B25-ScienceC.txt
==
Graham L. Kendall
Modified 6/254/2009
Email grahamkendall74135@yahoo.com
I am found on IRC Efnet/Undernet/Dalnet as glk
http://www.grahamkendall.net/
All are free to use any of this material without limit.
*******************************************************************************
==
Martin Rees Just Six Numbers  constants of nature
===
Science leads you (haltingly and with occasional
false steps) towards greater understanding of the universe and greater
ability to control and alter your environment. 
===
http://www.evolution.mbdojo.com/theory.html
==
"Planetary scientists think the oldest surfaces
on Mars formed during the wet and warm Noachan
epoch from about 4.1 billion to 3.7 billion
years ago that featured a bombardment of large
meteors and extensive flooding. The newly
discovered lake is believed to have formed
during the Hesperian epoch and postdates the end
of the warm and wet period on Mars by 300
million years, according to the study."
==
"Decoding the Universe", by Charles Shife,
==
Discovering a more precise age of the universe

Wendy Freedman, director of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, and two
colleagues were named this month as recipients of the $500,000 Gruber Prize,
one of the world's top awards in the field of cosmology.
Freedman, along with Robert Kennicutt and Jeremy Mould, were honored for their
nearly decade-long effort to find a more precise value for the Hubble constant,
one of the key values in cosmology, a measure of how fast the universe is
expanding and thus how old it is.

The Freedman team's work helped scientists to arrive at the currently accepted
age of the universe: 13.7 billion years.
Freedman discussed her research in the Carnegie offices where astronomer Edwin
Hubble made his measurements nearly a century ago.
What is the Hubble constant?
Edwin Hubble discovered in 1929 that the universe was expanding. He made that
discovery in two parts. He first found that there were galaxies outside and in
addition to our own Milky Way galaxy. At that time, it hadn't been known there
were other galaxies. For the first time, Hubble was able to measure the
distances to these objects. Then he showed they were all taking part in the
expansion of the universe. Based on Einstein's general theory of relativity,
if you can measure how fast the universe is expanding, you can run the model
backward and find out how long it's been expanding and how big the universe
is. The faster the current expansion rate, the younger and the smaller the
observable universe.
So the Hubble constant is a measure of the expansion rate of the universe?
Right, the current expansion rate. But it turned out to be much more difficult
than expected to measure the Hubble constant. Hubble's original value [500
km/sec/Mpc] was off by at least a factor of seven. [1 Mpc=1 Megaparsec, or
3.26 million light years.] For decades before [our project] the uncertainty
had remained a factor of two.
That's a lot of error.
That's right. And since so many other things in astronomy depend on knowing
the exact distance scale of the universe, this big uncertainty with the Hubble
constant was a real problem in cosmology. Especially when it came to
understanding and locating stars and galaxies outside the Milky Way.
How did you get involved in the effort to find a precise Hubble constant?
In 1984, a group of us put together a proposal to use the Hubble Space
Telescope to obtain a more accurate value for the Hubble constant, which would
put the measurement of extra-galactic objects on a more precise footing. We
were specifically interested in a set of stars called Cepheids.
What's special about Cepheids?
In 1908, Henrietta Leavitt of Harvard discovered the brightness of this type
of star varied as the star expanded and contracted, almost as if it were
breathing. If you can measure the distance to nearby Cepheids in our own
galaxy, and you compare them to Cepheids in other galaxies, you can find out
how far away the other galaxies are.
That sounds simple enough.
Yes, except that there are challenges, because Cepheids are young stars. So
you find them in regions where there is a lot of dust and gas left over from
star formation. The dust tends to scatter the light. If you don't correct for
it, things look farther away than they really are. And you also need really
high resolution in your telescope to be able to identify Cepheids.
And Hubble had that.
Hubble has 10 times the resolution of any ground telescope. But there was
still a lot of doubt about whether we could find distant Cepheids. A lot of
controversy over the universe's distance scale centered on the Virgo cluster
[of galaxies]. Is it near or far? Early on, it was thought that we could never
find Cepheids there.
But you did.
They jumped out like fish. Using these, we got our first value for the Hubble
constant in 1994. That was 80 km/sec/Mpc. Before that, the best anybody could
do was a range from 50 to 100.
That wasn't your final result.
By the end, we had measured the distances to two dozen other galaxies. In
2001, we narrowed the constant to 72 with an uncertainty of only 10%. Shortly
thereafter, NASA, using a different method, came up with 71. That resolved the
controversy. We now knew the universe was 13.7 billion years old.
That achievement must have been rewarding, even before getting this award.
It was such a long controversy, the solution was welcome for a lot of us. This
was a long effort. It was essentially my life for 18 years. But it was very
enjoyable. Not very often can you design a project where you can make a real
leap forward in science.
What are you working on now?
We're developing the next generation of giant ground telescope. It's called
the Giant Magellan Telescope. It will have a 24.5-meter mirror, the world's
largest. [For comparison, the famous 200-inch Mount Palomar mirror is about 5
meters across.] It will have 10 times better resolution than the Hubble Space
Telescope. We hope to start construction in 2012.
Where are you building it?
The Southern Hemisphere, Chile. We already have three other telescopes on the
site there.
People in Los Angeles are probably not aware how big a player Carnegie is in
astronomy.
We are a major player. Our astronomers are doing world-class research on
cosmology, black holes, extrasolar planets. We started in 1903. Hubble himself
was a Carnegie astronomer. Today, we have 130 people working here. Half are in
Chile.
So what are you going to do with the money?
The honest answer is that I haven't had time to think about it yet.
==
Our sun consumes or burns through 4.28e9 kg/sec.
==
Black hole more massive than imagined: study
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090609/
tsc-black-hole-more-massive-than-imagine-e123fef.html
A pair of pioneering astronomers revealed Tuesday how they used a
supercomputer to show that a nearby black hole is vastly more massive
than scientists ever imagined. Skip related content
Related photos / videos
An artist's impression illustrates the gravitational pull of a giant
black hole (dark More Enlarge photo
The black hole at the heart of the relatively close Messier 87 Galaxy
(M87) weighs in at 6.4 billion times the mass of our Sun, according to
US astrophysicist Karl Gebhardt and Germany's Jens Thomas, who say
it's the largest ever measured with a reliable technique.
One of the more enigmatic features of astronomy, a black hole is a
region in space that is inferred by tracking stars that orbit it.
Objects fall into its stupendous gravitational field but nothing, not
even light, can return.
Gebhardt and Thomas' revelation, they say, sheds light on how galaxies
grow, and may solve the paradox of quasars -- active black holes
guzzling matter in distant galaxies that scientists are struggling to
understand.
Addressing the American Astronomical Society conference in Pasadena,
California, the stargazers described how they employed the gargantuan
computing power of the Lonestar system, also known as the huge "Texas
Advanced Computing Center" at the University of Texas.
The Lonestar has 5,840 processing cores and can perform 62 trillion
"floating-point operations" per second. For comparison, the most
state-of-the-art laptop computer has only two processing cores and
performs only 10 billion such operations per second.
Gebhardt and Thomas's study, to be published later this year in the
Astrophysical Journal, aims to clock the mass of Galaxy M87's central
black hole by also modeling the galaxy's "dark halo," a phenomenon
that extends past a galaxy's visible structure and contains the
ethereal but weighty dark matter.
"In the past, we have always considered the dark halo to be
significant, but we did not have the computing resources to explore it
as well," said Gebhardt as he lauded the supercomputer's ability.
The Lonestar's mass model for the M87 black hole came out several
times the weight than any previous estimate, a result they did not
expect at all.
They chose giant elliptical M87 because of it's relative proximity to
our own galaxy -- about 55 million light years away.
The galaxy is also notable for the spectacularly active jet of light
shooting from its core, emitted as matter swirls closer to the black
hole.
These factors make M87 "the anchor for supermassive black hole
studies," Gebhardt said.
The new results, he added, also suggest all other black hole masses
for the largest galaxies are grossly underestimated.
Such a conclusion would fundamentally change consideration of the
physical laws of space, as scientists examine black holes and probe
how galaxies grow.
For the problem of weighing quasars, seen at a much earlier period in
the vast expanse of cosmic time, the astronomer's conclusion could
have major implications.
Quasars shine brightly and emit copious radiation as matter crosses
the event horizon -- part of the black hole from which nothing, not
even light, can escape.
"There is a long-standing problem in that quasar black hole masses
were very large -- 10 billion solar masses," Gebhardt said.
"But in local galaxies, we never saw black holes that massive, not
nearly. The suspicion was before that the quasar masses were wrong,"
he said.
Yet, he said, if scientists "increase the mass of M87 two or three
times, the problem almost goes away."
While the astronomer's conclusions are model-based, Gebhardt noted
that they are supported by his recent physical telescope observations.
He has most recently tested the computer simulations by examining M87
and other galaxies through powerful instruments at the Hawaii-based
Gemini North Telescope Hilo and the European Southern Observatory's
Very Large Telescope in Chile's high altitude Atacama desert.
===
A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics:

1.     A -5 point starting credit.
2.     1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.
3.     2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.
4.     3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.
5.     5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful
correction.
6.     5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of
a widely accepted real experiment.
7.     5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with
defective keyboards).
8.     5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann".
9.     10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally
misguided (without good evidence).
10.     10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this
were evidence of sanity.
11.     10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how
long you have been working on it. (10 more for emphasizing that you worked on
your own.)
12.     10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don't know personally
and asking them not to tell anyone else about it, for fear that your ideas will
be stolen.
13.     10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds
any flaws in your theory.
14.     10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly
defining it.
15.     10 points for each statement along the lines of "I'm not good at math,
but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it
in terms of equations".
16.     10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only
a theory", as if this were somehow a point against it.
17.     10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory
predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn't explain "why" they occur, or fails to
provide a "mechanism".
18.     10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or
claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided (without
good evidence).
19.     10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a
"paradigm shift".
20.     20 points for emailing me and complaining about the crackpot index.
(E.g., saying that it "suppresses original thinkers" or saying that I
misspelled "Einstein" in item 8.)
21.     20 points for suggesting that you deserve a Nobel prize.
22.     20 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Newton or claim
that classical mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
23.     20 points for every use of science fiction works or myths as if they
were fact.
24.     20 points for defending yourself by bringing up (real or imagined)
ridicule accorded to your past theories.
25.     20 points for naming something after yourself. (E.g., talking about
the "The Evans Field Equation" when your name happens to be Evans.)
26.     20 points for talking about how great your theory is, but never
actually explaining it.
27.     20 points for each use of the phrase "hidebound reactionary".
28.     20 points for each use of the phrase "self-appointed defender of the
orthodoxy".
29.     30 points for suggesting that a famous figure secretly disbelieved in
a theory which he or she publicly supported. (E.g., that Feynman was a closet
opponent of special relativity, as deduced by reading between the lines in his
freshman physics textbooks.)
30.     30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was
groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.
31.     30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an
extraterrestrial civilization (without good evidence).
32.     30 points for allusions to a delay in your work while you spent time
in an asylum, or references to the psychiatrist who tried to talk you out of
your theory.
33.     40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis,
stormtroopers, or brownshirts.
34.     40 points for claiming that the "scientific establishment" is engaged
in a "conspiracy" to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or
suchlike.
35.     40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a
modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.
36.     40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated,
present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for
fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will
be forced to recant.)
37.     50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no
concrete testable predictions.
==
Peer review is only the beginning--the true value of a paper is what 
happens after publication.  Is it referred to frequently? does it become a 
part of the accepted and fully tested corpus of science?  Or is it ignored 
and/or refuted by later work?
==
Mercury's orbit.
The precession of the orbit comes about by a more straightforward aspect
of GR -- that space is deformed.  Keplerian ellipses aren't orbits in 
GR as the curvature of space prevents the simple closed figure.  Instead,
you get a rosette, where each aphelion is offset slightly from the previous.
(likewise the rest of the orbit, but it's easiest to see at aphelion).
You can get a nice discussion of the details in Cornelius Lanczos' 
_Variational Mechanics_.
==
Earth is made up of several layers, once thought to be pretty distinct.
The skin, or crust, goes down about 25 miles (40 km). Below that is
the mantle area, which extends about halfway to the center of the
planet. The mantle is a thick layer of silicate rock surrounding a
dense, iron-nickel core, and it is subdivided into the upper and lower
mantle, extending to a depth of about 1,800 miles (2,900 km). The
outer core is beneath that and extends to 3,200 miles (5,150 km) and
the inner core to about 4,000 miles (6,400 km).
New data reveal the mantle consists of more varying material than was
thought. So convection ÷ how heated material bubbles up ÷ is now
thought to work differently.
Imagine a pot of water boiling, explains researcher Allen McNamara
of Arizona State University. That would be all one kind of
composition. Now dump a jar of honey into that pot of water. The honey
would be convecting on its own inside the water and that's a much more
complicated system.
One clue to the new thinking is that seismic waves traveling through
the planet have long been measured to travel at inexplicably different
speeds. Sharp speed changes suggest differing materials. On each side
of the planet there are two big, chemically distinct, dense piles or
blobs of material that are hundreds of kilometers thick ö one beneath
the Pacific and the other below the Atlantic and Africa, the researchers say.
You can picture these piles like peanut butter, McNamara said. It
is solid rock, but rock under very high pressures and temperatures
becomes soft like peanut butter, so any stresses will cause it to flow.
How stuff moves within the piles should help scientists better
understand how surface plates move around, causing earthquakes and
building mountains.
The piles dictate how the convective cycles happen, how the currents
circulate, McNamara said. If you don't have piles then convection
will be completely different. 
==
Broad, William and Nicholas Wade in Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit
in the Halls of Science. Touchstone, New York, NY (1982)
==
Robert Laughlin, Ph.D., Nobel Prize in Physics 1998, "A Different Universe:
Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down" p 168-170 (Basic Books, New York,
2005)
==
"Supergiant" Asteroid Shut Down Mars's Magnetic Field
A "supergiant" asteroid several times larger than the one that likely killed
the dinosaurs struck Mars with such force that it shut down the planet's
magnetic field, scientists say.
Based on the number of large craters present, scientists think very early Mars
suffered 15 or so giant impacts within a span of about a hundred million years.
Now a new computer model suggests Mars's magnetic field may have been slowly
weakened by four especially large impacts and then snuffed out completely by a
fifth and final blow.
That impact created the 2,000-mile-wide (3,300-kilometer-wide) Utopia crater,
which dates back roughly 4.1 billion years, said study team member James
Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Maryland.
"It's possible that the four earlier impacts set everything up, and the Utopia
crater was the straw that broke camel's back."
Bombardment
Earth has a magnetic field in part because of heat transfer between the
planet's rotating molten core and the relatively cooler mantle layer above it.
This temperature difference helps create what's known as an electric dynamo,
which keeps the magnetic field stable over time.
But when the solar system was first forming it went through a tumultuous time
known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, in which several large asteroidsremnants
of planetary formationsmashed into young Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury.
This is about the time the Utopia crater was formed, and roughly the same time
that scientists think the Martian magnetic field shut down, said Roberts, whose
research is detailed in a recent issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research.
According to the new model, the Utopia impact injected so much heat into the
Martian mantle that it drastically reduced the temperature difference driving
the dynamo.
"If the mantle becomes too hot, it's not able to cool the core as
efficiently and there is no magnetic field," Roberts told National Geographic
News.
Without a magnetic field, Mars was exposed to the full brunt of the solar
wind, the cntinuous stream of charged particles emitted by the sun.
The solar wind could then have slowly eroded away Mars's atmosphere until only
a wispy envelope of gas remained.
Drastic climate change would have soon followed, helping to create the
desiccated Mars we know today.
Earth Defense
While a similar impactor could conceivably shut down Earth's magnetic field,
it would have to be much larger than the one that struck early Mars, Roberts
said.
Earth's mantle is twice as thick as that of Mars, and its core churns much
more vigorously, making it more difficult to shut down the dynamo effect that
generates the field.
Venus also lacks a global magnetic field, but scientists think that is because
its mantle is dryer and stiffer and thus less conducive to heat flow.
Sabine Stanley, a geophysicist at the University of Toronto who was not
involved in the study, noted that the idea of magnetic field-killing asteroids
is not new.
But the latest study, Stanley said, is the first to model the phenomena in
detail and to finger a potential culprit crater on Mars.

==
A key
symptom of ideological thinking is the explanation that has no implications
and cannot be tested. I call such logical dead ends antitheories because they
have exactly the opposite effect of real theories: they stop thinking rather
than stimulate it.
==
Our brains don't see everything‹the world is too
big, too full of stimuli. So the brain takes shortcuts, constructing a
picture of reality with relatively simple algorithms for what things
are supposed to look like.
==
When chemists synthesize organic compounds in the lab, they often wind up with
a mix of molecules: half are right-handed, and half are left. But cells are a
bit more particular. When life arose, our ancestors made some choices. They
went with the right-handed sugars, and the left-handed amino acids, a
tradition still in effect.
==
Uranium to lead decay sequence
Uranium-238
Thorium-234
Protactinium-234
Uranium-234
Thorium-230
Radium-226
Radon-222
Polonium-218
Lead-214
Bismuth-214
Polonium-214
Lead-210
Bismuth-210
Polonium-210
Lead-206 (stable)
==
Most distant object in the universe spotted

Astronomers have spotted the most distant object yet confirmed in the
universe  a self-destructing star that exploded 13.1 billion light years from
Earth. It detonated just 640 million years after the big bang, around the end
of the cosmic "dark ages", when the first stars and galaxies were lighting up
space.
The object is a gamma-ray burst (GRB)  the brightest type of stellar
explosion. GRBs occur when massive, spinning stars collapse to form black
holes and spew out jets of gas at nearly the speed of light. These jets send
gamma rays our way, along with "afterglows" at other wavelengths, which are
produced when the jet heats up surrounding gas.
The burst, dubbed GRB 090423 for the date of its discovery last Thursday, was
originally spotted by NASA's Swift satellite at 0755 GMT.
Within an hour, astronomers began training ground-based telescopes on the same
patch of sky to study the burst's infrared afterglow. Some of the first
observations were made on Mauna Kea in Hawaii with the United Kingdom Infrared
Telescope and the Gemini North telescope.
Other telescopes later measured the spectrum of the afterglow, revealing that
the burst detonated about 13.1 billion light years from Earth. "It's the most
distant gamma-ray burst, but it's also the most distant object in the universe
overall," says Edo Berger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a
member of the team that observed the afterglow with Gemini North.
Stretched light
To gauge an object's distance, astronomers measure how much an object's light
has been stretched, or reddened, by the expansion of space. This burst lies at
a redshift of 8.2, more distant than the previous GRB record holder, which lay
at a redshift of 6.7.
Other astronomers have claimed to find galaxies at even greater distances  at
redshifts of 10 and 9, but those findings are still ambiguous, says Joshua
Bloom of the University of California, Berkeley, who observed the afterglow
using the Gemini South telescope in Chile. Until now, the record holder for
the farthest galaxy had a spectroscopically confirmed redshift of 6.96.
The burst's immense distance makes the now-dead star the earliest object to be
discovered from an era called 'reionisation', which occurred within the first
billion years after the big bang. At that time, an obscuring fog of neutral
hydrogen atoms was being burned off by radiation from the first stars and
galaxies, and possibly also from the annihilation of dark matter particles.
'Watershed event'
"For astronomy, this is a watershed event," Bloom told New Scientist."This is
the beginning of the study of the universe as it was before most of the
structure that we know about today came into being."
The timing of the period of reionisation is still unclear, Bloom says. If
astronomers can find more gamma-ray bursts at even greater distances, they
could use their spectra to determine how quickly the universe became
transparent and what was responsible for the process.
"In principle, you can see very early times in the universe [with GRBs], when
everything else was too faint," says Nial Tanvir of the University of
Leicester in the UK, a member of a team that used the Very Large Telescope in
Chile to make one of the first measurements of the distance of the burst.
Distant blasts could also help pinpoint the locations of faint GRB host
galaxies that could be detected by space telescopes like the
soon-to-be-refurbished Hubble Space Telescope or NASA's infrared James Webb
Telescope, which is set to launch in 2013.
Sensitive and fast
But building up a picture of the early universe will require finding many more
distant bursts, and progress in discovering distant bursts has been slow. Swift
has found 120 bursts with measured distances, but only three  including this
one  date from the first billion years of the universe's history.
That is in part because stars did not form at high rates in the very early
universe, before a redshift of about 5, and so they did not explode often as
GRBs.
But it is also because infrared detectors that are both sensitive and quick
enough to measure very distant, short-lived GRB afterglows have only recently
begun operating. As a result, astronomers may have missed out on identifying
some of the most distant GRBs identified by Swift.
Berger hopes the discovery of this object will hasten the development of new
telescopes that could discover such afterglows with even greater efficiency.
"As a single object, [the burst] is an amazing proof of concept," says Berger.
"I think we've shown that's a worthwhile investment because [distant bursts]
actually do exist."
NASA is considering one such telescope, called the Joint Astrophysics Nascent
Universe Satellite (JANUS), for funding this year.
==
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/evolution/work.php
==
The Lost Siblings of the Sun
Most stars are born in clusters rather than singly, and theres plenty of
evidence that the Sun was too.

This Hubble closeup of part of the Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius shows the kind
of environment where the Sun and solar system were probably born. Massive hot
stars dominate the scene; they will run through their brief lives quickly and
explode as supernovae. The larger white box shows several more modest stars
that recently formed in the retreating gas-and-dust pillar to their right. The
small box highlights a "proplyd," a protoplanetary disk around a star that may
end up like our Sun.
For one thing, the material of the infant solar system (as preserved in the
earliest meteorites) was enriched by fresh supernova debris from at least one
very young, massive star (having 15 to 25 solar masses) that exploded less
than 5 light-years away, no more than 2 million years after the Sun's
formation. Today no such massive star exists within 300 light-years of the
Sun. Clearly, the early solar system had stars close around it.
But that was 4.57 billion years ago. Where are the Suns cluster-mates now?
Some of them, it turns out, should remain surprisingly nearby. An analysis by
Simon F. Portegies Zwart (University of Amsterdam) finds that the Suns birth
cluster started off with about 500 to 3,000 solar masses and a diameter
smaller than about 20 light-years typical for open clusters. Evidence for the
cluster's mass and size, Zwart writes, is preserved in the anomalous chemical
abundances and structure of the solar system's Kuiper Belt the realm of
small, icy objects out beyond Neptune. Some of the Kuiper Belt's objects are
dynamically "hot"; they were stirred up and scattered by the gravity of at
least one nearby cluster star making a close pass in early days.
Like other open clusters, the Sun's birth cluster disintegrated with time.
Most of its stars have long since drifted away and are mixed irretrievably
into the swarms of the Milky Way strung out during the approximately 27
orbits that they and the Sun have made around the galaxy since their origin
long ago.
However, about 10 to 60 of the Sun's nestmates (a few percent) should still
remain closer than 300 light-years from us and are still traveling in parallel
with us, according to Portegies Zwart. The European Space Agency's upcoming
Gaia astrometry satellite should be able to sort them out by their space
motions. Their exact chemical abundances might then give them away for sure.
Finding even a few, writes Portegies Zwart, will strongly constrain the
parameters of the parental star cluster and the location in the Galaxy where
we were born.
Don't expect them to look like anything special, though. The Sun is very
ordinary among stars, and so were the circumstances of its origin.
The Sun's birth cluster is a very interesting subject. The dynamical
interactions there might result in binary star systems forming. The original
giant molecular cloud contracted and as a result, it's spin increased. This
spin causes the cloud to break into two clouds, which continue to collapse and
spin faster and break up all the way down to stellar masses. After stars form
then further interactions may create new binaries, cause the binaries to
contract, or break them apart into single stars, Does the Sun have a binary
companion? After the cluster breaks up random passing stars have the potential
of breaking the binaries up or modifying their orbits in various ways. If,
however, the Sun has a companion, it would have to be less than 45 Jupiter
masses or existing surveys would have spotted it by now. I'd like to see a
good far infrared survey.
The Sun's birth cluster is a very interesting subject. The dynamical
interactions there might result in binary star systems forming. The original
giant molecular cloud contracted and as a result, it's spin increased. This
spin causes the cloud to break into two clouds, which continue to collapse and
spin faster and break up all the way down to stellar masses. After stars form
then further interactions may create new binaries, cause the binaries to
contract, or break them apart into single stars, Does the Sun have a binary
companion? After the cluster breaks up random passing stars have the potential
of breaking the binaries up or modifying their orbits in various ways. If,
however, the Sun has a companion, it would have to be less than 45 Jupiter
masses or existing surveys would have spotted it by now. I'd like to see a
good far infrared survey.
==
Naturalism must be adopted as a strategy or working hypothesis for science to
succeed. We may therefore be agnostic about the ultimate truth of naturalism,
but must nevertheless adopt it and investigate nature as if nature is all that
there is." - Geology Professor Steven D. Schafersman
==
The ideal gas law is the equation of state of a hypothetical ideal
gas, first stated by Benot Paul Emile Clapeyron in 1834.
The state of an amount of gas is determined by its pressure,
volume, and temperature according to the equation:
pV = nRT
where
p is the absolute pressure [Pa],
V is the volume [m3] of the vessel containing n, moles of gas,
n is the amount of substance of gas [mol],
R is the gas constant [8.314 472 m3?Pa?K 1?mol 1],
T is the temperature in kelvin [K].
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_gas_law
===
With a theory (in the scientific sense) you have an idea or a group of
ideas that attempt to explain a natural phenomenon, and evidence is
sought to confirm or disconfirm the theory. Science tends to reward
those who successfully revise (or even topple) an established theory.
Opposition to the idea is actively solicited in the form of peer
review. Theories are constantly reviewed, revised, retested, and
questioned. In science, every theory is provisional. It says This
is what the evidence leads us to believe right now... but we could be
wrong.
With an ideology, you have an idea that a person or group seeks to
establish as a valid premise (social, religious, even scientific).
The ideology may not even deal with a 'natural phenomenon' (Unless you
consider an idea like My God can beat up your God to be a scientific
premise). Evidence is sought only to confirm the idea, and evidence
that would tend to disconfirm it is suppressed, sometimes ruthlessly.
Ideologies tend to reward only those who seek to confirm and propagate
the idea, and those who dissent are also suppressed (the form of
suppression tends to vary depending on how widely the ideology is
established, and how ingrained it is in the group). In an ideology,
the idea is the predetermined conclusion to which all effort must be
directed. It says This is how it is. If you think differently, then
prison, death, assignment to a reeducation camp, or exclusion from
the club of peoplewhothinklikewedo.
Sometimes science falls victim to ideologies, and there are numerous
examples of this. But the self correcting nature of science tends to
weed out the ideologies in the long run.
==
We learn about the distant cosmos by two primary methods:
1) photons which arrive from distant objects.
2) high-energy particles (cosmic rays) which arrive from distant objects
For both of these methods, the information we measure includes their flux
(number of particles per second per unit area), their energy (wavelength or
frequency), direction and sometimes polarization.
Our ability to interpret what is going on 'out there' depends on one basic
assumption: that it is physically consistent.
One characteristic of this physical consistency is our ability to predict some
characteristic(s) of the system's behavior based on physical principles that
can be expressed in mathematical form. That this mathematical process works as
well as it does has been the subject of ongoing philosophical debates, such as
described in The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural
Sciences.
How do we test this physical consistency? The primary method is that the
objects we observe behave the way we predict. For example, we can predict the
locations of planets in the solar system with excellent precision, decades in
advance. This capability is used in everything from eclipse prediction to
interplanetary probes.
Occasionally, we encounter situations where our predictions appear to break
down. To maintain physical consistency, there are three possibilities
scientists generally consider:
a) some approximation(s) used in the mathematical calculation are outside
their range of validity and introducing larger errors in the calculation.
Solutions to these problems may require increased computational resources
which may or may not be available;
b) there is some additional known physics, not included in the original
calculations, that should be included;
c) the most exciting possibility of all - new physics is being detected.
The history of science is loaded with examples of 'great problems' where the
solutions were found through this method. Sometimes, finding these solutions
takes a few years, but the process has been known to take decades. Notice that
'supernatural intervention' is not on the list. To illustrate this process, I
will focus on two historical examples:
Solar Neutrinos
Initial measurements of solar neutrinos were one-third the expected fluxes
based on nuclear reactions required to produce the observed luminosity of the
Sun. Some creationists tried to claim that this was evidence that the Sun was
not powered by fusion and could therefore not be billions of years old (see
Evidence for a Young Sun, by Keith Davies). It would take over three decades,
but real scientists would continue perusing the 'naturalistic' solutions,
examining possibilities (a), (b), and (c). A number of refinements were made
pursuing possiblities (a) and (b) but they did not improve the agreement in a
significant way. Eventually, theories and experiments began to favor option
(c), culminating in some experiments to actually test the hypothesis of
neutrino oscillations, where the neutrinos oscillate between different
'flavors' when traveling through matter. Eventually experiments detected the
mu- and tau- neutrinos from the Sun, which were created by oscillations of the
electron-neutrinos created in solar fusion reactions. This was achieved by the
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. An Earth-based experiment measured neutrino
oscillations more directly by passing neutrinos through the Earth to a
detector (K2K Long-baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment Official
Homepage). Also check out the Ultimate Neutrino Page.
The Theory of Gravity
Newtonian gravity was a great success in predicting orbits of solar system
objects and even discovering the planet Neptune based on deviations from the
predicted orbits. However, the orbital deviations of the planet Mercury proved
harder to explain as many searches for a perturbing planet met with failure.
The solution would eventually be found by Albert Einstein in 1915, during the
development of his General Theory of Relativity. General Relativity was tested
through a number of astronomical observations before it was possible to test in
Earth-based laboratories. Today, general relativistic effects must be included
when computing the signal propagation times in the Global Positioning System.
Also check out Relativity in the Global Positioning System by Neil Ashby which
illustrates the details of how this is done.
I have described a number of similar astronomical discoveries in my paper, The
Cosmos in Your Pocket. How Cosmological Science Became Earth Technology. I,
available at the Cornell Preprint server.
Also important in scientific testing is the question of reproducibility, . We
cannot 'reproduce' astronomical observations in the laboratory sense. However,
there are other ways to solve the reproducibility question, such as:

1. We test by observing other similar objects, as in the case of
supernovae and gamma-ray bursts;
2. We can make more detailed observations of same object, perhaps at new
wavelengths, with higher angular and temporal resolutions, accumulate longer
baseline datasets, or examine other observable properties such as polarization
of the photons;
3. If the idea involves new atomic processes or particles, we can try to
reproduce or detect them in controlled Earth-based experiments (i.e.
Laboratory Astrophysics).
All of these provide feedback that can reinforce or invalidate our
interpretation of events distant in time and space.
All knowledge is accumulated indirectly, even when conducted in laboratory
equipment. The constituents of atoms have never been seen, only inferred from
many experiments and observations. We construct mathematical models of these
particles that can reliably reproduce measurements, both past and future.
I can't prove that we aren't all brains in a vat, providing biochemical energy
for some supercomplex machine, and our 'reality' is just a very sophisticated
VR program, such as in the movie, The Matrix.
There is no 'proof' of the theory of gravity. There is no 'proof' of quantum
mechanics, nuclear physics, atomic physics, or any other science. There is
only an overwhelming amount of physical evidence that it works. While they
work today, tomorrow, we may have new experiments that hint at something
beyond our 'standard models' of these phenomena.
Yet we build microelectronic circuits, nuclear reactors, and launch satellites
into space and to other planets, using these 'unproven theories'. These same
'unproven theories', taken together, give us the great age (over 13 billion
years) of the Universe. In spite of creationists' denials, these 'unproven
theories' have made modern technologies possible.
So to those who wish to argue with me that astronomy is 'unproven' as a
science, I insist that you provide me with PROOF, not just evidence, of the
reality of electrons, protons, and neutrons. To make things more interesting,
perhaps I should insist on PROOF that these subatomic particles are not, say,
magical pixies that just happen to behave in ways we observe but which could
change their behavior at any time. If you can't prove this, why are you using
any microelectronics technology?
I'll close with an applicable quote:

Moreover, fact does not mean absolute certainty. The final proofs of logic and
mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only
because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim
for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a
style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, fact can only mean
confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional
assent. I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the
possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. -- S.J. Gould,
Evolution as Fact and Theory
==
E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis.
2001, ISBN: 0425181642

Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" in Debate: Historical Essays and Documents on the
1941 Meeting Between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg by Matthias Drries. 2005,
ISBN: 0967261724
==
On the near side of the Moon, the team looked at a characteristic flat, dark
basaltic plain, the Mare Serenitatis, or 'sea of serenity'. Several hundred
metres below the surface the group spotted a thin layer of loose debris
sitting between thick basaltic lava. The debris suggests that the Moon enjoyed
a 'quiet period' in terms of volcanic activity, between 3.55 billion and 2.84
billion years ago, the researchers think.
==
http://www.varchive.org/ce/tc14.htm 

Much of creationist commentary on the possible errors in 14C is intended
to portray the scientific community as being either incompetent or
dishonest regarding such issues as the consideration of potential errors
in radiometric dating methods. Creationists never discuss the fact
that given these analyses, scientists have found ways of identifying
and mitigating the effects of these potential sources of error.

What follows is a summary from chapter 14.1.3, p.364-366 of Dickin
[1995]:

1941 Thellier proposed that Earth's magnetic field experiences
secular variations.

1949 Arnold and Libby publish radiocarbon dates of items of known
age.

1952 Libby publishes first book on radiocarbon dating.

1954 Forbush observed that the 11-year cycle of sunspot activity
was inversely correlated with cosmic-ray intensity.
1955 Suess  proposed dilution due to the burning of fossil fuels
for the 2% depletion of 14C activity seen in 20th century wood
compared to 19th century wood.

1956 Elasser, et al. predicted variations in the cosmic ray flux
due to secular variations in Earth's magnetic field.

1958 de Vries found that 17-th century wood had a 2% higher activity
than 19th century wood.

1961 Stuiver used historical records of sunspot activity to calculate
cosmic ray intensity, and hence 14C production for the past 1500
years, and suggesting that the observations of de Vries,
correlated with a sunspot minima.

1965 Stuiver used more detailed records to confirm the correlation of
a sunspot minimum with de Vries observations.

1967 Bucha and Neustupny provided paleomagnetic intensity measurments
that supported the existence of secular variations in the Earth's
magnetic field first proposed by Thellier. They were able to
model the variations of 14C production, and almost exactly match
the deviations between the tree-ring and radiocarbon time scales.

By 1969, it became apparent that calibration of the 14C dating method
was both possible, and required, to make radiocarbon dates
useful for the determination of calendar dates. (See the issues of
the journal ``Radiocarbon'' between 1960 and 1969 for published 14C
date lists.)
Indeed, it is often material from prior to 1969 that creationists
use as ammunition against the 14C dating method.

One useful method of calibrating 14C is dendrochronology, or age
dating
by counting tree rings. The basic idea of calibration is simple. Plot
the true date determined from counting tree rings versus the
radiocarbon
date. The result is a plot that can be used to both determine the
actual original 14C/12C ratios (useful for studies in
paleoclimatology)
and can be used to convert radiocarbon dates of other samples into
calendar dates.
The first use of dendrochronlogy to calibrate 14C was made by

1970 Furgeson used dendrochronology of bristlcode pines to calibrate
radiocarbon dating back to 7484- years b.p. (before the
present).

Through comparison with tree ring dates, the 14C method has
been calibrated back to more than 13,000 years before the present,

1991 Becker, et al publish a stable dendrochronological calibration
of 14C back to 11,000 years before the present using tree rings.
The chronology consists of a 9,928-year absolutely dated
dendrochronological record of Holocene oak (Quercus robur,
Quercus petraea) and a 1,604-year floating Late Glacial and
Early Holocene chronology of pine (Pinus sylvestris) from
subfossil tree remains deposited in alluvial terraces of central
European rivers.

In addition, 14C dating has also been calibrated back to more
than 30,000 years before the present using uranium-thorium (isochron)
dating of corals [Bard, et al, 1990] and [Edwards, et al, 1993].
While it is unlikely that 14C will be useful for objects older
than 50,000 years, owing to the problems of background contamination
[Dickin, 1995] and [Lowe, 1991], there is a more recent paper by
[Kitagawa, H., and van der Plicht, J., 1998] discusses calibration
of 14C dating back to 45,000 b.p. using U-Th dates of glacial lake
varve sediments (periodic sedimentary layers).

References:
Arnold, J. R. and Libby, W. F. (1949) Age determinations by
radiocarbon
content: Checks of samples with known age. Science 110, 678-680.

Bard, E., Hamelin, B., Fairbanks, R.G., and Zinder, A., (1990),
Calibration of the 14C timescale over the past 30,000 years
using mass spectrometric U-Th ages from Barbados corals,
Nature, 345, 405-410.

Becker, B., Kromer, B., and Trimborn P., 1991, A stable-isotope
tree-ring timescale of the Late Glacial/Holocene boundary:
Nature, vol. 353 (17 Oct 1991), 647-649.

Dickin, A. P. (1995), Radiogenic Isotope Geology, Cambridge University
Press.

Dalrymple, G. Brent, (1991), The Age of the Earth. California:
Stanford
University Press, ISBN 0-8047-1569-6.

Edwards, R. L., Beck, J. W., Burr, G. S., Donahue, D. J.,
Chappell, J. M. A., Bloom, E. R. M., Druffel, E. R. M.,
Taylor, F. W., 1993, A large drop in atmospheric 14-C/12-C
and reduced melting in the Younger Dryas*, documented with
230-Th ages in corals: Science, vol. 260 (14 May 1993), 962-967

Furgeson, C. W. (1970), Dendrochronology of bristlecone pines, Pinus
aristata. Establishment of a 7484-year chronology in the
White Mountains of eastern-central California, USA.
In: I. U. Olsson (Ed.), Radiocarbon Variations and
Absolute Chronology, Proc. 12th Nobel Symp. Wiley, pp.
629-40.

Kitagawa, H., and van der Plicht, J., (1998), Atmospheric radiocarbon
calibration to 45,000 yr B.P: Late glacial fluctuations and
cosmogenic isotope production, Science, v. 279, 20 Feb 1998.

Libby, W. F. (1952) Radiocarbon dating, University of Chicago Press.

Libby, W. F. (1970) Ruminations on radiocarbon dating
In: I. U. Olsson (Ed.), Radiocarbon Variations and
Absolute Chronology, Proc. 12th Nobel Symp. Wiley, pp. 629-40.

Lowe, J. John, ed. (1991) Radiocarbon Dating: Recent Applications and
Future Potential, Quaternary Proceedings, Number 1, 1991,
Published
for the Quaternary Research Association, Wiley.

==
"fooled by randomness"  book on probability
==
Due to the process of nutation, Earth¹s tilt varies from 22.1 degrees to
24.5 degrees over a 42,000 year cycle.
==
Did Magnetic Blip Trigger Mass Extinction?
It was a dying on a scale never seen before or since on
Earth. The slaughter was everywhere; the fertile ocean and balmy
supercontinent Pangea were transformed into killing fields, littered with the
bodies of ancient animals. By the time the dust had settled on the
Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago, 90 percent of life on
the planet had been snuffed out.
Now a new theory suggests the catastrophe was set in motion 15 million years
earlier, deep in the Earth. On the edge of the molten outer core, a plume of
super-hot material began rising through the mantle, upsetting convection in
the core and throwing the planet's magnetic field into disarray.
The weakening of Earth's magnetic field exposed the surface to a shower of
cosmic radiation, says Yukio Isozaki of the University of Tokyo. He believes
the radiation broke nitrogen in the atmosphere into ions that acted as seeds
for clouds enshrouding the planet.
"This would've caused severe cooling and a drop in sea level" as the cool
temperatures allowed massive ice sheets to accumulate on the continents,
Isozaki said. "If you check the rock record at that time, tropical coral reefs
die first. Then you start to see fauna from mid latitudes move into the
tropics. It all points to cooling."
The superplume disrupted the magnetic field and put a strain on creatures
living on the surface, but it was only the beginning. Five million years later
it reached the surface, Isozaki said, and the hot material punched through the
crust, erupting as three successive supervolcanoes.
Today the remnants of those volcanoes are scattered through India, China and
Norway. On their own they were too small to do much harm, but together Isozaki
thinks they cooled the climate even further, launching an extinction as bad as
the one that would kill the dinosaurs 185 million years later.
Then, 10 million years later, the Permian-Triassic extinction struck.
"The effects of the superplume were just the first punch of extinction,"
Isozaki said. "Then came the knockout punch, the Permian-Triassic extinction."
Isozaki thinks both "punches" were caused by the same superplume. Ten million
years after the smaller volcanoes blew their tops, a much larger volcano, the
Siberian Traps, erupted, launching the worst killing in the planet's history.
Gregory Retallack of the University of Oregon agrees that the late Permian
round of extinction was bad -- as much as 67 percent of species were
eradicated. But he doesn't think the two events are related. In the 10 million
years after the first punch in the late Permian, he said, life recovered.
"The late Permian looks good all over the world," Retallack said. "You've got
corals, healthy marine communities, and lots of fossil flora on land."
There's no questioning the severity of the Permian-Triassic crisis -- "We
almost lost it there," Retallack said -- but whether the two can be traced a
single mantle superplume, or they were unrelated, remains a mystery for now.
==
An ancient killer is hiding in the remote forests of Siberia.
Walled off from western eyes during the Soviet era and forgotten among the
endless expanse of wilderness, scientists are starting to uncover the remnants
of a supervolcano that rained Hell on Earth 250 million years ago and killed 90
percent of all life.
Researchers have known about the volcano -- the Siberian Traps, for years. And
they've speculated that the volcanic rocks, which cover an area about the size
of Alaska, played a role in runaway global warming that led to the end --
Permian mass extinction, the worst dying the planet has ever seen.
Now a team of researchers led by Henrik Svenson of the University of Oslo in
Norway have performed a series of experiments, showing the volcano employed an
arsenal of deadly weapons during its 200,000-year-long assault on the biosphere.
Prime among them was carbon. Searing magmas from the volcano intruded into the
Tunguska Basin in eastern Siberia, a region laden with thick deposits of coal,
oil and gas. Heat from the molten rock baked the hydrocarbons, turning the
area into the world's largest fossil fuel-burning plant. In all, the volcano
may have belched as much as 100,000 gigatons of carbon into the air (all of
humanity emits about eight gigatons of carbon annually).
That's more than enough to cause a global climate apocalypse. But the team
also wanted to know what happened when lava infiltrated the area's abundant
salt deposits. When heated in a laboratory to 275 degrees Centigrade (527
degrees Fahrenheit), the salts released a host of toxic gases, chief among
them methyl chloride, an efficient ozone-killer.
"This is the first geologically realistic evidence that ozone collapse during
the end-Permian could have actually happened," Svenson said.
But there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the findings, Linda
Elkins-Tanton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said.
"There is evidence of a large number of genetic mutations in the fossil record
around this time," she said, which could be the result of an onslaught of
ultraviolet radiation due to a weak ozone layer. "But the idea of ozone
destroyers is pretty new. The question is whether or not the eruptions were
powerful enough to inject gases into the stratosphere."
The answer may come from close examination of hundreds of pipe-like structures
strewn throughout the Tunguska Basin. Often 300 meters (984 feet) in diameter,
Svenson's team believes the pipes are ancient volcanic craters left over after
the lethal mix of carbon and chlorine gases exploded into the atmosphere.
==
Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276 BCE - 194 BCE) is noted for being the first known
person to have calculated the circumference of the Earth. 
==
A theory is our attempt to explain the facts of something; the theory
of evolution for example only exists because there is evidence for
evolution. Theories don't exist where there are no facts; for example
there is no theory of where pink unicorns come from because no one
wants to formulate an explanation for something that doesn't exist.
The scientific method on the other hand, is a set of rules to test an
explanation, (a theory), to disprove it.
An Ideology however, is a collection of pervasive beliefs or a
collective mindset that may or may not involve facts, evidence or
and that's a perfectly sound ideology.
==
It's quite possible that our explanations for the truth of the
sciencel observation may never be 100% truthful simply because they
are not complete. However, I think it is fair to say they are now more
complete than they were 1,000 years ago.
With a theory (in the scientific sense) you have an idea or a group of
ideas that attempt to explain a natural phenomenon, and evidence is
sought to confirm or disconfirm the theory. Science tends to reward
those who successfully revise (or even topple) an established theory.
Opposition to the idea is actively solicited in the form of peer
review. Theories are constantly reviewed, revised, retested, and
questioned. In science, every theory is provisional. It says This
is what the evidence leads us to believe right now... but we could be wrong.
==
The ideal gas law is the equation of state of a hypothetical ideal
gas, first stated by Beno?t Paul ?mile Clapeyron in 1834.
The state of an amount of gas is determined by its pressure,
volume, and temperature according to the equation:
pV = nRT
where
p is the absolute pressure [Pa],
V is the volume [m3] of the vessel containing n, moles of gas,
n is the amount of substance of gas [mol],
R is the gas constant [8.314 472 m3?Pa?K 1?mol 1],
T is the temperature in kelvin [K].
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_gas_law
==
During the past four billion years, the old, stable cores of the continental
crust, called cratons, have ridden on their plates, repeatedly colliding to
form super-continents, most recently called Pangaea, then splitting up, as at
present. They are surrounded by greater or lesser continental shelves, which
is why in your simplistic, uninformed fantasies, they seem not perfectly to
align. They also often leave bits of themselves behind when they move by
seafloor spreading, which is one way in which geologists can work out previous
connections.
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ File:World_ geologic_ provinces. jpg
For instance, the Rockall Bank was formed west of Scotland approximately 55
million years ago, when the ancient continent of Laurasia was split apart by
plate tectonics. Greenland & Europe separated, with the northeast Atlantic
Ocean forming between them, but Rockall, formerly part of North America, was
left behind. At present only a tiny rock islet is above water, but much more
of the bank is exposed during the lower sea levels of glacial periods.
Supercontinents split apart by volcanic action, first rifting, then separating
due to seafloor spreading. This process doesn't proceed exactly along the
previous edges of continental plates. Bits previously attached to continents
can be found far from their previous "owners", as noted. But the timing of
splits & former positions of continents can be known from other methods, such
as paleomagnetism & comparisons of fossils. Evidence for the paleocontinents
of Laurasia, Gondwana & supercontinent Pangaea (~180 to 250 mya), for
instance, is provided by Triassic Period fossils of both plants & animals.
Older supercontinents such as Rodinia, which broke up rougly 750 mya, are
necessarily less well described. For even older ones, see link:
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Supercontinent
The timing of Pangaea's break up is confirmed by the age of Atlantic seafloor,
since continental drift results from seafloor spreading. Had you ever studied
geology, you'd already know this.
==
For instance, in every generation after Copernicus' 1543 proposal that the
earth moves around the sun annually & turns on its axis daily more astronomers
came to accept his view as a scientific fact rather than simply a mathematical
model. After the telescopic observations of Galileo & description of
elliptical planetary orbits by Kepler in 1609, advocacy of heliocentrism
became more common. When Newton published his theory of gravity in 1687,
explaining Kepler's laws of planetary motion, most natural philosophers were
finally convinced that the earth actually does orbit the sun, although this
fact wasn't definitely demonstrated directly until the discovery of aberration
of light by Bradley around 1728 & even more so by Bessel's measurement of
stellar parallax in 1838. Foucault's pendulum in 1851 showed that the earth
also actually does rotate on its axis.

Some scientists proposed common descent of all life on earth from a single or
few simple living things in the century before Darwin, but his work, like
Galileo's made it increasing difficult to maintain other conclusions based
upon observations of nature. Mendelian inheritance & subsequent developments
in cytology, microbiology, genetics & other fields ruled out any other
possibility as decisively as Newton defeated geocentrism. Now we can actually
directly observe common descent with modification in many organisms,
comparable to Bradley, Bessel's & Foucault's observations & experiments.
==
Source of Moon's Magnetism Found
Moon rocks delivered to Earth by Apollo astronauts held a mystery that has
plagued scientists since the 1970s: Why were the lunar rocks magnetic?
Earth's rotating, iron core produces the planet's magnetic field. But the moon
does not have such a setup.
Now, scientists at MIT think they have a solution. Some 4.2 billion years ago,
the moon had a liquid core with a dynamo (like Earth's core today) that
produced a strong magnetic field. The moon's magnetic field would have been
about 1-50th as strong as Earth's is today, the researchers say.
The MIT team found evidence for the molten-core theory by analyzing the oldest
of all the moon rocks that have not been subjected to major shocks from later
impacts  something that tends to erase all evidence of earlier magnetic
fields. In fact, it's older than any known rocks from Mars or even from the
Earth itself.
The rock was collected during the last lunar landing mission, Apollo 17, by
Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, the only geologist ever to walk on the moon.
"Many people think that it's the most interesting lunar rock," said MIT's Ben
Weiss, who is senior author of a paper on the new finding being published in
the Jan. 16 issue of the journal Science.
Weiss and his colleagues used a commercial rock magnetometer that was
specially fitted with an automated robotic system to study the rock's faint
magnetic traces. The results helped them to rule out the other possible
sources of the magnetic traces, such as magnetic fields briefly generated by
huge impacts on the moon. Those magnetic fields are very short lived, ranging
from just seconds for small impacts up to one day for the most massive strikes.
Rather, the rock readings showed it must have remained in a magnetic
environment for a long period of time  millions of years  and thus the field
must have come from a long-lasting magnetic dynamo.
That's not a new idea, but it has been "one of the most controversial issues
in lunar science," Weiss said.
Until the Apollo missions, many prominent scientists were convinced that the
moon was born cold and stayed cold, never melting enough to form a liquid
core. Apollo proved there had been massive flows of lava on the moon's
surface, but the idea that it has, or ever had, a molten core remained
controversial.
Their findings fit in with the prevailing theory that the moon was born when a
Mars-sized body crashed into the Earth and blasted much of its crust into
space, where it clumped together to form the moon.
==
"Alien" Atmosphere Helped Unfreeze Early Earth
Oxygen trapped in 635-million-year-old rocks from the Arctic has revealed that
ancient Earth once had an otherworldly atmosphere that might have helped melt
millions of years' worth of deep freeze.
Analysis of the chemical composition of rocks from the Norwegian island chain
of Svalbard shows a surprisingly low amount of a particular type, or isotope,
of oxygen.
Reduced levels of this isotope are linked to high levels of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere, and the new data suggest ancient Earth might have had 300 to
1,000 times more CO2 than current levels.
An atmosphere so rich in CO2 would still be breathable by modern standards,
but it would place limits on the growth of life as we know it.
"The numbers indicate a very, very different world" than scientists had
previously assumed, said study leader Huiming Bao of Louisiana State
University.
Bao and colleagues think their finding supports the "snowball Earth" theory,
which says that snow and ice accumulation worldwide once reached a threshold
that caused the entire planet to stay frozen for millions of years.
Most scientists believe Earth could only emerge from such a state after ten
million years or more, after atmospheric CO2 built up enough to finally
trigger melting and lead to a rapid thaw.
(Related: "Ancient 'Snowball Earth' Melted Fast Due to Methane" [May 28,
2008].)
But Bao notes that there is no direct evidence for high CO2 levels, and it's
possible his team's findings are due to a completely unfamiliar interaction
between the atmosphere and the biosphere.
Weird Air
Bao and colleagues analyzed a compound called sulfate from rocks dated to the
Neoproterozoic era, which lasted from a billion to 542 million years ago.
Sulfate forms when a charged sulfur atom binds with four oxygen atoms. The
complete molecule is highly stable, which makes sulfate a useful tool for
studying what types of oxygen atoms were present when the sulfate formed.
In the Svalbard study, which appeared last week in the journal Science, Bao
and colleagues looked at the sulfate-containing mineral carbonate and found
very low levels of an oxygen isotope called O-17.
Previously Bao and a different set of co-authors had examined sulfate in
another mineral called barite in samples from south China and West Africa
dated to roughly the same time period. Those rocks had also shown a low amount
of O-17.
Given that the abnormal isotope ratios occurred in several locales, University
of California, San Diego, chemist Mark Thiemens thinks the results are
associated with a widespread phenomenon.
The atmospheric effects were, "if not global, at least equatorial," said
Thiemens, who was not involved in the new study.
And geophysicist Raymond Pierrehumbert, of the University of Chicago, said the
result "underscores what I call 'Neoproterozoic weirdness,' namely that there
are a lot of strange geochemical signatures that indicate that the climate is
doing something radically different from what it was doing before or since."
Fragile Ecosystem
Scientists don't know what would have caused snowball Earth scenarios in the
past, but they do have ideas for what might trigger a repeat scenario in the
future.
Either nuclear weapons or a catastrophic asteroid impact could conceivably
shield Earth from the sun's rays long enough to turn it into a frozen planet,
study leader Bao said.
Such a state wouldn't be favorable to life, just as it might not have been
prior to 635 million years ago.
"Increasingly, lines of fossil evidence suggest that after this global
glaciation event, [the first] animals started to appear in the geological
record," Bao said. "Most believe this is not just a coincidence."
UCSD's Thiemens believes the new study presents a warning about the
instability of Earth's atmosphere and climate, in light of increases in
human-contributed greenhouse gases.
"I think the really important part is  it shows that the whole atmosphere in
the Earth system is actually reasonably fragile," he said.
==
Geological supercontinents 
Gondwana   Laurasia  Pangaea   Pannotia
Rodinia   Columbia   Kenorland · Ur   Vaalbara
==
ages of known Super Continents or Large
Continental
Assemblies?
Table 1. Terminology of supercontinents and other large continental
assemblies:
Arctica about 2500 Ma,
Atlantica about 2000 Ma,
Columbia about 1800 - 1500 Ma,
Gondwana about 600 - 500 Ma,
Kenorland about 2500 Ma,
Laurasia about 250 Ma,
Mawson continent about 1700 Ma,
Nena about 1800 Ma,
Palaeopangea about 1100 - 1000 Ma,
Pangea about 250 Ma,
Rodnia about 1100 - (800 - 700) Ma,
Ur about 3000 Ma.
Reference:
Supercontinents in Earth History.
Gondwana Research, V.6, No. 3, pp. 357-368.
(Table 1 on page 358, and breakup of Rodnia occurred at about 800-700
Ma on page 364.)

