6A - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006 NEws Harvard professor takes on more cosmic issues 0 AP PHOTO A young boy looks at a display of flowers for international media personality and environmentalist Steve Irwin, who died on the Great Barrier Reef yesterday Crocodile hunter Irwin killed y stigrays barb Man who made a career of dangerous encounters with animals fell victim to one CAIRNS, Australia (AP) - Steve Irwin died doing what he loved best, getting too close to one of the dangerous animals he dedi- cated his life to protecting with an irrepress- ible, effervescent personality that propelled him to global fame as television's "Crocodile Hunter." The 44-year-old Irwin's heart was pierced by the serrated, poisonous spine of a stingray as he swam with the creature yesterday while shooting a new TV show on the Great Barrier Reef, his manager and producer John Stainton said. News of Irwin's death reverberated around the world, where he won popularity with mil- lions as the man who regularly leaped on the back of huge crocodiles and grabbed deadly snakes by the tail. "Crikey!" was his catch phrase, repeated whenever there was a close call - or just about any other event - during his TV programs, delivered with a broad Australian twang, mile- a-minute delivery and big arm gestures. "I am shocked and distressed at Steve Irwin's sudden, untimely and freakish death," Austra- lian Prime Minister John Howard said. "It's a huge loss to Australia." Conservationists said all the world would feel the loss of Irwin, who turned a childhood love of snakes and lizards and knowledge learned at his parents' side into a message of wildlife preservation that reached a television audience that reportedly exceeded 200 million. "He was probably one of the most knowl- edgeable reptile people in the entire world," Jack Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio, told ABC's "Good Morning America." In high-energy programs from Africa, the Americas and Asia, but especially his beloved Australia, Irwin - dressed always in khaki shorts, shirt and heavy boots - crept up on lions, chased and was chased by komodo dragons, and went eye-to-eye with poisonous snakes. Often, his trademark big finish was to hunt down one of the huge saltwater crocodiles that inhabit the rivers and beaches of the Outback in Australia's tropical north, leap onto its back, grabbing its jaws with his bare hands, then tying the animal's mouth with rope. He was a committed conservationist, run- ning a wildlife park for crocodiles and other Australian fauna, including kangaroos, koalas and possums, and using some of his TV wealth to buy tracts of land for use as natural habitat. Irwin was in the water at Batt Reef, off the Australian resort town of Port Douglas about 60 miles north of Cairns, shooting a series called "Ocean's Deadliest" when he swam too close the stingray, Stainton told reporters. "He came on top of the stingray and the sting- ray's barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart," said Stainton, who was on board Irwin's boat, Croc One, at the time. Crew members administered CPR and rushed to rendezvous with a rescue helicopter that flew to nearby Low Isle, but Irwin was pronounced dead when the paramedics arrived, Stainton said. "The world has lost a great wildlife icon, a passionate conservationist and one of the proudest dads on the planet," Stainton said. "He died doing what he loved best and left this world in a happy and peaceful state of mind. He would have said, 'Crocs Rule!' ' Marine experts called the death a freak acci- dent. They said rays reflexively deploy a sharp spine in their tails when frightened, but the venom coating the barb usually just causes a very painful sting for humans. "It was extraordinarily bad luck," said Shaun Collin, a University of Queensland marine neuroscientist. "It's not easy to get spined by a stingray, and to be killed by one is very rare." Irwin was born Feb. 22, 1962, in the south- ern city of Melbourne to a plumber father and a nurse mother, who decided a few years later to chase a shared dream of becoming involved in animal preservation. God subject of study for leader of planet definition panel (AP) - Too bad about Pluto - the planet, not the Disney dog - and that humiliating descent to mere "dwarf planet" status in our solar system. Don't blame Harvard Univer- sity's Owen Gingerich. He led the International Astronomical Union panel on how to define a planet, which wanted to keep tiny Pluto among 12 planets on an expanded official list. Instead, the world's astronomers voted down Pluto and recognized only eight full-fledged planets. When not politicking about planets, Gingerich is the sort to ponder more cosmic questions. For instance: Why do any planets exist at all? Or self-aware organisms such as humans, given the spec- tacular odds against this? And: Is the biblical God involved? He wonders about scientific spe- cifics: The number of grains of sand on all of Earth's beaches is vastly exceeded by the number of stars in the universe. But the total of stars is vastly exceeded by the unimagina- ble connections within-any human brain (100 billion neurons, each linked with 10,000 other neurons). All the gold ever mined throughout human history would fit into a cube measuring only 18 yards per side having the same weight as the steel that American mills produce every four hours. Gingerich's book on all this, "God's Universe" (Harvard Univer- sity Press), is, like Pluto, relatively small. Yet it's big in ambition. The author is both a believing Christian and a world-class scientist, now retired as a Harvard historian of science and senior astronomer with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. It appears just after "The Lan- guage of God" (Free Press), a best- seller in which faith gets similar defense from another Christian and distinguished biologist, Fran- cis Collins, director of the interna- tional Human Genome Project. Both Gingerich and Collins believe in God as the creator of the universe, yet neither advocates the much-debated "intelligent design" movement. This theory holds that earthly species are too complex to have occurred without guidance from some intelligent power (for instance, God). That's religion, not science, Gingerich objects, although as a believer he's personally impressed with divine intelligence as he sur- veys the astonishing structures of the cosmos. He also thinks Dar- win's theory of evolution has more potential for explanation than dev- otees of intelligent design do. Gingerich says the universe and life on Earth make more sense if the divine will designed things in a purposeful way. But this "can be neither denied nor proved by scien- tific means," any more than science explains realities such as love or beauty. Scientists, whether believers or atheists, use the same methods in the laboratory. "Science cannot rule out miracles" but miracles aren't part of scientific explana- tions, he says. The fact that scien- tists don't refer to God "does not mean that the universe is actually godless, just that science within its own framework has no other way of working." He complains that some fel- low scientists overreach - and build support for intelligent design - when they turn evolution into an argument for atheism. That's ideol- ogy, not science, he maintains, and should be resisted for the same rea- son that intelligent-design thought doesn't belong in science classes. "I am personally persuaded that a superintelligent Creator exists beyond and within the cosmos" and that "encouraging the exis- tence of self-conscious life is part of the Creator's design and pur- pose," he said. El Order Your Textbooks Online Today And Get... 4 I C First Choice On All Used Books L A 25% Savings When You Buy Used $ Convenient Delivery or Pickup L1 Extra Free Time Why Wait? Log on Now to: www.whywaitforbooks.com Michigan Union Bookstore 530 S.State - Ground Floor @ Michigan Union I I 4 4 I i