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Not long ago I mentioned that The Free Press had published a weird piece extolling religion: an atheist beefing that she really missed the goddy parts of Christmas even though she wasn’t a believer. She needed to go to church. With that, I wondered whether softness on religion was becoming part of anti-wokeness, or at least that news site.

Now, with the publication of a new longer piece, The Free Press has buttressed my speculations. For this article not only names and tells the stories of a number of notables who decided to embrace religion (largely Christianity), but also implies that there are good reasons for them to do so.  Mostly it’s the “God-shaped hole in our being”: the dubious idea that humans have an innate—and perhaps evolved—need to find a divine being to worship and give then succor.  Indeed, several people (including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose embrace of Christianity we’ve discussed before) explicitly mention that religion is what gives their life meaning.

If that is the case, good for them. But of course many of us find meaning and purpose without religion. Indeed, as I’ve argued, people often don’t go out looking for meaning and purpose to their lives, but simply enact their lives in a way that winds up giving them meaning and purpose.  Those things can be found in children, family, friends, activities (be they physical, intellectual, or humanitarian) and so on.

The biggest issue with this article, though, is that it is completely devoid of any evidence for the truth of the tenets of religion. It’s touting faith as a balm for wounded souls, and, so the narrative goes, one should accept God to get cured–regardless of whether what you believe is true. Indeed, it quotes Andrew Sullivan on the advantage of not having to have good reasons to believe:

The question swirling around all the new believers was: Were they true believers? Or was their conversion mostly or entirely utilitarian—driven by a desire to push back against the forces of technology and secularism and wokeness and an increasingly militant Islam? Did they actually believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God and that he had died for our sins and was resurrected? Or did they think that was a nice story that we should tell ourselves because it encouraged people to treat each other better—because it was a kind of cultural bulwark? And did it really matter in the end?

Andrew Sullivan, the writer and podcaster, suggested this might not be easy to answer. “The feeling”—of believing—“will vary,” Sullivan, a Catholic, told me. “Sometimes, there’s no feeling. Sometimes, you’re overwhelmed. The point really is to escape feeling as such—our emotions are not what prove anything.”

“The genius of ritual is that it allows us not to articulate our feelings,” Sullivan said. “It allows us to express our faith through an act.”

Well, I don’t find that “genius”. If your faith depends on believing that Jesus died for our sins, was bodily resurrected, and then became the only route to Heaven, then you bloody well better have good reasons for thinking that. It was the achievement of New Atheism to show that peoples’ reasons are not good ones.  If your eternal life (and its location) depends on believing the truths espoused by your faith, it’s salubrious to have chosen the right faith. But people don’t worry about that; they usually assume the faith they were taught as children.

Click on the screenshot below to read the piece, or find it archived here.

Here are the names in each of the “I found God” anecdotes. Excerpts are indented; bolding is mine:

1.) In the beginning, Matthew Crawford believed in nothing.

“The question of God wasn’t even on the radar,” the best-selling author told me.

. . . .“A lot of very thoughtful people who once believed reason and science could explain everything—why we’re here, what comes after we’re gone, what it all means—are now feeling a genuine hunger for something more,” he said.

“There has to be a larger order that comprehends us and makes a demand on us,” Crawford added. “It’s clear that we can’t live without a sense of meaning beyond ourselves.”

Has to be?  Why?  And of course if you find “meaning and purpose” in things like friends, family, work, and avocation, then that is a “sense of meaning” that doesn’t need the supernatural.

2.) But something profound is happening. Instead of smirking at religion, some of our most important philosophers, novelists, and public intellectuals are now reassessing their contempt for it. They are wondering if they might have missed something. Religion, the historian Niall Ferguson told me, “provides ethical immunity to the false religions of Lenin and Hitler.”

Again, we are supposed to believe that these important intellectuals might have missed out by neglecting God.  But the effects of religious belief give no evidence for the truth of its tenets.

