The Copernican Geological Revolution
March 17, 2010
The Copernican Revolution did not just affect astronomy and physics: it revolutionized geology.
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Divining Violent gods as Natural Cosmic Creators
March 10, 2010
Ancient stargazers imagined the violent actions of gods in the heavens giving rise to the stars, earth and man. Today’s secular astronomers engage in a similar kind of lore. While not naming their gods after mythical heroes, they describe them as forces of nature whose violent clashes give rise to order and design. Sometimes they […]
Multiverse Explanations Are Fashionable, If Not Justifiable
February 22, 2010
How can scientists get away with speculating about unobservable universes, when science is supposed to concern itself with observation? “In the end, there is no way to know for sure what other universes are out there, or what life they may hold,” an article in PhysOrg ended, “But that will likely not stop physicists from […]
Universe Has a Run-Down Feeling
February 3, 2010
There’s 30 times more entropy in the universe than thought, according to Dr. Charley Lineweaver at the Australian National University. PhysOrg said that Lineweaver and a PhD student Charles Egan measured the entropy of the universe. It looks like it is feeling pretty run down. “We considered all contributions to the entropy of the observable […]
Who in the Universe Makes Music?
February 1, 2010
A cosmologist and some musicians want to “sonify the universe” by making music out of stellar events like supernova explosions. In an unusual article for a science media outlet, “Reaching for the Stars to Create Music of the Universe,” Science Daily reported that Nobel laureate George Smoot was inspired by the wishes of a Grateful […]
What Value Do Evolutionary Explanations Provide?
January 13, 2010
We want value for our science dollars. We know artists are into self-expression, but scientists need to offer more than just artistic prose: they are supposed to be in the knowledge generation business. So we expect to gain one of two things from their scientific explanations. One, we would like to gain practical knowledge that […]
Bad Math Gets a Pass When Its Naturalistic
January 8, 2010
“Now we know our place in the universe,” gloated Ohio State University astronomer Scott Gaudi, who told the science press that 15% of solar systems in the universe are like ours. “Solar systems like our own are not rare, but we’re not in the majority, either.” His calculation was based on how many relatively earthlike […]
Galaxy-Spangled Banner Unfurled
December 8, 2009
The Hubble team has unveiled a new deep field image of distant galaxies, the “Hubble Ultra Deep Field Infrared WFC3/IR.” The image, available at the HubbleSite, was taken with the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) installed during the latest servicing mission. It’s been 5 years since the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (03/09/2004; […]
Is the Universe Evolving Upward?
November 13, 2009
It’s intuitively obvious that to get from a big bang to intelligent astronomers looking for evidence of the bang through telescopes, the amount of organization in the universe must increase over time dramatically. Lately, astronomy has uncovered much more dynamism in space than previously recognized – but much of it seems destructive, not creative. Orion […]
Materialists: What Do You Know?
October 28, 2009
For people who brag about their work, scientists are an odd lot. At one moment they are touting science as the surest path to knowledge and understanding. The next moment it seems like they are at square one. This is particularly true of materialist cosmologies and Darwinian theories for the origin and development of life. […]
Science News or Tabloid Journalism?
October 19, 2009
Science news outlets have put out some bizarre headlines recently. Readers can judge whether they should be blessed with the label “science” or belong instead at supermarket checkouts. Women are evolving fatter: New Scientist and PhysOrg said that natural selection is making women shorter, plumper and more fertile. “The take-home message is that humans are […]
Cosmology: Truth or Style?
October 8, 2009
If you follow cosmology, you’re familiar with WMAP, Type-1a supernovae, gravitational lensing, inflation and a host of technical terms. They seem authoritative because they rely on respectable laws like gravity and general relativity. In an article in Nature today, however, Richard Massey pictured the whole enterprise as a matter of fashion, not fact. […]
Cosmology: Crossroads or Crosswinds?
September 28, 2009
Earlier this month in Science, Charles L. Bennett (Johns Hopkins) wrote a status report called “Cosmology at a Crossroads.”1 It included a brief survey of how cosmology got to its current paradigm and how future instruments should narrow down the unknowns. The “standard model” as it has become known hangs together if one allows for […]
Cosmic Accounting Is Wildly Inaccurate
August 26, 2009
Counting faint celestial objects is admittedly hard, but the task should be within the capabilities of expert astronomers. It is, after all, as simple as counting. So much theoretical work relies on accurate counts of what’s out there, they need to get at least in the ballpark. Recent indications hint that their counts have been […]
Are We at the Center of the Universe?
August 23, 2009
An alternative cosmology that doesn’t require dark energy may have the effect of putting the Milky Way near the center of the universe. That’s not the only interpretation, but it is being considered. Space.com reported on work by mathematicians at UC Davis who solved Einstein’s field equations without dark energy. If the big […]