See and hear galaxies evolve from the dawn of the universe

Royal Astronomical Society

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The panel on the left shows the so-called cosmic web, where the colour encodes the projected density of gas and stars. The two panels on the right zoom into two of the many galaxies formed in the simulations. These images show the stellar light obscured by dust for a disc galaxy seen face-on (top right) and another disc galaxy seen edge-on (bottom right).

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Credit: Schaye et al. (2026)

The most realistic picture yet of how galaxies formed and then evolved from the beginning of time has been revealed in a suite of new and unique audiovisual simulations.

This data, published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shows that the standard cosmological model can successfully explain the observed growth of galaxies, from the first billion years after the Big Bang to the present day, when key physics is included.

Unlike earlier simulations, the COLIBRE 'virtual universes' model the cold gas and cosmic dust inside galaxies – the raw materials from which stars form and which strongly affect how galaxies look in telescopes.

By including these previously missing ingredients and using far more computing power than ever before, the simulations successfully reproduce real galaxies, both in the present-day universe and in the early universe as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

"Much of the gas inside real galaxies is cold and dusty, but most previous large simulations had to ignore this," said project leader Professor Joop Schaye, of Leiden University. "With COLIBRE, we finally bring these essential components into the picture."

The results show that our standard model of the universe can explain galaxy formation more accurately than previously thought, while also opening up powerful new ways to compare theory with observations and to explore a virtual universe through visuals, sound, and interactive tools.

Digital cold gas and dust grains

According to the international team of researchers, their COLIBRE simulations break new ground in several ways. Earlier simulations artificially prevented gas inside galaxies from cooling below about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit – hotter than the surface of the Sun – because modelling colder gas was too complex. Yet, observations show that stars form in cold gas. COLIBRE includes the additional physical and chemical processes needed to model this cold interstellar gas directly.

COLIBRE also simulates small dust grains, which can greatly influence galactic gas. These solid particles can help hydrogen molecules to form, which dominate the cold gas content of galaxies. The dust also shields gas from harsh ultraviolet radiation and strongly affects how galaxies appear in telescopes. Dust absorbs ultraviolet and optical light from stars and re-emits it in the infrared, shaping many astronomical observations. By modelling dust directly, COLIBRE opens new ways to compare simulations with real data.

Thanks to advances in algorithms and supercomputing, COLIBRE uses up to 20 times more resolution elements than earlier simulations, allowing larger volumes to be simulated in greater detail and with better statistics.

A new laboratory

COLIBRE demonstrates that realistic treatments of cold gas, dust, and outflows driven by stars and black holes are crucial for understanding galaxy evolution, the researchers say. It provides a powerful new laboratory for testing theories, interpreting observations, and creating "virtual observations" to check how astronomers analyse real data.

The findings also show that the standard cosmological model remains consistent with observations of galaxy evolution, including some that were thought to be challenging, such as the masses of galaxies in the early universe.

"Some early JWST results were thought to challenge the standard cosmological model," said Dr Evgenii Chaikin, of Leiden University, lead author of several accompanying COLIBRE papers and co-author of the main study.

"COLIBRE shows that, once key physical processes are represented more realistically, the model is consistent with what we see."

Still, not everything has been explained yet. The enigmatic 'Little Red Dots' discovered by JWST, possibly the seeds of supermassive black holes, are not predicted by COLIBRE, which assumes such seeds already exist. Modelling their formation will require even higher resolution simulations and new physics, pointing the way for future work.

The simulations were run using the SWIFT simulation code on the COSMA8 supercomputer at the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, which is hosted on behalf of the DiRAC national facility in the UK. The largest simulation required 72 million CPU hours, and the full model took nearly 10 years to develop by an international team spanning Europe, Australia, and the United States.

Carlos Frenk, Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at the Institute for Computational at Durham University, and a core member of the COLIBRE team said: "It is exhilarating to see 'galaxies' come out of our computer that look indistinguishable from the real thing and share many of the properties that astronomers measure in real data such as their number, luminosities, colours and sizes.

"I like to tease my observer colleagues by asking 'which galaxy catalogue do you think these images came from?'"

He added: “What is most remarkable is that we are able to produce this synthetic universe purely by solving the relevant equations of physics in the expanding universe.”

The scientists point out that it will take years to analyse the data that has already been produced. Most simulations were completed in 2025, although some of the simulations with the highest resolution are still running and are expected to finish after the summer.

A universe you can see and hear

Beyond traditional data products, the team has developed new ways to explore the simulations. This includes "sonified videos", where sound encodes additional physical information, as well as interactive maps that allow users to explore the virtual universes.

"We're excited not just about the science, but also about creating new ways to explore it," said Dr James Trayford, of the University of Portsmouth, who led the development of COLIBRE's dust model and the sonification of its visualisations.

