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Physics

The Daily Planet
July 12, 2007
This entry is not about birds or planes; it’s supernews from the solar system. Sponge Blob:  Hyperion, an oddball moon of Saturn between Titan and Iapetus, was featured at Jet Propulsion Laboratory last week (see stunning image from Sept. 2005 at the Cassini imaging team website).  Two papers in Nature July 5 analyzed its sponge-like […]
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Cosmology

Nature Celebrates Bizarre ‘Many-Worlds’ Cosmology
July 7, 2007
The cover of Nature this week (July 7) looks like a comic book.
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Geology

Lord Kelvin’s Core Values Defended
July 2, 2007
Myth: Lord Kelvin held back the progress of geology for 100 years by insisting the Earth was younger than geologists and evolutionists believed. Myth debunked here.
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Astronomy

Cosmic Star Formation: When Elegant Theories Are Wrong
June 30, 2007
An astronomer wrote about “cosmic train wrecks” in Science recently.1  Paolo Coppi (Yale) was speaking about galactic mergers, but he could have just as well been talking about current cosmological models.  Things once thought to be understood are coming in for new scrutiny, now that more powerful telescopes can peer deeper into the veiled hearts […]
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Physics

Saturn’s Moons Are Bustin’ Out All Over
June 16, 2007
Add Tethys and Dione to the party blowers around Saturn.  Cassini found that these two moons are active, like Enceladus and Titan, though on a lesser scale.  Cassini scientists discovered the effects of outbound particles from these moons by studying the plasma fields with the Cassini plasma spectrometer (CAPS) instrument.  The results suggest surface activity, […]
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Politics and Ethics

The Malthus Effect on Politics and Economics
June 5, 2007
In 1798, Thomas Malthus published an essay that had a profound impact on Charles Darwin and others. But it was flawed.
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Origin of Life

OOL Study Substitutes Computer for Chemistry
May 15, 2007
Upon reading a recent origin-of-life paper in PNAS,1 you might think the authors ran experiments with real chemicals and real deep-sea rocks.  A more careful look, however, reveals that their model only worked in cyberspace.  This raises interesting questions about the ability of simulations to substitute for empirical evidence.     Their claims were dramatic […]
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Amazing Facts

Details of Photosynthesis Coming to Light
May 9, 2007
New tools of science are unveiling the secrets of what was long a “black box” in biology: photosynthesis.  A paper in Nature last week1 described the structure of the plant PhotoSystem I complex (PSI) in near-atomic resolution.  Next day, a paper in Science2 described some of the protein interactions that occur when plants turn light […]
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Physics

Instant Diamonds?
May 7, 2007
Talk about catastrophism: imagine a geological process creating a dyke 150 miles deep in a few minutes.  This is a new model for how diatremes formed, as described in Nature last week.1  The surprise end of the abstract by Lionel Wilson and James W. Head III states, “No precursor to the eruption is felt at […]
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Amazing Facts

Seeking Explanations for Plant Fibonacci Spirals
May 6, 2007
The spiral patterns on an artichoke are enough to make a physicist choke.  How do plants like cacti, sunflowers, strawberries and artichokes produce geometric patterns of left- and right- handed spirals?  Why do these spirals follow a mathematical rule called the Fibonacci sequence?  A new theory suggests that it is the optimal energy arrangement for […]
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Physics

Tweaking Mercury to Keep it Old
May 4, 2007
Mercury has a magnetic field.  That’s odd.  It shouldn’t.  If it were 4.6 billion years old, the little planet should be solid stiff by now.  Planetary scientists have published a new model of its interior with the required molten outer core that allows a dynamo to generate the observed magnetic field.  What’s interesting are the […]
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Bible and Theology

Heat and Light: Jerusalem City of David Excavations Arouse Notoriety
May 3, 2007
Opinions about tangible archaeological evidence hinge on beliefs about the Bible and science.
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Amazing Facts

Swifts Don’t Just Dream of Flying…
April 29, 2007
…they fly while dreaming.  Did you know that swifts, the aerial acrobats of the air, sleep on the wing?  That’s not all, they adapt their wing shape to turn on a dime.  Science Daily summarized the cover story of Nature this week (April 26) that examined “wing morphing” in swifts – their ability to change […]
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Astronomy

Cosmology: Crisis or Confidence?
April 13, 2007
What is it with cosmology these days?  On the one hand, astronomers seem more confident than ever.  They speak of this as the era of “precision cosmology,” when the only task remaining seems to be refining the decimal points; e.g., the first refinements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) won John Mather and George Smoot […]
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Physics

Saturn Still Serving Surprises
March 28, 2007
The Cassini Spacecraft, three-fourths of the way into its 4-year prime mission, is not running out of new things to see.  Some of the latest discoveries are both awesome and strange. A Hex on the Pole:  As if the south pole of Saturn, with its earth-sized hurricane (picture) were not dramatic enough, the north pole […]
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