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In August 2018, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) began its long journey to study the Sun’s outer corona. After several gravity-assist maneuvers with Venus, the probe broke Helios 2‘s distance record and became the closest object to the Sun on October 29th, 2018. Since then, the Parker probe’s highly elliptical orbit has allowed it to pass through the Sun’s corona several times (“touch the Sun”). On December 24th, 2024, NASA confirmed that their probe made its closest approach to the Sun, passing just 6 million km (3.8 million mi) above the surface – roughly 0.04 times the distance between the Sun and Earth (0.04 AU).

In addition to breaking its previous distance record, the PSP passed through the solar atmosphere at a velocity of about 692,000 km/h (430,000 mph). This is equivalent to about 0.064% the speed of light, making the Parker Solar Probe the fastest human-made object ever. After the spacecraft made its latest pass, it sent a beacon tone to confirm that it made it through safely and was operating normally – which was received on December 26th. These close passes allow the PSP to conduct science operations that will expand our knowledge of the origin and evolution of solar wind.

Every flyby the probe made with Venus in the past six years brought it closer to the Sun in its elliptical orbit. As of November 6th, 2024, the spacecraft reached an optimal orbit that brings it close enough to study the Sun and the processes that influence space weather but not so close that the Sun’s heat and radiation will damage it. To ensure the spacecraft can withstand temperatures in the corona, the Parker probe relies on a carbon foam shield that can withstand temperatures between 980 and 1425 °C (1,800 and 2,600 degrees °F).

This shield also keeps the spacecraft instruments shaded and at room temperature to ensure they can operate in the solar atmosphere. Said Associate Administrator Nicky Fox, who leads the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a recent NASA press release:

“Flying this close to the Sun is a historic moment in humanity’s first mission to a star. By studying the Sun up close, we can better understand its impacts throughout our solar system, including on the technology we use daily on Earth and in space, as well as learn about the workings of stars across the universe to aid in our search for habitable worlds beyond our home planet.”

Nour Rawafi, the project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), is part of the team that designed, built, and operates the spacecraft. “[The] Parker Solar Probe is braving one of the most extreme environments in space and exceeding all expectations,” he said. “This mission is ushering a new golden era of space exploration, bringing us closer than ever to unlocking the Sun’s deepest and most enduring mysteries.”

The Parker Solar Probe was first proposed in a 1958 report by the National Academy of Sciences’ Space Science Board, which recommended “a solar probe to pass inside the orbit of Mercury to study the particles and fields in the vicinity of the Sun.” While the concept was proposed again in the 1970s and 1980s, it would take several more decades for the technology and a cost-effective mission to be realized.

The Parker Solar Probe also made several interesting and unexpected finds during previous close passes. During its first pass into the solar atmosphere in 2021, the spacecraft discovered that the outer boundary of the corona is characterized by spikes and valleys, contrary to expectations. It also discovered the origin of switchbacks (zig-zag structures) in the solar wind within the photosphere. Since then, the spacecraft has spent more time in the corona, closely examining most of the Sun’s critical processes.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe survived its record-breaking closest approach to the solar surface on December 24th, 2024. Credits: NASA

The probe’s discoveries are not limited to the Sun either. As noted, one of the PSP’s primary objectives is to study how solar activity influences “space weather,” referring to the interaction of solar wind with the planets of the Solar System. For instance, the probe has captured multiple images of Venus during its many gravity assists, documented the planet’s radio emissions, and the first complete image of Venus’ orbital dust ring. The probe has also been repeatedly blasted by coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that swept up dust as they passed through the Solar System.

“We now understand the solar wind and its acceleration away from the Sun,” said Adam Szabo, the Parker Solar Probe mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This close approach will give us more data to understand how it’s accelerated closer in.”

The probe even offered a new perspective on the comet NEOWISE by capturing images from its unique vantage point. Now that the mission team knows the probe is safe, they are waiting for it to reach a location where it can transmit the data collected from its latest solar pass. “The data that will come down from the spacecraft will be fresh information about a place that we, as humanity, have never been,” said Joe Westlake, the director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. “It’s an amazing accomplishment.”

The spacecraft’s next solar passes are planned for March 22nd, 2025, and June 19th, 2025.

Further Reading: NASA

The post NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Makes its Record-Breaking Closest Approach to the Sun appeared first on Universe Today.

Like me, Steve Pinker has resigned from the Honorary Board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).  His resignation was sent yesterday. Steve is a bigger macher than I. both intellectually and, in this case, because he was Honorary President of that Board. I put below his two emails, reproduced with permission.

The first one was sent yesterday to the co-Presidents of the FFRF as well as the editor of Freethought Today!, which originally published my piece and then removed it.

From: Pinker, Steven
Sent: Saturday, December 28, 2024 11:49 AM
Subject: resignation

Dear Annie Laurie and Dan,

With sadness, I resign from my positions as Honorary President and member of the Honorary Board of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The reason is obvious: your decision, announced yesterday, to censor an article by fellow Board member Jerry Coyne, and to slander him as an opponent of LGBTQIA+ rights.

