Creationism News -- April 2012 ????? -- 2012?4?

1
Creationism News -- April 2012 ????? -- 2012?4?

• Dedicated to David Coppedge who sacrificed his
  career as the Head Systems Administrator for the
  Cassini Spacecraft in JPL to honor the Creator
  of the Universe. He also spent literally
  thousands of hours to make his excellent
  websites.
• The contents of this presentation were taken from
  various sources. Thank God that David Coppedge
  came back from the lawsuit after two months of
  vacation. Pray for the results of the lawsuit.
  I now resume using his website materials.
• Pastor Chui
• http//ChristCenterGospel.org
• ckchui1_at_yahoo.com

12/7/2020
1
2
Adaptation Mechanisms in Biology ?????????

• ICR Acts and Facts (April 2012) has an article on
  the mechanisms of adaptation. Most expressed
  traits and adaptations are biologically complex
  responses. A creationist model of adaptation is
  based on the organisms innate physiological
  capabilities and fault tolerance mechanisms that
  are genetically programmed by the Creator.
  Scientifically valid descriptions employ recent
  molecular discoveries in genomics, cell
  physiology, and phenotypic plasticity to explain
  an organisms behavior to their environmental
  niches.

12/7/2020
2
3
The Grand Staircase ???

• ICR Acts and Facts (April 2012) has an article on
  the Grand Staircase, which describes the
  landforms of Utah and Arizona, starting from the
  colored Bryce Canyon, to Grey Cliffs, to White
  Cliffs, to Vermillion Cliffs, and finally to the
  Grand Canyon. These cliffs and canyons do form a
  grand staircase which spans the geologic era from
  the paleozoic, mesozoic, and the cenozoic. The
  staircase is best explained by receding flood
  waters in short duration. The Redwall limestone,
  in which billions of 2-foot long nautiloid
  fossils were discovered, prove the deposit could
  not have been due to gradual processes. The
  Coconino Sandstone is an underwater sand ripple
  deposit. The Zion Canyon has vast marine deposits
  of fossils. Bryce Canyon is a failed lake bed
  full of Flood waters. It all fits inferences from
  biblical information.

12/7/2020
3
4
Tech Innovations from the Creator ?????????

• ICR Acts and Facts (April 2012) has an article on
  how engineers copied from nature and produced
  many designs that still fall short of the real
  thing. Examples include the intricately designed
  scales of the large Arapaima Brazilian fish gave
  inspiration for engineers to develop flexible
  ceramics. Diving watercrafts are designed after
  the sleek water dynamics of killer whales,
  dolphins, and sharks. The humpback whale flippers
  have dome-like bumps called tubercles are now
  used in wind turbine blades which increased
  yearly electrical production by 20 with reduced
  noise! Now this design can be applied to fans,
  pumps, compressors, and turbines. God had it
  first. Rough shark skin is designed to smooth the
  water flow over the shark. 80 of the medals were
  won by swimmers with these suits.

12/7/2020
4
5
Tech Innovations from the Creator ?????????

• ICR Acts and Facts (April 2012) further describes
  how scientists took the wing design of
  long-distance birds to develop an amazing
  morphing airplane wing. The wing skin were
  covered by an outer skin like fish scales. This
  leads to rapid flights with less fuel
  consumption.
• Velcro was invented to imitate the burr structure
  of plants.
• Blood-clotting is not copied for use in aircraft
  composite material. Composites with tiny hollow
  tubes filled with epoxy resin. When the aircraft
  is over stressed, a crack would appear and resin
  leaks out. The scar is sealed.
• Gecko technology now includes tapes that would
  improve recovery from surgery and make more
  robust surgical materials, patches, and bandages.
  Let us give glory to God.

12/7/2020
5
6
Spider Web Design ?????

• ICR Acts and Facts (April 2012) has an article on
  the masterful design of spider webs. Spider silk
  is stronger than steel and tougher than Levlar
  pound-for-pound. A spider silk strand resists
  stress in a stepwise fashion. After initial
  stiffening, the thread absorbed stress by
  stretching. Additional pressure caused the thread
  to sharply stiffen, thus transferring pressure to
  the rest of the web. The load capacity increased
  by 3-10 with the introduction of defects. Its
  as if the web was designed to anticipate breaks.
  Because their webs remain stable after damage,
  spiders repair them to catch multiple means with
  the same web. Now scientists use modified
  bacteria and goats to manufacture silk proteins.
  Automobile designers can incorporate crumple
  zones to absorb head-on collisions.
• Thank God because He optimized the spider web.

12/7/2020
6
7
Dead Galaxies Live On ??????

• Discover (April 2012) reports U of Michigan
  astronomer Joel Bregman looked into red-and-dead
  elliptical galaxies and found all of them have
  some young stars. The reddest and deadest galaxy,
  Messier 105, harbors dozens of young stars,
  although these young stars are a fraction of our
  own Milky Way. This fact will force astronomers
  to revise their models of galaxy formation. The
  fact is all galaxies have both old and young
  stars. It is a matter of interpretation. Some
  have more old stars, while others have more
  young stars. It is like some families have more
  elderly and others have more youngsters.
• Thank God for these families of galaxies.

12/7/2020
7
8
A cu. mm of Brain Tissue ? 1015 byte
?????????1015??

• Discover (April 2012) reports MIT neuroscientist
  Sebastian Seung who models the brains
  connectomethe million billion points of contact
  between neurons in the brain. If successful,
  well glimpse the anatomy of the mind. He needs
  bigger and faster computers for modeling. He
  needs more eyeballs to analyze the results. He is
  designing a game so that the public can play. It
  may take years to know what the brain is in store
  for us all. Thank God for our brains.

12/7/2020
8
9
The Clouds Are Alive ????

• Discover (April 2012) reports that clouds are
  teeming with microorganisms so much as that it
  says the clouds are alive. The ecosystem in the
  sky may influence much of the worlds weather.
  The amount of microbial life present in the cloud
  droplets that make up a winter storm is amazing.
  The skies are full of invisible life. Bacteria,
  algae, and fungi are swept up by winds and lifted
  to the altitude of 20 miles into the stratosphere
  by electric fields during thunderstorms. Some
  researchers proposed the ice-making bug and
  others like it might be creating ice crystals in
  clouds that result in precipitation. Now cloud
  seeding has more chances. Thank God for that.

