Piltdown Superman

NASA chose to name their new lunar project after Artemis, goddess of the moon — and a number of other things. The spacecraft it is carrying is named after Orion the hunter. It has been fifty years since Gene Cernan of Apollo 17 left the last footprints on the moon. The goal of the Artemis program is to eventually setting up a lunar base. Quite a few science fiction stories have been written and filmed about those, but there are several serious problems involved that the writers gloss over. Artemis/Orion launch, NASA / Bill Ingalls (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) The Apollo astronauts were up there for days, and NASA wants a permanent station. The moon is outside the protection of Earth's magnetic field, so if the sun got ornery and shot off a flare, the solar wind could be fatal very quickly. There are also temperature extremes, which the Apollo missions minimalized. Light and dark cycles are very long. Another problem remains, and it's a biggie. Water. Coo

Since the beginning, humans have been using implements to improve their existence. Adam probably fashioned a rake and a hoe to tend the garden. Jump forward to advanced technology with computers and artificial intelligence, and there are some startling things going on. The quest for making self-aware artificial intelligence continues, merging humanity and machines in transhumanism , and even the possibility of mind cloning . Man tries to displace God in creation with evolution as well as with technology. The idea of brain-computer interfaces is both exciting and alarming. Network, Pixabay / Gerd Altmann The exciting part is medical, providing people with handicaps or damage to connect with the outside world. Such applications are no more along the lines of playing God as a physician treating an injury or illness. Science fiction writers have provided speculative and even cautionary stories that involve computers, androids, robots, and so on getting control of our minds through hardware

Flying reptiles of the past have long been a source of amazement to many people, and there is a great deal of mystery surrounding them. As expected, they appear in movies and such. There are about 150 species defined from fossils, and apparently  Pterodactylus was the first kind discovered. A 2005 movie titled Pterodactyl  has some of the critters living in modern times with wing edges like guillotines. Those are also about three times the size of  Pterodactylus from the fossil record. If the movie makers had done a little homework, they should have called it Pteranodon . Better yet, name the flick after the bigger grouping, pterosaurs. I only watched a few minutes of the movie and suggest you skip it. Pterosaur replica, Pixabay / Efraimstochter (mosaic effect added) They are classified as reptiles, but do not have some reptilian traits. There is speculation that they were warm-blooded. One scholar said they have a mosaic of features. Because of an abundance of fossils (some are well

"To answer your question, I like walking on the beach, making jewelry, painting on cave walls — " "So, it looks like you can't bring your paintings over to my place, then." "Nope. Wanna come over and see my cave?" As discussed here several times,  it has been conclusively established that Neanderthals were fully human. Perhaps we are hardwired to want to reproduce and spread around our DNA. After all, God did  command at the beginning to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). Do not be surprised if you get a DNA test and find Neanderthals in your ancestry. Family, Unsplash / Josue Michel , modified with FotoSketcher Some secularists are resistant to the fact that Neanderthals were simply another people group, but they appear to have disappeared. They, too, were descendants of Adam and Eve with distinct physical variations well within human limits. After the Flood, they were part of the dispersion at Babel. Some Darwinists want to deny reality and kee

Before we get to the main subject, there is some interesting news about the magnetic field of Earth. This shield surrounds our blue marble and protects us from harmful solar radiation, plasma, and such. It was recently discovered that when plasma strikes the magnetosphere, it vibrates and ripples like a drum membrane . The impact is spread out and dissipated to a large extent. The way buildings are designed to move in high winds or in earthquakes (resilience movement) comes to mind. To this child, is is an aspect of the magnetic field which is yet another example of the Master Engineer's design capabilities. Analysis by biblical creationists should be interesting. Earth's magnetic field, NASA / Walt Feimer (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) Radiocarbon dating is useful for determining an approximate age of certain things, but its reliability is lessened when the object under scrutiny is very old. The magnetic field can help. It has signatures  where the age an

