Creationism News -- April 2012
创造论新闻 -- 2012年4月
Dedicated to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career
as the Head Systems Administrator for the Cassini
Spacecraft in JPL to honor the Creator of the
Universe. He also spent literally thousands of hours to
make his excellent websites.
The contents of this presentation were taken from
various sources. Thank God that David Coppedge
came back from the lawsuit after two months of
“vacation.” Pray for the results of the lawsuit. I now
resume using his website materials.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/12/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
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Adaptation Mechanisms in Biology
生物学中的适应机制
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ICR Acts and Facts (April 2012) has an article
on the mechanisms of adaptation. Most
expressed traits and adaptations are
biologically complex responses. A creationist
model of adaptation is based on the organism’s
innate physiological capabilities and fault
tolerance mechanisms that are genetically
programmed by the Creator. Scientifically valid
descriptions employ recent molecular
discoveries in genomics, cell physiology, and
phenotypic plasticity to explain an organism’s
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behavior to their environmental niches.
The Grand Staircase
大楼梯
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ICR Acts and Facts (April 2012) has an article on the Grand
Staircase, which describes the landforms of Utah and
Arizona, starting from the colored Bryce Canyon, to Grey
Cliffs, to White Cliffs, to Vermillion Cliffs, and finally to the
Grand Canyon. These cliffs and canyons do form a grand
staircase which spans the geologic era from the paleozoic,
mesozoic, and the cenozoic. The staircase is best explained
by receding flood waters in short duration. The Redwall
limestone, in which billions of 2-foot long nautiloid fossils
were discovered, prove the deposit could not have been due
to gradual processes. The Coconino Sandstone is an
underwater sand ripple deposit. The Zion Canyon has vast
marine deposits of fossils. Bryce Canyon is a failed lake bed
full of Flood waters. It all fits inferences from biblical
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information.
Tech Innovations from the Creator
从造物主来科技创新
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ICR Acts and Facts (April 2012) has an article on how
engineers copied from nature and produced many designs
that still fall short of the real thing. Examples include the
intricately designed scales of the large Arapaima Brazilian
fish gave inspiration for engineers to develop flexible
ceramics. Diving watercrafts are designed after the sleek
water dynamics of killer whales, dolphins, and sharks. The
humpback whale flippers have dome-like bumps called
tubercles are now used in wind turbine blades which
increased yearly electrical production by 20% with reduced
noise! Now this design can be applied to fans, pumps,
compressors, and turbines. God had it first. Rough shark
skin is designed to smooth the water flow over the shark.
80% of the medals were won by swimmers with these
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suits.
Tech Innovations from the Creator
从造物主来科技创新
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ICR Acts and Facts (April 2012) further describes how
scientists took the wing design of long-distance birds to
develop an amazing morphing airplane wing. The wing
skin were covered by an outer skin like fish scales. This
leads to rapid flights with less fuel consumption.
Velcro was invented to imitate the burr structure of plants.
Blood-clotting is not copied for use in aircraft composite
material. Composites with tiny hollow tubes filled with
epoxy resin. When the aircraft is over stressed, a crack
would appear and resin leaks out. The scar is sealed.
Gecko technology now includes tapes that would improve
recovery from surgery and make more robust surgical
materials, patches, and bandages. Let us give glory to
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God.
Spider Web Design
蜘蛛网设计
ICR Acts and Facts (April 2012) has an article on the
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masterful design of spider webs. Spider silk is stronger
than steel and tougher than Levlar pound-for-pound. A
spider silk strand resists stress in a stepwise fashion. After
initial stiffening, the thread absorbed stress by stretching.
Additional pressure caused the thread to sharply stiffen,
thus transferring pressure to the rest of the web. The load
capacity increased by 3-10% with the introduction of
defects. It’s as if the web was designed to anticipate
breaks. Because their webs remain stable after damage,
spiders repair them to catch multiple means with the same
web. Now scientists use modified bacteria and goats to
manufacture silk proteins. Automobile designers can
incorporate crumple zones to absorb head-on collisions.
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Thank God because He optimized the spider web.
Dead Galaxies Live On
死星系仍然活
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Discover (April 2012) reports U of Michigan
astronomer Joel Bregman looked into red-and-dead
elliptical galaxies and found all of them have some
young stars. The reddest and deadest galaxy, Messier
105, harbors dozens of young stars, although these
young stars are a fraction of our own Milky Way. This
fact will force astronomers to revise their models of
galaxy formation. The fact is all galaxies have both
“old” and “young” stars. It is a matter of interpretation.
Some have more “old” stars, while others have more
“young” stars. It is like some families have more
elderly and others have more youngsters.
Thank God for these families of galaxies.
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10 byte
A cu. mm of Brain Tissue 
一立方毫米的脑组织1015字节
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Discover (April 2012) reports MIT neuroscientist
Sebastian Seung who models the brain’s
connectome—the million billion points of
contact between neurons in the brain. If
successful, we’ll glimpse the anatomy of the
mind. He needs bigger and faster computers for
modeling. He needs more eyeballs to analyze
the results. He is designing a game so that the
public can play. It may take years to know what
the brain is in store for us all. Thank God for our
brains.
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The Clouds Are Alive
云层活着
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Discover (April 2012) reports that clouds are teeming
with microorganisms so much as that it says the
clouds are “alive.” The ecosystem in the sky may
influence much of the world’s weather. The amount of
microbial life present in the cloud droplets that make
up a winter storm is amazing. The skies are full of
invisible life. Bacteria, algae, and fungi are swept up
by winds and lifted to the altitude of 20 miles into the
stratosphere by electric fields during thunderstorms.
Some researchers proposed the ice-making bug and
others like it might be creating ice crystals in clouds
that result in precipitation. Now cloud seeding has
more chances. Thank God for that.
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Surprising Scientific Fraud
令人惊讶的科学欺诈
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Discover (April 2012) has the last page dedicated to “20 Things
You Didn’t Know about Science Fraud.” In 18 surveys of
researchers, 2% confessed to falsifying or manipulating data,
but 14% said they knew a colleague who had. From retracted
biology papers from 2000 to 2010, Americans were more prone
to commit fraud than scientists of other nations. Chinese
scientists were actually 3 times more likely to commit fraud. If
caught stealing other’s ideas, they excused themselves that a
memory as an original thought. Even geniuses succumb to
temptation. Isaac Newton fudged numbers in his Principia,
considered to be the greatest physics text ever written. Others
who have altered data include Freud, Darwin, and Pasteur.
This says that “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory
of God.”
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Genome Length
基因组长度
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Popular Science (April 2012) has an interesting section on
the length of genome of various life forms:
Bacterium (Escherichia coli): 6.2 million DNA base pairs
Foot fungus (Trichophyton rubrum): 22 million DNA pairs
Earthworm (A. tuberculata): 655 million DNA pairs
Piranha (S. brandtii): 1600 million DNA pairs
Human (Homo sapiens): 3000 million DNA pairs
Daffodil (N. jonquilla): 16000 million DNA pairs
That is why one single leaf of daffodil can grow into a plant.
Is daffodil more complex than humans? Not necessarily.
The fact is that all cells are very complex. There are
hundreds of types of highly complex cells working in
harmony in us to make us breathe and think. Thank God! 11
3/12/2016
Jesus vs. Scientists: Who's Better at Miracles?
耶稣与科学家：谁在神迹更好？
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Yahoo Science quotes Live Science (April 7) on
Jesus vs. Scientist: Who’s Better at Miracles?
The article compares Jesus’ miracles to current
successes of science on topics of virgin birth,
free wine, healing lameness, feeding the
masses, making blind people see, resurrection
of Lazarus, and found that science is still lag
behind. It might take another 2000 years for
science to catch up. The article says.
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Oil Spill Anniversary
石油泄漏周年
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Popular Mechanics (April 2012) has a short article on
the two year anniversary of the worst oil spill in
America. The mishap killed 11 people and dumped 5
million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
Federal officials found it is not a catastrophe as
predicted. Favorable currents and topology prevented
the oil from spreading and allowed bacteria to break it
down quickly. A reduction of bluefin population was
found to reduce less than 4%. Thank God for the
bacteria to avert a catastrophe.
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Vikings’ Crystal Compass
海盗水晶罗盘
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Archaeology (March/April 2012) reports Vikings
were able to sail from Norway to North America
1000 years ago without magnetic compass. The
crystal Iceland spar could be used to ascertain
the sun’s position even on a cloudy day. When
light passes through the crystal, it is doubly
refracted. As a person holds up the crystal to
the sun and rotates it, the two beams line up
when facing the sun. This is true even on a
cloudy day. Thank God for the ingenuity of the
Vikings to navigate without compass.
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Heart Disease is Still the No. 1 Killer
心脏疾病仍是头号杀手
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Time (April 2, 2012) has an article describing why heart
disease is still the number 1 killer in America. Each year
more than half a million people die of heart-related causes
in the US, but despite increasing awareness of the key
contributors to heart disease, we haven’t been getting
much better at preventing it. Of the seven major heart risk
factors(high cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, high
glucose levels, an unhealthy diet, a sedentary lifestyle,
smoking and being overweight—most of us succeed at
keeping only 3 or 4 under control.
That is why Paul said that “the flesh is weak. The things
that I want to do I did not do.” We need the grace of God
and help of the Holy Spirit to help us to walk in His path.
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Man-made Sound Helps Hummingbirds
人做声音帮助蜂鸟
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Time (April 2, 2012) has an article describing how
man-made sound from natural gas compressors help
the hummingbirds to survive. Strange as it may sound.
The man-made sound scare away the predator, the
bluejay, which eats nesting babies of the
hummingbirds.
Man-made engine noise is not all that bad. At least in
the case of the hummingbirds. It helps the birds to
survive. We praise God for that.
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Cambrian Explosion: Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
寒武纪大爆发：沉积，我亲爱的漂流
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The short sentence “Then something happened”
appears in a press release from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, entitled, “Great Unconformity:
Evidence for a geologic trigger of the Cambrian
explosion” (see it also on PhysOrg). The references
to geology, fossils and evidence sure sounds like this
is coming from the science lab. Here’s the context:
The oceans teemed with life 600 million years ago, but
the simple, soft-bodied creatures would have been
hardly recognizable as the ancestors of nearly all
animals on Earth today.
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Cambrian Explosion: Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
寒武纪大爆发：沉积，我亲爱的漂流
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Then something happened. Over several tens of
millions of years – a relative blink of an eye in geologic
terms – a burst of evolution led to a flurry of
diversification and increasing complexity, including
the expansion of multicellular organisms and the
appearance of the first shells and skeletons.
The results of this Cambrian explosion are well
documented in the fossil record, but its cause –
why and when it happened, and perhaps why
nothing similar has happened since – has been a
mystery.
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Cambrian Explosion: Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
寒武纪大爆发：沉积，我亲爱的漂流
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Although Darwin and other palaeontologists [sic;
Darwin’s only degree was in theology] have regarded
the resultant widespread hiatus in the rock record as a
failure of preservation, the formation of this
prominent gap may have actually been an
environmental trigger for biomineralization,
thereby promoting the Cambrian explosion of
marine animals. Determining the geodynamic
causes of extensive Neoproterozoic continental
denudation followed by Phanerozoic sedimentation,
and linking those dynamics to the timing and spatial
distribution of marine transgression and
biogeochemical change, is now a challenge for
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geoscience.
Cambrian Explosion: Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
寒武纪大爆发：沉积，我亲爱的漂流
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Then something happened. Over several tens of
millions of years – a relative blink of an eye in geologic
terms – a burst of evolution led to a flurry of
diversification and increasing complexity, including
the expansion of multicellular organisms and the
appearance of the first shells and skeletons.
The results of this Cambrian explosion are well
documented in the fossil record, but its cause –
why and when it happened, and perhaps why
nothing similar has happened since – has been a
mystery.
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Cambrian Explosion: Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
寒武纪大爆发：沉积，我亲爱的漂流
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This is all part of the gap. They filled the gap with their
