Hi Brig, Nice to hear from you. This is something I have been trying to do since I was a graduate student. It's nice to have finally gotten it done and I appreciate you recognizing it. You are right. I think the findings suggest new genes and gene innovation play a bigger role than people think in terms of distinguishing ape species. Best regards, Evan

Brig, thank you for recent posts of JWST finding fully formed galaxies formed less than 300 million years after the assumed creation of the universe -- aka Big Bang AND thanks for posting the piece about quasars being observed to be "nearly the identical at all epochs of the universe"; "a mature quasar (found) at cosmic dawn." Speaking of dawn, in light of these findings perhaps it has 'dawned' on at least a few BBers that the JWST has provided by now more than enough evidence to toss the BB into the bin, having had a run that has distracted and diverted cosmologists for far too long.

Regarding the quasar issue, over thirty years ago Halton Arp published persuasive evidence for quasars being physically connected to active galactic nuclei as ejected objects that become the seeds of new galaxies. The literature is full of Arp's papers and books if anybody bothers to read it. For his discoveries Arp was unceremoniously banned from further telescope time on the Palomar telescope and his observations have either been ignored or rationalized away by some truly lame alternatives.

The thirty-one year old Quasi-Steady State Theory of Hoyle, Narlikar, and Burbidge solidly shows quasars to be the ejecta of active galaxies at all epochs and fiurther it predicts exactly what the JWST has found. Also we panspermists know that the BB fails to allow for enough time to pass for the complexities of living entities to develop and evolve into what we witness here on Earth. The objections to panspermia large rest on the red herring that panspermia does not offer an origin for life. That's about it from me this time around. Keep the faith, Brig!

...I found these links in 1997 right after I had digitized the "Postcards from Mars" poster and sent it to Gil [Levin]. NASA had posted a very large number of these images. They were listed as from the "Frost Monitoring" program that was carried out over a period of at least two or three weeks. Their use of the term "Frost" was both inaccurate and highly deceptive. Most people assumed the white stuff was "Carbon Dioxide Frost" rather than frozen H2O that had fallen from the Martian sky in the form of snow, sleet or grapple. However the detector temperature proved it was crystalline water rather than frozen CO2 and the absence on vertical surfaces proved it was absolutely not frost. I pointed this detail out in numerous SPIE "Life in the Cosmos" Panels and in several papers published during the 1997 to 2008 time period.

Academician Galimov and other scientists at the Chania, Crete Conference were surprised when Roland Paepe, David Gilichinski and I revealed these images as well as those of Double Rimmed Polygons on Mars and NE Siberia in my presentation. NASA had adopted the "Follow the Water" theme and claimed they were searching for evidence of water on Ancient Mars. The official NASA position at that time was that there was no water on present day Mars and hence the Levin LR data had to be from super metallic peroxides in the Mars regolith rather than biology.

However these were their images! NASA clearly knew about the permafrost polygons and water ice at the polar caps as well as the fact that the detector temperature proved these images had to be frozen water snow or sleet. My paper in the Permafrost Conference was cleared by NASA MSFC and HQ and NASA never once commented or published a paper to rebut the results. Instead, our scientific papers were just studiously ignored in hopes no one would notice. This approach was also taken with our results about indigenous microfossils, nucleobases and chiral amino acids in Carbonaceous Meteorites. I note that the Perserverance Rover was also designed to search for rocks rather than biology and Post Viking, NASA has never launched a life detection experiment to the Moon, Mars, comets or icy moons. [...]

Richard

Half of educated adults don't accept the basic theory, and neither do many very well-informed biologists. Most of them don't want to discuss it because the conversations are usually unproductive and uncivil. I wish skeptical reporters would show up.

The theory of evolution is in crisis, and the crisis is bigger than they are willing to face. None of the various alternatives you mention meets the most basic criterion of science -- proof in the lab. I have had lengthy conversations with some of them -- Jim Shapiro for example. When I make this point, they clam up.

I read Thomas Kuhn and am influenced by his observation: theories never simply go away until a replacement - perceived to be better - is available. I have latched onto an alternative, panspermia (it's about evolution, too.) But nevermind panspermia.

I wish science reporters would demand proof from the scientists. If the theory is completely wrong, that does not mean we have to abandon science. That false dilemma is equally supported by evolutionists and creationists.

I'll stop here. I welcome your thoughts and suggestions. Best regards, Brig

from Buranyi: Hi Brig, Thanks for the email. My answer to the main question is to basically both agree with you, but push back on your comparison a little. Politics writers are indeed often quick to push on their sources and ask critical questions. However, in my estimation they are just as likely to let egregious falsehoods pass, write uncritical stories, etc, when they have political reason to go easy on a politician. Political reporters are often too political.

Now the idea that science writers are not often enough like political writers - in the sense of reporting hard and being critical - is true. I don't have a complete answer for you except to say that science is often covered like sports, simply reporting the play by play of what is going on, adding some colour, and pleasing both the sources and the audience. It's edutainment, for many. Part of it is simply because science writers often see themselves as translators of scientific work - something akin to a national geographic correspondent, but reporting from labs instead of the rainforest/tundra/etc. Of course, some of this kind of work is necessary. But there should be more of the the harder kind too. I think there are some good science journalists out there, but the ones who are truly adversarial (like Leonid Schneider, for instance) have trouble placing stories within a system that mostly wants edutainment.