Living fossils are threatend by a water mold

 

Wollemi pines (Wollemia nobilis) were taught to have have disappeared arounds 3 million years ago at the close of the  Devonian period.

But they were found in 1994.

Now, “They are threatened by Phytophthora cinnamomi, a pathogenic water mold that causes dieback, and by rampant wildfires that intermittently rage through this region of New South Wales.”

“Following a pilot transplantation effort in 2012, the recovery team initiated a more intensive project in 2019. Over 400 saplings were transplanted at two sites and — due to drought conditions — the team later hauled several thousand gallons of water to the plants in order to help them survive. Later that year, a substantial number of the trees were destroyed by bushfires. Only 58 saplings made it to 2023.”

Now more trees are being planted in area that bush fires could not  kill tem off.

Source:

 Richard Pallardy2024 

'Living fossil' tree frozen in time for 66 million years being planted in secret locations | Live Science 28 February

Earth has extra moons, and they may hold the secrets of our solar system's past

 

Image coutesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

Joel Kontinen

Earth's closest cosmic companions, known as 'minimoons' or 'quasi-moons', could hold the secrets to the history of our early solar system.

Near-Earth asteroids are similar to time capsules, holding secrets to the early history of the solar system, experts say. Temporary companions called 'minimoons' may be the best place to unearth these secrets.

The solar system has many secrets that researchers are still trying to unravel. They are turning to space rocks that according to evolutionists may unravel to story of how we got here. For instance, NASAs “OSIRIS REx mission discovered water and carbon — two of the precursors for life on Earth — on the 4.5billion-year-old asteroid Bennu.”

According to evolution, ”among the thousands of asteroids swarming near Earth’s orbit, minimoons — tiny cosmic bodies, whose orbits are partially governed by Earth and partially by other solar system bodies — may be prime candidates for learning about the origins of the solar system, said Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

Miniscule objects, such as “Bennu or a minimoon, are "like time capsules," Paul Abell, chief scientist for small body exploration at NASA, told Live Science. "They give us indications of what the early solar system was like [and] what the conditions were."

Source:

Kiley Price 2024 Earth has extra moons, and they may hold the secrets of our solar system's past | Live Science 26 February

Researchers find more than 100 new species near Chile

 

Image courtecy of: Schmidt Ocean Institute

Joel Kontinen

Recently researchers discovered more than 100 new marine species, “as well as a handful of hefty new seamounts while exploring the deep sea off the coast of Chile.”

Where did the  expedition  go?  

“Between Jan. 8 and Feb. 11, researchers on board the Schmidt Ocean Institute's (SOI) research vessel Falkor (too) explored the seafloor off the coast of Chile. The expedition, named "Seamounts of the Southeast Pacific, focused on underwater mountains, or seamounts, in three main areas: the Nazca and Salas y Gómez ridges — two chains of more than 200 seamounts that stretch a combined 2,900 kilometres or 1,800 miles from Chile to Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui); as well as the Juan Fernández and Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks. “

It seems that unlike in evolution, new species are found almost every day,

Source:

Harry Baker, 2024,'Mind-blowing' deep sea expedition uncovers more than 100 new species and a gigantic underwater mountain | Live Science 23 February. 

Monster black hole powers the brightest known object in the universe

 

Image courtesy of ESO/M. Kornmesser

Joel Kontinen

Astronomers have found a quasar 12 billion light years away hosting a supermassive black hole that gobbles up a sun-sized amount of mass every day

Space is wonderful, full of things know as black holes.

Recently, “a quasar500 trillion times brighter than the sun has taken the title of the brightest known object in the universe. It appears to be powered by a supermassive black hole that is devouring a sun-sized amount of mass every day.”

Here what New Scientist told of the find:

“Quasars are galactic cores where gas and dust falling into a supermassive black hole release energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Christian Wolf at the Australian National University in Canberra and his colleagues first spotted the new brightest quasar, called J0529-4351, in 2022 by combing through data from the Gaia space telescope and looking for extremely bright objects outside the Milky Way that were misidentified as stars.

After following up with further observations from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, they have now found it it is the most luminous object in the universe that we know of.

Wolf and his colleagues used a device on the VLT called a spectrometer to analyse the light coming from J0529-4351 and calculate how much was produced by the black hole’s swirling disc of gas and matter, called its accretion disc. This revealed that J0529-4351 is the fastest-growing black hole in the universe, gobbling up around 413 solar masses per year, or more than a sun per day”.

