Science

Shaped by a different biology or culture, other intelligent civilisations – if they’re out there – might understand the universe in a completely different way than we do. Physicist Daniel Whiteson explores what that could tell us about physics and ourselves

Bad medicine, bad laws, bad choice

The post Legislative Alchemy: “Naturopathic Doctor” licensing is bad medicine for Florida first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Drones aren't yet licensed to carry passengers, but some may already be airlifting wounded personnel off the battlefield and could be employed for smuggling people

Researchers in Munich have used the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona to capture five images of one and the same supernova in a single picture. The gravity of two foreground galaxies has deflected the light from a supernova far in the background along different paths to Earth.

Satellite imaging is increasingly important to every field from crop monitoring to poverty reduction. So it’s no surprise that there have been more and more satellites launched to try to meet that growing demand. But with more satellites comes more risk for collision - and the debris field that comes after the collision. A new paper in Advanced in Space Research from John Mackintosh and his co-authors at the University of Manchester looks at how we might use mission design to mitigate some of the hazards of increasing the number of satellites even more

Star dust is at the root of everything that exists, and is produced in large quantities around Wolf-Rayet binaries. But there are some puzzling observations of dust grain sizes that require explanations. New research shows why different observations have found different dust grain sizes.

This morning a friend who works in the department office called me and said “there are two ducks in the pond.” I instantly knew that this would be a male/female pair of mallards scoping out the pond as a potential nesting and rearing site. Within one minute I grabbed my camera and my container of adult duck food (I saved it from last year; I have plenty and it’s still good), and ran down to the pond.

Sure enough, there was a pair of mallards at the far (south) end.  Moreover, then swam near me when I whistled, though they didn’t come right up to me. This suggests that these are the mallards knew me, though, based on bill patterns in the hen, I don’t think they are Esther and Mordecai from last year.

Those ducks were named because they arrived on the Jewish holiday of Purim, and, sure enough, that holiday is tomorrow.  These are again Jewish ducks and will have to be named accordingly.

I am so happy. There is no guarantee they’ll stay, but food is thin on the pond, and I am making sure they know it is a place to get a nice meal. After filling their tummies, they retired back to the south end for a rest.

Photos. First, the pair (name suggestions welcome, especially Jewish-themed names—but not Mordecai and Esther):

The hen:

The hen eating (out of focus). They were hungry!

The drake, dripping water from his bill after having eating a food pellet (I give them only the best):

The hen’s bill:

This is Esther from last year. The bill pattern of today’s hen is clearly different, so the hen we have now is not Esther. But there’s no guarantee that this one will breed here (remember, Esther was our first ground-nesting female). Note that today’s duck lacks Esther’s black markings on the top and tip of her bill, and those should have remained over a year.

Stay tuned for 2026 Duck Adventures.

Originally I was going to call this post “The New York Times coddles faith again,” but there is not all that much coddling in this review of Christopher Beha’s new book Why I am not an Atheist. 

What puzzles me is that the review is on the cover of the NYT’s latest Sunday book section. That position is usually reserved for important or notable books, but Timothy Egan’s review doesn’t make the book seem that interesting. Could it be that the cover slot came from the book being about . . . . God? At any rate, given that Beha’s book came out February 17, the fact that its Amazon ranking is only 1,562 (very low for a new book on the benefits of faith), and there are only 8 reviews (all 5-star reviews, of course), is not a sign that this is a barn-burner that will fill the God-shaped lacuna in the public soul.

Beha has previously given an excerpt of his book in the NYer, which I discussed in my recent post  “A New Yorker writer loses faith in atheism.”  I found Beha’s arguments lame, and I summarized the book this way, as well as provided information on the author.  From my post:

Even the title of this New Yorker article is dumb: “faith in atheism” is an oxymoron, for a lack of belief in gods is not a “faith” in any meaningful sense. But of course the New Yorker is uber-progressive, which means it’s soft on religion. And this article, recounting Christopher Beha’s journey from Catholicism to atheism and then back to a watery theism, is a typical NYer article: long on history and intellectual references, but short on substance. In the end I think it can be shortened to simply this:

“Atheism in all its forms is a kind of faith, but it doesn’t ground your life by giving it meaning. This is why I became a theist.”

