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Dark Matter Still Missing After Many Decades ... "Big Bang theory in trouble". November 22, 2019 | Jerry Bergman All the proposed candidates for mysterious, unknown stuff have failed to materialize, putting Big Bang theory in trouble. by Jerry Bergman, PhD The cover story of the November 16-22 New Scientist announced prominently on the cover: “DARK MATTER: We still haven’t found it. Our theories are falling apart. Is it time to rethink the universe?” [1] Dan Hooper, author of the cover story, is worried, because Dark Matter theory is a necessary support for the Big Bang. Thus, the Big Bang...

"Viking genetics and Viking ancestry is used quite a lot in extremist right-wing circles," says Cat Jarman at the University of Bristol in the UK, who wasn't involved in the study. Many white supremacists identify with a "very pure Viking race of just people from Scandinavia, who had no influence from anywhere else".

Earth's nearest neighbours have turned into uninhabitable hellholes. Understanding their transformation will teach us which rocky exoplanets might be fit for life CLOSE to the sun lie a pair of sizzling coals. You could be forgiven for thinking these strange worlds were two circles of hell: Mercury, a black and blasted plain, and Venus, a sweltering world beset by rain of pure acid. But for all the terror of their outward appearance, their insides are remarkably familiar. Along with Earth and Mars, they form the solar system’s only rocky planets, a stark contrast to the bloated gas giants that make...

Mice and men share about 97.5 per cent of their working DNA, just one per cent less than chimps and humans. The new estimate is based on the comparison of mouse chromosome 16 with human DNA. Previous estimates had suggested mouse-human differences as high as 15 per cent. The new work suggests that neither genome has changed much since we shared a common ancestor 100 million years ago. "The differences are going to be few rather than many," says Richard Mural of Celera Genomics, the Maryland company that compared the mouse chromosome with human DNA. "Perhaps 100 million years separating...

ID theorists say that information is the foundation of the universe. Others say matter is. Our choice of who to believe will shape our future. First, suppose the materialists are right. If materialism (naturalism) is simply true, because everything comes down to matter in the end, what future might we expect? Stephen Hawking insists in a recent interview that "Science will win." If we take his current non-realist views seriously, science as we have known it is finished and there is nothing to win. That doesn't mean, of course, that everything shuts down. Some projects will continue as if immortal...

The UN’s top climate change body has issued an unprecedented apology over its flawed prediction that Himalayan glaciers were likely to disappear by 2035. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said yesterday that the prediction in its landmark 2007 report was “poorly substantiated” and resulted from a lapse in standards. “In drafting the paragraph in question the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,” the panel said. “The chair, vice-chair and co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of IPCC procedures in this instance.” The stunning admission is certain to...

A Darwinist Religious Experience Described April 11, 2009 — As millions of Jews just completed Passover, and as millions of Christians gather to celebrate Easter, a Darwinist reporter was experiencing “existential vertigo” – a sweeping sense of dizziness as her imagination zoomed in and out of the implications of her faith. It may be the closest thing that a secular materialist can call a religious experience. And religious experience is an accurate description: it was the outworking of an all-encompassing world view, with ultimate causes, ultimate destinies, moral imperatives, and heavy doses of faith. Amanda Gefter (see her previous attack...

The New Scientist had a story by their book editor Amanda Gefter called "How to Spot a Hidden Religious Agenda". Today, it was pulled from their web site; the explanation being that they "received a complaint about the contents of the story." You can still find a copy here, and we've copied the text until we find out what caused them to pull the story. Here's the opening: ---------------------------------------------------------------- As a book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to...

No Weaknesses in the Theory of Evolution? by Frank Sherwin, M.A.* "There are no weaknesses in the theory of evolution." This was the testimony of Eugenie Scott to the Texas State Board of Education in January when the Board was debating new state science curriculum standards.1 Dr. Scott is Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a watchdog group committed to exposing and ridiculing any group that questions the strange paradigm of Darwinism. Is it true "there are no weaknesses" in this particles-to-people worldview? Clearly, there is a very real problem with what biological molecules (DNA and...