"These tools could provide new insights, make our field more accessible, and help us build intuition for how galaxies grow and evolve."

ENDS

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Media contacts

Sam Tonkin

Royal Astronomical Society

Mob: +44 (0)7802 877 700

press@ras.ac.uk

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Science contacts

Joop Schaye

Leiden Observatory, Leiden University

schaye@strw.leidenuniv.nl

 

Evgenii Chaikin

Leiden Observatory, Leiden University

chaikin@strw.leidenuniv.nl

 

James Trayford

Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth

james.trayford@port.ac.uk

 

Professor Carlos Frenk

Durham University

c.s.frenk@durham.ac.uk

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Images & video

Images, videos, and interactive material from the COLIBRE simulations are available at:

https://colibre-simulations.org

Media, developed using COLIBRE, can be found here: sonified videos, interactive sliders, and interactive maps.

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Further information

The paper ‘The COLIBRE project: cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation and evolution’ by Schaye et al. has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag375.

The paper ‘COLIBRE: calibrating subgrid feedback in cosmological simulations that include a cold gas phase’ by Chaikin et al. has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag300.

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Notes for editors

About the COLIBRE collaboration

The COLIBRE collaboration is an international team led by Professor Joop Schaye, of Leiden University. It includes researchers from the UK (Durham University, Portsmouth, Hull, Liverpool John Moores, Nottingham), Austria (University of Vienna), Italy (University of Milano-Biococca), Australia (University of Western Australia), Belgium (University of Ghent) and the US (University of Pennsylvania).

A team of several Durham physicists at the Institute for Computational Cosmology contributed to the design and execution of the simulations and to the scientific analysis of the data. Members of this team wrote key elements of the software used for the simulations and helped run them on the "COSMA" supercomputer at Durham. Members of the team are leading major sub-projects analysing the simulation results and comparing them to observed data.

About NOVA
The Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA, www.astronomie.nl) is the alliance of the astronomical institutes of the universities of Amsterdam, Groningen, Leiden, and Nijmegen. The mission of Top Research School NOVA is to carry out frontline astronomical research in the Netherlands, to train young astronomers at the highest international level, and to share its new discoveries with society. The NOVA laboratories are specialised in building state-of-the-art optical/infrared and submillimeter instrumentation for the largest telescopes on earth.

About the Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.

The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of peer review, in which fellow experts on the editorial boards accept the paper as worth considering. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content.

Keep up with the RAS on Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Download the RAS Supermassive podcast

 

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Journal

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI

10.1093/mnras/stag375 

Article Title

‘The COLIBRE project: cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation and evolution’

Article Publication Date

13-Apr-2026

‘Howl at the Moon’: NASA’s bid to boost space enthusiasm

By AFP
April 11, 2026


This handout picture released on April 7, 2026, by NASA shows crescent Earth setting along the Moon's limb, as seen from the Orion spacecraft on April 6, 2026 - Copyright NASA/AFP Handout
Maggy DONALDSON

When NASA flight director Zebulon Scoville was working a shift during the uncrewed Artemis I test flight, he realized the US space agency wasn’t consistently livestreaming the spacecraft’s journey to Earth.

“They said, well, we don’t have bandwidth, we’ve got to get all this vehicle and engineering data down,” Scoville recalled. “I was like — wrong.”

“This program will be over if people don’t buy it and they don’t come with us.”

NASA eventually got a low-bandwidth live stream up for that 2022 uncrewed mission.

And once it was over, senior officials named the NASA veteran “imagery czar” to boost engagement.

He told AFP he spent two years working across the agency to figure out how better to take the public on NASA’s new Moon missions.

That included adding an optical communications system onto the Orion spacecraft, a laser that transmitted to a ground station on Earth, sending streaming video in higher resolution.

Throughout the more than nine-day Artemis II crewed test flight — which ended Friday with an emotional splashdown off the California coast — NASA has maintained live programming on its own streaming platform and across social media.

That, combined with third-party streamers and broadcast news, has earned millions of views.

And as NASA official Lori Glaze said Friday: “To all of our new followers out there, please stay tuned.”

– NASA on Twitch –

From social media posts clipped from livestreamed events with the astronauts to an extraordinary portfolio of celestial photographs, viewers caught an eyeful of Artemis II.

Insitutions including museums held Artemis splashdown parties, and some teachers integrated the launch into their lessons.

Alex Roethler, a Wisconsin physics teacher, said watching the mission helped his students get “more engaged,” and made lessons “feel more real.”

“I love having the livestream available, and I also think it’s cool that they use Twitch,” Roethler said, referring to a video streamer site favored by gamers. “That is a platform more of our students use.”

The crew themselves have been integral to the storytelling.

During the nearly seven-hour lunar flyby, astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen and Reid Weisman gave near-literary descriptions of lunar surface features and left scientists in Houston awe-struck.

