”165 million”-year-old spider looks just like today’s spiders

The spider recently found in China might have spun a web like this. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

Researchers have found a spider fossil assumed to be 165 million years old in northern China. Named Eoplectreurys gertschi, it is “120 million” years older than the oldest known spider.

Paul Selden, a palaeontologist at the University of Kansas, and colleagues published the discovery in the journal Naturwissenschaften on February 6. In addition to the exceptionally well preserved spider fossil, they also found salamanders, small mammals, crustaceans and insects.

Selden was astonished at how little spiders have changed since the days of the Eoplectreurys. “Looking at modern ones, you think, well, it’s just a dead ringer,” he said.

Darwinists often define evolution as change but for instance dragonflies, squid, Coelacanths, horseshoe crabs and tuataras have hardly remembered to change, although they have had more time at their disposal than the early mammals who supposedly turned into men.

Once again, we notice how reluctant animals are to evolve. Not even the assumed millions of years have been able to bring about change from one kind to another.


Sources

Ghose, Tia. 2010. Stunningly Preserved 165-Million-Year-Old Spider Fossil Found. Wired Science. (9 February)
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/spider-fossil/

Selden, Paul A. and Diying Huang 2010.The oldest haplogyne spider (Araneae: Plectreuridae), from the Middle Jurassic of China. Naturwissenschaften (6 February) http://www.springerlink.com/content/v4r927t13446q311/?p=be8737ef790947d5a19d3faa934227da&pi=0

Marine algae are surprisingly clever

Marine algae are familiar with quantum laws. Image courtesy of Eric Guinther, Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

For researchers, the quantum computer is still mostly a dream. Marine algae, however, are surprisingly clever. They already apply quantum technology. ”Our result suggests that the energy of absorbed light resides in two places at once”, says professor Greg Scholes, the lead author of a new study on the photosynthesis of marine algae published in the journal Nature.

Computer memories are made up of bits that can only be in one state (either 0 or 1) at a time. Researchers have dreamt of a more sophisticated solution or a quantum computer in which the bits could be in more than one state simultaneously.

Now, research conducted by Greg Scholes, a chemistry professor at the University of Toronto, and colleagues shows that marine algae already make use of quantum technology.

The solutions seen in nature are often surprisingly clever. No wonder that the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:

” For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”

The technology that marine algae use suggests extremely intelligent design.

Source:

Kazan, Casey. 2010. Quantum Laws Discovered at Work in Photosynthesis. The Daily Galaxy. (5 February) http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/02/quantum-laws-discovered-at-work-in-photosynthesis.html

What Darwin Got Wrong About Natural Selection

Charles Darwin’s views are facing strong headwinds. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

“Much of the vast neo-Darwinian literature is distressingly uncritical.” This is how Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini characterise the writings of many evolutionists in New Scientist. For instance, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins praise natural selection to the skies and fail to notice that it is not all-powerful.

Natural selection plays a decisive role in the writings of Charles Darwin. Darwinists regard it as the mechanism of evolution that helps us to understand how phenotypic traits are passed from one generation to the next. Few have stopped to think about the limits of natural selection.

”Each generation contributes an imperfect copy of its genotype - and thereby of its phenotype - to its successor. Neo-Darwinism suggests that such imperfections arise primarily from mutations in the genomes of members of the species in question.”

Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini suggest that this combination of natural selection and random changes cannot explain how phenotypic traits develop, however.

They compare Darwin’s view to that of B. F. Skinner whose behaviourist psychology overestimated the role of one’s environment in behaviour.

Although Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini are not ready to throw evolution overboard, their view speaks of a type of courage that is seldom seen but is necessary in standing up against Darwinian orthodoxy. A year ago, when New Scientist published its Darwin was wrong cover story, many Darwinists were calling for a boycott of the magazine.


Source:

Fodor, Jerry ja Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. 2010.
Survival of the fittest theory: Darwinism's limits. New Scientist 2746 (3 February)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527466.100-survival-of-the-fittest-theory-darwinisms-limits.html?full=true

Goodbye, Primordial Soup!

New research moves the origin of life deeper into the oceans. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

Charles Darwin dreamt of a warm little pond, hoping that it would somehow cause the very first cell to come into being. Although evolutionists were fascinated by the idea, they were unable to find support for it.

