4 April 2007
How did life on Earth originate? The words on Earth make it an unusually well-posed question. It is the headline of an article on Physorg.com about research at the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics at Germany's Ernst-Mach-Institut (EMI). To simulate the shock wave that occurs when a meteorite crashes into a planet, an EMI team used cylindrical explosives to briefly crush a thin layer of microbes between two flat-milled stone plates (post-explosion photo at right). Although the microbes experienced pressure 400,000 times that of air at sea level, a small minority survived. The main reason [is] that the inhospitably high pressure only lasts for a fraction of a second just like the impact of a meteorite, explained team leader Ulrich Hornemann.

Because meteorites are not flat, the EMI team also asked if impact pressure might be reduced in small crevices. It is. EMI's project partners at the German Aerospace Center added, ...The small fissures are also advantageous to the tiny organisms in other ways, providing them with protection on their journey through space against UV radiation, solar wind and the icy cold.... Hornemann concludes that life on Earth may have come here from other planets.

29 March 2007
I felt sick to my stomach.... They were talking about genes involved in brain development having come directly from bacteria — Jonathan Eisen, the University of California, Davis

When the sequence of the Human genome was first published in 2001, one surprise was evidence that 100-200 human genes had come directly from bacteria. Darwinists reacted strongly. "How could this possibly happen?" wondered James Brown, leader of GlaxoSmithKline's study of the phenomenon. Michael Stanhope, a member of his team, commented, "The original claim does nothing but fuel paranoid thoughts about gene transfer."

"Sure enough... flabbergasted evolutionary biologists rapidly shot the claim down," John Whitfield now reports in Nature. "The genes in question were more likely to have been present in the common ancestor of humans and bacteria but then lost in other lineages." And two geneticists at Emory University have commented, "Because selection is weak relative to drift in small populations, fixation of a laterally transferred gene in a characteristically small vertebrate population would require an exceptionally large fitness benefit."

The evolution of the animals has plagued us for years. We're hitting a wall. — Antonis Rokas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This latter objection actually contains a crucial insight. Newly delivered genetic programs, if they are appropriate and timely, could provide a dramatic benefit. For example, new research asks if the acquisition of an advantageous gene improved human brains.

But okay, suppose some or all of the 100-200 human genes were not transferred directly from bacteria. Perhaps various other transfer pathways were employed. Perhaps some of the subject genes were actually inherited vertically. In any of the scenarios preferred by darwinists, how would brain development genes evolve long before there was any need for them?

2 February 2007
Radar reveals methane lakes on Titan. NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured images of more than 75 irregular dark patches in depressions in Titan's high northern latitudes during a flyby, 22 July 2006. Methane lakes are consistent with the hydrological cycle expected to prevail on this cold moon of Saturn. The source of Titan's methane is has not been determined. We wonder if our own planet, when it was much colder, ever had methane lakes. Did they become the natural gas deposits we mine today?

Besides the lakes, Titan's dense, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere is another anomaly. Earth has the only similar atmosphere in the solar system. Could Gaian biological processes have produced these similar phenomena on both bodies?

22 January 2007
...The bacteria and newfound Archaea ...are archetypes of the kind of life that could exist on other planets, such as in the iron- and sulfur-rich soil of Mars. — biologist Jill Banfield of the University of California, Berkeley

10 January 2007
...It is not enough that companies make disclosures of financial information.... In addition it is vital that there be a set of financial intermediaries, who are at least as competent at receiving, processing and interpreting financial information ... as the companies are at delivering it — Yale Law professor Jonothan Macey, writing about the financial collapse of Enron.

Macey was cited in a New Yorker article suggesting that, prior to its collapse in 2001, Enron's extreme financial fragility was not concealed from the public — it was disclosed in the company's own financial statements. The condition went unnoticed because the financial statements were convoluted and took great effort to understand. Almost everyone relied on Enron itself to explain the situation. Of course, Enron explained that everything was fine.

An analogous situation governs our understanding of evolution. The same researchers who deliver the scientific data are the ones who interpret it for us. Virtually all of these researchers are committed darwinists (although they may disagree about some of the details.) Naturally, they give the data thoroughly darwinian interpretations. But here as well, we may need competent intermediaries to provide unbiased explanations. As scientific specialties proliferate and narrow, the need only grows.