==
Helium becomes solikd at 0K and minimal 2.6 MPa
==
In animals, scientists have observed that a chemical called oxytocin
is involved in developing a bond between a mother and her young.
==
Fiddler crabs reveal honesty is not always the best policy
Dishonesty may be more widespread in the animal kingdom than previously
thought. A team of Australian ecologists has discovered that some male fiddler
crabs lie about their fighting ability by growing claws that look strong and
powerful but are in fact weak and puny. Published this week in the British
Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology, the study is the first direct
evidence that crabs bluff about their fighting ability.
The signals animals send each other about their fighting prowess - and the
honesty of these signals - is a long-standing problem in evolutionary biology.
Despite their size - they are just two centimetres across - fiddler crabs are
ideal for studying dishonesty in signalling. This is because males have one
claw that is massively enlarged (which they use to attract females or fight
rival males) and if they lose this claw during fights they can grow a
replacement. In most species the new claw is identical to the lost one, but
some species cheat by growing a new claw that looks like the original but is
cheaper to produce because it is lighter and toothless.
According to lead author of the study, Dr Simon Lailvaux of the University of
New South Wales: Whats really interesting about these 'cheap' claws is that
other males cant tell them apart from the regular claws. Males size each other
up before fights, and displaying the big claw is a very important part of this
process.
Dr Lailvaux and colleagues from the Australian National University measured
the size of the major claw in male fiddler crabs, and two elements of fighting
ability - claw strength and ability to resist being pulled from a tunnel. They
found that while the size of an original claw accurately reflects its strength
and the crab's ability to avoid being pulled out of its burrow, this
relationship does not hold true for a regenerated claw.
This means that while males can gain an idea of the performance abilities of
males with original claws from the size of those major claws, regenerated
claws dont reveal any information on performance capacities. Males with
regenerated claws can 'bluff' their fighting ability, like bluffing in a poker
game. Theyre not good fighters, but the deceptive appearance of their claw
allows them to convince other males that its not worth picking a fight with
them. The only time it doesnt work is when regenerated males hold territories,
which means they cant go around choosing their opponents - they have to fight
everyone who challenges them, and eventually someone will come along and
expose their bluff. Lailvaux explains.
The study is important because it helps shed light on an issue - dishonesty -
that is by definition hard to study. One of the reasons we dont know a huge
amount about dishonesty is because its tough to pick up on it. Dishonest
signals are designed to be difficult to detect, so to have a system like
fiddler crabs where were able to do experiments and test hypotheses about
dishonesty is pretty cool, he says.
The results also have important implications for individual reproductive
success and survival, as understanding the mechanisms and consequences of
dishonesty is essential to uncovering the full story of how these and other
animals live, die and reproduce.
According to Lailvaux: By studying exactly how animals fight, and what
physiological and performance capacities enable males to win fights, were
getting closer to identifying which traits are likely to be generally
important for male combat. Honest signalling is important for several reasons,
primarily because its important that fights dont always escalate into bloody
violence. Fighting can be costly in terms of time and energy, and its in an
individuals best interest to avoid risking being injured in a fight, so one of
the reasons why we think honest signalling has evolved is because animals need
to have a diplomatic option for settling disputes, as opposed to duking it out
with every male that comes along. If theres a way for individuals to assess
beforehand which males they are likely to lose to in a fight and which ones
they are able to beat, then that allows them to plan accordingly.
Fiddler crabs live in mangrove swamps and mudflats. There are around 100
species worldwide. Despite their propensity for dishonesty, the name fiddler
crab comes from the fact that while waving their big claw to attract females
they look like they are playing the violin.
Simon P Lailvaux, Leeann T Reaney and Patricia R Y Backwell (2008). Dishonesty
signalling of fighting ability and multiple performance traits in the fiddler
crab Uca mjoebergi. Functional Ecology, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2435.2008.01501.x,
is published online on 12 November 2008.
==
Earth's crust was drifting 4 billion years ago
PLATE tectonics, crucial for creating the oceans and atmosphere essential for
life, began around a billion years earlier than we thought.
Michelle Hopkins and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles,
have found evidence of tectonics in zircon deposits that formed about 4
billion years ago. Analysis showed that minerals trapped within the zircon
crystals had formed at a lower temperature and higher pressure than expected
for crust of that age (Nature, vol 456, p 493). This suggests that the
crystals had been formed in a subduction zone, where one rocky tectonic plate
plunges beneath another, showing that plate tectonics was up and running at
this time.
While chemical traces in zircons have hinted that tectonics began this early,
this is the first direct evidence from actual minerals of the period, says
co-author Craig Manning.
==
Earths present-day greenhouse scourge, carbon dioxide, may have helped ancient
Earth escape a deep freeze, some U.K. scientists propose.The researchers claim
Earth never froze over completely during the Cryogenian Period, about 840 to
635 million years ago. This view contradicts the Snowball Earth hypothesis,
which claims Earth was locked in ice for many millions of years owing to a
runaway, planet-cooling chain reaction.What might have let the planet escape
this fate is unclear, but the scientists point to recent research from the
University of Toronto. This speculates that the advancing ice was stalled by
the interaction of the climate system and the carbon cycle of the ocean, with
carbon dioxide playing a key role in insulating the planet. Carbon dioxide is
by the same token today blamed for global warming.The Toronto scientists say
that as Earths temperatures cooled, oxygen was drawn into the ocean, where it
reacted chemically with organic matter, releasing carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere.Something must have kept the planets equatorial oceans from
freezing over, said geoscientist Phillip Allen of Imperial College London, who
with colleagues presented the new proposal in a paper published online Nov. 30
in the research journal Nature Geoscience.In the climate change game, carbon
dioxide can be both saint and sinner. These days we are so concerned about
global warming and the harm that carbon dioxide is doing to our planet.
However, approximately 600 million years ago, this greenhouse gas probably
saved ancient Earth and its basic life forms from an icy extinction.Allen,
whose previous research has found evidence of hot and cold cycles in the
Cryogenian period, said many papers have been published and much debate
devoted to the Snowball Earth theory.Sedimentary rocks deposited during these
cold intervals indicate that dynamic glaciers and ice streams continued to
deliver large amounts of sediment to open oceans. This evidence contradicts
the Snowball Earth theory, which suggests the oceans were frozen over. Yet,
many scientists still believe Snowball Earth to be correct.
==
Over millions of years, vast quantities of petroleum were trapped in
beachlike sand formations spanning an area roughly the size of Florida.
==
Flake  "The Computational Beauty of Nature"
==
Racing to the 'God Particle'
Physicists from all over the world are racing to prove the existence of a
particle that's surmised to be at the heart of the matter. Literally.
Dubbed the "God particle" by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman, the
Higgs boson is a controversial particle believed to bestow mass on all other
particles.
Scientists are hoping to discover traces of its presence in Fermilab's
Tevatron, a 7-mile-long circumference particle accelerator that smashes
opposing beams of protons and antiprotons around a circular track, sifting
through the debris with two immense detectors called CDF and D0.
Because it plays a key role in the standard model of physics (the theory on
which physicists base their whole understanding of matter), proving the
existence or absence of the Higgs boson could rock the entire foundation of
physics, indicating the existence of particles and forces not yet imagined and
paving the way for an entirely new set of laws.
"The Higgs boson is interesting because it is the only reasonable explanation
we have for the origin of mass," says Dave Rainwater, a researcher at
FermiLab. "Without the Higgs, all fundamental particles would be massless, and
the universe would be very different. The weak nuclear forces wouldn't be weak
at all, for instance, so the elemental composition of the cosmos would be
radically different, stars would shine differently, and we probably wouldn't
exist."
The best experimental data on the Higgs boson so far comes from experiments
done with the LEP collider at CERN, near Geneva, in 2000. Results indicated
that the Higgs particle was too heavy to be detected by the collider and that
it probably had a mass of 114 billion electron-volts (GeV). The Tevatron is
expected to be able to spot the Higgs in a couple of years, if it is not
heavier than 170 GeV to 180 GeV.
If all else fails, the Large Hadron Collider being built at CERN, scheduled to
go online in 2007, is designed to guarantee discovery of the Higgs. With a
27-kilometer-circumference tunnel, the LHC will collide protons at seven times
the energy levels of the Tevatron.
And the payoff for whoever discovers the Higgs boson? Nothing less than a
Nobel Prize. "Its discovery would be one of the crowning achievements of
modern science, and validate decades of intense research," says John Conway, a
professor at Rutgers University.
"We believe that the Higgs is the key to unlocking the mystery of the
elementary particles: the quarks and the leptons. The standard model does not
give us the answers to many questions: Why are there three 'generations' of
matter particles? Why do they have the masses and electric charges that they
do? The Higgs is believed to be related to the mechanism by which the matter
particles get their mass, but there is no good theory yet as to why different
particles have different masses."
"One thing we expect the Higgs to open up is the question of supersymmetry,"
says John Womersley, co-spokesman of the D0 experiment at Fermilab.
"Supersymmetry is a relationship between the particles of matter and the
forces of the universe. Mathematically, it's beautiful. Not one piece of
direct experimental data really supports it yet. Finding a Higgs in the place
we expect would be a piece of evidence. Not finding it would be a big problem
for the advocates of this idea.
"What would shake the foundation of physics much more than finding the Higgs
would be a definitive 'ruling it out.' That would upset all of our conceptions
about how the universe works. It would make supersymmetry something that, if it
applies in the universe, does so only at much higher energies than we can
observe. And it would require new forces or new laws to explain masses, in the
absence of a Higgs."
The last stage in this three-stage relay race is a linear collider. While the
LHC is guaranteed to make a definitive discovery or exclusion, it will not be
able to measure the properties of the Higgs precisely. "There is an
international consensus among the particle physics community that we would
need another accelerator to go one step beyond and resolve the riddles ...
nature gives us, (of) which we will have first insights from the Tevatron and
the LHC," said Dr. Klaus Desch, a scientist at the University of Hamburg who
is working on the European study for such a machine called TESLA.
"The linear collider will enable us to actually verify that the Higgs has
exactly the properties we expect. We'll be able to test that it couples to
each particle proportional to the mass," added Womersley.
==
e=mc2: 103 years later, Einstein's proven right
It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2 has
finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French,
German and Hungarian physicists.
A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for
Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have
set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the
particles at the nucleus of atoms.
According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons
comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons.
The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is
only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent?
The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on
Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks
and gluons.
In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his
Special Theory of Relativity in 1905.
The e=mc2 formula shows that mass can be converted into energy, and energy can
be converted into mass.
By showing how much energy would be released if a certain amount of mass were
to be converted into energy, the equation has been used many times, most
famously as the inspirational basis for building atomic weapons.
But resolving e=mc2 at the scale of sub-atomic particles -- in equations
called quantum chromodynamics -- has been fiendishly difficult.
"Until now, this has been a hypothesis," France's National Centre for
Scientific Research (CNRS) said proudly in a press release.
"It has now been corroborated for the first time."
For those keen to know more: the computations involve "envisioning space and
time as part of a four-dimensional crystal lattice, with discrete points
spaced along columns and rows."
==
Galaxy Surprise Sheds Light on Dark Matter
A study of small galaxies circling around the Milky Way found that while they
range dramatically in brightness, they all surprisingly pack about the same
mass. The work suggests there is a minimum size for galaxies, and it could
shed light on mysterious dark matter.
Spinning around the Milky Way are at least 23 pint-sized galaxies, each
shining with the light of anywhere from a thousand to a billion suns. Though
each of these galaxies is very dim compared to large galaxies like our own,
they span a large range in brightness.
Astronomers led by Louis Strigari of the University of California-Irvine
studied the movements of individual stars in these satellite galaxies to
determine the mass of each galaxy.
"What we found was astonishing, which was that they all had the same mass,"
said researcher James Bullock, a UC-Irvine astrophysicist. "It's not what we
were expecting  we were really taken off guard."
Loaded with dark matter
The finding could help explain the mysterious stuff called dark matter and how
it affects the formation of galaxies. Nobody knows what dark matter is, but its
presence is revealed by gravity that is not produced by the regular matter that
can be seen.
Despite their wide-ranging brightnesses, all of the 23 satellite galaxies
around the Milky Way seem to have a central mass of 10 million times that of
the sun. And what's more, almost all of that mass seems to be made up of dark
matter, with just the tiniest smidgen of visible matter producing stars.
"These are by far the dimmest galaxies that have ever been discovered, and the
least luminous of these things are the most dark-matter-dominated things that
we know about," Bullock told SPACE.com.
Though they qualify as galaxies, the satellites are not pinwheel spirals like
the Milky Way and its cousins. Rather, these dwarf galaxies look more like
diffuse, puffy balls of light.
Dark matter wells
The fact that these galaxies, the smallest ever seen, all weigh about the same
may mean that there is a lower threshold for the mass of galaxies. Though as to
why there would be a minimum galactic size, "I have to say right now we're
totally at a loss," Bullock said.
The researchers do have some ideas, though.
For one, maybe there are no dark matter clumps smaller than these galaxies,
and their size represents the critical mass necessary for dark matter to
condense into a clump.
"Maybe we've kind of hit a limit of how dark matter can cluster, and if that's
true, maybe that tells us something about the dark matter particle itself,"
Bullock said.
Another option is that dark matter can form smaller clumps than these, but it
just can't give rise to visible-light galaxies, he said. Perhaps the process
of galaxy formation, which isn't fully understood, depends on having a minimum
mass to begin with.
"You can think of a dark matter clump as a well, and the more massive the dark
matter clump, the deeper that well is, and the harder it is for the normal
matter to float out of it," Bullock said. "It could be that there are smaller
clumps, but their wells are so shallow that any normal matter just falls right
out."
The hunt for dark matter
The astronomers want to do further research, such as a detailed study of the
satellite galaxies around our neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, to probe the
meaning of their discovery.
"We want to try to figure out if what we're learning is really a limit on how
massive a clump of dark matter can be, or just a limit on massive a galaxy can
be," Bullock said.
The researchers hope that by combining their findings with new observations
and predictions made by theoretical models of dark matter, scientists may
ultimately get to the bottom of what dark matter is made of.
At the very least, the discovery raises many new questions.
"These are very intriguing results, absolutely," said Savvas Koushiappas, a
physicist at Brown University who was not involved in the study. "The thing I
find extremely puzzling is, well, what does this tell us about physics? Is it
truly a problem with [galaxy formation], or is it touching something
fundamental about dark matter? It's a very interesting result and deserves
attention, and it's something that now we have to think about. We have a lot
of work to do."
==
At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and
Complexity by Stuart Kauffman (Paperback - November 21, 1996)

Complexity is the study of
how agglomerations of agents behaving individually come to manifest
dramatically complex group behaviors (called "emergent phenomena") with a
richness you could never derive from the study of the simple components.
Commonly studied emergent behaviors include the stock market, economies,
flocks of birds and fish, the rise of life from pre-biotic molecular soup, the
properties of complex molecules compared to the properties of their component
atoms, etc... Methods of study are frequently computer simulations that model
emergent complexity using simple rules in a recursive way reminiscent of chaos
theory research. Indeed, Langton shows that emergent complexity is along the
same continuum as chaos, but pitched at the edge between chaos and static
order - literally the "edge of chaos". 

The fact that informational order appears spontaneously seems to violate the
2nd law of thermodynamics - but does not because only information is being
created, not energy. Kauffman calls it "order for free". This emergent order
is deeply significant in a number of ways. First of all it provides a way of
studying the structures of reality that are too messy and dynamic to fit
classical reductionist science. But, more importantly, the reality of emergent
complexity says something deeper about a creative generative force in the
universe which resonates deeply with human spiritual feelings. Seeing order
emerge spontaneously feels like witnessing "creation". In the latter chapters
we see that evolution moves complex systems closer towards the edge of chaos
(lambda around 1/4). Not only does this give a mathematical model for
"evolutionary fitness" (which previously had been only definable as a
tautology: evolutionary fitness = higher rates of survival (i.e. fitness)) but
this also suggests a deeper concordance between a particular degree of chaos
and some powerful natural property of phase transition that somehow engenders
all the amazing dynamical systems we marvel at - particularly life itself on
all its levels, from the swirling metabolic action of cells to the cellular
group behavior of complex organisms such as ourselves, and our higher level
social behavior. It's not an accident of evolution - it's an important,
universal and inevitable law of nature, like gravity or electromagnetism.
==
In the last Ice Age, sea levels fell about 130 meters and much of Russia
escaped a big ice sheet. Scientists can build sea level records from fossils
because ocean chemistry varies; salt, for instance, is more concentrated when
there is less sea water.
==
While they have no electric charge, neutrinos carry a magnetic field.
==
Annuals versus Perennials -- Not a Garden Variety Solution
Scientists with the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology in Gent, Belgium,
have determined what makes plants either "annual," meaning they live one
growing season and die, or "perennial," meaning they regrow every spring. The
difference, according to work done by scientist Siegbert Melzer, comes down to
two critical flower-inducing genes that, when turned off, can turn an annual
into a perennial. The rapid growth of flowers, and then seeds, is the strategy
most annuals use to propagate from one generation to the next and one growing
season to the next. Annuals experience "rapid growth following germination
and rapid transition to flower and seed formation, thus preventing the loss of
energy needed to create permanent structures," said a statement about the
research from the institute. "They germinate quickly after the winter so that
they come out before other plants, thus eliminating the need to compete for
food and light. The trick is basically to make as many seeds as possible in
as short a time as possible." Perennials instead build "structures" such
as overwintering buds, bulbs or tubers, that contain cells that are not
yet specialized and, when the next growing season begins, can be converted
into stalks and leaves. An annual uses up all of its non-specialized cells
making flowers, and thus, after dropping seeds, it dies. The growth of the
flowers is triggered by the plant sensing the length of day and amount of
sunlight. When the light is just right, "blooming-induction genes" are
triggered. By deactivating two of the genes that induce flower growth
in the thale cress, a flowering plant whose genome has been entirely
sequenced, the researchers created mutant plants that "can no longer
induce flowering, but . . . can continue to grow vegetatively or come
into flower much later." Because the plants don't use up the store of
non-specialized cells making flowers, they become perennials, able
to continue to grow for a long time. And, like true perennials,
the altered annuals show secondary growth with wood formation.
==
Dusty Shock Waves Generate Planet Ingredients

Shock waves around dusty, young stars might be creating the raw materials for
planets, according to new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The evidence comes in the form of tiny crystals. Spitzer detected crystals
similar in make-up to quartz around young stars just beginning to form
planets. The crystals, called cristobalite and tridymite, are known to reside
in comets, in volcanic lava flows on Earth, and in some meteorites that land
on Earth.

Astronomers already knew that crystallized dust grains stick together to form
larger particles, which later lump together to form planets. But they were
surprised to find cristobalite and tridymite. What's so special about these
particular crystals? They require flash heating events, such as shock waves,
to form.

The findings suggest that the same kinds of shock waves that cause sonic booms
from speeding jets are responsible for creating the stuff of planets throughout
the universe.

"By studying these other star systems, we can learn about the very beginnings
of our own planets 4.6 billion years ago," said William Forrest of the
University of Rochester, N.Y. "Spitzer has given us a better idea of how the
raw materials of planets are produced very early on."Forrest and University of
Rochester graduate student Ben Sargent led the research, to appear in the
Astrophysical Journal.

Planets are born out of swirling pancake-like disks of dust and gas that
surround young stars. They start out as mere grains of dust swimming around in
a disk of gas and dust, before lumping together to form full-fledged planets.
During the early stages of planet development, the dust grains crystallize and
adhere together, while the disk itself starts to settle and flatten. This
occurs in the first millions of years of a star's life.

When Forrest and his colleagues used Spitzer to examine five young
planet-forming disks about 400 light-years away, they detected the signature
of silica crystals. Silica is made of only silicon and oxygen and is the main
ingredient in glass. When melted and crystallized, it can make the large
hexagonal quartz crystals often sold as mystical tokens. When heated to even
higher temperatures, it can also form small crystals like those commonly found
around volcanoes.

It is this high-temperature form of silica crystals, specifically cristobalite
and tridymite, that Forrest's team found in planet-forming disks around other
stars for the first time. "Cristobalite and tridymite are essentially
high-temperature forms of quartz," said Sargent. "If you heat quartz crystals,
you'll get these compounds."

In fact, the crystals require temperatures as high as 1,220 Kelvin (about
1,740 degrees Fahrenheit) to form. But young planet-forming disks are only
about 100 to 1,000 Kelvin (about minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit to 1,340
Fahrenheit) -- too cold to make the crystals. Because the crystals require
heating followed by rapid cooling to form, astronomers theorized that shock
waves could be the cause.

Shock waves, or supersonic waves of pressure, are thought to be created in
planet-forming disks when clouds of gas swirling around at high speeds
collide. Some theorists think that shock waves might also accompany the
formation of giant planets.

The findings are in agreement with local evidence from our own solar system.
Spherical pebbles, called chondrules, found in ancient meteorites that fell to
Earth are also thought to have been crystallized by shock waves in our solar
system's young planet-forming disk. In addition, NASA's Stardust mission found
tridymite minerals in comet Wild 2.
==
Very intelligent people can reach a state of cognitive
dissonance, and the history of science is littered with examples. How
many brilliant scientists have been caught, unable to accept that a
pet notion has been refuted, even as the evidence steadily mounts against them?
===
How Water Made Earth Livable for Us - The Peroxy Way
Living on a planet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere we tend to forget that our
planet is an anomaly.
About 4.5 billion years ago, when the solar system accreted out of a disk of
gas and dust, the Earth was thoroughly reduced. Over the course of the first
1-2 billion years our planet became slowly, but inextricably ever more
oxidized. Vast amounts of iron rich sediments precipitated out of the oceans,
known as "Banded Iron Formations" or BIFs, indicating that reduced ferrous
iron, Fe2+, converted into ferric iron, Fe3+. This required a large, sustained
supply of oxidizing power.
In his 1984 book, "The Chemical Evolution of the Atmosphere and Oceans," H. D.
Holland estimated that, over the 2+ billion years during which the BIFs
precipitated, at least 1012 gram oxygen had to be injected into the Earth's
oceans every year. Sometime around 2.4 to 2.3 billion years ago, the global
oxidation accelerated. During this remarkable period, known as the "Great
Oxidation Event," free O2 appeared in Earth's atmosphere and soon increased to
the over 20% O2, which we now enjoy.
The Great Oxidation Event is attributed to the invention of photo-synthesis:
the capacity of living organisms, using sunlight, to split H2O and CO2 into O2
plus reduced H and C, which in turn combine to produce organic compounds. New
forms of life appeared that could harness the newly available chemical energy:
first microbial and later multi-cellular organisms prospered in the oceans and
eventually conquered the land.
If the Great Oxidation Event can be linked to oxygenic photo-synthesis, the
question remains what process might have driven the earlier slow oxidation of
Earth.
One school of thought has promoted the idea that some form of oxygenic
photo-synthesis was invented very early on, soon after the origin of life.
Maybe colonies of photosynthetic bacteria, similar to today's cyanobacteria,
were building stromatolites in shallow waters along the coasts of early
continents, pumping out enough oxygen to precipitate the BIFs and prepare the
way for the stupendous rise of free O2 in Earth's atmosphere during the Great
Oxidation Event.
The "invention" of oxygenic photosynthesis so early in Earth's history poses
serious problems. Oxygen is one of the most reactive elements in nature, and
is toxic to life adapted to reducing environments. Before pumping out oxygen
as part of their metabolism, the microorganisms must have learned how to
handle this dangerous by-product of their cellular biochemistry and how to
extract the energy. They must have learned how to detoxify those Reactive
Oxygen Species, commonly referred to in microbiologists' circles as ROS, which
are the scourge of all forms of life.
One possible solution to this dilemma is that, long before the Great Oxidation
Event, the Earth might have been slowly oxidized by some non-biological
process. Such a process would have given the microorganisms time to adapt to
the changing environment or, as Dr. Lynn Rothschild of the NASA Ames Research
Center said, "It would have provided a training ground for early life to learn
how to handle oxygen."
Indeed, such a non-biological process exists. When rocks crystallize from
magmas that contain dissolved gases, mostly H2O, or when minerals
re-crystallize at high temperatures in H-2Oladen environments, water becomes
an impurity in their crystal matrices, usually in the form of hydroxyl, OH.
Even minerals that do not normally contain hydroxyl invariably take up small
amounts of water giving O3Si-OH, more generally O3X-OH, where X can be Si4+,
Al3+, etc. Most of those will occur in the form of O3X-OH OH-XO3 pairs.
In the Earth Sciences redox reactions are broadly discussed, usually involving
transition metal cations that change their valence states such as Fe2+
oxidizing to Fe3+. Redox reactions involving anions are also quite popular
such as reactions with sulfur that can change from sulfide, S2-, to sulfate,
SO42-, where sulfur is in the valence state S6+. However, for some unknown
reason, oxygen anions are always considered to be frozen into their 2 valence
state, O2-.
Years ago, while studying impurity hydroxyls in MgO, I discovered an unusual
redox reaction that involves OH pairs: during cooling OH pairs in the MgO
matrix change into peroxy anions, O22, plus H2, as indicated in Equation 1. In
other words, two oxygens change their valence from 2- to 1-, meaning that they
become oxidized, while two protons become reduced to molecular H2:

OH + OH o O22- + H2

[Equation 1]

In subsequent years it became clear that hydroxyls in silicate minerals, also
due to some "water" being incorporated during crystallization or
re-crystallization, undergo the same type of redox reaction, oxidizing two
oxygens to the peroxy state while splitting off an H2 molecule, as depicted in
this graphic of Equation 2.
H2 is capable of diffusing away over time, even escaping to grain boundaries
and beyond. Thus, an interesting situation arises: Rocks that contain minerals
with impurity hydroxyl  essentially any rock  will acquire peroxy as a memory
of their solute H2O content. A peroxy, however, is nothing but an extra O atom
stored in the mineral structure, equivalent to half an oxygen molecule, O2:

O3Si-OO-SiO3 o O3Si-O-SiO3 + 12 O2

[Equation 3]
There are numerous consequences. One is rooted in semiconductor physics. A
peroxy is composed of two O, which are tightly bound together and inactive for
all practical purposes. However, when a peroxy bond breaks, the rock becomes a
semiconductor. The reason is that an O in a matrix of O2- is a defect electron
or "hole". It is associated with energy levels in the valence band of the
otherwise insulating silicate minerals. All mineral grains in a rock that are
in physical contact with others are also in electric contact, as far as their
valence bands are concerned. In other words, a hole in any given mineral grain
in a rock is able to pass to any neighboring grains. In fact, the holes
associated with O states have been shown in the laboratory to travel through
meters of rock as well as through sand and soil. There is little doubt that
these electronic charge carriers are able to travel large distances through
the Earth's crust, through tens of kilometers at least.
All that is needed for these electric currents to start flowing are: (i) a
process to break the peroxy bonds, (ii) a pathway for the charge carriers to
flow.
It has been shown that stressing rocks causes peroxy bonds to break and to
release hole charge carriers that travel fast and far. This photograph shows a
4-meter long piece of granite squeezed at one end. Upon running a wire from the
stressed end to the front end, where a copper electrode is attached, a current
of about 1 nanoampere is obtained. This current runs along the stress gradient
for hours, even days, as long as the load on the rock is kept constant. Taking
off the load causes the current to fade. Re-stressing the rock causes to the
current to come back. The process can be repeated many times. The rock is a
battery that is charged by stress and can be recharged by re-applying stress.
When we replace the copper contact with a water bath, into which we introduce
a copper electrode, the same current flows. Using a slab of gabbro, a rock
mineralogically similar to basalt, we measure a current on the order of 100
nanoamperes. It has been flowing for over 4 weeks without loosing more than
30% of its initial strength. However, with water, we see a new reaction: the
holes that flow through the rock and pass through the rock-water interface
oxidize water to hydrogen peroxide, H2O to H2O2. The reaction is quantitative,
generating one H2O2 molecule for every two hole charge carriers that cross the
rock-water interface.
What does this mean for the early Earth? The geological literature provides
convincing evidence that our home planet has been tectonically active since
the earliest times. There must have been plenty of tectonic stresses acting on
the rocks that built the continents. There must have been plenty of stress
gradients, along which the same type of hole currents were flowing that we can
now demonstrate in laboratory experiments. Wherever these currents crossed
rock-water interfaces, for instance along continental margins at subduction
zones or other mountain-building regions, water must have been oxized to
hydrogen peroxide, which in turn decomposes rapidly into water plus oxygen:

H2O2 o H2O + 12 O2

[Equation 4]
This electrochemical oxidation of water must have helped our planet to become
ever more oxidized, contributing to the early slow oxidation of Earth.
Yet, electrochemical oxidation of water was surely not the only reaction that
pushed the early Earth toward an ever higher degree of oxidation. Global
weathering has to be taken into consideration, too. Weathering is a powerful
process that dissolves rocks and wears down mountains. Today about 3 km3 of
rocks pass through the global weathering cycle every year. When the Earth was
young, the continents were bare and the rain was more acid than today due to
the higher CO2 content in the early atmosphere. Hence, weathering rates must
have been higher too, say 10 km3 per year. When weathering eats into a rock,
water hydrolyzes the peroxy and produces hydrogen peroxide, even if the H2
molecules formed according to equation 5 still linger around:

O3Si-OO-SiO3 + 2 H2O o O3Si-OH + OH-SiO3 + H2O2

[Equation 5]

If we take a conservative estimate for the average peroxy content in rocks,
300 parts per million, the amount of H2O2 released globally at a weathering
rate of 10 km3 per year translates into 1013 grams per year. This is 10x the
amount that H. D. Holland estimated to be necessary to precipitate the BIFs.
Thus we come to the tentative conclusion that, through weathering and
electrochemistry, peroxy in rocks provided enough oxidation power to change
the course of our planet's history. Over the course of 1.5 to 2 billion years,
peroxy forced the early Earth to slowly but inextricably become ever more
oxidized. Along the way dangerous Reactive Oxygen Species, constantly produced
at rock-water interfaces and during peroxy hydrolysis, challenged the early
microbes, archaea and bacteria. As Dr. Rothschild so aptly put it, the ROS
might have provided a "training ground" for those early micro-organisms to
learn how to deal with oxygen. They developed the basic enzymatic defenses,
which our bodies still use today to fend off the detrimental side effects of
our oxygen-based metabolism.
Thus, while the Earth was still overwhelmingly reduced, eukaryotes joined the
archaea and bacteria. Under the onslaught of those ROS, the eukaryotes
"learned" how to survive in an oxygen-spiked environment long before free O2
gas appeared in Earth's atmosphere. At some point the eukaryotes learned how
to take advantage of the large chemical energy that oxygen can provide. They
adapted to do oxygenic photosynthesis, to tap the energy in O2. This lead to
the Great Oxidation Event and to plenty of free O2 in Earth's atmosphere that
made our planet livable for us...and it all started with water and a
little-known solid state reaction in the rocks.


==
The last interglacial period about 100 kya was much warmer than now,
as shown by raised beaches in Alaska. Hippos lived in the Thames at
London. Scandinavia was an island. Yet no evidence of a coal-burning
Neanderthal Industrial Revolution has been found.
The Holocene Climatic Optimum, which ended about 5000 years ago, was
also warmer than the current phase of the present interglacial. Since
then, warmer & colder periods have alternated with some regularity.
The Roman Warm Period around the time of Christ was followed by the
Dark Ages Cold Period. During the subsequent Medieval Warm Period,
England grew better wine grapes than France & the Norse established
dairy farms in Greenland. The Little Ice Age wiped them out & buried
their farms under tundra. Recently, during the present Modern Warm
Period, which began around 1850, sheep but not cattle have returned to
Greenland. Wine is also again being made in England, although it's
not very good & the industry remains tiny.
==
Gamma Ray burst
Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite found one with a red shift of
6.7 or 12.8 billion light years away. So far, that's the record.
==
Extreme supernova explosions of the type that produce GRBs require stars of
both great mass and low metallicity. (In astronomy, "metals" are any elements
heavier than hydrogen or helium.) "Larger galaxies tend to be more metal-rich
than smaller ones.
"Metals in a star produce strong stellar winds -- the metals' atoms reflect
the star's light and act like a solar sail, getting an extra push that
hydrogen and helium alone would not get," says Fruchter. "This activity
causes some of the star's mass to flow out into space."
So, stars with high metallicity tend to lose a lot of their mass before
they explode. "[Metals] can cause such great mass loss that instead of
turning into black holes upon collapse, some stars may only turn into
neutron stars. It's quite possible that a black hole may need to be
present to create a gamma-ray burst."
==
The criteria desired for index fossils are that they are common, widely 
distributed and with a restricted stratigraphic range, though to a 
degree the latter requirement can be relaxed by using the range of 
co-occurrence of two or more taxa. (The typical rank of a taxon used as 
in index fossil is a species; sometimes infraspecific taxa are used;
==
Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions
(Paperback) by Lisa Randall
==
Isochron, Ar-Ar and Uranium concordia all agree generally in dating formations.
==
Limestone covers about 10% of the earth surface.
A flood does not deposit limestome.
==
The early iron items, prior to about 900BC, was
so valuable that only kings could afford it.
==
http://www.physorg.com/    science news
==
Let me define fact for you.
It is data that has been proven, tested and confirmed to such a degree, that
we would be astounded to find any evidence to its contrary.
==
"In ancient times, half our children would have died by the age of 20. Now,
in the Western world, 98 per cent of them are surviving to age 21.
==
The "deepest ever" living fish have been discovered, scientists
believe.
A UK-Japan team found the 17-strong shoal at depths of 7.7km (4.8
miles) in the Japan Trench in the Pacific - and captured the deep sea
animals on film.
The scientists have been using remote-operated landers designed to
withstand immense pressures to comb the world's deepest depths for
marine life.
Monty Priede from the University of Aberdeen said the 30cm-long
(12in), deep-sea fish were surprisingly "cute".
"Nobody has really been able to look at these depths before - and I
think we will see fish living much deeper" Alan Jamieson, Oceanlab.
The fish, known as Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis , can be seen darting
about in the darkness of the depths, scooping up shrimps.
Alan Jamieson, from the University of Aberdeen, said: "It was an
honour to see these fish.
"No-one has ever seen fish alive at these depths before - you just
never know what you are going to see when you get down there."
The deepest record for any fish is Abyssobrotula galatheae , which was
dredged from the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench at a depth of more
than 8km (5 miles) in 1970. However, it was dead by the time it
reached the surface.
The previous record for any fish to have been spotted alive was
thought to have stood at about 7km (4 miles).
Pressure points
The Hadeep project, which began in 2007, is a collaboration between
the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab and the University of Tokyo's
Ocean Research Institute (Ori) and aims to expand our knowledge of
biology in the deepest depths of the ocean.
It is funded by the Nippon Foundation and the Natural Environment
Research Council (Nerc).
The researchers have been looking at the Hadal zone - the area of
ocean that sits between 6,000 and 11,000m (20,000-36,000ft). It
consists of very narrow trench systems, most of which are found around
the Pacific Rim.
[DEEP SEA DIVISIONS
Bathyal zone: 1,000-3,000m (3,000-10,000ft)
Abyss: 3,000-6,000m (10,000-20,000ft)
Hadal: 6,000m-11,000m (20,000-36,000ft)]
The researchers are able to explore them using specially designed
remote operated vehicles that are fitted out with cameras.
Professor Priede, director of Oceanlab, said: "There is the question
of how do animals live at all at these kinds of depths.
"There are three problems: the first is food supply, which is very
remote and has to come from 8km (5 miles) above.
"There is very high pressure - they have to have all sorts of
physiological modifications, mainly at the molecular level.
"And the third problem is that these deep trenches are in effect small
islands in the wide abyss and there is a question of whether these
trenches are big enough to support thriving endemic populations."
But this species appears to have overcome these issues, added
Professor Priede.
"We have spotted these creatures at depths of 7,703m (25,272ft) - and
we have actually found a massive group of them.
"And this video is pretty tantalising - the fact that there are 17 of
them implies that they could well be a family group, begging the
question of whether some form of parental care exists for these fish."
Vibration sensors
The researchers said they were surprised by the fish's behaviour.
"We certainly thought, deep down, fish would be relatively inactive,
saving energy as much as possible, and so on," Professor Priede told
BBC News.
"But when you see the video, the fish are rushing around, feeding
accurately, snapping at prey coming past."
Because the fish live in complete darkness, they use vibration
receptors on their snouts to navigate the ocean depths and to locate
food.
Professor Priede added: "Nobody has seen fish alive before at these
depths - only pickled in museums - and by the time they come up from
the depths they look in a pretty sorry state.
"But these fish are actually very cute."
Alan Jamieson added that he believed the team would find more fish
during their next expedition in March 2009, which would probe the
ocean between depths of 6,000m and 9,000m.
He told BBC News: "Nobody has really been able to look at these depths
before - I think we will see some fish living much deeper."

==
Before the Glen Canyon Dam was built, the average sediment transport rate
through the Grand Canyon was measured to be around 500,000 tons per day.
==
Galaxy Diversity Reveals Clues to Cosmic Evolution
Astronomers peering out into our cosmic backyard have long understood that the
Milky Way's galactic neighbors only seem similar on the surface. Now a detailed
survey from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the diversity of those
galaxies as they evolve over time.
The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST) program zeroed in on 14 million
stars in 69 nearby galaxies. Such galaxies sit close enough so that Hubble's
sharp eyes could single out the brightest stars instead of seeing a giant
smear of light, and may help settle raging debates over how galaxies and their
stars form in the first place.
"Instead of picking and choosing particular galaxies to study, our survey will
be complete by virtue of looking at 'all' the galaxies in the region," said
Julianne Dalcanton, head of the ANGST survey at the University of Washington
in Seattle. "This gives us a multi-color picture of when and where all the
stars in the local universe formed."
A galactic fossil record
The survey covered galaxies ranging 6.5 million light-years to 13 million
light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light will travel in a
year, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
Many nearby galaxies contain stars that are positive relics compared with the
younger stars in more distant galaxies. Astronomers can guess how those
younger stars may evolve based on the older nearby stars.
"Using the galaxies in the nearby universe as a 'fossil record,' we can
compare them with young galaxies far away," Dalcanton said. "This comparison
gives us a history of star formation and provides a better understanding of
the masses, structures and environments of the galaxies."
The formation of galaxies remains poorly understood, although evidence is
mounting that massive galaxies grow by clumping together and merging with
smaller brethren. This step-by-step evolution of gradually larger galaxies
competes with the theory that galaxies simply start from scratch.
However, some observations suggest that galaxies do have the power to expand
rapidly. Astronomers found a star factory 12.3 billion light-years away that
churns out 4,000 stars per year, compared with our Milky Way's 10 stars
annually. That burst of star-making activity suggests such a galaxy would only
need 50 million years to grow into one of the largest ever observed.
Stellar evolution
Many such large spiral galaxies created most of their stars early on,
according to a separate new study. Also relying on data from the Hubble
galactic survey, the astronomers examined the outer disk of M81 and found that
most stars formed more than 7 billion years ago, when the universe was half its
current age. The supernova deaths of massive stars within such mammoth galaxies
rapidly enriched them with heavy elements such as carbon.
"We were surprised by how quickly the elements formed and how the subsequent
star-formation rate for the bulk of the stars in M81 changed after that," said
Benjamin Williams, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Astronomers had believed that star populations become increasingly younger
further out within galaxies, but Hubble data indicated that older stars can
also lurk in a galaxy's outer arms. Recent simulation work has presented
another possible explanation  stars may wander all over spiral galaxies. The
survey should provide further data to flesh out current theories.
"With this information, we will be able to trace the complete cycle of star
formation in detail," Dalcanton said.
==
Science isn't in the business 
of proving anything. Science offers us models with which we can better 
understand natural phenomenon. It gives us a testable, reliable, 
dynamic (always subject to revision) means of interpreting reality.
==
Writing in about 300 BC, Theophrastus attempts to classify plants, as well 
as describing their structure, habits and uses. His remarks are based on 
observations carried out in Greece, but he also includes information brought 
back from the new Hellenistic empire in the Middle East, Persia and India, 
resulting from the conquests of Alexander the Great.
=
http://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/flat_earth_myth_ch8.html   flat earth
==
Discovery of world's oldest rocks challenged
Geologists in Canada may have discovered the oldest rocks on Earth. But a
controversy over the techniques used to date the rocks is threatening to
overshadow the discovery.
Finding the oldest rocks on Earth is important because they should help
scientists solve one of geology's great mysteries: how the surface of our
planet was transformed from the ocean of magma that existed in the Hadean  the
earliest era in Earth's history  into the floating tectonic plates we have
today.
For the last four years, Jonathan O'Neil of McGill University and colleagues
have been studying a large band of ancient rocks in northern Quebec known as
the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt. However, the team has used a controversial
method for dating the rocks.
The dating method relies on the amount of the common isotope neodymium-142 in
the rock. All rocks contain some neodymium-142, but rocks older than 4.2
billion years should contain more of it.
That's because it is produced by the radioactive decay of samarium-146, which
had largely disappeared 4.2 billion years ago. Any rocks that formed while
samarium-146 was still around would today contain larger than usual quantities
of neodymium-142.
"You can precisely measure the amount of neodymium-142 and calculate a precise
age for the rock," explains O'Neil. "In our case it gave us an age of 4.28
billion years." That's significantly older than any rock yet found on Earth.
Moon-forming blow
This could make the greenstone belt the oldest known rocks on Earth, just 300
million years younger than our solar system. It also dates them close to the
time when a massive object the size of Mars dealt Earth a glancing blow 4.53
billion years ago, knocking off the debris which formed the Moon.
The energy of the blow was such that the Earth's upper layers melted into an
ocean of magma. The next period for which we have evidence in the evolution of
Earth is around 3.8 billion years ago, by which time most geologists agree
plate tectonics were in place.
"What we really want to get to is what Earth looked like before 4 billion
years ago," says Martin Whitehouse of the Swedish Museum of Natural History,
who was not involved in the study.
"We want to understand how the early Earth transitioned from a magma ocean
through to the Earth at 3.8 billion years. Somewhere in those 700 million
years something changed. Any shred of evidence is important in trying to
reconstruct this evolution."
Ancient magma?
"To study how early crust formed we need to have samples of these rocks," says
O'Neil. With rocks in hand, it becomes possible to analyse every aspect of them
and retrace their history. O'Neil's latest find could help with that process.
However, the neodymium-142 levels may not be an indicator of the rock's age.
O'Neil himself admits his team may instead be measuring the age of the magma
from which the rocks formed. "All rocks have precursor, something that came
before they formed," says Whitehouse.
O'Neil's team has also used a conventional method to date the rocks which
suggests the greenstone belt is only 3.8 billion years old  about 200 million
years younger than the current oldest rock  Acasta gneiss, which was
discovered in Canada in 1999.
It is clear that O'Neil and his colleagues have discovered one of the oldest
signals from the very early stages in our planet's development. But how the
signal should be interpreted "is going to be very controversial", says
Whitehouse.
"On the weight of evidence from other studies in the area, I would still
consider that 3.8 billion years is more likely the actual age of the rocks,"
says Simon Wilde of the Institute for Geoscience Research in Australia.
Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.116
==
GRB 080913 exploded Sept. 13 at a whopping distance of 12.8 billion
light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. his image merges the view
through Swift's UltraViolet and Optical Telescope, which shows bright stars,
and its X-ray Telescope, which captures the burst (orange and yellow). Credit:
NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler
An explosion originating near the edge of the universe has been seen by an
orbiting NASA telescope. The burst of gamma rays is the farthest such event
ever detected.
The blast, designated GRB 080913, arose from an exploding star 12.8 billion
light-years away. It was detected by the Swift satellite and announced today.
==
The Sun Will Eventually Engulf Earth--Maybe
Researchers debate whether Earth will be swallowed by the sun as it expands
into a red giant billions of years from now
The future looks brightmaybe too bright. The sun is slowly expanding and
brightening, and over the next few billion years it will eventually desiccate
Earth, leaving it hot, brown and uninhabitable. About 7.6 billion years from
now, the sun will reach its maximum size as a red giant: its surface will
extend beyond Earths orbit today by 20 percent and will shine 3,000 times
brighter. In its final stage, the sun will collapse into a white dwarf.
==
Sept 14,1752 - The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar,
skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2).
Dates 5 October 1582 to 14 October 1582  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
==
WORLD VIEW 
330 BC Aristotle provides evidence of spherical earth 
240 BC Eratosthenes of Cyrene accurately calculates circumference of globe 
8th Century AD work by Bede shows acceptance of sphere idea 

Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms
in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the
"conspiracy" that the Earth is round.
"People are definitely prejudiced against flat-earthers, " says John Davis, a
flat earth theorist based in Tennessee, reacting to the new Microsoft
commercial.
"Many use the term 'flat-earther' as a term of abuse, and with connotations
that imply blind faith, ignorance or even anti-intellectualis m."
Mr Davis, a 25-year-old computer scientist originally from Canada, first
became interested in flat earth theory after "coming across some literature
from the Flat Earth Society a few years ago".
"I came to realise how much we take at face value," he says. "We humans seem
to be pleased with just accepting what we are told, no matter how much it goes
against our senses."
Mr Davis now believes "the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite - it
stretches horizontally forever".
"And it is at least 9,000 kilometres deep", he adds.
James McIntyre, a British-based moderator of a Flat Earth Society discussion
website, has a slightly different take. "The Earth is, more or less, a disc,"
he states. "Obviously it isn't perfectly flat thanks to geological phenomena
like hills and valleys. It is around 24,900 miles in diameter."
Mr McIntyre, who describes himself as having been "raised a globularist in the
British state school system", says the reactions of his friends and family to
his new beliefs vary from "sheer incredulity to the conviction that it's all
just an elaborate joke".
So how many flat-earthers are around today? Neither Mr Davis nor Mr McIntyre
can say.
Disappearing ships
Mr McIntyre estimates "there are thousands", but "without a platform for
communication, a head-count is almost impossible", he says. Mr Davis says he
is currently creating an "online information repository" to help to bring
together local Flat Earth communities into a "global community".
"If you will forgive my use of the term 'global'", he says.

