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Luskin: The dead talk back to Darwin

David Klinghoffer
Evolution News
Sat, 18 Dec 2021 07:55 UTC
Archaeopteryx
© H. Raab (User: Vesta), CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.Archaeopteryx.
In his review of Return of the God Hypothesis, I was struck by Leonard Sax's quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, the year before Darwin's death. Nietzsche reflected on the meaning of Darwinism for man:
Formerly one sought the feeling of the grandeur of man by pointing to his divine origin: this has now become a forbidden way, for at its portal stands the ape, together with other dreadful beasts, grinning knowingly as if to say: no further in this direction!
The image of "dreadful beasts" blocking the way is vivid and seemed correct at the time. The fossil record, in particular — a record of beasts (and other life forms) that lived and died — has often been presented by Darwinists as confirmation of their theory. Charles Darwin himself recognized that the voices of the dead were not entirely with him. Events like the Cambrian Explosion were not at all what was predicted by his theory of gradual, unguided change over time.

Comment: See also:

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Galaxy

Astronomers observe stars moving around Milky Way's supermassive black hole


PhysOrg
Tue, 14 Dec 2021 19:46 UTC
stars orbit massive black hole milky way
© ESO/GRAVITY collaborationThese annotated images, obtained with the GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) between March and July 2021, show stars orbiting very close to Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.
One of these stars, named S29, was observed as it was making its closest approach to the black hole at 13 billion kilometres, just 90 times the distance between the Sun and Earth. Another star, named S300, was detected for the first time in the new VLTI observations. To obtain the new images, the astronomers used a machine-learning technique, called Information Field Theory. They made a model of how the real sources may look, simulated how GRAVITY would see them, and compared this simulation with GRAVITY observations. This allowed them to find and track stars around Sagittarius A* with unparalleled depth and accuracy.

The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO's VLTI) has obtained the deepest and sharpest images to date of the region around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The new images zoom in 20 times more than what was possible before the VLTI and have helped astronomers find a never-before-seen star close to the black hole. By tracking the orbits of stars at the center of the Milky Way, the team has made the most precise measurement yet of the black hole's mass.
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Mars

ExoMars discovers hidden water in Mars' Grand Canyon


ESA
Wed, 15 Dec 2021 10:05 UTC
Valles Marineris
The ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has spotted significant amounts of water at the heart of Mars’ dramatic canyon system, Valles Marineris.
The water, which is hidden beneath Mars' surface, was found by the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO)'s FREND instrument, which is mapping the hydrogen - a measure of water content - in the uppermost metre of Mars' soil.

While water is known to exist on Mars, most is found in the planet's cold polar regions as ice. Water ice is not found exposed at the surface near the equator, as temperatures here are not cold enough for exposed water ice to be stable.

Missions including ESA's Mars Express have hunted for near-surface water - as ice covering dust grains in the soil, or locked up in minerals - at lower latitudes of Mars, and found small amounts. However, such studies have only explored the very surface of the planet; deeper water stores could exist, covered by dust.

"With TGO we can look down to one metre below this dusty layer and see what's really going on below Mars' surface - and, crucially, locate water-rich 'oases' that couldn't be detected with previous instruments," says Igor Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia; lead author of the new study; and principal investigator of the FREND (Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector) neutron telescope.
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Beaker

California's new lab-grown meat facility is the most advanced in the world

Irmak Bayrakdar
Interesting Engineering
Wed, 15 Dec 2021 00:00 UTC
lab-grown meat
© studiocasper/iStock
If you weren't aware of it, the amount of meat that humans consume globally has rapidly risen over the decades and meat production is now at an all-time high. According to the Worldwatch Institute, meat production has tripled over the last forty years, increasing by 20 percent in just the last decade. And more meat production leads to more carbon emissions that feed climate change.


Comment: This misnomer has been thoroughly debunked already - but is still being trotted out as truth by the lab-grown meat industry and their bought-and-paid-for media shills:

Lab grown meat could produce more 'damage' than the real thing, scientists warn


Since the issue has become a major problem, companies around the world have been working on green alternatives to meat products. Perhaps you might remember our previous coverage of Impossible Foods' Impossible Burgers and how they're nearly identical to regular patties and Redefine Meat's 3D-printed steaks.

