Did Earth life actually begin on Mars? Asteroid impacts could let microbes planet-hop, study suggests

 

Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Joel Kontinen

Billions of years ago Mars hosted lakes, streams and perhaps even a huge ocean according to evolution believing scientists.

A remarkably hardy bacterium can survive pressures similar to those generated when asteroid impacts blast debris off Mars, a new evolutionary study has found.

The findings, published earlier this week in the journal PNAS Nexus, may prompt scientists to reconsider where life could exist across the solar system and could lead to a reassessment of "planetary protection" rules designed to prevent contamination between worlds.

"Life might actually survive being ejected from one planet and moving to another," study co-author Kaliat Ramesh, a mechanical engineer at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said. "This is a really big deal that changes the way you think about the question of how life begins and how life began on Earth."

Researchers recently exposed the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans to the pressures experienced during an asteroid strike. The microbe survived, suggesting that impacts could spread life from planet to planet. 

The new findings lend support to a long-debated theory known as lithopanspermia, which proposes that life can spread between planets by hitching a ride on fragments of rock blasted into space by massive impacts. The idea remains unproven.

For the study, Ramesh and his colleagues tested the endurance of Deinococcus radiodurans, an exceptionally resilient bacterium found, among other places, in Chile's high-altitude deserts. With a thick outer shell and a remarkable ability to repair its own DNA, D. radiodurans is famously tolerant of intense radiation, freezing temperatures, extreme dryness and other harsh conditions similar to those found in space. It has been nicknamed "Conan the bacterium," after all.

To simulate the forces involved in an asteroid impact, the researchers sandwiched samples of D. radiodurans between two steel plates. Using a gas-powered gun, they fired a projectile at roughly 300 mph (480 kph), subjecting the microbes to pressures between 1 and 3 gigapascals.

Nearly all of the microbes survived impacts generating 1.4 gigapascals of pressure, while about 60% remained alive at 2.4 gigapascals. At lower pressures, the cells showed no signs of damage, though researchers observed ruptured membranes and some internal cellular damage at higher pressures, the study reports.

"We continuously redefine the limits of life," Madhan Tirumalai, a microbiologist at the University of Houston who was not involved with the new study, told The New York Times.

As the pressure increased, the researchers also detected heightened activity in genes responsible for repairing DNA and maintaining cell membranes.

"We expected it to be dead at that first pressure," Lily Zhao, a mechanical engineer at JHU who led the experiment, said in the statement. "We started shooting it faster and faster. We kept trying to kill it, but it was really hard to kill."

The experiment eventually ended, the statement read, because the steel structure holding the plates "fell apart before the bacteria did."

This study does not take the existence of a Creator as established. Only God can give life to planets such as Earth.

Source:

Sharmila Kuthunur 2026 Did Earth life actually begin on Mars? Asteroid impacts could let microbes planet-hop, study suggests | Space 6 March

Top predators still prowled the seas after the biggest mass extinction

 

Image courtesy of Christian Darkin/Science Photo Library

Joel Kontinen

The worst known mass extinction wiped out over 80 per cent of marine species. But despite these huge losses, many ecosystems did not collapse, with a variety of animals and even top predators managing to survive the cataclysm.

The findings suggest that each ecosystem’s fate was determined, in part, by its own unique mix of species. The same may be true of modern marine ecosystems, which are also facing major threats from climate change.

The mass extinctions that evolutionists think are true, never happened millions of years ago. Many creationists say that they happen ed at the time of Noah’s flood, some 4,500 years ago.

Source:

Michael Marshall 2026 Top predators still prowled the seas after the biggest mass extinction | New Scientist 4 March 

 

It will be Purim in Israel in a few days. In 400 BC during the event, the proud Haman tried to kill all Jews but Mordecai and Esther attempted to kill the Jews, and Haman and his sons were killed on the gallows he had designed for Mordecai.

Now, with the death of Khamenei on Purim has been reached its goal.  The suppressor of the Jews  is no more.  