And for the casual observer, it is hard to accept that all of this is not some
bizarre 21st Century jape. After all, most schoolchildren know that ships can
disappear over the horizon, that satellites orbit the earth and that if you
head along the equator you will eventually come back on yourself.
What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that
the Earth is round? "The space agencies of the world are involved in an
international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit," says Mr McIntyre.
John Davis also says "these photos are fake".
And what about the fact that no one has ever fallen off the edge of our
supposedly disc-shaped world?
Mr McIntyre laughs. "This is perhaps one of the most commonly asked
questions," he says. "A cursory examination of a flat earth map fairly well
explains the reason - the North Pole is central, and Antarctica comprises the
entire circumference of the Earth. Circumnavigation is a case of travelling in
a very broad circle across the surface of the Earth."
Ultimate conspiracy
Mr Davis says that being a flat-earther doesn't have an impact on how one
lives every day. "As a rule of thumb, we don't have any fears of aircraft or
other modes of transportation, " he says.
Christine Garwood, author of Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, is
not surprised that flat-earthers simply write off the evidence that our planet
is globular.
"Flat earth theory is one of the ultimate conspiracy theories," she says.
"Naturally, flat earth believers think that the moon landings were faked, as
were the photographs of earth from space."
Perhaps one of the most surprising things in Garwood's book is her revelation
that flat earth theory is a relatively modern phenomenon.
Ms Garwood says it is an "historic fallacy" that everyone from ancient times
to the Dark Ages believed the earth to be flat, and were only disabused of
this "mad idea" once Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to America
without "falling off the edge of the world".
In fact, people have known since at least the 4th century BC that the earth is
round, and the pseudo-scientific conviction that we actually live on a disc
didn't emerge until Victorian times.
Theories about the earth being flat really came to the fore in 19th Century
England. With the rise and rise of scientific rationalism, which seemed to
undermine Biblical authority, some Christian thinkers decided to launch an
attack on established science.
Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884) assumed the pseudonym of "Parallax" and
founded a new school of "Zetetic astronomy". He toured England arguing that
the Earth was a stationary disc and the Sun was only 400 miles away.
In the 1870s, Christian polemicist John Hampden wrote numerous works about the
Earth being flat, and described Isaac Newton as "in liquor or insane".
And the spirit of these attacks lives on to the present day. The flat-earth
myth remains the outlandish king in the realm of the conspiracy theorist.
And while we all respect a degree of scepticism towards the authorities, says
Ms Garwood, the flat-earthers show things can go too far.
"It is always good to question 'how we know what we know', but it is also good
to have the ability to accept compelling evidence - such as the photographs of
Earth from space."
==
 Arab/Muslim civilization.
As an Assyrian, a non-Arab, Christian native of
the Middle East, whose ancestors reach back to
5000 B.C., I wish to clarify some points you
made in this little story, and to alert you to
the dangers of unwittingly being drawn into the
Arabist/Islamist ideology, which seeks to
assimilate all cultures and religions into the
Arab/Islamic fold.
I know you are a very busy woman, but please
find ten minutes to read what follows, as it is
a perspective that you will not likely get from
anywhere else. I will answer some of the
specific points you made in your speech, then
conclude with a brief perspective on this
Arabist/Islamist ideology.
Arabs and Muslims appeared on the world scene in
630 A.D., when the armies of Muhammad began
their conquest of the Middle East. We should be
very clear that this was a military conquest,
not a missionary enterprise, and through the use
of force, authorized by a declaration of a Jihad
against infidels, Arabs/Muslims were able to
forcibly convert and assimilate non-Arabs and
non-Mulsims into their fold. Very few indigenous
communities of the Middle East survived this --
primarily Assyrians, Jews, Armenians and Coptics
(of Egypt).
Having conquered the Middle East, Arabs placed
these communities under a Dhimmi (see the book
Dhimmi, by Bat Ye'Or) system of governance,
where the communities were allowed to rule
themselves as religious minorities (Christians,
Jews and Zoroastrian). These communities had to
pay a tax (called a Jizzya in Arabic) that was,
in effect, a penalty for being non-Muslim, and
that was typically 80% in times of tolerance and
up to 150% in times of oppression. This tax
forced many of these communities to convert to
Islam, as it was designed to do.
You state, its architects designed buildings
that defied gravity. I am not sure what you are
referring to, but if you are referring to domes
and arches, the fundamental architectural
breakthrough of using a parabolic shape instead
of a spherical shape for these structures was
made by the Assyrians more than 1300 years
earlier, as evidenced by their archaeological
record.
You state, its mathematicians created the
algebra and algorithms that would enable the
building of computers, and the creation of
encryption. The fundamental basis of modern
mathematics had been laid down not hundreds but
thousands of years before by Assyrians and
Babylonians, who already knew of the concept of
zero, of the Pythagorean Theorem, and of many,
many other developments expropriated by
Arabs/Muslims (see History of Babylonian
Mathematics, Neugebauer).
You state, its doctors examined the human body,
and found new cures for disease. The
overwhelming majority of these doctors (99%)
were Assyrians. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth
centuries Assyrians began a systematic
translation of the Greek body of knowledge into
Assyrian. At first they concentrated on the
religious works but then quickly moved to
science, philosophy and medicine. Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, Galen, and many others were
translated into Assyrian, and from Assyrian into
Arabic. It is these Arabic translations which
the Moors brought with them into Spain, and
which the Spaniards translated into Latin and
spread throughout Europe, thus igniting the
European Renaissance.
By the sixth century A.D., Assyrians had begun
exporting back to Byzantia their own works on
science, philosophy and medicine. In the field
of medicine, the Bakhteesho Assyrian family
produced nine generations of physicians, and
founded the great medical school at Gundeshapur
(Iran). Also in the area of medicine, (the
Assyrian) Hunayn ibn-Ishaq's textbook on
ophthalmology, written in 950 A.D., remained the
authoritative source on the subject until 1800
A.D.
In the area of philosophy, the Assyrian
philosopher Job of Edessa developed a physical
theory of the universe, in the Assyrian
language, that rivaled Aristotle's theory, and
that sought to replace matter with forces (a
theory that anticipated some ideas in quantum
mechanics, such as the spontaneous creation and
destruction of matter that occurs in the quantum
vacuum).
One of the greatest Assyrian achievements of the
fourth century was the founding of the first
university in the world, the School of Nisibis,
which had three departments, theology,
philosophy and medicine, and which became a
magnet and center of intellectual development in
the Middle East. The statutes of the School of
Nisibis, which have been preserved, later became
the model upon which the first Italian
university was based (see The Statutes of the
School of Nisibis, by Arthur Voobus).
When Arabs and Islam swept through the Middle
East in 630 A.D., they encountered 600 years of
Assyrian Christian civilization, with a rich
heritage, a highly developed culture, and
advanced learning institutions. It is this
civilization that became the foundation of the
Arab civilization.
You state, Its astronomers looked into the
heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for
space travel and exploration. This is a bit
melodramatic. In fact, the astronomers you refer
to were not Arabs but Chaldeans and Babylonians
(of present day south-Iraq), who for millennia
were known as astronomers and astrologers, and
who were forcibly Arabized and Islamized -- so
rapidly that by 750 A.D. they had disappeared
completely.
You state, its writers created thousands of
stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic.
were too steeped in fear to think of such
things. There is very little literature in the
Arabic language that comes from this period you
are referring to (the Koran is the only
significant piece of literature), whereas the
literary output of the Assyrians and Jews was
vast. The third largest corpus of Christian
writing, after Latin and Greek, is by the
Assyrians in the Assyrian language (also called
Syriac); see:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14408a.htm
You state, when other nations were afraid of
ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and
kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe
out knowledge from past civilizations, this
civilization kept the knowledge alive, and
passed it on to others. This is a very
important issue you raise, and it goes to the
heart of the matter of what Arab/Islamic
civilization represents. I reviewed a book
http://www.aina.org/aol/peter/greek.htm
titled How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs, in
which the author lists the significant
translators and interpreters of Greek science.
Of the 22 scholars listed, 20 were Assyrians, 1
was Persian and 1 an Arab. I state at the end of
my review: The salient conclusion which can be
drawn from O'Leary's book is that Assyrians
played a significant role in the shaping of the
Islamic world via the Greek corpus of knowledge.
If this is so, one must then ask the question,
what happened to the Christian communities which
made them lose this great intellectual
enterprise which they had established. One can
ask this same question of the Arabs.
Assyrians first
settled Nineveh, one of the major Assyrian
cities, in 5000 B.C., which is 5630 years before
Arabs came into that area. Even the word 'Arab'
is an Assyrian word, meaning Westerner (the
first written reference to Arabs was by the
Assyrian King Sennacherib, 800 B.C., in which he
tells of conquering the ma'rabayeh --
Westerners. See The Might That Was Assyria, by
H. W. F. Saggs).
==
Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the Universe. Most occur
when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. As a star's core collapses, it
creates a black hole or neutron star that, through processes not fully
understood, drive powerful gas jets outward. These jets actually punch
through the collapsing star, carrying matter and beaming radiation into space.
==
The Persian scholar Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980-1037) had more
than 450 books attributed to him. His writings were concerned with
many subjects, most notably philosophy and medicine. His medical
textbook was used as the standard text in European universities for
centuries. His work on Aristotle was a key step in the transmission of
learning from ancient Greeks to the Islamic world and the West. He
often corrected the philosopher, encouraging a lively debate in the
spirit of ijtihad. His thinking and that of his follower ibn Rushd
(Averroes) was incorporated into Christian philosophy during the
Middle Ages, notably by Thomas Aquinas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam
How Islam Influenced Science


 'In the ninth century, the library of the monastery of St.
Gall was the largest in Europe. It boasted 36 volumes. At the same
time, that of Cordoba contained over 500,000!'.
The idea of the college was a concept which was borrowed from Muslims.
The first colleges appeared in the Muslim world in the late 600's and
early 700's. In Europe, some of the earliest colleges are those under
the University of Paris and Oxford they were founded around the
thirteenth century. These early European colleges were also funded by
trusts similar to the Islamic ones and legal historians have traced
them back to the Islamic system. The internal organization of these
European colleges was strikingly similar to the Islamic ones, for
example the idea of Graduate (Sahib) and undergraduate (mutafaqqih) is
derived directly from Islamic terms.
In the field of Mathematics the number Zero (0) and the decimal system
was introduced to Europe, which became the basis for the Scientific
revolution. The Arabic numerals were also transferred to Europe, this
made mathematical tasks much easier, problems that took days to solve
could now be solved in minutes. The works of Al-Khwarizmi
(Alghorismus) were translated into Latin. Alghorismus, from whom the
of astronomical tables. He, more importantly, laid the ground work for
algebra and found methods to deal with complex mathematical problems,
such as square roots and complex fractions. He conducted numerous
experiments, measured the height of the earth's atmosphere and
discovered the principle of the magnifying lens. Many of his books
were translated into European languages. Trigonometric work by
Alkirmani of Toledo was translated into Latin (from which we get the
sine and cosine functions) along with the Greek knowledge of Geometry
by Euclid. Along with mathematics, masses of other knowledge in the
field of physical science was transferred.
Islamic contributions to Science were now rapidly being translated and
transferred from Spain to the rest of Europe. Ibnul Hairham's works on
Optics, (in which he deals with 50 Optical questions put to Muslim
Scholars by the Franks), was translated widely. The Muslims discovered
the Principle of Pendulum, which was used to measure time. Many of the
principles of Isaac Newton were derived from former Islamic scientific
contributions. In the field of Chemistry numerous Islamic works were
translated into Latin. One of the fields of study in this area was
alchemy. The Muslims by exploring various elements, developed a good
understanding of the constitution of matter. Jabir ibn-Hayyan (Geber)
was the leading chemist in the Muslim world, some scholars link the
introduction of the 'scientific method' back to him. A great number of
terms used in Chemistry such as alchohol, alembic, alkali and elixir
are of Islamic origin.
Medicine was a key science explored by Muslims. Al-Rhazes is one of
the most famous Doctors and writers of Islamic History. Every major
city had an hospital, the hospital at Cairo had over 8000 beds, with
separate wards for fevers, ophthalmic, dysentery and surgical cases.
He discovered the origin of smallpox and showed that one could only
acquire it once in one's life, thus showing the existence of the
immune system and how it worked. Muslim doctors were also aware of the
contagious qualities of diseases. Hundreds of medical works were
translated into Latin.
All of this knowledge transferred from the Muslims to the Europeans
was the vital raw material for the Scientific Revolution. Muslims not
only passed on Greek classical works but also introduced new
scientific theories, without which the European Renaissance could not
have occurred. Thus even though many of the Islamic contributions go
unacknowledged, they played an integral role in the European
transformation.
==
Galaxy structure
Bars form when stellar orbits in a spiral galaxy become unstable and deviate
from a circular path. "The tiny elongations in the stars' orbits grow and they
get locked into place, making a bar.
==
The Sun Will Eventually Engulf Earth--Maybe
The future looks brightmaybe too bright. The sun is slowly expanding and
brightening, and over the next few billion years it will eventually desiccate
Earth, leaving it hot, brown and uninhabitable. About 7.6 billion years from
now, the sun will reach its maximum size as a red giant: its surface will
extend beyond Earths orbit today by 20 percent and will shine 3,000 times
brighter. In its final stage, the sun will collapse into a white dwarf.
Although scientists agree on the suns future, they disagree about what will
happen to Earth. Since 1924, when British mathematician James Jeans first
considered Earths fate during the suns red giant phase, a bevy of scientists
have reached oscillating conclusions. In some scenarios, our planet escapes
vaporization; in the latest analyses, however, it does not.
The answer is not straightforward, because although the sun will expand beyond
Earths orbit, or one astronomical unit (AU), it will lose mass along the way.
As a result, Earth should drift outward as the gravitational tug lessens over
time. (At its maximum radius of 1.2 AU, the sun will have lost about one third
of its mass, compared with its current heft.) In this way, Earth could escape
solar envelopment.
But other factors complicate the analysis. Drag on the planet from the suns
outermost, tenuous layers will cause Earth to drift inward. Smaller forces
from the other planetsall in turn reacting to the same reducing, expanding
sunare even more difficult to account for completely.
Earlier this year two teams reported different kinds of calculations
indicating that Earth will be swallowed up by the sun. In a calculation that
would thrill any college junior studying classical mechanics, Lorenzo Iorio of
Italys National Institute of Nuclear Physics used perturbation theory. It
simplifies analyses by dropping relatively small factors, thereby making
complex equations of motions that describe the interactions between the sun
and Earth mathematically manageable. Assuming that the suns yearly mass loss
(currently about one part in 100 trillion) remains small for the duration of
its evolution to the red giant phase, Iorio calculates that Earth will move
outward at about three millimeters a year, or only 0.0002 AU by the suns red
giant phase. But at that point the sun will balloon up, in only a million
years, to 1.2 AU in radius, thus vaporizing Earth.
Iorios paper, submitted to Astrophysics and Space Science, has not yet been
peer-reviewed. Several scientists question whether quantities that Iorio
assumes are small will indeed remain small throughout the suns evolution.
Even if Iorio got his number crunching wrong, he may have the right answer. In
an analysis published in the May Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society, Klaus-Peter Schroder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico and
Robert Smith of the University of Sussex in England also conclude that Earth
is doomed, by using more exact solar models and by considering tidal
interactions. As the sun loses mass and expands, its rotation rate must also
slow downphysics students learn this relation as the conservation of angular
momentum. The slowed rotation causes a tidal bulge on the suns surface. The
gravity exerted by this bulge pulls Earth inward. With such a consideration,
the researchers find that any planet with a present-day orbital radius of less
than 1.15 AU will ultimately perish.
Could Earth be saved if someone is still left at home? In a bold piece of
astronomical engineering, Don Korycansky of the University of California,
Santa Cruz, and his colleagues have proposed nudging Earth with a large
asteroid arranged to pass nearby periodically. It could take one billion years
to move our planet out to somewhere safe, like the orbit of Mars. Our moon,
though, might have to be left behind, and any miscalculation could mean
extinction. Needless to say, more study is required.
==
One copy of the X chromosome is inactivated in virtually all the cells in a
woman's body. Women, like men, need only one copy of the X chromosome to
survive, and inactivation of the second copy prevents "doubling up" on the
expression of genes residing on the X chromosome.
==
Current observations suggest that this is about 13.73 billion years, 
with an uncertainty of about 120 million years.
==
Cell Division Study Resolves 50-year-old Debate, May Aid Cancer
Research
ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2008)  A new study at Oregon State University
has finally resolved a controversy that cellular biologists have been
arguing over for nearly 50 years, with findings that may aid research
on everything from birth defects and genetic diseases to the most
classic "cell division" issue of them all  cancer.
The exact mechanism that controls how chromosomes in a cell replicate
and then divide into two cells, a process fundamental to life, has
never been completely pinned down, researchers say. You can find the
basics in any high school biology textbook, but the devil is in the
details.
"Researchers have been debating cell cleavage ever since the cell was
discovered, with two basic models proposed around 1960 of how a
contractile ring pulls together and allows a single cell to split into
two," said Dahong Zhang, an OSU associate professor of zoology. "Part
of the problem is that until now there was no decisive way to
manipulate the cytoskeleton, such as the microtubules and filaments
that are involved, and see what was happening as it occurred."
To address that, Zhang developed some new instrumentation that uses
"microneedles" and state-of-the-art imaging techniques which allow
direct manipulation of the cytoskeleton, while capturing the results
of contractile ring formation. The system has not only solved this
decades-old riddle, but "the technology is a very powerful new
approach," Zhang said, that should find applications in other cell
biology research issues.
It has been known for some time, scientists say, that a "contractile
ring," which is composed of some of the same fibers used in muscle
contraction, move into the correct position, pull and split a cell in
two after its chromosomes have been separated. This is distribution of
genetic materials at its most basic level, and it has to be done at
exactly the right place and time. When the process breaks down, cancer
and other serious medical or genetic issues can be a result.
But if you think of the cell as a sphere, what was less clear was
whether the "equator" contracted or the "poles" relaxed to allow this
contraction and division. Two distinct theories were formed, called
polar relaxation and equatorial stimulation, to explain this aspect of
cell division  and some scientists have spent much of their careers
arguing for one side or the other.
Turns out, Zhang said, that both sides were correct. Nature and
evolution have actually created a basic way for a cell to divide with
a backup system that can work if the other approach fails.
"Accurate cell division is one of the most critical of all life
functions, and there clearly is an evolutionary value to having
redundancy, a system able to do it two different ways," Zhang said.
"It makes perfect sense when you think about it. The findings speak
plainly for themselves, and there should no longer be a question over
which model is right."
By labeling cells and moving microtubules around while still being
able to see them and their impact on microfilaments, OSU researchers
were able to selectively inhibit one mechanism of cell division or the
other. They discovered that in the same cell type, it could divide
either by polar relaxation or equatorial stimulation  the two
mechanisms are not mutually exclusive.
The findings, Zhang said, add significantly to the basic understanding
of cell biology, and should be of special interest to cancer
researchers. Cancer is essentially the loss of normal control over
cell division and migration. In fact, a compound used in Zhang's
laboratory to inhibit cell division while they studied it was taxol
a commonly used cancer drug.
Accurate and effective cell division, researchers say, is also key to
the understanding of some genetic diseases, miscarriages, birth
defects and other issu
==
The Birth of the Sun
New Observations Show Sun-like Star in Earliest Stage of Development
Located in the Eagle Nebula, E42 is thought to be a very early embryo of a
star much like Earth's Sun.
Members of a research team led by the University of Colorado at Boulder have
used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to peer at the embryo of an infant star
in the nearby Eagle Nebula, which they believe may someday develop into a
virtual twin of Earth's Sun.
The object, known as an evaporating gas globule, or EGG, has the same mass as
the Sun and appears to be evolving in a violent environment much like the one
believed to have produced Earth's Sun, said researcher Jeffrey Linsky of JILA,
a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and
Technology. Located in a region called the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle
Nebula roughly 7,000 light-years from Earth, the object -- dubbed E42 -- is
thought to be in the earliest stage astronomers have ever detected a star like
the Sun, said Linsky.
A new image of the Pillars of Creation, consisting of a Hubble Space Telescope
image overlaid with Chandra X-ray data, was released Feb. 15 by the Chandra
X-ray Observatory Center in Cambridge, Mass. The image, which shows red, green
and blue dots representing low-, medium- and high-energy X-rays, indicates
there are relatively few X-ray sources in the pillars and suggests the Eagle
Nebula is past its star-forming prime, said Linsky.
Linsky and colleagues from West Chester University in Pennsylvania, the
University of Exeter in England and the University of Arizona analyzed visual
and infrared emissions from the pillars to identify E42, the Sun-like
proto-star. E42 is located in the left pillar on the right edge of a node
jutting out to the right about two-thirds of the way down the pillar.
"We think this is a very, very early version of our own Sun," said Linsky.
This image of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory following deployment from the
Space Shuttle Columbia was taken Mission Specialist Cady Coleman, during the
STS-93 mission.
E42 is one of 73 EGGs discovered in the Pillars of Creation in 1996 with the
Hubble Space Telescope by Arizona State University astronomer Jeff Hester and
his team. While 11 of the EGGs have been determined to contain infant stellar
objects, only four are massive enough to form a star. Of those, E42 is the
only one that has a Sun-sized mass, said Linsky.
"The four proto-stars that we have identified on the edges of the pillars are
probably the youngest stars ever imaged by astronomers," Linsky said.
While Linsky and his team used Chandra to zero in on more than 1,100 hotter,
more mature stars in the Eagle Nebula, neither E42 nor the other three EGGs
believed massive enough to form stars were observed to be emitting any X-rays,
he said. "The results indicate young, evolving stars like E42 have not yet
developed the magnetic structures needed to produce X-rays," he said.
Earth's Sun is thought to have formed some 5 billion years ago after clouds of
dust and gas were seared by ultraviolet radiation and pounded by shockwaves
from one or more supernovae explosions, Linsky said. "The Sun was likely born
in a region like the Pillars of Creation because the chemical abundances in
the solar system indicate that a supernova occurred nearby and contributed its
heavy elements to the gas of which the Sun and the planets formed." Studying
E42 and how it continues to develop will help astronomers understand how our
own Sun formed and how it affected the environment of the early solar system.
The Sun influences Earth in many ways. On one hand it provides the light and
heat that sustains life on our planet. On the other hand it bathes the Earth
in ultraviolet light, showers it with x-rays, gamma-rays, electrons, and
atomic nuclei, and wraps the Earth in the folds of its own magnetic field.
A January 2007 study by an astronomy team from France suggested the pillars
were toppled some 6,000 years ago by a nearby supernova explosion, as
evidenced by a glowing cloud of scorched dust adjacent to the pillars. Since
the pillars are roughly 7,000 light years away, the French team contends they
will still be visible from Earth as "ghost images" for another thousand years
or so.
"My guess is that the shock wave from the supernova may have been far enough
away so that E42 and some of the other stars may have survived," said Linsky.
"But I guess we will have to wait another thousand years or so to get the
==
Earth's Early Temperature
Doctoral student Nicole Cates and Assistant Professor Stephen Mojzsis survey a
landscape of ancient rocks in Hudson Bay, Quebec confirmed by the CU-Boulder
team to date back roughly 3.75 billion years, making them among the most
oldest known rocks on Earth.
Credit: University of Colorado at Boulder
Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that has become a bane of modern society, may
have saved Earth from freezing over early in the planet's history, according to
the first detailed laboratory analysis of the world's oldest sedimentary rocks.
Scientists have theorized for years that high concentrations of greenhouse
gases could have helped Earth avoid global freezing in its youth by allowing
the atmosphere to retain more heat than it lost. Now a team from the
University of Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder that analyzed
ancient rocks from the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec, Canada,
have discovered the first direct field evidence supporting this theory.
The study shows carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere could have sustained
surface temperatures above freezing before 3.75 billion years ago according to
the researchers, led by University of Chicago Assistant Professor Nicolas
Dauphas. Co-authors on the study, which appeared online Jan. 16 in the journal
Earth and Planetary Science Letters, included Assistant Professor Stephen
Mojzsis and doctoral student Nicole Cates of CU-Boulder's geological sciences
department and Vincent Busigny, now of the Institut de Physique du Globe in
Paris.
A rock from a banded iron formation in northern Quebec, Canada.
Credit: University of Chicago
The new study helps explain how Earth may have avoided becoming frozen solid
early in its history, when astrophysicists believe the sun was 25 percent
fainter than today. Previous studies had shown liquid water existed at Earth's
surface even though the weak sun should have been unable to warm the planet
above freezing conditions. But high concentrations of CO2 or methane could
have warmed the planet, according to the research team.
The ancient rocks from Quebec contain iron carbonates believed to have
precipitated from ancient oceans, according to the study. Since the iron
carbonates could only have formed in an atmosphere containing far higher CO2
levels than those found in Earth's atmosphere today, the researchers concluded
the early Earth environment was extremely rich in CO2.
"We now have direct evidence that Earth's atmosphere was loaded with CO2 early
in its history, which probably kept the planet from freezing and going the way
of Mars," said Mojzsis.
The CO2 could even have played a role as a "planetary thermostat," since cold,
icy conditions on Earth would have decreased the chemical weathering of rocks
and increased the amount of CO2 moving into the atmosphere, ratcheting up
Earth's surface temperatures, according to Dauphas.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may have prevented Earth from freezing over
completely early in the planet's history.
Credit: USC
In a companion article that appeared online Feb. 2 in Earth and Planetary
Science Letters, Mojzsis, Cates and CU-Boulder undergraduate Jon Adam used a
technique known as uranium-lead dating to establish the ancient age of the
Hudson Bay rocks. Discovered by Canadian scientists in 2001, the rocks were
confirmed by Mojzsis and his team to be at least as old as an isolated
outcropping of West Greenland rocks previously believed by researchers to be
the oldest on Earth.
The CU-Boulder team analyzed the rocks by crushing them into powder and dating
zircon crystals present in the rock, said Mojzsis. The technique allowed them
to calculate the geologic age of the crystals based on the radioactive decay
rate of the uranium and lead isotopes in relation to each other, a technique
known to be accurate to 1 percent or less.
"Zircon is nature's best timekeeper," said Mojzsis. "The tests show that the
rocks in Quebec are roughly 3.75 billion years old, about the same as the West
Greenland rocks."
The landscape of the Hudson Bay region under study today, marked by hills of
grassland and marsh peppered by lakes, streams and craggy outcroppings, is
much different from the alien Earth of 3.8 billion years ago, said Mojzsis. In
much earlier times, a dense atmosphere of CO2 would have given the sky a
reddish cast, and a greenish-blue ocean of iron-rich water would have lapped
onto beaches, he said.
While scientists have been concerned that the limited sample of Earth's oldest
known rocks from West Greenland provided a biased view of early Earth, the
Hudson Bay discovery essentially doubles the known amount of extremely ancient
rocks, and there appear to be a number of similar, ancient outcrops in the
vicinity. "We are now finding Earth's oldest rocks are not as rare as we once
thought," Mojzsis said.
==
Why Early Earth Did Not Freeze
Early in Earth's history, our solar system was a much different place. When
the sun was very young, it was faint and provided little heat for the Earth.
However, even in its chilly beginnings, the surface of the Earth was ice-free.
For years, scientists have proposed theories for this "faint young sun
problem."
Most of these theories are based on the idea that the early Earth must have
had extremely high amounts of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in
the atmosphere in order to warm the planet. According to a team of German
scientists, geological evidence of atmospheric CO2 seems to indicate that
levels were "far too low to keep the surface from freezing." However, their
new study may provide a new answer to the problem.
The study, under lead author Philip von Paris of the Institut fur
Planetenforschung (Institute for Planetary Research) at the Deutsches Zentrum
fur Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Centre for Air and Space Travel) in Berlin,
was recently published in the journal Planetary and Space Science.
Classic problem
According the geological record of Earth, liquid water was present on the
Earth's surface as early as 3.7 billion years ago (the Earth itself is thought
to be about 4.5 billion years old). This means that the average temperature of
the early Earth, 3.7 billion years ago, must have been above freezing.
Scientists aren't sure how warm the Earth was, but it's generally accepted
that the planet has been ice-free for most of its history.
However, by looking at sun-like stars of different ages around the universe,
astronomers believe that the sun's luminosity 3.7 billion years ago was
significantly less than today. If the early Earth's atmosphere was the same as
it is now, there wouldn't have been enough sunlight to warm the planet.
Temperatures would have been well below freezing up until 2 billion years ago.
Most proposed answers to the "faint young sun problem" involve some degree of
greenhouse warming on the early Earth in order to keep it from freezing over.
In fact, many scientists believe that warming of the Earth occurred at much
higher levels than those seen today due to the presence of gases like carbon
dioxide (CO2), methane, ethane or ammonia. However, there are many
uncertainties concerning whether or not each of these gases could have been
present on the early Earth.
Impact of asteroids
The new study by the German team is now causing scientists to reconsider the
role of CO2 in warming the early Earth.
They applied a new model to the atmosphere of the early Earth that includes
updated information about how radiation could have been absorbed to cause
heating. The study also included important parameters concerning the surface
albedo (how much light is reflected away by the planet's surface) and the
humidity of the atmosphere.
The new model was used to examine interesting points in the history of Earth,
such as the end of a period of frequent asteroid impacts known as the Late
Heavy Bombardment (3.8 billion years ago), the first evidence of oxygen
production by cyanobacteria (2.9 billion years ago) and the first known
oxidation event (2 billion years ago).
A warm breath
"Our new model simulations suggest that the amount of CO2 needed to keep the
surface of the early Earth from freezing is significantly less than previously
thought," the authors stated in their paper. In fact, the amount of CO2 might
be ten times less than previous studies indicated.
The model showed that a partial pressure of only 2.9 millibars of CO2 would
have been needed during the late Archaean and early Proterozoic periods in
order to bring the surface temperature of the Earth above freezing. This
result, although contrary to previous studies, agrees with current geological
data. For this period of time, the contradictions of the "faint young sun
problem" disappear.
The result improves our understanding of how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
can affect the global temperature of Earth.
Today, carbon dioxide levels on Earth are increasing, primarily as a result of
human activities. This increase is one of the most important causes of climate
change on Earth. Understanding how carbon dioxide affected the ancient climate
of Earth might provide clues about the future of Earth's climate and global
biosphere.
==
"The Road to Reality" by Roger Penrose

Objectivity  by Lorraine Daston & Peter Galison
===
'Complexity' of Neanderthal tools

Neanderthal tools were just as efficient as those made by our ancestors
Early stone tools developed by our species Homo sapiens were no more
sophisticated than those used by our extinct relatives the Neanderthals.
That is the conclusion of researchers who recreated and compared tools used by
these ancient human groups.
The findings cast doubt on suggestions that more advanced stone technologies
gave modern humans a competitive edge over the Neanderthals.
The work by a US-British team appears in the Journal of Human Evolution.
The researchers recreated wide stone tools called "flakes", which were used by
both Neanderthals and early modern humans.

We know that the Neanderthals were very capable technicians

They also reconstructed "blades" - a narrower stone tool later adopted by Homo
sapiens.
Some archaeologists often use the development of stone blades and their
assumed efficiency as evidence for the superior intellect of our species.
The team analysed the data to compare the number of tools produced, how much
cutting edge was created, the efficiency in consuming raw material and how
long tools lasted.
They found no statistical difference in the efficiency of the two stone
technologies.
In some respects, the flakes favoured by Neanderthals were even more efficient
than the blades adopted by modern humans.
Pros and cons
The result casts doubt on the idea that blades were a significant
technological advance, helping our ancestors out-compete, and eventually
eradicate, their evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals.
The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) appear in the fossil record about
400,000 years ago.
At their peak, these squat, physically powerful hunters dominated a wide area
spanning Britain and Iberia in the west, Israel in the south and Siberia in
the east.
Meanwhile, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, and displaced the Neanderthals
after spreading into Europe about 40,000 years ago.
The last known evidence of Neanderthals comes from Gibraltar and is dated to
between 28,000 and 24,000 years ago.
Lead author Metin Eren, from the University of Exeter, UK, said:
"Technologically speaking, there is no clear advantage of one tool over the
other.
"When we think of Neanderthals, we need to stop thinking in terms of 'stupid'
or 'less advanced' and more in terms of 'different'."
He added: "Our research disputes a major pillar holding up the long-held
assumption that Homo sapiens was more advanced than Neanderthals.
"It is time for archaeologists to start searching for other reasons why
Neanderthals became extinct while our ancestors survived."
Greater variety
Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at London's Natural History
Museum, said: "There are now very few palaeoanthropologists who consider the
Neanderthals to have been 'stupid', or who consider that they died out because
they made flake rather than blade tools."
Professor Stringer, who was not connected with the study, added: "We know that
the Neanderthals were very capable technicians, and that their tools would have
been excellent for activities such as butchery, working skins or wood.
"However, the blade tools manufactured by early modern humans in Europe were
often modified for specialisation as piercers, chisels or engravers, and as
parts of composite tools, such as harpoons.
"With modern humans we not only find a greater variety of tools, but also much
greater working of difficult materials like bone, antler and ivory."
The authors of the paper in Journal of Human Evolution suggest that, since
they conferred no technological advantage, modern humans may have used blades
because they had cultural meaning.
"For early Homo sapiens colonizing Ice Age Europe, a new shared and
flashy-looking technology might serve as one form of social glue by which
larger social networks were bonded," said Mr Eren.
==
In sedimentary rock that had previously been dated to 3.7 billion years ago or
older, researchers found an isotope of the element tungsten in amounts that do
not typically occur on Earth and so are thought to be of extraterrestrial
origin. Isotopes are particles with identical chemical properties, but
different masses.
The material comes from two regions, one the Isua Greenstone Belt in Greenland
and another in northern Labrador, Canada.
The researchers did not find actual meteorites or chunks of asteroids,
explained lead scientist say Ronny Schoenberg of the University of Queensland
in Australia. Instead, they studied material that had long ago been mixed with
Earth's crust to form so-called metamorphosed sediments.
"These sediments consist of bits and pieces of weathered rocks which have been
transported by rivers into an ocean, where they first formed soft layers, which
were then compacted by more overlying sediments and later deeply buried back
into Earth's crust by subduction," Schoenberg said in an e-mail interview.
High pressure and temperatures crystallized the sediments, and later they were
returned to the surface.
==
In 1929 Edwin
Hubble's measurements of the red-shift in the optical spectra of light from
distant galaxies,{9} which was taken to indicate a universal recessional
motion of the light sources in the line of sight, provided a dramatic
verification of the Friedman-Lemaitre model. Incredibly, what Hubble had
discovered was the isotropic expansion of the universe predicted by Friedman
and Lemaitre. 
==
As Bertrand Russell put it so succinctly in his BBC radio debate with
Frederick Copleston, The universe is just there, and that's all.
==
J.L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (1993). 

Ted Drange, Nonbelief and Evil (1998).

Nicholas Everitt, The Non-Existence of God (2003). 

Brian Skyrms, Choice and Chance (4th ed., 1999). 

Hugh Gauch, Jr., Scientific Method in Practice (2002).

Ronald Giere, Understanding Scientific Reasoning (1996). Susan Haack, Evidence
and Inquiry (1995) and Defending Science (2003). 

Mario Bunge, Emergence and Convergence (2003), : Philosophy of Science I:
From Problem to Theory and Philosophy of Science II: From Explanation to
Justification (1998). 

 Giulio Agostini, Bayesian Reasoning in Data Analysis (2003)

Dean Hamer,The God Gene (2004).

Eugene D'Aquili and Andrew Newberg, The Mystical Mind
(1999) and Why God Won't Go Away (2001). 

John Horgan, Rational Mysticism (2003).

Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained (2002). 

Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust(2002). 

Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds (1993). 

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Charles Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today (2002).

Richard Carrier, The Big Debate (2004).

G. Veneziano, The Myth of the Beginning of Time, Scientific American 
290.5 (2004): pp. 54-65.  

James Haught, Holy Horrors (1999).
Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History (1995).

: Bruce Metzger, The Text Of The New Testament (4th
ed., 2005) and The Canon of the New Testament (1997). 

Bart Ehrman, The New
Testament (3rd ed., 2003), The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (1996), and
Lost Christianities (2003). 

Udo Schnelle, The History and Theology of the New
Testament Writings (1998). 

Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament (2000). 

Charles H. Talbert, What is a Gospel? (1977). 

Gerd Ludemann, The Resurrection of Jesus (1995), The
Resurrection of Christ (2004), and What Really Happened to Jesus (1996). 

Bob Price, Deconstructing Jesus (2000) and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man
(2003). 

G. A. Wells, The Jesus Legend (1996) and The Jesus Myth (1998). 

Earl Doherty, Challenging the Verdict and The Jesus Puzzle (1999).

Richard Carrier, What We Are Debating in Naturalism vs. Theism: The
Carrier-Wanchick Debate (2006); 

Richard Carrier, Sense and Goodness without
God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism (2005), pp. 65-70, 211-12;  

Richard Carrier, Defending Naturalism as a Worldview: A Rebuttal to Michael
Rea's World Without Design (2003).

Richard Carrier, The Argument from Biogenesis: Probabilities Against a 
Natural Origin of Life,
Biology and Philosophy 19.5 (November 2004): pp. 739-64. 

Geoffrey Zubay, Origins of Life (2nd ed., 2000). 

Tom Fenchel, Origin and Early Evolution of Life (2003). 

Andri Brack, The Molecular Origins of Life (1998). 

Noam Lahav, Biogenesis (1998). 

Iris Fry, The Emergence of Life on Earth (2000).

Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada, The Spark of Life (2000). 

J. William Schopf, Life's Origin (2002). 

John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary, The Origins of Life (1999). 

Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth (2000).


Chris Colby, Introduction to Evolutionary Biology (2nd ed., 1996).

Monroe Strickberger, Evolution (3rd ed., 2000). 

Mark Ridley, Evolution (3rd ed., 2003). 

Douglas Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology (3rd ed., 1998).

Eugenie Scott, Evolution vs. Creationism (2004). 

Niall Shanks, God, the Devil, and Darwin (2004). 

Matt Young & Taner Edis, eds., Why Intelligent Design Fails (2004). 

Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution (1995).

Joseph Ledoux, Synaptic Self (2002).
William Libaw, How We Got to Be Human (2000). 

Gerald Edelman, Wider than the Sky (2004). 

Steven Johnson, Mind Wide Open (2004). 

Christof Koch, The Quest for Consciousness (2004). 

Susan Blackmore, Consciousness (2003). 

Julian Paul Keenan, et al., The Face in the Mirror (2003). 

Robert Aunger, The Electric Meme (2002). 

V. S. Ramachandran, Brief Tour of Human Consciousness (2004),
Phantoms in the Brain (1999), and the Encyclopedia of the Human Brain (2002).

John Gribbin, The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of
Everything (2000). 

L.E. Lewis, Jr., Our Superstring Universe (2003). 

Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos (2004) and The Elegant Universe.

Rosemary Wright, Cosmology in Antiquity (1995). 

Sam Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks (1956), The Physical World of
Late Antiquity (1962), and Physics of the Stoics (1959).
==
Galileo helped pave the way for classic
mechanics and made huge technological and observational leaps in astronomy.
Most famously, he championed the Copernican model of the universe, which put
the sun at its center and the earth in orbit. The Catholic Church banned
Galileo's 1632 book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, forced
Galileo to recant his heliocentric views and condemned him to house arrest. He
died in his Florence home in 1642.
==
The last major change in the field took place some 780,000 years ago during a
magnetic reversal, although such reversals seem to occur more often on
average. A flip in the north and south poles typically involves a weakening in
the magnetic field, followed by a period of rapid recovery and reorganization
of opposite polarity.
The Milky Way is believed to be more than 13 billion years old, which is
estimated to be virtually as old as the entire Universe itself. The Milky Way
galaxy is actually just one of billions of galaxies contained within the
Universe, although very little is currently known about its seemingly infinite
galactic counterparts.
The Milky Way galaxy has a whopping circumference of roughly 250-300 thousand
light years! Within the main body of the Milky Way there are estimated to be
between 200 and 400 billion stars. The Earths solar system is believed to
exist very close to the Galaxys galactic plane, due to the fact that the Milky
Way essentially divides the night sky into two virtually equal hemispheres.
Scientists now estimate that in roughly three billion years, the Milky Way
galaxy will actually collide with the Andromeda Galaxy, which is very slowly
working its way towards us at a modest speed of about 1,800 kilometers per
minute.
==
The Oort Cloud is a huge spherical cloud surrounding the solar system.
It extends about 18 trillion miles (30 trillion kilometers) from the sun and
was first proposed in 1950 by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort. 
==
http://www.astronomy.net/
==
www.galaxyzoo. org
==
gen 30:37 Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and almond and plane, and
peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the rods.
gen 30:38 He set the rods which he had peeled in front of the flocks in the
runnels, that is, the watering troughs, where the flocks came to drink. And
since they bred when they came to drink,
gen 30:39 the flocks bred in front of the rods and so the flocks brought forth
striped, speckled, and spotted.
==
Universe's first star born tiny, grew huge: study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first object to brighten the dark, primordial
universe after the Big Bang was the tiny seed of a star that rapidly grew into
a behemoth 100 times more massive than the sun, scientists said on Thursday.
This first generation of stars apparently lived hard and died quickly. While
our sun may live 5 billion years, this first generation of stars likely lasted
only a slim fraction of that -- about 1 million years, the researchers said.
Scientists think the universe was born in a Big Bang explosion 13.7 billion
years ago and has been expanding ever since. But they have struggled to
understand how the first stars formed in the aftermath of this cataclysm.
Japanese and U.S. astronomers ran a sophisticated computer simulation that
showed how some of the hydrogen and helium gases strewn throughout the young
universe came together to form the first generation of stars.
"These stars are thought to be the first sources of light and also the first
sources of heavy elements such as carbon, oxygen and iron," Naoki Yoshida of
Nagoya University in Japan, who worked on the study published in the journal
Science, said in a telephone briefing.
"If we want to understand how things came about and look the way they do now,
we have to go back in time and understand how stars looked when they first
began to form," added Lars Hernquist of Harvard University in Massachusetts.
COMPACT UNIVERSE
At the time, the universe was about 20 times as compact as it is now,
Hernquist said. "We think that early in the universe, the only elements that
existed were hydrogen and helium, with trace amounts of lithium," Hernquist
added.
This matter was generally very smoothly distributed throughout the universe,
but some regions had greater concentrations of it than others, the researchers
said.
The effects of the gravity from this matter drew in more and more material
over time, setting in motion clouds of hydrogen and helium that came together
as a "protostar" -- the seed of a much larger star.
The first protostar was born about 300 million years after the Big Bang, the
researchers said. Nuclear reactions inside the protostar made it the first
object to cast starlight in what some astronomers call the "cosmic dark ages,"
they added.
It was a relatively tiny object at first, 1 percent the mass of the sun. But
within about 10,000 years -- "the blink of an eye," according to the
researchers -- it grew into a giant full-fledged star at least 100 times the
sun's mass.
While none of the stars survive today, their influence remains.
The processes churning inside the stars synthesized the universe's first heavy
elements. In dying, these stars may have blasted this stuff back into space to
become building blocks of future stars and planets composed of many more
elements.
Hernquist said these stars may have died in a very bright supernova or might
have collapsed in on themselves, forming black holes with relatively little of
their material ejected into space as ingredients for future stars.

==
The Age of the Earth by Brent Dalrymple
==
"Quaternary Dating Methods" by Mike Walker
==
http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page
==
Science uses logic and experimental methods to measure and describe the
material world. It yields knowledge about the workings of molecules and
machines, mitosis and momentum. Science has no moral valence. It is neutral.
DNA technology can craft a cure for a cancer or produce a weapon of
bio-terrorism. It is only a person's application of science that takes on
a moral dimension where ethics comes on the scene.
==
 The earliest recorded eclipse was in China on October 22, 2134 BC
==
The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory
George Musser 
==
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/DatingMethods.html

http://sciwebserver.science.mcmaster.ca/geo/research/age/beyond_carbon.htm
==
London's Natural History Museum pride themselves on being able to identify
species from around the globe.
The museum has more than 28 million insect species in its collection, 
==
Great Pyramid Consensus is that it was built from around 2580 to 2560 BC.  
==
Molecules of oxygen are paramagnetic, but that's due to the way the electrons
are arranged. In most stable compounds of oxygen (particularly organic ones),
the electrons are paired up so as to be diamagnetic. 
==
That's the major difference between science and superstition -Science still
works, even if you don't believe in it.
==
But a society that does not value critical thinking, the laying out of
rational arguments, and the use of logic in debating its issues, is a society
in decline and risking a return to obscurantism. The irony here is that the
most important documents regulating American life, the Constitution and the
Bill of Rights, were in fact a direct product of the philosophy of the
Enlightenment, and were drafted by people like Thomas Jefferson, with a very
keen interest in philosophy and rational discourse. Of course, the
Constitution has been under constant assault over the past few decades, in
synch with the rising tide of religious fundamentalism and irrationalism.
Appreciating what philosophy is about and how it works may make a significant
contribution toward reversing that tide.
==
Philosophy can never settle anything because,
unlike science, it does not rely on experimental evidence.
==
fallacies:
http://www.nizkor. org/features/ fallacies/
http://www.don- lindsay-archive. org/skeptic/ arguments. html
http://www.onegoodm ove.org/fallacy/ toc.htm
http://www.austhink .org/critical/ pages/fallacies. html
==
Magnetic Field Weakening in Stages, Old Ships' Logs Suggest

Earth's magnetic field is weakening in staggered steps, a new analysis of
centuries-old ships logs suggests.
The finding could help scientists better understand the way Earth's magnetic
poles reverse.
The planet's magnetic field flipsnorth becomes south and vice versaon average
every 300,000 years. However, the actual time between reversals varies widely.
The field last flipped about 800,000 years ago, according to the geologic
record.
Since 1840, when accurate measures of the intensity were first made, the field
strength has declined by about 5 percent per century.
If this decline is continuous, the magnetic field could drop to zero and
reverse sometime within the next 2,000 years.
But the field might not always be in steady decline, according to a new study
appearing in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science. The data show that field
strength was relatively stable between 1590 and 1840.
"It now looks as though it happens in steps rather than just one continuous
fall," said David Gubbins, an earth scientist at the University of Leeds in
the United Kingdom.
Records and Math
The magnetic field protects Earth from cosmic radiation. In its absence,
scientists say, Earth would be subjected to more electrical storms that
disrupt power grids and satellite communications (sun storm photos).
Humans and other animals would possibly be exposed to additional health
hazards.
For time periods before 1840, when more accurate techniques came available,
scientists have been able to measure the field's intensity by looking at the
orientation of magnetic minerals in rocks and pottery shards.
But this technique, dubbed paleomagnetism, has an error margin of 10 percent.
"A 10 percent error in field strength is bigger than the change we've seen in
the past 200 or 300 years," Gubbins said
To more accurately measure older samples of the field's rate of decline,
Gubbins and his colleagues used new data from historic sources, including
ships' logs.
The ships' logs provide information on declinationthe direction compasses
pointand, beginning around 1700, inclinationthe angle a magnetic needle makes
relative to the horizon.
Using statistics to combine intensity measurments starting in 1590 with the
data from the ships' logs allowed the team to reduce the inaccuracies, Gubbins
explained.
What they determined is that the field was relatively stable for about 250
years.
Gary Glatzmaier is an earth scientist at the University of California, Santa
Cruz. He models the processes deep inside the Earth that create the magnetic
field and lead to reversals over hundreds of thousands of years.
He says the results of the new study confirm his own ideas based on his models
that the magnetic-field strength doesn't change at a constant rate but is
always erraticincreasing, decreasing, or staying flat for varying lengths of
time.
"If [the field's activity] stayed constant, that would be worth noting," he
said.
Growing Patches
When Gubbins and his colleagues analyzed their data, they found that the most
recent decline can be explained by patches of reverse magnetic field that have
been growing in and migrating around the Southern Hemisphere since about 1800.
"It does look like the patches first formed toward the end of the 18th
century, when Captain Cook was busy sorting out navigation and measuring
magnetic field all over the world," Gubbins said.
Captain James Cook was an English explorer famous for his voyages to the
Pacific Ocean (Oceania map) and for mapping Australia's east coast, the
Hawaiian Islands, Newfoundland, and New Zealand.
Glatzmaier agrees that the patches of reverse magnetic field are responsible
for the measured decrease in field intensity over the past two centuries.
He added, however, that the patches are not the cause of the weakening
magnetic field but rather a "manifest of what is happening deep below in the
core. The field is changing because of the dynamo well below the surface."
The dynamo is the geologic process that creates the magnetic field, maintains
it, and causes it to reverse.
Scientists believe the dynamo occurs where heat from the solid inner core
churns the liquid outer core of nickel and iron.
Since the last field reversal about 800,000 years ago, the field has tried but
failed to reverse somewhere between 10 and 20 times, Gubbins says.
"So the field [intensity] is continually zigzagging all the time," he said.
Studying the most recent change in intensity, he adds, will provide a new
window on the physical processes of how the magnetic field reverses.
==
Earth's Core, Magnetic Field Changing Fast, Study Says
Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth's liquid outer core are
weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface, a new
study says.
"What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the
Earth's magnetic field," said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the
Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.
The findings suggest similarly quick changes are simultaneously occurring in
the liquid metal, 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) below the surface, he said.
The swirling flow of molten iron and nickel around Earth's solid center
triggers an electrical current, which generates the planet's magnetic field.
The study, published recently in Nature Geoscience, modeled Earth's magnetic
field using nine years of highly accurate satellite data.
Flip-Flop
Fluctuations in the magnetic field have occurred in several far-flung regions
of Earth, the researchers found.
In 2003 scientists found pronounced changes in the magnetic field in the
Australasian region. In 2004, however, the changes were focused on Southern
Africa.
The changes "may suggest the possibility of an upcoming reversal of the
geomagnetic field," said study co-author Mioara Mandea, a scientist at the
German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam.
Earth's magnetic field has reversed hundreds of times over the past billion
years, and the process could take thousands of years to complete.
The decline in the magnetic field also is opening Earth's upper atmosphere to
intense charged particle radiation, scientists say.
Satellite data show the geomagnetic field decreasing in the South Atlantic
region, Mandea said, adding that an oval-shaped area east of Brazil is
significantly weaker than similar latitudes in other parts of the world.
"It is in this region that the shielding effect of the magnetic field is
severely reduced, thus allowing high energy particles of the hard radiation
belt to penetrate deep into the upper atmosphere to altitudes below a hundred
kilometers (62 miles)," Mandea said.
This radiation does not influence temperatures on Earth. The particles,
however, do affect technical and radio equipment and can damage electronic
equipment on satellites and airplanes, Olsen of the Danish space center said.
The study documents just how rapidly the flow in Earth's core is changing.
By using satellite imagery, researchers have a nearly continuous measurement
of changes, he said.
==
"All models are wrong, but some are useful." 
So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago,
==
Your Brain Lies to You
FALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun
revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less
egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator
Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created
a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult
than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories 
and mislead us along the way.
The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computers hard
drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the
brain about the size and shape of a fat mans curled pinkie finger. But the
information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it
down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the
fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the
context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the
capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably dont remember how you
learned it.
This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget
whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer,
people often later remember it as true.
With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a
noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during
the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage
to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and
its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004
presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in
the polls.
Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia,
campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that
if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long
after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an
opening line like I think I read somewhere or even with a reference to a
specific source.
In one study, a group of Stanford students was exposed repeatedly to an
unsubstantiated claim taken from a Web site that Coca-Cola is an effective
paint thinner. Students who read the statement five times were nearly
one-third more likely than those who read it only twice to attribute it to
Consumer Reports (rather than The National Enquirer, their other choice),
giving it a gloss of credibility.
Adding to this innate tendency to mold information we recall is the way our
brains fit facts into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news
that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.
In another Stanford study, 48 students, half of whom said they favored capital
punishment and half of whom said they opposed it, were presented with two
pieces of evidence, one supporting and one contradicting the claim that
capital punishment deters crime. Both groups were more convinced by the
evidence that supported their initial position.
Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional
chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than
by their factual merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods about
Coke  or about a presidential candidate.
Journalists and campaign workers may think they are acting to counter
misinformation by pointing out that it is not true. But by repeating a false
rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger. In its concerted effort to
stop the smears, the Obama campaign may want to keep this in mind. Rather than
emphasize that Mr. Obama is not a Muslim, for instance, it may be more
effective to stress that he embraced Christianity as a young man.
Consumers of news, for their part, are prone to selectively accept and
remember statements that reinforce beliefs they already hold. In a replication
of the study of students impressions of evidence about the death penalty,
researchers found that even when subjects were given a specific instruction to
be objective, they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with
their beliefs.
In the same study, however, when subjects were asked to imagine their reaction
if the evidence had pointed to the opposite conclusion, they were more
open-minded to information that contradicted their beliefs. Apparently, it
pays for consumers of controversial news to take a moment and consider that
the opposite interpretation may be true.
In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote that the
best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the
competition of the market. Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more
likely to spread if they are honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this
admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps
we can move closer to Holmess ideal.
===
n., pl. par·tis pris (pär'te¯).
An inclination for or against something or someone that affects judgment; 
prejudice or bias.
==
 It is a great mistake here to suppose that a little knowledge is dangerous;
every grain of pure truth is precious, and will bear precious fruit. 
==
Far off in universe, the same laws found
Natures laws appear to be the same in the distant universe as they are here, a
study has found.Astronomers determined that one of the key numbers in physics
is about the same in a galaxy six billion light years away as it is on Earth.
A light-year is the distance light travels in a year.Scientists have debated
whether the laws of physics may change at different cosmic times and places.
The study suggests these laws are the same in this galaxy half way across the
visible Universe as they are here, said astrophysicist Michael Murphy of
Swinburne University in Australia, lead author of a paper on the findings. The
work appears in the June 20 issue of the research journal Science.The number
studied was the weight or mass ratio between the proton and electron, parts of
the atom. The ratio is found to be about 1836.15. The astronomers examined the
issue by effectively looking back in time at a quasar, the luminous core of a
distant galaxy, whose light took 7.5 billion years to reach us. Along the way,
it was partly absorbed by ammonia gas in another galaxy.Not only is ammonia
useful in bathroom cleaning, its a good molecule to test our understanding of
physics, Murphy said. Ammonia absorbs the quasars radio waves, a form of
light, but only waves with certain energies. These precise absorption
characteristics are sensitive to the proton-electron mass ratio, and can be
measured from Earth using devices known as spectroscopes.The researchers used
a spectroscope on the Effelsberg 100m radio telescope near Bonn, Germany. By
comparing the ammonia absorption with that of other molecules, we were able to
determine the value of the proton-electron mass ratio in this galaxy, and
confirm that it is the same as it is on Earth, said Christian Henkel of the
Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, a co-author of the study.The
astronomers said they plan to continue testing natures laws in different cosmic
places and times, but they need to find more absorbing galaxies. The studied
galaxy, designated B0218+367, is the only target for this kind of research so
far. There must be many more target galaxies out there, as soon as the right
telescopes to find them are available.Murphy said this problem could be
overcome with the proposed Square Kilometre Array, or SKA, telescope, which
scientists also believe could pick up distant civilizations television
signals.The SKA is the largest, most ambitious international telescope project
ever conceived. When completed it will have an enormous collecting area, and
will allow us to search for more absorbing galaxies, Murphy said. The
telescopes location, which has been short-listed to Western Australia or
Southern Africa, is to be announced within two years.By continuing their
research into natures forces, the astronomers also hope to find a window into
the extra dimensions of space that many theoretical physicists think may exist.
==
 memes - 
: n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or
idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to
another.
==
A team figured out how salmonella is able to get your immune system to
ignore it while it grows.
The culprit is a protein called AvrA. Here is how it works: Usually, when your
body is invaded by a bacteria, the bug causes tissue damage, releasing
chemicals that lead to swelling and inflammation. Physically, inflammation can
isolate the invaders, making it difficult for them to travel to other parts of
the body. Chemically, it attracts phagocytes, white blood cells that kill bad
bacteria.
Salmonella has the ability to punch through the tight links of cells that make
up the intestinal wall, using an arsenal of proteins and toxins it can inject
into cells. Sun said scientists always thought AvrA was one of these, but, as
her team reported June 4 in the online journal PloS One, AvrA actually has an
opposite function.
The study found that AvrA can maintain the tight structure of cell junctions
in the intestinal cells, she said.
AvrA temporarily stops salmonella from breaking apart the cell links. Because
the bug doesn't damage tissue during this phase, there's no inflammatory
response. Instead, salmonella is mostly left alone, free to grow and multiply
into a formidable invasion force. Only then does it break through the
intestinal walls, beginning its reign of terror and making you sick.
==
Huxley  _Manual of the Anatomy of the Invertebrated Animals_ (1878)
==
Ion Microprobe Technology Reveals Earth was Habitable 4.3 Billion Years Ago
A team of scientists led by University of Wisconsin-Madison geologists
Takayuki Ushikubo, Valley and Noriko Kita have completed an analysis of
ancient minerals called zircons which shows liquid water existed at least 4.3
billion years ago and that heavy weathering by an acrid climate possibly
destroyed the surface of the Earth's earliest continents when the planet was a
mere 150 million years old.
Zircons, the oldest known materials on Earth, offer a window in time back as
far as 4.4 billion years ago. Because these crystals are exceptionally
resistant to chemical changes, they have become the gold standard for
determining the age of ancient rocks, says UW-Madison geologist John Valley.
Valley previously used these tiny mineral grains  smaller than a speck of
sand  to show that rocky continents and liquid water formed on the Earth much
earlier than previously thought, about 4.2 billion years ago.
Ushikubo, the first author on the new study, says that atmospheric weathering
could provide an answer to a long-standing question in geology: why no rock
samples have ever been found dating back to the first 500 million years after
the Earth formed.
"Currently, no rocks remain from before about 4 billion years ago," he says.
"Some people consider this as evidence for very high temperature conditions on
the ancient Earth."
Previous explanations for the missing rocks have included destruction by
bombardment of meteorites and the possibility that the early Earth was a
red-hot sea of magma in which rocks could not form.
The current analysis suggests a different scenario. Ushikubo and colleagues
used a sophisticated new instrument called an ion microprobe to analyze
isotope ratios of the element lithium in zircons from the Jack Hills in
western Australia. By comparing these chemical fingerprints to lithium
compositions in zircons from continental crust and primitive rocks similar to
the Earth's mantle, they found evidence that the young planet already had the
beginnings of continents, relatively cool temperatures and liquid water by the
time the Australian zircons formed.
"At 4.3 billion years ago, the Earth already had habitable conditions,"
Ushikubo says.
The zircons' lithium signatures also hold signs of rock exposure on the
Earth's surface and breakdown by weather and water, identified by low levels
of a heavy lithium isotope. "Weathering can occur at the surface on
continental crust or at the bottom of the ocean, but the [observed] lithium
compositions can only be formed from continental crust," says Ushikubo.
The findings suggest that extensive weathering may have destroyed the Earth's
earliest rocks, he says.
"Extensive weathering earlier than 4 billion years ago actually makes a lot of
sense," says Valley. "People have suspected this, but there's never been any
direct evidence."
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can combine with water to form carbonic acid,
which falls as acid rain. The early Earth's atmosphere is believed to have
contained extremely high levels of carbon dioxide  maybe 10,000 times as much
as today.
At those levels, you would have had vicious acid rain and intense greenhouse
effects. "That is a condition that will dissolve rocks," Valley says. "If
granites were on the surface of the Earth, they would have been destroyed
almost immediately  geologically speaking  and the only remnants that we could
recognize as ancient would be these zircons."
==
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pscindx.htm  science
==
"The analysis of all the stars studied with HARPS shows that about one third
of all solar-like stars have either super-Earth or Neptune-like planets with
orbital periods shorter than 50 days."
==
Drake Equation, a set of mathematical assumptions that attempts to predict how
many advanced civilizations might exist in the Milky Way galaxy.