One such company is Upside Foods, a cultured meat company that is headquartered in Berkley, California, and it claims that its vast 53,000-sq ft (16,154-m²) facility is the world's most advanced lab-grown meat facility, so far.

Comment: The lab-grown meat industry is not only based on the bogus notion of creating fewer greenhouse gases that traditional cattle-rearing (which is itself part of the con of the "Climate Crisis" agenda) - but also, further, puts food production into the hands of those who would seek to control our food supply choices ala 'The Great Reset'. See also:

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Snowflake

Little Ice Age triggered by unusually warm period, unprecedented cold struck within 20 years

University of Massachusetts Amherst
Phys.org
Wed, 15 Dec 2021 12:00 UTC
AMOC little ice age
© Lapointe et. al., 10.1126/sciadv.abi8230Multimodel mean correlation map between the low-frequency AMOC at 26°N and SST (12). Stars numbered 1 to 15 denote location of sites.
New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst provides a novel answer to one of the persistent questions in historical climatology, environmental history and the earth sciences: what caused the Little Ice Age? The answer, we now know, is a paradox: warming.

The Little Ice Age was one of the coldest periods of the past 10,000 years, a period of cooling that was particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region. This cold spell, whose precise timeline scholars debate, but which seems to have set in around 600 years ago, was responsible for crop failures, famines and pandemics throughout Europe, resulting in misery and death for millions. To date, the mechanisms that led to this harsh climate state have remained inconclusive. However, a new paper published recently in Science Advances gives an up-to-date picture of the events that brought about the Little Ice Age. Surprisingly, the cooling appears to have been triggered by an unusually warm episode.

Comment: Forecasts based on solar activity, coupled with measurements on earth, show that it is looking increasingly likely that our planet is moving quickly towards yet another ice age; so much so, that even scientists funded to push the global warming agenda are unable to deny the occurrence, and likely increase, of extreme 'cold snaps' in our future: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Sun

'Humanity has touched the sun' in a pioneering achievement for space exploration

Mindy Weisberger
Live Science
Wed, 15 Dec 2021 17:50 UTC
Parker Solar Probe
© NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve GribbenArtist's concept of the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the sun. Launching in 2018, Parker Solar Probe will provide new data on solar activity and make critical contributions to our ability to forecast major space-weather events that impact life on Earth.
A NASA probe has entered the sun's atmosphere and "touched" the blazing corona, in a first for solar science.

The Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018, conducted seven flybys of the sun before dipping into the corona during its eighth flyby on April 28, 2021. It made three trips into the sun's atmosphere, one of which lasted for 5 hours, mission scientists reported at a press briefing on Tuesday (Dec. 14) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

In the upper reaches of the solar atmosphere, where temperatures average about 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius) — hotter than the light-emitting surface of the sun, which is only 10,000 F (5,500 C) — the spacecraft collected atmospheric particles in a special instrument called the Solar Probe Cup. By entering and sampling the sun's atmosphere, the Parker Solar Probe accomplished a scientific achievement akin to landing on the moon, scientists said at the briefing.

"Imagine yourself sitting on a beach and staring at the ocean wondering what lies beneath the surface. This is basically what scientists have been doing for decades, wondering what mysteries lie in the sun's corona," said Nicola Fox, Heliophysics Division Director of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. And just three years after Parker Solar Probe's launch, "we have finally arrived; humanity has touched the sun," Fox said at AGU, held this year in New Orleans and online.

Comment: See also:

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Microscope 2

Nature creates plastic-eating bugs to save itself from pollution - study


RT
Thu, 16 Dec 2021 09:28 UTC
plastic garbage
© Reuters / Eloisa Lopez
Global plastic pollution is forcing our planet to adapt, growing microorganisms that can degrade the accumulating waste, a new study claims. Living organisms with the potential to diminish 10 types of plastic have been discovered.

