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New Horizons at Jupiter

New Horizons, a spaceship bound for Pluto, took a good look at the Jupiter system on Feb 28, 2007.

Exceptional Preservation: Can It Last Hundreds of Millions of Years?

What can happen in 460 million years?  A lot, according to the standard geological timescale.  In this diagram of geological and biological evolution, accepted by nearly all geologists, all the continents came together 260 million years ago, broke up 200 million years ago, and broke into our familiar continents 100 million years ago (mya).  In […]

More Impacts on Crater Count Dating

Planetary scientists have relied on crater counts to estimate the surface age of a planet or moon.  The more craters, the older the surface.  This method has recently come under closer scrutiny (see 10/20/2005) because of the phenomenon of secondary cratering.     A simplistic look at a crater-scarred planet or moon might lead one […]

Upsets: Assumptions About Genes, Atmospheres Challenged

It’s not fun when a whole superstructure of scientific theories and models is found to rest on a shaky foundation.  That’s just what may be happening in two very different fields: genetics and planetary science: Lateral pass to the opposing team:  Building evolutionary trees by comparing genomes was supposed to be simple.  Sure, geneticists knew […]

Geological Dates Adjust Catastrophically to Evolutionary Assumptions

Pick a date for the rise of a land mass: 3 million years or 30 million years.  Either one will work, depending on the current evolutionary assumptions, if one is to follow the logic of an article on the Discovery Channel website.  Here’s how it began: The geologic rise of the Ethiopian Plateau may have […]

Saturn’s Iapetus Takes Cassini’s Spotlight

Scientists are eagerly poised for Cassini’s long-awaited ultra-close flyby of Iapetus on September 10.  The previous visit in 2005 was over 77,000 miles away; this flyby will skim the surface from less than 1,000 miles.  Moreover, it will see a portion of the moon only vaguely imaged by Voyager and Cassini before.  Jet Propulsion Laboratory, […]

“We have no idea why these galaxies grew so large so soon”

Five full-sized galaxies have been detected at the edge of the visible universe, reported Science Now.  This continues a trend over the last few years where astronomers have been detecting old objects at young ages (e.g., 07/25/2007, 09/24/2006, 08/18/2006, 03/31/2006).   “The galaxies, which are forming stars very rapidly, are big for their age, meaning […]

Homo habilis Contemporary with Homo erectus

Homo habilis couldn’t have been the ancestor of Homo erectus, because they lived side by side.  This has been all over the news since it was announced in Nature yesterday: see the Times UK, PhysOrg, the BBC News, Reuters Africa, National Geographic, and MSNBC News, which says the new discovery paints a “messy” view of […]

Can Life Survive for Millions of Years?

How long can cells and tissues last?  Two different yet related stories should raise questions about the dates claimed, because the observations are astonishing. Trees of the living dead:  Cypress trees in Hungary supposedly buried for eight million years look pristine.  The wood is unfossilized and uncoalified, said the report on Breitbart.com.  All that remained […]

Four Evidences of Cosmic Youth

Astronomers and planetary scientists routinely talk in millions and billions of years.  Three recent science news reports raise questions about how to fit apparently young objects into a vast timeline.  Lunar burps:  The moon is passing gas, reported Science News).  This explains the long history of observations of lunar transients, or bright flashes observed from […]

Stars Found Almost as Old as Universe

A new record was set by a Caltech team using the Keck telescopes on Hawaii: they detected a galaxy nearly as old as the universe.  The consensus age for the universe is 13.6 billion years.  The light from this galaxy, they claim, is over 13 billion years old – “a mere 500 million years after […]

Dinosaur Sex and Other Tales

How much do we really know about dinosaurs?  How much can be inferred from their bones?  Two recent stories illustrate conflicting themes: much of what we thought we knew was wrong, but that doesn’t stop evolutionary paleontologists from speaking with confidence. Walking with dino ancestors:  Paleontologists used to think that the alleged precursors of dinosaurs […]

Iapetus, Charon Look Young for Their Age

Hard bodies in the solar system are supposed to be billions of years old.  Why, then, do so many look smooth and young-looking?  Two examples made news today: Charon So Smooth:  Pluto has a moon named Charon (KAR-on) that apparently leaks beauty cream out of its interior.  Live Science and Space.com report about a study […]

The Daily Planet

This entry is not about birds or planes; it’s supernews from the solar system. Sponge Blob:  Hyperion, an oddball moon of Saturn between Titan and Iapetus, was featured at Jet Propulsion Laboratory last week (see stunning image from Sept. 2005 at the Cassini imaging team website).  Two papers in Nature July 5 analyzed its sponge-like […]

Greenland Was Forest Green

Greenland once had boreal forests like those in Sweden, reported Science Daily.  Researchers analyzed the mud under 2 km of ice and found DNA from yew, alder, pine, grain, butterflies, moths, flies and beetles.  According to the article, “the research is painting a picture which is overturning all previous assumptions about biological life and the […]
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