12/7/2020
9
10
Surprising Scientific Fraud ?????????

• Discover (April 2012) has the last page dedicated
  to 20 Things You Didnt Know about Science
  Fraud. In 18 surveys of researchers, 2
  confessed to falsifying or manipulating data, but
  14 said they knew a colleague who had. From
  retracted biology papers from 2000 to 2010,
  Americans were more prone to commit fraud than
  scientists of other nations. Chinese scientists
  were actually 3 times more likely to commit
  fraud. If caught stealing others ideas, they
  excused themselves that a memory as an original
  thought. Even geniuses succumb to temptation.
  Isaac Newton fudged numbers in his Principia,
  considered to be the greatest physics text ever
  written. Others who have altered data include
  Freud, Darwin, and Pasteur.
• This says that For all have sinned, and come
  short of the glory of God.

12/7/2020
10
11
Genome Length ?????

• Popular Science (April 2012) has an interesting
  section on the length of genome of various life
  forms
• Bacterium (Escherichia coli) 6.2 million DNA
  base pairs
• Foot fungus (Trichophyton rubrum) 22 million DNA
  pairs
• Earthworm (A. tuberculata) 655 million DNA pairs
• Piranha (S. brandtii) 1600 million DNA pairs
• Human (Homo sapiens) 3000 million DNA pairs
• Daffodil (N. jonquilla) 16000 million DNA pairs
• That is why one single leaf of daffodil can grow
  into a plant.
• Is daffodil more complex than humans? Not
  necessarily.
• The fact is that all cells are very complex.
  There are hundreds of types of highly complex
  cells working in harmony in us to make us breathe
  and think. Thank God!

12/7/2020
11
12
Jesus vs. Scientists Who's Better at Miracles?
?????????????

• Yahoo Science quotes Live Science (April 7) on
  Jesus vs. Scientist Whos Better at Miracles?
  The article compares Jesus miracles to current
  successes of science on topics of virgin birth,
  free wine, healing lameness, feeding the masses,
  making blind people see, resurrection of Lazarus,
  and found that science is still lag behind. It
  might take another 2000 years for science to
  catch up. The article says.

12/7/2020
12
13
Oil Spill Anniversary ??????

• Popular Mechanics (April 2012) has a short
  article on the two year anniversary of the worst
  oil spill in America. The mishap killed 11 people
  and dumped 5 million barrels of crude into the
  Gulf of Mexico. Federal officials found it is
  not a catastrophe as predicted. Favorable
  currents and topology prevented the oil from
  spreading and allowed bacteria to break it down
  quickly. A reduction of bluefin population was
  found to reduce less than 4. Thank God for the
  bacteria to avert a catastrophe.

12/7/2020
13
14
Vikings Crystal Compass ??????

• Archaeology (March/April 2012) reports Vikings
  were able to sail from Norway to North America
  1000 years ago without magnetic compass. The
  crystal Iceland spar could be used to ascertain
  the suns position even on a cloudy day. When
  light passes through the crystal, it is doubly
  refracted. As a person holds up the crystal to
  the sun and rotates it, the two beams line up
  when facing the sun. This is true even on a
  cloudy day. Thank God for the ingenuity of the
  Vikings to navigate without compass.

12/7/2020
14
15
Heart Disease is Still the No. 1 Killer
??????????

• Time (April 2, 2012) has an article describing
  why heart disease is still the number 1 killer in
  America. Each year more than half a million
  people die of heart-related causes in the US, but
  despite increasing awareness of the key
  contributors to heart disease, we havent been
  getting much better at preventing it. Of the
  seven major heart risk factors(high cholesterol,
  elevated blood pressure, high glucose levels, an
  unhealthy diet, a sedentary lifestyle, smoking
  and being overweightmost of us succeed at
  keeping only 3 or 4 under control.
• That is why Paul said that the flesh is weak.
  The things that I want to do I did not do. We
  need the grace of God and help of the Holy Spirit
  to help us to walk in His path.

12/7/2020
15
16
Man-made Sound Helps Hummingbirds ????????

• Time (April 2, 2012) has an article describing
  how man-made sound from natural gas compressors
  help the hummingbirds to survive. Strange as it
  may sound. The man-made sound scare away the
  predator, the bluejay, which eats nesting babies
  of the hummingbirds.
• Man-made engine noise is not all that bad. At
  least in the case of the hummingbirds. It helps
  the birds to survive. We praise God for that.

12/7/2020
16
17
Cambrian Explosion Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
????????,??????

• The short sentence Then something happened
  appears in a press release from the University of
  Wisconsin-Madison, entitled, Great Unconformity
  Evidence for a geologic trigger of the Cambrian
  explosion (see it also on PhysOrg). The
  references to geology, fossils and evidence sure
  sounds like this is coming from the science lab.
  Heres the context
• The oceans teemed with life 600 million years
  ago, but the simple, soft-bodied creatures would
  have been hardly recognizable as the ancestors of
  nearly all animals on Earth today.

12/7/2020
17
18
Cambrian Explosion Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
????????,??????

• Then something happened. Over several tens of
  millions of years a relative blink of an eye in
  geologic terms a burst of evolution led to a
  flurry of diversification and increasing
  complexity, including the expansion of
  multicellular organisms and the appearance of the
  first shells and skeletons.
• The results of this Cambrian explosion are well
  documented in the fossil record, but its cause
  why and when it happened, and perhaps why nothing
  similar has happened since has been a mystery.

12/7/2020
18
19
Cambrian Explosion Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
????????,??????

• Although Darwin and other palaeontologists sic
  Darwins only degree was in theology have
  regarded the resultant widespread hiatus in the
  rock record as a failure of preservation, the
  formation of this prominent gap may have actually
  been an environmental trigger for
  biomineralization, thereby promoting the Cambrian
  explosion of marine animals. Determining the
  geodynamic causes of extensive Neoproterozoic
  continental denudation followed by Phanerozoic
  sedimentation, and linking those dynamics to the
  timing and spatial distribution of marine
  transgression and biogeochemical change, is now a
  challenge for geoscience.

12/7/2020
19
20
Cambrian Explosion Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
????????,??????