Source:

Alex Wilkins, 2024, Monster black hole powers the brightest known object in the universe | New Scientist 19 February

 

Dogs and horses buried with Iron Age people may have been beloved pets

 

Image courtesy of Laffranchi et al. (CC-BY 4.0)

Joel Kontinen

A 2200-year-old burial ground in northern Italy includes people interred with dogs and horses, perhaps showing they had strong bonds with their animals.

It seems that dogs and horses were common and used as pets in the iron age.

“Archaeologists have often suspected that the ancient, worldwide custom of including animals in human graves was associated with higher socioeconomic status, beliefs about the afterlife or traditions in certain families. But after thorough investigation, researchers are now starting to wonder whether such “co-burials” were simply an expression of love to a devoted non-human family member, says Marco Milella at the University of Bern in Switzerland.”

Here is New Scientist says:

“Milela and his colleagues revisited the bones excavated from the 2200-year-old Seminario Vescovile burial ground just east of Verona in Italy, where the Cenomani people lived in metal-making communities before and during the Roman conquest.

Most of the 161 graves found at the site contained just the remains of a person, but 16 also included animals, either whole or in parts. Of those, 12 were pork or beef products, apparently meant as food offerings to the deceased, says Zita Laffranchi, also at the University of Bern.

The other four people, however, were buried with dogs or horses or both of these animals, which weren’t used for food in that population. They included a middle-aged man with a small dog, a young man with parts of a horse, a 9-month-old baby girl side-by-side with a dog and – most unexpectedly – a middle-aged woman with a pony laid on top of her and a dog’s head above her own.”

Yes, it seems that dogs and horses were common to these people who lived about 2 200years ago,  

Source:

Christa Lesté-Lasserre. 2024. Dogs and horses buried with Iron Age people may have been beloved pets | New Scientist 14 February

 

 

Asteroid sampled by NASA may once have been part of an ocean world.

 

Image courtesy of NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebers,

Joel Kontinen

Space is full of wonders, Bennu is an exceptional asteroid.  A sample from the asteroid Bennu, brought back to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx mission, contains hints that it was once part of a planetesimal. It may have once been part of a small, ocean-covered world with conditions favourable for life to emerge.

That’s according to the team behind NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which brought back a sample of the asteroid Bennu in September 2023.

Source:

Joshua Howgego 2024 Bennu: Asteroid sampled by OSIRIS-REx may once have been part of an ocean world | New Scientist 6 February

 

Tunning 'Einstein engagement ring' from the early universe is one of the oldest ever discovered

 

Image courtesy of ESA/Hubble & NASA, H. Nayyeri, L. Marchetti, J. Lowenthal.

Joel Kontinen 

Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a stunning photo of one of the most distant Einstein rings ever found. The luminous halo of light aligns perfectly with another galaxy, making it look like a cosmic engagement ring.

The Einstein ring, named HerS J020941.1+001557, is made of light from a galaxy 19.5 billion light-years from Space is wonderful ‘and full of surprises. Recently, the “Hubble Space Telescope snapped an extremely rare, near-perfect ring of gravitationally warped light, known as an "Einstein ring," shining from a galaxy in the early universe. The luminous halo lines up perfectly with another galaxy, making it look like a diamond-studded engagement ring.”

The Live Science article had this to say: “Einstein rings occur when light from a distant galaxy is bent around a closer galaxy or black hole that is perfectly aligned between the distant object and the observer. This bending effect, known as gravitational lensing, is caused by light passing through space-time that has been warped by the immense gravity exerted by the foreground object. The light travels in a straight line through the curved space-time,

Source:

 Harry Baker, 2024. Stunning 'Einstein engagement ring' from the early universe is one of the oldest ever discovered | Live Science 9 February

 

Bizarre worm lizard not seen for 90 years found by landmine removers

 

Image courtesy of Mark Spicer

Joel Kontinen

A subspecies of the Somali sharp-snouted worm lizard was found by a landmine clearance team, the first official sighting since 1931.

“A subspecies of the Somali sharp-snouted worm lizard (Ancylocranium somalicum parkeri) was first reported by scientists in 1931 in the region that is now Somaliland”.  

Last month, Mark Spicer at the HALO Trust, a landmine clearance charity, and his colleagues were in Somaliland, near the Ethiopian border. “One day, one of our minefield supervisors, Hassan Du’ale, called me over to show me something interesting,” says Spicer. “I’m following him, we’re both wearing PPE [personal protective equipment] and he did a bit of scrambling around in the earth and produced a worm lizard.”

Well, evolution says that some animals live for a few years and then die off, but with these animales it’s the opposite.

