Merry Christmas and Happy New year

We have time off from December 23, 2016 through January 2, 2017. We'll get back to responding to your technology preview feedback up our return. Happy Holidays.

As a scientist with a Catholic upbringing, I find archaeology associated with Jesus Christ's life quite fascinating. According to documentaries that I have seen on the American Heroes Channel, despite popularly held beliefs:

• Jesus was not born on December 25 in the year 0. A monk who devised our current calendar made an arithmetic mistake. It is more likely that Jesus was born in the year 4 BC.

• Jesus was not born in a manger. In 4 BC, there was very little wood available to build a stable. It is more likely that Jesus was born in a cave. The manger story comes from a line in the gospel where it says that Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room at the inn. The Greek word for "inn" actually means "guest room." Since there was no room in the house (the guest room), Jesus was probably born in the basement, which would have been a cave, much like today's wine calendar, that was beneath the house. Animals were often kept in the basement, so manger probably translates to a "small feeding trough" in the basement rather than a stable.

Historical inaccuracies aside, what many Christians celebrate today is inspiration from Jesus' teachings rather than the facts of his life.

Inspiration is alive in the lab.