Sunday 30 September 2018

Look for Older Worlds for Finding Life

This is what astronomers hope to find.




Joel Kontinen

If alien astronomers want to search for signs on life on Earth, they might just find it in the telltale pattern reflected from our plant, from redwood forests to cacti covered plains.

This reflected fingerprint has been visible since plants first began carpeting our rocky landscape over half a billion years old.

“Now, two astronomers are suggesting that plants could leave similar fingerprint-like patterns on distant exoplanets.”

One of them is “Cornell University’s Lisa Kaltenegger, who recently described Earth’s leafy signature in a study published in the journal Astrobiology.”

Years ago, when the spacecraft the Galileo, sensed the signs of life on Earth. But Kaltenegger’s dream can only be released, if the universe is so olds she thinks.


Source:

Drake, Nadia.2018. Want to Find Alien Life? Look at Older, Hotter Earths. National Geography (27.9.)

Thursday 27 September 2018

The Created Solar System

Image courtesy of WP, planets2013-fa.svg. cc by-sa 3.0.




Joel Kontinen

In the European creation conference, Dr. William Worraker talked about the Created Solar System. In a planet by planet view, he also talked about exoplanets, that are confounding planet stories.

In addition, he talked about the D. Russell Humphrey ’s sayings on planets. For instance, his views on Mercury turned out to be right. And Humprey’s had been right on Mars, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

They conform to the 6,000 year- old- timetable for the solar system.

Worraker also took up the little moons secret, that is, some are geologically active. He also took up Pluto’s amazing young landscape.

Tuesday 25 September 2018

Strengthening the Design Argument


Envisat satellite. Envisat satellite. Professor Stuart Burgess took part in designing a solar array for the satellite. Image courtesy of abrev, public domain.




Joel Kontinen

In the European Creation Conference, Dominic Statham spoke om God’s impressive design. He’s design is stated in Romans 1:19-20. He’s all-powerful, incapable of doing the misstates we make.

In their book, co-written by Professor Stuart Burgess, Statham has taken up some impressions that God would use, such as the mouth of, for instance, a fish, used as a lock in something they’ve made.

They also discussed why God’ s inventions are tiny and are no more energy-jumpers than they actually are.

As a matter of fact, God’s inventions are much smaller that human ones are need a whole lot of less energy. These inventors try to find more structures in God’s creation which they can use their inventions.





Saturday 22 September 2018

Prof. Steven Taylor: Soft Tissue, Proteins and Carbon-14 in Dinosaur Remains




Joel Kontinen

At the creation conference, Professor Steven Taylor (University of Liverpool) spoke of the wonders that have made dinosaurs recent.
In just the twenty years since Dr. Mary Schweitzer came up with her discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur bones, many fossils have turned to be too new for evolutionists.

Dr. Schweitzer did not believe in the beginning that the soft tissue was as old as the dinos were: “It’s 65 years old… can’t be that old.” But her subsequent discoveries, all gave the same results.

Prof. Taylor has also done measurements of actual soft tissue. He says that it’s correct to say that the same precautions were used to date the old fossils than new uses. He produced a figure, saying, that the instances to soft tissue had increased all the time in recent years. Actually, all animals had soft tissue, including the ones 500 million years old.

The same is also true of proteins and carbon-14 in dinosaur bone. They could not hold that much time – but they all do.

Wednesday 19 September 2018

Creation Ministries Tries to get the message Through on three continents

In 2016, Creation Ministries International (CMI) arranged a two-day conference in central London.



Joel Kontinen


On Friday, at 9,00 Am CMI will hold its 2nd European Creation Conference in London. The same ministry is also opening large-scale creation conferences in Australia and the USA.


The European Creation Conference will hold a great number of speakers, from prof. Steve Taylor (discussing the soft tissue, proteins and carbon-14 in dinosaurs), and Pekka Reinikainen (on the origin on man), and includes John Huibers (A modern-day ark).

This conference will be held in the Emmanuel Centre in London.

Using Lignin to Replace Plastic Materials





Joel Kontinen

Plastic is everywhere. even the deepest trenches have been replaced by them. “A plastic bag and other plastic waste have even been found in the nearly 11-kilometre-deep Mariana Trench, the deepest known point in the world’s oceans.

There is a cure for this. It’s called lignin. It is the substance that’s gets trees stand upright.

According to the Aalto.university press release, Lignin can

• partly or completely replace phenol formaldehyde resin adhesives used in plywood, hardboard, chipboard and laminate.
• be a raw material for biochemicals and functional coatings, which improve, for example, weather durability.
• be a raw material for carbon fibre in, for example, cars and airplanes, as well as a material in production of bioplastics and liquid fuels.

“Lignin is an excellent alternative as a replacement for fossil materials. It is created as a by-product of pulping. Cellulose is a common material that is often discussed and researched, but lignin has not been given as much attention", says Professor Monika Österberg.

It seems that lignin will take care pf the plastic overdose.

