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On my last post, there were a number of comments, but I wanted to highlight one thing Cliff wrote. I thought that this part of a comment he left was worth a full response. Quoted directly: “We can pound Gov Perry for pandering to those of his supporters who don’t believe in evolution.  But, in fact, if God created the whole shebang six thousand years ago, how would we know?  I don’t think that is the way it came to be, but I would not dismiss someone who did.”

Before I get into how we know the creation hypothesis is incorrect, I would like to address a more philosophical point. We live in a culture that encourages us to have strong opinions, be it about whether politician X should be president or whether Jersey Shore can be considered “culture.” Is this a good thing? Maybe, maybe not. It is good to disagree; it keeps life interesting and ensures that we are exposed to many different viewpoints. Currently in our culture, there are several disciplines of science that are subjected to this type of handling. I would argue that this does a great disservice to our society. read more »

On Friday July 8^th, at 11:26AM NASA will launch the space shuttle Atlantis on STS-135, the final shuttle mission. It marks the end of an era that began on April 12, 1981 with the first flight of Columbia. 135 missions later, the United States’ fourth great space program, the successor to Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, has come to its end.

I was born between STS-31 and STS-41, the 35^th and 36^th shuttle missions, both flights of the shuttle Discovery. STS-31 was the mission to deploy the Hubble Telescope. I have never known anything but the shuttle program. Quite frankly, I have taken it for granted; I cannot imagine it being over. But after tomorrow the United States will no longer have the ability to put astronauts into orbit; we will be reliant on Russian Soyuz rockets for the foreseeable future. Not only is there no plan to replace the shuttle, but now Congress is preparing to cancel the Webb Telescope, which was to be the successor to the Hubble, taking us back even closer to the Big Bang than Hubble is capable of.

The shuttle is the most complicated machine ever built, consisting of over a million moving parts. The time and work involved in preparing a shuttle for launch is unimaginable. The shuttles have given us the Hubble and the International Space Station. And they have given us more technological and scientific breakthroughs than most of us will ever know. read more »

Today we celebrate Charles Darwin’s birthday. The great biologist was born 202 years ago, meaning that it has been just over 151 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species. I have written in the past about his ideas, so to avoid repeating myself I would like to focus on the state of biology education in the United States today.

On January 28^th a report was published in the journal Science entitled “Defeating Creationism in the Courtroom, But Not in the Classroom.” The researchers sought to survey what our students are currently being taught in biology classrooms. The results were not promising.

They found that only 28% of American biology teachers instruct their students in evolution as recommended by the National Research Council, which works in conjunction with the National Academy of Sciences. In other words, only 28% of our teachers are teaching students basic biology. read more »

This was an interesting year for science. But rather than stretch for a list of the top ten accomplishments or discoveries I would like to focus in on three specific feats of technological achievement that, I think, have broad implications both for the future of science and how humanity views itself.

I begin with the discovery of hundreds of exoplanet candidates in our galaxy. This does not mean that astronomers have found hundreds of exoplanets (though, with 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, it’s safe to assume that there are at least billions of planets). Rather, using indirect measurements, astronomers have found what look to be planets. As better telescopes (well, spectrographs) come online, astronomers will be able to confirm whether these are in fact planets.

There was one other very interesting find when it comes to exoplanets. In September one team of researchers was able to identify the first exoplanet known to hold liquid water. However, this discovery was contested when a second team could not find the planet. Whether the planet does exist and does contain water will remain in question; however, there is no question that somewhere out there exist other planets that do contain liquid water. Astronomers are currently looking for planets that have “biomarkers,” or the correct elements and compounds that would allow for life. Carbon. Oxygen. Water. Methane. Carbon dioxide. As well as uranium, potassium, and thorium to allow for tectonic activity. It may very well be that life exists within our solar system (Europa, Titan, Io, and Enceladus are all candidates). read more »

In my last post, I discussed how scientists have been able to prove that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is due to human activity. It’s now time to discuss why carbon dioxide matters. Below is a chart from the IPCC of radiative forcings, which I explain below.

Before I can explain forcings, there is an important concept that we need to remember from high school physics: every system is in an energy equilibrium (the second law of thermodynamics). This applies to the Earth, meaning that the Earth must radiate as much energy as it absorbs. Translated into what actually happens, the Earth must emit as much energy as it absorbs from the sun, meaning that if the amount it absorbs rises, the Earth’s temperature must rise to compensate.

A forcing is anything that perturbs that balance, by either raising or lowering the amount of energy the Earth absorbs from the sun. Positive forcings raise that amount, mostly by trapping sunlight that has already entered the Earth’s atmosphere and has been reflected off the Earth’s surface, preventing it from escaping into space. Negative forcings raise the albedo of the Earth, meaning that they increase the amount of sunlight the Earth reflects. read more »