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Missing Link in Star Formation Found?
March 29, 2005
According to a press release from the European Space Agency, a missing link in stellar evolution has been found.  Observation: excited molecular hydrogen in two colliding galaxies.  Conclusion: a star is born: The scientists noticed that the overlapping region of the two colliding galaxies is very rich in molecular hydrogen, which is in an excited […]
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Easter Essay
March 27, 2005
Accompanied by a picture of a cross and a sunset, captioned “The Sun and the Son,” a somber-looking Brian Walden wrote an essay in the BBC News expressing his reaction to Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees’ “chilling” comment that “It will not be humans who witness the demise of the Sun six billion years hence; […]
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Public Not Patronizing Evolution-Based IMAX Films
March 23, 2005
Mark Looy at Answers in Genesis comments on reports that some IMAX movie theaters are dropping evolution-based films because the public is taking offense at them.  Looy denies that “religious fundamentalists” or creation organizations are putting any pressure on the theaters.  He claims this is just an informal grass-roots response by viewers who are becoming […]
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Mars Crater-Count Dating Is All Wrong
March 22, 2005
Planetary scientists have long relied on crater counts to estimate the ages of surfaces in the solar system.  The more craters, the older the surface, has been the assumption.  Now, according to a report in New Scientist, the method is flawed, at least on Mars.  Data from the 2001 Mars Odyssey have shown rays around […]
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Religion and Charity Evolved, Claim Darwinists
March 16, 2005
“Charity begins at Homo sapiens,” quips Mark Buchanan in New Scientist, noting that only human beings exhibit “true altruism” (i.e., helping genetic strangers, such as those suffering from the Asian tsunamis) when such behavior cannot help the individual pass on his or her genes.  He evaluates the various theories that evolutionary psychologists have come up […]
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Plants Produce Jigsaw Puzzles
March 11, 2005
The cells on a leaf interlock one another, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  In a manner similar to jigsaw puzzles, which can be lifted by the hand even though composed of individually-weak pieces, this gives the leaf structural strength.  How does this come about?  In the current issue of Cell,1 Jeffrey Settleman (Harvard) explains […]
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Biblical Archaeology Address
March 3, 2005
Baptist Press posted a report about an address by noted archaeologist William Dever (see 02/18/2005 entry) at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary last month.  Dever provided several examples from his own digs of archaeological finds that corroborate the Biblical record and chronology.  He hit hard against the revisionists who try to deny the historicity of […]
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Mars Life in Embalming Fluid?
March 1, 2005
A researcher with the Mars Express project claims to have found formaldehyde along with methane in exceptional amounts, reports News@Nature.  Since methane is destroyed by radiation in hundreds of days, and formaldehyde in several days, there is either a geological source for it, or it comes from living organisms in the soil, Vittorio Formisano claims. […]
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Pot Shots at Hot Spots
February 18, 2005
Say that title five times, and you’ll be as flummoxed as geologists reporting in Science1 last week that long-believed assumptions are wrong.  They looked at three seamount chains in the Pacific, long thought to provide evidence of tectonic plates moving across stationary hot spots, and found that current theory cannot account for them: Our findings […]
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Mars Dry Most of Its Life
February 18, 2005
If Mars had liquid water, it was only briefly early in its history.  Observations from the Mars Express, which just celebrated its first year in orbit, show no hint that liquid water has existed any time recently, reports Nature Science Update.  It’s not that H2O is rare; it is abundant at the poles, for instance, […]
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Introns Engineered for Genetic Repair
February 18, 2005
Scientists at Purdue University are using bacterial machines to treat cancer and other diseases.  These machines, called Group I introns, were thought to be useless: Once thought of as genetic junk, introns are bits of DNA that can activate their own removal from RNA, which translates DNA’s directions for gene behavior.  Introns then splice the […]
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How Powerful Is Natural Selection?  “Biologists May Be Deluding Themselves”
February 16, 2005
Andrew P. Hendry (McGill University, Montreal) is no creationist; Darwinian evolution is a given in his News and Views piece in Nature1 this week.  But he cautioned his fellow evolutionary biologists not to make overconfident claims about the power of Darwin’s most famous concept, natural selection: Adaptation by natural selection is the centrepiece of biology.  […]
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Honeybees Fly with Mental Maps
February 15, 2005
You can tell a honeybee to get lost, but it can’t.  You can even take it off its flight path, but it will find its way back.  Scientists writing in PNAS1 this week described experiments by a European team that wanted to test their navigating abilities.  They marked bees at feeding stations, then took them […]
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Lichens: Two Designs Are Better than One
February 15, 2005
A lichen is a symbiotic organism comprised of an alga and a fungus.  PNAS1 reported a study that showed that “antioxidant and photoprotective mechanisms in the lichen Cladonia vulcani are more effective by orders of magnitude than those of its isolated partners” (emphasis added in all quotes).  Kranner et al. found: Without the fungal contact, […]
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National Geographic Besieged by Letters Over Darwin Article
February 15, 2005
“Was Darwin Wrong?” the cover teased in November.  Inside, printed in huge bold type, the answer was ruthless and final: “NO.  The evidence for evolution is overwhelming” – end of discussion (see 10/24/2004 entry).  Not everybody liked this treatment.  Over 600 letters poured in, and in the March issue, NG printed six samples “chosen to […]
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