Ticks Are “Masters of Survival” – And Defy Darwinian Expectations

This tick found in the Dominican Republic was trapped in amber. Image courtesy of George Poinar, Jr., Oregon State University, CC BY-SA 2.0.



Joel Kontinen

A paper published in Nature Communications features a tick found sucking the blood of an ancient bird-like creature that evolutionists think was a dinosaur. It was found in the famous amber deposit in Myanmar (Burma) “thought to be 99 million years old.”

There is something fishy about this age. An article in Science admits that the samples “were originally purchased from amber dealers by private collectors, who later donated the samples to museums.”

The second problem has to do with the way evolutionists are willing to turn a bird into a dinosaur, as long as it fits in with their ideology. Thus, if the assumed age might cause a problem for their thinking, it is explained away as a dinosaur.

Fossils trapped in amber tend to be problematic for Darwinians, as – regardless of their assumed age – they almost always show a profound lack of change.

Practically all insects trapped in amber look the same as today’s animals. Creatures like ticks, beetles, spiders, wasps or ants defy Darwinian expectations by their stasis or lack of evolution.

Source:

Vogel, Gretchen. 2017. 99-million-year-old ticks sucked the blood of dinosaurs. Science (12 December).

Amazing Navigation Skills in Young Loggerhead Sea Turtles

A baby loggerhead making its way to the sea. Image courtesy of Hillebrand Steve, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Public domain.



Joel Kontinen

Young loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) can swim against tides to get to their preferred destination, new research shows.

Katherine Mansfield (University of Central Florida in Orlando) and her colleagues monitored the movements of 19 young loggerheads via satellite-tracking tags. They released the turtles into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil.

In a few months the tiny animals swam some 4,350 kilometres. They mostly followed seasonal currents but would also swim against the ocean currents.

Darwinian mechanisms can hardly explain the loggerheads’ amazing skills.

They are not the only marine animals that display such prowess. Jellyfish share their ability.

Turtles present another major dilemma for Darwinism. These living fossils have resisted evolution for “230 million” years.

Source:

Mansfield, Katherine L et al. 2017. First satellite tracks of South Atlantic sea turtle ‘lost years’: seasonal variation in trans-equatorial movement. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 284 (1868) (6 December).

Fake Science Papers in the News

Image courtesy of Frederick Burr Opper, Public Domain.




Joel Kontinen

In 2015, a group of Chinese scientists published a paper entitled “Nucleolin Promotes TGF-β Signaling Initiation via TGF-β Receptor I in Glioblastoma” in the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience.

While it might sound like a genuine scientific paper, there is little genuine in it. 1) Its stated funding source was not the real funding source. 2) One of the co-authors admitted he had not taken part in the research or in writing the paper and didn’t even know about the study. 3) The senior author acknowledged that he had not taken part in the submission process and did not support its publication. 4) The journal’s editors suspected that the peer-review process was compromised,

The paper was retracted in June 2017. This year, the journal’s publisher Springer has retracted over 100 scientific papers, prompting Live Science to begin an article with the words:

“Lies, exaggerations, criminal acts, unbridled irony, alternative facts,
fake news … No, we're not talking about 2017 politics. This is the 2017 world of science.”

The article goes on to say:

“This past year, hundreds of scientific papers were retracted from professional journals. In the majority of cases involving these retractions, the reason was an innocent, yet sloppy, error in the methodology of the experiment that the authors themselves caught. But for quite a few papers, the retractions reflected scientific misconduct and a not-so-innocent attempt to tweak the data — or make it up entirely.”

And Live Science didn’t even mention the case of a dog sitting on the editorial board of 7 journals.

It seems that scientific misconduct thrives in the Darwinian community.

Quite often, big science gives rise to big lies.

Source:

Wanjek, Christopher. 2017. Lies, Mistakes & More: These Scientific Papers Got Nixed in 2017. Live Science (27 December).

Saturn’s Rings Are Young, Cassini Data Suggest

Too young for an old solar system? Image courtesy of NASA/JPL.