own imaginations. There’s no evidence that shallow
seas repeatedly advanced and retreated, wearing
down imaginary sediments to basement rock all over
the world. There’s only the gap– igneous basement
rock, with flat sediments stacked on top of them a
billion Darwin Years later. This is clearly visible in the
Grand Canyon, but it represents a global
phenomenon. That’s why it’s called the Great
Unconformity. Furthermore, there’s only one Great
Unconformity, so they have not found a Law of Nature
that creates global unconformities from time to time.
Peters himself said in the press release, “there’s
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nothing else like it in the entire rock record.”
Cambrian Explosion: Sedimentary, My Dear Flotsam
寒武纪大爆发：沉积，我亲爱的漂流
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During an imaginary billion-year gap that left no sign of
gully erosion on a global flat surface while imaginary
seas advanced and retreated. “Then something
happened.” New minerals changed the chemistry of
seawater. This “triggered” a geologically-sudden
explosion of complex body plans with eyes, articulated
limbs, digestive systems, muscles and nerves. In
science, it’s now permissible to use gaps to fill gaps.
You can use silence to fill silence. You can use
imagination in lieu of scientific data. Stuff happens: in
modern Darwinian thinking, that’s all you need to
know. Imagining what may happen in the gaps gives
you Understanding — Enlightenment — Nirvana.
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Wernher von Braun Remembered
要记得沃纳·冯·布劳恩
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Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) would
have turned 100 on March 23. His name is
almost synonymous with “rocket scientist”
to many. Father of the American space
program, including the first American
satellite, the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo
programs, the moon landings and Skylab,
von Braun left an indelible mark on
America and the world.
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Wernher von Braun Remembered
要记得沃纳·冯·布劳恩
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David Christensen, who worked with von Braun, spoke
from his experience with the giant of rocketry:
He was very unique. I don’t know of another individual,
frankly, that’s had those capabilities, either then or
now, that could do the things he did.
He was a very warm personality.
He was very down to Earth and friendly, never talked
down to anyone. But talking to him, working on a
project, you learned very quickly he was a genius.
He was a very broad-based individual, very culturally
capable; he played several musical instruments, wrote
music, he was an astronomer and he was certainly a
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top notch engineer.
Wernher von Braun Remembered
要记得沃纳·冯·布劳恩
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Late in the Apollo program, Wernher von Braun
became a Christian and supporter of creation
and academic freedom – the freedom of
students to question Darwinian materialism. He
wrote popular articles on the relationship of
science and faith. “The better we understand
the intricacies of the universe and all it harbors,
the more reason we have found to marvel at the
inherent design upon which it is based,” he said
in 1972.
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Wernher von Braun Remembered
要记得沃纳·冯·布劳恩
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In a statement remarkably prescient of arguments
used by the subsequent intelligent design movement,
he added, “While the admission of a design for the
universe ultimately raises the question of a Designer
(a subject outside of science), the scientific method
does not allow us to exclude data which lead to the
conclusion that the universe, life and man are based
on design. To be forced to believe only one
conclusion—that everything in the universe happened
by chance—would violate the very objectivity of
science itself.”
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Wernher von Braun Remembered
要记得沃纳·冯·布劳恩
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The positive coverage of von Braun’s 100th birthday is
a hopeful sign that the misinformed guilt-byassociation slurs of this great man are finally dying
down, and that history will treat him favorably, as it
should. Consider that he made great effort at
considerable risk to escape to the Americans as soon
as it was possible. Look at his record from the moment
he arrived on American shores. Is it believable his
character suddenly switched from one pole to another
overnight?
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Wernher von Braun Remembered
要记得沃纳·冯·布劳恩
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The weight of evidence is that his expertise, borne of
childhood love of space and rocketry, had been
temporarily co-opted during the German war effort by
forces beyond his control, and put to uses that
repulsed him. As soon as it was possible for him to
escape the clutches of his desperate situation, he
sought out the Americans and surrendered his whole
team to them. As an American, he explained his
German situation when asked, without dwelling on it,
but a few continued to tar him with guilt by association.
No other alleged “Nazi war criminal” led such a stellar,
exemplary life afterward.
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Wernher von Braun Remembered
要记得沃纳·冯·布劳恩
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He quickly became an American citizen and dedicated
himself to the peaceful exploration of space. Von
Braun was never charged with or convicted of any war
crimes; on the contrary, he was showered with honors.
Even the British Interplanetary Society, in the London
that felt the horror of the V2 rockets, honored him. His
achievements cannot and should not be smeared with
baseless suppositions. The man’s life speaks for itself.
Happy Birthday, Dr. von Braun– one of the world’s
greatest creation scientists.
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From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
要从大自然的奇观到科技奇观
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1. Butterfly black magic. Science Daily reported,
“Butterfly Wings’ ‘Art of Blackness’ Could Boost
Production of Green Fuels.” Notice they said art of
blackness, not black art. It’s purely physical: the
arrangement of cells on some butterfly wings are
designed to absorb light to look as black as black can
be. This observation portends fuel efficiency, the
article says:
Butterfly wings may rank among the most delicate
structures in nature, but they have given researchers
powerful inspiration for new technology that doubles
production of hydrogen gas — a green fuel of the
future — from water and sunlight.
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From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
要从大自然的奇观到科技奇观
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At a meeting of the American Chemical Society,
Tongxiang Fang told the audience that the
problem in fuel cells is light-gathering efficiency.
“We realized that the solution to this problem
may have been in existence for millions of
years, fluttering right in front of our eyes,” Fan
said. “And that was correct. Black butterfly
wings turned out to be a natural solar collector
worth studying and mimicking,” Fan said.
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From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
要从大自然的奇观到科技奇观
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2. Does this float your boat? Imagine a one-pound
boat that could carry 1,000 pounds. Wonders like this
are coming into the realm of possibility by studying
how water striders do it. Water striders literally walk on
water, their specialized footpads creating mere
dimples in the skin-like surface of water. By combining
the bugs’ technique with one of the world’s lightest
solid substances, aerogel, researchers at the
University of Helsinki are looking to produce products
useful for “cleaning up oil spills to helping create such
products as sensors for detecting environmental
pollution, miniaturized military robots, and even
children’s toys and super-buoyant beach floats.”
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From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
要从大自然的奇观到科技奇观
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Their findings were also presented at the American
Chemical Society meeting. Biomimetics was the hot
topic there: “The symposium focused on an emerging
field called biomimetics, in which scientists literally
take inspiration from Mother Nature, probing and
adapting biological systems in plants and animals for
use in medicine, industry and other fields.” The ACS is
the world’s largest scientific society. Even the aerogel
itself derives from cellulose in plants. If you wear
cotton or use paper, you’re familiar with cellulose, but
nano-cellulose is opening up a whole new age,
according to one of the symposium organizers that
invited a dozen presentations on it:
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From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
要从大自然的奇观到科技奇观
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“We are in the middle of a Golden Age, in which a
clearer understanding of the forms and functions of
cellulose architectures in biological systems is
promoting the evolution of advanced materials,” said
Harry Brumer, Ph.D., of Michael Smith Laboratories,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Ikkala pointed out that cellulose is the most
abundant polymer on Earth, a renewable and
sustainable raw material that could be used in many
new ways. In addition, nanocellulose promises
advanced structural materials similar to metals,
such as high-tech spun fibers and films.
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From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
要从大自然的奇观到科技奇观
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3. Biological batteries: If your surgeon left an
Energizer battery inside you after sewing you back up,
you would NOT last long like a toy bunny; you would
be at a serious health risk. Some day, though,
surgeons may intentionally sew batteries inside your
body – batteries made with biological enzymes found
in bacteria. “Nature’s billion-year-old battery key to
storing energy” reads a headline on PhysOrg, referring
to the time in Darwin years that evolutionists believe
this enzyme, involved in photosynthesis, has existed.
“Light induces a charge separation in the enzyme,
causing one end to become negatively charged and
the other positively charged, much like in a battery.”
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From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
要从大自然的奇观到科技奇观
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If a team from Concordia University succeeds in
controlling this enzyme, inventors may be able to
create biological batteries that could internally monitor
your vital signs with no ill effects from toxic chemicals,
because the ingredients would be all natural. One of
the driving forces for the research is that such
materials are “carbon neutral and use resources that
are in abundance: sun, carbon dioxide and water,” the
article explained. “Researchers are using nature’s
battery to inspire more sustainable, man-made
energy converting systems.”
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From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
要从大自然的奇观到科技奇观
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While on the subject of physics, let’s notice a
tribute to James Clerk Maxwell, one of the
world’s greatest creation scientists. His famous
“Maxwell’s Equations” have yielded a new
solution to the question of whether self-bending
light is possible — and it is. Does this mean we
will some day be able to see around corners?
Read PhysOrg for the scoop on what this
profound discovery might have in store for
everything that acts with wave-like behavior.
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From Wonders of Nature to Wonders of Technology
要从大自然的奇观到科技奇观
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Did you notice the claim that the American Chemical
Society is the world’s largest scientific society? and
that they are jazzed about biomimetics–an intelligentdesign based mode of scientific inquiry? What does
that tell you about the future of Darwinism, that
useless Victorian myth that produced things no more
valuable to society than forced sterilization, genocide
and totalitarian regimes? Yes, a Golden Age is
coming, if we can extricate ourselves from the
clutches of the Victorian myth, and return science to
what it used to be: thinking God’s thoughts after him.
The words of physicist James Joule are jewels in that
regard, worth reading in this new age of biomimetics.
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Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放
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Saturn just passed opposition on April 15,
making it a good viewing object from Earth this
season. Amateur observers with telescopes
may be able to make out the moons Titan,
Rhea, Dione, Iapetus, Tethys, and Enceladus.
They may look like beautiful little gems from
Earth, but from the Cassini spacecraft in orbit at
Saturn, they are no less than astonishing.
Recent observations of these moons add to the
astonishment.
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Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放
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Titan, the largest of Saturn’s family of natural satellites
(larger even than the planet Mercury), yielded more
secrets of its southern “great lake,” named Ontario
Lacus (Lake Ontario, due to its resemblance and size
to Earth’s counterpart). It turns out the lake is more
like a mud flat, shallow and wide. Namibia has similar
salt pans that occasionally fill in with liquid from the
water table. Cassini scientists now think that liquid
methane and ethane seep into the mud flat from
below, instead of during downpours. This not only
makes the giant “lake” a poor splashdown site for
future spaceships, but adds to the mystery of the
missing ethane, once thought to have covered Titan
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with a global ocean several kilometers deep.
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放
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Rhea is Saturn’s second largest moon, but smaller
than Titan by a long shot (Rhea would cover Texas,
but Titan would cover the entire United States).
Cassini made another flyby of Rhea from 26,000 miles
on March 10. The main thing of note in Space.com’s
coverage was an impact basin 300 miles across,
nearly a third of the moon’s diameter. Rhea also
retains a tenuous atmosphere of oxygen and carbon
dioxide, apparently replenished by charged particles.
“Researchers think the oxygen comes from Rhea’s
surface ice, liberated from water molecules that get
blasted apart by charged particles streaming from
Saturn’s magnetosphere. The source of the carbon
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41
dioxide, however, is more mysterious.”
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放
Dione may be active like Enceladus, according to an

