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Solar System

Comets Are Cracking Up
March 29, 2010
An amateur astronomer observed a comet splitting in two, reported (PhysOrg), but it’s not just the comets that are breaking up.  Theories about them have undergone a revolution at revelations they are not all they were cracked up to be.  They used to be pristine remnants of the formation of the solar system.  Analysis of […]
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Cosmology

Explaining the Undetectable: Science or Faith?
March 28, 2010
Scientists routinely portray themselves superior to religious people who (in their estimation) accept things on faith.  This ignores the fact that many theories in science walk by faith, too.  Theories frequently posit entities that cannot be detected by any means – and may not exist at all, except as props for the consensus.  When a […]
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Amazing Facts

Biomimetics: Science for Now
March 27, 2010
Do you want science that makes a difference in our lives?  Look at real plants and animals with real solutions to practical problems.  That’s where researchers are making amazing discoveries with practical spinoffs. Shellfish materials:  Strong, lightweight structures are coming, thanks to the imitation of oysters and shellfish.  PhysOrg reported that researchers at the University […]
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Dinosaurs

How Much Can One Bone Say?
March 26, 2010
Two fossil discoveries are generating a lot of news from a single bone.  The first is a dinosaur hip.  The second is a human finger.  How much weight can a single bone carry? Australian tyrannosaur:  The tyrannosaurid dinosaurs had a distinctive hip bone.  Live Science cast any doubt on the claims: “it’s still a hypothesis […]
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Bible and Theology

Can Morality Be Darwinized?
March 25, 2010
There’s a cottage industry within the Darwin empire that tries to explain morality in terms of natural selection.  Hardly a week passes without some new paper trying to explain why humans reward moral behavior and punish immoral behavior.  Some try to do it by finding morality in animals, as if to portray a continuity in […]
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Intelligent Design

Archaeologist Employs Design Detection with Little Evidence
March 24, 2010
There are hundreds of large stone spheres in Costa Rica, some up to 8 feet in diameter weighing 16 tons.  There are no written records or tribal traditions about them.  John Hoopes, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas, has been studying these spheres for a long time.  According to PhysOrg, he’s had to dispel […]
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Amazing Facts

Beetle Pulls 1,141 Times Its Weight
March 23, 2010
Ever watch those contest shows for the World’s Strongest Man?  Compared to dung beetles, they’re wimps.  Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London found that the strongest beetle tested could pull an astonishing 1,141 times its own weight – “the equivalent of a 70kg person lifting 80 tonnes (the same as six full double-decker buses),” […]
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Early Man

Laetoli Footprints Fully Modern Too Early
March 22, 2010
Science Daily has reported a bombshell announcement from the University of Arizona School of Anthropology: the famous Laetoli footprints in Africa said to be 3.6 million years old are identical to modern human prints. “Based on previous analyses of the skeletons of Australopithecus afarensis, we expected that the Laetoli footprints would resemble those of someone […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Everything You Know About Evolution Is Wrong (Again)
March 21, 2010
There’s a genre of science news stories characterized by pointing out things Darwin got wrong.  It’s not creationists that do this – these are secular reporters and evolutionary biologists.  They seem to try to one-up Darwin by proposing new theories that do evolution better.  They usually don’t go far enough to jettison Darwin completely, but […]
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Cosmology

The Whole Universe Is Crazy
March 19, 2010
Suppose you engaged a mental patient about the origin of the universe.  He tells you that it banged and it whooshed and it crunched.  He elaborates and says that there’s lots of universes out there crashing into each other all the time.  “Yep, that’s how it happened, and that’s how we got here.  I’s sure […]
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Physics

No Clear Explanation for Saturn’s Rings After 6 Years of Cassini
March 19, 2010
Those who hoped Cassini would solve the puzzles of Saturn’s rings should read the paper today in Science.1  The state-of-the-rings report, authored by a Who’s Who of ring scientists, is filled with questions.  Titled “An Evolving View of Saturn’s Dynamic Rings,” the report cannot determine their origin, their age, or their composition.  List the points […]
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Darwin and Evolution

“Synthetic Evolution” – Is it Really Intelligent Design?
March 18, 2010
Some Cambridge scientists engineered a four-character genetic code and made some proteins with it.  They guided the process at every step, but claim that they “evolved” this code.  Is that a fair use of language?  This strange admixture of concepts is found in today’s issue of Nature.1  The confusion began right in the title: “Encoding […]
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Bible and Theology

The Copernican Geological Revolution
March 17, 2010
The Copernican Revolution did not just affect astronomy and physics: it revolutionized geology.  So argued Walter Alvarez in Geology this month.1  Geologists usually talk rocks in their rags, but Alvarez (the one who brought impacts into extinction theories) decided to play historian.  With Henrique Leitao, he announced, “we argue that the Copernican Revolution represented not […]
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Amazing Facts

Search for Intraterrestrial Life Scores Big
March 16, 2010
Single-celled organisms may be tiny, but what they lack in bulk they make up for in volume and importance.  Scientists have been appreciating more than ever the ubiquitous presence of microbes on our planet and the roles they play to sustain the biosphere.     PhysOrg reported that half of the world’s life may lie […]
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Solar System

Mars Discoveries Change Paradigms
March 15, 2010
Mars is under assault by an armada of orbiters gathering intell from the planet with photons and radar beams.  What kind of information has been seized recently? Dry rivers:  Remember the networks of river channels that were telltale signs of water?  Remember the hope for life those images generated?  Some of those riverbeds could have […]
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