Author: Discover Main Feed

At the bottom of the Baltic Sea, history sits largely intact. Because shipworms don’t care for these cold, low-salt waters, shipwrecks can endure for centuries without great decay. The Vasa, a famous Swedish warship that sank in Stockholm harbor in 1628, was in terrific condition when engineers raised it from the depths more than 300 years later. But, scientists now warn, those conditions could be coming to an end due to global warming.

Shipworms, which can obliterate a wreck in ten years, have already attacked about a hundred sunken vessels dating back to the 13th century in Baltic waters off Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, reported study co-author Christin Appelqvist [National Geographic News]. Now, Appelqvist says, their range is beginning to extend beyond those areas into the northern part of the Baltic. That could threaten close to 100,000 shipwrecks scattered across the bottom of the sea.

Shipworms are not worms at all, but rather saltwater clams with reduced shells notorious for boring into and eventually destroying wooden structures immersed in sea water, such as piers, docks and wooden ships [UPI]. These clams can bore a foot deep into wood of all kinds. Because they already inhabit the waters of Sweden’s small western coast (located at the southern tip of the country), Appelqvist says no wooden wrecks remain there—at least not any that are in decent enough condition to be studied.

The shipworms are warm-water lovers, so Appelqvist’s team wonders if rising sea temperatures are what has allowed them this extended range. “The warmer temperatures mean that the shipworm is less stressed and can thus tolerate lower salinity,” she explained. “The warm water also results in a longer breeding season” [The Local].

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Image of the Vasa: flickr / Carl M

We are here in Aspen for what is always the first particle physics conference of each year, the Aspen Winter Particle Physics Conference. This is the 25th anniversary of this series, hosted by the Aspen Center for Physics. I have attended myself twice in the past (1998 and 2007) and this year I am an organizer, along with Robin Erbacher, Tim Tait, and Graham Kribs.

The format of the conference is much like the other winter particle physics conferences such as Lake Louise in Canada, and La Thuile in Italy. We have a morning session of talks ending a bit after 11:00 am, a long mid-day break to allow for a bit of skiing, and an afternoon session from 4:30 pm to after 7:00 pm. It runs Monday – Friday this week, so we are half way through. Tonight the conference is hosting a public lecture from David Kaplan from NYU at the Wheeler Opera House, with a “Physics Cafe” before hand at which we organizers will field questions from the public.

We chose as a theme for the conference “The Revolution in Particle Physics is Here” and there is definitely a palpable sense that the revolution is indeed upon us. Neal Weiner gave a great opening talk recounting the many curious anomalies that we already have observed in experiments, and speculated on what may lie in store at the LHC and in astrophysical observations. Eric Prebys, a leader of the US effort on the LHC commissioning, gave a very interesting and detailed talk about the recent successes in commissioning the LHC machine and the very bright prospects for this year. The machine will turn on again in February, and soon raise the beam energy to 3.5 TeV (a collision energy of 7 TeV). Big decisions face the CERN management: should we stay safe at 7 TeV or attempt a higher energy like 10 TeV this year? Should the LHC shut down for many months at the end of 2010 or press on in 2011 to collect as much physics data as possible?

There is truly crackling excitement for the prospects of discovery this year at the LHC, and maybe even the Tevatron. The big LHC experiments are all working extremely well out of the box and eager for physics data: we heard talks from ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb. In fact the first three days of the program are devoted to the LHC and Tevatron, including some very nice theory talks from Tilman Plehn, Paddy Fox, Martin Schmaltz, and Jay Wacker. Heady stuff!

As for Aspen itself, it’s a place of almost surreal beauty, nestled in the Rockies, with fantastic skiing at four mountain areas. It is truly the playground of the super-rich: on the mountain slope above us are arrayed dozens of trophy mansion estates running in the seven figure range. (One colleague quipped “your health care dollars at work!” Heh, heh.) The only reason we (relatively) poor physicists can enjoy such a place is due to the existence of the Aspen Center for Physics. The Center is an offshoot of the Aspen Institute, the postwar brainchild of Chicago businessman Walter Paepcke, dedicated to becoming “an ideal gathering place for thinkers, leaders, artists, and musicians from all over the world to step away from their daily routines and reflect on the underlying values of society and culture”. And so it has become – it’s a really unique place.

You may remember how a bizarre spiral of white light lit up the skies of Norway in December, leading conspiracy theorists and anti-reality proponents everywhere to claim it was everything from an alien spaceship to a transdimensional wormhole.

Saner heads — like mine — saw this immediately for what it was: a rocket booster outgassing while spinning. The question I couldn’t answer at the time was, was this on purpose (gyroscopic spinning for stabilization) or a booster that malfunctioned and spiralled wildly out of control?

