The world’s most prosperous (and happiest) countries are also its least religious, new research states.

Found this interesting article. I did have to emphasize something in the article based on intellectual honesty. However, it's pretty clear when you look at data that goes back years. It's been said quite often, and this confirms it more:

Who Needs God When We’ve Got Mammon?

From Dostoyevsky to right-wing commentator Ann Coulter we are warned of the perils of godlessness. “If there is no God,” Dostoyevsky wrote, “everything is permitted.” Coulter routinely attributes our nation’s most intractable troubles to the moral vacuum of atheism.

But a growing body of research in what one sociologist describes as the “emerging field of secularity” is challenging long-held assumptions about the relationship of religion and effective governance.

In a paper posted recently on the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, independent researcher Gregory S. Paul reports a strong correlation within First World democracies between socioeconomic well-being and secularity. In short, prosperity is highest in societies where religion is practiced least.

Using existing data, Paul combined 25 indicators of societal and economic stability — things like crime, suicide, drug use, incarceration, unemployment, income, abortion and public corruption — to score each country using what he calls the “successful societies scale.” He also scored countries on their degree of religiosity, as determined by such measures as church attendance, belief in a creator deity and acceptance of Bible literalism.

Comparing the two scores, he found, with little exception, that the least religious countries enjoyed the most prosperity. Of particular note, the U.S. holds the distinction of most religious and least prosperous among the 17 countries included in the study, ranking last in 14 of the 25 socioeconomic measures.

Paul is quick to point out that his study reveals correlation, not causation. Which came first — prosperity or secularity — is unclear, but Paul ventures a guess. While it’s possible that good governance and socioeconomic health are byproducts of a secular society, more likely, he speculates, people are inclined to drop their attachment to religion once they feel distanced from the insecurities and burdens of life.

“Popular religion,” Paul proposes, “is a coping mechanism for the anxieties of a dysfunctional social and economic environment.” Paul, who was criticized, mostly on statistical grounds, for a similar study published in 2005, says his new findings lend support to the belief that mass acceptance of popular religion is determined more by environmental influences and less by selective, evolutionary forces, as scholars and philosophers have long debated.

In other words, we’re not hardwired for religion.

Paul also believes his study helps refute the controversial notion that the moral foundation of religious doctrine is a requisite for any high-functioning society – what he dubs the “moral-creator hypothesis.”

Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist at Pitzer College whose research looks at the link between religion and societal health within the developed world, agrees with that assertion. “The important thing we’re seeing here is that progressive, highly functional societies can answer their problems within a framework of secularity. That’s a big deal, and we should be blasting that message out loud,” he contends.

Zuckerman says the findings are consistent with his own data, collected for his 2008 book Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment — a portrait of secular society in Denmark and Sweden — and his forthcoming Faith No More: How and Why People Reject Religion.

Scandinavian countries, in particular, have achieved high levels of economic strength and social stability, and yet the influence of religion there is in steep decline, perhaps the lowest in recoded history. Coincidence or not, those countries also rank among the world’s happiest populations. In The Netherlands’ Erasmus University Rotterdam’s annual World Database of Happiness the same Northern European countries that score low in religiosity rank high in reported levels of happiness. (The U.S ranked 27th).

What’s their secret? Zuckerman believe it lies in the historically strong sense of community — perhaps a survival response to long, harsh winters – that transcends religious life in these northern climates. Social well-being, economic strength (and happiness) are products of community interaction, not faith, Zuckerman conjectures.

If that’s true — and other researchers, such as influential Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, are touting the idea that mass religion’s greatest value lies in the web of personal interaction it weaves — then societies that reject religion may suffer if strong secular institutions are not in place to maintain community bonds and foster positive civic associations. Social interactions both inside and outside church structure, Bloom recently wrote, is far more beneficial than “a belief in constant surveillance by a higher power.”

Indeed, researchers in a variety of other studies are targeting the positive effects of church-based social interaction. One study published earlier this year in the Journal of Happiness Studies concluded that the quality and depth of personal relationships has a far greater effect on children’s happiness than does religious practice itself — church attendance, prayer, meditation. In many American communities, organized religion is the principal conduit to those kinds of close relationships, as well as to civic action and problem-solving.

Zuckerman warns against hasty emulation of the Danes and Swedes. “We can’t just say that secularity is good for society and religion is bad,” he warns. “And nor can we say the opposite. The connections are very complex.”

Paul is less compromising, characterizing organized religion, particularly the conservative Christian brand widely practiced in the U.S., as societal anathema, conspiring against real progress.

In his paper, Paul writes of an “antagonistic relationship between better socioeconomic conditions and intense popular faith” derived from fear that greater prosperity will loosen the grip of religion. That antagonism, though subtle, is evident in the debate over health care, he argues, noting the intense opposition of such groups as the Christian Coalition to universal coverage and other progressive, European-style fixes.

“These groups have a lot to lose in these kinds of debates. When you adopt progressive policy reforms,” Paul says, “in the long run, religion is bound to be road kill.”

Paul, 54, lives in Baltimore and is not affiliated with any university or think tank. He is largely self-taught. He has published three respected books on paleontology, claiming naming rights to a handful of species, and he earns a living as an artist and illustrator of prehistoric creatures. He migrated to the field of secular studies to wage a kind of scholarly assault on the right-wing fundamentalists who challenge both the evolutionary assumptions of paleontology and, it follows, his livelihood.

He isn’t shy about promoting progressive policy reforms and is quick to blame the Christian right for a range of societal dysfunctions. (A recent study published in the journal Reproductive Health found that states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs have higher rates of teenagers giving birth).

Yet in spite of his findings, and his secularist agenda, Paul stops short of proposing measures to suppress the role and influence of religion in America. Why? It’s already happening, he insists. Although we remain largely a nation of believers, our faith and commitment are slipping. Religious affiliation, church attendance and belief in God are all in slow decline in the U.S. A recent Gallup poll found that two-thirds of adults believe the influence of religion in American life is waning, up from 50 percent just four years ago.

As these trends continue, he believes, policymaking will more effectively address the true needs of society, rather than the dogma of religious idealism. “People need to know that society without religion is not a bad thing,” Paul says. “And we’re seeing this in other countries. We don’t need religion to have a thriving, prosperous nation.”

Brain Damage Leads to Religion

I KNEW IT! ;) Okay, maybe the title is too snarky, but there is a bit of a confirmation (bias) there that I find emotionally and viscerally satisfying. The fun reasoning on this would be that the more religious, the more brain damage one has. Just having some fun.

Spirituality linked to brain damage

Brain activity changes when people undergo spiritual or religious experiences. This isn't surprising, of course, since it's the brain that generates these mental states. Studying just how brain activity changes as people think religious thoughts or experience spiritual or transcendental experiences gives a window into how they are generated in the brain and how they link to other kinds of experiences.

The religious tend to take a dualist approach to these kinds of results, arguing that these changes in brain activity are somehow just a signal, or only part of the story. The actual spiritual experience is generated somewhere else, and the brain activity is just the physical manifestation.

But this argument crumbles if spiritual experiences can be generated by actively changing brain activity. There is some evidence already that this is so. Most famously, Michael Persinger at Laurentian University has found that using electromagnets to stimulate the temporal lobe can generate spiritual feelings (although recently Swedish researchers were not able to duplicate his results).

So what's the connection to brain damage? Well, a new study by Brick Johnstone and Bret Glass at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that people with evidence of brain damage to their right parietal lobes score higher on a standard measure of spirituality.