When it became obvious that life could not begin in a warm little pond, scientists toyed with the idea of moving its genesis into deeper waters. In 1929, J. B. S. Haldane, the British geneticist known for the dilemma named after him, proposed the now discarded model. He suggested that UV radiation caused methane, ammonium and water to produce the first organic compounds in the oceans of the early earth.

A fresh study published in BioEssays suggests that it’s time to bury this idea. Lead author Nick Lane of University College London says that this old textbook explanation simply does not work.

Primordial soup is unable to produce life since much more than water is needed.

For supporters of evolution, the problem is by no means insignificant. If evolution is unable to begin, how on earth – or even elsewhere – can it proceed? The new study replaces primordial soup with a deep-sea hydrothermal vent.

However, even this hypothesis is as speculative as Darwin’s original dream. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) already experimentally disproved the idea that life could come from inanimate matter. In other words, there is no such thing as spontaneous generation. While theorists might use the term abiogenesis instead, the same problem is as relevant as ever.

Source:

New Research Rejects 80-Year Theory of 'Primordial Soup' as the Origin of Life. ScienceDaily. 3 February 2010. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100202101245.htm

ICR: 40 Years of Creation Research

Joel Kontinen





Forty years ago Dr. Henry Morris, then a hydraulics professor at Virginia Tech, established the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). From a humble beginning, ICR has grown into a remarkable apologistic organisation known throughout the world for its creation research and criticism of evolution.

ICR researchers have made some remarkable breakthroughs. Dr. John Baumgardner for instance discovered that both coal and diamonds contain measurable amounts of carbon-14. The half life of C-14 is approximately 5,700 years so diamonds that are assumed to be millions of years old should not contain any radiocarbon.

ICR has also published tens of books and a layman’s magazine called Acts & Facts. Last year it participated in making the documentary The Mysterious Islands. ICR has an educational centre in Dallas, Texas, and for 16 years operated the Museum of Creation and Earth History at Santee, California. The museum is currently run by the Life and Light Foundation.



Sources:

DeYoung, Don. 2005. Thousands … Not Billions. Green Forest, AZ: Master Books.

The web pages of ICR


Numbers, Ronald L. 2006. The Creationists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

IPCC is meeting strong headwinds

The Himalayan glaciers are not melting as fast as IPCC anticipated. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

It’s not far from a Nobel to a fiasco. Just over two years ago, in late 2007, Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were basking in the limelight.

Their reputation has not fared well recently.

Now, many critics are calling for IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri to step down for publishing incorrect data on the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. Moreover, he has ties to companies that would benefit from new climate policies.

Climate change advocates suffered another setback when the British Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) disclosed that researchers at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia broke the law by refusing to let climate critics have a look at their reports.

Sources:

Schiermeier, Quirin. 2010. IPCC flooded by criticism. Nature news (2 February) http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100202/full/463596a.html

News briefing: 4 February 2010. Nature News.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100203/full/463592a.html

New winds from the fossil world

This is what is left of Lucy. New research cautions palaeontologists not to make too hasty interpretations.





Joel Kontinen


A new study challenges vertebrate evolution. Palaeontologists Mark Purnell, Robert Sansom and Sarah Gabbott at the University of Leicester, UK, published a report on their experiments in Nature. Their research changes our view of fossils.

Purnell and his colleagues killed amphioxus (Branchiostoma lanceolatum) and lampreys (Lampetra fluviatilis) for their experiment and observed how they decayed. They noticed that the traits that were the primary characteristics of these species disappeared rather quickly.

According to Nature, the research throws light on the development of chordates (Chordata), in particular the Cambrian animals. Although the report explains the differences between species in a typical Darwinian way, it suggests that researchers have often jumped to conclusions. In other words, they have seen what they wanted to see.

Scientists will probably have to discard some of their old ”discoveries”. The paper suggests that researchers should refrain from too hasty conclusions to avoid disasters like the one involving the Ida fossil.

Nature also produced a short video on the study:








Sources:

Cressey, Daniel. 2010. Something rotten in the state of palaeontology. Nature News (31 January)
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100131/full/news.2010.45.html

Sansom, Robert S., Sarah E. Gabbott and Mark A. Purnell. 2010. Non-random decay of chordate characters causes bias in fossil interpretation. Nature (published online 31 January.) http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08745.html