3.) In February 2024, podcaster Joe Rogan, in a conversation about the sorry state of America’s youth with New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, said: “We need Jesus.” Not five years earlier, Rogan had hosted Richard Dawkins on his show and poked fun at Christians.

Why Jesus? Is there evidence that he was who he said he was, and that believing in Jesus is the only way to heaven? Maybe we need Muhammad or Buddha.

Anyway, many of us don’t need Jesus.

Note the swipe at Dawkins. The article makes fun of New Atheists throughout; it’s almost like that contempt was ripped from Pharyngula. There’s even a section called “The Rise and Fall of the New Atheists”.  Well, New Atheists aren’t writing their books any more, as they’ve had their say, but the decline of faith in the Western world (not just the U.S.) is sufficient evidence that the anecdotes of this article go against a trend of decreasing religiosity.

4.) In April, the comedian Russell Brand—who has emerged in recent years as a voice of the counterculture and amassed an audience of more than 11 million on X—announced that he was about to be baptized. “I know a lot of people are cynical about the increasing interest in Christianity and the return to God but, to me, it’s obvious. As meaning deteriorates in the modern world, as our value systems and institutions crumble, all of us become increasingly aware that there is this eerily familiar awakening and beckoning figure that we’ve all known all our lives within us and around us. For me, it’s very exciting.”

It’s almost as if his social-media following validates his beliefs.  And again, why Christianity? How does Brand, who I thought was smarter than this, know that Christianity is the religion with the “right” claims? Why not Islam or Judaism?

5.) In May, tech mogul Peter Thiel, who had espoused a vague spirituality and had been friends with the late French philosopher and religious thinker René Girard, came down unequivocally on the side of God. “God has some kind of a plan for history,” Thiel said, while being interviewed by a pastor at a former church. “Maybe it’s a hidden plan; it’s a secret plan. He has a plan for your life.” It was a remarkable moment: One of the gods of Silicon Valley, who had long argued that technology could cure death, was now saying that there was one true God, and that human beings were human—limited, mortal, at the mercy of larger forces.

How certain Thiel is about the existence of God! But what is his evidence? And what is this evidence of a “plan for history” and a “plan for your life”?  Thiel is just making this stuff up, spinning his wheels.

6). Then in July, Elon Musk—the former “atheist hero,” the king of electric vehicles and space exploration, the champion of free expression—sat down with Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who has studied the intersection of religion and ideology, to discuss God. “I’m actually a big believer in the principles of Christianity,” Musk said. Soon after, Musk took to X to pronounce that “unless there is more bravery to stand up for what is fair and right, Christianity will perish.”

Note that Musk said he believes in the PRINCIPLES of Christianity, not the actual factual assertions of the faith. Do those beliefs include the principle that if you don’t except Jesus as your savior, you’re going to fry eternally? What about the principle that it’s okay to have slaves, so long as you don’t whip them too hard?

As for Jordan Peterson, what he believes about Christianity is so confused and incoherent that I cannot take his “religion” seriously.

There are more like this, includiong Paul Kingsnorth and Jordan Hall, but again, they are just conversion stories, and say nothing about the truth of Christianity. And for every believer cited I could dig up someone who either gave up faith or refused to adopt it, as shown by the growth of “nones” in America.  If it’s a war of anecdotes, the nonbelievers win (see below).

But we’ve neglected the prize specimen of conversion, former atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She was deeply depressed, and nothing worked to help her. Until she found Christianity.

7.) In 2022, she started to come around to the idea of Christianity, going to church, thinking, reading: Who was this Christian God? And what was the nature of one’s relationship with him? How did that change you?

Then came Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The attack was proof, like the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, of everything she had long believed about Islam. She was horrified, but she was also amazed by the Israelis’ conviction. “What I find with my Jewish friends was this blind faith in Israel and the existence of Israel—there will be a Zionist movement, there will be a home for the Jewish people,” she said. “They are immersed in these biblical stories. It’s a story of faith.”

