A U.S. science satellite slated to launch to Mars in March has been grounded due to a leak in a key research instrument, NASA said on Tuesday, creating uncertainty about the future of a widely anticipated effort to study the interior of the planet.
The spacecraft, known as InSight, was designed to help scientists learn more about the formation of rocky planets, including Earth.
The cancellation raises questions about the future of the research effort, as it will be another two years before Earth and Mars are favorably aligned for a launch. NASA has not said if it will have funding for the program, which was capped at $425 million.
The agency is expected to discuss the decision on a conference call scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
After landing on Mars, the science satellite would have remained stationary, using three science instruments to detect quakes and other seismic activities. It was also designed to measure how much heat is being released from the planet’s subsurface and monitor Mars’ wobble - or variations in its orbit - as it circles the sun.
A problem with the seismometer triggered cancellation of the launch, the agency said in a statement. The instrument, which was provided by France's CNES space agency, has a leak in the vacuum container that houses its primary sensors.
CNES repaired a faulty weld on the vacuum tank, but apparently the problem remained, according to NASA.
InSight had arrived last week at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to begin launch preparations.
(Reporting by Irene Klotz in Tel Aviv; Editing by Letitia Stein and Paul Simao)
The the indigenous peoples of the Amazon are far removed from the Paris conference rooms where politicians and technocrats in dark suits hashed out a historic deal on curbing climate change to close out the year.
But they are taking bold action of a different kind to save the rich biodiversity of the planet's largest rainforest, whose survival is essential to limit global warming.
In Ecuador, one tribe has swapped hunting for growing cocoa. Another in Brazil has started managing its fish stocks. And one in Peru set up an indigenous local government to protect its environment from oil, mining and logging companies.
The Waorani barely seem to notice the stifling tropical heat in Gareno, a hamlet of wooden huts in the middle of the Ecuadoran jungle.
Every morning, they chant a ritual work song in their native language, Waotededo, before heading out to their fields for the day.
Keen to preserve their environment, in 2010 they gave up hunting, their traditional livelihood, and replaced it with farming cocoa.
The Waorani had noticed the game they hunted was increasingly hard to find.
To combat the problem, an indigenous women's group, the Association of Waorani Women of the Ecuadoran Amazon (AMWAE), created a program that gives cocoa trees to local women if their husbands stop hunting.
"They gave up hunting wild animals, and we took up farming without cutting down the forest," said AMWAE president Patricia Nenquihui.
Ten indigenous communities are participating in the project -- 70 families who farm 25 hectares (60 acres) in the eastern provinces of Pastaza and Napo.
The association buys their crop from them for $1.25 a pound -- 45 cents above the market price -- and sends it to the capital, Quito, to be made into chocolate.
At first, the men were "upset" over the program, said Nenquihui. But the older generations admitted that hunters had to walk up to one full day through the jungle to hunt the animals they sold to provide for their families.
"We opened our eyes," said Ligia Enomenga, a 26-year-old widow who is raising her six children thanks to the money she earns growing cocoa.
"Before, (the men) hunted a lot. Now they have joined the cocoa project and stopped killing animals," she said.
"We hunted a lot... Wild pigs, monkeys, toucans. Sometimes we brought out five or six quintals (500 to 600 pounds, 230 to 275 kilograms)," said Moises Enomenga, whose wife now farms cocoa instead.
- Saving the pirarucu -
In Brazil, home to most of the region's six million square kilometers (2.4 million square miles) of forest, the Paumari people are taking a similar approach to save the pirarucu, an enormous fish that can reach up to 4.5 meters (15 feet) long.
Pirarucu fishing was banned when the enormous gray and hot-pink river monsters began to disappear.
But after seven years of work with a conservation group called the Native Amazon Operation (Opan), the Paumari successfully lobbied to re-legalize sustainable fishing practices.
"It goes far beyond marketing the fish. It's about strengthening community groups, strengthening fish stocks and generating income. Those are the main sources of revenue for this community," said Gustavo Silveira, a coordinator at Opan.
"The management and control they have over their territory is a fantastic thing."
Under the program, pirarucu that measure less than a meter and a half must be released. Brazilian environmental authorities do a population count every year, and the Paumari are in charge of guarding the area's lakes from poachers.
- 'Protect our ancestral lands' -
Meanwhile, the Wampis nation in Peru has set up its own government in a bid to stop deforestation and the destructive presence of oil and mining companies on its lands.
"We're not asking for independence, simply to protect our ancestral lands and give us title to 1.3 million hectares where more than 100 Wampis communities live," said Wrays Perez Ramirez, the president of the newly formed indigenous government, which is not officially recognized by the Peruvian authorities.
"The next generations are going to need natural resources to survive."
In southwestern Colombia, the Inga people are likewise fighting to protect the biodiversity of their lands -- threatened, in this case, by the guerrilla war that has wracked the country for the past 50 years.
They have won government funding to eradicate more than 22,000 hectares of poppy fields, the raw ingredient for heroin. The fields were threatening the local ecosystem and fueling violent clashes between armed groups in the region.
