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Now Particle Physics is Getting in on the Archaeology Game

By Sophia Chen

IN DECEMBER 2015, a group of scientists carried tools into a chamber inside of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Usually, the room was sealed from the public. But with the blessing of Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, they used laser tools to carefully align several bathroom-tile sized panels on the floor of the last intact Wonder of the Ancient World. Each panel contained a special photographic film.

They left the panels there for more than three months. If all went as planned, the panels would capture images they could use to find new chambers and passageways in the pyramid. The pyramid’s known rooms include the queen’s chamber—where they installed the panels—the king’s chamber with its looted sarcophagus, and a sloping, high-ceilinged room known as the Grand Gallery. But the possibility remained that more treasures lay hidden in the 4,500-year-old, 50-story structure.

The group announced a discovery on Thursday. Publishing in Nature, the team of researchers from Egypt, France, and Japan, chronicle a new space, as long as the Statue of Liberty, above the Grand Gallery. Because they don’t know the intended purpose of the space, they won’t call it a “chamber,” preferring to call it a “void.” “The void is there,” said Mehdi Tayoubi, the president of the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute, during a press conference. “What is it? We don’t know.”

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The New Religions Obsessed with A.I.

By Brandon Withrow

What has improved American lives most in the last 50 years? According to a Pew Research study reported this month, it’s not civil rights (10 percent) or politics (2 percent): it’s technology (42 percent).

And yet, according to other studies, most Americans are wary of technology, especially in areas of automation (72 percent), or robotic caregivers (59 percent), or riding in driverless vehicles (56 percent), and even in using brain chip implants to augment the capabilities of healthy people (69 percent).

Science fiction, however, is quickly becoming science fact—the future is the machine. This is leading many to argue that we need to anticipate the ethical questions now, rather than when it is too late. And increasingly, those taking up these challenges are religious and spiritual.

How far should we integrate human physiology with technology? What do we do with self-aware androids—like Blade Runner’s replicants—and self-aware supercomputers? Or the merging of our brains with them? If Ray Kurzweil’s famous singularity—a future in which the exponential growth of technology turns into a runaway train—becomes a reality, does religion have something to offer in response?

On the one hand, new religions can emerge from technology.

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Julie Payette dares to be interesting with comments on climate, astrology, and divine intervention

By Aaron Wherry

Gov. Gen. Julie Payette said a few interesting things on Wednesday night. And if that’s interesting it’s because governors general generally tend to avoid saying particularly interesting things.

Addressing a science conference in Ottawa, Payette argued for the need for greater public acceptance and knowledge of science. In doing so, she made dismissive references to astrology, the notion of “divine intervention” in the creation of life and those who doubt the scientific consensus that humans are significantly responsible for the warming planet.

Gov. Gen. Julie Payette addresses science conference.

Such stuff is probably not out of place at a science conference. And Payette is an individual of science, a former astronaut and engineer. But she is also now the governor general, Canada’s unelected and non-partisan de facto head of state  — a unifying figure and an impartial guardian of the democratic order who is supposed to exist above and beyond politics.

And that is where things get interesting.

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The new GOP tax reform bill would politicize churches

By Jack Jenkins

The newly unveiled Republican tax reform bill includes a provision that will likely make leaders of the Religious Right very happy—by amending a part of the tax law that keeps churches from engaging in explicit political advocacy.

Embedded within the bill’s more than 400 pages is a small provision that would change an aspect of the so-called “Johnson Amendment,” a provision of the tax codes that prohibits churches, faith communities, and other non-profits from outright endorsing political candidates.

Under the Johnson Amendment, it is illegal (albeit rarely enforced) for a faith leader to, say, endorse a candidate from the pulpit. Some conservative leaders—including paragons of the Religious Right and Trump’s own lawyer Jay Sekulow—have long argued this law infringes on their freedom of speech or religion.

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One More Pioneering Woman in Science You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

By Ellen Elliott

It is a regrettable fact that science has historically undervalued the contributions of women. Elizabeth Stern is probably one of the most significant physician-scientists who worked at the interface of epidemiology and cancer in the mid-20th century, but it is unlikely you have ever heard her name. You won’t read about Stern’s research in medical textbooks, or find any symposiums or departments dedicated to her memory. But her groundbreaking research led the way to our modern understanding of the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer.