In November of that year, Hirsi Ali published an essay, “Why I Am Now a Christian”—a response to Bertrand Russell—in UnHerd. “We can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools,” she wrote. “To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok.”

The essay triggered an avalanche of conversations in the independent media universe—including a book, which she is now working on, and a debate, in June, between Hirsi Ali and Dawkins in which she argued that Christianity is a bulwark against “the cult of power, Islamism.” The debate felt like a kind of bookend to the four horsemen meeting in Hitchens’s apartment in 2007.

Well, yes, Christianity could make you resist Islam (note that religion is being divisive here), and if it cured Hirsi Ali of her depression, then I won’t fault her for accepting it, so long as she believes its tenets, which she says she does.  Here’s the debate between Dawkins and Hirsi Ali. The audience is clearly on Hirsi Ali’s side, but the existence of God can’t be decided by a vote, and of course atheists are generally seen with suspicion compared to lauded “people of faith”. I have always found it curious that it’s considered praise to say someone is a “person of faith”.  It could just as well be said that that is a “person of delusion.”

Another argument for religion adduced in the piece is that religion inspired great art, including all the religious paintings before artists discovered apples and flowers, as well as cathedrals and great music.  This is in fact true, for surely we would have no Notre Dame or Chartres without Christianity. (I’m not so sure about music and painting.) But again, Islam too has inspired fantastic architecture as in their many lovely mosques (e.g., the Taj Mahal), as well as painting, and music (well, until recently). But again, none of this attesta to the verity of the revelations given to Muhammad.

And let’s get back to Dawkins:

Dawkins underscored that he, like Sam Harris, is still very much an atheist. He did not see any contradiction in saying, as he had to Rachel Johnson on the Leading Britain’s Conversation (LBC) radio show, that he was “happy” with the number of Christians declining in Britain and that he “would not be happy if we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches.”

“The tendency you’re talking about,” he told me, alluding to Hirsi Ali, “is, I think, mostly people who don’t necessarily believe Jesus was the son of God or born of a virgin, or rose from the dead, but nevertheless think that Christianity is a good thing, that Christianity would benefit the world if more people believed it, that Christianity might be the sort of basis for a lot of what’s good about Western civilization.”

And yet, Dawkins did admit he was worried about losing the world that had been bequeathed to us by Christianity. “If we substituted any alternative religion,” he said in his April interview, “that would be truly dreadful.”

It wasn’t just about the danger of what was coming. It was about what we were losing, or might lose.

“Some of the greatest music ever written is church music, music inspired by Christianity,” he told me, echoing Roger Scruton. J.S. Bach would never have composed his Mass in B Minor—with all those violins, cellos, sopranos, and tenors weaving together, pointing us toward the heavens—without the divine, he said. Nor would Dostoevsky, as Paul Kingsnorth said, have written The Brothers Karamazov had he not been a believer. Had the world not been changed in countless unbelievable ways by that art? Had that art not changed us?

When I mentioned Dawkins’s distinction between cultural and theological Christianity to Kingsnorth, he said he thought Dawkins was deliberately sidestepping a deeper conversation about the nature of belief.

I can’t agree fully with Richard about Christianity having bequeathed us a world we want to live in. We can’t run the experiment, but what kind of world would we have if religion had never arisen? We wouldn’t have cathedrals, but perhaps rationality and science would have taken hold a lot earlier, and surely a lot fewer people would have died in the many religious wars. (They’re still dying in droves, by the way: Jew against Muslim, Sunni against Shia, and so on.)

All I know is that I can’t force myself to believe, to condition my life, on something like this unless I know it is true. And because I see no evidence for a God, much less for the truth of any religion, I cannot force myself to believe.  I consider myself a cultural Jew, but my life wouldn’t be that much poorer if I was purely secular.  It is very convenient that believers say they don’t need no stinkin’ evidence, for they get to believe and don’t have to explain why they believe beyond “it makes me feel good.” Like this, from Jonah Teller, a New York Catholic priest:

Father Jonah thought that a new fervor, a more authentic connection to the faith, was emerging out of the loneliness of the last few years. There was a “genuine happiness” that he could feel at Mass, “an excitement, a love.”

