Brilliant engineering:
The weevil ‘hip’-and-leg joint
Aus May 2013
By David Catchpoole
The invention of the threaded screw-and-nut mechanism was a great engineering breakthrough. But we now know that God thought of it first.
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Water is ‘just right’ for life
Aus April 2013
By Jonathan Sarfati and David Catchpoole
Scientists have been puzzled, however, as to how H20 (water) molecules can exist in a stable network in the face of destabilizing quantum effects — i.e. “why water’s fragile structure does not break down completely.”
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There is still much to learn about biology
Aus March 2013
By David Catchpoole
TThe Editor-in-Chief of Science, Bruce Alberts, in a recent editorial turned his attention to the relative lack of understanding of what happens in living cells
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Why a butterfly flutters by
Aus December 2012
by David Catchpoole
Have you ever thought that the butterfly, with its jerky fluttering flight, is a ‘primitive’ and inefficient flyer? After all, its wings don’t look even remotely aerodynamic, compared to the beautifully streamlined ‘aerofoil’ wings of birds and airplanes.
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Silk-shooting tarantulas!
Aus July 2012
By Dr Jonathan Sarfati
Spiders stick to surfaces in an ingenious way, without glue. Instead, their feet have microscopic hairs enabling short-range molecular attractions, just like gecko feet.
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Our brains:
‘complex beyond belief’
Aus June 2012
By Dr Carl Wieland
A study by Stanford University researchers using new imaging techniques has announced stunning results. Stephen Smith, the study’s senior author, is cited as claiming that they had found that the brain’s complexity is beyond anything they’d imagined, “almost to the point of being beyond belief”.
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‘Carnivorous’ dinos were vegetarian!
Aus May 2012
By Dr Carl Wieland
Predators like T. Rex and Velociraptor belong to the suborder Theropoda, which was long supposed to be largely, if not exclusively, carnivorous. A recent study by Lindsay Zanno and Peter Mackovicky of the Chicago Field Museum has overturned this notion.
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Carbon dating points to a young age!
Aus April 2012
By Jim Mason, Creation Ministries International. www.Creation.com
Radioactive 14C is continually being formed in the atmosphere, and makes up about a trillionth of all carbon atoms on Earth. Because it is biologically almost indistinguishable from non-radioactive carbon (12C), it is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis and then by animals eating the plants and other animals eating the animals that eat the plants and, of course, by humans when we eat our burgers and broccoli.
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Hornets use solar power!
Aus February 2012
By Jonathan O’brien
The humble hornet is turning out to be more complex than anyone ever imagined. Scientists from Tel Aviv University have discovered that the Oriental Hornet can generate electricity from the sun.
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Y chromosome shock !
Aus December 2011
By David Catchpoole
Researchers were unprepared for what they would find when they recently completed sequencing of the chimpanzee Y chromosome, and compared it to the human Y chromosome.
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Thinking is NOT a trick of the mind!
Aus November 2011
by David Catchpoole
The title of Richard Dawkins’ bestseller The God Delusion encapsulates the evolutionary view that everything just evolved, including religion. I.e., “God” is just a trick of the mind...
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Flying fish are expert gliders
Aus October 2011
By Jonathan O’Brien
Many birds can dive underwater, but it is perhaps less well known that some fish can fly in the air much like birds do, that is, support their weight using aerodynamic lift, gliding over the surface of the water for surprisingly long distances.
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‘Simple’ cell has coordinated motors
Aus September 2011
By Jonathan Sarfati
Many “simple” single-celled creatures have an amazing electrical outboard motor that drives a whip-like cord to swim — the flagellum. Could such a motor that far exceeds man’s inventions be the result of a cosmic accident billions of years ago?
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We have machinery to repair our DNA!
Aus August 2011
By Dr Jonathan Sarfati
Our body’s information is stored on the famous DNA double helix molecule. This is so efficient that just five round pinheads full of DNA could hold all the information of the earth’s entire human population. And each of our 100 trillion cells has 3 billion DNA ‘letters’ (called nucleobases) worth of information.
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Thousands of dinosaur footprints in China running the same way!
Aus July 2011
By Tas Walker
According to a BBC report,1 scientists from China found 3,000 dinosaur footprints in the Zhucheng area of eastern Shandong province.
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Robots will not take over the world
Aus June 2011
By Carl Wieland
Artificial intelligence, or “AI” is an enthralling research field. As computing speeds get ever faster, it has spawned many predictions, from science fiction writers as well as from serious researchers in the field, of a world in which superintelligent machines with consciousness “take over” our planet.
