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When it comes to upgrading electrical and broadband infrastructure, new research shows that a 'dig once' approach is nearly 40% more cost effective than replacing them separately. The study also found that the greatest benefit comes from proactively undergrounding lines that are currently above ground, even if lines haven't reached the end of their usefulness.

In the great tug-of-war between the Sun and its planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are much more susceptible to solar activities than scientists thought. Jupiter itself has an interesting reaction as it gets pummeled several times a month by solar wind bursts. They compress its magnetosphere and create a huge "hot spot" with temperatures over 500C.

Researchers report their discovery of fluorescent pigments in the feathers of Long-eared Owls, that can only be seen by humans with the help of ultraviolet light.

Up until recently, astronomy was reliant entirely on electromagnetic waves. While that changed with the confirmation of gravitational waves in 2016, astronomers had developed fundamental frameworks in the electromagnetic spectrum by that point. One critical framework broke the spectrum into three categories based on their wavelength - infrared, optical, and ultraviolet. To astronomers, each of these categories was created by a different physical phenomenon, and monitoring each gave its insight into what that phenomenon was doing, no matter what the other spectra said. This was especially prevalent when researching galaxies, as infrared and optical wavelengths were used to analyze different aspects of galaxy formation and behavior. However, Christian Kragh Jespersen of Princeton's Department of Astrophysics and his colleagues think they have found a secret that breaks the entire electromagnetic framework - the optical and infrared are connected.

It’s easy to measure the rotation rate of terrestrial planet by tracking surface features but the gas and ice giants pose more of a problem. Instead, previous studies have relied upon indirect measures like measuring the rotation of their magnetic fields. Now a team of astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to refine the rotation rate of Uranus with an incredible level of accuracy. This time though, instead of studying the rotation of the magnetic field, they tracked aurora to measure one rotation!

We all know that black holes can devour stars. Rip them apart and consume their remnants. But that only happens if a star passes too close to a black hole. What if a star gets close enough to a star to experience strong tidal effects, but not close enough to be immediately devoured? This scenario is considered in a recent paper on the arXiv.

This article was originally published in Skeptic in 1997.

Presented here for the first time are the complete texts of two letters that Einstein wrote regarding his lack of belief in a personal god.

Just over a century ago, near the beginning of his intellectual life, the young Albert Einstein became a skeptic. He states so on the first page of his Autobiographical Notes (1949, pp. 3–5):

Thus I came—despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents—to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived… Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude … which has never left me….

We all know Albert Einstein as the most famous scientist of the 20th century, and many know him as a great humanist. Some have also viewed him as religious. Indeed, in Einstein’s writings there is well-known reference to God and discussion of religion (1949, 1954). Although Einstein stated he was religious and that he believed in God, it was in his own specialized sense that he used these terms. Many are aware that Einstein was not religious in the conventional sense, but it will come as a surprise to some to learn that Einstein clearly identified himself as an atheist and as an agnostic. If one understands how Einstein used the terms religion, God, atheism, and agnosticism, it is clear that he was consistent in his beliefs.

Part of the popular picture of Einstein’s God and religion comes from his well-known statements, such as:

“God is cunning but He is not malicious.” (Also: “God is subtle but he is not bloody-minded.” Or: “God is slick, but he ain’t mean.”) (1946)“God does not play dice.” (On many occasions.)“I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.” (Unknown date.)

It is easy to see how some got the idea that Einstein was expressing a close relationship with a personal god, but it is more accurate to say he was simply expressing his ideas and beliefs about the universe.