article on the BBC News by Paul Rincon. “NASA’s
Cassini spacecraft has spied possible signs of
geological activity on Saturn’s icy moon Dione,” he
reported. These tentative findings are based on fissures
resembling the “tiger stripes” on Enceladus, a possible
ice volcano, and areas that appear to have been
resurfaced. So far, the suggestion has not been
corroborated by observations of jets or heat signatures,
although “rampart craters” hint that there may be internal
heat in Dione remaining. Perhaps, though, the fissures
are “fossil tiger stripes,” indicating past geological
activity that ceased. It’s remarkable that little Enceladus,
less than half the diameter of Dione, should be the most
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42
active moon of Saturn.
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放

Iapetus hasn’t had any flybys as good as the best one in
2007, which led scientists to propose ice-hopping or
“runaway migration” to explain the dichotomy between
dark and light sides. Observations continue to be made
and analyzed, though. Space.com reported how Paul Ries
is using Earth radar to infer temperature changes across
the dark and light parts of the moon. Unexpectedly, the
measurements did not follow a Planck blackbody curve as
Ries predicted, but rather showed a fairly flat spectrum
across wavelengths, suggesting steep absorption. At this
point Ries doesn’t have an explanation. He’s comparing
radar on Earth ice to see what the signals can tell about
grain size and other factors. “Iapetus certainly has some
strange stuff that needs to be explained, so this is
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43
potentially very interesting for the future,” he said.
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放

