Reflectorites
Below are web article links, headlines and/or paragraphs for the
period 13-17 January, in descending date order, with my
comments in square brackets.
Steve
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http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/ ABCNEWS January 17, 2000 ...
Pop Quiz Vertebrates make up what percentage of the animal kingdom?
(X) 4 percent () 14 percent () 23 percent () 73 percent Correct! ... [This
quiz reveals that vertebrates only make up 4% of animals. Yet the strongest
claimed evidence for evolution comes from that 4%. The other 96% of
animals, seem to be mostly ignored by evolutionists, presumably because it
does not provide as good evidence for evolution? This is a point Phil
Johnson has made: "...the evidence for Darwinian macroevolutionary
transformations is most conspicuously absent just where the fossil evidence
is most plentiful- among marine invertebrates. (These animals are plentiful
as fossils because they are so frequently covered in sediment upon death,
whereas land animals are exposed to scavengers and to the elements.) If the
theory were true, and if the correct explanation for the difficulty in finding
ancestors were the incompleteness of the fossil record, then the evidence
for macroevolutionary transitions would be most plentiful where the record
is most complete." (Johnson P.E., "Defeating Darwinism by Opening
Minds", 1997, p60)]
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/chandra000114.html
ABCNEWS ... Peering Into Deep Space Orbiting Observatory
Applies X-Ray Vision By Kenneth Chang ... ATLANTA, Jan. 16 -
For each breath you take, thank an exploding star. ...The images
show a ring of gas about 1,000 years after the supernova. ... The
particular wavelengths, or "colors," glowing in the 30-light-year-wide
ball show that some of the gas is oxygen. A lot of it - the amount of
oxygen is equal to the mass of 1.5 million Earths. That oxygen
could someday fill the atmosphere of not-yet-formed planets,
enough for thousands of planetary systems. Without supernova
explosions, there could not be any life ... Heavier elements such as
oxygen are formed mostly in the fusion reactors of the very largest
stars and when these stars go supernova, the heavier elements are
dispersed into the interstellar clouds. When the clouds condense
into new stars, there's enough of the heavier stuff to also form
planets and provide atmospheres for them. "These might be called
the fountains of life," Canizares says, "because it was the explosion
of such supernovae that provided the oxygen on Earth." [This
article indicates that oxygen is plentiful in space, particularly
where planetary systems form, so this seems to throws even more doubt
on the Miller-Urey postulate that the early earth had a reducing
atmosphere (ie. with little or no oxygen). The same article also
mentions the puzzle of the Milky Way's central black hole being
so weak, but see the following Washington Post article.]
http://www.sciencenews.org/20000115/fob6.asp Science News Week of
Jan. 15, 2000; Vol. 157, No. 3 All mixed up over birds and dinosaurs By
R. Monastersky ... Red-faced and downhearted, paleontologists are
growing convinced that they have been snookered by a bit of fossil fakery
from China. The "feathered dinosaur" specimen that they recently unveiled
to much fanfare apparently combines the tail of a dinosaur with the body of
a bird, they say. ... Recently, while examining a dromaeosaurid dinosaur in
a private collection in China, Xu decided that the Archaeoraptor fossil is a
chimera. The tail of that dinosaur is identical to the Archaeoraptor tail, he
told Science News.The two tails are mirror images of each other, derived
from the same individual, says Xu. When rocks containing fossils are split,
they often break into two fossils. Currie suspects that someone sought to
enhance the value of Archaeoraptor by pasting one part of the dinosaur's
tail to a bird fossil. ... [An example of the danger of fraud when too much
money is at stake and scientists see what they want to see. There is going
to be red faces at National Geographic whose November 1999 issue
featured this, and extrapolated that even T-rex had feathers! The fact is that
none of the Chinese *dinosaurs* have feathers! Only two early *birds*,
Caudipteryx and Protoarchaeopteryx, have feathers.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-01/15/047l-011500-idx.html
The Washington Post ... Weak Black Hole Mystifies Scientists Orbiting
Chandra Observatory Reveals Several Unknown Features of the Cosmos
By Curt Suplee Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, January 15, 2000;
Page A13 ATLANTA, Jan. 14-The supermassive black hole at the center
of our Milky Way galaxy appears to be sort of a wimp, surprised
astronomers announced today. With a mass of 2.6 million suns, its
perimeter should be ablaze with X-rays created as trillions of tons of ultra-
hot compressed gas vanish into its bottomless maw. Instead, eagerly
