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Fossils

Can Delicate Fossil Embryos Survive 570 Million Years?
April 1, 2006
Scientists and English and American universities are trying to understand how to preserve biological embryos such as those found in Cambrian rock claimed to be 570 million years old, reports a press release from Indiana University.  Normally, such soft tissues would disappear within a month.  “It’s like trying to fossilize soap bubbles” they said.  “Some […]
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Fossils

Chicxulub Impact Not a Global Catastrophe
March 29, 2006
In a surprising reversal of stories told for decades, it appears the dinosaurs did not die from the impact of a large meteor near the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.  According to a press release from the Geological Society of America, the Chicxulub Impact occurred too early – 300,000 years too early – to have killed […]
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Uncategorized

Little Colorado Grand Falls Much Younger Than Thought
March 5, 2006
The Little Colorado River makes a dramatic drop over a lava cliff in Arizona after going around a lava flow.  Previous estimates dated the lava at the falls at 150,000 years old (150ka).  Now, a team of geologists publishing in GSA Bulletin1 used multiple methods that dated it at no more than 19,600 years old […]
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Astronomy

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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Physical Science

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 […]
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Fossils

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 […]
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Dinosaurs

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 […]
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Physical Science

Keeping Saturn’s 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 […]
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Early Man

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 […]
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Dinosaurs

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 […]
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Fossils

How Fossils Form: We Don’t 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 […]
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Physics

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 […]
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Physical Science

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 […]
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Bible and Theology

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 […]
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Solar System

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 […]
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