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Over at Evolution News, an Intelligent Design site run by the Discovery Institute, there was a fund-raising article. Nothing wrong with that since neither they nor biblical creation science organizations receive government funding — unlike the secular science industry. The author, Dr. John G. West, raised some points worth discussing in " The Biggest Obstacle to Accepting Intelligent Design ". Regular readers know that I have serious reservations about the "big tent" ID movement, but they often do good work showing flaws in minerals-to-microbiologist evolution. Both ID and creationists use intelligent design arguments about living things and specified complexities. Engineer at work, Pexels / RF._.studio Dr. West says the biggest obstacle for people to accept Intelligent design is: Not hearing the evidence in the first place . I reckon there's some truth to that. A spell back I was telling someone that I promote creation science, and the o

Some people throw around the German word doppelgänger  when they see a person who strongly resembles another, and some people look for a supernatural aspect. (Christian Rock band Daniel Amos used it as an analogy for our sin nature .) While there is nothing supernatural about the doppelgänger gene, more formally known as the Signal Recognition Particle 14, it spooks Darwin's acolytes. Yet again, the science of genetics (which was pioneered by Gregor Mendel, peas be upon him) has been unkind to evolution. It seems to this child that  doppelgänger genes are an Easter egg hidden by our Creator for modern scientists to find. DNA, Pixabay / Gerd Altmann Remember when I mentioned planograms? Those are like maps by which big retail stores are told where to lay out merchandise. I compare those to the evolutionary Tree of Life and clades. Evolutionists have their planograms where living things are expected to belong, but SRP 14 is mighty recalcitrant. Similar living things have similar tra

Yesterday morning, I was in town at the local eatery and came across Rusty Swingset, the foreman at the Darwin Ranch. His lady friend Jacqueline Hyde and assistant foreman Cliff Swallows were also at the table. They introduced me to the other fellow, Decker Halls, who was on loan to them through the Christmas season. Although we have diametrically opposed convictions, some Darwinists can be decent folks. We had breakfast together, and after a spell, our conversation turned to bats. Mexican free-tailed bats, USFWS / Ann Froschauer , ( CC BY 2.0 ) While absently fingering the bough of holly pinned to his lapel, Decker Halls said, "Bats are important mammals but very misunderstood. Most sleep in the day and feed at night, so most people don't get to see them in action. They get creeped out seeing most of a large colony going out to feed together. Bats don't place an order for pizza like we just did." The feeding process gets complicated, since they have that echolocation

The secular science industry is consistent in several ways, especially when they are pursuing an agenda. With both global climate change (a darling of leftists) and particles-to-podiatrist evolution (essential to atheism), inconvenient facts are often ignored, waved off, and even suppressed. Another problem is that scientists often display arrogance and haste, making pronouncements when they should have not only considered all the data, but also have realized more would surface. A bit hairy surprise is how beavers are offsetting global warming. Beaver in water, NPS / Rocky Mountain National Park , modified at PhotoFunia  (usage does not imply endorsement) Beavers were created to be exceptional engineers. Some people consider them pests because they interfere with human plans. That may need rethinking. While they cannot completely offset global warming, they make an impact on that and on ecosystems in many ways. Especially in removing nitrates at a far greater rate than other climate de

Imagine you are the near-earth asteroid Didymos, going through space and making chin music with Dimorphos about why neither of you is named after a false god. Suddenly, bam ! Your moon takes it on the chin from a human space vehicle that was designed to crash into it. To add insult to injury, the orbit of Dimorphos was noticeably changed.  Actually, this rude behavior was planned by NASA to see if it was possible to deflect a menacing asteroid headed toward Earth. Dimorphos, NASA / Johns Hopkins APL (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) Yes, there have been big meteorite and asteroid strikes on Earth in the past, and there's a passel of 'stroids out yonder. One of significant size striking could be devastating to life here. Scientists wondered if they could make an impact (heh!) and possibly redirect this one through the DART project. The Italian Space Agency spiced things up by furnishing a spacecraft that rode along on DART, detaching a few days before the coll