When people argue about evolution vs. creationism (or the disingenuous alternative to creationism called “intelligent design”) it often comes off as a debate between science and religion.

This is the case with some conservative Protestants in the United States. However, the Catholic Church has made it clear that it has no problem with evolution.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s culture minister, said today that the theory of evolution is compatible with the Bible. The Vatican discourages literal interpretations of the Bible, including the literal interpretation of creationism that is at odds with the very solid scientific theory of evolution.

School districts in many U.S. states have wrestled with whether or not to teach intelligent design, which has no basis in science whatsoever, as an alternative to evolution in science classes. Scientists argue that you have to teach science in a science class, and keep religion (and fantasy ideas, like intelligent design) out of science class. The debate crept into national politics recently with reports that vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin might be a creationist. Meanwhile, a recent Pew survey found that for the first time in more than a decade, a majority of Americans think religious organizations should stay out of politics.

Ravasi said it this way: Creationism belongs to the “strictly theological sphere” and could not be used “ideologically in science.” According to Reuters, however, no apologies are forthcoming for Charles Darwin.

(Worth noting here that the Vatican’s chief astronomer said earlier this year that believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God.)

• God and Science Collide in Nation’s Capital

Lot of buzz regarding a recent Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine story about shooting off astronauts to an asteroid - presented as an “alternate vision” for the next president - perhaps altering the trajectory of NASA’s return of footprints on the Moon. An upcoming conference is to thrash out the idea in greater detail, noted the story.

This morning I emailed the NASA folks for any reaction - and got this response authored by the chief of NASA, Mike Griffin, in response to the Aviation Week & Space Technology story.

“I have noted on many occasions that, at present NASA funding levels, our budget is sufficient to support a variety of excellent space programs, but that it cannot support all of them. Balanced choices must be made. But they cannot be continually remade if there is to be progress,” Griffin explained.

“Those who are organizing this conference have long favored choices other than those put forth in the Vision for Space Exploration and subsequently authorized by the Congress. Their rejection of the Moon as an important destination for mankind, their emphasis on the early use of the Lagrange Points in a new space architecture, and their advocacy for early missions to the near-Earth asteroids (NEO) and to Mars are well known and long standing. These views were summarized in a report issued by the International Academy of Astronautics in July 2004. Their opposition to the International Space Station continues unremitting. One struggles to understand how the future international and commercial partnerships they advocate will come to pass if existing treaty-level commitments are not kept,” Griffin said.

“What is not mentioned in the Aviation Week article is that the questions to be raised at this conference have been asked and answered. The organizer’s views, and many others, were amply considered and thoroughly debated in the two years that elapsed between President Bush’s announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration in January 2004, and the strongly bipartisan ratification of the goals of the Vision in the NASA Authorization Act of December, 2005. As goes without saying, NASA will execute the law of the land. Until and unless the Congress provides new and different authorization for NASA, the law of the land specifies that we will complete the International Space Station, retire the Shuttle, design and build a new spaceflight architecture, return to the Moon in a manner supporting a ’sustained presence’, and prepare the way for Mars,” Griffin explained.

“We are doing those things as quickly and efficiently as our appropriated funding allows. System designs for the early elements have been completed, contracts have been let, and consistently solid progress is being made with a minimum of unexpected difficulty. True, the available budget is less than what was once promised, and progress is therefore slower than all of us would prefer. But applying resources in the right direction, irrespective of pace, is always productive, and we are doing that. Ares and Orion as they are presently taking form are the building blocks for any human future beyond low Earth orbit (LEO),” the NASA chief pointed out.

“As I have often stated, human missions to NEOs have no stronger advocate than I, and I hope that a future Congress will add such authorization to future guidance for NASA, without altering other goals. But in other respects, I believe that the 2005 Authorization Act for NASA remains the finest policy framework for U.S. civil space activities that I have seen in forty years. In particular, I believe that to venture into deep space beyond the Moon with what will be our first step beyond LEO in more than fifty years, whether to an asteroid or to Mars, is riskier than it needs to be. Returning to the Moon and consolidating the gains to be made thereby is properly on the path toward NEOs and Mars. We should stay the present course as laid out in the Act,” Griffin said.

