A few months ago, the science journalism community, myself included, and a large portion of the nation’s population went justifiably apeshit over Todd Akin’s asinine remarks on female physiology. It is unsettling enough that someone so ignorant is a member of the United States House of Representatives (and has been for 11 years), but to make the situation even more frightening, Akin also sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. And to make matters worse still, he is not alone in his ignorance.

Akin sits on the House Science Committee with a few other individuals who are not only undeserving of the position, but are completely unqualified to hold it. Sitting with Akin on the affectionately-dubbed “Anti-Science Committee” is Paul Broun, a creationist who believes the Earth is 9,000 years old, Mo Brooks and Jim Sensenbrenner, both global-warming deniers, and Ralph Hall, who blocked a bill to fund science research by essentially forcing the opposing candidates to vote in favor of pornography.
Having religious zealots holding political office has become so commonplace that the average citizen does not even consider the fact that many of these politicians base their actions in office on religious beliefs — a direct violation of the constitutional church/state separation mandate.

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”

Paul Broun said this as part of a speech he gave at Liberty Baptist Church in Georgia. It is impossible not to pick up on the irony of spouting religious beliefs while sitting on the House Science Committee. I would expect this ecclesiastical drivel from a religious fundamentalist or dogmatic preacher, but not from a man who is supposed to be responsible for shaping the scientific future of this country.

Broun continues, “And that’s the reason as your congressman I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C.”

I hope this terrifies all of you as much as it terrifies me. So god made the earth in six days … and then the trillions of other stars got thrown together when? On a Tuesday? Mr. Broun, are you going to propose that all unmarried non-virgins should be put to death as it commands in Deuteronomy 22:19? Are you going to propose that it should be illegal to wear clothes made of two different materials as it says in Leviticus 19:19? According to the Bible in 1 Kings 7:23, the value of pi is 3, not 3.14.

If these are the laws you will be following in office, then this country has a lot more to worry about than global warming.

I must make it clear that I do not harbor negative feelings toward individuals with strong religious beliefs. I do, however, feel that my rights as a citizen are being infringed upon when those individuals use their political power to impose their religious beliefs upon myself or my peers. Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. Vice President Joe Biden is an exemplary example of a man who does not let his religion influence his political actions. During his debate, he stated, “My religion defines who I am … but I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians, and Muslims, and Jews. I just refuse to impose that on others.”

Speaking of global warming, it would seem logical that the head of the panel that oversees the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy would be someone who is scientifically-inclined, or at least scientifically-informed. Such is not the case, however.

“I haven’t seen anything that convinces me global warming is real, much less caused by human activity.”

This alarming claim was made by Mo Brooks, a representative from Alabama. In another spine-chilling interview, he claims that “there’s some good associated with [carbon dioxide emissions], to the extent that we have higher levels. That means that plant life grows better, because it is an essential gas for all forms of plant life. I’m not familiar with any [adverse effects of carbon dioxide] on human beings.”

This man sits on the House Science Committee, and he has no idea whatsoever what is going on in our environment. I will give Brooks the benefit of the doubt and say that he is merely confused as to what is happening.

While Brooks may be well-intentioned but sadly misinformed, the same cannot be said for Jim Sensenbrenner, the vice chair of the House Science Committee. Sensenbrenner openly denies any and all scientific research that shows climate change is occurring. He has compared climate scientists to fascists, and supported billboards that compared people who believe in climate change to serial killers.

And now we come to Ralph Hall, a man who sits on one of the most-respected scientific committees in the world, and the man who blocked a bill that would give billions of dollars to scientific research and teaching. Contradictory does not even begin to describe this man. He is the antithesis to what the Committee should be standing for.

The House Science Committee should be for science. Shocking, I know. The Committee should house men and women who hold education and science to a higher standard than the people who sit there now. The committee should house people who know that rainbows are not god’s promise, but a manifestation of light refraction — people who know that the first humans were not Adam and Eve, but the australopithecines. How can the United States expect to remain a competitive scientific player if we are constantly being sabotaged from within?

HUDSON LOFCHIE can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Albert Einstein is one of the most respected scientists of all time. His ideas and theories have changed the way that physicists view the universe. Some of his ideas were so ahead of their time that there has never been a way to prove or disprove them.  However, with a recent discovery of a new star near the center of our galaxy, scientists may finally be able to prove, or disprove, the famous theory of relativity.

The star, named S0-102, orbits the black hole found in the center of the Milky Way galaxy every 11.5 years, five years faster than S0-2, the next closest star to the galactic core that was previously being studied by Andrea Ghez, leader of the UCLA research group that made the discovery. However, the record-breaking orbit is not the most exciting part of the discovery.

“The [more] important thing is that we have found a second star that orbits the black hole in a human lifespan,” said Leo Meyer, a researcher in Ghez’s team. “Most of those stars take more than a hundred years to orbit around [the black hole] and this is just too long.”

Ghez explained that each star on its own is not incredibly useful, but now that two stars can be observed, the interactions of these two stars will reveal how space and time warp around black holes.

Since the orbit completes in a human time-frame, more accurate observations can be made because researchers can view multiple complete cycles instead of just a partial cycle of a star that orbits every hundred or so years. The information given by the orbits will help astronomers learn how much space is affected by the gravity of the supermassive black hole.

“This theory is by far the least tested and so we can use this discovery to test Einstein in a fundamentally new way,” said Meyer.

Using observations of this new star, astronomers at UCLA hope to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which predicts that mass distorts space and time in the way a bowling ball would distort a mattress. Of course, this distortion in space would be in three dimensions instead of a two-dimensional mattress. Einstein’s theory has been tested on stars and planets, but it has never been proven to work in or near a supermassive black hole.

“Einstein’s theory has been very precisely tested inside of our own solar system, and so far it has passed all tests we have thought of,” said Andrew Bradshaw, a graduate student in the department of physics at UC Davis. “The strength of gravity around our Sun is weak in comparison to gravity around the black hole. By precisely measuring the orbits of stars like S0-2 and S0-102, [astronomers] will be able to test whether the measurements match the predictions made by Einstein.”

The newly-found star is significant to the research because it gives astronomers valuable information about other objects that orbit near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and it will help determine what the mass of a black hole actually is — a question that has taunted astronomers for generations.

“When an astronomer wants to figure out the mass of an object, for instance, the black hole at the center of the galaxy, we always learn what an object’s mass is by measuring its gravitational influence on other objects,” said Robert Becker, a professor in the UC Davis physics department and a member of the UC Davis Cosmology Group.

With the discovery of this new star orbiting so close to the galactic core, astronomers will now be able to make far more accurate calculations about the properties of the black hole at the center of our galaxy.

UCLA is currently developing new technology to increase the sensitivity of telescopes, thus revealing any more large bodies in the gravitational field of the central black hole. Ultimately, the research will lead to more information about the enigmatic properties of black holes.

“[Researchers are] clearly learning to do this better, and one of the results of that is being able to see fainter stars … as you go to fainter stars, you see more stars,” Becker said. “[This] is only the tip of the iceberg as they improve their techniques to better map out the stars in the vicinity of the black hole, and better define what the state of things is at the center.”

NICOLE NOGA can be reached at science@theaggie.org.