What they did was to assess 26 adults with modest traumatic brain injury (they were all walking wounded, able to function in the outside world) to a battery of tests of brain function. What they were expecting to see was that brain damage in the right parietal lobe would increase spirituality, but that damage to the frontal lobe or left temporal lobe would decrease spirituality.

In fact, damage to the frontal lobe did not seem to have any effect, and although there was a slight signal with damage to the left temporal lobe, it wasn't statistically significant.

Interestingly, the effects of damage to the right parietal lobe match with previous studies looking at brain activity in meditating Buddhist monks. When they achieved a transcendental state, activity in their parietal lobes was also quelled.

So it seems that shutting down this part of the brain seems essential for at least some aspects of religious experiences. Why this particular bit of the brain? Well, it's all to do with how we figure out where we are, and how we relate to the world around us. As Johnstone & Glass explain:

From a neuropsychological perspective, the right hemisphere allows for individuals to define themselves in relation to the immediate environment, the here-and-now. The right parietal lobe is generally associated with awareness of the self relative to other objects in space, awareness of the self as perceived by others in social situations, and the ability to critically evaluate one’s own strengths and weaknesses (such as insight). Disorders of the right hemisphere involve a diminished capacity in the ability of the self to function in the immediate environment, including difficulties localizing the body in space...

In other words, it's this bit of the brain that figures out where you are in time and space. If it breaks down, you'll experience some pretty freaky sensations - which, if you are so inclined, the rest of your brain will interpret as a religious experience.

The brain surgery path to transcendence

Transcendence: the belief that you are connected in ineffable ways to the world around you, that you are not limited by your body but can go beyond it in mysterious ways.

The feeling of transcendence seems to be linked to the right parietal lobe. Brain scans of meditating Buddhist monks show decreased activity in this area, and people with brain damage in the region report feeling more spiritual.

Now a new study has taken a closer look in patients undergoing surgery for brain tumours. Using a sensitive measure of spirituality and accurate mapping of the brain lesion, they were able to tie down the relationships to two specific brain regions, shown in the image.

One of these is located in the right parietal lobe, and the other in the left parietal lobe. These parts of the brain are linked to awareness of where your body (and body parts) is in space.

So these results support the idea the transcendental experiences are caused by a loss of function in these key brain areas. What's interesting was the effect was both immediate (it happened straight after surgery) and prolonged (it was detectable in patients who had previously been operated on for a tumour in the same area).

And feeling more transcendental seemed to turn them on to religion. Patients whose brain tumours were located in this area reported being more religious even before surgery. So if somebody you know suddenly takes up churchgoing, you might want to refer them to your friendly, local neurologist!

Global Warming Dissidents

There are a lot of things to be skeptical about, and even many things where there are degrees of skepticism that are good and healthy. Of course, there are also areas where skepticism is just plain stupid and totally unreasonable. Anthropomorphic Climate Change is one area where there is a certain degree of healthy skepticism. People doubting the legitimate citizenship of the President of the United States: Just plain fucking crazy, deluded, and borderline racist people that shouldn't be allowed in public unsupervised.

Now what do I mean about healthy skepticism on AGW? Most respected climate scientists who actually know what the fuck they are talking about have pretty much settled the issue, and only loonies like the birthers of other such idiots are left to talk about it... Well, that's not entirely correct. There are still issues that cause some concern and have open questions to them. Such as what is the actual effect of AGW going to be in the future, and how fast will it really happen. Basically the models people use are still not that refined because, well, it hasn't actually happened yet. It's like trying to predict the motion of every molecule in the ocean for a 10 year period. Not an easy thing to do.

I in no way deny that there is AGW. I also think that it's a good idea to eliminate as much pollution as possible (unless you are one of these idiots that think it's okay to take a shit in your fridge, and still eat the food... remind me never to go to your house for dinner). So I found this article to be a good one:

Climate Skepticism

by Steven Novella, Feb 08 2010

Climate science has turned from an obscure and forgotten discipline to the center of a raging world-wide controversy – something I don’t think climate scientists were prepared for. It has also become the third rail of skepticism – don’t touch it unless you want to get burned.

The reason for this is probably obvious – skeptics are divided politically (this is an oversimplification but largely true) between liberals and libertarians, both of which seem to have strong and opposite opinions on the topic of global warming. As a result I have been simultaneously criticized for being too soft and too hard on global warming dissidents. I hope this means that I am striking an objective balance – but then, of course, I get criticized for striking a “false balance.” I have been told that I am losing my skeptical street cred, and that I have faith in global warming as a secular religion. Many people also seem to think they can divine my political persuasion from my opinions on global warming, but then proceed to make very incorrect assumptions on that score.

There has also been intense fighting on what to call global warming dissidents – the term I have settled on as the most accurate and neutral. Part of the problem is that dissidents come in a broad range of opinions. At one end of the spectrum there are what can only be described as deniers – those who engage in all the tactics of denialism against any notion of climate change. At the other end are those who accept the core scientific consensus of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), but are skeptical of some of the dire predictions and proposed fixes. And there is every permutation in between – defying easy categorization or labeling. So I use “dissidents” as a neutral catch-all.

What is most disappointing about the AGW controversy is the degree to which self-identified members of the skeptical community engage in less-than-skeptical discourse on this topic. I am mainly referring to the many dozens of e-mails I have received on the topic (every time I talk about it) but also on blogs and articles.

I would like to share with you an e-mail exchange I had recently with a global warming dissident. He is responding mainly to my recent discussion of “climategate” – which has really increased the nastiness of the discussion on AGW.

My personal understanding of the current state of climate science is this – the evidence is very solid that average global temperatures are trending up over the last century and that human forcing through CO2 production is the best current answer to explain this trend. If this trend continues (a somewhat big “if”) then there will likely be significant unwanted consequences – not for the earth, but for human civilization. Shifting around agriculture and shorelines will be inconvenient, to say the least. But there is admitted uncertainty in this, and we don’t know all the ways in which the environment will respond to CO2 and temperature increases. But, as is often the case with applied sciences, we have to act prior to certainty if we want to affect the outcome.

Further, the current plans for fixes to rising CO2 and climate change are as much political as scientific. I think the best solutions to focus on are those things that we would benefit from anyway. Let’s accelerate research and development into alternative energy sources and increased energy efficiency. Even if AGW is a non-issue, these will be good things. It’s a win-win.

I must admit I have not been impressed with those who have e-mailed me to try to convince me that AGW is pseudoscience, and that dissidents are the real skeptics. It seems that the more someone tries to convince me of this position, the more they push me in the opposite direction. The following e-mail exchange really is representative of what I receive. (Forgive the length of the exchange.)

Steve, I was heartened to hear your softened position on Global Warming in the Year End SGU, even though Rebecca is still rabid. Eventually, all of you will come to realize who were the real skeptics on this issue, and who were the Denyers. A quote from below article – if the shoe fits:

“The secular religion of global warming has all the elements of a Religious Faith: original sin (we are polluting the planet), ritual (separate your waste for recycling), redemption (renounce economic growth) and the sale of indulgences (carbon offsets). We are told that we must have faith (all argument must end, as Al Gore likes to say) and must persecute heretics (global warming skeptics are like Holocaust deniers, we are told).

People in the grip of such a religious frenzy evidently feel justified in lying, concealing good evidence and plucking bad evidence from whatever flimsy source may be at hand. The rest of us, and judging from polls that includes most of the American people, are free to follow a more rational path.”

from: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/How-climate-change-fanatics-corrupted-science-83396362.html

I responded with the opinion I outlined above, concluding:

When you dig through all the nonsense and look at the actual data – in my opinion it supports the conclusion that the planet is warming and anthropogenic forcing is playing a significant role. Where this will lead and what to do about it are less clear. There is still uncertainty, but one thing is sure – if we wait until we are certain about AGW it will be too late to do anything about it. It’s like waiting to treat a patient with possible cancer until after you are sure it’s cancer, because it has spread and is now incurable.