With Artemis II, there have been “just smiles and actually showing emotion through NASA, where we have sometimes had a history of being a little bit dry,” Scoville said.

“It’s okay to jump up and down and howl at the moon,” he added.

– Apollo-Artemis parallels –

Before Artemis II, the United States hadn’t sent astronauts around the Moon since 1972 for the Apollo 17 mission — the last of that famed space program that saw humans walk on the lunar surface.

In the lead-up to the 10-day test flight, NASA faced both a blase populace and a fractured media environment.

The space agency had to battle for attention across traditional and social media in a way the three-TV-channel era of Apollo never experienced. The Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969 saw approximately one-fifth of the global population tune in.

Yet for all the mythical qualities of Apollo, Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at the Planetary Society, said “nostalgia” perhaps “glosses over some of the issues that the program at the time faced.”

“Everything that led up to that was actually broadly unpopular with the American electorate, with the public writ large,” Kiraly told AFP.

Still, even with that in account, the analyst said “I don’t think this moment is living up to the hype” of most Apollo missions, and added he hopes NASA’s communications strategies continue to improve.

– ‘Longing for something good’ –

Ahead of Artemis II, Scoville had conversations with mission commander Reid Wiseman in which they reflected on parallels between the Apollo 8 lunar mission and this most recent Moon flyby.

The United States in 1968 was politically fractured and at war.

Nearly 60 years later, not so much has changed.

“We’re watching the news today, with wars, with division, and, like, how much everyone is just so longing for something good to happen,” Scoville said.

In a recent space-to-Earth press conference, Wiseman said their only news source during the mission was their families, who said Artemis has captivated people worldwide, though he admitted they are “biased.”

Wiseman said he hoped the trip could “have the world pause” to take in the beauty of our planet and universe.

“I think for the folks that decided to tune in — and it sounds like it was quite a few — this has happened,” he said.

Throughout their journey, all four astronauts emphasized how unified Earth looks from afar — a takeaway they hoped would permeate public consciousness.

“People are wanting to reach out to their inner rocket nerds,” Scoville said. “This is just a glimpse of what’s to come.”

After Artemis II, NASA looks to SpaceX, Blue Origin for Moon landings


By AFP
April 11, 2026


NASA official Lori Glaze says after Artemis II returns to Earth that 'all of industry' needs to work toward Moon landing - Copyright AFP RONALDO SCHEMIDT

Charlotte CAUSIT

With Artemis II successfully completing its historic lunar mission on Friday, NASA is banking on billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk for the next step: landing astronauts on the Moon.

The Apollo program — which sent the first and only humans to the Moon’s surface between 1969 and 1972 — was designed so that only two astronauts could land on the lunar surface for a maximum of a few days.

More than 50 years later, American ambitions and expertise have grown, with NASA hoping to send four people on a mission lasting several weeks and eventually building a lunar base.

For the second phase of its mission, the space agency is looking to commercial landers designed by Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’s Blue Origin to get its astronauts on the Moon.

After Artemis II splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday after its record-breaking journey, NASA officials urged all hands on deck for a crewed landing in 2028.

“We need all of industry to work and come along with us, and they need to accept that challenge and come with us and really start the production lines that are going to be required in order to achieve that goal,” Lori Glaze, the acting associate NASA administrator, told a press conference.

The Apollo program relied on a single rocket, the Saturn V, which carried both the lunar lander and the capsule carrying the astronauts.

NASA has opted for two separate systems for Artemis: the first to launch the Orion spacecraft carrying the crew from Earth, and another to launch the lunar lander, which will be privately contracted.



– ‘Camping trip’ –



The decision was driven by the technical limitations of the Apollo program, Kent Chojnacki, a senior NASA official in charge of lunar lander development, told AFP.

“It was very not expandable to long-term exploration and long-term stays,” he explained.

Although spectacular, the Apollo missions were like “camping trips,” said Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at the Planetary Society, which encourages space exploration.

The systems NASA is looking at now are “huge compared to Apollo,” said Chojnacki, noting that the new lunar landers being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX are two to seven times larger than before.

The space agency is also drawing from external partners, such as the European companies that built the propulsion module for Orion.

The new approach opens access to more equipment and resources, but also significantly complicates operations.

To send these giant spacecrafts to the Moon, the private space exploration companies will need to master in-flight refueling, a complex maneuver that has not yet been fully tested.

After the lunar lander is launched, additional rockets will be needed to deliver the fuel required for the journey to the Moon, some 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth.



– ‘Lose the Moon’ –



Given this risky undertaking and the numerous delays — particularly those experienced by SpaceX that was supposed to have its lander ready first — pressure has mounted in recent months.

“We are once again about to lose the Moon,” three former NASA officials warned in an article in SpaceNews last September.

