March 2019 Newsletter
In this Clergy Letter Project update, you’ll find the following six items:
- Humanist Clergy Join The Movement;
- Astrobiology News for March 2019: K Dwarfs and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life;
- WesleyNexus Evolution Weekend 2019: In Case You Missed It ;
- Associate Director, Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion;
- Darwin Devolves; and
- A 10th State Joins the Attack on Evolution.
1. Humanist Clergy Join The Movement
In case you missed the news earlier this month, I want to take this opportunity to share some very good news with you. Humanist clergy have now joined The Clergy Letter Project!
Thanks to the hard work of Dr. Jason Wiles, a member of The Clergy Letter Project’s list of scientific consultants and a Humanist chaplain and celebrant, The Humanist Clergy Letter was drafted and circulated. I’m proud to say that The Humanist Clergy Letter has been endorsed by the Society for Humanistic Judaism and supported by The Humanist Society.
You can read about the effort in a short essay that Jason and I recently wrote.
Please join me in thanking Jason for all of his hard work and in welcoming the newest members of The Clergy Letter Project family.
2. Astrobiology News for March 2019: K Dwarfs and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
In this month’s Astrobiology News, Clergy Letter Project consultant and Adler Planetarium astronomer Grace Wolf-Chase celebrates Women’s History Month by discussing Giada Arney’s work searching for extraterrestrial life.
In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ll highlight a recent article by one of the many excellent female astrobiologists. Giada Arney presented a TED talk late last year entitled Discovering the Story of Life in the Universe.(1) Earlier this month, Arney published a paper arguing that stars known as K dwarfs may offer the best prospects for detecting signs of life on orbiting worlds.(2)
What makes K dwarfs so interesting in the search for extraterrestrial life? K dwarfs fall between stars like our Sun (G dwarfs) and dim, red, long-lived M dwarfs(3) in terms of brightness, temperature, and lifespan. With lifetimes of ~17-70 billion years, K dwarfs offer plenty of time for life to evolve on worlds in their habitable zones. Although M dwarfs are even longer-lived, these stars undergo very energetic stellar flares and are much brighter when they are young, so any planets that would otherwise be in the habitable zone of these stars might have their water boiled off early on.
Since K dwarfs may offer a “sweet spot,” Arney investigated what signs of life might look like on a hypothetical planet orbiting a K dwarf.(4) The simultaneous presence of methane and oxygen in a planet’s atmosphere is considered to be a particularly good biosignature, since these molecules react, and thus destroy each other. To be detected, they must be replenished, very possibly by life, and remain in significant amounts in a planet’s atmosphere.
Using a computer model to simulate how the chemistry and temperature of a planet’s atmosphere responds to different host stars, Arney showed that the methane-oxygen signal would be easier to detect from planets in the habitable zones of K dwarfs compared to Sun-like stars. Proposed future missions such as LUVOIR(5) or HabEx(6) could be designed to detect such signals from planets orbiting “nearby” K dwarfs.
By the way, two of the K dwarfs Arney considers good targets in the search for signs of life, 61 Cyg and Epsilon Indi, may be familiar to my fellow Star Trek geeks as the legendary home systems of the Tellarites and the Andorians.(7) How cool would it be if either of these two stars actually does host a world harboring life?
Until next month,
Grace Wolf-Chase, Ph.D. (gwolfchase@adlerplanetarium.org)
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9yL0x9LTRU
2. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0651/meta
3. I’ve written about prospects for life on worlds orbiting M dwarfs in the past – for e.g., check out the articles on TRAPPIST-1 in the Astrobiology archive: http://theclergyletterproject.org/Resources/Astrobiology.html
4. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/k-star-advantage
5. https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/luvoir/
6. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/habex/
7. https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Worlds_of_the_Federation
3. WesleyNexus Evolution Weekend 2019: In Case You Missed It
In case you were unable to participate in WesleyNexus’s Evolution Weekend event, you can now watch it on video! The event was entitled “Human Origins: Social and Religious Impacts.” Take a look at it and perhaps share it with others.
4. Associate Director, Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion
The following note is from Dr. Se Kim, Deputy Chief Programs Officer at the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. As you’ll see, she describes an exciting position for a scientist interested in the intersection of religion and science.
Greetings from AAAS-DoSER! I am writing to ask you for your help in spreading the word about the search for a new Associate Program Director for DoSER!
As the world’s largest general scientific society, AAAS established the program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) in 1995 to facilitate communication between scientific and religious communities and relate scientific knowledge and technological development to the purposes and concerns of society at large. The program is led by Director Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, and the program has really grown to make major impacts through flagship projects like Science for Seminaries, Engaging Scientists project, Science for Religion Reporters, and Science for Theological Education. See www.aaas.org/doser
The position requires working closely with the Director in overseeing the continued success of this very important program. We are looking for a scientist with a passion for engaging the religious publics. The position will be here in Washington DC, and it is not remote.
The position description and application link at AAAS employment site is here - http://bit.ly/2Uujfmd
If any interested candidates have questions, please direct them to me (skim@aaas.org), Dr. Wiseman, and/or to the AAAS human resources jobs@aaas.org.
5. Darwin Devolves
Paul Braterman, a member of The Clergy Letter Project’s list of scientific consultants, recently published an informative book review of Michael Behe’s new book, Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution. Behe, in case you don’t remember, is best known for promoting the idea of irreducible complexity that lies at the heart of the modern pro-creationist intelligent design movement. Paul’s review is well worth reading.
6. A 10th State Joins the Attack on Evolution
As I reported in the two previous newsletters, nine states (Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Maine, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Virginia) have seen anti-evolution legislation introduced in their legislatures in 2019. Iowa has recently joined this group. Despite this growing list of states opting to attempt to oppose the teaching of evolution as a central part of biology, I’m happy to say that most of these efforts (Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, South Dakota and Virginia) have failed for now. But those of us who care about high quality science education not being compromised by a narrow religious perspective need to remain vigilant.
Concluding Thoughts
The mass killings at two mosques in Christchurch take our breath away. Unfortunately, this carnage should not be seen as an isolated event. Indeed, the shooting and death that took place at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh mere months ago is far too similar. Together, we who make up The Clergy Letter Project have taken a strong and vocal position in support of religious tolerance. We understand that there is far more that ties us together than divides us. Even as we profess our own faith, or lack thereof, we can celebrate the beliefs of our fellow humans. So, as we grieve and mourn the loss of so many, we look for ways to help all people move past hatred, past divisiveness, and past narrow sectarianism. We understand that both religion and science teach us that we are members of a single species and that our genetic heritage demonstrates just how closely related we all are.
Finally, as always, I want to thank you for your continued support and as I do every month, I urge you to take one simple action. Please share this month’s Newsletter with a colleague or two (or post a link via any social media platform you use) and ask them to add their voices to those promoting a deep and meaningful understanding between religion and science. They can add their signatures to one of our Clergy Letters simply by dropping me a note at mz@theclergyletterproject.org. Together we are making a difference.
Michael
Michael Zimmerman
Founder and Executive Director
The Clergy Letter Project
www.theclergyletterproject.org
mz@theclergyletterproject.org