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?
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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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Genetic Toolkit Manages Dangerous Tools with Safety Switch and Lockbox
September 19, 2006
Laymen appreciate scientists who can express complex concepts in everyday terms. Here’s a good example from the Wistar Institute: Around the home, regularly used tools are generally kept close at hand: a can opener in a kitchen drawer, a broom in the hall closet. Less frequently used tools are more likely to be stored in […]
Marine Mimics Found Off Thailand
September 18, 2006
Live Science reported findings from a rich seascape off the coast of Thailand: “Scientists combing through undersea fauna off Indonesia’s Papua province said Monday they had discovered dozens of new species, including a shark that walks on its fins and a shrimp that looks like a praying mantis.” National Geographic posted even more […]
The Trouble with Neanderthals
September 18, 2006
If nothing else, the scientific investigation of Neanderthal Man is valuable for illustrating how fluid scientific opinion can be. Since we found out Sept. 1 that Neanderthal genes may be lurking among us, two more unexpected claims have been made about these wrestler-build members of genus Homo. Hideouts and Holdouts: Some Neanderthals may have lived […]