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We’ve spent decades scratching the surface of Mars trying to uncover life there. But we’ve been searching a barren wasteland bombarded by radiation and bathed in toxic perchlorates. The entire time, it's likely that it’s been too hostile to harbor extant life. So if we want a better shot at finding currently living life on Mars, we need to go underground. That is exactly the purpose of Orpheus, a proposed Mars vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) hopper mission put forth by Connor Bunn and Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute at the 57th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “create”, came with this caption:

In which the boys return to the devilishly tricky P of E.

I assume the artist means “problem of evil”, which of course clever theologians have found a way to rationalize (there’s nothing these people can’t explain).  But Mo is unable to come up with his own theodicy.

For all its ancient, familiar features, the Moon is still changing—and sometimes in dramatic ways. Scientists recently identified a fresh 22-meter-wide crater by comparing orbital images taken years apart, revealing a relatively recent impact that no one actually saw happen. The collision blasted bright material outward in striking rays, making the new crater stand out sharply against the darker lunar surface.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been pushing the narrative that raw unpasteurized milk is both safe and better for your health than pasteurized milk. As usual, he is objectively wrong.

The post More On Raw Milk first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

By tracing the origins of an unusual, short-lived particle, researchers have gathered some of the strongest evidence yet that mass can emerge from fluctuations in the vacuum

James Watson’s The Double Helix is probably one of the greatest science books of all time – but Michael Le Page finds he can’t recommend that anyone actually reads it

A bizarre, record-breaking neutrino detected in 2023 may have originated from an exploding primordial black hole—a relic from the early universe. Scientists suggest these black holes could carry a mysterious “dark charge,” causing rare but powerful bursts of energy that current detectors might occasionally catch. This could explain why only one experiment saw the event. The theory also opens the door to discovering entirely new particles and possibly uncovering the nature of dark matter.

A bizarre, record-breaking neutrino detected in 2023 may have originated from an exploding primordial black hole—a relic from the early universe. Scientists suggest these black holes could carry a mysterious “dark charge,” causing rare but powerful bursts of energy that current detectors might occasionally catch. This could explain why only one experiment saw the event. The theory also opens the door to discovering entirely new particles and possibly uncovering the nature of dark matter.

Planetary exploration may be about to get a major speed boost. Researchers tested a semi-autonomous robot that can move from rock to rock, analyzing each without waiting for human instructions. The system completed missions up to three times faster than traditional methods while still accurately identifying important geological targets. This could allow future missions to cover far more ground in the search for resources and signs of life.

Quantum computers struggle with a major flaw: their information vanishes unpredictably. Scientists have now created a new method that can measure this loss over 100 times faster than before. By tracking changes in near real time, researchers can finally see what’s going wrong inside these systems. This could be a big step toward making quantum computers stable and practical.

Scientists have zoomed in on how phosphoric acid moves electrical charges so efficiently in both biology and technology. By freezing a key molecular pair to extremely low temperatures, they found it forms just one stable structure—contrary to predictions. This structure relies on a specific hydrogen-bond network that may be universal in similar systems. The discovery helps explain how protons travel so quickly and could inspire better energy materials.

The Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) experiment has reached its coldest operating temperature, hundreds of times colder than outer space.

Ostensibly, the reasons Donald Trump and his administration (particularly Secretary of War Pete Hegseth) went to war with Iran were as a response to the Iranian leadership’s brutal suppression of Iranian protesters, putting a stop to the activities of Iran’s network of proxy groups throughout the Middle East and to destroy Iran’s ability to create a nuclear arsenal.1 President Trump specifically stated (emphasis in the original):

(…) if we didn’t do what we’re doing right now, you would have had a nuclear war, and they would have taken out many countries.2

He continued: 

The regime already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and our bases, both local and overseas, and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America.3

Since then, the Trump administration has added “enriched uranium” as another reason to invade. 

Iran’s religiously based autocratic regime has indeed brutally suppressed peaceful protest and does support a considerable number of violent proxies in the Middle East. However, there appears to be little or no support for the president’s assertions that Iran has a viable nuclear weapons program. He has previously stated that U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025 had “obliterated” that nation’s nuclear weapons program.4

So, if Iran’s military capabilities aren’t the rationale for the Trump administration’s war on Iran, did the administration’ prosecute this war to help pro-democracy groups in Iran bring down that country’s dictatorial regime? Apparently not. War Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a March 2 Pentagon press briefing, “This is not a so-called regime-change war, but the regime sure did change, and the world is better off for it.”5

That’s not quite correct. Iran’s new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s previous religious and political leader, recently killed in a U.S. air strike, isn’t likely to turn Iran into a secular democracy. U.S. air strikes have, if anything, hardened the anti-western, anti-democracy stance of the Iranian leadership. 

