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Late Heavy Bombardment Myth Is Dying

A favorite tale from the Apollo era, the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment, is being bombarded itself.
Cassini at Saturn

Planetary Rings Defy Long Ages

Models of the origin of planetary rings are simulations based on fictions. Real physics cannot keep them billions of years old.

Moon Origin Story Collapses

In a one-two punch, discoveries undermine the accepted story of the moon's origin and its subsequent history.

Rearranging Deck Chairs on Sinking Planet Theories

Supernovas come in handy as theory rescue devices.

Major Scientific Revolutions Are Still Possible

Beware the myth of progress. There's more scientists don't know than what they know.

Origin-of-Life Speculation Goes Off the Rails

Astrobiologists and their accomplices in the media are finding life everywhere where it isn't or couldn't be. Time to call in the science rangers.

Titan: Planetary Scientists Invent Imaginary Histories

Getting from then to now is more poetic license than demonstrable fact.

Comet Ocean Theory Debunked

Data from the Rosetta mission debunk the notion that comets brought Earth's ocean water. Now they're hoping asteroids could have.

Lunar Impact: Major Moon Basin Was Not a Big Hit

The theory of how the largest impact basin on the moon was formed has been turned upside down.

Fresh Impacts Viewed on Mars, Moon

New impacts observed on the moon and Mars allow space scientists to learn about crater formation in near real time. What conclusions can be drawn?

Planet Theories vs. the Evidence

Planet theorists are putting up a valiant fight against new findings, but in some cases, the evidence seems to be winning.

What Do Scientists Know About Prehistory?

Evolutionary biologists and geologists speak of events happening millions or billions of years ago as concrete facts. They are not observational facts, though; they are inferences from indirect evidence. Indirect evidence can often lead to different conclusions; in fact, some philosophers like Duhem and Quine argue for “under-determination of theory by data,” meaning that data can never converge to support just one theory. Some can demonstrate logically that there are an infinite number of theories that can explain a set of data. Evolutionary scientists counter that there are only one or a few that are reasonable (implying that theirs is among the limited set of reasonable ones). Recent discoveries that threaten to overturn past reasonable theories, though, cast doubt on their confidence.
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