NASA has discovered liquid water on Mars. Just thought you should know that this morning.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Potentially life-giving water still flows across the ancient surface of Mars from time to time, NASA scientists said Monday in revealing a potential breakthrough in both the search for life beyond Earth and human hopes to one day travel there. 

While the discovery doesn't by itself offer evidence of life on Mars, either past or present, it does boost hopes of that the harsh landscape still offers some refuge to life. 

"The existence of liquid water, even if it is super salty briny water, gives the possibility that if there's life on Mars, that we have a way to describe how it might survive," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA.

So that is just one of the things that science has discovered this week.

But remember there is no reason to focus on teaching it to our children, or spending tax payer money on it, after all its not like it provides answers to any of the important questions about our origins or the survival of our species or anything.

In fact Rush Limbaugh does not even believe that NASA found anything.

"How do we know what is true?" Excellent question, with an excellent video to answer that question.

I am almost embarrassed to admit that I was virtually unaware of the many talents of the great Stephen Fry before seeing him in "V for Vendetta."

I loved that film and loved his character in it.

Since then I have learned a great deal about his vast body of work, and even follow him on Twitter.

This video is exceedingly well done and explains exactly why testing theories against evidence is the only true pathway to truth.

Scientists who discovered the "God particle" receive Nobel prize.

Courtesy of USA Today: 

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics has gone to Britain's Peter W. Higgs and Belgium's Francois Englert, the Nobel Committee announced in Stockholm on Tuesday. 

They were jointly awarded the prize for their work on a theory that offers an explanation for how the fundamental particles of the Universe acquire mass. 

Last year, the pair's work was confirmed after the discovery of the so-called Higgs particle — known also as the Higgs boson and the God particle — at a laboratory in Geneva.

 I almost feel bad for referring to the Higgs boson as the "God particle' but since that is the way that it is universally known I thought it would  make more sense to my visitors.

The person who gave it that misnomer has explained why: 

This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one… 

So now that we have discovered it, despite some early exclamations from the scientifically ignorant religious nuts, we have moved further away from a divine explanation for the universe rather than closer to one.

Perhaps, using religious logic (Does that even exist?), it would have been more appropriate to call it "Satan's Particle."

Personally I am just happy to be writing about something other than the government shutdown.

That awkward moment when the primitive tribe you have come to convert to Christianity, instead converts you to atheism.

I have started to write about this incredible conversion multiple times but always put it off. But the other day I stumbled across this YouTube video of Everett reading from his book and realized that it was much more powerful coming from him. (Oops it turns out it was read by another. Still better hearing it read aloud though.)

The Pirahãs, he said, “believed that the world was as it had always been, and that there was no supreme deity”. Furthermore they had no creation myths in their culture. In short, here was a people who were more than happy to live their lives “without God, religion or any political authority”. 

Despite Everett translating the Book of Luke into Pirahã and reading it to tribe members, the Pirahãs sensibly resisted all his attempts to convert them. 

According to a report in the New Yorker: 

His zeal soon dissipated … Convinced that the Pirahã assigned no spiritual meaning to the Bible, Everett finally admitted that he did not, either. He declared himself an atheist.

As an Atheist of course I find this story very gratifying. But as an American I am almost saddened to realize that even such a primitive people were able to discover a truth which still eludes so many of my fellow countrymen.

Just a final thought.

Remnants of supernova.

“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” ― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

The discovery of Higgs-Boson (The God Particle) passes peer review. So now it is a little thing we call "science."

Large Hadron Corridor

Courtesy of Extreme Tech:  

CERN’s announcement on July 4 — that experiments performed by the Large Hadron Collider had discovered a particle that was consistent with the Higgs boson — has passed a key step towards becoming ratified science: Its findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Physics Letters B. 

Back in July, both the CMS and ATLAS teams — teams of scientists tasked with analyzing the data produced by the CMS and ATLAS detectors — announced that they’d discovered a new elementary particle. CERN did not say that this was the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle, but as the Standard Model of particle physics only has one undiscovered particle remaining, it probably is the Higgs boson. Following CERN’s announcement, both the CMS and ATLAS teams submitted their findings to Physics Letters B — and today, both of their research papers have passed peer review by the scientific community, effectively becoming… science. 

One more step into the bright light of discovery, and away from the darkness of superstition and ignorance.

With this discovery we can really begin to examine exactly HOW the universe, and all of its components, were  formed. And THAT nothing supernatural was necessary, or dare I say even possible.

I fucking love science!

Hubble telescope discovers ancient galaxy that should not exist, but does.

Courtesy of i09: 

This galaxy is so large, so fully-formed, astronomers say it shouldn't exist at all. It's called a "grand-design" spiral galaxy, and unlike most galaxies of its kind, this one is old. Like, really, really old. According to a new study conducted by researchers using NASA's Hubble Telescope, it dates back roughly 10.7-billion years — and that makes it the most ancient spiral galaxy we've ever discovered. 

"The vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks," said UCLA astrophysicist Alice Shapley in a press release. "Our first thought was, why is this one so different, and so beautiful?" 

Shapley is co-author of the paper describing the discovery, which is published in the latest issue of Nature. She and her colleagues had been using Hubble to investigate some of our Universe's most distant cosmic entities, but the discovery of BX442 — which is what they've dubbed the newfound galaxy — came as a huge surprise. 

"The fact that this galaxy exists is astounding," said University of Toronto's David Law, lead author of the study. "Current wisdom holds that such ‘grand-design' spiral galaxies simply didn't exist at such an early time in the history of the universe." 

The hallmark of a grand design galaxy is its well-formed spiral arms, but getting into this conformation takes time. When astronomers look at most galaxies as they appeared billions and billions of years ago, they look clumpy and irregular. A 10.7-billion-year-old entity, BX442 came into existence a mere 3-billion years after the Big Bang. That's not a lot of time on a cosmic time scale, and yet BX442 looks surprisingly put together. So much so, in fact, that astronomers didn't believe it at first, chalking their unusual observation up to the accidental alignment of two separate galaxies. But further investigations, conducted at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, revealed BX442 to be the real thing.

You know for me this is the beauty of science, and why I prefer it over faith.

Here is a situation where a bunch of scientists are confronted with evidence that their presuppositions are incorrect, but rather than deny the existence of the new data and cling to the faith that they were right all along, they simply turn to the other astronomers and say. "Hey guess what guys? We were wrong! Now let's study the crap out of this new evidence."

And forward we go.

Scientists at CERN believe they have discovered the "God Particle."

Courtesy of Fox News:

To cheers and standing ovations from scientists, the world's biggest atom smasher claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle Wednesday, calling it "consistent" with the long-sought Higgs boson -- popularly known as the "God particle" -- that helps explain what gives all matter in the universe size and shape. 

"We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics," Rolf Heuer, director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists. 

He said the newly discovered subatomic particle is a boson, but he stopped just shy of claiming outright that it is the Higgs boson itself -- an extremely fine distinction. 

"As a layman, I think we did it," he told the elated crowd. "We have a discovery. We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson." 

The Higgs boson, which until now has been a theoretical particle, is seen as the key to our understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight. The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton's discovery of it: Gravity was there all the time before Newton explained it. But now scientists know what a boson is and can put that knowledge to further use. 

Yet another incredible step forward for science out of the darkness of ignorance. This is an amazing time to be alive, and one that I hope truly signifies a  new era of enlightenment.

Just imagine how much we can learn about our origins and the building blocks of the universe with this new knowledge to guide us?

Update: I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson is undoubtedly happy with the discovery but less happy about what it ways about our country.