Enceladus remains the prima donna of Saturn, bursting out
her fountains at the south pole like a show that never ends.
On March 27, Cassini shot the plumes again from 46 miles,
hoping to “taste” them and send home pretty pictures, too;
dazzling geyser shots were posted. Space.com reported that
continued study of the “tiger stripe” cracks show them to be
deformed by Saturn’s powerful gravity. On April 14, Cassini
made a second pass from 46 miles. Even though the tiger
stripes are in the dark now, the infrared spectrometer and
cosmic dust analyzer were poised for front-seat
observations. A JPL press release showed latest
unprocessed images from the encounter and a follow-up
flyby of Tethys that provided the highest-resolution images of
a side of Tethys not seen by the ultra-close 2005 encounter.
A new close-up of Connecticut-sized Janus filled in a
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44
productive month by Cassini scientists.
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放

Ringside. All that glitters at Saturn is not moons. Saturn’s
sparkling F-ring was the subject of a report on New Scientist
about puzzling observations of possible bursting moonlets
that have on rare occasions brightened the F-ring
significantly. Voyagers 1 and 2 saw sparkles in the 1980s,
and Hubble saw one in 1995, but the ring has brightened
overall since (implying more dust than before), except for an
84% brightening in December 2006 that took two years to
fade. The F-ring is known to be perturbed by the little potatoshaped moon Prometheus, but if the sparkles are due to
disruption of moonlets, there aren’t that many more moonlets
around, unless Prometheus has ways of continually making
and destroying giant snowballs made of ring dust. Reporter
Lisa Grossman left it up as an oddity that may send scientists
3/12/2016
45
back to the drawing board.
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放

The dynamism found at Saturn’s rings and moons
raises questions about how long these energetic,
entropy-rich processes on small moons and in thin
rings can be sustained. Cassini already spectacularly
falsified the “global ocean on Titan” hypothesis when
its Huygens probe landed on a soggy mud flat in 2005.
Are we to believe the geysers on Enceladus have
been going on for 4.5 billion years but stopped earlier
on larger Dione? Are we incredibly lucky to be seeing
the flimsy F-ring running out of moonlets right when
Cassini is there to observe it?
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Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放

We must keep in mind that, in science, there is a vast
difference between scientific observation and scientific
explanation. Unquestionably, our maps of the surfaces
of Enceladus, Iapetus and Titan are vastly superior
today than they were after Voyagers 1 and 2. That’s
significant progress. The images of the F-ring are also
orders of magnitude better than they were in the
1980s. Nevertheless, the explanations for activity on
Enceladus and Titan seem strained. Are these
anomalies that could lead to a scientific revolution?
3/12/2016
47
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放

It’s notable that this is the 50th anniversary of
philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn’s influential
book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. David
Kaiser in Nature took note of that, as did Evolution
News & Views in several posts. The book that brought
“paradigm shift” into the vernacular started a wave of
thought that toppled logical positivism and helped
many people realize that science is not necessarily the
objective, neutral, truth-seeking, progressive
enterprise students are led to believe, but in fact is
governed by sociological and cultural factors that often
stifle creative thinking by focusing attention on what
questions are worth answering, what puzzles are
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48
worth solving, and what research is worth funding.
Saturn Moons Continue to Shine
土星月亮继续绽放

The planetary science community tends to be a
close-knit thought collective with a web of belief
that is tolerant of maverick views only to a point.
If enough anomalies continue to pile up at
Saturn, though, it will be interesting to watch if
several long-held assumptions may have to be
jettisoned to account for them. This may be a
good time for new minds, uncluttered by
tradition and consensus, to look at Cassini’s
observations afresh.
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Paradigm Shift: Impact Didn’t Kill Dinosaurs
范式转换: 陨石没有杀死恐龙

A new study casts doubt on whether asteroid
impacts led to extinctions. It’s based on reinterpreting geological evidence used to identify
impacts. This finding, if sustained, would
undermine the theory that an impact killed off
the dinosaurs and a later impact led to the
extinction of many large mammals. Even more
significant, an overturn of the impact hypothesis
would illustrate that scientists are capable of
going off on wrong tangents for decades.
3/12/2016
50
Paradigm Shift: Impact Didn’t Kill Dinosaurs
范式转换: 陨石没有杀死恐龙

