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Birds

Feather Fossil Fallacy?
July 9, 2008
Imprints of melanocytes have been found in fossil feathers.  What does this mean?  The popular science news reports, like Science Daily, Live Science, PhysOrg and the BBC News seem convinced it can tell us something about how birds evolved from dinosaurs.  Understanding what was discovered requires sifting through claims that go far beyond the evidence. […]
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Solar System

Saturn Rings: F is for Flamboyant
July 2, 2008
Cassini provides additional evidence that Saturn's F-ring is young.
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Cosmology

Cosmology at the Outer Limits
June 30, 2008
Those who think cosmology could not get any weirder than it already is (01/15/2008) may want to take note of recent pronouncements by the gurus of universal physics.  Physics teachers in particular may feel an obligation to state Bob Berman’s disclaimer (10/06/2004) before class: viz, “Warning: The following contains contemporary cosmology.  Reading it can produce […]
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Physics

Hopes Die for Enceladus Longevity
June 19, 2008
Ever since Enceladus, the little 300-mile-across moon of Saturn was found in 2005 to be erupting out its south pole, scientists have tried to explain how it could be possible.  They have looked high and low for an energy source to power the geysers of the little moon dubbed “Cold Faithful” for billions of years.  […]
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Uncategorized

The Andes: Pop-Up Mountains
June 10, 2008
The majestic Andes of South America did not rise smoothly and gradually, a team of geologists reported in Science.1  Instead, long periods of stasis for tens of millions of years were punctuated by rapid periods of uplift.  It sounds as if punctuated equilibria theory has been stolen from evolutionary biology and applied to geology.  They […]
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Amazing Facts

Asian Bees Speak European
June 4, 2008
Asian honeybees and European honeybees went their separate ways millions of years ago, say evolutionists.  Why, then, were Asian bees able to readily learn the European language?  An international team watched this happen.  They ran some affirmative-action integration experiments on the two species, and reported their results today in PLoS One.1     “The honeybee […]
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Uncategorized

Geology: Another Catastrophic Rethink
May 23, 2008
Amphitheater-shaped canyons are common throughout the West – and even on Mars.  Geologists had them pretty well figured out.  Water seeps out the bottom of a wall, weakening the face of a cliff.  Gradually, material collapses and leaves a large alcove that continues to recede headward.  That idea is now questioned by a new theory […]
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Solar System

Moon Still Feeling the Impact
May 21, 2008
Craters on the moon seem so old.  Astronomers count them to try to figure out how long ago the surface was battered by impacts.  Although amateurs have claimed to see flashes on the moon’s surface through backyard telescopes, serious astronomers dismissed many of the reports as stories from the lunatic fringe.  “Not any more,” says […]
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Astronomy

Star Light, Star Bright, I Wish I Knew What’s Going On
May 16, 2008
Astronomy is fun, if for no other reason than it gives one endless opportunities to be shocked and surprised. Pulsar outside the box:  Theory has it all laid out nice and neat.  Pulsars form when a red giant drops matter onto a binary companion, making it go boom in a supernova, leaving behind a spinning […]
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Origin of Life

Earth’s Core Values Questioned
May 11, 2008
Geologists have long assumed that iron attracted certain elements toward the earth’s core during its formation.  The amounts of them we find today were added by meteorites and comets as a veneer on the surface later.  A press release from Florida State University is questioning those core values.  New research “calls into question three decades […]
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Solar System

Iapetus Is Losing Its Dry Ice
May 5, 2008
How long can a moon afford to leak?  Iapetus is losing its dry ice (carbon dioxide) through sublimation at a prodigious rate, say scientists in a paper in Icarus this month.1  “One can see that the long-term stability of CO2 is problematic.”     Solving the mystery of the dark side on this mystery moon […]
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Astronomy

Hubble Snaps Colliding Galaxies
April 24, 2008
A new catalog of colliding galaxy images has been released by the Hubble Space Science Institute.  The 59 images show “close encounters that sometimes end in grand mergers and overflowing sites of new star birth as the colliding galaxies morph into wondrous new shapes.”  The release coincided with the 18th anniversary of the Hubble Space […]
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Uncategorized

Grand Canyon Age Estimates Fluctuate Wildly
April 10, 2008
Just when the park rangers were getting familiar telling the public the Grand Canyon was carved about 5 million years ago, some geologists announced the shocking news that it might be less than a million (05/31/2002, 07/22/2002).  The age was plummeting as recently as November (11/30/2007).  But then last month, another revision came: it’s 17 […]
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Origin of Life

Enceladus: Hotter Chemical Plume Found
March 26, 2008
Initial results of Cassini’s March 12 flyby of Enceladus have been published.  You can watch a replay of today’s press briefing, read the blog, and read illustrated bulletins about the organic material, chemical signatures, hot spot locations, the stellar occultation (see also the Quicktime animation).  Another article shows the plume locations.  An astrobiologist (Chris McKay) […]
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Physics

Crater Dater Deflator: Impactors Can Be Recycled
March 25, 2008
They came from outer space – that was the old paradigm about impactors that made craters on planetary bodies.  Then, we learned how secondary craters can confuse a surface’s history (06/08/2006, 09/25/2007).  Now, two papers in Icarus show that moons can do a lateral pass.     Alvarellos et al,1 showed that Jupiter’s moon Io […]
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