My letter to you last November (reproduced below) explains why I think these are grave errors. With this action, the Foundation is no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics. It has turned its back on reason: if your readers “wrongfully perceive” the opposite of a clear statement that you support the expression of contesting opinions, the appropriate response is to stand by your statement, not ratify their error. It has turned the names Freethought Today and Freethought Now into sad jokes, inviting ridicule from its worse foes. And it has shown contempt for the reasoned advice of its own board members.

There are not the values of not the organization I have supported for twenty years, and I can no longer be associated with it.

Sincerely,
Steve

*************

As Steve notes above, this second letter was sent over a month ago to the same people, with copies to me and Richard Dawkins, as all of us were discussing the issue of “mission creep” with the FFRF.

From: Pinker, Steven
Sent: Monday, November 11, 2024 10:04 AM
Subject: RE: Comment for FFRF

Thanks, Annie Laurie. But I think it’s important to distinguish two things:

1. The right to bodily autonomy, an ethical issue.

2. The nature of sex in the living world, a scientific issue.

Some trans activists believe that the only way to ensure the first is to rewrite the second, imposing what we regard as fallacious and tendentious claims in defiance of our best scientific understanding. This is unfortunate for two reasons: it’s a conceptual error, confusing the moral and the empirical, and it’s counterproductive to force people to choose between trans rights and scientific reality. Those who favor scientific reality will be alienated from the cause of safeguarding trans rights.

I see FFRF as in the vanguard of separating key moral and political commitments from honest scientific inquiry (after all, a major impetus for enshrining religious doctrine such as creationism is that it is necessary for the preservation of moral values). Many people have noted that the radical factions of the trans movement have taken on some of the worst features of religion, such as the imposition of dogma and the excommunication and vilification of heretics. FFRF can be firmly on the side of trans rights without advancing tendentious (and almost certainly false) biological claims. Of course, it’s fine for views that we regard as tendentious to be expressed in FFRF forums, as long as respectful disagreements are allowed to be expressed as well.

Best,
Steve

This is the result of a dispute I’ve explained before (see here). Because the FFRF has caved into to gender extremism, an area having nothing to do with its mission, and because, when they let me post an article on their website about this, they changed their mind and simply removed my post, I have decided I can no longer remain a member of their board of honorary directors.  So be it. Everything is explained in this email I sent FFRF co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker about an hour ago, to wit:

Dear Annie Laurie and Dan,

As you probably expected, I am going resign my position on the honorary board of the FFRF.  I do this with great sadness, for you know that I have been a big supporter of your organization for years, and was honored to receive not only your Emperor Has No Clothes Award, but also that position on your honorary board.

But because you took down my article that critiqued Kat Grant’s piece, which amounts to quashing discussion of a perfectly discuss-able issue, and in fact had previously agreed that I could publish that piece—not a small amount of work—and then put it up after a bit of editing, well, that is a censorious behavior I cannot abide. I was simply promoting a biological rather than a psychological definition of sex, and I do not understand why you would consider that “distressing” and also an attempt to hurt LGBTQIA+ people, which I would never do.

As I said, I think these folks should have moral and legal rights identical to those of other groups, except in the rare cases in which LGBTQIA+ rights conflict with the rights of other groups, in which case some kind of adjudication is necessary. But your announcement about the “mistake” of publishing my piece also implies that what I wrote was transphobic.

Further, when I emailed Annie Laurie asking why my piece had disappeared (before the “official announcement” of revocation was issued), I didn’t even get the civility of a response. Is that the way you treat a member of the honorary board?

I always wanted to be on the board so I could help steer the FFRF: I didn’t think of it as a job without any remit. The only actions I’ve taken have been to write to both of you—sometimes in conjunction with Steve, Dan (Dennett), or Richard—warning of the dangers of mission creep, of violating your stated goals to adhere to “progressive” political or ideological positions. Mission creep was surely instantiated in your decision to cancel my piece when its discussion of biology and its relationship to sex in humans violated “progressive” gender ideology. This was in fact the third time that I and others have tried to warn the FFRF about the dangers of expanding its mission into political territory. But it is now clear that this is exactly what you intend to do. Our efforts have been fruitless, and if there are bad consequences I don’t want to be connected with them.

I will add one more thing. The gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (“a woman is whoever she says she is”), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.

I will continue to struggle for the separation of church and state, and wish you well in that endeavor, which I know you will continue. But I cannot be part of an organization whose mission creep has led it to actually remove my words from the internet—words that I cannot see as harmful to any rational person.  I am not out to hurt LGBTQIA+ people, and I hope you know that. But you have implied otherwise, and that is both shameful for you and hurtful for me.

