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Amazing Discoveries (1/3/2007)
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There’s Another Comet Up There!
By J. R. Church
It was the brightest comet since the Hale Bopp comet graced
our skies some 30 years ago. Comet McNaught was discovered on August 7, 2006 by
Australian astronomer Robert McNaught. He found the faint object on a photograph
taken at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales. By January 2007, the
comet had become a spectacular sight (see photo).
It looped around the sun and is currently on its way out of
our solar system. A calculation of its orbit noted that it swept to within just
15.8 million miles of the Sun on January 12 — less than half the distance of
Mercury — making it a very bright object in the twilight evening sky. As we
prepare this article in early February, estimates were that it might become as
much as 40 times brighter than Venus.
An article on "Space.com" suggested an uncertainty about just
how bright it might become, noting: "The brightest stars in the sky are
categorized as zero or first magnitude. Negative magnitudes are reserved for the
most brilliant objects: the brightest star is Sirius (-1.4); the full Moon is
-12.7; the Sun is -26.7. The faintest stars visible under dark skies are around
+6." Predicting a comet’s brightness has proven to be difficult. Many scientific
predictions have fizzled around the time of perihelion (their swing around the
Sun).
This is the 31st comet to bear McNaught’s name. It is a new
comet and has no known previous history. Its discovery took astronomers by
surprise. McNaught discovered the comet when it was a few degrees east of the
head of Scorpio. His work is to look for asteroids and comets that might pose a
threat of impact with planet Earth. On August 31, McNaught described the comet
as having a magnitude of +17.3, or about 25,000 times dimmer than the faintest
object that human eyes can see without optical aid.
Through February, the comet became a bright object in the far
southeastern sky just before sunrise. However, it grew bright enough to be seen
in daylight. It soon moved further south, becoming unavailable to observers in
the northern hemisphere. It can only be seen by observers located south of the
Equator. Some reports say that the comet grew to four times brighter than
Sirius.
In 1995, the "Solar and Heliospheric Observatory" (SOHO)
spacecraft was launched for the purpose of studying the Sun. Its function is to
observe solar activity and relay the information to NASA. It works by placing a
disc over the brightness, thus producing a continual artificial solar eclipse,
then observing solar flares, the movements of Mercury, and count the number of
comets swinging around the Sun. Since it was first turned on, it has counted
over 1,200 comets — all discovered using the spacecraft’s cameras.
When Robert McNaught was asked about his excitement of having
another comet named after him, he said, "I guess having my name attached to this
comet must influence my excitement, but really, to be honest, it is largely an
accident who finds them. Even more relevantly, I am backed so expertly by an
excellent team of guys at the University of Arizona who wrote the software that
did the detection."
Ancient civilizations thought that comets were omens of evil.
Flavius Josephus reported that a bright comet hung like a sword over Jerusalem
for about a year, suggesting that it seemed to be a message of doom for the
city. Not long afterward, the Roman army destroyed the great Temple and
slaughtered over 100,000 people.
We are not as bold as the ancients in suggesting such signs,
but other indications of possible war between Iran, Syria, the Hezbollah and
Hamas against Israel portend a bleak future for this world. Like the Comet
McNaught, everything seems to be "going south!"
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Amazing Discoveries (1/2/2007)
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The F-35 Stealth Fighter - Lightning II!
By J. R. Church
I was watching the Military Channel the other night and saw
Lockheed's most advanced development in America's arsenal of fighter aircraft -
the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Its designers have left no
page unturned in putting the latest and best technology into this awesome
aircraft. It is impervious to radar, travels at over 1,200 mph, and houses all
weapons, rockets, etc., inside.
There are three models, one of which is designed for vertical
take-off - similar to the British Harrier Jet, and dubbed a "Short Take-Off and
Vertical Landing aircraft (STOVL)." Another is designed for aircraft carriers.
It is called a "Carrier Variant (CV)." A third uses a conventional runway. It is
called a "Conventional Take-Off and Landing aircraft (CTOL)."
The pilot will use a helmet with sensors that allow him to
see beneath and behind the aircraft. Vision Systems International (a partnership
between Kaiser Electronics and Elbit of Israel) is providing the advanced
helmet-mounted display.
Display Systems is developing the panoramic cockpit display
system, which will include 20in. x 8in. active matrix liquid crystal displays
and the display management computer. BAE Systems Platform Solutions has
developed an alternative design helmet-mounted display, based on the binocular
helmet being developed for the Eurofighter Typhoon.
This $200 billion stealth aircraft was developed by Lockheed
Martin Aeronautics Company for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and the
U.K. Royal Navy.
The USAF F-35A air-to-ground strike aircraft, will replace
the F-16 and A-10, and complement the F-22.
The F-35 will be powered by a Pratt and Whitney afterburning
turbofan F-135 engine, a derivative of the F-119 fitted on the F-22.