This view—that we are involved in a holy war against Islam—is not Hegseth’s alone.

So, if the United States isn’t intent on democratizing Iran, and Iran’s military capabilities aren’t an issue, what is our government’s motivation for attacking Iran, even bringing it to its knees in what President Trump characterized as “unconditional surrender”? While Trump’s motives may be a bit murky and unfocused, those of Secretary Hegseth are not.

Sporting on his chest, among his many other tattoos, is a Jerusalem cross—a favored emblem of the medieval crusaders. Hegseth, author of the 2020 book, American Crusade, told CBS reporter, Major Garrett: “I mean, obviously, we’re fighting religious fanatics who seek a nuclear capability in order for some religious Armageddon.”6 Troops, he later added, “need a connection with their almighty God in these moments.” A couple of days later, not long after returning from a dignified transfer of soldiers killed in action, Hegseth quoted Psalm 144 at a Pentagon press conference, “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.” 

This view—that we are involved in a holy war against Islam—is not Hegseth’s alone. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has received over 110 complaints from enlisted personnel that their officers, referencing the Book of Revelation, have been essentially preaching to them, telling them this war was part of a divine plan. In one such complaint, a noncommissioned officer (NCO) explained that his commander even said President Trump was divinely anointed to carry out this plan: “This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be ‘afraid’ as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now,” the NCO wrote. “He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,’” the NCO continued. “He had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy.”7

This message reflects Hegseth’s own rhetoric, as expressed at a recent Pentagon Prayer Service (emphasis added): 

Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.8

One major source of evangelical Christian bias among officers in the military is the Air Force Academy. Evangelical Christian proselytizing and pressure to adhere to fundamentalist end-times rhetoric has long been a problem at the Academy. Consider this 2007 news item: 

Three faculty members from United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in Colorado Springs, Colorado–one of whom is also a former cadet–have gone public today with their criticisms of evangelical Christian proselytizing at the USAFA. They are joined by another former cadet now serving in Iraq. One faculty member has been reassigned to the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.9

This is one of several news items I found reporting on this problem during the 2000s. Since I was unable to find any recent news stories on the present state affairs at the Academy, I called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and was privileged to speak with Michael Weinstein, founder and president of MRFF. I asked him if, since there had been some congressional scrutiny of the Air Force Academy’s religious policies, if the Academy had reformed with respect to its religious bias. He told me that, unfortunately, the problem of evangelical Christian religious proselytizing was now worse than ever.10

The coupling of war-making with religious dogma also dredges up the specter of religious wars in the past, culminating in the Thirty Years War.

Among the many instances of religious coercion posted on MRFF’s Air Force Academy’s “Wall of Shame” is the 2022 incident in which a training day was scheduled on Yom Kippur, perhaps the most solemn of Jewish religious holidays (emphasis in the original): 

In its latest slap in the face to Jewish cadets, the ever-religious-diversity-challenged Air Force Academy this year scheduled its “Commandant’s Challenge” on October 5, perfectly timed to fall right smack on Yom Kippur, the most solemn of all Jewish holy days, forcing Jewish cadets to choose between their religion and joining their much-preferred Christian counterparts in the semester’s most important training day.11

Two days after the event, MRFF received an email from the parent of one Jewish cadet who was not only forced to make the agonizing decision to miss Yom Kippur services, but was told by a senior cadet in her chain of command that the issue was her “being Jewish,” suggesting that she at least “make an effort to try Christianity,” inviting her to a Bible study, and telling her that she wouldn’t be “converting away from Judaism” but rather that “Christianity is just enlightened Judaism.” In the words of her parents, this cadet was “humiliated beyond description” and was “was more despondent than we’d ever heard her before.” 

This would seem to be an obvious violation of the separation of church and state. However, when the Air Force Academy invited the highly religious former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to speak, he answered a cadet’s question about the separation of church and state as follows: 

[God] is the reason that our nation excelled the way that it does. And those people that like to criticize America—criticize people in America—and always talking about separation of church and state, which is not in the Constitution, by the way—do they realize that our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, talks about certain unalienable rights given to us by our creator, a.k.a. God—do they realize that the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag says we are one nation under God—in many courtrooms, on the wall, it says ‘In God we Trust’—every coin in our pocket, every bill in our wallet says ‘In God we Trust.’ So, if it’s in our founding documents, it’s in our Pledge, it’s on our courts, it’s on our money, but we’re not supposed to talk about it. What in the world is that? In medicine we call it schizophrenia.12

While “In God We Trust” is engraved on our coins, and while “under God:” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance in the 1950s, this hardly constitutes the imposition of a state religion. In any case, Carson was wrong in saying separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. The First Amendment, possibly the most important portion of the Bill of Rights opens with a prohibition against government involvement in religion: 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. 

