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The World Is a Free Lunch

August 7, 2007

One of the strangest Darwinian models to be put forth recently has to be a paper by James V. Stone (a psychologist at Sheffield U, UK), published in PLoS Computational Biology.1 He basically says that evolution is a free lunch. Brains and whole body types can emerge if an organism can learn parts of adaptive […]

Cell Biology

Can Life Survive for Millions of Years?

August 6, 2007

How long can cells and tissues last? Two different yet related stories should raise questions about the dates claimed, because the observations are astonishing. Trees of the living dead: Cypress trees in Hungary supposedly buried for eight million years look pristine. The wood is unfossilized and uncoalified, said the report on Breitbart.com. All that remained […]

Human Body

Monkeys Prefer the Sound of Silence

August 5, 2007

Given a choice, chimpanzees choose silence over music. The Random Samples page in Science1 mentioned experiments by scientists from MIT and Harvard where monkeys were given a choice of booths playing a flute lullaby, a Mozart concerto, techno-rock, and silence. Between the musical booths, “The monkeys spent an average of about two-thirds of their time […]

Astronomy

Four Evidences of Cosmic Youth

August 4, 2007

Astronomers and planetary scientists routinely talk in millions and billions of years. Three recent science news reports raise questions about how to fit apparently young objects into a vast timeline. Lunar burps: The moon is passing gas, reported Science News). This explains the long history of observations of lunar transients, or bright flashes observed from […]

Dumb Ideas

Darwinism Seen in Action!

August 3, 2007

An example of Darwinian evolution in action was reported by EurekAlert. This dramatic announcement called it a “rare example” of a “controversial theory of genetic conflict” in the reproduction of certain fish: The conflict has been likened to a “battle of the sexes” or an “arms race” at the molecular level between mothers and fathers. […]

Early Man

Romanian Neanderthal May Have Interbred With Modern Humans

August 2, 2007

A report in National Geographic says that a skull found in a Romanian cave is shaking up ideas about Neanderthal Man and its relationship to modern humans. The mostly modern skull shows a feature that was characteristic of Neanderthals: “The otherwise human skull has a groove at the base of the back of the skull, […]

Marine Biology

Deep Sea Vents Tantalize Evolutionists

August 1, 2007

A team of Chinese and American scientists pulled up fragments of deep-sea vents and analyzed their contents, reported Science Daily. They said the creatures inhabiting these vents are the “most primitive life forms on Earth,” and so thought that the fragments might provide clues to the origin of life. Timothy Kusky of Saint Louis University […]

Amazing Facts

Motorized Ears Give Mammals Acoustic Acuity

July 31, 2007

f=”crev03.htm#amazing11″>03/27/2001), we reported on the discovery of prestin, a motor protein that acts as an amplifier in the inner ear. One of the fastest-acting molecular motors known (02/21/2002), prestin works by stiffening the rod-shaped cell body with its cilia. Somehow, the action of this motor protein amplifies hearing in mammalian ears by several orders of […]

Fossils

Trilobite Tree Is Upside Down

July 28, 2007

Darwin predicted that life would become more diverse over time, like the branches on a tree. The pattern of trilobites in the fossil record is just the opposite: more diversity appears in the lower layers, and less diversity in the upper layers. Surprisingly, evolutionary paleontologists are turning this into evidence for Darwin’s theory. […]

Cell Biology

Photosynthesis Requires the Right Kind of Star

July 27, 2007

Where can photosynthesis occur? The answer depends on the energy of starlight, the atmosphere, the amount of water vapor, and the organisms equipped to harvest it. A new kind of photosynthetic bacterium was just discovered in a Yellowstone hot spring (see Science Daily). Exciting as this is (and the discoverer felt he had […]

Origin of Life

Origin of Life: Speculation vs. Evidence

July 27, 2007

The European Astrobiology Magazine reviewed a book1 that tries to give “detailed scrutiny” the problem of “the transition from small, simple molecules to large, complex cells.” The initial reaction by reviewer Toby Murcott points out glaring problems in origin of life research: uncertainty, lack of consensus, and lack of evidence: What hits you immediately about […]

Dumb Ideas

The Simpsons Producer Treats Evolution as Fact

July 26, 2007

The TV cartoon The Simpsons was praised for its “greatness” in, of all places, the premiere scientific journal Nature.1 Michael Hopkin interviewed “Executive producer Al Jean, the show’s head writer and a Harvard mathematics graduate.” One of the questions was, “One episode in which the show does take sides is the one in which Lisa […]

Astronomy

Stars Found Almost as Old as Universe

July 25, 2007

A new record was set by a Caltech team using the Keck telescopes on Hawaii: they detected a galaxy nearly as old as the universe. The consensus age for the universe is 13.6 billion years. The light from this galaxy, they claim, is over 13 billion years old – “a mere 500 million years after […]

Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Sex and Other Tales

July 24, 2007

How much do we really know about dinosaurs? How much can be inferred from their bones? Two recent stories illustrate conflicting themes: much of what we thought we knew was wrong, but that doesn’t stop evolutionary paleontologists from speaking with confidence. Walking with dino ancestors: Paleontologists used to think that the alleged precursors of dinosaurs […]

Cosmology

Cosmologists in Search of Dark Ghosts

July 23, 2007

Dark matter and dark energy: do they exist? Cosmologists and physicists are spending large amounts of money building huge and expensive detectors to find them, but so far have found nothing. This raises profound questions about the limits of science, the interaction of observation with theory, the presuppositions behind scientific models, and the sociology of […]

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