"The Earth was crying... and asking us to take care of her," said Hernando Chindoy, the governor of the Inga de Aponte indigenous reserve.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX's Falcon 9 is back: back in service, blasting off Monday night after a six-month stand-down; and — just as remarkably for the company's long-term plans — the rocket is back on the ground, in one piece. The space company made its triumphant return to flight with a flawless 8:29 p.m. EST…
The Star Wars films raise lots of pressing questions. “Why is there sound in space?” “How did George Lucas lose his way?” And, of course, “Did Han shoot first?” (that’s an easy one).
There are innumerable variants on the “How realistic is Star Wars?” question. The answer is, of course, not very. But it’s fascinating to use this question to probe what space combat might really be like.
For example, several people have tried to answer “How to build a Death Star?”, referring to the first film’s moon-sized space station with the power to destroy a planet. A less obvious but perhaps more important question is “If robots like R2-D2 exist in the Star Wars universe, why are the bad guys' superweapons so big in the first place?”
The presence of R2-D2 and other robots tells us something very important about the “Galaxy far, far away”. Namely, that they have access to a workforce that can be churned out in large numbers and copied as needed. If you have robots with skills somewhat comparable to humans, you have access to recursive manufacturing: manufacturing that builds upon previous manufacturing. You can thus build a factory, that can build robots, that can build another factory, that can build robots, and so on, going on until all the raw materials and energy of the planet (or star system) are used up.
Even if robots aren’t very good builders, this kind of exponential growth means that robot-powered recursive manufacturing will rapidly overwhelm and surpass more conventional manufacturing, and grow ever faster. In the Star Wars universe, the majority of the physical production should come from such recursive manufacturing.
Starkiller Base
In the latest Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, the evil First Order have created a weapon even bigger than the Death Star. Known as “Starkiller Base”, it is constructed from an apparently hollowed-out planet and can suck all the energy from a nearby star before using it to fire destructive beams at multiple planets at once.
As far-fetched as this sounds, constructing such a large structure around or in a planet would be relatively easy with recursive manufacturing. With a vast army of robot builders at your command, your only effective limitations are the amount of raw materials (mostly the planet itself and any others nearby) and your energy source (most likely the nearest star).
Today’s forecast: planet-detroying energy beams
Lucasfilm
The problem is that this isn’t a very efficient way of building a weaponised force for wiping out multiple planets. Instead of constructing one base made up of trillions of tons of metal and rocks, why not construct lots of them, each just a shell and a weapon, run by robots? You’d have completed half a million lightweight superweapons in the time it would take to build one massive one. Even if the robots aren’t particularly good at their jobs, the redundancy of having so many would overcome this.
The next question is whether these weapons could really destroy a planet? That would require, at the very minimum, breaking the planet into fragments that go on their separate and unmerry ways. This means that you have to overcome the gravitational binding energy of the planet, the total gravitational force that keeps the planet together.
The gravitational binding energy of the moon is around 1.25×1029 Joules. That’s the minimal energy requirement for completely blowing it up. In practice, however, you’d need more. That energy is about six minutes' worth of our sun’s output, so it seems feasible that destroying the moon could be done.
But planets have higher binding energies. Large gaseous planets like Jupiter have binding energies of around 2.04×1036 Joules. That would require about 170 years' worth of the sun’s energy – far less plausible, although maybe possible if you could really drain an entire star. But if you’re draining a star, you have to overcome the star’s own binding energy first, requiring even more energy to start with.
Death rays
A much more efficient way to defeat multiple civilisations would be to hit all the planets with a large mass at high speed – rather than an energy beam – enough to shake the big ones with immense tremors, and crack the crusts of the small ones, making them unlivable. You could then saturate them with enough ionising radiation to fry all electronics and kill any surviving living organisms. That would be much more economical from the bad guys' point of view.
But that’s still a waste of energy. Using recursive manufacturing, a much simpler idea is to seed space with factories churning out other factories (of course), detection systems, and intelligent missiles. Within a few years, such factories will have transformed most of the nearby asteroids and planets into missiles.
The process will have almost certainly uncovered any rebels trying to hide nearby, and dropped a few (billion) missiles on their heads. And the same happens for any new enemies trying to set up in the system later. With these self-replicating weapons, once you’ve hit a star system, it stays yours. Even if someone else tries the same approach, their initial factory will be easily discovered and destroyed.
So, the existence of R2-D2 implies that the real superweapons shouldn’t be the flashy Death Stars and Starkillers, but the simple mobile robotic factory, that can be dropped discreetly into myriads of star systems to rapidly and permanently take them over.
What makes Christmas so special? Its religious significance? An intangible feeling of goodwill towards all mankind? One thing that certainly helps is that Christmas is a feast for the senses. And that’s all down to chemistry.
Carol services wouldn’t be the same with the yellow, flickering light of candles. Church candles are traditionally made of beeswax, largely esters of long-chain alcohols with both saturated acids (such as palmitic acid) and unsaturated acids (such as palmitoleic acid). The wick draws the melted wax upwards before it is vaporised and decomposed by the flame.