China, which is hoping to send humans to the Moon by 2030, has been making progress as well, raising fears in the Trump administration that the United States could get left behind.

With that in mind, NASA raised the possibility last fall of reopening the contract awarded to SpaceX and using Blue Origin’s lunar lander first, sending shockwaves through the rival companies.

Both firms announced they were realigning their strategies to prioritize the lunar project — and keep their lucrative contracts with NASA.

But concerns remain, particularly regarding the feasibility of in-orbit refueling.

“We do have a plan,” Chojnacki said, noting that NASA has a back-up plan in case of failure.

The timeline is also up in the air.

NASA says it plans to test an in-orbit rendezvous between the spacecraft and one or two lunar landers in 2027, and carry out a crewed lunar landing in 2028.

Before that, companies will need to test in-orbit refueling and send an unmanned lunar lander to the Moon to demonstrate its safety.

That all needs to happen within the next two years.

“It feels like a very small amount of time,” said Clayton Swope of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Faith has always gone to space. Artemis II shows how much it has changed.

(RNS) — Both Apollo 8 and Artemis II missions included public references to religion, but astronauts aboard the Artemis’ Orion spacecraft struck a broader, more global tone.

NASA’s Artemis II moon rocket lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-B Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

Jack Jenkins
April 7, 2026

RNS

(RNS) — On Monday (April 6), NASA astronauts finally were about to commence Artemis II’s flyby of the moon, the first such close observance of Earth’s satellite in nearly 60 years. The four astronauts had spent days on the Orion spacecraft, hurtling toward the moon, and they were about to travel farther away from Earth than any human being in history.

But moments before the crew would enter into roughly 40 minutes of radio silence as they passed behind the moon, the voice of astronaut Victor Glover — who has been open about his Christian faith and worships at Churches of Christ congregations in Texas — crackled over the broadcast channel to offer a message of love.

“As we continue to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, I would like to remind you of one of the most important mysteries there on Earth — and that’s love,” said Glover. “Christ said, in response to what was the greatest command, that it was to love God with all that you are. And he also, being a great teacher, said this: ‘I give you equal to it, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Glover added: “And so, as we prepare to go out of radio communication, we’re still able to feel your love from Earth and to all of you down there on Earth, and around the Earth, we love you from the moon.”

The spiritual appeal recalled perhaps one of the most widely broadcast moments of religious expression: the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, when three astronauts read from Genesis on live television as they, too, orbited the moon. Both missions also happened to coincide with religious holidays: Apollo 8 circled the moon on Christmas Eve, and the 10-day Artemis II mission overlapped with the Christian celebration of Easter and the Jewish holiday of Passover.

RELATED: Vatican astrophysicists offer new way of studying gravity after the big bang

But for all their similarities, the four astronauts participating in the Artemis II mission have collectively showcased a broader, more pluralistic approach to public religious expression than the three men who rode aboard Apollo 8. It’s a subtle change that showcases NASA’s evolving relationship to public displays of faith, a tonal shift that likely traces its origins to the legal challenges that followed the reading of Genesis aboard the lunar module back in 1968.

Artemis II pilot Victor Glover, right, speaks about the role of Easter and the importance of unity across beliefs on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026, from inside the Orion spacecraft. (Video screen grab)

Much of the God-talk on the Artemis mission has centered on Glover, who is also the most publicly religious astronaut on the mission. He reportedly brought a Bible along with him for the 10-day journey in space, which is something he’s done before: He told The Christian Chronicle in 2020 that he had a Bible and Communion cups sent to the International Space Station in preparation for his arrival aboard a Space X capsule in November of that year. At the time, Glover suggested he planned to worship virtually with his church while in orbit, as he had been doing throughout the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

NASA officials did not offer a direct response when asked by Religion News Service if Glover or other Artemis II astronauts have made special arrangements to worship while aboard the Orion capsule. But Glover did offer some public religious reflection while hurtling toward the moon over the weekend, when CBS reporter Mark Strassmann asked him to comment on the journey’s overlap with Easter.

“When I read the Bible and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us who were created, it’s you have this amazing place, this spaceship. You guys are talking to us because we’re in a spaceship really far from Earth, but you’re on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe and the cosmos,” Glover said.

He added that whether listeners “believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that … we got to get through this together.”

A similar sentiment was expressed a few days before the astronauts blasted off from Earth. A reporter in the press pool asked the astronauts about traveling to the moon during Easter. Reid Wiseman, Artemis II’s commander, and the two other astronauts — Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — all glanced over to Glover, who said something inaudible that sparked a chuckle among the group.

Wiseman then stepped forward and acknowledged the legacy of Apollo 8, gearing his answer to a multireligious audience.

“We have our own different opinions, our own individual opinions and our own individual beliefs,” he said, gesturing to his fellow astronauts. “I think that’s one of the best parts about this mission right now: As we have said from the beginning, we really are for all, by all, and we want to take the whole world along with us.”

