Posted on 09/16/2009 9:03:13 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Fresh Fossil Feather Nanostructures
by Brian Thomas, M.S.*
Bird feathers can contain pigmentation for a wide range of colors, with specific molecules reflecting certain hues when light touches them. They also can display “structural” colors, where the thicknesses of layers of cells and connective tissues are fine-tuned to refract certain colors.
Scientists recently described structural coloration that is still clearly discernible in well-preserved fossil feathers. Why do these fossil feathers have their original cell structures laid out in the original patterns if they are millions of years old?
In 1995, paleontologists Derek Briggs and Paul Davis provided an overview of fossil feathers from the 40 or so places on the globe where they were known to exist.1 Among their findings was that 69 percent of feather fossils are preserved not as impressions, but as carbon traces. This was verified by comparing the proportions of carbon in both the surrounding carbonaceous rock and the fossil within it, to the proportions of organically-derived carbon from the same items. They found that there was more organic carbon in the fossil than in the stone.
At that time, the researchers thought the carbon came from bacteria that had degraded the feather material and then remained placed in the feather’s outline. But 13 years later, Briggs and other colleagues showed clear evidence that these “bacterial cells” were actually melanosomes―the same microscopic, sausage-shaped, dark pigment-containing structures in today’s bird feathers―from the original feather.2
This means that the organic carbon in the melanosomes somehow avoided decay for millions of years, which contradicts “the well-known fact that the majority of organic molecules decay in thousands of years.”3
Briggs and his colleagues recently described fossil feathers from the German Messel Oil Shale deposits, which are famous for their remarkably well-preserved fossils. These not only contained organic carbon from melanosomes (not bacteria), but the melanosomes were still organized in their original spacing and layering. Thus, the “metallic greenish, bluish or coppery” colors that can be seen from different viewing angles, producing an iridescent sheen, may very well be similar to that of the original bird’s plumage.4
Biologists already know that “in order to produce a particular [structural] colour, the keratin thickness must be accurate to within about 0.05 μm (one twenty thousandth of one millimetre!).”5 Although the keratin had decayed from these fossil feathers, its layers of melanosomes remained laid out in similarly precise thicknesses. Thus, not only was the color preserved, but the melanosomes were still organized to within micrometers of their original positions.
Evolutionary geologists maintain that the Messel Shale was formed 47 million years ago. But with these colorful feather fossils—which retain not only the original molecules inside their original melanosomes, but also the architectural layout of these structures—evolutionists must invent some kind of magical preservation process that simply isn’t observed in the laboratory or in nature.
Without the assumption of millions of years, however, the fossil data begin to make much more sense. Fresh-looking fossil features point to a young world.
References
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on September 16, 2009.
You apparently didn’t get the memo...no intelligence, no purpose, no design is allowed.
The random I was referring to was origins, but you knew that.
Evolutionists cling to the idea that a single cell is responsible for all we know over ga-jillions of years with no guidance.
There’s simply no spinning out of it...WAAAAAAAY too many of your fellow liberals have stomped their feet about it and have seen to it by now.
I also suggest you watch your back as far as your fellow evos are concerned, if you venture too far backwards with your ideas about survival of the fittest...you know...not being random and all!
I mean when you start asserting that first cell wasn’t random...hold the phone!
And...DUCK!
You have yet to establish any facts about the "Origin of Species," it is only a theory...
I think it is time to get evolutionists off of welfare.
That’s actually not a verse indicating that *God hates fags*, but shows that they are under His judgment for their sin, which is the condition that anyone else who doesn’t seek His forgiveness is in.
Homosexuality shows a unique kind of rejection of God, but is not unforgivable, any more than other sins are unforgivable.
I Corintians 6:9-11 9Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
God’s grace forgives all sin. Jesus died for the homosexual, just like He died for the greedy person, or the drunkard, or whatever sin it is that one commits. All it take is one sin to condemn someone and any of that list can be forgiven, as it states.
Look TP, you can teach your kids whatever you want. If you want them to believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that rain is God’s tears, or that viruses are caused by sin, be my guest.
The world needs ditch diggers too.
Awwwwww...lookie another self-absorbed liberal that says I can teach my kids what I want!
I bet I even get to pay for my kids AND the liberal’s kid too!
But...when will self-absorbed liberals understand what the world DOESN’T need is...self absorbed liberals!
I don’t have time to break it all down for you. There’s a good introductory article by Dr. Humphreys over at ICR. It also touches on the controversy surrounding his Whitehole Cosmology. If you feel up to tackling Dr. Humphreys scientific papers on the same, drop me a ping or PM and I’d be glad to forward a few of them to you.
http://www.icr.org/i/pdf/imp/imp-338.pdf
All the best—GGG
I was merely saying the speed of light is not a constant.
It isn’t.