“The conference organizers have assigned sole responsibility for our new civil space exploration strategy to President Bush, ignoring the hugely bipartisan — actually non-partisan — support it has received in Congress. In fact, the principal features of the Vision for Space Exploration, and the subsequent 2005 Authorization Act, are directly traceable to the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board [CAIB]. President Bush acted on those recommendations in his proposal to Congress. No such far-reaching proposal should be adopted without debate. That debate was had, in 2003, ‘04, and ‘05, and it was fulsome. From it came a unifying plan for civil space, and the best legislative guidance NASA has ever had,” Griffin stated.

“No plan can fully satisfy all the many constituencies we have in what I wish were a true ’space community’. but as the CAIB noted, it would be far worse to continue the prior multi-decade lack of any strategic plan, to continue dithering and debating and inevitably widening the gap between shuttle retirement and the availability of new systems. The 2005 Authorization Act codifies a great strategic plan for civil space exploration. Now is the time for space advocacy groups to come together in support of it,” Griffin concluded.

Meanwhile, conference organizers of the workshop have notified Aviation Week & Space Technology that the recent story created a misperception - that the workshop to be held at Stanford University had already decided upon a new path for the human and robotic exploration of space, one that might call for pushing the Ctrl-Alt-Delete button on a NASA Moon base.

Not so, explains Scott Hubbard of Stanford University and Louis Friedman of The Planetary Society.

“We wish to make it clear that the purpose of the workshop is to examine critically the Vision for Space Exploration in order to prepare for future space policy considerations in a new Administration and new Congress,” states the letter to the magazine provided to SPACE.com.

“We have deliberately included a wide range of participants with disparate views, including those who would maintain the status quo. We personally do not know what the conclusions of the workshop will be - or even if there will be a definitive consensus,” the clarifying letter notes in part, underscoring the point that the workshop has “no predetermined conclusions.”

German art historians say they’ve put a name to the famous face and settled the debate of the identity of the “Mona Lisa” once and for all.

According to this Reuters article, experts at the Heidelberg University library have found conclusive evidence that the woman in the famous Da Vinci painting was in fact Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, whom many historians had long thought was the subject of the portrait.

The German historians found scribbles in the margins of a book by a Florentine city official who mentions that Da Vinci was currently working on a portrait of Lisa Gherardini.

For other insights into the mysteries of the smiling woman in the painting, check out our article on why the “Mona Lisa”’s smile changes and just why the painting is so famous.

Mike Gravel was very chatty. John Edwards’ rep provided thoughtful replies. Bill Richardson’s rep emailed three words: yes, yes, no.

Those were the only meaningful responses to LiveScience’s modest attempt to survey the presidential candidates’ opinions on three hot-button science policy topics of the day — federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, federal action on global warming and the teaching of creationism in public schools.

We’re not known for our political reporting, and we suspect the smash-up of the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary with the New Year has erased the ability of many campaign offices to answer some media requests. And there are the candidates’ Web sites:

Joe Biden has an entire page of information on national policy action he’d take on global warming.

Chris Dodd has an energy plan that acknowledges climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.

Duncan Hunter’s opposition to embryonic stem cell research is noted here and Mike Huckabee’s is here.

John McCain’s more nuanced position on stem cells can be read here and his approach to limiting carbon emissions is here.

Barack Obama sees climate change as one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation.

Fred Thompson talks about reducing carbon emissions here.

And while Hillary Clinton’s campaign never got back to us, she had put out a detailed science-friendly policy agenda a few months ago.

Still, the scarcity of direct replies to our survey was telling … of something. (For details on candidates’ positions on space exploration, see our Space.com story.)

Also, did Dennis Kucinich and Duncan Hunter go through a scrambler? The former’s slogan is “Strength Through Peace.” The latter’s is “Peace Through Strength.”

