot I might read more of was Saga, and that was at least partly because the included example was Volume 3 of a continuing series, so I didn’t really understand what was going on. I did like the art, though, and what I could figure out was more interesting to me than the others.

I’ll probably end up leaving that category blank when I do my ballot, because it’s just Not My Thing to such a degree that I don’t think voting would be useful.

And that’s pretty much it for that.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1RxXYRA

Comet Lovejoy near star Polaris

View larger. | May 22 photo of Comet Lovejoy (green dot, center of photo) and star Polaris (bright, upper right of photo) by Stuart Atkinson. Used with permission.

Here is a grand photo of Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), which is now in the northern sky, not far from the North Star, Polaris. On May 26, 2015, Stuart Atkinson posted this photo and wrote a great article about how to spot the comet now, at the blog of the Society for Popular Astronomy. Thanks, Stu, for giving us permission to publish your photo here!

Remember Comet Lovejoy from earlier this year? It’s a long-period comet, discovered in August, 2014 by Terry Lovejoy in Australia. It has been prominent in our sky since late 2014 and became briefly visible to the eye in early 2015. Around that time, we received many wonderful photos of this very photogenic object, whose bright greenish color stems from cyanogen and diatomic carbon being burned off the comet as it passes through space.

After January, the comet dropped off the radar for most of us, but experienced sky observers using binoculars and telescopes have been following it ever since. Stuart Atkinson wrote in his May 26 post about Lovejoy:

Lovejoy is fading but is still, remarkably, bright enough to be seen with a pair of binoculars.

It is now drifting serenely up towards Polaris, the Pole Star, and that means it is very easy for even the most inexperienced comet hunter to find: if you know where to find Polaris, you can find Comet Lovejoy as it heads away from Earth and returns to the cold, lonely depths of the outer solar system. It won’t grace our skies again until the year 15382!

Read Stu’s article about Comet Lovejoy, which includes directions for finding it – and helpful charts – here.

Polaris, coincidently, is our Star of the Week. Click here for more about it.

Just for old times’ sake … here’s one of my favorite photos of Comet Lovejoy from late 2014.

Comet Lovejoy on December 23, 2014. Photo by Gerald Rhemann. Used with permission. See more comet photos by Gerald Rhemann.

Bottom line: A good photo of Comet Lovejoy on May 22, 2015, near Polaris, the North Star.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1EH53WH

View larger. | May 22 photo of Comet Lovejoy (green dot, center of photo) and star Polaris (bright, upper right of photo) by Stuart Atkinson. Used with permission.

Here is a grand photo of Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), which is now in the northern sky, not far from the North Star, Polaris. On May 26, 2015, Stuart Atkinson posted this photo and wrote a great article about how to spot the comet now, at the blog of the Society for Popular Astronomy. Thanks, Stu, for giving us permission to publish your photo here!

Remember Comet Lovejoy from earlier this year? It’s a long-period comet, discovered in August, 2014 by Terry Lovejoy in Australia. It has been prominent in our sky since late 2014 and became briefly visible to the eye in early 2015. Around that time, we received many wonderful photos of this very photogenic object, whose bright greenish color stems from cyanogen and diatomic carbon being burned off the comet as it passes through space.

After January, the comet dropped off the radar for most of us, but experienced sky observers using binoculars and telescopes have been following it ever since. Stuart Atkinson wrote in his May 26 post about Lovejoy:

Lovejoy is fading but is still, remarkably, bright enough to be seen with a pair of binoculars.

It is now drifting serenely up towards Polaris, the Pole Star, and that means it is very easy for even the most inexperienced comet hunter to find: if you know where to find Polaris, you can find Comet Lovejoy as it heads away from Earth and returns to the cold, lonely depths of the outer solar system. It won’t grace our skies again until the year 15382!

Read Stu’s article about Comet Lovejoy, which includes directions for finding it – and helpful charts – here.

Polaris, coincidently, is our Star of the Week. Click here for more about it.

Just for old times’ sake … here’s one of my favorite photos of Comet Lovejoy from late 2014.