But it is hot, glowing, carbon-rich soot particles that give out that yellow candlelight. And the smokiness probably comes from unsaturated compounds in the wax. Cheaper candles were once made from animal fat but now most candles are made of saturated hydrocarbons produced by the petrochemical industry, so they burn with cleaner flames.
The spiky green leaves and bright red berries of holly make it a favourite traditional decoration. The red colour comes from a molecule in the anthocyanin family, which is widely found plant pigments. But the berries, which also serve as winter food for birds, also contain two familiar molecules: caffeine and theobromine, the molecule that makes chocolate toxic to dogs. The berries are toxic to humans too, but not as much as some once believed.
There is actually an orange-red molecule named rudolphomycin but sadly it takes its name from a character in the opera La Bohème, not the similarly named red-nosed reindeer. It is one of a number of molecules that make up bohemic acid, which takes its name from the same source.
However, the molecule does have another Christmas link. The smallest fragment of rudolphomycin is a little sugar molecule. We all know of sugars with names ending in –ose, like glucose, sucrose (table sugar) and fructose, so it is no surprise that this fragment was given the name rednose. Rudolphomycin itself is a potential antibiotic and anti-tumour compound.
What are you smoking?
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I is for incense
Famous as one of the gifts of the biblical Wise Men, the incense most associated with Christmas – frankincense – originates as a resin from the Boswellia plant. It has only recently been discovered that burning incense activates ion channels in the brain that can alleviate anxiety or depression thanks to a molecule called incensole acetate. This psychoactive behaviour suggests high mass could really live up to its name.
Snow is made of ice crystals formed from moisture in the atmosphere, which aggregate together to make snowflakes. They commonly have hexagonal structures but there is an almost infinite variety of patterns they can form, although some could appear identical to the human eye. It appears that the hexagonal structure, which reflects the underlying molecular shape of ice, forms first and then undergoes further growth from the corners. The precise pattern is affected by conditions including temperature and relative humidity.
Like many Christmas customs, tinsel decorations originated in Germany but takes their name from the French “estincele” meaning sparkle. In the 19th century, tinsel was made of metal. People who could afford it used silver but for much of the 20th century it was commonly made from lead strands with a shiny tin coating, until it was phased out in the 1970s over fears the lead would poison children. Nowadays, most tinsel is composed of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) with a shiny aluminium coating. You cannot get away from metal if you want sparkle.
Just like holly, mistletoe bears berries that may not be as toxic as commonly thought. In fact, the plant has long been used in medicine. Traditionally, it was used to treat headaches and seizures but doctors are now studying its use as a cancer treatment. Mistletoe contains protein molecules called lectins that are cytotoxic and can kill cancer cells, although research has yet to confirm that the plant could form the basis of a successful drug. But it may also help fight obesity-related liver disease, and contains moronic acid, which is reported to act against HIV and herpes.
Christmas spirits
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A is for alcohol
Strictly speaking, when we refer to alcohol we mean ethanol (or ethyl alcohol), which many people find an essential tool for getting through the Christmas period of sometimes forced socialising and awkward family reunions. It works by affecting the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the bit at the front which weighs up risk-taking activity. Heavy drinkers can be affected by damage to their frontal lobe and adolescents, whose prefrontal cortexes are still forming, may be particularly at risk from alcohol abuse.
The body gets rid of alcohol by first turning it into acetaldehyde (ethanal) and then into acetic acid (ethanoic acid), which can then be broken down further. Acetaldehyde is toxic and drinking too much produces more of it than the enzymes in the human body can decompose, leading to a hangover. There are all sorts of suggestions about how to reduce hangovers. The best one is not to drink so much in the first place.
Sugar wonderland
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S is also for sweeteners
With all that food, you may end up on a diet after Christmas, especially as so many of the foods associated with the festival are so rich in sugar. One alternative may be to use more artificial sweeteners, which are mostly synthetic molecules, although stevia is a natural sweetener derived from the South American plant Stevia rebaudiana. Much smaller amounts of these artificial sweeteners are needed for a sweet taste than sugar but they are not metabolised in the body to generate energy such as glucose. The result is that they contribute far fewer calories, although there is some evidence which suggests they can help cause obesity.
Son Xanda is spotted mating as public donation for Oxford University’s lion research work in Zimbabwe crosses $1 million
The son of Cecil, the lion killed by American dentist and hunter Walter Palmer in July, has been observed mating and scientists now anticipate the birth of Cecil’s grandcubs in March.
“Xanda was seen mating repeatedly with lionesses from the so-called Backpans pride,” said Professor David Macdonald, founding director of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), which has been researching the lions in Hwange national park, Zimbabwe, where Cecil was killed, since 1999. “Pregnancy in lions lasts about 110 days, so all being well Cecil’s grand offspring should be around in March.”
“The real point of this story is not just the pleasure we might all take in thinking of Cecil’s lineage continuing, but more especially the illustration of the power of long-term studies in animal ecology,” said Prof Macdonald, whose research helps improve conservation efforts. “It takes many years to build up a picture of [lions’] lives, giving us now the capacity to follow the fates of lineages.”