The journal New Scientist has recently run an article called Born Believers: How your brain creates God (especially in hard financial times)1… Towards the latter end of the article is a disclaimer that ‘All the researchers involved stress that none of this says anything about the existence or otherwise of gods.’ However, the tenor of the article, including the title, militates strongly that the author’s preferred reality is that, yes folks, “your brain creates God.” The article initially suggests that “God” is created in our brains as a result of “an evolutionary adaptation that makes people more likely to survive”....

Star Children for DarwinFeb 28, 2009 — Why should we be looking for alien intelligence around other stars when it is right behind your eyeballs?  You may not have known that you are a star child, but that’s what a leading astronomer called you.  As a good star child, you need to pay tribute to Charles Darwin.     In New Scientist, Lawrence Krauss called on children of spaceship Earth to “Celebrate evolution as only star children can.”  In this, he tied together the International Year of Astronomy 2009, the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the telescope on...

Science Intrudes Into Morality Dec 23, 2008 — The Pope recently declared that we need to save humanity from self-destructive behaviors, like homosexuality. Can science intrude on questions of human behavior and morals? New Scientist thought so; a blog entry today says the Pope “misuses science to attack homosexuality.”One would think that moral behavior would lie outside the field for a scientific news source, but online news editor Rowan Hooper went on, mocking the Pope’s claim that the church has a role in saving “human ecology” like scientists have a role in protecting tropical forests. Hooper called this “a bizarre...

Ed. Note: this is the first instalment of a detailed critique of a major New Scientist anti-creationist diatribe. This one deals with a substantial section in the article, which tries to downplay the Nazi reliance on Darwinian theories, and instead tries to smear Christianity as a cause of the Holocaust...

Early settlers drained marshy US landscape 19:00 17 January 2008 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic A milldam on Pickering Creek in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The dam spans the entire valley, and is filled to the brim with sediment (Image: Robert Walter and Dorothy Merritts) Standard notions of the 'natural' eastern US landscape with its meandering ribbon-like streams may be misguided, suggests historical research. In the US, a multibillion-dollar landscape restoration industry is guided by the almost intuitive notion that natural, gravel-bedded streams wander in single channels across the land. This springs from the assumption that, when European settlers arrived in...

Many human genes evolved recently 01:00 07 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Melissa Lee Phillips Human genes involved in metabolism, skin pigmentation, brain function and reproduction have evolved in response to recent environmental changes, according to a new study of natural selection in the human genome. Researchers at the University of Chicago, US, developed a statistical test to find genomic regions that evolution has favoured over the last 15,000 years or so – when modern humans dealt with the end of the last ice age, the beginning of agriculture, and increased population densities. Many of the 700 genes the researchers...

Genes may help determine how religious a person is, suggests a new study of US twins. And the effects of a religious upbringing may fade with time. Until about 25 years ago, scientists assumed that religious behaviour was simply the product of a person's socialisation - or "nurture". But more recent studies, including those on adult twins who were raised apart, suggest genes contribute about 40% of the variability in a person's religiousness.

Longest scientific study yet backs Atkins diet 12:21 18 May 04 The claimed benefits of the controversial low-carbohydrate Atkins diet have been reaffirmed in two new studies, one of which is the longest study to date. "I think it's good news for Atkins dieters," says Linda Stern, who led the first study of 132 obese patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia, US. The diet was devised by the late US doctor Robert Atkins. To lose weight, devotees avoid carbohydrates and consume more protein and fat instead. Both new studies found that subjects on the Atkins diet shed...

Cold fusion, briefly hailed as the silver-bullet solution to the world's energy problems and since discarded to the same bin of quackery as paranormal phenomena and perpetual motion machines, will soon get a new hearing from Washington. Despite being pushed to the fringes of physics, cold fusion has continued to be worked on by a small group of scientists, and they say their figures unambiguously verify the original report, that energy can be generated simply by running an electrical current through a jar of water. Last fall, cold fusion scientists asked the Energy Department to take a second look at...