Here is part of the e-mailer’s response:

Thanks for the considered reply. We of course agree on many of the issues – I have always been in favor of pollution control, energy efficiency, alternative energy, recycling when efficient. But not Cap and Trade or Carbon Credits or other political/economic disasters. Regarding your cancer analogy, you don’t treat for cancer without the biopsy showing the actual cancer. If you saw the Walter Williams / John Coleman information I sent yesterday, the “warming” itself is now questionable because CRU dropped the coldest temperature data from the mix used to show global temps. And the anthropogenic forcing effect is very tenuous – and where we truly disagree on Truth and Relevance.

OK – this is where I like to dig in. Whenever I get a specific claim I investigate it for myself and try to find out what the real story is. It seems that when it comes to the AGW controversy the claims of the dissidents do not hold up under investigation. So, did the CRU drop data in order to create the false impression of global warming? Here is what I found.

Your point about the CRU dropping the coldest temperature data is a good example of why I am not impressed with the criticisms of AGW dissidents. You seem to be accepting uncritically the claims of the extremists on one side. My approach is always to investigate the claims first, see what both sides are saying, and then come to a conclusion.

It did not take me long to find this: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2010/01/kusi-noaa-nasa/
A very reasoned and referenced analysis of this claim.

First, as far as I can tell the claim comes from here: http://www.climategate.com/climatologists-drop-806-cold-weather-stations-in-a-single-year

The claim of dropped data results from anomaly hunting followed by admitted speculations:

“Absent any public statement from climatolgists for such a strange act, I can only speculate that this a deliberate attempt to cause an artificial warming of the data set. I can think of no other valid scientific reason.”

Ah – an argument from ignorance. Well, he should have investigated first.

It turns out that stations are not being dropped from the data. It takes years and even decades to put together the hand-collected data from many stations around the world. So as you look back in time, those stations whose data has not been made available yet “drop off”. As the author above explains – if you look at the number of stations providing data 30 years from now you may see a spike around 2010 in the number of stations. In other words – stations are not being dropped, there is just a delay in getting data from them.

Second – you need to ask what should be an obvious question – is there any evidence that the stations which are currently missing from the data (for whatever reason) would skew the temperature results in favor of a warming trend. The answer to this is a clear no, from multiple independent lines of evidence. First – satellite temperature data would increasingly depart from ground station data if the ground stations were being biased in one direction. No such trend exists.

Second, when you compare stations with current data and those without current data, there is no pattern or bias toward warmer or cooler temperatures. So the core claim that cooler temperatures are being systematically dropped is false.

As a side note, the claim is about the GHCN, not the CRU.

This is representative of the entire climategate affair, as far as I can tell – although I am reserving judgment until all the facts are in. It does seem the CRU scientists were not following the rules of transparency and had developed a bunker mentality. It remains to be seen if they were engaged in “pious fraud.” What I reject are the premature conclusions of dissidents who were quick to assume that climategate confirmed all of their most extreme opinions.

So far, when you dig down to the real information it turns out that the anomalies in the data were just an innocent part of the scientific process – in this case the lag in data collection. This is true anomaly hunting and confirmation bias.

I am still waiting to hear a legitimate scientific argument from AGW dissidents why we should reject the claim that global warming is happening and is likely anthropogenic. I am not impressed by political arguments, calling my position a religion, or weaving liberal conspiracy theories.

I may be wrong – if you think I am then let’s discuss the science. My challenge to those who consider themselves global warming skeptics is, if you wish to truly earn that mantle, is to focus on scientific arguments. My opinions can be changed on this topic, I really have no stake in the debate at all – except the one that every human on the planet has, which is only served by knowing the truth, whatever it is. I hope global warming is not happening, it is nothing but a major inconvenience and crimp in civilization. I would love to just continue burning fossil fuels and not have to worry about the consequences.

So if you disagree with me, show me some science. And spare me the name-calling and conspiracy theories.

Hubble captures picture of asteroid collision!

Sometimes there is something out there that is just too damn cool not to repost! This is one of those things! Again, this is one of Dr. Plait's offerings, so it has probably got all the exposure in the world that it will get, and me reposting it here won't really do anything to increase that exposure. I just want to be able to reference this in the future.

Although, it does bring me to a serious question. The LINEAR is supposed to help detect these sort of things, especially those that can make things "suck hard" for us down here on this planet. However, it does beg the question as to what would happen if we actually found something that was going to impact. What would we actually be able to DO? And could we get our collective acts together to set any plan we made into motion with a reasonable chance of success? Personally, I am betting the GOP would filibuster any plans in the hopes that it's jebus coming to take them away, and just let millions of people die because of their fucked up view of the world. Maybe that's just me being a little snarky, but sadly probably not too snarky.

Hubble captures picture of asteroid collision!

Last week, the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey program, designed to sweep the heavens looking for near-Earth asteroids, spotted something really weird; an elongated streak that looked as if two asteroids had collided. Just days later, Hubble was pointed at the object, and what it saw was really really weird:

[Click to armageddonate.]

This is a false-color image showing the object, called P/2010 A2, in visible light. The long tail of debris is obvious; this is probably dust being blown back by the solar wind, similar to the way a comet’s tail is blown back. What apparently has happened is that two small, previously-undiscovered asteroids collided, impacting with a speed of at least 5 km/sec (and possibly faster). The energy in such a collision is like setting off a nuclear bomb, or actually many nuclear bombs! The asteroids shattered, and much of the debris expanded outward as pulverized dust.

Now, let me just take a moment and say HOLY HALEAKALA WHAT WE’RE SEEING HERE IS THE COLLISION BETWEEN TWO PREVIOUSLY UNDISCOVERED ASTEROIDS THAT EXPLODED LIKE THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS WHEN THEY IMPACTED!!!

Phew. OK, I feel better. I needed to get that off my chest.

First off, to be clear we’re in no danger from this event. It was really far away (in human terms; 140 million km or 90 million miles — the object’s orbit keeps it farther from the Sun than Mars — so we’re not about to get pummeled with debris. And while the explosion energy was quite large — certainly much larger than any weapon ever detonated on Earth — it wasn’t radioactive, in case you’re worried about that sort of thing. This was a kinetic explosion, caused by a high-speed collision, and not an actual detonation of any kind.

Looking at the image, the bright spot to the left is most likely what’s left of one of the two asteroids, a chunk of rock estimated to be a mere 140 meters (450 feet) across. In the press release they’re not clear about the curved line emanating to the right of the nucleus. It may be — and I’m spitballing here — dust blown back from a stream of chunks, since the tail is broad and appears to originate from that swept curve, and not from the nucleus itself. The other filament perpendicular to the curve is from yet another piece of debris.

Despite how much this looks like a comet, ground-based observations indicate no gas is present, meaning this was from asteroids colliding, not comets, which have significant amounts of ice which turn to gas near the Sun. The collision energy was high enough to produce a lot of gas if any were present. That clinches this being an asteroid impact.

Also, the orbit of the object indicates it’s an asteroid, and it appears to be part of a well-known group of asteroids called the Flora family, which share similar orbital characteristics, and are probably remnants themselves of an ancient breakup of a much larger parent asteroid.

