The conference will include sessions on various topics spanning areas as diverse as physics, human cognition, art, astronomy, and religion. For those who wish to submit a paper for consideration, the call is open until May 30th, 2009.

More information may be found here.

[Edited to add that the early registration deadline, including the call for abstracts, has been changed to June 15, 2009, and the deadline for registration is now July 1, 2009. Thank you to Attila Grandpierre for this information.]

This is my personal confession: I smell like charred bonfire. But I do have a good reason.

On Wednesday, I woke up early to make it to a local Birkat Ha-Hammah ceremony. It was cloudy and rather cold out, so I wasn’t sure that it was going to be possible to bless the sun. It simply wasn’t visible. My husband and daughter were still sleeping, so I headed out quietly. There had been a snowfall the night before, and I found it rather incongruous to be brushing snow off of the car immediately before heading off to bless the sun and burn leavening (hametz) for Passover.

When I arrived at the first location (there were at least two ceremonies being held nearby) nobody was there, and the sun was still covered with clouds. I looked in the general direction of the east and began to recite the blessing on the sun anyway. But a few words into the blessing, the clouds parted, and I could clearly see the solar disk (which I carefully kept in my peripheral vision).

I then drove to another ceremony site, which was the empty field of a synagogue that is currently under construction. A few women and families were just leaving, so there were only five or six men and me in attendance. The bonfire was in a large rectangular metal bin, and was being stoked by volunteers, with wooden planks being added periodically. People would come by, throw pieces of bread, pita, and even a box filled with croissants into the fire, and recite the Aramaic declaration of nullification of hametz. In turn, I also threw in the pieces of bread and pita that I’d brought with me and recited the declaration on behalf of myself and my family.

Most of the celebrants burned their leavened products and then said the blessing on the sun. I chatted with one of them, telling him that the sun had come out, however briefly, during the blessing. To this, he replied, “Yes, the miracle happened here too!” I smiled, and we wished each other a happy Passover.

After thanking the volunteers, I headed off to do some more Passover shopping. I was still thinking about the blessing of the sun. Miracle? Perhaps not the fact of the emergence of the sun itself, but our very relationship to it on earth is certainly a powerful one (whether one subscribes to the rare earth hypothesis or no). Mostly, I think of such moments as numinous, as per Rudolf Otto (Das Heilige). Whether or not one attributes this feeling of awe to a religious force, it is difficult to deny that the sun, moon, stars, planets and other heavenly bodies hold a certain fascination. Even more so when their observation is underscored by religious ritual.

A happy Passover and Easter to those who celebrate them!

Several months ago, I posted about an upcoming rare event in Judaism — that is, the blessing of the sun, or Birkat Ha-Hammah, that takes place once every twenty-eight years, and is based primarily on the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Brakhot 59b.

The event takes place this year on April 8th, in the early morning. Because Passover happens to begin on the evening of April 8th (a truly rare convergence indeed), many morning celebrations will combine the burning of leaven (chametz) and the blessing of the sun.

For those who may be interested, here are a number of relevant links, spanning several perspectives, both confessional and non:

http://www.ujc.org/page.aspx?id=197451

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=S&artid=1165

http://www.blessthesun.org/

http://www.jrf.org/birkat-hahammah

http://www.jewfaq.org/chamah.htm

http://mobile.aish.com/literacy/mitzvahs/Here_Comes_the_Sun.asp

http://www.forward.com/articles/104024/

To quote the immortal bards Gerome Ragni and James Rado, “Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in.”

Dr. Ruggles is an Emeritus Professor of Archaeoastronomy at the University of Leicester. Among his books are ‘Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmologies and Myth’ and ‘Skywatching in the Ancient World: New Perspectives in Cultural Astronomy’.

For more information, including contacts and the price of admission, please visit the British Science Association site, located here.

'Census Hopeful', by Camilla Kesterton

On a note related to my posting of March 3rd, here is a recent article on the BBC News site related to one of the Big Questions that touches upon the realms of theology, cosmogony, and astronomy. Among the respondents is Brother Guy Consolmagno of the Vatican observatory.

But really, whether or not more Earth-like planets are found, and whether or not the Drake equation really does closely estimate the number of potential intelligent civilizations out there, the likelihood of interstellar distances being traversed in time to make contact any time soon is rather low, in my view.

Both our conception of the universe and the views of the Roman Catholic church have, of course, changed immensely since the time of Copernicus. The Church has, in fact, come to take special interest in happenings astronomical. In this article, published by the University of Arizona News, we read of Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo’s recent visit to the Steward Observatory to meet with Vatican and UA astronomers. As the article reveals, “the cardinal reports about the Vatican Observatory directly to Pope Benedict XVI.”

On a related note, my thanks to reader Rebecca Kelley for sending along a link to a recent posting to the Uncertain Believer blog. The posting is entitled How Will the Church Respond to Discoveries About the Universe?

[Edited to add: I thought I'd read some rather enlightened comments from the Chief Vatican astronomer Reverend José Gabriel Funes on the question of possible intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and indeed, here is one article in which he discusses the matter, as well as a quote within it exemplifying his views:

"Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom," he said. [. . .] “Why can’t we speak of a ‘brother extraterrestrial’? It would still be part of creation.”]