So far as I can determine, that is all, though the article is tricked out with all kinds of agonized assertions as the author finds he cannot “ground his life” on a lack of belief in God. But whoever said they could?  But it plays well with the progressive New Yorker crowd (same as the NY Times crowd) in being soft on religion and hard on atheism.  The new generation of intellectuals need God, for to them, as to Beha, only a divine being can give meaning to one’s life.

Christopher Beha, a former editor of Harper’s Magazine,  is the author of a new book, Why I am Not an Atheist, with the subtitle Confessions of a Skeptical Believer. The NYer piece is taken from that book

You can read the Sunday NYT review by clicking on the screenshot below, or find it archived for free here.

Here’s the cover highlighting the book (thanks to Greg for sending me a photo of the paper version he gets).  Stuff like this roils my kishkes:

Reviewer Tinothy Egan is somewhat lukewarm about the book, even though he avers that he is a believer and had his own search for faith as well as an inexplicable faith epiphany. The NYT identifies him this way:

Timothy Egan is the author of “A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith,” among other books, and a winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction.

So both author and reviewer, as well as the MSM (including the NYT), are rife these days with either promotions of religious books or softball reviews of them.  And all this manages to center on the search for meaning in these dire times, a search for meaning that always winds up filling the “God-shaped hole” in our being. That is something Egan apparently documents in his own book and is, of course, the subject of Beha’s book.

As I noted when reviewing Beha’s New Yorker piece, he went back and forth from a youthful Catholicism to a materialistic atheism and then found his way back to God again, always tormented by the fact that he saw an angel who spoke to him when he was 15.  As reviewer Egan says:

As someone who also saw something inexplicable (a long-dead saint opening her eyes from a crypt in Italy), I preferred the teenage Beha who was filled with religious wonder. Not to worry. By the end of the book, he returns to the angel with an expanded view. It was both miracle and real. “I know what ‘caused’ these visitations, from a strictly material standpoint, but I also know what they in turn caused — a lifelong journey that I am still on.”

Not to worry! That statement alone speaks volumes. But Egan continues:

In between are several hundred pages that make up that journey, almost all of it through the mostly atheistic philosophers of the Western canon. Unlike a traditional pilgrimage, this book is an odyssey of the mind. Beha debates the old masters: Descartes, Kant, Locke, Mill, Hobbes, Camus, Nietzsche and many, many others, but he starts with a poke at the “New Atheists” Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and the like — all of them now passé, in his view.

This tells you two things: the reviewer is soft on spiritual experiences, since he himself had one (see the link three paragraphs back), and that the author bashes the New Atheism as being “passé”, a cheap shot which doesn’t at all give New Atheism credit for pushing along the rise of the “nones” and making criticism of religion an acceptable thing to discuss.

But Beha is still somewhat critical of the scholastic tenor of the book, so it’s not a totally glowing review:

Beha is not a stone thrower or even much of a picker of fights. He reveres the great minds, to an obsessive degree. He’s the guy you wanted as your college roommate in the pre-A.I. era. Or maybe not. He’s done all the reading and even wrote a memoir about it, “The Whole Five Feet,” recounting the year he consumed all 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics series. Just looking at the list makes most of us tired.

He climbed that mountain, so we don’t have to. But, alas, at times in his new book he gets lost in the clouds. Here’s a sample, discussing Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher: “Kant is here invoking two binaries we’ve already discussed. The first is that between a priori and a posteriori truth; the second is that between analysis and synthesis.”

