Looking Young For My Age

At this moment, there is a debate that is raging in the church... well... the portion og the church that is located in the states.

What's being debated?

The age of the earth.

On one side, you have the young earth creationists (YEC)... and on the other side are the atheists, agnostics, anti-Christs, christians...

That's right. Christians have sided with those who are unashamedly anti-Christ to go against their brethren.

The are known as old age creationists (OAC).

Ultimately though, as these things typically go, the argument is not really about the age of earth... but the authority of the scriptures.

You see, the YECs teach that if you start from the bible, you will see that the earth... indeed the universe as we know it, is relatively young.

In the YEC camp are scientists and inventors who back up their claim with scientific results.

The OECs on the other hand believe that not only does the bible not teach a young universe, but the findings of the anti-Christ scientists are actually true... regardless of whether or not their scientific results contradict the scriptures.

The response from the YECs is that the anti-Christ's results are not just false, but are made up but promoted as though they had sound scientific proof when they clearly do not when scientifically scrutinised... and they give the theory of evolution as proof of this.

The YECs say that the OECs actually hurt the credibility of christianity with their... not only unscientific but unbiblical stance.

And although the OECs have rejected that thought, the anti-Christs have gone on record to agree with the YECs on this point.

The anti-Christs believe that thei scientific findings completely undermine the entire bible and reduces it to the level of imaginary tales by Dr. Seuss.

Whether or not you understand the evidence provided by both sides or not...

Whether you believe the earth is billions of years or not...

If you are a Christian, then you are someone whose primary goal is to obey the word of the Lord... to live by every word that proceeds from God.

A christian must believe that the bible is true... everything in it is true... else the very salvation they claim to have is false... or at the very least... suspect.

Jesus sums it up for us...

John 17:17 
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

If the word of God is not true... then it is not the word of God.

Evolution vs. God

Transitional Fossil Found

Scientists identify crocodile ancestor among fossils discovered a century ago

Tyrannoneustes lythrodectikos, whose remains lay unidentified in a museum, was a super-predator with dolphin-like features.

A creature resembling a hybrid dolphin and crocodile has been identified by scientists examining fossil remains discovered more than a century ago.

The new species, named Tyrannoneustes lythrodectikos, was a marine "super-predator" that lived 163m years ago. It belonged to a group of ancient crocodiles with dolphin-like features.



An amateur fossil hunter found the reptile's partial skeleton in a clay pit near Peterborough in the early 1900s. Experts have only now been able to confirm the identity of the remains, housed at the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow.

The animal had pointed, serrated teeth and a large gaping jaw suited to feeding on large-bodied prey. It represents a transitional form between marine crocodiles that fed on small prey and their supersized relatives.

Dr Mark Young, from the University of Edinburgh, said: "It is satisfying to be able to classify a specimen that has been unexamined for more than 100 years, and doubly so to find that this discovery improves our understanding of the evolution of marine reptiles."

Dr Neil Clark, palaeontology curator at the Hunterian, said: "Little research has been done on this specimen since it was first listed in 1919. It is comforting to know that new species can still be found in museums as new research is carried out on old collections.

"It is not just the new species that are important, but an increase in our understanding of how life evolved and the variety of life forms that existed 163m years ago in the warm Jurassic seas around what is now Britain."

The research appears in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

Mars May Have Had Life

Mars: 'Strongest evidence' planet may have supported life, scientists say

Minerals found underground on Mars are the "strongest evidence yet" that the planet may have supported life, according to new research.

The team, led by the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Aberdeen, said the ingredients for life could have been in a zone up to 5km down for much of the planet's history.

They used data from the US space agency (Nasa) and European Space Agency (Esa).

Nature Geoscience has published the research.

The team said the research backed up the existing theory that Mars could have supported life due to micro-organisms hidden beneath the surface.

They said that when meteorites strike the surface of Mars, they act as natural probes, bringing up rocks from far below.

The McLaughlin Crater is described as one such area of interest in the study.

Dr Joseph Michalski, lead author and planetary geologist at the Natural History Museum, said: "We don't know how life on Earth formed but it is conceivable that it originated underground, protected from harsh surface conditions that existed on early Earth.

"However, the early geological record of Earth is poorly preserved so we may never know what processes led to life's origin and early evolution.

"Whether the Martian geologic record contains life or not, analysis of these types of rocks would certainly teach us a tremendous amount about early chemical processes in the solar system.

"In this paper, we present a strong case for exploring the subsurface, as well as the surface.

"But I don't personally think we should try to drill into the subsurface to look for ancient life. Instead, we can study rocks that are naturally brought to the surface by meteor impact and search in deep basins where fluids have come to the surface."

'Be clever'

Co-author Prof John Parnell, geochemist at the University of Aberdeen, added: "This research has demonstrated how studies of Earth and Mars depend on each other.

