| Stephen Hawking can't use physics to answer why we're here | Eric Priest Modern belief in God is not about covering the gaps in our knowledge, but about answering different types of questionsStephen Hawking makes the claim that it is not necessary to invoke God as the creator of the universe and the assertion that physics alone made it.He may be correct in his first statement, but to rule out a possibly important role for God is in my view unjustified. It is certainly possible that God sets up and maintains or underpins the laws of physics and allows them to work, so that being able to explain the big bang in terms of physics is not inconsistent with there being a role for God.As a scientist, you are continually questioning, rarely coming up with a definitive answer. The limitations of your own knowledge and expertise together with the beauty and mystery of life and the universe often fill you with a sense of profound humility. Thus, unequivocal assertions are not part of a genuine scientific quest.Mathematics as applied to physics may be the queen of sciences according to Carl Friedrich Gauss, but it does not answer every scientific question. Chemistry, biology, psychology and the social sciences have their own ways of analysing the nature of reality which are complementary to those of physics and mathematics: indeed, they are not reducible to physics but their insights emerge at their own level of complexity.Furthermore, many of the questions that are most crucial to us as human beings are not addressed adequately at all by science, such as the nature of beauty and love and how to live one's life – often philosophy or history or theology are better suited to help answer them.The complementary nature of different questions and in particular of the difference between how and why are important. If M-theory does indeed turn out to enable a unified theory, Hawking may be able in future to say how the universe started, but as a physicist he cannot answer the question "why?"This is well illustrated by John Polkinghorne's story about boiling a kettle: I can describe with physics how it boils in terms of the stove making its temperature rise; but why it is boiling is a different type of question altogether – most probably in my case because my wife is thirsty!The so-called "God of the Gaps" is not part of modern religious faith. In this view, you invoked God to explain the inexplicable – at one time this would have been the weather or common diseases, and for Hawking apparently until recently the origin of the universe. Thus, when an alternative explanation arises, there is no longer any need for God.The God followed by many people of a religious faith is not a God of the Gaps at all – rather a God who helps answer other nonscientific questions about why the universe and its amazing life exists and how to lead a good life. Also, they welcome the advances in understanding that modern science brings, since they reveal more of the incredible beauty, diversity and wonder of the nature of the universe.You cannot prove whether God exists or not. But you can ask whether the existence or nonexistence of God is more consistent with your experience. It is up to each of us to reach our own conclusion, but for many of us it is and can make a profound and enriching difference to our lives.ReligionStephen HawkingMathematicsPhysicsPhilosophyEric Priestguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
A Crop Sprouts Without Soil or Sunshine At St. Philip's Academy in Newark, leafy greens are planted in a cloth bed and irrigated with a nutrient-infused mist in an aeroponic growing system. feeds.nytimes.com |
New Earth-like planet discovered Gliese 581g is in the 'Goldilocks zone' of its solar system, where liquid water could exist, and is a strong contender to be a habitable worldAstronomers have discovered a potentially habitable planet of similar size to Earth in orbit around a nearby star.A team of planet hunters spotted the alien world circling a red dwarf star called Gliese 581, 20 light years away.The planet is in the "Goldilocks zone" of space around a star where surface temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to form."Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Steven Vogt, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."If confirmed, the planet would be the most Earth-like that has ever been discovered in another solar system and the first strong contender for a habitable one.More than 400 exoplanets have been discovered by astronomers, but most are gas giants, like Jupiter, that would be inhospitable to life as we know it.Astronomers used the Keck telescope in Hawaii to study the movement of Gliese 581 in exquisite detail and from their observations inferred the presence of a number of orbiting planets. The team report two new planets in the Astrophysical Journal, bringing the total number known to be circling the star to six.One of the planets, named Gliese 581g, has a mass of three to four times that of Earth and takes 37 days to orbit the star. Astronomers believe it is a rocky planet with enough gravity to retain an atmosphere.Unlike the previously discovered planets, Gliese 581g lies squarely in the region of space were life can thrive. "We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone — one too hot and one too cold — and now we have one in the middle that's just right," Vogt said.One side of the planet is always facing the star, much as one side of the moon constantly faces Earth. This means that the far side of the planet is constantly in darkness. The most habitable region of the planet would be the line between the light and dark regions."Any emerging life forms would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude," Vogt said.The average temperature on the planet is estimated to be between -31 to -12C, but the ground temperature would vary from blazing hot on the bright side and freezing on the dark side."The number of systems with potentially habitable planets is probably on the order of 10 or 20 percent, and when you multiply that by the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, that's a large number. There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy," said Vogt.Alien lifeSpaceAstronomyIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
