Dialogue 2006 #1

Have you ever tried to imagine what a world without grasses would look like? The scenery might well be pretty bleak. Scientists have long declared that there were no grasses present in dinosaur communities. The plant-eating dinosaurs had to make do, we have been assured, with cycads, ferns, horsetails and trees of flowering plants such as palms and magnolias. Read the rest of this entry »

Hibernation on Demand? Here is a question that has baffled me for quite some time. How could eight people on the ark look after so many animals? Consider this: Noah and his three sons had to look after all these animals for 53 weeks while living in the ark. Read the rest of this entry »

Since the advent of global positioning satellites, or at least since their availability to civilians, scientists have found many uses for these devices. One of the more interesting applications is to track animals, as in the “fish with chips” program. This is a multimillion dollar Census of Marine Life project. In conjunction with this program, thousands of marine animals in the Pacific Ocean, including many fish, have been fitted with electronic surveillance tags. Read the rest of this entry »

As far as our solar system is concerned, astronomers have grown accustomed to expecting the unexpected. Certainly nobody expected liquid water spewing from a small moon of Saturn. Read the rest of this entry »