The study by the U.S. Geological Survey, reported by
PhysOrg, found that “impact markers,” such as
“elevated levels of iridium, magnetic spherules, and
titanomagnetite grains,” can form in wetlands and
marshes called black mats. The impact markers had
been used to support the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T)
extinction and a more “hotly contested” Younger Dryas
Impact theory that led to extinction of the Clovis
culture allegedly 12,900 years ago. The new study
published by Pigati et al in PNAS1 casts doubt on the
uses of these markers to infer asteroid impacts.
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Paradigm Shift: Impact Didn’t Kill Dinosaurs
范式转换: 陨石没有杀死恐龙


The abstract states,
In this study, we investigated black mats ranging in
age from approximately 6 to more than 40 ka in the
southwestern United States and the Atacama Desert
of northern Chile. At 10 of 13 sites, we found
elevated concentrations of iridium in bulk and
magnetic sediments, magnetic spherules, and/or
titanomagnetite grains within or at the base of black
mats, regardless of their age or location,
suggesting that elevated concentrations of these
markers arise from processes common to wetland
systems, and not a catastrophic extraterrestrial
impact event.
3/12/2016
52
Paradigm Shift: Impact Didn’t Kill Dinosaurs
范式转换: 陨石没有杀死恐龙


The “impact” of this re-interpretation goes beyond
extinction theories:
“Luis and Walter Alvarez’s proposal that an
extraterrestrial impact was responsible for extinctions
at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary eventually moved
from unlikely hypothesis to accepted theory, and
with its acceptance came the temptation to apply
this explanation to any rapid change in Earth’s
conditions,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “The
results of this study demonstrate the importance
of maintaining a healthy skepticism and multiple
working hypotheses.”
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Paradigm Shift: Impact Didn’t Kill Dinosaurs
范式转换: 陨石没有杀死恐龙

The impact theory may not be dead yet; undoubtedly
critics will have a rebuttal to the USGS study. Even so,
the “healthy skepticism and multiple working
hypotheses” advice has been sadly lacking in the
news media and on science TV as many jumped on
the impact-theory bandwagon without considering the
impact on science’s credibility should the popular
hypothesis be overturned. What do the popular-media
producers care? They made their money and some
retired. The losers are students who grow up believing
whatever scientists tell them and what animators
“show” them, but don’t get to hear “the rest of the
story” till too late if at all.
3/12/2016
54
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
大卫王统治的城市，不是统治牧羊人

Ongoing archaeological finds from Khirbet
Qeiyafa in ancient Judah now show
conclusively that the site had fortified walls with
gates, administrative buildings, bronze and iron
objects, and artifacts suggesting extensive
trade with foreign powers. These discoveries
cast doubt on the “minimalist” chronology of
some liberal scholars who claim that King
David, even if he existed, was a tribal chief over
pastoralists.
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55
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
大卫王统治的城市，不是统治牧羊人

Todd Bolen at Bible Places Blog has
summarized the major finds. The full report on
the Israeli Antiquities Authority website by Yossi
Garfinkel et al. tells how the goal of the 4th and
5th excavation seasons last year was to identify
Iron Age IIA features of the fortress city south of
Jerusalem that has been radiometrically dated
to the late 11th and early 10th centuries BC –
the time of David and Solomon.
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56
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
大卫王统治的城市，不是统治牧羊人

Khirbet Qeiyafa received international press in 2008 with
the discovery of a pottery inscription from that period. The
findings suggest a complex civilization during the time of
David: this settlement, uncovered to date, included two
gates, two gate plazas, twenty-eight casemates
(twenty complete), ten residential buildings and
remains of administrative buildings at the top of the
site. Large quantities of artifacts were discovered on the
floors of the houses in each area, including hundreds of
pottery vessels that can be restored, hundreds of stone
objects, dozens of metallic objects and small finds.
Much evidence was found of ritual activity, including
mazzevot, a cultic chamber, models of temples (two of
ceramic and one of stone) and a figurine.
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King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
大卫王统治的城市，不是统治牧羊人

1. A town plan characteristic of the Kingdom of
Judah that is also known from other sites, e.g., Bet
Shemesh, Tell en-Nasbeh, Tell Beit Mirsim and Be’er
Sheva‘. A casemate wall was built at all of these sites
and the city’s houses next to it incorporated the
casemates as one of the dwelling’s rooms. This
model is not known from any Canaanite, Philistine
or Kingdom of Israel site.
2. Massive fortification of the site, including the use
of stones that weigh up to eight tons apiece.
3. Two gates. To date, no Iron Age cities with two
gates were found in either Israel or Judah.
4. An open space for a gate plaza was left near each
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gate.
King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
大卫王统治的城市，不是统治牧羊人

5. The city’s houses were contiguous and built very close
together.
6. Some 500 jar handles bearing at least one finger print
were found. Marking jar handles is characteristic of the
Kingdom of Judah and it seems this practice has already
begun in the early Iron Age.
7. A profusion of bronze and iron objects were found.
The iron objects included three swords, about twenty
daggers, arrowheads and two spearheads. The bronze
items included an axe, arrowheads, rings and a small bowl.
8. Trade and imported objects. Ashdod ware, which was
imported from the coastal plain, was found at the site. Basalt
vessels were brought from a distance of more than 100 km
and clay juglets from Cyprus and two alabaster vessels
from Egypt were discovered.
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King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
大卫王统治的城市，不是统治牧羊人


It should be noted that Khirbet Qeiyafa was a relatively
small outlying fortress in Judah. The conclusions of
the excavators is that the minimalist chronology has
been falsified in light of this evidence: “The
excavations at Khirbat Qeiyafa clearly reveal an
urban society that existed in Judah already in the
late eleventh century BCE. It can no longer be
argued that the Kingdom of Judah developed only
in the late eighth century BCE or at some other
later date.”
Incidentally, the fortress is within eyesight of the Elah
valley, the location of the battle of David and Goliath.
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King David Ruled Cities, Not Shepherds
大卫王统治的城市，不是统治牧羊人

Don’t forget that archaeology is an intelligent design
science. A great deal can be inferred about the
intelligence and purpose of the creators of these
artifacts, even though we have never met the
designers, don’t know their names, and cannot
describe everything that brought their work into
existence. This goes to show that intelligent design is
a working scientific principle and method in the
sciences. If the same methods are used to infer
intelligent causes in other phenomena, such as
genetic software and fine-tuning of the laws of
physics, then so be it.
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Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据


Planet theorists are putting up a valiant fight against
new findings, but in some cases, the evidence seems
to be winning.
Moon. “New research provokes more questions
about the origin of the moon,” blazes a headline on
PhysOrg from last month. For some time now, the
“favored scenario” for our moon’s origin has been that
a Mars-size body impacted the earth, and the moon
formed from the debris. Scientists even gave a
mythical name to the impactor: Theia. Trouble is,
Theia might really be just a myth:
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62
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

Now, new research from geophysical scientist
Junjun Zhang and colleagues, suggests that
such thinking might be wrong. In their paper
published in Nature Geoscience, they find that
in comparing titanium isotopes from both the
moon and the Earth, that the match is too
close to support the theory that the moon
could have been made partly of material
from another planet.
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63
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

The match of isotopes between Earth and
moon is too close to believe that a distant
impactor brought material from elsewhere. But
it is even more implausible to imagine Earth
spinning so fast to throw off some of its material
to form the moon. This leaves mythmakers in
an amusing paradox: “Hopefully new research
will one day provide us with a definitive
answer. Until that day though, it seems we will
all have to just keep on musing.”
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64
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