Figure 1

Einstein’s “belief” in Spinoza’s God is one of his most widely quoted statements. But quoted out of context, like so many of these statements, it is misleading at best. It all started when Boston’s Cardinal O’Connel attacked Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity and warned the youth that the theory “cloaked the ghastly apparition of atheism” and “befogged speculation, producing universal doubt about God and His creation” (Clark, 1971, 413–414). Einstein had already experienced heavier duty attacks against his theory in the form of anti-Semitic mass meetings in Germany, and he initially ignored the Cardinal’s attack. Shortly thereafter though, on April 24, 1929, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of New York cabled Einstein to ask: “Do you believe in God?” (Sommerfeld, 1949, 103). Einstein’s return message is the famous statement:

“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings” (103). The Rabbi, who was intent on defending Einstein against the Cardinal, interpreted Einstein’s statement in his own way when writing:

Spinoza, who is called the God-intoxicated man, and who saw God manifest in all nature, certainly could not be called an atheist. Furthermore, Einstein points to a unity. Einstein’s theory if carried out to its logical conclusion would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism. He does away with all thought of dualism or pluralism. There can be no room for any aspect of polytheism. This latter thought may have caused the Cardinal to speak out. Let us call a spade a spade (Clark, 1971, 414).

Both the Rabbi and the Cardinal would have done well to note Einstein’s remark, of 1921, to Archbishop Davidson in a similar context about science: “It makes no difference. It is purely abstract science” (413).

The American physicist Steven Weinberg (1992), in critiquing Einstein’s “Spinoza’s God” statement, noted: “But what possible difference does it make to anyone if we use the word “God” in place of “order” or “harmony,” except perhaps to avoid the accusation of having no God?” Weinberg certainly has a valid point, but we should also forgive Einstein for being a product of his times, for his poetic sense, and for his cosmic religious view regarding such things as the order and harmony of the universe.

But what, at bottom, was Einstein’s belief? The long answer exists in Einstein’s essays on religion and science as given in his Ideas and Opinions (1954), his Autobiographical Notes (1949), and other works. What about a short answer?

In the Summer of 1945, just before the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein wrote a short letter stating his position as an atheist (Figure 1, above). Ensign Guy H. Raner had written Einstein from mid-Pacific requesting a clarification on the beliefs of the world famous scientist (Figure 2, below). Four years later Raner again wrote Einstein for further clarification and asked “Some people might interpret (your letter) to mean that to a Jesuit priest, anyone not a Roman Catholic is an atheist, and that you are in fact an orthodox Jew, or a Deist, or something else. Did you mean to leave room for such an interpretation, or are you from the viewpoint of the dictionary an atheist; i.e., “one who disbelieves in the existence of a God, or a Supreme Being?” Einstein’s response is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 2

Combining key elements from the first and second response from Einstein there is little doubt as to his position:

From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist…. I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being.

I was fortunate to meet Guy Raner, by chance, at a humanist dinner in late 1994, at which time he told me of the Einstein letters. Raner lives in Chatsworth, California and has retired after a long teaching career. The Einstein letters, a treasured possession for most of his life, were sold in December, 1994, to a firm that deals in historical documents (Profiles in History, Beverly Hills, CA). Five years ago a very brief letter (Raner & Lerner, 1992) describing the correspondence was published in Nature. But the two Einstein letters have remained largely unknown.

“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one.” —Einstein

Curiously enough, the wonderful and well-known biography Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel, by Banesh Hoffmann (1972) does quote from Einstein’s 1945 letter to Raner. But maddeningly, although Hoffmann quotes most of the letter (194–195), he leaves out Einstein’s statement: “From the viewpoint of a Jesuit Priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.”!

Hoffmann’s biography was written with the collaboration of Einstein’s secretary, Helen Dukas. Could she have played a part in eliminating this important sentence, or was it Hoffmann’s wish? I do not know. However, Freeman Dyson (1996) notes “…that Helen wanted the world to see, the Einstein of legend, the friend of school children and impoverished students, the gently ironic philosopher, the Einstein without violent feelings and tragic mistakes.” Dyson also notes that he thought Dukas “…profoundly wrong in trying to hide the true Einstein from the world.” Perhaps her well-intentioned protectionism included the elimination of Einstein as atheist.