Joel Kontinen

Belief in a 4.5-billion- year-old solar system requires explaining away unexpected details that point to a much younger date.

Previous research had already suggested a youngish age for Saturn’s rings and moons, and observations made this year by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and reported at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU )confirm this.

An article in Science states that the rings

“are surprisingly youthful: Until a few hundred million years ago, they did not exist. Saturn acquired its jewels relatively late in life. If any astronomers had gazed at the sky in the time of the dinosaurs, they might have seen a bare and boring Saturn.”

The naturalistic scenario needs a catastrophe of sorts, for instance, a comet or asteroid that crashed into one of Saturn’s moons, breaking it into pieces that formed the rings, or a shift in the orbits of the moons.

However, if Saturn is much younger, such storytelling becomes superfluous.

Source:

Voosen, Paul. 2017. Saturn’s rings are a recent addition to the solar system, Cassini observations show. Science (12 December).

Bisons and Buffaloes Remind Us of Genesis’ After Its Kind Principle

A European bison (Bison bonasus). Image courtesy of Michael Gäbler, CC BY 3.0.





Joel Kontinen

Recently, a Live Science article took up the differences between bisons and buffaloes. These animals do look a bit alike, but there are some major differences. American bison are shaggy and have a shoulder hump, but the buffaloes of Asia and Africa don’t. They are more adapted to a warmer climate.

However, the differences do not nullify the obvious, i.e., they belong to the same Genesis kind. This phenomenon can also be seen in many other animals.

What is more, bisons haven’t changed in aeons. They appear in early cave art in Europe.

Hybrids, such as ligers, zonkeys, geeps, grolars, wholphins and leopons, likewise suggest that the Genesis principle is still valid.

Source:

Weisberger, Mindy. 2017. Bison vs. Buffalo: What's the Difference? Live Science (23 December).

Former Pentagon UFO Investigator Does Not Rule Out Alien Life

Image courtesy of Phylyp, CC BY-SA 4.0.




Joel Kontinen

"My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone," said Luis Elizondo, former head of the Pentagon Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, in a recent interview with CNN.

He went on to say that some unidentified flying objects might not necessarily hail from outer space, but some might.

Ufos seem to have an evolution connection.

If life evolved here, it should have also evolved elsewhere, they seem to believe.

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell believes in ufos, and the SETI folks are searching for alien life everywhere.

Some evolutionists speculate what aliens might look like, others are concerned with how to communicate with them, and some, like professor Stephen Hawking, are afraid of them.

Unfortunately (for them, that is), all alleged signals have been false alarms.

In other words, there is no proof of extraterrestrial life or evolution anywhere.

Source:

Howell, Elizabeth. 2017. We May Not Be Alone, Former Pentagon UFO Investigator Says. Space.com (20 December).

Glória in excélsis Deo

Gerard van Honthorst: Adoration of the Shepherds (1622). Public domain (Google Art Project).




Joel Kontinen

Glória in excélsis Deo are words that mark the time God began a new era in His dealings with mankind.

“Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”(Luke 2:14, NKJV), the angels and heavenly hosts told the shepherds to whom they announced these glad tidings.

Adam’s descendants were unable to set right the wrong things their predecessor had done by rebelling against his Maker, so God had to step into human history to reconcile mankind to Himself.

Christmas fulfilled the prophecies uttered by Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah and Micah.

Christ, the Lamb of God, chose to live among human beings to lead us to salvation.

Young Venus? Venus Might Be Geologically Active

Image courtesy of NASA.




Joel Kontinen

An increasing number of observations don’t support the standard age of the solar system, i.e, 4.5 billion years. Instead, they seem to indicate a much younger date.

The list of “bad dates” is anything but short. It includes Venus, Saturn, Pluto, Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa, among others.

A recent report posted on Phys.org gives more details about Venus:

“For planetary scientists, Venus's geologic heartbeat flat-lined around 700 million years ago. Now, a global view of some well-known deformation features on Venus's surface may indicate it's capable of crustal motion, and that motion might even be happening today, scientists reported Monday at the 2017 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans.”