On the F-35B, the engine is coupled with a shaft-driven lift
fan system for the Vertical Take-Off (STOVL) propulsion. The counter-rotating
lift fan, developed by Rolls-Royce Defense, can generate more than 20,000 pounds
of thrust. Doors installed above and below the vertical fan open as the fin
spins up to provide vertical lift.
The main engine has a three-bearing swivelling exhaust
nozzle. The nozzle, which is supplemented by two roll control ducts on the
inboard section of the wing, together with the vertical lift fan provide the
required vertical takeoff capability.
Other nations cooperating in the development of this awesome
machine are: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore
and Turkey.
The concept demonstration phase of the program began in
November 1996 with the award of contracts to two consortia, led by Boeing
Aerospace and Lockheed Martin. The Lockheed Martin JSF team includes Northrop
Grumman, BAE Systems, Pratt and Whitney and Rolls-Royce. Final assembly of the
aircraft is taking place at Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth, Texas, plant.
Assembly of the first Conventional Take-Off and Landing
version (CTOL) F-35A was completed in February 2006. The Short Take-Off and
Vertical Landing (STOVL) F-35B will have its first flight in 2007. The F-35A
fighter is expected to enter service in 2008, the F-35B in 2012.
This stealth fighter combines the best of all previous
technology. The Stealth "Wing" bomber is not a fighter. The F-117 "black
diamond" stealth is too slow, making it vulnerable. One was shot down over
Kosovo. The F-22 Raptor can be seen and targeted by enemy radar. The Harrier Jet
was far too slow to be effective as a strike fighter aircraft. But the new F-35
has all the technology and travels at mach 1.6 speed - about 1,200 mph. The
pilot can program takeoff, destination and landing. He will wear a pressure suit
to keep him from passing out in tight turns. The plane can generate as much as
nine times gravity in acceleration and turns.
A whole series of amazing technologies went into the
development of the F-35. But, instead of keeping it top-secret, our government
has chosen to tell the world - and our enemies - that we have it.
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Amazing Discoveries (1/1/2007)
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Penicillin: That Amazing Moldy Stuff!
By J. R. Church
Before the discovery of penicillin, infections were as feared
as cancer is today. Imagine living in any generation over the past 6,000 years
and facing the dangers of infection. For example, if you pricked your finger on
a thorn, or a sewing needle, or stepped on a nail, you could be in big trouble.
Your glands could swell up and require lancing, or a surgeon might have to
amputate your arm or leg to save your life. This was the story of humanity for
six thousand years. And infection was possible at any age. Imagine how many
hundreds of millions of needless deaths have plagued mankind over the centuries.
Following the carnage of World War I, British scientist
Alexander Fleming conducted experiments with bacteria. One day in 1928, a tear
fell from his eye onto the culture plate. Later, he noticed that a substance in
his tear killed the bacteria. He noted the incident, but didn’t know what to do
with. However, some years later, a similar coincidence occurred. Fleming left
his laboratory for the holidays, inadvertently leaving a discarded culture plate
lying out on his bench. He simply forgot to clean and disinfect the dish. A bit
of mold had fallen into the dish containing the bacteria, forming a clear patch.
When he returned, he recognized the possibility of what had happened. He decided
that the mold had created some kind of chemical antibiotic, which he named
penicillin, after the Penicillium mold that produced it. But Fleming could not
extract the bacteria-killing substance, so he moved on to other research.
The scientific aspects of the discovery were left for another
scientist to develop a decade later. He was the Australian scientist, Howard
Florey, who felt that no one person contained the knowledge and experience to
make major discoveries in the field of medicine. He had the foresight to
organize a team of specialists at Oxford University in the 1930s. One member of
his team, Ernst Chain, found an article about Alexander Fleming’s work while
flipping through a medical journal, and this prompted them to begin a careful
investigation of the anti-bacterial properties in mold — the stuff Fleming had
called "penicillin."
Individual members of the group concentrated attention on
various areas of their fields of expertise, meeting periodically to exchange
ideas. Chain worked with Edward Abraham on purifying penicillin. Norman Heatley
improvised methods for extracting penicillin, using ether. They grew the
cultures of mold in hospital bedpans. The liquid was drained and filtered
through parachute silk.
A. D. Gardner and Jena Orr-Ewing studied how penicillin
reacted with other organisms. Howard Florey and Margaret Jennings observed the
impact of penicillin on animals. Ethel Florey later worked with her husband on
clinical trials.
On May 25, 1940, the team performed one of the most important
medical experiments in history. They injected eight mice with a lethal dose of
streptococci bacteria. Four of the mice were treated with penicillin, while the
other four were used as controls. By the next day, the treated mice had
recovered and the untreated mice were dead. To say that Florey’s team was
excited, is a decided understatement. World War II was raging and soldiers were
dying needlessly. As quickly as he could, Florey set about to test the drug on
humans.
