While Christians have long challenged Charles Darwin's theory of undirected evolution, few appreciate the true extent of the challenge beyond the church. Current estimates are that approximately one-third of professional academic biologists who do not believe in intelligent design find Darwin's theory is inadequate to describe all of the complexity in biology.

Ben Stein documented a crackdown within the academy on criticism of Darwin in his 2008 documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. While this might explain why the public rarely hears of challenges to Neo-Darwinism, the documentary centered on intelligent design. But the growing discontent in academia is from secular naturalists.

Defining evolution is key. At the basic level of change over time, even Young Earth biblical creationists agree. At its most specific level of the common descent of all life on earth from a single ancestor via undirected mutation and natural selection, many legitimately question evolutionary theory as it stands. The word is often used interchangeably without distinction, but even when used technically in academic biologist circles, real skepticism exists about the theory.

The latest "we thought it was junk but it turned out to be crucial" study comes with the added bonus that the so-called "junk" is also species-specific and taxonomically restricted. The general topic is tandemly repeated satellite DNA in the much-studied fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. These satellite DNA regions comprise 15-20 percent of D. melanogaster's genome, and one of the regions, AAGAG(n), is transcribed across many of D. melanogaster's cell types.

While evolutionists have hoped and argued that transcription (not to mention mere presence) does not imply function (after all biology is one big hack-job, so RNA polymerase doesn't always know what it is doing), D. melanogaster is once again not cooperating. Not only is the satellite DNA ubiquitous and widely transcribed, the AAGAG RNA was found to be important for male fertility. Kind of important.

But Wait

Carl the cat was born to beat the odds. Abandoned on the side of the road in a Rubbermaid container, the scrawny black kitten-with white paws, white chest, and a white, skunklike stripe down his nose-was rescued by Kristyn Vitale, a postdoc at Oregon State University here who just happens to study the feline mind. Now, Vitale hopes Carl will pull off another coup, by performing a feat of social smarts researchers once thought was impossible.

In a stark white laboratory room, Vitale sits against the back wall, flanked by two overturned cardboard bowls. An undergraduate research assistant kneels a couple of meters away, holding Carl firmly.

"Carl!" Vitale calls, and then points to one of the bowls. The assistant lets go.

KELT-9 b is the hottest exoplanet known to date. In the summer of 2018, a joint team of astronomers from the universities of Bern and Geneva found signatures of gaseous iron and titanium in its atmosphere. Now these researchers have also been able to detect traces of vaporized sodium, magnesium, chromium, and the rare-Earth metals scandium and yttrium.

Exoplanets are planets outside our solar system that orbit around stars other than the Sun. Since the discovery of the first exoplanets in the mid-90's, well over 3000 exoplanets have been discovered. Many of these planets are extreme compared to the planets in our solar system: Hot gas giants that orbit incredibly close to their host stars, sometimes within periods of less than a few days. Such planets do not exist in our solar system, and their existence has defied predictions of how and why planets form. For the past 20 years, astronomers from all over the world have been working to understand where these planets come from, what they are made of, and what their climates are like.

An extremely hot gas giant

KELT-9 is a star located 650 light years from the Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Its exoplanet KELT-9 b exemplifies the most extreme of these so-called hot-Jupiters because it orbits very closely around its star that is almost twice as hot as the Sun. Therefore, its atmosphere reaches temperatures of around 4000 °C. In such heat, all elements are almost completely vaporized and molecules are broken apart into their constituent atoms - much like is the case in the outer layers of stars. This means that the atmosphere contains no clouds or aerosols and the sky is clear, mostly transparent to light from its star.

Over the last decade, journalists have held up Germany's renewables energy transition, the Energiewende, as an environmental model for the world.

"Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset," thanks to the Energiewende, wrote a New York Times reporter in 2014.

With Germany as inspiration, the United Nations and World Bank poured billions into renewables like wind, solar, and hydro in developing nations like Kenya.

But then, last year, Germany was forced to acknowledge that it had to delay its phase-out of coal, and would not meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction commitments. It announced plans to bulldoze an ancient church and forest in order to get at the coal underneath it.

After renewables investors and advocates, including Al Gore and Greenpeace, criticized Germany, journalists came to the country's defense. "Germany has fallen short of its emission targets in part because its targets were so ambitious," one of them argued last summer. "If the rest of the world made just half Germany's effort, the future for our planet would look less bleak," she wrote. "So Germany, don't give up. And also: Thank you."

