words of love and despair

(via Creationism in school: Science quiz gets it totally wrong.)

To start with, this photo is real, and was part of a quiz given at Blue Ridge Christian Academy, a private religious school. Since the school is private, and not public, this is not a violation of the First Amendment (unlike the flagrant stomping of the Constitution going on in Louisiana). In other words, this school can legally teach this. My complaint, therefore, is not a legal one.

My complaint is one of simple reality. Young-Earth creationism is wrong, and it’s certainlynot science. For that reason alone, ideally it shouldn’t be taught as truth anywhere, let alone a science class.

And it’s not just wrong, it’s spectacularly wrong. It’s the wrongiest wrong that ever wronged. We know the Earth is old, we know the Universe is even older, and we knowevolution is true. Any one of these things is enough to show creationism is wrong. In fact,all of science shows creationism is wrong, because creationism goes against pretty much every founding principle of and every basic fact uncovered by science. If creationism were true, then essentially no modern invention would work. Since you’re reading this on a computer, that right there is proof enough.

(via Solar-powered plane wraps first leg of flight across United States | Reuters)

(Reuters) - The flight from San Fransisco to Phoenix took 18 hours and 18 minutes on Saturday - and didn’t use a drop of fuel.

A solar-powered airplane that developers hope eventually to pilot around the world landed safely in Phoenix on the first leg of an attempt to fly across the United States using only the sun’s energy, project organizers said.

The plane, dubbed the Solar Impulse, took 18 hours and 18 minutes to reach Phoenix on the slow-speed flight, completing the first of five legs with planned stops in Dallas, St. Louis and Washington on the way to a final stop in New York.

Penn Astrophysicists Zero In on Gravity Theory

In 1998, astrophysicists made an observation that turned gravity on its ear: the universe’s rate of expansion is speeding up. If gravity acts the same everywhere, stars and galaxies propelled outward by the Big Bang should continuously slow down, like objects thrown from an explosion do here on Earth.

This observation used distant supernovae to show that the expansion of the universe was speeding up rather than slowing down. This indicated that something was missing from physicists’ understanding of how the universe responds to gravity, which is described by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Two branches of theories have sprung up, each trying to fill its gaps in a different way.

One branch — dark energy — suggests that the vacuum of space has an energy associated with it and that energy causes the observed acceleration. The other falls under the umbrella of “scalar-tensor” gravity theories, which effectively posits a fifth force (beyond gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces) that alters gravity on cosmologically large scales.

“These two possibilities are both radical in their own way,” Jain said. “One is saying that general relativity is correct, but we have this strange new form of energy. The other is saying we don’t have a new form of energy, but gravity is not described by general relativity everywhere.”

Astronomers are scanning the heavens for flashes of light that may signal the formation of a black hole, empowered by a new theory that indicates a dying star will generate a distinct flash of light that will allow man to witness the birth of a new black hole for the first time. (Photo : Credit: Alain Riazuelo, IAP/UPMC/CNRS)

(via Black Hole Birth Can Be Observed For First Time, Study Says : Space : Nature World News)

(via Solar-Gasm! Intense Eruption on Sun’s Far Side Spotted | Video | Space.com)

(via Astronomers Discover New Neighbor Galaxy to the Milky Way: Scientific American)

Leo P is one of just a few dozen local galaxies that does not swarm around the Milky Way or its massive sibling Andromeda, each of which has been extensively scanned for companion galaxies in recent years. “There has been a massive increase in the number of these nearby galaxies” around the Milky Way and Andromeda, says astronomer Alan McConnachie of the National Research Council Canada’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, who did not contribute to the new research. “There have really been very, very few discoveries of dwarfs that are sort of sitting out in the middle of nowhere.” Those lonely dwarf galaxies, such as Leo P, are hard to spot because they are faint, distant, and could be found anywhere on the sky.