Water might be even more important for alien life than we thought

 

Image courtesy of PandorumBS/Alamy

Joel Kontinen

Without enough liquid water on the surface, a planet's atmosphere can become choked with carbon dioxide, raising temperatures to a level beyond what is survivable for all known life

Is water important for life on exoplanets? According to Genesis, it is important also in space in which God created the planets.

Alien worlds found in the “habitable zone” of their star may still not be right for life

PandorumBS/Alamy

The number of planets capable of hosting alien life may be smaller than we thought, thanks to a new understanding of how water levels drive a planet’s climate. Below a certain level, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can grow too much and make a planet unbearably hot, which could also explain why Venus is as inhospitable as it appears today.

All life that we know of needs liquid water, which is why astronomers are keen to find planets in the “habitable zone” around their star region where temperatures are conducive for liquid water to exist. But now Haskelle White-Gianella at the University of Washington and her colleagues have found that source;

Source:

Alex Wilkins 2025 Water might be even more important for alien life than we thought | New Scientist 15 July

James Webb telescope reveals dizzying galaxies in the Bullet Cluster

 

Image courtesy of A. Smith, N. Madhusudhan (University of Cambridge

Joel Kontinen 

The universe is wonderful.  It speaks of the one who made it. The James Webb space telescope has just pictures a cluster that is some 3.7 million light years from us, in the constellation Carina.

However, it does not mention how dark matter is distributed.

“Galaxy clusters act as a magnifying lens, shining light on the faintest and most distant objects — a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. On the rarest of occasions, galaxy clusters collide, creating an even more massive lens. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently provided extremely detailed observations of such a lens, the Bullet Cluster.

Located about 3.7 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Carina, the Bullet Cluster is the aftermath of the collision between two galaxy clusters that is estimated to have begun approximately 150 million years ago. Each of the two galaxy clusters can be distinguished within the blue regions, yet they are bound by gravity and together form a single entity — the Bullet Cluster.

While gravitational lensing brings distant, faint objects into light, the extent of lensing can reveal the mass distribution within the massive foreground galaxy cluster. Mysterious dark matter makes up a huge chunk of galaxy clusters, but is difficult to spot because it does not reflect, absorb or emit light. So, astronomers sometimes study light from stars that are within the galaxy cluster but are not part of any galaxies. These stars are called intracluster stars and are floating because they are stripped from their galaxies during collisions. By analyzing the light from these stars, researchers can trace the distribution of dark matter, as these stars are gravitationally bound to the cluster's dark matter.

The latest data from JWST, combined with data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, allowed astronomers to create an accurate map of mass — both visible and dark matter — within the Bullet Cluster. The light from intracluster stars pinned down the location of invisible matter, and the X-rays confirmed the location of hot gas. Based on these observations, astronomers could "replay" the collision. This revealed that hot gas (in bright pink) was pulled out of the galaxy clusters and left behind in the central region, while the dark matter (in blue) associated with individual galaxy clusters stayed.”

Source:

Shreejaya Karantha 2025 Did the James Webb telescope really find evidence of alien life? Here's the truth about exoplanet K2-18b. | Live Science July 6

Bizarre 'failed star' the size of Jupiter is 2,000 degrees hotter than the sun

 

Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

Joel Kontinen

This Jupiter-size object is 80 times hotter than the sun

Our solar system is really special, compared to other systems. Take for instance the exoplanet that will give not life to the little green men.

“Some stars get hot, hotter than the sun. A newly discovered star system is breaking records — and helping scientists unravel the mysteries of an extreme type of planet known as hot Jupiters. In a paper published Aug. 14 in the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers describe how the system could help further our understanding of worlds beyond our solar system.

A newly discovered star system is breaking records — and helping scientists unravel the mysteries of an extreme type of planet known as hot Jupiters. In a paper published Aug. 14 in the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers describe how the system could help further our understanding of worlds beyond our solar system.”

 Source:

Joanna Thompson 2023 Bizarre 'failed star' the size of Jupiter is 2,000 degrees hotter than the sun | Live Science August 18

 

Evolution has made humans both humans Machiavellian and born socialists

 

Image courtesy of David Oliete

Joel Kontinen

Humanity’s innate treachery is behind social ills ranging from inequality to abuse of power. Lessons fit from our ancestors can help defeat the enemy within

Darwinian evolution has made humans Machiawellian and born socialists, this is what New Scientist says, but it is not true, we know that evolution does not happen. It is just  a fairy tale.  I think that this has not do with the present woke ideology,

“Nearly 2 million years ago, one of our hominin ancestors developed bone cancer in their foot. The fate of this individual is unknown, but their fossilised remains leave no doubt that cancer has been a part of our story for a very long time. It is also clear that, when threatened by our own normally cooperative cells turning against us, we evolved an immune system to help us identify and deal with the enemy within.”