Wiseman then referenced Ramadan — “we just came out of a very important Muslim holiday” — noting that it ended less than a month before Easter.

“I think that that’s great — that we celebrate all of this all the way around the world,” he said.

It’s a different tone than the one struck by astronauts aboard the Apollo 8 mission.

Apollo 8 astronaut Jim Lovell speaks during an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of his 1968 space mission at the Washington National Cathedral, Dec. 11, 2018. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)

Whereas Artemis II shot past the moon only once before heading back to Earth, the Apollo 8 mission entered into lunar orbit, circling Earth’s satellite multiple times over the course of 20 hours. As the astronauts rounded the planet for the ninth time, all three astronauts — William Anders (a Catholic at the time), Jim Lovell (Presbyterian) and Frank Borman (Episcopalian) — took turns reading from the Book of Genesis on a broadcast, reciting verses 1-10 from the King James translation of the Bible. The men read from the mission’s flight manual, where the Scripture passages had been printed after Christine Laitin suggested them to her husband, a government official assisting with the mission.

“From the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth,” Borman said.

Fifty years later, Lovell reflected on the moment while addressing a crowd at the Washington National Cathedral.

“I arrived on a planet with a proper mass to have the gravity to retain water and an atmosphere — the essentials for life. I arrived on a planet orbiting a star at just the right distance to absorb that star’s energy,” he said. “In my mind, the answer was clear: God gave mankind a stage on which to perform. How the play ends is up to us.”

That broadcast prompted a lawsuit from atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who argued it violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Although the U.S. Supreme Court eventually threw out the case due to “want of jurisdiction” — presumably referring to space — historians have long argued the lawsuit had a lasting impact on NASA, as astronauts were effectively discouraged from openly engaging in worship or religious activity during a mission.

Many point to Buzz Aldrin, who celebrated Communion on the moon shortly before walking out onto the lunar surface, but waited more than a year before commenting on the moment publicly.

The Artemis II crew captured this view of an Earthset on April 6, 2026, as they flew around the moon. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

In the intervening years, it has become common for astronauts to speak publicly about religious practices that occurred during their missions, even as the space-farers and NASA have taken pains to avoid giving a specific faith tradition center stage as on Apollo 8. Bibles were brought to the moon and returned in the Apollo era, and Christians of several varieties brought crucifixes, icons and other religious symbols with them aboard various rockets. Teams of Islamic scholars were convened to help guide Muslim astronauts who wanted to pray and maintain their religious observance while orbiting Earth on the International Space Station — including during Ramadan. Jewish astronauts have brought Torah scrolls aboard the space shuttles, with one reading from Genesis while in orbit.

Sometimes religious expression can be more subtle. Aboard the Artemis II, the personal mission patch worn by Canadian astronaut Hansen includes references to spirituality embraced by Indigenous communities he has spent time with. According to the Canadian government, his patch, which was designed by Anishinaabe artist Henry Guimond, includes a representation of the “Seven Sacred Laws, a traditional First Nations teaching shared with (Hansen) in preparation for his journey around Grandmother Moon.”

But while religious ritual is space is common, the profundity of a moon mission appears to have inspired Artemis astronauts to broaden their public religious appeals. It’s an approach that may be drawn from the wisdom of past astronauts: Wiseman’s desire to “take the whole world along with us” is reminiscent of Aldrin’s thoughts on his moon Communion. In his 2010 memoir, he explained he now envisions major space missions as something for all people — be they religious or otherwise.

“We had come to space in the name of all mankind — be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists,” Aldrin wrote. “But at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the Apollo 11 experience than by giving thanks to God.”

NO GOD!

Opioid use stigma may underlie clinician biases towards patients with sickle cell disease

University of Chicago Medical Center

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In season 1, episode 2 of the popular show The Pitt, a Black woman with sickle cell disease arrives at the emergency department in acute pain, only to be initially dismissed as drug-seeking.

“Unfortunately, this contemporary media portrayal is all too relevant,” said Austin Wesevich, MD, MPH, MS, a hematologist and health services researcher at the University of Chicago Medicine. “Nationwide, patients with sickle cell disease are not receiving the same quality of care that other patients experience.”

New research led by Wesevich and colleagues at UChicago Medicine unpacks the intersectional biases that may underlie this disparity in care quality. Published in JAMA Network Open, the study looked for associations between the presence of negative descriptors in clinician notes and the overlapping stigmatized factors of race, chronic pain, and opioid treatment among patients with sickle cell disease — most of whom are Black.

This study builds directly on important research published in 2022, which found that Black patients had more than 2.5 times the odds of having negative descriptors in clinician notes compared to white patients. Another study from 2024 explored the downstream effects clinician biases can have on the quality of care patients receive, finding that when clinicians hear a patient described with negatively biased language, they have less empathy for the patient and, in some cases, less accurately recall the patient’s critical health details.