Nothing like this has ever been seen before. Sure, Hubble and about a hundred other telescopes observed the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slam in to Jupiter in 1994, but that was different than seeing two asteroids hit. Asteroids are small, and very very far apart on average (don’t believe scenes like that in "Empire Strikes Back"), so a collision like this is extremely rare, and catching it from such a great vantage point rarer still. But we have a lot of eyes on the sky, and the more we watch the more we’ll see.

And we’d better. An object 140 meters across hitting the Earth would, to be technical, suck. Hard. Whatever caused Meteor Crater in Arizona, an impact scar over a kilometer across, was itself probably about 40 meters across. An object like 2010 A2, which is three times the diameter, would have 20 -30 times the mass, and do considerably more damage. I’m glad groups like LINEAR are out there patrolling the skies for such things. We need to learn as much as we can about these asteroids, so that we can prevent the next Meteor Crater from occurring.

This is just so cool I had to share:

Stunning New Image of Cat's Paw Nebula

ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2010) — ESO has just released a stunning new image of the vast cloud known as the Cat's Paw Nebula or NGC 6334. This complex region of gas and dust, where numerous massive stars are born, lies near the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, and is heavily obscured by intervening dust clouds.

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The Cat's Paw Nebula (NGC 6334) is a vast region of star formation. The whole gas cloud is about 50 light-years across. (Credit: Image courtesy of ESO)

Few objects in the sky have been as well named as the Cat's Paw Nebula, a glowing gas cloud resembling the gigantic pawprint of a celestial cat out on an errand across the Universe. British astronomer John Herschel first recorded NGC 6334 in 1837 during his stay in South Africa. Despite using one of the largest telescopes in the world at the time, Herschel seems to have only noted the brightest part of the cloud, seen here towards the lower left.

NGC 6334 lies about 5500 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scorpius (the Scorpion) and covers an area on the sky slightly larger than the full Moon. The whole gas cloud is about 50 light-years across. The nebula appears red because its blue and green light are scattered and absorbed more efficiently by material between the nebula and Earth. The red light comes predominantly from hydrogen gas glowing under the intense glare of hot young stars.

NGC 6334 is one of the most active nurseries of massive stars in our galaxy and has been extensively studied by astronomers. The nebula conceals freshly minted brilliant blue stars -- each nearly ten times the mass of our Sun and born in the last few million years. The region is also home to many baby stars that are buried deep in the dust, making them difficult to study. In total, the Cat's Paw Nebula could contain several tens of thousands of stars.

Particularly striking is the red, intricate bubble in the lower right part of the image. This is most likely either a star expelling large amount of matter at high speed as it nears the end of its life or the remnant of a star that already has exploded.

This new portrait of the Cat's Paw Nebula was created from images taken with the Wide Field Imager (WFI) instrument at the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, combining images taken through blue, green and red filters, as well as a special filter designed to let through the light of glowing hydrogen.

Justice Served

Not sure if you have seen the incredibly stupid "dowsing" rods that some crook sold to the Iraqi Military, but I see that logic has finally prevailed. I think one of the funniest things that I saw in all the reporting in this, was a statement by this scumbag: "We have been dealing with doubters for 10 years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights." Yeah, like fucking lights will make this non-sense any more real. Now, if he'd said they were going to have it go "PING!" from time to time, I'm sure it would have been okay.

I just hope this guy rots a good long time. It's precisely this sort of deluded thinking that humans are so susceptible to. Con men and all the world's religions know that, and take advantage of it!

As Good As Dowsing

For once we have some news of rationality winning – although it took a while. Jim McCormick (pictured right), maker of the useless ADE-651 “bomb detection” device, was arrested yesterday in the UK on suspicion of “fraud by misrepresentation.” An export ban on the device will come into force next week. To which I add – about time!

It’s not as if this is new information. The ADE-651 is just the latest incarnation of a device that was previously called “The Mole,” and before that the “Quadro Tracker.” They’re all the exact same device and they have all consistently failed tests designed to see if they work. Back in October 2008 and again in November 2009, James Randi challenged the makers of the ADE-651 to apply for his million dollar prize to prove that it worked. Of course, as with all the other charlatans and quacks Randi challenges, they didn’t apply. Well, now we know why – the makers were selling these pieces of junk to the Iraqi government for $40,000 a pop or a total to date of $85 million! By my count, that’s over 2,000 not bomb detectors not detecting bombs in Iraq alone. Randi’s $ million must have seemed like small change. (I have to admit I am still a bit skeptical about this $85 million figure. It is the figure that is consistently being reported by all media, although they are probably just repeating each other, so we can’t be sure. Still, we have nothing else to go on right now. If it is confirmed it is certainly a massive fraud for such a piece of junk.)

The BBC reports that there are concerns that the devices have failed to stop bomb attacks that have killed hundreds of people. Actually, a little more than just “concerns.” There have been several successful bomb attacks in Iraq recently in areas where they were apparently relying on this bogus device:

And an attack in December killed over 120 people, prompting Iraqis to ask how the bombs could have got through the city's security.

Attention is increasingly focusing on the ADE-651, the hand-held detector now used at most checkpoints in Baghdad. [My bold.]

Get that? This useless device is used at most checkpoints in Baghdad in place of physical inspections of vehicles. Remember, this is a device that has no memory, no programming, no working electronics, no batteries and no known way it could possibly ever work. It has consistently failed to work in all controlled tests. And yet they go for $40,000 each! Over 2,000 of them.

Strangely, I find I do agree with one thing McCormick has to say about his product:

"the theory behind dowsing and the theory behind how we actually detect explosives is very similar".

Yes, dowsing and the ADE-651 are similar in that they are both complete bullshit.

Randi’s blog today has a post, Randi Responds to the Arrest of James McCormick, that includes a video of Randi explaining the history of this device and the JREF’s role in exposing it. (Although I don’t often recommend long video clips, this one with Randi is worth the time.) Astonishingly, the Quadro Tracker (which, to repeat, is the exact same product as the ADE-651) was tested back in 1995 and was described back then by the FBI as “a fraud.” Fifteen years later, McCormick gets arrested.

The Iraqi officer who appeared at a press conference with McCormick recently, Major General Jehad al-Jabiri, apparently said he did not care about the failed tests of this device. I join Randi in hoping the Iraqis investigate this Iraqi officer’s connection to the manufacturers of the device. Apparently it has been sold for $16,500 (still a rip off for something that does nothing), although it was sold to the Iraqi military for up to $60,000. Would the Major General’s bank accounts reveal kickbacks received from McCormick’s company? There would have been enough spare cash from that $85 million to pay off any number of intermediaries. Perhaps the threat of jail time (Iraqi jail – nice) would motivate the Major General finally to care if the damn thing works or not. One can only hope.

Praise should go to the JREF for doggedly exposing this fraud for at least the past 15 years, according to Randi. (Shame on the media and law enforcement for allowing it to continue, without criticism, for so long.) Don’t forget all the other frauds and charlatans who also refuse to take Randi’s $ million test because they know they would fail. (And ditto.)

Science education inoculates against religion

So I saw this blog in my feed today. I went over to read it just to see what the author had to say. At first I was hopeful that there was some correlation like IQ vs Religiosity, but I really don't see that. To me, it just seems that the more devout someone is, the more they will run away from learning about the world around them. They can't handle the fact that their impotent little god hardly has an gaps to hide in as it is, so they just cover their eyes and ears and hope nothing gets in.

Some are more active about it, and even try to keep other people who may actually want to learn (Texas Board of [un]-Education anyone?), but hopefully more and more rational people will stand up to those fucktards, and kick them to the curb where they belong. SO while this paper was somewhat positive to me, it just reminded me that it's more a result of some of these cretins willfully ignoring science, and swallowing up every lie they can find that supports their incredibly fucked up view of the world.