It turns out it was the latter. My friend, the space folklore specialist James Oberg, posted an intriguing article in the IEEE Spectrum discussing how this was yet another in a long series of failed tests of the Russian sea-launched Bulava ICBM. He writes about the checkered history of the program and the massive problems it is still facing.

Of course, despite all the evidence that this was a Russian rocket, expect the comment section below to fill to overflowing with nonsensical talk about it being from HAARP, or Big Pharma, or possibly SkyNet. After all, why let silly things like facts get in the way of good conspiracy theory?

When candidate Barack Obama was campaigning for president across the country, no one used social networking better than his camp. Now, after conquering Facebook and YouTube, POTUS wants you to keep in touch with a new iPhone app.

The iPhone app, dubbed The White House app, is free, and President Obama’s PR team hopes it will keep audiences connected to what’s going on in Washington. It’s available on iTunes.

The Washington Post reports:

The application comes packed with content, including the latest news items, videos, photos and blog posts from The White House. One feature that stands out is live video streaming, which enables iPhone and iPod Touch owners to watch the President’s public events at the White House as well as other events like key speeches and press briefings in real-time.

The app has been released just ahead of the President’s State of the Union address–so people can watch the address on their iPhone in real time.

The White House Blog writes:

The White House app also lets users stay up to date with the White House Blog and the latest from the Briefing Room. Browse behind-the-scenes photos and watch on-demand videos. The app provides instant access to full videos from recent speeches, press briefings, and special events.

The Huffington Post reports this is the first step in the White House’s mobile strategy, led by Macon Phillips, a veteran of the Obama campaign. The White House is expected to launch mobile.WhiteHouse.gov, a mobile-ready version of the White House’s virtual headquarters that is optimized for any Web-enabled mobile device.

For now, if you’re downloading the White House app, make sure you get the right one–it’s the one that says “free.”

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Image Credit: iTunes

After being on the road for over two weeks, it’s good to be home. I met so many passionate scientists, students, and science advocates along the way that it brought me a sense of great hope for what’s to come. A highlight was the past weekend stopover in North Carolina for ScienceOnline2010 where I was delighted to meet dozens of interesting science writers and new media folks in person while getting the opportunity to spend time with my favorite science bloggers from around the world. It was a lot of fun to share a panel on fact-checking with Rebecca Skloot and David Dobbs–and if you haven’t already picked up the most recent issue of O Magazine, make sure you do! Rebecca has a fascinating excerpt from her upcoming book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks inside! I also had the pleasure of participating in a second session with Isis and Janet; two women who constantly amaze me both in and out of the blogosphere. Our session on civility got a bit too uncivil at times, but it also brought up very important discussion points that I’d like to see explored more online.

I had my two favorite allies by my side most of the meeting–CM and Vanessa Woods. I am also pleased to report back that Ed Yong is just as awesome in person as at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Bora, Anton, and David did a terrific job pulling the conference together and it was fantastic to see so many friends who inhabit the blogosphere from Sci to Brian, Greg to Carl, Darlene to Dave, Miriam to Kevin, Arikia to Nate, Eric and Eric and on and on… I could not begin to list everyone, so instead, I will just say this: Everyday it is a delight, privilege, and honor to share the science blogosphere with the incredible, inspiring, and wonderful individuals that participate here. I am already looking forward to next year’s event!

Just when the whole “ClimateGate” affair had retreated from the headlines, other climate scientists have stepped in to shoot themselves in the foot in the public spotlight. In a new slow-simmering controversy that reached major news outlets this week, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chief Rajendra Pachauri admitted that one of the details in the 2007 report was a mistake. Though the goof is a minor one (in that it doesn’t change the conclusion of the report), the backlash probably won’t be, given what happened the last time around.

Specifically, one part of the report states that the Himalayan glaciers are retreating faster than anywhere else in the world, and that there’s a good chance they could totally disappear by 2035. But while it’s true that the glaciers are retreating, the date given is a gross overstatement. “You just can’t accomplish it,” says Jeffrey Kargel from the University of Arizona. “If you think about the thicknesses of the ice – 200-300m thicknesses, in some cases up to 400m thick – and if you’re losing ice at the rate of a metre a year, or let’s say double it to two metres a year, you’re not going to get rid of 200m of ice in a quarter of a century” [BBC News].

So what happened? A misunderstanding of second-hand information. The report cited a 2005 study by the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental advocacy group. That study cited a 1999 article in New Scientist magazine that quoted Indian glacier expert Syed Hasnain as saying Himalayan glaciers could disappear “within forty years” [The Wall Street Journal]. Hasnain has since said that comment wasn’t based on good science, and IPCC co-chair Chris Field has said the information looks like it came more from news reports than from scientifically-reviewed literature, which is improper for report like the IPCC’s.

