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My dad had a sight problem, but he is now fine. He says that he will give his place to a younger miner, but what matters is that they all go out and that they have no problems along the way.The anxiety is killing me. I will try to do all I can on these days so that I can avoid crying when they rescue him. I want to be well when I see him and hug him. I plan to be calm, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens when the moment comes.After that, we'll have plenty of time to organise a barbecue and finally give him the steak and avocado that he always asks for. Trapped Chilean miners: Family's diary（3）8 OCTOBEROmar: They are saying the rescue is near.

I convince myself that everything will be fine.  Omar Reygadas' children at the camp We trust the rescue team entirely, but we are worried about the force of nature. We fear a landslide that could hamper the operation.We don't want our relatives to be in danger on the way to the surface. We are waiting for the team to make a decision to encase the tunnel or not.As a family, our position is that they should encase the tunnel. We want our relatives to come out safe and calm.We don't want the decision to be rushed. If the president is not here by the time they get rescued, so be it. The rescue workers are the ones doing the job and security is what matters - for the miners inside and for the people outside.Our other worry is about how they get out. The miners with the best health will go first [when dangers are thought to be highest].We want to see our father soon, but we don't want him to be one of the first ones because of the risk this implies.Our whole family will be sleeping in Camp Hope during the weekend. We want to see my dad soon. We want to find out how he is and then start planning for a barbecue and a party. Trapped Chilean miners: Family's diary（4）

OCTOBER Relatives are waiting for the rescue at the camp Marcela: I spoke to my dad last weekend. He seemed happy and was in a better mood than at other times.I think he knows the rescue is near and that he will be with us soon.We can now talk to him every weekend, so we do whatever we can to be here when that happens. We only have eight minutes for the four of us, and it's very difficult to say so many things in such a short time. So we tell him that we love him and we miss him, and try to cheer him up.Generally, we try not to talk too much about the rescue, just like the psychologist recommended. We tell him only what's necessary, so we only told him that it would happen soon.We are very happy the rescue might happen in just a few days.

But we are a bit worried about my dad's health.Continue reading the main story Chile's Trapped MinersChile mine rescue Live Twitter: Tim Willcox at the scene Graphics: Guide to rescue Graphics: Rescue day plans The government and the rescue workers are prepared to receive them, but we haven't prepared anything because we don't know what his health condition will be.We do know that as soon as he gets out he will go straight to the hospital in Copiapo so that they can run some medical tests.What we do after he gets rescued will also depend on his mood and what the psychologists say. So we don't have any plans to hold a party yet.

We do know that when the rescue operations start we will all stay at the camp to wait for him. We will have to sort out permission from work.This sad experience has helped my family to be even more united. We now appreciate the small things in life, like the neighbour or friend who offers help or some words of encouragement. We have also remembered that God is here with us.Translated from Spanish interviews by BBC Mundo. You can read the original text in Spanish

Religious Science Fiction?（2）

Actually, many science-fiction writers may well be religious believers. The typical themes of science-fiction do not call upon the writer to nail his religious or anti-religious colors to the mast. The number of either religious or anti-religious works of science-fiction is relatively small. C. S. Lewis is probably the best known of the small band of writers who set out to write specifically Christian science fiction with Out of the Silent Planet and Voyage to Venus (also published as Perelanda). His third book in this trilogy, That Hideous Strength, about a University and powerful government department being taken over by devil-worshipers who are finally overcome with the help of Merlin, cannot really be called science fiction. The Man-Kzin Wars, a series to which I contribute, has fierce carnivorous aliens, and at times touches on the problems of their beliefs and of converting them. James Blish also wrote some "religious" stories but these, such as one ending with the conversion of Satan after God hands His job over to him, are really too fanciful to count as serious religious works. There are a lot of stories about deals with the Devil that come into the same category.

The total of "religious" science fiction that is published and also worth reading is small, which is perhaps simply a reflection of the fact that little religious art of high quality is being produced in any area today.

Science fiction it seems is not a particularly suitable vehicle for either religious or anti-religious propagandizing. H. G. Wells wrote one anti-God story, "The Island of Doctor Moreau" -- it could also be read, depending on the reader's preferences, as an anti-Darwinian story -- which he later disparaged as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy," but he also wrote several stories inclined the other way.

To write good religious science fiction, or indeed good religious fiction of any kind, is a challenge but one that it would be worthwhile trying to meet. It seems a pity the field has been apparently abandoned to pernicious rubbish like The Da Vinci Code, though this seems already, mercifully, to have faded away. In this, as in other areas, we could do with another C. S. Lewis to re-state the principles of Christianity in terms to stir the imagination.

It’s easy to imagine catching a ball, holding it for a moment and then throwing it in the air again. It’s also easy to imagine scooping up a handful of water — say, from the ocean — and then releasing it again. But what about light? Is it possible to “catch” light — and then let it go?

Scientists from Harvard University recently demonstrated a way to catch and release light—but it’s not easy. In other words, no one will be using the new method to play a game of catch with flashlight beams anytime soon. The researchers were able to build a trap that held light for about 1.5 seconds. That may not seem like much time to hold anything, but 1.5 seconds is enough time for light from the moon to reach Earth.

Lene Hau is the physicist who led this study of how to stop and release light. Physicists study matter, energy and motion. In the case of Hau’s experiment, she had to use her knowledge of all three.

The light trap wasn’t built from normal materials. Hau and her team instead used a material called a Bose-Einstein condensate, or BEC. This material is unusual because it does not represent any of matter’s usual states: solid, liquid or gas. It’s not even a plasma, the fourth state of matter found in high-energy experiments and on the sun.

Instead, BECs are a fifth state of matter. They exist only at the coldest possible temperatures, a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. (Absolute zero is the coldest possible temperature in the universe. It’s so cold that not even atoms can move around.) BECs are one of the strangest known materials. Solids, liquids, gases and plasmas are all made up of individual atoms. But when some materials are cooled to almost absolute zero, their atoms seem to collapse into one teeny-tiny blob, and that blob is called a BEC.

The scientists used a BEC to stop light in a way similar to the game of Gossip (also known as Telephone, or Whisper Down the Lane). It’s an easy game to play: One person whispers a message to a second person, who listens. That person then turns to a third person and passes on the message. The third person should now have the same message as the one sent by the first person (though it might be slightly different). In Hau’s experiment, the light is like the message, and the BEC is like the person in the middle — who hears the message and then passes it on.

Hau and her team fired a pulse of light into a BEC — so they had to do their experiment at very cold temperatures — and the light changed a small group of atoms. These changed atoms (called an imprint) dug a little hole for themselves in the BEC — like a footprint. The research team then turned off a control laser, which made the light’s footprint “sit” in the BEC. “It can snugly sit there for long periods of time,” Hau told Science News.

The scientists waited for 1.5 seconds and then turned the control laser back on. When they did, the trapped light pulse came out of the BEC.