• Then something happened. Over several tens of
  millions of years a relative blink of an eye in
  geologic terms a burst of evolution led to a
  flurry of diversification and increasing
  complexity, including the expansion of
  multicellular organisms and the appearance of the
  first shells and skeletons.
• The results of this Cambrian explosion are well
  documented in the fossil record, but its cause
  why and when it happened, and perhaps why nothing
  similar has happened since has been a mystery.

12/7/2020
20
21
Cambrian Explosion Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
????????,??????

• This is all part of the gap. They filled the gap
  with their own imaginations. Theres no evidence
  that shallow seas repeatedly advanced and
  retreated, wearing down imaginary sediments to
  basement rock all over the world. Theres only
  the gap igneous basement rock, with flat
  sediments stacked on top of them a billion Darwin
  Years later. This is clearly visible in the Grand
  Canyon, but it represents a global phenomenon.
  Thats why its called the Great Unconformity.
  Furthermore, theres only one Great Unconformity,
  so they have not found a Law of Nature that
  creates global unconformities from time to time.
  Peters himself said in the press release,
  theres nothing else like it in the entire rock
  record.

12/7/2020
21
22
Cambrian Explosion Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
????????,??????

• During an imaginary billion-year gap that left no
  sign of gully erosion on a global flat surface
  while imaginary seas advanced and retreated.
  Then something happened. New minerals changed
  the chemistry of seawater. This triggered a
  geologically-sudden explosion of complex body
  plans with eyes, articulated limbs, digestive
  systems, muscles and nerves. In science, its now
  permissible to use gaps to fill gaps. You can use
  silence to fill silence. You can use imagination
  in lieu of scientific data. Stuff happens in
  modern Darwinian thinking, thats all you need to
  know. Imagining what may happen in the gaps gives
  you Understanding Enlightenment Nirvana.

12/7/2020
22
23
Wernher von Braun Remembered?????????

• Wernher von Braun (19121977) would have turned
  100 on March 23. His name is almost synonymous
  with rocket scientist to many. Father of the
  American space program, including the first
  American satellite, the Mercury, Gemini and
  Apollo programs, the moon landings and Skylab,
  von Braun left an indelible mark on America and
  the world.

12/7/2020
23
24
Wernher von Braun Remembered?????????

• David Christensen, who worked with von Braun,
  spoke from his experience with the giant of
  rocketry
• He was very unique. I dont know of another
  individual, frankly, thats had those
  capabilities, either then or now, that could do
  the things he did.
• He was a very warm personality.
• He was very down to Earth and friendly, never
  talked down to anyone. But talking to him,
  working on a project, you learned very quickly he
  was a genius.
• He was a very broad-based individual, very
  culturally capable he played several musical
  instruments, wrote music, he was an astronomer
  and he was certainly a top notch engineer.

12/7/2020
24
25
Wernher von Braun Remembered?????????

• Late in the Apollo program, Wernher von Braun
  became a Christian and supporter of creation and
  academic freedom the freedom of students to
  question Darwinian materialism. He wrote popular
  articles on the relationship of science and
  faith. The better we understand the intricacies
  of the universe and all it harbors, the more
  reason we have found to marvel at the inherent
  design upon which it is based, he said in 1972.

12/7/2020
25
26
Wernher von Braun Remembered?????????

• In a statement remarkably prescient of arguments
  used by the subsequent intelligent design
  movement, he added, While the admission of a
  design for the universe ultimately raises the
  question of a Designer (a subject outside of
  science), the scientific method does not allow us
  to exclude data which lead to the conclusion that
  the universe, life and man are based on design.
  To be forced to believe only one conclusionthat
  everything in the universe happened by
  chancewould violate the very objectivity of
  science itself.

12/7/2020
26
27
Wernher von Braun Remembered?????????

• The positive coverage of von Brauns 100th
  birthday is a hopeful sign that the misinformed
  guilt-by-association slurs of this great man are
  finally dying down, and that history will treat
  him favorably, as it should. Consider that he
  made great effort at considerable risk to escape
  to the Americans as soon as it was possible. Look
  at his record from the moment he arrived on
  American shores. Is it believable his character
  suddenly switched from one pole to another
  overnight?

12/7/2020
27
28
Wernher von Braun Remembered?????????

• The weight of evidence is that his expertise,
  borne of childhood love of space and rocketry,
  had been temporarily co-opted during the German
  war effort by forces beyond his control, and put
  to uses that repulsed him. As soon as it was
  possible for him to escape the clutches of his
  desperate situation, he sought out the Americans
  and surrendered his whole team to them. As an
  American, he explained his German situation when
  asked, without dwelling on it, but a few
  continued to tar him with guilt by association.
  No other alleged Nazi war criminal led such a
  stellar, exemplary life afterward.

12/7/2020
28
29
Wernher von Braun Remembered?????????

• He quickly became an American citizen and
  dedicated himself to the peaceful exploration of
  space. Von Braun was never charged with or
  convicted of any war crimes on the contrary, he
  was showered with honors. Even the British
  Interplanetary Society, in the London that felt
  the horror of the V2 rockets, honored him. His
  achievements cannot and should not be smeared
  with baseless suppositions. The mans life speaks
  for itself. Happy Birthday, Dr. von Braun one of
  the worlds greatest creation scientists.

12/7/2020
29
30
From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
?????????????

• 1. Butterfly black magic. Science Daily reported,
  Butterfly Wings Art of Blackness Could Boost
  Production of Green Fuels. Notice they said art
  of blackness, not black art. Its purely
  physical the arrangement of cells on some
  butterfly wings are designed to absorb light to
  look as black as black can be. This observation
  portends fuel efficiency, the article says
• Butterfly wings may rank among the most delicate
  structures in nature, but they have given
  researchers powerful inspiration for new
  technology that doubles production of hydrogen
  gas a green fuel of the future from water and
  sunlight.

12/7/2020
30
31
From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
?????????????

• At a meeting of the American Chemical Society,
  Tongxiang Fang told the audience that the problem
  in fuel cells is light-gathering efficiency.
• We realized that the solution to this problem
  may have been in existence for millions of years,
  fluttering right in front of our eyes, Fan said.
  And that was correct. Black butterfly wings
  turned out to be a natural solar collector worth
  studying and mimicking, Fan said.