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Vertebrates not ‘one blood’ after all
Aus May 2011
By Carl Wieland
According to evolutionary dogma, once upon an eon, all vertebrates (animals with backbones) shared the same blood.
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Still more to learn about mothers’ marvellous milk
Aus April 2011
By Don Batten
Scientists at the University of California have discovered yet another way that mother’s milk benefits babies.
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Super scented — Aerodynamics of odours in a dog’s nose
Aus March 2011
By Tas Walker
What is highly sensitive to scent and can recognise the direction of the faintest odour? A dog’s nose!
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Researchers surprised — Bible right about Israel’s bees
Aus February 2011
By David Catchpoole
According to an article in New Scientist, The Bible didn’t dub it ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’ for nothing.
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Life “infinitely more complex” than biologists expected
Aus December 2010
By Dr Jonathan Sarfati
Ten years after the hoop-la surrounding the Human Genome Project, Nature journal reflected on how the study of biology has been affected by the findings.
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Moth eyes inspire anti-reflective surface — but difficult to copy
Aus November 2010
By Dr Jonathan Sarfati
Reflected glare is a problem for viewers of display screens, and it’s also a problem for solar cells — light that’s reflected can’t be converted into electrical energy. But researchers have noted that although moths see well at night, their eyes don’t shine in light, meaning that they are harder for predators to see.
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Bone complexity:
explained by function not evolution
Aus October 2010
By Dr Jonathan Sarfati
Bones provide most of the structure and support in vertebrates. They are analogous to
girders in the building industry, but bones have a huge advantage over man-made girders, in that they are
constantly rebuilding and redesigning themselves to cope with changing stress directions
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Even tiny babies have a sense of right and wrong
Aus September 2010
By Dr Carl Wieland
In an ingenious series of experiments involving puppets and ‘morality plays’,
Yale researchers seem to have established that even at six months, babies have a sense of right and wrong.
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Daddy, don’t swallow me!
Aus August 2010
by David Cook
Cardinal fish are small reef-dwelling fish that are found in tropical and temperate seas. (This photo is of the red-striped cardinal fish, Apogon victoriae, off the coast of Western Australia.)
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The amazing motorized germ
India May 2010
By Steven De Vowe
What do your skin, a compost pile and an enormous lake all have in common? Each of them is home to an abundance of microscopic germs, properly called bacteria. Bacteria seem to be thought of as ‘simple’ compared to many-celled organisms, but certain motorized bacteria (such as E. coli or Spirilla) reveal immense engineering complexity.
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Pulsating plants
Aus July 2010
by David Catchpoole
Plants never cease to amaze the researchers who study our planet’s greenery. With every new impressive discovery about the complex workings of plants, the more it is realised how little we know about plants and plant growth.
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DNA repair uses electrical signals
Aus June 2010
by Don Batten
The DNA in our cells gets damaged and needs to be repaired. Failure to fix the damage causes cancer. Our cells have nano-machines that travel along the strands of DNA to find the errors and repair them.
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Dragonfly design tips
Africa April 2010
by David Catchpoole
How is it that the dragonfly can perform its energetically-demanding aerial acrobatics — flying backwards or forwards, fast, slow or hovering — and remain airborne for such extended periods?
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Spider silk: super muscle
Aus April 2010
by Dr Jonathan Sarfati
While Kevlar is the strongest man-made fibre by a long shot,1 humble spider silk is even stronger and more elastic (able to stretch to 40% of its length). Dragline silk, the main support for a spider web, is a hundred times stronger than steel — a cable of silk a little thicker than a garden hose could support the weight of two full Boeing 737 aircraft.2
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Neandertals wore make-up!
Aus March 2010
by Rob Carter
Old notions of ancient man are falling fast, with archaeologists working in
southern Spain dropping a bombshell. Or, in this case, a painted shell. They report
that Neandertals were making and using makeup thousands of years ago, with decorative shells being used for storing these cosmetics.
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An altruistic seal
Aus February 2010
by David Catchpoole
About eight years ago an amazing scene was witnessed near Middlesborough, UK. A seal saved an injured dog from drowning in the River Tees.
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White blood cells sprout “legs”!
Aus December 2009
by Dr Jonathan Sarfati
When there is an infection, white blood cells are rushed to the site to “eat” the invading germs. But how exactly do they get there?
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How do bees make decisions?
Aus November 2009
by David Catchpoole
When a hive gets too crowded, half the bees (together with the queen) swarm temporarily to a nearby tree to wait while several hundred go and scout for a new home. But how do they decide which site is best?