The dates given are not accurate, humans  had cancer but so early.

“But treacherous cancer cells weren’t the only internal threat our ancestors faced. As hypersocial beings, their survival was also jeopardised by selfish individuals attempting to subvert the group – and capable of unravelling society, just as a cancer eventually kills its host. I am interested in understanding how we adapted to this threat. At the heart of the story is this question: is human nature selfish or altruistic, competitive or cooperative? Are we essentially cancers, tamed by culture, or more like healthy cells in the human body, working together for mutual success?”

Source: 

Jonathan R. Goodman 2025 Evolution has made humans both Machiavellian and born socialists | New Scientist 9 July

 

Ash-winged dawn goddess' is oldest pterosaur ever discovered in North America

 

Image courtesy of Brian Engh

Joel Kontinen

We taught that Pterosaur were large, but now it seems that some weren’t so big. They have found a Pterosaurs that is small enough to sit on my shoulder. Yes, God created some animals large  and some small.  

A cache of Triassic fossils in Arizona has revealed Eotephradactylus mcintireae, or "ash-winged dawn goddess," the oldest pterosaur ever discovered in North America.

Eotephradactylus mcintireae lived alongside fellow evolutionary newcomers, including turtles, as well as more ancient animal lineages, such as giant amphibians and armored crocodile relatives. 

Researchers have unearthed the oldest pterosaur ever discovered in North America and named it the "ash-winged dawn goddess."

The 209 million-year-old pterosaur was among a cache of more than 1,000 Triassic fossils extracted from rocks in the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Eotephradactylus mcintireae is partly named after volcanic ash found in the fossil bed and Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, because it evolved near the beginning, or dawn, of pterosaurs' evolutionary history.

Pterosaurs, informally called "pterodactyls," were flying reptiles that dominated the skies during the age of dinosaurs. The group produced many giants, some with wingspans stretching to around 36 feet (11 meters), but E. mcintireae and the other early members were tiny by comparison.

Eotephradactylus mcintireae lived alongside fellow evolutionary newcomers, including turtles, as well as more ancient animal lineages, such as giant amphibians and armored crocodile relatives. (Image credit: Illustration by Brian Engh.)

Kligman began working on the fossils in 2018, after the jaw had been discovered, and said he doubted the fossil was a pterosaur at first — at the time, researchers had only found one early pterosaur in North America, and none had ever been found in sediment deposited in a river.

"When I finally examined the jaw my doubts were put to rest — the distinctive teeth and jaw anatomy was unmistakably from a pterosaur," Kligman said. "I was most surprised by the fact that a delicate, tiny jaw like this one had not been destroyed by the movement of river gravel prior to it being fossilized, suggesting that the bonebed was preserving a unique fossilization setting."

The bonebed revealed a community of evolutionary newcomers, such as pterosaurs and turtles, sharing the landscape with each other and more ancient animals, such as giant amphibians, before the latter went extinct at the end of the Triassic.

"The presence of the pterosaur Eotephradactylus living and interacting in a community alongside groups like frogs, lizard relatives, and turtles is the first occurrence of this community type in the fossil record — these groups are commonly found living together in post-Triassic communities from the Jurassic and Cretaceous, however they had never been found together preceding the end-Triassic extinction event 201 million years ago," Kligman said.

Source: 

Patrick Pester 2025 'Ash-winged dawn goddess' is oldest pterosaur ever discovered in North America — and it was small enough to sit 'on your sh8oulder' | Live Science  July 

 

You’ve been sold a giant myth when it comes to improving your health

 

Image courtesy of Becki Gill

Joel Kontinen

Could we make people live longer as they do now, without suffering from illnesses? Answer my friend, is not blowing in the wind, it seems to be yes.

“Diet and exercise will only get you so far, but there is a magic bullet that could make us all live longer, says professor of global public health Devi Sridhar.