Comet Lovejoy on December 23, 2014. Photo by Gerald Rhemann. Used with permission. See more comet photos by Gerald Rhemann.

Bottom line: A good photo of Comet Lovejoy on May 22, 2015, near Polaris, the North Star.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1EH53WH

News digest – GPs, cancer survival, herpes virus treatment, smoking statistics… and some terrible puns

• News about a herpes-based drug went viral after a re-engineered virus was shown in trials to nudge the immune system into attacking and killing skin cancer cells. But the study didn’t compare the new treatment against a standard therapy, so while scientifically exciting, it’s unclear how this treatment would be used alongside newer immunotherapies. Also, some papers were reporting that this ‘virotherapy’ would be ‘available within a year’ but we felt this was over optimistic. We looked at the study in detail in this blog post.
• Our researchers found that the lower cancer survival in the UK – compared to countries with similar health care systems – was linked to delays in GPs referring patients for tests. BBC reported this as did the Daily Mail, the Guardian and many others. Here’s our in-depth analysis.
• Italian researchers suggested that a Mediterranean-style diet might halve a woman’s risk of womb cancer. The Guardian covered this, as did the Daily Mail and Mirror. But, as we said in the press release, there’s still some way to go to confirm this idea.
• UK researchers uncovered a possible way that breast cancer can spread to the bones, which suggests the process can be blocked. BBC covered this as did many national papers. And here’s our take on the story.
• New research showed that, because of England’s smoking ban, 11,000 fewer children now make trips to the hospital each year. We talked about this as did the BBC and the Guardian among others.
• But smoking still thrusts over half a million children into poverty. According to new research, more than half of the 2.3 million children in the UK who live in poverty have a parent who smokes and the addiction places an extra financial burden on the family. The Independent and the Daily Mail have more on this story.
• Cancer climbed to second place on the list of the world’s biggest killer diseases, affecting nearly 15 million each year and killing more than 8 million. Heart disease still has the top spot. The Week and the Daily Mail have more on this.
• UK researchers are beginning to understand how certain blood cancers come back years after chemotherapy. BBC has more details.
• There was coverage of a new study suggesting a link between obesity in teenage boys and a subsequent risk of bowel cancer later in life. The BBC and the Guardian have the story.

Number of the week:

11,000

The number of children’s hospital visits that England’s smoking ban prevents each year.

• A company that manages prescription-drug benefits for US employers and insurers has been making deals with pharmaceutical companies to base the prices of some cancer drugs on how well the drug works. The Wall Street Journal has the full story.
• Urine for a treat with this next story! Popular Science – along with the BBC – ran a piece about researchers that modified probiotic bacteria (the stuff in yogurt) to light up when signs of cancer were present in urine. But the research was done in mice so there is still a long way to go before there is a urine test for cancer.
• Reuters reported that smokers are more likely to think cancer is a death sentence.
• Younger cancer patients are more willing to try alternative therapies, according to a story on Reuters. But we recommend they read our blog post on alternative therapies before they actually use any.
• The Independent ran an intriguing headline that said: “Machine that unboils eggs now being used to improve cancer treatment”. But don’t get too egg-cited – the device may help speed up research, not treatment.
• The Cancer Drugs Fund – the pot of money set aside by the NHS in England to pay for new cancer drugs – agreed to continue to pay for one stomach cancer drug, regorafenib, after the manufacturer appealed the initial decision to cut it. The BBC and Pharma Times have more details.
•  “Discovery could crack cancer code”, said The Times, with an overly ambitious headline. The story was about US researchers who identified six messenger molecules that are found in ovarian cancer cells. But scientists still need to verify that these molecules are actually found in women who have cancer.
•  Speaking of untested genetic markers, Reuters and Bloomberg reported that a group of international researchers – including some of our own – are saying that new genetic ‘panel’ tests that look for cancer risk markers shouldn’t be used until they are proven to be valid and useful (something that is a growing worry in the US – though less so over here).

And finally…

Gawker highlighted a somewhat unscientific school curriculum taught by a familial cult in the US. Whatever other properties it may or may not bestow, you can relax: semen does NOT cause cancer.

