Is Science Faith-Based?

Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has a new post highlighting the differences between science and faith. And he does a much better job, in my opinon, than I did.

Atlantis Reaches Space

The weather turned out to be benign (at least at Cape Canaveral) and the fuel sensors worked successfully, allowing Atlantis to launch on-time at 2:45 PM EST. The shuttle reached space several minutes later and is on its way to the International Space Station carrying the Columbus science laboratory (Europe's single largest contribution to the station).

Columbus is about 23 feet long and 15 feet wide, allowing it to hold 10 "racks" of experiments, each approximately the size of a phone booth. Five NASA racks will be added to the laboratory once it is in orbit. Each rack provides independent controls for power and cooling, as well as communication links to earthbound controllers and researchers. These links will allow scientists all over Europe to participate in their own experiments in space from several user centers and, in some cases, even from their own work locations.

Atlantis Passes Fuel Sensor Checks; to Launch at 2:45 PM EST

Space Shuttle Atlantis passed all checks on the low-fuel sensors that failed in December, prompting NASA's two-month delay. The shuttle is due to launch in just a few minutes, at 2:45 PM EST, if the weather holds.

PlanetQuest Update

Laurence Doyle posted a new update early this morning on PlanetQuest, saying:

I applied for the NASA Kepler Science Team and included PlanetQuest as the educational component of the proposal. I proposed to find planets in the multiple star systems that Kepler observes and won the proposal.

So, there will be NASA Kepler spacecraft data in the PlanetQuest Collaboratory (we'll divvy it up evenly) to look for planets in. What is amazing about these data is that the precision will be 100 times anything achieved on Earth -- that is, the detection of Earth-sized planets around Sunlike stars will be possible.

So this seems like good news for both Dr. Doyle's PlanetQuest efforts and the Kepler Mission, both of which are projects that I've been interested in for a very long time.

Now, if PlanetQuest can just get their software out the door and into my grubby little hands....

Launch Postponed

12/17/2007 - 9:28 AM - UPDATE: In order to give their staff some time off over the holidays, NASA has pushed the shuttle's launch date back again, this time to January 10. If they dalay much longer, the launch of Atlantis could impact the timeline for 2008's remaining shuttle launches. NASA has a pretty limited lifespan for these shuttles, which are supposed to be retired by 2010, so any delay in launching missions this year could have serious repercussions.

12/10/2007 - 8:11 AM - UPDATE: Still unable to find and correct the fuel sensor glitch, NASA has decided to postpone the launch until January 2, 2008. Doing so will hopefully give their people time to figure out why the sensors are failing (or replace them with a different set that will hopefully work better).

12/08/2007 10:26 AM - UPDATE: NASA has added a further delay, but odds are looking pretty good for a launch tomorrow. These sensors are a four-piece backup system, and when they fueled the shuttle on Thursday only two of the four registered. NASA's rules call for at least three to be functioning in order to launch, but they may relax that rule. They are also planning to shorten their launch window from the normal five minutes to just one minute to conserve a little extra fuel. The reason is that the sensors in question are designed to shut off the engines after fuel gets pretty low, and this way if they fail to shut off there will be a little bit more fuel left at the end of the burn.

12/07/2007 8:09 AM - UPDATE: It's not going to be today, either. NASA is going to spend a little time trying to figure out how to fix the wiring to the sensors. If they can't come up with a solution quickly, they may just launch tomorrow, anyway. These sensors are redundant systems, so not having them won't impact the launch unless the primary systems fail.

So the weather was perfect, but the shuttle wasn't. Two of four low-level fuel sensors on the Atlantis' external fuel tank malfunctioned, prompting a delay of at least 24 hours. Hopefully they'll get things fixed and launch the shuttle tomorrow.

Shuttle Launch Tomorrow

So you probably know by now, but Atlantis is due to launch tomorrow at 4:31 pm EST (3:31 pm here in the Midwest) carrying the European Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station. The weather looks good, so barring any unforseen complications, the next step in space-borne science should be getting underway pretty soon.

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grade Chimp?

Researchers from Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute created a working memory task that involved displaying a series of numbers on the screen for a fraction of a second then covering them with boxes. The subjects (chimps and university students) were tasked to touch the white squares in the correct numerical order.

What they discovered was that the nine university students performed progressively worse as the time the numbers were visible decreased from 0.6 seconds to 0.21 seconds, as they had expected. The explanation is that humans cannot scan the screen fast enough to see and mentally record all of the numbers.

One of the two chimps in the study, Ai, demonstrated the same results. The other chimp, seven-year-old Ayumu, however, demonstrated no decreased ability as the time interval shrank. In other words, Ayumu actually performed better on this task than any of the students. The students' performance was on par with Ai, the older chimp.

Is it possible that the average, young university student has roughly the same cognitive abilities as a middle-aged chimp, and that younger chimps have better cognitive abilities than younger people? Sure, anything is possible. But it's not likely. Rather, the researchers believe that chimps in general (or at least Ayumu specifically) have much stronger eidetic memory (more commonly referred to as photographic memory) than the average human.

It should also be pointed out that the sample size of this study was limited to nine students and two chimpanzees. That's a pretty small sample for any real scientific study. However, this could open the door to new areas of cognitive research.