Alan Alda: Scientists Should Learn to Talk to Kids

What is time?

That's the question put to scientists this year by the Flame Challenge, a contest first conceived by actor Alan Alda, famous for his roles on the TV shows M*A*S*H and "The West Wing." The directive? For scientists to explain this complex concept in ways that will inspire and interest 11-year-old children.

The Flame Challenge gets its name from last year's inaugural competition, which posed a question from Alda's own childhood: What is flame? As an 11-year-old, Alda had asked a teacher this question and gotten back the baffling, one-world answer, "oxidation."

Now scientists will face an arguably bigger challenge in explaining the concept of time. Kids will judge the entries, which are due by March 1. (Teachers must apply for their classrooms to become judges by Feb. 1.) Creativity is encouraged: Last year, the winner explained flame with not only an animated video, but also with an originally composed song.

Alda talked with LiveScience about the sophisticated minds of 11-year-olds, his own interest in science and why scientists should learn to talk to kids.

LIveScience: How did you get interested in science communication?

Alda: I think my interest began when I was actively involved in helping communicate science when I was doing "Scientific American Frontiers" and other science shows on PBS. Accidentally, we discovered an unusual way to do science communication, which was through conversations with scientists rather than asking a set bunch of questions that had predictable answers. What we did was get into a real conversation where I didn't know what the answers were going to be. I didn't even know what the questions were going to be. [What's That? Your Basic Physics Questions Answered]

What happened was the scientists, in pretty much every case, came out from behind lecture mode and got personal, because they really wanted one person to understand, which was me. When I finally did understand it, it often became a little television moment where the audience saw an event take place, and it made it easier for them to understand it, too.

In the course of that, I began to think, wouldn't it be wonderful if scientists had this ability to engage in a personal dialogue with the public like this without somebody like me having to be there for it?

LiveScience: What's the goal of the Flame Challenge?

Alda: I'll tell you what it looks like it is and what it actually is. It looks like it's a way to teach 11-year-olds science, and what it really is is a way to get scientists to experience how hard it is to say something that they know so well in a way that an 11-year-old can understand it, so that they get challenged by the difficulty of it, and, we hope, want to look further into communicating hard stuff more simply.

What's interesting about it is that the kids are so excited about being the judges of these entries. They get a chance for the first time, somebody their age, to judge the work of somebody the scientist's age. They're very serious about it, they're not flippant at all. In the first year's round a very common complaint was that the entries weren't informative enough. They don't just want entertainment, they want information. [Gallery: Science Meets Art]

LiveScience: What's the advantage of gearing the answers toward kids rather than adults?

Alda: That just happened by accident. The way this came about, I was asked to write a guest editorial for the journal Science about communicating science. I can remember the chair I was sitting in where I was working on it, and I remember thinking, "I'm writing something anybody could write."

Everybody knows all these reasons we need good communication. It suddenly occurred to me, wait a minute, I have a very vivid story of poor science communication. It was when a teacher gave me a one-word answer to a question. I was so fascinated by what flame was, and I asked this teacher and she said, "Oxidation."

It became a real springboard for action. What happened is that more than 800 scientists around the world contributed entries [last year], and more than 6,000 kids around the world became judges, including an aboriginal classroom in Australia. They were from all over.

This is purely anecdotal, but 11 seems to be an age where you can formulate tough questions, and you can assimilate the answers to those questions. But it also turns out that if an answer makes sense to kids, it's going to make sense to most of the rest of us, too.

LiveScience: This year's question seems much tougher.

Alda: It's way tougher, and it makes me think that 11-year-olds have grown in sophistication since I was an 11-year-old. I asked about something you could see and feel the heat from and you could read by. It was there. But now these kids are asking —"What is time?" — which you can keep track of with a clock or the change of seasons, but what it actually is is an extremely deep question that I think a lot of people have tried to answer unsuccessfully.

It'll be really interesting to see how scientists approach this answer. I think it has to be satisfying on the sense that it gives you a handle in the underlying depth of the question and maybe gets you interested in exploring it further. I think it would be a very successful answer if all it does is get a couple of kids interested in devoting their lives to that question.

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10 Scientists Who Mattered in 2012

Scientists were plenty busy this year, with landing the 1-ton rover Curiosity on Mars, announcing the discovery of what is likely the Higgs boson and even revealing a little-dirty secret in research.

For the second year, the editors of the scientific journal Nature have announced their "Nature's 10," the top 10 scientists who mattered in 2012, with profiles that dig deeper into the personal stories behind the achievements. Here's a look at their picks.

A heavenly discovery?

A particle sought after for decades came to light in spectacular fashion on July Fourth this year, with physicists from two experiments being conducted in the Large Hadron (LHC) Collider near Geneva announcing they had found a particle that looked eerily similar to the Higgs boson, predicted to give all other matter its mass.

While several billion neurons (not to mention the Wattage used in the LHC) were behind the discovery, director general of LHC's host lab CERN, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, made sure the world heard about it, according to Nature editors. Apparently neither group was willing to claim an actual "discovery" until their evidence was proven to a certain level of certainty. With a gentle hand, Heuer nudged for the announcement, but let the scientists be scientists and stick to the facts (for instance saying they had a 5 and 4.9 sigma level of certainty, respectively), while he used, only once, the word "discovery." (A 5 sigma means there is only a one in 3.5 million chance the signal seen in the LHC data isn't real.) [Top 5 Implications of Finding the Higgs Boson]

Mars madness

Another whopper for science in 2012 was arguably the landing of the Mars rover Curiosity on the Red Planet's surface. Leading the 50-person team behind the smooth landing was engineer Adam Steltzner, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The touchdown technique was a first: Curiosity was lowered to the Martian surface on cables by a rocket-powered sky crane, one that had an alien look on its own. "Because it looked so outlandish, we all felt very exposed," Steltzner told Nature. "If it failed, people would have been like, 'You idiots.'" It didn't.

Since its spectacular touchdown, Curiosity has discovered an ancient streambed where water likely flowed for thousands of years long ago and hints of possibly life-giving organic compounds.

Hurricane Sandy Cassandra

Not all happenings were so uplifting. After Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast and left transportation tunnels flooded and millions without power, climatologist Cynthia Rosenzweig wasn't surprised. That's because the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies researcher and a team of other scientists had forecasted such cataclysmic events in 2000 as part of a report for the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The dozen years of warning helped city officials incorporate climate change into city planning. Rosenzweig, who started off as a farmer in Tuscany but eventually moved from agricultural science to climate science, is now trying to assess whether those efforts reduced Sandy's damage. [On the Ground: Hurricane Sandy in Images]

Can you repeat that?

It's a dirty-little secret that many scientific results can't be reproduced. In 2006, Elizabeth Iorns, a geneticist at the University of Miami, tried to replicate a study about a cancer gene and couldn't. She found that few scientific journals wanted to publish her findings and that she got blowback from colleagues. That lit a fire in her belly to ensure that more scientific results are rigorously tested. To that end, she created a startup based in Palo Alto, Calif., called the Reproducibility Initiative. The goal of the fledgling nonprofit is to have third-party researchers replicate important scientific experiments. If the startup can make headway, it may help scientists know which results are real.

Sex bias

While it's no surprise that women are underrepresented in science, pinning that to discrimination, rather than gender differences in aptitude or interest, has been tricky. But when Yale University microbiologist Jo Handelsman showed that researchers offer fictitious female job applicants about $4,000 less in salary and rate them as less competent and worthy of mentorship than male counterparts, she produced strong evidence for sexual bias. Handelsman says she hasn't personally experienced strong bias, but became motivated to speak out about it when other women scientists described their experiences with sex discrimination.

Mad man

Timothy Gowers isn't a likelier crusader in the world of scientific journal publishing. The Cambridge University mathematician has won the Fields Medal (mathematics highest honor) and has been knighted for his influential work. But he made waves this year when he spearheaded a global boycott of the giant publishing group Elsevier, discontented with the publishing group's sky-high prices and their fight against open-access scientific publishing, which can be viewed by everyone without a subscription. The boycott has fueled growing interest in open-access publishing and may even have influenced Elsevier to withdraw its support for a controversial, anti-open access political bill. The bill, the Research Works Act, would have allowed scientists to publish research funded with U.S. taxpayer money in journals that would be closed off to the general public.

Deadly research

When Ron Fouchier, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, used just four genetic tweaks to create a highly lethal strain of the H5N1 bird flu that could spread through the air, it sparked a global discussion about whether such deadly pathogens should be created. Critics argued that the mutant bird flu could be accidentally released and that publishing the findings could give would-be terrorists a road-map for creating a biological weapon. Fouchier's results were eventually published in Nature with key methodological details removed, but not without a flurry of discussion over the ethics of the research. Throughout it all, Fouchier has been arguing that the research is necessary and safe. In January 2012, Fouchier and other flu researchers agreed to a moratorium on researching this particular type of flu. Now he has set his sights on a mysterious, deadly form of pneumonia that has emerged from a bat virus in Saudi Arabia.