While the “2035″ story hit the major media outlets this week, it wasn’t exactly brand new. This round of verbal barbs began last month in India, but glaciologist Georg Kaser said he raised doubts several years ago, and that others pointed to the Himalayan date as goof: “All the responsible people are aware of this weakness in the fourth assessment. All are aware of the mistakes made,” he said. “If it had not been the focus of so much public opinion, we would have said ‘we will do better next time’. It is clear now that working group II has to be restructured” [The Guardian].

IPCC chief Pachauri tried to stress that one bad detail doesn’t invalidate 3,000 pages of research—indeed, the glaciers are retreating, but at a speed not even close to that implied by the bad date in the report. He at least acknowledged the political ramifications of the IPCC’s goof and tried to spin them in his favor: “Some people will attempt to use it to damage the credibility of the IPCC; but if we can uncover it, and explain it and change it, it should strengthen the IPCC’s credibility, showing that we are ready to learn from our mistakes” [The Times]. But though it might be inevitable that a few errors sneak into such a mammoth report (and science relies on finding one’s mistakes and learning from them), the laxness that allowed an error on an order of magnitude like this makes for a public embarrassment the IPCC can little afford in an already polarized political climate.

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Image: Wikimedia Commons / little byte of luck

It’s been weeks since I’ve seen clear ground here in Boulder; we’ve had snow and ice for a long time. You’d think I’d be sick of it and wouldn’t want to see any more, but then you either don’t know me well, or you haven’t seen this beautiful image from NASA’s Aqua satellite:

[Click to embiggen.]

This image, taken on January 17, 2010, shows thin ice forming in the St. Lawrence river in Quebec. I love the swirls of ice, forming along the eddies and flow of the water.

Aqua is an Earth-observing satellite designed to monitor our planet’s water cycle as it orbits at an altitude of 700 kilometers. The camera used in this image is the MODIS, or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. It can observe in a whopping 36 different wavelengths, from visible to infrared. It has a maximum resolution of 250 meters per pixel — I find that a bit funny, given that we have probes orbiting the Moon and Mars with resolutions a thousand times higher. But each was designed to do a specific job, and for Aqua, 250 meters is good enough. Clearly, it’s enough to produce stunning images like this one.

Intuition through time: what does the seer see?

“OBJECTIVE: A great deal of human activity is involved in anticipating the future, from predicting the next influenza strain to the expectations that underlie the placebo effect. Most models of anticipation take for granted that events unfold in a unidirectional flow of time, from past to future. Two experiments were conducted to test this assumption. DESIGN: Pupillary dilation, spontaneous blinking, and eye movements were tracked before, during, and after participants viewed photographs with varying degrees of emotional affect. RESULTS: Data contributed by 74 unselected volunteers in two experiments showed that: (a) pupillary dilation and spontaneous blinking were found to increase more before emotional versus calm photos (combined P = .00009), (b) horizontal eye movements indicated a brain hemisphere asymmetry before viewing photos, appropriate to both the emotionality (P = .05) and the valence of the future images (P = .01), (c) participants selected for independently obtaining significant differential effects in pupillary dilation showed positive correlations between their eye movements before versus during exposure to randomly selected photos (P = .002), and (d) a possible “transtemporal interference” effect was observed when the probability of observing future images was varied (P = .05 [two-tailed])… …CONCLUSIONS: These studies, which replicate conceptual similar experiments, suggest that sometimes seers do see the future.”

Thanks to Fred for today’s ROFL!

We’ve brought you stories of lab-created blood cells able to simulate red blood cells in humans, or to act like platelets in rodents and stop bleeding. Now, in a study soon to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes a new, even smaller creation for our bloodstreams: A nanoparticle that could target and latch onto only the damaged cells in arteries around the heart to deliver drugs there.

The MIT researchers, led by Robert Langer, have developed other nanoparticles to target cancer; this new particle they call a “nanoburr,” named for those seeds covered in bristles or hooks that latch onto animals passing by. Its nanoburrs are coated with proteins which can only stick to a structure in the blood vessel wall called the “basement membrane.” This is only exposed when the wall is damaged, so only damaged sections of blood vessel are targeted [BBC News]. Then the particle can slowly release the drug stored inside.

Each particle is just 60 nanometres across – 60 billionths of a metre – and consists of three layers. The inner core contains the drug in question bound to a long-chained molecule, or polymer. A middle layer made of fatty material separates this core from the outer coating of a polymer that protects the particle as it travels in the blood stream [The Independent]. Medical researchers covet this kind of targeted drug delivery not only because it could make treatment more effective, but also because it lowers the risk of exposing other parts of the body to potentially toxic treatments.

While the nanoburrs in this case were designed to target damaged or hardened arteries and release drugs to combat atherosclerosis, Langer says the idea could be adapted to target any condition that deteriorates cell walls in a similar way, as some cancers and inflammatory diseases do. As usual, however, medical use in patients remains many years away.