Anyhow, Edwards said he supports stem cell research and federal funding for it, and respects scientists and the scientific method, “so I believe that policy should be science driven and that science shouldn’t be politics driven.”

The American people should halt global warming and achieve energy independence, Edwards said. He supports carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emission caps starting in 2010 to reduce emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and by at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

As for creationism and evolution, Edwards thinks local school boards should decide what is taught in their schools, but said “I personally agree with the theory of evolution and believe it should be taught in our schools.”

Richardson said “yes” for stem cell funding, “yes” for federal action to slow down global warming and “no” to the teaching of creationism in public schools as part of the science curriculum.

Gravel supports federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. He also supports a carbon tax and would invite other nations to do the same so all nations could pool the resources to create a global institute to get the world off carbon fuels in a decade.

As for creationism in the schools, Gravel says: “Oh God, no. Oh, Jesus. We thought we had made a big advance with the Scopes monkey trial … My God, evolution is a fact, and if these people are disturbed by being the descendants of monkeys and fishes, they’ve got a mental problem. We can’t afford the psychiatric bill for them. That ends the story as far as I’m concerned.”

Looks like top-thinkers in making contact with extraterrestrials have become a bit star-crossed.

The scene is the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) that has a permanent study group and task groups set up to look at issues regarding the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and policy issues of contacting alien starfolk.

What has surfaced is heated debate over “Active SETI” - that is, beaming out deliberate and powerful Spinal Tap-like signals that are cranked up to #11 on the volume control knob.

Several active participants in the IAA SETI deliberations have raised a warning flag, along with their collective eyebrows on the matter.

I contacted one of those people engaged in the whirlpool of debate, Michael Michaud, a former director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Advanced Technology. He is also recent author of the seminal and scholarly book: “Contact with Alien Civilizations - Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials”.

“While I am glad to see media interest in the Active SETI issue, some journalists have misrepresented the debate. None of us are calling for a ban on all transmissions. We recognize that it is unrealistic and probably unnecessary to stop the routine radio, television, and radar signals that the Earth emits every day.”

But what Michaud and others within the IAA are calling for “is more open, democratic consideration of whether it is or is not advisable to transmit powerful targeted signals when we know nothing about the capabilities or intentions of the civilizations that might detect them,” he told me via email. “My personal goal is to get people to think in terms of species interests, not just personal, organizational, or national interests. We are learning to do this as we face global problems such as climate change or the possibility of an asteroid impact. The bottom line is responsible behavior that keeps the interests of the larger society in mind.”

Michaud contends that the exact mechanism for addressing this question is open to debate.

“As a starting point, I suggest that people who want to send unusually powerful, targeted signals from radio telescopes be asked to submit such plans to the International Astronomical Union for approval. If an organization composed of astronomers has reservations about such Active SETI, the issue would have to be seen as one of more general public concern,” Michaud said.

Furthermore, some critics who claim that interstellar flight is impossible or totally unrealistic make the false assumption that such missions must carry biological beings with the life spans of humans, Michaud said, adding that some also assume that all journeys must be round-trips.

“These assumptions do not stand up under objective scrutiny, particularly when we consider that an alien civilization may be far more technologically advanced than we are,” Michaud told me.

Michaud and the other IAA members engaged in the Active SETI discussion all strongly favor searching for signals. “If we detect another civilization, we could again make a conscious decision — with the interests of Humankind as our measure — as to whether we should or should not initiate communication,” he added.

“It would help if certain journalists would stop using outdated cliches about contact. The term ‘little green men’ is just silly,” Michaud continued. “If direct contact ever takes place, it is far more likely to be with intelligent machines than with biological beings. It is even more stupid — and irrelevant — to describe the potential threat as one of being eaten.”

Michaud underscored the point that it took 50 years (the 1930s to the 1980s) for the public to take seriously the potential threat from collisions with Earth-crossing asteroids, and to begin thinking about how to deal with them.

“If we date the beginning of SETI to 1960, a more realistic approach to direct contact is due about now,” Michaud concluded.