Watching cells grow

Cedric Blanpain doesn't trust Petri dishes, sort of. This skepticism in the ability of lab-dish cell growth to replicate what happens in real life led Blanpain to uncover, in 2011, distinct stem cells in the adult mammary gland. This year, he applied a carcinogen to mouse skin and then followed tumor growth using a cell-tracking method; his results showed not all cells contribute equally to tumor growth, with some dwindling after a few cell divisions and others, the stem cells, generating thousands of clones — the tumor-generating cells. "I saw the first slide, and I said 'show me the second one.' After the fifth, I was sure what I was seeing," Blanpain told Nature.

Manslaughter verdict

A reminder that science doesn't always, and sometimes cannot, stay in the ivory towers, this year brought a devastating manslaughter verdict for six Italian scientists and one government official Bernardo De Bernardinis (an engineer by training) accused of being too reassuring about the risk of an earthquake prior to a temblor in 2009 that killed 309 individuals in the town of L'Aquila. [See Photos of L'Aquila Earthquake Destruction]

Seismologists across the globe expressed appall at a verdict that didn't account for the fact that earthquakes cannot be predicted with any level of accuracy. Even so, De Bernardinis not only showed compassion for those who lost loved ones in the earthquake, but he also showed up at every hearing, Nature reported. Insisting that he only listened to what the seismologists told him before the infamous press conference at the center of this trial, De Bernardinis also admits he should've waited for a concise statement from the scientists before addressing the public. Now, he hopes the trial will lead to better risk-prevention systems in Italy that have clear-cut expectations for scientists, government officials and the media.

Sequencing genomes

The head of the Chinese genome-sequencing institute, BGI, Jun Wang has shown modesty and confidence in the significance of what he and colleagues are doing. And the numbers speak worlds: BGI is leading the sequencing of 10,000 vertebrates (animals with backbones), 5,000 insects and other arthropods, and more than 1,000 birds, including some extinct ones. In this year alone, BGI was listed in 100 scientific publications, Nature reports, adding the organization is a "main player" in the 1,000 Genomes Project Consortium, whose aim is to find genetic factors behind disease.

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Holiday Gift to Stargazers: The Christmas Sky

The Yuletide evening sky is especially rewarding, with much of the eastern swathe filled with brilliant stars — sort of a celestial Christmas tree.

Distinctive groupings of stars forming part of the recognized constellation outlines, or lying within their boundaries, are known as asterisms. Ranging in size from sprawling naked-eye figures to minute stellar settings, they are found in every quarter of the sky and at all seasons of the year. 

The larger asterisms — ones like the Big Dipper in Ursa Major and the Great Square of Pegasus — are often better known than their host constellations. One of the most famous is in the northwest these frosty December evenings. 

The Northern Cross

The brightest six stars of the constellation Cygnus (the Swan) — which was known simply as the “Bird” in ancient times — compose an asterism popularly called the Northern Cross. [Night Sky Observing Guide for December 2012 (Gallery)]

Bright Deneb decorates the top of the Cross. Albereo, at the foot of the Cross, is really a pair of stars of beautifully contrasting colors: a third-magnitude orange star and its fifth-magnitude blue companion are clearly visible in even a low-power telescope. (In astronomy, lower magnitudes signify relatively brighter objects. Venus' magnitude is around -5, for example, while the full moon's is about -13.)

While usually regarded as a summertime pattern, the Northern Cross is best oriented for viewing now. It  appears to stand majestically upright on the northwest horizon at around 8:30 p.m. local time, forming an appropriate Christmas symbol. (And just before dawn on Easter morning, the cross lies on its side in the eastern sky.)

The Christmas package

Look over toward the southeast part of the sky at about the same time, 8:30 p.m. or so. Can you see a large package in the sky, tied with a pretty bow across the middle? Four bright stars outline the package, while three others make up the decorative bow. [Stunning Night Sky Photos of December 2012]

Now you can see how our modern imagination might work, but tradition tells us that those seven stars formed a mighty hunter called Orion, the most brilliant of the constellations and visible from every inhabited part of the Earth. Two stars mark his shoulders, two more his knees and three his belt.

As is also the case with the mighty Hercules, the figure of Orion has been associated in many ancient cultures with great national heroes, warriors or demigods. Yet in contrast to Hercules, who was credited with a detailed series of exploits, Orion seems to us a vague and shadowy figure. 

The ancient mythological stories of Orion are so many and so confused that it is almost impossible to choose among them. Even the origin of the name Orion is obscure, though some scholars have suggested a connection with the Greek "Arion," meaning "warrior." 

The myths all tend to agree that he was the mightiest hunter in the world, and he is always pictured in the stars with his club upraised in his right hand. Hanging from his upraised left hand is the skin of a great lion he has killed. Orion is brandishing this skin in the face of Taurus, the Bull, who is charging him.  

The heavenly manger

The legendary French astronomer Nicolas Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) referred to the three belt stars of Orion as "The Three Kings." If we consider these three stars to represent the Magi, then it's fitting that the star cluster known as Preasepe,(the Manger) lies not far to the east, within the faint zodiacal constellation of Cancer.

A manger is a trough or open box in which feed for horses or cattle is placed. The Book of St. Luke tells us that the baby Jesus was set down in a manger because there was no room at the local inn. In our current Yuletide evening sky, Preasepe thus can represent the manger where Christ was placed... 

The constellation Cancer is practically an empty space in the sky, positioned between the Twin Stars (Pollux and Castor) of Gemini and the Sickle of Leo. It’s completely devoid of any bright stars and would probably not be considered a constellation at all, if not for the fact that there had to be a sign of the Zodiac between Gemini and Leo.

In the middle of Cancer are two stars called the Aselli ("donkeys") that are feeding from the manger; Asselus Borealis and Asselus Australis bracket Preasepe to the north and south, respectively.

To the unaided eye, the manger appears as a soft, fuzzy patch or dim glow. But in good binoculars and low-power telescopes, it is a beautiful object to behold, appearing to contain a smattering of several dozen stars. Using his crude telescope, Galileo wrote in 1610 of seeing Preasepe not as one fuzzy star, but as  " . . . a mass of more than 40 small stars." 

The shepherd’s star

If you are up about an hour or so before sunrise, look toward the east-southeast to get a glimpse of what Flammarion described as "The Shepherd’s Star," the planet Venus. He wrote:

"She shines in the east in the morning, with a splendid brightness which eclipses that of all the stars. She is, without comparison, the most magnificent star of our sky; the star of sweet confidences."

Indeed, Venus is always bright. This year, it will remind those who rise early on Christmas morning of the Biblical "Star in the East."

Telescope targets

Venus may be rather disappointing to those who receive a telescope as a holiday gift, appearing as nothing more than a dazzling disk of light. But there are two other splendid planetary targets to gaze at.

That very bright 'star" that you notice at day’s end in December, glowing about one-quarter of the way up from the east-northeast horizon right after sundown, is actually Jupiter. The gas giant is a superb telescopic showpiece, with cloud bands crossing its disk and a retinue of four large moons. On Christmas night, Jupiter will be visible just above the waxing gibbous moon, making for an eye-catching sight.

And lastly, in the predawn morning sky is "the lord of the rings," Saturn, which this week rises above the east-southeast horizon around 3 a.m. local time and just before sunrise can be found about 30 degrees above and to the right of Venus.

Your clenched fist held at arm's length measures about 10 degrees, so Saturn will appear about "three fists" up and to Venus’s right. .A telescope magnifying 30-power or more will reveal Saturn’s famous rings, now tilted almost 19 degrees to our line of sight.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York. Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+. 

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New 'Baby Picture' of Universe Unveiled

Astronomers have released a new "baby picture" of the universe.

The all-sky image draws on nine years' worth of data from a now-retired spacecraft dubbed the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

WMAP launched in 2001 and from its perch a million miles away from Earth (in the direction opposite the sun) it scanned the heavens, mapping out the afterglow of the hot, young universewith unprecedented accuracy.

This image maps the temperature of the radiation left over from the Big Bang, at a time when the universe was only 375,000 years old. It shows a temperature range of plus-or-minus 200 microKelvin, with fluctuations in the so-called cosmic microwave background radiation appearing here as color differences.

These patterns allow astronomers to predict what could have possibly happened earlier, and what has happened in the billions of year since the universe's infancy. As such, the spacecraft has been instrumental in pushing forward cosmological theories about the nature and origin of the universe.

Among other revelations, the data from WMAP revealed a much more precise estimate for the age of the universe — 13.7 billion years — and confirmed that about 95 percent of it is composed of mind-boggling stuff called dark matter and dark energy. WMAP data also helped scientists nail down the curvature of space to within 0.4 percent of "flat," and pinpoint the time when the universe began to emerge from the cosmic dark ages (about 400 million years after the Big Bang.)

The probe retired two years ago, and the WMAP science team is now releasing its final results, based on a full nine years of observations.

