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Former New York Cosmos star Giorgio Chinaglia died of complications from a heart attack Sunday. The Italian soccer great was 65. Chinaglia died at his home in Naples, Fla., his son, Anthony, said through family friend Charlie Stillitano, who was Chinaglia's co-host on a Sirius XM radio show.

The culture war might be likened to fighting a war against a coalition of powers. Imagine WWI-style trench warfare on a long front. In the center of the enemy lines are the forces of moral relativism. These forces oppose the idea that there is a universal moral law. On one flank are the forces of the sexual revolution, including gays, feminists, adulterers, the promiscuous, and the pro-abortion folks. On the other flank are the cultural relativists, and multiculturalists. This camp opposes the ideas of truth, beauty, and intrinsic quality. It seeks to suppress the literary, philosophical, and artistic heritage of...

Scientists are beginning to sort out the stellar ingredients that produce a type 1a supernova, a type of cosmic explosion that has been used to measure the universe’s accelerating expansion. Two teams of researchers presented new data about these supernovas at the American Astronomical Society meeting on January 11. One team confirmed a long-held suspicion about the kind of star that explodes, and the second provided new evidence for what feeds that star until it bursts. “This is a confirmation of a decades-old belief, namely that a type 1a supernova comes from the explosion of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf,” said...

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.(Mark 16:16)Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:(I Peter 3:20-21)Today in our local church, we celebrate the hopeful end of a long draught…...

Scientists hoping to puzzle out how the Universe began will find a long-sought theoretical particle — or rule out that it exists — by the end of 2012, the director of the world's largest atom smasher predicted Monday. Rolf Heuer, director of the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, said his confidence was based on the latest findings from the $10 billion proton collider under the Swiss-French border. "I would say we can settle the question, the Shakespearean question — 'to be or not to be' — end of next year," he told reporters at a major physics conference in...

Harmony Public Schools, a high-performing charter school network that focuses on math and science, has been the target of activists concerned that its leaders are non-U.S. citizens with ties to Turkey. Led by the Texas Eagle Forum, a conservative pro-family organization, Harmony's critics have issued a flurry of legislative alerts in recent weeks that said the state's $25 billion endowment for "our children's textbooks" was imperiled by "Turkish men, of whom we know very little other than most are not American citizens."

Astronomers have found a nascent star 750 light years from earth that shoots colossal jets of water -- a cosmic fire hose -- out its poles in bullet-like pulses. In a process that almost defies adjectives and analogies, each jet of water is the equivalent of a hundred million times the water flowing through the Amazon River every second and the speed of the jet is the equivalent of 80 times the muzzle velocity of an AK-47 assault rifle. The blast creates huge shockwaves around the star and the process may be responsible for sprinkling the universe with water. And...

Life originated in a nebular cloud, over 10 billion years ago, but may have had multiple origins in multiple locations, including in galaxies older than the Milky Way. Multiple origins could account for the different domains of life: archae, bacteria, eukaryotes. The first steps toward life may have been achieved when self-replicating nano-particles initially comprised of a mixture of carbon, calcium, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, sugars, and other elements and gasses were combined and radiated, forming a nucleus around which a lipid-like permeable membrane was established, and within which DNA-bases were laddered together with phosphates and sugars; a process which may...

PARIS (AFP) – Astronomers may have underestimated the tally of galaxies in some parts of the Universe by as much as 90 percent, according to a study reported on Wednesday in Nature, the weekly British science journal. Surveys of the cosmos are based on a signature of ultraviolet light that turns out to be a poor indicator of what's out there, its authors say. In the case of very distant, old galaxies, the telltale light may not reach Earth as it is blocked by interstellar clouds of dust and gas -- and, as a result, these galaxies are missed by...

A 'catastrophic event' halted the birth of new stars in an infant galaxy 10 billion years ago, scientists revealed today.They believe this may explain why early giant galaxies similar to our own Milky Way didn't just keep on expanding after they had formed. The team from Durham University, observed the massive galaxy, called SMM J1237+6203, as it would have appeared just three billion years after the Big Bang when the Universe was a quarter of its present age. An artist's representation showing outflow from a supermassive black hole inside the middle of a galaxy. Scientists believe debris from such a...