–Misha

Image

Herpes virus image by Ed Uthman from Houston, TX, USA via Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY-2.0

from Cancer Research UK - Science blog http://ift.tt/1eFGrbP

• News about a herpes-based drug went viral after a re-engineered virus was shown in trials to nudge the immune system into attacking and killing skin cancer cells. But the study didn’t compare the new treatment against a standard therapy, so while scientifically exciting, it’s unclear how this treatment would be used alongside newer immunotherapies. Also, some papers were reporting that this ‘virotherapy’ would be ‘available within a year’ but we felt this was over optimistic. We looked at the study in detail in this blog post.
• Our researchers found that the lower cancer survival in the UK – compared to countries with similar health care systems – was linked to delays in GPs referring patients for tests. BBC reported this as did the Daily Mail, the Guardian and many others. Here’s our in-depth analysis.
• Italian researchers suggested that a Mediterranean-style diet might halve a woman’s risk of womb cancer. The Guardian covered this, as did the Daily Mail and Mirror. But, as we said in the press release, there’s still some way to go to confirm this idea.
• UK researchers uncovered a possible way that breast cancer can spread to the bones, which suggests the process can be blocked. BBC covered this as did many national papers. And here’s our take on the story.
• New research showed that, because of England’s smoking ban, 11,000 fewer children now make trips to the hospital each year. We talked about this as did the BBC and the Guardian among others.
• But smoking still thrusts over half a million children into poverty. According to new research, more than half of the 2.3 million children in the UK who live in poverty have a parent who smokes and the addiction places an extra financial burden on the family. The Independent and the Daily Mail have more on this story.
• Cancer climbed to second place on the list of the world’s biggest killer diseases, affecting nearly 15 million each year and killing more than 8 million. Heart disease still has the top spot. The Week and the Daily Mail have more on this.
• UK researchers are beginning to understand how certain blood cancers come back years after chemotherapy. BBC has more details.
• There was coverage of a new study suggesting a link between obesity in teenage boys and a subsequent risk of bowel cancer later in life. The BBC and the Guardian have the story.

Number of the week:

11,000

The number of children’s hospital visits that England’s smoking ban prevents each year.

• A company that manages prescription-drug benefits for US employers and insurers has been making deals with pharmaceutical companies to base the prices of some cancer drugs on how well the drug works. The Wall Street Journal has the full story.
• Urine for a treat with this next story! Popular Science – along with the BBC – ran a piece about researchers that modified probiotic bacteria (the stuff in yogurt) to light up when signs of cancer were present in urine. But the research was done in mice so there is still a long way to go before there is a urine test for cancer.
• Reuters reported that smokers are more likely to think cancer is a death sentence.
• Younger cancer patients are more willing to try alternative therapies, according to a story on Reuters. But we recommend they read our blog post on alternative therapies before they actually use any.
• The Independent ran an intriguing headline that said: “Machine that unboils eggs now being used to improve cancer treatment”. But don’t get too egg-cited – the device may help speed up research, not treatment.
• The Cancer Drugs Fund – the pot of money set aside by the NHS in England to pay for new cancer drugs – agreed to continue to pay for one stomach cancer drug, regorafenib, after the manufacturer appealed the initial decision to cut it. The BBC and Pharma Times have more details.
•  “Discovery could crack cancer code”, said The Times, with an overly ambitious headline. The story was about US researchers who identified six messenger molecules that are found in ovarian cancer cells. But scientists still need to verify that these molecules are actually found in women who have cancer.
•  Speaking of untested genetic markers, Reuters and Bloomberg reported that a group of international researchers – including some of our own – are saying that new genetic ‘panel’ tests that look for cancer risk markers shouldn’t be used until they are proven to be valid and useful (something that is a growing worry in the US – though less so over here).

And finally…

Gawker highlighted a somewhat unscientific school curriculum taught by a familial cult in the US. Whatever other properties it may or may not bestow, you can relax: semen does NOT cause cancer.

–Misha

Image

Herpes virus image by Ed Uthman from Houston, TX, USA via Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY-2.0

from Cancer Research UK - Science blog http://ift.tt/1eFGrbP

Which phase of moon best for stargazing?

