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Sooner or later, students of abiogenesis will encounter Darwin's 1871 letter to Joseph Hooker with his speculations on the spontaneous generation of life. He was returning some pamphlets which triggered the reaction: "I am always delighted to see a word in favour of Pangenesis, which some day, I believe, will have a resurrection." The next paragraph has his "big if" dream: ...

10 Ways Darwin Got It Wrong This year marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birthday and, coincidentally, 150 years since the publication of his book On the Origin of Species. One of the most influential books in modern history, it has helped shape philosophy, biology, sociology and religion in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. But both Darwin's theory and his book are doomed by major flaws. by Mario Seiglie Was Charles Darwin right about his theory? More importantly, how vital is it to find out the correct answer? Unlike other scientific theories, Darwinian evolution touches not only science but...

An archaeologist says excavations in southern Georgia have turned up beads, metal tools and other artifacts that may pinpoint part of the elusive trail of the 16th-century Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. Dennis Blanton of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta was scheduled to present his findings Thursday to the Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Mobile, Ala. Excavations since 2006 in rural Telfair County uncovered remains of an Indian settlement along with nine pea-sized glass beads and six metal objects, including three iron tools and a silver pendant. Blanton says the artifacts are consistent with items Spanish explorers traded...

Hearing the heartbeat of the Earth Getting the vision thing right is important for technology announcements and HP has it nailed, twinning a great vision with advances in its sensing technology. Here's Peter Hartwell, a senior researcher at HP Labs: "With a trillion sensors embedded in the environment, all connected by computing systems, software and services, it will be possible to hear the heartbeat of the Earth, impacting human interaction with the globe as profoundly as the Internet has revolutionised communication." Okay Peter, we're paying attention now. The meat of this concerns digital MEMS (micro-electrical-mechanical system) - accelerometers that signal...

Scene 1: The White House Rose Garden. The President of the United States is standing before a crowd of amateur astronomers, students and teachers, with his science adviser by his side. In front of him: a telescope. The president bends down and presses his eye to the eyepiece. Flashbulbs pop. Scene 2: Kennedy Space Center. The Ares 1-X rocket sits on the launch pad, ready for its first test flight. More than 300-feet tall but fewer than 20 feet in diameter, it looks as precarious as a flying chopstick, but tomorrow's astronauts might ride a rocket like this one to...

Back in 1980 the US space programme was in the doldrums. Apollo was fading into history and there hadn't been a US astronaut in space for five years. The quirky space shuttle, much diminished from its initial vision, was still waiting to make its maiden flight. But that fall came Cosmos, a revolutionary documentary series with a compelling host. Both the television universe and the real one have never been quite the same. Carl Sagan, by equal measure professorial and childlike, offered space enthusiasts a new paradigm. Buck Rogers was out; refined and groovy cosmic citizen was in. Here was...

Glaciers crowning Africa's tallest mountain could disappear within decades. Remnant of the Eastern Ice Field as seen 2000. This particular chunk of ice has now disappeared.Lonnie G. Thompson The snows of Kilimanjaro are rapidly disappearing and will be gone by 2033, predicts the most detailed analysis yet of the iconic glaciers gracing Africa's highest peak.In addition to shrinking in area, Kilimanjaro's glaciers are thinning from the top down, says Ohio State University's Lonnie Thompson, lead author of the new study. "They're being decapitated," he says. "In fact, they're probably not really glaciers anymore. They're remnants of another climate."In 2000, Thompson...

Scientists have developed an atlas of the bacteria that live in different regions of the human body. Some of the microbes help keep us healthy by playing a key role in physiological functions. The University of Colorado at Boulder team found unexpectedly wide variations in bacterial communities from person to person. The researchers hope their work, published in Science Express, will eventually aid clinical research. They say that it might one day be possible to identify sites on the human body where transplants of specific microbes could benefit health. The study was based on an intensive analysis of the bacteria...

Why Evolutionary-Based Science Is A Menace To Scientific Research, Discovery, and Progress Evolutionary-based research always begins with the inaccurate and unscientific presupposition that the Theory of Evolution, i.e. the Big Bang, the spontaneous generation of life, and common descent, is true. Due to this systemic problem, scientific discovery and progress is severely hampered, not to mention the hundreds of millions of research dollars that are squandered every year. In a time in which almost ANY alternative thought is given a platform, the evolution industry is silencing dissenting scientific evidence, even when it’s from fellow evolutionists! See the growing list of...