Cordially
Jerry

For centuries, comets have captured our imagination. Across history they have been the harbingers of doom, inspired artists and fascinated astronomers. These icy remnants of the formation of the Solar System hold secrets to help us understand the events nearly 5 billion years ago. But before these secrets can be revealed, comets have to be studied and to study them they need to be found. A team of researchers have developed a technique to hunt down comets based upon data from meteor showers and to asses if they pose any threat to us here on Earth!

Comets are objects that orbit the Sun like the planets but their orbits are usually more elliptical. They are composed of dust, gas and water ice and often called ‘dirty snowballs.’ Many comets are part of, or were a part of the Oort Cloud or Kuiper Belt. These distant regions of space house many of the Solar System’s icy bodies. On occasions, interactions between the bodies in the clouds can send chunks in toward the inner Solar System transforming the dormant chunks of rock and ice into the comets we recognise. Driven by heating from the Sun, the ice immediately sublimates into a gas giving rise to a comets familiar fuzzy coma and tail. Contrary to popular belief, the tail of a comet doesn’t stream out behind the comet as it travels through space, instead, it always points away from the Sun pushed in that direction by the Solar Wind. 

Geysers of dust and gas shooting off the comet’s nucleus are called jets. The volatile material they deliver outside the nucleus builds the comet’s coma. Credit: ESA/Rostta/NAVCAM

Comets are categorised as either short period comets or long period with the latter group having an orbit of more than 200 years. Due to their long orbits, scientists fear that one  will be on a collision course with Earth and go completely un-noticed until it is too late.  The risk of this occurrence is of course incredibly small but the impact could be catastrophic to life on Earth. A team of astronomers led by Samantha Hemmelgarn from the Northern Arizona University has published a paper in Planetary Science Journal where they explain their technique for identifying threats from long period comets using  data from meteor showers. 

Leonids meteor shower

“This research gets us closer to defending Earth because it gives us a model to guide searches for these potentially hazardous objects,” Hemmelgarn said. Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through the debris left behind by a comet. The team has studied 17 meteor showers that are associated with long period comets and calculated where the parent comet should be in space.

Using the path of the meteor showers, the team can assess the liklihood that a long period comet could pose a threat over its future orbits. In the test cases, the model accurately predicted the comet locations including its direction and speed of travel. This provides the opportunity for astronomers to hone their search around the sky looking for long period comets rather than hope one might be spotted through automated searchers that scour the whole sky. 

The obvious benefit is that early identification of a comet on a collision course with Earth means that there is more time to develop a plan for our defence. There is nothing yet that provides any concern for astronomers but the next impact event of extinction level, may be millions of years away. The team hope that their work and model will help to provide humanity with the earliest warning of potential impacts. 

Source : How to Find a Comet Before it Hits Earth

The post Meteor Showers May One Day Help Protect Humanity! appeared first on Universe Today.

Today is the last Sunday of the year, which means that we have John Avise‘s last post of the year (he will of course continue in 2025).  Right now he’s showing photos of American lepidopterans. John’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Butterflies in North America, Part 4 

First, I’d like to wish all WEIT readers a Happy New Year and a wonderful 2025.  This week continues my many-part series on butterflies that I’ve photographed in North America.  I’m continuing to go down my list of species in alphabetical order by common name.

California Sister (Adelpha californica):

California Sister, underwing:

California Tortoiseshell (Nymphalis californica):

Callippe Fritillary (Speyeria callippe):

Callippe Fritillary underwing:

Carolina Satyr (Hermeuptychia sosybius):

Carolina Satyr underwing:

Cassius Blue (Leptotes cassius), underwing:

Ceraunus Blue (Hemiargus ceraunus), male, topwing:

Ceraunus Blue, underwing:

Checkered White (Pontia protodice), male:

Checkered White, female:

Checkered White, female underwing:

Good morning on Sunday, December 29, 2024, the penultimate day of Coynezaa, which ends tomorrow with a milestone birthday for PCC(E).  Today we will have a brief Hili post, but there will be readers’ wildlife, a regular post (this one on the osculation of faith), and an announcement.  All is well, and tomorrow or Tuesday we’ll be back in business.

It’s also National Pepper Pot Day, celebrating a soup said to be created on this day in 1777 when George Washington sent his cook out to forage for something that could warm and nourish his freezing soldiers overwintering at Valley Forge. This soup was the result, though Wikipedia has a different origin tale.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

There is only one item of news for us today:  there has been another plane crash, this time in South Korea, and the death toll is high. On the news this morning they attributed it to a bird strike. Two people survived, both members of the crew:

A passenger plane crashed while landing at an airport in southwestern South Korea on Sunday, killing most of the 181 people on board in the worst aviation disaster involving a South Korean airline in almost three decades, officials said.

The Boeing 737-800 plane, operated by South Korea’s Jeju Air, had taken off from Bangkok and was landing at Muan International Airport when it crashed at around 9 a.m. local time. Footage of the accident shows a white-and-orange plane speeding down a runway on its belly until it overshoots the runway, hitting a barrier and exploding into an orange fireball.