Many atheopaths1 and their compromising churchian allies claim that biblical belief and science are mortal enemies. Yet historians of science, even non-Christians, have pointed out that modern science first flourished under a Christian world view while it was stillborn in other cultures such as ancient Greece, China and Arabia. The historical basis of modern science depended on the assumption that the universe was made by a rational Creator. An orderly universe makes perfect sense only if it were made by an orderly Creator (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:33). For example, evolutionary anthropologist and science writer Loren Eiseley stated:...

C. Gate #3: Self-Righteousness Arrogance. 1. Introduction. a. Self-righteousness means to be righteous in one's own esteem; in fact, to be Pharisaical. Our Lord condemned self-righteousness in His great dissertation of Matt 23, which begins: "Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites." b. Self-righteousness is generally associated with arrogance. It is the arrogant reliance on one's own assumed, inconsistent, and hypocritical righteousness. c. Self-righteousness is the arrogant conviction that one's own righteousness is superior to that of all others. It is the conclusion that one's own righteousness is so great that intolerance of all others becomes the modus operandi of blind...

String theory “philosophy” challenged --snip-- The big bang is fundamental to cosmic evolution or the idea that somehow the universe made itself. The article majored on the varying ideas that emanate from big bang philosophy, such as dark energy and dark matter etc. that are used to solve some of the “science” problems of the big bang. It then went on to say that string theory is just another one of these ideas with no basis in experimental science...

ABHAY ASHTEKAR remembers his reaction the first time he saw the universe bounce. "I was taken aback," he says. He was watching a simulation of the universe rewind towards the big bang. Mostly the universe behaved as expected, becoming smaller and denser as the galaxies converged. But then, instead of reaching the big bang "singularity", the universe bounced and started expanding again. What on earth was happening? Ashtekar wanted to be sure of what he was seeing, so he asked his colleagues to sit on the result for six months before publishing it in 2006. And no wonder. The theory...

The first stars in the universe were short-lived brutish monsters, and they changed the nature of the cosmos forever, blazing away a dark fog that had smothered space for 300 million years and beginning to enrich the cosmos with the stuff of life.

Although I suspect that intelligent life is rare in the cosmos, I’m playing little more than a hunch. So it’s interesting to see that Andrew Watson (University of East Anglia) has analyzed the chances for intelligence elsewhere in the universe by looking at the challenges life faced as it evolved. Watson believes that it took specific major steps for an intelligent civilization to develop on Earth, one of which, interestingly enough, is language. Identifying which steps are critical is tricky, but in the aggregate they reduce the chance of intelligence elsewhere. A linguist at heart, I wasn’t surprised with the...

Could The Universe Be Tied Up With Cosmic String? ScienceDaily (Jan. 21, 2008) — A team of physicists and astronomers from the University of Sussex and Imperial College London have uncovered hints that there may be cosmic strings - lines of pure mass-energy - stretching across the entire Universe. Cosmic strings are predicted by high energy physics theories, including superstring theory. This is based on the idea that particles are not just little points, but tiny vibrating bits of string Cosmic strings are predicted to have extraordinary amounts of mass - perhaps as much as the mass of the Sun...

A ‘defect’ in spacetime may be one of the most curious findings of the data collected from the Wilkinson Anisotropy Probe. What WMAP gave us is the earliest image of the cosmos we have in our repertoire, showing temperature changes across the microwave background thought to be the aftereffect of the Big Bang. When Marcos Cruz (Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria) and colleagues found a cold spot in the data, they launched an investigation to determine what in heaven could be causing it. A random fluctuation in the data? Possibly, but the Spanish and British team studying the cold spot...

  Double vortex at Venus South pole     ESA’s Venus Express data undoubtedly confirm for the first time the presence of a huge 'double-eye' atmospheric vortex at the planet's south pole. This striking result comes from analysis of the data gathered by the spacecraft during the first orbit around the planet.  On 11 April this year, Venus Express was captured into a first elongated orbit around Venus, which lasted 9 days, and ranged between 350 000 and 400 kilometres from Venus' surface. This orbit represented for the Venus Express scientists a unique opportunity to observe the planet from...

