ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 286

Falling into lava would be a pretty hot mess

By Alessandra Potenza

As Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano keeps regurgitating molten rock, the US Geological Service continues to post amazingly terrifying photos and videos of lava spewing up in the air and taking over land. The lava is scorching hot, it glows bright orange, and it has the power to gobble up anything that crosses its path. So, what would happen if you touched it?

The lava coming out of Kīlauea is over 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,170 degrees Celsius). “It’s much hotter than anything you’d get in your stove at home,” says Erik Klemetti, assistant professor of geosciences at Denison University. Dipping your hand into molten rock won’t kill you instantly, but it will give you severe, painful burns — “the kind that destroy nerve endings and boil subcutaneous fat,” says David Damby, a research chemist at the USGS Volcano Science Center, in an email to The Verge.

Now, falling into lava is another story. The extreme heat would probably burn your lungs and cause your organs to fail. “The water in the body would probably boil to steam, all while the lava is melting the body from the outside in,” Damby says. (No worries, though, the volcanic gases would probably knock you unconscious.) But unlike one of the characters in the 1997 film Volcano or Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, you wouldn’t sink into the lava and liquefy like the Wicked Witch of the West, says Klemetti, who wrote about those scenes in a 2011 Wired article. Lava may look like a liquid, but it’s not like water: it’s too sticky and viscous. “So you’d be sitting on top of the lava flow,” says Janine Krippner, a volcanologist at Concord University.

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Looking for Life on a Flat Earth

By Alan Burdick

On the last Sunday afternoon in March, Mike Hughes, a sixty-two-year-old limousine driver from Apple Valley, California, successfully launched himself above the Mojave Desert in a homemade steam-powered rocket. He’d been trying for years, in one way or another. In 2002, Hughes set a Guinness World Record for the longest ramp jump—a hundred and three feet—in a limo, a stretch Lincoln Town Car. In 2014, he allegedly flew thirteen hundred and seventy-four feet in a garage-built rocket and was injured when it crashed. He planned to try again in 2016, but his Kickstarter campaign, which aimed to raise a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, netted just two supporters and three hundred and ten dollars. Further attempts were scrubbed—mechanical problems, logistical hurdles, hassles from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Finally, a couple of months ago, he made good. Stuff was leaking, bolts needed tightening, but at around three o’clock, and with no countdown, Hughes blasted off from a portable ramp—attached to a motorhome he’d bought through Craigslist—soared to nearly nineteen hundred feet, and, after a minute or so, parachuted less than gently back to Earth.

For all of that, Hughes might have attracted little media attention were it not for his outspoken belief that the world is flat. “Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is,” he told the Associated Press. “Do I know for sure? No. That’s why I want to go up in space.”

Hughes converted fairly recently. In 2017, he called in to the Infinite Plane Society, a live-stream YouTube channel that discusses Earth’s flatness and other matters, to announce his beliefs and ambitions and ask for the community’s endorsement. Soon afterward, The Daily Plane, a flat-Earth information site (“News, Media and Science in a post-Globe Reality”), sponsored a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than seventy-five hundred dollars on Hughes’s behalf, enabling him to make the Mojave jump with the words “Research Flat Earth” emblazoned on his rocket.

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Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians

By Sigal Samuel

Americans are deeply religious people—and atheists are no exception. Western Europeans are deeply secular people—and Christians are no exception.

These twin statements are generalizations, but they capture the essence of a fascinating finding in a new study about Christian identity in Western Europe. By surveying almost 25,000 people in 15 countries in the region, and comparing the results with data previously gathered in the U.S., the Pew Research Center discovered three things.

First, researchers confirmed the widely known fact that, overall, Americans are much more religious than Western Europeans. They gauged religious commitment using standard questions, including “Do you believe in God with absolute certainty?” and “Do you pray daily?”

Second, the researchers found that American “nones”—those who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular—are more religious than European nones. The notion that religiously unaffiliated people can be religious at all may seem contradictory, but if you disaffiliate from organized religion it does not necessarily mean you’ve sworn off belief in God, say, or prayer.

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There’s an “Inverse Piano” in Your Head

By David Noonan

Neuroscientist James Hudspeth has basically been living inside the human ear for close to 50 years.

In that time Hudspeth, head of the Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience at The Rockefeller University, has dramatically advanced scientists’ understanding of how the ear and brain work together to process sound. Last week his decades of groundbreaking research were recognized by the Norwegian Academy of Science, which awarded him the million-dollar Kavli Prize in Neuroscience. Hudspeth shared the prize with two other hearing researchers: Robert Fettiplace from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Christine Petit from the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

As Hudspeth explored the neural mechanisms of hearing over the years, he developed a special appreciation for the intricate anatomy of the inner ear—an appreciation that transcends the laboratory. “I think we as scientists tend to underemphasize the aesthetic aspect of science,” he says. “Yes, science is the disinterested investigation into the nature of things. But it is more like art than not. It’s something that one does for the beauty of it, and in the hope of understanding what has heretofore been hidden. Here’s something incredibly beautiful, like the inner ear, performing a really remarkable function. How can that be? How does it do it?” After learning of his Kavli Prize on Thursday, Hudspeth spoke with Scientific American about his work and how the brain transforms physical vibration into the experience of a symphony.

