How Not to Date a Volcano
November 13, 2006
Two teams of geologists looked at the same volcano field in Nevada, but came up with vastly different dates.
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Dinosaur Bone Soft Tissue Questioned, Defended
November 11, 2006
The subject of soft tissue in dinosaur bones came up at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Meeting earlier this month, reported Science.1 Mary Schweitzer was there, defending her spectacular claim that she had discovered both medullary bone (06/03/2006) and soft, pliable blood vessels and cartilage in a T. rex leg bone (03/24/2005). Doubters, however, brought […]
Moon Gas Indicates Recent Geologic Activity
November 9, 2006
It’s aliv-v-v-v-e! Evidence for recent geological activity on our moon has been reported in Nature.1 Katharine Sanderson introduced the findings in News@Nature, in an item titled, “The moon has gas: Eruptions confound the idea that our nearest neighbour is a geological dead zone” – Some think the Moon has been geologically dead for billions of […]
Geologists Puzzle Over Egyptian Craters
November 1, 2006
A set of craters deep in the Egyptian desert has geologists scratching their heads. Discovery Channel News says that they look neither like impact craters nor known volcanic phenomena. “It is a strange and new thing,” reported one French scientist. Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona remarked, “There’s nothing in our current geological literature […]
Key Reference Rock Formed Five Times Faster than Thought
October 25, 2006
Strata in the Niagara Gorge, used as a reference for Silurian dating, formed much quicker than previously believed – in just 1/5 the time, according to a press release from Ohio State. Bradley Cramer and his advisor Matthew Saltzmann used high-resolution carbon isotope stratigraphy to re-examine the rocks in the Niagara Gorge. “Rocks that were […]
Gold Can Form in a Geological Instant
October 15, 2006
You can’t say something is old just because it looks old, like gold.
Science Potpourri
October 13, 2006
Interesting articles from recent issues of Science have piled up in the queue. These might have made separate entries in CEH if time and space were unlimited. Deep Impact: The team of the Deep Impact mission to a comet published spectral results in the July 13 issue. “Emission signatures due to amorphous and crystalline silicates, […]
Glory Be Behind Saturn
October 12, 2006
Don’t look at this picture till you’re ready. Switch off the phone, turn off the radio, rub your eyes, and sit down. Ready? Click Here. This is a view of Saturn we could never see from Earth. It’s the backside of the planet, with the sun shining through the rings. According to a […]
Nature Potpourri
October 11, 2006
Articles of interest from Nature have been piling up in the CEH queues. Perhaps a brief mention is better than nothing, before they fall into archive oblivion. Carbon 14: In the Sept 14 issue, there was a give & take between critics of a carbon-14-dated study and the author. The critics pointed out, “We appreciate […]
Supernova 80% Younger Than Thought
October 1, 2006
The age of a supernova remnant has dropped from 10,000 years to less than 2,000 years. How?
The Trouble with Neanderthals
September 18, 2006
If nothing else, the scientific investigation of Neanderthal Man is valuable for illustrating how fluid scientific opinion can be. Since we found out Sept. 1 that Neanderthal genes may be lurking among us, two more unexpected claims have been made about these wrestler-build members of genus Homo. Hideouts and Holdouts: Some Neanderthals may have lived […]
Ethane Cloud at Titan: Too Little, Too Late?
September 14, 2006
Those following the Titan exploration by Cassini-Huygens have wondered where the ethane went. Oceans of ethane hundreds of meters deep, if not kilometers deep, were predicted but not found, as reported previously (see 04/25/2003 and 10/16/2003 pre-Huygens reports, 01/15/2005 and 01/21/2005 Huygens early results, and 12/05/2005 review; see also New Scientist analysis of the “total […]
Dinosaur Bone Hunting Looks Promising
September 4, 2006
With probably less than a third of dinosaur types known, prospects are good for a new generation of young people to find one of their own, reports News@Nature. New finds in Mongolia, South America and China over the last fifteen years indicate the vast majority of dinosaurs are still waiting to be discovered. The authors […]
Meanwhile, Back on the Dinosaur Ranch
August 29, 2006
Sid Perkins went on a dinosaur hunt in Montana this past July, and wrote up his experiences for the cover story of the Aug. 26 issue of Science News. It was more personal diary than science. Perkins talked about the teamwork, hard work, and the occasional thrill of finding a fragment of bone that the […]
Early Oxygen Fuels Fire in OOL Camp
August 25, 2006
Live Science reported a new claim about oxygen on the early earth appearing far earlier than usually assumed. A Penn State astrobiologist is claiming that uniformly high oxygen levels existed on earth 3.8 billion years ago, a billion years before previous estimates. Oxygen’s presence on Earth has been typically inferred from sulfur isotope […]