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Adult stem cells in contact lens cure cornea damage
Aus October 2009
by Dr Jonathan Sarfati
The cornea is the transparent outer window of the eye, which
also provides about two-thirds of the focusing. So corneal damage is a major
cause of blindness. But now, researchers from the University of New South Wales,
Australia, have invented a new way to use adult stem cells to repair corneas.
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Tooth enamel: Brittle as glass yet resists cracking
Aus September 2009
by Dr Jonathan Sarfati
Our teeth are surprisingly tough — they usually remain
uncracked through decades of biting and chewing. Yet the surface coating called
enamel, while the hardest substance in the human body, is as brittle as glass.
What is the secret
of enamel’s staying crack-free despite its brittleness?
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Desert creatures inspire “SandBot”
Aus August 2009
By David Catchpoole
Traversing loose terrain quickly is not easy—even specialty vehicles such as dune buggies can sometimes end up hopelessly mired in sand. What happens is that the loose, soft-packed structure of sand grains collapses under the weight of a vehicle’s wheels and provide too little traction for the wheels to roll back out.
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Tiny insect’s unique eyes inspire advanced camera
Aus July 2009
By Dr jonathan sarfati
The tiny strepsipteran parasite Xenos peckii is an apparently obscure insect, but it turns out to have amazingly well designed eyes that human engineers have copied.
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Zebra or horse? A ‘zorse’, of course!
Aus June 2009
by David Catchpoole
Examples of zebra-horse hybrids abound, but few are as stunningly eye-catching as ‘Eclyse’.
While most other zorses have stripes across their entire body, Eclyse looks like she’s had her face and rear flank painted
by a very clever artist. But the markings are real!
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Scientists copy Creator’s super-rubber
Aus May 2009
By Dr jonathan sarfati
The stretchiest rubber in the world,
resilin, was
first found in dragonfly wings about
40 years ago.
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Fish aren’t dimwits — Scientists are finding Nemo is no dory
Aus April 2009
by David Catchpoole
It seems that fish are smarter
than is commonly thought.
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A ‘backwards’ comet!
Aus March 2009
By David Catchpoole
The origin of comets presents a challenge to evolutionary cosmologists.
Being ‘dirty balls of ice’, with every pass by the sun they lose mass at
such a rate that they cannot be more than thousands of years old (otherwise
they would long ago have disappeared). That fits perfectly with the Bible’s time
frame but leaves evolutionary ‘big bang’ billions-of-years proponents
scratching for ideas.
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Butterfly brilliance
Aus February 2009
by Dr Jonathan Sarfati
Some butterflies, such as the blue morpho (Morpho menelaus) of South
America and the male mountain blue don (Papilio ulysses) of northern Australia
are known for their brilliant iridescent blues.
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The discovery of HMAS Sydney II and her destroyer
Aus December 2008
by Peter Skinner
Rusting hulls on the ocean floor reveal the high cost of believing a lie
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Plants have a ‘dimmer switch’
Aus November 2008
by David Catchpoole
Although scientists have for some time known of photosynthesis — the process by which plants produce energy-rich carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water using sunlight energy — they have not yet fully described all that happens in photosynthesis, let alone been able to duplicate it.
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How landscapes reveal Noah’s Flood
Aus October 2008
by Dr Tas Walker
In the 4,500 years since the Flood, ice, wind and water have continued to erode the landscape.
But we can still see the effects of the receding waters of Noah’s Flood worldwide.
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Swedish trees contradict the Bible?
Aus September 2008
by Carl Wieland
A closer look at a claim about the world’s oldest trees.
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Fingertip control
Aus August 2008
by David Catchpoole
People often take for granted their ability to button their shirt and to press
the numbers on a mobile phone.
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Walking up walls
Aus July 2008
by David Catchpoole
Insects inspire a better ‘sticky tape’
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Starlings are experts at sticking together
Aus June 2008
by Philip Bell, BSc(Hons) Zoology
Watching a large flock of birds banking, rolling, turning,
twisting and continually morphing into different shapes in flight can be a mesmerizing experience.
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The humming bird’s tale secret - revealed
Aus May 2008
by Philip Bell
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, studied the high-frequency chirping noises made by males of a species called Anna’s hummingbird. They found that these chirps did not come from the head end, as assumed previously, but from the tail.
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Good design in miniature
Aus April 2008
by David Catchpoole
When Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute researcher William Eberhard put miniaturized orb-weaving spiders to the test, he got a big surprise. He had expected that the bigger spiders (weighing 50—100 mg) in his study would substantially outperform the most tiny ones (less than 0.005 mg).
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Which date do you choose?
Aus March 2008
by Dr Tas Walker, Mechanical engineer and geologist
Believe it or not, methods to ‘date’ the earth as being very old just don’t add up. For a start, the various methods contradict one another, and are often contradicted by the evidence itself.
