Dating Methods

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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 […]

Physical Science

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Fossils

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Media

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 […]

Cosmology

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 […]

Bible and Theology

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 […]

Fossils

Spider Blood Survives 20 Million Years So They Say

September 30, 2005

EurekAlert announced, “Spider blood found in 20 million year old fossil.” Science Daily repeated the story. The articles even tell how the spider died (it was climbing a tree and was struck on the head by fast-flowing sap). The BBC News said, “Spider is ‘20 million years old.’” At least they put quotes around the […]

Solar System

Do Dead Meteorites Tell Tales?

September 28, 2005

Several researchers lately have claimed that meteorites can tell us the history of our solar system. How can this be? Messages from Heaven: Richard Kerr in Science1 reported on work by Strom et al. in the same issue2 that the asteroid belt was the source of the so-called “late heavy bombardment” that is said to […]

Astronomy

Cosmic Baby Boom Becomes Baby Explosion

September 21, 2005

There has been a trend in deep space astronomy to find more and more mature-looking stars and galaxies farther back in time (04/06/2005, 03/10/2005, 07/08/2005). That trend just doubled or tripled. An announcement in Nature1 (see press release by European Southern Observatory), a thousand galaxies were found at distances corresponding to estimated ages of 9 […]

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