Public donations to WildCRU’s lion conservation work have now passed £780,000 ($1.2m), given by over 13,000 individuals and organisations. ‘Cecil was a glorious male lion with a fascinating family history, from which we had learnt a lot about lions’ private lives, and his death was heartbreaking,” said Macdonald. “However, our goal is to learn from it. Good can come from this if the world’s attention can lead to support for our work to improve lion conservation.”
Cecil, who was was 13-years-old, was killed, beheaded and skinned in July. Bait was allegedly used to lure him out of his habitat in Hwange national park so he could be killed.
The scientists are confident of Xanda’s parentage because Cecil was the only pride male around the time of his birth in 2011. They are also confident Xanda is the same animal as the cub they observed four years ago because the pattern of a lion’s whiskers are unique, like a fingerprint. Cecil is likely to have many offspring among the Hwange lions, but Xanda is one of the few which can be confidently linked to him.
WildCRU, which is funded entirely by donations, has been studying the Hwange lions since 1999 and had tracked Cecil since 2008. The project also researches lions in other parts of Africa and has satellite-tracked more than 200 lions and monitored in detail the lives of more than 500 individuals.
It is also involved in an anti-poaching team, an education campaign and an initiative that helps local farmers protect their cattle by informing them of the lions’ movements.
“Lions are beautiful and their behaviour fascinating beyond imagination, and it is heartbreaking that they – most iconic of Africa’s mammals – face a perilous decline,” said Macdonald. “My huge gratitude to those who have supported us therefore extends beyond deep thanks for the money they have gifted, to the hope they have given us of a shared vision of the future, based on valuing wildlife, the environment and sustainability.”
Bright stars top Christmas trees in Christian homes around much of the world. The faithful sing about the “Star of Wonder” that guided the wise men to a manger in the little town of Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. They’re commemorating the Star of Bethlehem described by the Evangelist Matthew in the New Testament. Is the star’s biblical description a pious fiction, or does it contain some astronomical truth?
Puzzles for astronomy
To understand the Star of Bethlehem, we need to think like the three wise men. Motivated by this “star in the east,” they first traveled to Jerusalem and told King Herod the prophecy that a new ruler of the people of Israel would be born. We also need to think like King Herod, who asked the wise men when the star had appeared, because he and his court, apparently, were unaware of any such star in the sky.
These events present us with our first astronomy puzzle of the first Christmas: How could King Herod’s own advisors have been unaware of a star so bright and obvious that it could have led the wise men to Jerusalem?
Next, in order to reach Bethlehem, the wise men had to travel directly south from Jerusalem; somehow that “star in the east” “went before them, ‘til it came and stood over where the young child was.” Now we have our second first-Christmas astronomy puzzle: how can a star “in the east” guide our wise men to the south? The north star guides lost hikers to the north, so shouldn’t a star in the east have led the wise men to the east?
And we have yet a third first-Christmas astronomy puzzle: how does Matthew’s star move “before them,” like the taillights on the snowplow you might follow during a blizzard, and then stop and stand over the manger in Bethlehem, inside of which supposedly lies the infant Jesus?
The adoration of the Magi, after they followed that ‘star in the east’ to Jesus.
The astronomer in me knows that no star can do these things, nor can a comet, or Jupiter, or a supernova, or a conjunction of planets or any other actual bright object in the nighttime sky. One can claim that Matthew’s words describe a miracle, something beyond the laws of physics. But Matthew chose his words carefully and wrote “star in the east” twice, which suggests that these words hold a specific importance for his readers.
Can we find any other explanation, consistent with Matthew’s words, that doesn’t require that the laws of physics be violated and that has something to do with astronomy? The answer, amazingly, is yes.
Astrological answers to astronomical puzzles
Astronomer Michael Molnar points out that “in the east” is a literal translation of the Greek phrase en te anatole, which was a technical term used in Greek mathematical astrology 2,000 years ago. It described, very specifically, a planet that would rise above the eastern horizon just before the sun would appear. Then, just moments after the planet rises, it disappears in the bright glare of the sun in the morning sky. Except for a brief moment, no one can see this “star in the east.”
We need a little bit of astronomy background here. In a human lifetime, virtually all the stars remain fixed in their places; the stars rise and set every night, but they do not move relative to each other. The stars in the Big Dipper appear year after year always in the same place. But the planets, the sun and the moon wander through the fixed stars; in fact, the word “planet” comes from the Greek word for wandering star. Though the planets, sun and moon move along approximately the same path through the background stars, they travel at different speeds, so they often lap each other. When the sun catches up with a planet, we can’t see the planet, but when the sun passes far enough beyond it, the planet reappears.
And now we need a little bit of astrology background. When the planet reappears again for the first time and rises in the morning sky just moments before the sun, for the first time in many months after having been hidden in the sun’s glare for those many months, that moment is known to astrologers as a heliacal rising. A heliacal rising, that special first reappearance of a planet, is what en te anatole referred to in ancient Greek astrology. In particular, the reappearance of a planet like Jupiter was thought by Greek astrologers to be symbolically significant for anyone born on that day.