It wasn’t that complicated in the end. It was, he said, a kind of turning away from a radical atomization. “The world many people have grown up in is one in which you have the ability to be your own God,” said Father Jonah. “You should have it simply because you want it, whatever it may be. Or not have it, and that can include your own existence—a rejection of simply being.”

But the fact of our existence is a testament to God’s love for us, he said. “We are always wanted,” Father Jonah said. “We are always loved. This is the most important thing. God is not a mindfulness hack or a wellness exercise. It’s not—‘I found this ethical system that gets results, and therefore, I will choose it.’ It’s not a choice. It’s an encounter with an actual, personal love.”

Father Jonah’s evidence is this: we exist, therefore God, and not just God but the loving Christian god. Does God love the Covid virus and mosquitoes, too, which also exist?

I am not going to go into detail about how faith is declining throughout the West, but here are some data from the Gallup organization. Click each graph to see the report

x

 

From Pew Research:

and from Open Culture:

Look as you will, all you will find is a continuous decline in religion in America over the last 100 years.  But it’s not just America: read the Wikipedia article “Decline of Christianity in the Western World.”

This trend, of course, is downplayed in the article, with only a brief mention about the increase in “nones” under the Hirsi Ali section, but that’s about it.  Yet given this trend, in 200 years believers in America will be quite rare. Religion will never disappear, of course, but its decline has been discussed by Steve Pinker in his book Enlightenment Now. with religion adduced as an anti-Enlightenment force throughout history.

But why is the Free Press running pieces like this?  I have no idea, and can guess only that Bari Weiss, the editor, is herself religious, a believing Jew. I would love to hear her discuss the reasons for her faith, and why she rejects Christianity as a personal religion. But I haven’t seen that.

ONE MORE POINT:  To those who think that societies can’t function well without religion, I have a one-word response: Scandinavia.

Following successful early demonstrations of linking two quantum computing chips, IBM is aiming to break records for the largest quantum computer yet by combining many of them in parallel

Hartmut Neven, who leads Google's Quantum AI lab, wants to entangle our brains with quantum processors to test the idea that consciousness involves quantum phenomena

Exploring asteroids and other small bodies throughout the solar system has gotten increasingly popular, as their small gravity wells make them ideal candidates for resource extraction, enabling the expansion of life into the solar system. However, the technical challenges facing a mission to explore one are fraught – since they’re so small and variable, understanding how to land on one is even more so. A team from the University of Trieste in Italy has proposed a mission idea that could help solve that problem by using an ability most humans have but never think about.

Have you ever closed your eyes and tried to touch your fingers to one another? If you haven’t, try it now, and you’ll likely find that you can easily. It’s possible to do even without guidance from your five normal senses. That is what is known as proprioception – our hidden “sixth” sense. It is that ability to know where objects are in relation to one another – in this case, where your hands are in relation to one another without any other sensory indication.

Taking that basic idea and extrapolating it to a mission to an asteroid, the basic concept of the mission involves a lander with what seems like a dome with a ton of little balls on it, each facing a slightly different direction. Those balls are then ejected from the dome with varying degrees of force and land on various parts of the asteroid or comet.

Fraser discusses why swarms are becoming so central to our idea of space exploration.

They then create what is known in networking as a “mesh” system by connecting through one another and back to the main lander, which has a higher power output and larger communications array. They also contain a series of sensors, such as a camera, a magnetometer, and, importantly, an inertial measurement unit, or IMU.

IMUs are commonly used in cell phones to tell which direction the phone is oriented—that’s why your phone’s screen will flip upside down if you hold it upside down. They can also measure acceleration, which is why many are used in modern rocketry. They’re tiny and not very power-hungry, allowing them to fit into the ball format used for this mission.