Tiny predatory dinosaur weighed less than a chicken

 

Reconstruction of Alnashetri cerropoliciensis. Image courtesy of Gabriel Díaz Yantén, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro.

Joel Kontinen

Not all dinosaurs were big, some were relatively small. They weighed less than a small chicken.  

The 95-million-year-old fossil of Alnashetri cerropoliciensis was found at the La Buitrera site in northern Patagonia, Argentina, in 2014.

The first specimen of Alnashetri, found in 2012, was a set of incomplete hindlimb bones, says Peter Makovicky at the University of Minnesota, who was part of the study on the new fossil. With only fragmentary remains, it was impossible to say more than that it was probably an Alvarezsaur. “We were not even sure if it was a juvenile or fully grown,” he says.

“With a whole skeleton, we suddenly had all the information to understand how Alnashetri was similar or differed from other species, and a key to understanding how the unusual anatomy of Alvarezsaurs evolved,” says Makovicky.

The new fossil has very long, slender hind limbs and surprisingly long forelimbs that retain three well-developed fingers. Detailed analysis of the fossil bones revealed the dinosaur was an adult and at least 4 years old.

Alvarezsaurs were once thought to be early ancestors of birds. However, it is now clear that, while Alnashetri might have had some superficial resemblance to a bird, it and all the Alvarezsaurs were, in fact, non-avian theropods. “The new discovery certainly underscores this,” says Mackovicky.

Some evolutionists think that dinosaurs have been descended from birds.

Previously, it was thought that all the tiny alvarezsaurs had very short, stout forelimbs with a large thumb but shrunken side digits, and tiny teeth. Palaeontologists thought these anatomical features evolved alongside their shrinking body size because they only ate ants and termites, says Makovicky. “But Alnashetri does not fit that mould – it is among the smaller Alvarezsaurs, but neither its teeth nor its forelimbs are reduced, because it represents a much earlier branch on the Alvarezsaur evolutionary tree.”

In fact, its forearms are more typical of other Theropods rather than a specialist ant-eater, he says. “Alnashetri is tiny but is otherwise built like a more typical Theropod – given its small size, it probably ate its fair share of invertebrates, but probably had a wider range of prey.”

That means palaeontologists still don’t fully understand why these dinosaurs became so small. “We’re left with only a vaguer sense that Alvarezsaurs were successful at occupying the niches of very small predators,” says Mackovicky.

Source:

James Woodford 2026 Tiny predatory dinosaur weighed less than a chicken | New Scientist 25 February 

Stone Age symbols may push back the earliest form of writing

 

The Adorant figurine, approximately 38,000 years old, consists of a small, ivory plate bearing an anthropomorphic figure and multiple sequences of notches and dots. Image courtesy of Landesmuseum Württemberg / Hendrik Zwietasch, CC BY 4.0.

Joel Kontinen

Stone Age people 40,000 years ago used a simple form of writing comparable in complexity to the earliest stages of the world’s first writing system, cuneiform, according to a study of mysterious signs engraved on figurines and other artefacts found in Germany. If confirmed, this pushes back the emergence of a proto-writing system by more than 30,000 years.

Ancient humans have long made deliberate marks on objects, but some of the earliest groups of Homo sapiens to arrive in Europe around 45,000 years ago took this to a new level. Many of the artefacts they made, such as pendants, tools and figurines, were engraved with sequences of graphic symbols such as lines, crosses and dots. These groups also painted symbols on cave walls alongside depictions of animals, and the meaning of these symbols has been contentious.

But if we think what actually happened so long ago, People have always been people, According to Genesis, people would try to  write at the very beginning of society.

Source:

Alison George 2026 Stone Age symbols may push back the earliest form of writing | New Scientist 23 February 

Israel’s secret war to save a people from genocide

 

Israel’s has a secret war to save a people from genocide. It concerns the Druzes and the Kurds. 

Iran’s Secret Christian Revolution: How Faith is Toppling a Regime

 

Iran’s secret Christian revolution: how faith is toppling a regime.