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The Internet is a rich source of information on the creation vs.
evolution debate. Search for the most current news on creation and
evolution. Note: There may be no results on the day of your
search.
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Following are some recent news articles we found on the subject. Abstracts are included here. We update these news items monthly.
"Stellar Hint at Radiation's Role in Life", NYT, July 31, 1998.
"Evolutionary Biology Begins Tackling
Public Doubts", Carol Kaesuk Yook, NYT, July 8,
1998.
"The
Evolution of the Universe", P. James Peebles, et. al.,
Scientific American, March, 1998, Feature
Article
July 31, 1998 NYT
Experiment Supports Theory That Life Began in Volcanic
Environment
By NICHOLAS WADE
Carl R. Woese of the University of Illinois is a microbiologist who thinks that life may have started in the heat of volcanoes or undersea volcanic vents some 4.5 billion years ago. Stanley Miller of the University of California disagrees, saying that life would more likely have formed in water under normal conditions. Miller provided evidence for his theory, showing that water mixed with gasses and zapped with electric bolts (that represent lighting) can form most of the components needed for life. However, molecules in normal water do not collide enough to create the more complex molecules of life.
Woese instead believes that
life on Earth began in the furnace-like temperatures of a volcanic
environment. This theory has received support from an experiment
designed to reconstruct the chemical events that may have led to
the first living cells. The experiment, reported in Friday's issue
of the journal Science, shows that peptides, short protein
chains, can form naturally under conditions that might plausibly
have existed on the early Earth some four billion years ago.
A third idea has been advanced by Dr. Gunther Wachtershauser. He
believes that prebiotic reactions occurred on a surface, probably
of some common catalyst like the ores of iron and nickel. Chemicals
bound to a surface would be much more likely to meet and combine
into the more complicated molecules typical of life, he
believes.
July 31, 1998
Stellar Hint at Radiation's Role in Life
The left-handed molecules that led to the beginning of life on
earth may have been singled out for their eventual role in biology
by a type of radiation that astronomers have discovered in a
0star-forming cloud some 1,500 light years away.
A team of astronomers in Australia reported in the issue of
Science magazine published Friday that they detected strongly
polarized radiation from a celestial cloud of hot dust and infant
stars in the constellation Orion. Its discoverers believe that
similar radiation could account for the uniform twist of key
molecules in living creatures and help explain how life arose.
Go to top
July 8, 1998
Evolutionary Biology Begins Tackling Public Doubts
By CAROL KAESUK YOOK
Scientists at a meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution, an international body of some 3,500 scientists, discussed ways that the belief in evolution could be promoted through education at the high school and college level. Statistics show that many people, including graduate students in biology, do not believe in evolution. The Society discussed the basis of misconceptions related to evolution and ways to counteract them. These misconceptions are, according to Dr. Brian Alters, are the beliefs that the methods used to date fossils and other rocks are not accurate, that mutations are never beneficial to animals, that it is statistically impossible for life to arise by chance and that there is scientific evidence that humans were supernaturally created.
March, 1998
The Evolution of the Universe
By P. JAMES E. PEEBLES, DAVID N. SCHRAMM, EDWIN L. TURNER AND
RICHARD G. KRON
"At a particular instant roughly 12 billion years ago, all the matter and energy we can observe, concentrated in a region smaller than a dime, began to expand and cool at an incredibly rapid rate. By the time the temperature had dropped to 100 million times that of the sun's core, the forces of nature assumed their present properties, and the elementary particles known as quarks roamed freely in a sea of energy. When the universe had expanded an additional 1,000 times, all the matter we can measure filled a region the size of the solar system."
Copyright © 1999 ThinkQuest Team 19012. All
rights reserved. Last modified: Monday August 31, 1998.