The equation is N = R* x fp x ne x fe x fi x fc x L. It says that the number
of civilizations we might communicate with (denoted by N) equals the rate of
star formation (R*) multiplied by the fraction of stars that have planets (fp)
multiplied by the average number of planets around a star that can support life
(ne) multiplied by the number of those planets that actually develop life (fe)
multiplied by the fraction that develop intelligent life (fi) multiplied by
the fraction that develop technology that can be detected from Earth (fc).

All this is then multiplied by the length of time a technological civilization
can exist (L).
==
The Universe in a Mirror 
By Robert Zimmerman 
(Princeton University Press, 287 pages, $29.95)
==
Missing Matter Of Universe Found; Cosmic Web Discovered
Now, in an extensive search of the relatively recent, local universe,
University of Colorado at Boulder astronomers said they have definitively
found about half of the missing normal matter, called baryons, in the spaces
between the galaxies. This important component of the universe is known as the
intergalactic medium and it extends essentially throughout all of space, from
just outside our Milky Way galaxy to the most distant regions of space
observed by astronomers.
The questions "where have the local baryons gone, and what are their
properties?" are being answered with greater certainty than ever before. "We
think we are seeing the strands of a web-like structure that forms the
backbone of the universe," said CU-Boulder Professor Mike Shull. "What we are
confirming in detail is that intergalactic space, which intuitively might seem
to be empty, is in fact the reservoir for most of the normal, baryonic matter
in the universe."
Hubble observations made nearly a decade ago by Todd Tripp and colleagues
first reported finding the hottest portion of this missing matter in the local
universe. That study utilized spectroscopic observations of one quasar to look
for absorbing intergalactic gas along the path to the quasar.
Writing in the May 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal, doctoral student
Charles Danforth and Shull of CU-Boulder's astrophysical and planetary
sciences department reported on observations taken along sight-lines to 28
quasars. The analysis probably represents the most detailed look to date at
the intergalactic matter within about 4 billion light-years of Earth, Shull
said.
Baryons are protons, neutrons, and other subatomic particles that make up
ordinary matter such as hydrogen, helium and heavier elements. Baryonic matter
forms stars, planets, moons and even the interstellar gas and dust from which
new stars are born, said Shull. Astronomers caution that the missing baryonic
matter is not to be confused with "dark matter," a mysterious and exotic form
of matter that is only detected via its gravitational pull.
Danforth and Shull looked for the missing baryonic matter by using the light
from distant quasars -- the bright cores of galaxies with active black holes
-- to probe the spider web-like structure that permeates the seemingly
invisible space between galaxies, much like a flashlight shining through fog.
Using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph aboard NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope and NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, the astronomers
found hot gases -- mostly oxygen and hydrogen -- which provide a
three-dimensional probe of intergalactic space. The two spacecraft helped the
researchers find the spectral "fingerprints" of intervening oxygen and
hydrogen superimposed on the quasars' light.
The bright quasar light was measured to penetrate more than 650 filaments of
hydrogen in the cosmic web. Eighty-three filaments were found laced with
highly ionized oxygen in which five electrons have stripped away, said Shull.
The presence of highly ionized oxygen and other elements between the galaxies
is believed to trace large quantities of invisible, hot ionized hydrogen in
the universe. These vast reservoirs of hydrogen have largely escaped detection
because they are too hot to be seen in visible light, yet too cool to be seen
in X-rays, the researchers said.
The oxygen "tracer" was probably created when exploding stars in galaxies
spewed the oxygen back into intergalactic space where it mixed with the
hydrogen and then was shocked and heated to very high temperatures, Shull
said. The team also found that about 20 percent of the baryons reside in the
voids between the web-like filaments.
Within these voids could be dwarf galaxies or wisps of matter that could turn
into stars and galaxies in billions of years, said the CU-Boulder researchers.
Probing the vast cosmic web will be a key goal for the Cosmic Origins
Spectrograph, or COS, a $70 million instrument designed and built by
CU-Boulder with Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder to probe the
nearby galaxies and the distant universe. Astronauts plan to install it on
Hubble during a servicing mission later this year.
"COS will allow us to make more robust and more detailed core samples of the
cosmic web," Shull said. "We predict that COS will find considerably more of
the missing baryonic matter in weaker filaments.
"Our goal is to confirm the existence of the cosmic web by mapping its
structure, measuring the amount of heavy metals found in it, and measuring its
temperature," he said. "Studying the cosmic web gives us information on how
galaxies built up over time."
The COS team hopes to observe 100 additional quasars and build up a survey of
more than 10,000 hydrogen filaments in the cosmic web, many laced with heavy
elements from early stars.

==
New Evidence From Earliest Known Human Settlement In The Americas
New evidence from the Monte Verde archaeological site in southern
Chile confirms its status as the earliest known human settlement in
the Americas and provides additional support for the theory that one
early migration route followed the Pacific Coast more than 14,000
years ago.
The study was conducted by a team of anthropologists, geologists and
botanists headed by Vanderbilt University's Distinguished Professor of
Anthropology Tom Dillehay and was reported in the May 9 issue of the
journal Science.
The paper, which includes the first new data reported from the site in
10 years, includes the identification of nine species of seaweed and
marine algae recovered from hearths and other areas in the ancient
settlement. The seaweed samples were directly dated between 14,220 to
13,980 years ago, confirming that the upper layer of the site, labeled
Monte Verde II, was occupied more than 1,000 years earlier than any
other reliably dated human settlements in the Americas.
The Monte Verde site was discovered in 1976. It is located in a peat
bog about 500 miles south of Santiago and has revealed well-preserved
ruins of a small settlement of 20 to 30 people living in a dozen huts
along a small creek. A wide variety of food has been found at the
site, including extinct species of llama and an elephant-like animal
called a gomphothere, shellfish, vegetables and nuts.
In 1979, when Dillehay and his colleagues first reported that the
radiocarbon dating of the bones and charcoal found at Monte Verde
returned dates of more than 14,000 years before the present, it
stirred up a major controversy because the early dates appeared to
conflict with other archaeological evidence of the settlement of North
America.
Since at least 1900, the prevailing theory had been that human
colonization began at the end of the last Ice Age about 13,000 years
ago, when groups of big game hunters, called the Clovis culture,
followed herds from Siberia to Alaska over a land bridge across the
Bering Strait and then gradually spread southward. None of the Clovis
artifacts were dated earlier than 13,000 years ago. So having a
substantially older human settlement in southern Chile was difficult
to reconcile with this view.
It wasn't until 1997 that the controversy was resolved by a prominent
group of archaeologists who reviewed the evidence, visited the Monte
Verde site and unanimously approved the dating.
Most scholars now believe that people first entered the new world
through the Bering land bridge more than 16,000 years ago. After
entering Alaska, it is not known whether they colonized the hemisphere
by moving down the Pacific coast, by inland routes or both. The
general view is that the early immigrants would have spread down the
coast much faster than they could move inland because they could
exploit familiar coastal resources more readily and get much of their
food from the sea. However, evidence to support the coastal migration
theory has been particularly hard to find because sea levels at the
time were about 200 feet lower than today: As the sea level rose, it
would have covered most of the early coastal settlements.
==
Gram staining (or Gram's method) is an empirical method of differentiating
bacterial species into two large groups (Gram-positive and Gram-negative)
based on the chemical and physical properties of their cell walls.
The method is named after its inventor, the Danish scientist Hans Christian
Gram (1853  1938), who developed the technique in 1884 to discriminate between
pneumococci and Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria.
1Gram-negative bacteria are those bacteria that do not retain crystal violet
dye in the Gram staining protocol Gram-positive bacteria will retain the
crystal violet dye when washed in a decolorizing solution. In a Gram stain
test, a counterstain (commonly safranin) is added after the crystal violet,
coloring all Gram-negative bacteria a red or pink color. The test itself is
useful in classifying two distinct types of bacteria based on structural
differences in their cell walls.
Many species of Gram-negative bacteria are pathogenic, meaning they can cause
disease in a host organism. This pathogenic capability is usually associated
with certain components of Gram-negative cell walls, in particular the
lipopolysaccharide (also known as LPS or endotoxin) layer. In humans, LPS
triggers an innate immune response characterized by cytokine production and
immune system activation. Inflammation is a common result of cytokine
production, which can also produce host toxicity.
==
Science tells us what is happening while we are not there to watch.
==
Kuhn Structure of Scientific Revolutions    Great classic
==
Galileo credited Cardinal Baronius with the 1598 aphorism, "The Bible was
written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.
==
Combining data over a period of
three years, they have produced an image containing over 100,000
galaxies over an area four times the size of the full Moon. 
==
God's Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion
(Hardcover) by Guy Consolmagno (Author) 
==
"Quaternary Dating Methods" by Mike Walker.
==
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley said they had used new
rock dating methods to pinpoint the extinction of the dinosaurs more precisely
than ever before.
Their improved argon-argon dating method places the Cretaceous-Tertiary,
or K/T, boundary at 65.95 million years ago, give or take 40,000 years.
Earlier estimates had put it at 65.5 million years ago, with a 300,000-year
margin of error.
==
 Evolving Brain by R. Grant Steen Stung:  
The Accidental Mind by David J. Linden
===
Genetic variations that have been inherited together are known as haplotypes.
==
Moon's birth changed the length of days on Earth
THE collision that formed our moon may have defined the length of our planet's
day and set the direction in which it spins.
The moon is widely thought to have formed after an object roughly the size of
Mars crashed into the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, throwing up a cloud of
debris that eventually coalesced into a rocky sphere. Robin Canup of the
Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, wanted to find out if this
process was influenced by the spin of the Earth at the time - something
previous models of the moon's formation did not take into account.
Canup built a computer model that used as many as 120,000 pieces of virtual
rock to simulate the two colliding bodies. Her model showed that the Earth's
rotation beforehand may have been very different to what it is today (Icarus,
DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2008.03.011). Prior to the impact, the Earth's axis of
rotation may have been steeply tilted, and the planet would have spun much
faster, with a day lasting as little as 4 hours. The model also showed that
the direction in which the Earth spins could have been reversed by the impact.
If the Earth had previously rotated in this way, its current spin and that of
the moon can be accounted for, Canup says. What's more, if the Earth had once
spun faster, enough material would have been thrown up by the impact to make
the moon the size it is.
==
Gansser, A., 1964. Geology of the Himalayas, John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.,
New York.
==
STOCKHOLM - Scientists have found a cluster of spruces in the mountains in
western Sweden which, at an age of 8,000 years, may be the world's oldest
living trees.
The hardy Norway spruces were found perched high on a mountain side where they
have remained safe from recent dangers such as logging, but exposed to the
harsh weather conditions of the mountain range that separates Norway and
Sweden.
Carbon dating of the trees carried out at a laboratory in Miami, Florida,
showed the oldest of them first set root about 8,000 years ago, making it the
world's oldest known living tree, Umea University Professor Leif Kullman said.
California's "Methuselah" tree, a Great Basin bristlecone pine, is often cited
as the world's oldest living tree with a recorded age of between 4,500 and
5,000 years.
Two other spruces, also found in the course of climate change studies in the
Swedish county of Dalarna, were shown to be 4,800 and 5,500 years old.
"These were the first woods that grew after the Ice Age," said Lars Hedlund,
responsible for environmental surveys in the county of Dalarna and
collaborator in climate studies there.
"That means that when you speak of climate change today, you can in these
(trees) see pretty much every single climate change that has occurred."
Although a single tree trunk can become at most about 600 years old, the
spruces had survived by pushing out another trunk as soon as the old one died,
Professor Kullman said.
Rising temperatures in the area in recent years had allowed the spruces to
grow rapidly, making them easier to find in the rugged terrain, he added.
"For quite some time they have endured as bushes maybe 1/2 meter tall," he
said.
"But over the past few decades we have seen a much warmer climate, which has
meant that they have popped up like mushrooms in the soil."
==
A Meat-Eating Neanderthal from Jonzac
There is a new isotopic dietary analysis of Neanderthals at the site of Jonzac
(Chez Pinaud), in SW France, available in the Journal of Human Evolution
(Richards et al., 2008). Here's the abstract:
We report here on the isotopic analysis (carbon and nitrogen) of collagen
extracted from a Neanderthal tooth and animal bone from the late Mousterian
site of Jonzac (Charente-Maritime, France). This study was undertaken to test
whether the isotopic evidence indicates that animal protein was the main
source of dietary protein for this relatively late Neanderthal, as suggested
by previous studies. This was of particular interest here because this is the
first isotopic study of a relatively late Neanderthal associated with
Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition (MTA, dating to approximately 55,000 to
40,000 BP) technology. We found that the Jonzac Neanderthal had isotopic
values consistent with a diet in which the main protein sources were large
herbivores, particularly bovids and horses. We also found evidence of
different dietary niches between the Neanderthal and a hyena at the site, with
the hyena consuming mainly reindeer.
This is a good, empirically strong study with many comparative data points
drawn from associated faunal remains, and the conclusions are robust. It is
also original in its use of collagen extracted from tooth dentine as opposed
to bone, the latter being the material on which all previous isotopic studies
of diet have been done. This is important because:
"Unlike bone, tooth dentine likely does not alter
over a lifetime, and therefore it reflects a specific period of
time of formation. Therefore, the isotopic data from this Neanderthal
premolar do not reflect the lifetime average, but instead
the diet at the ages of later childhood/early adolescence.
Our isotopic results for the Jonzac Neanderthal are compared
to the those reported for other European Neanderthals
in Table 3. The isotopic values are remarkably similar for all
of the Neanderthals, and in all cases, the authors of the various
studies concluded, as we have for Jonzac, that the main source
of dietary protein was animal protein, likely from large herbivores.
In no case do we see isotopic evidence for the significant
consumption of aquatic (marine or freshwater) protein,
as has been observed from Gravettian humans in Europe (Richards
et al., 2001; Pettitt et al., 2003). The results of our isotopic
study of the Jonzac Neanderthal therefore support the
emerging picture from isotopic studies that Neanderthals
have a similar dietary adaptation over a wide range of environments
and over a relatively long period of time." (Richards et al. 2008: 6)
This is interesting because it directly implies that, at Jonzac, a Neanderthal
juvenile had a diet similar to that documented in adult Neanderthals elsewhere.
This has concomitant implications for how animal food might have been shared
within Neanderthal groups, suggesting that even relatively young individual
had access to a relatively high quality diet.
Another interesting conclusion of this study is that hyenas and hominins
preferentially targeted different herbivore taxa, with humans mainly going
after bovids and horses and hyenas targeting reindeer. This might represent
evidence for niche partitioning, that is, the concentration on different
segments of a given niche by organisms that are in competition for it. In this
case, the competition would have been between carnivorous species, and the
partition would be reflect by the selective exploitation of different animal
species within the high-return large herbivore niche. This, however, is based
on the isotopic signature of a single hyena bone from a different layer than
that where the Neanderthal tooth was recovered and compared to averaged
isotopic signature of herbivores from two layers, so we need to be cautious to
draw firm conclusions on the basis of this evidence alone.
Overall, though, it does seem that the Neanderthal at Jonzac had a childhood
protein intake heavily dominated by the meat of large herbivores. A few
comments, however: the Vindija remains are more recent by several millennia
than the Jonzac tooth, so the observation that some comparatively late
Neanderthals hunted lots of large herbivores is not completely unprecedented
(Richards et al. 2000). Also, while this study provides one more isotopic data
point on Neanderthal diets, the fact remains that we still have no such studies
from Neanderthals from the southern part of their range, nor from coastal
settings. I suspect that such results might alter the picture we have of
Neanderthal animal procurement. Even if they don't, however, it is important
to remember that
"dietary contributions from fat cannot be evaluated by isotope analysis
of collagen and so carbon and nitrogen isotope
studies can only reconstruct the likely proportions of
different species that made up the protein component
of their diets, which is unlikely to have comprised
more than about 40% of their diet by energy and possibly
only 25% of the diet overall (Cordain et al 2002)."
(Pearson 2007: 6).
Thus, while the results of isotopic dietary analyses of Neanderthals are
uniquely informative, it is important to remember that they only provide data
pertaining to one part of their diet. Thus, to assume that Neanderthals ate
only meat because they appear to have drawn most of their protein from large
herbivore is 'jumping the evidential gun'. Given that Neanderthals were
top-ranked hunters living at relatively low population densities, it would
have made little sense for them not to target the highest-ranked animal
resources in their ecosystem as their main source of meat. And this behavior
is exactly what isotopic studies have been demonstrating so far. As for the
rest of the the Neanderthal diet, various lines of evidence - including a
wonderful paper by Henry and Piperno (2008) presented at the Paleoanthropology
Society meetings two weeks ago - are beginning to clearly show that
Neanderthals also appear to have made extensive use of plant resources
whenever they had access to them. Unfortunately, this is effectively invisible
from an isotopic standpoint.
References:
Henry, A., Piperno, D. 2008. Plants in Neandertal diet: Plant microfossil
evidence from the dental calculus of Shanidar III. Paper presented on March
26, at the 2008 Annual Meetings of the Paleoanthropology Society, Vancouver,
BC, Canada.
Pearson, J. A. 2007. Hunters, fishers and scavengers: a review of the isotope
evidence for Neanderthal diet. Before Farming 2007/2-2.
Richards,M.P. , Pettitt, P.B., Trinkaus, E., Smith, F.H., Karavanic,
I.,Paunovic, M.,
2000. Neanderthal diet at Vindija and Neanderthal predation: the evidence
from stable isotopes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 97: 7663-7666.
RICHARDS, M., TAYLOR, G., STEELE, T., MCPHERRON, S., SORESSI, M., JAUBERT, J.,
ORSCHIEDT, J., MALLYE, J., RENDU, W., HUBLIN, J. (2008). Isotopic dietary
analysis of a Neanderthal and associated fauna from the site of Jonzac
(Charente-Maritime) , France. Journal of Human Evolution DOI:
10.1016/j.jhevol. 2008.02.007
==
Dinosaurs along the Grand Canyon?
The Grand Canyon may be so old that dinosaurs once lumbered along its rim,
new research suggests. This comes shortly after another study that
already seemed to raise the canyons estimated age, though not nearly as
much.
The Grand Canyon has an older prehistory than many had thought, said
Rebecca Flowers, a geologist at the University of Colorado at
Boulder. Flowers is lead author of the study, to appear in the May issue
of the Geological Society of America Bulletin.
Flowers and colleagues used a technique called radiometric dating to
conclude that the Grand Canyon may have formed more than 55 million years
ago. That pushes back by 40 million to 50 million years the assumed
origins of the enormous gorge, in northern Arizona.
The researchers gathered evidence from rocks in the canyon and on
surrounding plateaus thought to have been deposited near sea level
several hundred million years ago. Later, the Earths crust pushed
upwards and eroded in the area to form the canyon.
As rocks moved to the surface in the Grand Canyon region, they cooled off,
said Flowers, adding that her team reconstructed the ancient layout by
determining the cooling history. The team believes an ancestral
canyon developed along the eastern section of the current one some 55
million years ago, only later linking with other parts that developed
separately.
The ancient sandstone in the canyon walls contains a mineral called
apatite, hosting minute amounts of the radioactive elements
uranium and thorium. These slowly decay, or disintegrate, Flowers
said. An abundance of the three elements, paired with temperature
information from Earths interior, offered a sort of clock to
calculate when the apatite grains were embedded in rock a mile deepthe
canyons approximate depth todayand when they cooled as they neared the
surface as a result of erosion.
Apatite from the bottom of the canyons Upper Granite Gorge region
yields similar dates as samples collected on the nearby plateau, said
geologist Brian Wernicke of the California Institute of
Technology, a collaborator in the research.
Because both canyon and plateau samples resided at nearly the same depth
beneath the Earths surface 55 million years ago, a canyon of about the same
dimensions of today may have existed at least that far back, he said,
possibly as far back as the time of dinosaurs at the end of the
Cretaceous period 65 million years ago. Thats when the dinosaurs died
off.
One of the most surprising findings was that plateaus surrounding the
canyon may have eroded as swiftly as the gorge itself, each dropping a
mile or more, said Flowers: small streams on the plateaus seem to have
stripped rock just as effectively as the ancient Colorado River carved
the canyon.
If you stand on its rim now, the bottom of the ancestral canyon would have
sat over your head, incised into rocks that have since been eroded away,
said Flowers. The Colorado River was likely running in the opposite
direction as now, she added.
==
Missing Link Between Planets and Stars Found
Brown dwarfs are the oddballs of the cosmos, more massive than planets but not
heavy enough to generate the thermonuclear fusion that powers real stars. Now
astronomers have found the coldest brown dwarf to date
The failed star might represent a new class of objects that are a missing link
between planets and stars.
The cold brown dwarf floats freely in space, not bound to a star. Its mass is
somewhere between 15 and 30 times that of Jupiter. And it is about 660 degrees
Fahrenheit (350 Celsius), cooler than any other known object in its class.
The surface of the sun is about 11,000 degrees F (6,000 degrees C). The
temperature at the top of Jupiter's clouds is about -230 degrees F (-145
degrees C), though at its core the mercury soars to 3,000 degrees F (24,000
degrees C).
The brown dwarf, named CFBDS J005910.83-011401.3, is about 40 light-years from
our solar system. It was found by an international team using the Canada France
Hawaii Telescope and Gemini North Telescope, both located in Hawaii, and the a
European Southern Observatory telescope in Chile.
Oddballs
The mass of brown dwarfs is usually less than 70 Jupiter masses. In contrast
to a star like our sun, which spends most of its lifetime burning hydrogen and
keeping a constant internal temperature, a brown dwarf spends its lifetime
getting colder and colder.
The first brown dwarfs were detected in 1995. Since then, they have been found
to share common properties with giant planets, while differences remain. For
example, clouds of dust and aerosols, as well as large amounts of methane,
were detected in the atmospheres of the coolest brown dwarfs, just as in the
atmosphere of Jupiter and Saturn.
However, there were still two major differences. In the brown dwarf
atmospheres, water is always in gaseous state, while it condenses into water
ice in giant planets; and ammonia has never been detected in the brown dwarf,
while it is a major component from Jupiter's atmosphere.
Cooler still
The newly-discovered brown dwarf looks much more like a giant planet than the
known classes of brown dwarfs, both because of its low temperature and because
of the presence of ammonia.
To date, two classes of brown dwarfs have been known: the L dwarfs
(temperature of 2,100 to 3,600 Fahrenheit (1,200-2,000 C), which have clouds
of dust and aerosols in their high atmosphere, and the T dwarfs (temperature
lower than 2,100 F), which have a very different spectrum because of methane
forming in their atmosphere.
Because it contains ammonia and has a much lower temperature than do L and T
dwarfs, CFBDS0059 might be the protoype of a new class of brown dwarfs to be
called the Y dwarfs, the researchers propose. This new class would become the
coldest stellar objects, hence the missing link toward giant planets.
Almost a planet
This discovery also has important implications in the study of extrasolar
planets.
The atmosphere of brown dwarfs looks very much like that of giant planets,
therefore the same models are used to reproduce their physical conditions.
Such modeling requires to be constrained with observations. Observing the
atmospheres of extrasolar planets is indeed very hard because the light from
the planets is embedded in the much stronger light from their parent star.
Because brown dwarfs are sometimes isolated bodies, with no stars nearby, they
are much easier to observe.
So looking to brown dwarfs with a temperature close to that of the giant
planets will help in constraining the models of extrasolar planets'
atmospheres, the researchers said.
==
Intelligence: A Rare Cosmic Commodity
Advanced ground and space-based telescopes are discovering new planets around
other stars almost daily, but an environmental scientist from England believes
that even if some of those planets turn out to be Earth-like, the odds are very
low they'll have intelligent inhabitants.
In a recent paper published in the journal Astrobiology, Professor Andrew
Watson of the University of East Anglia describes an improved mathematical
model for the evolution of intelligent life as the result of a small number of
discrete steps.
Evolutionary step models have been used before, but Watson (a Fellow of
England's Royal Society who studied under James Lovelock, inventor of the
"Gaia hypothesis") sees a limiting factor: The habitability of the Earth (and
presumably, other living worlds) will end as the sun brightens. Like most
stars, as it progresses along the main sequence, the sun's output increases
(it is believed to be about 25 percent brighter now than when the Earth
formed). Within at most 1 billion years, this will raise the average
temperature of the Earth to 50 degrees C, rendering the planet uninhabitable.
Four major steps
Applying the limited lifespan to a stepwise model, Watson finds that
approximately four major evolutionary steps were required before an
intelligent civilization could develop on Earth. These steps probably included
the emergence of single celled life about half a billion years after the Earth
was formed, multicellular life about a billion and a half years later,
specialized cells allowing complex life forms with functional organs a billion
years after that, and human language a billion years later still.
Several of these steps agree with major transitions that have been observed in
the archeological record.
Watson estimates the overall probability that intelligent life will evolve as
the product of the probabilities of each of the necessary steps. In his model,
the probability of each evolutionary step occurring in any given epoch is 10
percent or less, so the total probability that intelligent life will emerge is
quite low (less than 0.01 percent over 4 billion years). Even if intelligent
life eventually emerges, the model suggests its persistence will be relatively
short by comparison to the lifespan of the planet on which it developed.
The mathematical methods Watson used assume that each evolutionary step is
independent of the others, though they must occur in sequence. Watson
considers this "a reasonable first approximation for what is, after all, a
very idealized sort of model, deliberately simplified enough that the math can
be solved analytically."
Critical changes
Watson also suggests that some of the critical steps may have changed the
biosphere irreversibly.
The development of photosynthetic plants, for example, led to an oxygen
atmosphere, which was a necessary precursor to the development of complex land
animals. Once this transition occurred, any further evolutionary step would
have to take place in an oxygen atmosphere, which may have limited
opportunities for non oxygen-breathing life to evolve.
Watson says in the conclusion to his paper: " ... only on those rare planets
on which complex creatures happen to evolve can there exist observers who ask
questions about evolution and care about the answers." Asked if an advanced,
space-faring civilization might be able to survive the brightening of its star
by migrating off the planet where it evolved, Watson agrees that's possible:
"the model predicts only when 'intelligence' can arise based on the time
available. Once the observers exist, they might do all manner of things to
find new places to live."
Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, had this comment on
Watson's work: "We have, of course, only one example of intelligent life
(indeed, of life of any type). That means we cannot possibly estimate from
this single instance what is the probability of life on other worlds unless we
are completely confident we understand all the relevant evolutionary processes.
Watson argues that intelligent life will be dismayingly rare: there is no way
to prove that is true. On the other hand, if the converse is the case  if the
galaxy is home to many intelligences  that is amenable to proof. We should do
the experiment."
==
"Virus Of The Mind: The New Science of the Meme" by Richard Brodie
Herb Simon  "The Sciences of the Artificial"
Marvin Minsky  "The Society of Mind"
===
Continents loss to oceans boosts staying power
Study measures effects of chemical weathering on the composition of
continents
New research suggests that the geological staying power of continents
comes partly from their losing battle with the Earth's oceans over
magnesium. The research finds continents lose more than 20 percent of
their initial mass via chemical reactions involving the Earth's crust,
water and atmosphere. Because much of the lost mass is dominated by
magnesium and calcium, continents ultimately gain because the lighter,
silicon-rich rock that's left behind is buoyed up by denser rock
beneath the Earth's crust.
The Earth's continents seem like fixtures, having changed little
throughout recorded human history. But geologists know that continents
have come and gone during the Earth's 4.5 billion years. However,
there are more theories than hard data about some of the key processes
that govern continents' lives.
"Continents are built by new rock that wells up from volcanoes in
island arcs like Japan," said lead author Cin-Ty Lee, assistant
professor of Earth science at Rice University. "In addition to
chemical weathering at the Earth's surface, we know that some
magnesium is also lost due to destabilizing convective forces beneath
these arcs."
Lee's research, which appeared in the March 24 issue of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, marks the first
attempt to precisely nail down how much magnesium is lost through two
markedly different routes -- destabilizing convective forces deep
inside the Earth and chemical weathering reactions on its surface. Lee
said the project might not have happened at all if it weren't for some
laboratory serendipity.
"I'd acquired some tourmaline samples in San Diego with my childhood
mentor, Doug Morton," Lee said. "We were adding to our rock
collections, like kids, but when I got back to the lab, I was curious
where the lithium, a major element in tourmaline, needed to make the
tourmalines came from. I decided to measure the lithium content in the
granitic rocks from the same area, and that's where this started."
In examining the lithium content in a variety of rocks, Lee realized
that lithium tended to behave like the magnesium that was missing from
continents. In fact, the correlation was so close, he realized that
lithium could be used as a proxy to find out how much magnesium
continents had lost due to chemical weathering.
Continents ride higher than oceans, partly because the Earth's crust
is thicker beneath continents than it is beneath the oceans. In
addition, the rock beneath continents is made primarily of
silicon-rich minerals like granite and quartz, which are less dense
than the magnesium-rich basalt beneath the oceans.
Lee said he always assumed that processes deep in the Earth, beneath
the volcanoes that feed continents, accounted for far more magnesium
loss than weathering. In particular, a process called "delamination"
occurs in subduction zones, places where one piece of the Earth's
crust slides beneath another and gets recycled into the Earth's magma.
As magma wells up beneath continent-feeding volcanoes, it often leaves
behind a dense, magnesium-rich layer that ultimately founders back
into the Earth's interior.
In previous research, Lee found that about 40 percent of the magnesium
in basaltic magma was lost to delamination. He said he was thus
surprised to find that chemical weathering alone accounted for another
20 percent.
"Weathering occurs in just the top few meters or so of the Earth's
crust, and it's driven by the hydrosphere, the water that moves
between the air, land and oceans," Lee said. "It appears that our
planet has continents because we have an active hydrosphere, so if we
want to find a hydrosphere on distant planets, perhaps we should look
==
www.ted.com

randi.com
==
The Smaller Majority (Paperback)
by Piotr Naskrecki (Author)   about bugs
==
Despite their civilizatons' reliance on irrigation,
even literate people in ancient Mesopotamia & Egypt
didn't understand what caused the life-giving floods
of their rivers. Like their Neolithic forebearers,
they believed in rain gods & water spirits, requiring
placation through various rituals such as sacrifice,
song & dance. For them, naturalistic explanations
weren't even considered.

From about 4000 BC the Nile was dammed to improve
agricultural productivity of previously barren lands,
but Egyptians believed the annual inundation was under
control of the freshwater & fertility god Hapi,
represented as a man with breasts.

http://www.touregyp t.net/featuresto ries/hapi. htm

Mesopotamian towns were protected from flooding with
high earthen walls, & they too developed advanced
irrigation techniques. Nevertheless, the hydrological
cycle remained a mystery to these pre-scientific
people. The Sumerian freshwater god Enki, featured in
the original version of the Flood myth, shared many
attributes with the later Hebrew chief God YHWH:

http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Enki

Aqueducts were built by the Greeks and Ancient Romans,
whose engineering advances led to improved
understanding of hydrology, in keeping with the first
scientific revolution.

The first ancient writer known to develop a
philosophical theory of the hydrologic cycle was Roman
architect & engineer Vitruvius, who, in the first
century BC, described precipitation falling in the
mountains, then infiltrating the earth's surface,
leading to streams & springs in the lowlands.

During the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome, his work,
along with so many other books, were lost in Europe,
only to be rediscovered 1500 years later during the
Renaissance. So hydrological knowledge languished
until the rebirth of naturalistic explanations for
observed phenomena during the second scientific
revolution.

In the 15th & 16th centuries, Leonardo da Vinci &
Bernard Palissy independently reached an accurate
representation of the hydrologic cycle. But it was
not until the 17th century that hydrologic variables
began to be quantified. Pioneers of the modern
science of hydrology include Pierre Perrault, Edme
Mariotte & Edmund Halley.

By measuring rainfall, runoff & drainage area,
Perrault showed that rainfall was sufficient to
account for flow of the Seine. Marriotte combined
velocity & river cross-section measurements to obtain
discharge, again in the Seine. Halley showed that the
evaporation from the Mediterranean Sea was sufficient
to account for the outflow of rivers flowing into the
sea.

Advances in the 18th century included the Bernoulli
piezometer & Bernoulli's equation, by Daniel
Bernoulli, the Pitot tube. The 19th century saw
development in groundwater hydrology, including
Darcy's law, the Dupuit-Thiem well formula &
Hagen-Poiseuille' s capillary flow equation.

Rational analyses began to replace empiricism in the
20th century, while governmental agencies began their
own hydrological research programs. Of particular
importance were Leroy Sherman's unit hydrograph, the
infiltration theory of Robert E. Horton & C.V. Theis's
Aquifer test/equation describing well hydraulics.

Since the 1950's, hydrology has been approached with a
more theoretical basis than in the past, facilitated
by advances in the physical understanding of
hydrological processes and by the advent of computers
and especially Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

So its clearly anachronistic to imagine that biblical
authors had any inkling that rain resulted from
evaporation. The books of the Bible plainly show that
its authors, similarly to their Egyptian, Mesopotamian
& Canaanite neighbors, truly believed that their
chief, Creator God literally caused precipitation to
fall through windows in the dome of heaven, from the
reservoir of water above it & from the storehouses of
hail & snow.

Please bear in mind that even the greatest scientists
of the early modern period, such as Kepler & Newton,
still sometimes reverted to supernatural intervention
or action to explain phenomena now known to be caused
naturally. This applies both to science & human
history.

The triumph of scientific thought is an historically
recent event, still under attack, as well-funded
creationist assaults on public education demonstrate.
==
Brown dwarfs, often called 'failed' stars, are defined as having between about
13 and 75 times the mass of Jupiter. "Their mass estimate puts it right in the
grey area between a planet and a brown dwarf," Boss says.
==
Chemical modification of histones can change the way DNA and histones are
wound up together. Histone acetyltransferases (HATs) are enzymes that add
acetyl groups to histones and loosen the packing, promoting gene expression
On the other hand, histone deacetylases (HDACs) remove acetyl groups from
histones, causing them to wrap with DNA more tightly, decreasing gene
expression. 
==
Evidence of an expanding universe was discovered by astronomer Vesto Slipher
and deduced by mathematicians Willem de Sitter, Lemaitre and 
Alexander Friedman
==
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." - 
Albert Einstein
==
Wilde S.A., Valley J.W., Peck W.H. and Graham C.M., 2001, Evidence from
detrital zircons for the existence of continental crust and oceans on the
Earth 4.4 Gyr ago. Nature 409: 175-178.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth
==
The Maastrichtian is the last Stage of the Cretaceous
Period of the Mesozoic Era, the end of which saw the
extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. It's named for
Maastricht, Netherlands, where fossil mosasaurs were
first discovered, but outcrops of that age abound east
of the US & Canadian Rockies. The previous Late
Cretaceous Stage is called the Campanian, for the
French village of Champagne.

In Montana & Alberta, Campanian & Maastrichian rocks
occur in world-famous fossil beds.

One of the many insurmountable problems for
anti-scientific "Flood geology" there as everywhere
else on earth is that strata laid down on land are
interspersed with layers of marine sediments, as the
Western Interior Seaway came & went. If the geologic
column all came from the same global flood, how do
layers of dry land come to lie between sea water
strata? Of course, creationists also need to answer
how the sudden influx of so much fresh water didn't
kill all those oceanic lifeforms.

Descriptions of Campanian & Maastrichtian layers
follow, mainly from Wikipedia, plus South Dakota &
Colorado state material.

Two Medicine Formation

The Two Medicine Formation is a geologic formation, or
rock body, that was deposited between 83.5  0.7 Ma to
70.6  0.6 Ma (million years ago), during Campanian
(Late Cretaceous) time, & is located in northwestern
Montana. It crops out to the east of the Rocky
Mountain Overthrust Belt, & the western portion (about
600 m thick) of this formation is folded & faulted
while the eastern part, which thins out into the
Sweetgrass Arch, is mostly undeformed plains.

Below the Two Medicine Fm. are the nearshore (beach &
tidal zone) deposits of the Virgelle Sandstone, &
above it is the marine Bearpaw Shale. Throughout the
Campanian, the Two Medicine Fm. was deposited between
the western shoreline of the Late Cretaceous Interior
Seaway & the eastward advancing margin of the
Cordilleran Overthrust Belt. The Two Medicine Fm. is
mostly sandstone, deposited by rivers & deltas.

The Two Medicine Fm. was deposited in a seasonal,
semi-arid climate with possible rain shadows from the
Cordilleran highlands. This region during the
Campanian experienced a long dry season & warm
temperatures. Lithologies, invertebrate faunas, &
plant & pollen data support the above interpretation.

The Two Medicine Fm. is one of the most important
dinosaur-bearing formations in the world, including
Gorgosaurus, related to Albertosaurus & the later
Tyrannosaurus.

Egg Mountain, discovered & named by Jack Horner & Bob
Makela in 1979, is a colonial nesting site on the
Willow Creek Anticline in the Two Medicine Fm. that is
famous for its fossil eggs of Maiasaura, which
demonstrated for the first time that at least some
dinosaurs cared for their young. The eggs were
arranged in dug-out earthen nests, each nest about a
parent's body length from the next, and baby dinosaurs
were also found with skeletons too cartilaginous for
them to walk - similar to those of altricial
(helpless) baby birds. The parent(s) must then have
brought food to the young, and there is plant matter
in the nests that may be evidence of either this or
for incubation of the eggs. Maiasaura also grew
extremely fast, at rates comparable to modern birds.
Skeletons of Orodromeus & skeletons & eggs of Troodon
were also found at Egg Mountain.

Judith River Formation

The Judith River Formation is a fossil-bearing
geologic formation in northern Montana, & is part of
the Judith River Group. It dates to the upper
Cretaceous. It is an historically important
formation, explored by early American paleontologists
such as Edward Drinker Cope, who named several
dinosaurs from scrappy remains found here on his 1876
expedition (such as Monoclonius) . Modern work has
found nearly complete skeletons of the hadrosaurid
Brachylophosaurus.

Dinosaur Park Formation

The Dinosaur Park Formation is the uppermost member of
the Judith River Group, a major geologic unit in
southern Alberta. It was laid down over a period of
time between about 76.5 & 75 million years ago. The
formation is made up of deposits of a high-sinuosity
(anastomosing) fluvial system, & is capped by the
Lethbridge Coal Beds. The formation is bounded by the
Oldman Formation below it & the marine Bearpaw
Formation above it (Eberth, 2005).

It is best known for the dense concentrations of
dinosaur skeletons, both articulated & disarticulated,
that are found there. However, other animals such as
fish, turtles & crocodilians are also abundant in the
formation. The formation has been named after
Dinosaur Provincial Park, a UNESCO World Heritage
Site.

Bearpaw Formation

The Bearpaw Formation, also called the Bearpaw Shale,
is a sedimentary rock formation found in northwestern
North America. It is exposed in the US state of
Montana, as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta
& Saskatchewan, east of the Rocky Mountains. It
overlies the older Two Medicine, Judith River &
Dinosaur Park Formations, & is in turn overlain by the
Horseshoe Canyon Formation in Canada & the Fox Hills
Sandstone in Montana. To the east & south it blends
into the Pierre Shale.

A marine formation composed mostly of shale, it
represents the last major expansion of the Western
Interior Seaway before it completely receded from
northwestern North America by the end of the
Cretaceous Period. It is famous for its
well-preserved ammonite fossils. Other fossils found
in this formation include many types of shellfish,
bony fish, sharks, rays, birds, marine reptiles like
mosasaurs, plesiosaurs & sea turtles. The occasional
dinosaur remains have also been discovered, presumably
from carcasses washed out to sea.

Horseshoe Canyon Formation

The Horseshoe Canyon Formation is part of the Edmonton
Series & is up to 230m in thickness. It is Late
Campanian to Early Maastrichtian in age (Edmontonian
Land Mammal Age) & is composed of mudstone, sandstone
& carbonaceous shales. There are a variety of
environments represented by the succession, including
floodplains, estuarine channels & coal swamps, which
have yielded a diversity of fossil material.
Tidally-influenced estuarine point bar deposits are
easily recongizable as Inclined Heterolithic
Stratification (IHS). Brackish-water trace fossil
assemblages occur within these bar deposits &
demonstrate periodic incursion of marine waters into
the estuaries. The Horseshoe Canyon Formation crops
out extensively in the area of Drumheller, Alberta, as
well as further north along the Red Deer River near
Trochu, & also in the city of Edmonton. It is overlain
by the Battle, Whitemud & Scollard formations.

Dinosaurs found in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation
include Albertosaurus, Anchiceratops, Arrhinoceratops,
Atrociraptor, Chirostenotes, Dromiceiomimus,
Edmontonia, Edmontosaurus, Euoplocephalus,
Hypacrosaurus, Ornithomimus, Pachyrhinosaurus,
Parksosaurus, Saurolophus, Stegoceras, Struthiomimus &
Troodon. Other finds have included mammals such as
Didelphodon coyi, non-dinosaur reptiles, amphibians,
fish, marine & terrestrial invertebrates & plant
fossils. Reptiles such as turtles & crocodilians are
rare in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, & this is
thought to reflect the relatively cool climate which
prevailed at the time.

Horseshoe Canyon itself is located 17 km southwest of
Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, on Highway 9. This
Canyon gets its name from its horseshoe shape and is
approximately 3 km long, extending from Highway 9 to
Kneehill Creek area.

Fox Hills Formation

The Fox Hills Formation, approximately 69 to 70
million years old, formed in a delta deposit close to
the ancient inland sea that once covered large areas
of the mid-continent during a time of warm, moist
climate. It is found today in Corson, Dewey, Ziebach,
Butte, Harding, Pennington & Meade counties, South
Dakota.

Carnivorous dinosaur fossils known from the Fox Hills
Formation were:

Troodon formosus, a small predator Dromaeosaurid
(related to Deinonychus, which is an early Cretaceous
form)
Struthiomimus, an ostrich-like dinosaur
Nodosaurids
Hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus (?)
Ceratopsid Triceratops (?)

http://geosurvey. state.co. us/wateratlas/ chapter6_ 1page2.asp

Hell Creek Formation

The Hell Creek Formation, located in northwestern
South Dakota, southwestern North Dakota & eastern
Montana, contains rocks approximately 66 to 68 million
years old. They were formed in the upper reaches of a
delta, under warm and moist conditions.

Specimens of the following dinosaurs have been found
in this formation:

Carnivorous dinosaurs:

Tyrannosaurus rex
Nanotyrannus lancensis
Troodon formosus
Dromaeosaurid
Ornithomimus, an ostrich-like dinosaur

Nodosaurids (armored dinosaurs):

Edmontonia
Denversaurus schlessmani
Ornithopods:
Thescelosaurus neglectus
Thescelosaurus ?

Hadrosaurids:

Edmontosaurus regalis
Edmontosaurus annectens
Anatotitan copei
Pachycephalosaurids

(bone headed dinosaurs):

Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis
Ceratopsids (horned dinosaurs):
Triceratops horridus (the South Dakota State Fossil)
Torosaurus latus

The first named specimen now attributed to Triceratops
is a pair of brow horns attached to a skull roof,
found near Denver, Colorado in the spring of 1887.
==
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Morrison_ Formation

This single ten million year-long formation includes
rocks laid down in a variety of environments. In the
north, the Sundance Sea, an extension of the Arctic
Ocean, stretched through Canada down to the United
States. Coal is found in the Morrison Formation of
Montana, which means that the northern part of the
formation, along the shores of the sea, was wet and
swampy, with more vegetation. Eolian, or
wind-deposited sandstones are found in the
southwestern part, which indicates it was much more
arid ‹ a desert, with sand dunes.
==
Creationists should in my opinion venture forth into
Creation to read these sermons in stone.

From Paleontology Portal

Idaho Paleontology and Geology

The Precambrian: The Precambrian is represented in
Idaho predominantly by metamorphic rocks. Some of
these were originally sediments, which have been
slightly to moderately altered. The only known
Precambrian fossils in the state are stromatolites and
some possible trace fossils found in southeastern
Idaho.

The Paleozoic: The Paleozoic was a time of fluctuating
sea levels. A shallow sea covered parts of Idaho
during most of the Early Paleozoic, and a diverse
assemblage of invertebrate animals inhabited the
marine environments. The oceans receded during the
Silurian and most of the Devonian, but then returned
and most of the state remained under water during the
Carboniferous and Permian. Some poorly preserved plant
fossils and a few thin coal layers indicate that
marine deposition was interrupted by periods of uplift
and erosion; however, few of these terrestrial
deposits have been found.

The Mesozoic: Triassic and Jurassic outcrops consist
of metamorphosed and sedimentary rocks. These deposits
have yielded a variety of marine fossils including
molluscs, echinoids, corals, bryozoans, brachiopods,
shark teeth, and fragmentary remains of an early
ichthyosaur. The presence of raindrop impressions in
the Jurassic rocks in southeastern Idaho suggests that
some of the sediments were terrestrial or at least
exposed during low tides. Cretaceous rocks in most of
the central part of the state are igneous and do not
contain any fossils. However, some terrestrial and
freshwater sediments occur in the eastern part of the
state and contain fossils of dinosaurs and other
vertebrates, as well as fresh water molluscs,
ostracods, and plants.

The Cenozoic: Tertiary rocks in Idaho are mostly
volcanic or river and lake deposits that contain
fossils of fish, mammals, and plants. The plant
fossils suggest that the climate was milder than it is
today. Quaternary rocks consist primarily of lava
flows, glacial deposits, and fossiliferous lake and
river sediments. Hundreds of vertebrate species are
known from these deposits, including mammoths, horses,
camels, bison, mountain sheep, ground sloths, rodents,
rabbits, birds, snakes, lizards, and fish.

Montana Paleontology and Geology

The Precambrian: A thick sequence of Late Precambrian
sedimentary rocks indicates that the western part of
Montana was covered by a warm, shallow sea. These
rocks contain the oldest evidence for life in Montana,
including stromatolites and trace fossils left by
animals crawling along the sea floor.

The Paleozoic: Shallow marine waters continued to
cover most of Montana through the early part of the
Paleozoic (Cambrian), supporting a great diversity of
algae, invertebrates, and some of the earliest
vertebrates. Following the retreat of this sea, high
rates of erosion removed most of the Silurian and
Early Devonian rocks from the state. The seas returned
in the Late Devonian, inundating nearly all of
Montana. Crinoids, sponges, brachiopods, molluscs,
conodonts, and fish thrived in the warm waters. Marine
conditions persisted into the Carboniferous, and the
seas were home to a remarkable diversity of
cartilaginous fishes. During the Late Carboniferous
(Pennsylvanian) , regional uplift created highlands in
the north-northwestern part of the state, and the
shallow seas again retreated. Erosion of these
uplifted areas continued into the Permian. The end of
the Paleozoic is represented only by a thin blanket of
marine sediments in the southeast that were deposited
during a brief incursion of a shallow sea.

The Mesozoic: A hot, arid landscape stretched across
Montana through most of the Triassic. The only fossils
present are marine, indicating two brief incursions of
the sea. During the Jurassic, warm, tropical seas
returned to Montana, gradually retreating as eroding
highlands in the west shed sediment to the east and
northwest. Montana's oldest dinosaurs roamed among the
vegetation of ferns, ginkgos, cycads, and conifers.
Mountain building and episodes of violent volcanism
mark the Cretaceous in western Montana. Terrestrial
ecosystems supported a wide diversity of plants and
animals, including numerous dinosaurs.

The Cenozoic: The sea retreated from Montana for the
final time during the Tertiary. A major episode of
tectonic activity folded and faulted the crust,
creating several mountain ranges and elevating the
state by thousands of meters. Dry climatic conditions
alternated with wet, tropical conditions throughout
this period. Large titanotheres, dogs, and other
mammals roamed the landscape. The climate became
increasingly wetter and cooler through the Quaternary.
Glaciers expanded in the mountains of northwest
Montana and the Yellowstone region, carving out
mountain peaks and flattening the northern third of
the state. Mammoths, dire wolves, and musk ox roamed
the regions that were ice-free.

Wyoming Paleontology and Geology

The Precambrian: Precambrian metamorphic and igneous
rocks are exposed along the length of the Rocky
Mountains in Wyoming. Stromatolites and some possible
trace fossils have been found in metamorphosed
Precambrian sediments in the southeastern part of the
state. These rocks were originally formed from limy
sediments deposited on a shallow sea floor.

The Paleozoic: The Paleozoic is characterized by
fluctuating sea levels. A shallow sea covered Wyoming
during the Early Paleozoic, and fossils of trilobites,
brachiopods and other marine organisms are found in
the sandstones, shales, and limestones laid down at
this time. The sea retreated in the Silurian, and the
state underwent an interval of uplift and erosion
before marine conditions returned in the Devonian. A
shallow sea persisted through much of the rest of the
Paleozoic, and a diverse assemblage of invertebrate
animals inhabited the marine environments. The sea
began to retreat once again during the Permian.

The Mesozoic: The sea continued to retreat during the
Triassic. Sediments accumulated in nearshore marine
environments and then on vast river floodplains that
developed as the sea regressed. Eventually, wind-blown
sand dunes formed. Jurassic sediments were deposited
during several transgressions and regressions of
shallow marine water over Wyoming. Marine rocks are
rich in fossils of oysters, belemnite cephalopods, and
other marine invertebrates, while bones and trackways
of dinosaurs are common in the deposits of the vast
river floodplains at the edge of the sea. The Western
Interior Seaway spread through much of the state
during the Cretaceous, and a series of
mountain-building episodes (the Laramide Orogeny)
began. Cretaceous fossils include fish, turtles,
crocodiles, pterosaurs, mammals, birds, and, of
course, dinosaurs.

The Cenozoic: Early Cenozoic (Tertiary) climates
favored the growth of luxurious forests, and fossil
plants and coal deposits are common in many Tertiary
formations. Lakes formed in many of the intermountain
basins, and the resulting sediments often contain
abundant, beautifully preserved fish fossils,
including the Wyoming State Fossil, Knightia eocaena.
The Rockies continued to rise and large volcanic
eruptions periodically deposited thick layers of ash
across the state. Late Cenozoic (Quaternary) rocks in
Wyoming are predominantly the result of volcanic
activity, but glaciation also produced sediments,
predominantly in the western part of the state.
Microfossils have been recovered from glacial lake
sediment and fossils of numerous vertebrates have been
found in northern Wyoming.