Source:


Sipponen, Mika Henrikki et al. 2018. Spatially confined lignin nanospheres for biocatalytic ester synthesis in aqueous media. Nature Communications 9, 2300.


Sunday 16 September 2018

Where Did We Get Our Phosphorus?


Image courtesy of Lorrie Graham/AusAID, CC BY 2.0.



Joel Kontinen


Phosphorus (P) is one of our planet’s general chemical elements. Without it we would not have RNA , DNA and our ATP, and thus we would not have life.

“’Phosphorus is one of the key elements in biology.’ says Matthew Pasek, an astrobiologist and geochemist at the University of South Florida.”

Now, Pasek, is on a search for who we got our phosphorus in the beginning. “Unlike the other elements essential for life, phosphorus is mainly found in solid form, whereas the likes of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen are often found as a gas.“ [Studying phosphorus] keeps us grounded in actual hard rock samples. Unlike the others, there is no obvious gas form, so has to come from rock sources,” Pasek says.

Meteorites also contain phosphorus. In Pasek’s thinking, published in the journal Icarus, “found that most phosphorus should be in a solid form everywhere in the Solar System, out to about Saturn.

Mikhail Zolotov, thinks that Pasek’s work ok, but “it is contentious that gas movement toward the Sun, which was not modeled in the paper, could be faster than the diffusion of gas away from the Sun.”

Source:

Wild, Sarah , 2018. How Phosphorus Came in From the Cold. Astrobiology Magazine (September 6).


Friday 14 September 2018

Bee-eaters Can Find their Flocks After Many Miles and Days Apart


A Pair of Merops apiaster feeding. Image courtesy of Pierre Dalous, CC BY-SA 3.0.,




Joel Kontinen


Swizz researchers outfitted 77 bee-eaters in 2015, and 92 more in 2016 with loggers, and here’s what they found out:

-Multisensor loggers reveal the spatiotemporal group dynamics of migrating birds.

-European bee-eaters ( Merops apiaster) can migrate ∼14,000 km in the same group.

-Groups that separate during migration can reform after ∼5,000 km apart.

These bee-eaters were going from Germany to Angola in winter. With a weight of 5 cm (2 inches), they did this without the help of smartphones and electronic devices, this could never come around by Darwinian devices (i,e., random mutations and natural selection).

Source:

Dhanjal-Adams, Kiran L et al. 2018 Spatiotemporal Group Dynamics in a Long-Distance Migratory Bird. Current Biology 28, 17.
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Wednesday 12 September 2018

Is Pluto a Planet?

Image courtesy of mage courtesy of Image courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.




Joel Kontinen


Pluto lost its planetary status in 2006. At that time, several trans-Neptunian objects beat it for size.

At the time, a planet was defined by 1) It must orbit the sun, 2) it must be massive enough that its gravity pulls it more or less into a spherical shape, and 3) it must clear the neighbourhood around its orbit.

Now, in the journal Icarus, Michael Metzger takes the line that “the third criterion did not match historical usage by scientists and should be revoked.”

Needless to say, Pluto is looking young.

And, as Merzger says. Pluto is "more dynamic and alive than Mars.”

Source:

Bartels, Meghan. 2018 Is Pluto a Planet? New Paper Adds to Decade-Long Debate. Space.com. (September 10).

Monday 10 September 2018

DNA from a worm in Siberian Permafrost Wriggle to Life –Why Not the Ice-age Horse as Well?

Image courtesy of Bob Goldstein, UNC Chapel Hill , CC BY-SA 3.





Joel Kontinen

In May, scientists said that they had brought an arctic nematode to life. They are small, about 1 millimeter in length. Some are them are found living 1.3 kilometres (0.8 miles below Earth's surface, "deeper than any other multicellular animal".

Image courtesy of Michil Yakovlev/SVFU/The Siberian Times.


Then, why not the ice age foal? Found in last month, from a 100-meters (328-foot) deep Batagaika crater. The horse was 98 centimetres (39 inches) tall. “Its mummified remains were so well-preserved by icy conditions that the skin, the hooves, the tail, and even the tiny hairs in the animal's nostrils and around its hooves are still visible.”

Some scientist are interested. Among them is Woo-Suk Hwang, a stem-cell researcher and cloning pioneer South Korea. They " are already collaborating in an attempt to clone a woolly mammoth."

Others are not so optimistic. However, Dna has already been excavated from dinosaur bone.


Sources:

Weisberger, Mindy. Siberian, 2018. Worms Frozen for 42,000 Years in Siberian Permafrost Wriggle to Life. Live Science ( July 27).

Weisberger, Mindy. 2018. This Plan to Bring Back an Extinct Ice-Age Horse Species Is an extreme Long Shot, Scientists Say. Live Science (6 September).

Friday 7 September 2018

Elon Musk Says, ”We’ve Probably Living in a Simulation”


Image curtesy of Torben Hansen, CC BY 2.0.




