Science & TechnologyS


Better Earth

On the origin of life, scientists help break the poisonous spell of the materialist world view

David Klinghoffer
Evolution News
Mon, 01 Jul 2019 06:15 UTC
James Tour, Rice University
James Tour, Rice University, in a scene from Episode 5 of Science Uprising.
If you follow the news, you've seen countless headlines like this: "Amazing Discovery May Hold Key to Origins of Life," "Found: The Origin of Life," "Scientists May Have Found the Chemical Compound That Started Life," and on and on. Michael Egnor wrote about just such a story here yesterday.

The origin of life is the deepest mystery imaginable and it sounds like scientists have it all figured out. Or just about. The new episode of Science Uprising, "Origin of Life: Intelligence Required," firebombs that persistent and influential myth, advanced by scientists themselves and their media helpers. It does so in just seven devastating minutes.

"We See the Human Soul"

It's crucial to materialism to believe that blind, natural processes alone could have blundered about and generated life from dumb chemical predecessors. Whether it happened on our planet or another, all the wonders of the first living cell must have come into existence with no need for intelligent design. Any hint to the contrary threatens to topple a whole of way of thinking about human beings and about all life, that denies any reality beyond the material. "We are not materialists," says the masked narrator of Episode 5, "We see the human soul":

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Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope detects buckyballs ions in interstellar space


Universe Today
Wed, 26 Jun 2019 16:50 UTC
hubble buckeyball ions space
Scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope have found a very complex molecule out there in space. Called Buckyballs, after renowned thinker Buckminster Fuller, they are a molecular arrangement of 60 carbon atoms (C60) in the rough shape of a soccer ball. Though it's not the first time these exotic molecules have been spotted in space, it is the first time that Buckyball ions have been found.

The Buckyballs, (aka Buckminsterfullerenes) were found in the Interstellar Medium (ISM,) the diffuse matter and radiation that exists in between solar systems. Since ISM is the sort of fundamental matter out of which stars and planets eventually form, astronomers are really interested in it. Understanding the contents of the ISM sheds light on the rise of stars, planets, and eventually life itself.
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Butterfly

Biologists call to overhaul flawed taxonomic categories

Christie Wilcox
Quanta Magazine
Mon, 24 Jun 2019 12:00 UTC
phyla
© Quanta Magazine; source: Nick Hobgood; Bernard DUPONT; Luc Viatour; Ryan McMindsSegmented worms and millipedes look more alike than jellyfish and corals do, and their lineages also diverged more recently. Yet segmented worms and millipedes are in different phyla (Annelida and Arthropoda), while jellyfish and corals are both Cnidaria. Such inconsistencies highlight problems with the meaning of the phylum category.
Carl Linnaeus was probably not the first scientist to realize the inherent connectedness of life on this planet. But he articulated and codified it. In the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae, published in 1758, he established a system of naming and organizing life that endures to this day - what we still call Linnaean taxonomy, although today's system is somewhat different from the five-rank hierarchy he proposed. The principle is the same, though: Life is organized into nested ranks, with each higher tier representing a larger group of related organisms to which the species at the bottom belong.

This ranked taxonomy - domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species - is foundational to biology pedagogy. Every student learns it, often through a mnemonic like "Didn't Know Popeyes Chicken Offered Free Gizzard Strips" or "Dear King Phillip Came Over For Great Spaghetti."

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Info

Sugar could make clothing almost indestructible

Josh Barney
University of Virginia
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 18:08 UTC
Single Celled Organism
© University of VirginiaSugar coats the surface of tiny appendages called pili in the single-celled organisms scientists studied, allowing them to exist in extreme environments.
The secret to making clothing practically indestructible could be the same thing that makes us grow out of it: sugar.

A new discovery from the University of Virginia School of Medicine reveals how sugars could be used to make almost indestructible cloth and other materials.

Nature figured it out long ago, but the answer has been hidden away in bubbling baths of acid.
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Nebula

Mysterious cosmic radio burst detected in a completely unexpected region of space

George Dvorsky
Gizmodo
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 14:00 UTC
Fast Radio Burst
© CSIRO
For years, astronomers have struggled to understand the source of fast radio bursts, powerful split-second pulses of energy that originate far outside our galaxy. In an astonishing technical feat, astronomers have finally managed to pinpoint the galactic origin of a one-off FRB-but its unexpected location in space suggests scientists need to go back to the drawing board.

New research published today in Science describes the first single FRB to have its location pinpointed to a specific galaxy.

"This is a very significant result," Shriharsh Tendulkar, an astronomer from McGill University who wasn't involved with the new study, told Gizmodo. "Firstly, from a technical point of view, it is a very challenging task to find a non-repeating fast radio burst and to precisely measure its position at the same time with the same telescope."

Indeed, a repeating FRB has been localized to a distant galaxy before, a feat accomplished by a Cornell University-led team in 2017. But FRBs come in two flavors: repeaters and one-offs, the latter of which are more common but, up until this point, were impossible to pinpoint in space owing to their transient nature. A team led by astronomer Keith Bannister from the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) at the Australia Telescope National Facility is now the first to localize the galactic origin of a single, non-repeating FRB.