But Germany didn't just fall short of its climate targets. Its emissions have flat-lined since 2009.

Approximately every two Earth years, when it is summer on the southern hemisphere of Mars, a window opens: Only in this season can water vapor efficiently rise from the lower into the upper Martian atmosphere. There, winds carry the rare gas to the north pole. While part of the water vapor decays and escapes into space, the rest sinks back down near the poles. Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany describe this unusual Martian water cycle in a current issue of the Geophysical Research Letters. Their computer simulations show how water vapor overcomes the barrier of cold air in the middle atmosphere of Mars and reaches higher atmospheric layers. This could explain why Mars, unlike Earth, has lost most of its water.

Researchers have identified a group of ancient bald cypress trees which are over 2,000 years old in the forested wetlands of North Carolina's Black River.

Staggeringly, the scientists found that one of the trees was 2,624 years old. This makes the bald cypress the oldest-known tree in the eastern portion of North America, as well as the longest-living known wetland tree species on Earth, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Research Communications.

The trees were discovered in 2017 by lead author of the study David Stahle from the University of Arkansas and his colleagues, who took 110 core samples to determine their age with radiocarbon dating.

Stahle's prior research in the area had already identified bald cypress trees (Taxodium distichum) which were up to 1,700 years old, but the new data, taken from trees which had not been studied before, suggests they are longer-lived than previously thought.

Man's future missions to Mars may see humans housed in incredible 3D-printed pod-like structures, according to a futuristic design project that scooped a $500,000 NASA prize.

Proposed by New York-based company AI SpaceFactory, the strange structure is designed to be printed from recycled substances and materials found on-site during deep space explorations to the moon, Mars or beyond, to build sustainable housing for adventuring humans.

Darwinian evolution is a brilliant and beautiful scientific theory. Once it was a daring guess. Today it is basic to the credo that defines the modern worldview. Accepting the theory as settled truth -no more subject to debate than the earth being round or the sky blue or force being mass times acceleration- certifies that you are devoutly orthodox in your scientific views; which in turn is an essential first step towards being taken seriously in any part of modern intellectual life. But what if Darwin was wrong?

Like so many others, I grew up with Darwin's theory, and had always believed it was true. I had heard doubts over the years from well-informed, sometimes brilliant people, but I had my hands full cultivating my garden, and it was easier to let biology take care of itself. But in recent years, reading and discussion have shut that road down for good.

This is sad. It is no victory of any sort for religion. It is a defeat for human ingenuity. It means one less beautiful idea in our world, and one more hugely difficult and important problem back on mankind's to-do list. But we each need to make our peace with the facts, and not try to make life on earth simpler than it really is.

Charles Darwin explained monumental change by making one basic assumption-all life-forms descend from a common ancestor-and adding two simple processes anyone can understand: random, heritable variation and natural selection. Out of these simple ingredients, conceived to be operating blindly over hundreds of millions of years, he conjured up change that seems like the deliberate unfolding of a grand plan, designed and carried out with superhuman genius. Could nature really have pulled out of its hat the invention of life, of increasingly sophisticated life-forms and, ultimately, the unique-in-the-cosmos (so far as we know) human mind-given no strategy but trial and error? The mindless accumulation of small changes? It is an astounding idea. Yet Darwin's brilliant and lovely theory explains how it could have happened.

A popular GPS tracker - used as a panic alarm for elderly patients, to monitor kids and track vehicles - contains security flaws, which security researchers say are so severe the device should be recalled.

The Chinese-manufactured white-label location tracker, rebranded and sold by more than a dozen companies - including OwnFone Footprint and SureSafeGo - uses a SIM card to connect to the 2G/GPRS cell network. Although none of the devices have internet connectivity and won't be found on exposed device database sites like Shodan, they still can be remotely accessed and controlled by SMS.

Researchers at U.K. cybersecurity firm Fidus Information Security say the device can be tricked into turning over its real-time location simply by anyone sending it a text message with a keyword. Through another command, anyone can call the device and remotely listen in to its in-built microphone without alerting anyone.

Another command can remotely kill the cell signal altogether, rendering the device effectively useless.