Science education inoculates against religion

At the back end of 2007, I wrote that science education doesn't inoculate against religion. But the time has come to indulge in a bit of revisionism.

Here's why. Darren Sherkat (who has a paper out on religious fundamentalism and verbal ability that I covered in the previous post) has also taken a look at the link with scientific knowledge. The paper isn't published yet, but he sent me the manuscript - and he's also blogged it, if you want the 'horse's mouth' version!

As before, this is an analysis of the US General Social Survey, which includes a set of 13 questions on general science topics. As you can see in the graph, people who think the Bible is a book of fables scored nearly 40% higher that those who think it is the literal word of God.

You get a similar result for people who are members of Conservative Protestant sects. What's more, it persists even after controlling for other factors that might explain the difference - like age, education, income, race, immigrant status and region.

It seems that there is something about conservative Christianity in the US that works directly against science skills. In part, this might be down to the nature of the questions.

Sherkat omitted from the analysis the question about evolution, but there are also questions about continental drift and also the Big Bang. A Young Earth Creationist, might give the wrong answer to these even though they had been taught the correct answer.

So why did I previously suggest no link between science proficiency and religiosity? Well, I looked at international student scores on science collected by PISA, and correlated these with data on how often people in those countries prayed. I didn't find any link.

But Sherkat's work suggests that the link is strongest with people who have a rather extreme attachment to their religion. So I went back and redid the analysis, using the latest religious data from the World Values Survey.

This time I looked at people who rated themselves '10' on a 10-point scale asking how important God is in their life. This is a question that really picks out the very devout.

It turns out that countries with a lot of these really devout people do very poorly at educating their children about science.

In a way that's not too surprising, because these countries also tend to be poorer and less well educated in general.

But PISA also provide data adjusted for socioeconomic differences between the countries. So this score reflects how effective countries are at educating their children on science, after taking into account their different circumstances.

The data are only available for OECD countries, but that's good because these countries are broadly similar to start with. Unfortunately, the WVS didn't collect religious data from all OECD countries, which makes the sample even smaller. But even so...

The remarkable fact is that even within this small, relatively homogenous, pool of countries there's still a significant correlation.

Although this is an ecological study (it didn't look at individual data, like Sherkat's can do with the GSS data), it does support his findings.

Either highly religious people shield their children from science, or good science education shifts people from being highly religious to a more moderate stance (or perhaps both, of course).

Either way, I'm going to have to revise my previous belief that science education and religion aren't linked!

__________________________________________________________________________
This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

Autism News

As the father of a child who has been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, I tend to keep my eye on scientific literature reagrding the subject. And by scientific literature, I mean actual science, not hare-brained ideas like "mommy sense" or whatever else type of bullshit the likes of Jenny McCarthy and those idiots peddle (which can be decidedly harmful). One of my favorite sites to go to is ScienceDaily. They even have a whole section dedicated to Autism.

So why make a blog entry on this? Well, mostly because I haven't blogged in a while! I have been very busy with numerous things that consume more time than the day offers, and blogging was one of those extra things that just had to be prioritized out. Im sure you know how that goes.

Anyway, I haven't been over to ScienceDaily lately, so I was excited to find out more about the ability to diagnose autism. Sadly, autism is a difficult dissorder to properly and truly diagnose, and it takes quite a while. Which of course leads to the whole confusion and confirmation bias with the vaccine canard. (Just as an aside, I am a dad of an autistic child, and we all vaccinate!) Anyway, here is the article that I found:

Brain Imaging May Help Diagnose Autism

ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2010) — Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) process sound and language a fraction of a second slower than children without ASDs, and measuring magnetic signals that mark this delay may become a standardized way to diagnose autism.

Researchers at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia report their findings in an online article in the journal Autism Research, published January 8.

"More work needs to be done before this can become a standard tool, but this pattern of delayed brain response may be refined into the first imaging biomarker for autism," said study leader Timothy P.L. Roberts, Ph.D., vice chair of Radiology Research at Children's Hospital.

ASDs are a group of childhood neurodevelopmental disorders that cause impairments in verbal communication, social interaction and behavior. ASDs are currently estimated to affect as many as one percent of U.S. children, according to a recent CDC report.

Like many neurodevelopmental disorders, in the absence of objective biological measurements, psychologists and other caregivers rely on clinical judgments such as observations of behavior to diagnose ASDs, often not until a child reaches school age. If researchers can develop imaging results into standardized diagnostic tests, they may be able to diagnose ASDs as early as infancy, permitting possible earlier intervention with treatments. They also may be able to differentiate types of ASDs (classic autism, Asperger's syndrome or other types) in individual patients.

In the current study, Roberts and colleagues used magnetoencephalography (MEG), which detects magnetic fields in the brain, similar to the way electroencephalography (EEG) detects electrical fields. Using a helmet that surrounds the child's head, the team presents a series of recorded beeps, vowels and sentences. As the child's brain responds to each sound, noninvasive detectors in the MEG machine analyze the brain's changing magnetic fields.

The researchers compared 25 children with ASDs, having a mean age of 10 years, to 17 age-matched typically developing children. The children with ASDs had an average delay of 11 milliseconds (about 1/100 of a second) in their brain responses to sounds, compared to the control children. Among the group with ASDs, the delays were similar, whether or not the children had language impairments.

"This delayed response suggests that the auditory system may be slower to develop and mature in children with ASDs," said Roberts. An 11-millisecond delay is brief, but it means, for instance, that a child with ASD, on hearing the word 'elephant' is still processing the 'el' sound while other children have moved on. The delays may cascade as a conversation progresses, and the child may lag behind typically developing peers."

A 2009 study by Roberts and colleagues sheds light on how changes in brain anatomy may account for the delays in sound processing. The study team used MEG to analyze the development of white matter in the brains of 26 typically developing children and adolescents. Because white matter carries electrical signals in the brain, signaling speed improves when neurons are better protected with an insulating sheath of a membrane material called myelin.

In this previous study, the researchers showed that normal age-related development of greater myelination corresponds with faster auditory responses in the brain. "The delayed auditory response that we find in children with ASDs may reflect delayed white matter development in these children," said Roberts. Roberts says his team's further studies will seek to refine their imaging techniques to determine that their biomarker is specific to ASDs, and will investigate other MEG patterns found in children with ASDs in addition to auditory delays.

Grants from National Institute of Health, the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation, Autism Speaks, and the Pennsylvania Department of Health supported this research. In addition, Roberts holds an endowed chair, the Oberkircher Family Chair in Pediatric Radiology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Roberts' co-authors were from Children's Hospital, including the Hospital's Center for Autism Research.

And to further debunk the anti-vax pro-disease nutters:

More Evidence That Autism Is a Brain 'Connectivity' Disorder

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2010) — Studying a rare disorder known as tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), researchers at Children's Hospital Boston add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that autism spectrum disorders, which affect 25 to 50 percent of TSC patients, result from a miswiring of connections in the developing brain, leading to improper information flow. The finding may also help explain why many people with TSC have seizures and intellectual disabilities.

Findings were published online in Nature Neuroscience on January 10.

TSC causes benign tumors throughout the body, including the brain. But patients with TSC may have autism, epilepsy or intellectual disabilities even in the absence of these growths. Now, researchers led by Mustafa Sahin, MD, PhD, of Children's Department of Neurology, provide evidence that mutations in one of the TSC's causative genes, known as TSC2, prevent growing nerve fibers (axons) from finding their proper destinations in the developing brain.