awaited first findings from the recently launched Chandra observatory
show that the output "is really puny," said Gordon Garmire of Pennsylvania
State University. A hole that hefty should be "a million or even a billion
times brighter than what we're seeing. That's a real puzzle. It's going to
challenge theorists to explain why it's so faint." Also at:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000114/sc/space_chandra_2.html
Yahoo! ... Friday January ... Coolest Black Hole Found by Chandra
Telescope ... By Deborah Zabarenko ATLANTA (Reuters) - The coolest
black hole ever detected has been found in a nearby galaxy, astronomers
reported on Friday in the first scientific findings from the 5-month-old
orbiting Chandra X-ray telescope. Coolness, in this case, is a relative term.
The black hole in question is in the known-to-be-quirky Andromeda
galaxy, and the gas swirling into it has a temperature of a mere million
degrees Fahrenheit. A typical star in Andromeda that gives off X-rays has a
temperature at least 10 times that. ... [See below for more different black
hole stories. I find it significant how often theories formed in the absence of
hard experimental evidence, that seem so obviously right, have often had to
be drastically revised when it became possible to test them experimentally.
Now what other theory do we know of that seemed so right, which was
formed in the absence of hard experimental evidence, has not yet been able
to be tested experimentally, yet is starting to look decidedly shaky? ;-)]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_603000/603707.stm
BBC ... Saturday, 15 January, 2000, ... Planet faces 'abrupt
changes' Antarctic temperatures have risen by more than two
degrees since 1940 By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby A
US report says the world could be taken by surprise by unexpected
environmental problems during the twenty-first century. ... One of
the authors, Chris Bright, says: "Environmental decline is often
seen as gradual and predictable, but ... As pressures on the Earth's
natural systems build, there may be some disconcerting surprises
as trends interact, reinforcing each other and triggering abrupt
changes." [More evidence that uniformitarian extrapolations back
into the past or forward into the future, are tenuous.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_603000/603514.stm
BBC ...Friday, 14 January, 2000, ... Chandra solves cosmic X-ray
mystery The Universe's X-ray glow is actually millions of pinpoint
sources By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse
... A second new class of objects has been observed in the image.
Comprising approximately one-third of the sources, they are
thought to be "ultra-faint galaxies". Dr Mushotzky said that these
sources may emit little or no optical light, either because the dust
around the galaxy blocks the light totally or because the optical light
is eventually absorbed during its long journey across the Universe.
He added that these sources would be well over 14 billion light
years away and thus the earliest, most distant objects ever
identified. [It will be interesting if these do turn out to be galaxies
and the most distant objects ever detected. It might tell us
something empirically verifiable about the universe not long after it
came into existence.]
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/Blackhole_000114.html
ABCNEWS ... A Black Hole of a Neighbor A Nearby Puzzle By Paul
Recer The Associated Press ATLANTA, Jan. 14 -Four bursts of X-ray
energy have alerted astronomers to a black hole just 1,600 light-years away
from Earth, practically on the doorstep in astronomical terms. ... Smith said
the bursts come and go so rapidly that it may represent a new subclass of
X-ray-producing objects. ..."Either the matter can flow into the black hole
without forming an accretion disk or the black hole is significantly different
in its mass, spin or charge," said Ronald Remmillard of MIT. ... See also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_603000/603423.stm BBC
... Friday, 14 January, 2000, Lone drifter black holes discovered ... By
BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse Some black holes
drift alone through the Galaxy rather than waltzing around companion
stars, astronomers have discovered. ... All previously known star-sized
black holes have been found in orbit around normal stars, with their
presence betrayed by their effect on the companion star. The two new
black holes were detected indirectly, by the way their gravity bends the
light of a more distant star behind them. "These results suggest that black
holes are common and that many massive but normal stars may end their
lives as black holes," said Dr David Bennett ...; Also at:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000113/sc/holes_naked_1.html &:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000113/sc/space_holes_1.html Yahoo!
