Notre Dame Professor Tries To Solve Mystery Behind The Star of Bethlehem
December 25, 2007
For nearly 2,000 years, it’s been the one puzzle astronomers haven’t been able to fully solve. But now, one Notre Dame professor thinks he may have discovered the origin of the star of Bethlehem.
Look at an artist’s rendering of Jesus’ birth and you can always find it.
Listen to songs like “We Three Kings” and it’s clear.
The star of Bethlehem plays a pivotal role in the Christmas story.
Still, it’s role in the Bible is fairly small. In fact, there’s only one reference — in the Gospel of Matthew. “Where is he born the King of the Jews?” it reads. “For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.”
But did that star really exist? If so, where was it? What was it? Why was it so bright?
They are questions Notre Dame Astrophysicist Dr. Grant Mathews began to ask about three years ago. And what he found took him by surprise.
“The standard viewpoint over the years is that it’s a massing of planets, or what we call planetary conjunction, when planets move past each other,” he said.
But here’s the curious thing:
Mathews says this conjunction wasn’t just a few planets.
“Basically every known planet at the time was amassed all at once,” he said.
And it wasn’t anything astronomers had recorded before.
“To have all of them line up like that at once was a very rare event,” Mathews said.
On April 17, 6 B.C., Jupiter, Saturn, the sun, and the moon all aligned in the constellation Aries. Venus and Mars lined up in neighboring constellations.
Dr. Mathews says, for the so called “wise men” this would have had great significance.
“That would have signaled to the Magi that there was newborn leader with a special destiny — a very powerful leader that was going to appear in Jerusalem,” he said.
But Mathews wasn’t convinced the planets fully explained that bright light in the East referenced in the Gospel of Matthew. So he went “back in time” to see if something else might have been there too.
He found two likely candidates. The first, is a nova — a combination of two stars that shines thousands of times brighter than a normal star.
The second is a supernova — a single star 10-20 times the size of our sun that collapses in a massive nuclear explosion. Supernovas can create light up to 100 million times as bright as a normal star.
“It is as bright as this entire galaxy of stars,” Mathews said, pointing to a picture from NASA’s Hubble Telescope.
Using other Hubble images, pictures from the Chandra X-Ray Observer Satellite, and ancient Chinese astronomy charts, Mathews scanned the skies and was astonished.
“Sure enough, in the archives, there is a supernova in Aquilla the constellation they saw. And it’s about 2,000 years old,” he said.
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U.S. Jews, Muslims Seek Paths to Harmony
December 25, 2007
Muslims and Jews, a tiny slice of the U.S. population, are looking for new ways to get along that could set a worldwide example for two ancient but often alienated faiths, religious leaders and experts say.
“I’ve encountered (among Muslims) a more centrist, a more moderate voice that is looking to the Jewish community to help project that voice … to the greater world,” said Rabbi Marc Schneier of New York, speaking of a national summit of imams and rabbis he helped organize earlier this year.
He also cited a recent incident in a New York subway “where four young Jews were being verbally and physically assaulted on a train for wishing the passengers a happy Hanukkah, and the only individual to come to their rescue was a young Muslim man,” Hassan Askari, of Bangladeshi heritage, who was beaten.
Russia Warns of Retaliation Against U.S. Missile Shield
December 25, 2007
Russia will take “measures of reprisal” if the United States insisted on deploying a missile shield in central Europe which could threaten Moscow’s national security, a foreign ministry spokesman said Monday.
The U.S. missile defense plan will be “a strong action designed to weaken Russia’s nuclear deterrent,” said Mikhail Kamynin in a foreign ministry statement.
Russia would “have no other choice than to take measures of reprisal,” he said.
Russia’s head of strategic missile forces, General Nikolai Solovtsov, has threatened to target planned U.S. missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic if Washington ignored Russia’s concerns, the Interfax news agency reported.
Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles could target the planned U.S. shield if it was seen to “undermine the Russian nuclear deterrent capability,” Solovtsov said.
Washington has insisted the missile shield, which consists of a radar station in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland, is intended to stave off the threat of attacks from what it calls “rogue states.”
Earlier reports said the first missile could be put on alert in Poland in 2011 and the deployment could be completed by 2013.
Israel Would Win Nuclear War With Iran
December 25, 2007
All out nuclear war between Israel and Iran: a doomsday scenario that we all fear deeply. A new study compiled by the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), headed by former Pentagon analyst Anthony H. Cordesman, explored just such a nightmare scenario, noting that it could lead to the death of between 16- 28 million Iranian civilians, and 200-800 thousand Israelis.