Bugs producing plastic-degrading enzymes both on land and in oceans are growing in quantity and diversity, the study from the Swedish Chalmers University of Technology shows. Researchers have discovered over 30,000 enzyme homologues - members of protein sequences sharing similar properties - that live all around the planet and have the potential to degrade the 10 types of plastic most widely used by humans.

Around 12,000 such organisms were found in the ocean, and 18,000 in the soil, researchers revealed, adding that their habitats correlate with local levels of plastic pollution. The highest amounts of plastic-degrading bugs were discovered in "notoriously highly polluted areas," including the South Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

Comment: Mother nature adapts.

See also:

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Galaxy

Astronomers spot double-helix structure in Messier 87 galaxy


Sci-News.com
Wed, 15 Dec 2021 18:35 UTC
double helix messier 87 galaxy
© Sophia Dagnello / NRAO / AUI / NSF / Pasetto et al.VLA image of the Messier 87 radio jet, made at multiple radio frequencies. The jet seen in this image is about 8,000 light-years long. This image clearly shows the corkscrew-like helical structure in the inner part of the jet, which originates at the bright spot at the left, at the core of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole resides.
Astronomers using NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array have captured unprecedented high-fidelity radio images of a jet of material propelled from the core of the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87.

Messier 87 is an elliptical galaxy located some 53 million light-years from us in the constellation of Virgo.

Also known as M87, NGC 4486 or Virgo A, it hosts a black hole some 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun at its center. Messier 87's black hole is the first one ever to be imaged — an achievement done with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) and announced in 2019.

Earlier this year, new EHT images traced the magnetic field in the vicinity of the black hole event horizon.

Comment: Messier 87 seems to be the galaxy that keeps on giving. It has also produced this gem.

Black hole imaged in ground-breaking photo now spotted spitting out matter at nearly the speed of light

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Cassiopaea

New supernova remnant detected by astronomers

Tomasz Nowakowski
Phys Org
Mon, 13 Dec 2021 18:59 UTC
Supernova Remnant
© Araya et al., 2021Region surrounding G 17.8 + 16.7 as seen at 1.4 GHz (left) and 2.3 GHz (right).
Astronomers from Costa Rica and Australia have reported the detection of a new supernova remnant (SNR) by inspecting a gamma-ray source known as FHES J1723.5−0501. The researchers found that this source is an SNR and it has been designated G17.8+16.7. The finding is detailed in a paper published December 3 on arXiv.org.

SNRs are diffuse, expanding structures resulting from a supernova explosion. They contain ejected material expanding from the explosion and other interstellar material that has been swept up by the passage of the shockwave from the exploded star.

Studies of supernova remnants are important for astronomers, as they play a key role in the evolution of galaxies, dispersing the heavy elements made in the supernova explosion and providing the energy needed for heating up the interstellar medium. SNRs are also believed to be responsible for the acceleration of galactic cosmic rays.

FHES J1723.5−0501 (also known as 4FGL J 1723.5−0501e) is a gamma-ray source detected outside the galactic plane with NASA's Fermi spacecraft. Previous observations have revealed the presence of an unclassified radio shell along the southwestern edge of this source, suggesting that FHES J1723.5−0501 may be potentially associated to an SNR or a pulsar wind nebula (PWN).
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Info

Vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging developed by Japanese scientist


The Japan Times
Sun, 12 Dec 2021 17:21 UTC
Juntendo University campus
© KyodoJuntendo University campus in Tokyo Bunkyo ward.
A Japanese research team said it developed a vaccine to remove so-called zombie cells that accumulate with age and damage nearby cells, causing aging-related diseases including arterial stiffening.

The team, including Juntendo University professor Toru Minamino, confirmed that mice administered with the vaccine showed decreases in the zombie cells, medically known as senescent cells, and in areas affected by arterial stiffening.

"We can expect that (the vaccine) will be applied to the treatment of arterial stiffening, diabetes and other aging-related diseases," Minamino said.

The results of the team's research were published in the online version of the journal Nature Aging on Friday.

Senescent cells refer to those that have stopped dividing but do not die. They damage nearby healthy cells by releasing chemicals that cause inflammation.
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