"The universe encoded its autobiography in the microwave patterns we observe across the whole sky," Charles Bennett, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University who heads the WMAP science team, said in a statement. "When we decoded it, the universe revealed its history and contents. It is stunning to see everything fall into place."

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AP-GfK Poll: Science doubters say world is warming

WASHINGTON (AP) — A growing majority of Americans think global warming is occurring, that it will become a serious problem and that the U.S. government should do something about it, a new Associated Press-GfK poll finds.

Even most people who say they don't trust scientists on the environment say temperatures are rising.

The poll found 4 out of every 5 Americans said climate change will be a serious problem for the United States if nothing is done about it. That's up from 73 percent when the same question was asked in 2009.

And 57 percent of Americans say the U.S. government should do a great deal or quite a bit about the problem. That's up from 52 percent in 2009. Only 22 percent of those surveyed think little or nothing should be done, a figure that dropped from 25 percent.

Overall, 78 percent of those surveyed said they believe temperatures are rising, up from 75 percent three years earlier. In general, U.S. belief in global warming, according to AP-GfK and other polls, has fluctuated over the years but has stayed between about 70 and 85 percent.

The biggest change in the polling is among people who trust scientists only a little or not at all. About 1 in 3 of the people surveyed fell into that category.

Within that highly skeptical group, 61 percent now say temperatures have been rising over the past 100 years. That's a substantial increase from 2009, when the AP-GfK poll found that only 47 percent of those with little or no trust in scientists believed the world was getting warmer.

This is an important development because, often in the past, opinion about climate change doesn't move much in core groups — like those who deny it exists and those who firmly believe it's an alarming problem, said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University social psychologist and pollster. Krosnick, who consulted with The Associated Press on the poll questions, said the changes the poll shows aren't in the hard-core "anti-warming" deniers, but in the next group, who had serious doubts.

"They don't believe what the scientists say, they believe what the thermometers say," Krosnick said. "Events are helping these people see what scientists thought they had been seeing all along."

Phil Adams, a retired freelance photographer from Washington, N.C., said he was "fairly cynical" about scientists and their theories. But he believes very much in climate change because of what he's seen with his own eyes.

"Having lived for 67 years, we consistently see more and more changes based upon the fact that the weather is warmer," he said. "The seasons are more severe. The climate is definitely getting warmer."

"Storms seem to be more severe," he added. Nearly half, 49 percent, of those surveyed called global warming not just serious but "very serious," up from 42 percent in 2009. More than half, 57 percent, of those surveyed thought the U.S. government should do a great deal or quite a bit about global warming, up from 52 percent three years earlier.

But only 45 percent of those surveyed think President Barack Obama will take major action to fight climate change in his second term, slightly more than the 41 percent who don't think he will act.

Overall, the 78 percent who think temperatures are rising is not the highest percentage of Americans who have believed in climate change, according to AP polling. In 2006, less than a year after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, 85 percent thought temperatures were rising. The lowest point in the past 15 years for belief in warming was in December 2009, after some snowy winters and in the middle of an uproar about climate scientists' emails that later independent investigations found showed no manipulation of data.

Broken down by political party, 83 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of Republicans say the world is getting warmer. And 77 percent of independents say temperatures are rising. Among scientists who write about the issue in peer-reviewed literature, the belief in global warming is about 97 percent, according to a 2010 scientific study.

About 1 in 4 people surveyed think that efforts to curb global warming would hurt the American economy, a figure down slightly from 27 percent in 2009 when the economy was in worse shape. Just under half, 46 percent, think such action would help the U.S. economy, about the same as said so three years ago.

The AP-GfK poll was conducted Nov. 29-Dec. 3 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,002 adults nationwide. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points; the margin of error is larger for subgroups.

The latest AP-GfK poll jibes with other surveys and more in-depth research on global warming, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale University's Project on Climate Change Communication. He took no part in the poll.

When climate change belief was at its lowest, concerns about the economy were heightened and the country had gone through some incredible snowstorms and that may have chipped away at some belief in global warming, Leiserowitz said. Now the economy is better and the weather is warmer and worse in ways that seem easier to connect to climate change, he said.

"One extreme event after another after another," Leiserowitz said. "People have noticed. ... They're connecting the dots between climate change and this long bout of extreme weather themselves."

Thomas Coffey, 77, of Houston, said you can't help but notice it.

"We use to have mild temperatures in the fall going into winter months. Now, we have summer temperatures going into winter," Coffey said. "The whole Earth is getting warmer and when it gets warmer, the ice cap is going to melt and the ocean is going to rise."

He also said that's what he thinks is causing recent extreme weather.

"That's why you see New York and New Jersey," he said, referring to Superstorm Sandy and its devastation in late October. "When you have a flood like that, flooding tunnels like that. And look at how long the tunnel has been there."

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Associated Press Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta, News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and writer Stacy A. Anderson contributed to this report.

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Online:

The poll: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

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Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

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Scientists seek to solve mystery of Piltdown Man

LONDON (AP) — It was an archaeological hoax that fooled scientists for decades. A century on, researchers are determined to find out who was responsible for Piltdown Man, the missing link that never was.

In December 1912, it was announced that a lawyer and amateur archaeologist named Charles Dawson had made an astonishing discovery in a gravel pit in southern England — prehistoric remains, up to 1 million years old, that combined the skull of a human and the jaw of an ape.

Piltdown Man — named for the village where the remains were found — set the scientific world ablaze. It was hailed as the missing evolutionary link between apes and humans, and proof that humans' enlarged brains had evolved earlier than had been supposed.

It was 40 years before the find was definitively exposed as a hoax, and speculation about who did it rages to this day. Now scientists at London's Natural History Museum — whose predecessors trumpeted the Piltdown find and may be suspects in the fraud— are marking the 100th anniversary with a new push to settle the argument for good.

The goal, lead scientist Chris Stringer wrote in a comment piece published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is to find out "who did it and what drove them" — whether scientific ambition, humor or malice.

Stringer heads a team of 15 researchers — including experts in ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating and isotope studies — examining the remains with the latest techniques and equipment and combing the museum's archives for overlooked evidence about the evidence unearthed at sites around Piltdown.

"Although Charles Dawson is the prime suspect, it's a complex story," Stringer, the museum's research leader in human origins, told The Associated Press. "The amount of material planted at two different sites makes some people — and that includes me — wonder whether there were at least two people involved."

Doubts grew about Piltdown Man's authenticity in the years after 1912, as more remains were found around the world that contradicted its evidence. In 1953, scientists from London's Natural History Museum and Oxford University conducted tests that showed the find was a cleverly assembled fake, combining a human skull a few hundred years old with the jaw of an orangutan, stained to make it look ancient.

Ever since, speculation had swirled about possible perpetrators. Many people think the evidence points to Dawson, who died in 1916.

Other long-dead suspects identified by researchers include Arthur Smith Woodward, the museum's keeper of geology, who championed Dawson's discoveries and gave them vital scientific credibility. The finger has also been pointed at museum zoologist Martin Hinton; Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; and even "Sherlock Holmes" author Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived near Piltdown.

Stringer said the key may lie in a later find nearby — a slab of elephant bone nicknamed the "cricket bat" — that seemed to back up the first Piltdown discovery. It was revealed as a clumsy fake, carved with a steel knife from a fossilized elephant femur.

One theory is that Hinton — skeptical but afraid to openly question Woodward, his boss at the museum — might have planted it thinking it would be spotted as a hoax and discredit the whole find. A trunk with Hinton's initials found in a loft at the museum a decade after his death in 1961 contained animal bones stained the same way as the Piltdown fossils.

Miles Russell, senior lecturer in archaeology at Bournemouth University, thinks the museum's work may shed new light on how the forgery was done. But he thinks there is little doubt Dawson was the perpetrator.

"He is the only person who is always on site every time a find is made," Russell said. "And when he died in 1916, Piltdown Man died with him."

Russell is author of the new book "The Piltdown Man Hoax: Case Closed" — though he doubts speculation about the century-old fraud will stop.

"People love conspiracy theories," he said. "And this is one of the biggest scientific hoaxes of all time."

Whoever was behind it, the hoax delayed consensus on human origins, leading some scientists to question the authenticity of later finds because they did not fit with Piltdown Man.

Stringer said Piltdown Man stands as a warning to scientists always to be on their guard — especially when evidence seems to back up their theories.

"There was a huge gap in evidence and Piltdown at the time neatly filled that gap," he said. "It was what people expected to be found. In a sense you could say it was manufactured to fit the scientific agenda.

"That lesson of Piltdown is always worth learning — when something seems too good to be true, maybe it is."

___

Online:

Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

Piltdown Man at the Natural History Museum: www.nhm.ac.uk/piltdown

___

Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

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Evidence of Early Life Draws Ire from Scientists

Life may have first emerged on land about 100 million years earlier previously thought, suggests a study that has scientists up in arms, many of whom are arguing that the research paper should never been published in the first place.