Further erosion of the separation of church and state may be found at the Air Force Academy, as evidenced by the recent appointment of Erika Kirk, conservative activist and widow of Charlie Kirk, to the academy’s Board of Visitors. A recent news report on this appointment reported how this is in keeping with Secretary Hegseth’s framing of the current war in terms of a Christian end-times struggle between good and evil: 

Records from the United States Air Force Academy’s oversight board show leaders dismantling diversity programs and reviewing curriculum as the board embraces what critics call a concerning ideological turn toward Christian nationalism and prepares to seat conservative activist Erika Kirk.13

The communications, revealed in December 2025 meeting minutes reviewed by The Intercept, come as the administration has employed religious rhetoric in its military policies. Amid the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran, some service members and political supporters have framed the war in religious terms, including describing it as part of “God’s divine plan.” 

Critics warn the changes could reshape how the military’s premier officer training institution educates future leaders as it aligns with the administration’s “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” initiative, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s marquee plan to reverse the military’s diversity efforts and emphasize “lethality.” 

The rhetoric voiced above by a military commander to his troops is ominous since it brings to mind the specter of nuclear war. The coupling of war-making with religious dogma also dredges up the specter of religious wars in the past, culminating in the Thirty Years War, and the creation of religious states such as Savonarola’s Florence, Calvin’s Geneva, and Oliver Cromwell’s England. Our more secular society grew out of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, itself engendered in reaction to the excesses of these religious wars and religious states. 

Hegseth, in contrast, sees our nation not as one founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, but rather as a specifically Christian nation: 

“America was founded as a Christian nation,” he said at a recent National Prayer Breakfast. “It remains a Christian nation in our DNA, if we can keep it,” he added, splicing some religion onto a famous Benjamin Franklin quip about whether the US was a republic or a monarchy.14

“Not only are we warriors armed with the arsenal of freedom, we ultimately are armed with the arsenal of faith,” he said, adapting Franklin D. Roosevelt’s idea that the US should be the arsenal of democracy to his own religious worldview 

So, was America founded as a Christian nation? Not according to the second president John Adams who was one of the authors of the Constitution. Adams, then vice president under George Washington, while negotiating the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796 to secure commercial shipping rights and to protect American ships in the Mediterranean from the Barbary pirates, said: 

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.15

Hegseth is heavily influenced by Douglas Wilson, a conservative theologian and Christian Nationalist—one who advocates for Christian dominance over government and society. The sort of Christianity Wilson advocates is something few American Christians today would recognize as what they believe16 Hegseth’s views would also seem to derive from the (now discredited) end-times scenario proposed by the late Hal Lindsey, which involved the building of the Third Temple, elucidated in a 2015 report from one of his websites: 

Unbelieving religious Jews will rebuild the false temple and offer false animal sacrifices during the first part of the Tribulation. (Daniel 11:31). Then the “man of lawlessness”, the Antichrist, will desecrate that false temple of God by taking his seat in the Holy of Holies, displaying himself as being God. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 NASB) That event will start the last half of the Tribulation. That will start 3½ years of the greatest horrors yet known to mankind. It will end with the visible Coming of THE ALMIGHTY, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will rule for 1000 years of peace. Then is the last Judgment of all unbelievers of all Ages. He will then establish forever the New Heaven and Earth.17

In a 2018 speech, Hegseth rhapsodized about the possibility of building the Third Temple on the Temple Mount.18 Lindsey’s prophecies, first expressed in his first book The Late, Great Planet Earth(the best-selling book of the 1970s), originally called for the Tribulation, the seven-year period leading up to the Battle of Armageddon, to begin within the generation (in his reckoning a period of 40 years) of the creation of the state of Israel. Since Israel became a state in 1948, that would have meant the Tribulation would have begun in 1988. However, as that year approached without it being likely it would be the beginning of the end, Lindsey recalculated the time two different ways. First, he said that the beginning of Israel as a state perhaps should not be calculated as 1948. Rather, it should be calculated as 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank in the Six Day War. Thus, the Tribulation would begin in 2007. Next, he decided a generation might really mean 100 years, rather than 40. Thus, the Tribulation might well begin in 2048 (1948 + 100) or even 2067 (1967 + 100). 