We got this question:

Which phase of the moon would be best for stargazing, and why?

And the answer is … it depends on what you want to do. Some people enjoy watching the moon itself, as it waxes and wanes in our sky. Some enjoy the fact that the moon appears near bright stars and planets at certain times of the month. For instance, you can use tonight’s moon to help you find the planet Saturn, and the stars Spica and Antares, as displayed on the sky chart below.

Use tonight’s moon to locate the stars Spica and Antares, plus the planet Saturn. The green line depicts the ecliptic – Earth’s orbital plane projected onto the constellations of the Zodiac.

The moon is now a waxing gibbous moon. Waxing means the illuminated part is increasing, whereas gibbous means the moon is more than half-full but less than totally full. Full Moon will occur on June 2.

Moon-free nights enable astronomers to look at deep-sky objects, such as galaxies, star clusters and nebulae, so they like it when the moon is at or near new phase. It’s best to look at these faint fuzzies in a night sky with little or no light. The next new moon happens on June 16.

Understanding moon phases

People using telescopes try to avoid the moon, because its glare interferes with the telescopic views of deep-sky objects. Especially around full moon, the moon casts a lot of light, washing out many nighttime treasures. At new moon, the moon is up during the day, not the nighttime. Around then, you won’t see the moon at all – unless you’re on just the right spot on Earth to watch a solar eclipse. But the last solar eclipse happened with the March 20 new moon, and the next solar eclipse won’t take place until September 13.

Moon phases: 1) new moon 2) waxing crescent 3) first quarter 4) waxing gibbous 5) full moon 6) waning gibbous 7) last quarter 8) waning crescent. For more, read Understanding moon phases

Bottom line: The best phase of the moon for stargazing depends on what you want to do. Some enjoy watching the moon itself. On the other hand, people using telescopes avoid the moon because its glare interferes with deep-sky objects.

A planisphere is virtually indispensable for beginning stargazers. Order your EarthSky planisphere today.

Help support EarthSky! Visit the EarthSky store for to see the great selection of educational tools and team gear we have to offer.

.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1kIhego

We got this question:

Which phase of the moon would be best for stargazing, and why?

And the answer is … it depends on what you want to do. Some people enjoy watching the moon itself, as it waxes and wanes in our sky. Some enjoy the fact that the moon appears near bright stars and planets at certain times of the month. For instance, you can use tonight’s moon to help you find the planet Saturn, and the stars Spica and Antares, as displayed on the sky chart below.

Use tonight’s moon to locate the stars Spica and Antares, plus the planet Saturn. The green line depicts the ecliptic – Earth’s orbital plane projected onto the constellations of the Zodiac.

The moon is now a waxing gibbous moon. Waxing means the illuminated part is increasing, whereas gibbous means the moon is more than half-full but less than totally full. Full Moon will occur on June 2.

Moon-free nights enable astronomers to look at deep-sky objects, such as galaxies, star clusters and nebulae, so they like it when the moon is at or near new phase. It’s best to look at these faint fuzzies in a night sky with little or no light. The next new moon happens on June 16.

Understanding moon phases

People using telescopes try to avoid the moon, because its glare interferes with the telescopic views of deep-sky objects. Especially around full moon, the moon casts a lot of light, washing out many nighttime treasures. At new moon, the moon is up during the day, not the nighttime. Around then, you won’t see the moon at all – unless you’re on just the right spot on Earth to watch a solar eclipse. But the last solar eclipse happened with the March 20 new moon, and the next solar eclipse won’t take place until September 13.

Moon phases: 1) new moon 2) waxing crescent 3) first quarter 4) waxing gibbous 5) full moon 6) waning gibbous 7) last quarter 8) waning crescent. For more, read Understanding moon phases

Bottom line: The best phase of the moon for stargazing depends on what you want to do. Some enjoy watching the moon itself. On the other hand, people using telescopes avoid the moon because its glare interferes with deep-sky objects.

A planisphere is virtually indispensable for beginning stargazers. Order your EarthSky planisphere today.

