ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 165

An Asteroid Bigger Than the Empire State Building Will Pass Earth Soon. But Don’t Worry.

By Chelsea Gohd Another asteroid is passing close by Earth but, no, it won’t hit us. On Aug. 10, Asteroid 2006 QQ23 will fly within 0.049 astronomical units (4.6 million miles) of Earth at about 10,400 mph (16,740 km/h). This might not seem close, but it is close enough to classify the object as a near-Earth …

Europe’s record heat melted Swiss glaciers

By Chelsea Harvey The sweltering heat wave that roasted much of Europe last month has since moved north, where it’s wreaking havoc on the Greenland ice sheet. But while all eyes are currently trained on the Arctic ice, scientists are finding that Europe’s coldest places have also suffered. According to initial findings from the Swiss …

Leaders of religious right balk at labeling Trump a racist

By David Crary Many religious leaders have strongly condemned President Donald Trump’s disparaging remarks about minority members of Congress. Prominent figures on the religious right have not joined in, instead maintaining public silence or insisting that Trump’s tactics reflect hard-nosed politics rather than racism. “He does not judge people by the color of their skin,” …

Preacher Blames TX Shooting on Nation Having “Thrown Out the Ten Commandments”

By Hemant Mehta Another mass shooting, another manifesto suggesting this was a white supremacist who feared a “Hispanic invasion,” another round of useless thoughts and prayers. And you knew this would come, too: Another Christian suggesting this was caused by a lack of forced religion in public school. Evangelist Ray Comfort posted a video last night offering his theory …

Milky Way’s twisted spiral revealed in 3D

By Elizabeth Gibney The twisted form of the Milky Way has been revealed in three dimensions, thanks to a map of bright, young pulsating stars. The map is the most detailed yet to be made of the galaxy using only direct distances to individual stars. The best maps of the Milky Way so far have …

A Hudson Megachurch, a Beloved Pastor and the International Sex Abuse Scandal They’ve Tried To Hide

By Sam Allard For a man who purports to be so boldly committed to truth, American missionary and Christian pastor Tom Randall has been at the center of – in fact, may be the chief architect of – a long and wicked deception. Randall is a gregarious man with an earnest, unsophisticated preaching style. He stands 6’5″ …

Is God a Winning Strategy for Democrats?

By Andrew L. Seidel Conservative Christians aren’t real Christians. That seems to be the argument Democratic hopeful Pete Buttigieg was making when he lambasted “so-called conservative Christian senators” at this week’s Democratic Debate. Then he quoted Proverbs. Mayor Pete was building on the “#FakeChristian” line of attack used against Vice President Pence after his trip to the …

The Nuns Who Bought and Sold Human Beings

By Rachel L. Swarns Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, one of the oldest Roman Catholic girls’ schools in the nation, has long celebrated the vision and generosity of its founders: a determined band of Catholic nuns who championed free education for the poor in the early 1800s. The sisters, who established an elite academy in Washington, D.C., also …

‘Mosaic’ HIV vaccine to be tested in thousands of people across the world

By Emiliano Rodríguez Mega An experimental HIV vaccine that targets more strains of the virus than any other developed so far will start a late-stage clinical trial later this year. The ‘mosaic’ vaccine, which incorporates genetic material from HIV strains from around the world, also seems to have the longest-lasting effects of any others tested …

Newly uncovered super-Earth 31 light-years away may be habitable

By Rebecca Falconer NASA announced Wednesday that its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has uncovered a potentially habitable planet just 31 light-years away from our solar system. Why it matters: TESS member and associate professor of astronomy Lisa Kaltenegger, who led the international team and who is also director of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute, said in a statement the discovery of the …