Toy Octopus Is Far from the Living Reality
August 27, 2016
The news media are celebrating an autonomous soft robot shaped like an octopus. It has a lot to learn from its living counterpart.
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Hope, Not Evidence, Drives Astrobiology
August 25, 2016
Earth-size exoplanets are not evidence for alien life. They are evidence for orbiting bodies.
Spirit Lake Threatens Megaflood
August 22, 2016
36 years after Spirit Lake was destroyed by a volcano, it has come back with its own threats of destruction.
Weekend Biomimetics Parade
August 20, 2016
Here's a quick list of exciting news about how imitation of nature's designs is leading to wonderful inventions.
Radiation, Mistakes, and Assumptions
August 19, 2016
Three news items about atomic radiation should cause us to beware of academic overstatement.
Secularists Use Intelligent Design Reasoning
August 18, 2016
Data from a star are hard to reconcile with natural causes. Are super-intelligent aliens at work?
Secularists Battle Over Which Life Theory Is More Wrong
August 16, 2016
Origin-of-life camps don't recognize that RNA-World theories and hydrothermal-vent theories suffer from the same basic problem.
Mars Life Hopes Reduced
August 12, 2016
Key assumptions about habitability on Mars have fallen, but astrobiologists try to keep hope alive.
Sunflower Motion Is Complex
August 9, 2016
They follow the sun, but how? Scientists are just finding out the mechanisms behind light tracking in sunflowers.
Chinese Flood Legend Was Historic
August 8, 2016
A dam breach flood in China known only from legend appears to be supported by geological evidence.
Fossil DNA Stuns Geologists
August 4, 2016
None of them would have believed DNA could survive over a million years. They have no explanation for its preservation.
Hydrothermal OOL Chemistry Is Unlikely
July 30, 2016
A favorite way for theorists to get around the lack of enzymes at the origin of life is shown to be implausible.
For the Love of Trees
July 23, 2016
You don't have to be a proverbial tree-hugger to love trees and wonder at all the things they can do, and do for us.
Is Dark Matter Going the Way of Phlogiston?
July 21, 2016
There is no exotic dark matter, according to the most sensitive search to date. The ramifications for cosmology are enormous.
Radar Reveals Former Warm Landscape Under Greenland
July 18, 2016
Under the world's fastest moving glacier, radar has revealed a network of V-shaped canyons carved by temperate rivers.