Officials were investigating what caused the tragedy, including why the plane’s landing gear appeared to have malfunctioned, whether birds had struck the jet, or if bad weather had been a factor.

The airport in Muan had warned the plane’s pilots about a potential bird strike as they were landing, said Ju Jong-wan, a director of aviation policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The plane issued a mayday alert shortly afterward, then crash-landed, he added, saying later that the plane’s black boxes — which should help determine the cause of the crash — have been recovered.

Jeju Air flight 7C2216 had 175 passengers and six crew members on board. Hundreds of people — grandparents, parents and children — packed the Muan airport waiting anxiously for news about their loved ones.

As of Sunday evening, the government said, 177 people had been confirmed dead, including 22 Korean nationals identified by their fingerprints. The names of the dead were posted on lists in the airport as relatives crowded around.

More than 1,500 people were deployed to help search the wreckage; at least two crew members were rescued from the aircraft’s tail section.

Lee Jeong-hyeon, an official in charge of search and rescue operations at the scene, said the plane had broken into so many pieces that only its tail was identifiable.

“We could not recognize the rest of the fuselage,” he said.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are almost in hibernation:

A: Lately you are in bed day and night. Hili: We are waiting for spring.

In Polish: Ja: Ostatnio w dzień i w nocy jesteście na łóżku. Hili: Czekamy na wiosnę.

When I wrote yesterday about my critique of Kat Grant’s “What is a woman?” piece, a critique published on the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s (FFRF) website, I had no idea that what I wrote was being removed by the FFRF at that moment! I’m not going into a long exegesis here, as I’ll have more to say about this affair elsewhere.  But here are the relevant links:

“What is a woman?“: The original FFRF post on Freethought Today! by Kat Grant, an intern with the FFRF.

“Biology is not bigotry“: My response to Grant’s piece on Freethought Today!. The link is an archived one because the original post is gone. You can also find it archived here. Also, because a reader suggested that archived pieces could be removed, I’ve added a transcript of my final published piece below the fold of this article. 

When some readers pointed out yesterday that “Biology is not bigotry” was no longer online, I had no idea what happened, and assumed they had relocated the post. I was unable to believe that they would actually remove my post, especially because FFRF co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor had given me permission to write it and approved the final published version.

I emailed Annie Laurie inquiring what had happened to my piece. I never got a response—or rather, they didn’t have the human decency to write me back personally. They still have not done so, and now they shouldn’t bother. Instead, they sent out the following notice to all FFRF members (it’s also archived here):

 

Note first that when they refer to my piece, they mention neither who wrote the piece or what it was about. If I’m to be cancelled for what I wrote, dammit, I want my NAME and TOPIC mentioned!

Several things are clear, including a point I’ve made before: the FFRF has a remarkable ability to place any kind of antiwoke ideology under the rubric of “Christian nationalism.” That’s why I wrote in my now-expunged piece, “As a liberal atheist, I am about as far from Christian nationalism as one can get!”  And of course I support LGBTQIA+ rights, save in those few cases where those rights conflict with the rights of other groups, as in sports participation. I doubt that even the FFRF would think that women should be boxing, professionally or in the Olympics, against men or biological men who identify as women.  So in terms of “LGBTQIA-plus rights,” I’m pretty much on the same plane as the FFRF, even though they imply I’m not.

But it’s the last six paragraphs of the FFRF’s post where they explain why they took down my piece.  It is because it caused “distress” and “did not reflect [the FFRF’s] values or principles.”  I’m not sure what values or principles my piece failed to reflect. Does the FFRF think that sex is really a spectrum, that there are more than two sexes in humans, or that the most useful definition of biological sex doesn’t involve gamete size? I don’t know, nor do they say.

As for my words causing “distress,” well, I’m sorry if people feel distress when I explicate the biological definition of sex or estimate how few people fail to adhere to the sex binary.  But this is all material not for censorship but for back-and-forth discussion, especially on a site called “Freethought Now!” (Should it be called “Freeethought Not!” instead?)

And that is what disappoints me most: not just the “mission creep” instantiated by the FFRF’s incursion into partisan politics or dubious ideology, but the fact that they will not allow free and civil discussion about an article that they published, an article that concludes by saying, “A woman is whoever she says she is.”  If that is not a statement ripe for discussion, then what is? It is only fear that would make an organization take down a rational discussion of such a contentious statement. I don’t know what the FFRF is afraid of, but I am just a biologist defending my turf, and am not by any means bent on hurting LGBTAIA+ people.

I’m distressed that it’s come to this, as I’ve always been a big supporter of the FFRF and its historical mission, which is, I suppose, why they made me an honorary director and gave me the Emperor Has No Clothes Award. And I will always support their activities that genuinely try to keep church and state separate. But when they start censoring my words because, though biologically justifiable, they are ideologically unpalatable, that is just too much. All I can say now is that this is not the end of this kerfuffle, and that I stand by what I wrote before.