Studying a well-characterized axon route -- between the eye's retina and the visual area of the brain -- Sahin and colleagues showed that when mouse neurons were deficient in TSC2, their axons failed to land in the right places. Further investigation showed that the axons' tips, known as "growth cones," did not respond to navigation cues from a group of molecules called ephrins. "Normally ephrins cause growth cones to collapse in neurons, but in tuberous sclerosis the axons don't heed these repulsive cues, so keep growing," says Sahin, the study's senior investigator.

Additional experiments indicated that the loss of responsiveness to ephrin signals resulted from activation of a molecular pathway called mTOR, whose activity increased when neurons were deficient in TSC2. Axon tracing in the mice showed that many axons originating in the retina were not mapping to the expected part of the brain.

Although the study looked only at retinal connections to the brain, the researchers believe their findings may have general relevance for the organization of the developing brain. Scientists speculate that in autism, wiring may be abnormal in the areas of the brain involved in social cognition.

"People have started to look at autism as a developmental disconnection syndrome -- there are either too many connections or too few connections between different parts of the brain," says Sahin. "In the mouse models, we're seeing an exuberance of connections, consistent with the idea that autism may involve a sensory overload, and/or a lack of filtering of information."

Sahin hopes that the brain's miswiring can be corrected by drugs targeting the molecular pathways that cause it. The mTOR pathway is emerging as central to various kinds of axon abnormalities, and drugs inhibiting mTOR has already been approved by the FDA. For example, one mTOR inhibitor, rapamycin, is currently used mainly to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients, and Sahin plans to launch a clinical trial of a rapamycin-like drug in approximately 50 patients with TSC later this year, to see if the drug improves neurocognition, autism and seizures.

In 2008, Sahin and colleagues published related research in Genes & Development showing that when TSC1 and TSC2 are inactivated, brain cells grow more than one axon -- an abnormal configuration that exacerbates abnormal brain connectivity. The mTOR pathway was, again, shown to be involved, and when it was inhibited with rapamycin, neurons grew normally, sprouting just one axon.

Supporting the mouse data, a study by Sahin and his colleague Simon Warfield, PhD, in the Computational Radiology Laboratory at Children's, examined the brains of 10 patients with TSC, 7 of whom also had autism or developmental delay, and 6 unaffected controls. Using an advanced kind of MRI imaging called diffusion tensor imaging, they documented disorganized and structurally abnormal tracts of axons in the TSC group, particularly in the visual and social cognition areas of the brain (see image). The axons also were poorly myelinated -- their fatty coating, which helps axons conduct electrical signals, was compromised. (In other studies, done in collaboration with David Kwiatkowski at Brigham and Women's Hospital, giving rapamycin normalized myelination in mice.)

Sahin has also been studying additional genes previously found to be deleted or duplicated in patients with autism, and finding that deletion of some of them causes neurons to produce multiple axons -- an abnormality that, again, appears to be reversed with rapamycin.

"Many of the genes implicated in autism may possibly converge on a few common pathways controlling the wiring of nerve cells," says Sahin. "Rare genetic disorders like TSC are providing us with vital clues about brain mechanisms leading to autism spectrum disorders. Understanding the neurobiology of these disorders is likely to lead to new treatment options not only for TSC patients, but also for patients with other neurodevelopmental diseases caused by defective myelination and connectivity, such as autism, epilepsy and intellectual disability."

The current study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the John Merck Scholars Fund, Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance, the Manton Foundation, the Children's Hospital Boston Translational Research Program, and the Children's Hospital Boston Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center.

Duyu Nie was first author on the paper. Coauthors were Duyu Nie, Alessia Di Nardo, Juliette M Han, Hasani Baharanyi, Ioannis Kramvis, and ThanhThao Huynh, all of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center and Department of Neurology, Children's Hospital Boston; Sandra Dabora of Brigham and Women's Hospital; Simone Codeluppi and Elena B Pasquale of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, and University of California San Diego; and Pier Paolo Pandolfi of Beth Israel Deaconess Cancer Center.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am also one of the administrators for the Facts, not Fantasy website. Just in case anyone was wondering. And yes, i will put this article there in the near future.

Science! It works bitches!

Casey Luskin Wrong on Tiktaalik

Just found this entry over at Skeptico. Normally I would consider posting it over at Facts not Fantasy, but I think it's probably a bit too inflammatory for that page, so I am putting it here. As someone else said, this is really a story about "For every quote used by a creationist, there is an equal and opposite rest of the quote." I just find it amusing that such godly people would be such lying sacks of shit, and display such craven dishonesty! I suppose that lying for jebus is okay?

Casey Luskin Wrong on Tiktaalik

Casey Luskin over at the Disco-Tute’s blog is getting all excited about the recent discovery of fossilized tetrapod (four footed vertebrate) footprints in Poland, dated 395 million years ago. What? The Disco-Tute is excited about new scientific discoveries? Well, yes, but only because they think it disproves evolution, or something. Luskin’s post is entitled Tiktaalik Blown "Out of the Water" by Earlier Tetrapod Fossil Footprints, which should give you an idea. Briefly, the transitional (between fish and tetrapod) fossil Tiktaalik was found in rocks 375 million years old, but these new tetrapod fossils are 395 million years old, so this newly discovered tetrapod wasn’t a descendant of Tiktaalik. Luskin claims this means Tiktaalik isn’t a transitional form, even though it clearly has features of both fish and tetrapods (more on that below).

Here’s Luskin:

The fossil tetrapod footprints indicate Tiktaalik came over 10 million years after the existence of the first known true tetrapod. Tiktaalik, of course, is not a tetrapod but a fish, and these footprints make it very difficult to presently argue that Tiktaalik is a transitional link between fish and tetrapods. It’s not a “snapshot of fish evolving into land animals,” because if this transition ever took place it seems to have occurred millions of years before Tiktaalik. [My bold.]

Of course, Luskin’s reasoning is wrong – if Tiktaalik is an intermediate between fish and tetrapods, then the discovery that this evolution also occurred earlier doesn’t suddenly magically mean that Tiktaalik isn’t an intermediate between fish and tetrapods anymore. The evidence that Tiktaalik is an intermediate is still evidence that Tiktaalik is an intermediate. Luskin doesn’t understand what an “intermediate” is – he thinks it has to be something on a direct line from (in this case) fish to existing land animals; it’s actually just a fossil that shows evolutionary change within lineages. (It has features of both a fish and a tetrapod, so it shows evolution happening.) Luskin thinks evolutionary theory says this happened only once. But evolutionary theory doesn’t say that. Transitional forms don’t have to be direct descendants of living species, they just have to be transitional between species (“cousins” of our ancestors, if you like) – that is, they just need to demonstrate evolution occurring.

PZ has a good post up, Casey Luskin embarrasses himself again, where he explains that Tiktaalik's status as a transitional form does not depend on us slotting it in a specific chronological time period as a link between two stages in the evolution of a lineage.

Why ID Is Useless

An interesting thing about Tiktaalik, is how Neil Shubin (its discover) managed to find it using a prediction of evolutionary theory. In his post, Luskin quotes Shubin. I’ll repost what Luskin quoted, but I’ll add a piece that he missed, from Zimmer and Shubin on Tiktaalik:

What evolution enables us to do is to make specific predictions about what we should find in the fossil record. The prediction in this case is clear-cut. That is, if we go to rocks of the right age, and the rocks of the right type, we should find transitions between two great forms of life, between fish and amphibian.