Source:

Chen Ly 2024 Bizarre worm lizard not seen for 90 years found by landmine removers | New Scientist 7 February 

 

Climate and science

Joel Kontinen

How did we know that carbon dioxide levels leading to climate change  had happened over two million years ago? This is based on models and not scientific research.

And then it came with the research that says the following stage was it was around 580 million years ago, during the early Paleozoic era.

“This drop in temperature occurred in concert with a decline in clay authigenesis and the rise of siliceous life.”

This is what Darwinian storytelling tells us.

 

Source:

H. Jesse Smith. 2024. In Science Journals | Science 9 February. 

Ice on Mimas

 

Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science I

Joel Kontinen

Some of Saturn’s moon have ice before their surface. For example, “Mimas appears to have a vast global ocean underneath its icy shell, according to close measurements of its orbit. If other icy worlds have similar oceans”.

For certain evolutionists, this would mean life hospitable to life on the moon.

“Mimas is the smallest of Saturn’s seven major moons. It was long thought to be mostly composed of solid ice and rock, but in 2014 astronomers observed that its orbit around Saturn was unexpectedly wobbling, which could only be explained by either a rugby ball-shaped core or a liquid ocean.

Many astronomers rejected the ocean explanation because the friction needed to melt the ice should also have produced visible marks on Mimas’s surface. However, recent simulations have suggested that this ocean could exist without such marks.

To look for more clues, Valéry Lainey at the Paris Observatory in France and his colleagues analysed observations of Mimas’s orbit made by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. They found that its orbit around Saturn has drifted around 10 kilometres over 13 years.

According to the team’s calculations, this orbital drift could only have been produced by wobbles from an icy shel sliding over an ocean, or a core with a physically impossible pancake shape.”

Source:

By Alex Wilkins 2024. Saturn’s moon Mimas may be hiding a vast global ocean under its ice | New Scientist 7 February  

 

Israel Marks its 100th Embassy with the Opening of Indigenous People Embassy

 

Image courtesy of Twitter Screenshot

Joel Kontinen

What does indigenous mean for Jews and the people around them? For Arabs it means that the Jews only came to Israel in 1948, which is a lie, and they were held as colonialist invaders.

However, indigenous people from around the world, including the Maori, have set up their embassy in Jerusalem.

Wearing colorful traditional costumes, native peoples from around the globe made speeches, sang, danced, beat drums and, in one case, sounded a giant ram’s horn on Thursday to celebrate the inauguration of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem.

The embassy will serve as a much-needed antidote to the false claims by the Palestinians that there is no evidence of any Jewish life in Israel prior to 1948, when Jews ostensibly arrived as colonialist invaders.

The embassy is in part due to the efforts of the Indigenous Coalition for Israel (ICFI), a New Zealand-based group founded by native counter the false narrative about the Israel-Palestinian conflict that has “taken hold amongst indigenous peoples” and “has often bled into antisemitism,” its website says.

“We recognize that Jews are the indigenous people of this land, and we stand with you and your struggle,” ICFI co-founder Sheree Trotter told the 200-plus audience, noting that the Land of Israel is the place where the Jewish “nation was forged, its language and sacred literature developed, the beliefs, customs and traditions began.“

The embassy will also host academic symposia and become a tourist attraction. 

Source:

David Issac, 2024. Israel Marks its 100th Embassy with the Opening of Indigenous People Embassy | United with Israel 5 February.

 

Mammoth tusk tool may have been used to make ropes 37,000 years ago

 

Image courtesy of Conard et al, Sci. Adv. 10, eadh5217 (2024)

Joel Kontinen

A 37,000-year-old piece of mammoth ivory with four carved holes found in a cave in Germany was probably  tool for making ropes, researchers have suggested’. Experiments with a replica suggest it.

Evolutionists believe that ice age animals are thousands of years old, they do not hold the flood of Noah's day as accurate.

“You can make rope with it very easily, and the rope’s very strong,” says Nicholas Conard at the University of Tübingen in Germany. “Of course, that doesn’t mean that’s the only thing it could be. But compared to saying that it’s a symbol of power or some sort of artwork, I think the rope hypothesis is a pretty good one.”

“The piece of ivory was found in 2015 in the Hohle Fels cave in the Ach valley in south-west Germany.”

What about dating? ”It hasn’t been dated directly to avoid damaging it, but based on where it was found it must be at least 35,000 years old, and is most likely around 37,000 years old, says Nicholas Conard - and it was probably made by modern humans.”

Source:

 Michael Le Page 2024. Mammoth tusk tool may have been used to make ropes 37,000 years ago | New Scientist 31 January