The hunt for evidence that a 980-foot long feature on Mt. Ararat in Turkey might be the remains of Noah’s Ark has taken on a new dimension, quite literally.

Satellite Imaging Corporation of Houston, Texas has created a 3D terrain model of the so-called “Mt. Ararat anomaly” - making use of stereo IKONOS satellite image data to create a flyover of the site in remote northeastern Turkey.

The high-tech effort involves GeoEye, INTA Space Turk, along with the talents of Satellite Imaging Corporation.

Porcher Taylor, an associate professor at the University of Richmond’s School of Continuing Studies, has been at the forefront of utilizing Earth orbiting remote sensing spacecraft to study the Ararat Anomaly from on-high. In a press statement, he explained: “To be best of my knowledge, to date, only 2D satellite missions had been flown over the anomaly, not stereo missions.”

Taylor notes that GeoEye’s IKONOS satellite serves as a “space-based Indiana Jones” over the anomaly. Furthermore, the GeoEye-1 — to be launched early next year — will make the controversial anomaly almost twice as visible due to that spacecraft’s ultra-powerful 0.4 meter resolution.

The purported anomaly lies surrounded by rugged strato-volcanic rock at the northwestern corner of Mt. Ararat’s western plateau. It sits mostly buried underneath a permanent glacier and drew attention because of its relatively smooth surface texture and unusual physical composition, according to some interpretations. The site occupied by the anomaly is located at 15,300 feet above sea level.

To take your own flyover of the site courtesy of Satellite Imaging Corporation, go to:

http://www.satimagingcorp.com/gallery/quicktime-mt-ararat-low.html

Also, check out:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/9/prweb550721.htm

 

Back on February 7th 1971 (Earth time), Ed Mitchell was speeding much faster than a rifle bullet, on a trajectory between the Moon and the Earth. That’s when the strangest thing happened…

Mitchell had piloted Apollo 14’s Lunar Module down to the Fra Mauro region of the Moon, become the sixth human to do science in the dust, and gotten himself and Cdr. Alan Shepard back off the regolith and onto their bus ride back home.

Now he was bored: “We were just systems engineers on a perfectly functioning spacecraft.” So he looked out the window. The Command Module was pointing “up” – which is to say perpendicular to the plane of the Solar System – and spinning slowly, about once every two minutes. “Barbecue Mode”, it’s called; to evenly heat the vehicle. Ed was floating, watching the Earth, Moon, Sun and starfield pan by.

And then, without warning: an overwhelming feeing of bliss, timelessness, connected-ness… He suddenly and deeply felt the understanding of his constituent atoms as having been born in the fires of ancient supernovas. He saw Earth and it’s people and all it’s other species and systems as a unified integrated synergistic whole. He felt good; ecstatic actually…

He was not the first – nor the last – to have this specific epiphany.

Rusty Schweikart had felt it back on March 6th 1969 during a spacewalk outside his Apollo 9 vehicle: “When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing. That makes a change…it comes through to you so powerfully that you’re the sensing element for Man.”

20 years ago, author Frank White collected, sifted, polished and curated the observations of 30 astronauts and cosmonauts. But these weren’t science observations or notes about the spacecraft hardware. They were reports of this specific, marked psychological shift – common to all these space travelers – immediately and profoundly broadening these hard-boiled guys’ perspectives.

This morning, in a hotel across the street from the Pentagon in Washington, DC, Frank White addressed proponents of proselytizing this Overview Effect. Cognitive scientist David Beaver had called us here. A core group of about 40 authors, astronauts, special; effects designers, ex-magicians, musicians, scientists, technologists, producers, journalists, capitalists, space-tourist adventurers, humanists, assorted geeks, hippie-survivors (and, yes, this reporter) quickly decided upon a loose strategy of collaboration and mutual support. Intended mission: maximize opportunities for Earth-dwellers to have individual Overview experiences. Strategy: use art, science, mass media, music, environmental awareness, personal networking and, oh yeah: the Web to spread the opportunity for non-space travelers to understand and possibly experience the Effect.