Comment: See also:

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Bulb

Physicists discover new optical phenomenon: croissant-shaped twists of light

Adam Mann
National Geographic
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
Light torque
© Kevin Dorney, Kapteyn-Murnane Group, Jila-University of Colorado BoulderUsing two time-delayed laser pulses shot into argon gas, optical physicists have discovered a whole new property of light called self-torque. Shining this type of laser on a flat surface yields a croissant-shaped puddle of light.
The pastry-like optical phenomenon could one day be used in industrial applications or to improve communications technology.

WHAT DO YOU get when you add up a bunch of donuts? According to optical physicists: a croissant.

That's the result of new research revealing a never-before-seen property of light called self-torque. This newfound characteristic of photons involves a twisting laser beam that spins faster and harder, similar to a bit of dirt as it whirls down a drain. The odd behavior, described today in the journal Science, might one day lead to improved communications technology and novel ways of manipulating microscopic objects.

"We're always discovering new things in science, but it's not that often you discover a new fundamental property," says study coauthor Kevin Dorney, a physical chemist at the JILA laboratory run by the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Extreme optical baking

The recipe for pastry-shaped lasers starts with a type of light that possesses what's known as orbital angular momentum. This property, itself only officially discovered in 1992, can be imparted to a laser beam when it passes through a seashell-shaped lens. The light emerges looking like a helix corkscrewing around a central point. Shine the laser on a surface, and it will look like a fat ring with a hole in the center or, more colloquially, a donut.

A nano-size particle placed in its path will start to spin like a planet around a star-hence the property's astronomical moniker.
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Chess

Huawei CEO: If we ditch Android, Google will lose 800 million users

Deidre Richardson
Android Headlines
Wed, 26 Jun 2019 16:41 UTC
huawei
In the latest response from Huawei on the Trump Ban, Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei says that if Huawei ditches Android, Google will lose 800 million users.

"Huawei and Google will always be on the same line of interest, and if we don't load Google's system, Google will lose 700-800 million users in the future," Zhengfei said.

The quoted number of potentially departing Android users is a curious one, considering that there's little knowledge regarding how many Android users are currently using Huawei devices. Perhaps Huawei's CEO knows this because of mobile analytics information, in the same way Google knows it has over 2 billion users on its mobile OS.

Outside of this, however, the number seems pulled out of thin air. There is something worthy about it, when one considers that Huawei is the second largest global manufacturer in the world and that many of its devices run Android (though some of its devices run Windows). So, perhaps the number is likely, probable, or even reasonable to imagine.
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Microscope 1

Ancient proteins are starting to reveal humanity's history

Matthew Warren
Nature
Wed, 26 Jun 2019 12:00 UTC
Homo floresiensis
© Adapted from World History Archive/AlamyHomo floresiensis is one of the species researchers hope to study by sequencing ancient proteins. Credit: Adapted from World History Archive/Alamy
Move over, DNA: Proteins dating back more than one million years have been extracted from some fossils, and could help to answer some difficult questions about archaic humans.
Some time in the past 160,000 years or so, the remains of an ancient human ended up in a cave high on the Tibetan Plateau in China. Perhaps the individual died there, or parts were taken there by its kin or an animal scavenger. In just a few years, the flesh disappeared and the bones started to deteriorate. Then millennia dripped by. Glaciers retreated and then returned and retreated again, and all that was left behind was a bit of jawbone with some teeth. The bone gradually became coated in a mineral crust, and the DNA from this ancient ancestor was lost to time and weather. But some signal from the past persisted.

Comment: See also:

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Butterfly

Bird that went extinct 136,000 years ago comes 'back from the dead' after evolving again

Andrew Griffin
The Independent
Fri, 10 May 2019 11:51 UTC
White-throated rail.
© Charles J Sharp via CC BY-SA 4.0White-throated rail. There is no other evidence of the phenomenon that has ever been so clear, scientists say
A bird that previously went extinct rose from the dead after it evolved all over again, scientists have found.

The last surviving flightless species of bird in the Indian Ocean, a type of rail, has actually been around before, the research found. It came back through a process called "iterative evolution", which saw it emerge twice over, the researchers found.

It means that on two separate occasions - tens of thousands of years apart - a species of rail was able to colonise an atoll called Aldabra. In both cases it eventually became flightless, and those birds from the latter time can still be found on the island now.

Iterative evolution happens when the same or similar structures evolve out of the same common ancestor, but at different times - meaning that the animal actually comes about twice over, completely separately.

Comment: It would appear that there are a great many exceptions and anomalies to the mainstream theory of evolution: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Info

'Hidden consciousness' detected in some coma patients

Megan Schmidt
Discover Magazine
Wed, 26 Jun 2019 16:23 UTC
Hidden consciousness
© Chairoij/ShutterstockA study detected hidden consciousness in one out of seven unresponsive brain injury patients using widely-available hospital technology.
There are some things that life never prepares you for - like the dreaded phone call that a loved one is in a coma, and you're responsible for making their end-of-life decisions if they don't wake up.

These decisions are further complicated by the fact that there's no true test for consciousness. And, unfortunately, it's difficult for doctors to predict who will wake up and who won't.

But now, a team of researchers at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center say a tool that's readily available in nearly all hospitals around the world was effective in spotting signs of "hidden consciousness" in comatose patients. These subtle patterns in brain activity are signals that the person is aware but is physically unable to show it.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that an electroencephalogram (EEG), a machine that detects electrical activity in the brain, could find hints of hidden consciousness in one of seven people just days after a serious brain injury. And in patient follow-ups a year later, researchers say people who initially showed signs of hidden consciousness were more likely to recover.
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