"It is what we have observed of microbes living below the continents and oceans of Earth. They allow us to speculate on habitats for past life on Mars, which in turn show us how life on the early Earth could have survived.

"We know from Earth's history that planets face traumatic conditions such as meteorite bombardment and ice ages, when the survival of life may depend on being well-below ground.

"So it makes sense to search for evidence of life from that subsurface environment, in the geological records of both Earth and Mars.

"But it's one thing to do that on Earth - we need to be clever in finding a way to do it on Mars."

Text books have Anatomy 'wrong' in early animals

Tetrapod anatomy: Backbone back-to-front in early animals

original article

Textbooks might have to be re-written when it comes to some of the earliest creatures, a study suggests.

Researchers have found that our understanding of the anatomy of the first four-legged animals is wrong. New 3D models of fossil remains show that previous renderings of the position of the beasts' backbones were actually back-to-front.



The findings, published in the journal Nature, may even change our thinking on how the spine evolved.
The scientists looked at a group of animals called the tetrapods, examining three creatures called Ichthyostega, Acanthostega and Pederpes.

These primitive four-legged animals are of great interest to palaeontologists: they were the first creatures to haul themselves out of the oceans, paving the way for all future vertebrate life on land.

Studying how these animals are put together is key to understanding how they made this transition.

The researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) used the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) to bombard the 360-million-year old fossils with high energy X-rays.

This enabled them to create detailed computer reconstructions of the prehistoric animals.

RVC's Prof John Hutchinson said: "Their vertebrae are actually structurally completely different from what everyone for the last 150 or so years has pictured. The textbook examples turn out to be wrong."

The scientists found that parts of the spine thought to face the front of the animal, in fact faced the back - and vice versa.

They also discovered the earliest known evidence of a breastbone in Ichthyostega.

Prof Hutchinson said the findings provided more clues about how the early animals physically moved out of the water and on to land.

An earlier paper by the same team suggested that the tetrapods dragged themselves out of the sea, using their front legs to haul the rest of their body along the ground. The new anatomical findings backed this up, Prof Hutchinson said.

The study also shed more light on how the modern backbone evolved.

He explained: "All of that anatomy [from these early land animals ] was handed down to later animals.

"It influenced the future evolution of the spine in everything on land. It tells us about our own development and why our own backbones developed they way they did."

Science tests wrinkled fingers

Science puts wrinkled fingers to the test

original article

Science may be getting closer to explaining those prune-like fingers and toes we all get when we sit in a hot bath too long.

UK researchers from Newcastle University have confirmed wet objects are easier to handle with wrinkled fingers than with dry, smooth ones.

They suggest our ancestors may have evolved the creases as they moved and foraged for food in wet conditions.



Their experiments are reported in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

These involved asking volunteers to pick up marbles immersed in a bucket of water with one hand and then passing them through a small slot to be deposited by the other hand in a second container.

Volunteers with wrinkled fingers routinely completed the task faster than their smooth-skinned counterparts.

The team found there was no advantage from ridged fingers when moving dry objects. This suggests that the wrinkles serve the specific function of improving our grip on objects under water or when dealing with wet surfaces in general.

For a long time, it was assumed that the wrinkles were simply the result of the skin swelling in water, but recent investigations have actually shown the furrows to be caused by the blood vessels constricting in reaction to the water, which in turn is a response controlled by the body's sympathetic nervous system.

That an active system of regulation is at work led scientists into thinking there must be some deeper evolutionary justification for the ridges.

"If wrinkled fingers were just the result of the skin swelling as it took up water, it could still have a function but it wouldn't need to," said Dr Tom Smulders, from Newcastle's Centre for Behaviour and Evolution.

"Whereas, if the nervous system is actively controlling this behaviour under some circumstances and not others, it seems less of a leap to assume there must be a function for it, and that evolution has selected it. And evolution wouldn't have selected it unless it conferred some sort of advantage," he told BBC News.

US-based researchers were the first to propose that the wrinkles might act like the tread on tyres, and even demonstrated how the patterns in the skin resembled those of run-off channels seen on the sides of hills.

Wet trees

What the Newcastle team has now done is confirm that prune-like fingers are indeed better at gripping wet objects.

"We have tested the first prediction of the hypothesis - that handling should be improved," Dr Smulders said.

"What we haven't done yet is show why - to see if the wrinkles remove the water, or whether it's some other feature of those wrinkles such as a change in their stickiness or plasticity, or something else. The next thing will be to measure precisely what's happening at that interface between the objects and the fingers."

Our ancestors might not have played with wet marbles, but having better gripping fingers and feet would certainly have been advantageous as they clambered about and foraged for food along lake-shores and by rivers.

It would be interesting to see, observed Dr Smulders, just how many other animals displayed this trait - in particular, in primates.