The study, published today (Dec. 12) in the journal Nature, suggests that ancient fossilized creatures found in Southern Australian sediments actually came from land, not from the ocean. If the findings are true, the fossils would have been lichenlike plants that first colonized land, not ocean-dwelling ancestors of jellyfish.

"We have big organisms living on land a lot further back than we thought before," said study author Gregory Retallack, a geologist and paleobotanist at the University of Oregon.

But the study has faced intense skepticism from several experts in the field — some of whom have questioned not only the study's scientific validity, but also its acceptance into a prestigious scientific journal.

"I find Retallack's observations dubious, and his arguments poor. That this was published by Nature is beyond my understanding," wrote Martin Brasier, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study, in an email.

Primitive sea dwellers

Scientists first discovered the fossils in 1947 in the Ediacaran Hills of Southern Australia. The reddish rocks contained imprints from a strange, striated creature called Dickinsonia, as well as other primeval creatures that lived around 550 million years ago. [Extreme Life on Earth: 8 Bizarre Creatures]

Until now, scientists had long believed the rocks were made up of ocean sediments and that Dickinsonia and other primeval creatures fossilized in the outcroppings were sea dwellers similar to jellyfish or sea pens that lived just before the Cambrian explosion began about 540 million years ago, when all the major animal groups suddenly appeared.

But when Retallack first saw the fossils, he wondered whether they were formed on land. In particular, the fossils had a reddish hue that comes from oxygen in the atmosphere reacting with iron to create rust — a process that doesn't happen under the sea, he said. He also noticed that nodules throughout the rock looked strikingly similar to the rootlike structures put out by primitive lichen or fungi found in other ancient soils.

To see if some of the Ediacaran fossils were land-dwellers, he tested the rock's composition and found it was characteristic of the very first stages of soil formation on land, in which nutrients such as potassium and magnesium are depleted. A similar process doesn't happen in the ocean, he said.

In the current paper, Retallack argues that the ancient fossils are actually a primitive precursor to lichen or fungi and that they helped colonize land, paving the way for the Cambrian explosion.

Even today, lichen are the pioneers that first take root on bare rock, creating the precursors of soil (other organisms can grow on lichens).

"One of the first things that happens when you have a piece of bare ground is some lichen come in and eventually some new stuff comes in like dandelions, and pretty soon you've got a tall Douglas fir forest," Retallack told LiveScience.

Scientists skeptical

But several scientists have called his claims into question and wonder why Nature published the piece. [Top 10 Science Journal Retractions]

The rocks may have turned their reddish hue much more recently, some 65 million years ago, when they somehow rose above the water; in that scenario, the sediments could have been underwater at the time Dickinsonia and other Ediacaran creatures lived, Shuhai Xiao, a paleontologist at Virginia Tech wrote in an accompanying article in Nature. In addition, the chemical composition of the rocks doesn't preclude the fossils originating in the ocean.

What's more, some of the fossils are oriented as if they were dragged by current or ocean waves, Xiao wrote. Finally, many of the species Retallack reclassifies as land-dwellers are found elsewhere in the world in rocks that are unambiguously formed from ocean sediments.

Retallack's ideas "would represent a fundamental change in our picture of evolution, but they will probably face continuing skepticism because the evidence is unconvincing," he wrote.

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The Science of Finding the Perfect Christmas Gift

For all of recorded history, people have been giving presents for a myriad of reasons: to show affection, curry favor, or fulfill familial duty. And the custom goes beyond the human species. Even family cats are known to bequeath presents of dead mice or birds on their owners.

"It's an act of social communication," said SunWolf, a communications professor at Santa Clara University. "Without using words, you're always saying something: 'I wish we could be closer, I think of you, I miss you.'"

But figuring out how to translate your love for someone else into that perfect gift can be stressful. Here are some tips for making gift-giving a joy for both the giver and the receiver.

Get one big present

A big present looks more impressive when it stands on its own, according to a study reported last year in the Journal of Consumer Research. Putting a tube of lip balm in with the cashmere sweater will make gift-givers view the present less favorably.

That's because people tend to average out the value of the present, making the whole package seem cheaper.

Use that wish list

Buying something straight off a person's wish list may seem lazy, but it may be the safest strategy, said Nicholas Epley, a psychologist at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Epley's team has found that when people receive a gift they like, they didn't actually care whether someone put a lot of careful thought into selecting it.

His team conducted a study at the Museum of Science in Chicago where people were asked to either randomly select or carefully choose a high-rated or low-rated present from the gift shop for another person. Those who got coveted items didn't think much about the giver's intentions. [Geeky Gifts: Holiday Guide for Science-Lovers]

"What we found is that a gift giver's thoughtfulness, or how thoughtful you thought the gift giver was, counted only when you got a crappy gift," Epley told LiveScience.

Put some thought into it

But despite the fact that a good gift needs no context, getting a thoughtful gift does have benefits — for the giver.

Givers who were asked to think carefully about a gift choice felt closer to the receivers than those who were asked to pick randomly, Epley said. That held even when givers were offering presents to random strangers.

"Perspective taking, or imagining being in another person's shoes, makes you feel closer to the person," he said.

But mention the thought

Thoughts do wind up counting when you get a bad gift, Epley found. For instance, when the museum visitors in his study received a low-rated ruler that said "Rulers of Science" on it, they were more likely to appreciate the gift if they were told how the giver had thoughtfully selected it.

So it might be good to write a little note on that card to Uncle Marv describing why that life-size replica of George Washington made you think of him.

"The practical message of this is not that you shouldn't put thought into a gift. You shouldn't assume your thoughts will count like you think they do or that people will magically know how thoughtful you are," Epley said.

Agree to opt out

It's also okay to stop giving gifts, even if you have done so in the past. That friend you met in 1989, the grandmother who knits progressively uglier sweaters, or the co-worker who you don't know very well — if thinking about giving or receiving is stressful, it's okay to not give a gift as long you communicate it clearly, SunWolf told LiveScience.

"Just like any relationships that don't work anymore we need to have an exit strategy," she said. Instead, come up with an alternate way of showing you care, like telling grandma "The gift giving thing isn't necessary anymore grandma, I'd be happy with just having lunch with you."

Consider regifting

There's also regifting — recycling a gift you've received previously — which new research in the journal Psychological Science suggests may not be as offensive as once thought, at least to the gift giver. To improve acceptance of regifting, the researchers suggested voicing your feelings when recycling a present, even expressing to the receiver that it's OK for them to do what they like with the gift (even if that means passing it along next year).

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Look Up! International Observe the Moon Night Rises Tonight

The moon will take center stage for stargazers in the around the world tonight (Sept. 22) during International Observe the Moon Night to share the beauty of Earth's nearest neighbor with the public.

Many moon-watching events are planned around the world tonight, with NASA and Canadian astronomers aren't missing out. NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and Western University in Ontario, Canada, will hold special events to share methods on how to observe the moon with the public, as well as interesting moon facts and history.  

Tonight, the moon will appear half-full in what is known as the first quarter moon, making it a prime target for amateur astronomers and casual night sky observers.

"The first quarter moon rises around 2:25 p.m. and sets around 12:15 a.m." explained SPACE.com contributor Geoff Gaherty, an astronomer with Starry Night Software, which offers computer guides to the night sky. "It dominates the evening sky."

The full moon of September, which is also known as a Harvest Moon, will rise on Sept. 29.

At the Ames Research Center, astronomers with NASA's Lunar Science Institute will hold five 15-minute discussions and presentations on the moon at Shenandoah Plaza, while visiting amateur astronomers and astronomy clubs will set up telescopes for public viewing. The event runs from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. PDT.

"Through International Observe the Moon Night, we hope to instill in the public a sense of wonderment and curiosity about our moon," Ames center officials said in an announcement. [Amazing Blue Moon Photos for 2012]

You can learn more about how to participate in Ames' event here: http://lunarscience.nasa.gov/inomn/

At Western University, meanwhile, scientists with the school's Center for Planetary Science and Exploration will convene at the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. local time to discuss moon observation, lunar science and other moon-oriented subjects.

"In addition to observing the Moon with Western's Perkin-Elmer refracting telescope (weather permitting), astronomers and planetary scientists will deliver talks, present lunar meteorites and lead a cell phone photo contest," Western University officials said in a statement.

More information on the Western University's event is here: http://cpsx.uwo.ca/outreach/event-news/inomn-2

The NASA Ames and Western University events are just two of countless public moon-watching programs scheduled around the world for the International Observe the Moon Night, which is now in its third year.

This year's event comes just weeks after the death of Neil Armstrong, the first person ever to walk on the moon. Armstrong, who commanded NASA's Apollo 11 moon landing mission, died on Aug. 25 at age 82 due to complications from recent heart surgery. He was buried at sea on Sept. 14.

To honor Armstrong's memory, his family has asked that the public take time to think of the pioneering astronaut when gazing at the moon.

" Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink," they said in a statement.