Utah Paleontology and Geology

The Precambrian: Little is known about the Precambrian
in Utah as most of these rocks are igneous and
metamorphic and are buried beneath younger rocks. Some
lightly metamorphosed Precambrian marine rocks exposed
in the Uinta Mountains in the northeastern part of the
state contain fossils of simple, single-celled
organisms, indicating the presence of a marine
environment.

The Paleozoic: The Paleozoic is well represented in
Utah. Warm, shallow seas covered much of the state
through most of this time interval. These seas were
home to a diversity of organisms including clams,
snails, trilobites, corals, brachiopods, algae, and
sponges. Late Paleozoic (Carboniferous) sedimentary
rocks are the most fossiliferous in the state. Fossils
found in these rocks include nearly all groups of
marine invertebrates, as well as rare occurrences of
fossil fish.

The Mesozoic: Shallow seas retreated from the eastern
part of Utah and broad, low floodplains developed
during the Triassic. Some of the earliest dinosaurs
roamed these floodplains, leaving behind their fossil
footprints. Meanwhile, a shallow sea teeming with
marine life still covered the western part of the
state. Marine and non-marine conditions alternated
throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Great fields
of sand dunes blanketed Utah, but were then covered
with a shallow sea that once again flooded the region.
Brachiopods, clams, snails, ammonoids, fish, and great
marine reptiles lived in the seas, and a diverse and
abundant dinosaur fauna roamed the land. During the
Cretaceous, the seas retreated from Utah for the last
time; Late Cretaceous deposits include fossils from
numerous terrestrial vertebrates.

The Cenozoic: The Early Cenozoic (Tertiary) was a time
of major uplift in Utah. Extensive fresh water lakes
periodically covered the low areas of central Utah,
leaving behind a diverse fossil record of the animals
that lived in and around the lake system. These vast
lakes were mostly gone by the end of the Tertiary.
Uplift of the Colorado Plateau and the formation of
the Basin and Range topography also began in the Late
Tertiary. Utah developed its present topography during
the Late Cenozoic (Quaternary) . Regional uplift
resulted in renewed erosion by rivers, forming the
spectacular river canyons of the state. Lake
Bonneville formed during a wetter interval in the
Quaternary, only to shrink away through evaporation as
the climate became more arid. The Great Salt Lake is a
small remnant of ancient Lake Bonneville. Quaternary
fossil vertebrates include saber-toothed cats,
short-faced bears, giant ground sloths, bison, and
musk ox, among many others.

Colorado Paleontology and Geology

The Precambrian: Most of the Precambrian in Colorado
consists of igneous and metamorphic rocks as old as
2.7 billion years. The only Precambrian sedimentary
rocks in Colorado are located in the extreme northwest
corner of the state. No Precambrian fossils have been
reported.

The Paleozoic: The Paleozoic was a time of fluctuating
sea levels. Colorado lay near the equator during much
of the Early and Middle Paleozoic (Cambrian through
Devonian) and a variety of marine fossils indicates
that a shallow, tropical sea covered the state during
this time. At some point in the Middle Paleozoic
(Silurian or early Devonian), the sea retreated for a
time and the state was subjected to a period of
erosion before marine waters returned in the
Carboniferous. Mountain-building events in the Late
Carboniferous raised a series of ranges in western
Colorado, and both terrestrial and shallow marine
environments existed in low-lying areas between these
ranges. Fossils of sharks, trilobites, brachiopods,
and crinoids can be found in the marine sediments,
while fossils of some of the earliest conifers, tree
lycopods, and huge horsetail Calamites occur in
terrestrial deposits. The seas retreated in the
Permian, once again exposing much of the state to
erosion, and resulting in extensive dunes, where
fossilized tracks of insects and unknown reptiles can
now be found.

The Mesozoic: Much of Colorado lay above sea level
during the Triassic and Jurassic. Extensive
floodplains and coastal lowlands developed at the edge
of a shallow seaway. Dinosaurs, other reptiles,
amphibians, and conifers flourished in these
environments. During the Cretaceous, the shallow
seaway expanded across the state. Dinosaur footprints
and fossil flowering plants are common in the forested
and swampy coastal areas that formed along its
margins. As the seas deepened, thick deposits of muddy
and limy sediments accumulated on the sea floor. These
sediments are rich in fossils, including single-celled
algae, molluscs, fish, and the bones of large marine
reptiles. Just before the end of the Cretaceous, the
seas retreated, the Rocky Mountains began to rise, and
dinosaurs roamed a landscape covered by broadleaf
trees and palms.

The Cenozoic: During the Early Cenozoic (Tertiary),
the Rocky Mountains continued to rise and tropical
rainforests grew along its slopes. Mammals,
crocodiles, and turtles roamed the area. Huge lakes
formed in low-lying areas between the rising
mountains. Oil shales formed in these lakes are the
source of beautifully preserved fossils of fish,
leaves, and insects. Volcanic eruptions spread debris
and ash into the Denver Basin. Later in the Tertiary,
Sequoia forests flourished in the cooling climate, and
grasslands spread across much of the state. Mountain
glaciers carved the spectacular peaks and valleys of
the Rockies during the Late Cenozoic (Quaternary) .
True prairies appeared, and mammoths, camels, bison,
horses, and flourished.

New Mexico Paleontology and Geology

The Precambrian: The Precambrian in New Mexico is
represented by granite found in the cores of many of
the states mountain ranges. No Precambrian
sedimentary rocks or fossils are known.

The Paleozoic: In contrast, the Paleozoic is well
represented by sedimentary rocks and fossils. A
shallow sea covered much of southern and western New
Mexico during the Cambrian through the Silurian.
Trilobites, brachiopods, nautiloids, and other marine
invertebrates flourished in the warm waters. During
the Carboniferous, New Mexico was an archipelago of
islands rising from the shallow, warm seaways. On
land, lush vegetation grew in areas of dense forests
and swamps, while clams, brachiopods, and other
organisms inhabited the sea floor. In the Early
Permian, the climate became drier. The broad river
floodplains were replaced by dune fields and a
shallow, hypersaline sea. When more normal marine
conditions returned during the Middle Permian, the
huge reef at El Capitan in southeastern New Mexico
developed.

The Mesozoic: Mesozoic rocks and fossils are common in
New Mexico. During the Triassic, a seasonally arid
climate supported heavily vegetated floodplains, where
Coelophysis, one of the earliest dinosaurs, lived.
Arid conditions continued into the Jurassic and giant
sauropod dinosaurs roamed the coastal plains. By the
Cretaceous, the sea returned and flooded the eastern
part of New Mexico. Dense jungles and coal-forming
swamps hugged the coastline. Dinosaurs flourished on
land, while the warm, muddy sea to the east was home
to oysters, ammonites, and other sea creatures.

The Cenozoic: During the Early Tertiary, a
mountain-building episode turned much of New Mexico
into ranges and basins. Magnolias and garfish left
their remains in sediments deposited in river
floodplains and lakes. Volcanic eruptions were
frequent. Later in the Tertiary, the crust opened
along the Rio Grande and formed a chain of rift basins
that filled with sediments. Large mammals wandered the
landscape. During the Quaternary, the Rio Grande
became established as the main river system in New
Mexico. Glaciers formed in the mountains and mammoths,
camels, and other mammals flourished in the cooler
climate.

Here's an interactive guide to the Mesozoic geologic
column from the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming:

http://www.fieldmus eum.org/expediti ons/pete_ expedition/ expedition_
interactive/ expedition4. html

Note that the sea transgresses & regresses to greater
or lesser extent over this period. This is an
insoluble problem for creationists, one of many.
Without even dating the rocks or considering that the
fossils are of extinct organisms, it's obvious that
the layers weren't all laid down by the same supposed
flood, since strata formed on dry land are
interspersed with maritime layers, formed in periods
when the Interior Seaway covered Wyoming.

The Rockies also feature Precambrian & most famously
Cambrian rocks raised from the ancient sea floor to
the mountain tops. Had this process happened in the
past 4500 years, someone would have noticed. The
highest altitude rocks in this region are the oldest,
thanks to mountain-building (orogeny), including the
marvelous Burgess Shale of British Columbia.
Creationism has no explanation for these facts.

http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Burgess_Shale
==
http://www.fantasticforum.com/1res/showthread.php?threadid=5273==
streaming Coast to Coast Midnight to 4 Central time 

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/
====
When IBM invented the RAMAC hard drive in 1956, 
it stored 5 megabytes of data and cost $50,000. 
==
The strength of science is its capacity for self correction and openness for
debate on even the most established theories. There does, however, come a time
when well established scientific theories reach a level of general consensus
among scientist. 
==
The Fungus That Conquered Europe
THE feast of Irelands patron saint has always been an occasion for saluting
the beautiful land where the praties grow, but its also a time to look again
at the disaster that established around the world the Irish communities that
today celebrate St. Patricks Day: the Great Potato Famine of 1845-6. In its
wake, the Irish left the old country, with more than half a million settling
in United States. The famine and the migrations changed Irish and American
history, of course, but they drastically changed Britain too.
Americans may think of the disease that destroyed Irelands potato crops, late
blight, as a European phenomenon, but its devastations actually started with
them. The origin of the fungal organism responsible, Phytophthora infestans,
has been traced to a valley in the highlands of central Mexico, and the first
recorded instances of the disease are in the United States, with the sudden
and mysterious destruction of potato crops around Philadelphia and New York in
early 1843. Within months, winds spread the rapidly reproducing airborne spores
of the disease, and by 1845 it had destroyed potato crops from Illinois east to
Nova Scotia, and from Virginia north to Ontario.
It then crossed the Atlantic with a shipment of seed potatoes ordered by
Belgian farmers. They had been hoping that fresh stock would improve their
yields. Unhappily, it brought the seeds of devastation.
The warm damp spring of 1845 enabled late blight to become an epidemic. By
mid-July, the disease had spread throughout Belgium and into the Netherlands.
It went on to infect an area from northern Spain to the southern tips of
Norway and Sweden, and east to Northern Italy. It moved inexorably through the
British Isles and reached Connemara, on Irelands west coast, in mid-October.
The ruin of Europes potato crops was complete.
Nothing like it had been known before. Neither the Vandal hordes nor the
bubonic plague had penetrated Europe so deeply and so fast. The failure of the
crop was a disaster for every farmer, market gardener and family in Europe that
relied on potatoes. Few were unaffected; in Ireland, a population that in 250
years had grown from one million to more than eight million, solely because of
the potatos unrivaled quality as a staple food, was threatened with starvation.
The first intimations of Irelands looming calamity reached the British
government in August 1845. Although Britain was responsible for the social and
economic iniquities which had made Ireland so susceptible, the government of
the day deserves some credit for its efforts to avert mass starvation. There
were political as well as logistical difficulties.
The Conservative prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, without seeking the approval
of either cabinet or Parliament, authorized the banker Sir Thomas Baring to
secretly buy 100,000 of American maize for shipment to Ireland. But before any
official relief program could proceed there was a political obstacle to
overcome: Britains Corn Laws, which imposed exorbitant duties on imported
grain to ensure that it could never be cheaper than home-grown produce.
To Peel it was obvious that the Corn Laws would have to go, but his electorate
of large landowners was vehemently opposed to their abolition. The Duke of
Wellington, leader of the House of Lords, complained that Irelands rotten
potatoes have done it all  they put Peel in his damned fright. Peel drew
heavily on the news from Ireland as he urged Parliament to vote for abolition:
Are you to hesitate in averting famine which may come, because it possibly may
not come? Are you to look to and depend upon chance in such an extremity? Or,
good God! are you to sit in cabinet, and consider and calculate how much
diarrhea, and bloody flux, and dysentery, a people can bear before it becomes
necessary for you to provide them with food?
The bill abolishing the Corn Laws was passed in May 1846 in the House of
Commons, with two-thirds of Peels party voting against it and the entire
opposition voting in favor. A month later, Peel was out of office.
As it turned out, far from Britain being flooded with cheap wheat, within
weeks of the abolition the price of grain had reached heights rarely seen
before. Speculation was rife, with dealers buying grain futures at two and
three times the price of a few months before, draining the countrys gold
reserves and eventually threatening the stability of the Bank of England
itself.
Then, as fate would have it, the summer of 1847 brought news that Irelands
potato crop, though small, was doing well. The grain harvests also promised to
be exceptionally good. Prices tumbled just as the grain bought months before at
inflated rates began arriving in the ports.
Dealers who had gambled on high prices now found themselves unable to recoup
their investments. Twenty major grain trading companies were brought down in
September with total liabilities approaching 10 million. An additional 99
trading and related firms collapsed in October as the crisis spread, bringing
down 11 country banks and three of the biggest in Liverpool.
The London banks, though, survived and went on to prosperity, for Irelands
famine, by ending the Corn Laws, prompted the beginning of the free trade that
established the success of Britains industrial economy. Still, the banking
crisis had such an impact on the British mind-set that it is the benchmark
against which commentators compare subsequent banking problems.
Not since the 1840s have we seen anything like this, they declared as the Bank
of England stepped in last year to save the Northern Rock bank from a collapse
caused by the subprime mortgage debacle  another American-born infection. At
least our potatoes are safe.
==
That habitable planet might not be so far off
An Earthlike, habitable planet may be in our stellar neighborhood, and could
be found with a dedicated telescope, new computer simulations suggest.
Astronomers have long been looking for potentially habitable planets, and one
team finally reported a candidate planetary system last year. But no place
where researchers have pinned their hopes is nearly as close where the new
study points.
The Alpha Centauri triple stellar system is our closest neighbour in space. It
lies 4.36 lightyears away in the direction of the southern constellation
Centaurus. In the above photo, the two brighter stars of the system appear as
merged together due to their luminosity and proximity. The small arrow at
lower right indicates the location of the third, dim star, Proxima Centauri.
The nearest stars to our Sun are in the threestar system called Alpha
Centauria popular travel destination in science fiction, though its unlikely
humans could get there anytime soon.
Using simulations based on current planetformation theories, researchers
concluded that Earthlike planets should have formed around one member of this
system, the star Alpha Centauri B.
One of these worlds, they added, could well be orbiting in the stars habitable
zone, a region suitably warm for liquid water to exist on a planet surface.
If they exist, we can observe them, said Javiera Guedes, a graduate student at
the University of California, Santa Cruz. Guedes is first author of a paper
detailing the findings, accepted for publication by the research publication
Astrophysical Journal.
I think the planets are there, and its worth a try to have a look, added
astronomer Gregory Laughlin of the university, a coauthor. The investigators
said they ran the reenactments repeatedly with different starting assumptions,
and got at least one Earthsized planet each time, and in the habitable zone
much of the time.
Most of the 228 planets discovered outside our solar system so far have been
found through the Doppler method, which analyzes starlight to detect tiny
wobbles in a star due to a planets gravitational pull. But its challenging to
detect rocky, Earthsized planets because they cause only a tiny wobble.
But Laughlin said several factors make Alpha Centauri B an excellent candidate
for finding terrestrial planets. These include the brightness of the star and
its position in the sky, which gives it a long period of observability each
year from the Southern Hemisphere. Laughlin said it would take five years of
watching using a dedicated telescope to detect an Earthlike planet around
Alpha Centauri B.
Coauthor Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University is leading a program
to intensively monitor Alpha Centauri B and neighboring Alpha Centauri A. Her
team is using the 1.5meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo InterAmerican
Observatory in Chile.
Visiting any hypothetic aliens in Alpha Centauri would not be an easy project,
despite the stars relative proximity of about 4.36 lightyears. A lightyear is
the distance light travels in a year, so it would take about four years for
light to get there from here. Our fastest spacecrafts used to date would take
about 60,000 years to go there, although some scientists predict new
technology could reduce that time considerably.
The planet astronomers fingered last year as a potential site for life, called
Gliese 581c, is about 20.5 light years away. Its habitability has since come
under question, but some astronomers say another planet orbiting the same star
might be liveable.
==
Estimates for peopling of Americas getting earlier

Archeologists are presenting what they call the latest evidence that a
traditional account of the peopling of the Americas is wrong.
The mainstream view prevailing in the past several decades holds that humans
entered the continent about 12,000 years ago using a temporary land bridge
from northeastern Asia to Alaska. These migrants would have given rise to a
culture of mammoth hunters known for their unique stone projectilepoints and
dubbed Clovis, after remains found near Clovis, N.M., in the 1930s.
Excavation of the Schaefer mammoth in Wisconsin, thought by archaeologists to
date to about 14,500 years ago. (Image courtesy D. Joyce)
But in recent years evidence has turned up that the first Americans might have
been considerably older, some archaeologists argue.
A new review published in the research journal Science contends that that the
first Americans had their roots in southern Siberia, ventured across the
Bering land bridge probably around 22,000 years ago, and migrated down into
the Americas as early as 16,000 years ago.
In the paper, Ted Goebel of Texas A&M University and colleagues argue that the
latter date is when an icefree corridor in Canada opened and enabled the
migration.
The new account is bolstered by genetic evidence and the discovery of new
archaeological sites and more accurate dates for old sites, according to the
researchers.
Genetic evidence, they wrote, points to a founding population of less than
5,000 people at the beginning of the second migration in Canada.
Moreover, they added, archaeological evidence suggests the Clovis culture may
have been relative latecomers to the Americas or descendants of earlier
PaleoIndian populations represented at archaeological sites such as Monte
Verde in Chile. That site is thought to have been occupied 14,600 years ago.
==
Spitzer Finds Organics and Water Where New Planets May Grow
Researchers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered large amounts
of simple organic gases and water vapor in a possible planet-forming region
around an infant star, along with evidence that these molecules were created
there. They've also found water in the same zone around two other young stars.
By pushing the telescope's capabilities to a new level, astronomers now have a
better view of the earliest stages of planetary formation, which may help shed
light on the origins of our own solar system and the potential for life to
develop in others.
John Carr of the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, and Joan Najita of the
National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson , Ariz. , developed a new
technique using Spitzer's infrared spectrograph to measure and analyze the
chemical composition of the gases within protoplanetary disks. These are
flattened disks of gas and dust that encircle young stars. Scientists believe
they provide the building materials for planets and moons and eventually, over
millions of years, evolve into orbiting planetary systems like our own.
"Most of the material within the disks is gas," said Carr, "but until now it
has been difficult to study the gas composition in the regions where planets
should form. Much more attention has been given to the solid dust particles,
which are easier to observe."
In their project, Carr and Najita took an in-depth look at the gases in the
planet-forming region in the disk around the star AA Tauri. Less than a
million years old, AA Tauri is a typical example of a young star with a
protoplanetary disk.
With their new procedures, they were able to detect the minute spectral
signatures for three simple organic molecules--hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and
carbon dioxide--plus water vapor. In addition, they found more of these
substances in the disk than are found in the dense interstellar gas called
molecular clouds from which the disk originated. "Molecular clouds provide the
raw material from which the protoplanetary disks are created," said Carr. "So
this is evidence for an active organic chemistry going on within the disk,
forming and enhancing these molecules."
Spitzer's infrared spectrograph detected these same organic gases in a
protoplanetary disk once before. But the observation was dependent on the
star's disk being oriented in just the right way. Now researchers have a new
method for studying the primordial mix of gases in the disks of hundreds of
young star systems.
Astronomers will be able to fill an important gap--they know that water and
organics are abundant in the interstellar medium but not what happens to them
after they are incorporated into a disk. "Are these molecules destroyed,
preserved or enhanced in the disk?" said Carr. "Now that we can identify these
molecules and inventory them, we will have a better understanding of the
origins and evolution of the basic building blocks of life--where they come
from and how they evolve."Carr and Najita's research results appear in the
March 14 issue of Science.
Taking advantage of Spitzer's spectroscopic capabilities, another group of
scientists looked for water molecules in the disks around young stars and
found them--twice. "This is one of the very few times that water vapor has
been directly shown to exist in the inner part of a protoplanetary diskthe
most likely place for terrestrial planets to form," said Colette Salyk, a
graduate student in geological and planetary sciences at the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena . She is the lead author on a paper about
the results in the March 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Salyk and her colleagues used Spitzer to look at dozens of young stars with
protoplanetary disks and found water in many. They honed in on two stars and
followed up the initial detection of water with complementary high-resolution
measurements from the Keck II Telescope in Hawaii . "While we don't detect
nearly as much water as exists in the oceans on Earth, we see essentially only
the disk's surface, so the implication is that the water is quite abundant,"
said Geoffrey Blake, professor of cosmochemistry and planetary sciences at
Caltech and one of the paper's co-authors.
"This is a much larger story than just one or two disks," said Blake. "Spitzer
can efficiently measure these water signatures in many objects, so this is just
the beginning of what we will learn."
"With upcoming Spitzer observations and data in hand," Carr added, "we will
develop a good understanding of the distribution and abundance of water and
organics in planet-forming disks."
==
A critical thinker NEVER knows anything for sure, except that as time
goes on and people impress their views, knowledge continues to change
and grow and get more accurate over time. One must always research
and learn more. That is why a critical thinker is skeptical as well.
Being skeptical does not mean being doubtful about everything, but
being desirous of making sure of what is taught and discussed, etc.
==
A highly unstable star known as a Wolf-Rayet, the last
known stable phase in the life of these massive stars right before a supernova.
Wolf-Rayet stars are regarded by astronomers as ticking bombs. 
When the Wolf-Rayet goes supernova, "it could emit an intense beam of
gamma rays.
==
UNM Researchers Discover Significantly Older Grand Canyon
Western portion of canyon actually formed 17 million years ago
Up until recently, it was thought the Grand Canyon was approximately
six million years old. That was until researchers in the Earth and
Planetary Sciences Department in the College of Arts and Sciences at
the University of New Mexico discovered otherwise. Using a technique
called uranium-lead isotope (U-Pb) dating of water table-type
speleothems or cave formations, researchers Victor Polyak, Carol Hill
and Yemane Asmerom, were able to determine the western portion of the
Grand Canyon actually began to form some 17 million years ago.
That revelation, or "Eureka moment" as Asmerom called it, makes the
Grand Canyon almost three times older than originally thought.
The research, which began more than nine years ago, was funded by the
National Science Foundation for $250,000 and published recently in the
journal Science. The discovery was enabled by the realization that
certain cave formations, such as mammillary coatings that form near
groundwater tables, allowed researchers to date both parts of the
canyon radiometrically accurately for the first time.
"The fact that many Grand Canyon caves contain mammillary speleothems
has allowed us to take advantage of advances in U-Pb and U-series
analytical techniques in an effort to make the long sought chronology
possible," said Polyak in the article.
As it turned out, the caves and cave deposits, which are located
throughout the Grand Canyon, were ideal in that the researchers found
both pre-existing and chemical sediments deposited before, during and
after the incision of the canyon.
Naturally, the caves preserved and protected them from weathering.
With sufficient uranium lead ratios and yield U-Pb dates, the
mammillary coatings place the water table within the canyon at a
particular place and at an absolute time. The mammillary coatings
allow for the incision history of the Grand Canyon to be reconstructed.
"We knew if we could successfully determine the age of these coatings,
we could position a pre-existing water table at a certain place in the
canyon at a particular time," said Polyak.
The core data, which included 57 analyses, came from nine mammillary
coatings from throughout the canyon, both east and west. The results
from the eastern Grand Canyon displayed faster water table descent
rates than data from the western Grand Canyon which showed stable,
slow drops in the water table. The data showed a slower incision rate
in the western portion than the eastern.
The resulting data provided a record of water table deposits as the
Colorado River cut through the canyon over millions and millions of
years  approximately 17 million for the western portion.
"Based on uranium-lead dates of these deposits and the positions of
these deposits throughout the canyon, that the western Grand Canyon is
much older than what most scientists have thought," said Polyak.
"Normally what you'd expect is for the area around the headwaters to
be older than what they call the 'tail of the river,' said Asmerom.
"Here, essentially, you have a 10 million year old pre-history of the
western Grand Canyon before the Colorado River became a though-flowing
river to the Gulf of California."
The research may provide further clues and could eventually offer the
possibility for a reconstruction of the canyon's history.
"These results were possible by the convergence of new technical
capabilities achieved in our Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory, the
conceptual breakthrough in connecting the mammillary to the water
table and having samples that had sufficient uranium for dating," said
Asmerom.

It took eons to make Grand Canyon grand
Gazing into the majestic Grand Canyon, awe-struck visitors inevitably ask:
"How old is it?" Far older than generally thought, says new evidence that
scientists culled from caves lining the canyon's red limestone cliffs.
The Grand Canyon often is referred to as about 6 million years old a but its
western half actually began to open at least 17 million years ago, a
University of New Mexico team reports Friday in the journal Science.
Wait: The western side of the canyon is the downstream end of the Colorado
River, so how could it be older than the arguably more spectacular eastern
side?
Remember, geologists caution, that the Grand Canyon was carved from drainage
systems that didn't turn into the single river we now know as the Colorado
until roughly 6 million years ago. The new research suggests two canyons
formed that eventually joined. And it makes sense that the older side would
even look different, less jagged, thanks to more years of gravity and wind
erosion to soften its edges.
"This is really exciting for those of us who work in the stories and theories
of how the Grand Canyon has evolved," Arizona geologist Wayne Ranney, author
of "Carving the Grand Canyon," said of the new work. "This paper helps us to
more clearly understand that different parts of the canyon formed at different
times. That's how big the Grand Canyon is."
How and when the Grand Canyon formed has been a question of both geologists
and average visitors since John Wesley Powell's famous first expedition in
1869.
Dating the canyon's carving has been difficult because it has largely depended
on evidence from exposed rock and mineral deposits that themselves erode over
time.
The University of New Mexico team tried a new technique: Testing formations
inside the numerous caves that line the Grand Canyon a protected formations
less susceptible to erosion a that form at the water table. So cave specialist
Carol Hill said they should provide a record of how the water table dropped
over time as the canyon was cut deeper and deeper.
First Hill and colleagues made the grueling climbs to cull the formations from
caves in 10 different spots along the length of the Grand Canyon. Then came
work in specialized labs to pin down the age of each formation, using a method
called uranium-lead isotope testing.
The findings: The western side of what is now the Grand Canyon started forming
about 17 million years ago, and that initial erosion was fairly slow and steady
a a couple of inches every thousand years.
The canyon formed not just downward and westward but it opened steadily to the
east, too, through what geologists call "headward erosion," the team reports a
until the western side cut through enough rock to meet water on the eastern
side, around 5 to 6 million years ago.
Then the action really started, with the eastern side of the canyon being cut
at a rate of about 8 inches to almost a foot every thousand years, they report.
Why the speedup? The new research can't say exactly, but Ranney notes that
land mass was shifting around a lot during this period, too, heaving some
sections of rock and lowering others. The Hurricane and Toroweap faults in the
western Grand Canyon dropped enough to essentially form a waterfall, speeding
water flow enough that the eastern side was being ripped as the river plunged
to the west, he explained.
While geologists point to some questions in the new research, overall it does
fit with various theories about how the Grand Canyon formed, said Rebecca
Fowler of the University of Colorado, Boulder, who also studies the Grand
Canyon.
"All of it is pointing toward a pretty complex history of Grand Canyon
development, which is one of the reasons this area has been so controversial,
" she said. "It's a pretty complicated system and it's very likely that the
entire Grand Canyon did not incise (cut) all at one time."
==
Astronomers refer to a synodic month: the return of the moon in its orbit
relative to the sun in the sky. In fact, the Greek astronomer Meton (born
about 460 B.C.), independently discovered that 235 synodic months is almost
exactly equivalent to 19 years: what we now call the Metonic cycle.
==
Women in History: Hypatia

Throughout history, women with independent minds who have made significant
contributions to our body of knowledge, have been mocked, censored or even
killed for their perceived outspokenness.
Hypatia of Alexandria, was a gifted female philosopher, astronomer and
mathematician who flourished in Roman Egypt during Arcadius' reign.
In 415 A.D, she was torn to pieces by a band of Alexandrians and her body was
violated and scattered over the whole city.
The motive was thought to be envy of her exceptional wisdom regarding
astronomy.
Some historians say that she was killed by a group of Christian monks (the
attack happened during Lent), egged on by Cyril, an Alexandrian bishop. Cyril
was said to be jealous of her influence and popularity, and resentful that she
didn't "stay in her place" as a woman.
She was either 45 or, more likely, 60 years of age, at the time of her death.
Philosophically, she was a Neoplatonist. To Christians that meant she was a
pagan. She encouraged the expansion of human knowledge through the study of
science, logic and mathematics and discouraged believing in mysticism.
She led the Neoplatonic School in Alexandria. Neoplatonism dominated the Greek
philosophical schools and remained predominant until the teaching of philosophy
by pagans was outlawed in the second half of the 6th century A.D.
According to her contemporaries, she was imposing and stunningboth
intellectually and physically--standing five feet nine, possessing fine
features and a mesmerizing speaking voice. It was said that she was able to
swim, row, climb mountains, ride horseback and walk distances of ten miles
without tiring.
Instead of wearing traditional female garb, she dressed in the clothing of a
scholar and moved about Alexandria freely, commanding her own chariot.
The contemporary Christian historiographer, Socrates Scholasticus, vividly
describes her in his Ecclesiastical History:
"There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher
Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass
all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato
and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many
of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the
self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of
the cultivation of her mind, she not unfrequently (sic) appeared in public in
presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an
assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and
virtue admired her the more"
Theon, was a teacher of mathematics with the Museum of Alexandria, as well as
her most important teacher and mentor. According to the Suda, a 10th century
Byzantine Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, he
was also the last director of the Museum. The Museum was a center of Greek
intellectual and cultural life, and included the great library of Alexandria.
Hypatia's writings, which were housed in the famous museum, were lost when it
was burned to the ground by Arab conquerers. What we know of their content is
from the work of others who quoted her, and a few letters written to her by
contemporaries.
Her works included: A Commentary on the Arithmetica of Diophantus; and A
Commentary on the Conics of Apollonious.
According to women's historian, Jone Johnson Lewis, she is thought to have
invented: the plate astrolabe, an astronomical instrument; the graduated brass
hydrometer, which determines liquid gravity; and the hydroscope, a precursor to
the modern microscope.
Hypatia wrote widely about mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, including
about the motions of the planets, number theory and conic sections.
Her groundbreaking influence, and even her name, has continued to survive and
thrive throughout the centuries.
Hypatia's legacy

Here are just some of the many ways in which Hypatia is still both referenced
and relevant today:

*	Feminist artist Judy Chicago included Hypatia in her controversial art
installation, "The Dinner Party".

*	Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino sees the protagonist meet a secluded society
of satryr-like creatures who all take their name and philosophy from Hypatia.

*	Rinne Groff's 2000 play The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem, features a
character named Hypatia who lives silently, in fear that she will be killed
like her namesake.

*	Hypatia is the name of a "shipmind" (ship computer), in The Boy Who Would
Live Forever, a novel by Frederick Pohl.

*	"Hypatia Sans Pro" is an Adobe typeface.

*	Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, has been in publication since
1986.
==
Here are the largest 17 Kuiper Belt objects discovered, in estimated
size order, with calculated distances (from the sun, in AU, where AU =
Astronomical Unit = sun-earth distance = approx. 93 million miles) and
estimated sizes (in kilometers):

Name/Designation Avg Dist Est Size
Eris (2003UB313) 67.69 2,400
Pluto 39.53 2,300
2003EL61 43.31 2,000
Sedna (2003VB12) 486.0 1,800
2005FY9 45.66 1,600
Quaoar (2002LM60) 43.58 1,290
Orcus (2004DW) 39.34 1,100
Ixion (2001KX) 39.65 980
2002AW197 47.30 940
2002UX25 42.53 810
2002TX300 43.11 800
Varuna (2000WR) 42.90 780
2002MS4 41.90 740
2003MW12 45.94 740
2005RN43 41.53 740
2002TC302 55.02 710
2003AZ84 39.45 710

From:
The Dwarf Planets
by Mike Brown
http://web.gps. caltech.edu/ ~mbrown/dwarfpla nets/

==
What is Relativity?
Albert Einstein was famous for many things, but his greatest brainchild is the
theory of relativity. It forever changed our understanding of space and time.
What is relativity? Succinctly put, it is the notion that the laws of physics
are the same everywhere. We here on Earth obey the same laws of light and
gravity as someone in a far off corner of the universe.
The universality of physics means that history is provincial. Different
viewers will see the timing and spacing of events differently. What for us is
a million years may just be a blink of an eye for someone flying in a high
speed rocket or falling into a black hole.
It's all relative.
Special relativity
Einstein's theory is divided into special and general relativity.
Special relativity came first and is based on the speed of light being
constant for everyone. That may seem simple enough, but it has far-reaching
consequences.
Einstein came to this conclusion in 1905 after experimental evidence showed
that the speed of light didn't change as the Earth swung around the Sun.
This result was surprising to physicists because the speed of most other
things does depend on what direction the observer is moving. If you drive your
car alongside a railroad track, a train coming at you will seem to be moving
much faster than if you turned around and followed it in the same direction.
Einstein said that all observers will measure the speed of light to be 186,000
miles per second, no matter how fast and what direction they are moving.

This maxim prompted the comedian Stephen Wright to ask: "If you are in a
spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the
headlights, does anything happen?"

The answer is the headlights turn on normally, but only from the perspective
of someone inside the spaceship. For someone standing outside watching the
ship fly by, the headlights do not appear to turn on: light comes out but it
takes an eternity for the beams to get ahead of the spaceship.

These contradictory versions arise because rulers and clocksthe things that
mark time and spaceare not the same for different observers. If the speed of
light is to be held constant as Einstein said, then time and space cannot be
absolute; they must be subjective.
For instance, a 100-foot-long spaceship traveling at 99.99 percent the speed
of light will appear one foot long to a stationary observer, but it will
remain its normal length for those onboard.
Perhaps even weirder, time passes slower the faster one goes. If a twin rides
in the speeding spaceship to some distant star and then comes back, she will
be younger than her sister who stayed on Earth.
Mass, too, depends on speed. The faster an object moves, the more massive it
becomes. In fact, no spaceship can ever reach 100 percent of the speed of
light because its mass would grow to infinity.
This relationship between mass and speed is often expressed as a relationship
between mass and energy: E=mc^2, where E is energy, m is mass and c is the
speed of light.
General relativity
Einstein wasn't done upsetting our understanding of time and space. He went on
to generalize his theory by including acceleration and found that this
distorted the shape of time and space.
To stick with the above example: imagine the spaceship speeds up by firing its
thrusters. Those onboard will stick to the ground just as if they were on
Earth. Einstein claimed that the force we call gravity is indistinguishable
from being in an accelerating ship.
This by itself was not so revolutionary, but when Einstein worked out the
complex math (it took him 10 years), he discovered that space and time are
curved near a massive object, and this curvature is what we experience as the
force of gravity.
It is difficult to picture the curved geometry of general relativity, but if
one thinks of space-time as a kind of fabric, then a massive object stretches
the surrounding fabric such that anything passing nearby no longer follows a
straight line.
The equations of general relativity predict a number of phenomena, many of
which have been confirmed:
*	bending of light around massive objects (gravitational lensing)
*	a slow evolution in the orbit of the planet Mercury (perihelion precession)
*	frame dragging of space-time around rotating bodies
*	weakening of light escaping gravity's pull (gravitational redshift)
*	speeding up in the rotational periods of binary stars and pulsars
*	gravitational waves (ripples in space-time fabric) caused by cosmic smashups
*	the existence of black holes that trap everything including light
The warping of space-time around a black hole is more intense than anywhere
else. If the space-faring twin fell into a black hole, she would be stretched
out like spaghetti.
Luckily for her it would all be over in a few seconds. But her sister on Earth
would never see it endwatching her poor sister inching incrementally toward the
black hole over the age of the universe.
==
http://mathcurve.com/  math curves
==
http://www.texasjim.com/NASApix/NASA%20pix.htm  nasa pictures
===
See space station http://www.heavens-above.com/selecttown.asp?CountryID=US
==
 Before his death, Regiomontanus published an almanac containing astronomical
tables covering the years 1475-1506. Regiomontanus' almanac turned out to be
of great value, for his astronomical tables provided detailed information
about the sun, moon and planets, as well as the more important stars and
constellations by which to navigate. After it was published, no sailor dared
set out without a copy. With its help, explorers were able to leave their
customary routes and venture out into the unknown seas in search of new
frontiers.
==
Science is a special way of communicating - its methods and knowledge base are
the same throughout the world, disregarding culture and politics. Even without
a common language, if you put scientists together from the same discipline,
they will enthusiastically find a way to communicate. 
==
Kepler truly believed that a geometrically-oriented supreme being would make
planetary orbits perfect circles, but how Tycho Brahe's excellent observational
data led Kepler to the correct answer - that planetary orbits are elliptical.
Scientists are trained to follow the evidence no matter where it leads -
the universe is the way it is, whether we want it to be that way or not!
==
The United States built a mighty economy on the basis of strong scientific
engineering and science throughout the last century. Now, with science
falling into disrepute to serve short term political aims, every American
should fear the decline that is sure to follow
==
Our own Milky Way galaxy is still outside of any galaxy clusters and may go
through a starburst episode in about 3 billion years when it merges with the
nearby Andromeda galaxy,
==
In the 7th century A.D., Brahmagupta
dealt with arithmetic involving 0, including division by 0.
==
Stars in the LMC are known to have lower elemental abundances than most
stars in our galaxy,
==
The radioactive half-life of C-11 is 20 minutes, and that of O-14 is 1 minute,
and that of O-15 is 2 minutes, and that of N-13 is 10 minutes, why is the
life-time of C-14 some 5730 years.
==
"The Discoverers", by Daniel Boorstein
==
http://www.grisda.org/links/0707.htm  science
==
Pools of Invisible Matter Mapped in Space
A new map reveals dense pools of invisible matter tipping the scales at 10
trillion times the mass of the sun and housing a cosmic city of ancient
galaxies.
The map, presented last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society
in Austin, Texas, provides indirect evidence for so-called dark matter and how
this mysterious substance affects galaxy formation.
Scientists theorize that dark matter, considered to make up about 85 percent
of the universe's matter, acts as scaffolding on which galaxies mature. As the
universe evolves, the tug from dark matter's gravitational field causes
galaxies to collide and swirl into superclusters.
It's all these gravitational effects, from something that can't be seen, that
indicates dark matter exists.
"The dark matter halos are what allow the galaxies to form in the first place.
The dark matter is the underlying skeleton of the universe," said Meghan Gray
of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, who was part of the
map-making team. "Most of the universe is dark matter. Galaxies are just froth
on this ocean of dark matter.
Uncovering invisible matter
Gray, Catherine Heymans of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and
colleagues used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to observe a supercluster called
Abell 901/902, which resides 2.6 billion light-years from Earth and spans more
than 16 million light-years across.
The astrophysicists measured light from a backdrop of more than 60,000
galaxies after it passed through the supercluster and its dark matter.
According to Einstein's general relativity theory, the presence of matter can
bend spacetime, deflecting the path of a light ray passing through the mass.
"Dark matter leaves a signature in distant galaxies" explained study co-author
Ludovic Van Waerbeke of the University of British Columbia. "For example, a
circular galaxy will become more distorted to resemble the shape of a banana
if its light passes near a dense region of dark matter."
By averaging the shape-distortions from the thousands of galaxies, the
researchers found four pools of dark matter. And the invisible clumps matched
up with the location of hundreds of ancient galaxies, which have experienced a
violent history in their passage from the outskirts of the supercluster into
the central hubs.
"If the supercluster wasn't there, you'd still see all of these galaxies in
the background," Gray told SPACE.com. "But you put this massive object [in
front of them] and your view gets distorted. It's a cosmic optical illusion."
Aging galaxies
The survey's broader goal is to understand how galaxies are influenced by the
environment in which they live.
"The new map of the underlying dark matter in the supercluster is one key
piece of this puzzle," Gray said. "At the same time, we're looking in detail
at the galaxies themselves."
The galaxies in the central hubs, they are finding, show signs of aging, as
they are elliptical, red in color and are no longer forming stars. Disk
galaxies reside on the outskirts of the supercluster. These youthful galaxies
are blue-hued and buzzing with star birth.
It's these young galaxies that constantly fall into the supercluster, adding
to its galactic girth.
"As they come in, either they're interacting with each other more or they're
interacting with the dark matter," Gray explained. "Something is happening to
change their properties."
The team plans to study individual galaxies in an effort to understand how
this supercluster environment shapes and changes galaxies.
==
x^a - y^b = 1 has no integer solutions with x,y,a,b > 1,
except for 3^2 - 2^3 = 1.
==
Biggest black hole in the cosmos discovered
The most massive known black hole in the universe has been discovered,
weighing in with the mass of 18 billion Suns. Observing the orbit of a smaller
black hole around this monster has allowed astronomers to test Einstein's
theory of general relativity with stronger gravitational fields than ever
before.
The black hole is about six times as massive as the previous record holder and
in fact weighs as much as a small galaxy. It lurks 3.5 billion light years
away, and forms the heart of a quasar called OJ287. A quasar is an extremely
bright object in which matter spiralling into a giant black hole emits copious
amounts of radiation.
But rather than hosting just a single colossal black hole, the quasar appears
to harbour two a setup that has allowed astronomers to accurately 'weigh' the
larger one.
The smaller black hole, which weighs about 100 million Suns, orbits the larger
one on an oval-shaped path every 12 years. It comes close enough to punch
through the disc of matter surrounding the larger black hole twice each orbit,
causing a pair of outbursts that make OJ287 suddenly brighten.
General relativity predicts that the smaller hole's orbit itself should
rotate, or precess, over time, so that the point at which it comes nearest its
neighbour moves around in space an effect seen in Mercury's orbit around the
Sun, albeit on a smaller scale.
Bright outbursts
In the case of OJ287, the tremendous gravitational field of the larger black
hole causes the smaller black hole's orbit to precess at an incredible 39 each
orbit. The precession changes where and when the smaller hole crashes through
the disc surrounding its larger sibling.
About a dozen of the resulting bright outbursts have been observed to date,
and astronomers led by Mauri Valtonen of Tuorla Observatory in Finland have
analysed them to measure the precession rate of the smaller hole's orbit.
That, along with the period of the orbit, suggests the larger black hole
weighs a record 18 billion Suns.
A couple of other black holes have been estimated to be as massive, but their
masses are less certain, says Valtonen. That's because the estimates were
based on the speed of gas clouds around the black holes, and it is not clear
whether the clouds are simply passing by the black holes or actually orbiting
them.
But Tod Strohmayer of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, US, says
he is not convinced that Valtonen's team has really measured the mass of the
large black hole in OJ287 accurately.
That's because only a handful of the outbursts have been measured with high
precision, making it difficult to determine if the precession scenario is
responsible for the outbursts. "Obviously, if subsequent timings continue to
agree with the model, then that would provide further support," he told New
Scientist.
No limit
Just how big can black holes get? Craig Wheeler of the University of Texas in
Austin, US, says it depends only on how long a black hole has been around and
how fast it has swallowed matter in order to grow. "There is no theoretical
upper limit," he says.
The new research also tested another prediction of general relativity that
the black holes should spiral towards each other as they radiate energy away
in the form of gravitational waves, or ripples in space. This radiation
affects the timing of the disc crossings and their accompanying outbursts.
The most recent outburst occurred on 13 September 2007, as predicted by
general relativity. "If there was no orbital decay, the outburst would have
been 20 days later than when it actually happened," Valtonen told New
Scientist, adding that the black holes are on track to merge within 10,000
years.
Wheeler says the observations of the outbursts fit closely with the
expectations from general relativity. "The fact that you can fit Einstein's
theory [so well] ... is telling you that that's working," he says.
The research was presented on Wednesday at a meeting of the American
Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas, US.
==
Scientists: Earth Barely Supports Life
AUSTIN, TexasIf Earth had been slightly smaller and less massive, life might
never have gained a foothold.
They key to life on Earth as we know it, scientists figure, is plate
tectonics the forces that move continents and build mountains. And the more
massive a world is, the thinner its plates are. Thinner plates are weaker and
more easily moved and so able to support the kinds of crucial planet-shaping
plate tectonics experienced on this planet over the billions of years that
life evolved from simple one-celled organisms to complex creatures that can
fly, swim and read.
"Plate tectonics are essential to life as we know it," said Diana Valencia of
Harvard University, who presented research on the topic here Wednesday at a
meeting of the American Astronomical Society. "Our calculations show that
bigger is better when it comes to the habitability of rocky planets."
The study reveals Earth has been on the edge of habitability from the
beginning, and just eked by to allow life-friendly conditions.
The results give hope to astronomers looking for life on other planets.
"It expands the potential to find life on other planets that are different
from Earth," said astrophysicist Sara Seager of MIT, who was not involved in
the study. She added that Valencia "has shown us that we can have hope that we
can have life there."
Not too hot, not too cold
Plate tectonics, Valencia explains, is what allows the carbon cycle on Earth
to operate. So as plates spread apart from each other, slide under one
another, and even crash into each other to lift gigantic mountain ranges like
the Himalayas, they also recycle carbon dioxide. This greenhouse gas acts as a
thermostat to keep Earth balmy but not scorching over geologic time scales.
"Recycling is important even on a planetary scale," Valencia explained.
Valencia and her Harvard colleagues, Richard O'Connell and Dimitar Sasselov,
examined so-called super-Earths more than twice the size of Earth and up to 10
times as massive. Any heftier and the planet would have enough tug to collect
gas, transforming it into a Neptune- or Jupiter-like world, theory holds.
They studied planets roughly the age of Earth, because really old planets
would have cooled off too much to support convection and plate tectonics.
Bigger is better
The simulations showed that rocky orbs with masses three times that of Earth
and greater should experience plate tectonics. Earth was found to be a
borderline case, which is supported by the fact that the slightly smaller
planet Venus is tectonically inactive. The reason for plate tectonics,
Valencia said, might be water, because it weakens the plates through
lubrication. That can nudge plate tectonics. Venus has no water.
"It might not be a coincidence that Earth is the largest rocky planet in our
solar system, and also the only one with life," Valencia said.
As a rocky world gets more massive, the plates get thinner and so they are
easier to move. That means super-Earths would be more geologically active than
our planet.
"The bigger planets have more favorable conditions for plate tectonics than
Earth does," Valencia told LiveScience.
Vacation destinations?
To date, five super-Earths have been spotted, even though they are very
difficult to detect with current technology. Each orbits close to its host
star, however, and are too hot for life.
If super-Earths are as common as observations suggest, the researchers say it
is inevitable that some will have Earth-like orbits within the habitable zones
of their host star, making them comfy havens for life.
"There are not only more potentially habitable planets, but many more," said
Sasselov, who is director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative.
He speculates our descendants in the far-future might consider a super-Earth
for their next vacation, assuming some means of exotic propulsion were devised
for the trip.
While this vacation would be "out of this world," Sasselov added the
super-Earth destination would feel just like home. That is in terms of its
geography. With more rapid plate tectonics, there would be less time for
mountains and ocean trenches to form before getting recycled. That means a
landscape where mountains soar no taller than those on Earth, for instance.
"The landscape would be familiar," Sasselov said. "A super-Earth would feel
very much like home."
==
The mostly dormant black hole at the center of our galaxy weighs several
million times the mass of the sun. In more active galaxies, black holes can
surpass a billion solar masses. (The record-setter, at 18 billion solar
masses, was announced this week.)
==
Unknown Force Triggers Star Formation
The best look ever inside a womb of star birth reveals a force at work
astronomers were not aware of.
Like a baby's first ultrasound, scientists peered into a stellar envelope to
capture the earliest and most detailed view of a collapsing cloud of gas and
dust, NASA announced Tuesday. The images were made mostly with the European
Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory.
Some previously unrealized energetic process, likely related to magnetic
fields, is superheating parts of the cloud, nudging it to become a star,
scientists said.
The detection of X-rays from the cold stellar precursor surprised astronomers.
The observations reveal that matter is falling toward the core 10 times faster
than gravity could account for.
"We are seeing star formation at its embryonic stage," said Kenji Hamaguchi, a
NASA-funded researcher at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Previous
observations have captured the shape of such gas clouds but have never been
able to peer inside. The detection of X-rays this early indicates that gravity
alone is not the only force shaping young stars."
The results will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Observations by other telescopes confirmed the interpretation of the scene,
inside a star-forming region called R Corona Australis, about 500 light-years
from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6
trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
The object is between 10,000 and 100,000 years into the process of gathering
itself together, researchers said. The cloud temperature is about 400 degrees
below zero Fahrenheit (minus 240 Celsius). In a few million years, it will
become dense enough to ignite the nuclear fusion that powers our Sun and other
stars.
The whole setup is spinning, and scientists speculate that magnetic fields
accelerate gas to high speeds as it approaches the core. In other high-energy
environments, such as around black holes, high-speed gas is known to produce
X-rays.
"This is no gentle freefall of gas," said Michael Corcoran of NASA Goddard, a
co-author on the report.
"The X-ray emission shows that forces appear to be accelerating matter to high
speeds, heating regions of this cold gas cloud to 100 million degrees
Fahrenheit," Corcoran said. "The X-ray emission from the core gives us a
window to probe the hidden processes by which cold gas clouds collapse to
stars."
==
Baby Versions of Milky Way Spotted
Astronomers have spotted small galaxies near the beginning of time that
resemble ancestors of our own galactic home.
The tiny galaxies are about one-tenth to one-twentieth the size of the Milky
Way and have 40 times fewer stars. Light from the ancient clusters was emitted
about 2 billion years after the Big Bang, the theoretical beginning to the
universe that occurred about 13.7 billion years ago. So the galaxies are seen
as they existed in a very young universe.
The galaxies are not the most distant seen by the Hubble Space Telescope, but
astronomers consider them to be the best evidence of precursors to larger,
spiral structures such as the Milky Way.
"Finding these objects and discovering that they are a step in the evolution
of our galaxy is akin to finding a key fossil in the path of human evolution,"
said Eric Gawiser, an astronomer at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences.
Gawiser and Caryl Gronwall, an astrophysicist at Pennsylvania State
University, detailed their findings today at the American Astronomical Society
(AAS) annual meeting in Austin, Texas.
"They come in a variety of shapes round, oblong and even somewhat linear and
we are starting to make precise measurements of their sizes," Gronwall said of
the spiral galaxies, which are made mostly of hot, bright stars that emit a
unique "Lyman alpha" signature of ultraviolet light.
Statistical analyses and computer simulations of how galaxies bump into one
another led Gronwall and Gawiser to conclude that galaxies with strong Lyman
alpha signatures are the ancestors of spiral galaxies.
"We knew by our understanding of cosmological theory that spiral galaxies had
to evolve from low-mass galaxies such as these," Gawiser said. "The challenge
was to actually find them. We'd seen other early universe galaxies, but they
were bigger and destined to evolve into elliptical galaxies, not spirals."
Nigel Sharp, a program officer at the National Science Foundation's Division
of Astronomical Sciences who was not involved in the work, said Gronwall and
Gawiser used Hubble and other observatories to extract an important finding.
"This team has come the closest yet to finding young galaxies that resemble
our own Milky Way in its infancy," Sharp said.
==
Plate tectonics may bump, grind to halt
If you thought the continents were slow-moving todaythey drift a few
centimeters a year, or at roughly the same rate that fingernails growjust wait
350 million years. Trends in plate tectonics, the slow shuffling of the
continent-size pieces that make up Earth's crust, imply that the Americas and
Eurasia will collide at approximately that time, thereby zipping shut the
Pacific Ocean. Writing in the journal Science, researchers point out that such
closure would eliminate most of Earth's crustal subduction zones, where one
continental plate slides underneath another, which they say could bring plate
tectonics to a grinding halt. Indeed, it may have happened in the past: A
pause in continental drift would trap the planet's heat, and they point to
increasing evidence that Earth has shed less heat over its history than you
might expect if there was uninterrupted jostling.
==
Precursor of Life Molecules Found Around Star
Astronomers have found the first signature of complex organic molecules in the
dust cloud around a distant star, suggesting that these building blocks of life
may be a common feature of planetary systems.
In our solar system, the large carbon molecules, called tholins, have been
found in comets and on Saturn's moon, Titan, giving its atmosphere a red tinge.
Tholins are thought to be precursors to the biomolecules that make up living
organisms on Earth (though they are no longer found on our planet because the
oxygen in our atmosphere would quickly destroy them).
A new study, detailed in a recent issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters,
features observations of the spectrum of the dust disk surrounding the star
HR4796A that indicate the presence of tholins there.
The spectrum of scattered visible and infrared light from the disk looks very
red, the researchers report, a color known to be produced by tholins. (The
spectrum's signature doesn't seem to match other red substances, such as iron
oxides.)
"Until recently it's been hard to know what makes up the dust in a disk from
scattered light, so to find tholins this way represents a great leap in our
understanding," said study team member John Debes of the Carnegie Institution.
HR4796A, located in the constellation Centaurus, is a massive
8-million-year-old star about 220 light-years from Earth. Its dust disk,
discovered in 1991, is considered a prime example of a planetary system in
formation.
The dust is generated by the collisions of small bodies, perhaps similar to
our own comets and asteroids, which could deliver these tholins to planets
that might be orbiting the distant star.
Because the star is twice as massive and nearly twice as hot as the sun, it
provides clues into the different conditions under which planets, and life,
might potentially evolve.
===
On some 50 expeditions, often with U.S. National Science Foundation support,
he and colleagues have braved high winds, frostbite and altitude sickness,
survived in ice caves, crossed treacherous crevasses with makeshift bridges,
and hauled heavy equipment to unlikely heights.
In 2006, at a 20,000-foot-high site in the Tibetan Himalayas, Thompson had to
rely on animal power, dozens of yaks, to carry ice-core segments on their
backs to the valley below.
An accumulation of four miles of ice cores, including one Himalayan sample
reaching back 750,000 years, now lies in cold storage at the lab in Columbus,
Ohio, where the ice is analyzed layer by layer through centuries past.
Flecks of dust, falling seasonally, enable glaciologists to count the years
down the ice core's length. Isotopes of oxygen, in minute air bubbles trapped
in the ice, vary with temperature and so tell researchers how ancient climate
shifted. Other clues chemicals, surrounding geology, trapped and frozen
vegetation or insects tell high-altitude investigators still more
===
For a brief summary of scientific & scholarly thought
on the age of the earth before Darwin & in the decades
after his discovery of natural selection but before
the discovery of radiation, read the link below. It
will be a growth experience for you, since you will
see what a delusional liar you have been:

http://www.talkorig ins.org/faqs/ geohist.html

Here are some excerpts, showing plainly that 111 years
before "On the Origin of Species" (published in 1859),
some scientists estimated the earth to be billions of
years old, & that even earlier others had glimpsed the
truth of the enormous age of the earth. This fact had
nothing at all to do with supporting evolution, as you
falsely imagine, despite all the evidence of reality
posters here have tried to help you understand:

Chronology of Writings

1510 Leonardo Da Vinci: Selections from the Notebooks
of Leonardo Da Vinci. In his notebooks Da Vinci
ponders fossil seashells and concludes that they could
not have been laid down by the Noachian flood. He
wrote:

"If the Deluge had carried the shells for
distances of three and four hundred miles from the sea
it would have carried them mixed with various other
natural objects all heaped up together; but even at
such distances from the sea we see the oysters all
together and also the shellfish and the cuttlefish and
all the other shells which congregate together, found
all together dead; and the solitary shells are found
apart from one another as we see them every day on the
sea-shores.