“Part of the issue for Black patients — and many marginalized groups — is that many in this population have multiple social identities that may be stigmatized because of income, immigration status, gender, or other factors. So when patients experience discrimination in healthcare, it is challenging to pinpoint what identity may be triggering the behavior,” said senior author Monica Peek, MD, MPH, the Ellen H. Block Professor for Health Justice at UChicago Medicine. “With this paper, our goal was to try and isolate the effect of race, chronic illness, and opioid use in order to understand how clinicians respond to each one and what that means for the care they deliver to patients with sickle cell disease.”

The team used natural language processing and machine learning to search the electronic health records of over 18,000 adult patients, including almost 40,000 clinician notes, for sentences containing a negative patient descriptor such as “aggressive,” “noncooperative,” or “noncompliant.” Patients with sickle cell disease were compared to four groups of people without sickle cell disease: patients who racially identified as Black, patients diagnosed with chronic pain, patients diagnosed with opioid use disorder, and patients who had none of these identities or diagnoses. The researchers found that patients with sickle cell disease had higher odds of having negative descriptors in their electronic health record compared with Black patients and patients with chronic pain, but had similar odds of negative descriptors as patients with opioid use disorder, suggesting that bias toward patients with sickle cell disease may be most strongly tied to opioid use stigma. Non-Black patients without sickle cell disease, chronic pain or opioid use disorder had fewer negative descriptors than the other patient groups.

“Although patients with sickle cell disease routinely use opioid medications to manage their chronic pain, the vast majority do not have an opioid use disorder,” Peek pointed out. “It is a testament to the strength of their character that they do their best to live full lives while managing debilitating pain with the minimum amount of medication. And yet, within health professions and society as a whole, there is a persistent bias that stereotypes these patients primarily as ‘drug-seekers’ rather than regular people managing a chronic disease.”

Fortunately, this is not where the story ends: this newly published work is just part of the first phase of a three-part project. Wesevich, Peek, and other colleagues at UChicago Medicine have developed an educational intervention aimed at mitigating bias related to sickle cell care. Putting adult learning theory into practice, they designed an anti-bias curriculum that includes skills-based learning using roleplay alongside clear explanations of the ways negative biases tangibly reduce care quality.

“Clinicians cannot measure pain directly without asking the patient, so it’s a choice to believe patients when they share their pain levels,” Wesevich said. “Some of us have been medically trained to try to objectively measure pain through heart rate and physical exams, but the reality is that there must be some level of trust, especially because someone coming in with an acute flare on top of their chronic pain may not show the physical or behavioral signs we’re psychologically programmed to expect. Even if they behave very differently from someone experiencing appendicitis or childbirth, a patient with sickle cell disease who experiences daily pain and who happens to be Black and asking for opioid treatment deserves no less trust than any other patient.”

The curriculum has been delivered to almost 70 UChicago Medicine residents during the 2025-2026 academic year, and although data collection is still ongoing, there are early signs that the intervention is effective. Other academic institutions and community organizations are already interested in delivering the intervention at their centers.

“This work sheds light on issues patients have been experiencing for many years, and we’re not only paying attention to it — we’re doing something about it,” Wesevich said. “We need effective anti-bias interventions to improve care for patients with sickle cell disease, and this deeper understanding is a step in the right direction.”

 

This work is funded by the ABIM Foundation and by a Bucksbaum-Siegler Institute pilot grant.

“Negative Descriptors of Patients With Sickle Cell Disease in the Electronic Health Record” was published in JAMA Network Open in April 2026. Co-authors are Austin Wesevich, Alexandria Vangelatos, Michael Sun, Elizabeth Tung and Monica Peek.

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.6458 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

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From Hegseth to RFK Jr., leaders are using religion as symbol — not substance

(RNS) — In both cases, Christianity has been severed from the theological tradition that both limits it and gives it coherence.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, left, prays over Pastor Doug Wilson during a Pentagon chapel service. (DOD photo)

Karen E. Park
April 6, 2026

RNS

(RNS) — In the past several weeks, religious language has been used in American public life with unusual intensity and disturbing clarity. President Donald Trump ended an Easter morning obscenity-laced threat of violence to Iran with the mocking words “Praise be to Allah.” Also on Easter Sunday, several departments of the Trump administration posted messages celebrating Christ’s resurrection, including the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Defense Department and the Justice Department.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has continued to invoke Scripture to sanction the Iranian war, even as he has removed the Army’s chief of chaplains, Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., from his post, where he has been responsible for advising senior leaders on religious issues and troop morale.