Help support EarthSky! Visit the EarthSky store for to see the great selection of educational tools and team gear we have to offer.

.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1kIhego

Ruse Defends the Independence View [EvolutionBlog]

Philosopher Michael Ruse has an article in the current issue of the academic journal Zygon. It is called, “Why I Am an Accommodationist and Proud Of It.” In it, he proposes to defend the notion that science and religion are simply independent of one another, and therefore cannot really be in conflict.

The article is not freely available online, but I will transcribe a few bits as we go. It is nothing that Ruse hasn’t been saying for years, however. The paper goes on for fourteen pages, but it is ultimately nothing more than God of the gaps stuff. There are certain questions that science cannot answer, so religion has room to insert answers of its own. Done! There’s really nothing more to his argument than that.

After identifying four questions that he says science cannot answer: (1) Why is there something rather than nothing? (2) What are the foundations of morality? (3) What is the nature of consciousness? (4) What is the purpose of it all?, Ruse goes on to write:

There is no great secret about what I am going to say next. I did not choose my four questions deliberately with the next move in mind. But obviously, as I was choosing them, I realized what the next move would be. The questions are questions that go right to the heart of the Christian religion. They do not cover all of the religion, obviously. They say nothing about the Trinity. But they do ask about matters central to the life and thought of the believer. And moreover, thanks to Christianity, they are questions to which the believer thinks that he or she has the answer. Why is there something rather than nothing? Because God, a being who exists necessarily, created heaven and earth as an act of divine goodness. For no other reason, nor is other reason needed. What are the foundations of morality? They are grounded in the will of God. They are that which He had decreed we should do. What is the nature of mind? Being created in the image of God. What is the point of it all? That we should enjoy eternal life with God, our Father.

I think there is a lot to be said against Ruse’s answers, even if we grant Christian theologians a place at the table. But I think there is a more fundamental problem with what Ruse is suggesting. After this paragraph, Ruse writes:

Some general and specific points of qualification are needed. What the Christian cannot do is offer quasi-scientific answers. It is one thing to say that God created freely out of love. That is not a scientific answer. It is another thing to identify the Creation with the Big Bang or some such thing, as one of the popes did in the middle of the last century. That is a scientific answer and illicit. If there is something behind the Big Bang in the temporal sense, it is not God. Apart from anything else, He is outside time and space. The same goes for other answers. One is not solving the mind-body problem in a way that the cognitive scientist qua cognitive scientist would find acceptable. One is offering a different kind of answer entirely.

I wonder, though, how many Christians will be satisfied with this. It is way too facile to say that Christians are offering different kinds of answers from scientists. There is one very important sense in which the answers Ruse puts into the mouths of Christians are, indeed, of a scientific character. The Christian intends his answers to be taken as true statements about the world. Truths, mind you, that you ignore at your peril.

Ruse explicitly endorses Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of “nonoverlapping magisteria,” which is to say that science and religion are just independent of each other. But Gould’s book was savaged by almost everyone who reviewed it, and not just by, or even primarily by, atheists. Many Christian critics objected mightily to the idea that religion’s only role is to lurk in the shadows, dining on whatever scraps remain after science has held forth on the factual reality of the physical world. They do not want independence. They want mutual reinforcement.

Ruse condescendingly grants to Christianity the right to make assertions about things that science cannot definitively resolve. But does Ruse think Christians can have any basis for confidence in the correctness of those assertions? There are distinctively religious ways of knowing, such as the testimony of scriptures and divine revelation. Does Ruse grant any authority at all to these ways of knowing? When Christians make their assertions, is there any reason for non-Christians to pay attention? Or, in Ruse’s view, should Christians just be talking to each other?

Ruse grants to Christians the right to hold forth on the foundations of morality. But how does he react when Christians take the obvious next step, and apply their particular ideas on morality to issues of public policy? When a Christian says that his understanding of God’s will is that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry, does Ruse think that argument should be taken seriously and treated politely? Or does he think instead that’s a lousy approach to morality? I’m sure its the latter, but what, then, of his invitation to Christians to hold forth on the foundations of morality?