[…]

What we see when we look at the fossil record, at rocks of just the right age, is a creature like Tiktaalik. Just like a fish, it has scales on its back, and fins. You can see the fin webbing here. Yet when we look at the head, you see something very different. You see a very amphibian-like thing, with a flat head, with eyes on top. It gets even better when we take the fin apart. When we look inside the fin, as in this cast here, what you’ll see is bones that compare to our shoulder, elbow, even parts of the wrist—bone for bone. So you have a fish, at just the right time in the history of life, that has characteristics of amphibians and primitive fish. It’s a mix.

[My bold to indicate the bit that Luskin didn’t quote.]

Tiktaalik is undoubtedly transitional. With gills, scales and fins it is a fish, but its fins, instead of having the many tiny bones normally found in fish, had fewer but sturdier bones in its limbs – bones similar in number and position to those of every land creature that came later. Also, it had a flat head with eyes on the top like a modern amphibian, and it had a neck (which fish don’t have). It also had spiracles (breathing holes) on the top of its head, which suggests it had primitive lungs, and it had stronger ribs that allowed it to pump air into these lungs. Normal fish don’t need these because they breathe through their gills.

Luskin misses the point of all this with his “Tiktaalik, of course, is not a tetrapod but a fish” comment. Typical creationist – scientist finds a transitional form (fish to tetrapod) and creationist insists it’s not transitional because it’s still either a fish or a tetrapod. (Fish, in this case.) Nothing would satisfy Luskin – regardless of what new fossils are found, according to Luskin they’ll either be a fish or a tetrapod but never a transitional.

Also, it is beyond question that Shubin used evolutionary theory to predict where he would find Tiktaalik. He reasoned that if there were lobe finned fish but no terrestrial vertebrates 390 million years ago, and terrestrial vertebrates 360 million years ago, evolutionary theory would predict that you would find fossils of the transitional form in rocks around 375 million old (ie in between the two). And you would find them in a freshwater area, since both lobe finned fish and early amphibians lived in freshwater. So that’s where he looked. And guess what? That’s exactly where he found it. So evolutionary theory predicted where the fossil would be found. Again, this all flies right over Luskin’s head:

The New York Times presaged Shubin's argument, first reporting on Tiktaalik that "the scientists concluded that Tiktaalik was an intermediate between the fishes Eusthenopteron and Panderichthys, which lived 385 million years ago, and early tetrapods. The known early tetrapods are Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, about 365 million years ago." But would neo-Darwinism have predicted true tetrapods from 397 million years ago? Definitely not

No, but then neither would Intelligent Design (ID) have predicted this. The same way that ID didn’t predict Tiktaalik. These new fossils were discovered by real scientist doing real science, not by creationists using “Intelligent Design.” What this demonstrates is that science expands our knowledge while ID is completely vacuous and useless. ID didn’t predict anything (neither Tiktaalik nor these new fossils) since ID is nothing but a bunch of ignorant whining about evolution.

Where do we go from here? Well, clearly the creationists at the Disco-Tute will continue to miss the point entirely and claim that this discovery by real scientists somehow invalidates discoveries made by other real scientists. Meanwhile, actual real scientists will use this new information as a springboard to investigate and learn more. Philippe Janvier from the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris (reviewer of the paper on the newly found fossil) told CNN:

"The divergence between the tetrapods and their closest fish relatives is much younger than previously thought and it obliges us to find actual evidence -- skeletons or complete fossils -- in much earlier strata that could enlighten us between this divergence."

Real scientists will now do actual research on these new fossils so we can learn more about our past. The difference between this and creationist poseurs such as Luskin, couldn’t be clearer.

Additional Reading

Jerry Coyne’s excellent book Why Evolution Is True has more on Tiktaalik and on transitional forms in general.

The Known Universe Scientifically Rendered For All to See

Straight from the American Museum of Natural History:

After hovering over Mount Everest and the gorges that plunge to the Ganges, you are pulled through the Earth’s atmosphere to glimpse the inky black of space over Tibet’s high desert. So begins The Known Universe, a new film produced by the American Museum of Natural History that is part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.

The magic of this film, though, happens as the inky black expands. Pulling farther and farther from Earth, you see the deep blue of the Pacific give way to night as the Sun comes into focus, the orbits of the solar system shrink smaller and smaller, the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio stretch and distort, and, as the Milky Way receeds, the spidery structure of millions of other galaxies come into view. Then, you reach the limit of the observable universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light has taken more than 13.7 billion years to reach our planet, and you return, back to Earth, to two lakes that are nestled between Mount Kailash and Mount Gurla Mandhata in the Himalayas.

The structure of The Known Universe is based on precise, scientifically-accurate observations and research. The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History maintains the Digital Universe Atlas, the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe. The Digital Universe started nearly a decade ago. It is continually updated and is the primary resource for production of the Museum’s Space Shows such as the current Journey to the Stars, and is used in live, real-time renderings for Virtual Tours of the Universe, a public program held on the first Tuesday of every month. Last year, some 30,000 people downloaded the Digital Universe to their personal computers, and the Digital Universe will soon be updated with a more accurate and user-friendly software interface. Digital Universe is licensed to many other planetariums and theaters world-wide.

“I liken the Digital Universe to the invention of the globe,” says Curator Ben R. Oppenheimer, an astrophysicist at the Museum. “When Mercator invented the globe, everyone wanted one. He had back orders for years. It gave everyone a new perspective on where they live in relation to others, and we hope that the Digital Universe does the same on a grander, cosmic scale.”

The new film was produced by Michael Hoffman, and directed by Carter Emmart. Brian Abbot manages and Ben R. Oppenheimer curates the Digital Universe Atlas. The exhibition at the Rubin, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, opened on December 11 and continues through May 10.

Holy FSM! Top 10 Astronomy Pictures of 2009

Dr. Phil Plait has released his top ten list of astronomy pictures. Click on the title of this post, or just click here. It's often said that folks who are skeptics or insist on evidence and the like have no sense of wonder. I vehemently dissagree with that sentiment, and after looking at these pictures, if you don't feel any wonder, then I suspect you are some sort of zombie. I will admit that some of those pictures, what they represent, and how they really put us in our place in the universe could move me to tears of awe and wonder.

Anyway, here is the first page entry:

Every year, this gets harder.
Not that deciding what pictures to use in 2006, 2007, or 2008 was all that easy! But astronomy is such a beautiful science. Of course it has scientific appeal: the biggest questions fall squarely into its lap. Where did this all begin? How will it end? How did we get here? People used to look to the stars asking those questions, and coincidentally, for the most part, that’s where the answers lie. And we’ll be asking them for a long time to come.
But astronomy is so visually appealing as well! Colorful stars, wispy, ethereal nebulae, galactic vistas sprawling out across our telescopes… it’s art no matter how you look at it. And our techniques for viewing the heavens gets better every year; our telescopes get bigger, our cameras more sensitive, and our robotic probes visit distant realms, getting close-up shots that remind us that these are not just planets and moons; they’re worlds.
So every year the flood of imagery takes longer to sort through, and far longer to choose from. And the choices were really tough! This year leans a bit more toward planetary images than usual, but that’s not surprising given how many spacecraft we have out there these days.
I don’t pick all these images for their sheer beauty; I consider what they mean, what we’ve learned from them, and their impact as well. But have no doubts that they are all magnificent examples of the intersection of art and science. At the bottom of each post is a link to the original source and to my original post on the topic, if there is one. If you disagree with my picks, or think I’ve missed something, put a link in the comments! All the pictures have descriptions, and are clickable to bring you to (in most cases) much higher resolution version. So embiggen away!
And welcome to my annual Top Ten Astronomy Pictures post. Enjoy.
ENTER THE TOP TEN GALLERY

LRO spots Apollo 12 footsteps

Dr. Plait has another update from the LRO, and I just thought I would share what he had to say. I know that the people who actually remember mankind walking on the moon make up a smaller and smaller percentage of the population, and we should strive to bring back that sense of wonder and acomplishment to our species!

