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<p>New geochemical research indicates that existing theories of the formation of the Earth may be mistaken. The results of experiments to show how zinc (Zn) relates to sulphur (S) under the conditions present at the time of the formation of the Earth more than 4 billion years ago, indicate that there is a substantial quantity of Zn in the Earth’s core, whereas previously there had been thought to be none. This implies that the building blocks of the Earth must be different to what has been supposed. The work is presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Paris.</p>

For the first 300,000 years after the Big Bang the rapidly expanding universe was dark and filled with neutral hydrogen gas doing nothing much. But over the next half billion years the first stars and galaxies arrive through a process known as re-ionization – turning the lights on in the universe. Using an amazing Dark Energy Camera which is part of the -meter Blanco Telescope, at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), in northern Chile, scientists have captured a picture of 23 of these young galaxies – the very dawn of visual time. Arizona State University astronomers Sangeeta Malhotra and James...

Excerpt A scientific swamp Then, too, in the last few decades there has been considerable discussion of a basic paradox in the construction of the universe. Why are the laws of physics exactly balanced for animal life to exist? There are over 200 physical parameters within the solar system and universe so exact that it strains credulity to propose that they are random — even if that is exactly what standard contemporary physics baldly suggests. These fundamental constants of the universe — constants that are not predicted by any theory — all seem to be carefully chosen, often with great...

What scientific argument for the truth of Christianity do you find the most persuasive? As I contemplated this question, my answer was big bang cosmology. Here’s why. All big bang models include three essential features: (1) constant laws of physics throughout the universe; (2) a dynamic universe, one either expanding or contracting; and (3) a beginning to the universe. Remarkably, the biblical description matches these essential features. Constant Laws of Physics The scientific enterprise depends on a universe governed by constant laws of physics. If measurements today have no bearing on what happened yesterday or will happen tomorrow, no scientific...

Strikingly clear drone footage shows a vehicle laden with explosives destroy an entire Afghan army compound in a matter of seconds, after a Taliban militant drives unhindered onto the base. A vehicle is seen approaching the outpost in the footage published Friday. The vehicle drives through the open gates and continues apparently unchecked into the heart of the outpost. Seconds later, the entire compound goes up in flames.

World Famous Scientist: God Created the Universe ‘The final resolution could be that God is a mathematician.’ Michio Kaku has made a name for himself as a world-leading theoretical physicist unafraid to speak his mind.Kaku, the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York, has published more than 70 articles in physics journals on topics such as supersymmetry, superstring theory, supergravity, and hadronic physics.His latest claim is likely to make waves in the world of science.“I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence”, Kaku says...

Somewhere around 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe began with a bang. In less than a second, the four fundamental forces -- electromagnetism, gravitation, weak nuclear interaction, and strong nuclear interaction -- which initially were joined as a single even more fundamental force, separated. Suddenly, the Universe started to expand at an exponential rate. Cosmic inflation had begun. .... The Big Bang is the best theory we have to explain the birth and existence of the Universe. As astrophysicist Ethan Siegel wrote in his recent book Beyond the Galaxy: "To this very day, there is no other model that is...

How did the universe begin? And what came before the Big Bang? Cosmologists have asked these questions ever since discovering that our universe is expanding. The answers aren't easy to determine. The beginning of the cosmos is cloaked and hidden from the view of our most powerful telescopes. Yet observations we make today can give clues to the universe's origin. New research suggests a novel way of probing the beginning of space and time to determine which of the competing theories is correct.

Although impressive, the number of galaxies found at this early epoch is not the team’s only remarkable breakthrough, as Johan Richard from the Observatoire de Lyon, France, points out. “The faintest galaxies detected in these Hubble observations are fainter than any other yet uncovered in the deepest Hubble observations.” By looking at the light coming from the galaxies the team discovered that the accumulated light emitted by these galaxies could have played a major role in one of the most mysterious periods of the universe’s early history — the epoch of reionization. Reionization started when the thick fog of...

EGSY8p7 is the most distant confirmed galaxy whose spectrum obtained with the W. M. Keck Observatory places it at a redshift of 8.68 at a time when the Universe was less than 600 million years old. The illustration shows the remarkable progress made in recent years in probing early cosmic history. Such studies are important in understanding how the Universe evolved from an early dark period to one when galaxies began to shine. Hydrogen emission from EGSY8p7 may indicate it is the first known example of an early generation of young galaxies emitting unusually strong radiation. Credit: Adi Zitrin, California...