According to Devi Sridhar, we have our health priorities all wrong. In fact, we’ve been sold a giant myth. We are unhealthily obsessed with what we can do personally – diet, exercise and the rest – and largely ignore the most important determinant of our health. This magic bullet: government.

Public health measures like universal healthcare, drinkable water, clean air and safe roads have a much bigger impact on our chances of making it to 100 than any number of gym sessions or kale smoothies. Sridhar, a professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, UK, has a new book out called How Not to Die (Too Soon), which makes a robust case that public health, not just individual striving, is not key to living a long and healthy life. “

Source:

Graham Lawton  2025 You’ve been sold a giant myth when it comes to improving your health | New Scientist 2 July

 

Astronomers spot potential 'interstellar visitor' shooting through the solar system toward Earth

 

Image credit: David Rankin/Catalina Sky Survey

Joel Kontinen 

An intruder from the reaches of time has appeared on Earth. Scientist said that the intruder comes from outside the solar system. This would be the third such incident, but it may not be inhabited:

“A newly discovered object, dubbed A11pl3Z, appears to be moving too fast and straight to have originated in the solar system. If confirmed, it will be the third interstellar visitor ever spotted

A11pl3Z is most likely a large asteroid, or maybe a comet, potentially spanning up to 12 miles (20 kilometres). It is traveling toward the inner solar system at around 152,000 mph (245,000 km/h) and is approaching us from the part of the night sky where the bar of the Milky Way is located.”

The earlier incident features Comet 2I/Borisov, which was system and Oumuamua, a cigar-shaped object that made headlines in 2017.

Source:

Harry Baker 2025 Astronomers spot potential 'interstellar visitor' A11pl3Z shooting through the solar system toward Earth | Live Science July 3

 

James Webb telescope discovers frozen water around a distant, sunlike star

 

Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)

Joel Kontinen

Could there be water around a distant star? This is what scientist have found out recently.  This brings to live the saying that where there is water, there might be live.

But if all planets had water or ice, it was the way God created the universe.

“The new discovery centres on a star called HD 181327, located about 155 light-years away, in the constellation Telescopium. At just 23 million years old, HD 181327 is a cosmic infant compared with our 4.6 billion-year-old sun, and it's encircled by a broad, dusty debris disk that is rich in small, early building blocks of planets.”

The millions of years in this study are fake, as God did not take so long to form the universe.

Source:

Sharmila Kuthunur 2025 Milestone discovery: James Webb telescope discovers frozen water around a distant, sunlike star | Live Science May 24

Some evolutionists think they know what the face of a Denisovan looked like

 

Image courtesy of Hebei GEO University

Joel Kontinen

Some evolutionists think that they have figured out how the Denisovans looked like. However, the book of Genesis says that we are all children of one mother, and she was not a Denisovan.

This is what New Scientist writes:

The Denisovans, a mysterious group of ancient humans originally identified purely from DNA, finally have a face.

Using molecular evidence, Qiaomei Fu at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and her colleagues have confirmed what many researchers suspected: that a skull from China known as “dragon man” belonged to a Denisovan.

This fits with other evidence suggesting that the Denisovans were large and stocky. “I think we’re looking at individuals that are all [around] 100 kilos [of] lean body mass: enormous, enormous individuals,” says Bence Viola at the University of Toronto in Canada, who was not involved in the study.

Source:

Michael Marshall 2025 We finally know what the face of a Denisovan looked like | New Scientist 18 June 

Small and speedy dinosaur recognised as a new species

 

Image courtesy of © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London

Joel Kontinen

Some evolutionists believe that the dinosaurs are divided into too many clans but now it seem that they have overrated it and that there are not so much different dinosaurs at all.

Enigmacursor darted around North America in the Late Jurassic 145-150 million years ago and its skeleton now be on display in London’s Natural History Museum

A newly discovered species of dinosaur is going on display in London’s Natural History Museum.

Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae was a speedy, two-legged herbivore, 64 centimetres tall and 180 cm long that lived about 145 million to 150 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic Period.

Its reconstructed skeleton will be on display in the museum’s Earth Hall from 26 June, alongside its contemporary, Sophie the Stegosaurus.

Susannah Maidment and Paul Barrett, both palaeontologists at the Natural History Museum, have analysed the Enigmacursor specimen, which was uncovered from the Morrison Formation in the western US in 2021-22.