... Thursday January 13 ... Three Giant Black Holes Found Near Earth By
Deborah Zabarenko ATLANTA (Reuters) - Three monster black holes
have turned up in Earth's cosmic neighborhood, astronomers reported on
Thursday, prompting questions about whether black holes are born before
the galaxies that contain them. The new trio of so-called supermassive
black holes are in the constellations Virgo and Aries, between 50 million
and 100 million light years from Earth. Even though a light year -- the
distance light travels in a year -- is about six trillion miles, these distances
are just around the corner by celestial standards. Their proximity is not
unusual, but their mass is: Each weighs between 50 million and 100 million
times the mass of our sun. That puts them in a comparatively small club of
giant black holes. Only 20 are known to exist; most black holes weigh just
a few times the sun's mass. ... [There has been a spate of different black
hole news stories in the last week or so. This last one is most interesting
because it might change the standard view that galaxies form first and black
holes last. Could such early black holes be the missing 7 dimensions in
string theory?]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_602000/602703.stm
... Friday, 14 January, 2000, ... Skeleton fuels row over Americans' origins
A reconstruction from the skull of the man at the centre of the controversy
By Washington correspondent Paul Reynolds Tests on an ancient human
skeleton discovered in the United States suggest it may shed new light on
the origins of North America's earliest inhabitants. Carbon dating results
from three laboratories have shown the skeleton - known as Kennewick
Man after the area where it was found - to be between about 9,300 and
9,500 years old. This means that, under federal law, the remains will be
classified as Native American. ... Also at:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000113/sc/science_kennewickman_2.html
Yahoo! ... Thursday January 13 ... U.S. Says Ancient Kennewick Man Is
Native American By Chris Stetkiewicz SEATTLE (Reuters) - The U.S.
Interior Department said on Thursday that tests show the Kennewick Man
skeleton found in southern Washington state in 1996 was that of a 9,300-
year-old Native American, almost certainly descended from Asian
ancestors. The findings supported the popular theory that migrating Asians
first populated North America about 20,000 years ago, and also mean that
the skeleton could be returned to the earth without giving scientists more
time to study it. .. Earlier story at:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000112/sc/science_kennewickman_1.html
Yahoo! ... Wednesday January 12 ... U.S. to Release Age of Disputed
Kennewick Man SEATTLE (Reuters) - The Interior Department on
Thursday will release results of tests dating the Kennewick Man skeleton at
the center of a dispute over whether Europeans roamed North America
9,000 years ago. Anthropologists and American Indian tribes battling for
three years over the skeleton found near the Columbia River in Kennewick,
Washington, were set to receive official radiocarbon dating results that are
certain to rekindle debate over the ethnicity and origin of the remains. ...
[More on this other conflict between science and a culture!]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000920277651983&rtmo=3ww3KKrM&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/1/13/ecfly13.html
Electronic Telegraph 13.01.00 .... The creation of robofly The American
military is funding an ambitious project to mimic the antics of the fly
stretching some of the newest branches of science to their very limits,
reports Andy Goldberg ... The research team were forced to turn to the
natural world as inspiration for their micromachine because regular
aeroplane designs cannot work on such a small scale devices. Flies were
chosen as the insect to copy because they are among nature's best pilots.
They can take off and land in any direction, even upside down. They can
change course in just 30 thousandths of a second. And they process
information at speeds that make a supercomputer look like an abacus.