None of these are isolated developments. They raise urgent and fundamental questions about what it means to speak about God in a time of war.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent prayer at the Pentagon was particularly notable for its violent religious language. On Wednesday, March 25, he prayed that American forces be granted “overwhelming violence of action” against those who “deserve no mercy,” and that these actions be carried out “without remorse.” He asked God to “break the teeth of the ungodly” and “blow them away like chaff before the wind.” The language is jarring, but it is not original to Hegseth. It draws directly on some of the most violent passages in the biblical Psalms, like Psalm 58’s plea to God to “break the teeth of the wicked.”

Within the Christian tradition, the handful of Psalms quoted in Hegseth’s prayer are known as the imprecatory Psalms, and they are among the most difficult passages in the Bible. For millennia they have been interpreted with caution and often redirected inward, toward the human struggle against sin rather than the destruction of persons. For example, in his “Expositions on the Psalms,” Augustine of Hippo takes one of the verses used by Hegseth from Psalm 144, which addresses the God “who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle” and reads it as a description of the Christian life of charity. This “war,” Augustine teaches, is not against human enemies but against sin, and it is waged not through violence but through mercy. For Augustine, God is love as revealed in Christ, and therefore all of Scripture must be read according to this precept. To read a violent passage in Scripture as literally authorizing violence, the way Hegseth does, is to fundamentally misunderstand God’s nature.

Pope Leo XIV has condemned the Iran war in very strong terms. On Palm Sunday (March 29), he preached, “Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” And on Easter Sunday, Pope Leo condemned the “abuses that crush the weakest among us, because of the idolatry of profit that plunders the earth’s resources, because of the violence of war that kills and destroys.” Pope Leo is an Augustinian priest — so his understanding both of war and of the Psalms that Hegseth uses to justify and celebrate violence and destruction — is grounded in Augustine’s theological understanding. One summary of this understanding can be found in Augustine’s “On Christian Doctrine,”: “Whoever thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build up the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all.”

It is unlikely that Hegseth is aware of this theological tradition. He simply takes some of the most violent lines in the Bible and combines them into a seamless appeal for destruction. Reading the actual imprecatory Psalms in full, not just a cherry-picked selection of violent lines, reveals them to be powerful prayers of anguish and grief, arising from the Psalmist’s feelings of vulnerability as much as his rage or desire for vengeance. In Hegseth’s mashup, however, all the complexity and tension disappear, and only decontextualized biblical bloodlust remains.

While Hegseth uses Scripture to sanction violence and war, we are seeing other prominent religious figures — such as Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly, both Catholic — lean on the imagery of Christianity for its symbolic power, especially for its association with authority and order. Matthew Schmitz, a religion editor and commenter, has recently described this phenomenon as “unreligious religiosity.” The problem, however, is not that the use of these symbolic objects and gestures lacks religion, but that it lacks theology.

One recent example is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appearance, holding a rosary, on the January 2026 cover of The Atlantic. The object functions as a signal of religious identity and authority, but without any real engagement with the theological tradition it represents. In this form of public religion, the rosary is not prayed but displayed; it operates as a symbol rather than as part of a disciplined devotional and intellectual practice. What results is a religiosity detached from the theological frameworks that give devotional objects and ritual practices their meaning.

The two tendencies — Hegseth’s, which invokes Scripture, and Kennedy’s, which invokes a particular material dimension of religion — are not different, they are symptoms of the same condition. In both cases, religion has been severed from the theological tradition that both limits it and gives it coherence.

The Christian theological tradition insists Scripture cannot be read in bits and pieces, cobbled together irresponsibly in order to support an agenda of death and destruction. The Bible must instead be read in light of other Scripture and within a broader theological tradition. This means that Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies stands when it is most difficult — even and especially during times of war. Christian theology cannot be decided by any individual — no matter how powerful. Its meaning comes from a body of knowledge that has responsibly sought to interpret and understand the will of God for centuries.

The danger is not only that military leaders are using religious language to justify violence, or that online influencers are using simplistic memes and images as religious shorthand. The danger is that in both cases, the discipline of theology that must give these texts and objects their meaning is absent. Theology places limits on what can be said in God’s name. Without those theological limits, God can be made to authorize and endorse anything — including hatred, bloodlust and merciless destruction.

(Karen E. Park, a former professor of theology and religious studies at St. Norbert College, is the co-editor of American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism. She writes on Substack at Ex Voto. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Hegseth mentor Doug Wilson's vision for a Christian nation means married women can't vote

MOSCOW, Idaho (FāVS News) — During a town hall at an Idaho University, Wilson and his fellow pastors pitched a vision of America with no LGBTQ+ rights, no divorce and no voting rights for married women. Wilson has gained notoriety for his Christian nationalist views and his ties to Pete Hegseth.