Back then, it was thought to be a Nanosaurus – a poorly known species of small herbivorous dinosaur. The Enigmacursor fossil isn’t complete, but using the few teeth – which reveal it ate plants – and portions of the neck, backbone, tail, pelvis, limbs and feet, Maidment and Barrett have defined this fossil as a new species, placed it in an evolutionary tree and reconstructed it for display.

They have based the structure of missing elements, like the skull, on similar small dinosaurs like Yandusaurus and Hexinlusaurus. Generally, we know little about smaller dinosaurs, both because they are less likely to fossilise than bigger animals and because fossil hunters tend to seek larger, more valuable examples.

“This is a two-legged dinosaur and it’s got very small forearms that it probably would have used to grasp food to bring it to its mouth,” says Maidment. “And it’s got incredibly large feet and very long limbs. So, it was probably quite fast by dinosaur standards.”

That is where the “cursor” part of its name comes from: it means “runner”. Maidment says it was probably charging around in the shadows of behemoths like Diplodocus and Stegosaurus.

The specimen’s vertebrae weren’t fused, which implies it wasn’t fully mature when it died. “I think this animal was probably a teenager, but it may well have been sexually mature, so it might not have got that much bigger,” says Maidment.

“Enigmacursor represents one of the rarities from further down the food chain of the dinosaur era,” says David Norman at the University of Cambridge. “This newly described animal was clearly a small, wallaby-sized herbivore that scampered around the Late Jurassic countryside.”

The discovery sheds light on the early evolutionary stages of the herbivorous dinosaurs that would go on to dominate Cretaceous ecosystems in North America, says Maidment, and helps us build a more realistic ecological picture of the life and times of dinosaurs.

Source:

Chris Simms 2025 Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae: Small and speedy dinosaur recognised as a new species | New Scientist 25 June 

Stellar flares may hamper search for life in promising star system

 

Image courtesy of Mark Garlick/Alamy

Joel Kontinen

Some planets are formed that they have life. But only exoplanets tend not to have it. The latest case is the Trappist 1 saga which probably has none.

Astronomers have been trying to detect atmospheres on planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, but bursts of radiation from the star make this challenging.

The search for atmospheres around the TRAPPIST-1 star system, one of the most promising locations for life elsewhere in the galaxy, might be even more difficult than astronomers first thought because of short-lived radiation blasts from the star.

TRAPPIST-1, first discovered in 2016, is a small red dwarf star about 40 light years from Earth with at least seven planets orbiting it. It is a prime target for astronomers hoping to detect extraterrestrial life because several of its planets appear to sit in a habitable zone where temperatures are just right for liquid water.

Source: 

Alex Wilkins 2025 Stellar flares may hamper search for life in promising star system | New Scientist 23 June

Enigmatic lizards somehow survived near Chicxulub asteroid impact

 

A yellow-spotted tropical night lizard (Lepidophyma flavimaculatum)

Image courtesy of Dante Fenolio/Science Photo Library

Joel Kontinen

Lizards are not dinosaurs. but somehow the dinosaur eating catastrophe that happened some 66 million years old did not affect these lizards. They may have been present some 66 million years ago.

The night lizards may have been the only terrestrial vertebrates that survived in the region of the asteroid impact 66 million years ago, which led to the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs

A small, secretive group of lizards that still exists today may have been the only terrestrial vertebrates that survived in the vicinity of the Chicxulub asteroid collision, which led to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs.

It has long been known that xantusiid night lizards are an ancient lineage that have persisted for tens of millions of years. But Chase Brownstein at Yale University and his colleagues suspected that the group may have actually arisen earlier than previously thought: in the Cretaceous Period, which ended around 66 million years ago.

The end of the Cretaceous was marked by a giant asteroid strike in the vicinity of Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, which left a crater over 150 kilometres wide and caused the extinction of most of the animal and plant species across the world.

Brownstein and his team used previously published DNA sequence data for xantusiids to create an evolutionary tree for the group. They combined this with skeletal anatomy across living and fossil night lizards, allowing the team to determine how old their lineages are and estimate how many offspring the ancestral night lizards would have produced.

They found that the most recent common ancestor of living xantusiids emerged deep within the Cretaceous, over 93 million years ago, and they probably only had clutches of one or two offspring.

“I think it is very possible that these ancient populations were as close or closer to the impact site than those today,” says Brownstein. “It’s almost as if xantusiid distribution sketches a circle around the impact site.”