How sad it is that one of the nation’s premier organizations promoting “freethought” won’t permit that kind of thought on their website, but instead quashes what they see as “wrongthink.”

 

Click “continue reading” to see a transcript my original published piece.

•  Freedom From Religion Foundation
• December 26, 2024

 

Disclaimer: FFRF Honorary Board Member Jerry A. Coyne requested that this column be written as a guest blog. The views in this column are of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Biology is not bigotry
By Jerry A. Coyne

In the Freethought Now article “What is a woman?”, author Kat Grant struggles at length to define the word, rejecting one definition after another as flawed or incomplete. Grant finally settles on a definition based on self-identity: “A woman is whoever she says she is.” This of course is a tautology, and still leaves open the question of what a woman really is. And the remarkable redefinition of a term with a long biological history can be seen only as an attempt to force ideology onto nature. Because some nonbinary people — or men who identify as women (“transwomen”) — feel that their identity is not adequately recognized by biology, they choose to impose ideology onto biology and concoct a new definition of “woman.”

Further, there are plenty of problems with the claim that self-identification maps directly onto empirical reality. You are not always fat if you feel fat (the problem with anorexia), not a horse if you feel you’re a horse (a class of people called “therians” psychologically identify as animals), and do not become Asian simply become you feel Asian (the issue of “transracialism”). But sex, Grant tells us, is different: It is the one biological feature of humans that can be changed solely by psychology.

But why should sex be changeable while other physical traits cannot? Feelings don’t create reality. Instead, in biology “sex” is traditionally defined by the size and mobility of reproductive cells (“gametes”). Males have small, mobile gametes (sperm in animals and pollen in plants); females have large, immobile gametes (ova in plants and eggs in animals). In all animals and vascular plants there are exactly two sexes and no more. Though a fair number of plants and a few species of animals combine both functions in a single individual (“hermaphrodites”), these are not a third sex because they produce the typical two gametes.

It’s important to recognize that, although this gametic idea is called a “definition” of sex, it is really a generalization — and thus a concept — based on a vast number of observations of diverse organisms.  We know that, except for a few algae and fungi, all multicellular organisms and vertebrates, including us, adhere to this generalization. It is, then, nearly universal.

Besides its universality, the gametic concept has utility, for it is the distinction between gamete types that explains evolutionary phenomena like sexual selection. Differential investment in reproduction accounts for the many differences, both physical and behavioral, between males and females. No other concept of sex has such universality and utility. Attempts to define sex by combining various traits associated with gamete type, like chromosomes, genitalia, hormones, body hair and so on, lead to messy and confusing multivariate models that lack both the universality and explanatory power of the gametic concept.

Yes, there is a tiny fraction of exceptions, including intersex individuals, who defy classification (estimates range between 1/5,600 and 1/20,000). These exceptions to the gametic view are surely interesting, but do not undermine the generality of the sex binary. Nowhere else in biology would deviations this rare undermine a fundamental concept. To illustrate, as many as 1 in 300 people are born with some form of polydactyly — without the normal number of ten fingers.  Nevertheless, nobody talks about a “spectrum of digit number.” (It’s important to recognize that only a very few nonbinary and transgender people are “intersex,” for nearly all are biologically male or female.)

In biology, then, a woman can be simply defined in four words: “An adult human female.”

Dismissal of trait-based concepts of sex leads to serious errors and misconceptions. I mention only a few. The biological concept of a woman does not, as Grant argues, depend on whether she can actually produce eggs. Nobody is claiming that postmenopausal females, or those who are sterile or had hysterectomies, are not “women,” for they were born with the reproductive apparatus that evolved to produce eggs. As for chromosomes, having two X chromosomes gives you a very high probability of being a woman, but a rearrangement of genetic information can decouple chromosome constitution from the gametic apparatus.

But the biggest error Grant makes is the repeated conflation of sex, a biological feature, with gender, the sex role one assumes in society. To all intents and purposes, sex is binary, but gender is more spectrum-like, though it still has two camel’s-hump modes around “male” and “female.” While most people enact gender roles associated with their biological sex (those camel humps), an appreciable number of people mix both roles or even reject male and female roles altogether. Grant says that “I play with gender expression” in “ways that vary throughout the day.” Fine, but this does not mean that Grant changes sex from hour to hour.

Under the biological concept of sex, then, it is impossible for humans to change sex — to be truly “transsexual” — for mammals cannot change their means of producing gametes. A more appropriate term is “transgender,” or, for transwomen, “men who identify as women.”