Mars: The dry-Marsers scored more
points over the wet-Marsers this month. In
Nature News (April 11), Eric Hand wrote
an article entitled, “Dreams of water on
Mars evaporate: Climate models reveal
the red planet was mostly cold and
dry.” The pendulum has swung back to
the dry-Marsers:
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65
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

Last month, Jim Head, a planetary scientist at Brown
University in Providence, Rhode Island, threw a wet
blanket on the idea that Mars was ever very wet at
all, in a keynote talk at the Lunar and Planetary
Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. Head
and others are assembling a picture of a Mars that
was cold and dry from the beginning, punctuated
at most by short bursts of wetness. “The notion of
a palm-tree-covered Mars has waned,” says
Stephen Clifford, a planetary scientist at the Lunar and
Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, who is
organizing a conference in May on the early climate of
Mars.
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66
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

Head’s “revisionism” is driving Mars lifers
into hiding: “[Jeff] Andrews-Hanna
[Colorado School of Mines] says the shift
in thinking doesn’t rule out life on
ancient Mars, but instead drives it
deeper underground.”
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67
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

A paper in Science today (27 April 2012: Vol. 336 no.
6080 pp. 449–452, DOI: 10.1126/science.1219437)
doesn’t need Martian water, either. Strange-looking
polygons and coils in Athabasca Valles were
explained by Phil Christensen and Andrew Ryan as
artifacts of lava flows. The spiral coils found by Ryan
on HiRise photos from the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter (see photo on National Geographic News) are
like fossil eddies created by shear stress in the flowing
pahoehoe lava (see Science Daily). They don’t require
water or ice for their formation. Moreover, they formed
quickly:
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68
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

Ice-related processes fail to account for our
observations. There are no known mechanisms to
naturally produce spiral patterns in ice-rich
environments on the scale and frequency
observed in our study area. If the primary plates
were ice rafts, then the water extruded during rafting
would not have the correct viscosity to form and
preserve the coils. We have also shown that the
polygons formed after the fracture and drift of the
secondary plates on which they are present. This
precludes the notion that the polygons formed
over decades or even centuries in an ice-rich
regolith, because it seems unlikely that frozen soil
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could somehow fracture and drift.
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

Late Heavy Bombardment. The notion of a “Late Heavy
Bombardment” (LHB) of the inner solar system long after
the birth of Earth is taking some bombardment of its own.
The “spotty impact record” on the moon is making it
difficult to maintain that a stream of high-velocity impactors
came in a barrage about 4 million years ago; crater data
seem to indicate a mix of high-velocity and low-velocity
impactors. Richard A. Kerr in Science reported on the
controversy at the Lunar and Planetary Science
Conference where, at a pre-conference workshop, William
Bottke tried to be diplomatic. To keep peace between the
catastrophists (who believe in the LHB) and the pacifists
(who assert that most cratering tapered off after the birth
of the inner planets), Bottke suggested both groups might
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70
be partly right.
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据


At the conference, Bottke presented a blend
of the competing bombardment histories
that takes account of the spotty impact record
produced by a mix of fast and slow
impactors.… Bottke thinks the resulting late
bombardment was longer and less intense than
many catastrophists have proposed.
Kerr did not indicate if everybody is happy with
the compromise.
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71
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

Nebular hypothesis: More new troubles are brewing
for old ideas that debris disks around stars are
nurseries for planets. The old picture was that dust is
hot near the star, but frozen at the outer edge of the
disk. A “frost line” in the middle segregates rocky from
volatile material that presumably remains frozen in its
primordial state. Alas, more evidence has come in that
complicates the picture. A study reported by the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, echoed
on PhysOrg, indicates that some of the outermost
material of dust disks must have melted. Infrared
measurements can differentiate between amorphous
and crystalline dust.
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72
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

Primordial dust is assumed to have been
amorphous. To have become crystalline, as the
data from the Spitzer Space Telescope
indicated, the outermost dust must have heated
up to the melting point and re-frozen. This
echoes observations from comets, once
thought to be primordial snowballs from the
edges of our solar system, but have been
observed to contain high-melting-point
ingredients (4/18/2011).
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73
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

Theorists are stuck with two possibilities: the dust
migrated from the inner regions outward by some
unknown mechanism, or another unknown mechanism
(perhaps a shock wave) heated the material in the
outer regions. The press release put the best possible
spin on this new puzzle: “The new paper answers
some questions while refining others, and is a
good example of the important progress being made
today in understanding how planets and planetary
systems form.” Being interpreted, this means, “We
haven’t a clue, but science marches on.”
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74
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

Cosmic rays: Another theory on a cosmic scale took a
big hit this month with no replacement paradigm in
sight. Astronomers had hoped to explain high-energy
cosmic rays as coming from some of the most
energetic events known to occur in the universe:
gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). New measurements from
a large neutrino detector embedded in Antarctic ice
(appropriately named IceCube) failed to correlate
detector flashes with the short-lived bursts. The report
in Nature (484, 19 April 2012, pp. 351–354,
doi:10.1038/nature11068) left explanations hanging:
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75
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据


This implies either that GRBs are not the only
sources of cosmic rays with energies exceeding
1018 electronvolts or that the efficiency of
neutrino production is much lower than has
been predicted.
Observations were 3.6 times lower than
predicted by theory. Space.com titled its report,
“Cosmic Ray Mystery Leaves Scientists in
the Dark.” PhysOrg headlined, “Neutrinos put
cosmic ray theory on ice.”
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76
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

These reports might support scientific progress by
falsification: i.e., that science progresses by ruling out
theories. It’s helpful to know that some popular
theories are no longer supportable by new evidence,
but scientific understanding cannot grow by
subtraction alone. When what we think we know turns
out to be false, can scientists really claim to
understand the world? An article on Evolution News &
Views questions whether “known knowns” are
progressing against “known unknowns,” “unknown
unknowns” and “unknowable unknowns” – and
whether positivists like Michael Shermer have a clue
where the boundary lies between knowledge and
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ignorance.
Planet Theories vs. the Evidence
行星的理论与证据

We certainly applaud the teams that build, operate
and collect data from intelligently-designed
instruments like Spitzer, IceCube and Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter. Data from these amazing
instruments are a gift bequeathed to us in the
information age. We only point out that good data are
a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for scientific
understanding. Time after time, we provide examples
in these pages of predictions, expectations and
favored theories that are suffering a late heavy
bombardment of high-speed data impactors. Maybe it
will dawn on some readers that the consensus
worldview, the bottom-up, naturalistic evolutionary
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78
assumption, is a detriment to scientific understanding.
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

The scientific consensus has pretty much
declared it a fact of natural history that
birds evolved from dinosaurs. One
evolutionary professor remains a gadfly,
though. He contests the evidence on
which the hypothesis is based, and also
believes his maverick position is growing.
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

Alan Feduccia, a distinguished professor emeritus at
the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, wrote
an essay for New Scientist. His position does not deny
an evolutionary origin of birds, but places the
“feathered dinosaurs” so often portrayed as ancestors
of modern birds on a dead-end branch. He claims his
position is more in line with 19th century paleontologist
Richard Owen and 20th century evolutionist Gavin de
Beer. These men viewed flightless birds as
degenerate products of variation, not stages toward
flight; for instance, de Beer in 1956 “showed
conclusively that flightless birds descended from flying
ancestors and have never re-evolved flight.”
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

