On Thursday, the space shuttle Discovery successfully docked with the International Space Station, bringing needed supplies and equipment to the ISS. The docking followed an almost picture-perfect launch on Tuesday, the first shuttle launch in over two and a half years. However, on Wednesday NASA officials put a damper on the spirits of space flight enthusiasts, saying that falling foam chunks from the external fuel tank still appeared to be a problem. The discovery of that still-existing flaw, thought to be the cause of the Columbia disaster, is enough to ground the shuttle fleet again. We'll get an update on the flight of the Discovery, and the future of the shuttle program.

Then, we'll turn our attention to memory and learning. New research shows the uncanny role that unconscious memory plays in the learning process. In work with patients with a brain injury that prevents them from forming conscious memories of new events, researchers found that the patients could 'unconsciously' learn to perform an object recognition task -- successfully picking out the correct items from a set, even though the patients had no idea why they were picking up the objects. Describing the feeling he had while working with the objects, one patient said “It seems to be automatic...My mind just seemed to tell me, ‘just pick it up, it’s the right one’.” We'll talk with one of the researchers about habits and learning, and how we can make memories without even knowing it.

Finally, we'll talk about views of evolution in the Roman Catholic church. Proponents of evolutionary theory have pointed to a statement by the late Pope John Paul II that evolution was 'more than a hypothesis" as support for their position. However, a recent newspaper opinion column by Cardinal Schonborn, the influential archbishop of Vienna, says that evolutionists should not be too quick to claim that the church supports their work. "Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science," wrote Schonborn. We'll take a look at the controversy. Call in with your questions and comments at 1-800-989-8255 (2-3 Eastern). Teachers, find more information about using Science Friday as a classroom resource in the Kids' Connection.

Guests:
Frank Morring
Senior Space Technology Editor
Aviation Week and Space Technology
Washington, DC

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Larry R. Squire
Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences, University of California School of Medicine, San Diego
Research Career Scientist, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego
San Diego, California

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Edward J. Larson
Author, "Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion" (Harvard University Press, 1998)
Herman E. Talmadge Chair of Law & Richard B. Russell Professor of American History
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia

Books/Articles Discussed:

"Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion," by Edward Larson. Harvard University Press, 1998.

"Robust habit learning in the absence of awareness and independent of the medial temporal lobe" by Peter J. Bayley, Jennifer C. Frascino and Larry R. Squire. Nature 436, 550-553 (28 July 2005) | doi: 10.1038/nature03857.

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This segment produced by Charles Bergquist