This hypothetical, research-oriented study also explored other contingencies for unconventional warfare in our region, noting the tactics that various countries could potentially employ in such instances.
As pertains to nuclear warfare, the study found that an Israeli nuclear scrimmage with Iran would most likely last for about three weeks. Aside from the aforementioned direct casualties, the study could not determine how many additional long-term casualties would arise from fallout and radiation in the weeks and months following such an attack.
One essential requirement for nuclear confrontation in our region, according to the study, is allowing Iran’s nuclear program to develop, unhindered by a pre-emptive strike by either Israel or the United States. If US or Israeli preemption does not occur, the study found, Iran could very well have 30 nuclear warheads available for warfare between 2010-2020. Israel, by comparison, currently has 200 nuclear war heads with both air and sea launch capabilities, according to the study.
Whats The Story With Atheism
December 25, 2007
Is atheism the new opiate of the masses? The momentum for this question had begun long before the new Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, this week answered the BBC Radio 5 Live question, “Do you believe in God?”, with a simple: “No.” It was already under way before everyone forgot to feel affronted by the influx of seasonal e-cards wishing us all a Happy Holiday, and then comprehensively failed to notice that the mighty M&S had left out Jesus from its 2007 Christmas card collection.
The traditional Christmas school holiday period had already morphed into “Winterval” in an increasing number of Scottish local authorities.
Earlier this month, a survey commissioned by the public theology think-tank Theos revealed that more than one-quarter of British adults could not identify Bethlehem as Jesus’s birthplace, guessing Nazareth or Jerusalem instead. Only 12% could answer all four questions about the Christmas story correctly.
The Theos survey followed an earlier Sunday newspaper revelation that only one in five schools planned to perform a Nativity play this year. The apparent de-Christianising of modern multicultural Britain compelled at least one commentator yesterday to describe 2007 as the year “the swelling tide of unbelief crashed further through the structures of our cultural architecture”.
Economic Collapse - Crisis May Make 1929 Look Like A Walk In The Park
December 24, 2007
As central banks continue to splash their cash over the system, so far to little effect, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues things are rapidly spiralling out of their control.
Twenty billion dollars here, $20bn there, and a lush half-trillion from the European Central Bank at give-away rates for Christmas. Buckets of liquidity are being splashed over the North Atlantic banking system, so far with meagre or fleeting effects.
As the credit paralysis stretches through its fifth month, a chorus of economists has begun to warn that the world’s central banks are fighting the wrong war, and perhaps risk a policy error of epochal proportions.
“Liquidity doesn’t do anything in this situation,” says Anna Schwartz, the doyenne of US monetarism and life-time student (with Milton Friedman) of the Great Depression.
“It cannot deal with the underlying fear that lots of firms are going bankrupt. The banks and the hedge funds have not fully acknowledged who is in trouble. That is the critical issue,” she adds.
Lenders are hoarding the cash, shunning peers as if all were sub-prime lepers. Spreads on three-month Euribor and Libor - the interbank rates used to price contracts and Club Med mortgages - are stuck at 80 basis points even after the latest blitz. The monetary screw has tightened by default.
York professor Peter Spencer, chief economist for the ITEM Club, says the global authorities have just weeks to get this right, or trigger disaster.
“The central banks are rapidly losing control. By not cutting interest rates nearly far enough or fast enough, they are allowing the money markets to dictate policy. We are long past worrying about moral hazard,” he says.
“They still have another couple of months before this starts imploding. Things are very unstable and can move incredibly fast. I don’t think the central banks are going to make a major policy error, but if they do, this could make 1929 look like a walk in the park,” he adds.
The Bank of England knows the risk. Markets director Paul Tucker says the crisis has moved beyond the collapse of mortgage securities, and is now eating into the bedrock of banking capital. “We must try to avoid the vicious circle in which tighter liquidity conditions, lower asset values, impaired capital resources, reduced credit supply, and slower aggregate demand feed back on each other,” he says.
New York’s Federal Reserve chief Tim Geithner echoed the words, warning of an “adverse self-reinforcing dynamic”, banker-speak for a downward spiral. The Fed has broken decades of practice by inviting all US depositary banks to its lending window, bringing dodgy mortgage securities as collateral.
Ex-CIA Official: Israel Will Attack Iran On It’s Own
December 23, 2007
I came back from a trip to Israel in November convinced that Israel would attack Iran,” Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and senior adviser to three US presidents, George W. Bush among them, told the American Newsweek magazine in an article published Friday.