Fossilization occurs rapidly when the conditions are right. The conditions necessary for lithification of soft tissue give clues to unlock the history of a fossil deposit. Experiments show that microbes are involved in the mineralization of soft tissue. By decaying flesh they affect the acidity of the environment and release ions necessary for its mineralization. Fossilization in apatite seems to require associated death and decay. In the Jurassic Oxford Clay Formation in England, apatite preserved the soft tissue of many squid-like animals, probably after a mass mortality event occurred in a zone of already high phosphate levels from decaying carcasses....

Archaeologists claim to have found the oldest known artefact in the Americas, a scraper-like tool in an Oregon cave that dates back 14,230 years.

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation. The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident,...

When scientists search the heavens for habitable worlds beyond Earth, they don't necessarily know what to look for. A new study has found that the most probable place to find intelligent life in the galaxy is around stars with roughly the mass of the sun, and surface temperatures between 5,300 and 6,000 Kelvin (9,100 and 10,300 degrees Fahrenheit) - in fact, stars very similar to our own sun.

In August 2009, retired University of Liverpool marine biologist Donald Williamson officially challenged the standard Darwinian interpretation of caterpillar origins. His paper was fast-tracked to publication by a “high-placed advocate,”[1] but shortly afterward his ideas were rebutted in the very same journal. While this back-and-forth exchange has sparked intense criticism over the submission and review processes that were used, the situation also reveals core problems with broad-scale evolution...

The ideal of the coolly rational scientific observer, completely independent, free of all preconceived theories, prior philosophical, ethical and religious commitments, doing investigations and coming to dispassionate, unbiased conclusions that constitute truth, is nowadays regarded by serious philosophers of science (and, indeed, most scientists) as a simplistic myth...

TAU's man/machine interface is essential link in groundbreaking prosthetic handIn one sense, our hands define our humanity. Our opposable thumbs and our hands' unique structure allow us to write, paint, and play the piano. Those who lose their hands as a result of accident, conflict or disease often feel they've lost more than mere utility. A new invention from Tel Aviv University researchers may change that. Prof. Yosi Shacham-Diamand of TAU's Department of Engineering, working with a team of European Union scientists, has successfully wired a state-of-the-art artificial hand to existing nerve endings in the stump of a severed arm....

Striking new photos of water-vapor geysers erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus were beamed to Earth this week by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in orbit around the ringed planet.

A vast pool of molten rock in the continental crust that underlies southwestern Washington state could supply magma to three active volcanoes in the Cascade Mountains -- Mount St. Helens , Mount Rainier and Mount Adams... Other scientists dismiss the existence... Rather than magma heated to 1,300 to 1,400 degrees, some think it could be water... Seth Moran , a volcano seismologist with the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash... said the most telling evidence that the theory was wrong was the lack of any surface evidence, such as geothermal vents or hot springs, among the mountains that would...

“Junk” DNA Discovered to Have Both Cellular and Microevolutionary Functions Evolutionists have long sought mechanisms for the origin of reproductive barriers between populations, mechanisms which are thought to be key to the formation of new species. A recent article in ScienceDaily finds that “Junk DNA” might be the “mechanism that prevents two species from reproducing.” Basically, so-called “junk”-DNA is involved in helping to package chromosomes in the cell. If two species have different “junk” DNA, then this prevents the proteins in the egg from properly packaging the chromosomes donated by the sperm. The organism does not develop properly. As the...

Finding Critics for Science Allie Winegar Duzett, November 4, 2009 There are many fields with rigorous critics; many writers make a living critiquing music, dance, art, and literature. At Accuracy in Media and other media watchdog groups, employees critique the claims of major news organizations. But one crucial field regularly goes without any public criticism: the field of science, and scientific discovery. “Science lacks for critics,” David Berlinski claimed at a recent Heritage Foundation Bloggers’ Briefing. “It is really remarkable that in the sense in which literature or dance or music has always entered public consciousness with a very rich...

Darwin’s bulldog—Thomas H. Huxley --snip-- Huxley, although an unbeliever, was thoroughly familiar with the gospel, and had little time for Christians who compromised their position by supporting the anti-biblical belief of evolutionary naturalism. He wrote: ...