What this really comes down to is that Ruse, like Gould before him, is mostly contemptuous of religious belief. He is respectful of religious people I am sure, as am I, but when it comes to the epistemic status of religious claims he is barely to the right of Richard Dawkins. I’m sure he would deny this charge, but it is no less true for that. As an abstract, philosophical question, he sees places where Christians can hold forth without fear of being directly contradicted by science. But as soon as Christians want more than this, when they want to argue that their religion provides factual insights into the world that are not available through other methods of investigation, Ruse will be scarcely more polite than any of the New Atheists.

There is more to Ruse’s essay than I have described. He goes on at some length about the importance of metaphor in science, and that science is committed for some reason to the metaphor of the world as a machine, and that under this metaphor certain questions are impermissible. I’m sure that sort of thing played well among the audience that heard these remarks (the paper is based on a talk Ruse gave at a science/religion conference), but, leaving aside the many dubious claims he makes, none of it strengthens his argument at all. There are certain questions science cannot definitively answer. Fine. You don’t need a degree in philosophy to appreciate that. The issue is whether, when science fails to answer a question, there is something else that does answer it.

I do want to point to his final paragraph, however:

And so, I draw to the end of what I want to say. I shall not be terribly upset (and certainly not surprised) if you do not agree with me in whole or in part. All I ask of you is to appreciate the need for some kind of position as I am advocating–or to provide an argument as to why we don’t need the kind of position I am advocating. I ask you if you don’t like my solution, to provide one in its stead. And to do as I have tried to do–use basic philosophy and history of science, and don’t get seduced into tender-minded thinking. It is not needed and it never really works.

Let me just say that I am all in favor of Ruse’s solution. I would be fine with a system in which Christians agree not to hold forth on the factual reality of the physical world, and to yield to science on all such questions. And I would be fine with a system where they simply talk to each other about what they believe, but don’t then insist that their religion provides special insights that are relevant to public policy. I don’t think the primary pushback against Ruse’s view will be coming from atheists. Rather, I suspect the main hostility will come from Christians, who will think, properly, that Ruse is not really being very accommodating at all.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1d5fw8m

Philosopher Michael Ruse has an article in the current issue of the academic journal Zygon. It is called, “Why I Am an Accommodationist and Proud Of It.” In it, he proposes to defend the notion that science and religion are simply independent of one another, and therefore cannot really be in conflict.

The article is not freely available online, but I will transcribe a few bits as we go. It is nothing that Ruse hasn’t been saying for years, however. The paper goes on for fourteen pages, but it is ultimately nothing more than God of the gaps stuff. There are certain questions that science cannot answer, so religion has room to insert answers of its own. Done! There’s really nothing more to his argument than that.

After identifying four questions that he says science cannot answer: (1) Why is there something rather than nothing? (2) What are the foundations of morality? (3) What is the nature of consciousness? (4) What is the purpose of it all?, Ruse goes on to write:

There is no great secret about what I am going to say next. I did not choose my four questions deliberately with the next move in mind. But obviously, as I was choosing them, I realized what the next move would be. The questions are questions that go right to the heart of the Christian religion. They do not cover all of the religion, obviously. They say nothing about the Trinity. But they do ask about matters central to the life and thought of the believer. And moreover, thanks to Christianity, they are questions to which the believer thinks that he or she has the answer. Why is there something rather than nothing? Because God, a being who exists necessarily, created heaven and earth as an act of divine goodness. For no other reason, nor is other reason needed. What are the foundations of morality? They are grounded in the will of God. They are that which He had decreed we should do. What is the nature of mind? Being created in the image of God. What is the point of it all? That we should enjoy eternal life with God, our Father.

I think there is a lot to be said against Ruse’s answers, even if we grant Christian theologians a place at the table. But I think there is a more fundamental problem with what Ruse is suggesting. After this paragraph, Ruse writes:

Some general and specific points of qualification are needed. What the Christian cannot do is offer quasi-scientific answers. It is one thing to say that God created freely out of love. That is not a scientific answer. It is another thing to identify the Creation with the Big Bang or some such thing, as one of the popes did in the middle of the last century. That is a scientific answer and illicit. If there is something behind the Big Bang in the temporal sense, it is not God. Apart from anything else, He is outside time and space. The same goes for other answers. One is not solving the mind-body problem in a way that the cognitive scientist qua cognitive scientist would find acceptable. One is offering a different kind of answer entirely.