International Observe the Moon Night officials have set up a public Flickr webpage where amateur astronomers can post their "winks" at the moon for Armstrong here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/inomn2012/

For a complete list of International Observe the Moon Night webcasts and events, or to find an event near you, visit: http://observethemoonnight.org/

Editor's note: If you take an amazing photo of the moon that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say

HOUSTON — A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television's Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.

A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy.

Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially brining the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.

"There is hope," Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight.

Warping space-time

An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind. [Star Trek's Warp Drive: Are We There Yet? | Video]

Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn't being warped at all.

"Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light," explained Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit group of scientists and engineers devoted to pursuing interstellar spaceflight. "But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light."

With this concept, the spacecraft would be able to achieve an effective speed of about 10 times the speed of light, all without breaking the cosmic speed limit.

The only problem is, previous studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.

But recently White calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring. He found in that case, the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe NASA launched in 1977.

Furthermore, if the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time, the energy required is reduced even more, White found.

"The findings I presented today change it from impractical to plausible and worth further investigation," White told SPACE.com. "The additional energy reduction realized by oscillating the bubble intensity is an interesting conjecture that we will enjoy looking at in the lab."

Laboratory tests

White and his colleagues have begun experimenting with a mini version of the warp drive in their laboratory.

They set up what they call the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer at the Johnson Space Center, essentially creating a laser interferometer that instigates micro versions of space-time warps.

"We're trying to see if we can generate a very tiny instance of this in a tabletop experiment, to try to perturb space-time by one part in 10 million," White said.

He called the project a "humble experiment" compared to what would be needed for a real warp drive, but said it represents a promising first step.

And other scientists stressed that even outlandish-sounding ideas, such as the warp drive, need to be considered if humanity is serious about traveling to other stars.

"If we're ever going to become a true spacefaring civilization, we're going to have to think outside the box a little bit, were going to have to be a little bit audacious," Obousy said.

You can follow SPACE.com assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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US Scientists to Use Chinese Moon Lander for Space Research

A cooperative deal has been inked between a U.S. group and China to use that country's moon lander to conduct astronomical imaging from the lunar surface.

The International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA) of Kamuela, Hawaii has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Beijing-based National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A signing ceremony took place in Kamuela on Sept. 4.

The deal is the first such U.S.-China collaboration centered on using China's Chang'e-3 moon lander now being readied for launch next year.

Dedicated to astronomical research and public education, China's NAOC hosts the Lunar and Planetary Research Center and is the institute responsible for the ultraviolet lunar telescope to be carried onboard the Chang'e-3 lander. That instrument will be operated by the China National Space Administration's Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. [Gallery: China's Moon Photos by Chang'e 2 Lunar Probe]

The Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 lunar orbiters were launched by China in 2007 and 2010, respectively. The most recent orbiter cranked out a detailed map of the moon's surface, including the landing zone picked for the rover-carrying Chang'e 3 lander — Sinus Iridium (Bay of Rainbows).

Natural progression

"I've been visiting China observatories and astronomy facilities like NAOC for about 15 years, so this memorandum of understanding has been a natural progression," Steve Durst, ILOA founding director, told SPACE.com.

This science collaboration will be part of a mission that will conduct the first soft controlled landing of any spacecraft on the moon in almost 40 years, Durst said in a press statement. It will be the first ever program to conduct astronomical imaging from the moon's landscape, he said.

The ILOA co-sponsors with its Space Age Publishing Company affiliate a number of educational initiatives, international forums to provide increased global awareness of space science, exploration and enterprise, Durst said.

Forums are held in Silicon Valley, Canada, China, India, Japan, Europe, Africa, Hawaii, Kansas and New York. Current plans, Durst said, are for expansion to South America, Southeast Asia, Mexico and Antarctica through 2014.

"We're optimistic that resulting Space Age USA-People's Republic of China -international interaction should be very productive for all," Durst said. The deal struck involved quite an effort, he said, calling it "hopefully quite significant and historic."

Google Lunar X Prize

Durst said that the exchange in kind calls for China's NAOC to receive observing time on the ILO-X and ILO-1 mission instruments — science gear that's part of the International Lunar Observatory Association's work with Moon Express, a Google Lunar X Prize enterprise based at NASA Research Park at Moffett Field, Calif. That prize has groups vying for a $30 million purse for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon.

The ILO-X is an optical telescope precursor instrument, part of a joint venture with Moon Express in a bid for the Google Lunar X-Prize.

In a July statement, Moon Express said it has designed and is building the ILO-X as the first independently developed astronomical telescope that will operate on the moon, looking out at the galaxy and heavens beyond and back at the Earth.

About the size of a shoe-box, the ILO-X will use leading-edge optical and imaging technology to deliver dramatic and inspiring deep sky pictures of galactic and extragalactic objects, according to Moon Express co-founder and CEO, Bob Richards.

ILO-1 is the primary ILOA mission under development by MDA Canada to land a multifunctional 2-meter dish at the moon's south pole to conduct astronomical observation and commercial communications activities.

Regarding the newly signed memorandum of understanding, Durst said: "Of course, I'm both amazed and sad that there's no American lander operating on the moon too…public, private, any kind," Durst said. He called the moon's south pole "the next new frontier."

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is a winner of last year's National Space Club Press Award and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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After victory lap, Endeavor rolls to retirement

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Space shuttle Endeavour rocketed beyond Earth orbit 25 times. Its 26th mission: A 12-mile commute through the streets of Los Angeles to its new retirement home in a museum.

With Endeavour permanently on the ground after a majestic aerial spin Friday around California, crews over the weekend will begin unbolting the shuttle from the 747 jumbo jet and putting it on a special flatbed trailer, a process that will take a few weeks.

The road trip in early October to the California Science Center has been billed as a parade, but some residents along the route have objected to the cutting down of some 400 trees to make room for the five-story-high shuttle with a 78-foot wingspan.

A crowd recently packed a public meeting where concerns were raised about the loss of shade and greenery in their neighborhoods. Museum officials have pledged to replant at least double the number of lost trees.

But Friday brought nothing but good feelings as the shuttle became California's biggest star, the people its paparazzi.

From the state Capitol to the Golden Gate Bridge to the Hollywood sign, massive crowds of spectators pointed their cellphones and cameras skyward as the shuttle, riding piggyback atop a 747 jumbo jet, buzzed past.

Peggy Burke was among the hordes of camera-toting tourists who jammed the waterfront along the San Francisco Bay, reflecting on the end of an era.

"It's just a shame that the program has to end, but I'm so glad they came to the Bay area especially over the Golden Gate Bridge," she said. "Onward to Mars."

At the Hollywood & Highland Center, a shopping complex with a view of the Hollywood sign, revelers yelled and screamed.

"It was like being in Times Square for the millennium," said Blue Fier, a college photography professor. "This is right up there. It was pretty cool."

Known as the baby shuttle, Endeavour replaced Challenger, which exploded during liftoff in 1986. Endeavour rolled off the assembly line in the Mojave Desert in 1991 and a year later, rocketed to space. It left Earth 25 times, logging 123 million miles.

Friday's high-flying tour was a homecoming of sorts.

After a nearly five-hour loop that took Endeavour over some of the state's most treasured landmarks, it turned for its final approach, coasting down the runway on the south side of the Los Angeles International Airport, where elected officials and VIPs gathered for an arrival ceremony.

As the jumbo jet taxied to the hangar, an American flag popped out of the jet's hatch. Endeavour will stay at the airport for several weeks as crew prepare it for its 12-mile trek through city streets to the California Science Center, its new permanent home, where it will go on display Oct. 30.

NASA retired the shuttle fleet last year to focus on destinations beyond low-Earth orbit. Before Endeavour was grounded for good, Californians were treated to an aerial farewell.

Endeavour took off from Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave desert Friday after an emotional cross-country ferry flight that made a special flyover of Tucson, Ariz., to honor its last commander, Mark Kelly, and his wife, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

It circled the high desert that gave birth to the shuttle fleet before veering to Northern California. After looping twice around the state Capitol, it swung over to the San Francisco Bay area and Silicon Valley and then headed down the coast, entering the Los Angeles air space over the Santa Monica Pier. En route to LAX, it passed over a slew of tourist sites including Dodger Stadium, Disneyland and the Queen Mary.

The cost for shipping and handling Endeavour was estimated at $28 million, to be paid for by the science center. NASA officials have said there was no extra charge to fly over Tucson because it was on the way.

Endeavor's carefully choreographed victory lap was by far the most elaborate of the surviving shuttle fleet. Discovery is home at the Smithsonian Institution's hangar in Virginia after flying over the White House and National Mall. Atlantis will remain in Florida, where it will be towed a short distance to the Kennedy Space Center's visitor center in the fall.

Derek Reynolds, a patent attorney from a Sacramento suburb who saw the last shuttle launch last year, felt the flyover in Sacramento was a rare opportunity to share a firsthand experience of the space program with his 5-year-old son, Jack, who he pulled out of kindergarten for the day.