"And we find oysters together in very large
families, among which some may be seen with their
shells still joined together, indicating that they
were left there by the sea and that they were still
living when the strait of Gibraltar was cut through.
In the mountains of Parma and Piacenza multitudes of
shells and corals with holes may be seen still
sticking to the rocks..."

1594 Loys le Roy: Of the interchangeable course or
variety of things in the Whole world. Le Roy accepted
that land and sea could change places and that
mountains could be reduced to plains and vice versa.
Le Roy was vague about actual mechanisms. He can be
considered as a very early uniformitarian.

1625 Nathaniel Carpenter: Geography delineated forth
in two Bookes In this early work Carpenter argued that
the Flood could not have been the major agent of
geological change.

1634 Simon Stevin: Second Book of Geology. Stevin
followed up Le Roy with arguments that wind and water
sufficed as primary agents.

1637 Rene Descartes: Discours de la Methode.
Descartes constructed a history of the Earth which was
quite influential; it was the starting point for many
later cosmogonies. Some of the main points of his
system were that the Earth formed as a fiery ball,
that when it cooled a crust formed over the abyssal
waters, and that this crust collapsed, releasing
massive volumes of water.

1640 James Ussher: A number of writers calculated the
date of creation, using the Biblical chonologies,
astronomical records, and historical chronologies. Of
these, Ussher's date of 4004 BC is the most famous.
Other dates include 3928 BC (John Lightfoot, AD 1644)
and 5529 BC (Theophilus of Antioch. AD 169).

1669 Nicholas Steno: The Produmus. Steno did the
basic analysis of how fossils got embedded in stone.
From his field observations of the Tuscan landscape he
concluded that the Flood was important but did not
completely explain the observed geology.

1681 Thomas Burnet: Sacred Theory of the Earth.
Burnet's famous and widely read book reworked
Descartes's speculations to fit the biblical account.
In his conception the antediluvian Earth was a smooth
ovoid. Over time the surface dried out and the abyssal
waters were heated. Eventually the surface cracked,
releasing the abyssal waters in the Noachian flood.

1691 John Ray: The Wisdom of God Manifested in the
Works of Creation. Ray reworked Burnet's cosmogony.
One of the notable features of Ray's works was the
thought he put into possible sources for the waters of
the flood. Ray accepted that there had been continuous
interchange between land and sea.

1693 Baron Leibnitz: Protogea. Leibnitz reworked
Descartes's cosmogony. Protogea was published much
later in 1749.

1695 John Woodward: An essay toward a Natural History
of the Earth. Woodward came down fairly strongly for
the view that the flood was an act of God that could
not be accounted for by normal physical processes. He
also postulated hydrological sorting to account for
the ordering of fossils.

1696 William Whiston: A new theory of the Earth....
Whiston added comets to Burnet's cosmogony as the
source of the waters of the flood.

1705 Robert Hooke: Lectures and Discourse of
Earthquakes and Subterranean Eruptions. Hooke believed
that the fossils were the remains of extinct species
and could not be accounted for by the Flood.

"Asking himself how the present areas of land came
to be dry, he answers 'it could be from the Flood of
Noah, since the duration of that which was but about
two hundred natural days, or half a year could not
afford time enough for the production and perfection
of so many and so great and full grown shells, as
these which are so found do testify; besides the
quantity and thickness of the beds of sand with which
they are many times found mixed, do argue that there
must needs be a much longer time of seas residence of
the seas above same, than so short a space can
afford."

1748 Benoit de Maillet: Telliamed, or Conversations
between an Indian Philosopher and a French Missionary
on the Diminution of the Sea. Using Descartes's
cosmology, the assumption that the earth was once
entirely flooded, and the observation that the sea
level was dropping three inches per century near his
home, he calculated the age of the earth to be greater
than 2 billion years.

1771 Peter Pallas: Observation sur la Formation des
Montagnards. ... Pallas made extensive observations of
Russian mountains. He observed the results of
processes that acted on mountains, e.g. weathering,
erosion, deposition, and the fracturing and upheaval
of strata. He argued for occasional catastrophic
events as an origin for mountain building.

1774 Comte de Buffon: Epochs of Nature. Buffon
assumed that the earth started molten, measured
cooling rates of iron spheres, scaled up, and
calculated the age at ~75,000 years. He himself was
suspicious that this was much too young and, in
manuscripts published after his death, suggested
longer chronologies, including one estimate of nearly
3 billion years.

1778 Jean de Luc: Lettres Physique et Morales sur
l'Histoire de la Terre et de l'Homme. De Luc's work is
"transitional between the armchair speculation of the
seventeenth century and the hard-nosed empiricism of
the nineteenth century." De Luc accepted the biblical
account, including the Noachian flood; however, he
assumed that the six days of creation were six long
periods of indefinite duration.

1778 John Whitehurst: An inquiry into the Original
State of the Earth. Whitehurst added the notion of
drastic tidal action of the moon to Woodward's
cosmogony.

1779 Horace-Benedict de Saussure: Voyages dans les
Alpes. De Saussure made extensive observations of the
Alps. He appreciated that curved strata had originally
been laid down as horizontal sheets and were later
deformed.

1787 Abraham Werner: Kurze Klassification und
Beschreibung der verschiedener Gebirgsarten. Werner
recognized the importance of successive advance and
retreat of the oceans for creating the layers of the
Earth.

1788 James Hutton: Theory of the Earth; or, an
investigation of the laws observable in the
composition, dissolution and restoration of land upon
the globe. Hutton is traditionally credited with being
the father of modern geology. He was the first modern
uniformitarian. Hutton argued that the Earth was of
immense antiquity, cycling through changes via slow
processes sans catastrophes. The last sentence of
Hutton's 1788 work is famous and is widely quoted:

The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is,
that we find no vestige of a beginning - no prospect
of an end.

1794 Robert Townson: Philosophy of Mineralogy.
Townson was one of the many catastrophists of the late
18'th and early 19'th century. He pointed out that
fieldwork had revealed that the features of the
surface of the Earth could not be accounted for by a
single Creation and catastrophic flood but rather
successions of formation and dramatic change.

1794 Richard Sullivan: A View of Nature. Sullivan was
another catastrophist. He wrote:

Thus succeed revolution to revolution. When the
masses of shells were heaped upon the Alps, then in
the bosom of the ocean, there must have been portions
of the earth, unquestionably dry and inhabited;
vegetable and animal remains prove it; no stratum
hitherto discovered, with other strata upon it, but
has been, at one time or another, the surface. The sea
announces everywhere its different sojournments; and
at least yields conviction that all strata were not
formed at the same period.

1799 Robert Kirwan: Geological Essays. Kirwan was a
scriptural geologist. Although he mostly followed the
biblical account in his account the formation of the
topography of the Earth took several centuries.
Kirwan's virulent attacks on Hutton had the effect of
making Hutton much better known than he otherwise
would have been.

1812 James Hall: Transactions of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh. Hall argued that Hutton's water cycles were
insufficient to account for large tumbled rocks in the
Alps. He proposed huge waves on a catastrophic scale
that moved ice and rock.

1812 Baron de Cuvier: Dicours sur les Revolutions du
Globe. Cuvier was the best known and most influential
of the catastrophists. His extensive researches in the
geology of the Paris basin led him to postulate a
series of many global catastrophes.

1820 William Buckland: Vindiciae Geologicae. In 1820
Buckland was a scriptural geologist. Thus he wrote:

Again the grand fact of an universal deluge at no
very remote period is proved on grounds so decisive
and incontrovertible, that, had we never heard of such
an event from Scripture, or any other authority,
Geology of itself must have called in the assistance
of some such catastrophe, to explain the phenomena of
diluvian action which are universally presented to us,
and which are unintelligible without recourse to a
deluge exerting its ravages at a period not more
ancient than that announced in the book of Genesis.

1830 Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology. This was
the work that "won" the catastrophist/ uniformitarian
debate. Lyell laid down four principles of uniformity:

* Uniformity of law (the natural laws have
remained the same)
* Uniformity of process (same causes today as in
the past)
* Uniformity of rate (changes occurred at the same
rate as now)
* Uniformity of state (the Earth was much the same
in the past as it is now)

In modern Geology it is generally recognized that
Lyell claimed too much in the last three principles.
Drastic changes, albeit not as all embracing as those
envisioned by the catastrophist, occur from time to
time. There have been significant changes in state due
to such factors as declining strength of the
radioactive sources of heat, the acquisition of oxygen
as a major atmospheric component, the colonization of
land by life, plate tectonics, and asteroid
bombardment.

1836 William Buckland: Geology and Mineralogy
considered with reference to natural Theology. By 1836
Buckland had abandoned the Noachian flood as a source
of major geological change. Instead he postulated
numerous antediluvian catastrophes.

1852 Jean Baptiste de Beaumont: Notice sur des
Systemes de Montagnes. De Beaumont was a relatively
late catastrophist. He argued that as the Earth cools
its volume slowly reduces. The shrinkage causes the
formation of mountains via catastrophic crumpling of
the surface.

1857 Hugh Miller: The Testimony of the Rocks. Miller
was a very popular creationist geologist. He believed
that the Noachian flood was a local flood in the
Mideast and did not credit the theory that the Earth
was young. On page 324 he wrote:

"No man acquainted with the general outlines of
Palaeontology, or the true succession of the
sedimentary formations, has been able to believe,
during the last half century, that any proof of a
general deluge can be derived from the *older*
geologic systems, -- Palaeozoic, Secondary [Mesozoic],
or Tertiary."

Now note that after Darwin, just as I told you, some
physicists disagreed with biologists & geologists over
the age of the earth, including his own son. But once
radioactivity was discovered, scientists found out
that the latter were right & the physicists, including
the highly respected Lord Kelvin, were wrong. There
is no such conspiracy of modern scientists as you so
insanely imagine.

1862 Lord Kelvin: On the Secular Cooling of the
Earth. Using thermodynamic principles and measurements
of thermal conductivity of rocks, Kelvin calculated
that the earth consolidated from a molten state 98
million years ago. In 1897, he revised his estimate to
20-40 million years. Dalrymple says that Kelvin's
estimates were "highly authoritative" for three
decades, but notes that they were challenged by people
from several fields, including T. H. Huxley, John
Perry (a physicist), and T. C. Chamberlain (a
geologist). All of them challenged the likelihood of
Kelvin's assumptions.

1893 Charles D. Walcott: Geologic Time, as Indicated
by the Sedimentary Rocks of North America. Walcott
takes a detailed look at the Paleozoic sediments of
the Cordilleran Sea (just east of the Sierra Nevadas),
considering such things as the land area supplying
sediments and the grain sizes of the sediments. He
arrived at an estimate of 17.5 million years for the
Paleozoic and, based on various other authors'
estimates of relative ages of the other eras, 55
million years for the earth.

1905 Ernest Rutherford: In the Silliman Lectures at
Yale, Rutherford suggested using radioactivity as a
geological timekeeper. The idea was good but there
were practical problems. Initially little was known
about the physics and chemistry of radioactive
elements. Instrumentation had to be improved. The next
section (in the above link) is a chronology of key
events in working out the age of the Earth using
radiometric dating.
==
How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life
by Thomas Gilovich
How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age by
Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn
Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments by
T. Edward Damer
==
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest
Scientific Problem of his Time (Hardcover)
by Dava Sobel (Author), Neil Armstrong (Foreword)
==
The protostar HH 211, as it accretes material from
a surrounding disk. Some of the material from the disk is ejected outward in a
bipolar jet. The matter in the jet rotates around the jet's axis, carrying
away angular momentum so the star can grow. Credit: Change Tsai (ASIAA)
Astronomers have observed for the first time a jet of matter spiraling outward
from an infant star, as if a lengthy strand of curly pasta.
The enormous jet, which shoots out in two directions, is rocketing material
away from the so-called protostar and into interstellar space at more than
"supersonic speeds." From end to end, the bipolar jet extends 16,000
astronomical units (AU), where 1 AU is the average distance between the Earth
and sun.
Called Herbig-Haro (HH) 211, the protostar is located about 1,000 light-years
away in the constellation Perseus. Scientists have estimated HH 211 started
gathering stellar material about 20,000 or so years ago.
"It's like an infant compared to the sun," said astronomer Qizhou Zhang of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "Ultimately
this object we observed will grow into a star like the sun, but right now it's
only 6 percent of the mass of the sun."
The finding, detailed in the Dec. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal,
confirms a key step of star formation, one that astronomers have suspected
since the 1980s.
Stars are thought to form at the center of rotating disks of hydrogen gas and
dust. Over time, protostars pack on material from spinning disks, meanwhile
getting hotter and hotter, until they begin nuclear fusion. This
hydrogen-burning process keeps full-blown stars aglow.
However, there's a stellar glitch of sorts. Similar to dizzying rides that
rotate so swiftly riders stick to the outer walls, as a disk rotates faster
and faster, the swirling matter sticks to the disk's outer edge. The gas can't
fall inward toward the star until it sheds excess spin power called angular
momentum.
"It has to get rid of the spin energy otherwise the matter will just keep
swirling around in this disk around the star without actually going into the
star," Zhang told SPACE.com.
Reverse whirlpool
Theory suggests nascent stars could shed excess angular momentum in the form
of gas spiraling outward around shooting jets. Zhang and his colleagues
glimpsed such spiraling gas using the Submillimeter Array (SMA), which
consists of eight radio telescopes located atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
Measurements showed matter rotating around the jet's axis in a sort of
"reverse whirlpool." The results suggest the bipolar jet moves outward at a
speed greater than 200,000 mph (322,000 kph), while matter swirls around the
jet's major axis at more than 3,000 mph (4,828 kph).
"HH 211 essentially is a 'reverse whirlpool,'" Zhang explained. "Instead of
water swirling around and down into a drain, we see gas swirling around and
outward."
==
Islam's magnificent Golden Age in the 9th-13th centuries brought about major
advances in mathematics, science,
and medicine. The Arabic language held sway in an age that created
algebra, elucidated principles of optics, established the body's
circulation of blood, named stars, and created universities. But with
the end of that period, science in the Islamic world essentially
collapsed. No major invention or discovery has emerged from the Muslim
world for well over seven centuries now. That arrested scientific
development is one important elementalthough by no means the only
one that contributes to the present marginalization of Muslims and a growing
sense of injustice and victimhood.

First encounters
Islam's encounter with science has had happy and unhappy periods. There
was no science in Arab culture in the initial period of Islam, around
610 AD. But as Islam established itself politically and militarily, its
territory expanded. In the mid-eighth century, Muslim conquerors came
upon the ancient treasures of Greek learning. Translations from Greek
into Arabic were ordered by liberal and enlightened caliphs, who filled
their courts in Baghdad with visiting scholars from near and far.
Politics was dominated by the rationalist Mutazilites, who sought to
combine faith and reason in opposition to their rivals, the dogmatic
Asharites. A generally tolerant and pluralistic Islamic culture allowed
Muslims, Christians, and Jews to create new works of art and science
together. But over time, the theological tensions between liberal and
fundamentalist interpretations of Islamsuch as on the issue of free
will versus predestinationbecame intense and turned bloody. A
resurgent
religious orthodoxy eventually inflicted a crushing defeat on the
Mutazilites. Thereafter, the open-minded pursuits of philosophy,
mathematics, and science were increasingly relegated to the margins of
Islam.

<http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_60/iss_8/#ref>

Ottoman Empire astronomers
A long period of darkness followed, punctuated by occasional brilliant
spots. In the 16th century, the Turkish Ottomans established an
extensive empire with the help of military technology. But there was
little enthusiasm for science and new knowledge (see figure 1). In the
19th century, the European Enlightenment inspired a wave of modernist
Islamic reformers: Mohammed Abduh of Egypt, his follower Rashid Rida
from Syria, and their counterparts on the Indian subcontinent, such as
Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Jamaluddin Afghani, exhorted their fellow Muslims
to accept ideas of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution.
Their theological position can be roughly paraphrased as, "The Qur'an
tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." That echoed
Galileo earlier in Europe.

Similarly, in the mass media of Muslim countries, discussions on "Islam
and science" are common and welcomed only to the extent that belief in
the status quo is reaffirmed rather than challenged. When the 2005
earthquake struck Pakistan, killing more than 90 000 people, no major
scientist in the country publicly challenged the belief, freely
propagated through the mass media, that the quake was God's punishment
for sinful behavior. Mullahs ridiculed the notion that science could
provide an explanation; they incited their followers into smashing
television sets, which had provoked Allah's anger and hence the
earthquake. As several class discussions showed, an overwhelming
majority of my university's science students accepted various
divine-wrath explanations.
==
It's possible to divide evidence into 5 categories:
(1) Axioms. These are fundamental assumptions -- ideas that that have never
been contradicted and which can't be explained in any simpler terms -- that
are so basic to our understanding of a subject that they are universally taken
to be true, if for no other reason than to see where they lead. These don't
occur in physical reality; they're confined to the abstract worlds of
mathematics and philosophy.
(2) Experimental results. This is where you observe real-world objects and
events under carefully controlled conditions. Science and medicine are big on
this, but you never hear about it in the messy world that most of us live our
lives in every day.
(3) Forensic evidence. Like experimental results, this entails looking at the
real world to see how it works, but without all the advantages of planning or
controlled conditions. As seen on TV shows like "CSI", this almost invariably
gets hauled in after the fact, trying to deduce what MIGHT or MUST have
happened from the physical evidence left behind, like fingerprints,
bloodstains, DNA samples, phone logs, etc.
(4) Testimony. Testimony is recognized as a form of evidence in courts of law:
"This is what I saw, and here's what happened.".
(5) Circumstantial evidence. This is also allowed in courts of law. It's where
the prosecutor shows that the defendant had motive, means, and opportunity to
commit a crime, and there's no other decent explanation for how the crime got
committed, so it's reasonable to conclude that the defendant is guilty, even
tho you can't demonstrate it conclusively.
==
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/shannon.html
==
Sir Isaac Newton
(25 December 1642 20 March 1727)
[OS: 4 January 1643 - 31 March 1727]\
Sir Isaac Newton, English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural
philosopher, and alchemist, was the father of modern science. In his treatise
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, he described
universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for
classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical
universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for modern engineering.
Demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his
theory of gravitation, Newton showed that the motions of objects on earth and
of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws. With this,
he removed the last doubts about heliocentrism and advanced the scientific
revolution.
His conception of the universe based upon natural and rationally
understandable laws became the seed of Enlightenment. These principles were
available for all people to discover. Itallowed people to pursue their own
aims fruitfully in this life, not the next,to perfect themselves with their
own rational powers.
==
In the last few millenia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected
discoveries about the cosmos and our place within it. I believe our future
depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos in which we float
like a mote of dust in the morning sky. Carl Sagan
==
The cooling remnants of the supernova Cassiopeia A, as shown by a long
exposure with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ.
of Minn.
The blown-out remains of supernova Cassiopeia A, as seen by NASA's Spitzer
Space Telescope. Clockwise from upper left: a composite made up of three
infrared views shown in the remaining panels; silicon gas (blue) deep in the
interior of the remnant; argon gas (green) that synthesized as it was ejected
from the star; a collection of silicate, iron and aluminum-containing dust
(red). The features line up and tell astronomers that the dust, together with
the gas, was created in the explosion. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The elements and molecules that flew out of the Cassiopeia A star when it blew
apart can be seen clearly for the first time in this spectral data. Prior to
these observations, no one was certain where such potentially planet-forming
dust came from. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Dust littered the early universe and seeded the formation of rocky planets
such as the Earth. But where, exactly, most of the celestial grit came from
was uncertain until now.
Astronomers have found 10,000 Earth masses worth of dust surrounding
Cassiopeia A, the remnants of a supernova about 11,000 light-years away from
our planet. The NASA Spitzer Space Telescope observations show silicates,
carbon, iron oxide, aluminum oxide and other dust-forming chemicals around the
blown-out star.
Jeonghee Rho, an astronomer at the Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., thinks the
discovery signals the first strong evidence that massive exploding stars
really are the litterbugs of the universe.
"Now we can say unambiguously that dust and lots of it was formed in the
ejecta of the Cassiopeia A explosion," Rho said. She and her team will detail
their findings in the Jan. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Stars like the sun are thought to burn too long to seed the cosmos with enough
grit, and massive stars are probably too gassy and short-lived, the thinking
goes. Cassiopeia A's explosion is extremely recent the light reached Earth
just 325 years ago but Rho and her team think cosmic dust balls similar to
the remnant began producing the stuff of terrestrial planets billions of years
ago.
Within Cassiopeia A, the astronomers found cool yet freshly-made dust mixed in
with jettisons of gas called "unshocked ejecta" deep inside the supernova
leftovers.
"Dust forms a few to several hundred days after these energetic explosions,
when the temperature of gas in the ejecta cools down," said team member
Takashi Kozasa, an astronomer at Hokkaido University in Japan.
This activity had never been seen before and hints that supernovae can crank
out plenty of dust to lead to planet formation, though it doesn't account for
all of the universe's grit.
"Perhaps at least some of the unexplained portion is much colder dust, which
could be observed with upcoming telescopes, such as Herschel," said team
member Haley Gomez, an astronomer at the University of Wales in the UK.
Set to launch in 2008, scientists hope to use the European Space Agency's
Herschel spacecraft to find such cold dust near quasars, thought to be
hyperactive black holes, which X-ray observations suggest could produce the
stuff.
==
1931 -- The paper of Kurt Godel appears: "On Formally Undecidable Propositions
of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I",
==
1. The second law applies to all systems. The formulation is different for
closed vs open.
2. There are no truly closed systems except perhaps for the universe
itself. Closed systems are used as ideal approximations to some
real situations to simplify the calculations. This is done when the
energy exchange between the system and its' surroundings is
small enough to be ignored for the timescale being considered.
Look up a text book on statistical thermodynamics, which is the modern
version of thermodynamics.
==
The Enduring Mysteries of the Moon
The moon--linked in myth with goddesses of witchcraft and the hunt, with gods
of magic and wisdom--is nearly as old as Earth itself, with enigmas of its
own. As close as the moon is to Earth, we are still far from solving all its
mysteries--from how the moon was born to whether life on Earth has its past
and future there.
How was the moon made?
Most scientists think the moon was born from a gargantuan collision--when a
young, 30-million-year-old Earth was sideswiped by an embryonic planet the
size of Mars some 4.5 billion years ago, with debris from our planet and this
impactor eventually coalescing into a molten, red-hot moon.
Curiously, while the latest computer models suggest most of the moon came from
the impactor, lunar samples from the Apollo and other missions suggest the moon
is very chemically similar to Earth's mantle.
"Perhaps that means the impactor, this embryonic planet, was similar to Earth,
drawn from the same materials our planet was,"
The Lunar Cataclysm\
The moon was rocked by a chain of devastating cosmic impacts known as the
Lunar Cataclysm or the Late Heavy Bombardment about 4.2 billion to 3.8 billion
years ago, which gouged out 50 or so giant basins still visible on the lunar
surface. Astronomers suspect it occurred when the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn
shifted, with the gravitational pull of these giant planets hurling more
asteroids and comets around.
All the inner planets likely got hit at the same epoch as well--Foing
estimated Earth suffered 25 or 30 times more impacts than the moon. Scientists
aren't quite certain when the Late Heavy Bombardment occurred and how long it
lasted, but it apparently took place around when life arose on Earth.
Pinning down when these impacts occurred could help shed light on whether they
scoured primitive life that had just developed on Earth--or whether they
planted chemical ingredients that helped life emerge. "It will be necessary to
go to many impact basins on the moon to measure samples to try and figure out
when they were created," Foing said.
Millions of tons of rocks blasted off Earth by cosmic impacts during the
planet's earliest days could have landed on the moon, stones that could hold
secrets concerning the origins of life -- including the remote possibility of
microbial fossils.
"As much as 200 kilograms from the early Earth could have fallen on every
square kilometer of the moon," Foing said. "These rocks could be a very
interesting scientific goal for robot and human expeditions to dig and look
for."
==
The oldest dated zircons date from about 4.4 Billion years ago - very close to
the hypothesized time of the Earth's formation. The Greenland sediments include
banded iron beds. They contain possibly organic carbon and quite possibly
indicate that photosynthetic life had already emerged at that time. The oldest
known fossils (from Australia) date from a few hundred million years later.
==
Argumentum ad ignorantium means argument from ignorance. This fallacy
occurs whenever it is argued that something must be true simply because it
has not been proved false. Or, equivalently, when it is argued that
something must be false because it has not been proved true. (Note that
this is not the same as assuming that something is false until it has been
proved true, a basic scientific principle.)

http://www.pleasurepoint.com/logical.html#ad_ignorantium
===
After they exhaust all their nuclear fuel, more than 97 percent of the stars
in our galaxyvirtually all with eight to 10 times the mass of our sun or
lessare expected to end up as white dwarfs, remnant stars roughly the size of
Earth and very dense. Our sun is predicted to become a white dwarf more than
five billion years from now.
==
it would take about 22 pounds of plutonium or 130 pounds of uranium to create
a nuclear detonation. Both would require explosives to set off the blast,
but significantly more for the uranium.
===
Obsidian manufacture may have led to urban civilization
New details in the tragic end of one of the world's earliest cities as well
as clues about how urban life may have begun there were revealed in a recent
excavation in northeastern Syria that was conducted by the University of
Chicago and the Syrian Department of Antiquities.
The attack must have been swift and intense. Buildings collapsed, burning
out of control, burying everything in them under vast pile of rubble, said
Clemens Reichel, the American co-director of the Syrian-American
Archaeological Expedition to Hamoukar. Reichel, a Research Associate at the
University's Oriental Institute, added that the assault probably left the
residents destitute as they buried their dead in the ruins of the city.
Reichel made that assessment of the battle that destroyed Hamoukar about
3500 B.C. after an excavation was conducted in September and October at the
site near the Iraqi border. The team uncovered further evidence of the
accomplishments of the inhabitants among the remains of the walled city
dating to the fourth millennium B.C.
In addition to the wall, the team has uncovered quasi-industrial
installations and two large administrative buildings that had been destroyed
by an intense fire. It was at the site that, mixed in with the debris from
the collapsed wall, that over 1,000 egg-shaped sling bullets were found in
2005, leading the excavators to conclude that an early act of warfare had
caused the end of the settlement.
Work in this past season may explain how powerful the early weapons were.
We literally have them at all stages of use, from manufacture to impact,
Reichel said, pointing out that the team found a sling bullet that had
pierced the plaster of a mud brick wall. The team also found 12 graves in the
debris, very likely of people killed in the battle.
The team discovered several rooms with walls up to six feet high in which
more than 1,100 sling bullets were found mixed in with collapsed walls and
roofs. They also found a shallow pit into which a water jar had been buried
to its rim in the floor of one of the rooms. This pit, ordinarily used to
soak discarded clay sealings to recycle them into fresh sealing clay, was
used to make sling bullets during the city's final hours. This was indicated
by two dozen sling bullets than were lined up neatly along its edge.
It looks as if they were--quite literally--throwing everything they could
find against the aggressors, Reichel said.
Hamoukar was on a key trade route that led from Anatolia (modern-day Turkey)
across Northern Syria and the river Tigris into Southern Mesopotamia. Some
evidence of this long-lasting trade was found in an area to the south of
Hamoukar's main site-- a large mound. The team found obsidian fragments in an
area of over 700 acres (280 hectares), which they dated to 4,500 - 4,000 B.C.
using pottery fragments found with the obsidian. In addition to tools and
blades, the team found large amounts of production debris such as cores, a
discovery that is even more significant than finding actual tools.
Finding cores and other production debris tells us that they are not just
using these tools here, they are making them here, Salam al-Kuntar, the
Syrian co-director of the expedition, explained. Obsidian does not occur
around Hamoukar but had to be brought in from Turkey with the nearest sources
being over 70 miles away.
The discovery of an obsidian processing center is significant, Reichel
added, for it could explain the emergence of a city in this location at such
an early time. A large-scale export of tools to Southern Mesopotamia would
have resulted in significant revenue and accumulation of wealth. This could
have been the incentive that pulled people off their fields. People
specialized instead of ploughing their own fields they bought their food
supplies from surrounding villages. And once people accumulated a fortune
they want a walled enclosure to protect it--your first city. Unlike in
southern Mesopotamia, therefore, the prime mover towards urbanism appears to
have been economic incentive, not coercion.
The obsidian workshops were located off the main mound and predate the
destroyed city by several hundred years, but numerous older levels have
already been noted below the destroyed buildings in small test trenches. We
have no clear idea how far the first city at Hamoukar goes back in time,
Reichel said. It could be much earlier than 3,500 B.C.
By the time the city was destroyed, he added, copper had started to replace
obsidian as key raw material for tools. The discovery of numerous copper
tools in the ruins of Hamoukar might indicate that Hamoukar had followed
developed from an obsidian into a copper processing center, possibly also
exporting copper tools to the south.
The discovery could lead the way to providing an additional explanation for
how civilization developed in the Fertile Crescent. In the south, urban
society emerged in the Uruk culture in response to the needs of providing
organization to an economy supported by an irrigation-based agriculture.
The latest findings from Hamoukar suggest that the specialized
mass-production of goods for trade could have been a similar driving force in
the North.
Source: University of Chicago
==
The Triassic Period had floods of volcanic basalt around the
Permian-Triassic (Paleozoic-Mesozoic ) boundary, some
250 million years ago. The End Permian extinction
event was the most catastrophic of at least the past
540 million years, since the Cambrian Period.
==
Dinosaurs probably did not enjoy many carefree teenage years,
since most were parents before they reached adulthood, according to recently
announced research.
The find puts dinosaurs on the list of animals that had teenage pregnancies.
Others on the list include crocodiles, lizards and humans.
The discovery, announced in Austin at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's
annual meeting, also suggests why evolution favors early births in these
groups.
"Dinosaurs did pretty much what we do and what most other vertebrates do,"
explained co-presenter Andrew Lee. "If these species had waited until full
size to reproduce, they would have had very few years in which to produce
offspring."
Lee, a microanatomy instructor and post-doctoral fellow at Ohio University,
and colleague Sarah Werning extracted bone tissue from three types of
dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurus rex, Allosaurus and Tenontosaurus. The latter was a
medium sized, plant-eating cousin of duck-billed dinos, while the former two
were big carnivores, so the sampling represented a broad spectrum.
Three of the examined dinos possessed a special type of bone tissue called
medullary that was used as temporary calcium storage before eggshells were
made.
Lee explained to Discovery News that living birds possess this same tissue,
which they form a few weeks before they are ready to create eggs. This means
the analyzed dinosaurs were females that were ready to lay eggs just before
they died. Their cause of death remains unknown.
Based on the growth stages of the dinosaurs, the scientists determined that T.
rex was laying eggs by the age of 18, Allosaurus by age 10 and Tenontosaurus by
the very young age of 8. Individuals within all three species would have
reached full adult size between their 17th and 21st years. Their lifespan was
from 25-30 years.
Since smaller animals tend to reach sexual maturity earlier than larger
animals, the smallest of the three dinosaurs studied, Tenontosaurus, was on a
slightly faster track.
Florida State University paleontologist Gregory Erickson and his team recently
came to similar conclusions using a different technique.
Instead of extracting bone tissue, Erickson and his colleagues counted growth
rings in the bones of T. rex and other related dinosaurs, all of which had
been found buried with brooding eggs.
Erickson and his group also concluded that T. rex gave birth before it reached
full maturity.
"We now know that T. rex lived fast and died young," he said.
While birds are the modern descendants of dinosaurs, birds never give birth as
teens. They finish growing and then may wait a year, or even longer, before
reproducing.
Lee thinks several factors caused birds to change from their dino birthing
ways.
"Flight is definitely part of the answer," he said. "Most birds need to be
able to fly when they fledge, so they have to reach adult size."
Birds also now require a steep learning curve for survival, and the learning
process takes time. Additionally, he said, "If birds matured early, their
offspring might be born during the late summer or fall when food for growth is
more scarce."
As for future humans losing their ability to produce as teens, Lee believes
that's unlikely.
He said, "There is little benefit to delay sexual maturity in humans, so I
can't imagine that selection might operate to delay sexual maturity before
reaching adult size."
==
Himalayas created by high-speed impact
IT BRINGS a new meaning to the land speed record. After the break-up of the
Gondwanan supercontinent 140 million years ago, India sped north at 20
centimetres per year - about five times as fast as any other landmass in the
recent geological past. The speed of its collision with Asia propelled the
Himalayas to the top of the world.
Now the secret to India's speed has been found. The mantle plume that broke up
Gondwanaland had its most powerful effect on the Indian plate, melting away its
deepest levels, which would normally have slowed its pace. The other elements
of Gondwanaland - Africa, Australia and Antarctica - retained their solid
roots and crept along at the sluggish rate continental plates usually move at.
Rainer Kind at the German National Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam
and colleagues discovered that the thickness of the lithosphere beneath India
was just 100 kilometres thick. Most continents are 180 to 300 kilometres deep
Seismic survey relied on the difference in density between the
lithosphere and the hotter, underlying asthenosphere, which reflects seismic
waves back to the surface. "This is a very accurate technique to determine the
lithosphere's thickness."
==
NASA has been monitoring Solar output via satellite at least since the
launch of the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor Satellite in
1980. The hard data shows that solar output is far from constant.
Solar output, measured in W/m^2, varies by about a tenth of a percent
over the 11year sunspot cycle.
Tree ring data (John Eddy in Science, 192, 1189 (1976)) indicates that
solar output can vary by 0.2% to 0.6% over many centuries. The Solar
output is deduced from the abundance of carbon14 in tree rings.
Carbon14 is formed in the upper atmosphere when cosmic rays intersect
carbon dioxide. When the Sun's activity is low, its weakened magnetic
field allows more cosmic rays to escape causing carbon14 abundance to
go up. The Maunder Minimum, the so called mini ice age that occurred
between 1645 and 1715 AD, occurred when the sun spot cycle stopped for
70 years (the face of the sun was blank).
===
A major article about the science of the rainbow is found in the April, 1977
Scientific American.
===
mathematician Kurt Godel
performed a brilliant meta-analysis of number theory in 1931 and found that it
breaks down when indexicals are considered (i.e., self-referential
propositions such as "this quote is untrue").
==
From plasma crystals and helical structures towards inorganic living matter

Abstract.Complex plasmas may naturally self-organize themselves into stable
interacting helical structures that exhibit features normally attributed to
organic living matter. The self-organization is based on non-trivial physical
mechanisms of plasma interactions involving over-screening of plasma
polarization. As a result, each helical string composed of solid
microparticles is topologically and dynamically controlled by plasma fluxes
leading to particle charging and over-screening, the latter providing
attraction even among helical strings of the same charge sign. These
interacting complex structures exhibit thermodynamic and evolutionary features
thought to be peculiar only to living matter such as bifurcations that serve as
`memory marks', self-duplication, metabolic rates in a thermodynamically open
system, and non-Hamiltonian dynamics. We examine the salient features of this
new complex `state of soft matter' in light of the autonomy, evolution,
progenity and autopoiesis principles used to define life. It is concluded that
complex self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties
to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter that may exist in
space provided certain conditions allow them to evolve naturally.

1.Introduction

A universal definition of life[1] relates it to autonomy and open-ended
evolution[2], i.e. to autonomous systems with open-ended
evolution/self-organization capacities. Thus a number of features follow: some
energy transduction apparatus (to ensure energy current/flow); a permeable
active boundary (membrane); two types of functionally interdependent
macromolecular components (catalysts and records)in order to articulate a
`genotypephenotype' decoupling allowing for an open-ended increase in the
complexity of the individual agents (individual and `collective'
evolution)[3]. The energy transduction system is necessary to `feed' the
structure; the boundary as well as a property called `autopoiesis' (which is a
fundamental complementarity between the structure and function[4, 5]) are
necessary to sustain organized states of dissipative structures stable for a
long period of time. To maintain a living organic state, it is also necessary
to process nutrients into the required biochemical tools and structures
through metabolism which in mathematical terms can be seen as a mapping f that
transforms one metabolic configuration into another (and is invertible) f(f)=f;
i.e. it is a function that acts on an instance of itself to produce another
instance of itself[6, 7]. Finally, memory and reproduction of organic life are
based on the properties of DNA which are negatively charged macromolecules
exhibiting an important property of replication[8].

Self-organization of any structure needs energy sources and sinks in order to
decrease the entropy locally. Dissipation usually serves as a sink, while
external sources (such as radiation of the Sun for organic life) provide the
energy input. Furthermore, memory and reproduction are necessary for a
self-organizing dissipative structure to form a `living material'. The well
known problem in explaining the origin of life is that the complexity of
living creatures is so high that the time necessary to form the simplest
organic living structure is too large compared to the age of the Earth.
Similarly, the age of the Universe is also not sufficient for organic life to
be created in a distant environment (similar to that on the Earth) and then
transferred to the Earth.

Can faster evolution rates be achieved for non-organic structures, in
particular, in space consisting mostly of plasmas and dust grains, i.e. of
natural components spread almost everywhere in the Universe? If yes, then the
question to address is: are the above necessary requirements of
self-organization into a kind of a `living creature' present in plasmas
containing macro-particles such as dust grains? Here, we discuss new aspects
of the physics of dust self-organization that can proceed very fast and
present an explanation of the grain condensation into highly organized
structures first observed as plasma crystals in[9, 10]. We stress that,
previously, important features of these structures were not clearly related to
their peculiar physics such as plasma fluxes on to grain surfaces, sharp
structural boundaries, and bifurcations in particle arrangements that can
serve as memory marks and help reproduction. The plasma fluxes strongly
influence interactions of dust particles, sustain the boundaries, and realize
the energy transduction. We discuss experiments which indicate the natural
existence of the memory marks in helical dust structures, similar to DNA, and
natural mechanisms of the helical dust structure reproduction.

2.Plasma over-screening and plasma fluxes

An important feature of inorganic structures is the presence of `memory marks'
existing as `rigid marks' in common crystal systems. In contrast, observations
of crystals formed by dust in a plasma (plasma crystals)[9, 10] demonstrate no
rigid marks because of unusual properties of plasma crystals such as large
coupling constant, low temperature of phase transition, and large separation
of grains. These puzzling properties can be resolved by employing the
over-screening of grain fields, the effect that was clearly realized only
recently. The over-screening appears in the presence of plasma fluxes on to
the grain surfaces[11][13]. As a result, an attraction well appears as
indicated schematically in figure1. This potential well is usually shallow and
located at a distance much larger than the Debye screening length lD (an
example shown in figure1 uses parameters typical for plasma crystal
experiments[9, 10]). A shallow potential well explains the large coupling
constant as well as the low temperature of phase transitions. By extracting
the pure Coulomb potential of interaction and introducing the screening factor
y, the grain interaction potential is V=Zd2e2y/r (Zd is the grain charge in
units of electron charge e). Due to over-screening, the value of y changes its
sign at large distances as indicated in figure1. At the potential well minimum,
the screening factor ymin is negative. The value |ymin| determines the
temperature of the associated phase transition Td and also characterizes the
distance rd=rd(|ymin|) of the well minimum (in the simplest case, ). If
condensation of grains (or grain pairing) occurs, the grains will be localized
at the minimum of the attraction well, rd. The corresponding criterion can be
expressed through the coupling constant G (which is the ratio of the potential
energy of the grain interaction to their kinetic energy) as
G>GcrZd2e2/rdTd=1/|ymin|. Thus, |ymin| determines values of the inter-grain
distance, the temperature of transition, and the coupling constant. For a
shallow attractive well, |ymin|1 and G1. This qualitatively explains thelarge
value of G observed in experiments. The model predicts Gcr to be of the order
of the difference between the maximum grain interaction and the temperature of
transition (about 34 orders of magnitude). As a result, the concept of plasma
over-screening agrees well[12, 13] with major experimental observations [9,
10]. It also applies for description of dust helical structures and leads to
the possibility of unusual `memory marks' impossible in common crystals.

Figure1.Sketch of the screening factor y of the grain interaction potential.
The grain interaction energy V can be described in units of pure (not
screened) Coulomb interactions of grains V=y(Zd2e2/r) as a function of the
distance between the grains in units of the linear Debye screening length. The
distance rd displays the position of the minimum of the attraction well and has
a typical experimental value of 200mm[9, 10]. This corresponds to the
inter-grain distances observed during the phase transition to the plasma
crystal state. The value of |ymin| varies between 10-2 and 10-4 for different
models and different experiments. This value is in accordance with the ratio
of the interaction at the minimum of the potential well and the maximum
interaction energy corresponding to y=1, respectively. The value of coupling
constant G=1/|ymin| ranges from 102 up to 104 in accordance with observations.

We have performed molecular dynamics simulations to demonstrate that a random
distribution of grains, interacting via the potential shown in figure1 with a
shallow attractive well |ymin|103 and experiencing background friction and
stochastic kicks, forms spherical grain crystals. In figure2, we show results
of these simulations. Application of this model is of double importance.
Firstly, we resolve the problems of laboratory observations, and secondly, we
predict the possible existence of large plasma poly-crystals in spacea new
state of matter which is unexplored so far. Here, an important point for space
applications is that the attraction potential well is shallow and therefore
even weak dissipation can cause the grain capture in the well.


Figure2.Molecular dynamics simulations of dusty cloud evolution. The figure
shows snapshots of the velocity field and grain positions: (a) corresponds to
the initial state (t=0) of the cloud, (b) t=0.3s and (c) t=3s, respectively.
The velocity magnitude is color-coded. It rises from blue to red by a factor
of five. Initially, 103mm-size grains were distributed randomly over the
sphere of radius about rd (see figure1) and the pair interactions between
grains are described by the potential shown in figure1. Grain motions are
damped by friction (to model viscosity of plasma neutral component) and
stochastically accelerated by Langevin force (to model plasma fluctuations).
The simulations reveal formation of a stable self-confined spherical structure
in time. Local order analysis shows that some grains (about a few percents of
their total number) have hcp lattice type, while the majority of grains are in
a liquid state.

Physically, the attraction appears due to the electrostatic self-energy of
grains, supported by plasma fluxes continuously absorbed by the grains. The
fluxes are necessary to sustain the grain charges and appear almost
immediately as soon as a particle is embedded in the plasma. The self-energy
of grains is much larger than their kinetic and potential energies so that its
(even small) changes can strongly influence grain interactions. It was first
shown in[11] that for a fixed source of plasma fluxes, the electrostatic
energy of two grains decreases when they approach each other. As the
self-energy is supported by continuous plasma fluxes, work has to be done to
maintain them and this can almost compensate the associated changes of
self-energy. Nevertheless, a full compensation does not occur if the distance
between the grains is large. At present it is understood[12, 13] that this
phenomenon is a general feature of grain interactions in a plasma. The fluxes
on grains depend on the electrostatic polarization charges of the grains and
the polarization charges depend on the fluxes and create an accumulation of
excess plasma charges between the grains. These plasma charges exhibit the
sign opposite to that of likely charged interacting grains and therefore cause
the attraction. The appearance of grain attraction is a general phenomenon
which converts the grain containing matter into a new unusual state.

Effects of plasma fluxes lead to gravitation-like instabilities with an
effective gravitational constant GeffZd2e2|yminmd2. For a dust size a3mm, a
mass density of the dust material of 2gcm2, Zd103 and |ymin|104, the effective
gravitational constant Geff is approximately 6104cgs which is 1012 times larger
than the usual gravitational constant G=6.7108cqs. The effective Jeans length
of this instability has the size of order rd. The effective gravity affects
only dust grains and therefore plasmas can be influenced by this attraction
only through their interactions with the grains. The new effective instability
of a dusty plasma leads to structurization of dust clouds similar to the
effects caused by the usual gravitational instability.

Dust structures self-organized in the plasma environment have sharp boundaries
such that they are isolated from each other by regions without grains (dust
voids). This effect, observed in the laboratory as well as in micro-gravity
experiments onboard the ISS [14], is well explained theoretically[15, 16]. The
structures and crystals should self-generate additional confining forces due to
the plasma fluxes directed into the structures, i.e. these structures serve as
sinks of plasmas and the ram pressure of the plasma fluxes acts on the
structures to make them self-organized, self-confined and dissipative. This
self-contraction should be added to the the grain pairing; their joint effect
leads to formation of dust helical structures.

3.Helical dust structures

Helical dust structures (an example is given in figure3(a)), can be considered
as equally separated flat structures with constant rotation angle between the
planes (figure3(b)). Their properties are of special interest for the problems
discussed here. Figure3(a) illustrates double helical dust structures similar
to DNA. Molecular dynamics simulations of interacting grains with an
additional gas friction show that any cylindrically symmetric grain
distribution converts in time into a stable self-confined helical
structure[17]. These specific stable dust structures form due to the grain
pairing attraction as well as due to the external plasma flux created by the
whole structures (and the anticipated ram pressure). In experiments in gas
discharges with a longitudinal external electric field forming striations[18,
19], modulated cylindrical grain crystals were observed. As predicted by
numerical simulations[17], these cylindrical crystals convert into helical
structures with fewer grains per unit length. According to numerical
experiments, highly symmetric spherical dust structures can be formed only
when the spherical symmetry is externally supported (e.g. when all initial
conditions are spherically symmetric). In the other cases, even a small
asymmetry leads to formation of cylindrically symmetric and/or helical
structures. In nature, some asymmetry always exists and therefore formation of
helical structures is quite probable. First observations of dust self-confined
moving helical structures were done in dc cryogenic gas discharges[20]. The
particle traces, moving in a self-organized way, are shown in figure4. Similar
ion helical structures were also observed in laser cooling traps[21].


Figure3.(a) and (b) Sketch of helical double winding grain structures similar
to DNA. (c) Bifurcations in (,D/D)plane of structures confined by external
potential Kr2/2; is the rotational angle in each plane of the helical
structure; D is the diameter of the helical structure and D is the spatial
separation of the planes of the helical structure; the line K=0 corresponds to
self-organized stable structures without external confinement K=0 but with the
presence of dust attraction[17].


Figure4.(a) Traces of helical structures on the walls of the chamber observed
in dc cryogenic plasmas at Ti=2.7K. The traces of conical helical structure
are shown black on the green background of discharge at several distances from
the top of it; x=0mmthe `head' of the structure, x=3mmthe middle of the
structure and 5mmthe end of the structure. The whole structure looks like a
`worm', hollow inside (having a dust void inside) and moving on cylindrical
surfaces around the axis of discharge. (b) Sketch of the central part of the
helical structure of the `worm' deduced from the traces left of the structure
on the wall of the discharge chamber, the grains are located at the surfaces
of a few cylinders inside each other[20].

Important features of dust helical structures observed in simulations[17] and
indicated by analytical investigation of stability of helical structures and
mode oscillations is the existence of numerous bifurcations in the dependence
of the helical winding angle upon the diameter of the structure. An example of
this helical structure behavior is demonstrated schematically in figure3(c).
Bifurcations in helical structures appear naturally and correspond to the
critical conditions when any slight change in the helical structure diameter D
results in a sudden change of the helical winding. We note that various helical
structures with different bifurcations can be obtained in experiments using
current cylindrical discharge plasma crystals by continuously decreasing the
number of grains injected into the system. Numerical investigations show a
universal character of these bifurcations. The helical structures have the
unique property of bifurcations which can serve as memory marks. With
increasing of diameter of the structure suddenly the rotational angle of the
structure is changed. This is illustrated by figure3(c) which shows that an
increase of diameter of the structure at certain radius there appears
possibility of presence of two equilibrium vales of the rotational angle (the
upper thick dashed line and the lower solid line) instead of one possible
equilibrium value for the rotational angle before bifurcation (the upper thick
line). After the bifurcation the solid thick dashed line represents an unstable
branch and the solid lower line represents a stable branch. Thus the rotational
angle at some critical radius is changing abruptly.

These bifurcations can serve as possible memory marks for the structures. The
helical crystals can then store this information.

4.Replication of helical dust structures

Dust convection and dust vortex formation outside the structure is another
natural phenomenon observed in laboratory experiments and in experiments
onboard the ISS [14][16]. The physics of dust vortex formation is related to
the grain charge inhomogeneity and its dependence on surrounding plasma
parameters. The gradients of grain charges are supported self-consistently by
the structure, and they are the reason for the non-potential character of the
electrostatic force eZdE acting on the grains and causing the vortex
formation. Dust convection was observed in experiments on cylindrical dust
crystals formed in modulated gas discharges[18] (figure5(a)) and was obtained
in numerical modeling[19] (figure5(b)). It is important that the helical
crystals modulated in their radius are always surrounded by self-created dust
convection cells. The helical dust structures, after they are formed, resemble
features similar to those of DNA. In particular, they can transfer information
from one helical structure to another via the dust convective cells
surrounding any bifurcation of the helical structure. A rough sketch of a
possible model of the helical grain structure reproduction is shown in
figure5(c).


Figure5.(a) The observed grain convection surrounding the cylindrical grain
crystal. Different colors correspond to different grain velocities[18], The
velocities vary from about 0.4cms-1 (blue) up to 1.5cms1 (red). (b) The dust
convection obtained in numerical simulations[19]. (c) Sketch of the model for
helical structure duplication (reproduction). See details in the text.

Let us discuss some details about possible sequences of events during the
reproduction. The abrupt change of the rotational angle will create an
inhomogeneity in random halo dust grains surrounding the helical structure
with grain charge gradient not collinear to the electric field and will create
a force forming pair of toroidal vortices around the structure. For a
negatively charged structure the upper toroidal vortex has a clockwise
rotation while the lower has an anti-clockwise rotation. If another (second)
helical structure has no bifurcation and moves close to that with bifurcation
the vortices start to be created in this structure. Finally these vortices
create the bifurcation in the second structure and transfer the information
from the first structure to the other one.

