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Solar System

It’s Tough to Get a Date, but Fun to Keep Trying
August 8, 2006
Geochronology is a perverse sort of game.  Like the proverbial clock shop apprentice who went crazy trying to get all the grandfather clocks to tick together, the scientist trying to interpolate earth’s past climate patterns from geochronometers has so many uncooperative variables, he can never hope for anything better than partial conformity to accepted visions […]
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Uncategorized

Plate Tectonics: Are Modern Geologists Treading on Solid Ground?
July 14, 2006
Plate tectonics is the reigning theory of earth’s dynamic crust.  Laymen may not realize that acceptance of plate tectonic theory came quite suddenly in the 1960s.  It was like a revolution.  For decades, the consensus of geological scientists was adamantly against the notion of shifting plates moving horizontally in various directions.  Those who taught such […]
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Bible and Theology

New Noah’s Ark Claims – From Iran
June 15, 2006
Bob Cornuke was interviewed by John Kasich on Fox News Saturday evening, with the first public showing of videos of an anomalous feature in northern Iran proposed as a candidate for Noah’s Ark.  The find has also been announced on Christian Worldview Network with 18 photographs and a video.  Cornuke, a former police investigator turned […]
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Amazing Facts

Beavers Achieve Environmental Reprieve
June 8, 2006
In what might be considered an unexpected convergence between geology and zoology, it has been found that beaver dams influence large tracts of land both above and below ground.  “Impact of beaver dams wider than thought” announced a headline on LiveScience summarizing studies by scientists in Rocky Mountain National Park.     The dams take […]
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Uncategorized

Mt. St. Helens Performs Fast Rock
May 10, 2006
Before reading the caption, look at the picture of this football-field size mountain of rock at Astronomy Picture of the Day and guess how old it is.  The answer: about five months.  The smooth rock slab with its cornice tip has grown as much as a meter a day.  The caption contains links to more […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Paper View:  Cambrian Explosion Damage Control
April 23, 2006
Like some federal official holding a press conference after a disaster, a Harvard paleontologist has tackled the unenviable job of explaining what Darwin called the most severe challenge that could be levied against his theory: the fossil record. The challenge starts with a bang...
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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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Fossils

Stromatolites Can Form By Non-Biological Processes
March 22, 2006
Exclusive  Stromatolites have been Exhibit A for stories of the rise of life on the early earth.  These column-shaped rocks found in Precambrian strata are usually assumed to be evidence of microbial mats that grew upward as sediment slowly accumulated on top of them.  Scene 1 is usually Shark’s Bay in Australia, where stromatolites form […]
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Solar System

Stardust Finds Burnt Rock in Comet Dust
March 14, 2006
Major upset in solar system origin theories indicated by minerals that had to form hot.
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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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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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Origin of Life

Life Didn’t Start on Hot Clay
February 13, 2006
Strike off one more proposal for the origin of life.  “Darwin’s warm pond theory tested,” announced the BBC News, but it was found wanting.     Origin of life researchers have long recognized the serious problem of concentrating organic molecules in a primordial soup such that they could interact and grow.  A popular ingredient in […]
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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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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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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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