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Solar System

Comets Didn’t Bring Earth’s Oceans
November 3, 2009
So much for the “water balloon” theory of how Earth got its oceans.  A new study by Belgian planetary scientists pretty much rules out comets as the source of our planet’s abundant water.  Their results are published in this month’s Icarus.1     “The origin of water on Earth is still puzzling,” they began.  Our […]
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Dumb Ideas

Can SETI Be Quantified?
October 31, 2009
What is the probability of finding intelligent life on other planets?  In 1960, Frank Drake attempted to quantify that question with his famous Drake Equation (see MSNBC and NOVA, which allows you to estimate the probability with an interactive meter).  Trouble is, Stanley Miller and Leslie Orgel of primordial soup fame thought it was meaningless.  […]
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Cosmology

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.  […]
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Cosmology

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 […]
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Dumb Ideas

How to Name a Protoplanet
October 12, 2009
Pallas has long been classified as an asteroid, but all of a sudden in the news media, everyone is calling it a protoplanet.  How did it get promoted?     The picture being painted of asteroid 2 Pallas is that of a planetary building block that failed in its attempt to grow into another real […]
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Awards

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.     […]
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Physics

Giant Backward Ring Found Around Saturn
October 7, 2009
Saturn has a newly-discovered ring to add to its decor – the largest of all.  It’s so big, it makes Saturn look like a speck in the middle of it.  The ring, located at the orbit of the small outer moon Phoebe, is inclined 27 degrees and revolves backwards around Saturn.  This was announced today […]
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Intelligent Design

Outer Limits Not Lively
September 29, 2009
One of the “cosmic coincidences” cited in the intelligent-design treatise The Privileged Planet1 is the “galactic habitable zone” – a fairly narrow region of the galaxy where planets can form and exist safely.  The outer regions of the galaxy were described as lacking the heavy elements necessary for planet formation.     Score one for […]
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Cosmology

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 […]
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Solar System

Mars Red-Faced Without Water
September 21, 2009
The Martians are singing How dry I am.  Scientists have a new explanation for how Mars turned red without water: it’s just dry dust tumbling in the wind.  This new hypothesis was announced by Live Science, Science Daily, New Scientist, and Space.com, based on a presentation at the European Planetary Science Congress last week.1    […]
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Intelligent Design

Earth Size Gives Life Edge
September 7, 2009
The earth seems to be holding onto its status as a privileged planet.  New Scientist reported that a rocky planet’s size is linked to its ability to sustain a magnetic field and plate tectonics.  This means that some of the “super-earths” found around other stars (5-10 times the size of earth) may not be habitable.  […]
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Dumb Ideas

Milking the Martian Meteorite
September 1, 2009
One would think everything has been told about ALH 84001, the Martian meteorite that made a splash in 1996 with claims it contained fossils of living organisms.  That claim was essentially discarded in subsequent years.  Its major contribution was giving life to a new science called astrobiology and energizing NASA’s Mars program.  Now, a new […]
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Physics

What’s Up With the Planets?
August 27, 2009
Here are planets and moons making news in our celestial neighborhood, the solar system.  Maybe we’ll drop in on another neighborhood while we’re looking around. Venus resurfacing:  Planetary geologists can’t get away from the evidence that Venus underwent a planet-wide volcanic resurfacing epoch.  Crater counts and lava flow surveys leave little room for doubt that, […]
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Astronomy

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 […]
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Cosmology

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 […]
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