2018

From Philip Perry at BigThink: The ability to run long distances and sweat—so as not to overheat, allowed our ancestors to wear out other animals. Sweating was the key factor. Consider a gazelle running over long distances and being chased by our progenitors. The fact that they can sweat and the gazelle can’t means they can last far longer in the heat of the African Savannah. … Sweating, in addition to being a highly advanced cooling system, may have also acted as a defense mechanism. Anyone who’s ever played shirtless tackle football in the summertime knows how hard it is to catch someone who’s slick and sweaty. … More. It’s not clear, in that case, why body armor got started. Read More ›

From Steve Dent at Engadget: For the first time, scientists have peered into living cells and created videos showing how they function with unprecedented 3D detail. Using a special microscope and new lighting techniques, a team from Harvard and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute captured zebrafish immune cell interactions with unheard-of 3D detail and resolution. The tech has already yielded new insights on cell function and could transform our understanding of how organisms function at the smallest scales. … The stunning result, as shown above, is a live window into immune cell function with ten times more detail than ever seen before. In one shot, an orange-tinted immune cell scoops up blue sugar particles, and in another, a cancer cell Read More ›

Gravitational waves are thought to be ripples in the fabric of space-time, caused by violent processes. From Davide Castelvecchi at Nature: With a handful of discoveries already under their belts, gravitational-wave scientists have a long list of what they expect more data to bring, including insight into the origins of the Universe’s black holes; the extreme conditions inside neutron stars; a chronicle of how the Universe structured itself into galaxies; and the most-stringent tests yet of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Gravitational waves might even provide a window into what happened in the first few moments after the Big Bang. More. The difficulty is, do gravitational waves exist or are they just today’s phlogiston – an idea that explained Read More ›

Recently, Trinity International University’s Henry Center’s online journal Sapientia asked, “Can Science Detect Intelligent Design? An Introduction,” sponsored by Hans Madueme. Design theorist Stephen C. Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell, replied at Evolution News & Science Today: Where did the information in the cell come from? And how did the cell’s complex information processing system arise? These questions lie at the heart of contemporary origin-of-life research. Clearly, the informational features of the cell at least appear designed. And, as I show in extensive detail in my book Signature in the Cell, no theory of undirected chemical evolution explains the origin of the information needed to build the first living cell. Why? There is simply too much information in Read More ›

From Emily Conover at Science News: Quantum entanglement has left the realm of the utterly minuscule, and crossed over to the just plain small. Two teams of researchers report that they have generated ethereal quantum linkages, or entanglement, between pairs of jiggling objects visible with a magnifying glass or even the naked eye — if you have keen vision. Physicist Mika Sillanpää and colleagues entangled the motion of two vibrating aluminum sheets, each 15 micrometers in diameter — a few times the thickness of spider silk. And physicist Sungkun Hong and colleagues performed a similar feat with 15-micrometer-long beams made of silicon, which expand and contract in width in a section of the beam. Both teams report their results in Read More ›

From David Snoke at the Christian Scientific Society: Some people gave me feedback that this was the best CSS meeting ever. We had a great time discussing both the strange science of quantum mechanics, and some of the implications for religion … Erica Carlson gave a great introduction to the strangeness of QM. She argued strongly against the idea that our minds control reality, as some “new age” writers have argued. Rather, our minds at most control the set of questions that measurement may give answers to. More. The Society now has a Facebook page. See also: At Scientific American: “Inexplicable lab results may be telling us we’re on the cusp of a new scientific paradigm” This doesn’t sound like Read More ›

But putting it that way would have been a bad career move, so the researchers present the facts and leave it at that. From ScienceDaily: A new study of guenon monkeys in Gombe National Park is the first to provide genetic evidence of ongoing mating between two distinct species. These monkeys have successfully been producing hybrid offspring for hundreds maybe even thousands of years. Prior studies have suggested that the different physical characteristics of these monkeys keeps them from interbreeding. So, if their faces don’t match, they shouldn’t be mating, right? Wrong, according to this latest evidence. … Prior studies and conventional wisdom have suggested that the physical characteristics of guenon monkeys with a variety of dazzling colors and very Read More ›