"I want him to experience it and give him the memory since it's the last one," Reynolds said.

As Endeavour approached LAX, other airplanes were forced to circle and wait. Passengers on an American Airlines flight from Miami snapped pictures and shot video out their windows as the shuttle arrived.

"This was a once-in-a-lifetime event," said pilot Doug Causey, who has been flying for 29 years. "That was a real treat to see something like that."

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press staff members Tom Verdin and Juliet Williams in Sacramento; Terry Chea and Marcio Sanchez in San Francisco; John Antczak in Pasadena; Jae Hong in Santa Monica; and Greg Risling, Martha Mendoza, Raquel Maria Dillon, Richard Vogel and Chris Carlson in Los Angeles.

___

Alicia Chang can be followed at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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Space Shuttle Endeavour Lands in L.A. for Display at California Science Center

LOS ANGELES — The last-ever space shuttle to take flight has made its final landing.

Space shuttle Endeavour, mounted atop NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet, touched down at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in California Friday (Sept. 21), after three day, cross-country trip from Florida.

The iconic black and white spacecraft, riding piggyback on the blue and white NASA aircraft, landed on the southern most runway at LAX at 12:51 p.m. PDT (3:51p.m. EDT; 1951 GMT). The early afternoon arrival marked the end of not only Endeavour's airborne journey, but the final ferry flight of the space shuttle program era.

Endeavour, which flew into space 25 times between 1992 and 2011, was delivered from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to L.A. for the California Science Center (CSC), which was awarded the shuttle by NASA last year. After a two-day planned road trip from the airport to the science center next month, the CSC will open its Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion on Oct. 30.

The CSC held a welcome ceremony for the arriving shuttle and SCA at the United Airlines' hangar where Endeavour will be hoisted off the aircraft and readied for its city street transport. State and local officials heralded the arrival as a homecoming — Endeavour and its sister ships were built and assembled in Southern California. [Photos: Shuttle Endeavour's California Sightseeing Tour]

State sightseeingEndeavour's transcontinental trip from the East to West Coast included two stopovers in Texas before landing in California on Thursday at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base. The overnight stay at Dryden preceded Endeavour's departure on a state-wide tour Friday morning before touching down at LAX.

Taking off at 8:15 a.m. PDT (11:15 a.m. EDT; 1515 GMT), the carrier aircraft flew Endeavour over its birthplace, the city of Palmdale where it was assembled, as well as the surrounding towns of Lancaster, Rosamond and Mojave, before heading north to Sacramento for a flyover salute of the state capital. [Shuttle Endeavour Soars Into Calif. Skies (Video)]

The flight was delayed getting started by an hour to allow the fog to rise by the time the air- and- spacecraft reached San Francisco Bay for a scenic overflight of the Golden Gate bridge. The SCA and shuttle then flew a low pass by NASA's Ames Research Center and, further south, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Circling over Los Angeles, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of residents had the chance to spot the shuttle flying over numerous landmarks and area attractions. The SCA took Endeavour over Disneyland, the Getty Museum, Griffith Observatory and by the Hollywood sign, the Santa Monica Pier and Universal Studios. Other flybys included the facilities for two of NASA's contractors, Boeing in Seal Beach and SpaceX in Hawthorne.

Endeavour also flew over its soon to be permanent home, the California Science Center at Exposition Park.

Trading wings to wheels

Now on the ground, Endeavour was set to be hoisted by two large cranes off the back of the SCA and lowered onto a wheeled overland transporter overnight Friday. A NASA team will then work with science center curators to ready the orbiter for its move to the museum.

The aerodynamic tail cone installed on Endeavour for the ferry flight for will be removed and a pair of thruster engine nozzles will be installed for the orbiter's display. NASA will also retrieve from inside the shuttle's crew compartment a package of embroidered patches that the CSC requested be flown with Endeavour on its westward journey.

Beginning Oct. 12, Endeavour will exit the airport on top of the modified NASA transporter using four self-propelled, computer-controlled vehicles. The 12-mile (19-kilometer) trip will take the shuttle through the streets of Inglewood and Los Angeles, where again thousands of residents and visitors are expected to get an up-close view of the orbiter on the move.

To facilitate the street parade, the CSC has been working to temporarily remove or raise traffic lights, power lines and other obstacles to the shuttle Endeavour's 78-foot (24-meter) wingspan and 58-foot-tall (18-m) tail. The center has also had to have removed nearly 400 trees in the way, but are investing $500,000 to replace each with as many as four in their place, a well as provide two years of tree maintenance.

Reaching the CSC by dusk on Oct. 13, Endeavour will be towed the final quarter of a mile (400 m) by a Toyota Tundra pickup truck as part of a partnership and promotion that could raise upwards of $500,000 towards the shuttle's final exhibit. The Oschin pavilion is a temporary home for Endeavour; by 2017, the CSC plans to open the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center to present the space shuttle vertically, as it was on its launch pad.

The California Science Center's Endeavour exhibit is one of only four displaying the retired shuttles. Discovery, the fleet leader, is now at the Smithsonian in northern Virginia. The prototype Enterprise is in New York City on board the converted aircraft carrier at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Atlantis, the last shuttle to fly in space during NASA's 135th mission, will be moved to NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in November.

See shuttles.collectspace.com for continuing coverage of the delivery and display of NASA's retired space shuttles.

Follow collectSPACE on Facebook and Twitter @collectSPACE and editor Robert Pearlman @robertpearlman. Copyright 2012 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

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Desalination no panacea for Calif. water woes

MARINA, Calif. (AP) — In the Central California coastal town of Marina, a $7 million desalination plant that can turn salty ocean waves into fresh drinking water sits idle behind rusty, locked doors, shuttered by water officials because rising energy costs made the plant too expensive.

Far to the north in well-heeled Marin County, plans were scrapped for a desalination facility despite two decades of planning and millions of dollars spent on a pilot plant.

Squeezing salt from the ocean to make clean drinking water is a worldwide phenomenon that has been embraced in thirsty California, with its cycles of drought and growing population. There are currently 17 desalination proposals in the state, concentrated along the Pacific where people are plentiful and fresh water is not.

But many projects have been stymied by skyrocketing construction costs, huge energy requirements for running plants, regulatory delays and legal challenges over environmental impacts on marine life. Only one small plant along Monterey Bay is pumping out any drinking water.

From Marin County to San Diego, some water districts are asking themselves: How much are we willing to pay for this new water?

"We found that our demand for water had dropped so much since the time we started exploring desalination, we didn't need the water," said Libby Pischel, a spokeswoman for the Marin Municipal Water District. "Right now, conservation costs less than desalination."

Desalination plants can take water from the ocean or drill down and grab the less salty, brackish water from seaside aquifers. Because of their potential impacts to marine life, the California Coastal Commission reviews each project case-by-case.

There was great fanfare in 2009 when the last regulatory hurdle was cleared to build the Western Hemisphere's largest desalination plant in Carlsbad, north of San Diego.

At the time, it was proposed that the $320 million project would suck in 100 million gallons of seawater and be capable of producing 50 million gallons of drinking water a day. It was expected to come online by this year.

Since then, the plant owner, Poseidon Resources LLC, has been negotiating a water purchase agreement and is close to clinching a 30-year deal with the San Diego County Water Authority, a wholesaler to cities and agencies that provide water to 3.1 million people.

The compact is essential for Poseidon to obtain financing to build what has become a $900 million project, which includes the seaside plant and a 10-mile pipeline. The San Diego agency hopes the plant opens in 2016 and anticipates desalination will account for 7 percent of the region's supply in 2020. It estimates the cost is comparable to other new, local sources of drinking water, such as treated toilet water or briny groundwater.

Interest is still high, but "people are realizing that desalination isn't a magic fix to the state's water issues," said coastal commission water expert Tom Luster.

Water can be de-salted in different ways. Poseidon's project will use reverse osmosis. Other plants shoot ocean or brackish water at high pressure through salt-removing membrane filters. Because pumps must be used constantly to move massive amounts of water through filters, these facilities are extremely energy intensive.

Also, in many cases, desalinated water is pricier than importing water the old-fashioned way — through pipes and tunnels. And it is cheaper to focus on conservation when possible: new technologies like low-flow toilets and stricter zoning laws that require less water-intensive landscaping have helped curb demand in communities throughout the state.

Desalination has been around for years in Saudi Arabia, other Arab Gulf states and Israel, which last year approved the construction of a fifth desalination plant. The hope is that the five plants together will supply 75 percent of the country's drinking water by 2013.

The process also has helped ease thirst in places such as Australia, Spain and Singapore. Experts say it has been slower to catch on in the United States, mainly because companies face tougher rules on where they can build plants and must endure longer environmental reviews. Poseidon, for example, is facing opposition by environmental groups over its proposed plans to build another facility in Huntington Beach. The company has received several permits for the Orange County project, but still needs approval from the coastal commission.

