Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Fossil forest update: “Pretty sophisticated” for nearly 400 million years ago

Researcher: "Based on what we know from the body fossil evidence of Archaeopteris prior to this, and now from the rooting evidence that we've added at Cairo, these plants are very modern compared to other Devonian plants. Read More ›

How can we make low-energy concrete for the Moon or Mars — or, Earth?

The C18 rediscovery/ re-invention of concrete . . . it had apparently been made by the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians [–> earlier, the Nabataeans] (and many natural, volcanic or sedimentary rocks are concrete-like) . . . opened up a world of new building possibilities; especially, when it is reinforced by steel. As, we can see all around us. But, concrete here uses a high energy process based on limestone, so how can we break through such barriers for the Moon or Mars? And, how could this be relevant to our home world, Earth? We could look at bones and teeth. For: >>The minerals found in human teeth and bones that give them their hardness and strength belong to a group Read More ›

Test: If naturalists are right, totalitarian states should be just as creative as free ones

A Chinese university is dumping intellectual freedom from their charters yet China hopes to be the world’s top AI power. Is there a contradiction here? Read More ›

At Aeon: Religion, science, and post-modernism

McLeish: Much of ‘postmodern’ philosophical thinking and its antecedents through the 20th century appear at best to have no contact with science at all, and at worst to strike at the very root-assumptions on which natural science is built, such as the existence of a real world, and the human ability to speak representationally of it. Read More ›

Fossilized Cambrian arthropod brains found

Had to happen eventually. And when a Cambrian arthropod brain turns up that can be analyzed, if it turns out to be pretty much like a modern arthropod brain, what reasonable conclusion should we draw about the design of life or the alleged lack thereof? Read More ›

At New Scientist: Our puny human brains can’t imagine alien life

Not true! We humans more or less invented the whole idea of aliens. Without us, they probably wouldn’t exist even as a story. Just think: There would be no market for ET tales, films, and trade goods except for us humans. Don’t believe me? Try to get clams or termites interested in ET and see what happens… Read More ›

One of the biggest science stories of the last decade: The Descent of Man gets crowdsourced

Those old Descent of Man charts were sometimes fun, showing a bacterium ending up as some poor slob hunched over a workstation. Some sort of moral was always pounded into us by these tales, usually not an uplifting one. But real history is always better and more interesting. Read More ›