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For example, Dr Eugenie Scott of the staunchly anticreationist National Center for Science Education (NCSE) revealed their agenda when she said: “ … I would describe myself as a humanist or a nontheist. I have found that the most effective allies for evolution are people of the faith community. One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day! … What we [such clergy and atheists] have in common is that we want to see evolution taught in the public schools … .”4

If we have free will, so do subatomic particles, mathematicians claim to prove.“If the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect—what is the source of the free will possessed by living things throughout the earth?”—Titus Lucretius Carus, Roman philosopher and poet, 99–55 BC. Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest...

GENEVA -- Michelangelo L. Mangano, a respected particle physicist who helped discover the top quark in 1995, now spends most days trying to convince people that his new machine won't destroy the world. "If it were just crackpots, we could wave them away," the physicist said in an interview at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym, CERN. "But some are real physicists."

Women buying creams made of tiny particles 'used as guinea pigs' By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent (Filed: 05/05/2006) Consumers who use a new generation of cosmetics are being used as "guinea pigs", scientists said yesterday. Researchers called for the tightening of testing procedures governing face and sun creams, dietary supplements and other products that harness the special properties of tiny particles of matter, known as nanotechnology. Some of the beauty products which make use of nanotechnology About 100 people in Germany suffered health problems at the end of March after using a bathroom sealant called Magic Nano. Nanotechnology involves working...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A particle accelerator at Sandia National Laboratories has heated a swarm of charged particles to a record 2 billion degrees Kelvin, a temperature beyond that of a star's interior. Scientists working with Sandia's Z machine said the feat also revealed a new phenomenon that could eventually make future nuclear fusion power plants smaller and cheaper to operate than if the plants relied on previously known physics. "At first, we were disbelieving," said Chris Deeney, head of the project. "We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result and not an 'Oops'!" Sandia's...

Few e-mails have ever stopped me as cold as the one I am about to describe. In it, the author, a former university professor who wishes to remain anonymous, claims to know the actual mechanism behind intelligent design. That is the mechanism by which God created the universe, our world and all biological life within it. This is especially intriguing as Darwin's theory of evolution is now hotly contested by arguments of intelligent design. One weakness of ID is its failure to offer a mechanism to counter evolution's bogus explanation of diversity through macro-mutation. As a result, ID has failed...

Am I the only one who marvels at the futility of Man as he tries to explain the origin of the universe? The time and effort expended upon this pursuit could be far better spent upon issues that actually lack an answer. Trying to find a new explanation for the cosmos via science is like trying to reinvent the wheel. For the sake of argument let’s assume that the universe happened by accident just as many so-called scientists claim. With this as a starting point we can make the assumption that there was a source of crude matter from which...

PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - A space capsule returning solar particles to earth has crashed in the Utah desert before it could be captured in a mid-air recovery by a Hollywood stunt helicopter pilot, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Wednesday.

French and Italian scientists are planning a large underground laboratory beneath the Alps designed to detect elusive particles from the Sun's core. It would consist of a huge tank filled with several hundred thousand cubic metres of ultra-pure water. Detectors lining the tank would be sensitive to flashes of light caused by the passage of sub-atomic particles. The lab would test theories in solar physics and help scientists understand the fundamental forces of nature. Sun stream It would be built adjacent to a road tunnel under the Frejus mountain near the French-Italian border. The ambitious project has entered its earliest...

A scientist says one of the most sought after particles in physics - the Higgs boson - may have been found, but the evidence is still relatively weak. Peter Renton, of the University of Oxford, says the particle may have been detected by researchers at an atom-smashing facility in Switzerland. The Higgs boson explains why all other particles have mass and is fundamental to a complete understanding of matter. Dr Renton's assessment of the Higgs hunt is published in Nature magazine. "There's certainly evidence for something, whether it's the Higgs boson is questionable," Dr Renton, a particle physicist at Oxford,...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 February 19 Pauli Exclusion Principle: Why You Don't Implode Credit & Copyright: Andrew Truscott & Randall Hulet (Rice U.) Explanation: Why doesn't matter just bunch up? The same principle that keeps neutron stars and white dwarf stars from imploding also keeps people from imploding and makes normal matter mostly empty space. The observed reason is known as the Pauli Exclusion Principle. The principle states that identical fermions...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 October 5 X-Ray Cygnus A Credit: A. Wilson & A. Young (UMD), P. Shopbell (Caltech), CXC, NASA(Inset Credit: NRAO) Explanation: Amazingly detailed, this false-color x-ray image is centered on the galaxy Cygnus A. Recorded by the orbiting Chandra Observatory, Cygnus A is seen here as a spectacular high energy x-ray source. But it is actually more famous at the low energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum as...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 July 27 Apollo 11: Catching Some Sun Credit: Apollo 11, NASA (Image scanned by Kipp Teague) Explanation: Bright sunlight glints and long dark shadows dramatize this image of the lunar surface taken by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first to walk on the Moon. Pictured is the mission's lunar module, the Eagle, and spacesuited lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin unfurling a long sheet of foil also...

Attack of the Clones is classically implausible. © Lucasfilm Perfect clones can't exist, say physicists. They're not doing down the hottest topic in biology, merely pointing out that the laws of classical physics forbid making an exact copy of an object, living or inanimate, just as the laws of quantum physics have been known to do for 20 years. Scientists have created replicas of individual quantum particles such as atoms and photons with properties almost identical to those of the original. Last month, a team at the University of Oxford, UK, even showed that they could clone a photon...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 May 16 Double Trouble Solar Bubbles Credit: SOHO Consortium, LASCO, EIT ESA, NASA Explanation: During April and May, attention has been focused on the western evening sky, presenting its spectacle of bright planets and crescent moons shortly after sunset. Meanwhile, the Sun itself has not been just sinking quietly below the horizon. For example on May 2nd, two enormous clouds of energetic particles blasted away from the...