The end-times scenarios that so animate Pete Hegseth and many of the proselytizers at the Air Force Academy aren’t really based that firmly on the Christian scriptures.

The event that will supposedly herald the Tribulation is the Rapture—the belief that, just before the horrific catastrophes of the end-times are about to take place, true believers will be taken up to heaven, thus saved from all the horrors specified in the Book of Revelation. This elaborate doctrine is based on just two verses from the Pauline epistle 1 Thessalonians, 1 Thess.14:16, 17: 

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so, we will be with the Lord forever. 

The “we” Paul was referring to in these verses was quite literal, since the Christians of the first century believed the world would end with their generation. Consider, for example, the following passages from the Gospel of Matthew, First (Mt. 10:23): 

When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. 

This view that Christ would return to the earth in the generation of the first believers is made even more explicit in MT. 16:27, 28: 

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall requite every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you: There are some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. 

Since Jesus didn’t return in the lifetimes of those to whom he was speaking, to requite everyone according to their works, i.e., the Last Judgement, and since Paul and the Christians of the first century did not rise to meet God in the air, how is it that end times prognosticators see the verses above as applying to today, some two thousand years later? Christian apologists go to great lengths to explain these contradictions. One of these rationalizations is that, “the Son of man coming in the glory of his father” refers to the Transfiguration, when, according to the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) Jesus was supernaturally transformed on a mountain in the presence of three of his disciples.19

While this interpretation is rather adroit it fails to explain the allusion to the last judgment in Mt. 16:28. A less adroit rationalization is that Mt. 16:27, 28 refers to the miracle of Pentecost (Acts 2:1–12) when the Holy Spirit supposedly descend upon the disciples, allowing them to speak in other languages than their own. Both rationalizations violate Occam’s Razor. The simplest and most direct interpretation of the verses above is that both Paul and the author of Matthew believed in the imminent return of Jesus, and that the verses above were never intended to refer to events two thousand years in the future.20

They are, in fact, extrabiblical elaborations, wild fantasies based on teasing bizarre interpretations out of tenuous biblical passages

The end-times scenarios that so animate Pete Hegseth and many of the proselytizers at the Air Force Academy aren’t really based that firmly on the Christian scriptures. They are, in fact, extrabiblical elaborations, wild fantasies based on teasing bizarre interpretations out of tenuous biblical passages. As an example of this, consider the Rapture, a mainstay of modern end-times narratives. As noted above, the entire biblical support for this is just two verses from a single Pauline epistle, 1 Thessalonians 14:16, 17. In fact, the modern fundamentalist scenario of the Rapture, that has believers suddenly and mysteriously disappearing en masse as a prelude to the Tribulation, was the invention, in 1830, of a single maverick theologian of dubious credentials, John Nelson Darby (1800–1882).21

Perhaps Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the proselytizers at the Air Force Academy, and those military officers who see the President as anointed by God to bring about Armageddon, and who reference the Bible to back up their views, should read one more Bible verse, purporting to be the words of Jesus, concerning when the end will come, Matthew 24:36 (KJV): “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”

New research shows that Earth formed from inner Solar System material. Isotopic geochemistry analysis found no evidence that material from beyond Jupiter contributed to Earth's bulk composition. The results also support the idea that Earth's water wasn't delivered by comets.

Two of the forefathers of quantum theory, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, had a famous argument over whether light is a wave or a particle. Columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan finds that the matter has been settled once and for all

Paul McCartney was—and I use the past tense—one of the two greatest songwriters of the era that comprised the apogee of pop music. (The other was John Lennon; I’m excluding Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell as were folkier).  Sadly, he’s still making music, and, save for George Harrison, each of the Beatles immediately lost their touch after they went solo.

Here’s a McCartney song touted in the NYT as the “What’s New” in music we should pay attention to. It’s from a new album he’s releasing in May. Their blurb:

Paul McCartney, ‘Days We Left Behind”

“The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” to be released May 29, will be Paul McCartney’s first solo album since 2020; it’s named after a Liverpool street in the neighborhood where he grew up. In “Days We Left Behind,” a cozy ballad carried by acoustic guitar and piano, he sings about places and memories as both fragile and lasting; he mentions Forthlin Road, the street where he lived and wrote early songs with John Lennon. “Nothing stays the same,” he muses, but he also insists, “No one can erase the days we left behind.” His voice is shakier than it once was, only making things more poignant.