Similarly, Feduccia holds that the “feathered
dinosaurs” attracting so much attention in the media
were either pure scaly dinosaurs with whose decayed
collagen has been misinterpreted as “proto-feathers,”
or were degenerate flightless birds. His own view is
that the birds evolved from archosaurs, the
predecessors in evolutionary history of the true
dinosaurs. He thinks some of the archosaurs lived in
trees and developed flight as they jumped (the
arboreal hypothesis).
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

Critics of Darwinism will, therefore, find
Feduccia’s own evolutionary view to be
just as implausible as the consensus view.
What he says in his essay, however, is
illuminating about the habits of a scientific
consensus. Here are some salient points:
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

Sinosauropteryx, a fossil with alleged protofeathers, caused a sensation when it was
announced in Nature in 1998. But “no
evidence then or now has emerged showing
that these structures are anything other
than collagen fibres supporting a typical
reptilian frill,” Feduccia said. “The fact that the
filaments are located within a clearly
demarcated body outline — indicating the fibres
were not external, as they would be if they were
feather-like structures — was completely
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ignored.”
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑


Feduccia continued, aware of the latest claims. “Other
fibres have been described in herbivorous
ornithischians and pterosaurs, which have no
connection with birds, but there is still little evidence to
connect any of these structures with feathers.” The
tyrannosaurid’s fibers, whatever they were, cannot
possibly have been used for flight; see Science Daily:
“The large size of Yutyrannus and the downy structure
of its feathers would have made flight an impossibility,”
the article stated April 5.
Feduccia described some of the other alleged
feathered dinosaurs, like Caudipteryx and
Protarchaeopteryx, but considered them secondarily84
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑


He sees the consensus view as a dangerous return to
dogma over scientific caution:
Birds as “living dinosaurs” is now a cornerstone
of modern paleontological thought. But a
consensus is always in danger of turning into
dogma. Indeed, given the cult-like belief in the
field’s orthodoxy, it seems that every fossil pulled
from the Chinese deposits is accompanied by
hyperbolic pronouncements of it having filled a
major evolutionary gap. Yet many of these
discoveries lack normal scientific stringency, and
we see a transition from normal scientific
falsification to simply confirming what is already85
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑


Feduccia described his opinion as “a minority one, but
growing in popularity”. He rejects the “fantastical
proposals” about “dinosaurs with protofeathers,
dinosaurs with bird wings and modern feathers, fourwinged gliding dinosaurs, and tiny supposed
theropods from the Jurassic period with avian wings.”
The birds-from-dinosaurs controversy has a long
history, Feduccia explained. Richard Owen in 1875
“set the record straight” when Thomas Huxley first
advanced the view that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
“Owen predicted that ‘science will accept the view of
the Dodo as a degenerate Dove rather than as an
advanced Dino,’ thus stating the crux of the current 86
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑


Feduccia believes the “feathered dinosaurs”
adorning covers of Nature were flightless birds.
He calls them “Mesozoic kiwis.”
He believes it “biophysically improbable” that
birds evolved from the ground up in theropod
dinosaurs. “No flightless bird ever gave rise
to a flying one; the same is surely true in the
dinosaur fossil record.”
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

It’s even more improbable, he thinks, that
dinosaurs gave rise to all the special features of
birds. “Most disturbingly, current orthodoxy
dictates that the entire suite of sophisticated
avian flight architecture, including
aerodynamic wings and specialised brain
structures, evolved in earthbound dinosaurs
in a non-flight context, a proposal that is
practically non-Darwinian.”
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑


Feduccia’s latest book, Riddle of the Feathered
Dragons (Yale University Press, 2012) describes his
view in more detail. His essay for New Scientist
closes.
My central idea, that Chinese fossils bearing
modern feathers are early birds, seems new and
revolutionary yet it is new only as a fresh application of
de Beerian thinking to a new set of problematic fossils.
Paraphrased, de Beer’s axiom still holds: if it has
feathers and avian flight wings, it’s a bird!
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

So are you better off with Feduccia, de Beer and
Owen than you were with Thomas Huxley and Xing
Xu? Feduccia still believes that non-flying archosaurs
evolved into birds. He just feels it is less biophysically
improbable that the “sophisticated avian flight
architecture, including aerodynamic wings and
specialised brain structures” came from animals
jumping in trees rather than running along the ground.
Look, Dr. Feduccia, if it is “practically non-Darwinian”
to imagine theropods generating these sophisticated
structures from the ground up, it is just as “nonDarwinian” and “biophysically improbable” to imagine
archosaurs generating them while jumping out of the
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trees.
Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

Actually, both Feduccia’s and Xu’s positions are 100%
Darwinian. That’s because the essence of Darwinism
is the Stuff Happens Law. If an animal develops flight,
it’s because stuff happens. If an animal doesn’t
develop flight, it’s because stuff happens. Darwinians
don’t need evidence; they need imagination. The play
is the thing. The scattered fossils from China,
Germany and wherever don’t tell one story; they are
scattered pieces of evidence that can be interpreted
multiple ways. In Darwinism, data are mere props for
imaginary scenarios.
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

Darwinism allows for opposite outcomes from the
same laws of nature. Feduccia’s story, for instance,
employs gravity (a law of nature) as the creator of
flight: “Flight originated from the trees down, with
small size and gravity providing the impetus, as is
the case for all animals that developed flight.” But the
same law (gravity) produced opposite outcomes,
according to evolution. Bats developed flight by
jumping out of trees, but lemurs didn’t. Pterosaurs
developed flight by falling off cliffs, but apatosaurs
didn’t. Birds developed powered flight by jumping out
of trees, but lizards didn’t. Don’t even ask about
insects.
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

If gravity had such law-like powers of creation,
everything would fly, even pigs and humans. (Humans
do fly, but that’s using aircraft built by intelligent
design.) This should be a testable scientific
hypothesis. Shove a billion lizards out of trees, and
see which ones become birds under the impetus of
gravity (remember, half a wing doesn’t count). Come
now. External influences like gravity cannot command
unguided variations, including chance mutations, to
produce an ordered result. It’s crazy (and nonDarwinian) to expect environmental influences to act
as an “impetus” for coordinated design.
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Questioning the Dino-Bird Hypothesis
恐龙-鸟假说的质疑

Feduccia’s usefulness for thinking people,
therefore, is merely to point out the antiscientific power of dogmatic paradigms. He is a
maverick within the Darwinian camp. Those
outside the camp can use him like the hero in
the fairy tale Seven at One Blow, a logically
thinking tailor, who slew the giants by getting
them to finish each other off.
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How the Tiger Got Its Stripes: Dunno
老虎的条纹：不知道


A leading hypothesis for morphogenesis
(pattern formation, such as tiger stripes) has
been shown to be oversimplified. Whatever
gave a tiger its stripes is more complicated than
developmental biologists thought.
Live Science reported that the morphogen
theory – the idea that protein gradients control
pattern formation – is insufficient to account for
the evidence:
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How the Tiger Got Its Stripes: Dunno
老虎的条纹：不知道


