Evolution

Shaking Up Theories Of Earth’s Formation

March 30, 2012

Researchers from The Australian National University are suggesting that Earth didn’t form as previously thought, shaking up some long-standing hypotheses of our planet’s origins right down to the core — literally.

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How Plants May Have Helped Create Earth’s Unique Landscapes

February 3, 2012

According to conventional thinking, plant life first took hold on Earth after oceans and rivers formed; the soil produced by liquid water breaking down bare rock provided an ideal medium for plants to grow in. It certainly sounds logical, but a new study is challenging that view – the theory is that vascular plants, those [...]

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Key Step in Evolution Replicated by Scientists – With Yeast

January 23, 2012

One of the great puzzles in science has been the evolution of single-celled organisms into the incredibly wide variety of flora and fauna that we see today. How did Earth make the transition from an initially lifeless ball of rock to one populated only by single-celled organisms to a world teeming with more complex life? [...]

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Sleeping Beauties: A Galactic Fairye Tale

June 21, 2011

It’s a well known fact that galaxies come in two types – either actively forming stars or not. In simplistic terms, that means they are either awake or asleep. But now scientists are looking back twelve billion light years across time to find the same holds just as true then as it does now. As [...]

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The ATLAS3D Project: Calling A Different Tune

June 21, 2011

In 1926, astronomer Edwin Hubble gave us our first basic galaxy classification scenario – the Hubble Sequence. Using photographic plates, Hubble derived a simplistic system based on three visually known structures: elipitical, spiral and lenticular. This sequence, when plotted out, gave the appearance of a common object and eventually became known as the “Hubble Tuning [...]

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The Universe Verse Continues – It’s Alive!

March 17, 2011

Back in 2009, I was given an odd book. It was the Universe Verse: Book One. In it, the author illustrates the formation of the universe, from the Big Bang, to the formation of stars and galaxies in rich detail and painstaking attention to the tiniest of scientific facts. And to top it off, it’s [...]

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Darwin vs. the Sun

December 14, 2010

Today, we take it for granted that the Sun produces energy via nuclear fusion. However, this realization only came about in the early 1900′s and wasn’t confirmed until several decades later (see the Solar Neutrino Problem). Prior to that, several other methods of energy production had been proposed. These ranged from burning coal to a [...]

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Astronomy Without A Telescope – Necropanspermia

November 13, 2010

The idea that a tiny organism could hitchhike aboard a mote of space dust and cross vast stretches of space and time until it landed and took up residence on the early Earth does seem a bit implausible. More likely any such organisms would have been long dead by the time they reached Earth. But… [...]

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Without Nickel, Life on Earth Could Finally Breathe

April 9, 2009

Researchers have long puzzled over why oxygen flourished in Earth’s atmosphere starting around 2.4 billion years. Called the “Great Oxidation Event,” the transition “irreversibly changed surface environments on Earth and ultimately made advanced life possible,” said Dominic Papineau of the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory. Now, Papineau has co-authored a new study in the journal Nature,  which reveals [...]

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Arizona Scientist: We Could All Be Martians

February 21, 2009

As long as we’re still pondering human origins, we may as well entertain the idea that our ancestor microbes came from Mars. And Jay Melosh, a planetary scientist from the University of Arizona in Tucson, is ready with a geologically plausible explanation. Meteorites. “Biological exchange between the planets of our solar system seem not only [...]

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US Signs International Deal to Collaborate on Lunar Missions

July 28, 2008

NASA has signed a landmark agreement to collaborate with emerging space-faring nations for the exploration of the Moon. This collaboration will include Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Britain and France in the aim to work with NASA developing new technologies and send a series of robotic exploratory missions to pave the way for [...]

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An Experiment to Test Panspermia

August 9, 2007

One of most intriguing, and controversial, theories astrobiology is the concept of Panspermia. This idea proposes that life on Earth might have began on another planet, or maybe even out in interstellar space. Scientists have discovered just how hardy microbial life can be, surviving long journeys in the vacuum, cold, and radiation of space. Now [...]

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Astrophoto: Swan Song for a Comet

October 13, 2006

On December 2, 1995, the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft was launched aboard an Atlas/Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Station on a two-year mission to monitor the sun. Almost eleven years later, the SOHO spacecraft continues to faithfully record solar activity orbiting the Sun about 1.5-million kilometers inward from Earth. NASA and the [...]

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