A gigantic, previously unknown set of galaxies has been found in the distant universe, shedding light on the underlying skeleton of the cosmos. "Matter is not distributed uniformly in the universe," said Masayuki Tanaka, an astronomer with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) who helped discover the galactic assemblage. "In our cosmic vicinity, stars form in galaxies and galaxies usually form groups and clusters of galaxies." But those collections of matter are just small potatoes compared to larger structures long-theorized to exist. "The most widely accepted cosmological theories predict that matter also clumps on a larger scale in the so-called 'cosmic...

The mysterious people who etched the strange network of 'Nazca Lines' across deserts in Peru hastened their own demise by clearing forests 1,500 years ago, according to British scientists. The Nazca people, famed for giant animal drawings most clearly visible from the air, became unable to grow enough food in nearby valleys because the lack of trees made the climate too dry. Archaeologists examining the remains of the Nazca, who once flourished in the valleys of south coastal Peru, discovered a sequence of human-induced events which led to their 'catastrophic' collapse around 500 AD. Author Oliver Whaley, of the Royal...

Regardless of your tribal affiliations, were you cautiously optimistic when our new president promised to "restore science to its rightful place" in the formulation of public policy? Were you embarrassed by the prior occupant's politicization of issues that should have been decided on a more scientific basis? Did you assume that Barack Obama would surround himself with apolitical science advisors unencumbered by embarrassing anti-science baggage and free of culture-war axes to grind? To paraphrase a once famous mayor of New York - So how's he doing so far? You're probably aware that the H1N1 swine flu vaccine supply has fallen...

SANTA ANA, Calif., Nov. 3 /Christian Newswire/ -- While many people continue to believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, a group of scientists will present overwhelming scientific evidence against Darwin's speculations. "If Charles Darwin knew 150 years ago what we know today, he likely would not have published Origin of the Species," said John Baumgardner, Ph.D., whose organization, Logos Research Associates, will lead the two-day "Darwin Was Wrong" conference Nov. 13-14 at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. "We can perhaps excuse Darwin, given his ignorance about the true complexity of living organisms and about genetics," said Dr. Baumgardner, a geophysicist...

Ardipithecus ramidus is an extinct primate whose fossilized remains were first found along the Awash River in Ethiopia about fifteen years ago. Many fragments were collected, including shattered bones from a four-foot-tall female nicknamed "Ardi." She was chosen to represent her kind, apparently because of the comparative completeness of her remains. Now Ardi's discoverers believe they have collected enough data to reconstruct her history--but what does their data actually reveal? ...

Oct 29, 2009 — “Even the most ardent fan of Charles Darwin might be feeling weary as his anniversary year draws to a close,” remarked Clive Wynn in another issue of Nature celebrating his bicentennial. --snip-- The Editors are not done celebrating, though. They just began a 4-part essay series on how Darwin’s ideas were received around the world...

Rethinking relativity: Is time out of joint? EVER since Arthur Eddington travelled to the island of Príncipe off Africa to measure starlight bending around the sun during a 1919 eclipse, evidence for Einstein’s theory of general relativity has only become stronger. Could it now be that starlight from distant galaxies is illuminating cracks in the theory’s foundation? .... Yet it is still not clear how well general relativity holds up over cosmic scales, at distances much larger than the span of single galaxies. Now the first, tentative hint of a deviation from general relativity has been found. While the evidence...

China's "father of space program" mourned across country (Source: Xinhua) 2009-11-02 　 People in deep sorrow come to express condolences in a small mourning hall that was set up at Qian Xuesen's home, Beijing, Nov. 1, 2009. Qian, also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, died of illness in Beijing Saturday morning at the age of 98. He led the country's missile and aviation programs and played a significant role in developing China's first man-made earth satellite. (Xinhua/Gao Xueyu) 　 　　BEIJING, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The death of China's legendary scientist Qian Xuesen has plunged many Chinese into deep sorrow and people...

PARIS (AFP) – It took 13 billion years to reach Earth, but astronomers have seen the light of an exploding mega-star that is the most distant object ever detected, two studies published Thursday reported. The stunning gamma-ray burst (GRB) was observed by two teams of researchers in April, and opens a window onto a poorly known period when the Universe was in its infancy.