From Michael Price at the Evolution Institute, interviewing independent scholar John Campbell, author of several books on universal Darwinism, John O. Campbell, an independent scholar from British Columbia, has published several works [1-4] describing his version of universal Darwinism. This framework proposes that Darwinian selection explains what exists not just biologically but in many other realms as well, from the quantum to the cultural to the cosmological. My interest in John’s framework developed after I began researching ‘cosmological natural selection with intelligence’ [5-7], and seeing how concepts like entropy, selection, and adaptation seem fundamental in both biology and physics. My research led me to the Evo Devo Universe research community, to which John also belongs, and I soon learned of his remarkable Read More ›

Evolutionists do not have a clear understanding of how photosynthesis arose, as evidenced by a new paper from Kevin Redding’s laboratory at Arizona State University which states that: read more …

From computer engineer Bernardo Kastrup at Scientific American: It turns out, however, that some predictions of QM are incompatible with non-contextuality even for a large and important class of non-local theories. Experimental results reported in 2007 and 2010 have confirmed these predictions. To reconcile these results with the current paradigm would require a profoundly counterintuitive redefinition of what we call “objectivity.” And since contemporary culture has come to associate objectivity with reality itself, the science press felt compelled to report on this by pronouncing, “Quantum physics says goodbye to reality.” The tension between the anomalies and the current paradigm can only be tolerated by ignoring the anomalies. This has been possible so far because the anomalies are only observed in Read More ›

Recently, these stories popped over the desk (might as well address them all at once): From Dirk Schulze-Makuch at AirSpaceMag: Life May Have Begun in Ocean Sediments, According to New Theory During the Hadean time period, more than four billion years ago, the Earth was much more active than it is today, and hot water percolated through Earth’s crust in many places. The submarine crust, being covered by water, would have protected any primitive organisms from ultraviolet radiation. The porosity and chemical reactivity of the sediments between the crust and the seawater are critical in Westall’s model, as it is thought to have led to miniature “chemical reactors” that enhanced formation of the organic building blocks needed for life. While Read More ›

Readers may remember Ask Bret Weinstein who, with his also-biologist wife Heather Heyng, was driven from Evergreen State in Washington during a campus war on science (a side-skirmish in a bigger culture war*). From Debra Soh at Quillette: It’s been almost a year since violent student protests erupted at Evergreen State College—enough time for the “non-traditional” Olympia, WA university to draw useful lessons from a fracas that made it a byword for campus identity politics run amok. Unfortunately, a report from an Independent External Review Panel, tasked by college President George Bridges with finding ways to attain closure on the events of last Spring, provides scant hope this will happen. The Evergreen admin is still placating people it must denounce if Read More ›

Here: Paper. “Popper, in approx 1978 for the most part, took his criticisms of Darwinism back. But when John Horgan interviewed Popper in 1992, Horgan noted that Popper “blurted out that he still found Darwin’s theory dissatisfying. “One ought to look for alternatives!” Popper exclaimed, banging his kitchen table.” ” See also: Laszlo Bencze on the current campaign against Karl Popper’s falsification criterion for science. “I assume that these critics have only read other people’s writings about Popper and not Popper himself.” and Question for multiverse theorists: To what can science appeal, if not evidence?

In the case of former FBI man James Comey and his book,  A Higher Loyalty anyway. From AJ Dellinger at Gizmodo: Reviewers hoping to share their thoughts on former FBI director James Comey’s new book A Higher Loyalty will have to have the conversation somewhere other than Amazon. The massive online retailer is limiting the ability to post reviews to those who purchased the book directly through its platform. Deadline first pointed out the limitation, which is preventing anyone who isn’t a “verified buyer” from leaving feedback on Comey’s tell-all autobiography. Reviewers who did not purchase the book from Amazon and try to leave a review are greeted with a message that reads, “Sorry, we are not able to accept your Read More ›

From Evolution News: InterVarsity Press publishes some great books and used to be a place to which you could reliably turn for thoughtful, well-researched commentary on evolution and intelligent design. They still have excellent titles on the backlist, including Intelligent Design Uncensored and Darwin on Trial. But in 2016, IVP announced a “partnership with the BioLogos Foundation” that seemed to bring with it a whole new attitude. … Now from InterVarsity there comes along a new book, Mere Science and Christian Faith: Bridging the Divide with Emerging Adults, by BioLogos Advisory Council member Greg Cootsona. While not altogether a surprise, it’s disappointing to report that the book’s case for theistic evolution and its critique of intelligent design, aimed at younger Read More ›