Elizabeth Stern was born September 19, 1915 in Cobalt, Ontario. She was the fifth of eight children born to George and Sarah Stern, who emigrated from Poland to escape growing anti-Semitism and political unrest in Eastern Europe. She graduated from the University of Toronto School of Medicine on June 8, 1939, at the age of 23. While at the University of Toronto she met Solomon Shankman, a doctoral student in chemistry, and they married in 1940. They soon immigrated to Los Angeles, California, where Stern completed residency training in pathology at Cedars of Lebanon and Good Samaritan Hospitals in 1946.

From 1950 to 1960 she served as the director of laboratories and research at the Los Angeles Cancer Detection Center. In 1961 Stern was hired by the University of California Los Angeles (U.C.L.A) School of Medicine as the chief of the Cytology Laboratory, and began her research lab in the Department of Pathology. In 1963 her laboratory was transferred to the U.C.L.A. School of Public Health. Stern’s former colleague and distinguished cytopathology expert Dorothy Rosenthal commented that, “The Department of Pathology didn’t want to keep [Stern] … because the Chair did not want to fill a full-time faculty position with a cytopathologist.”

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Do Animals Have Humor?

By Joseph Castro

Between verbal jokes, slapstick comedy and tickling, there are numerous reasons we laugh. But are humans the only species with a sense of humor?

The short answer is no, but it also depends on how you define “humor.”

For millennia, philosophers and psychologists have struggled to come up with an exact definition for what constitutes as humor. They’ve presented numerous theories over the years, one of the most popular being the “incongruity theory” of humor. At its basic level, this theory says that humor arises when there’s an inconsistency between what one expects to happen and what actually happens — and this includes comedic tools like puns, irony and twists of fate.

Under this definition, the vast majority of animals probably don’t have a sense of humor, as they lack the cognitive mechanisms and networks that would allow them to identify such inconsistencies.

One known exception is Koko, the famous western lowland gorilla who understands more than 1,000 American Sign Language signs and 2,000 spoken English words. The clever primate is known not only to use language to humorous effect by playing with different meanings of the same word, but also to understand slapstick comedy — she’s reportedly signed the word “chase” after tying her trainer’s shoelaces together and made laughing noises at her trainer’s clumsiness.

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Atheist Woman Sues to Remove “So Help Me God” From Oath

By Summer Meza

An atheist woman seeking citizenship in Massachusetts is suing to remove the phrase “so help me God” from the United States citizenship oath.

Olga Paule Perrier-Bilbo, a French national who has lived in the U.S. since 2000 with a green card, says that the inclusion of the phrase is an unconstitutional violation of her religious freedom. Her lawyer, Michael Newdow, drew attention for a similar Supreme Court case in 2004, when he argued that the Pledge of Allegiance should be rewritten to omit “under God.”

This is Perrier-Bilbo’s second application for citizenship, according to The Sacramento Bee.The first time around was in 2009, when she was offered the chance to participate in a private citizenship ceremony that would allow her to omit those four words. But the fact that the oath includes them at all is what she’s objecting to now. The lawsuit was filed in federal court on Thursday.

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VA Republican: Trans People Violate the Laws of Nature at a “Fundamental Level”

By Hemant Mehta

Bob Marshall is one of the Delegates up for election on Tuesday in Virginia — he’s been in office since 1992 — but his recent comments show exactly why he doesn’t deserve his seat.

Marshall was speaking with right-wing radio host Sandy Rios when he said he wouldn’t use the proper pronouns to refer to his transgender opponent, Danica Roem, because he gets the “laws of nature.”

“It is not a civil right to masquerade your fantasies as reality,” Marshall said. “But standing up to this is somewhat difficult because you get called all kinds of names. And if you’re going to be shying away because someone calls you a bigot or a transphobe or whatever it is, it probably is not something that you should attempt.”

…

“I’ve drawn a line. I’m not leaving it, because I don’t make the laws of nature but I think I understand them, at least at this fundamental level. I never flunked biology, so I’m not going to call a man a woman, period,” Marshall said.

Spoiler: He doesn’t understand the topic at a fundamental level. Getting a passing grade in high school biology didn’t inoculate him from being an asshole.

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The Economist The Economist asks: Richard Dawkins

Anne McElvoy and Jan Piotrowski ask one of the world’s best-known evolutionary biologists whether science can guide us through a turbulent world of post-truth. Can there really be an objective truth, or will our existing biases win out?