Based on fossil evidence, it is unlikely that the ancient night lizards simply recolonised the region later on, says Brownstein.

“We know from our reconstructions that the common ancestor of living species was almost certainly living in North America, where the fossil record of xantusiids is pretty much fairly continuous on either side of the boundary layer marking the impact,” he says.

Many night lizard species live in rock crevices and their slow metabolisms are comparable to those of other survivors of the mass extinction, such as turtles and crocodiles. “This, perhaps, would have allowed them to take shelter during the impact and its immediate aftermath,” says Brownstein.

Nathan Lo at the University of Sydney says the lizards are remarkable. “They lived in the region around the asteroid’s point of impact, [yet] they managed to survive, even though the asteroid would have wiped out organisms that were within hundreds of kilometres of the impact point.”

They managed this despite not having many of the usual traits that we would expect to see in survivors of mass extinctions. “The species that tend to survive through these extinction events are those that are small in size, reproduce quickly and that have large geographic ranges,” says Lo. “But these lizards generally reproduce slowly and seem to have quite small ranges.”

 Source: 

James Woodford 2025 Enigmatic lizards somehow survived near Chicxulub asteroid impact | New Scientist 25 June 

Sea spiders 'farm' methane-eating bacteria on their bodies

 

Image courtesy of Biance Dal Bó

Joel Kontinen

Could a sizable amount of methane be harmful for us and the world? Now it seems that a Sea-spiders species kills off methane. This was probably brought off by intelligent design that want to keep us going strong.

Spider-like creatures living near methane seeps on the seafloor appear to cultivate and consume microbial species on their bodies that feed on the energy-rich gas. This expands the set of organisms known to rely on symbiotic relationships with microbes to live in these otherworldly environments.

Shana Goffredi at Occidental College in California and her colleagues collected sea spiders – marine arthropods named for their resemblance to arachnids – living near three different methane seeps in the Pacific Ocean. They found three previously unknown species from the sea spider genus Sericosura that appear to be abundant only near these gas seeps.

Other types of sea spiders that don’t live near seeps largely eat other invertebrates. But the researchers found the new sea spiders appear to get most of their nutrition by eating a distinctive set of bacterial species that live on their bodies. These bacteria harvest energy by metabolising methane and methanol coming from the seeps, energy that would otherwise be inaccessible to the sea spiders.

The researchers found the bacteria were confined to the spiders’ exoskeletons like a “microbial fur coat”, growing in what Goffredi describes as “volcano-like” clusters. The layers of bacterial growth also had markings like lawnmower tracks where the spiders may have munched on them using their hard “lips” and three tiny teeth.

To confirm the sea spiders really were eating the bacteria, the researchers also used a radioactive labelling technique to track how the carbon in methane was consumed by the sea spiders in the lab. “We watched that methane go into the microbes that are on the surface of the spiders, and then we watched that carbon molecule move into the tissues of the spider,” says Goffredi.

Source:

James Dinneen 2025 Sea spiders 'farm' methane-eating bacteria on their bodies | New Scientist 20 June

Can space rock around Venus collide with Earth?

 

Image courtesy of ESA

Joel Kontinen

An 'invisible threat': Swarm of hidden 'city killer' asteroids around Venus could one day collide with Earth, simulations show

Could a killer asteroid one day collide with Earth? According to a new study, it could. This bring to mind the killer asteroids mentioned in the book of Revelation: “The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.” Rev. 8:10-11.

Researchers think there are more hidden space rocks lurking around Venus. All but one of the planet's known co-orbitals have eccentricities greater than 0.38, meaning they have very elongated trajectories around the planet. This suggests there is an observational bias, likely because objects with lower eccentricities are probably being obscured by the sun's glare.

Co-orbitals can also move around relative to Venus, which can change their chances of colliding with Earth in the future. Previous research has shown that this likely happens to the space rocks once roughly every 12,000 years — known as a co-orbital cycle.

We know that Earth is not 12,000 years old so there is a problem which this.  

Source:

Harry Baker 2025 An 'invisible threat': Swarm of hidden 'city killer' asteroids around Venus could one day collide with Earth, simulations show | Live Science June 4

 

 

Australian moths use the stars as a compass on 1000-km migrations

 

Image courtesy of Dr. Ajay Narendra/Macquarie University, Australia

Joel Kontinen

Bogong moths are the first invertebrates known to navigate using the night sky during annual migrations to highland caves

Can the Australian moth use the stars to reach a destination that is a thousand kilometres away?

