Alfred Russel Wallace: Darwin's co-discoverer - a forgotten hero

The Times
February 12, 2009
: Darwin's co-discoverer
A little-known naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, also proposed the theory of natural selection - and this spurred Charles Darwin on to publish his great book.
Anjana Ahuja

In the 1850s, a bearded Victorian naturalist set sail for exotic shores, determined to discover the origin of species. He returned to England laden with once-living bounty - mostly birds, beetles and butterflies - which he dispersed, for modest sums, to museums and cultured gentlemen. He retained specimens for himself, the study of which furnished such papers as On the Law that has regulated the Introduction of New Species. His investigations would culminate, in 1858, in an explanation of evolution through natural selection.

This is not Charles Darwin, but Alfred Russel Wallace, who shared joint billing with Darwin on the paper that would set the elder scientist on the road to fame. The stirringly titled On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection, read out to the Linnean Society in Piccadilly on July 1, 1858, raised the controversial idea of natural selection. This argued that favourable traits in a species would result in greater reproductive success for the lucky ones that carried them, and these traits - such as a long neck for eating leaves from high branches - would gradually spread. This might slowly lead to new species (say, giraffes).

The story of what happened afterwards to Darwin and Wallace might well have been entitled “On the Tendency of Co-Discoverers of a Theory to Depart Indefinitely in Their Fortunes”. Darwin, whose reputation was sealed a year later with the publication of On the Origin of Species, lies entombed in Westminster Abbey, metaphorically rubbing shoulders with prime ministers and royalty. The bicentenary of his birth is being marked in grand fashion this week. Wallace lies in a small Dorset graveyard, flanked until recently by unchecked leylandii, his name and legacy largely unfamiliar beyond his family and a coterie of scientists and historians. More

Trillions of earth like planets supporting life in our galaxy

The Times
February 16, 2009
We are not alone: 'trillions' of planets could be supporting life
Mark Henderson, Science Editor, in Chicago
Almost every star similar to the Sun probably has a life-harbouring planet like the Earth in orbit around it, a leading astronomer said yesterday.

The discovery of hundreds of planets around distant stars in our galaxy suggests that most solar systems have a world like ours that is capable of supporting life, and many of them are likely to have evolved it, according to Alan Boss, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington.

Nasa’s Kepler spacecraft, which will be launched next month to seek Earth-like worlds, is expected to find thousands of rocky planets in the patch of sky it surveys, Dr Boss told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago.

“We’re on the verge of finding out convincingly how frequently habitable planets occur in the Universe,” he said. “A little over 20 years ago we knew of no other planetary system other than our own. We now know of well over 300. I suspect that virtually every star when you look up at the night sky has an Earth-like planet around it.” These “exoplanets” are mainly gas giants like Jupiter, but they do include some “super-Earths” that are a few times larger than our planet. While smaller worlds like ours are invisible to existing telescopes, Kepler will be capable of finding them.More

Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith: Vatican

From The Times
February 11, 2009
Vatican buries the hatchet with Charles Darwin

Richard Owen in Rome
The Vatican has admitted that Charles Darwin was on the right track when he claimed that Man descended from apes.

A leading official declared yesterday that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith, and could even be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. “In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God,” said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. The Vatican also dealt the final blow to speculation that Pope Benedict XVI might be prepared to endorse the theory of Intelligent Design, whose advocates credit a “higher power” for the complexities of life.

Organisers of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species said that at first it had even been proposed to ban Intelligent Design from the event, as “poor theology and poor science”. Intelligent Design would be discussed at the fringes of the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, but merely as a “cultural phenomenon”, rather than a scientific or theological issue, organisers said.

The conference is seen as a landmark in relations between faith and science. Three years ago advocates of Intelligent Design seized on the Pope’s reference to an “intelligent project” as proof that he favoured their views. More

smallest exoplanet, Corot-Exo-7b, has a high temperature - between 1,000 and 1,500C

Telescope sees smallest exoplanet

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News


When planets transit their star, they block out light - like Mercury above
The smallest planet yet found outside the Solar System has been detected by a French space telescope.
The rocky world is less than twice the size of Earth.
Only a handful of planets have so far been found with a mass comparable to Earth, Venus, Mars or Mercury.
The discovery was made by Corot, an orbiting observatory with a 27cm-diameter telescope to search for planets orbiting other stars.
About 330 of these "exoplanets" have been discovered so far. But most of them have been gas giants similar to Jupiter or Neptune.
"For the first time, we have unambiguously detected a planet that is 'rocky' in the same sense as our own Earth," said Malcolm Fridlund, Corot project scientist from the European Space Agency (Esa).
"We now have to understand this object further to put it into context, and continue our search for smaller, more Earth-like objects with Corot," he added.
The new find, Corot-Exo-7b, has a diameter less than twice that of Earth and orbits its Sun-like star once every 20 hours. More