"If it's in many, many primates then my guess is that the original function might have been locomotion through wet vegetation or wet trees. Whereas, if it's just in humans that we see this then we might consider something much more specific, such as foraging in and along rivers and the like."

Haul of comets around other stars

'Exocomet' numbers nearly tripled in new study

original article

A new haul of comets around distant stars has been unveiled, more than doubling the number we know of.

The first such "exocomet" was discovered in 1987 but since then only three more had been found.

At the 221st American Astronomical Society meeting in the US, astronomer Barry Welsh gave details of seven more.



Proving that comets are common in the Universe has implications for their role in delivering water or even the building blocks of life to planets.

Comets such as Halley's Comet, which makes a long, elliptical path passing near the Sun every 75 years, make themselves known through their long "tails" of gas and debris that come off as they approach their host stars.

It is this that Dr Welsh and his collaborator Sharon Montgomery of Clarion University have measured, using the McDonald Observatory in Texas.

The exocomets' tails absorb a tiny amount of their host stars' light - and the absorption changes with time as the comets speed and slow.

With patient observation, the pair came up with seven new exocomet sightings.

In our Solar System, many comets come from the Kuiper belt, a disc of debris beyond the orbit of Neptune, and from the Oort cloud, an even larger and more distant debris disc.

Dr Welsh explained that these discs were characteristic "leftovers" of planet formation as we now understand it.

"Imagine a 'cosmic building site', where the building has already been made - the planets," he told BBC News.

"We're looking at what's left: the bricks, the mortar, the nails - the debris discs have comets, planetesimals, and asteroids."

But something must disturb the comets' orbits, putting them on a course toward their star.

While collisions between comets might do that, it is believed that the gravity of planets nearby can do the job.

In fact, in 1987 when the first exocomet was spotted around the star Beta Pictoris, it was hypothesized that a planet may have been responsible - and in 2009, a giant planet was found here.

Holds water

Recent years have seen a marked focus on exoplanets, with 461 new candidates and the prospect of billions more that are Earth-sized announced on Monday.

The new study helps illuminate the interplay between those planets and the debris discs from which they came - and in turn help to explain how our own Solar System formed.

"It looks as though the planet building process is very similar in many, many cases - and in order to prove that you need to look not only at the final product and also at the things they were made from," Dr Welsh said.

The finding of more and more comets also raises the possibility that comets could play a crucial role in delivery services.

"There are two theories: one is that comets early on in our Solar System's history brought ice to the planets, the ice melted and formed oceans," Dr Welsh explained.

"And the other one, perhaps a bit more far fetched, is that the organic [molecules in comets]… were the seeds of life on planets. And if comets are so common throughout all planetary systems, then perhaps life is as well."

Giant Squid is a Breakthrough

Giant Squid in Ocean Depths is a Big Breakthrough

original article

(CNN) -- The first ever video footage of a giant squid swimming in the ocean depths is "an enormous breakthrough," according to a prominent marine conservationist who wrote a book about the quest to find the mysterious creatures.

"People have been searching for them for hundreds of years, literally," said Richard Ellis, the author of "The Search for the Giant Squid: The Biology and Mythology of the World's Most Elusive Sea Creature."

Scientists and television broadcasters released images this week of the 10-foot-long giant squid they had filmed deep in the Pacific Ocean, far off the coast of the Japanese mainland, during hundreds of hours of underwater research.

The discovery is significant for both science and mythology, in which giant squids have long played a notable role, Ellis said in an interview on CNN.

"We're going to learn how this thing moves," he said. "How it swims, what it does with its arms when it swims."

He described the squid as having eight arms and "two very, very long tentacles which it uses to grasp its prey." Its limbs have suckers lined with sharp teeth.

Monsters reminiscent of giant squids have been featured in fables and imagery through the ages, like the Kraken in Norse legend and the Scylla in Greek mythology.

"For a long time, people didn't even think they existed," Ellis said.

The carcasses of dead giant squid that washed ashore eventually proved that the creatures were real, but finding live ones in the wild has proved extremely challenging.

The first still photographs of one of the huge creatures were captured in 2004, and footage was taken of one floating on the surface of the water in 2006. But researchers and cameramen had never before managed to catch a glimpse of them in the ocean abyss where they live.

The mission that finally tracked down the creature involved 55 dives in two special submersible vehicles that spent a total of more than 285 hours far beneath the waves. Some of the dives went deeper than 3,000 feet.

The team of scientists and filmmakers on the mission came from a variety of institutions, including the National Science Museum of Japan, the Discovery Channel and the Japanese broadcaster NHK.

They used equipment including "ultra-sensitive camera systems with light invisible to squid, bio luminescent lures and secret squid attractants," the Discovery Channel said.

NHK and the Discovery Channel say they plan to air their programs about the squid sighting this month.