12/7/2020
31
32
From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
?????????????

• 2. Does this float your boat? Imagine a one-pound
  boat that could carry 1,000 pounds. Wonders like
  this are coming into the realm of possibility by
  studying how water striders do it. Water striders
  literally walk on water, their specialized
  footpads creating mere dimples in the skin-like
  surface of water. By combining the bugs
  technique with one of the worlds lightest solid
  substances, aerogel, researchers at the
  University of Helsinki are looking to produce
  products useful for cleaning up oil spills to
  helping create such products as sensors for
  detecting environmental pollution, miniaturized
  military robots, and even childrens toys and
  super-buoyant beach floats.

12/7/2020
32
33
From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
?????????????

• Their findings were also presented at the
  American Chemical Society meeting. Biomimetics
  was the hot topic there The symposium focused
  on an emerging field called biomimetics, in which
  scientists literally take inspiration from Mother
  Nature, probing and adapting biological systems
  in plants and animals for use in medicine,
  industry and other fields. The ACS is the
  worlds largest scientific society. Even the
  aerogel itself derives from cellulose in plants.
  If you wear cotton or use paper, youre familiar
  with cellulose, but nano-cellulose is opening up
  a whole new age, according to one of the
  symposium organizers that invited a dozen
  presentations on it

12/7/2020
33
34
From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
?????????????

• We are in the middle of a Golden Age, in which a
  clearer understanding of the forms and functions
  of cellulose architectures in biological systems
  is promoting the evolution of advanced
  materials, said Harry Brumer, Ph.D., of Michael
  Smith Laboratories, University of British
  Columbia, Vancouver.
• Ikkala pointed out that cellulose is the most
  abundant polymer on Earth, a renewable and
  sustainable raw material that could be used in
  many new ways. In addition, nanocellulose
  promises advanced structural materials similar to
  metals, such as high-tech spun fibers and films.

12/7/2020
34
35
From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
?????????????

• 3. Biological batteries If your surgeon left an
  Energizer battery inside you after sewing you
  back up, you would NOT last long like a toy
  bunny you would be at a serious health risk.
  Some day, though, surgeons may intentionally sew
  batteries inside your body batteries made with
  biological enzymes found in bacteria. Natures
  billion-year-old battery key to storing energy
  reads a headline on PhysOrg, referring to the
  time in Darwin years that evolutionists believe
  this enzyme, involved in photosynthesis, has
  existed. Light induces a charge separation in
  the enzyme, causing one end to become negatively
  charged and the other positively charged, much
  like in a battery.

12/7/2020
35
36
From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
?????????????

• If a team from Concordia University succeeds in
  controlling this enzyme, inventors may be able to
  create biological batteries that could internally
  monitor your vital signs with no ill effects from
  toxic chemicals, because the ingredients would be
  all natural. One of the driving forces for the
  research is that such materials are carbon
  neutral and use resources that are in abundance
  sun, carbon dioxide and water, the article
  explained. Researchers are using natures
  battery to inspire more sustainable, man-made
  energy converting systems.

12/7/2020
36
37
From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
?????????????

• While on the subject of physics, lets notice a
  tribute to James Clerk Maxwell, one of the
  worlds greatest creation scientists. His famous
  Maxwells Equations have yielded a new solution
  to the question of whether self-bending light is
  possible and it is. Does this mean we will some
  day be able to see around corners? Read PhysOrg
  for the scoop on what this profound discovery
  might have in store for everything that acts with
  wave-like behavior.

12/7/2020
37
38
From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
?????????????

• Did you notice the claim that the American
  Chemical Society is the worlds largest
  scientific society? and that they are jazzed
  about biomimeticsan intelligent-design based
  mode of scientific inquiry? What does that tell
  you about the future of Darwinism, that useless
  Victorian myth that produced things no more
  valuable to society than forced sterilization,
  genocide and totalitarian regimes? Yes, a Golden
  Age is coming, if we can extricate ourselves from
  the clutches of the Victorian myth, and return
  science to what it used to be thinking Gods
  thoughts after him. The words of physicist James
  Joule are jewels in that regard, worth reading in
  this new age of biomimetics.

12/7/2020
38
39
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• Saturn just passed opposition on April 15, making
  it a good viewing object from Earth this season.
  Amateur observers with telescopes may be able to
  make out the moons Titan, Rhea, Dione, Iapetus,
  Tethys, and Enceladus. They may look like
  beautiful little gems from Earth, but from the
  Cassini spacecraft in orbit at Saturn, they are
  no less than astonishing. Recent observations of
  these moons add to the astonishment.

12/7/2020
39
40
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• Titan, the largest of Saturns family of natural
  satellites (larger even than the planet Mercury),
  yielded more secrets of its southern great
  lake, named Ontario Lacus (Lake Ontario, due to
  its resemblance and size to Earths counterpart).
  It turns out the lake is more like a mud flat,
  shallow and wide. Namibia has similar salt pans
  that occasionally fill in with liquid from the
  water table. Cassini scientists now think that
  liquid methane and ethane seep into the mud flat
  from below, instead of during downpours. This not
  only makes the giant lake a poor splashdown
  site for future spaceships, but adds to the
  mystery of the missing ethane, once thought to
  have covered Titan with a global ocean several
  kilometers deep.

12/7/2020
40
41
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• Rhea is Saturns second largest moon, but smaller
  than Titan by a long shot (Rhea would cover
  Texas, but Titan would cover the entire United
  States). Cassini made another flyby of Rhea from
  26,000 miles on March 10. The main thing of note
  in Space.coms coverage was an impact basin 300
  miles across, nearly a third of the moons
  diameter. Rhea also retains a tenuous atmosphere
  of oxygen and carbon dioxide, apparently
  replenished by charged particles. Researchers
  think the oxygen comes from Rheas surface ice,
  liberated from water molecules that get blasted
  apart by charged particles streaming from
  Saturns magnetosphere. The source of the carbon
  dioxide, however, is more mysterious.

