Unidentified Flying Objects – UFO’s – have been a popular topic with the American public for the past 60 years, even if mainstream astronomers and scientists don’t take them seriously (except as a human psychological phenomenon). There has arguably been a resurgence of public interest in UFO’s within the past 2 or 3 years, even though UFO sightings have dropped precipitously since 2015. In 2017, the NY Times, CNN, and other mainstream media reported on a US Defense Dept study (the 2007-2012 Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program) on UFO’s. And within the past few months, a new story appeared in the NY Times about a series of interesting UFO sightings by US Navy pilots flying FA-18 jet fighters off the coast of Virginia in 2014, while on training exercises.

The Navy incident wasn’t just one guy seeing a brief flash in the corner of his eye while in a 3G turn; there were multiple sightings over several months and several pilots saw the objects. In some cases two pilots would be looking at the same thing and talking with each other about it on the radio, and the objects were also detected by radar and infra-red detectors. Also, the jets returned with video footage of the flying objects (which you can view on the NY Times website; albeit, you don’t see much more than some sort of bright spot zipping around over the ocean).

Interestingly, there were somewhat similar sightings by Navy pilots flying the same type of jets off the coast of California in 2004. There were significant differences in what the objects looked like to the 2004 pilots (the Pacific UFO’s were fairly large and looked something like a flying pill, whereas the Atlantic objects were smaller and looked something like little boxes inside of a sphere). However, in both cases, the objects accelerated and moved around in ways unlike  »  continue reading …

Nor will any vicious beast go up on it;
These will not be found there.
Isa 35:9 (NASB)

There’s an interesting article in the May 2017 edition of Scientific American that might interest those of you who are “dog people”. The title of the article is “How to Build a Dog“. No, it’s not that scientists are now so far advanced with DNA manipulation and life incubation techniques that they can custom-design a dog, and then use CRISPR, stem cell activation and artificial incubation technology to grow that customized dog in a lab. No, we haven’t gotten to the point where you can custom order your next dog, mixing and matching features as if selecting from a Chinese restaurant menu, Say, for example a miniature German Shepard with long, fold-over ears, a fuzzy tail, and shaggy white fur with brown patches.

The SciAm article is really about foxes. A number of biologists and naturalists over the years have tried to take foxes from the wild and teach them how to live with human beings. These attempts have generally failed; foxes just have too much “wildness” inside of them. However, one long-term scientific experiment based in Siberia actually has been quite successful in creating a different kind of fox, one that is similar to your average run-of-the-mill pet dog. This experiment was begun in the 1950s at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics at Novosibirsk by a Russian geneticist named Dmitry K. Belyaev. The SciAm article was written by Lydmila Trut, who started working for Dr. Belyaev in 1958 as an intern, and took over the project following Belyaev’s death in 1985. Dr. Trut gained her doctorate in evolutionary genetics and now at age 83, continues to direct the domesticated fox program in Novosibirsk.

The program was quite successful. The SciAm article describes the looks and behavior of their current generations of foxes (and provides pictures), and the parallels with dogs are quite amazing. These foxes like being around people, they want to be petted and have their bellies rubbed; they wag their tails and follow  »  continue reading …

There are a lot of differing opinions today among astrobiologists and planetary specialists as to whether life is common in the universe, and how many intelligent and sentient life-forms (like humans) are out there in the heavens. On the one hand, paleontologists, biologists and geoscientists have found over the past twenty years or so that life forms can flourish in very harsh environments, places with little or no light or oxygen and very cold or very hot temperatures, even places with relatively high exposure to ultraviolet or radioactive radiation. Of course, most of these life forms aren’t much more than very simple one-celled germ-like things. But they are alive.

Furthermore, the accelerating pace of exoplanet research and discoveries have allowed the detection of a rapidly increasing number of planets whirling around far-distant stars. Our scientists have learned how to distinguish rocky Earth-like planets from “gas bags” like Jupiter and Saturn, and in a few years they might even be able to detect whether these planets have an atmosphere, and what kinds of gasses are in that atmosphere. The boffins are obviously very interested in finding out how many “second Earths” are out there, rocky planets of near-Earth size orbiting a bright but stable star at a distance where liquid water could exist and where a favorable atmosphere could form. Again, we are still some years away from being able to pinpoint such stars and planets, but thus far, a large number of candidates have emerged.

So, given that life can form even under very tough conditions, and given that “habitable zone” planets may relatively common in the cosmos, many scientists are coming to believe in a “cosmic life imperative” in the Universe. But recall that all of this was “on the one hand”. On that other hand is the increasing realization that  »  continue reading …