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." —The Bhagavad Gita Seven years after the nuclear tests in Alamogordo, New Mexico, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, was lecturing at a college when a student asked if there were any U.S. atomic tests before Alamogordo. “Yes, in modern times,” he replied. The sentence, enigmatic and incomprehensible at the time, was actually an allusion to ancient Hindu texts that describe an apocalyptic catastrophe that doesn’t correlate with volcanic eruptions or other known phenomena. Oppenheimer, who avidly studied ancient Sanskrit, was undoubtedly referring to a passage in...

Geologists Show that Seafloor Dynamics Are at Work in Splitting African Continent In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial. Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea. The new study, published in...

NASA's Kepler mission is unlikely to detect any Earth-like exoplanets before 2011 due to an electronic glitchKepler, NASA's mission to search for planets around other stars, will not be able to spot an Earth-sized planet until 2011, according to the mission's team. The delays are caused by noisy amplifiers in the telescope's electronics. The team is racing to fix the issue by changing the way data from the telescope is processed, but the delay could mean that ground-based observers now have the upper hand in the race to be the first to spot an Earth twin. "We're not going to...

This weekend’s feedback is in response to a number of queries about the Church of England (Anglicans) officially apologizing to Darwin. However, they don’t speak for all attenders of this church, since many of them are still faithful to Scripture and are appalled by their ‘leaders’. There are numerous mistakes in the article by the official CoE representative, a Rev. Dr Malcolm Brown, on the official CoE website, and Jonathan Sarfati replies point-by-point...

Castle Rock, Colorado—Despite the first major snowstorm of the season, and unrelenting efforts by malicious Darwinists to prevent people from registering, a huge crowd of around 1,000 people showed up Friday night to hear Dr. Stephen Meyer present the DNA evidence for intelligent design based on his new book Signature in the Cell. Meyer, Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and myself are in Colorado to speak at the Legacy of Darwin ID Conference sponsored by Shepherd Project Ministries. On Saturday, Michael Behe will present the evidence against modern Darwinism from his books Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution;...

The Bible tells us that God made mankind—male and female—“in His image” (Genesis 1:26, 27). This gives us humans a special significance in the cosmos. However, modern secular (godless) thinking minimizes this significance. As Voyager 1 reached the edge of our solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan asked NASA to instruct Voyager to turn around and take a picture looking back towards Earth. The grainy image showed our home as a tiny pale blue dot. In a book written soon after, atheist Sagan wrote, “our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are...

Life is not a naturalistic phenomenon with unlimited evolutionary potential as Darwin proposed. It is intelligently designed, ruled by immutable laws, and survives only because it has a built-in facilitated variation mechanism for continually adapting to internal and external challenges and changes. The essential components are: functional molecular architecture and machinery, modular switching cascades that control the machinery and a signal network that coordinates everything. All three are required for survival, so they must have been present from the beginning—a conclusion that demands intelligent design. Life’s built-in ability to adapt and diversify looks like Darwinian evolution, but it is not....

Cobbling together 3000 individual photographs, a physicist has made a new high-resolution panoramic image of the full night sky, with the Milky Way galaxy as its centerpiece. Axel Mellinger, a professor at Central Michigan University, describes the process of making the panorama in the November issue of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is speeding toward a collision with our Milky Way Galaxy, and when it hits -- in less than 40 million years -- it may set off a spectacular burst of stellar fireworks.

Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Psalm 103:1 This is the season when we in the United States tend to turn our thoughts to thankfulness for the blessings of prosperity and peacefulness. And well we should. Our country, with all of its struggles, is still the most emulated and sought after civilization of the modern world. And, in spite of the efforts on the part of some, it is still a nation of moral laws and religious stability. We have much to be thankful for...

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Scuba divers are exploring the depths of a volcanic lake in Guatemala to find clues about an ancient sacred island where Mayan pilgrims flocked to worship before it was submerged by rising waters.

An inscribed stele erected at Thebes by Ahmose, the first Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, documents a destructive storm accompanied by flooding during his reign. Fragments of the stele were found in the 3rd Pylon of the temple of Karnak at Thebes between 1947 and 1951 by the French Mission. A restoration of the stele and translation of the text was published by Claude Vandersleyen (1967). In the following year (1968), Vandersleyen added two more fragments, one from the top of the inscription and a small piece from line 10 of the restored text, which had been recovered by Egyptian...