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Image: MIT

The next generation of bulletproof vests and military armor could well be inspired by a deep-sea snail, say scientists.

A team led by materials scientist Christine Ortiz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology investigated the iron-rich shell of the “scaly foot” mollusk, whose triple-layered shell gives it one of the strongest exoskeletons seen in nature. The researchers believe that copying its microstructure could help in the development of armor for soldiers, tanks, and helicopters. Their work was published (pdf) this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists were first drawn to this snail in 2003 when they discovered it living in a relatively harsh environment on the floor of the Indian Ocean. It lives near hydrothermal vents that spew hot water–thereby exposing it to fluctuations in temperature as well as high acidity. It also faces attacks from predators like crabs and other snail species. But unlike other snail species, this snail survives because of its thick shell and the different properties of each of its three layers.

The outer layer of the snail’s shell is composed of iron sulphides. The scaly-foot snail is the only known animal species that uses iron sulphides as part of its structure. The middle layer is organic and much thicker than the other two. The researchers compare it to the thin protein coating, called the periostracum, seen on the shells of other snail species. The inner layer is composed of aragonite, a calcium mineral found in mollusk shells and corals [CBC]. The design of the shell apparently allows it to deflect attacks by crabs that pick up snails in their claws and squeeze them, sometimes for days at a time, in an attempt to crack their shells.

Using a device called an indenter, the researchers applied a force to the shell using a diamond tip. They discovered that the outer shell is designed to crack in a way that absorbs energy. Cracks spread only by fanning out around the iron sulphide particles. This “microcracking” not only absorbs energy, it also ensures that larger cracks do not form. What’s more, the particles of iron sulphide may blunt and deform intruding claws [The Times of India]. Meanwhile, the thick inner layer seems to absorb the mechanical energy exerted by either an indenter or a crab claw, and may also dissipate heat.

Coating armor in iron based nanoparticles that dissipate the energy of a blow by generating microcracks is “largely unexplored in synthetic systems” and particularly promising, said Ortiz. She said helmets, motorbikes, and even Arctic oil pipelines that are buffeted by icebergs could benefit from this study. Ortiz and her team are now looking at a host of natural exoskeletons to study protective design principles, including chitons, urchins, beetles, and armored fish.

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Image: Dr. Anders Warén, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden

“The internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes,” former Republican Senator Ted Stevens explained back in 2006.

And now, thanks to that series of tubes, you can watch a bear give birth. We don’t know what Stevens would make of this, but here comes the bear-cam.

The BBC reports that for the very first time, a webcam has been placed inside the den belonging to a pregnant wild black bear named Lily, and the “bear-cam” will stream live images to the web as she gives birth.

The bear biologist tracking Lily hopes this live birth will help people overcome their fears and misconceptions about bears. The biologist, Lynn Rogers of the Wildlife Research Institute in northern Minnesota, told the BBC:

“We’re putting it [the bear-cam] there because there is so much that we don’t know about what bears do in dens and what behavior they have leading up to giving birth. And how they take care of the cubs.”

Lily is three years old, and viewers who see the live birth may see the arrival of three cubs–that’s the size of a regular bear litter. This may all seem like quite an invasion of privacy, however Lily is no stranger to the Internet. She’s already a bit of a star on Facebook. Her “Lily The Black Bear” fan page has garnered more than 30,000 fans. She also has her own Twitter account.

So go forth, dear reader, and “friend” the bear. And don’t forget to tune in to the live birth–when the cubs will greet their momma and the entire world all at once.

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Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons

For most of us, “Googling” is synonymous with Web hunting: dredging up an old friend, say, or locating a late-night pizzeria. But the world’s leading search engine and its related applications are turning out to be powerful research tools, too. Scientists have begun tapping into Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google News to monitor volcanoes, find fossils, and track infectious diseases.

Over at the Intersection, Chris Mooney is concerned that we haven’t had a science/religion tiff in what, days? So he wants to offer a defense of organizations like the National Center for Science Education, who choose to promote science by downplaying any conflicts between science and religion. For example, the NCSE sponsors a Faith Project, where you can be reassured that scientists aren’t nearly as godless as the newspapers would have you believe.

In the real world, scientists have different stances toward religion. Some of us think that science and religion are (for conventional definitions of science and religion) incompatible. Others find them perfectly consistent with each other. (It’s worth pointing out that “X is true” and “People exist who believe X is true” are not actually the same statement, despite what Chad and Chris and others would have you believe. I’ve tried to emphasize that distinction over and over, to little avail.)

In response to this situation, we uncompromising atheists have a typically strident and trouble-making idea: organizations that bill themselves as “centers for science education” and “associations for science” and “academies of science” should not take stances on matters of religion. Outlandish, I know. But we think that organizations dedicated to science should not wander off into theology, even with the best of intentions. Stick with talking about science, and everyone should be happy.