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Starlight and time - a big breakthrough
Aus February 2008
by David Catchpoole
A stunning new book by a physics professor purports to show more firmly than ever how light from the most distant stars would have reached Earth in a very short time.
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Submarines with fish fins?
Aus December 2007
By David Catchpoole
Out in the deep seas and oceans of the world,
propeller-driven submarines can generally
handle straight-line travel quite well, so long
as their propellers don’t become entangled in
cables or stray mooring ropes, etc.
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An eye for detail
Aus November 2007
By David Catchpoole
When you fix your gaze on something, your eyes ‘jitter’, i.e. they make small, involuntary movements. These jitters wiggle the image on the retina. In the 1950s, researchers using cumbersome mirrors to negate the jitter when volunteers looked at an object discovered that the volunteers began to lose sight of the object (disappearing into a featureless grey), so the researchers concluded that jittering kept the image from fading.
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Amazing discovery: Bird wing has “leading edge” technology!
Aus October 2007
By David Catchpoole
As jumbo jets and other large modern aircraft approach an airport to land, pilots deploy flaps on the leading edges of the wings — this allows the plane to fly at much lower speeds without stalling.
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New archaeological find affirms Old Testament history
Aus September 2007
By Dr Don Batten
A clay tablet with details of one of Nebuchadnezzar’s court officials supports the historicity of the Bible’s book of Jeremiah
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Marvellous moth motif
Aus August 2007
By Emit Silvestru, M.Sc., G.Eng., Ph.D.
One of the most stunning of the wonders in the insect world is on the Emperor Speckled Moth (Gynanisa maja) from southern Africa, a member of the silkmoth group. To scare predators away, its wings display this strikingly accurate rendition of a mammal’s face — even the sparkle in the pupils!
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Off the menu ...
Aus July 2007
by David Catchpoole
Given we’re told this is a dog-eat-dog and fish-eat-fish world, there’s something strange going on here.
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Does wood take millions of years to petrify?
Aus June 2007
Rapid, catastrophic burial beneath fallen trees, wet sediment, and volcanic ash which prevent the normal process of organic decay are commonly known to be crucial in the petrification process. However, millions of years are not required to petrify wood. In fact, there is testable and observational evidence which demonstrates that wood can be petrified rapidly under the right conditions.
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Two-tone twins
Aus June 2007
Believe it or not, these two beautiful little girls are twins — though many would label blue-eyed Remee as “white” and her brown-eyed sister, Kian as “black”.
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Pterosaurs flew like modern aeroplanes
Aus May 2007
by Jonathan Sarfati
Scientists have long wondered how the extinct flying reptiles, the pterosaurs, could fly. They seemed too ungainly to lift into the air from the ground, or to land safely without breaking their delicate wings.
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Aces of the air
Aus April 2007
by Emil Silvestru
That flies are excellent flyers is no secret to anybody. Yet few of us would have known they are better than any bird, bat or bee.
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In leaps and bounds
Aus March 2007
by David Catchpoole
Frogs must have amazing muscles to be able to jump so fast and so far, right?
Actually, their leg muscles are not particularly beefy at all, leaving scientists to puzzle
over how frogs can leap the way they do !
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Bright bird brains
Aus December 2006
Many teachers of young children have experienced the frustration of not getting a correct answer, or sometimes even any answer, from bright youngsters who evidently know the right answer, but won’t admit it.
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Ultrasonic frog sound
Aus June 2006
Scientists studying a rare Chinese frog have discovered it can communicate by ultrasound – very high pitched sounds that are above the range that human ears can hear, according to reports in ABC News Online Australia (16/3/06) and New Scientist (18/3/06, p21).
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Races don’t exist!
Aus May 2006
Some readers may recall this newspaper photo a few years ago of twins, one of whom had very light skin, and the other had very dark skin tone...
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Herbivorous carnivores?
Aus May 2005
by David Catchpoole
Just because an animal has teeth usually associated with meat-eating, it doesn’t mean that it has to eat meat.
And surely this helps us to understand how it could have once been – that all animals (whether they had sharp teeth or not) were originally exclusively vegetarian (Genesis chapter 1 and verse 30), just like the kinkajous in the forest today.
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Giant oysters on the mountain
Aus June 2004
by David Catchpoole
Whether or not you think of oysters as a gourmet delicacy, there's
something about these fossilized giant oysters that attracts attention. Eye-catching
not just for their size—some measure up to 3.5 m (12 ft) across and weigh 300 kg
(650 lb)—but also for where they were found … high in the Andes Mountains!
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