But even here Grant misleads the reader. They argue, for example, that “Transgender people are no more likely to be sexual predators than other individuals.” Yet the facts support the opposite of this claim, at least for transgender women. A cross-comparison of statistics from the U.K. Ministry of Justice and the U.K. Census shows that while almost 20 percent of male prisoners and a maximum of 3 percent of female prisoners have committed sex offenses, at least 41 percent of trans-identifying prisoners were convicted of these crimes. Transgender, then, appear to be twice as likely as natal males and at least 14 times as likely as natal females to be sex offenders. While these data are imperfect because they’re based only on those who are caught, or on some who declare their female gender only after conviction, they suggest that transgender women are far more sexually predatory than biological women and somewhat more predatory than biological men. There are suggestions of similar trends in Scotland, New Zealand, and Australia.

Biological sex affects who and what we are. Let’s look at the contentious area of sports participation.  Here’s a summary of the current regulatory situation (from a link that Grant gives):

“For the Paris 2024 Olympics, the new guidelines require transgender women to have completed their transition before the age of 12 to be eligible to compete in the women’s category. This rule is intended to prevent any perceived unfair advantages that might arise from undergoing male puberty.”

“In addition, at least 10 Olympic sports have restricted the participation of transgender athletes. These include sports like athletics, cycling, swimming, rugby, rowing, and boxing.”

Completing transition before 12 is virtually unknown (26 American states ban childhood transition), and the International Olympic Committee has now asked each sport to devise its own rules. Further, the presence of “regulation” does not make the problem go away, for many regulations are insufficient to protect female athletes from male athletic advantage. According to a United Nations report on violence against women, “By 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals [to transgender women] in 29 different sports.”

I close with two points. The first is to insist that it is not “transphobic” to accept the biological reality of binary sex and to reject concepts based on ideology. One should never have to choose between scientific reality and trans rights. Transgender people should surely enjoy all the moral and legal rights of everyone else. But moral and legal rights do not extend to areas in which the “indelible stamp” of sex results in compromising the legal and moral rights of others. Transgender women, for example, should not compete athletically against biological women; should not serve as rape counselors and workers in battered women’s shelters; or, if convicted of a crime, should not be placed in a women’s prison.

Finally, speaking as a member of the FFRF’s honorary board, I worry that the organization’s incursion into gender activism takes it far outside its historically twofold mission: educating the public about nontheism and keeping religion out of government and social policies. Tendentious arguments about the definition of sex are not part of either mission. Although some aspects of gender activism have assumed the worst aspects of religion (dogma, heresy, excommunication, etc.), sex and gender have little to do with theism or the First Amendment. I sincerely hope that the FFRF does not insist on adopting a “progressive” political stance, rationalizing it as part of its battle against “Christian Nationalism.” As a liberal atheist, I am about as far from Christian nationalism as one can get!

Issues of sex and gender cannot and should not be forced into that Procrustean bed. Mission creep has begun to erode other once-respected organizations like the ACLU and SPLC, and I would be distressed if this happened to the FFRF.

Jerry A. Coyne is emeritus professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago.

Note: The Hili Dialogues will be truncated over the next few days as I figure out how to respond to the FFRF’s removal of my piece on biological sex.  Bear with me; I do my best. I’m also not sure about readers’ wildlife and the Caturday felids.

Welcome to CaturSaturday, December 28, 2024, the fourth day of Coynezaa, which ends on the 30th, as well as National Chocolate Candy Day, which reminds me of this famous clip from “I Love Lucy”:

It’s also Call A Friend Day, National Card Playing Day, and Pledge of Allegiance Day, the latter celebrating our National Fealty to God (it was on this day in 1942 that Congress recognized the words of the pledge, but the “One Nation, Under God” bit was added only in 1954 in reaction to of Godless Communism.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As always, I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press, call this week, “TGIF: Welcome to America, Greenland.” And as the items are short, I’ll steal one more as lagniappe:

→ Sinwar shirts: Until people noticed and got annoyed, Walmart was selling shirts online celebrating Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar with the not-at-all alarming URL: walmart.com/ip/Yahya-Sinwar-We-Will-Win-Or-Die-Shirt. Free shipping!

→ UN’s gonna UN: It was a busy year for the United Nations. It condemned Israel 17 times and condemned the rest of the world a combined six times, according to UN Watch. Afghanistan barred women from speaking, and the UN General Assembly couldn’t muster even one of their little fake resolution batons. Meanwhile, UNRWA, a Hamas front that calls itself part of the UN but is based in Gaza, is reportedly selling some of that desperately needed aid. The UN closes out the year stronger than ever.

→ Oh no, not flames! One Canadian headline writer was so determined to avoid saying that an arsonist firebombed a synagogue that they instead wrote this:

Flames. After what they did to that woman on the subway, they’ve had quite a villainous week! And a “place of worship.” If your media company just uses words to accurately describe what is happening, you’re considered a wild, rebellious group of thought criminals.

