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Dumb Ideas

Poison Planet Was Life’s Training Ground
November 14, 2008
Navy Seals go through “Hell Week” in their training to become warriors.  The radical hardships they endure help prepare them for missions that will call on their deepest resources of courage and determination.  These men of the elite special forces also become experts in dealing with explosives.  Can molecules do the same, with a little […]
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Astronomy

SETI Could Find Design in Neutrinos
October 12, 2008
Most of the scientists involved in SETI research are very antagonistic to Intelligent Design.  Nevertheless, they find the design inference perfectly “natural” when looking for ways to comb through natural phenomena for intelligently-designed signals.     Two new methods for detecting alien messages were reported by Science News in the Oct. 11 issue.1  Both involve […]
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Dumb Ideas

Spore Game: Evolution or ID?
September 4, 2008
Spore is a highly-anticipated computer game that just came out.  Evolutionists are claiming it as a model of how life evolves – but intelligent-design advocates are calling it an ID game, pure and simple.  Who’s right?     Carl Zimmer, a science writer, is among those counting Spore points for Darwin.  His blog entry from […]
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Bible and Theology

Life in Space: Follow the Hot Water, not the Hot Air
August 8, 2008
Planetary scientists have their eyes and instruments on regions of hot water, but speculating too dogmatically about life in space could get you in hot water yourself.     Simon Klatterhorn (geologist, U of Idaho) is mesmerized by the possibility of life at Europa, Jupiter’s ice-crusted oceanic moon.  In an interview by Science Daily, he […]
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SETI

What’s SETI Got to Do With It?
July 31, 2008
The science news outlets are all posting a story from Space.com about how you can adopt a scientist.  Mark Showalter is an interesting guy – astronomer, scuba diver, amateur naturalist, award-winning photographer, and specialist in planetary rings.  But why was this story posted in the SETI column?     There doesn’t seem to be anything […]
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Intelligent Design

Alien Messages via Neutrinos
June 6, 2008
Three scientists are suggesting that SETI researchers comb neutrinos for alien messages.  Nothing natural could produce high-energy neutrinos, they said in Science,1 so aliens may use their cosmic accelerators to send neutrino packets across the intergalactic internet.  They suggested watching for them in the neutrino detector at the South Pole. 1.  Random Samples, Science, Volume […]
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Dumb Ideas

Preparing the World for Aliens
May 29, 2008
Some people are so convinced there are alien intelligences in the universe, we should be getting ready to meet them.     The Telegraph, a UK newspaper, reported that NASA has partly financed a creative writing class on “interstellar message composition” at the University of Wyoming.  Professor Jeffrey Lockwood wants to help the 11 students […]
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Origin of Life

Astrobiologists Pool Their Ignorance at AbSciCon
May 1, 2008
A big conference on Astrobiology was held in Santa Clara, California last month.  It was the fifth AbSciCon (Astrobiology Science Conference), a bi-annual cross-disciplinary event.  This one pulled together 675 researchers from 28 countries across a variety of disciplines, all interested in life in space.  Naturally, evolution was an overarching theme.  From Edna DeVore’s account […]
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SETI

Imagination as Science
April 17, 2008
Can a science exist without evidence?  Astrobiology, and its subcategory “the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” involve a great deal of scientific equipment, trained researchers, and funding, but still have no observational evidence to support their reason for being: extraterrestrial life.  Where is the line between imagination and reality in these fields?     Some insight […]
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Dumb Ideas

Fooling Oneself About Aliens
April 1, 2008
Would you give a Bible to a Neanderthal, or invite a porpoise to your church?  Who would ask such questions?  Seth Shostak would – director of the SETI Institute.  On Space.com, he speculated about “alien sociology.”     Shostak wrote the weekly SETI column for Space.com to answer critics who think that broadcasting our presence […]
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Bible and Theology

How to Address an Alien
March 17, 2008
How would you like this job: your assignment is to be the speechwriter for planet earth.  You are to figure out what our first message is to the aliens – to give them a good first impression as we introduce the human species to the galactic community.  “No kidding? What does it pay?”     […]
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Astronomy

Astrobiology Justifying Itself
March 16, 2008
Is astrobiology a legitimate science?  Seth Shostak, director of the SETI Institute, tried to answer that question in the weekly SETI Thursday column on Space.com.  He estimates there are “approximately a thousand scientists who would be proud to print ‘astrobiologist’ on their business cards.”  Astrobiology still gets a cool reception in some quarters.  Shostak likened […]
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Intelligent Design

SETI Signals Could Be Loaded with Information
February 4, 2008
Unusual properties of electromagnetic waves allow for a higher carrying capacity of information than thought.  SETI researcher Seth Shostak reported on Space.com that Swedish researchers have found a possible “subspace channel” in the orbital angular momentum of narrowband radio waves that might allow the encoding of information.  This information would be impervious to the jumbling […]
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Bible and Theology

A Tale of Two Cosmic Cities
January 13, 2008
Two organizations have prepared curricula presenting grand panoramas of cosmic history.  Each is divided into seven modules – but that is where any similarity ends.  One is a completely materialistic and evolutionary view composed by scientists and educators from NASA and the federal government and major academic institutions and corporations.  The other is a completely […]
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Cosmology

SETI: Physics Conspires to Keep the Aliens Isolated
December 7, 2007
Where are the aliens?  They’re too far away to get to know.  Don’t look for galactic federations to join any time soon, said SETI Institute Director Seth Shostak at Space.com.  The harsh realities of the speed of light make fellowship, both in person and via radio signals, too remote to be feasible.     Shostak […]
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