But they’re not happy; Chris and others (Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas is a thoughtful example) think that the NCSE can be more effective if it proactively tries to convince people that science and religion need not be incompatible. As an argument toward this conclusion, Chris attempts to horrify us by offering the following hypothetical conversation between a religious believer and an NCSE representative:

Religious believer: I know you say that evolution is good science, but I’m afraid of what my pastor says–that accepting it is the road to damnation.

NCSE: As a policy, we only talk about science and to not take any stance on religion. So we couldn’t comment on that.

Religious believer: I do have one friend who accepts evolution, but he stopped going to church too and that worries me.

NCSE: All we can really tell you is that evolution is the bedrock of modern biology, and universally accepted within the scientific community.

Religious believer: And I’m worried about my children. If I let them learn about evolution in school, will they come home one day and tell me that we’re all nothing but matter in motion?

NCSE: ….

To which I can only reply … um, yeah? That doesn’t seem very bad at all to me. Do we seriously want representatives of the NCSE saying “No, the claim that accepting evolution is the road to damnation is based on a misreading of Scripture and is pretty bad theology. If we go back to Saint Augustine, we see that the Church has a long tradition of…” Gag me with a spoon, as I understand the kids say these days.

Of course, we could also imagine something like this:

Religious believer: I know you say that evolution is good science, but I’m afraid of what my pastor says–that accepting it is the road to damnation.

NCSE: Oh, don’t worry. There’s no such thing as “damnation,” your pastor has just been misleading you.

Religious believer: I do have one friend who accepts evolution, but he stopped going to church too and that worries me.

NCSE: Well, that will happen. Prolonged exposure to scientific ways of thinking can lead people to abandon their religious beliefs. But don’t worry, you’ll be happier and have a more accurate view of how the universe works if that’s what happens.

Religious believer: And I’m worried about my children. If I let them learn about evolution in school, will they come home one day and tell me that we’re all nothing but matter in motion?

NCSE: That would be great! Because that’s what we are. But it’s not as depressing as you make it out to be; correctly understanding how the world works is the first step toward making the most out of life.

How awesome would that be? I don’t actually advocate this kind of dialogue in this particular context — as I just said, I think science organizations should simply steer clear. But these answers have a considerable benefit, in that I think they’re “true.”

That’s the major point. Advocacy and educational organizations have the goal of supporting science and education the best way they can, but there are limits. For example, they should stick to the truth. I tried to make this point in my post about politicians and critics — some people have as their primary goal advocating for some sort of cause, whereas others are simply devoted to the truth. But an organization advocating for science needs to take both into consideration.

And there are some scientists — quite a few of us, actually — who straightforwardly believe that science and religion are incompatible. There are absolutely those who disagree, no doubt about that. But establishing the truth is a prior question to performing honest and effective advocacy, not one we can simply brush under the rug when it’s inconvenient or doesn’t make for the best sales pitch. Which is why it’s worth going over these tiresome science/religion debates over and over, even in the face of repeated blatant misrepresentation of one’s views. If science and religion are truly incompatible, then it would be dishonest and irresponsible to pretend otherwise, even if doing so would soothe a few worried souls. And if you want to argue that science and religion are actually compatible (not just that there exist people who think so), by all means make that argument — it’s a worthy discussion to have. But it’s simply wrong to take the stance that it doesn’t matter whether science and religion are compatible, we still need to pretend they are so as not to hurt people’s feelings. That’s not being honest.

I have no problem with the NCSE or any other organization pointing out that there exist scientists who are religious. That’s an uncontroversial statement of fact. But I have a big problem with them making statements about whether religious belief puts you into conflict with science (or vice-versa), or setting up “Faith Projects,” or generally taking politically advantageous sides on issues that aren’t strictly scientific. And explaining to people where their pastors went wrong when talking about damnation? No way.

Right now there is not a strong consensus within the scientific community about what the truth actually is vis-a-vis science and religion; I have my views, but sadly they’re not universally shared. So the strategy for the NCSE and other organizations should be obvious: just stay away. Stick to talking about science. Yes, that’s a strategy that may lose some potential converts (as it were). So be it! The reason why this battle is worth fighting in the first place is that we’re dedicated to promulgating the truth, not just to winning a few political skirmishes for their own sakes. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? (Mt. 16:26.)

[Update: In this post I originally said that Biblical passages are inscribed in the sights, however, what is actually inscribed are references to these passages, such as “JN8:12” referring to John 8:12. I corrected the text below. I don’t think changes anything but I want to be accurate.]

There has been a minor uproar over an ABC news report that some rifle sights made by a Michigan company and bought by the US military have Biblical inscriptions in them.