After decades of studying this, Ed Mitchell is pretty certain that the feeling of interconnectedness / oneness with the Universe is a consequence of quantum physics. Now Mitchell and the others assembled here want, specifically to induce or produce the Overview Effect in as many of Earth’s citizens as possible.

If this feels a little religiously fervent to you, you’re not wrong. And that’s a danger: It tends to turn critical thinkers off before they start thinking truly critically about the possibilities.

But, to the good, the Overview Effect is - by definition - simultaneously ecumenical and agnostic. And it’s nothing if not a thrill ride:

40 years ago, Doug Trumbull instantiated Overview Effects in moviegoers as the special effects designer of Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001 a Space Odyssey. Since then Trumbull’s technical-artistic touched has graced many pivotal motions pictures. He, more than anyone, invented the motion-based movie-driven theme park ride. That little thing at Universal called Back to the Future, for instance; Trumbull made it fly.

Today, at the conference, Doug foresaw a time perhaps 5-6 years out when a video iPod-like device would deliver an Overview Effect-producing dose of media content directly to users’ retinas. Oh, and it looks like Trumbull will own or co-own the patent…

Andy Newberg, a neuroscientist/physician with a background in space medicine, is learning how to spot the markers: “You can often tell when you’re with someone who has flown in space,” he says, “It’s palpable.” Andy scans brains for a living: praying nuns, transcendental meditators, others in the act of focused states. He can pinpoint regions in subjects’ gray matter that correlate to these circumstances. Newberg is seriously looking at how to fly equipment that could study, in-situ, the brain functions of space travelers. If this Overview Effect is physiologically real, Andy could watch it happen.

Interestingly, Newberg’s first test subject will not be a paid astronaut, but rather a paying space tourist: Reda Andersen slated to fly with Rocketplane Kistler says “It would be criminal NOT to study the first of us (space adventure travelers).”

Barbara Marx Hubbard is convinced this is evolution in action: “The sleep of the womb is over,” she says, “We are growing up; becoming fully human.” Hubbard has worn many hats: disciple of Bucky Fuller, Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, international space advocate, and importantly a mother of five. As we’re born, Barbara says: “we pass from the Inner Space of our mothers into Outer Space”

So, keep the term “Overview Effect” in the top list of your search engine. In the next few years, you’ll see it connected to some awfully smart, entertaining, pithy, profound, soulful, and, yeah probably some way-too-silly and hopelessly doomed-to-fail stuff, as well.

But such is the messy, non-directed, unintended, viral-memetic way of evolution.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa doesn’t lean so much anymore. It has been straightened 18 inches, getting it back to its 1838 position, so it won’t fall over.

There’s a ton of interesting detail about the project and the tower’s history, here. �

Sex was about more than making babies even for prehistoric humans, according to an article in the Sunday Times:

Practices ranging from bondage to group sex, transvestism and the use of sex toys were widespread in primitive societies as a way of building up cultural ties.

The idea, based on a 30,000-year-old statue of a naked woman and an old stone phallus, is that early humans used sex to communicate. �Even back then, talk was cheap.

Some people don’t even live to 63. That’s how many years Hyman Rickover served in the US Navy (the longest stretch of active service in US military history), before retiring at the ripe old age of 81 in 1982. Saturday the 27th would have marked his 106th Birthday. So why do we toast him, besides for his incredible employee-of-the-century dedication?

Because without Mr. Rickover, there would be no Harrison Ford submarine thriller “K-19: The Widowmaker.” Rickover was the “Father of the nuclear Navy,” responsible for putting the first nuclear-powered submarines into action and scaring the pants off the Russians at the height of the Cold War. Convinced that nuclear reactors were the way of the naval future, he spearheaded the launch of the USS Nautilus in 1955 and personally oversaw the development of the US Naval reactor program, as well as the first nuclear power plants established on dry land. Rickover’s ships had an examplary safety record, unlike the Russians (see Harrison Ford reference, above) and other competitors.

Today, nuclear power generates almost 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, according to the US Census Bureau.