Thus, the “star in the east” refers to an astronomical event with supposed astrological significance in the context of ancient Greek astrology.
What about the star parked directly above the first crèche? The word usually translated as “stood over” comes from the Greek word epano, which also had an important meaning in ancient astrology. It refers to a particular moment when a planet stops moving and changes apparent direction from westward to eastward motion. This occurs when the Earth, which orbits the sun more quickly than Mars or Jupiter or Saturn, catches up with, or laps, the other planet.
Together, a rare combination of astrological events (the right planet rising before the sun; the sun being in the right constellation of the zodiac; plus a number of other combinations of planetary positions considered important by astrologers) would have suggested to ancient Greek astrologers a regal horoscope and a royal birth.
Wise men looking to the skies
Molnar believes that the wise men were, in fact, very wise and mathematically adept astrologers. They also knew about the Old Testament prophecy that a new king would be born of the family of David. Most likely, they had been watching the heavens for years, waiting for alignments that would foretell the birth of this king. When they identified a powerful set of astrological portents, they decided the time was right to set out to find the prophesied leader.
Giotto Scrovegni’s Adoration of the Magi depicted the Star of Bethlehem as a comet.
If Matthew’s wise men actually undertook a journey to search for a newborn king, the bright star didn’t guide them; it only told them when to set out. And they wouldn’t have found an infant swaddled in a manger. After all, the baby was already eight months old by the time they decoded the astrological message they believed predicted the birth of a future king. The portent began on April 17 of 6 BC (with the heliacal rising of Jupiter that morning, followed, at noon, by its lunar occultation in the constellation Aries) and lasted until December 19 of 6 BC (when Jupiter stopped moving to the west, stood still briefly, and began moving to the east, as compared with the fixed background stars). By the earliest time the men could have arrived in Bethlehem, the baby Jesus would likely have been at least a toddler.
Matthew wrote to convince his readers that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah. Given the astrological clues embedded in his gospel, he must have believed the story of the Star of Bethlehem would be convincing evidence for many in his audience.
Is the holiday season more glitter than glow for you lately? Are you a former Christian who finds that hymns don’t resonate anymore? Do you roll your eyes about the “war on Christmas” manufactroversy? Does the cherubic little Jesus-in-a-Manger fail to flood your body with sweetness? Do you feel mixed about participating in a religious holiday now that you’re not religious? Get the scrooge out with these ten tips:
1. Remind yourself that our celebrations from December 21 through January 1 are not Christian in origin. All over the northern hemisphere, people have celebrated this time as one of birth and new life. Solstice is the reason for the season, and December 25th was the day of solstice under the old Roman calendar. The return of light, the budding of new life, the promise of fresh starts—these were particularly precious to agrarian people who entrusted themselves, one year at a time, to the cycle of the seasons, but they are precious to us all. Here are 12 pre-Christian holiday traditions that aren’t about God or shopping.
2. Discover the magical, mystical origins of the Christmas story. If you love mythology in any form, from the epic of Gilgamesh to the epic of Frodo Baggins, the Christmas narratives are rich with threads of hero quest that have been woven and rewoven and can be traced across time and culture. Why was the virgin birth added late to the Jesus story? Why were stories of dying and rising gods so common in the ancient Near East? What can these ancient stories tell us about who we are as human beings? Antiquities scholars, both Christian and secular, can set you on your own journey of discovery.
3. Claim what fits. In weddings, the saying “old, new, borrowed, blue” reminds us that mixing and matching are what ritual and celebration are made of. Every culture and religion borrows from those that came before. (Syncretism, they call it.) So does every person. So, pick what you cherish from your tradition or others and do your own mixing. One wonderful thing about moving beyond dogma is the quest for meaning is yours. You and only you know which old traditions are still meaningful.
4. Don’t be afraid to embrace explicitly Christian elements. If you’ve been wounded by Christianity or feel like our world is being wounded, it is easy to be bitter or reactive and to pass that reactance on to any children who look up to you. A better approach is to treat Christianity just like you would any other mythic or cultural tradition. All of them reflect the struggle of our ancestors to determine what is good and what is real and how to live in community with each other. All contain a mixture of wisdom and foolishness and downright immorality. Take what seems timeless and wise and move on.
5. Get creative. Draw on your inner artist. The best art takes old elements and assembles them in a way that is unique to the artist. Create your own rituals. What is your life about? What do you want to celebrate and with whom? What might the decorations look like? Which smells and tastes do you savor? What music does resonate? Do what feels genuine, and then persist. Developing a solid sense of ritual and tradition takes time and repetition.
