Earth’s Twin Is Still Missing, Despite Discovery of Over 1, 200 New Exoplanets

An artist’s impression of Kepler in action. Image courtesy of NASA.




Joel Kontinen

NASA has announced that its Kepler space observatory has found 1,284 new exoplanets, including roughly 550 Earth-sized ones. Of these, nine may orbit their star in the habitable zone or at a distance at which water is expected to be in liquid form but not too hot to evaporate.

Commenting on the discovery, Andrew Norton, Professor of Astrophysics Education at The Open University, writes:

“The latest announcement is an impressive piece of work, and the discovery of so many new exoplanets is stunning. It is increasingly clear that planets orbit stars as a rule – not an exception. While astronomers still haven’t found an exact twin of the Earth, the rapid pace of discoveries is surely a sign that it is just a matter of time until they do.”

But what if Earth really is unique, as some researchers have suggested, and there’s no place like home elsewhere in the universe?

The wildest speculations have put the number of Earth-like planets at over 100 billion billion, but that is based more on wishful thinking than on facts.

We should keep in mind that Venus and Mars orbit the Sun in the habitable zone, and just look how habitable they are.

Moreover, the goldilocks zone around some stars may be smaller than we assumed, and some habitable planets might not be habitable after all.

Research suggests that even Kepler-438 B, once touted as the most Earth-like exoplanet, might not be habitable.

Source:

Norton, Andrew. 2016. More than 1,000 new exoplanets discovered – but still no Earth twin. The Conversation (11 May).

Another Darwinian Dilemma: Tarsiers Raft From Asia to Africa and Back Again – Several Times

A Philippine tarsier (Carlito syrichta). Image courtesy of Kok Leng Yeo, Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).




Joel Kontinen

Monkeys are not very fond of swimming or even rafting over vast stretches of open seas. But if evolution were true, they had to get from Asia to Africa and back again several times, regardless of their dislike of navigation.

A new study published in the journal Science on tarsier fossils found in China proposes that Asian tarsiers must have crossed the waters separating Asia and Africa, as evolutionists believe that "40 million years ago" Africa was an island continent.

Evolutionists believe that modern monkeys evolved from tarsiers.

Previous research has also suggested that tarsiers had to be excellent mariners.

According to a Darwinian story, African monkeys later crossed the ocean into South America and from there they eventually made it over to Central America, after an ocean adventure of at least 160 kilometres (100 miles).

Science Daily reports that one of the species recently discovered, named Oligotarsius rarus, “was ‘incredibly similar’ to the modern tarsier found today only in the Philippine and Indonesian islands.”

K. Christopher Beard, senior curator at the University of Kansas' Biodiversity Institute, a co-author of the paper, says: "The fossil teeth described in this paper are nearly identical to those of modern tarsiers. Research shows that modern tarsiers are pretty much living fossils -- those things have been doing what they do ever since time immemorial, as far as we can tell."

A tarsier is anything but primitive; it can rotate its head 180 degrees and it communicates with other tarsiers by using ultrasound.

Source:

University of Kansas. 2016. Six new fossil species form 'snapshot' of primates stressed by ancient climate change. Science Daily. (5 May).

Weird Deep-Sea Jellyfish Affirms Genesis After Its Kind Principle

“Stunningly beautiful jellyfish.” Image courtesy of NOAA.





Joel Kontinen

We see beauty in the most unexpected places, from huge nebulae to tiny spiders. We see it in flowers, and even in ourselves.

And we shouldn’t forget the deep seas. Recently, NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer vessel has been examining the Marianas Trench, using an unmanned submarine for photography.

A few weeks ago researchers were able to see a “stunningly beautiful jellyfish” at a depth of some 3,700 metres (12,000 feet).

While the creature is weird, it is definitively a jellyfish and not an alien. It confirms the after its kind principle introduced in the Book of Genesis.

If it were a Darwinian world, we would hardly expect to see such beauty so deep below the surface, as it does not have any survival value.


Source:

Okeanos Explorer. 2016. NOAA.

More Evidence for Noah’s Flood: Pollen from Tropical Trees in Antarctica

Araucaria araucana aka monkey puzzle tree. Image courtesy of William S. Kessler, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).




Joel Kontinen

Dinosaurs in Alaska. Billions of dead nautiloids in the Grand Canyon. Turtle fossils in the Andes. A whale graveyard in the Atacama Desert in Chile. A fossilised tropical forest in Norway. Huge aquifers in arid Northern Kenya. Mountain gaps in Australia.

The most logical explanation for these phenomena is the global flood of Noah’s day.

The same could be said of natural formations that defy the idea of millions of years, such as the Natural Archway in Sahara.

The latest addition to this list is the discovery of pollen grains of tropical plants, including Araucaria araucana or the monkey puzzle tree, below the ice cover in Antarctica. They suggest that once the climate was a lot warmer.

The researchers found these remains in ice cores. While they interpreted their discovery in terms of millions of years, the Flood that devastated the early Earth some 4,500 years ago is a much more credible explanation.

Source:

Coghlan, Andy. 2016. Ice core reveals how lush Antarctica changed to icy desert. New Scientist (6 May).

