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Astronomy

Early Large Galaxies Stun Cosmologists
April 2, 2009
Cosmology has a kind of Cambrian Explosion of its own to grapple with.  Contrary to expectations, some of the earliest galaxies appear as large as current ones, if not larger.  Astronomers, using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, examined five galaxy clusters with ages estimated at 5 billion years after the Big Bang.  Statements in a […]
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Early Man

Peking Man Ages 200,000 Years
March 16, 2009
Dates for Chinese fossils of Homo erectus have been pushed back 200,000 years to 780,000 years before the present, reported Live Science.  The report is based on a paper in Nature by scientists who used cosmogenic nuclide dating methods for the first time.1  Ciochon and Bettis, in the same issue of Nature,2 said the report […]
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Fossils

Permian Extinction: The Origin of Specious Geological Events
March 9, 2009
The Permian extinction – one of the most dramatic events in the history of life on Earth, in which some 90% of species went extinct – lay people assume scientists can back up this story with evidence from geology and fossils, but where is it?  Whatever happened at the prime site in South Africa, from […]
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Uncategorized

Darwin’s Wrong Turn in Argentina
February 12, 2009
When the Beagle was sailing the coast of Argentina in 1834, it stopped at the mouth of the Santa Cruz River.  25-year-old Charles Darwin, who had been reading Lyell’s Principles of Geology, got out and explored the area on foot as the crew made camp on the cliffs.  Darwin was impressed by the six-mile-wide canyon […]
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Solar System

Titan Methane Age Still a Problem
February 2, 2009
“Our new map provides more coverage of Titan’s poles, but even if all of the features we see there were filled with liquid methane, there’s still not enough to sustain the atmosphere for more than 10 million years.”  So said Elizabeth Turtle, lead author of a paper in Geophysical Research Letters,1 in an article on […]
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Physics

The Moon Has Core Values
January 25, 2009
Did the moon have a molten core?  There has been “a long-held consensus that objects in the solar system smaller than than [sic] Mars, can’t sustain magnetic fields,” said National Geographic News based on a paper in Science January 16.1  Apollo rock samples seem to indicate the presence of long-lived magnetism.  It suggests a molten […]
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Astronomy

Dating Stars as Models
January 12, 2009
Many have dreamed of dating a star, but the way astronomers do it is less glamorous.  For one thing, they need to know how old she is first, and how good a model she makes.  In a Perspectives piece for Science,1 David R. Soderblom of the Space Telescope Science Institute explained the requirements for stellar […]
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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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Solar System

Cassini Celebrates Season of Change
December 18, 2008
It’s approaching equinox on Saturn.  Cassini is now well into its first extended mission, aptly dubbed the Equinox Mission, till Sept. 2010.  The Cassini Team just exhibited its snazzy new website.  It’s not all bells and whistles.  The science is ringing the phones off the hook.  Even without the pictures the following announcements could stop […]
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Cell Biology

Applying the Scientific Method to Prehistory
December 10, 2008
What could be more scientific than the scientific method?  A scientist observes an unexplained phenomenon.  He or she gathers data, analyzes it, proposes a hypothesis to explain it, and tests it.  The results are published in a peer-reviewed journal.  Mission accomplished, right?  Here are two papers on very different phenomena – one dealing with the […]
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Physics

Ganymede Age Threatened by Magnetism
December 2, 2008
The biggest moon in the solar system is Ganymede, the third large moon out from Jupiter.  Larger than Mercury, Ganymede has a heterogeneous surface of dark and light areas (picture), grooved terrain, abrupt changes of landforms, and bright splashes where impacts have scarred its icy surface (gallery).  What goes on inside, though, is more surprising: […]
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Solar System

Young Lava Conflicts with Lunar Age
November 12, 2008
The Japanese found what the Americans and Russians didn’t: young lava on the far side of the moon.  “Volcanoes shook up the far side of the moon for far longer than scientists thought,” reported National Geographic News on photos from the Japanese Kaguya (Selene) spacecraft (11/15/2007).     Crater-count dating estimates the lava flows at […]
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Uncategorized

Bible Was Right: Edom Thrived in Solomon’s Time
October 27, 2008
High-precision radiocarbon dates have confirmed that Biblical Edom was active with industrial-scale metal production in the 10th and 9th centuries.  Archaeologists publishing in PNAS said,1 “The methodologies applied to the historical IA archaeology of the Levant have implications for other parts of the world where sacred and historical texts interface with the material record.”  In […]
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Origin of Life

The Life and Death of Oxygen
October 24, 2008
The oxygen in our atmosphere has the energy equivalent of 20 thousand billion billion hydrogen bombs.  To maintain the oxygen level in our atmosphere, that amount of energy would have to be spent in manufacturing molecular oxygen every 4 million years (a thousandth the assumed age of the earth).     Now that we have […]
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Fossils

Walk the Ediacara Two-Step
October 6, 2008
Controversy is swirling around claims that footprints have been found in rock 30 million years earlier than the Cambrian explosion.  The press release on Ohio State shows a picture of parallel rows of dots that a team from Ohio State claims look like footprints of a worm-like or millipede-like animal.  The rocks are said to […]
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