12/7/2020
41
42
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• Dione may be active like Enceladus, according to
  an article on the BBC News by Paul Rincon.
  NASAs Cassini spacecraft has spied possible
  signs of geological activity on Saturns icy moon
  Dione, he reported. These tentative findings are
  based on fissures resembling the tiger stripes
  on Enceladus, a possible ice volcano, and areas
  that appear to have been resurfaced. So far, the
  suggestion has not been corroborated by
  observations of jets or heat signatures, although
  rampart craters hint that there may be internal
  heat in Dione remaining. Perhaps, though, the
  fissures are fossil tiger stripes, indicating
  past geological activity that ceased. Its
  remarkable that little Enceladus, less than half
  the diameter of Dione, should be the most active
  moon of Saturn.

12/7/2020
42
43
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• Iapetus hasnt had any flybys as good as the best
  one in 2007, which led scientists to propose
  ice-hopping or runaway migration to explain the
  dichotomy between dark and light sides.
  Observations continue to be made and analyzed,
  though. Space.com reported how Paul Ries is using
  Earth radar to infer temperature changes across
  the dark and light parts of the moon.
  Unexpectedly, the measurements did not follow a
  Planck blackbody curve as Ries predicted, but
  rather showed a fairly flat spectrum across
  wavelengths, suggesting steep absorption. At this
  point Ries doesnt have an explanation. Hes
  comparing radar on Earth ice to see what the
  signals can tell about grain size and other
  factors. Iapetus certainly has some strange
  stuff that needs to be explained, so this is
  potentially very interesting for the future, he
  said.

12/7/2020
43
44
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• Enceladus remains the prima donna of Saturn,
  bursting out her fountains at the south pole like
  a show that never ends. On March 27, Cassini shot
  the plumes again from 46 miles, hoping to taste
  them and send home pretty pictures, too dazzling
  geyser shots were posted. Space.com reported that
  continued study of the tiger stripe cracks show
  them to be deformed by Saturns powerful gravity.
  On April 14, Cassini made a second pass from 46
  miles. Even though the tiger stripes are in the
  dark now, the infrared spectrometer and cosmic
  dust analyzer were poised for front-seat
  observations. A JPL press release showed latest
  unprocessed images from the encounter and a
  follow-up flyby of Tethys that provided the
  highest-resolution images of a side of Tethys not
  seen by the ultra-close 2005 encounter. A new
  close-up of Connecticut-sized Janus filled in a
  productive month by Cassini scientists.

12/7/2020
44
45
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• Ringside. All that glitters at Saturn is not
  moons. Saturns sparkling F-ring was the subject
  of a report on New Scientist about puzzling
  observations of possible bursting moonlets that
  have on rare occasions brightened the F-ring
  significantly. Voyagers 1 and 2 saw sparkles in
  the 1980s, and Hubble saw one in 1995, but the
  ring has brightened overall since (implying more
  dust than before), except for an 84 brightening
  in December 2006 that took two years to fade. The
  F-ring is known to be perturbed by the little
  potato-shaped moon Prometheus, but if the
  sparkles are due to disruption of moonlets, there
  arent that many more moonlets around, unless
  Prometheus has ways of continually making and
  destroying giant snowballs made of ring dust.
  Reporter Lisa Grossman left it up as an oddity
  that may send scientists back to the drawing
  board.

12/7/2020
45
46
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• The dynamism found at Saturns rings and moons
  raises questions about how long these energetic,
  entropy-rich processes on small moons and in thin
  rings can be sustained. Cassini already
  spectacularly falsified the global ocean on
  Titan hypothesis when its Huygens probe landed
  on a soggy mud flat in 2005. Are we to believe
  the geysers on Enceladus have been going on for
  4.5 billion years but stopped earlier on larger
  Dione? Are we incredibly lucky to be seeing the
  flimsy F-ring running out of moonlets right when
  Cassini is there to observe it?

12/7/2020
46
47
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• We must keep in mind that, in science, there is a
  vast difference between scientific observation
  and scientific explanation. Unquestionably, our
  maps of the surfaces of Enceladus, Iapetus and
  Titan are vastly superior today than they were
  after Voyagers 1 and 2. Thats significant
  progress. The images of the F-ring are also
  orders of magnitude better than they were in the
  1980s. Nevertheless, the explanations for
  activity on Enceladus and Titan seem strained.
  Are these anomalies that could lead to a
  scientific revolution?

12/7/2020
47
48
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• Its notable that this is the 50th anniversary of
  philosopher of science Thomas Kuhns influential
  book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
  David Kaiser in Nature took note of that, as did
  Evolution News Views in several posts. The book
  that brought paradigm shift into the vernacular
  started a wave of thought that toppled logical
  positivism and helped many people realize that
  science is not necessarily the objective,
  neutral, truth-seeking, progressive enterprise
  students are led to believe, but in fact is
  governed by sociological and cultural factors
  that often stifle creative thinking by focusing
  attention on what questions are worth answering,
  what puzzles are worth solving, and what research
  is worth funding.

12/7/2020
48
49
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine????????

• The planetary science community tends to be a
  close-knit thought collective with a web of
  belief that is tolerant of maverick views only to
  a point. If enough anomalies continue to pile up
  at Saturn, though, it will be interesting to
  watch if several long-held assumptions may have
  to be jettisoned to account for them. This may be
  a good time for new minds, uncluttered by
  tradition and consensus, to look at Cassinis
  observations afresh.

12/7/2020
49
50
Paradigm Shift Impact Didnt Kill Dinosaurs
???? ????????

• A new study casts doubt on whether asteroid
  impacts led to extinctions. Its based on
  re-interpreting geological evidence used to
  identify impacts. This finding, if sustained,
  would undermine the theory that an impact killed
  off the dinosaurs and a later impact led to the
  extinction of many large mammals. Even more
  significant, an overturn of the impact hypothesis
  would illustrate that scientists are capable of
  going off on wrong tangents for decades.

12/7/2020
50
51
Paradigm Shift Impact Didnt Kill Dinosaurs
???? ????????

• The study by the U.S. Geological Survey, reported
  by PhysOrg, found that impact markers, such as
  elevated levels of iridium, magnetic spherules,
  and titanomagnetite grains, can form in wetlands
  and marshes called black mats. The impact markers
  had been used to support the Cretaceous-Tertiary
  (K-T) extinction and a more hotly contested
  Younger Dryas Impact theory that led to
  extinction of the Clovis culture allegedly 12,900
  years ago. The new study published by Pigati et
  al in PNAS1 casts doubt on the uses of these
  markers to infer asteroid impacts.