-- All-New Episodes to Air Beginning Wednesday, January 20, 2010, at 9 PM (ET/PT) -- (Silver Spring, Md.) Science Channel has commissioned renowned production company LMNO Cable Group for six all-new episodes of the network's hit special METEORITE MEN. As production continues, the series will chronicle modern day treasure hunters Geoff Notkin and Steve Arnold as they traverse North America in search of rare, lost pieces of our universe. METEORITE MEN is scheduled to debut Wednesday, January 20, 2010, at 9 PM (ET/PT). Notkin and Arnold have searched the world for remnants of meteorites for years. The duo uses inventive,...

Oct 30, 2009 — “Plant fossils give first real picture of earliest Neotropical rainforests,” announced a press release from University of Florida.  The fossils from Colombia show that “many of the dominant plant families existing in today’s Neotropical rainforests – including legumes, palms, avocado and banana – have maintained their ecological dominance despite major changes in South America’s climate and geological structure.” The team found 2,000 megafossil specimens from the Paleocene, said to be 58 million years old.  This is only 5 to 8 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs according to conventional dating.  “The new study provides...

America is turning out plenty of science and engineering grads, a university study concludes, but many of the best are taking jobs in finance and consulting. U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever, according to a study released on Oct. 28 by a group of academics. But that finding comes with a big caveat: Many of the highest-performing students are choosing careers in other fields. The study by professors at Rutgers and Georgetown suggests that since the late 1990s, many of the top students have been lured to careers in finance and consulting. "Despite...

(See all these news nuggets and more by clicking the excerpt link below): 1. BBC News: “Darwin Teaching ‘Divides Opinion’” Darwinism is a controversial topic, and many believe creation should be taught in the classroom. But why is that news? 2. ScienceDaily: “Junk DNA Mechanism that Prevents Two Species from Reproducing Discovered” Has the U.S. government finally supported creationist research? Alas, no, but the results of a National Institutes of Health study fit squarely within the young-earth creation framework. 3. PhysOrg: “Charles Darwin Really Did Have Advanced Ideas about the Origin of Life” Charles Darwin was convinced that life’s origin...

Alongside all the public interest in sporting prowess, recent research has added significantly to our knowledge of how the human body actually works. Many characteristics we take for granted now appear to be critical success factors. Take, for example, our toes. We do not need long toes, like monkeys and apes, because our toes are not used for grasping branches. But are they vestigial - withered remnants of once-grand appendages? The answer is: most definitely not! Whilst it is possible to walk comfortably with longer toes, running is different. Increase toe length by just 20% and there is a doubling...

Patients taking statin drugs were almost 50 percent less likely to die from flu, researchers reported on Thursday in a study providing more evidence the cholesterol-lowering drugs help the body cope with infection. The findings are compelling enough to justify doing controlled studies in which some patients are given the drugs deliberately and some are not, said Meredith Vandermeer of the Oregon Public Health Division, who helped lead the study. "Our preliminary study shows these cholesterol-lowering medications called statins are associated with a decrease in mortality," Vandermeer told a news conference at a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of...

As we recently noted, Stephen Hawking has stepped down from the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge. The chair didn't stay empty for long. It has been announced that Michael Green will become the new Lucasian Professor. Green is one of the pioneers of string theory, and is already at Cambridge. I'm not sure he even switches offices, or chairs for that matter. Hawking did seminal work in general relativity. He proved a number of singularity theorems (with Roger Penrose). He wrote The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime (with George Ellis). John Wheeler conjectured that quiescent black holes have "no hair" (i.e.,...

Credit: Froese et al. 2009. The Klondike region of the Canadian Arctic isn't often thought of as an oasis for life. Today, the area is best known for its vast frozen wilderness, its goldfields, and as the namesake of a popular chocolate-coated ice cream treat. However, new research shows that the Klondike goldfields of Canada's Yukon Territory hold key records of a past environment that was much different than the harsh climate experienced by today's explorers, ice truckers and miners. The Klondike is part of a wider geographic area dubbed "Beringia," which includes parts of Siberia, Alaska and the Canadian...