People attend a town hall meeting featuring pastors Doug Wilson, seated from left, Toby Sumpter and Jared Longshore, Thursday, April 9, 2026, at the University of Idaho Administration Auditorium in Moscow, Idaho. (Photo by Tracy Simmons)

Tracy Simmons
April 10, 2026
RNS


MOSCOW, Idaho (FāVS News) — In Pastor Doug Wilson’s Christian nationalist America, there would be no minarets — only the sound of church bell towers. There would be no statues of Hindu deities or other non-Christian religious symbols in public spaces. Adultery would carry legal penalties, and Obergefell v. Hodges would be overturned. Wilson says he’s not trying to get there tomorrow. But he and his Moscow, Idaho, church are building what he calls “a working prototype.”

“What I mean by Christian nationalism is America being what it was founded to be,” said Toby Sumpter, a pastor at Christ Church, the congregation led by Wilson.

Sumpter joined Wilson and Pastor Jared Longshore, dean at New Saint Andrews College, the school run by Christ Church, at a town hall on the University of Idaho campus, where the three laid out their vision for America’s future.

The trio made national headlines last year after they appeared together in a CNN profile examining Wilson’s Christian nationalist movement and its ties to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Turnout for Thursday’s (April 9) event, hosted by Collegiate Reformed Fellowship — a student organization affiliated with Christ Church, was small and subdued compared to previous town halls, which drew standing-room-only crowds, protesters and outbursts from local residents.

At the beginning of the town hall, Longshore said the term “Christian nationalist” was slapped on Christ Church by others.

“We didn’t pick this name for ourselves — it was picked for us,” he said. “Other people slapped it on us because we said Jesus is Lord of the state.”

The pastors argued that Christian nationalism isn’t a new idea — it’s a return to America’s founding. They pointed to state constitutions that acknowledged the Christian God and held religious tests for officeholders. They said it had been done before and could be done again. A number of the original 13 colonies that made up the United States had established state churches at the founding, but those ties between church and state were cut early in the country’s history.

RELATED: Christ Church at 50: How Doug Wilson pushed Christian nationalism to the center

What would America look like for the roughly one-third of Americans who are not Christian?


Wilson claimed members of minority religions would actually have “more liberty” than they do now, though he did not elaborate. He was clear, however, about the limits. The pastors argued that what the Bible defines as sinful behavior would not be treated as private — that it has consequences for society as a whole.

“We’re living in the nuclear fallout of the destruction of the American family,” Sumpter said.

Under that framework, public celebrations of LGBTQ+ identity would not be tolerated. Wilson said Pride Month and Pride parades would receive no government support, and Obergefell v. Hodges would be overturned.

Wilson went further, offering praise for the 1969 Stonewall raids — the police action against a New York gay bar that sparked the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. He added that said sodomy laws — which were on the books in some of the 50 states until 2003 — should be restored, though not aggressively enforced. “I would not want a sexual Gestapo,” he said.

Their vision extends beyond sexuality and into the structure of the family — including who should have the right to vote. Wilson and the other pastors also argued for cutting the number of voters. Under their model, voting rights would belong to the head of each household — not to individuals. Women in households led by a husband would not. That means women who are widowed, divorced or otherwise head of their own households would vote.

The household view is part of a broader argument made by the Reformed Christian movement Wilson is part of, which seeks to overturn the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

“We don’t believe that the fundamental building block of society is the individual,” Wilson said. “We believe the fundamental building block of any social order is the family.”

Wilson said their own church already operates this way. In Christ Church elections, members vote by household rather than individually. He did not call for immediately repealing the 19th Amendment but said its passage was an example of federal government overreach into state elections.

The primacy of the family unit also shaped their views on marriage law. Longshore said that their vision for America would eliminate no-fault divorce, which he blamed for enabling the breakdown of the American family. Adultery would carry legal penalties, with the unfaithful spouse penalized in divorce proceedings.

He connected the issue directly to same-sex marriage, arguing that no-fault divorce represented the same radical individualism that eventually led to Obergefell.

“The fact that I can divorce my wife because she burnt the biscuits — that’s crazy,” Longshore said. “What happened to our bonds and our allegiance?”

The issue of blasphemy arose when an audience member sent in a question about the First Amendment and free speech.



Wilson drew a distinction between sincere differences of opinion — which he said should never be prosecuted — and violent public blasphemy, which he said should be treated as disturbing the peace. The pastor also acknowledged that his vision is far from reality. But he said Christ Church isn’t waiting.

“What is happening here in Moscow is building out a working prototype of what this kind of society looks like,” he said. “All of it is peaceful. But we see ourselves as being directly commissioned by the Lord in the Great Commission to disciple America.”

For those skeptical of his vision, Christian and non-Christian alike, Wilson had a simple message: Come see for yourself.

“Retain all your skepticism,” he said. “But have it be open-palm skepticism. Just visit and see — you’re going to find a lot of surprisingly normal people.”