→ Gaetz situation unfortunate all around: The House Ethics Committee finally released its report on Matt Gaetz this week, giving America a Christmas gift that nobody asked for but everyone expected. The committee found evidence that Gaetz paid tens of thousands of dollars to women for sex and drugs, but also for companionship and tenderness. They allege it happened on at least 20 different occasions, one of which involved a 17-year-old girl, violating Florida state laws. This really caught me off guard. Paying minors for sex is illegal in Florida? Gaetz’s die-hard fans (who are these people?) defended him, arguing that two key witnesses against Gaetz have serious credibility issues, which, frankly, no surprises there, since they are 17? There’s nothing I didn’t lie about at that age. My question: Who do you think witnessed Gaetz at his Diddy freak-off–like parties? Honest church ladies? Think again. Gaetz, for his part, released a statement: “It’s embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank, and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. I live a different life now.”

He’s just an average frat boy, you see. Boys will be johns. And he’s repented, changed his ways. Nothing else to it. Embarrassing? Yes. Criminal? Probably. I’ll let the dust settle on this one, but for now, my main takeaway is that congresspeople have enough money to spend tens of thousands of dollars on women and drugs and still have the gall to demand a raise. Washington at work, people.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are going to the salon:

A: What are you doing here? Hili: We are waiting for fur care. In Polish: Ja: Co tu robicie? Hili: Czekamy na pielęgnację futer.

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From reader Reese Vaughn, who reports, “Woodford got a catnip ball for Christmas.”  That cat is baked!

From Now That’s Wild:

. . . and from Cat Memes:

2024 Year End Review; Best of 2024; Science Hero and Jackass of the Year; In Memoriam; Science or Fiction

In the coming years, NASA and other space agencies will send humans back to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era—this time to stay! To maximize line-of-sight communication with Earth, solar visibility, and access to water ice, NASA, the ESA, and China have selected the Lunar South Pole (LSP) as the location for their future lunar bases. This will necessitate the creation of permanent infrastructure on the Moon and require that astronauts have the right equipment and training to deal with conditions around the lunar south pole.

This includes lighting conditions, which present a major challenge for science operations and extravehicular activity (EVA). Around the LSP, day and night last for two weeks at a time, and the Sun never rises more than a few degrees above the horizon. This creates harsh lighting conditions very different from what the Apollo astronauts or any previous mission have experienced. To address this, the NASA Engineering and Safety Council (NESC) has recommended developing a wide variety of physical and virtual techniques that can simulate the visual experiences of Artemis astronauts.

In the past, the design of lighting and functional vision support systems has typically been relegated to the lowest level of program planning. This worked well for the Apollo missions and EVAs in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since helmet design alone addressed all vision challenges. Things will be different for the Artemis Program since astronauts will not be able to avoid having harsh sunlight in their eyes during much of the time they spend doing EVAs. There is also the challenge of the extensive shadowing around the LSP due to its cratered and uneven nature, not to mention the extended lunar nights.

Artist’s rendering of the Starship HLS on the Moon’s surface. NASA has contracted with SpaceX to provide the lunar landing system. Credit: SpaceX

In addition, astronaut vehicles and habitats will require artificial lighting throughout missions, which means astronauts will have to transition from ambient lighting to harsh sunlight and/or intense darkness and back. Since the human eye has difficulty adapting to these transitions, it will impede an astronaut’s “function vision,” which is required to drive vehicles, perform EVAs safely, operate tools, and manage complex machines. This is especially true when it comes to rovers and the lander elevator used by the Starship HLS – both of which will be used for the Artemis III and IV missions.

As Meagan Chappell, a Knowledge Management Analyst at NASA’s Langley Research Center, indicates, this will require the development of new functional vision support systems. That means helmets, windows, and lighting systems that can work together to allow crews to “see into the darkness while their eyes are light-adapted, in bright light while still dark-adapted, and protects their eyes from injury.” According to the NESC assessment, these challenges have not been addressed, and must be understood before solutions can be implemented.

In particular, they indicated how functional vision and specific tasks for Artemis astronauts were not incorporated into system design requirements. For example, the new spacesuits designed for the Artemis Program – the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) – provide greater flexibility so astronauts can walk more easily on the lunar surface. However, there are currently no features or systems that would allow astronauts to see well enough when transitioning between brilliant sunlight into dark shadow and back again without losing their footing.

The NESC assessment identified several other gaps, prompting them to recommend that methods that enable functional vision become a specific and new requirement for system designers. They also recommended that the design process for lighting, windows, and visors become integrated. Lastly, they recommended that various physical and virtual simulation techniques be developed to address specific requirements. This means virtual reality programs that simulate what it is like to walk around the LSP during lunar day and night, followed by “dress rehearsal” missions in analog environments (or both combined!).

Astronauts operating around the Lunar South Pole. Credit: NASA

As Chappell summarized, the simulations will likely focus on different aspects of the mission elements to gauge the effectiveness of their designs:

“Some would address the blinding effects of sunlight at the LSP (not easily achieved through virtual approaches) to evaluate [the] performance of helmet shields and artificial lighting in the context of the environment and adaptation times. Other simulations would add terrain features to identify the threats in simple (e.g., walking, collection of samples) and complex (e.g., maintenance and operation of equipment) tasks. Since different facilities have different strengths, they also have different weaknesses. These strengths and limitations must be characterized to enable verification of technical solutions and crew training.”