Joel Kontinen


Elon Musk thinks we’re all trapped in a "Matrix"-like pseudo existence. This happened during a talk with a comedian.

"If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then games will be indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will end. One of those two things will occur. Therefore, we are most likely in a simulation, because we exist;” Musk said.

He then went on to add:

“I think most likely — this is just about probability — there are many, many simulations. You might as well call them reality, or you could call them multiverse."

He has been wary of a immortal dictator, and staying that it will be even bigger thread to us than North Korea could be and even and might even have religion.

Yes, but who invented this simulation?

It seems that just like Adam and Eve hid from God, latter-day atheists are trying to escape from Him into a plurality of assumed universes.

Source:

Wall, Mike. 2018. We're Probably Living in a Simulation, Elon Musk Says. Space.com .(7 September).






Lähde:

Wall, Mike. 2018. We're Probably Living in a Simulation, Elon Musk Says. Space.com (7.9.).

Sharks Eat Seagrass, Remind Us of Pre-Fall World

Image courtesy of D Ross Robertson, Public Domain.


Joel Kontinen

A study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B has saId that the bonnethead shark, long thought to be a strict carnivore. Sharks Eat Seagrass, the publication tells us. . Reminds me of the PRE-fall world

"’ Until now, most people thought that seagrass consumption was incidental when these sharks were hunting for crabs, etc. that live in the seagrass beds,’ study co-author Samantha Leigh, an expert in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine, told AFP.”

The team found that the seagrass can form up to 62 percent of the bonnethead diet.

“Over the course of three weeks, the team conducted a series of lab-based trials in which they fed bonnethead sharks a diet of 90 percent seagrass and 10 percent squid.

They then analysed how much of the nutrients the animals digested, and how much they excreted.

Not all carnivores can digest plant material efficiently, but sharks fed the seagrass-heavy diet all gained weight, the team found.”


Sharks are living fossils that haven’t changed in “400 million years.”

Source:

Ward, Hazel, 2018. 'Carnivore' sharks have a stomach for greens: study. Phys.org. (5 September).
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Tuesday 4 September 2018

Our Brains are Equipped for Better Repair



Image courtesy of Looie496, US National Institutes of Health, National Institute, Public Domain.





Joel Kontinen

A new study published on Nature Neuroscience proposed that “immune cells rush through channels to get to injured tissue quickly.”

The study was based on the findings of Dr. Nahrendorf’s team. An expert on recovery after stroke, he noticed that immune cells called neutrophils arrived at the damaged area too quickly.

According to The National Institutes of Health bulletin: “Dr. Nahrendorf’s team detected the channels throughout the skull as well as in the tibia, which led them to search for similar features in the human skull. Detailed imaging of human skull samples obtained from surgery uncovered the presence of the channels. The channels in the human skull were five times larger in diameter compared to those found in mice. In human and mouse skulls, the channels were found in the both in the inner and outer layers of bone.

We always thought that immune cells from our arms and legs travelled via blood to damaged brain tissue, says Dr Francesca Bosetti, Ph.D., program director at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.”

Now the study changes that: “With the help of advanced imaging techniques, the researchers watched neutrophils moving through the channels. Blood normally flowed through the channels from the skull’s interior to the bone marrow, but after a stroke, neutrophils were seen moving in the opposite direction to get to damaged tissue.

Our big brain is a Darwinian enigma. Darwinists cannot explain it.

And, now it also seems that other effects are forceful too.

Source::

Researchers unearth secret tunnels between the skull and the brain. 2018. National Institutes of Health (August 27).

Sunday 2 September 2018

The origin of roots is a Darwinian Mystery



The Rhynie chert. Image courtesy of Jpwilson, public domain.



Joel Kontinen

Science Daily has an interesting view of the origin of roots:

Despite plants and vegetation being key to the Earth's ecosystem, little is known about the origin of their roots. However in new research, published in Nature, Oxford University scientists describe a transitional root fossils from the earliest land ecosystem that sheds light on how roots have evolved.”

The findings suggest that plant roots have evolved more than once, and that the characteristics of roots developed in a step-wise manner -- with the central root organ evolving first. And the root cap subsequently coming later.”

Professor Liam Dolan, who conducted a microscopic study with Dr Sandy Hetherington of the oldest known plant ecosystem -- the 407 million-year-old Rhynie chert, said: 'Our discovery suggests that plant organs were built up step-by-step during the course of plant evolution.’

Thus, plants got their present shape as they were becoming plants. As Dr. Hetherington says: “the cellular organisation of plants that were growing 407 million years ago.”

They also found root meristems belonging to the lycopsid plant Asteroxylon mackiei. They think that the “roots are a transitional step towards modern-style.”

Thus, the origin of roots is a Darwinian mystery.

The origin of plants is too hard for A Darwinist to understand .


Source:

University of Oxford. 2018. Getting to the root of plant evolution. (22 August).