From Jeff Hecht at New Scientist: Yet the scorched remains of 60 micrometeorites have survived 2.7 billion years in the limestone Tumbiana Formation of Western Australia. They are the oldest space rocks ever discovered on Earth. What’s more, the fact that the meteorites contain oxides of iron show that the upper part of the atmosphere back then must have contained oxygen. … The survival of iron oxides is particularly unusual – and it may only have happened because of unusually fortuitous circumstances. The lake into which the micrometeorites fell was highly alkaline, with its deepest layers totally anoxic. This is probably what prevented the minerals from dissolving. “Such conditions are rarely encountered in the geological record, which means that the Read More ›

Recently, we wrote about how a forbidden Darwin debunker had to be stopped. Debunking is all right as long as it doesn’t touch the culture’s true icons*: In the last few years, Sutton has himself embarked on another journey to the depths, this one far more treacherous than the ones he’s made before. The stakes were low when he was hunting something trivial, the supermyth of Popeye’s spinach; now Sutton has been digging in more sacred ground: the legacy of the great scientific hero and champion of the skeptics, Charles Darwin. In 2014, after spending a year working 18-hour days, seven days a week, Sutton published his most extensive work to date, a 600-page broadside on a cherished story of Read More ›

As debate has proceeded on the watershed, wedge-apart issue, real-time events have intruded to show who has read the dynamics accurately. Never mind the dismissive, denigratory accusations: bigot, hater, coward, apocalyptic, and worse  . . . So, it is time to promote yet another comment in the still-in progress thread — no. 656 — as a FTR: >>Events as we debate, sadly, are showing just how accurate and timely the analysis in the OP above is. Now, in the OP I spoke to bringing a society to a ridge-line watershed that forces a wedging apart of a community, country or civilisation along double, mutually polarised slippery slopes leading to ruin. When I did so, I had no awareness of a Read More ›

From ABC: The discovery pushes back the technological advance to between 45,000 to 49,000 years ago, and coincides with the arrival of people in Australia. The fragment is 10,000 years older than the previous oldest known fragments found in northern Australia in 2010.More. See also: Does the evidence point to mankind’s fully natural origin ? Follow UD News at Twitter!

It was multicellular, not unicellular, a predicted. From Nature News: A mysterious deep-ocean seaweed diverged from the rest of the green-plant family around 540 million years ago, developing a large body with a complex structure independently from all other sea or land plants. All of the seaweed’s close relatives are unicellular plankton. The finding, published today in Scientific Reports, upends conventional wisdom about the early evolution of the plant kingdom. “People have always assumed that within the green-plant lineage, all the early branches were unicellular,” says Frederik Leliaert, an evolutionary biologist at Ghent University in Belgium. “It is quite surprising that among those, a macroscopic seaweed pops up.” … “We still need to do a lot more sampling of those Read More ›

From BBC News: It has also detected nine small planets within so-called habitable zones, where conditions are favourable for liquid water – and potentially life. The finds are contained within a catalogue of 1,284 new planets detected by Kepler – which more than doubles the previous tally. … The Nasa Ames researcher said the Kepler mission was part of a “larger strategic goal of finding evidence of life beyond Earth: knowing whether we’re alone or not, to know… how life manifests itself in the galaxy and what is the diversity”. She added: “Being able to look up to a point of light and being able to say: ‘That star has a living world orbiting it.’ I think that’s very profound Read More ›

We are told, Running a brain-twisting thought experiment for real shows that information is a physical thing – so can we now harness the most elusive entity in the cosmos? … Recently came the most startling demonstration yet: a tiny machine powered purely by information, which chilled metal through the power of its knowledge. This seemingly magical device could put us on the road to new, more efficient nanoscale machines, a better understanding of the workings of life, and a more complete picture of perhaps our most fundamental theory of the physical world. More. That hardly makes information physical; if anything it would show that the universe in which we live is not ultimately controlled by physical forces. But we Read More ›

