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Freakish Star Stuns Astronomers

September 1, 2011

Astronomers have detected a star that should not exist. Current theory cannot explain the composition of a star in the constellation Leo. This “freakish star,” moreover, is probably not unique. What is it, exactly, that modern star formation theory does explain?

Amazing Facts

Pascal to Your Health

August 30, 2011

Blaise Pascal joins Louis Pasteur among the ranks of creation scientists who have improved the safety and nutrition of our food. We all know about pasteurization, the process of eliminating germs by gentle heating, but have you heard of pascalization? It’s “a century-old food preservation technology, finding a new life amid 21st century concerns about food safety and nutrition,” reported Science Daily. The process “more than doubles the levels of certain healthful natural antioxidants in fruit.” Pascalization will give new meaning to the term “fresh squeezed”.

Amazing Facts

Lucky in the Sky with Diamonds

August 25, 2011

There are treasures all around us we do not perceive. Sometimes we speak figuratively about sparkling gems that are, if we realized it, literally real, right there under our noses. Children sing, “Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are, up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky” without knowing that there really are diamond stars up there, with diamond planets, so magnificent and huge they are unfathomable in value. These are actual discoveries that have been announced by scientists this week.

Astronomy

8.7 Million Species Is Not a Scientific Fact

August 24, 2011

Human beings love to classify things. We pigeonhole items into bins of our own making, for whatever the reason, to give us a feeling of having things organized and understood. Do our pigeonholes reflect categories that are “out there” in nature, or are they constructs of our own minds? Science reporters are announcing in bold print that there are “8.7 million species on Earth,” but a look at the fine print shows the error bars to be so enormous, there is more error than data. What does this imply about the scientific validity of human classification schemes?

Awards

How the Reporter Evolved Its Silliness

August 23, 2011

When it comes to evolutionary stories, reporters have a knack for propounding the silliest notions about human origins. This tendency is evident in several recent science news stories about early man propounding, with nary a blush, outlandish claims with little evidence – or no evidence whatsoever.

Awards

Living Fossils Rise from the Dead

August 20, 2011

The oxymoron “living fossil” is suggestive. Seeing a plant or animal come to life, when it was only known from fossils, might seem miraculous. Perhaps, though, the phrase was invented to rescue Darwinian theory from the vast ages it requires. Is it credible to believe the time gaps? Here are two recent stories about creatures long thought dead, only to be found doing “Quite well, thank you.”

Amazing Facts

Hi-Tech Pharmaceutical Plants Are Green

August 19, 2011

In environmental lingo, what could be greener than a tree? And what is more despised by many environmentalists than chemical companies, especially the pharmaceutical and pesticide industries? Maybe we should take a tip from plants. They are not just environmentally friendly, they produce a myriad of complex compounds that are slowly finding their way into healthful products—and evolutionists have no idea how they do it.

Astronomy

SETI Blurs Line with Hollywood

August 18, 2011

Down again, up again; the SETI Institute got a reprieve for its Allen Telescope Array from actress Jodie Foster, star of the Sagan SETI saga Contact. And just in time; NASA needs contact to protect earth from aliens who might invade to punish us for global warming.

Amazing Facts

Your Rotary Engines Are Arranged in Factories

August 17, 2011

As if ATP synthase was not amazing enough, a team of scientists in Germany now tells us they are arranged in rows with other equipment to optimize performance. From electron micrographs of intact mitochondria, they were able to detect the rotary engines of ATP synthase and other parts of the respiratory chain. Their diagram in an open-source paper in PNAS looks for all the world like a factory.

Biology

Would Wood Evolve?

August 16, 2011

The woods. We call them by their primary substance: wood. But would wood evolve from plants lacking woody stems? Was there some evolutionary pressure to force plants to grow tall to reach the sun, so that lucky mutations found a way to produce lignin and the other building blocks of wood? What other mutations did the blind evolutionary algorithm have to find to organize the components into trunks for trees? Two discoveries, a fossil and a mechanism, offer evolutionists a way to enhance their woody story.

Bible and Theology

Secularists Lured to Paganism

August 15, 2011

If man is hopelessly religious, what happens when society’s scientific elites teach that religion is groundless? G. K. Chesterton once said, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.” The new atheists claim to base their beliefs on scientific evidence. They have no need for religious teachings or rituals. Is it not strange, then, to see the attraction of secularists to movements that give the appearance of new religious forms? Is there something innate in human nature that cries out for the sense of ultimate purpose and connection to the divine that religions have traditionally provided? Three recent examples of near-cult experiences may be illuminating.

Bible and Theology

Book Review: The Days of Lamech

August 14, 2011

To Biblical creationists, the period before the Flood lasted some 2,000 years – an immense span of time for humans with an explosive mix: high intelligence and a murderous sin nature. Yet the Bible provides few details about this period. How far did civilization proceed? What technologies did they develop? We know from Genesis they lived long, built cities, worked metals, made musical instruments, and mastered farming. We also know that the world was filled with violence. A new novel explores the possibilities of that tantalizing past. Building on the success of his first novel The Days of Peleg, novelist Jon Saboe has just published the long-awaited prequel, a drama set in the height of the antediluvian civilization: The Days of Lamech.

Awards

Origin of Life Made Easy

August 13, 2011

As anyone knows who has been given directions and told “you can’t miss it,” sounding easy and being easy can be entirely different things. Reporters sometimes make the most difficult step in evolution – the origin of life – look like a cinch through the use of suggestive metaphors, like the commonly-invoked phrase, “building blocks of life.” The directions in their articles usually lead to dead ends at worst, or, at best, baby steps on a long march, most of the route TBD, a TLA (three letter acronym) meaning “to be determined.”

Biology

Archaic Humans Are One With Us

August 12, 2011

According to the biological species concept, two varieties of anything are considered one species if they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Applied to humans, new evidence suggests that Neanderthals and the recently-discovered Denisovans were members of the human species. According to New Scientist, “On the western fringes of Siberia, the Stone Age Denisova cave has surrendered precious treasure: a toe bone that could shed light on early humans’ promiscuous relations with their hominin cousins.” Since one can only be promiscuous within the same species, this puts enormous pressure on evolutionary timelines that assume the Denisovans split from the Neanderthals 300,000 years ago.

Biology

Big Birds Lived with Dinosaurs

August 11, 2011

The largest flying bird is the California Condor with a wingspan of 2.9 meters. The largest flightless bird is the ostrich, up to 1.7 to 2.8 meters tall. These are shrimps compared to extinct birds that lived with dinosaurs. A fossil jaw from a Cretaceous bird has been found in Kazakhstan. The BBC News said, “If flightless, the bird would have been 2-3m tall; if it flew, it may have had a wingspan of 4m.” The find raises questions about what scientists know about the age of dinosaurs.

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