News to Note, January 10, 2009

1. Tiny Diamonds, Big Explosion

Scientists are taking the gold standard for proof of extinction to the next level—with diamonds.

A team has discovered “nano-diamonds” and other materials thought to be from a meteorite impact in several sedimentary layers across the U.S.

2. Pink Iguana Throws Off Scientists

A quarter-century ago, they might have been considered just as fantastic as pink elephants—but now pink iguanas are in the scientific spotlight.

3. BBC News: “Baby Jupiter’s Huge Weight Gain”

Gas giants—like the planet two doors down, Jupiter—may have accreted quickly from dust: it’s the required conclusion to fit the data into the evolutionary paradigm.

We’re talking about planetary evolution this time, where—according to secular science—planets form as gravity causes a disc of dust around a star to slowly conglomerate. But astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to study star cluster NGC 2362 encountered a surprise: all sun-sized stars and larger in the cluster are missing their planet-forming dust discs, and only a few stars smaller than the sun have them.

Since hundreds of “gas giant” planets have been discovered circling these “disc-less” stars, one might expect such a discovery to challenge evolutionists’ ideas about planet formation; instead, the astronomers have bent their model to fit the find. They now suggest that planets, particularly gas giants, must form “extremely fast,” in the words of Thayne Currie of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

BBC News notes that this finding “place[s] even tighter constraints on the time available to create gas giant planets.” Going one step further, we would say the discovery is yet another failure for secular astronomers to show their model of planet-formation in progress (not that it would prove their millions-of-years estimates, anyway).

4. When Hunters Fuel 'Evolution'

Losing or gaining anatomical features, changing colors, growing bigger or smaller—it doesn’t matter how a biological population is changing, it’s evolution!

5. Religion Evolved for Self-Control

How is one psychologist answering the loaded question “why did religion evolve?”

University of Miami (Florida) psychologist Michael McCullough thinks he has a clue to just why religion evolved: as a mechanism for improving self-control in participants.

6. The Cost of Skepticism?

“Questioning theories is usually a healthy pursuit”—except when life and death are concerned, or when the “theory” in question is evolution.

7. MSNBC: “Coral Growth in Decline at Great Barrier Reef”

A new report has identified an “ unprecedented” decline in growth of the Great Barrier Reef—and sees global warming as the culprit.

At first, the report seems confusing: why would warmth prevent coral from flourishing? According to the Australian Institute of Marine Science researchers, it comes down to not only warming sea temperatures, but also to more acidic oceans that result from “carbonate saturation.”

In an article to run on this website next week, AiG scientist Dr. Andrew A. Snelling is taking a closer look at the reef report and the alleged connection to global warming. Check back next Wednesday for our full coverage!

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