To read VJ Torley’s analysis of my criticism of S. Joshua Swamidass’ recent article, Evidence and Evolution, one would think that I mercilessly berated a poor fellow who was merely attempting to “extend an olive branch to creationists.” After all, nowhere did Swamidass belittle or ridicule his opponents, and nowhere was there so much as a trace of the smug superiority. And the guy is a Christian, not some atheistic reductionist. In fact, Swamidass does not even draw any conclusions in his article.  Read more

As the ongoing exchange on watersheds and dual mutually polarised slippery slopes continues, 07 has been demanding: 07, 536: I am still waiting on my list of 10 self evident moral truths. If anyone else can help Phinehas out that would be appreciated! He now stands answered in the very next comment, which I headline: >>537kairosfocus May 12, 2016 at 8:56 pm 07: Your rhetorical wait is over. There is no material difference between a single self evident moral truth and a dozen, once one exists such a category is non-empty. However, there are in fact several reasonably accessible self evident core moral truths of cumulatively systematic impact: 1] The first self evident moral truth is that we are inescapably Read More ›

After reading Dr. Cornelius Hunter’s panning of Professor S. Joshua Swamidass’s recent article, Evidence and Evolution, I figured the professor must have written a truly awful piece. Nevertheless, I decided to go back and have a look at his article. And I’m very glad I did. Swamidass’s article was irenic in tone, easy to follow, deeply learned, and absolutely right. Professor Swamidass’s olive branch What Professor Swamidass was attempting to do in his article was to extend an olive branch to creationists. Nowhere in the article did he belittle or ridicule his opponents, and there was not a trace of the smug superiority which many scientists display, when talking to creationists. Indeed, he bent over backwards to be accommodating: If Read More ›

At Ars Technica, John Timmer says what we all know about science journalism: Riffing off a John Oliver rant. On Monday, all these science journalism problems were driven home yet again. The University of Gothenburg issued a press release suggesting that hunger influences our decision-making processes. This finding shouldn’t be a huge surprise; anything that distracts us seems to influence our ability to make decisions. But the release itself is a perfect example of many of the problems Oliver pointed out. To begin with, the study was done with rats, not humans. But the very first line of the release—”Never make a decision when you are hungry”—implies that the results clearly apply to us. The other problem is that the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Venus flytraps have fascinated biologists for centuries, however, the molecular underpinnings of their carnivorous lifestyle remain largely unknown. Researchers have now characterized gene expression, protein secretion, and ultrastructural changes during stimulation of Venus flytraps and discover that common plant defense systems, which typically protect plants from being eaten, are also used by Venus flytraps for insect feeding. … “Contact with chitin normally means danger for a plant — that insects will eat the plant,” corresponding author Rainer Hedrich from the University of Würzburg said. Comparing the global gene expression changes during insect capture and digestion to the stress response of the model organism, Arabidopsis, the researchers found several commonalities. Jasmonic acid (JA), which is produced by non-carnivorous plants Read More ›

See here. Bill Nye fashions himself a voice of rational thought and scientific inquiry. His shtick has gotten him into classrooms and on an endless loop of evangelizing TV appearances. Yet nearly every time he speaks these days, Nye diminishes genuine science by resorting to scaremonger-y nuggets of easily dismissible ideologically-motivated nonsense.

One of the themes that has come up in the ongoing exchanges on the perils of our civilisation (with homosexualisation of marriage under colour of law as a key case in point) is the issue of justice, rights and manifestly evident core principles of the natural moral law.  Given current trends, this issue is well worth a particular focus. (On the wider issue of the objectivity of morality, I suggest here as a start. BTW, objectors should note that when they try to show us to be in the wrong, they are showing an implicit knowledge that core moral principles are binding and generally known, including justice and rights. That is, despite talking points to the contrary they know that Read More ›

Richard Weikart’s radio debate with philosopher Peter Singer (infanticide supporter) and evolutionary psychologist Susan Blackmore He writes, “This debate came about because of my recent book, The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life. Blackmore raises the issue of Darwinism to defend her position.” Here. See also: Darwin womb to tomb: Darwinism and abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia Father of adult son with Down syndrome reflects on post-birth abortion and Darwinism Nearly half of Americans now think humans are not special and “The evolutionary psychologist knows why you vote — and shop, and tip at restaurants” Follow UD News at Twitter!