Measurements from each of the remote sensors IMUs can be combined with data about the strength of the force that propelled them to their final resting place and fed into an algorithm, which will then help the base station determine the location of each sensor unit. That then allows measurements from the other sensors, such as the magnetometers and cameras, to paint a picture of the body’s external and internal structure – since magnetic fields, surface objects, and even gravity can vary significantly on small celestial bodies.

There are plenty of missions using swarms to explore asteroids – like the MIDEA project, as described here.
Credit – Cosmic Voyages YouTube Channel

As a proof of concept for this mission design, the team ran a simulation of a mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, most widely known for being visited by Rosetta, the ESA mission whose lander, Philae, experienced some of the trouble that is so common on these missions. They found that, depending on the number of projectile sensors, the mission could cover even weird morphologies like 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s two-lobed form. 

No agency has yet taken up the mission, but as electronics and sensors get smaller and more power efficient and more small bodies become potential resource sources, there might be a place for testing these spaced-out sensors. We’ll have to wait and see—just not with proprioception alone.

Learn More:
Cottiga et al. – Proprioceptive swarms for celestial body exploration
UT – Could You Find What A Lunar Crater Is Made Of By Shooting It?
UT – Swarming Satellites Could Autonomously Characterize an Asteroid
UT – Swarms of Orbiting Sensors Could Map An Asteroid’s Surface

Lead Image:
Depiction of the mission’s lander and deployable sensor system.
Credit – Cottiga et al.

The post Covering an Asteroid With Balls Could Characterize Its Interior appeared first on Universe Today.

Today we have some photos by UC Davis ecologist Susan Harrison. Susan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

A windy day at the coast

Looking back for any 2024 photos not sent to WEIT yet, I came across these ones from a couple of days in mid-October.  The tides were at their monthly low, and several of us inland-dwelling Californian birders drove out to Bodega Bay hoping to see mobs of shorebirds on the exposed mudflats.  Alas, the winds were gusting at 30 mph or more, and the birds were mostly either huddled in sheltered spots or blowing wildly past us across the bay.  We even saw a Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) sitting on the ground in a salt marsh, just waiting out the storm – too far away for a good photo, alas.

Last time we went to Bodega and encountered high winds, as some readers may remember, I gave up on real birds and did a photo essay on Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and its filming locations. This time we toughed it out and tried to photograph the huddling and swirling flocks.  Here are a few scenes.

Marbled Godwits (Limosa fedoa) hunkering down at the north end of the bay:

Godwit gang:

Marbled Godwits and Willets (Tringa semipalmata; black-and-white wings) billowing by:

Western Sandpipers (Calidris mauri) mixed with a Willet or two:

Black-bellied Plovers (Pluvialis squatarola) with their distinctive black armpits:

American Coots (Fulica americana), sheltering at a marina and then deciding the humans were too close:

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) having a bad feather day:

Great Egret (Ardea alba), catching a rodent and then being pursued by another egret:

North American River Otters (Lontra canadensis), which despite their name are often seen in saltwater:

Textile fragments found in a 2800-year-old grave in the Netherlands were once part of a woven dress with a red and blue checked pattern, molecular analysis has revealed

The international community seems no closer to an agreement on a code for deep-sea mining in international waters and the impasse may lead to countries acting unilaterally

A study in pigs has shown that the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy directly boosts heart health, in addition to the benefits of losing weight

One of many shameful incidents in the life of antivax activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was his promotion of anti-MMR fear mongering during a measles epidemic in Samoa. Now that he could become HHS Secretary, his apologists are frantically trying to gaslight you. Here's how.

The post Gaslighting RFK Jr.’s role in the deadly Samoan measles outbreak first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Ingenuity became the first aircraft to fly on another world in the first half of 2021. It explored the Martian terrain from above proving that powered air flight was a very efficient way to move around alien worlds. Now NASA have released a computer rendering of their next design, the Mars Chopper! 