About six miles south of the ghost desalination plant in Marina, the mechanical whir coming from a nondescript cinderblock building in a Sand City industrial park is the only evidence that the state's sole operating municipal desalination plant is at work.

The $14 million facility has the ability to produce up to 600,000 gallons a day of drinkable water for the town of about 340 people. Sand City's plant now produces half that amount each day; a third is used by the city with the rest sent elsewhere in Monterey County.

City leaders hoped to develop the former military town into an artsy, Bohemian beachside destination. With no other possible water options, they turned to desalination. "We're just like Saudi Arabia. There's nowhere else to get water and we want to develop," said Richard Simonitch, the city's civil engineer.

It's not that easy in Monterey Peninsula, where regional water use from development has exceeded its yearly rainfall replenishment and desalination is one of the only options available.

Proposals have been fraught with mistakes, political infighting and scandal, and have cost Monterey area ratepayers tens of millions of dollars.

Earlier this year, state utilities regulators rejected Monterey County's desalination plan, citing problems with environmental review. The plan was also mired in alleged corruption by a county water official, who now faces criminal charges.

Still, desalination will be an important part of the Central Coast's future: the state ordered water suppliers to stop drawing from the Carmel River, its main source of the precious resource, starting in 2017. Even officials in Marina, with its shuttered plant, see a future in which demand will require their current desalination plant to resume operation and are planning another, larger plant to help make up for the expected water loss.

"Water politics in Monterey County is a blood sport," said Jim Heitzman, general manager of the Marina Coast Water District.

_____

Chang reported from Los Angeles; Elliott Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report. Jason Dearen can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/JHDearen.

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Blowhard silencer, dead-fish brain science win spoof Nobel prizes

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Psychologists who discovered that leaning to the left makes the Eiffel Tower seem smaller, neuroscientists who found brain activity in a dead salmon, and designers of a device that can silence blowhards are among the winners of Ig Nobel prizes for the oddest and silliest real discoveries.

The annual prizes are awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research as a whimsical counterpart to the Nobel prizes, which will be announced early next month.

Former winners of the real Nobels hand out the Ig Nobel awards at a ceremony held at Harvard University in Massachusetts.

Ig Nobels for 2012 also went to U.S. researchers who discovered that chimps can recognize other chimps by looking at snapshots of their backsides, and to a Swedish researcher for solving the puzzle of why people's hair turned green while living in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden. (The culprit was a combination of copper pipes and hot showers.)

Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals and architect of the Ig Nobels who announced the winners on Thursday, said one of his personal favorites was this year's Acoustics Prize.

Japanese researchers Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada created the SpeechJammer, a machine that disrupts a person's speech by playing it back with a very slight delay.

"It's a small thing you aim at someone who is droning on and on," Abrahams said. "What the person hears is just off enough that it completely disconcerts and discombobulates them, and they stop talking. It has thousands of potential good uses."

Abrahams' panel of experts also cited the work of Dutch psychologists Anita Eerland, Rolf Zwaan and PhD student Tulio Guadalupe for their study, "Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller."

The work explored how posture influences estimations of size: with leaning to the left correlating with lower estimates, and leaning to the right correlating with higher estimates.

The team tested this by placing 33 undergraduates on a Wii Balance Board, which tilted slightly to the left or the right while they were asked to guess the size of objects, including the height of the Eiffel Tower.

As expected, those who leaned left had lower guesses than those who leaned to the right or stood up straight.

DEAD SALMON 'THINK'

One of the more infamous studies winning an Ig Nobel was for research detecting meaningful brain activity in a dead salmon.

It started as a lark, explains Craig Bennett of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies adolescent brain development using functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI, a technique for measuring brain activity.

Before starting tests on people, scientists first check their equipment using a phantom object, typically a sphere filled with mineral oil. But since any object will do, Bennett and colleagues had been trying out a variety of items, including a pumpkin, a Cornish game hen, and finally, an Atlantic salmon.

In the salmon test, the team showed photos to the dead fish and asked it to determine what emotion the person was feeling.

"By random chance and by simple noise, we saw small data points in the brain of the fish that were considered to be active," said Bennett. "It was a false positive. It's not really there."

The often-quoted study exposed the perils of fMRI science, which can be prone to false signals, and underscored the need to do statistical corrections to safeguard against such silly findings.

"It's a great teachable moment for how we should process the MRI data," he said.

OTHER WINNERS: - Physicists at Unilever led by Dr. Patrick Warren and at Stanford University led by Professor Joe Keller for their use of mathematics to explain why ponytails take on their distinctive "tail" shape. The Ig Nobel is Keller's second. - Igor Petrov and colleagues at the SKN Company in Russia for using technology to convert old Russian ammunition into new diamonds. - Rouslan Krechetnikov and Hans Mayer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, for illuminating why carrying a cup of coffee often ends up in a spill. - French researcher Emmanuel Ben-Soussan on how doctors performing colonoscopies can minimize the chance of igniting gasses that make their patients explode. - The U.S. Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report recommending the preparation of a report to discuss the impact of reports about reports.

(Editing by Michele Gershberg and Richard Chang)

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What's it like to fly a plane with shuttle on top?

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It's the ultimate piggyback ride: A space shuttle perched atop a Boeing 747 as the pair crisscrosses the country.

For three decades, this was how NASA transported shuttles that landed in the California desert to their Florida home base. But it's coming to an end.

This week, four pilots took turns flying a jumbo jet mounted with space shuttle Endeavour on a multi-leg journey bound for Los Angeles where it will go on display in a museum next month.

With the shuttle fleet retired, it's the final ferry mission for a group of highly specialized aviators. The elite pilots over the years have included former astronauts, including famed pilot Gordon Fullerton.

Scores have asked what it's like to haul a 170,000-pound shuttle.

"That's a tough thing to answer," said pilot Jeff Moultrie, who will be in command when Endeavour performs an aerial tour over several California landmarks Friday. "What do you tell somebody? It's different. It's unique."

That's for sure.

For one thing, there's the noise. It is decibels louder inside the shuttle carrier aircraft compared with a commercial airliner because the interior is hollowed out to keep it as light as possible. Aside from a few seats, there are no galleys, overhead bins or even air conditioning.

In case pilots forget they're carrying precious national cargo, the constant vibrations from above jolt them back to reality.

Pilots have to be more careful when they make turns, but otherwise, the 747 handles like a regular plane. They also have to be hyper-vigilant about the weather because moisture can damage the shuttle's delicate tiles.

Built for American Airlines, NASA acquired the aircraft in 1974 and used it for test flights from Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert and ferry flights to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It obtained a second one in 1990, but it was retired earlier this year.

The four current NASA pilots who can operate the modified 747 are ex-military aviators who split their time flying other planes including zero-gravity aircraft and T-38 supersonic jets.

Even when the shuttles flew routinely, a cross-country lift wasn't always needed. To keep their skills polished, they flew practice flights every several weeks and trained in a simulator twice a year.

Moultrie, who served as a commercial pilot for a decade, said he looked forward most to soaring in close to the Hollywood Sign. Even Angelenos have to keep their distance from the famed sign, which is surrounded by a fence.

"It's bittersweet," he said of the final mission. "We definitely feel privileged to be a small part of history. But on the flip side, we're sad."

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Follow Alicia Chang at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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Spaceport is built, but who will come?

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico Tourism Secretary Monique Jacobson says it will be New Mexico's Sydney Opera House. Virgin Galactic Chairman Richard Branson has hinted it will host the first of his new brand of lifestyle hotels. And the eclectic hot springs town of Truth or Consequences has been anxiously awaiting all the economic development the nearly quarter-of-a-billion-dollar project is supposed to bring to this largely rural part of southern New Mexico.

But as phase one of Spaceport America, the world's first commercial port built specifically for sending tourists and payloads into space, is nearing completion, the only new hotel project that has been finalized is a Holiday Inn Express here in Truth or Consequences, about 25 miles away. And three key companies with millions of dollars in payroll have passed on developing operations in the state.

The lagging development, along with competition from heavy hitters like Florida and Texas, is raising new questions about the viability of the $209 billion taxpayer-funded project — as well as the rush by so many states to grab a piece of the commercial spaceport pie. To date, nine spaceports are planned around the United States, mostly at existing airports, and another 10 have been proposed, according to a recent report from the New Mexico Spaceport Authority.

"Right now, the industry is not there to support it," Alex Ignatiev, a University of Houston physics professor and adviser to space companies, said of the list of planned and proposed spaceports across America.

Andrew Nelson, COO of XCOR Aerospace, disagrees, saying "in the next couple to three years, there's going to be a demonstrative reduction in the cost to launch stuff ... so we are going to have a lot more people coming out of the woodwork."

Currently, the Spaceport can count on two rocket companies that send vertical payloads into space and Virgin Galactic, the Branson space tourism venture that says it has signed up more than 500 wealthy adventurers for $200,000-per-person spaceflights. Other leaders in the race to commercialize the business and send tourists into space have been passing on New Mexico.