6. Find common ground with visiting relatives. All relationships (teacher-student, work colleague, friend, partner, daughter, nephew) require that we come together around things we have in common: shared interests, respect for each other’s good qualities, overlapping values, the appreciation of a good meal or a football game. Your family may not share your skepticism, curiosity, or desire for personal growth. If not, don’t go there, and don’t let them draw the conversations into your areas of disagreement. Take deep breaths, exercise self control, and change topics. Save deep, painful conversations for another time. Trust yourself. Schedule coffee with sympathetic friends. It may be sad, but it is ok for you to grow emotionally and spiritually even if people you love don’t come along.
7. Be a little wicked if you like. Religious people use the holidays for drawing in new believers or old believers who have fallen by the wayside. Sometime their evangelism comes from the thoughtless assumption that you share their point of view, and sometimes it is intentional. It’s part of our cultural dynamic, so feel free to do the same. Send solstice cards. Invite even religious friends to your celebrations. Give a receptive friend the gift of growth: If someone is wobbling their way out of Christianity, give them a copy of my book, Trusting Doubt. For a friend who may be ready to move from born again “beliefism” to a more thoughtful form of Christian faith, give Bruce Bawer’s Stealing Jesus. For someone who would like to see the Bible through the eyes of an unflinchingly honest Christian antiquities scholar, get Thom Stark’s, The Human Faces of God.
8. Balance your gift giving. Stand on principle–some of the time. Face it, certain kinds of gifts don’t mean much, but not giving them does. Your integrity doesn’t stand or fall based on whether you give the token “Christmas” gifts to your boss, co-workers or neighbors. Go to Starbucks and buy a dozen gift cards, or if time costs you less than money right now, bake those cookies. Tell people you wish them well—because you do–and be done with it. When it comes to real time and money, though . . .
9. Pay attention to your deeper values. Your resources are finite, so how do you want to use them? What are you trying to say to other people with your gifts – about them, about you, about your relationship, about the things that make life rich and full and that you want to share with them? If you are tired of the consumer rat race, opt out. Give some Kiva credit or a goat through the Heifer Project, or adopt a sea turtle or whatever. Then wrap the gift certificate around a really good bar of chocolate.
10. Immerse yourself in the real gifts of the season – love, light, joy, generosity, kindness, gratitude, wonder and shared hope. In the end, what else is there?
The British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission has released a report stating that a 4.6 magnitude earthquake that rocked northeast British Columbia in August was caused by fracking and may be the largest earthquake on record to be attributed to the controversial energy extraction process.
According to the Digital Journal, the commission noted that the epicenter of the earthquake that struck on August 17, 2015 was close to a fracking site operated by Progress Energy Canada Ltd.
Honn Kao, a research scientist with Geological Survey of Canada, stated that the quake is likely be the largest fracking-caused earthquake in the history, saying, "If this is proven to be linked to hydraulic fracturing, this would be a world record in terms of size. In theory, a bigger injection of fracking fluid can certainly trigger a bigger quake."
Opponents of fracking -- where a mixture of water, sand and various chemicals is pumped into the ground at high pressure to create fissures in the shale through which natural gas and oil can escape -- have long complained of geological damage outside of the ravaged landscapes from the leftover effluvia.
In Oklahoma, where fracking has become common, state authorities issued a report saying that the state has experienced 585 magnitude 3+ earthquakes in 2014 compared to 109 events recorded in 2013.
According to the Oklahoma Geological Survey, "The majority of recent earthquakes in central and north-central Oklahoma are very likely triggered by the injection of produced water in disposal wells."
Back in Canada, OGS Chief Operating Officer Ken Paulson said that Progress Energy Canada Ltd. followed regulations and stopped operations as soon as the magnitude was known, adding,"We allowed them to continue operations with a reduced pump rate, but if another event were to occur of 3.5 or greater, you have to shut it down again and we’ll try something different."
NASA'S Hubble telescope captured an image of a baby star buried in interstellar gas and dust with massive jets emitting from it that seem to resemble a double-bladed lightsaber from the new film "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."
Dr. Jennifer Wiseman said the image of dark clouds with a long gold line through it shows the birth stage of a new star system.
"This particular protostar system looks like a double-bladed lightsaber, which is timely with all the Star Wars frenzy going on right now," she added.
A 14,000-year-old thigh bone suggests a mysterious prehistoric humanoid species may have lived alongside humans in southwest China.
The partial femur was discovered in Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, in 1989, but researchers recently published their analysis of the finding in the journal PLoS One, reported Sci-News.com.
The thigh bone is small like the primitive species Homo habilis, with a narrow shaft, and thin outer layer, but the walls of the shaft are reinforced in high-stress areas and the primary flexor muscle is very large and faces backwards, researchers said.
The Maludong humanoid likely weighed about 110 pounds, which is considered very small by pre-modern and Ice Age human standards.
“The find hints at the possibility a pre-modern species may have overlapped in time with modern humans on mainland East Asia, but the case needs to be built up slowly with more bone discoveries,” said study co-author Darren Curnoe, of the University of New South Wales.
The team announced their Red Deer Cave discovery in 2012, sparking controversy and speculation that the bones could represent an unknown new species.
Other scientists wondered if the remains were from a very early type of modern humans, which migrated to that part of China more than 100,000 years ago.
