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Bible and Theology

Kepler On the Way to Search for Earth-Size Planets
March 7, 2009
The long-awaited launch of the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft was successful Friday night, announced the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Named for the 17th-century German astronomer-mathematician Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft will stare at 100,000 stars for over three years, looking for variations in their light that indicate the presence of planets.  Follow-up studies may determine if some of […]
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Cosmology

Evidence for Inflation, or Inflating the Evidence?
February 24, 2009
Cosmic inflation has become an accepted truth in cosmology, but its appeal is primarily philosophical and theoretical.  Something as weird as a universe jumping 26 orders of magnitude in size in one trillion trillion trillionth of a second (see 02/21/2005) should raise eyebrows in any scientific circle.  Is there any evidence for it?  Live Science […]
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Astronomy

2009 Is Looking Up
January 8, 2009
Astronomy is looking up this year; in fact, it’s looking heavenly.  The United Nations and the International Astronomical Union have designated 2009 the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009).  The IYA2009 website explains, The International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) will be a global celebration of astronomy and its contributions to society and culture, highlighted by the […]
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Cosmology

Dream On, Astrobiology
December 22, 2008
An astrobiologist at Open University (UK) has classified habitable worlds into four types, even though only one of them is known to have life.  Astrobiology Magazine reported the list by Jan Hendrik Bredeh?ft: earth-like, Mars-like, Venus-like and water-worlds.  After considering all the facts, Bredeh?ft says our best bet to find extraterrestrial ecosystems is to hunt […]
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Astronomy

Water, Water Everywhere
December 21, 2008
A press release from the Max Planck Institute says that water has been detected at a distant quasar 11.1 billion light-years away – the farthest detection of water yet.  “The water vapour is thought to exist in clouds of dust and gas that feed the supermassive black hole at the centre of the distant quasar,” […]
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Cosmology

Cosmologists Taste the Forbidden Fruit
December 5, 2008
Everyone agrees: our universe appears fine-tuned for human existence.  You have two choices: it was designed by God, or there is a multiverse (other universes we cannot detect).  Amanda Gefter is unhappy with that choice.  In New Scientist, she asked, why can’t we have more options?     Calling the God-vs-multiverse choice a false dichotomy, […]
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Astronomy

It Takes a Stellar Village
November 27, 2008
Do galaxies embark on a purpose-driven life?  The language in an article about galaxy evolution in Science Daily makes such seamless use of personal terms with natural processes, it’s hard to know where the data ends and the interpretation begins.     “Galaxy Zoo, which uses volunteers from the general public to classify galaxies, and […]
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Cell Biology

Far-Out Science
November 25, 2008
The following list of bizarre stories coming from science news outlets is jarring on two fronts: it shows how little scientists understand, and calls into question what counts as science these days.  Some stories illustrate one or the other; some both. Roar of the aurora aura:  Both Saturn and Mars turned up auroras that are […]
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Cosmology

Desperately Fleeing God in Cosmology
November 17, 2008
Does the fine-tuning of the universe require belief in God?  Or will multiverse theory allow for a self-perpetuating, eternal, godless cosmos?  Tim Folger explored this topic in an interview with Andrei Linde, a cosmologist currently at Stanford, in Discovery Magazine.  The opening line sums up the controversy: “Our universe is perfectly tailored for life.  That […]
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Cosmology

Antimatter Or Anti-Consensus?
November 1, 2008
Where’s the antimatter?  If the universe began in a big bang, there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter.  Instead, there is only regular matter as far as our telescopes can see.  (If antimatter were present, the annihilation of antimatter and matter would give a characteristic gamma-ray signature.)  This is a big matter; the […]
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Cosmology

Science Cannot Validate Itself
October 16, 2008
Science is an unbiased, objective, disciplined, cooperative method for progressively uncovering truth about the natural world.  That’s the way most of us were taught to think about it in school.  Further reflection, however, produces a host of questions rarely discussed in science class.  How does science differ from other unbiased, objective, disciplined, cooperative methods of […]
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Cosmology

Dark Energy May Be an Optical Illusion
October 5, 2008
Cosmologists can get rid of the burden of their worst imponderable substance, dark energy, if they are willing to jettison the Copernican Principle.  Science Daily reported thinking by a team of Oxford physicists who make the apparent acceleration of the universe an artifact of our viewing position.  When distant galaxies are viewed without the assumption […]
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Astronomy

Bangin’ Around to Get Something New Under the Sun
October 3, 2008
You’ve heard of the Big Bang, and the Cambrian Explosion.  Now, to get the solar system started, astronomers have added a Little Bang to move things along in the naturalistic path from nothing to everything.  Science Daily, Space.com and PhysOrg all reprinted a press release from the Carnegie Institution claiming that a nearby supernova led […]
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Cosmology

Dark Matters, When All You Have Is Light
August 30, 2008
A cluster of galaxies equivalent to a thousand Milky Ways was observed at a distance of 7.7 billion light-years.  What does it mean?  According to astronomers mentioned in an article on Space.com, it can only mean one thing: dark energy makes up 70% of the universe.     “The existence of the cluster can only […]
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Cosmology

Early Magnetic Galaxies Surprise Astronomers
July 17, 2008
Astronomers reported in Nature that early galaxies have normal magnetic fields.1  That is surprising because magnetic fields were supposed to start small and strengthen over billions of years.     The team tried to be careful to distinguish intervening magnetic signatures from those in quasars.  Their measurements indicated that “organized fields of surprisingly high strengths […]
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