NEWS ADVISORY, June 20 /Christian Newswire/-- Britain’s renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking told a recent Hong Kong news conference the human race must “spread out into space for the survival of the species.“ He cited “sudden global warming, nuclear war, or a genetically engineered virus� as threats that could wipe out humanity at any time. “As dire as Hawking’s concerns may be, humanity’s plight is actually worse,� says astronomer Hugh Ross, founder and president of the science/faith think tank Reasons To Believe (www.reasons.org). “But,� he adds, “that is not to say the human race is without hope.�  Ross explains, “It’s important to...

Roman Catholic priest Fr. Georges Lemaître, working off Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, first proposed the “Big Bang” explanation of the universe’s origin in 1927. It took decades for the theory to win general acceptance. Einstein himself opposed it bitterly for years, in what he would later call “the biggest mistake of my life.” The theory was finally proved experimentally only in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson. For their pains, they were awarded the Nobel Prize. Fr. Lemaître, on the other hand, never received the public recognition that was his due. Nevertheless, in the 1970s several apparent problems with the...

3/1/2006 - KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. (AFPN) -- When launched in 2010, a football-field-in-length demonstrator radar antenna, weighing more than 5 tons, will serve as the forerunner for the future of America's intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets in space. Administered by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate here, the innovative space-based radar antenna technology, or ISAT, program focuses on developing systems to deploy extremely large (up to 300 yards) electronically scanning radar antennas flying 5,700 miles above the Earth's surface and providing improved ground target detection to the warfighter. "These huge antennas will enable the revolutionary performance...

The stars run in their courses, in billions of galaxies, orbited by planets which are orbited by moons, and if they did not do so in ways which are predictable -- that is with many recurring similarities -- science would not exist. Predictability to some degree or other is the foundation of science. Those italics emphasize an extension of previous demands by science, which insisted on absolutes. Quantum physics took that down, and in the process angered Albert Einstein. But, still and all, even in the subatomic world one can safely play the odds. You cannot predict what any given...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Galaxy-gazing scientists surely wonder about what kind of impact finding life or intelligent beings on another planet would have on the world. But what sort of effect would it have on Catholic beliefs? Would Christian theology be rocked to the core if science someday found a distant orb teeming with little green men, women or other intelligent forms of alien life? Would the church send missionaries to spread the Gospel to aliens? Could aliens even be baptized? Or would they have had their own version of Jesus and have already experienced his universal or galactic plan...

Crisis in the Cosmos?Galaxy-formation theory is in peril 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 to a time when newborn galaxies filled the cosmos. Some of these babies have turned out to be nearly as massive as the Milky Way and other galactic geezers that have taken billions of years to form. Despite being only about 800 million years old, some of the infants are chock-full of old stars....

Leonard David Senior Space Writer SPACE.com In a unique case of space bumper cars, two pieces of rocket hardware have collided high above Earth. The orbital run-in involved a 31-year-old U.S. rocket body and a fragment from a more recently launched Chinese rocket stage. The collision occurred on January 17 of this year, with the incident happening some 550 miles (885 kilometers) above Earth. That area of low Earth orbit (LEO) has an above-average satellite population density. The American and Chinese space hardware cruised through space in similar orbits at the time of the rear-ender. The U.S. Surveillance Network of...

Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist. Over the past few years, observations of the motions of galaxies have shown that some 70% the Universe seems to be composed of a strange 'dark energy' that is driving the Universe's accelerating expansion. George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads to the formation of stars that contain...

2004 July 25 A Solar Filament Lifts Off Explanation: Hot gas frequently erupts from the Sun. One such eruption produced the glowing filament pictured above, which was captured in 2000 July by the Earth-orbiting TRACE satellite. The filament, although small compared to the overall size of the Sun, measures over 100,000 kilometers in height, so that the entire Earth could easily fit into its outstretched arms. Gas in the filament is funneled by the complex and changing magnetic field of the Sun. After lifting off from the Sun's surface, most of the filamentary gas will eventually fall back. More powerful...