Evolutionists Are ”Vampirical More Than Empirical”

Gustave Doré: Hop-o'-My-Thumb steals the ogre's seven-league boots. Image courtesy of Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). While not a vampire, an ogre is obviously no more empirical than a vampire.




Joel Kontinen


I recently stumbled upon an interesting article in The Conversation by Akshat Rathi on the reliability of scientific research. Written in 2013, it is perhaps more timely now than ever, given the increasing numbers of papers being retracted (some unnecessarily so, due to blatant censorship):

“In the past decade scientists have raised serious doubts about whether science is as self-correcting as is commonly assumed. Many published findings, including those in the most prestigious journals, have been found to be wrong. One of the reasons is that, once a hypothesis becomes widely accepted, it becomes very difficult to refute it, which makes it, as Jeremy Freese of Northwestern University recently put it, ‘vampirical more than empirical – unable to be killed by mere evidence’.”

The issue becomes even more serious through the very nature of Darwinian science that does not tolerate heresy and tries to shut down dissenting views.

As naturalistic/materialistic dogma is infallible in the eyes of some if not most of the beholders, they cannot allow the facts to spoil a good theory.

That should not be the way science is done.

Source:

Rathi, Akshat. 2013. Scientists falter as much as bankers in pursuit of answers. The Conversation (4 December).

Natural Selection As Predestination: Biologist Warns of the Dangers of Ignoring the Ideological Background of Research

Blind cave animals inspired a recent paper on evolution and predestination.





Joel Kontinen

Despite claims that scientists are objective, no one does research in a vacuum. The underlying ideology plays a major role in the choice of direction the study and its conclusions take.

Biologist Aldemaro Romero Jr. (Baruch College) discusses how predestination, a key concept in Calvinism and some non-Christian religions as well, can have an effect on research:

“Since the advent of Modern Synthesis we have a pretty consistent set of evidence that evolution is not linear, that there is not such a thing as direction for evolutionary processes, and that nothing is predetermined since natural selection, the main evolutionary mechanism, is a process that is not moved by any mystical force nor directs beings toward a particular end.”

Using blind cave animals as an illustration, he goes on to say:

“Yet, biospeleologists continue seeing 'preadaptations' and 'regressive evolution' (which implies direction) anywhere when it comes to cave fauna (Romero 1985, Romero and Green 2005).”

Dr. Romero seems to suggest that researchers have – either unwittingly or not – made evolution into a teleological or goal-oriented process, as though it had the picture of the final product in mind from the very beginning:

“Therefore, this paper demonstrates that the imprint of the idea of predestination still casts a shadow in modern evolutionary biology. I am not saying that modern biospeleologists do science under some sort of religious fervor but what many of them seem to neglect is that words matter and that words can hide a lot of the philosophical baggage that sooner or later may influence their ultimate conclusion.

Therefore, I hope this paper serves as a warning to scientists that no matter what reductionist view they have in the way they practice their research, if they do not understand the historical roots and the philosophical framework of their research they are doomed at presenting only a very partial (and many times biased) view of nature.”

What we see in nature is top-down planning in which there is little room for randomness, the hallmark of Darwinian evolution. We see teleology or goal-orientation, which does not match the blind watchmaker view of neo-Darwinism.

Almost everything in the animal kingdom looks designed.

While many evolutionists detest the d-word, it has become increasingly difficult to avoid it.

Even Darwinian just so stories are full of goal-orientation and teleology.

It seems that the problems evolution is facing are not about to disappear anytime soon.

Source:

Romero, Aldemaro Jr. 2016. The influence of religion on science: the case of the idea of predestination in biospeleology. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e9015 (27 April).

“We Are Zombies Rewriting Our Mental History,” Darwinian Researchers Say

Image courtesy of Jean-noël Lafargue, Free Art License.






Joel Kontinen

For Darwinists, free will is a hot potato that obviously should be avoided at all costs.

This also applies to consciousness that happens to be “a ghostly thing” in a naturalistic world. Evolution can’t explain it.

And so we are treated to a Darwinian just so story.

A new version features humans as zombies. Adam Bear and Paul Bloom conducted a series of experiments at Yale University. Volunteers looked at white circles and had to guess which one would turn red.

The test subjects managed to predict the right circle more often than if they had done so by mere chance, giving them a feeling of being in control.

However, the researchers “placed different delays between the white circles’ appearance and one of the circles turning red, ranging from 50 milliseconds to one second. Participants’ reported accuracy was highest – surpassing 30 per cent – when the delays were shortest.”

The researchers suggest that it “is possible that we perceive the order of events correctly – one circle changes colour before we have actually made our prediction – but then we subconsciously swap the sequence in our memories so the prediction seems to come first. Such a switcheroo could be motivated by a desire to feel in control of our lives.”

The results prompted Bear to suggest, “We are essentially zombie agents most of the time under the illusion that we’re always aware of why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

It might do us good to remember what Mark Twain famously wrote: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

Source:

Hutson, Matthew. 2016. We are zombies rewriting our mental history to feel in control. New Scientist (15 April).