You've heard of the Big Bang, but what about the "Colossal Crash?" Get ready, because it might be coming sooner than you think ... relatively speaking. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters a group of physicists have theorized a mechanism for "cosmological collapse" which predicts the universe will at some point stop expanding and then collapse back onto itself, destroying us and pretty much all matter. The idea has been floating around the scientific community in one form or another for a while now, but the latest paper is noteworthy because its numbers and models suggest that collapse...

A team of astronomers have found a colossal black hole so ancient, they're not sure how it had enough time to grow to its current size, about 10 billion times the mass of the Sun. Sitting at the heart of a distant galaxy, the black hole appears to be about 12.7 billion years old, which means it formed just one billion years after the universe began and is one of the oldest supermassive black holes ever known. The black hole, researchers said, is big enough to hold 1,000 of our own Solar Systems and weighs about as much as...

http://www.aish.com/societywork/sciencenature/The_Big_Bang_and_the_Big_Question_A_Universe_without_God$.asp The Big Bang and the Big Question: A Universe without God? by Lawrence Kelemen The history of scientific search for the origins of the Universe gives us permission to believe in God. Until the early twentieth century, astronomers entertained three possible models of the universe:1. The universe could be static.According to this theory, though the mutual gravitational attractions of stars and planets might hold them together in the form of solar systems and galaxies, each of these stellar-terrestrial groups slide through space along its own random trajectory, unrelated to the courses tracked by other groups of stars and...

Extra Dimensions Showing Hints Of Scientific Revolution Chicago - Feb 19, 2003 The concept of extra dimensions, dismissed as nonsense even by one of its earliest proponents nearly nine decades ago, may soon help solve seemingly unrelated problems in particle physics, cosmology and gravitational physics, according to a panel of experts who spoke Feb. 15 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver. "It doesn't happen often that you get a confluence of ideas and experiments that come together and it's something that obviously would change your whole way of looking at the universe,"...

The recent discovery that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate has led many astronomers to forecast a dark and lonely future for our galaxy. According to some predictions, the rapidly accelerating universe will cause all galaxies to run away from each other until they are no longer visible. In this widely accepted scenario, our own Milky Way will become an isolated island adrift in a sea of totally black space 150 billion years from now. But two new studies by Stanford University cosmologists suggest that it may be time to rethink this popular view of a "runaway universe."...

In the decades that astronomers have debated the fate of the expanding universe — whether it will all end one day in a big crunch, or whether the galaxies will sail apart forever — aficionados of eternal expansion have always been braced by its seemingly endless possibilities for development and evolution. As the Yale cosmologist Dr. Beatrice Tinsley once wrote, "I think I am tied to the idea of expanding forever." Life and intelligence could sustain themselves indefinitely in such a universe, even as the stars winked out and the galaxies were all swallowed by black holes, Dr. Freeman Dyson, ...

Scientists name new ‘object’ SDSS J0100+2802 and say it is 12.8bn light years from Earth and was formed just 900m years after the Big Bang *************************************************************A monster black hole powering “the brightest lighthouse in the distant universe” has been discovered that is 12bn times more massive than the sun, scientists have revealed.The extraordinary object is at the centre of a quasar - an intensely powerful galactic radiation source - with a million billion times the sun’s energy output.For years the nature of quasars, discovered in 1963, remained a mystery. Today scientists believe they are generated by matter heating up as...

Two physicists are trying to revive one of the great debates of twentieth-century science, arguing that the Big Bang may never have happened. Their work presents a radically different vision of the universe from the one cosmologists now work with. "The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there," says Dr. Ahmed Farag Ali of Benha University, Egypt. In collaboration with Professor Saurya Das of the University of Lethbridge, Canada, Ali has created a series of equations that describe a universe much like Hoyle's; one without a...

Secular Study: No Big Bang? by Brian Thomas, M.S. * Christians who believe the universe began billions of years ago often point to the Big Bang model to try and verify a creation-like beginning.1 But a new origin of the universe model offers an "everlasting universe" and dismisses the whole idea of a Big Bang.2 Genesis does not describe a Big Bang. Instead of a hot explosion, it presents a rather cold, watery origin. Instead of stars first, followed by Earth's emergence billions of years later, God made Earth first, then stars four days later. If the Big Bang really...

(Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once. The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin. Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from...