Figure 3

Although not a favorite of physicists, Einstein, The Life and Times, by the professional biographer Ronald W. Clark (1971), contains one of the best summaries on Einstein’s God: “However, Einstein’s God was not the God of most men. When he wrote of religion, as he often did in middle and later life, he tended to … clothe with different names what to many ordinary mortals—and to most Jews—looked like a variant of simple agnosticism….This was belief enough. It grew early and rooted deep. Only later was it dignified by the title of cosmic religion, a phrase which gave plausible respectability to the views of a man who did not believe in a life after death and who felt that if virtue paid off in the earthly one, then this was the result of cause and effect rather than celestial reward. Einstein’s God thus stood for an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who had the courage, the imagination, and the persistence to go on searching for them” (19).

Einstein continued to search, even to the last days of his 76 years, but his search was not for the God of Abraham or Moses. His search was for the order and harmony of the world.

Bibliography

• Dyson, F. 1996. Forward In The Quotable Einstein (Calaprice, Alice, Ed. ) Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1996. (Note: The section “On Religion, God, and Philosophy” is perhaps the best brief source to present the range and depth of Einstein’s views.)
• Einstein, A. 1929. quoted in Sommerfeld (see below). 1949. Also as Telegram to a Jewish Newspaper, 1929; Einstein Archive Number 33–272.
• ___. 1946 and of unknown date. In Einstein, A Centenary Volume. (A. P. French, Ed.) Cambridge: Harvard Univ Press. 1979. 32, 73, & 67.
• ___. 1959 (1949). “Autobiographical Notes.” In Albert Einstein, Philosopher–Scientist. (Paul Arthur Schilpp, Ed.) New York: Harper & Bros.
• ___. 1950. Letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25,1950; Einstein Archive Number 59–215.
• ___. 1954. Ideas and Opinions. New York: Crown Pub.
• ___. on many occasions. In Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel. (B. Hoffmann with the collaboration of Helen Dukas.) New York: The Viking Press.
• Hoffmann, B. (collaboration with Helen Dukas). 1972. Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel. New York: The Viking Press.
• Raner, G.H. & Lerner, L. S. “Einstein’s Beliefs.” Nature, 358:102.
• Sommerfeld, A. 1949. “To Albert Einstein’s 70th Birthday.” In Albert Einstein, Philospher–Scientist. (Paul Arthur Schilpp, Ed.) New York: Harper & Bros. 1959. 99–105.
• Weinberg, S. 1992. Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon Books. 245.

An investigation of the changing behaviour of a single quantum bit through time has uncovered a tantalising similarity to the geometry of three-dimensional space

Researchers completed one of the most comprehensive studies to date on the risks of using AI models to develop software. In a paper, they demonstrate how a specific type of error could pose a serious threat to programmers that use AI to help write code.

It’s incredibly tricky to pin down the origin of the language that led to the words spoken everywhere between Spain and India – and it’ll be even harder to be sure we’ve got it right

Unusual rocks on an Icelandic beach were dropped there by icebergs, adding to evidence that an unusually cool period preceded the collapse of the Roman Empire

In 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a report detailing recently-declassified information on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). Since then, the Department of Defense has released annual reports on UAP through the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Nevertheless, there is still a lack of publicly available scientific data on the subject. To address this, a new study led by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the Galileo Project proposes an All-Sky Infrared Camera to search for potential indications of extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Readers and correspondents are asking me what i think about the just-revealed “de-extinction” of the dire wolf by Colossal Biosciences, and the firm’s attempt to bring back the woolly mammoth, too.  I don’t want to write much about this now because I’ve put up a few posts about the mammoth before, and Matthew has expressed similar sentiments in his book As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age.  Further, I am writing my take for another venue, so I will just say this about the genetics of the de-extinction efforts so far:

My general sentiments are these: attempts to bring back extinct species as outlined so far are not only scientifically misguided, but are journalistically mis-reported by the press.  That is, the press is, by and large, distorting what has been done scientifically, pretending that an animal with only a few cosmetic gene edits is actually identical to an extinct species. Further, Colossal seems happy enough to let this misconception be widely reported (to be fair, there are some decent articles about the science of de-extinction, and I’ll link to a few below).