But Beha is sincere, honest and likable on the page. I found his personal story more engaging than his intellectual one. He started to doubt his faith at 18 when he nearly lost his twin brother to a car accident. He suffered from depression and life-threatening cancer, drank too much and took too many drugs. (He was an atheist for a long time.)

But as for the things I highlighted in my own take on Beha’s NYer article—things like the “faith in science” that we supposedly have, and the “romantic idealism” that is coequal to science in its inability to apprehend universal truths—of these things Egan says nothing. Nor does he point out that many people (I’m one) have found satisfaction without God, though many of us don’t have a God-shaped hole nor are actively looking for meaning.  Instead, Egan’s take is anodyne, for one simply cannot get away with pushing nonbelief in the New York Times. What you can do is bash atheism in general and New Atheism in particular.

Egan:

Ultimately, atheism failed [Beha], as it did some in the French Revolution who briefly converted the Notre-Dame Cathedral into the spiritually barren Temple of Reason. The religion of nonreligion can be like nonalcohol beer: What’s the point?

I have to interject here to note that “nonreligion”—atheism—is not religion, in the same way that not drinking is a form of alcoholism.  The trope that atheists have “faith” is simply ridiculous. What they have is a failure to be convinced of a phenomenon when there is no evidence for it. But I digress. Egan continues his review’s peroration:

Beha is not interested in trying to sway those who’ve given up on God. He simply wants to explain what moved him back to the faith of his fathers, “listening to the whispering voice within our souls.” There’s no Road-to-Damascus conversion. He’s not blinded by the light. It’s more about his often miserable life getting better with the right woman, a Catholic confession, regular attendance at Mass. And that woman — “she was the reason I believed in God” — isn’t even a believer. She’s a lapsed Episcopalian.

If Beha doesn’t necessarily win his argument with Russell, give him credit for following the imperative of all sentient beings — to deeply consider the mystery of ourselves in an unknowable universe.

“I don’t believe I will ever see things clearly; not in this mortal life,” he concludes. “The best we can hope for is to be looking in the right direction, facing the right way.”

The proper response to this conclusion is “meh”.

Estimating a mass for a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) is perhaps the single most important thing to understand about it, after its trajectory. Actually doing so isn’t easy though, as the mass for objects in the tens to hundreds of kilometers in size are too small to have their mass calculated by traditional radio-frequency tracking techniques. A new paper from Justin Atchison of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and his co-authors proposes a method that could find the mass of asteroids even on the smaller end of that range, but will require precise coordination.

Physicists are scrambling to understand why dark energy is weakening. In a surprising twist, we must now reconsider the possibility that our reality contains extra dimensions

Last year, our most detailed map of the universe yet suggested our understanding of dark energy has been wrong for decades. The shock result is reigniting the search for a better cosmic story   

Black holes that turn matter into energy could explain dark energy and answer two other cosmic questions. Now, the challenge is to find them

This is a New Scientist special package about shock results that have upended cosmology. What do they mean for our models of the universe, and what are the alternative explanations?

I put something like this up years ago, but it’s a good way to see, with just a few clicks, what happened to Iran after the “Revolution”. Let’s taken women’s dress, a touchstone of misogyny and theocratic oppression.  Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, it was a pretty free country in that respect, and everyone could dress how they wanted.

To see that, do a Google Image search for “Iranian women, 1970”. I’ve done it for you: click here.  And this is the first images you see (click photo to enlarge):

And the “after” page. Click “Iranian women, 2000” (again, just go here).  This is 21 years after the “Revolution.”  You’ll see this.

I didn’t manipulate the search in any way save put in what’s above, and I’ve used the first four rows of photos for both.

I don’t think I need to comment on the change, which speaks volumes about the oppression of women in that country.  Oh, and why the cry for change is “Women, Life, Freedom.”

As millions turn to ChatGPT and other AI chatbots for therapy-style advice, new research from Brown University raises a serious red flag: even when instructed to act like trained therapists, these systems routinely break core ethical standards of mental health care. In side-by-side evaluations with peer counselors and licensed psychologists, researchers uncovered 15 distinct ethical risks — from mishandling crisis situations and reinforcing harmful beliefs to showing biased responses and offering “deceptive empathy” that mimics care without real understanding.