Research presented by Paul Byrne, a planetary geologist at North Carolina State University, and colleagues suggests “signs of deformation within a few of the lava plains.”

At least some of the jostling and moving and rotating could have taken place very recently,” he says.

While they did not find plate tectonics, they certainly discovered signs of unexpected youth.

Source:

Rehm, Jeremy. 2017. Lava-filled blocks on Venus may indicate geological activity. Phys.org (18 December).

Bumblebees “Solve the Travelling Salesman Problem on the Fly”

Bumblebees are amazingly smart. Image courtesy of Bernie Kohl, public domain.





Joel Kontinen

Bumblebees are amazingly smart: they can detect weak electric fields with their mechanosensory hairs.

Recent research disclosed another amazing skill they have: “a grasp of maths that enables them to crack the classic travelling salesman problem as they forage for pollen and nectar.”

New Scientist describes this problem as follows: “Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each city and returns to the origin city?”

It seems that bumblebees with their tiny brains are at least equal to, if not better than, the best human computer programmes that attempt to tackle this problem.

If this sounds a lot like intelligent design, the obvious reason is that it indeed is.

The animal kingdom abounds with designed features that challenge Darwinian evolution, for instance jellyfish navigation, the gliding skills of lemurs, gecko feet and the co-ordinated flight of tens of thousands of starlings.

Source:

New Scientist staff and Press Association. 2017. Bumblebees solve the travelling salesman problem on the fly. New Scientist (11 December).

Scallops’ Eye Works Like A Telescope, Inspires Better Optical Devices

Image courtesy of Rachael Norris and Marina Freudzon, Public Domain.




Joel Kontinen

Scallops are anything but simple creatures. They have “200 eyes that function remarkably like a telescope, using living mirrors to focus light,” an article posted on Phys.org says, reporting on a recent paper published in the journal Science.

Researchers at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science and Lund University in Sweden found out these animals have “a mosaic of tiny mirrors and crystals, carefully arranged inside scallops' small poppy seed-like eyes which line their outer edge, known as the mantle.

Each mirror is layered, reflecting wavelengths of light in their habitat and giving them a spatial view of their surroundings.”

And there’s more.

“Each mirror is also ‘tiled with a mosaic of square-shaped crystals, minimizing surface defects for a clearer picture,’ the Science report said.

‘The mirror forms images on a double-layered retina, to separately image both peripheral and central fields of view.’ "

The research also has a biomimicry dimension: Engineers might use this complex system to design better optical devices.

The animal kingdom is full of intelligently designed features or solutions that cannot be explained away by Darwinian mechanisms.

Source:

Phys.org. 2017. Scallops have 200 eyes, which function like a telescope: study (30 November)-

Dark Energy: “The Worst Theoretical Prediction in the History of Physics”

Image courtesy of Szczureq, CC BY-SA 3.0.



Joel Kontinen

Dark energy is in big trouble. It was assumed to make up 68.3 percent of the mass of the universe, but it might be a mere illusion.

Live Science calls it the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics. Physicists don’t know what it is or if it is.

“We're clueless," astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson admits, but he’s unwilling to throw overboard the model that requires it.

Dark matter hasn't fared any better. Experiments can’t find traces of it.

The Big Bang model has been struggling for years. The facts don’t support it.

Early galaxies grew too fast, there’s no clear evidence of cosmic inflation (that, by the way, has been called a totally bonkers idea), and antimatter is still missing.


Source:

Pomeroy, Ross. 2017. The Worst Theoretical Prediction in the History of Physics. Live Science (1 December).

Cambrian Jellyfish Embryos Haven’t Evolved in “500 Million Years”

Image courtesy of the University of Bristol




Joel Kontinen

Microfossils known as Pseudooides (‘false eggs’) are the inspiration behind a story issued by the University of Bristol. Smaller than grains of sand, they nevertheless succeed in wrecking Darwinian thinking on how things are supposed to change:

“Everyone wants to be with their family for Christmas, but spare a thought for a group of orphan fossils that have been separated from their parents since the dawn of animal evolution, over half a billion years ago.”