According to the article, the military Powers That Be apparently didn’t know about the inscriptions (though apparently some soldiers knew; see below). The military does have rules forbidding proselytizing any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan (where the rifles are used), and this could be seen as such. Certainly it’s fodder for the people there to claim the US is waging a holy war, so the inscriptions are a pretty bad idea.

What to do about this?

First, on the military side, they need to sever the contract with the company, called Trijicon. I would hope that there is some other company that can make scopes for the rifles — if not, then the military needs to tell Trijicon to stop inscribing the ones they buy. The existing scopes are a problem to be sure, but that’s already done. Maybe they can be swapped out, or the inscriptions scraped off, though of course the expense in time and money would be huge. As far as the military goes, I think it’s almost certainly not worth it; they may simply have to (haha) bite the bullet, continue to use the rifle scopes, and hope for the best.

Trijicon, on the other hand, really screwed this up. They put the U. S. government in a bind here, both financially and perceptually. Whether they did this knowing it would violate U.S. laws or not, they need to be fined at the very least, and publicly humiliated as well.

Why humiliated? One of the Bible passages referenced on the scopes reads, “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Remember, that’s referenced in the scope of a rifle designed to kill people. Unless I have grossly misinterpreted the Sermon on the Mount, I don’t think that’s exactly what Jesus had in mind.

So Trijicon is icky and weird and allegedly did something illegal. However, Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation goes farther. He said: “It’s wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws…” I agree it’s wrong and that it violates laws. I suspect a First Amendment case can be made here, but I’m not sure it’s a good one, or that it’s worth making. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that an indirect violation of the Establishment Clause has probably occurred, and since it was done unknowingly by the military, the violation of the federal law is a better avenue of pursuit if action is taken to stop the inscriptions. I’m glad the issue has come to light, but I certainly don’t think we need to rake the Marines and Air Force as a whole over the coals because of it.

Now, having said that, there’s the matter of some soldiers knowing about the inscriptions. Weinstein says that “…commanders have referred to weapons with the sights as ’spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ.’” If that is true, then we have a far clearer problem. Those soldiers have indeed violated the First Amendment, and again, if this is true those military personnel need to be chastised — at the very least. I am of the opinion they shouldn’t be in charge of troops in religious tinderbox areas like Iraq and Afghanistan as well. The idea of religious zealots fighting on our behalf in an area that has been torn apart by religious zealotry for millennia strikes me as a really, really bad idea.

But then, again in my opinion, Weinstein goes too far in his rhetoric:

“This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country,” said Weinstein. “It’s literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we’re fighting. We’re emboldening an enemy.”

This statement makes me uncomfortable. I suspect Al Qaeda will use this as propaganda against us, but then they do that for everything; they hardly need more fodder for that. But this being the best example of Establishment violation… I think Weinstein needs to take a look at Kansas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and most recently Mississippi. Creationists make bigger violations than this over breakfast every day.

Perhaps he means Iraq when he says “this country”, though the context in the article is unclear. Either way, though, I think caution is called for in our rhetoric over things like this. There’s a clear path here, and no need to exaggerate the situation.

The image of Jesus with a rifle is everywhere on the web, but I couldn’t find the original. If anyone knows who did this, please leave a comment!

The personal brander job doesn’t sound like such a stretch, and the space pilot gig is definitely something for young rocket enthusiasts to aspire to… but grower-of-body-parts is definitely not something you expect to see advertised at a job fair this year. But a new study done by the British government has indeed included this unique profession as one of the important jobs in the future.

The report commissioned by Britain’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was carried out by market research group Fast Future, and tried to determine a list of both jobs that do not currently exist and current jobs that could become more prominent by 2030.

The BBC writes:

Potential jobs of the future will include more farmers of genetically engineered crops and livestock, specialists in climate change reversal, and personal branders who will help individuals to establish their own brand across social networking sites.

Not just that, the report predicts police officers will be needed to monitor weather manipulation, and electronic waste data managers will be employed by people who do not want to be tracked online.

Oh, and if you’re feeling a little slow, the report predicts that surgeons may be around to “boost your RAM” as it were, giving people the ability to get extra memory capacity.

Yay! The future is coming. Strap on your jet-packs.

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Image Credit: Flickr / Thorne Enterprises

Attention lovers of old-timey science: the good stuff keeps on coming. Last month, when Britain’s Royal Society released digital versions of some of its greatest scientific papers to celebrate its 350th anniversary, we brought you delightfully odd and gruesome samples from the library. Now the society has uploaded another batch of classic manuscripts, including a book containing an early account of Isaac Newton’s apple story, one of science’s most famous anecdotes.