I wonder, though, how many Christians will be satisfied with this. It is way too facile to say that Christians are offering different kinds of answers from scientists. There is one very important sense in which the answers Ruse puts into the mouths of Christians are, indeed, of a scientific character. The Christian intends his answers to be taken as true statements about the world. Truths, mind you, that you ignore at your peril.

Ruse explicitly endorses Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of “nonoverlapping magisteria,” which is to say that science and religion are just independent of each other. But Gould’s book was savaged by almost everyone who reviewed it, and not just by, or even primarily by, atheists. Many Christian critics objected mightily to the idea that religion’s only role is to lurk in the shadows, dining on whatever scraps remain after science has held forth on the factual reality of the physical world. They do not want independence. They want mutual reinforcement.

Ruse condescendingly grants to Christianity the right to make assertions about things that science cannot definitively resolve. But does Ruse think Christians can have any basis for confidence in the correctness of those assertions? There are distinctively religious ways of knowing, such as the testimony of scriptures and divine revelation. Does Ruse grant any authority at all to these ways of knowing? When Christians make their assertions, is there any reason for non-Christians to pay attention? Or, in Ruse’s view, should Christians just be talking to each other?

Ruse grants to Christians the right to hold forth on the foundations of morality. But how does he react when Christians take the obvious next step, and apply their particular ideas on morality to issues of public policy? When a Christian says that his understanding of God’s will is that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry, does Ruse think that argument should be taken seriously and treated politely? Or does he think instead that’s a lousy approach to morality? I’m sure its the latter, but what, then, of his invitation to Christians to hold forth on the foundations of morality?

What this really comes down to is that Ruse, like Gould before him, is mostly contemptuous of religious belief. He is respectful of religious people I am sure, as am I, but when it comes to the epistemic status of religious claims he is barely to the right of Richard Dawkins. I’m sure he would deny this charge, but it is no less true for that. As an abstract, philosophical question, he sees places where Christians can hold forth without fear of being directly contradicted by science. But as soon as Christians want more than this, when they want to argue that their religion provides factual insights into the world that are not available through other methods of investigation, Ruse will be scarcely more polite than any of the New Atheists.

There is more to Ruse’s essay than I have described. He goes on at some length about the importance of metaphor in science, and that science is committed for some reason to the metaphor of the world as a machine, and that under this metaphor certain questions are impermissible. I’m sure that sort of thing played well among the audience that heard these remarks (the paper is based on a talk Ruse gave at a science/religion conference), but, leaving aside the many dubious claims he makes, none of it strengthens his argument at all. There are certain questions science cannot definitively answer. Fine. You don’t need a degree in philosophy to appreciate that. The issue is whether, when science fails to answer a question, there is something else that does answer it.

I do want to point to his final paragraph, however:

And so, I draw to the end of what I want to say. I shall not be terribly upset (and certainly not surprised) if you do not agree with me in whole or in part. All I ask of you is to appreciate the need for some kind of position as I am advocating–or to provide an argument as to why we don’t need the kind of position I am advocating. I ask you if you don’t like my solution, to provide one in its stead. And to do as I have tried to do–use basic philosophy and history of science, and don’t get seduced into tender-minded thinking. It is not needed and it never really works.

Let me just say that I am all in favor of Ruse’s solution. I would be fine with a system in which Christians agree not to hold forth on the factual reality of the physical world, and to yield to science on all such questions. And I would be fine with a system where they simply talk to each other about what they believe, but don’t then insist that their religion provides special insights that are relevant to public policy. I don’t think the primary pushback against Ruse’s view will be coming from atheists. Rather, I suspect the main hostility will come from Christians, who will think, properly, that Ruse is not really being very accommodating at all.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1d5fw8m