News to Note, June 11, 2011

1. Evolving E.coli

Highly virulent strain of Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli continues to wreak havoc.

2. The Martian Runt

Mars is a runt because it formed quickly and was lucky enough to stay out of the way of on-coming traffic. So goes the latest step in the planetary shuffle.

3. Out of Asia

Homo erectus . . . Out of Asia?

4. Number Crunching

Smile, crunch the numbers, and make something out of nothing.

5. Compelling Convergence

Heads I win; tails I win—the beauty of convergent evolution.

And Don’t Miss . . .

• The Bible speaks of a fertile Middle East. Paleoclimatology confirms that those arid regions once had a rich landscape. So what happened? A new study by geophysicist Larry Vardiman, using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) computer model, has demonstrated that the lush Middle East of the past can be fully explained by volcanic action associated with the global Flood. The mid-oceanic ridge, a permanent record of the catastrophic opening of the fountains of the deep (Genesis 7:11), extends into the Arabian Sea. While uniformitarian geologists maintain the ridge formed slowly, rapid volcanic activity would have been produced extreme heating of the oceans. Hot surface temperatures, when plugged into the WRF, simulate the conditions required for a lush Middle East. What a gracious blessing in the wake of the greatest judgment the earth has ever known! For more information see “A Well-Watered Land: Numerical Simulations of a Hypercyclone in the Middle East.”
• A lengthy and accurate article on the future Ark Encounter (being designed by Answers in Genesis) appears on the front page today of the Kentucky Enquirer. It presents a good summary of what has been accomplished so far and what should be occurring over the next few months as AiG builds a full-size Noah’s Ark and eight other attractions in Northern Kentucky.
• Dutch contractor Johan Huibers is building a full-size replica of Noah’s Ark near Rotterdam. He hopes to dock it at London during the 2012 summer Olympics. Huibers has previously built a half-size version. He is building the ark as a testimony to the literal truth of the Bible’s account of the global Flood. See our previous article about his previous, smaller-scale Ark: “Johan Huibers and His Ark.”
• Inventors of a new technique to examine the crystalline graphite components buried in metamorphic rocks got quite a surprise. The “carbonaceous particles are millions of years younger than the rock in which they are found.” Study co-author Dominic Papineau said, “The carbon in the graphite is not as old as the rock. That can only ring a bell and require us to ask if we need to reconsider earlier studies.” This result is another reminder that radiometric dating methods are based on unprovable assumptions.
• Physicists in CERN laboratory in Geneva report they’ve managed to generate over 300 antimatter particles and keep them trapped in a magnetic containment field for up to 1000 seconds. Antimatter has never been found in nature, but scientists believe the big bang had to produce it. Some people think that producing antimatter will confirm the big bang, but it will not. Scientists are only producing conditions they believe prevailed at the time of the big bang. Furthermore, doing something in a laboratory today in no way proves it happened naturally in the past.
• Genomes of Columbian mammoths have been sequenced and found to overlap with the woolly mammoth genome. Columbian mammoths were larger than the woolly species and are found in temperate regions. Woolly mammoths are found in colder regions. All are extinct. Although evolutionary biologists have held that the Columbian mammoth migrated to North America 1.5 million years ago and the woolly counterpart only 400,000 years ago, they now readily conclude “they came into contact . . . at some point in their evolutionary history.” Obviously, more than their habitats had to overlap to achieve this hybridization. These mammoths, mastodons, and elephants represent different species within the same created kind. For more information, see “” and News to Note, January 22, 2011.