Scientists generally believed that Neanderthals and Denisovans, the youngest pre-modern humans on mainland Eurasia, had died out about 40,000 years ago -- after anatomically modern Homo sapiens arrived.
The research team first published their findings about skull bones discovered in the cave because they believed those would be more revealing, and they found in another journal article that the skull came from a a hybrid between modern Homo sapiens and some unknown species.
They said the femur bone may have come from that unknown species.
"Their anatomy was nothing like we'd seen before in modern humans, whether they lived 200,000 or 200 years ago," said Darren Curnoe, co-author of the study. "They were truly unique and a real mystery to us and many of our colleagues."
The fossil suggests that species may have survived alongside modern Homo sapiens much later than previously believed in the biogeographically diverse region -- and researchers said the finding hints at the possibility that other pre-modern groups survived there, as well.
"If we're correct, then either there were archaic humans still around at that time in southwest China who interbred with modern humans, or their hybrid features persisted longer after interbreeding occurred because of isolation and perhaps through the action of natural selection or genetic drift," Curnoe said.
Indeed, the Star Wars saga taps into the very storytelling devices that have structured myths and religious tales for centuries. And with every new film, fans are able to reinforce their unique communities in a world that has grown, in many ways, increasingly isolated.
A universal hero
Lucas freely admits he based his Star Wars epic on the “hero’s quest” that mythologist Joseph Campbell, in his 1949 book Hero with a Thousand Faces, argued underscores many myths and religious tales.
According to Campbell, hero quests have similar trajectories: the hero leaves his ordinary world and ventures to a place of supernatural wonders. He faces a series of trials to prove his mettle, survives a supreme ordeal, is granted some sort of boon or treasure and returns home to share his knowledge or treasure with those he left behind.
Following this formula, Lucas substituted his own characters for the heroes, villains, and saviors of earlier hero quests.
Take Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope: the hero (Luke Skywalker) leaves his ordinary world (Tatooine) after receiving “a call to adventure” (Princess Leia’s hologram message) and learns he has the special talents of a Jedi. A supportive mentor (Obi Wan Kenobi) offers supernatural aid (lightsaber) and guidance. Then Luke faces a series of trials to prove his mettle (stormtroopers, Jabba the Hutt), survives a supreme ordeal (Death Star, Darth Vader) and returns home wiser and victorious.
I became fascinated with how culture is transmitted through fairy tales and myth. Fairy tales are about how people learn about good and evil…it’s the most intimate struggle that we cope with – trying to do the right thing and what’s expected of us by society, by our peers, and in our hearts.
These stories typically appear during times of doubt and can help viewers reclaim the goodness and innocence in themselves, reminding them they can overcome the evil they see in the world. When Lucas set out to create Star Wars – against the backdrop of Vietnam, Watergate and the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr – he had his work cut out for him.
Lucas acknowledges he wrote Star Wars because he believed our society was in dire need of fairy tales, myth and fantasy – a “new myth” would provide a “New Hope” for an audience that had grown cynical and demoralized.
Today’s anxieties are just as acute. Exhausted by the wars in the Middle East, faced with global terrorism and beset with economic woes, the American people yearn for a mythic narrative that will reaffirm their view of the world, with a traditional American hero who will triumph over evil and ensure “everything will turn out okay.”
Looking into the mirror
Lucas is sometimes accused of promoting escapism. But he’s actually tapping into some key facets of the human condition. After all, it’s in the telling of mythic or religious stories that we attempt to answer fundamental questions like “Who am I?” and, ultimately, “What does it all mean?”
It’s no wonder, then, that in an increasingly secularized society, many find themselves gazing away from the pulpit, instead finding meaning in the stories playing out on screens in living rooms and movie theaters across the country.
Film is sometimes described as a “dream screen” – a mirror, when held in front of an audience, reflects both the personal and collective subconscious of our culture. It’s a place where all our hopes, fears and desires find expression.
Considering Star Wars' mythic foundation, it’s not surprising that it packs such a powerful, emotional punch, stirring the hearts of passionate fans yearning to see the next chapter of the Star Wars universe.
Myths are about creating meaning, reinforcing connections between the I and Thou, and mending the rift between the sacred and profane. They give us heroes we can identify with, who allow us to eventually realize that divinity is not outside the self, but within. In the beginning, Luke might be the character you wanted to pretend to be. With time “playing Luke” helps you become the person you always wanted to be.
Transcending the screen
If all roads of the hero’s journey lead inward, then film, as a shared cultural artifact, begs us to take the first step.
Unlike a simple, standalone artifact (such as a piece of pottery), film is a shared experience. For the audience, the story, its characters and unique props (like the lightsaber) become stored in an emotional and psychological cache. Filed into memory, they become part of the viewer’s personal history and identity.
So, rather than Star Wars existing as something outside of viewers, it takes root within. Many were exposed to the Star Wars films as children. Some acted out scenes at home and at school, investing time and creative energy into a fictional universe and characters who became like an extended family. For them, their “best birthday ever” became indistinguishable from the experience of playing with friends, the cutting of the cake – and their new Star Wars action figures.