The answer seems to be Yes, they can. This is according to the latest research.   

An Australian moth that migrates over 1000 kilometres to seek respite from summer heat is the first known invertebrate to use the stars as a compass on long journeys.

Every spring, billions of bogong moths (Agrotis infusa) travel from various parts of southern Australia to cool caves in the Australian Alps after spending the winter as caterpillars feeding on vegetation. Once in the caves, they have a long period of inactivity, called aestivation, before returning to their breeding grounds.

It has long been a mystery exactly how these moths, whose numbers have been collapsing in recent years, navigate so far to these high country caves, says Andrea Adden at the Francis Crick Institute in London.

Previous studies have shown that they are able to use Earth’s electromagnetic field, but only in combination with landmarks they can see. Adden and her colleagues wanted to find out what other cues the moths may be using to navigate.

“If you go to the Australian bush, where these moths live, and look around at night, one of the most striking visual landmarks is the Milky Way,” she says. “We know that daytime migratory insects use the sun, so testing the starry sky seemed an obvious thing to try.”

To do so, the team caught moths during their migration using light traps and took them to a lab. There, the insects were placed in a Perspex arena and an image of the night sky was projected onto a screen above them. The moths were tethered inside the arena but could pick a flight direction based on the sky image. The researchers used a device called a Helmholtz coil to essentially cancel out Earth’s magnetic field.

The tests showed that the moths use a stellar compass, says team member Eric Warrant at Lund University, Sweden. “When tethered moths were placed under highly realistic local starry night skies, they flew in their inherited migratory direction,” he says. “They did this solely with the help of these stars – all other visual cues, as well as the Earth’s magnetic field, were absent.”

When the team turned the starry sky by 180 degrees, moths flew in the opposite direction, and when they randomly redistributed the natural stars across the image they were completely disoriented.

In a second experiment, the moths were fixed in place with a very thin electrode inserted in their brains. This revealed changes in the moths’ neural activity when the projected sky image was rotated.

Although dung beetles use the Milky Way to stay on the same bearing over short distances, no insect was known to use celestial navigation for migration until now.

“The bogong moth is the first invertebrate we know of that is able to use the stars as a compass for long-distance navigation to a distant destination that it has never previously been to,” says Warrant. “Only humans and some species of night migratory birds are known to have this ability.”

Another insect famous for long-distance migrations, the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), uses the sun to navigate, factoring in the time of day.

It may be that intelligent design has given these moths the way to use the start and the worlds electromagnetic field to do this.

Source:

 James Woodford 2025 Australian moths use the stars as a compass on 1000-km migrations | New Scientist 18 June 

Aussie living fossil conundrum

Joel Kontinen

Living creatures often look much the same as their fossil counterparts supposedly living millions of years ago, earning the label ‘living fossils’.

Some evolutionists say the environment (and thus selection pressures) musts have stayed the same for all that time. But the ‘environment’ also includes the predators and prey supposedly evolving all around it.

Others conveniently claim that if only we had the fossil’s DNA, we would realize it only looks the same despite having evolved greatly.

A recent article listing an array of Australian living fossils said, ‘Australia’s isolation has allowed many such species to flourish, shielded from external pressures that influenced global evolution. “I.e., they were spared many environmental changes.

Except that, one sentence before, it has living fossils in general “often surviving environmental changes that drove others to extinction.” So, on the one hand, their geography shielded them from environmental change, On the other, they survived huge environmental change. Evolution is clearly very flexible, capable of explaining many an outcome. Only it helps not to have two contradictory explanations in the one paragraph.

The biblical creation/Flood/dispersion explanation is much more straightforward.

Source:

Weber,C., The living fossils of Australia: these ancient creatures defy evolution, msn.com, 8 Mar 2025

 

Israel strikes Iran

 

 Image courtesy of IsraeliPM

WWII Bomber Plane P-38 Found 300 Feet Below the Ice in Greenland

 

Glazier Girl. Image courtesy of Sgt. Ben Bloker, public domain.

Joel Kontinen


A World War II airplane that was lost in Greenland has been spotted by an aerial drone.

On July 4, 2018 California businessman Jim Salazar told the wrecked P-38 was beneath “more than 300 feet (91 meters) of ice using a ground-penetrating radar antenna fitted to a heavy-lift aerial drone.”