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Your Taxes Are Paying for Kids to Learn That Dinosaurs and Humans Lived Together

By David G. McAfee

Dinosaurs and humans never lived at the same time — not even close — and evolution is a scientific fact, but Florida taxpayers (and the rest of us) are funding schools that rely on textbooks that teach the opposite.

The textbooks in question come mostly from three Christian education companies: Abeka, Bob Jones University Press, and Accelerated Christian Education (ACE). In addition to teaching lies about evolution and dinosaurs, the books teach that slaves who “knew Christ” were better off than free men who weren’t religious, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

At the Orlando Sentinel’s request, educators from Florida colleges and school districts reviewed textbooks and workbooks from these publishers, looking at elementary reading and math, middle school social studies and high school biology materials.

They found numerous instances of distorted history and science lessons that are outside mainstream academics. The books denounce evolution as untrue, for example, and one shows a cartoon of men and dinosaurs together, telling students the Biblical Noah likely brought baby dinosaurs onto his ark. The science books, they added, seem to discourage students from doing experiments or even asking questions.

“Students who have learned science in this kind of environment are not prepared for college experiences,” said Cynthia Bayer, a biology lecturer at the University of Central Florida who reviewed the science books. “They would be intellectually disadvantaged.”

If you’re not asking questions in science class, you’re not doing science.

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3 years after same-sex marriage ruling, protections for LGBT families undermined

By Susan Miller

A Supreme Court ruling sanctioning same-sex marriage in 2015 was hailed as a milestone moment that would see discrimination crumble and equality triumph for LGBT couples — and for their children.

But in the past three years, those parents and kids have faced a brewing backlash that threatens everything from health benefits to a couple’s ability to adopt.

Two states — Kansas and Oklahoma — passed legislation in recent weeks that allows state-licensed child welfare agencies to cite religious beliefs for not placing children in LGBT homes, a troubling trend for LGBT advocates.

“We have to acknowledge that marriage equality was a huge victory for security and stability” for LGBT families, said Naomi Goldberg, policy director for the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), which released a report Monday documenting ways the 2015 ruling is being undercut and the consequences for kids. “But the landscape remains uncertain. Families have to think about ways they may or may not be recognized: when they travel, go to the doctor, go to a restaurant.”

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In Narrow Decision, Supreme Court Decides In Favor Of Baker Over Same-Sex Couple

By Nina Totenberg

The U.S. Supreme court dodged a major ruling on the question of whether business owners can refuse services to gay individuals based on their religious objections.

In a case brought by a Colorado baker, the court ruled by a 7-2 vote that he did not get a fair hearing on his complaint because the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated a hostility to religion in its treatment of his case.

Writing for the case, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that while it is unexceptional that Colorado law “can protect gay persons in acquiring products and services on the same terms and conditions that are offered to other members of the public, the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion.”

He said that while in this case the Colorado baker, Jack Phillips, understandably had difficulty in knowing where to draw the line, because the state law at the time affording store keepers some latitude to decline to create specific messages they considered offensive. Kennedy pointed to the Colorado commission’s decision allowing a different baker to refuse to put an anti-gay message on a cake.

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OPEN DISCUSSION – JUNE 2018

This thread has been created for open discussion on themes relevant to Reason and Science for which there are not currently any dedicated threads.

Please note it is NOT for general chat, and that all Terms of Use apply as usual.

If you would like to refer back to previous open discussion threads, the three most recent ones can be accessed via the links below (but please continue any discussions from them here rather than on the original threads):

OPEN DISCUSSION – MARCH 2018

OPEN DISCUSSION – APRIL 2018

OPEN DISCUSSION – MAY 2018

US EPA science advisers question ‘secret science’ rule on data transparency

By Jeff Tollefson

Science advisers to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) voted on 31 May to review a series of controversial rules that the agency has proposed over the past eight months. They include a plan that would limit the types of scientific research that the EPA could use to justify environmental regulations, and proposals to strike down limits on greenhouse-gas emissions.

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt framed the data rule as part of a push for transparency — and against ‘secret science’ — when he released it on 24 April. The policy would prevent the EPA from relying on studies that include any non-public data.

The decision by the EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) to review the rule comes after earlier criticism by some of its members. In a 12 May memorandum, an SAB working group chastised the EPA for not submitting the proposal to the board for review.

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I Am Now the Plaintiff in a Lawsuit Over Secular Celebrants

By Ed Brayton

I am now one of two plaintiffs in a lawsuit we filed yesterday in the U.S. Court for the Western District of Michigan. That suit seeks to force the state of Michigan to allow humanist secular celebrants like me (certified and everything) to officiate and solemnize weddings for those who want such an officiant.

This case has been in the works for a long time. We have lobbied the state legislature for three years to change the law but have gotten absolutely nowhere with it. Our state legislature is controlled by Republicans, who have a supermajority in both houses, and no one wants to touch such a bill. So we are taking the legal route, following the blueprint that worked in Illinois and the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals a few years ago. The district and appeals courts in that case forced the states of that circuit — Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin — to recognize secular celebrants as having the same authority to solemnize marriages as the clergy of any faith automatically have under the law.

As I said in the press release we sent out about the suit, I think that secular-minded people in the state should have their wishes respected in terms of the person they’d like to officiate important rituals like weddings and funerals and I look forward to being able to provide that for them when this suit is finished. I have gone through the process of being certified as a secular celebrant by the Center for Inquiry. My co-plaintiff in the case is my dear friend Jennifer Beahan, who is the Executive Director of CFI-Michigan.

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