A biography written by William Stukeley, one of Newton’s contemporaries, relates the apple story as Newton himself told it to Stukeley. The text of Stukeley’s Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life has long been available online, but the Royal Society opened up digital access to the handwritten manuscript itself Sunday [Scientific American]. In his 1752 book on Newton, Stukeley writes:

After dinner, the weather being warm, we went out into the garden and drank tea under the shade of some apple trees, only he and myself.

Amidst other discourse, he told me he was just in the same situation as when formerly the notion of gravitation came into his mind.

Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself, occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood.

Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth’s centre? Assuredly, the reason is that the earth draws it.

While Newton personally told this story to Stukeley, the latter’s book wasn’t published until a quarter-century after Newton’s death. And the great scientist himself may have embellished the anecdote. Keith Moore, the Royal Society’s head of library and archives, said: “Scholars know where the apple story comes from, and clearly it’s an anecdote Newton polished. What we want is for the public to see the manuscript itself. It wasn’t just Newton that polished it, succeeding generations put a gloss on it as well – that story just humanises him just a little bit” [The Guardian]. Indeed, some popular retellings have embellished the tale to add that the apple didn’t just plop to the ground near Newton, but actually clonked him on the head.

However padded or polished, the apple story still inspires the imagination. Thomas Levenson, MIT professor, DISCOVER contributor, and author of Newton and the Counterfeiter, tells DISCOVER that scholars have gone to great length to investigate its details, including some who took cuttings of what they believed to be Newton’s original apple tree. MIT has an apple tree grown from the supposed Newton cuttings that saw first fruits in 2006.

Stukeley’s Newton book isn’t the only newly released manuscript, though. The Royal Society also digitized Henry James’ fossil sketches, Richard Waller’s watercolors, and more.

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Image: The Royal Society

Well, I finally succumbed. I had to. I made a Facebook fan page for myself.

Sigh.

When you sit in your office at home without pants on, writing about whatever you feel like, you can sometimes forget that what you do has an impact on the greater world. People from all over the planet read this blog (I’ll need to contact someone at NASA sometime to get it put in the ISS RSS feed reader), which is something I try to keep in mind when I write it.

I also love using social media, which is a great way to keep such a community together. I follow a lot of folks on Twitter, for example, and I use Facebook, too, though my list of complaints about it would reach from here to, well, the ISS.

One of those complaints is that there is a limit to the number of friends you can have. A FB page was never really intended for use by people to promote social media, but for some of us that’s what’s happened; for me it morphed from its original use as a personal page for IRL friends to something bigger. But I’ve run up against that limit, and cannot add any more friends.

So, to get around this, I had to bite the bullet and make that fan page (which has no limit). If you’re already a friend on my original page, then consider adding that as well. I’ll note that a while back someone started a fan page for me, which was very cool, and much appreciated. But I don’t control that one, and wanted one where I do, something more official.

I’ll start using the fan page more and more as time goes on. I have my Twitter feed going to my original page, and I’ve added it to the fan page too. I’ll eventually post more pictures there, and so on. If you join the page you can add stuff there as well. I can also add events to the calendar, more info about what I’m doing, and eventually, who knows? It may have some actual use!

Welcome to the first installment of the From Eternity to Here book club. We’re starting at the beginning, with Chapter One, “The Past is Present Memory.”

Excerpt:

The world does not present us with abstract concepts wrapped up with pretty bows, which we then must work to understand and reconcile with other concepts. Rather, the world presents us with phenomena, things that we observe and make note of, from which we must then work to derive concepts that help us understand how those phenomena relate to the rest of our experience. For subtle concepts such as entropy, this is pretty clear. You don’t walk down the street and bump into some entropy; you have to observe a variety of phenomena in nature and discern a pattern that is best thought of in terms of a new concept you label “entropy.” Armed with this helpful new concept, you observe even more phenomena, and you are inspired to refine and improve upon your original notion of what entropy really is.

For an idea as primitive and indispensable as “time,” the fact that we invent the concept rather than having it handed to us by the universe is less obvious—time is something we literally don’t know how to live without. Nevertheless, part of the task of science (and philosophy) is to take our intuitive notion of a basic concept such as “time” and turn it into something rigorous. What we find along the way is that we haven’t been using this word in a single unambiguous fashion; it has a few different meanings, each of which merits its own careful elucidation.

The book is divided into four major parts — Part One gives an overview of the issues, Part Two discusses relativity and time travel, Part Three (the longest and best part of the book) is about reversibility, entropy, and the arrow of time proper, and Part Four puts it all into a cosmological context. So Part One is somewhat out of logical order — it’s an attempt to survey the terrain and raise some ideas that will come to fruition later in the book.