“This latest find echoes the 1992 recovery of another P-38 fighter from the same ‘Lost Squadron’ of U.S. warplanes in Greenland. That fighter was eventually restored to flying condition under the name ‘Glacier Girl’.

Both aircraft were part of a group of two B-17 bombers and six P-38 fighters flying from the U.S. to Britain in July 1942. They were traveling through a chain of secret airbases in Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland known as the Snowball Route.

Hundreds of U.S. aircraft flew this route during World War II as part of Operation Bolero, which delivered warplanes, pilots, equipment and supplies for the planned Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.”

This brings to nought the geological sediments, which are thought to be millions of years old.

Source:

Metcalfe, Tom, 2018. 'Lost Squadron' WWII Warplane Discovered Deep Beneath a Greenland Glacier. Live Science (August 25).

Giant phantom jelly: The 33-foot-long ocean giant that has babies out of its mouth

 

Image courtesy of  Antony Gilbert

Joel Kontinen

Giant phantom jellies were discovered in 1899 and since then have only been spotted around 120.

Giant phantom jelly (Stygiomedusa gigantea) lives on the oceans except the Arctic Ocean. It eats plankton and small fish.  

Why it's awesome: Earth's oceans are home to many secretive and unusual creatures that humans rarely see — including giant phantom jellies. These elusive deep-sea creatures have a 3.3-foot-wide (1 meter) bell and four ribbon-like arms that grow up to 33 feet (10 m) long, making them among the largest invertebrate predators in the ocean.

The first giant phantom jelly specimen was collected in 1899 and described in 1910. The species has only been spotted around 120 times since. This is because these jellies generally live in deep waters, down as far as 22,000 feet (6,700 m) below the surface.

They have compressible, squashable bodies, which help them to survive the incredibly high pressures they experience at these depths.

In 2022, researchers observed giant phantom jellies on three separate occasions during submersible expeditions in Antarctica, with videos and images showing the creatures swimming at relatively shallow depths of between 260 and 920 feet (80 to 280 m). In a study reporting the sightings, researchers said it's likely the jellies live closer to the surface in high southern latitudes because seasonal variations in sunlight may drive prey closer to the surface.

According to evolution, all species are connected to each other. 

Source:

Lydia Smith 2025 Giant phantom jelly: The 33-foot-long ocean giant that has babies out of its mouth | Live Science January 25

Evolutionists think they are getting close to recreating the first step in evolution of life

 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock/nobeastsofierce

Joel Kontinen

Life is thought to have begun when RNA began replicating itself, and researchers have got close to achieving this in the lab.

Could mankind  do the impossible, create life from almost nothing? 

The goal of understanding how inert molecules gave rise to life is one step closer, according to researchers who have created a system of RNA molecules that can partly replicate itself. They say it should one day be possible to achieve complete self-replication for the first time.

RNA is a key molecule when it comes to the origins of life, as it can both store information like DNA and catalyse reactions like proteins. While it isn’t as effective as either of these, the fact that it can do both means many researchers believe life began with RNA molecules that were capable of replicating themselves. “This was the molecule that ran biology,” says James Attwater at University College London.

But creating self-replicating RNA molecules has proved difficult. RNA can form double helices like DNA and can be copied in the same way, by splitting a double helix in two and adding RNA letters to each strand to create two identical helices. The problem is that RNA double helices stick together so strongly that it is hard to keep the strands separate for long enough to allow replication.

Now, Attwater and his colleagues have found that sets of three RNA letters – triplets – bind strongly enough to prevent the strands rezipping. Three is the sweet spot, says Attwater, as longer sets are likely to mispair. So, in the team’s system, an RNA enzyme in double-helix form is mixed with triplets.

The solution is made acidic and warmed to 80°C (176°F) to separate the helix, allowing the triplets to pair up and form the “rungs” of the double helix. The solution is then made alkaline and cooled to -7°C (19°F). As the water freezes, the remaining liquid becomes highly concentrated and the RNA enzyme becomes active and joins up the triplets, forming a new strand.

“RNA nucleotide triplets serve very specific informatic functions in translation in all cells,” says Zachary Adam at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This paper is interesting because it might point to a purely chemical role – a non-informatic function – for RNA nucleotide triplets that they could have served prior to the emergence of a living cell.”

Source:

Michael Le Page 2025 We’re getting close to recreating the first step in evolution of life | New Scientist 28 May