Citing conversations he had in Israel with officials in Mossad and the Israeli defense establishment, Riedel concluded that “Israel is not going to allow its nuclear monopoly to be threatened.”
While some US experts doubt Israel’s ability to tackle Iran alone, David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, was quoted by Newsweek as saying that although information on the exact location of Iran’s nuclear facility is incomplete, Israel’s air strike on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility on September 6, widely discussed in foreign media outlets, could be seen as a test run for any future strike on Iran’s facilities, as well as a direct warning to Teheran.
Riedel told the magazine his impression that Israel would venture a strike on Iran on its own was formed before the publication of the joint US intelligence agencies’ report, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). “This [the NIE] makes it [a strike on Iran] even more likely,” he said.
Since the publication of the NIE, which reversed a previous American assessment by concluding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, leaders worldwide have been adjusting their publicly stated positions on the Iranian nuclear issue.
Even inside the US, President Bush attempted some damage control by stating a day after the report’s publication that “Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous.”
In Israel, responses to the report ranged from subtle criticism of the report’s conclusions to outright slamming of the US intelligence community’s capabilities, so much so that on last Sunday’s cabinet meeting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert instructed his ministers to refrain from commenting any further on the report.
In the international scene, Russia’s decision to renew fuel shipments to Iran main nuclear facility at Bushehr was interpreted by many anlysts as stemming directly from the NIE’s publication; another development possibly stemming from the report is Russia and China’s hardened position on further sanctions against Teheran.
In Teheran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quick to capitalize on the NIE, calling it an “Iranian victory” and demanding that the United States publicly apologize for its previous bellicose stance.
Uzi Arad, a former Mossad official and adviser to opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, told Newsweek that on a recent trip to Moscow, a Russian general poked fun at the naiveté of the NIE, commenting that if the Iranians had halted weapons development in 2003 it was partly because they were satisfied with progress there and wanted to devote investment to harder parts of the nuclear equation, like enrichment.
“The irony is that the effect of this report may be self-negating - by itself it will accelerate Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons,” Arad told the magazine.
Israel Fears Clash With U.S. As Rice Applies Pressure Over Peace Talks
December 23, 2007
A senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel may come into conflict with the United States over increased pressure by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to advance talks with the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, the Israeli and PA negotiating teams, headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Ahmed Qureia, respectively, are to meet Sunday ahead of Tuesdays meeting between Olmert and PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
The U.S. might want to up the pressure on Israel to fulfil its obligations in the first stage of the road map, the adviser said in private conversations, particularly removing illegal outposts and freezing construction in the territories.
“Their demands from Israel will only increase and it is not certain that we can meet them under the circumstances,” he added.
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The adviser said that in Vice Premier Haim Ramons talks with American officials, he had gone “too far in promising them things to please them.”
Another senior government official involved in the talks also warned of expected crises with the Palestinians and the Americans.
Russia’s Putin Named Time’s Person of The Year
December 20, 2007
Russian President Vladimir Putin was named Time’s “Person of the Year” for bringing his country “roaring back to the table of world power,” the magazine said on its Web site.
Putin, 55, who has said he may become Russia’s prime minister after stepping down as president next year, has helped lead the country back to stability “at significant cost to the principles and ideas that free nations prize,” Richard Stengel, the magazine’s managing editor, wrote in an article explaining the choice.
“With dauntless persistence, a sharp vision of what Russia should become and a sense that he embodied the spirit of Mother Russia, Putin has put his country back on the map,” Stengel wrote.
Time, owned by Time Warner Inc., started the annual “Person of the Year” cover story in 1927 with Charles Lindbergh, the aviator who made the first solo trans-Atlantic flight. Last year, Internet users behind the self-made content on Web sites such as Google Inc.’s YouTube.com won the honor.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, a Nobel Prize winner, “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, Chinese President Hu Jintao and David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, were named runners-up, the magazine said.
Israeli Minister Warns NIE Miscalculation Could Lead To War
December 20, 2007
A senior Israeli official has voiced the first open criticism of the U.S. intelligence assessment of Irans nuclear program.
Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter warned that the United States underestimated Irans nuclear capabilities and intentions. Dichter said the National Intelligence Estimate, which asserted that Teheran abandoned its nuclear weapons program, could lead to a Middle East war.
“Something went wrong in the American blueprint for analyzing the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat,” Dichter, a former Israeli intelligence chief, said. “We have to hope that the United States will know to correct this. Israel and other states must help in any way including providing intelligence material so as to repair this miscalculation.”
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