The evolution of dust structures in the presence of plasma fluxes is related
to the characteristic frequency of dust motions. In first instance, this can
be estimated by the dust plasma frequency wpd~(Zd2e2/mdrd3)1/2, where md is
the mass of a dust particle. We note that characteristics of the potential
well (located at rd) and therefore the physics of plasma fluxes enter this
expression via rd and Zd. This consideration destroys one of the current myths
in astrophysics, namely, that the grain interaction is vanishing for distances
larger than the linear Debye screening radius. This is obvious since inside
the dust Jeans length (where the interactions are still effective) many grains
are present for most dust clouds in space. For most situations, the plasma dust
frequency of a few (or even a fraction of) Hz leads to times extremely short
compared to typical astrophysical times. If grain structures exist in space,
they have collective modes of oscillations which in principle can be detected
as modulations of the infrared emission of different cosmic sources. The
effective Jeans size of dust clumping is in the range that can be detected by
the Spitzer telescope in observation of (the closest to the Earth) formations
of dust clouds around stars and star outbursts preceding the formation of new
planetary systems. The program to measure low frequency regular modulations
from dust clouds with the effective structure sizes caused by the dust
attraction instability can be included in, e.g. the Spitzer telescope project.

Our analysis shows that if helical dust structures are formed in space, they
can have bifurcations as memory marks and duplicate each other, and they would
reveal a faster evolution rate by competing for `food' (surrounding plasma
fluxes). These structures can have all necessary features to form `inorganic
life'. This should be taken into account for formulation of a new SETI-like
program based not only on astrophysical observations but also on planned new
laboratory experiments, including those on the ISS. In the case of the success
of such a program one should be faced with the possibility of resolving the low
rate of evolution of organic life by investigating the possibility that the
inorganic life `invents' the organic life.

Acknowledgment

This work was partially supported by the Australian Research Council.

Appendix

A.1.Methods used for description of plasma crystal

Special methods have been developed to treat the plasma over-screening for
present experiments with large grain charges which cause the screening to be
nonlinear at short distances between the grains[9, 10]. The full nonlinear
treatment of the screening polarization charges and plasma fluxes is rather
complicated[12]. The progress was achieved on the basis of physical arguments
showing that close to the grains the influence of fluxes on polarization is
small. Neglecting the effect of fluxes the nonlinear screening was solved
in[13] by using the approach of[22]. Far from the grain the coupling of fluxes
and polarization charges became important but the polarization charge became
small and one can use the linear approach to find the coupling. The matching
method at the distances where the nonlinearity starts to be weak have been
applied successfully[13] to describe the nonlinear over-screening.

A.2.Numerical simulation methods

The cooperative behavior of charged grains embedded in a plasma is due to
electrostatic coupling between the charged particles, which are believed to
interact via a potential which has both a repulsive and an attractive
short-range component. 3D molecular dynamics simulations including
electrostatic collisions between grains, neutral drag and stochastic Langevin
force were performed to simulate the evolution of a dusty cloud. Free boundary
conditions were used. To analyze the local order of grains, we used the bond
order parameter method[23].

==
Giant "Blob" Is Largest Thing in Universe
Japanese astronomers have discovered what they call the largest object in the
universe: a colossal structure 200 million light-years wide that resembles a
swarm of giant green jellyfish.
Using the Subaru and Keck telescopes on the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, the
research team found an enormous object containing clusters of galaxies
surrounded by gas clouds known as Lyman alpha blobs.
Because the object is so far away, the astronomers are actually looking at
something from 12 billion years ago, a mere 2 billion years after the universe
is believed to have been formed in the big bang.
This young galactic blob could reveal how and when the earliest galaxies
formed.
Galactic Birthplace
Ryosuke Yamauchi from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, and his colleagues
used the Subaru Telescope to study a region of the universe known to contain
large concentrations of gas.
By placing a special filter on the telescope, they were able to concentrate on
the narrow range of light wavelengths expected from galaxies at extreme
distances.
With these special "goggles" Yamauchi and his team were able to pick out the
giant blob. It spreads out along three wavy tentacles.
Each arm is packed with galaxies around four times closer to each other than
the universe's average.
Previously known structures with such high density are much smaller, only
about 50 million light-years across.
"The densest regions in the universe are the places where galaxies are thought
to have formed first. Because this is one of the biggest structures known, it
must be one of the very first to have formed," said Philip Best, an astronomer
at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh in the U.K.
==
Climate
OIS 1 - 12,000 years ago until today (warm)
OIS 2 - 45,000 to 12,000 years ago (cold)
OIS 3 - 63,000 to 45,000 years ago (warm)
OIS 4 - 73,000 to 63,000 years ago (cold)
OIS 5 - 130,000 to 74,000 years ago (warm)
OIS 6 - 190,000 to 130,000 years ago (cold)
==
Andromeda way bigger than thought
The discovery of several large, metal-poor stars located far
from the center of the Andromeda galaxy suggests our nearest galactic neighbor
might be up to five times larger than previously thought.
The newfound stars are massive, bloated stars known as red giants.
Although found far beyond the most visible portion of Andromeda -- its
swirling disk -- the stars are still gravitationally bound to the galaxy and
make up part of its extended "halo."
"We're typically used to thinking of Andromeda as this tiny speck of light,
but the actual size of the halo...extends to a very large radius and it
actually fills a substantial portion of the night sky," said study team member
Jason Kalirai of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The finding, presented in Seattle, Washington, Sunday at the 209th meeting of
the American Astronomical Society, suggests Andromeda is at least one million
light-years across and could help settle a discrepancy between Andromeda and
the Milky Way that has long puzzled astronomers.
Andromeda
Also known as M31, Andromeda is located only about 2.5 million light-years
from Earth, making it our nearest galactic neighbor.
Like our own Milky Way, Andromeda is a classic spiral galaxy, which typically
consists of three main parts: a flattened disk, a bright central bulge of
densely packed stars and an extended spherical halo where stars are more
sparsely distributed.
Using the Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak and the DEIMOS spectrograph on the the
Keck II Telescope in Hawaii, the researchers found previously unseen red giant
stars out to a distance of at least 500,000 light years from Andromeda's
center.
The researchers picked out Andromeda's faint halo stars using a technique
developed by Karoline Gilbert, a UCSC graduate student, which distinguishes
the halo stars from the more numerous foreground stars in our Milky Way.
A dim foreground star and a bright star located much farther away -- whose
light can be diminished by interstellar gas -- can be hard to tell apart
because they appear to have similar luminosities as stars in our own galaxy.
The researchers liken the effect to distinguishing between the light of a
firefly 10 feet away and that of a powerful beacon in the distance.
"In this case, the fireflies are dwarf stars in our own galaxy and the beacons
are the red giant stars in Andromeda," said study team member Puraga
Guhathakurta, also from USCS.
Metal-poor halos
According to current galactic formation theories, the halo is the first part
of a galaxy that forms.
Stars in the halo are predicted to be metal poor because they formed during a
time when the universe had much less heavy metal content than it does now.
Heavy metals are created as stars evolve and then spewed out into interstellar
space when ancient stars either explode as supernovas or shed their outer
layers to become white dwarfs.
"The first stars are expected to be chemically deficient, and as these other
components such as the disk of the galaxy form later, it is contaminated by
the products of those first stars, so those stars are more metal rich,"
Kalirai said.
However, instead of being metal-poor, previous studies have found that
Andromeda's halo stars were actually 10 times richer in metals than halo stars
in our galaxy. This finding puzzled astronomers because both Andromeda and the
Milky Way should have similar formation histories.
The new findings could solve this discrepancy because the red giant stars are
anemic, as is expected from galaxy formation theories and what is known about
the Milky Way.
"If you plot the metalicity as a function of radius, you see a very nice trend
where the inner parts of the galaxy are metal rich, and the outer parts of the
galaxy are dominated by stars that are metal-poor," Kalirai said.
"We now believe that previous groups have been mistakenly identifying the
outer parts of the Andromeda bulge as its halo," Guhathakurta said.
Paul Hodge, an expert on the Andromeda galaxy from Washington University who
was not involved in the study, said the new finding paints a very different
picture of our galactic neighbor than was available only a few years ago.
"It's a new galaxy," Hodge said. "The outer parts of this galaxy are finally
being revealed and its turning out to be much more interesting and beautiful
than when could have imagined."
==
Maps of Ancient Earth Need Revising

A section of the Appalachian Mountains discovered in Mexico is forcing
scientists to redraw their maps of ancient Earth.
The Appalachians are a series of mountain ranges in eastern North America that
extend from Southern Quebec in Canada to northern Alabama. A piece of the chain
was recently uncovered in a large Mexican outcropping of rock, known as the
Acatlan Complex.
Analyses of the rocks revealed they were formed on the ocean floor, and dating
showed they were much younger than previously thought.
Pangea
Pangea began to break up about 225-200 million years ago.
"This will change the way geologists look at Mexico," said study leader Damian
Nance of Ohio University.
It also challenges current theories about the creation of the Appalachians,
mountain ranges that have revealed valuable clues about the planet's early
geography.
Previously, scientists thought that 420 million years ago Earth contained two
main land masses that were separated by a large expanse of sea, called the
Rheic Ocean. In the south was Gondwana, a supercontinent consisting of South
America, Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica. And to the north was
Laurussia, made up of North America, Greenland, Europe and parts of Asia.
According to the standard scenario [image], the Acatlan Complex was once part
of Gondwana, but it broke off the supercontinent about 500 million years ago.
The complex, along with a few other chunks of land, drifted northward, and in
the process blocked a stretch of sea known as the Iapetus Ocean. The Acatlan
Complex eventually collided with North America, and with the force of a
colossal bulldozer sent the once flat land into mountain-size ripplesforming
the Appalachian Mountains.
But the recent analysis of the Acatlan Complex rocks revealed they once
existed on the Rheic ocean floor, not the Iapetus, suggesting the Appalachian-
forming collision occurred about 120 million years later.
According to this scenario, the Acatlan Complex remained a part of Gondwana
and the entire supercontinent slammed into North America. The collision closed
the Rheic Ocean, created the Appalachian Mountains and formed the goliath land
mass known as Pangea.
The study is detailed in the October issue of the journal Geology.
==
The Earth was 91,405,436 miles from Sun at perihelion and 94,511,989 miles
from Sun at aphelion.
==
In cell biology, a mitochondrion (plural mitochondria)
is an organelle found in most eukaryotic cells (cells with nuclei).
Mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants," because
their primary function is to convert organic materials into energy in the
form of ATP via the process of oxidative phosphorylation. Usually a cell
has hundreds or even thousands of mitochondria which can occupy up to 25%
of the cell's cytosol. Mitochondria have their own DNA.
==
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthwherewater.html
Distribution of earth water.
===
New View of Early Earth: A Habitable Place
There are a trio of longstanding views of what Earth might have looked
like in its formative years: a moon-like desert, a fiery volcanic
hell, or a waterworld with no firm footing.
All three may be wrong.
A new study concludes Earth had continents and oceans 4.3 billion
years ago, which is just a geological eyeblink after the planet is
thought to have formed, in the wake of the Sun's birth 4.6 billion
years ago.
A separate study reported in May came to a similar conclusion, also
suggesting that notions of a fiery, hellish planet back then have been
overblown.
Here's why it matters: A world with water and land and somewhat
moderate temperatures and volcanic conditions would have been
habitable. That does not mean there was life, but the conditions were
in place.
The new study was reported in the
journal Science. University of Colorado researcher Stephen Mojzsis
explained what our world might have looked like back then:
"Before 4 billion years ago, the Earth would not be recognizable for
the Pale Blue World that we are familiar with today. Indeed, although
we now understand that there were significant landmasses already
present by that time, the denser carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere would
have given the sky a reddish-tinge," Mojzsis told LiveScience.
"The oceans, with a much higher concentration of iron than our
contemporary oceans, would look a dark greenish-blue and these oceans
would have bathed hundreds of small continents akin to New Zealand or
the Japan arc," he said.
The conclusion is based on an analysis of hafnium, a rare element in
ancient minerals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia. The rocks
are thought to be among the oldest on Earth, dated to 4.4 billion
years ago.
"The evidence indicates that there was substantial continental crust
on Earth within its first 100 million years of existence," Mojzsis said.
Perfect for microbes
The research, led by Mark Harrison of the Australian National
University, builds on work Mojzsis and colleagues reported in 2001
that showed evidence for water on Earth's surface roughly 4.3 billion
years ago.
"The view we are taking now is that Earth's crust, oceans and
atmosphere were in place very early on, and that a habitable planet
was established rapidly," Mojzsis said.
The air would have been an unbreathable mix of carbon dioxide, water
vapor, sulfur gases and methane. Yet for many microbes, "this is the
preferred environment," Mojzsis points out.
Scientists do not know exactly when life began or how it got started.
If it did begin 4.3 billion years ago, it may have been wiped out by
space rock impacts, only to start up again, other theorists say. At
any rate, Earth was a treacherous place for the first billion years or
so, until it had helped scoop up many of the asteroids and comets that
filled the early solar system.
==
The late heavy bombardment, or LHB. That era, about 700 million years
after the Moon formed, 4.55 billion years ago.
==
Critical thought rules.
You have to take the first step and HONESTLY admit ...
"I might be wrong".
Honesty doesn't omit relevant evidence.
Honesty recognizes there are limits to observation and perception.
Honest leaves you open to new evidence.
Honesty tries it's best to find truth.
Honesty holds truth provisionally and is willing to drop beliefs
based on new evidence.
This is the root of all critical thought.
==
A NATURAL NUCLEAR REACTOR IN GABON. Since uranium-235 undergoes
self-sustaining fission in commercial reactors and since uranium
lies in the Earth in great quantities, Paul Kuroda predicted that
naturally operating reactors are possible under special
conditions. Not nowadays, when the ratio of uranium-235 to
uranium-238 is only about 0.7%, but in the past, when the ratio was
much higher owing to the fact that U-235 has a shorter half life
than U-238. The conditions necessary for self-sustained fission
would be as follows: a uranium deposit where U-235 was present at
the 3% level (the level at which modern reactors operate); the
presence of material (such as water, carbon, and most organic
compounds) that could moderate, or slow down, the neutrons issuing
from fission reactions; and the absence of material (such as Fe, K,
Be, Gd) that would absorb the neutrons outright. In 1972, such a
natural reactor was found at the Oklo mine in Gabon, in West
Africa. There a 2-billion-year-old uranium deposit some 5-10 meters
thick and 600-900 meters wide was bathed by an ancient river. This
"reactor" is reckoned to have released 15 giga-watt-years of energy
and operated at an average power of 100 kilowatts. Now physicists
at Washington University in St. Louis have defined a likely mode of
operation for this ancient reactor and confirmed one of the proposed
mechanisms of its self regulation. According to Alex Meshik
(am@wustl.edu), the reactor cycled on (producing heat that boiled
the nearby water) typically for 30 minutes and then off (when the
now-scarce water failed to moderate the nuclear fission process)
typically for 2.5 hours. This cycling saga is deduced from
microscopic mass-spectrometric examination of the rock samples from
the area. Meshik says that tiny alumophosphate grains found in the
material of ancient reactor preserve a signature of the reactor's
operational mode. "It is fascinating that xenon isotopic
composition measured today provides us with such pristine timing
records for a natural reactor operated 2 billion years ago" (Meshik
et al., Physical Review Letters, 29 October 2004)
==
MARQUEZ, Texas _ Quiet pasture land in this east Central Texas community
holds clues to the planet's violent past, geologists say.
They say the site known as the Marquez Dome was once thought to be a salt dome
by prospectors looking for oil along the Texas Gulf coast.
However, scientists now say the site about 60 miles southeast of Waco holds the
remnants of a huge crater formed from an asteroid's impact about 58 million
years ago.
University of Houston geoscience professor Arch Reid says shallow seawater or a
marsh probably covered Marquez when it was struck by the asteroid, leaving a
hole about a mile deep that was filled with rock over geologic time. The
dome-like uplift gradually resulted from erosion.
"It's essentially a buried and exhumed crater with none of the crater left,"
Reid told the Waco Tribune-Herald in Monday's online edition.
Reid and three other scientists wrote one of the first research papers
explaining why the Marquez Dome was a buried impact crater rather than a
subterranean salt dome where petroleum can be trapped. Discovered in 1989, the
dome has also drawn a group of University of Tennessee students.
"The amount of energy released was around 10 million to 100 million megatons,"
said University of Tennessee geology professor Bill Deane, who visited the site
in March with a group of students. "You're talking about 100 hydrogen bombs.
It's estimated that 25 to 50 percent of the energy from (the impact) is turned
into heat. The effects would be devastating."
The resulting crater was initially about 8 miles in diameter before erosion
slowly started to cover it.
==
The validity of any theory in science is determined entirely by how
well it fits the evidence. The character and beliefs of the person
proposing the theory are irrelevant. Einstein could have been a
serial killer, and it would have no bearing what-so-ever on
the validity of his theories on general or special relativity.
Evolution is overwhelmingly supported by the evidence. That will be
true no matter what Darwin's character may have been.
==
Ancient Impact Turned Part of Earth Inside-Out
A space rock the size of a large mountain hit 1.8 billion years ago and dredged
up part of Earth's lower crust, essentially turning a bit of the planet inside
out, a new study concludes.
Earth's upper crust is about 22 miles (35 kilometers) thick. Scientists have
debated how deeply into the crust the shock wave from a large asteroid could
penetrate. All the way to the next layer, it appears.
The evidence comes from a crater in Sudbury, Ontario. Most of the crater was
long ago folded into the planet or eroded away. But a section is exposed,
revealing minerals and other features that can be compared to more recent
craters that are more intact. From all this, scientists gleaned clues to the
catastrophic impact.
It appears an asteroid about 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide hit the planet at
more than 89,000 mph (40 kilometers per second).
"The impact punched a hole to the very base of the crust and the meteorite
itself was probably vaporized," said University of Toronto geologist James
Mungall, who led the study. Much of the heating and damage is done by a shock
wave that compresses material ahead of the impacting object.
A plume of superheated rock from deep down surged upward and landed on top of
the impact site, creating the melt layer visible today.
In the top layers of the Sudbury structure, his team found relatively high
concentrations of iron, nickel and platinum, stuff that is more common in the
lower crust of the planet than in the upper crust (the elements exist in just
trace amounts in both regions). The lower crust sits atop Earth's mantle,
which surrounds the core.
"Since it ended up on top, it effectively inverted the layering of the crust,"
he said. "It had not really been appreciated that large impacts would
selectively move material from the bottom of the crust up to the top."
The top layers were also relatively depleted of zirconium, uranium and other
elements that tend to show up in other impact sites that only involved melting
of the upper crust.
==
The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is heftier
than thought and rotates at an amazing clip, new research shows.
For years scientists said the black hole contained about 2.6 million times the
mass of the Sun. They now believe the figure is somewhere between 3.2 million
and 4 million solar masses.
And a new study suggests all that mass, confined to an area about 10 times
smaller than Earth's orbit around the Sun, spins around about once every 11
minutes. The Sun, for comparison, takes about a month to make a revolution on
its axis. Earth spins once every 24 hours.
Black holes can't be seen or measured directly, because light passing near them
gets trapped. So astronomers measure a black hole's mass by observing the
orbital speed of nearby stars.
The orbit of a particle near a black hole depends on the curvature of space
around the black hole, which also depends on how fast the black hole is
spinning. A spinning black hole drags space around with it and allows atoms to
orbit nearer to the black hole than is possible for a non-spinning black hole,
as seen in the right-hand artist's rendering of a stellar black hole. In the
left one, no evidence for spin was found.
The new mass estimate was made by two separate groups, one at the University of
California, Berkeley, and another at the University of California, Los Angeles,
UC Berkeley physicist Reinhard Genzel told SPACE.com.
More interesting, perhaps, is what appears to be a precise measurement of the
supermassive black hole's spin rate made by Genzel's group.
Other studies have shown compelling evidence for the rotation of less massive
black holes, formed when stars collapse. That's no surprise to astronomers,
since these stellar black holes would logically retain the rotation of their
progenitor stars. The first solid evidence for a spinning stellar black hole
emerged more than two years ago.
Only hints of spin have been noted from supermassive black holes, each of which
is thought to form and evolve hand-in-hand with the development of the galaxy
in which it sits.
The location of the Milky Way's central black hole is well known. Called
Sagitarrius A*, or Sgr A*, it sits about 26,000 light-years away, at the heart
of the galaxy. It is surrounded by intense radio waves, X-rays and other
radiation. Astronomers know the black hole is smaller than the diameter of
Earth's orbit; they suspect it is about 10 times smaller but have not been able
to measure it with enough precision to know for sure.
Genzel's team saw a flickering of near-infrared light they presume is generated
by hot gas falling into the black hole, just before the gas disappears beyond
the "event horizon," a point of no return for light and matter.
"If our interpretation is right, this is the first solid evidence for a spin of
a massive black hole," Genzel said in an e-mail interview.
The black hole spins once every 11 minutes or so, Genzel estimates, though an
exact figure is difficult to pin down. The estimate represents a pace equal to
about 30 percent of the speed of light.
"These observations, reflecting similar patterns seen earlier in X-rays, open a
new window on this enigmatic source," said Ramesh Narayan of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in an analysis of the work for the
journal.
Theorists suspect other supermassive black holes, some containing as much
matter as a billion Suns, should also spin.
Not all black holes spin at the same rate, other investigations indicate. In
fact, some may not spin at all.
Another recent study pinned down how X-ray emissions from fast-moving iron
atoms near a stellar black hole can be used to determine whether or not the
unseen central object is rotating.
The iron produces a distinct X-ray signature. The orbit of the atoms depends
on the extent to which space around a black hole is curved. That mind-bending
warpage, in turn, is determined by how much the black hole spins.
A spinning black hole drags space with it, allowing atoms to orbit closer to
the black hole than if it were not spinning.
Observations by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite of a stellar
black hole named XTE J1650-500 reveal some iron-generated X-rays just 20 miles
from the event horizon. This black hole must be spinning rapidly, researchers
say.
Data collected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, on a stellar black hole
called Cygnus X-1, finds atoms no closer than 100 miles from the event horizon,
providing no evidence that it spins.
Meanwhile, efforts to understand whether and why lightweights and heavyweights
rotate are converging.
Jon Miller, who worked on the recent stellar black hole research, said there is
a high degree of correspondence between what happens to space around a spinning
stellar black hole and its supermassive brethren.
"Because stellar black holes are smaller, everything happens about a million
times faster, so they can be used as a test-bed for theories of how spinning
black holes affect the space and matter around them," Miller said.
==
IN about 4 billion years, the sun will become a red giant.
The sun will burn as a red giant for about 250 million years, but is that
enough time for life to get a foothold? During most of the red giant lifetime,
the sun will be only 30 times brighter than its current state. Toward the
end of the red giant phase the sun will grow more than 1,000 times brighter,
and occasionally release pulses of energy reaching 6,000 times current
brightness. But this period of intense brightness will last for a few million
years, or tens of millions of years at most.
It will then shrink to become a white dwarf.
The earth will be cooked.
The sun will become about the size of the earth.
==
It should be noted that changes in half life are known.
The changes do not occur uniformly or to all isotopes.
For example, pressure, temperature (within ranges that do
not instantly induce matter to become highly ionized plasma)
and chemical environment affect Beryllium-7; and basically
nothing else.
The reason for this is that Beryllium has an atomic number of 4;
only four electrons. The effects of pressure and temperature and
chemical environment basically do not make any difference to a
nucleus, where decay takes place. They affect the electron shells
of an atom. But for atoms with a very low atomic number and hence
very few electrons, the effects on outer electron shells can
means electrons end up generally closer to the nucleus than
usual; and this can make a difference to a decay mode related to
electrons. Beryllium-7 decay involves electron capture.
The changes in decay rate of Be-7 were first predicted in 1947;
and confirmed shortly after. The prediction was based on known
physics of decay processes; and its confirmation is a confirmation
of the models we have for radioactivity; which also predict no
detectable change for other isotopes.
Also Beryllium-7 has a half life of 53 days. This can be affected
by a couple of percent. Such a short half life means it cannot be
used for geological dating; although decay of cosmogenic Be-7 is
used in the study of sedimentation rates over the short term of
days or weeks.
As far as I know, no other naturally occuring isotope has any
detectable change in decay rate from pressure, temperature or
chemical environment.
An exception to the above remark is if such extreme
temperatures are applied (hundreds of millions of degrees)
than the atom is stripped of all electrons, and is reduced
to a bare nucleus. Of course, matter in this case is highly
ionized plasma; not even a gas.
In these cases, there are a number of isotopes which will
have enormously changed half-life. This effect was also
predicted in advance of its experimental confirmation. It
is not merely a speed up of decay; but the consequence of
a different decay mode.
Re-187 decays by beta-minus decay, with a half life of about
43.5 billion years. This decay mode emits an electron. It is
used in geological dating; in an isochron method.
If Re-187 is completely stripped of all electrons, then is
can engage in what is called bound-beta decay. This also
emits an electron, but the electron remains bound to the
nucleus in one of the inner shells. This significantly
changes the energy constraints; as the emitted electron
does not need to have the energy required to escape the
highly positive nucleus; and the half life becomes about
33 years (more than 9 orders of magnitude less).
A similar effect occurs for a number of other isotopes.
None of these processes make any difference at all for
alpha-decay; which is a radically different kind of decay
involving a break in the nucleus and emission of an alpha particle.
==
The lowest sedimentary layer in most locations [of the Grand Canyon], the
Tapeats sandstone, is thought to be on the order of 550 million years old."
=======
Einstein never "updated" the Special Theory, he generalized it; that's why
one is called the Special theory, and one the General. The Special
Theory is special because it only covers uniform rectilinear
motion (no accelerations), and is thus incomplete. Einstein
generalized it to include accelerations, including gravitational
acceleration. That makes the General theory a sequel and a
completion, but not an update.
Like most theories, Einstein's Special Relativity was in
fact a response to experimental results existing theory couldn't
explain, specifically, the Michaelson-Morley experiment. The math
to describe what was happening (the Lorenz tranformation
equations) was already known before Einstein published, but
nobody knew what it meant, nor how it could be fit in with
existing physical theory. Einstein explained that, and then went on
to correct all of Newtonian physics with his General theory.
The actual verification of Einstein's General theory
the bending of light in a gravitational field was measured, and
matched Einstein's predictions. According to Newton, light was
indifferent to gravity, and wouldn't bend at all.
==
The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times.
by Adrienne Mayor, Peter Dodson (Foreword)
# Hardcover: 384 pages ;
# Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr; (April 4, 2000)
# ISBN: 0691058636
The history of paleontology, as it is usually seen, starts with
the work of French naturalist Georges Cuvier some 200 years ago.
Mayor, a classical folklorist, moves the date back to the time of
the ancient Greeks and Romans. The ancients collected, measured,
and they recorded their discoveries and imaginative
interpretations of the fossil remains in numerous writings that
survive today. Among the beasts whose bones they pondered were
giant giraffes, mammoths and mastodons. Mayor also proposes that
the griffin of classical folklore, described in the legends as
having the body of a lion and the beak of an eagle, was based on
illiterate nomads' observations of dinosaur skeletons in the
deserts of Central Asia. And she tells of purely imaginary
creatures of the classical period, such as the triton and the
centaur. But her focus is on what the ancients made of the bones
of real animals. Advances in classical studies and paleontology,
she says, now make it possible to restore the ancient fossil
investigations to their rightful place in the history of science.
==
The Colorado Plateau experienced something like between 4000 and 6000 ft of
uplift around 5 million years ago.
Convection currents in the mantle create relatively stable "hot spots"
that can penetrate the earth's surface. The Hawaiian islands are an
obviuous example. The hot spot can be thought of as a hole in the
earth's crust through which heavy mantle rock erupts. When the hole
opens, pressure on that area of the mantle rock is released, and the
rock turns to liquid and seeps out of the crack (a related, but
distinctly different phenomenon is happening along the mid-atlantic
ridge, where the oceanic plate is actually cracked down the middle).
In cases of hot spots that are geographically stable (they stay in the
same place, while the continental and oceanic plates move over the top
of them) the molten rock can create shield volcanoes like Hawaii, and
like the continental shields (and like Olympus Mons on Mars, for that
matter; this is not an Earth-specific phenomenon).
Shield volcanoes often occurr when a hot spot breaks through an
oceanic plate. When a hot spot is below a continental plate, the
continental rock, being lighter, in a sense floats above the bulge
of molten rock that is building up below it, like a blister forming on
skin. Of course this "blister" is several miles thick and made of
rock, but the basic idea is the same.
In northeastern Africa, a hot spot is actually splitting Africa away
from the Saudi penninsula. The V-shaped crack in the continental rock
formed by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are two of the wings of
this crack. (A three-way, Y-shaped crack, with the wings separated by
about 120 degrees is a typical feature, and is also common in the
formation of columnar basalts, but that's a different post all by
itself.) The third wing of this Y-shaped crack is the Great Rift
Valley that runs from Eritrea/Somalia/Ethiopia in the north through
Kenya and Tanzania in the south. As the crustal rock of east Africa
has risen in altitude, it has also become weaker and erosional forces
(wind and rain) and normal faulting have created a roughly linear trench.
Imagine holding a building brick in each hand, so the long axis of
each is parallel to the ground. Pick up a third brick between them,
using only pressure to hold the middle brick in place.
-{ and }- are your left and right hands, and [] are the end-views of
the bricks.
Now lift the three bricks, using only pressure from the lateral bricks
to keep the middle brick in place. Raise it about an inch or two off
the table. Now slightly relax the pressure. As the middle brick
slips downwards to the table, you have a model of normal faulting.
Lifting the bricks corresponds to the raising of the continental rock
by the molten rock rising underneath it.
The case of the Grand Canyonm is slightly different because faulting
doesn't seem to have been as significant as it is in the rift valley.
The reason for this is that Africa is geographically stable, with
respect to the hot spot forming the rift, whereas North America was
moving westward with respect to the hot spot that raised the Grand
Canyon area. Further, the shape of the hot spot overridden by North
America seems to be different, and somewhat more diffuse than the one
under northeast Africa.
As North America overrode the hot spot(s?), it (they?) created the
basin and range country of Nevada before moving inland to the
southeast (actually, before North America moved NW). You will
probably note that the angle and distance between the basin and range
country and the Grand Canyon is roughly the same as the angle and
distance between the Columbia River Basalts and Yellowstone National
Park. That angle is an indicator of the direction of movement of the
continent, and the distance (divided by the ratio of Rubidium 87 to
Strontium 87 in the rock) is a proxy measure for the speed of
movement.
Since Africa is geographically stable, relative to its hot spot, the
continental rock has cracked into the typical Y-shaped pattern. Since
North America is moving over the top of its hot spot(s), the
"blisters" form, but rift valleys have not. Instead, erosion, partly
by wind, but mostly by the Colorado River, is responsible for the
formation of the Grand Canyon. The Colorado Plateau was a flat plain
when the Canyon began to form, and as it eroded, the land around it
also rose. So for the purposes of visualisation, you can think of the
river as staying in one place (with respect to altitude) while the
land rises up on either side of it.
====
Predictions are a consequence of a given theory and serve
as a metric for judging the scientific merit of the theory. If a theory
fails to make meaningful predictions, then it is rejected. However,
failed predictions do not in and of themselves mean a theory should be
abandoned - only that there is some disconnect between the theory and
the data it is explaining. A failed prediction can mean that a theory is
flawed or that the data being used is itself flawed or incomplete.
Either way, if a theory is largely successful but sometimes misses the
mark it can still be considered valid.
A case in point is Einstein's theories of relativity. After Einstein had
published his papers on the subject, some scientists decided to test one
of the predictions that he made regarding how gravitation deflects
light. There was a solar eclipse due to occur that would allow
astronomers to view an otherwise invisible star that was very close to
where the sun was in the sky. Once the moon had fully occulted the sun,
astronomers hoped to measure the position of that star and see if its
position had shifted. However, WW-1 was being waged during that time and
the observation could not be made. As it turns out, Einstein realized
that his prediction was wrong and that the amount of deflection of the
light from the star would have been different from what he originally
stated. Observations during a subsequent eclipse verified his revised
prediction and did much to established the legitimacy of his theories.
However, if the astronomers had been able to take the measurement during
the first eclipse and produced a result that did not agree with the
original prediction, it would not have meant the theory was wrong.
The author of this piece over emphasises the importance of the
predictive aspects of modern theories of science. Predictions are but
one aspect of scientific theories and importantly are only possible once
a theory has been developed to a sufficient degree. Before the
predictions of a theory are even considered, the scientific community
sees how closely the theory aligns with facts already in place. A theory
that is not grounded in the emprical is rejected long before any
predictions it may make are considered.
Theories can be likened to a building. Data (such as direct or indirect
observations, statistical analysis, etc.) are the foundation upon which
all theories are built. The theory itself is the framework, roof and
exterior siding that makes up the building, and predictions are
extensions added to the primary structure once the main theory is in
place. You can't make predictions until you have a solid theory to make
the predictions against.
To be considered scientific, a theory must be subject
to the scientific method, which means that it must
make nontrivial predictions capable of being verified
experimentally. Contrary to common opinion, being
scientific has nothing with a theory's subject matter,
the credentials of its advocates, the kind of mechanism
it asserts, or even that it makes sense. For example,
quantum theory is far from intuitive, implying bizarre
things, such as a cat that is neither dead nor alive until
someone looks at it. And yet it is considered to be in the
realm of science rather than fantasy because it makes
verifiable predictions.
And, (this is important), because it is consistent with observation and
provides a vehicle for explaining a host of other observations. It
provides a way of understanding the data and thereby the greater
universe of which we are a part. The degree as to how well the theory
matches the reality it seeks to explain is measured by the predictions
that it makes. As it happens, the theories that makeup modern quantum
physics are known to be flawed because of their inability to account for
gravitation.
To be verifiable, a prediction must
be capable of being shown wrong. If a theory makes only
predictions which are outside of our ability to test or
which are so vague or broad that they fit almost any
conceivable outcome, then it is not scientific. Such
theories may in fact be true, but science cannot verify
it because their assertions are beyond of the reach
of the scientific method.
This is only partly correct. The key assertion, that predictions are
valid only to the extent that they can be verified in a rigorous and
unambiguous way is quite correct. Any prediction that cannot be tested
is meaningless. This argument fails however because the implication
being suggested that biological evolution makes untestable and / or
vague predictions is false. This is a curious and contradictory position
for the author to take because many of his later arguements are premised
on the idea of failed predictions (those details are not included in
this post as this is a limited response [and long enough as it is] -
check the web site for details). If the predictions of evolution are so
untestable or vague, how does he justify using them to disprove
evolution?
Science advances by constantly trying to disprove what it
already knows.
This is just flat out wrong and it betrays a fundamental lack of
understanding of the subject matter the author is going to such lengths
to critique. Science isn't advanced by trying to disprove anything -
science advances by researching those phenomena that are inadequately
explained by current theories. The gap between relativity and quatum
physics is a case in point - physicists aren't trying to disprove either
theory but rather are trying to account for why the two premire theories
of modern physics are incompatible.
If a theory is found to be incompatable with some data, it isn't
abandoned out of hand - rather, the scientific community first tries to
modify and adapt the theory to bring in into conformance with the new
data. It isn't abandoned until (1) it is clear the current theory cannot
be reconcilled with the discrepancy and (2) a new theory is advanced
that resolves the problem.
A good example of this is the theory of solar fusion. For a long time
there has been a problem with the theory of how the sun's luminous
energy is generated. Theoretical predictions stated that we should be
detecting more neutrinos than we actually were. The fact was, the
discrepancy was pretty large and was a major shortcoming in the theory
this little problem). Recently however, a modification to the theory was
proposed that stated if neutrinos had a small mass (virtually, but not
quite, non-existent) then they may change from one type of neutrino to
another. As it happens, physicists were only looking for one type of
neutrino and not the others - once they started to look for the other
types of neutrinos, consistent with predictions of the now modified
theory, lo and behold they found them. They didn't disprove the
original theory, they modified it and in so doing brought it into better
alignment with the facts.
The more predictions a scientific theory
makes which turn out to be correct, the more confidence we
gain in it, until eventually we may refer to it as a proven
fact or law. However, this should not be seen as an absolute
statement, since many such laws have later been found to
make faulty predictions. Any theory, no matter how well
substantiated, may eventually be replaced one which makes
better predictions.
This is almost correct. A better phrasing would have been Any theory,
no matter how well substantiated, may eventually be replaced [with] one
which is more consistent with the data.
Before we move on, I wish to digress for a minute and discuss what it
actually means to make a prediction. If I hold out a coin and release
it, I predict it will drop toward the ground. This is a prediction
because it is an event that has not been observed and in fact cannot be
observed until it happens (if at all). But in truth, I don't really
consider that a prediction but actually a fact - that is, I don't
*think* the coin will fall to the earth, I *know* it will fall to the
earth. How can I justify such a presumption?
Likewise if I fire a weapon towards a target, I expect to reach that
target precisely as I aimed it. If I miss the target, I assume that it
was my aim what was off (either because I had a shaky hand or perhaps a
bad sight - whatever). What I *don't* assume is that my aim was perfect
but that this time the projectile traced a different path than usual.
In other words, I work with an implicit assumption in both cases which
is that the process that causes coins to fall towards the earth or
projectiles to hit a target is consistent and finite. In this case, the
prediction is not a best guess as to what will happen (say, who will win
the next election or what the wining numbers for next weeks lottery will
be) but rather an expectation that a specific event will occur in a very
specific way. Coins fall to the earth because they can't do anything
else.
This is a principle that I extend to all natural phenomena: things work
they way they do because they can't work in anyother way - coins will
never fall upwards towards the sky no matter how often I try the
release it and see what happens experiment. Natural processes are not
open to any old outcome but rather are constrained to very specific and
limited ranges of possibilities. Even the uncertainty of quanutum
physics is not unlimited in its possible outcomes.
Creationism (which the author claims is a "defensible scientific theory"
and "the only viable alternative to evolution") fails on this very
point. Creationism presumes, unjustifiably, a willful Creator that is
omnipotent and unlimited. By introducing this ad hoc notion (not derived
from any empirical evidence but rather created out of thin air [pun
intended] in order to satisfy a theological imperative), creationism
immediately makes any sort of meaningful and verifiable predictions
impossible. By the authors own definition, this puts creationism beyond
of the reach of the scientific method, contradicting his claim that
creationism is a defensible scientific theory.
God, you see, can do anything.
For example, God could choose to prevent the coin from falling to the
earth the very next time I try to drop it from my grasp - suddenly, I
can no longer trust the continuity of nature to be absolute but rather
must allow for the potential, and unpredictable, intevention by a
willful and all powerful intelligent agent that can decide - without
prior notice - to change the laws of physics on a whim. How do I know if
the arrow missed the target because I'm a lousy archer or because God
intervened? Like I said, God can do anything - perhaps he was answering
the prayer of a small child to protect the life a kitten behind the
target that I was unaware of and would have killed otherwise. All things
*are* possible with God and this type of explanation must considered at
all times. This frankly renders *all* science untenable.
In a part of this web page not otherwise included in this post, the
author lists a (trivially) small number of predictions that
creationism makes:
1. The fossil record will show static species, with no
unambiguously transient sequences. As more fossils are
discovered, they will continue to reflect stable
species which appear suddenly and remain virtually
unchanged to the present or until they disappear.
2. All living species will resist change beyond their
inherent variability. Each type of organism, while
exhibiting a degree of variability, has inherent
limits beyond which no further change is possible.
No species will ever naturally be transformed into
something fundamentally different.
3. Natural mutations will never result directly or
incrementally in a new viable organ. Naturally
occurring, benign mutations will always be small
and well within the recognizable bounds of the
organism. Large natural mutations will always be
harmful. Significant advantageous change must be
engineered and will never occur naturally.
4. Organisms are organized in discontinuous, hierarchical
types. Every new creature discovered, living or fossil,
will be able to be placed in a non-transient position
within taxonomic hierarchies. The hierarchical
organization of species will be reflected at both
the morphological and molecular levels.
How do we know any of this to be true? God might have done it this way
and God may have done it differently - these are not the necessary and
unavoidable outcomes of creation. These predictions are meaningless as
presented here. As long as we are making up predictions on the fly, it
is also just as reasonable to predict:
5. The universe will only appear to be 6,000 years old.
No stars or other astronomical phenomena further way
than that can be seen
6. The earth will have a solid core of carbon and that
the magnetic field is being created by God directly
instead of a rotating iron core at the earth's center.
7. God created the universe exactly 13.2 billion years
ago, formed the earth and the rest of the solar
system out of an interstellar dust cloud roughly
4.5 billion years ago, caused life to emerge via
chemical reactions in the oceans about 3.5 billion
years ago and evolved man from a creature that existed
4 million years ago (and which also gave rise to modern
chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans).
Prediction 5 follows the same logic as the original predictions and
for pretty much the same reason - this is consistent with a doctrinally
sanitized version of the Genesis text and flows from the theological
presumptions rather than the data itself.
Prediction 6 is extreme but it is nonetheless perfectly compatible with
creationism - this is not beyond what God could do and there is no
reason to reject the possibility out of hand. If predictions are all
that matter, this should be scientific by the author's definition.
Prediction 7 contradicts the other predictions, but that isn't a
problem - God can do anything and what is contradictory to us is
perfectly reasonable for him in his divine and infinite wisdom. The fact
is, there is nothing that precludes God from having created the
universe, life and humanity *exactly* they way mainstream science says
it came about. The alternative of creationism is just something made
up and covered with a thin veneer of science in order to satisfy a
religious doctrine. It has no inherent, intrinsic scientific merit.
1.2 Materialism is an unnecessary assumption of contemporary
science
At this point, the author makes a number of footnote references which I
have not included here. If the reader wishes to know that the author is
referring to, check out the original link at the top of this post.
It is commonly argued that creationism is inherently
unscientific because it does not conform to the materialistic
assumption - the belief that everything must be explainable as
the result of entirely natural processes. Oxford zoologist
Richard Dawkins reflected this belief when he stated that
explaining life by invoking a supernatural designer is
to explain exactly nothing.[1] While creationism undeniably
does provide an explanation of how life came to be, it is not
scientific, according to this argument, because it cannot
explain creation's Creator.
This is quite correct - as I pointed out above, the creator is capable
of doing anything he/she/they/it chooses and does not have to be consist
over time and space. Creationism doesn't explain anything because
anything is possible in that context. The author continues do expose his
lack of understanding the of essence of science with these types of
arguments. He confuses an ad hoc, invented explanation with a
scientific one. There are any number of explanations that can be offered
for how life came to be (constrained only by the limits of human
imagination), but only those that have a solid empirical and
philosophical underpinning are scientific. Creationism fails precisely
on that point.
The creator hypothesis lacks merit primarily because we have no way of
verifying it. Any phenomenon we can detect - directly or indirectly - is
necessarily a natural one. We simply cannot detect anything that is not
manifested in the material, observable universe. Since the creator
exists apart from the material universe, we have no way of observing it.
At best, all we can hope to do is observe its affects indirectly -
however, there is no way to do so reliably. Any unexplained phenomenon
cannot be ascribed to the unseen creator until we have a full and
exhaustive understanding of *all* natural phenomena and how they work.
Otherwise, anything attributable to a creator can just as easily, and
far more reasonably, be assumed to be the result of natural processes as
yet undiscovered or not fully understood.
However, if we insisted that scientific theories cannot contain
elements for which there is no explanation, we would have none
left, since every theory must ultimately rest upon axioms that
it cannot explain. For example, quantum theory does not explain
how a photon traveling through one slit knows about the
existence of a second one, nor does relativity explain how
mass manages to reach out and distort its neighboring space.
And even if such explanations were one day put forward, they
would of necessity rest upon some other unexplained phenomena.
Stating that a theory is scientific has nothing to do with how
it explains but rather with what it predicts. And a theory which
makes testable predictions is scientific regardless of whether
it involves perceptive photons, supernatural designers, or
cosmic bumblebees.
Again, the author simply doesn't know what he is talking about. Allow me
to illustrate this by example:
* I theorize that the universe is a figment
of my imagination. I am God but just don't
realize it. You see, I'm omnipotent, omniscient
and eternal. And bored - I've existed for an
eternity of eternities and I was in the mood
for something new so I created this reality.
* The universe was created at the precise moment
of my birth and exists strictly as a consequence
of my mind. I've stripped myself of my divine
nature and will continue in this state until
the moment of my death. Everything else in
universe will cease to exist at that moment.
* Now, some of you may think you have a real
existence of your own, but you don't - in order
for this to work, I made this reality complete
including independent, self-aware entities. But
that doesn't matter in the end - you're all tied
to my fate (in which case I suggest you be
really nice to me while I'm here).
Now this theory is as valid as creationism. Granted it's a bit
egotistical, but that's beside the point. If we are to entertain the
creation model, why not entertain this one? Predictions alone are not
enough - to be scientific, a theory *must* explain the data at hand.
More importantly, the insistence that we must accept the modern
materialistic assumption as a working hypothesis is not only
unnecessary, but ironically it actually serves to blind
scientific inquiry to the very issue of materialism. Once we
accept the materialist assumption, only materialistic theories
can be considered. And then the success of such theories, in
the absence of any alternative, is presented as evidence that
the universe is in fact materialistic. But this is clearly
cyclic reasoning. In reality, the only way one could prove
scientifically that the universe is materialistic is to drop
this extraneous assumption and then see if materialistic
theories are in fact better at predicting observed reality
than non-materialistic ones. Anything less is not science but
a kind of self-delusion.
And what, exactly, are non-materialistic threories? How do we detect
and observe something that does not exist as a part of the physical
universe? Until creationists can provide a meaningful definition of what
non-materialistic processes are and how they can be recognized, this
argument is totally without merit. Again, the author fails to understand
the essential link between science and data - without data to work from,
there is no science.
1.3 Considering supernatural causes does not turn science into
fantasy
Actually, it does. Prehaps it would be more accurate to state the
considering supernatural causes is a meaningless exercise as we have
no way to recognized the immaterial.
Another common argument of materialists is that, in order to be
meaningful, science must restrict itself to natural phenomena.
If theories involving the supernatural are entertained, they
insist, science would soon be overrun by wild fantasies, such
as claims that gravity is caused by fairies.[2] Thus, for the
sake of scientific integrity, all theories involving anything
outside of the natural world must be dismissed from
consideration. But the fact is that scientists must constantly
ask themselves if their observations have natural causes.
Paleontologists had to consider causes beyond the natural to
determine that the Piltdown Man fossil was a fraud. Similarly,
geologists examining Stonehenge would be foolish indeed not to
consider causes other than natural geological processes. But
this admission of the possibility of artificial causes does not
somehow force science to accept claims that the sandstone
structures in Arches National Park are also manmade. In fact,
the very same scientific method used to conclude that the one
structure is artificial was used to conclude that the others
are natural.
This is a wonderful example of one of the most common logical fallacies
creationists make when arguing for design. In a nutshell, the author is
equating human design with supernatual design. He is arguing that the
type of things humans can create are the same as the types of things the
creator can create. This is nonsense.
Humans can, and do, manipulate the natural world and bring about
configurations that would not occur otherwise (naturally), but in no
case do humans ever bring something into existence that violates the
limitations of the natural universe. *Everything* humans create are
natural objects or use natural processes - there is nothing supernatural
about them. God, on the other hand, is capable of bringing about things
that are *not* possible within the limits of the natural world. The
criteria we use to identify human designed artifacts are inadequate as a
tool for recognizing and identifying supernatural design. This argument
is simply meaningless.
Likewise, when considering the origin of life on earth, it is
a mistake to arbitrarily restrict oneself to only natural
causes. No matter what materialists may insist, it is possible
that life on earth did not arise as the result of totally
natural forces. Such theories should be evaluated the same way
as materialist ones, on the basis of their predictions. If
they do not make better predictions than materialism, they
will be dismissed, as any other failed theory. But to refuse
to consider them by claiming that they will somehow hijack
science is in reality to argue against reliance on the
scientific method. And refusing to follow the scientific method
when we don't like where it leads is what it means to be
unscientific.
Because the author keeps making the same logical errors, I find myself
repeating the same points over and over. I apologize for the redundancy.
No matter how much creationists may insist, it is meaningless to argue
that non-natural processes are or have ever been manifest in the
physical universe until we have the necessary criteria in place to allow
us to recognize them. Non-natural origin of life theories are
irrelevant. One can make all the predictions one wants based on an ad
hoc explanation, but without the data to support the underlying theory,
the predictions don't matter.
1.4 Materialism is incomplete in that it cannot account for
consciousness
So - God has a new gap to hide in. Well now, how about that.
Materialism asserts that our minds, like anything else, can
be explained by purely physical processes. All mental activity
is supposed to be the result of chemical reactions causing
electrical signals to travel from one neuron to another. But
what is the materialistic mechanism which produces the most
fundamental of all mental phenomena, consciousness? How could
as pain, anger, and amusement, or the me that experiences
and reacts to them?
Here is where those annoying data come into play (Damn them! Damn them
to Hell! [1]). We can make a link between the concious mind and the
physical brain because changes to the latter affect former. We use drugs
to alter our reality, sleep deprivation can have significant
psychological impact, brain damage from disease or trauma can affect
people's memories and even their personality (and on and on). We needn't
have a specific explanation for how the brain brings about consciousness
to be able to say that it does.
A popular materialistic explanation is that consciousness is
a side effect of the organizational complexity of the brain,[3]
but this is so vague as to hardly qualify as an explanation at
all. How could so abstract and ill-defined a concept as
complexity be the cause of such a specific, centralized, and
unique effect as consciousness? And why would the controlling
of an arm produce a conscious experience while the more
complicated controlling of digestion does not?
I'm basically just letting the author rant here, but this raises a
question of its own. Why should we have a conscious awareness of our
digestive system? That works pretty much automatically and doesn't
require conscious input to be effective - drop food and water into one
end, and eliminate the waste products out the other. Movement of our
skeletal frame on the other hand is meaningless in and of itself. It
isn't enough for our muscles to flex - there needs to be some
deliberation to the movement. The digestive system does not need
conscious control in order to process food, but obtaining that food
does.
In addition,
this theory leads to absurdities when one imagines the
complexity replicated in other forms, such as the entire
population of China organized to emulate the interactions of
the neurons of a human brain.[4] By the materialist explanation,
such a system would somehow be as conscious as the brain it
described. Others have concluded that since our brains are made
of ordinary matter, all matter must therefore be aware,
including things like thermostats, rocks, and electrons.[5]
And still others argue that consciousness doesn't really exist
at all but is just an illusion,[6] although how you can be
fooled into thinking that you think is obviously problematic.
If such attempts to provide a materialistic explanation of
consciousness seem contrived, there is good reason. We know
that consciousness can never be explained in materialistic
terms because it cannot even be defined in materialistic
terms.[7] It is a phenomena that is inherently outside of
the materialist model. And since consciousness is an
undeniable part of reality, materialistic theories, while
obviously very useful, are inherently incomplete and can
never hope to provide a complete explanation of reality.
No, we don't know this. At best all we can say is that we cannot explain
consciousness in terms of our current understanding of the physical
universe. We don't know enough about how things work to definitively
state that consciousness is uniquely non-material in origin.
Well, that pretty much wraps up section 1 of this creationist web-site.
There are a total of 5 sections (as well as an introduction, a
conclusion and some references) but as this is a pretty long post in its
own right, I'll just leave off here.
==
"Entropy in this sense came to be used in the growing fields of
information science, computer science, communications theory, etc. The
story is often told that in the late 1940s, John von Neumann, a
pioneer of the computer age, advised communication-theorist Claude E.
Shannon to start using the term entropy when discussing information
because no one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will
always have the advantage. Claude Shannon himself seems to be aware of
these differences in his famous 1948 paper, A Mathematical Theory of
continuous case the measurement is relative to the coordinate system.
If we change coordinates the entropy will in general change. In the
same paper he attaches no physical units to his entropy and never
mentions Boltzmann's constant, k. At one point he briefly introduces
K, saying tersely, The constant K merely amounts to a choice of a
unit of measure. Shannon never specifies the unit of measure, and
except in an appendix, K does not appear again in the 55-page paper.
This sort of entropy is clearly different. Physical units do not
pertain to it, and (except in the case of digital information) an
arbitrary convention must be imposed before it can be quantified. To
distinguish this kind of entropy from thermodynamic entropy, let's
call it logical entropy.
Richard Feynman knew there is a difference between the two meanings
of entropy. He discussed thermodynamic entropy in the section called
Entropy of his Lectures on Physics published in 1963, using physical
units, joules per degree, and over a dozen equations (vol I section
44-6). He discussed the second meaning of entropy in a different
section titled Order and entropy (vol I section 46-5) as follows:
'So we now have to talk about what we mean by disorder and what we
mean by order. ... Suppose we divide the space into little volume
elements. If we have black and white molecules, how many ways could we
distribute them among the volume elements so that white is on one side
and black is on the other? On the other hand, how many ways could we
distribute them with no restriction on which goes where? Clearly,
there are many more ways to arrange them in the latter case. We
measure disorder by the number of ways that the insides can be
arranged, so that from the outside it looks the same. The logarithm of
that number of ways is the entropy. The number of ways in the
separated case is less, so the entropy is less, or the disorder is
less.'
This is Boltzmann's model again. Notice that Feynman does not use
Boltzmann's constant. He assigns no physical units to this kind of
entropy, just a number. (A logarithm is a number, without physical
units.) And he uses not a single equation in this section of his
Lectures. Notice another thing. The number of ways can only be
established by first artificially dividing up the space into little
volume elements. This is not a small point. In every real physical
situation, counting the number of possible arrangements requires an
'There is, however, nothing to tell us how fine the [parceling] should
be. Entropies calculated in this way depend on the size-scale decided
upon, in direct contradiction with thermodynamics in which entropy
changes are fully objective.'
contains insight that should discourage attempts to physically link
the two kinds of entropy. He demonstrates that there is no
unavoidable minimal energy requirement per transmitted bit. Using
Boltzmann's constant to tie together thermodynamic entropy and logical
entropy is thus shown to be without basis. One may rightly object that
the minimal energy requirement per bit of information is unrelated to
logical entropy. But this supposed minimum energy requirement was the
keystone of arguments connecting the two concepts.
So, when talking about thermodynamic entropy, objective units of
measure can be and are used. However, when talking about logical
entropy no objective units can be used and so logical entropy is based
on at least some subjectivity - or so Klyce seems to be suggesting.
Klyce goes on to suggest that, In spite of the important distinction
between the two meanings of entropy, the rule, as stated above for
thermodynamic entropy, seems to apply nonetheless to the logical kind:
entropy in a closed system can never decrease. And really, there would
be nothing mysterious about this law either. It's similar to saying
things never organize themselves. It is true that crystals and other
regular configurations can be formed by unguided processes. And we are
accustomed to saying that these configurations are 'organized.' . . .
The correct term for such regular configurations is 'ordered.' The
recipe for a crystal is already present in the solution it grows
from.
Of course, this concept of logical entropy might have a bit to do with
the understanding of how entropy and biology interact. Dr. Hubert P.
Yockey gives the subject of entropy and biology a probing and
insightful treatment in his monograph, Information theory and
molecular biology. He emphatically agrees that there are different
kinds of entropy that do not correlate. '...The Shannon entropy and
the Maxwell-Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy... have nothing to do with each
other (p 313).'But Shannon entropy (which pertains to information
theory) makes no distinction between meaningful DNA sequences that
encode life and random DNA sequences of equal length. Therefore,
Yockey is able to conclude that evolution does not create any paradox
for Shannon entropy. Nevertheless, Yockey proves with impressive
command of biology and statistics that it would be impossible to find
the new genes necessary for evolutionary progress by the random search
method currently in favor. He is deeply sceptical of the prevailing
theories of evolution and the origin of life on Earth.
A rare example of the use of mathematics to combine the two kinds of
entropy is given in 'The Mystery of Life's Origin', published in 1984.
Its authors acknowledge two kinds of entropy, which they call
"thermal" and "configurational." To count the "number of ways" for the
latter kind of entropy they use restrictions which they later admit to
be unrealistic. They count only the number of ways a string of amino
acids of fixed length can be sequenced. They admit in the end,
however, that the string might never form. To impose the units joules
per degree onto configurational entropy, they simply multiply by
Boltzmann's constant. Nevertheless, they ultimately reach the
following conclusion (p 157-158):
'In summary, undirected thermal energy is only able to do the chemical
and thermal entropy work in polypetide synthesis, but not the coding
(or sequencing) portion of the configurational entropy work.... It is
difficult to imagine how one could ever couple random thermal energy
flow through the system to do the required configurational entropy
work of selecting and sequencing.'
'In Evolution, Thermodynamics and Information,' Jeffrey S. Wicken
also adopts the terms thermal and configurational. But here they
both pertain only to the non-energetic information content of a
thermodynamic state, and energetic information is also necessary for
the complete description of a system. Shannon entropy is different
from all of these, and not a useful concept to Wicken.
==
Ionian Philosophers (Greek, 5th and 6th centuries B.C.E.)
Empedocles of Acragas (Greek, 5th century B.C.E.)
Aristotle (Greek, 384-322 B.C.E.) Titus Lucretius Carus (Roman, 99-55 B.C.E.)

