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Solar System

See Comet Crumble
May 10, 2006
A comet is breaking up before our eyes.  Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 has split into dozens of pieces and is crumbling quickly, like pieces of dried meringue.  Science News tells about the breakup, and it made Astronomy Picture of the Day.  The Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes are also documenting the event.     This is […]
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Uncategorized

Mt. St. Helens Performs Fast Rock
May 10, 2006
Before reading the caption, look at the picture of this football-field size mountain of rock at Astronomy Picture of the Day and guess how old it is.  The answer: about five months.  The smooth rock slab with its cornice tip has grown as much as a meter a day.  The caption contains links to more […]
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Dumb Ideas

Fitness Costs What?  Say That Again?
May 9, 2006
Good news: evolution has figured out how to make your wounds heal faster.  Bad news: the required mutation makes you go deaf.     Believe it or not, that is the story told on News@Nature.  “Deafness gene has health benefit,” wrote Alison Abbott.  “Protein from genetic mutation helps wounds to heal.”  The article treats this […]
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Education

Book: Darwin Centurions Join Forces Against ID Visigoths
May 9, 2006
A new book attacking intelligent design has chapters by most of the big names in evolutionary thought: Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and others.  An introduction to the book Intelligent Thought: Science vs. the Intelligent Design Movement (ed. John Brockman, Vintage Press, May 2006), with a synopsis of each chapter, is available at The […]
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Amazing Facts

Q: Who Fights With Supercharged Harpoons?  A: Jellyfish
May 8, 2006
Weak, transparent, limp, and drifting in the water – who would have thought these creatures possess one of the most powerful weapons in the animal kingdom?  Jellyfish and hydras have stinging cells called nematocysts that fire so fast, no one has been able to catch the action of their microscopic harpoons – till now.   […]
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Origin of Life

The Porridge Before the Soup: Too Hot?
May 8, 2006
In the evolutionary theory of everything, there is a soup before the primordial soup we normally think of.  It’s the solar nebula, the whirling disk of dust, gas and ice that preceded the planets.  Scientists used to think the nebula was differentiated like chemicals in a giant centrifuge, with the rocks close to the sun […]
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Fossils

Fish Forsakes Fins in Favor of Arms
May 6, 2006
A crucial fossil palaeontologists are hailing as a true “missing link” in the evolutionary record has been uncovered in the arctic.  The discovery of a well preserved species of fossil fish bridges the gap between finned fish and their four legged relatives.  This croco-fish creature, documented in Nature,1 named Tiktaalik roseae has joints in its […]
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Health

Doctors Deny Darwin
May 5, 2006
Doctors and medical professionals may comprise the largest block of scientists with qualms about evolution.  According to a Finkelstein poll, an average of 60% of doctors, depending on religious demographics, reject the completely unguided Darwinian evolutionary explanation for life.  A new organization, Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (PSSI), has begun a website Doctors Doubting […]
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Intelligent Design

Solar Eclipses Unique to Earth, SETI Researcher “Finds”
May 4, 2006
Like many before him, Seth Shostak pondered the significance of total solar eclipses for the one planet with observers to appreciate them.  “OK, I’ve done the math,” the SETI Institute director said for SETI Thursday on Space.com.  “What you always suspected might be true … is true: namely that the best place in the solar […]
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Solar System

Hope for Titan Ocean Evaporates into Ice Desert
May 4, 2006
Saturn’s moon Titan is a desert of sand made of ice grains mixed with hydrocarbons.  These grains form large fields of wind-driven dunes found over much of the planet-sized moon.  “Titan’s Seas Are Sand,” reported a press release from U of Arizona based on a paper in the May 5 issue of Science (see Perspective […]
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Cell Biology

Will Genetics Be Neo-Darwinism’s Downfall?
May 4, 2006
The Institute for Creation Research is gearing up for a multi-year GENE project to look for evidence for design (and against evolution) in the genome.  They may not need to work very hard.  Secular scientists, by continuing to find things not all that helpful for neo-Darwinism, are doing yeoman’s work for them.     While […]
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Human Body

Can We Not Perform Similar Functions?
May 3, 2006
Researchers from King’s College London claim their data evidences the “Human [thyroid] gland probably evolved from gills.”1  According to speculation, gills were internalized as the thyroid gland when marine life evolved into land animals.  The possibility for this comes from the similar functions of gills and of the gland: both act as calcium level controls.  […]
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Fossils

Limbed Snakes Initiate Evolutionary Quandary
May 3, 2006
Researchers have discovered the fossil of a snake with a pelvis and functioning legs in Rio Negro, Argentina.  Sebastian Apesteguía (Argentine Museum of Natural Science) says Najash rionegrina is not the oldest snake discovered; marine snakes have been discovered in North America as well as Eastern Europe.  However, Najash rionegrina has been considered the earliest […]
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Human Body

Comparing Preferences for Pain or Gain
May 3, 2006
A group of researchers published in the Journal of Political Economy introduced the idea economic loss and gain incentives are innate, not learned.  To demonstrate this concept, the researchers presented capuchin monkeys two opportunities leading to two different outcomes for the monkey: pain or gain.  The capuchin monkeys had a tendency to choose the opportunity […]
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Bible and Theology

Soviet Cosmonaut No Atheist
May 3, 2006
World Magazine reported a surprise tidbit from history, to set the record straight: the first man in space was no atheist.  According to an urban legend, Yuri Gagarin, who flew a Soviet rocket in 1961, said that he didn’t “see any god up here” in space.  The quote has provided fodder for preachers ever since […]
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