Water on the Moon

NASA discovered there is plenty of water on the moon.
Experts have long suspected there was water on the moon. So the thrilling discovery announced Friday sent a ripple of hope for a future astronaut outpost in a place that has always seemed barren and inhospitable.
“We found water. And we didn’t find just a little bit. [...]

Old eggs, daphnia, and evolution

When predation is high, crustaceans and other water loving egg lay-ers are not hatched much. What often happens is that they will remain dormant until later in the year when the predators are much less active. This offers a great research opportunity into evolution.
By hatching these eggs, Hairston and others can compare time-suspended hatchlings with [...]

Oh, Jesus

There’s a story floating around the interwebbings that says “Study shows evolution guided by ‘invisible hand’” or some variation of that. Most of the actual articles take this idea too far.
A study in the University’s School of Psychology sought to explain how turn-taking has evolved across a range of species. The conclusion is that there [...]

Only in the light of evolution

Now that finals are over, I can devote more time to my dear, neglected blog. I begin with a series:
I am following a specific chapter in Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True.
The fossil record: We should see fossils in a certain order if evolution is correct. They should go from simple to more complex [...]

Language

Language is a dicey thing. It’s especially dicey for scientists. Take Einstein for example. He used to use the word “God” quite often. He usually did not mean anything related to the Christian god (or any other god concept). Let’s look at the Einstein phrase “Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?” He [...]

Words from a ‘respected’ theologian

Why we still respect theologians is beyond me. These people are nothing more than literay critics with a very narrow focus. At least this one only seems to have made headlines at a Christian site. On top of that, he actually said some things which aren’t batshit crazy.
“If you understand Christianity or even Theism – [...]

Happy Darwin Day

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. The discover of the principles of the most important theory yet formulated, Darwin also wrote his landmark book, On the Origin of Species, 150 years ago this year (though not this day).
As more people are likely to note, it is also the 200th [...]

Ancestral environments and reverse evolution

There’s been a long debate regarding whether evolution can be reversed or not. The general trend has been that it can not. The idea goes that once one evolutionary pathway has been crossed, it cannot be retraced back to its origins. It turns out that is not entirely true.
Says [researcher] Henrique, ‘In 2001 we showed [...]

Artificial molecules

Origins research is beginning to really heat up (hilarious pun intended). One team of researchers is working with RNA (but then again, who isn’t?)
A new molecule that performs the essential function of life – self-replication – could shed light on the origin of all living things.
If that wasn’t enough, the laboratory-born ribonucleic acid (RNA) strand [...]

The confusion over Steve Jones

Steve Jones has, according to media reports, made the claim that human evolution has stopped, or is at least slowing down in the West. At times we see conflicting statements from Jones himself over this.
I really just know about snails, and the beauty of evolution is that it gives biology a structure, so the rules [...]