Seen from a Darwinian perspective, the problem is that they haven’t changed since the Cambrian Era:

“Pseudooides fossils have a segmented middle like the embryos of segmented animals, such as insects, inspiring grand theories on how complex segmented animals may have evolved.

A team of paleontologists from the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences and Peking University have now peered inside the Pseudooides embryos using X-rays and found features that link them to the adult stages of another fossil group.

It turns out that these adult stages were right under the scientists’ noses all along: they have been found long ago in the same rocks as Pseudooides.

Surprisingly, these long-lost family members are not complex segmented animals at all, but ancestors of modern jellyfish.”

“500 million” years is a long time for the oxymoron known as evolutionary stasis, i.e. absence of change.

Source:

University of Bristol. 2017. Fossil orphans reunited with their parents after half a billion years. (13 December).

Lizard “Evolves a Complex Trait It Once Lost”?

Image courtesy of Jörg Hempelage, CC BY-SA 3.0 de.



Joel Kontinen

Most female lizards lay eggs, but the Zootoca vivipara (‘live-bearing’) gives birth to young offspring, expect for two subspecies.

This prompted New Scientist to speculate that this is a “rare example of a species re-evolving a complex trait that had been lost.”

According to this scenario, lizards first laid eggs, then stopped laying it, forgetting the trait, and then re-discovered it.

The problem with this kind of reasoning is that any kind of change can be seen as an example of Darwinian evolution, even when it clearly isn’t.

It is an example of Darwinian storytelling, which often tends to be more or less fact-free.

Source:

Le Page, Michael. 2017.Lizards re-evolved eggs after thousands of years of live births. New Scientist (5 December).

Rapid Burial of Pterosaur Eggs Suggests Noah’s Flood

Intelligently designed for flight. Image courtesy of Hugo Salais López, CC BY-SA 3.0.




Joel Kontinen

Pterosaurs present many formidable dilemmas for Darwinian evolution. They could grow to be as tall as giraffes and they were almost too heavy to fly.

But they did.

And there’s more. New research suggests that many pterosaurs of all ages met their death in a flood.

Science polishes the account of their demise with creative storytelling:

“The fossils formed about 120 million years ago when disaster struck a group of pterosaurs. The researchers speculate that when a sudden rain flooded a river, hundreds of pterosaur eggs buried in shallow sand or under a layer of leaves or grass were drowned and washed downstream, along with a number of older individuals. Quickly buried by sediment, the eggs and bones did not decay but instead were preserved as fossils.”

The global flood of Noah’s days is a more logical explanation. It has left animal graveyards, petrified forests and geological formations even in the most unlikely places.

Science focuses on the assumption that these flying reptiles cared for their young. In a Darwinian dog-eat-dog world, parental care might not be self-evident.

But in the creation model it certainly is.

Source:

Vogel, Gretchen. 2017. Ancient flying reptiles cared for their young, fossil trove suggests. Science (30 November).

Setback for Alien Life Hopefuls: No Signs of Water on Mars

Where’s the water? Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona




Joel Kontinen

Just over a century ago, it was customary to see signs of an alien civilisation on the red planet. Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835–1910) thought he saw canals on Mars.

Many others, including Percival Lowell (1855–1916), adopted this view.

Some people still think that there’s at least an inkling of truth in this.

Furthermore, Many people think that the red planet was once blue, sloshing with water.

Time magazine, for instance, has claimed that the Sun helped murder Mars.

And researchers have continued to speculate that liquid water might still be sloshing down the slopes of the red planet.

Now, however, Colin Dundas of the US Geological Survey and colleagues analysed satellite images.

Their research suggests that the assumed signs of running water on Mars dunes are probably just dry sand, as an article in New Scientist put it.

Source:

McKinnon, Mika. 2017. Signs of running water on Mars dunes are probably just dry sand. New Scientist (22 November).