The main problem, as I said, is the pretense that changing a living species by editing just a handful of genes (20 max so far) to get something that looks like the extinct “dire wolf” is not the same thing as re-creating a dire wolf.  That species undoubtedly had hundreds or thousands of genetic differences from the gray wolf, including genes affecting metabolism and behavior—genes that we do not know.  Further, control regions of genes, which are outside protein-coding regions, undoubtedly are involved in differences between extinct species and their relatives. But we don’t know where these regions are and so cannot use them for genetic editing.

All of this means that, in my view, de-extincting species is a cosmetic rather than a serious genetic project, designed to produce gee-whiz animals to entertain rich people and to wow children.  Such animals, especially the highly touted de-extincted mammoth, which mammoth expert Tori Herridge calls “an elephant in a fur coat”, would certainly not survive in their original habitat.  Further, proponents’ claims that de-extinction would be a fantastic conservation effort , and could even mitigate global warming. are totally unsupported speculations.

There are two such efforts that have received all the press: the de-extinction of the woolly mammoth and of the dire wolf; the latter effort has produced some pups, but they are not dire wolves. We will never see woolly mammoths, though Colossal promises that they’ll be stomping about in three years!

Mammoth (see my website posts above) There are many reasons why this project is a non-starter.  The evidence that it is feasible rests solely on the production of “woolly mice,” which are mice that have had 8 edits in only 7 genes (remember, mice are easier to work with than elephants!).  Only two of the genes that were changed were edited in a way to conform to known mammoth genes. The rest are simply using mouse mutants known to affect hair texture, color, and waviness in lab mice.  Thus we have a woolly mouse—not anything close to a woolly elephant. Yes, it’s cool to make multiple changes in multiple genes at once, but this is not a new technology. The novelty will be to edit an elephant egg cell in a way that the edited cell can be implanted in an Asian elephant and develop into a woolly mammoth. If you really want something popping out of an Asian elephant that is close to a woolly mammoth, you will never get it. In fact, the whole project seems impossible to me. And the conservation results touted by Colossal–that the re-exincted mammoths, released on the tundra, will keep carbon in the permafrost and not in the atmosphere–are purely speculative.

Dire wolf:  Scientists edited a gray wolf stem cell, changing 20 genes. Fifteen of the edited genes were designed from from the sequenced dire-wolf genome (again, sequencing an extinct organism is a feat, but not one developed by Colossal), while five others were taken from known genes that change dogs or wolves (the articles aren’t clear on which genes were used, as Colossal is keeping that secret).  The edited cell, as an egg, was placed into a “large dog” to be the surrogate mom, and then extracted via caesarian section (did the dogs survive this procedure?) They get a whitish wolf with some dog or gray-wolf genes, not dire wolf genes. All of the changes are said to affect things like fur color, body size, and tooth and jaw configuration–traits that differentiated the dire wolf from the gray wolf.  As I noted, we wind up with a gray wolf (and remember, domestic dogs are descended from gray wolves, and can even be considered gray wolves, as they mate with each other and can produce fertile hybrids); we get a gray wolf with a couple of changed traits to make it look like what we think the dire wolf looked like. (We are not sure, for example, that the dire wolf had white fur.)

Neither the mammoth nor the dire wolf results are published in a peer-reviewed journals, though the woolly mouse experiment has been languishing on bioRΧiv for a while but hasn’t been published.

Here are some links, most but not all of them pointing out problems with de-extinction projects:

Colossal’s explanation of  the mammoth project. (Note that they also want to de-extinct the dodo and the thylacine, or marsupial wolf.)

Colossal’s account on the dire wolf result.

Nature paper by Ewen Calloway on why the woolly mouse isn’t a credible step towards a woolly mammoth.

Nature paper by Tori Herridge explaining why she turned down a position as advisor to Colossal on the mammoth

Article in Ars Technica by Nitin Sekar, WWF authority on conserving the Asian elephant, explaining why “Mammoth de-extinction is bad conservation.”

Guardian paper by Adam Rutherford explaining why trying to de-extinct the Woolly Mammoth is not only unethical, but impossible.