In this way, Star Wars no longer remains just a film; it becomes much more.
For this reason, minor changes in the Star Wars narrative can unnerve fans. Denying that Han Solo shot first is like finding out you’re adopted; it’s akin to changing your fundamental understanding of the truth.
Forging connections to the past
Star Wars has further transcended the screen in the form of t-shirts, action figures, theme parks, and in cosplay and fan fiction.
As powerful as any holy relic (which, among believers, can provide affirmation and emotional support), buying and collecting Star Wars merchandise can trigger memories of the past. Accessing positive memories and tapping into nostalgia have been shown to be a critical component of forming a meaningful personal narrative, and the simple act of picking up a toy light saber can return fans to childhood, to a time when they felt happy and secure.
Even if someone didn’t have the rosiest childhood, he or she can still escape to the Star Wars universe, creating an alternate reality where cherished friends, caring mentors and happily-ever-afters await.
Situated in an advertising and media landscape that often overpromises and underdelivers (“Buy this and you will be happy”), the Star Wars universe helps fans create meaning when they might otherwise be unfulfilled.
Cosplaying for community
Watching a Star Wars film or buying Star Wars memorabilia doesn’t only remind us of the “good old days.” It serves a more meaningful purpose: it builds community in a world that has grown increasingly isolated, that has traded the physical for the virtual.
If the decline of social capital in public life (which includes religion) is partially responsible for this phenomenon, the rise of technology is equally at fault.
On the other hand, Star Wars, via play – whether it’s cosplay or swinging a light saber with a friend – demands social interaction, communication and engagement. (Some theorists have even argued that play served as the seed from which all human culture, including religion, evolved.)
Waiting in line for days to buy tickets, wearing your favorite Star Wars t-shirt to school and dressing up as your favorite character at a convention are all social touchstones – icebreakers that facilitate a sense of community and belonging.
It is in this shared storytelling space where history lives and meaning dwells. As cultural critic Lewis Hyde writes, meaningful stories can induce a “moment of grace, a communion, a period during which we too know the hidden coherence of our being and feel the fullness of our lives.”
Once upon a time, we gathered around fires to tell stories. Today we assemble in movie theaters to watch with wonder and awe the flicker of our stories on the screen.
Star Wars is, of course, different from religion in a number of ways. But it still allows us to transcend the everyday and enter a sacred realm – a place where we can glimpse the Holy Land of our better selves and become the heroes we want to be.
There are countless people throughout the US and throughout the world who have been steered away from a life of drug or alcohol addiction after a spiritual experience with a psychedelic drug. In fact, Bill Wilson, the co-founder of the alcoholics anonymous program, actually considered promoting LSD as a tool for alcoholics to shake their addiction. Wilson was a close associate with many early adopters of LSD and took numerous trips in controlled, scientific settings while he was involved with the AA program.
Wilson believed that LSD was not a cure-all for mental problems and diseases such as addiction, but he felt that it could be a catalyst towards understanding one’s own life and changing direction.
“I don’t believe [LSD] has any miraculous property of transforming spiritually and emotionally sick people into healthy ones overnight. It can set up a shining goal on the positive side, after all, it is only a temporary ego-reducer. The vision and insights given by LSD could create a large incentive – at least in a considerable number of people,” Wilson reportedly said after his first LSD trip in 1956.
In a later letter to Gerald Heard, one of his associates in the LSD scene, Wilson wrote, “I am certain that the LSD experiment has helped me very much. I find myself with a heightened color perception and an appreciation of beauty almost destroyed by my years of depression.”
Despite his confidence in the experience and the substance, Wilson was forced to stay relatively quiet about his experiments because he feared legal punishment and professional embarrassment. After rumors of his involvement in the LSD scene had begun to spread, Wilson asked the scientists that he was working with to omit his name in the records of their experiments.
Wilson feared becoming a pariah in the movement that he helped create because many people involved in AA were attached to the idea that all mind-altering chemicals are dangerous and should be avoided.
According to a paper called Pass It On, which was published by AA World Services in 1984, the movement was entirely opposed to his views on LSD.
“As word of Bill’s activities reached the fellowship there were inevitable repercussions. Most AAs were violently opposed to his experimenting with a mind-altering substance. LSD was then totally unfamiliar, poorly researched, and entirely experimental – and Bill was taking it,” the report read.
One of the ideas that permeates AA culture is that any mind altering substance whatsoever is dangerous and could trigger a relapse back into alcohol addiction. However, this view was obviously not shared by AA founder Bill Wilson, who understood that different substances have different effects on people and that it is possible to have a safe spiritual experience on a mind altering drug without slipping back into a life of addiction.
One of the most in-depth studies into Wilson’s LSD use and his connection with that realm is a book called Distilled Spirits by Don Lattin. The book features a number of thinkers, including Wilson, who both studied, and struggled with mind altering substances. The research collected many letters that were written between Wilson and his associates in the LSD scene, giving a glimpse into the thoughts that he was so apprehensive to make public.