Ingenuity was a small helicopter, or rather more a drone, that was carried to Mars on board the Perseverance rover mission in 2020. It was designed as a technology demonstration to prove that powered flight was possible in the thin atmosphere of Mars. It made its first flight on 19 April 2021 and hovered just 10 feet above the ground before safely landing again. Since then, Ingenuity has completed 60 flights on Mars helping to survey and scout for areas of interest for further study. 

This view of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was generated using data collected by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard the agency’s Perseverance Mars rover on Aug. 2, 2023, the 871st Martian day, or sol, of the mission, one day before the rotorcraft’s 54th flight. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Operating a drone in the Martian atmosphere offers challenges largely due to the lower density. Compared to Earth, the atmosphere is less than 1% the density of Earth’s atmosphere. This means the blades on any aerial vehicles need to work harder and generate more lift than their Earth-bound counterparts. 

Image of the Martian atmosphere and surface obtained by the Viking 1 orbiter in June 1976. (Credit: NASA/Viking 1)

Density aside, the fine dust on the surface of Mars is often lifted up into the atmosphere which could damage the delicate mechanisms of operating craft. Not only must these types of vehicles be carefully designed to fly in alien atmospheres but they must also be able to protect themselves from local hazards. 

Moving on from the success of the Ingeniuty drone, NASA has released a rendering of its next generation vehicle for aerial flight on Mars, known as the Mars Chopper. Ingenuity was a feasability study and proved aerial flight successful, new craft on the drawing board come with a greater payload capacity to carry scientific instruments such as imaging and analysis kit. This will enable them to undertake the basic tasks like scouting activity to support future exploration but also undertake analysis and terrain mapping work. Ultimately even providing support to the human exploration of Mars.

The image released reveals a drone like vehicle which is about the size of an SUV with six rotors.  Each rotor has six blades which are smaller than those on Ingenuity but collectivity can provide even more lift. The payload capacity of the Chopper in its current design configuration is 5 kilograms a distance of up to 3km. The design is a collaboration between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the Ames Research Center. 

This new model will be a real game changer for the exploration not only of Mars but of any alien worlds with a solid surface and an atmosphere that can support flight. Ingenuity led the way proving the technology and now, with the new concept Mars ‘Choppers on the drawing board, aerial reconnaissance on these new worlds will vastly improve the value of ground based exploration. Remote aerial exploration will also be of invaluable benefit to support human exploration where rovers will be unable to reach. 

Source : NASA’s Mars Chopper Concept (Rendering)

The post New Image Revealed by NASA of their New Martian Helicopter. appeared first on Universe Today.

Well, that makes three of us. Steve Pinker, I, and now Richard Dawkins, have all decided independently to resign from the Honorary Board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).  The organization’s ideological capture, as instantiated in throwing in their lot with extreme gender activism and censoring any objection to their views—as well as in the increasing tendency of the FFRF to add Critical Social Justice to their mission alongside their original and admirable goal of keeping church and state separate, has motivated us in different degrees to part ways with the group. I emphasize again that the FFRF did and still does engage in important work on keeping religion from creeping into governmental activity.

Richard explains his decision in the email below, sent not long ago to the heads of the FFRF. I, for one, hope that these resignations might make the FFRF rethink its direction.

I reproduce Richard’s very civil resignation with his permission:

Dear Annie Laurie and Dan

It is with real sadness, because of my personal regard for you both, that I feel obliged to resign from the Advisory Board of FFRF. Publishing the silly and unscientific “What is a Woman” article by Kat Grant was a minor error of judgment, redeemed by the decision to publish a rebuttal by a distinguished scientist from the relevant field of Biology, Jerry Coyne. But alas, the sequel was an act of unseemly panic when you caved in to hysterical squeals from predictable quarters and retrospectively censored that excellent rebuttal. Moreover, to summarily take it down without even informing the author of your intention was an act of lamentable discourtesy to a member of your own Advisory Board. A Board which I now leave with regret.

Although I formally resign, I would like to remain on friendly terms with you, and I look forward to cooperating in the future. And to delightful musical evenings if the opportunity arises.

Yours sincerely
Richard

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.