Currently Reading

It is spoooooky quiet at work today. One of my New Year's resolutions for this year is going to be to do more work at work. I'm going to turn into a machine.. just watch.

I started reading a book I found recommended on Millinerd over Christmas called Christian Belief in a Postmodern World: The Full Wealth of Conviction. I was immediately roped in by the first few chapters which discuss the perceived feud between science and religion. The book defends a position I've held for some time, that philosophically there is no conflict between science and religion and that they attempt to answer fundamentally different questions. The book provides some interesting historical commentary on how Christianity actually worked as a catalyst in the development of experimental science. Much of the perceived feud can be traced to the trial of Galileo by the Church and how the French philisophes (Voltaire etc) used this as an example of religions stifling effect on scientific progress. This period of history is really interesting and there was a lot more involved in the whole Galileo thing than I was aware of (His crime not necessarily "looking up the truth").

I got a bit bogged down in the next few chapters that discuss some philosophical arguments (Booooring!), but it looks like there is some good stuff yet to come.

Beagle a Bust

I ate lunch with my friend Nate Tuesday morning before heading home for Christmas. We discussed some of his research on bacteria and I mentioned that while bacteria might not be as exciting a subset of marine biology as dolphins, it's still pretty cool. I think one of the most fascinating things about bacteria is that it can be found living in the most extreme non life promoting environments on earth, suggesting that bacterial life could exist somewhere other than our planet. When Nate dropped me off I was excited to find a new national geographic on my door step with a cover article on Mars that asked the question "Is there life in Martian Ice?" (something like that anyway)!

New evidence from ever more detailed mappings of the Martian surface show that there are processes at work which are much more dynamic than previously thought. A possible explanation for these features is that there is actually more water (aka ice) in a wider range of locations on mars than previously thought. There are actually three different missions that will be reaching and attempting to land on mars in the next month or so! Was anyone else aware of this more than say a week or two ago? The first landing was scheduled to happen on Christmas day. The Brits launched up a satellite which is now orbiting around Mars, but unfortunately it looks like the lander part of the mission is a bust. I have been following the story since Christmas and while they are saying that there still might be a chance of contacting the Beagle lander it doesn't sound very promising. Here's the latest article.

It's disappointing that the Beagle is lost, but the satellite thing that brought it to Mars is still going to be able to get some really good data. Including looking under the surface of Mars with some kind of radar! The US has two landers scheduled to hit mars in the next month or so. These landers are much more sophisticated than the British one that was lost. The US landers will be able to drive around to look at different rocks and such. Does anyone else get excited about this stuff? I'm sure there will be more posts to come, so stay tuned.