12/7/2020
51
52
Paradigm Shift Impact Didnt Kill Dinosaurs
???? ????????

• The abstract states,
• In this study, we investigated black mats ranging
  in age from approximately 6 to more than 40 ka in
  the southwestern United States and the Atacama
  Desert of northern Chile. At 10 of 13 sites, we
  found elevated concentrations of iridium in bulk
  and magnetic sediments, magnetic spherules,
  and/or titanomagnetite grains within or at the
  base of black mats, regardless of their age or
  location, suggesting that elevated concentrations
  of these markers arise from processes common to
  wetland systems, and not a catastrophic
  extraterrestrial impact event.

12/7/2020
52
53
Paradigm Shift Impact Didnt Kill Dinosaurs
???? ????????

• The impact of this re-interpretation goes
  beyond extinction theories
• Luis and Walter Alvarezs proposal that an
  extraterrestrial impact was responsible for
  extinctions at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary
  eventually moved from unlikely hypothesis to
  accepted theory, and with its acceptance came the
  temptation to apply this explanation to any rapid
  change in Earths conditions, said USGS Director
  Marcia McNutt. The results of this study
  demonstrate the importance of maintaining a
  healthy skepticism and multiple working
  hypotheses.

12/7/2020
53
54
Paradigm Shift Impact Didnt Kill Dinosaurs
???? ????????

• The impact theory may not be dead yet
  undoubtedly critics will have a rebuttal to the
  USGS study. Even so, the healthy skepticism and
  multiple working hypotheses advice has been
  sadly lacking in the news media and on science TV
  as many jumped on the impact-theory bandwagon
  without considering the impact on sciences
  credibility should the popular hypothesis be
  overturned. What do the popular-media producers
  care? They made their money and some retired. The
  losers are students who grow up believing
  whatever scientists tell them and what animators
  show them, but dont get to hear the rest of
  the story till too late if at all.

12/7/2020
54
55
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
????????,???????

• Ongoing archaeological finds from Khirbet Qeiyafa
  in ancient Judah now show conclusively that the
  site had fortified walls with gates,
  administrative buildings, bronze and iron
  objects, and artifacts suggesting extensive trade
  with foreign powers. These discoveries cast doubt
  on the minimalist chronology of some liberal
  scholars who claim that King David, even if he
  existed, was a tribal chief over pastoralists.

12/7/2020
55
56
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
????????,???????

• Todd Bolen at Bible Places Blog has summarized
  the major finds. The full report on the Israeli
  Antiquities Authority website by Yossi Garfinkel
  et al. tells how the goal of the 4th and 5th
  excavation seasons last year was to identify Iron
  Age IIA features of the fortress city south of
  Jerusalem that has been radiometrically dated to
  the late 11th and early 10th centuries BC the
  time of David and Solomon.

12/7/2020
56
57
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
????????,???????

• Khirbet Qeiyafa received international press in
  2008 with the discovery of a pottery inscription
  from that period. The findings suggest a complex
  civilization during the time of David this
  settlement, uncovered to date, included two
  gates, two gate plazas, twenty-eight casemates
  (twenty complete), ten residential buildings and
  remains of administrative buildings at the top of
  the site. Large quantities of artifacts were
  discovered on the floors of the houses in each
  area, including hundreds of pottery vessels that
  can be restored, hundreds of stone objects,
  dozens of metallic objects and small finds. Much
  evidence was found of ritual activity, including
  mazzevot, a cultic chamber, models of temples
  (two of ceramic and one of stone) and a figurine.

12/7/2020
57
58
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
????????,???????

• 1. A town plan characteristic of the Kingdom of
  Judah that is also known from other sites, e.g.,
  Bet Shemesh, Tell en-Nasbeh, Tell Beit Mirsim and
  Beer Sheva. A casemate wall was built at all of
  these sites and the citys houses next to it
  incorporated the casemates as one of the
  dwellings rooms. This model is not known from
  any Canaanite, Philistine or Kingdom of Israel
  site.2. Massive fortification of the site,
  including the use of stones that weigh up to
  eight tons apiece.3. Two gates. To date, no Iron
  Age cities with two gates were found in either
  Israel or Judah.4. An open space for a gate
  plaza was left near each gate.

12/7/2020
58
59
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
????????,???????

• 5. The citys houses were contiguous and built
  very close together.6. Some 500 jar handles
  bearing at least one finger print were found.
  Marking jar handles is characteristic of the
  Kingdom of Judah and it seems this practice has
  already begun in the early Iron Age.7. A
  profusion of bronze and iron objects were found.
  The iron objects included three swords, about
  twenty daggers, arrowheads and two spearheads.
  The bronze items included an axe, arrowheads,
  rings and a small bowl.8. Trade and imported
  objects. Ashdod ware, which was imported from the
  coastal plain, was found at the site. Basalt
  vessels were brought from a distance of more than
  100 km and clay juglets from Cyprus and two
  alabaster vessels from Egypt were discovered.

12/7/2020
59
60
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
????????,???????

• It should be noted that Khirbet Qeiyafa was a
  relatively small outlying fortress in Judah. The
  conclusions of the excavators is that the
  minimalist chronology has been falsified in light
  of this evidence The excavations at Khirbat
  Qeiyafa clearly reveal an urban society that
  existed in Judah already in the late eleventh
  century BCE. It can no longer be argued that the
  Kingdom of Judah developed only in the late
  eighth century BCE or at some other later date.
• Incidentally, the fortress is within eyesight of
  the Elah valley, the location of the battle of
  David and Goliath.

12/7/2020
60
61
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
????????,???????

• Dont forget that archaeology is an intelligent
  design science. A great deal can be inferred
  about the intelligence and purpose of the
  creators of these artifacts, even though we have
  never met the designers, dont know their names,
  and cannot describe everything that brought their
  work into existence. This goes to show that
  intelligent design is a working scientific
  principle and method in the sciences. If the same
  methods are used to infer intelligent causes in
  other phenomena, such as genetic software and
  fine-tuning of the laws of physics, then so be it.

