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Was Baby Lucy Someone Elses Kid?

October 2, 2006

Jeffrey Schwartz (U of Pittsburgh) thinks the “child” skeleton nicknamed “Lucy’s baby” celebrated in the news media last month (09/20/2006) was probably not the same species as Lucy. In fact, he’s not sure if anyone knows what species the skeleton found in Hadar, Ethiopia is. According to a press release on EurekAlert, without exposed teeth […]

Uncategorized

Evolutionary Anthropologists Seek to Study Christianity

October 2, 2006

According to a press release on EurekAlert, “Anthropologists have almost no track record of studying Christianity, a religion they have generally treated as not exotic enough to be of interest.” This omission needs to be rectified, says Joel Robbins (UC San Diego): “Anthropologists, who are specialists in the study of religion outside the West, ought […]

Dating Methods

Supernova 80% Younger Than Thought

October 1, 2006

The age of a supernova remnant has dropped from 10,000 years to less than 2,000 years. How?

Origin of Life

Europa: The Link Between OOL and SETI

September 30, 2006

Why would searchers for extraterrestrial intelligence be interested in Europa? After all, despite the movie 2010 command to “attempt no landings there,” no astrobiologist believes it could host anything more than primitive life – certainly no one who could send messages to us. Cynthia Phillips, a principal investigator for the SETI Institute, explained […]

Genetics

Paper View: Evolutionists Augur Genes for Tales of Eyes, Hearts, Brains

September 29, 2006

The Sept. 29 issue of Science includes a special section on evolutionary genetics, beginning with an overview by Barbara R. Jasny, Elizabeth Pennisi and John Travis entitled “Genomic Tales.”1 Our organs tell stories. A pathologist, for example, can look at a lung and recognize a lifetime of toiling in a mine. Our genes tell stories, […]

Dumb Ideas

Why Are Kids Hyper? Blame Evolution

September 28, 2006

Jon Hamilton on National Public Radio was curious why his 7-year-old kid always had more energy than he did and didn’t need coffee to get him going. So he asked an evolutionary biologist at UC Irvine and got the following explanation: “It’s fairly clear that human evolution has been strongly shaped by very powerful selection […]

Amazing Facts

Tarantula Spins Silk from Feet

September 27, 2006

Surprise: a Costa Rican tarantula can spin silk from the tips of its feet. A team of German and American scientists writing in Nature1 coaxed one of these heavy, hairy spiders to walk vertically up glass, and was astonished to find it ejecting silky threads that arrested its slipping and enabled it to cling. They […]

Dumb Ideas

Atheist Dilemma: Fight or Smooth-Talk Religion?

September 25, 2006

The unpopularity of evolutionism and the persistence of religious faith has scientific materialists confounded and dumbfounded over how to respond. Some want to fight, some want to shrug it off, and some want to dialog with religious believers, in hopes of convincing some of them that evolution is not the bogeyman they think. Richard Dawkins […]

Astronomy

Deep Field Survey Shows Oldest Galaxies Yet

September 24, 2006

Astronomers continue to find mature galaxies at higher and higher redshifts. The latest record, reported in Nature,1 is z=6.96, interpreted to mean the galaxy was present 700 million years after the big bang (usually dated at 13.7 billion years ago). A survey of distant galaxies from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), also reported in […]

Mind and Brain

Mars Radiation Would Fry Astronaut Brains

September 23, 2006

Imagine the first Martian astronauts coming home confused, impaired and demented. This is the risk from solar radiation on Mars, say a group of NASA medical researchers (see RxPG News). Among the gravest risks of a manned flight to Mars ranks the possibility that massive amounts of solar and cosmic radiation will decimate the brains […]

Birds

Was Archaeopteryx a Biplane?

September 22, 2006

A U of Calgary PhD student thinks Archaeopteryx flew on all fours. Nick Longrich thinks the early bird had feathers on its legs that gave it additional lift. The discovery of some Chinese fossil birds with feathers on the legs lends support to his interpretation, he says. “The idea of a multi-winged Archaeopteryx has been […]

Physics

Bacteria Generate Hydrocarbon Reservoirs

September 21, 2006

Ethane and propane have been detected in ocean depths near the Galapagos, reported EurekAlert. These heavy energy-rich hydrocarbons may be widespread in ocean sediments. The authors of a paper in PNAS1 believe it is formed by bacteria metabolizing acetate from organic material in the sediment, and that this “upsets the general belief that hydrocarbons larger […]

Education

Farewell to the Face on Mars A Teachable Moment

September 21, 2006

ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has just sent back pictures of the Cydonia region on Mars. Objects seen in early Viking images of this region resembled a face, a skull and pyramids that gave rise to a cult following on late-night talk shows. NASA always discounted these resemblances as coincidental, and when JPL released higher-resolution photos […]

Solar System

Cassini Photographs Earth from Saturn, Discovers New Ring

September 19, 2006

A new ring, geysers from a distance, and our home planet from 930 million miles away – these and more wonders are visible in new photos taken by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. Now at opposition (facing the sun), the orbiter’s cameras can pick out fainter details in backlighting. Highlights of the three published photos […]