This latest series of recommendations reminds us that NASA is committed to achieving a regular human presence on the Moon by the end of this decade. As that day draws nearer, the need for more in-depth preparation and planning becomes apparent. By the time astronauts are making regular trips to the Moon (according to NASA, once a year after 2028), they will need the best training and equipment we can muster.

Further Reading: NASA

The post NASA is Considering Designs and Simulations to Prepare Astronauts for Lighting Conditions Around the Lunar South Pole appeared first on Universe Today.

Here physicist Brian Greene argues with Sam Harris about approaches to dispelling false beliefs, aka religion. Greene argues that simply acquainting people with science will make them less religious (or at least he implies it), and avers that some New Atheists have been ineffective because they call religious people “stupid”. (That’s not so true!). Harris, however, says that the “carrot” attitude of Greene (and Greene really doesn’t use a carrot because he doesn’t criticize religous belief at all) may not be as effective as Harris’s “stick”, which is simply rational argument about what is true and open criticism of the harms of religion. As Sam says, it’s false to assert that you can’t reason people out of religion because he’s seen it happen. So have I.

Sam notes what seems to be the case: Greene just doesn’t want to be the “go-to guy for why you can’t have your cake and eat it too in the matter of science and religion.”  On the other hand, Sam notes that in some ways religion is bad for science. For example, some religious beliefs are inimical to understanding science, including accepting global warming. And of course creationism is still with us in the form of ID.  Sam then asks whether Greene shouldn’t be pushing harder against such inimical religious beliefs. Greene responds that in physics he doesn’t encounter that kind of religious mishigass, which is found more in biology. It’s more than that, though, because I believe that in the past Greene, as one of the organizers of the World Science Festival, has participated in osculating the rump of faith. As I wrote in 2020:

On the other hand [Greene] takes lots of money from the John Templeton Foundation to run the World Science Festival, and there’s always some Templeton-sponsored events that reconcile religion and science or enable “spirituality”.  In fact, Dan Dennett withdrew from a Festival panel when he learned it was backed by Templeton (see the first link in this sentence). And Greene has always been reluctant to say anything bad about religion, despite the fact that he seems to be an atheist. Although he’s said that “there’s much in New Atheism that resonates with me“, he’s admitted that his strategy is less confrontational and less antagonistic than scientists like Dawkins. In fact, as we see below, it no longer seems the least confrontational and antagonistic, but rather worshipful.

There’s more, but I think that one element in Greene’s reticence is knowing that if one criticizes religion, one loses popularity. The fastest way to erode one’s acclaim as a science writer or popularizer is to criticize religion, even if you do it separately from talking about science. Neil deGrasse Tyson has also learned that lesson.

 

An AI model that understands the interplay between human body language, speech and emotion enables digital avatars to move more realistically when speaking

Digital healthcare consultations are not enough for a safe assessment of tonsillitis, according to a new study. Reliability will not be sufficient, thus increasing the risk of over- or under-treatment of a sore throat.

By the end of the century, most of the US outside the high mountains may never see deep snow cover the ground, with consequences for water storage as well as for the life on and beneath the snow

There is growing interest in exploring ways to counteract global warming by intervening in the atmosphere and the oceans, but planned trials are highly controversial

Several prototype aircraft that are intended to bring back commercial supersonic travel have been making big strides in recent years – but it is unknown how well the return of Concorde-like flights will go down with customers

The time to start speaking out to defend vaccines from RFK Jr. is now.

The post Dr. Marty Makary, What Are You Going To Do If RFK Jr. Demands That Revoke Approval For Vaccines? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A research group has analyzed the digital ecosystem of 11- to 12-year-old children across the Basque Autonomous Community, and concluded that two out of three own a smartphone. They use smartphones mainly to talk to family and friends. The researchers also point out that, at that age, access to social media mainly focuses on watching videos and not on generating content.

Bio-inspired wind sensing using strain sensors on flexible wings could revolutionize robotic flight control strategy. Researchers have developed a method to detect wind direction with 99% accuracy using seven strain gauges on the flapping wing and a convolutional neural network model. This breakthrough, inspired by natural strain receptors in birds and insects, opens up new possibilities for improving the control and adaptability of flapping-wing aerial robots in varying wind conditions.

Bio-inspired wind sensing using strain sensors on flexible wings could revolutionize robotic flight control strategy. Researchers have developed a method to detect wind direction with 99% accuracy using seven strain gauges on the flapping wing and a convolutional neural network model. This breakthrough, inspired by natural strain receptors in birds and insects, opens up new possibilities for improving the control and adaptability of flapping-wing aerial robots in varying wind conditions.