Spiral Galaxies Wind Up Into Blurs In Short Cosmological Time
March 4, 2006
Cosmic billions of years have received another challenge from the physics of spiral arms in spiral galaxies.
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Keeping Icy Moons Warm for Billions of Years
March 1, 2006
Each spacecraft that has explored the outer solar system has yielded surprises. It is common knowledge that Voyager scientists were blown away by the first views of active moons they expected to be cold and old. Recent discoveries have only intensified the surprises. Richard Kerr wrote recently in Science,1 Why is there geology on Saturn’s […]
Jurassic Beaver Raises Fur
February 24, 2006
Another mammal has been found smack in the middle of the age of dinosaurs. Science reported the discovery of Castorocauda lutrasimilis, an aquatic mammal about 17” long, found in China and dated according to evolutionary reckoning to 164 million years old – some 40 million years older than the previous record holder (see also 04/01/2005 […]
Join the Dinosaur Soft-Tissue Treasure Hunt
February 22, 2006
“Many Dino Fossils Could Have Soft Tissue Inside,” announced National Geographic in an eye-catching title. Based on the work of Mary Schweitzer, who announced soft tissue in a T. rex bone last year (06/03/2005), a “phenomenon, which was once thought impossible,” the article suggests that many species may have DNA and proteins remaining available for […]
Keeping Saturns Moons Old
February 6, 2006
The Saturn system has a problem: young moons. The current consensus on the age of the solar system (4.5 billion years) cannot handle such young objects. Richard A. Kerr in Science last month described the vexing problem:1 Why is there geology on Saturn’s icy satellites? Where did these smallish moons get the energy to refresh […]
Lesson from Laetoli: Observations Should Not Conform to Preconceived Ideas
February 3, 2006
David Menton examined the quarrel over Mexican footprints dating “too early” for human evolution theories (see 11/30/2005 entry). On Answers in Genesis, he has pictures of some of the prints, including one with a left-right stride and another with the right shape and indentations. He disputes the evolutionary responses that these are not true human […]
Geologists Fight Over Demise of Dinosaurs
February 3, 2006
“No basis in fact” and “circular reasoning” are some of the phrases in a UK News Telegraph report about the cause of dinosaur extinction, along with words like “feud” and “no consensus” and “doggedly undecided.” Despite the “much-loved disaster movie scenario” of an asteroid impact wiping out the dinosaurs, a significant number of critics dispute […]
How Fossils Form: We Dont Rightly Know
January 30, 2006
Fossils have been such a mainstay of evolutionary theory for at least two centuries, one would think we have a pretty good picture of the process. An article by Sid Perkins in Science News1 is revealing: “Only in the past decade or so have people begun to study in detail what happens to organisms after […]
Can Caves Record Climate History?
January 19, 2006
Many geologists and climatologists have assumed that cave formations, forming slowly over long ages, preserve a record of climate changes. These assumptions have been challenged by University of Texas researchers who experimented with water dripping from stalactites in a cave in Barbados. Their work was published in GSA Bulletin.1 Climate history could be […]
Echoes of Historic Supernovae Observed
December 29, 2005
Astronomers using telescopes at the Cerro-Tololo observatory in Chile were able to detect the faint light echoes of supernovae (see EurekAlert, Space.com and original paper in Nature1). They found three light echoes for six of the smallest previously-catalogued supernova remnants (SNR) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small irregular galaxy visible from the southern […]
Instant Geology and Undersea Activity
December 9, 2005
We’re accustomed to thinking of geological processes as slow and gradual, except for volcanoes, earthquakes and landslides, but some recent stories are surprising for the speed and extent of active processes. Run: The Earth Is Splitting Apart: Geologists were amazed to find a rift in the Afar desert east of Ethiopia opening up 8 meters […]
Enceladus Eruptions Caught on Camera
November 28, 2005
Enceladus, one of the small icy moons of Saturn, is undergoing eruptive activity right now. Evidence from previous flybys has now been corroborated visually in stunning images that made the lead stories on NASA, JPL and Cassini. Amateur enthusiasts were already expressing excitement at the images before the announcement (see Unmanned Spaceflight). The complete set […]
ICR Challenges Validity of Radiometric Dating
November 5, 2005
acked out the facilities of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California Saturday. Their frequent applause was not for contemporary musicians or a preacher, but for scientists. Ten miles from their headquarters, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) had rented the large auditorium for the formal presentation of the results of its eight-year research […]
Grown Man in the Stellar Crib: Now What?
October 14, 2005
The cover of Science News has a strange cartoon explained on the inside in an article by Ron Cowen: Imagine peering into a nursery and seeing, among the cooing babies, a few that look like grown men. That’s the startling situation that astronomers have stumbled upon as they’ve looked deep into space and thus back […]
Creation-Evolution Contest in Grand Canyon: New York Times Prints Eyewitness Report
October 6, 2005
New York Times reporter Jodi Wilgoren explored “parallel universes” along the Colorado River this summer (here for multimedia version). She rode a raft with a creationist group led by Tom Vail for several days, then rode with another party led by evolutionist Eugenie Scott. Her experiences with these two groups illustrated the stark contrast between […]