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Solar System

Martian Chronicles
February 3, 2011
Recent news stories about Mars can be categorized into past, present, and future. Mars past:  How Mars formed is a convoluted story.  That is evident from a report on PhysOrg that might suggest Mars modelers are drinking too much to relieve stress: “‘Marstinis’ could help explain why the red planet is so small.”  Mars seems […]
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Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Bones Crack Open Surprises: Original Tissue
January 30, 2011
Nature is kind.  That’s nice to know; but what was the context of the statement in New Scientist?  “Occasionally, though, nature is kind and fossilisation preserves details of an animal’s soft tissue.”  But has nature been kind for tens of millions of years?  In an article called “Soft-centred fossils reveal dinosaurs’ true colours,” Jeff Hecht […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Cute Dinosaur Forced to Support Evolution
January 14, 2011
Knee-high to a human, little Eodromaeus looks like a pet, but its discoverers are making the claim that it represents an early stage in dinosaur evolution.  Do the facts support this claim?     National Geographic announced a “nasty little predator from dinosaur dawn found.”  The BBC News said that Eodromaeus, whose name means “dawn […]
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Cell Biology

Long Life in Death Valley Claimed
January 13, 2011
“34,000-Year-Old Organisms Found Buried Alive!” blares a headline at Live Science.  Reporter Andrea Mustain admitted “It’s a tale that has all the trappings of a cult 1960s sci-if movie,” but assures us this one is scientific.     Brian Schubert (U of Hawaii) dug up salt crystals in the floor of Death Valley and found […]
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Early Man

“Primitive” Humans Were Sailors
January 6, 2011
Greek archaeologists have found stone tools on Crete thought to be between 130,000 and 700,000 years old, reported PhysOrg.  If so, the makers had to sail to get there.  “Crete has been separated from the mainland for about five million years, so whoever made the tools must have traveled there by sea (a distance of […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Adam Found?
December 29, 2010
Evidence of modern humans older than any ever discovered has been found in Israel – thus the teasing headline.  The skeleton’s evolutionary discoverers would certainly discount any Biblical tie-in.  Not that Adam was an Israelite, but like some later Biblical prophet, the find seems to be pronouncing doom on modern idolaters from the grave – […]
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Fossils

Soft Tissue Fossil Treasure Trove Found in China
December 22, 2010
Live Science announced a major new fossil find in China with some 20,000 fossils.  It was found in a 50-foot thick layer of limestone The fossils are exceptionally well-preserved, with more than half of them completely intact, including soft tissues.  Apparently they were protected across the ages by mats of microbes that rapidly sealed their […]
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Amazing Facts

Mummified Trees Found in Arctic
December 18, 2010
Like Narnian children finding a zoo of lifeless stone statues in the White Witch’s wintry realm, scientists have come across frozen trees, leaves and seed pods deep in the Canadian arctic.  “The dry, frigid site is now surrounded by glaciers and is completely treeless,” said National Geographic News.  What deep magic left this mummified forest […]
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Education

News from Saturn
December 7, 2010
Amazing discoveries continue to pour in from Cassini, now within its second extended mission since arriving at Saturn in 2004.  The spacecraft is back to nominal operations after a 3-week safing event caused by a single-bit error in the onboard computer (JPL).  The recovery came just in time for another major flyby of Enceladus. Enceladus […]
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Uncategorized

How Long Does it Take to Form a Slot Canyon?
November 26, 2010
Some of the most striking features of the southwest are the slot canyons – the narrow, winding defiles in sandstone that can be well over a hundred feet deep and go for miles (photo).  A whole culture of slot canyoneering takes on the challenge of hiking through them, and the amazing patterns of reflected light […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Cambrian Explosion Solved
October 31, 2010
Geologists have come out swinging against the idea the Cambrian Explosion damages Darwinism.  In a lengthy new paper in the Geological Society of America Bulletin,1 they believe they pitch three strikes against creationists and intelligent-design supporters who claim that the sudden appearance of all the animal body plans at the base of the Cambrian falsifies […]
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Early Man

Early Man in Trouble
October 28, 2010
New findings (or claims) are throwing long-held beliefs about human ancestors into disarray.  Early people were smarter, and traveled farther, than paleoanthropologists thought.     One report summarized by PhysOrg says, “A highly skillful and delicate method of sharpening and retouching stone artifacts by prehistoric people appears to have been developed at least 75,000 years […]
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Solar System

Keeping Saturn Old
October 7, 2010
Keeping a planet like Saturn going for billions of years has been a problem lately, especially when evidences show that what we see today of its rings and moons could not have lasted that long. Ringside gambling:  The rings of Saturn are majestic, colorful, and young-looking.  Their ices are too clean, and the forces acting […]
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Early Man

Animals Can Skew Archaeological Dates
October 6, 2010
Archaeologists date stone age artifacts by the depth of the layer.  They may not have paid sufficient attention to one factor that could have shoved them deeper down: animals trampling over them.  “Animals push human tools into ground�and back in time, study says,” was a subtitle of a report in National Geographic News.  This factor […]
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Birds

Super Penguin: Seeing Is Believing, But Is It Understanding?
October 1, 2010
Another fossil of a giant penguin in Peru has been found (cf. 06/26/2007).  It apparently had reddish-brown underwings and stood as tall as a man.  It must have been a strong swimmer.  Nicknamed “water king,” the mammoth penguin was placed at the 36 million mark on the evolutionary timeline.  One remarkable feature of this fossil, […]
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