<p>Can you access the flash of emancipation you felt the first time you were able to stay up on a bike or propel yourself through the water? Can you remember the way your new knowledge enhanced your life? And can you recall the gratitude you felt toward those people who had the skill and the patience to pass that knowledge along to you?</p>

Dark energy. Does it exist, and what are its properties? Using galaxy-cluster images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have applied a powerful, new method for detecting and probing dark energy. The results offer intriguing clues about the nature of dark energy and the fate of the Universe. The Marshall Center manages the Chandra program. Astronomers have detected and probed dark energy by applying a powerful, new method that uses images of galaxy clusters made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The results trace the transition of the expansion of the Universe from a decelerating to an accelerating phase several billion...

How big is the universe? It is one of the oldest questions in science, and the answer could be anything from "slightly bigger than the area of the universe that we can see" to "infinite". Until now. Cosmologists scrutinizing patterns in the microwave radiation 'afterglow' of the big bang have taken a big chunk out of that uncertainty. They calculate that the universe cannot possibly be smaller than a hefty 78 billion light years across. That rules out earlier suggestions that the universe could be a relatively small shape wrapped around itself. A recent suggestion that the cosmos could be...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – What are the limits of organic life in planetary systems? It’s a heady question that, if answered, may reveal just how crowded the cosmos could be with alien biology. A study arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council (NRC), has pulled together a task group of specialists to tackle the issue of alternative life forms -- a.k.a. "weird life". To get things rolling, a workshop on the prospects for finding life on other worlds is being held here May 10-11. The meeting is a joint activity of the NRC’s Space Studies Board's Task...

Hubble's mission will end in 2010. Four years later it will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. This link is to a shockwave (2 minute audio and video) presentation of The Best of Hubble

A cosmic message in a bottle is scheduled to float into outer space from a radio telescope in Ukraine today, bringing greetings of good will from 90,000 people on planet Earth. "I'm excited," said Cindy Price, 50, of League City. "It's almost a religious, spiritual connecting with the rest of the universe." Price is a member of Team Encounter, a Houston-based company organizing the cosmic call. She said she doubts the message will be received, but she's willing to try. "It's a message in a bottle," said Charles Chafer, Team Encounter's president and chief executive officer. "We certainly don't guarantee...

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 June 30 Disappearing Clouds in Carina Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), N. Walborn (STScI) & R. Barbß (La Plata Obs.), NASA Explanation: This dense cloud of gas and dust is being deleted. Likely, within a few million years, the intense light from bright stars will have boiled it away completely. Stars not yet formed in the molecular cloud's interior will then stop growing. The cloud has broken off of part of the greater...

'Phantom menace' may rip up cosmos   19:00 05 March 03   Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition   Stand by for a nightmare end to the Universe - a runaway expansion so violent that galaxies, planets and even atomic nuclei are literally ripped apart. The scenario could play out as soon as 22 billion years from now.   End of everything "Until now we thought the Universe would either re-collapse to a big crunch or expand forever to a state of infinite dilution," says Robert Caldwell of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. "Now we've come up with a third possibility - the...

Between Science and SpiritualityBy JOHN HORGAN Can mystical spirituality be reconciled with science and, more broadly, with reason? To paraphrase the mystical philosopher Ken Wilber, is the East's version of enlightenment compatible with that of the West? If so, what sort of truth would a rational mysticism give us? What sort of consolation? There are many claimed convergences between science and mysticism. Cognitive psychology supposedly corroborates the Buddhist doctrine that the self is an illusion. Quantum mechanics, which implies that the outcomes of certain microevents depend on how we measure them, is said to confirm the mystical intuition that consciousness...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 March 11 The 100-Meter Green Bank Radio Telescope Credit: NRAO, NSF Explanation: The largest single-dish fully steerable radio telescope began operation in 2000 August in Green Bank, West Virginia, USA. Dedicated as the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the device weighs over 30 times more than the Statue of Liberty, and yet can point anywhere in the sky more precisely than one thousandth of a degree....