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Solar System

Earth’s Ugly Sister Can’t Get a Date
August 16, 2004
Venus is the subject of an interview with David Grinspoon of NASA’s Exobiology Research Program in Astrobiology Magazine, and admits that the entire surface of our hellishly hot sister planet looks young.  It appears the globe was resurfaced almost simultaneously in the relatively recent past. Grinspoon relives the surprises from the Magellan mission: We’ve begun to […]
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Uncategorized

Old Rivers Cut Fast, Fast, Fast Through Solid Rock
July 22, 2004
A press release from University of Vermont says, “Geologists Discover Water Cuts Through Rock at Surprising Speed.”  A five-year study concluded that the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers cut through 10 to 20 meters of solid rock in 35,000 years, “a rate far more rapid than previously thought,”  especially since most of the cutting occurred during […]
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Early Man

Maybe Neanderthals Were Artists After All
July 8, 2004
Revised dating of human bones near figurines has cast an assumption about early humans into doubt, reports Nature Science Update.  Aurignacian artefacts, like horse figurines and other carved images, have long been thought to be telltale indicators of modern man.  Vogelherd cave near Ulm, Germany was considered the best example, because sandwiched between modern human […]
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Solar System

Titan Shows Its Surface to Cassini
July 6, 2004
Time to Titan their theories; Cassini scientists are both fascinated and puzzled by surface features coming to light from the first encounter July 2 with Saturn’s large atmosphere-shrouded moon Titan.  At a news conference July 3, some of the initial findings were unveiled: methane clouds hovering over the south pole, linear dark and light markings […]
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Solar System

Cassini Watches Explosion in Saturn’s E Ring
July 2, 2004
Something strange happened in the E ring of Saturn last January.  The incident is forcing scientists to conclude the ring cannot be very old.     The E ring is the broad, extended ring that extends from Mimas to Rhea (click here for diagram), over three times as broad as the main ring system but […]
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Physical Science

Saturn Runs Rings Around Cassini
July 1, 2004
“Shocked” was how Carolyn Porco, lead Cassini imaging scientist, described her initial reaction to new pictures of Saturn’s rings.  Precious images began to pour in early July 1 from science observations right after the previous night’s perfect orbit insertion maneuver (see 06/30/2004 headline).  Even though the imaging team had been confident in the capabilities of […]
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Uncategorized

Milky Way Center Bathed in Unexplainably Hot X-Rays
June 25, 2004
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory found more heat at the center of the Milky Way than astronomers can explain.  Astronomers observed a tiny angle around the Milky Way’s center for 170 hours.  After subtracting out known sources, a diffuse gas cloud remains that is radiating X-rays at 100 million degrees.  Star counts capable of heating the […]
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Solar System

Comet Surface Wild and Crazy
June 18, 2004
“Completely unexpected,” was the reaction of Donald Brownlee, principal investigator of the Stardust mission, to the photos revealed by the spacecraft that flew into the tail of Comet Wild-2 last January (see 01/02/2004 headline), reports a University of Washington press release.  The comet mission is the cover story in the June 18 issue of Science, […]
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Astronomy

Young Planet Around Young Star Claimed
May 28, 2004
A star estimated to be one million years old already has a planet in orbit around it, the Spitzer Space Telescope (Hubble’s counterpart for infrared astronomy) has found.  Astrobiology Magazine says this challenges old theories.  Alan Boss (Carnegie Institute) thinks this supports his disk-instability model for planetary formation, in which gas giants can form quickly, […]
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Cosmology

Cosmos Ages a Billion Years in One Day
May 28, 2004
Physicists have found that a portion of the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen reaction thought to participate in fusion reactions inside stars runs two times slower than previously thought.  The measurements were made in the Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA), a lab nearly a mile underground in Italy that offers more protection from cosmic rays.  The ripple effect […]
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Fossils

Do Fossils Show a Worldwide Record of Evolution?
May 21, 2004
The fossil record provides the acid test for evolutionary theory.  Everyone who walks a real dog by a poodle knows that small-scale variation occurs among living species, but non-evolutionists get understandably annoyed when Darwinians extrapolate the observed variations to encompass all of life: as if to say, because finch beaks vary, therefore humans had bacteria […]
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Uncategorized

Geological Column, Rev. 2004-a
May 13, 2004
The geological column is not “set in stone,” John Whitfield discovered as he investigated the work of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), which is releasing a revised column this summer.  “Silurian, Devonian, Triassic: the names seem as solid and permanent as rocks themselves.  But in fact,” he cautions in his report in Nature,1 “like […]
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Uncategorized

Caves Are Made by Bacteria
May 10, 2004
Caves seem like archetypes of slow, gradual, ancient processes.  Tourists have long been told that caves form slowly over many tens or hundreds of thousands of years by the slow dissolution of limestone by weak carbonic acid in water carried down from surface rainfall.  That explanation took a dramatic turn in the 1970s when scientists […]
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Bible and Theology

How Climate Influenced the Dead Sea and History
May 3, 2004
The Bible and science converge at one of the most remarkable lakes on Earth.
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Uncategorized

Tufa Mounds Formed “Instantaneously,” Geologically Speaking
May 1, 2004
Tufa towers have been found forming in Big Soda Lake, Nevada, at the rate of 30mm/year.  Now more than 3 meters tall, that means they could have reached their current height in only 100 years.  Rosen et al., who reported this in the May issue of Geology,1 warn that “care should be taken when trying […]
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