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned another incredible picture of an Apollo landing site, this time of our second manned walk on another world… and again, the footprints of the astronauts are clearly visible!

In November 1969, Apollo 12 touched down near the Surveyor 3 probe, which had soft-landed two years previously. The astronauts walked up to the lander and even brought back pieces of it! Surveyor is easily seen in this image, as well as the craters Pete Conrad and Al Bean investigated. In this high-resolution image (taken in September), you can even see their bootprints radiating away from their lander!

After the other Apollo images from LRO, I know this is more of the same. But don’t let it fall from your mind that these images show that once, not long ago, we dared to explore. For those few shining moments, we reached farther than our grasp, and managed to do something extraordinary. We let that slip away not too much later. Yes, our robots probe and peer into every corner of the solar system, and have done a magnificent job. But I am of the opinion that we need to send men and women out there as well, to extend the human presence beyond our own planet, beyond a simple low-Earth orbit.

I don’t know when we will exceed our grasp again. But I hope it’s soon.

Science Stuff From Bad Astronomy

Another blog that I read a lot (okay, maybe stalk is a better word, but no restraining order yet) is Bad Astronomy. Today Dr. Plait did a little list roundup of worthy news. I am reposting it, just for the video, although the other stuff is cool stuff too. And if you don't read Bad Astronomy, I suggest you do. The entry a few prior to this particular one is what it's all about! (And the cynics say skeptics have no sense of awe...)

From Dr. Plait:

Sometimes, news comes pouring in to Bad Astronomy HQ, and I am but a man, so I can’t keep up (writing about Saturn’s moons and giant galactic panoramas and big weird Scandinavian spinny thingies keep me pretty busy, y’know).

So here are some quick bits o’ interest.

1) Dr. Harriet Hall will inject (haha!) some medical sense into Oprah

2) You already knew this, but Rush Limbaugh is somewhat misinformed on basic matters of science and medicine^*.

3) Obama’s science advisor John Holdren reads a book by my Hive Overmind compatriots!

4) Pulsar-discoverer Jocelyn Bell-Burnell blogs.

5) My friend, the Aussie skeptic Richard Saunders appeared on national TV and handed an astrologer his head.

6) My evil twin Richard Wiseman is fun at parties. Here’s the video:

OK, good. That oughta keep y’all busy while I write up my next big astronomy post.

Science! It works (AGAIN) bitches!

Last night I watched the news, and saw a story about stem cell research that has basically cured sickle cell anemia! Yeah, take that bitches! Science works once again. This story actually caused me to be quite amused. Not at the misfortune of the peole who suffer with this terrible disease, but exactly what this potential cure meant. Let's see if I can explain why I was so amused (and yes, my intent is to be sarcastic and insulting, if you don't like it, fuck off).

You see, sickle cell anemia is an evolutionary adaptation (mistake even) in response to Malaria (a killer of MILLIONS). Now, to some, malaria is some sort of god(s) given punishment (or at the very least, the psychotic sky dady created it). You know, yet another very obvious sign of a loving and benevolent being... Anyway, with malaria being such a horrible disease, and it killing millions, it actually produces a very strong evolutionary tendency on quite a few folks who may have a random mutation that allows them to survive. Not that evolution is true though, right? So now we have scientists that come along, and use STEM CELLS to virtually cure this disease in 90% of the tested patients. Notice how prayed didn't play into this in the slightest (because prayed in no way works...). If anything, the scientists are fighting against god's creation, and winning! Suck on that you impotent imaginary skydaddy! :P And then the thing that really amused me... Most of the religious people in the world opposed stem cell research! Even after it was shown that fetal stem cells were not required, they still opposed stem cell research on some misguided principles that I just can't understand (like attempting to understand people who think the earth is flat).

So far, in all of history, no god(s) have ever healed an amputee. Eventually, I am quite sure that scientists will develop a method for humans to regrow severed limbs. Like I said, "Science! it works bitches!" So, if you are in a life threatening situation where science has the answer, what would you do?

(Waits for the standard apologetic's answers of skypsycho gave us brains, you can't measure prayer, we prayed for the scientists, etc... They are so predicatable.)

A Couple of Videos

I haven't written in a while, just because I have been incredibly busy with work. As such, I am just going to repost a couple of videos that I found out there on some other blogs.

I’m always astounded at how poor data-gathering devices we humans are. Forget all the hallucinations and misinterpretations, we simply don’t notice or retain most of what happens around us. Here’s a great demonstration (via Richard Wiseman’s blog)

How did you all do?

This is one of the reasons we developed the scientific method. Trusting our senses and powers of observation failed us too many times. We recognize our own shortcomings and try to overcome them. If someone says that they saw it with their own eyes, or that they just know something happened, then I am more likely to conclude that the exact opposite of what they say happened, or that what actually happened in no way bears any resemblance to what they said.

And then of course, there is utter silliness, especially some of the crap people will believe:

[NSFW language and some effects.]

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Anyway, just a quick post, gotta go.

So fucking backwards (Insult post)

Okay, so there was a "big poll" on Facebook that asked if you trusted the bible or science more... I can't believe that the poll (last I checked) was at 50/50. Pathetic! And a common statement I saw: "Science is always changing, but the bible stays the same."

How can one short sentence actually contain that many mistakes and misconceptions in so few words? Wow, this is total and epic failure of synaptic activity! Where do I start?

First of all, the bible fables most of you mentally castrated simpletons are reading in no way resembles the bible of a thousand years ago. Heck, even in the past 500 years it has had quite a a few edits. The KJV is even under attack by the fucktards at Consevipedia, and they want to take out all the "liberal bias" in the bible. WTF?!

And complaining that science changes? I suppose you were fine with barbers being surgeons then? Or would you prefer to go back to a goat herding lifestyle in the edges of the Mediterranean Sea? If anything, the constant changes of science is its greatest STRENGTH. it actually has the ability to correct for mistakes and get rid of ideas that don't quite fit. The bible has no such mechanism, so instead you get apologists that have to rationalize slavery, genocide, sexism, etc...

Man, I am so fucking disgusted with people adhering to bronze age mythologies in this day and age. I don't care if you think you are smart (and well, you may be), but you are foolish beyond measure. So please, if you cling to these childish and frankly dumb beliefs, don't expect me to respect you. I will deal with you on a rational level, and will treat you as a human being, but just know that in reality I feel sorry for you. Living in such a small mind and world when the universe is so much more spectacular than your petty little god or bible could ever imagine.

Personally, I think all the theitards out there are just pissed off that they can't go out and conquer some slaves, and can't publicly admit to their desire to subjugate their women. Fucking bronze age barbarians.

UK Libel laws Suck!

Straight from Dr Plait's blog. In case you aren't aware, this is a case where the chiropractors of the UK are claiming that chiropractic adjustments can solve all sorts of problems that are in no way musculo-skeletal. A particular Dr. Simon Singh called them on the nonsense, and now he's getting sued for libel... WTF? Okay, this is the backwards "guilty until proven innocent" (Popular with US conservatives as of late by the way) way that some UK laws traditionally work on.

Hero journalist Simon Singh has written a fantastic article for The Times Online about his libel case in the UK and libel in general: how it gags journalists and keeps people from learning important information.

If this article makes you angry, good. Do something about it.

So please take a moment and sign the petition. I think this is an opportunity to bring not only pressure but reality into the situation. Even though the UK is one of our closest allies in many things, they do need to catch up to the 21st century.