Putting silicate rocks from mine waste on fields could improve crops and limit global warming, but some researchers question where all that rock is going to come from

This is the last full batch I have, though I’m saving singletons and the like for a melange post. But today is our first post (as I remember) that features carnivorous plants, from reader Jan Malik. Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

A few species of carnivorous plants grow in New York and New Jersey, primarily in swamps or bogs where it is difficult for plants to obtain nitrogen and phosphorus. Compounds of both elements are highly soluble in water and are poorly retained in waterlogged, low-pH soil. So far, I have found two species, each using a different strategy to catch its prey.

• Sundew (likely Drosera intermedia).
  “A small plant growing in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. While there are other Drosera species in the Eastern USA, this one has leaves spaced along a short stem rather than a ground-hugging rosette. The plant must receive a rich payoff for the resources spent producing mucus and protease enzymes, as the remains of digested victims were obvious on many leaves. Research suggests that nitrogen from captured invertebrates can account for 30% to 70% of the plant’s total uptake, depending on prey density.”

• The “Expensive” Glisten.
  There must be something in the glistening droplets of mucilage on these tentacles that attracts insects. It looks like a lavish investment, but mucilage is mostly water with a small amount of polysaccharides to provide stickiness. The “expensive” enzymes are only produced after a victim is captured. I wonder if this secretion occurs only in the leaf where the victim is immobilized or systemically throughout the plant. In this shot, it even looks like the plant accidentally produced a web of sticky mucilage strands (on the right), mimicking a spiderweb.

• Digestion in Progress.
  An example of a fresh victim: a species of crane fly being digested. By plant standards, this process is quite fast; in a couple of days, little will remain except for fragments of chitin.

• Purple Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea).
  Photographed in the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks, NY, this species is a less “active” predator than the sundew. Both plants form traps from modified leaves, but pitcher plants form jugs that fill with rainwater. When small invertebrates (or occasionally small salamanders) fall in, they drown. Unlike the sundew, the pitcher plant generally doesn’t produce its own enzymes (except in very young pitchers); instead, it relies on a micro-ecosystem within the water—protozoa, mosquito larvae, and bacteria. These organisms decompose the victims, eventually releasing nitrogen and phosphorus for the plant to absorb through the leaf wall.

Carnivorous plants have a dilemma: how to capture invertebrates but let the pollinators live and do the job. The Purple pitcher plant soles it in the most logical way, by extending stems of its flowers so that they are far away from entrances to the pitchers. Apparently, that is the investment that pays off for the plant.

• Durability vs. Chemistry.
  Pitcher leaves are green in June but eventually turn deep purple. These plants are more cold-hardy than sundews and are likely the most northern-reaching carnivorous plants in North America. In the Adirondacks, they survive harsh winters buried under snow for half the year, and their leaves can remain active traps for several seasons. While Droserainvests in “biochemical weapons,” Sarraceniainvests in durable structures. Nutrient uptake is slower in pitchers but comes at a lower metabolic cost.

• The Downward Path.
  A close-up of the barbs on the lower lip of the pitcher trap. These guide victims downward, aided by scent and secreted nectar. Because they are downward-pointing, a victim has a difficult time climbing out, especially given the waxy, slippery surface of the leaf. Functionally, these barbs serve the same purpose as the sundew’s mucilage—preventing escape—but they are much “cheaper” energetically since they are part of the permanent leaf structure.

Fungus-farming ants have evolved a remarkable solution to the danger of excess carbon dioxide inside their nests – which could inspire ways for humans to capture CO2

The most comprehensive study to date has revealed what we need to eat throughout the day to sleep well that night

The latest in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series is out this month, along with a speculative retelling of Moby-Dick and a forgotten classic from 1936