NYT article by Carl Zimmer on the dire wolf, a good summary and not nearly as critical as his Bluesky post below.

New Yorker article by D. T. Max on the dire wolf, somewhat windy and credulous (archived here).

Article in the MIT Technology Review by Antonio Regalado: “Game of clones: Colossal’s new wolves are cute, but are they dire?”

Tweets and posts:

Tori Herridge’s posts on both Twitter and Bluesky are an informative and hilarious critique of the woolly mouse/mammoth projects. Get started with this one if you’d like (it’s a thread):

[though as an aside, honestly Colossal missed a trick not going for the Fgfr1/2 double mutant — I mean, have you seen a more mammothy-mouse?!]*MAMMOUSE KLAXON*www.nature.com/articles/s41…

— Tori Herridge (@toriherridge.bsky.social) 2025-03-05T00:20:55.808Z

Journalist Asher Elbein and a commenter on the misleading Dire Wolf.

Here Carl Zimmer points out that Colossal’s dire wolf is not a dire wolf. This is a bit more frank than his NYT article!

It's not a dire wolf. It's a gray wolf clone with 20 dire-wolf gene edits, and with some dire wolf traits. And here's my story! Gift link: http://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/s…

— Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer.com) 2025-04-07T16:38:15.772Z

Adam Rutherford (read his Guardian article on mammoths above) is particularly critical of the Dire Wolf project. I love the first tweet asserting that journalists who don’t do due diligence are making people stupider. That’s true, and it also makes people misunderstand (and possibly eventually mistrust) science:

Public service announcement. They are not Dire Wolves. They have 20 single letter changes in their entire genomes. I’ve done shits with more mutations. Every time journalists write up a Colossus press release, They are making people stupider. Client journalism by a ridiculous company.

— Adam Rutherford (@adamrutherford.bsky.social) 2025-04-07T20:02:25.283Z

GODDAMIT. IT’S NOT A RESURRECTED DIRE WOLF. 20 edits in 19,000 genes. IT’S NOT GOING TO AID CONSERVATION. EVERY WRITE UP THAT SWALLOWS AND REGURGITATES THIS GUFFERY WOLFSHIT IS DOING PR FOR A FUNDING ROUND.

— Adam Rutherford (@adamrutherford.bsky.social) 2025-04-08T12:05:49.778Z

Caveat emptor!

Oh, and for fun, here’s the Secretary of the Interior tweeting about how we shouldn’t worry so much about endangered species and pay more attention to “de-extincting” species.  But of course “de-extincting” isn’t going to do squat to keep existing species from waning. Burgum is off the rails here, entranced by the dire gray wolf.

Scientists have pioneered an influenza virus vector-based nasal spray vaccine platform and developed a nasal spray H5N1 avian influenza vaccine. During the early COVID-19 pandemic, this platform enabled the rapid development of a nasal spray vaccine in collaboration with mainland China's Wantai BioPharm. After completing Phase 1-3 clinical trials, it was approved in 2022 as the world's first nasal spray COVID-19 vaccine.

While the daily ebb and flow of people across a city might seem chaotic, new research reveals underlying universal patterns. A study unveils fundamental spatiotemporal scaling laws that govern these population dynamics.

Researchers have developed a handheld device that could potentially replace stethoscopes as a tool for detecting certain types of heart disease.

A study has demonstrated the effectiveness of a technology-assisted intervention for perinatal depression.

Every galaxy is thought to form at the center of a dark matter halo. Stars are formed when gravity within dark matter halos draws in gas, but astrophysicists don't know whether star-free dark matter halos exist. An Diego astrophysicist has calculated the mass below which halos fail to form.

A new way to watch catalytic reactions happen at the molecular level in real time could lead to better fundamental understanding and planning of the important reactions used in countless manufacturing processes every day.

A tiny, soft, flexible robot that can crawl through earthquake rubble to find trapped victims or travel inside the human body to deliver medicine may seem like science fiction, but an international team is pioneering such adaptable robots by integrating flexible electronics with magnetically controlled motion.