For example, XCOR Aerospace, which manufactures reusable rocket engines for major aerospace contractors and is designing a two-person space vehicle called the Lynx, has twice passed over New Mexico in favor of Texas and Florida. Most recently, it announced plans to locate its new Commercial Space Research and Development Center Headquarters in Midland, Texas.

Another company, RocketCrafters, Inc., passed over New Mexico for Titusville, Fla. And the space tourism company of SpaceX, is looking at basing a plant with $50 million in annual salaries to Brownsville, Texas.

Locally, officials blame the lack of new businesses on the legislature's refusal to pass laws that would exempt spacecraft suppliers from liability for passengers should the spacecraft crash or blow up. When New Mexico was developing Spaceport in partnership with Virgin Galactic, it passed a law to exempt the carrier through 2018, but not parts suppliers. Colorado, Florida, Texas and Virginia have adopted permanent liability exemption laws for both carriers and suppliers. The laws, called informed consent, are much like those that exempt ski areas from lawsuits by skiers, who waive their rights for claims when they buy a ski pass. Spaceport officials emphasize the carriers and suppliers would not be exempt from damage on the ground, or in cases of gross negligence.

"The issue is informed consent legislation," said Truth or Consequences Mayor John Mulcahy. "We need to get that passed."

Companies make no secret of the fact that the liability laws have played a role in their decision to go elsewhere. But they also cite Spaceport America's remote location —45 miles from Las Cruces and 200 miles from Albuquerque — and a failure by the state to offer competitive incentives as factors.

"We worked with (former Gov. Bill) Richardson's people as well as (Gov. Susana) Martinez," Nelson said. "They are all fine. They have been great. But they couldn't deliver the package that was necessary to get across the goal line."

Spaceport's success is tied largely to Virgin Galactic, which signed a 20-year lease to operate its commercial space tourism business from the site. Over the next two decades, the company's lease payments and user fees are expected to generate $250 million and more. But the terms of the lease or what penalties might be imposed if Branson pulls out are not publicly known. And the facility was planned with the idea that at least one new major tenant would move in by 2016.

"We are so happy we have Virgin Galactic as anchors," said Christine Anderson, executive director of the New Mexico Space Authority, which is lobbying lawmakers to approve informed consent. "But we want to attract more tenants. ... I think this is really a critical piece of legislation that New Mexico has to have."

Nelson says his company hasn't ruled out one day flying his Lynx aircraft in New Mexico. But he says the legislature's wavering on the liability exemptions "sends a message that we cannot expect a consistent response," he said.

Meantime, Branson's estimate for a first manned flight has been pushed back until late 2013 at the earliest. And questions remain about the facility's tourism draw.

Tourism and Spaceport officials have estimated as many as 200,000 people a year would visit the futuristic center. Branson told a national hotel conference in 2011 that he might put one of his still to be developed Virgin hotels in the area. But there has been no further word on that hotel, or others that have been rumored to cater to the space crowd.

Ignatiev estimates it will be 10 years before the commercial space business really takes off, "And I don't know how many states or commercial entities can sit around for 10 years and wait for business to show up. They are going to have a problem staying viable."

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Follow Jeri Clausing on Twitter at http://twitter.com/(hash)!/jericlausing

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Will Science Someday Rule Out the Possibility of God?

Over the past few centuries, science can be said to have gradually chipped away at the traditional grounds for believing in God. Much of what once seemed mysterious — the existence of humanity, the life-bearing perfection of Earth, the workings of the universe — can now be explained by biology, astronomy, physics and other domains of science. 

Although cosmic mysteries remain, Sean Carroll, a theoretical cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology, says there's good reason to think science will ultimately arrive at a complete understanding of the universe that leaves no grounds for God whatsoever.

Carroll argues that God's sphere of influence has shrunk drastically in modern times, as physics and cosmology have expanded in their ability to explain the origin and evolution of the universe. "As we learn more about the universe, there's less and less need to look outside it for help," he told Life's Little Mysteries.

He thinks the sphere of supernatural influence will eventually shrink to nil. But could science really eventually explain everything?

Beginning of time

Gobs of evidence have been collected in favor of the Big Bang model of cosmology, or the notion that the universe expanded from a hot, infinitely dense state to its current cooler, more expansive state over the course of 13.7 billion years. Cosmologists can model what happened from 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang until now, but the split-second before that remains murky. Some theologians have tried to equate the moment of the Big Bang with the description of the creation of the world found in the Bible and other religious texts; they argue that something — i.e., God — must have initiated the explosive event. 

However, in Carroll's opinion, progress in cosmology will eventually eliminate any perceived need for a Big Bang trigger-puller.

As he explained in a recent article in the "Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), a foremost goal of modern physics is to formulate a working theory that describes the entire universe, from subatomic to astronomical scales, within a single framework. Such a theory, called "quantum gravity," will necessarily account for what happened at the moment of the Big Bang. Some versions of quantum gravity theory that have been proposed by cosmologists predict that the Big Bang, rather than being the starting point of time, was just "a transitional stage in an eternal universe," in Carroll's words. For example, one model holds that the universe acts like a balloon that inflates and deflates over and over under its own steam. If, in fact, time had no beginning, this shuts the book on Genesis. [Big Bang Was Actually a Phase Change, New Theory Says]

Other versions of quantum gravity theory currently being explored by cosmologists predict that time did start at the Big Bang. But these versions of events don't cast a role for God either. Not only do they describe the evolution of the universe since the Big Bang, but they also account for how time was able to get underway in the first place. As such, these quantum gravity theories still constitute complete, self-contained descriptions of the history of the universe. "Nothing in the fact that there is a first moment of time, in other words, necessitates that an external something is required to bring the universe about at that moment," Carroll wrote.

Another way to put it is that contemporary physics theories, though still under development and awaiting future experimental testing, are turning out to be capable of explaining why Big Bangs occur, without the need for a supernatural jumpstart. As Alex Filippenko, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a conference talk earlier this year, "The Big Bang could've occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there. With the laws of physics, you can get universes."

Parallel universes

But there are other potential grounds for God. Physicists have observed that many of the physical constants that define our universe, from the mass of the electron to the density of dark energy, are eerily perfect for supporting life. Alter one of these constants by a hair, and the universe becomes  unrecognizable. "For example, if the mass of the neutron were a bit larger (in comparison to the mass of the proton) than its actual value, hydrogen would not fuse into deuterium and conventional stars would be impossible," Carroll said. And thus, so would life as we know it. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]

Theologians often seize upon the so-called "fine-tuning" of the physical constants as evidence that God must have had a hand in them; it seems he chose the constants just for us. But contemporary physics explains our seemingly supernatural good luck in a different way.

Some versions of quantum gravity theory, including string theory, predict that our life-giving universe is but one of an infinite number of universes that altogether make up the multiverse. Among these infinite universes, the full range of values of all the physical constants are represented, and only some of the universes have values for the constants that enable the formation of stars, planets and life as we know it. We find ourselves in one of the lucky universes (because where else?). [Parallel Universes Explained in 200 Words]

Some theologians counter that it is far simpler to invoke God than to postulate the existence of infinitely many universes in order to explain our universe's life-giving perfection. To them, Carroll retorts that the multiverse wasn't postulated as a complicated way to explain fine-tuning. On the contrary, it follows as a natural consequence of our best, most elegant theories.

Once again, if or when these theories prove correct, "a multiverse happens, whether you like it or not," he wrote. And there goes God's hand in things. [Poll: Do You Believe in God?]

The reason why

Another role for God is as a raison d'être for the universe. Even if cosmologists manage to explain how the universe began, and why it seems so fine-tuned for life, the question might remain why there is something as opposed to nothing. To many people, the answer to the question is God. According to Carroll, this answer pales under scrutiny. There can be no answer to such a question, he says.

"Most scientists … suspect that the search for ultimate explanations eventually terminates in some final theory of the world, along with the phrase 'and that's just how it is,'" Carroll wrote. People who find this unsatisfying are failing to treat the entire universe as something unique — "something for which a different set of standards is appropriate." A complete scientific theory that accounts for everything in the universe doesn't need an external explanation in the same way that specific things within the universe need external explanations. In fact, Carroll argues, wrapping another layer of explanation (i.e., God) around a self-contained theory of everything would just be an unnecessary complication. (The theory already works without God.)

Judged by the standards of any other scientific theory, the "God hypothesis" does not do very well, Carroll argues. But he grants that "the idea of God has functions other than those of a scientific hypothesis."

Psychology research suggests that belief in the supernatural acts as societal glue and motivates people to follow the rules; further, belief in the afterlife helps people grieve and staves off fears of death.

"We're not designed at the level of theoretical physics," Daniel Kruger, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Michigan, told LiveScience last year. What matters to most people "is what happens at the human scale, relationships to other people, things we experience in a lifetime."

Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover or Life's Little Mysteries @llmysteries. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

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