12/7/2020
61
62
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Planet theorists are putting up a valiant fight
  against new findings, but in some cases, the
  evidence seems to be winning.
• Moon. New research provokes more questions about
  the origin of the moon, blazes a headline on
  PhysOrg from last month. For some time now, the
  favored scenario for our moons origin has been
  that a Mars-size body impacted the earth, and the
  moon formed from the debris. Scientists even gave
  a mythical name to the impactor Theia. Trouble
  is, Theia might really be just a myth

12/7/2020
62
63
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Now, new research from geophysical scientist
  Junjun Zhang and colleagues, suggests that such
  thinking might be wrong. In their paper published
  in Nature Geoscience, they find that in comparing
  titanium isotopes from both the moon and the
  Earth, that the match is too close to support the
  theory that the moon could have been made partly
  of material from another planet.

12/7/2020
63
64
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• The match of isotopes between Earth and moon is
  too close to believe that a distant impactor
  brought material from elsewhere. But it is even
  more implausible to imagine Earth spinning so
  fast to throw off some of its material to form
  the moon. This leaves mythmakers in an amusing
  paradox Hopefully new research will one day
  provide us with a definitive answer. Until that
  day though, it seems we will all have to just
  keep on musing.

12/7/2020
64
65
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Mars The dry-Marsers scored more points over the
  wet-Marsers this month. In Nature News (April
  11), Eric Hand wrote an article entitled, Dreams
  of water on Mars evaporate Climate models reveal
  the red planet was mostly cold and dry. The
  pendulum has swung back to the dry-Marsers

12/7/2020
65
66
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Last month, Jim Head, a planetary scientist at
  Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island,
  threw a wet blanket on the idea that Mars was
  ever very wet at all, in a keynote talk at the
  Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The
  Woodlands, Texas. Head and others are assembling
  a picture of a Mars that was cold and dry from
  the beginning, punctuated at most by short bursts
  of wetness. The notion of a palm-tree-covered
  Mars has waned, says Stephen Clifford, a
  planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary
  Institute in Houston, Texas, who is organizing a
  conference in May on the early climate of Mars.

12/7/2020
66
67
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Heads revisionism is driving Mars lifers into
  hiding Jeff Andrews-Hanna Colorado School of
  Mines says the shift in thinking doesnt rule
  out life on ancient Mars, but instead drives it
  deeper underground.

12/7/2020
67
68
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• A paper in Science today (27 April 2012 Vol. 336
  no. 6080 pp. 449452, DOI 10.1126/science.1219437
  ) doesnt need Martian water, either.
  Strange-looking polygons and coils in Athabasca
  Valles were explained by Phil Christensen and
  Andrew Ryan as artifacts of lava flows. The
  spiral coils found by Ryan on HiRise photos from
  the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (see photo on
  National Geographic News) are like fossil eddies
  created by shear stress in the flowing pahoehoe
  lava (see Science Daily). They dont require
  water or ice for their formation. Moreover, they
  formed quickly

12/7/2020
68
69
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Ice-related processes fail to account for our
  observations. There are no known mechanisms to
  naturally produce spiral patterns in ice-rich
  environments on the scale and frequency observed
  in our study area. If the primary plates were ice
  rafts, then the water extruded during rafting
  would not have the correct viscosity to form and
  preserve the coils. We have also shown that the
  polygons formed after the fracture and drift of
  the secondary plates on which they are present.
  This precludes the notion that the polygons
  formed over decades or even centuries in an
  ice-rich regolith, because it seems unlikely that
  frozen soil could somehow fracture and drift.

12/7/2020
69
70
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Late Heavy Bombardment. The notion of a Late
  Heavy Bombardment (LHB) of the inner solar
  system long after the birth of Earth is taking
  some bombardment of its own. The spotty impact
  record on the moon is making it difficult to
  maintain that a stream of high-velocity impactors
  came in a barrage about 4 million years ago
  crater data seem to indicate a mix of
  high-velocity and low-velocity impactors. Richard
  A. Kerr in Science reported on the controversy at
  the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference where,
  at a pre-conference workshop, William Bottke
  tried to be diplomatic. To keep peace between the
  catastrophists (who believe in the LHB) and the
  pacifists (who assert that most cratering tapered
  off after the birth of the inner planets), Bottke
  suggested both groups might be partly right.

12/7/2020
70
71
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• At the conference, Bottke presented a blend of
  the competing bombardment histories that takes
  account of the spotty impact record produced by a
  mix of fast and slow impactors. Bottke thinks
  the resulting late bombardment was longer and
  less intense than many catastrophists have
  proposed.
• Kerr did not indicate if everybody is happy with
  the compromise.

12/7/2020
71
72
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Nebular hypothesis More new troubles are brewing
  for old ideas that debris disks around stars are
  nurseries for planets. The old picture was that
  dust is hot near the star, but frozen at the
  outer edge of the disk. A frost line in the
  middle segregates rocky from volatile material
  that presumably remains frozen in its primordial
  state. Alas, more evidence has come in that
  complicates the picture. A study reported by the
  Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
  echoed on PhysOrg, indicates that some of the
  outermost material of dust disks must have
  melted. Infrared measurements can differentiate
  between amorphous and crystalline dust.

12/7/2020
72
73
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Primordial dust is assumed to have been
  amorphous. To have become crystalline, as the
  data from the Spitzer Space Telescope indicated,
  the outermost dust must have heated up to the
  melting point and re-frozen. This echoes
  observations from comets, once thought to be
  primordial snowballs from the edges of our solar
  system, but have been observed to contain
  high-melting-point ingredients (4/18/2011).

12/7/2020
73
74
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Theorists are stuck with two possibilities the
  dust migrated from the inner regions outward by
  some unknown mechanism, or another unknown
  mechanism (perhaps a shock wave) heated the
  material in the outer regions. The press release
  put the best possible spin on this new puzzle
  The new paper answers some questions while
  refining others, and is a good example of the
  important progress being made today in
  understanding how planets and planetary systems
  form. Being interpreted, this means, We havent
  a clue, but science marches on.