Listen for yourself. Yes, his voice is shaky, a mere shadow of his voice from the Sixties. Worse, the song is lame in both melody and lyrics, though the melody is worse than the lyrics, which are at least tolerable (I give them below).

I realize that Macca was made to create music, and probably can’t stop doing it.  And this song is still better than a lot of the dreck that passes for pop/rock music these days, but compared to the earlier McCartney, well, it’s sad.  If you leave the video on, you’ll see a horrific AI-generated video in which all four Beatles are stuck in.

Lyrics:

Looking back at white and black
Reminders of my past
Smoky bars and cheap guitars
But nothing built to last

Nothing ever stays
Nothing comes to mind
No one can erase
The days we left behind

See the boys of Dungeon Lane
Along the Mersey shore
Some of them will feel the pain
But some were meant for more

And nothing stays the same
No one needs to cry
Nothing can reclaim
The days we left behind

We met at Forthlin Road
And wrote a secret code
To never be spoken
I stand by what I said
The promise that I made
Will never be broken

Nothing ever stays
Nothing comes to mind
And no one can erase
The days we left behind

In the skies the skylarks rise
Above the sounds of war
Since that day I knew they’d stay
With me for evermore

’Cause nothing stays the same
And no one needs to cry
And no one is to blame
For the days we left behind
The days we left behind

The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission have captured extraordinary views of the moon, including close-ups of the far side and a breathtaking solar eclipse

I would have missed this video had reader Doug not called my attention to it. It’s a very good half-hour discussion by evolutionary biologist Zach B. Hancock, a professor at Augusta University, in which he recommends the the top ten most influential books in evolutionary biology. Since Hancock is a population geneticist, the books deal largely with evolutionary genetics, but not all of them.

I slipped in at #10 with my book on Speciation with Allen Orr, but I won’t be too humble to claim our book wasn’t influential, for, as Hancock notes, it’s the only comprehensive book on the origin of species around. (Darwin’s big 1859 book was about the origin of adaptations, and had little that was useful about the origin of species.) Hancock regrets that Allen and I aren’t going to do a second edition, but Allen refuses to, and I don’t have the spoons (I do have 200 pages of notes on relevant papers that appeared after our book came out, but that will go nowhere.)

The rest of the list is stellar, and shows a keen judgement about the field. I’m not sure I would have put Lack’s book on the Galápagos finches in there, as it’s pretty much out of date. It should be replaced by a very important book by Ernst Mayr, his Systematics and the Origin of Species or the updated version in 1963,  Animal Species and Evolution. It was Mayr who codified the Biological Species Concept and paved the way for experimental and observational studies of speciation, and hence my book with Orr. 

I’d expect every graduate student in evolutionary genetics to have read  most of these books by the time they get their Ph.D. In fact, when I was on prelim hearings, judging whether students could be admitted to candidacy after a year or two, I and my colleague Doug Schemske made a habit of asking students to name the major accomplishments of several of the authors listed below. My impression is that the history of the field is not given so much weight now, so I wonder if students could still explain the major accomplishments of say, Theodosius Dobzhansky or Ronald Fisher. The books are of more than historical interest, for they raise questions that are still relevant. (I spent a lot of my career trying to understand the phenomenon of “Haldane’s Rule,” explained by J.B.S. Haldane in 1922. The paper was completely neglected until I read it in the early eighties and started a cottage industry of explanations [my own was largely wrong]).

Hancock’s explication of each book is excellent.  If you’re an academic teaching evolutionary biology, you might see how many of these books your students have read.

One commenter on YouTube gave the list and the time points in the video where each is discussed (the links go to those time point).

2:26 #10 Speciation – Jerry Coyne & Allen Orr
4:50 #9 Darwin’s Finches – David Lack
6:59#8 Evolution: The Modern Synthesis – Julian Huxley
9:15 #7 The Origins Of Genome Architecture – Michael Lynch
11:23 #6 Chance & Necessity – Jacques Monod
13:26 #5 The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins
16:54 #4 The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution – Motoo Kimura
19:34 #3 Genetics and the Origin of Species – Theodosius Dobzhansky
22:20 #2 The Genetical Theory Of Natural Selection – Ronald Fisher
26:35 #1 On The Origin Of Species – Charles Darwin

Training programmes for people with aphantasia – the inability to create mental images – are challenging neuroscientists' understanding of how we create thoughts

Amplifying the brain's waste disposal system seems to clear a substance that drives migraines, relieving some of the pain associated with the condition