James Tanner obituary Pioneer in auxology, the study of growth in the human bodyThe human body has been studied for millennia, but it is only relatively recently that scientists have understood how much information can be derived from the analysis of physical growth. Auxology, the study of such change, is largely the creation of James Tanner, who has died aged 90. As he wrote: "A child's growth rate reflects, better than any other single index, his state of health and nutrition, and often indeed his psychological situation."Tanner's research and writings influenced not only paediatrics but also anthropology, development economics, nutrition and economic history. His influence stemmed initially from his work, shortly after the second world war, on the Harpenden growth study, one of the earliest longitudinal studies, in which successive generations at a children's home in Hertfordshire were measured and assessed from childhood through to early adulthood.Tanner, with his collaborator Reginald Whitehouse, became proficient in statistics and the analysis of longitudinal data, richer in information than the more usual cross-sectional data. Crucially, they demonstrated that the analysis of human physical growth – and the assessment of the health and progress of individuals – could be illuminated by charts. The simplest of these charts, now used routinely throughout the world, plot the child's height and weight against an expected average growth pattern. If growth deviates significantly from that pattern, it may indicate deprivation or abuse.Tanner developed more complex charts which reflect the fact that there is not one "normal" pattern of growth in adolescence, but that there are early and late maturers. He supplemented the charts with the Tanner scale, a pictorial representation of change in genitalia, breasts and pubic hair. It is still widely used.Based at Great Ormond Street hospital in London, Tanner became concerned, in the 1950s, with the very small group of children who show a significant delay in growth. He pioneered the use of human growth hormone (HGH) to treat such a delay. The hormone was initially extracted from donors post-mortem. When it was suggested, in the 1980s, that this risked the development of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, he suspended the treatment. It was resumed when genetically engineered HGH became available in the 1990s.With Phyllis Eveleth, Tanner published the book Worldwide Variation in Human Growth (1976), demonstrating the overwhelming importance of the environment in determining children's growth and development. He showed, for example, that although 90% of the adult height of an individual is inherited, changes in the average height of large groups of people are almost entirely caused by their environment. Immigrant communities, for example the Italian or Japanese in the US, rapidly acquire some of the physical proportions of the host population. The data shows the extent of differences in height by social class within many different cultures and the fact that height rises with per capita gross domestic product. The success of economic aid and food supplements in developing countries can be assessed by measuring changing heights. According to Tanner: "A well-designed growth study is a powerful tool with which to monitor the health of a population or to pinpoint subgroups of a population whose share in economic or social benefits is less than it might be."His work inspired research into the long-term consequences of changes in nutritional status – measured by height and weight – on life-chances of all kinds. It has been found that taller people, even within a social class, tend to earn more; that the very young children of unemployed parents are shorter than those of parents with jobs; that tall women tend to marry into a higher social class; that mortality from most diseases falls as height rises, even into old age; that the burden of chronic disease has lifted as nutrition has improved. The policy implications of such findings are profound. Early intervention through good maternal care and childcare can bring benefits decades later.Tanner was a great communicator. His most successful popular work, Foetus Into Man (1990), remains one of the best introductions to human biology and growth studies. He also helped to create a new field of historical study, that of anthropometric history, the study of the history of human height and weight. Always interested in the history of his own subject, in 1981 he published A History of the Study of Human Growth.He advised, over several decades, a growing group of historians, economists and statisticians. My book (with Kenneth Wachter and Annabel Gregory), Height, Health and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750-1980, published in 1990, could not have been written without his help.Tanner was born in Camberley, Surrey, into a military family. His brother was killed in the second world war. James was a champion hurdler and might well have represented Britain at the cancelled Olympics of 1940. He attended Marlborough college and the University College of the South West of England (now Exeter University). He decided on a medical career, starting at the medical school of St Mary's hospital in Paddington, central London, before taking up a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania and working at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore. It was there that he met his first wife, Bernice Alture, with whom he had two children.He spent most of his career at Great Ormond Street and the Institute of Child Health in London. Bernice died in 1991. Tanner later found further happiness in his retirement in Devon with his second wife, Gunilla Lindgren, also an expert on auxology. She survives him, together with his daughter, a stepdaughter and stepson, and three granddaughters. His son predeceased him.• James Mourilyan Tanner, paediatrician, born 1 August 1920; died 11 August 2010Medical researchguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Gulf corals in oil spill zone appear healthy By BRIAN SKOLOFF 2010-10-22T15:32:40ZON THE FLOOR OF THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) -- Just 20 miles north of where BP's blown-out well spewed millions of gallons of oil into the sea, life appears bountiful despite initial fears that crude could have wiped out many of these delicate deepwater habitats.... hosted.ap.org |