"They're the fighter jets of the animal world," says Ron Fearing, the head of
the bio-mechanical research project. ... [Just amazing what random
mutation and natural selection can do, isn't it? :-)]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000920277651983&rtmo=3ww3KKrM&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/1/13/ecrlab13.html
Electronic Telegraph 13.01.00 ... View from the lab: Leaden prose, heavy
metal and golden hellos Professor Steve Jones reports on some healthy
changes evident at the annual meeting of the Association for Science
Education ... I have taught 5,000 biology students in my career - and, in the
past decade, my guess is that fewer than one in a 100 has chosen to
become a teacher. Perhaps it's time to stop writing sonorous prefaces to
chemistry books and to come up with some more of Element 79 (and not
just as a hello). Otherwise science teaching - and science - will fade away,
and all the conferences in the world will do nothing to save it. ... [Jones 1%
success rate is astonishingly bad for one who is such a gifted science
communicator. It is becoming an increasing concern in science journals that
young people are not chosing science as a career. Maybe it's the "end of
science" syndrome. Or maybe it is the leaders of science increasingly open
espousal of an anti-theistic philosophy, evidenced by chosing Dawkins as
sciencce's `ambassador'?]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000920277651983&rtmo=3ww3KKrM&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/1/13/ecfbrain13.html
Electronic Telegraph 13.01.00 ... The mind: much more than matter In his
new book, Antonio Damasio delves into the brain in search of the self.
Here he provides an exclusive preview. ... Those who cite the inability of
brain research to reveal the "substance of mind" also assume that current
knowledge is sufficient to make such a judgment final, a notion I find
entirely unacceptable. The current description of the brain is utterly
incomplete. ... Consequently, declaring the conscious-mind problem
insoluble because we have studied the brain to the hilt and have not found
the mind is ludicrous. The appearance of a gulf between mental states and
what occurs in the brain comes from the disparity between incomplete
efforts of neuroscience and the good understanding of mind we have
achieved through centuries of introspection and cognitive science. But
nothing indicates that we stand on the edge of an abyss that would
separate, in principle, the mental from the neural. ... [Nothing indicates it?
What about the current "inability of brain research to reveal the `substance
of mind'". Isn't that *something*? One must admire the unshakeable faith
of materialists! But In guess to them it's like old age-the only alternative is
worse! :-)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000113/sc/science_rice_1.html
Yahoo! ... Thursday January 13 ... Scientists Report on New Golden,
Vitamin-Rich Rice By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists who have genetically engineered a
golden rice that produces extra vitamin A reported details of their
accomplishment on Thursday, saying it could help save the lives of millions
of children. ... What the researchers did was not transfer a single gene, but
the entire genetic pathway for producing beta-carotene -- the precursor of
vitamin A -- into the rice plant. This included three genes, one from a
daffodil, and two from other plants. ... [More wizardry from the genetic
engineers! Such potential for good. But such potential for evil.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_602000/602156.stm
... Thursday, 13 January, 2000, ... Why caterpillars can taste bad.
Caterpillars can cause devastating crop losses By Environment
Correspondent Alex Kirby Why does the taste of some caterpillars deter
birds from eating them? It is a subject that is puzzling researchers at the
University of Stirling, UK. ... Dr Wilson told BBC News Online: "We think
it's possible that the plants the armyworms feed on don't normally produce
cyanide, but only in response to a mass onslaught by the caterpillars". "We
hope to show that this is what makes them distasteful to predators.
"According to the folklore of the Masai people of east Africa, cattle which
graze on land where armyworms have been will themselves die of
poisoning. "If we're right about the plants, that story could turn out to be
true - the mass of the armyworms may stimulate the plants to produce
cyanide, and what's left over may then kill the cattle." ... [If true this will be
another fascinating example of defence systems built into plants.]
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"A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology
and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is
far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the
oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks
semipopular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful
thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find
predictable progressions. In general. these have not been found-yet the
optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks."
(Raup D.M., "Evolution and the Fossil Record", Science, Vol. 213, No.
4505, 17 July 1981, p289).
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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