The basic point of Chapter One is to examine the ways in which we use the concept of “time.” I’ll readily admit that this doesn’t sound like the sexiest idea for an opening chapter. (In my next book, an important character will be murdered within the first few pages, after which his beautiful daughter will be compelled to search for his killer in various exotic locales.) The first chapter has to serve multiple purposes — it obviously needs to provide some background for the rest of the book, but this is not a classroom where you can assume the audience will necessarily follow you to the end. So the first chapter also has to be fun and engaging, hinting at some of the mysteries to come.

In fact, I juggled the first three chapters back and forth. Chapter Two explains the basics of entropy and the arrow of time, while Chapter Three explains the basics of cosmology. At one point I had the current Chapter One placed after these two chapters, on the theory that we could be precise about definitions after we had been exposed to some of the big and exciting ideas. This was a well-intentioned theory, but not an especially good one. Test readers balked, so the current Chapter One was put back in the beginning.

Despite being about definitions and so forth, I think Chapter One turned out to be pretty interesting — indeed, I wonder now whether it shouldn’t have been longer. When you talk to people on the street about “time,” the first questions they ask tend to be along the lines of “what is time, really?” or “is time real, or just an illusion?” This chapter tries to answer those questions, or at least spell out the perspective I’ll be taking for the rest of the book. And they’re important questions, interesting in their own right, even if I breeze through them — lots of philosophical work, not to mention physics, has been addressed to these issues.

We distinguish between three ideas of time — time is a coordinate, time is what clocks measure, and time is the agent of change. These aren’t really “definitions” in any careful sense, so much as “ways we use the notion of time.” And my readers were right — it’s important to set out these different senses right from the start, as I’ve discovered that even physicists tend to blur them together in their minds.

The most important non-obvious stance I take in this chapter is to come down firmly on the side of an “eternalist” or “block universe” conception of time. The past, present, and future are equally real. Philosophers and other deep thinkers have been arguing about this for years, and I kind of dismiss the whole discussion in a couple of paragraphs. Sorry, philosophers! It’s an important issue, but we have other conceptual fish to fry.

So let me know what you thought, and what questions still remain — either about the substance of the chapter, or the stylistic choices made along the way. I’ll try to respond, although I reserve to right to say “hold that thought until we get to Chapter X.” And of course everyone else is encouraged to chime in, too.

Last week, I wrote at Science Progress about how a group of scientists had dealt a devastating blow to the practice of MTR (mountaintop removal mining) with a good paper, some luck, and a good communications plan.

Now, the point is driven home further, as the chief scientist involved, Dr. Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland, was actually invited on The Colbert Report to discuss her work. Of course, the blowing up of mountains is a perfect Colbert topic, but I felt that Dr. Palmer did a good job, er, sticking to the science. Watch the whole thing:

The Colbert Report	Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Coal Comfort – Margaret Palmer
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

Last week ended with the encouraging cosmological news that the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HiFi), on the Herschel Space Observatory, is once again working. How stars are born, and the influence of the environments in which this takes place is, as you might imagine, an important astrophysical question. Part of Herschel’s mission is to address this issue by using HiFi, which is a high-resolution spectrometer, to provide detailed measurements of the composition of stellar nurseries. This question is also important for cosmology, where we are increasingly interested in the details of how galaxies formed and evolved over cosmic time, in order to be able to separate out the astrophysics from the features of large scale structure that are sensitively dependent on the background cosmology.

Herschel, which was launched along with the Planck satellite, but a few months into operation, HiFi developed an electronics problem and was switched off. This week, after a careful study of the incident, HiFi’s reserve electronics were switched on, and appear to be working correctly. While HiFi was down, Herschel’s other two instruments – Pacs and Spire were able to hog the observing time and do some lovely far-infrared and sub-millimeter science. To make up for this, the plan is now to give HiFi a larger slice of the observing pie for a while, in order to make sure it can accomplish its mission.

All in all this is wonderful news for cosmology and I’m delighted that another of our suite of outstanding experiments is once again up and running. One thing did make me giggle a little though. Speaking to the BBC, Frank Helmich, who leads HiFi, pulls one of my favorite academic tricks, saying

“I don’t watch much television but I know Crime Scene Investigation and this was just such an investigation – but in space! We found out what happened and then we designed all the mitigating measures,”

The CSI angle is a mild attempt to connect with popular culture for the benefit of the large and diverse readership of a BBC story, and I think that isn’t a bad idea at all. But what I find hilarious is the initial qualification. Although irrelevant to the point, it has to be said anyway, to satisfy what I’ve referred to before as the unspoken academic code, which I’ve paraphrased as

“Do not engage in any activity that is part of popular culture. Such activities include, but are not limited to; playing video games, playing card games (bridge excepted), watching movies without a serious social message and watching television (PBS, in particular NOVA, occasionally excepted). Any violation of the above may lead to a stubborn stain on your intellectual reputation, which may only be removed by repeatedly attending highly experimental theater.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to some interpretive dance.