12/7/2020
74
75
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• Cosmic rays Another theory on a cosmic scale
  took a big hit this month with no replacement
  paradigm in sight. Astronomers had hoped to
  explain high-energy cosmic rays as coming from
  some of the most energetic events known to occur
  in the universe gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). New
  measurements from a large neutrino detector
  embedded in Antarctic ice (appropriately named
  IceCube) failed to correlate detector flashes
  with the short-lived bursts. The report in Nature
  (484, 19 April 2012, pp. 351354,
  doi10.1038/nature11068) left explanations
  hanging

12/7/2020
75
76
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• This implies either that GRBs are not the only
  sources of cosmic rays with energies exceeding
  1018?electronvolts or that the efficiency of
  neutrino production is much lower than has been
  predicted.
• Observations were 3.6 times lower than predicted
  by theory. Space.com titled its report, Cosmic
  Ray Mystery Leaves Scientists in the Dark.
  PhysOrg headlined, Neutrinos put cosmic ray
  theory on ice.

12/7/2020
76
77
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• These reports might support scientific progress
  by falsification i.e., that science progresses
  by ruling out theories. Its helpful to know that
  some popular theories are no longer supportable
  by new evidence, but scientific understanding
  cannot grow by subtraction alone. When what we
  think we know turns out to be false, can
  scientists really claim to understand the world?
  An article on Evolution News Views questions
  whether known knowns are progressing against
  known unknowns, unknown unknowns and
  unknowable unknowns and whether positivists
  like Michael Shermer have a clue where the
  boundary lies between knowledge and ignorance.

12/7/2020
77
78
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence ????????

• We certainly applaud the teams that build,
  operate and collect data from intelligently-design
  ed instruments like Spitzer, IceCube and Mars
  Reconnaissance Orbiter. Data from these amazing
  instruments are a gift bequeathed to us in the
  information age. We only point out that good data
  are a necessary, but not sufficient, condition
  for scientific understanding. Time after time, we
  provide examples in these pages of predictions,
  expectations and favored theories that are
  suffering a late heavy bombardment of high-speed
  data impactors. Maybe it will dawn on some
  readers that the consensus worldview, the
  bottom-up, naturalistic evolutionary assumption,
  is a detriment to scientific understanding.

12/7/2020
78
79
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis ??-??????

• The scientific consensus has pretty much declared
  it a fact of natural history that birds evolved
  from dinosaurs. One evolutionary professor
  remains a gadfly, though. He contests the
  evidence on which the hypothesis is based, and
  also believes his maverick position is growing.

12/7/2020
79
80
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis ??-??????

• Alan Feduccia, a distinguished professor emeritus
  at the University of North Carolina in Chapel
  Hill, wrote an essay for New Scientist. His
  position does not deny an evolutionary origin of
  birds, but places the feathered dinosaurs so
  often portrayed as ancestors of modern birds on a
  dead-end branch. He claims his position is more
  in line with 19th century paleontologist Richard
  Owen and 20th century evolutionist Gavin de Beer.
  These men viewed flightless birds as degenerate
  products of variation, not stages toward flight
  for instance, de Beer in 1956 showed
  conclusively that flightless birds descended from
  flying ancestors and have never re-evolved
  flight.

12/7/2020
80
81
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis ??-??????

• Similarly, Feduccia holds that the feathered
  dinosaurs attracting so much attention in the
  media were either pure scaly dinosaurs with whose
  decayed collagen has been misinterpreted as
  proto-feathers, or were degenerate flightless
  birds. His own view is that the birds evolved
  from archosaurs, the predecessors in evolutionary
  history of the true dinosaurs. He thinks some of
  the archosaurs lived in trees and developed
  flight as they jumped (the arboreal hypothesis).

12/7/2020
81
82
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis ??-??????

• Critics of Darwinism will, therefore, find
  Feduccias own evolutionary view to be just as
  implausible as the consensus view. What he says
  in his essay, however, is illuminating about the
  habits of a scientific consensus. Here are some
  salient points

12/7/2020
82
83
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis ??-??????

• Sinosauropteryx, a fossil with alleged
  proto-feathers, caused a sensation when it was
  announced in Nature in 1998. But no evidence
  then or now has emerged showing that these
  structures are anything other than collagen
  fibres supporting a typical reptilian frill,
  Feduccia said. The fact that the filaments are
  located within a clearly demarcated body outline
  indicating the fibres were not external, as
  they would be if they were feather-like
  structures was completely ignored.

12/7/2020
83
84
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis ??-??????

• Feduccia continued, aware of the latest claims.
  Other fibres have been described in herbivorous
  ornithischians and pterosaurs, which have no
  connection with birds, but there is still little
  evidence to connect any of these structures with
  feathers. The tyrannosaurids fibers, whatever
  they were, cannot possibly have been used for
  flight see Science Daily The large size of
  Yutyrannus and the downy structure of its
  feathers would have made flight an
  impossibility, the article stated April 5.
• Feduccia described some of the other alleged
  feathered dinosaurs, like Caudipteryx and
  Protarchaeopteryx, but considered them
  secondarily flightless birds.

12/7/2020
84
85
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis ??-??????

• He sees the consensus view as a dangerous return
  to dogma over scientific caution
• Birds as living dinosaurs is now a cornerstone
  of modern paleontological thought. But a
  consensus is always in danger of turning into
  dogma. Indeed, given the cult-like belief in the
  fields orthodoxy, it seems that every fossil
  pulled from the Chinese deposits is accompanied
  by hyperbolic pronouncements of it having filled
  a major evolutionary gap. Yet many of these
  discoveries lack normal scientific stringency,
  and we see a transition from normal scientific
  falsification to simply confirming what is
  already thought to be known.

12/7/2020
85
86
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis ??-??????

• Feduccia described his opinion as a minority
  one, but growing in popularity. He rejects the
  fantastical proposals about dinosaurs with
  protofeathers, dinosaurs with bird wings and
  modern feathers, four-winged gliding dinosaurs,
  and tiny supposed theropods from the Jurassic
  period with avian wings.
• The birds-from-dinosaurs controversy has a long
  history, Feduccia explained. Richard Owen in 1875
  set the record straight when Thomas Huxley
  first advanced the view that birds evolved from
  dinosaurs. Owen predicted that science will
  accept the view of the Dodo as a degenerate Dove
  rather than as an advanced Dino, thus stating
  the crux of the current controversy.

12/7/2020
86
87
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis ??-??????

• Feduccia believes the feathered di