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Archive for 1998
Clever Plans in Plants
Have you ever read The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl? It is such a fun story! Even grown ups laugh about this nasty scheming reptile who keeps devising new and ingenious ways to catch children for his supper. He describes his schemes as “secret plans and clever tricks.” Various jungle animals however foil each sneaky plan and the nasty croc eventually gets launched by an elephant into outer space. Read the rest of this entry »
DNA Testing: The Final Chapter on the Romanovs
History is full of sad stories. Nobody needs to tell us that. Nevertheless many tragic events have been obscured by the mists of time. It sometimes seems that we scarcely know or care any more about the crusades, European wars or treaties during the Middle Ages or events before or after that time. Eighty years ago however, the assassination of the Romanovs, the Russian czar and his family took place in the Siberian town of Yekaterinburg. The events were so shrouded in mystery, and the victims so interesting (particularly the four beautiful daughters), that public interest in the story has never faded. Now, thanks to some remarkable espionage carried out in Russia during the final years of the Communist regime, and to some recently developed skills in forensic science, the final chapter on the Romanov saga will be written during the summer of 1998. If all goes according to plan, the Romanovs will be buried in the family sepulchre in St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The funeral service with appropriate imperial grandeur is scheduled for July 17 — 80 years to the day after their untimely deaths. Read the rest of this entry »
Does Information Run Your Life?
We all like to communicate, don’t we – at the very least to tell others what to do. Indeed a slang expression has been coined about this “Communication is the name of the game!” People, of course, are able to communicate in words. However there are other sorts of communication which do not involve words, but which nevertheless involve information. Some scientists, especially in their study of biology, have become very interested in information and its source. Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith, for example, discussed the genesis of biological information in his 1981 book The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution. Moreover this fall two new books on this subject (by Dr. William A. Dembski) are scheduled to be released. Dr. Dembski is an associate editor of Origins and Design (www.arn.org) and the titles of these new books are The Design Inference (Cambridge) and Mere Creation: Reclaiming the Book of Nature (InterVarsity). Dr. Dembski’s interest in information theory is in its implications for origins theory. This also was Dr. Wilder-Smith’s concern. In addition there is another book recently translated from German, which provides fascinating insights on this topic. The title of Dr. Werner Gitt’s book is In the Beginning was Information. Read the rest of this entry »
Only a ? in a Guilded Cage
Have you ever seen a plant growing inside a cage? We saw such a sight at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Australia. It makes you stop and think doesn’t it? Is the cage there to protect the tree or to protect the people? Is this some sort of carnivorous threat or what? The little evergreen tree inside the cage is actually a very non-threatening 50 cm tall. The cage is there to prevent anyone from running off with the rarest known tree species on earth. The existence of this highly unusual tree, known as the Wollemi Pine, was just discovered in late 1994. Scientists are still dancing with delight. Read the rest of this entry »
Pretty Bubbles
According to astronomer/author Timothy Ferris in his new book The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe(s) Report, cosmologist Andrei Linde considers speculation on ultimate origins an excitingly “dangerous” subject. (1997 published by Simon and Schuster see p. 260) Apparently Dr. Linde sometimes wakes up wracked by doubt. Maybe all the speculations in cosmology are simply myths, with no foundation in reality at all. Author Ferris quotes Linde as remarking “Maybe actually the solution is quite aside from what we’re thinking about. It is a very dangerous feeling, this feeling that you’re not totally secure in what you’re doing.” It is one thing to have tentative views, but why should this scientist consider his to be dangerous? What or whom does he fear? Certainly fellow cosmologists have no similar scruples. A review of Dr. Ferris’ book in Astronomy magazine July 1997 p. 108 claims “His work is a tour de force, a spiral galaxy of thoughts recounted in eloquent and vibrant prose.” We are advised to “Relish its prose, ponder its implications.” Well then let’s do it. Let’s see what the implications of cosmology are for us today. Read the rest of this entry »
Run From Darwinian Solutions
With sparkling eyes, the baby on the cover of TIME magazine’s 1997 Special Issue “The Age of Discovery”, is ready to reach out for some fascinating object. The theme is a “celebration of mankind’s exploration of the unknown.” However the issue seems most noteworthy for its atheistic and evolutionary bias. For example, one British author, in describing his boyhood enthusiasm for collecting insects, at the same time confides to us: “The life of those Wiltshire woods and rivers and ponds became, as the comfort of God’s presence drained away, so very much more complex than their romantic and theological past suggested. But at 14, this secular revelation was wildly exciting, a liberation from faith.” (p. 41) For author Redmond O’Hanlon, the joys of observing nature were closely connected to his new found enthusiasm for Darwin, which he began to read at that time. Read the rest of this entry »
Watch Out For Deep Space
It’s a scary place out there. Dangerous rays and strange bodies make deep space a good place to avoid. The Hubble Space Telescope (functioning since late 1993), and other observatory satellites like the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory or CGRO (launched April 5, 1991), and Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer or XTE (launched December 30, 1995) and Beppo-SAX (launched April 20, 1996), have provided us with an information overload when it comes to the wonders of space. If each type of body in space, such as stars and galaxies, functioned in predictable ways, then astronomers might have a pretty good grasp on what is going on out there. Recent observations made with these fancy new observatories however, have revealed a plethora of unexpected and unexplained phenomena. Vast numbers of objects which should act in similar ways, all seem to be doing their own thing. Read the rest of this entry »
Why is Everything so Complicated?
The study of science really was a lot less complicated a generation or so ago. What we knew about the planets in our solar system, for example, was short and sweet. The planets basically had location, size and mass, rings or no rings, moons and names. That wasn’t too hard to learn. Since the advent of the space age however we have discovered a wealth of exciting new information. Every planet is different not only in appearance from all the other planets, but also in important physical characteristics. Three planets (Venus, Uranus and Pluto) spin in a backwards (retrograde) direction as do a few moons. In addition the axis of rotation for Uranus is tipped so steeply that it is basically spinning sideways. Moreover four gaseous planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all exhibit magnetic fields just as Earth does. The orientation of the field however with these giants is exactly opposite to that on earth. A compass on any of the four Jovian planets would point southward. Evidently the solar system is becoming more complicated with the launch of each additional probe. Read the rest of this entry »