Now, there is a theory as to how evolution happens; the Theory of Evolution. We can see evolution on a macro level through the fossil record, and observe it on the micro level with things like fruit flies. We have a theory as to how it happens, which involves natural selection, genetic drift, speciation, and adaptation. We don't know all of the particulars about how it works, but neither do we know about how gravity works exactly.
The theory is the hypothesis for how a known process occurs, not the known process itself, whether it be evolution or gravity.
>>A google search reports that some people on the internet think that the speed of light is variable?
WOW!
If it’s on the internet, it must be true. Einstein be damned!<<
And before the internet, people said “you saw it in writing so it must be true”. I still read though. :)
And Einstein was not God.
“That’s irrelevant.”
Not to my statement I was defending it wasn’t. I said the speed of light is not a constant. It isn’t.
Other than the stab at humor, I do not see your point.
AK post 154:A google search reports that some people on the internet think that the speed of light is variable? WOW! If it's on the internet, it must be true. Einstein be damned!
In one post you state that the speed of light can be variable, in the very next post you mock the concept.
So, which is it? Is it variable or not?
Evolution, the theory, is called more properly, “The Origin of Species.” That was Darwin’s title.
Evolution requires change over a period of time. Time then, by deductive reasoning must have a beginning.
The flaw in evolutionist logic is that life did not come from the earth, because the earth came from somewhere else as well. Life came from somewhere else...
“Yes, I have read that about Lord Kelvin in the past. I have also read that he put that forward as the only plausible alternative to God, but then quickly followed it with his firm belief that God did indeed create life on Earth.”
—If you have any sources to that effect I’d be interested in seeing them.
I’m not sure if you mean that Kelvin once believed in panspermia, but then soon after changed his mind and then believed that God created on life on earth; or if you mean that Kelvin never really believed in panspermia but was merely saying that that’s the only alternative to God creating life on earth, and that he always affirmed the latter.
Either way it doesn’t match what I’ve found on Kelvin. He was a life long devout Christian and thus never would have proposed panspermia as an alternative to God. But he also took the idea of panspermia quite seriously and strongly advocated it.
Here are some quotes from talks he gave in 1871:
“We must regard it as probably to the highest degree that there are countless seed-bearing meteoritic stones moving through space.”
And as a result of these meteorites, after the earth cooled from it’s past molten state (between 20-40 million years ago):
“From the earth stocked with such vegetation as it could receive meteorically to the earth teeming with all the endless variety of plants and animals which now inhabit it, the step is prodigious; yet, according to the doctrine of continuity, most ably laid before the Association by a predecessor in this chair [Mr. Grove], all creatures now living on earth have proceeded by orderly evolution from some such origin.”
Notice above that he also talks about evolution. Not Darwinism though:
“I have always felt that this hypothesis does not contain the true theory of evolution, if evolution there has been, in biology.”
Instead he believed in a type of theistic evolution - an evolution directed by God.
I can’t find any evidence that he retracted panspermia... but I’m certainly open to the possibility that he did... I can’t find any evidence of him talking about it the last couple decades of his life, so he seems to have at least let the matter drop.
Given the exact same circumstances, it travels at the exact same speed every time. It doesn't fluctuate, that's why c is referred to as a physical constant.
Light does slow down through matter, but it is still a constant. The ratio at which it slows down is called the refractive index, and it slows at the exact same predictable ratio at all times.
Why did you include me in that post?
You seem to think that humans are the only observers in the universe or that perhaps we have most superior technology existing. You seem to think the earth is the center of the universe.
You have no more evidence that any form of life evolved on the earth than you do for it to have been delivered or engineered by extraterrestrials.
There's a difference between a variable and a constant. C is the speed of light in a vacuum; it does not change. The variable might be matter (gas, water, etc.). Light does slow down when it travels through matter, but it does so at the exact same rate predicted by the refractive index.
In other words, light travelling through a vacuum does not change; light travelling through a bundle of matter will always travel at the same speed if it goes through the same bundle of matter again. It is a predictable constant.
“http://creation.com/dinosaur-soft-tissue-and-protein-even-more-confirmation";
Now, come on 3G, don’t make me embarrass you again. You know this article misrepresents the finding. Why do you keep posting it?
I just hate to see old lies recycled as new lies in classic “creation science” style.
You need to come up with new lies to entertain us.
Because TP included you in 143. That was the one I meant to reply to.
SFD: Says who? Who pays the taxes? I personally think whoever pays for it should have some say... otherwise it is fascism...
Which is exactly the biggest reason that they earn the title of *liberal*.
Interesting thing is, homeschoolers and private schoolers, by and large teach creation in addition to evolution, something the public school students don't have the opportunity to do, and yet homeschoolers and private schoolers consistently outperform the public school students in standardized testing and SAT/ACT test scores.
The evidence is out there that teaching creation is NOT going to hurt the education of the students, no matter what evos say.
I find it rather ironic that evos are so big on evidence and proof when it comes to the ToE, but act like they never heard of the concepts before, when it comes to demonstrating that teaching creation won't hurt the education of students in schools.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.