A decades-old explanation for how tigers get their
stripes has come into question as researchers
challenge what’s called the morphogen theory. The
research does not nix the theory, but science may now
have a hypothetical tiger by the tail as they try to figure
out this aspect of how Nature works.
The morphogen theory dates back to the 1950s and
60s from the work of Alan Turing and Lewis Wolpert.
Researchers at New York University though, studying
pattern development in fruit flies, found that simple
protein gradients are not enough. There must be
multiple competing gradients involved:
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How the Tiger Got Its Stripes: Dunno
老虎的条纹：不知道


In other words, contrary to Turing’s theory, a single
gradient of proteins does not have sufficient power to
form the same body plan in each member of a
species; however, if there are multiple gradients that
work against each other, then the system becomes
robust enough for normal development.
The team doesn’t believe their work has falsified the
morphogen theory, but “suggested it needed some
additional refinement.”
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How the Tiger Got Its Stripes: Dunno
老虎的条纹：不知道

Here is a scientific phenomenon that should be easily
studied in lab conditions, and they cannot explain it. An
old theory taken for granted for some 50 years is not
sufficient to explain pattern development in simple fruit
flies, easily cultured and genetically altered in thousands
of labs around the world. How much less can scientists
explain the tiger’s stripes, or the amazingly intricate
patterns in birds, butterflies and many mammals? It’s not
that it isn’t worth trying to understand genetically and
developmentally how patterns form in embryos. The
point is that if a phenomenon this accessible to
observational science evades their grasp, how much
less can they know about the unobservable past, and
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the origin of complex organs?
Why You Are Waterproof
为什么你是防水

Can you imagine inflating like a water balloon
every time you jumped in a swimming pool? Or
what if water leaked out of your skin every time
you drank a glass of water? Your skin forms an
impermeable barrier to water, a new study
found, because of a unique way certain
molecules are arranged.
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Why You Are Waterproof
为什么你是防水


In “Strange Fat Explains Skin’s Waterproof Properties,” Helen
Thomson reported for New Scientist about a study from the
Karolinska Institute of Sweden. There, Lars Norlén shaved
arms of volunteers to obtain microscopically thin layers of the
outer skin layers. Studying the waterproof layer at
unprecedented resolution, the team was surprised to find
alternately-stacked fatty acid molecules.
Normally, fatty acids in cell membranes have two hydrophobic
(water-repelling) “tails” and a water-attracting “head.” In skin,
however, the tails are unfolded and point in opposite
directions. This creates water-repelling surfaces on both sides
of the layer.
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Why You Are Waterproof
为什么你是防水




This layer is completely robust, Norlén said:
This uniquely structured fatty layer prevents any water
from getting past in either direction – except where the skin
layer is modified to form pores. “There’s no water present
within this extracellular space,” says Norlén. “It cannot
perturb the barrier so it’s completely robust to hydration,
which is necessary for the changing environment that we
live in.”
Thanks to this unique arrangement, we don’t leak and can swim
with confidence. We sweat, of course, but that’s another story;
sweat glands are complex pores that emit water as part of our
tightly controlled thermoregulatory system.
Your skin is the largest organ of your body. Thank God He
thought of everything. Enjoy this little-known fact when you
take your next swim.
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Animals Have Biological GPS
动物有生物的GPS

Global Positioning System (GPS): that’s a
function. Maintaining a suite of satellites is one
method for achieving the function. But there
are other ways to figure out where in the world
you are, and two very different animals show
the way – naturally – using Earth’s global
magnetic field.
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Animals Have Biological GPS
动物有生物的GPS

Pigeon GPS: A team of researchers from Baylor
College inserted electrodes into pigeons’ brains, then
exposed them to artificial magnetic fields in the
absence of visual cues. According to New Scientist,
they found that 53 particular neurons associated with
the pigeon’s inner ear became particularly active when
the magnetic field was altered. They surmise these
neurons are part of the bird’s auditory map, “acting as
a biological GPS.” The neurons even responded to
the polarity of the field. This would allow a pigeon
released below the equator to orient itself correctly to
fly home.
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Animals Have Biological GPS
动物有生物的GPS

The BBC News focused on how this new finding
contradicts earlier studies that located the birds’
magnetic sense in the beak or eye. “Be puzzled,
because I am,” remarked David Dickman, one of the
authors of the study. Other mysteries to be resolved
include how the birds detect the Earth’s magnetic field
in the first place, and how they don’t become
disoriented when they tilt their heads. “One possibility
is that they use a combination of the
magnetic GPS and the pull of gravity
to triangulate their position,” the article surmised.
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Animals Have Biological GPS
动物有生物的GPS


Butterfly GPS: Another article by the BBC News from
September 2009 talked about biological GPS – in this
case, among Monarch butterflies. That study
indicated that the insects’ GPS is located in the
antennae. Given that many animals migrate, including
fish, reptiles and mammals, in addition to birds and
insects, there may be many and varied biological
methods for achieving the function of GPS.
No mention of evolution in these articles. A natural
wonder? No evolution? No wonder.
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Planetary Radiometric Dates 1/3 Younger
行星辐射的日期年轻1/3

The half-lives of radioactive isotopes may not
be as well-known as thought. One decay rate
frequently used to date solar system objects
had to be adjusted down to 66% of its former
assumed value, impacting theories of planet
formation.
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Planetary Radiometric Dates 1/3 Younger
行星辐射的日期年轻1/3

PhysOrg headlined, “‘Faster-Ticking Clock’
Indicates Early Solar System May Have
Evolved Faster Than We Think.” The old
decay rate for samarium-146 (146Sm) was reevaluated by a team from Argonne National
Laboratory, Hebrew University, two Japanese
universities and the University of Notre
Dame. The old value of 103 million years for its
half-life was recalculated at 68 million years,
two-thirds of its previously measured value.
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Planetary Radiometric Dates 1/3 Younger
行星辐射的日期年轻1/3


146Sm
has become the main tool for establishing the time
evolution of the solar system over its first few hundred million
years. This by itself owes to a delicate geochemical property of
the element samarium, a rare element in nature. It is a sensitive
probe for the separation, or differentiation, of the silicate portion
of earth and of other planetary bodies.
The smaller value, “previously adopted as 103 million years, to
a much shorter value of 68 million years,” the article
continued. It “has the effect of shrinking the assessed
chronology of events in the early solar system and in
planetary differentiation into a shorter time span,” the article
said. The story was reported a month ago by Science Daily.
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Planetary Radiometric Dates 1/3 Younger
行星辐射的日期年轻1/3

The article put a positive spin on this
adjustment, saying, “The new time scale,
interestingly, is now consistent with
a recent and precise dating made on a lunar
rock and is in better agreement with the dating
obtained with other chronometers.” It seems
they could just as well have said that the other
chronometers are now cast into doubt by the
adjustment of 146Sm, which was also
considered a precise chronometer till now.
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Planetary Radiometric Dates 1/3 Younger
行星辐射的日期年轻1/3

In any case, it is disturbing that a physical value that is “out
there in the world” could be found to be so far off by human
measurement. How many published papers are affected by
this change? Papers often quote radiometric dates to 4 or
more significant figures. Theorists rely on these values. If
values are not discovered but “adopted,” is it possible there
was motivation by theorists to “adopt” a different value to create
consistency with other chronometers? Does the new value
make the “assessed chronology of events in the early system”
more or less plausible? What will be the ripple effect from here
on for a chronometer that ticks 33% faster than previously
thought? Who will go back and correct theories based on the
previous value? These are questions the press releases never
ask.
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