The Ionian Philosophers
Evolutionary theory begins with the Ionian philosopher Anaximander (ca. 611
-
546 B. C. E.). Very little is known about his life, but it is known that he
wrote a long poem, On Nature, summarizing his researches. This poem is now
lost, and has survived only in extracts quoted in other works. Enough
survives, however, that Anaximander's thought can be reconstructed with some
confidence. For Anaximander, the world had arisen from an undifferentiated,
indeterminate substance, the apeiron. The Earth, which had coalesced out of
the apeiron, had been covered in water at one stage, with plants and animals
arising from mud. Humans were not present at the earliest stages; they arose
from fish. This poem was quite influential on later thinkers,
including Aristotle.
Had Anaximander looked at fossils? Did he study comparative fish and human
anatomy? Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what evidence Anaximander
used to support his ideas. His theory bears some resemblance to evolutionary
theory, but also seems to have been derived from various Greek myths, such as
the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, in which peoples or tribes are born from
the Earth or from stones. His concept of the apeiron seems similar to the Tao
of Chinese philosophy and religion, and to the formless and void Earth of
the Hebrew creation account and other creation myths. However, even though
Anaximander's ideas drew on the religious and mythical ideas of his time, he
was still one of the first to attempt an explanation of the origin and
evolution of the cosmos based on natural laws.
In the 6th century B.C.E. Xenophanes of Colophon (died ca. 490 B.C.E.), who
was a disciple of Anaximander, developed Anaximander's theories further. He
observed fossil fishes and shells, and concluded that the land where they were
found had been underwater at some time. Xenophanes taught that the world
formed from the condensation of water and primordial mud; he was the first
person known to have used fossils as evidence for a theory of the history of
the Earth.
The Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 B.C.E.) also observed fossil shells in
Egypt, and cited them as evidence that Egypt had once been underwater. He also
described a valley in Arabia, in the Mokattam mountains, where he saw the
backbones and ribs of such serpents as it is impossible to describe: of the
ribs there were a multitude of heaps. . . He ascribed these bones to winged
serpents that had been killed by ibises. We now know that these are the bones
of fossil mammals that wash out of the rocks every rainy season. Several other
ancient historians briefly mentioned fossils in their writings. Finally, the
famous Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos (460-357 B.C.E.) is known to have
collected fossils; in fact, modern excavations at Asklepion, the famous
medical school of Hippocrates's day, unearthed a fragment of a fossil
elephant molar.
---
Empedocles of Acragas
Another Greek philosopher, the fifth-century materialist Empedocles of Acragas
(in Sicily), postulated that the universe was composed of four basic
elements -- earth, air, fire, and water. These elements were stirred by two
fundamental forces, which Empedocles called Love and Strife. (Attraction and
repulsion might be better modern terms for what Empedocles actually meant.)
The constant interplay of these elements, alternately attracting and repelling
each other, had formed the universe. Empedocles claimed that the Earth had
given birth to living creatures, but that the first creatures had been
disembodied organs. These organs finally joined into whole organisms, through
the force of Love, but some of these organisms, being monstrous and unfit for
life, had died out.
The theory seems a bit bizarre today, but Empedocles had come up with a sort
of evolutionary theory: past natural selection is responsible for the forms we
see today. Empedocles also ascribed the origin of the life of today to the
interplay of impersonal forces, in which chance, not the gods, played the
major role. There are, however, major differences between Empedocles's ideas
and natural selection in the modern sense: Empedocles conceived of his
natural selection as a past event, not as an ongoing process. Once again, we
do not know whether Empedocles had actually found supporting evidence for his
theories. He may have been influenced by existing accounts of mythological
creatures that seemed to be put together out of the parts of different
animals, such as centaurs, sphinxes, and chimeras. But perhaps he had also
seen deformed animals, or examined monstrous-looking fossil bones.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lucretius
Much later, the Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus (99-55
B.C.E.) wrote his long philosophical poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature
of
Things). In this poem Lucretius proposed, among other things, an
evolutionary theory similar to that of Empedocles (which is ironic, because
he attacks Empedocles rather vehemently in other parts of the poem). Here
again, species were born out of the Earth, formed by the chance combination of
elements. Natural selection led to the extinction of once-living monstrous
organisms. Those organisms that survived either survived because of their
strength, speed, or cunning, or because of their usefulness to people. But
Lucretius did not believe in the production of new species from previously
existing ones, the other side of the coin of true evolutionary theories. He
denied that land-dwelling animals could ever have evolved from marine animals.
Like Empedocles, he taught that plants and animals had been born from the
Earth, and that the formation of new species was finished:
Wherefore, again, again, how merited
Is that adopted name of Earth - The Mother! -
Since she herself begat the human race,
And at one well-nigh fixed time brought forth
Each beast that ranges raving round about
Upon the mighty mountains, and all birds
Aerial with many a varied shape.
But, lo, because her bearing years must end,
She ceased, like to a woman worn. . . And what
She bore of old, she now can bear no longer. . .
Lucretius's poem is an exposition of Epicurean philosophy, and is notable for
its insistence on the senses as the only way to obtain knowledge. For whither
shall we make appeal? for what / More certain than our senses can there be
Whereby to mark asunder error and truth? It is also notable for its long
explication of atomism -- the doctrine that everything in the universe is made
up of atoms. Lucretius did not originate this theory -- it goes back to the
Greek philosopher Democritus of Abdera (fifth century B.C.E) -- but his
explanation of it influenced many writers and thinkers of the Middle Ages
and Renaissance, despite opposition from the Church.
---
The above quote from Lucretius's On the Nature of Things is taken from the
on-line edition, available from The Tech Classics Archive at MIT.
==
'Earliest writing' found in China

Tortoise shells bearing the ancient writing
First attempt at writing on a tortoise shell. Signs carved into 8,600-year-old
tortoise shells found in China may be the earliest written words, say
archaeologists.
The symbols were written down in the late Stone Age, or Neolithic Age.
They predate the earliest recorded writings from Mesopotamia - in what
is now Iraq - by more than 2,000 years.
The archaeologists say they bear similarities to written characters
used thousands of years later during the Shang dynasty, which lasted
from 1700-1100 BC. The archaeologists have identified 11 separate symbols
inscribed on the tortoise shells. The shells were found buried with human
remains in 24 Neolithic graves unearthed at Jiahu in Henan province, western
China. Shang character for 'eye' The character for 'eye', similar to
inscriptions in the latest find
The site has been radiocarbon dated to between 6,600 and 6,200 BC.
The research was carried out by Dr Garman Harbottle, of the Brookhaven
National Laboratory in New York and a team of archaeologists at the
University of Science and Technology of China in Anhui province.
"What [the markings] appear to show are meaningful signs that have a
correspondence with ancient Chinese writing," said Dr Harbottle.
The Neolithic markings include symbols that resemble the characters
for "eye" and "window" and the numerals eight and 20 in the Shang script.
"If you pick up a bottle with a skull and crossbones on it, you know
instantly that it's poison without the word being spelt out. We're
used to signs that convey concepts and I wouldn't be surprised if
that's what we're seeing here," Dr Harbottle added.
Gravesite in Hena. Writing discovery from gravesite dig
"There is a gap of about 5,000 years [between them]. It seems
astonishing that they would be connected. The persistence of sign use at
different sites along the Yellow River throughout the Neolithic and up to the
Shang period, when a complex writing system appears.
He emphasised that he was not suggesting the Neolithic symbols had the
same meanings as Shang characters they resembled.
Shaman rituals
There were signs the Neolithic culture at Jiahu which may not
have been complex enough to require a writing system.
But Professor Keightley did say that the signs appeared to be highly
"schematised" or stylised. This is a feature of Chinese written characters.
Aggregations of small pebbles were found close to several of the tortoise
shells. The shells once contained the pebbles and were used as musical rattles
in shamanistic rituals. In one grave, eight sets of tortoise shells were placed
above the skeletal remains of a man whose head was missing.
The shells come from graves where, in 1999, the researchers unearthed
ancient bone flutes. These flutes are the earliest musical instruments known to
date. The research is published in the journal Antiquity.
==
There are two components to a galaxys motion. One is the Hubble expansion
and the other component is the result of the gravitational attractions on
the galaxy from all other masses in the universe. The nearby galaxies
contribute nearly all of the latter. Galaxies are organized into structures
called clusters which are gravitationally bound systems. In the clusters,
which have dimensions of 20-30Mpc, the galaxies are moving about at
~1000km/sec. On length scales of 20-30Mpc the hubble expansion is much
smaller, and thus while the hubble expansion tends to move galaxies apart,
the motion of galaxies due to gravitational effects can exceed the hubble
expansion and thus galaxies can collide. Beyond a few tens of Mpc., there
are no far away blue shifted galaxies...that is beyond this distance from
us, the Hubble expansion exceeds the velocity due to gravitational forces.
==
Our Earth might have formed a lot earlier that astronomers previously believed,
maybe as quickly as 10 million years after the birth of the Sun. In fact, all
of the inner planets might have started forming as soon as 10,000 years after
the Sun ignited 4.5 billion years ago. Within 10 million years, the Earth had
reached 64 percent of its mass, and later collided with a Mars-sized object to
provide additional mass and create the Moon
==
Letter from a scientist.(not glk writing)

Do you know how science works? Have you ever spoken to a scientist? I have. I
have spoken to many scientists, because I happen to be one myself. By the way,
Science deals with, observable, verifiable, repeatable facts. No respectable
scientist would ever dream of reporting a discovery without verifying his/her
facts or observations. In the laboratory, every experiment is repeated, two,
three, or more times. If the work is important, I will often ask my colleagues
to repeat it again, just to see if they get the same results that I did.
That is not all. In every company in which I worked, there was a good deal of
internal review. I was usually required to write reports, weekly or monthly,
describing my experiments, results, and conclusions. My supervisor reviewed
these,and, and, in discussion, pointed out any shortcomings and often suggested
ways of dealing with them. We also had frequent research staff meetings.
Periodically, I was asked to present my work to the entire group. The other
scientists, my peers, also criticized my findings and conclusions. Scientists
love to criticize each others work. Its part of our training. Some, of course,
seem to enjoy it more than others. The point is that good science will stand up
to any and all criticism; bad science will be shredded.
Now science would be useless if scientists kept all of their information to
themselves. The most common way for scientists to communicate with others
outside the group is through recognized scientific publications or journals. To
have a paper published, one writes up the experiments, results, and conclusions
and sends the draft to the journal editor. The editor will send the draft to
usually at least three referees. The referees are other scientists, chosen for
their knowledge of the topic and are often leaders in their field. They will
write to the editor with their own criticisms and may suggest further work.
In some cases, they may recommend that the work is so flawed that the paper
not be published at all. The editor will pass the reviews back to the author.
The author must then convince the editor that the referees are wrong and
perform any additional work required, if the publication is ever to see the
light of day.
Also a scientist may want to present his/her work at a meeting. Some of these,
such as the one held by the American Chemical Society, have over 3,500
participants from all over the world. Anyone is free to ask questions,
criticize, or argue about the results.
This is a long post, but I would like you to be completely assured that what
comes out of science is checked, rechecked, reviewed and can be trusted. The
best test, however, is that science works.
Can you truthfully say the same about faith?
==
Scientists never use the word 'truth' in describing their models. Rather, they
search for theories which are useful for predicting the consequences of certain
actions. First of all, a theory must be consistent with itself. Secondly, it
had better be consistent with other established theories or be prepared to
refute or modify them. A very useful theory accurately predicts the outcomes
of a wide range of experiments. Finally, a theory should use the minimum
assumptions and entities required to solve the problem, applying Occam's Razor.
==
Look at Edward J. Larson
& Larry Witham Leading scientists still reject God,
Nature, Vol. 394, No. 6691 (1998), p313.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html
Larson and Witham essentially, repeated J. Leuba's
1914 and 1933 studies of the religious beliefs of American scientists,
and found that there had been a marked decline in conventional
religious belief among American scientists over the years, especially,
amongst those who were most prominent in their disciplines.
==
The whole process of science
depends on the requirement that hypotheses be formulated
so that they are testable and that proposed tests for them
be repeatable. It is these requirements that make science
a self-correcting process. There are certainly lots of scientists
who are biased and self-serving, some are even outright dishonest.
But science as a whole, has built-in mechanisms for weeding out
incorrect hypotheses, and for that matter weeding out frauds and
charlatans.
As for the claim that science is the most reliable means that
we have for discovering and ascertaining truths about the world
including ourselves, I would indeed take that to be an empirical
hypothesis, whose validity can only be assessed by comparing
science as an epistemological method to other proposed means
for unveiling truth such as intuition, tradition, and revelation.
And upon making such comparisons, it would seem that these
proposed alternatives to science come up short, primarily
on the grounds that given conflicting intuitions, traditions,
and revelations, there exists no reliable method for sifting
out true intuitions from false ones, true traditions from false
ones, or true revelations from false ones, using intuition,
tradition, or revelation as our epistemological methods.
None of these proposed methodologies have the kind
in built-in self-corrective mechanisms that science does.
==
Science does not seek to state anything with absolute certainty, only
rule out possibilities, ascertain probabilities and certainties to within a
calculable error margin.
==
Francis Drake has summarised in the famous Drake equation:
N = R x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L
where:
N = the number of observable civilizations existing in the Milky Way;
R = the rate at which stars have been born in the Milky Way per year;
fp = the fraction of these stars that have solar systems of planets;
ne = the average number of 'earthlike' planets potentially suitable for
life;
fl = the fraction of those planets on which life actually forms;
fi = the fraction of life-bearing planets where biological evolution
produces an intelligent species;
fc = the fraction of intelligent species that become capable of
interstellar
radio communication (!), (my exclamation mark, S.H.);
L = the average lifetime of a communicating civilization in years.
==
Returning to Einstein's nagging doubts about quantum mechanics, Nobel
laureate Gerard 't Hooft of Utrecht University has begun to outline a way
in which its apparent play of chance might be underpinned by precise
physical laws that describe the way the world works1.
Despite being physicists' most fundamental theory of the properties of
matter and energy, quantum mechanics holds that there are things we just
cannot know. For example, it forbids us from knowing everything about a
subatomic particle: its exact speed, position, mass and energy. We can only
put limits on the probable values of all these things at any instant.
Einstein did not like this idea, and suspected that another theory -
another layer of reality - might underlie quantum mechanics, in which
everything is spelled out precisely. These deeper properties of objects
became known as 'hidden variables'. According to this view, our ignorance
about the nature of a quantum object is illusory; we just haven't found the
right theory to describe it yet.
Today, most physicists adhere to a different reading of quantum theory,
called the Copenhagen Interpretation, as advocated by the Danish nuclear
physicist of the 1940s, Niels Bohr.
This says that there is no deeper reality, that hidden variables don't
exist and that the world is simply probabilistic. It holds that we are not
ignorant about quantum objects, it's just that there is nothing further to
be known.
Indeed, in the 1980s, the Copenhagen Interpretation was put to an
experimental test based on a theorem devised by the Irish physicist John
Bell - and it stood up. Hidden variables had to go.
't Hooft is not about to resurrect hidden variables. But neither is he
convinced that quantum uncertainty has to be the final word. "Contrary to
common belief," he says, "it is not difficult to construct deterministic
models where quantum mechanics correctly describes stochastic behaviour, in
precise accordance with the Copenhagen doctrine."
Here, stochastic means that things seem governed by fuzzy, rather than
precise, probabilities. And deterministic means that one thing leads
definitely to another, not simply to a range of other things with various
probabilities.
The key, says 't Hooft, is information loss. At the smallest conceivable
size scale - the Planck Scale, many trillions of times smaller than the
nucleus of an atom - there exists complete information about the world.
This information gets lost very quickly, 't Hooft explains. By the time we
start trying to probe and measure a system, we are like archaeologists
trying to make sense of ancient Babylonia: we have only the scantiest of
information to go on. We can say only what the system was probably like.
At the root of the debate is the question of non-local behaviour: whether
something that happens to a quantum particle in one place can have an
instantaneous effect on some distant particle. If so, the two particles are
said to be correlated.
The Copenhagen Interpretation says that quantum correlations like this are
real. A fully deterministic theory behind quantum mechanics would rule them
out. Gill feels that 't Hooft's idea represents a kind of compromise
between these views. "If he's right, there are indeed enormously strong and
active correlations working at great distance that somehow expresses
themselves at the level of kitchen-and-garden reality only in extremely
subtle ways."
But because the Planck Scale is so far below the resolution limit of any
conceivable experiment using current technology, it will be very difficult
to put the idea to the test. In any case, Gill suspects that the real
answer may turn out to be eternally elusive. Perhaps, he speculates, the
world was built "according to quantum mechanics but quantum mechanics
itself prevents us from ever being sure".
References
1.'t Hooft, G.Determinism beneath quantum mechanics. Preprint
xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0212095, (2002). Talk presented at 'Quo vadis
quantum mechanics' conference, Temple University, Philadelphia, September
2002.|Article
==
The mysterious tilt of the moons orbit is probably a natural consequence of
the moons formation from a giant collision with early Earth.
The moons orbit can be traced backwards in time to reveal that when the moon
formed near the Earth, its orbit was inclined by approximately 10 degrees
relative to the Earths equator. Most other planetary satellites in the
solar system have orbital inclinations smaller than 1 or 2 degrees. The cause
of the moons large orbital tilt has long been a mystery.
The inclination problem had been one of the last remaining obstacles for the
impact hypothesis of moon formation. The widely favored giant impact theory
proposes that a Mars-sized body(or larger)collided with earth 4.5 billion years
ago, creating a hot disk of debris from which the moon accumulated.
Previous models of the moons formation from such a disk predict that the lunar
orbit should have been nearly aligned with the Earths equator, with only about
a 1 degree tilt.
The new theory proposes that the moon acquired its large tilt soon after it
formed because of a gravitational interaction with debris left over from the
impact event. Modeling results show that the moon could have acquired its
10 degree tilt as a consequence of the moon-forming impact.
To yield a lunar-sized moon, the giant impact must place about two lunar masses
of material into an Earth-orbiting disk, according to Canup. In the model,
debris particles in the inner regions of such a disk are prevented from
coalescing by Earths gravity, which tends to pull objects apart. Instead, the
moon rapidly coalesces at the outer edge of the debris disk, at a distance of
about 14,000 miles from the Earth. The newly formed moon would have likely
co-existed for some time with an inner disk of gas and debris left over from
the impact.
After the moon coalesced, its gravity would generate waves in the inner disk.
The gravitational interaction of the moon with these waves would, in turn,
modify the lunar orbit. The waves are launched at certain locations in the disk
where the motions of disk particles are in resonance with the motion of the
moon. The waves generated at one such resonance -- where the orbital period of
the moon is approximately three times that of the disk particles -- are called
bending waves, which corrugate the surface of the disk. The gravitational
attraction between the moon and these rippled waves in the disk then acts to
amplify the tilt of the moons orbit.
Their model simulated the interaction of the moon and the inner debris disk,
assuming that the moon formed in an orbit with only a 1 degree tilt. They
found that the interaction of the moon with the bending waves it generates in
such a disk can amplify the lunar inclination to values as high as 15 degrees
before the disk dissipates. The required tilt of about 10 degrees can be
achieved if the disk contained at least 25 to 50 percent of a lunar mass and
persisted from decades to as long as a century. These values are consistent
with those predicted by other models of the impact event.
This theory explains the moons anomalous orbital tilt as a natural consequence
of its formation from a giant impact event. Rather than producing conflicting
evidence, the lunar inclination may now represent an additional corroboration
of the impact event.
==
Some active galaxies appear to harbor black holes in their nucleus that
register between 100 million and a billion solar masses.
==
D. C. Williams book The Ground of Induction about logic and philosophy

J. Richard Gott III, Implications of the Copernican Principle for Our Future
Prospects, _Nature_ 363:315-9 (27 May 1993). Aliens?
==
Martian meteorite (basaltic shergottite)
A 28 g stone almost completely covered with fusion crust was found in
Morocco. Classification and mineralogy (J.-A. Barrat, UAng, A.
Jambon, UPVI, Violaine Sautter, MNHNP, Ph. Gillet, ENSL): the
meteorite has a coarse-grained basaltic texture consisting
predominately of subhedral to euhedral pyroxene (up to 3 mm) and
interstitial, lath-shaped maskelynite; accessory minerals include
merrilite, chlorapatite, pyrrhotite, Fe-oxides, fayalite and silica;
pyroxenes show complex zonation with Mg-rich pigeonite cores (Fs26
Wo4), followed by augite (Fs29 Wo30), and mantled by Fe-rich
pigeonite (Fs84 Wo11); no pyroxferroite has been detected;
maskelynites homogeneous, An46-50 Ab52-48 Or~2; merrilite forms
rounded grains (up to 100 um) and is Fe-rich (~5 wt. % FeO),
commonly with 6-40 um thick rims of fayalite (Fa~95), silica, Fe-Ti
oxides, and pyrrhotite; silica (stishovite) occurs as irregular
grains in maskelynite or at grain boundaries to pyroxene and is
surrounded by radiating cracks. Oxygen isotopes (M. Javoy and E.
Petit, IPGP): d18O = +4.78 permil, d17O = +2.91 permil and D17O =
+0.42. Specimens: main mass, 25 g, CNES.
Northwest Africa 482
Northwest Africa
===
Mossbauer Effect
(7) (n2-n1)/n2 = (MG/c2)(h/R2).
So if a light ray leaves the ground and rises to a height h it will be found to
have a lower frequency n1 than the frequency n2 of a similar light ray that is
already at height h.

This effect has actually been observed. In 1960 the scientists R.V. Pound and
G.A. Rebka (Phys. Rev. Letters 4, 337 (1960)) shot the 14,400 electron-Volt
gamma rays from radioactive iron (Fe57) up the 21.6 meter tower at Harvard
University, and tried to absorb the gamma rays in similar iron nuclei at the
top of the tower. But since the frequency of the gamma rays is predicted to be
(slightly) lower than the natural frequency of the iron the gamma rays were
absorbed less efficiently than normal. Then Pound and Rebka introduced an
inspired trick (based on an effect discovered shortly before by Mossbauer)
they changed the natural frequency of the iron absorber by moving the iron
nuclei upwards, at just the right speed, thus causing a lowering of the natural
frequency due to the Doppler effect. The gamma rays were then readily absorbed
by the moving nuclei. The scientists determined that the frequency of the
rising gamma rays was less than the natural frequency of the stationary iron
nuclei, at the top of the tower, by a fractional amount equal to 2.56 x 10-15,
in excellent agreement with the prediction from equation (7) of 2.46 x10-15.
The Pound-Rebka experiment is one of the most beautiful of 20th century
science.
===
Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, _Phantoms in the Brain_,
==
Found 2000?
Lunar meteorite (impact melt breccia)
A 1015 g stone was purchased on 2001 January 10 in Alnif, Morocco, by
Michael Farmer. The exact location of find is unknown but it is
possibly in Algeria. The stone is complete, oriented, and appears
relatively unweathered. Classification and mineralogy (A. Rubin and
P. Warren, UCLA, and D. Kring and I. Daubar, UAz): texture is typical
of a crystalline impact melt breccia (polymict) with highland
affinities; glassy and vesicular melt veins and melt pockets indicate
shock subsequent to compaction by an impact event; plagioclase,
An95.7 Ab4.09 Or0.17 (n = 136, UAz); olivine, Fo65-68 (average Fo66)
with FeO/MnO = 88 +/- 7 g/g (UCLA); olivine Fo68.4 with FeO/MnO =
93.9 +/- 7.7 g/g (range: 78.7 to 111) (n = 51, UAz); pyroxene, Fs25
Wo17 with nearly uniform Mg/(Mg+Fe) = 67 68 mol% and FeO/MnO =
51
+/- 6 g/g (n = 10, UCLA); pyroxene, Wo10.3-51 En32.6-63.9 Fs42.6-
14.2, mean Mg/(Mg+Fe) = 68 mol%, FeO/MnO = 52 +/- 8 g/g (n = 28,
UAz); glassy melt veins occur in both UCLA and UAz samples; a 0.1 mm
vein (UCLA) has SiO2 = 44.3 wt.%, Na2O = 0.3 wt.%, Al2O3 = 30.0
wt.%, FeO = 3.6 wr.%, MgO = 3.9 wt.%, CaO = 17.3 wt.%, and TiO2 = 0.3
wt.%, which may approximate the bulk meteorite composition.
Specimens: half of the main mass is with Farmer; type specimens, 24
g, UCLA, and 18 g, UAz.
==
Are Decay rates constant over time?
1) Supernovae are expected to produce copious
amounts of certain isotopes, notably Co56 and Co57.

2) The afterglow of a supernova, weeks and months afterwards,
should be dominated by energy from cobalt decays.

3) Gamma-ray spectroscopy of SN1987A shows telltale spectral lines from
precisely those isotopes that are expected to be there, confirming their
presence and abundance. ( See Prantzos (1999)
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/9901373 .)

4) The afterglows fades away at a rate equal to the
here-and-now decay rates of the identified isotopes.

Conclusion:
The decay rate of Co56 and Co57 was the same then and there as it is here and
now. There has been no change in decay rates during the past 160,000 years.
==
Reply to a fundie.
You sit at a computer, hooked to power and telephone grids, made with plastic
and microscopic circuits photochemically etched on silicon wafers, using a
cathode ray tube or LCD array, and you have either the unmitigated gall or the
outright stupidity to laugh off science as guesswork and faith!!!
==
Karl Popper came up with a rational system that is non-foundationalist.
He showed that our knowledge is not based on induction but trial and error.
We cannot show theories to be absolutely true but only to be false. His
system is called Pan-Critical rationalism. It is the only non-foundationalist
philosophical system I know of. His philosophical system is very
"science friendly" and does not end up as an attack on rationalism. This system
of rationalism can be held rationally since it too can be held tentatively
(until it is shown false or replaced with some better system).
==
Igneous rocks are rocks derived from a melt. Volcanic rocks
are melts that are extruded onto the surface, like lava flows, volcanic
ash, or pyroclastic flows. Intrusive rocks are melts that were produced
beneath the surface, but solidified there, without ever breaching
the surface. Examples are large, blob-shaped plutons or batholiths
(often composed of coarsely-crystalline granite or gabbro), dykes (sheets of
rock that cross-cut the enclosing stratigraphy), sills (sheets of rock
that are parallel to the enclosing stratigraphy), laccoliths (bulging,
pillow-shaped sills), and pipes (like the column of magma beneath
some types of volcanoes).
The rock at Devils Tower,Wyoming, is apparently a phonolite -- a particular
type of moderately silicic, heterogeneously-cystalline, igneous rock.
Oldest Chinese Characters Ever Found
JINAN, China, April 202000
After years of arduous effort, Chinese archaeologists have confirmed that the
inscriptions on a 4,800-year-old piece of pottery unearthed in Juxian County in
east Chinas Shandong Province are the earliest form of Chinese characters ever
found.
These hieroglyphs, called Dawenkou Pottery Inscriptions by the archaeologists,
predate the inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells unearthed in the Yin
Ruins and the remains of the late Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 B.C.) in Anyang in
central Chinas Henan Province, which have long been considered the oldest
Chinese characters.
This pushes back the history of the Chinese script by some 2,000 years, Wang
Shuming, a research fellow with the Shandong Institute of Relics and Archeology
in charge of the excavation, told Xinhua Thursday.
The pottery inscriptions first came to light in the early 1960s when an ancient
pottery wine vessel bearing several strange drawings was discovered by farmers
in Juxian, the center of the ancient Ju culture in southeastern Shandong
Province. Tang Lan, a well-known Chinese paleographer, at that time regarded
the drawings as pictographs, though his view was neglected because there was a
lack of supporting evidence.
CLUES WERE IN TOMBS
In the 1980s, more than 30 tombs belonging to the late period of
the Neolithic Dawenkou Culture (4500-2500 B.C.) were excavated in Juxian, where
pottery wine vessels with 20 stylized pictures of some physical objects were
unearthed, providing more clues to an earlier form of Chinese characters.
==
In a study that may sound a warning about global warming, researchers have
found evidence the worlds climate can change suddenly, almost like a
thermostat that clicks from cold to hot. A new technique for analyzing gases
trapped in Greenland glaciers shows an ice age that gripped the Earth for
thousands of years ended abruptly some
15,000 years ago when the average air temperatures soared. There was a
16-degree F abrupt warming at the end of the last ice age. It happened within
just a couple of decades. The old idea was that the temperature would change
over a thousand years but it was much faster.
==
Note that glaciation starts in the Pliocene.
The last about 700 ky show 100 ky periodicity. Back before that, the
period is about 40 ky, and runs back to the 2-3 million years. Could
be another 25+ ice ages then. The 40 ky ice ages, however, were much
smaller amplitude than the 100 ky Ice Ages. Both the period and magnitude
are estimable from deep sea cores, by way of oxygen isotope analysis.
The isotopic ratios are controlled by both temperature and by the volume
of water in the ocean. The latter may seem a little odd. What happens
is that preferentially the lighter isotope-based water molecules evaporate.
This leaves behind the heavy (18 O rather than 16 O) isotope. At lower
temperatures, more 18 O is deposited as well. If one selects deep sea
dwelling critter shells only, the two effects can be (largely) disentangled
on the grounds that the deep ocean cant get much colder than it is now.
So almost all the signal is ice volume.

More detail (and quite readable) in _Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery_
by Imbrie, J., and K. P. 1979,

The observed rebound, with present day observed crustal mechanics, _require_
that the Antarctic ice sheet be hundreds of thousands of years old, and that
the Laurentide (North American at last glacial maximum) ice sheets have melted
about 10-20 thousand years ago.
Both of which go outside the creationist time scale.

The Milankovitch cycles themselves are consequences of the observed
orbits and masses of the planets.
Whether these variations in the earths orbit are significant for
climate is a different question. Put down two versions of the Milankovitch
hypothesis 1) (weak form) Orbital variations are important for climate

That Milankovitch periods show up in climate proxies is pretty obvious
for quite a number of proxies from around the world. The statistical
methods (time series analysis) are quite sufficient to detect this,
and also that many of these series are phase-locked to the Milankovitch
periods. What is less obvious is the details of the phase relationship
between the cycles and the proxies, and the phase shifts between the
proxies.
==
It seems that about 340,000 years there was a supernova only 180
light years away. At this distance it would have been as bright as a
full moon, and its X-rays and gamma rays would have stripped off the
Earths ozone layer pretty badly for a while.
==
Dynamics of dinosaurs and other extinct giants, Alexander
T-Rex and the Crater of Doom, Alvarez
The Dinosaur Heresies, Robert Bakker
The Science of Jurassic Park, DeSalle and Lindley
The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs, Desmond
The Horned Dinosaurs, Dodson
Bully for Brontosaurus, Stephen Jay Gould
Dinosaur in a Haystack, Stephen Jay Gould
Digging Dinosaurs, John Horner
Dinosaur Lives, John Horner
The Great Dying, Hsu
Quest for the African Dinosaurs, Jacobs
Kings of Creation, Lessem
Tracking Dinosaurs, Lockley
Dinosaurs, Spitfires, and Sea Dragons, McGowan
Diatoms to Dinosaurs, McGowan
Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs, Novacek
The Dechronization of Sam Magruder, Simpson

Paul J. Nahin Time Machines

Richard P. Feynman, Surely Youre Joking, Mr. Feynman!

The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1901).

Stephen J. Gould and Richard C. Lewontin, The spandrels of San Marco
and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist
programme,Proceedings of the Royal Society of London205 (1979): 581-598.

George C. Williams, Natural Selection (New York:Oxford University
Press, 1992) for a discussion of this and other structural
maladaptations in humans.

John Maynard Smith, Dinosaur Dilemmas,New York Review of Books,
April 25, 1991, p.6.

Motoo Kimura, The Natural Theory of Molecular Evolution (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983)

Memes and the exploitation of imagination, Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism48 (1990):127-135.

John R. Searle, Minds, Brains and Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1984).

Leslie A. White, The Science of Culture, A STUDY OF CIVILIZATION, New York:
Farrar, Straus and Co. 1949.


Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype (Oxford: W.H. Freeman and
Company, 1982), pp. 111-112.

Hume. 1779. _Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion_, Norman Kemp
Smith, ed., Part II. An e-version is at
<http://www.utm.edu/research/hume/wri/dialogue/dialogue.txt.
Paley. 1802. The Watch and the Human Eye in _A Modern Introduction
to Philosophy_, Edwards and Pap, eds., 425.
Pearl, Leon. Humes Criticism of the Argument from Design _The
Monist_ 54: 270-84 (1970), 276, 274. John Stewart Mill, _Theism_
(NY, 1957), 29, is cited on 271.

Richard Dawkins Snake Oil and Holy Water
If God is a synonym for the deepest principles of physics, what word is
left for a hypothetical being who answers prayers, intervenes to save cancer
patients or helps evolution over difficult jumps, forgives sins or dies for
them?

Philip Clayton The Ultimate Hypothesis
==
Ice Age History
Preboreal= 10300 yrs ago - ice age ended but still cool
Boreal= 9800 yrs ago warming strong monsoon returns to India
Atlantic= 9000 very warm Europe heavy rains in Africa
Early subboreal= 5800 sharp cooling Bahamas emerge!
4920 yrs ago sharp warming followed by
Kish -biblical flood 4900 yrs ago
Late Subboreal= 4120 yrs ago cooling by 3280 yrs ago sharp cooling
Subatlantic= 960 BC sharp warming, but by 120 BC cooling and Florida
emerges! 150 AD warming again until
Scandic= 270 AD cooling; 630 AD warming; and 670 AD long cooling until
AD 930
Neoatlantic= 930 AD very warm until
Pacific= 1190 AD cooling until 1470 AD then warming
Little Ice Age= 1530 AD cool or cooling until 1700 AD warm then 1810
cool again
Modern= 1850-1940 warming and then 1940-1972 some cooling -after 1972
warming!!!
==
Stephen Pinker How The Mind Works
The mind is a system of organs of computation designed by natural
selection to solve the problems faced by our ancestors in their foraging
way of life

A Guide for the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher
Christopher Charniak _Minimal Rationality_
Science and its Fabrication Alan Chalmers, 1998.

Roland Omnes, Understanding Quantum Mechanics, Princeton, 1999
==
Miller experiment.
Just turning on the spark in a basic pre-biotic experiment will yield _13_
out of 20 amino acids. With other plausible prebiotic conditions you can
get 17 of the 20. You can do this in several plausible early earth
atmospheres. CO2/hydrogen and nitrogen will do the trick (yield is a bit
lower though).The yield in the orginal experiment after two weeks was 5%,
this may not sound much, but this is actually staggeringly high, and
stunned the chemistry world at the time. The abiotically produced amino
acids could be polymerised into simple peptides, some with catalytic
properties. The tar is not such a problem as many of the compounds in
the tar _help_ with polymerization. Many of the polymerization schemes
use drying and redisolving compunds of the shoreline of beaches and lagoons,
wheretar interference is minimal.
Since the first prebiotic experiments a wide variety of biological
molecules have been synthesised from several plausible prebiotic
atmospheres (even worst case scenarios), including nucleotides, ribose
sugars and pantetheine. There has even been successfull abiotic
synthesis of high energy phosphate compounds.

Miller, S. L. Which Organic Compounds Could have Occurred on the
PrebioticEarth?, in Evolution of Catalytic Function (Cold Spring
Harbor Symposium onQuantitative Biology, Vol. 52, 1987), pp. 17-27.

Robertson, M. P. & Miller, S. L. Prebiotic Synthesis of
5-SubstitutedUracils: A Bridge Between the RNA World and the
DNA/Protein World,
Science 268, 702-705 (1995)

de Graaf RM. Visscher J. Schwartz AW. A plausibly prebiotic synthesis
of phosphonic acids. Nature. 378(6556):474-7, 1995

There is also a special Scientific American issue on the origin of
life, Orgel LE. The origin of life on the earth. Scientific American.
271(4):76-83, 1994 Oct
http://www.gene.com/ae/WN/NM/miller.html
http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/articles/95articles/cdeduve.html
==
Kurt Godels Incompleteness Theorem.
The theorem simply states that if a system is incompletely defined by its
axioms then there will be some questions that cannot be answered by that
system. There are algebras where this is not a problem and indeed when
there exsists an incomplete condition the issue of unresolvability merely
is a condition of the axioms.
Godels theorem:
For any formal system that distuinguishes between items that belong to a
set and items that dont, there is an item whose set cannot be determined.
Godel proved another theorem, a Completeness Theorem for a particular
branch of logic. Some systems are complete.

Godels Incompleteness Theorem
Godels First Incompleteness Theorem says that in any consistent formal
system which is sufficiently expressive that it can model ordinary
arithmetic, one can formulate expressions which can never be proven to be
valid or invalid (true or false) within that formal system. (Technically
speaking, the system must also be recursive; that is, there must be a
decision procedure for determining whether a given string is an axiom within
the formal system.)
Essentially, all such systems can formulate what is known as a Liar
Paradox. The classic Liar Paradox sentence in ordinary English is This
sentence is false. Note that if a proposition is undecidable, the formal
system cannot even deduce that it is undecidable.

Chaitin extended Godel. Godels Theorem falls out as a special
case corollary of the stuff Chaitin and Kolmogorov did.

In the below discussion, It is incorrectly believed that Godels
incompleteness theory applies to real finite memory machines.
Godels theory assumes the availability of unlimited names, unlimited
integers and unlimited recursion. This MIGHT apply to the nonexistent
set of all possible computers in the infinite future but it does NOT
apply to ANY real computer in any given, FIXED, year.
More can be said of the halting problem: Any operating(power on)
finite memory computer, started with a software controlled problem and
left to run without further input, will start exactly repeating its
output sequence in a finite time. This time may be unrealistic in the
computers lifetime but its less than the time it takes to count up to
the maximum number the computer can remember(total bits).
A computer with much larger memory CAN exactly record when the smaller
one starts to repeat its output (halt making new results), by simply
recording all the smaller computers TOTAL(all internal bits) results
and comparing each to all the rest.

Russell showed that one of the formal systems formulated by Frege (in which
he used as an axiom what he mistakenly thought was a logical proposition) was
inconsistent, subject to what's now called Russell's paradox. Other formal
systems, e.g. Russell's theory of types, Hilbert's work, Zermelo-Fraenkel
system, etc. avoid this inconsistency.

As for Godel, his incompleteness theorems showed that in some
axiom-based formal systems it was possible to present certain statements
whose truth value could not be determined within that system. But there
were certainly many other statements which could be proved true or false.
--
Example 1 (Set Theory):
Look up 'Continuum Hypothesis', which was proven by Godel in 1938 to be
consistent (i.e. non-contradicting) with the traditional (Zermelo-Fraenkel,
axioms of set theory. Problem is, later on P. Cohen proved that its negation to
be consistent as well.
Result: Several versions of set theory, some of which have CH true and others
false. Most people treat CH as another axiom, though.

Example 2 (Geometry):
For a long time (around 2 millinea) it was thought that the Eucledian Parallel
Postulate:
Given a line L and a point P not on L, there is exactly one line L' which
contains P and is parallel to L. could be proven from the other Euclidean
axioms, i.e. that it is a theorem and need not be an axiom. However, replacing
'exactly one' with 'at least two' or 'no' gives no contradictions whatsoever,
giving rise to Lobachevski-Bolyai (hyperbolic) and Riemann geometries,
respectively.

Russell produced a paradox in Frege's axiom system--which corresponds,
if memory serves, to what folks call "naive set theory." Russell &
Whitehead's theory of types, as displayed in _Principia Mathematica_,
tries to avoid these paradoxes. Nowadays, there are other axiomatic
systems for set theory that people use (Zermelo-Fraenkel is one; I
think Godel had a hand in another) that have simpler mechanisms to
avoid paradox (e.g. the distinction between classes and proper classes).
==
One cannot prove existential negatives, like unicorns do not exist,
because to prove them one would have to survey the entire universe. All one
can say is that there is no evidence that unicorns exist, and certitude to
their existence is then given according to the evidence. Zero evidence,
zero certitude, which in not the same as proving they do not exist. In
the discussion at hand it is up to you to provide conclusive evidence for
your claims, and the standard of evidence is as always the scientific one.
==
The minimum critical mass for U-235 is approximately 15 kilograms.
The Hiroshima bomb might have contained up to 60 kilograms of U-235.
==
Neutrons decay into a proton, positron, and anti-neutrino.
The currently accepted best value for the neutron lifetime,
886.7 (+/- 1.9) seconds. (P.R. Huffman et al., Nature, 6 January 2000.)
==
There are grooves from moving ice sheet s in Sahara that goes on for
hundreds of kilometers (440-465 million years old, Ordovician Period) .
The major glaciations in the Phanerozoic (Cambrian to Recent) have been
in the Ordovician, the Late Carboniferous and Early Permian, and the
modern ones since the Miocene or so. There is evidence for several
even older periods of glaciation back in the Precambrian.

There is evidence of two TOTAL freezups in the Precambrian, oceans included.
==
Random House College Edition, 1968,
scientism (noun):
1. Often disparaging. The attitudes, practices, etc., regarded as
characteristics of scientists. 2. advocacy of the application of
principles derived from the natural sciences to other disciplines,
including the humanities the social sciences. 3. scientific or
pseudo-scientific language.

scientistic (adj):
1. characterized by or having an exaggerated belief in science. 2. of,
pertaining to, or characterized by scientism.
--------
_The Tesla Coil Builders Guide to The Colorado Springs Notes of Nikola Tesla_
by Richard L Hull and the Tesla Coil Builders of Richmond Virginia
Best advanced guide for building the Tesla Coil, and Teslas Magnifying
Transmitter. Lots of practical advice and (the primary focus of the book)
history of the development of Teslas high voltage, high frequency resonators.
==
No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.
Charles P. Steinmetz
==
The results of experiments produce facts in the form of data. The
interpretation of such facts is often done in the context of specific
theoretical premises, but that does not mean that there is no evidence that can
be found that would contradict those theoretical premises, and in fact many
scientists understand they could make their careers if they could identify
evidence contradicting the current popular theories in favor of some new theory
that would make them famous.
==
There are cave paintings at Lascaux, France and elsewhere. Discovered in 1940,
Lascaux is an underground cave in southwestern France which is perhaps the
most elaborate presentation of Paleolithic art. Mainstream science informs
us that Stone Age artists from 17,000 years ago, using ladders,
scaffolding, paints and tools decorated the enormous chambers with over 1500
engravings and 600 paintings in shades of black, yellow, red and brown. They
depict a bevy of animals including horses, bulls, deer and ibex and even a
http://www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/
==
There are some North Texas oil wells where the byproduct gases are
in excess of 50% helium. This is derived from alpha particle decay
of radioactive atoms in a granite gravel bed into which the natural
gas migrated.
==
Our own first hand common sense experience is often very misleading.
Such experience would tell us that the earth is flat, that heavy objects
always fall faster than light objects, species are fixed, the sun goes around
the fixed earth and that light always travels in a straight line at infinite
speed through space. Such ideas, when extrapolated to the larger universe
outside our immediate experience and time, are wrong. If clearly in our
first hand experience were a reliable guide to how the world works, we
wouldnt need science at all and majority vote of the citizens would settle
all such questions.
==
He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, and that is the heart
of science.-Carl Sagan on Johannes Kepler in Cosmos
-----
Andromeda galaxy is about 700 kpcs and its approaching us at about
100 km/s. kpc= kiloparsec 1 parsec is 3.258 light years. km = kilometer
==
Disappearance of stellar debris disks around main-sequence stars after 400
million years Almost 5 billion years ago, the Sun formed in a local contraction
of a cloud of molecular gas.A rotating disk of gas and dust is believed to have
fed material onto the proto-Sun for the first few million years of its life,and
to have formed the planets, comets and other Solar System objects. Similar
disks, but with less mass, have been observed around a few main-sequence stars
such as Vega. The dust particles orbiting stars like Vega will be removed on
timescales of the order of 1Myr (Vega is about 350Myr old), and therefore must
be resupplied, at least for a time. But earlier surveys lacked the sensitivity
to determine how many nearby stars have dust disks, and to investigate how long
such disks survive. Here we report infrared observations indicating that most
stars younger than 300Myr have dust disks, while most older than 400Myr do
not: ninety per cent of the disks disappear when the star is between 300 and
400 Myr old. Several events that are related to the clean up of debris in the
early history of our Solar System have a similar time scale.
==
From the Feb 1998 issue of _Sky and Telescope_
By comparing detailed numerical models with solar-oscillation data,
David B. Guenther (Saint Marys University) and Pierre Demarque (Yale
University) have pinned down the Suns age at 4.5 +/- 0.1 billion
years. As noted in the _Astrophysical Journal_ for August 1, 1997,
this result dovetails nicely with the ages of the oldest meteorites.
The astronomers used measurements from the Global Oscillation Network
Group of ground-based solar telescopes, whose round-the-world stations
monitor the Suns brightness variations. These variations indirectly
reveal physical conditions beneath the surface.
==
Petitio Principii - Begging the question technical term
Strawman is a misrepresentation of something, usually an idea, to make
it easier to knock down with argumentation.
Poisoning the well attacks a claim not yet presented.
A baculum attacks an idea by reference to use of force or reference
to evil results of belief of the idea.
God of the gaps? We dont know so it must be God did it
Proof by assertion Stating a claim is assumed to be adequate proof.
See A21-Logic.txt in unsorted files
-----
In the latest edition of Scientific Americans quarterly publication
The Oceans, it is stated that in about 1 billion years, the sun will have
brightened to the point that our planet will no longer be able to
sustain liquid water, and thus will not sustain life.
See The Origins of Water on Earth in Scientific American Presents
The Oceans ,Fall 1998 issue,
-----
Hofstadter has co-edited "The Mind's I" with Dennett
Allport, P.P. 1993. Are the Laws of Physics Economical with the
Truth? _Synthese_ 94: 245-90.
Bothamley, Jennifer. 1993. _Dictionary of Theories_ (Washington,
D.C.: Gale Research International Ltd.), 637pp.
Cartwright, Nancy. 1980. Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts?
_Pacific Philosophical Quarterly_ 61: 75-84.
Cartwright, Nancy. 1983. _How the Laws of Physics Lie_ (GB:
Clarendon Press), 221pp.
Cartwright, Nancy. 1993. Is Natural Science Natural Enough?: A
Reply to Philip Allport _Synthese_ 94: 291-301.
Cartwright, Nancy. 1997. Why Physics? in _The Large, the Small and
the Human Mind_, Malcolm Longair, ed. (NY: Cambridge University
Press), 161-8.
Cartwright, Nancy. 1998. How Theories Relate: Takeovers or
Partnerships? _Philosophia Naturalis_ 35: 23-34.
Cartwright, Nancy and John Nordby. 1983. How Approximations Take Us
Away from Theory and Towards the Truth _Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly_ 64: 273-80.
Gale, Richard. 1984. Science and the philosophers _Nature_ 312: 491-5.
Needham, Paul. 1991. Duhem and Cartwright on the Truth of Laws
_Synthese_ 89: 89-109.
Stockler, Manfred. 1998. On the Unity of Physics in a Dappled World
Comment on Nancy Cartwright _Philosophia Naturalis_ 35: 35-9.
-----
A priori is a term used to identify a type of knowledge which is obtained
independently of experience. A proposition is known a priori if when judged
true or false one does not refer to experience. A priorism is a
philosophical position maintaining that our minds gain knowledge
independently of experience through innate ideas or mental faculties. The
term a priori is distinguished from a posteriori, which means knowledge
gained through the senses and experience. These are the two most common ways
in which philosophers argue that humans acquire knowledge.
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/apriori.htm
==
http://www.members.tripod.com/~mmanch01/
Copernicus De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, published a few days
after his death, gave new currency to the ancient Pythagorean
hypothesis that the Sun was at the centre of the universe
and that the planets (including the Earth) revolved around the
Sun. The work was however published with a preface by Andreas Osiander,
which declared that the theory of the Polish astronomer was a mere
hypothesis whose value lay in the way that it simplified astronomical
calculations. That saved from Church criticism.
==
An eclipse occurred on March 28, 585 BCE that may have
been the one reported to have been predicted by Thales of Miletus that
perhaps triggered the development of Greek science and philosophy.
==
The laws of physics: William James vs. realist physicists

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