They knew that they had to find a way to mass-produce the
drug before it could be widely used and British companies were unable to help
because of the war. If they had patented their formula, the entire team could
have become very wealthy. But in those days, Howard Florey felt that it was
unethical to patent their medical discovery. He and Norman Heatley decided to
take a dangerous flight to the United States in a blacked-out plane across the
Atlantic and explain his method to drug companies in the United States.
A Department of Agriculture laboratory just happened to be
looking for a new use for a thick liquid — the by-product from a corn-milling
process. When this liquid was used to grow mold, they were able to extract ten
times the amount of penicillin. Mary Hunt, known as Moldy Mary because of her
enthusiasm in finding new sources of mold, discovered that growing mold in
cantaloupe was twice again as successful in producing penicillin.
By late 1943, only four years after the first mouse
experiment, and in spite of the war, mass production of the drug was underway.
By the end of the war, many companies were producing the drug, including Merck,
Squibb and Pfizer.
In 1943, Howard Florey took a supply of penicillin to treat
wounded troops in North Africa. Instead of amputating wounded limbs, he
suggested the wounds be cleaned, sewn up and treated with penicillin. It
appeared to be an absolute miracle! For the first time in human history, medical
science had been revolutionized. Since that time, untold millions of lives have
been saved from otherwise certain death.
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Amazing Discoveries (12/1/2006)
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Discovered: A Giant Chicken Seven Feet Tall!
How would you like to tangle with a chicken seven feet tall?
On April 3, 2006, scientists from the University of Utah and the Utah Museum of
Natural History discovered the remains of a new bird-like, meat-eating dinosaur
in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), southern Utah. Although
represented only by the fossilized remains of hand and foot bones, comparisons
with more complete skeletons found in Asia demonstrate that this animal was
about seven feet tall when standing upright.
Discovery of this Utah giant, which is much larger than its
counterparts in Canada and the northern U.S., nearly doubles the documented
range of these dinosaurs in North America, and demonstrates that they roamed
much farther south than previously thought. A scientific paper naming and
describing this animal, and published in the latest issue of the Journal of
Vertebrate Paleontology, was authored by Lindsay Zanno, a graduate student in
the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and Scott Sampson, chief curator at
the Utah Museum of Natural History (UMNH), and associate professor in the
Department of Geology and Geophysics.
The new dinosaur, formally dubbed Hagryphus giganteus, which
means "giant four-footed, bird-like god of the western desert" in reference to
the animal’s outward resemblance to a large land bird, its giant stature, and
its discovery in the Utah desert. Hagryphus is a member of the oviraptorosaurs,
a group of bird-like feathered dinosaurs with toothless beaks, powerful arms and
formidable claws. These animals are thought by some paleontologists to have been
omnivorous, feeding on a mixture of meat and plants. Although only the hands and
feet of Hagryphus are known, the scientists were able to use the animal’s close
relatives to estimate the size of the skeleton. The researchers say they do not
know why this dinosaur was so much larger than its northern cousins but
speculate that it may have been related to different environmental conditions in
the south.
The most spectacular finds of oviraptorosaur dinosaurs are
fossilized skeletons from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. These dinosaurs were
named oviraptors, meaning "egg-thief," because their remains were discovered in
close association with nests of dinosaur eggs, and it was thought that the
raptors were eating the egg contents. In more recent years, however, eggs have
been found with remains of baby oviraptors inside. And the adult oviraptors turn
out to have been sitting on the nests, brooding the eggs just as birds do today.
Thus, it appears that the adult oviraptors were protecting the embryos rather
than devouring them! Nevertheless, the name has stuck.
Oviraptorsaurs are known to have existed in a large portion
of Asia but were thought to have invaded only the northern portion of North
America, since previous examples were known only from Montana, South Dakota, and
Alberta, Canada. Discovery of Hagryphus in southern Utah demonstrates that this
group of dinosaurs was much more widespread, living across much of the western
United States. Hagryphus lived in a time of global warming, which melted polar
caps and produced exceptionally high sea levels. As a result, the central
portion of North America was flooded, isolating the eastern and western portions
of the continent. The dinosaurs preserved in GSENM were stranded on the western
landmass, which formed a narrow peninsula. The relationships between northern
and southern dinosaurs that occupied this western landmass during the Late
Cretaceous are part of a long-term research project undertaken by University of
Utah scientists.
Hagryphus is the first new dinosaur to be named from GSENM,
and just one of many exciting finds made during a five-year collaborative
project between the Monument and the University of Utah. The primary goal of
this project, funded by GSENM, has been to conduct paleontological surveys and
to excavate the fossils of dinosaurs and other life forms that existed in this
region during a period near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. Over the past five
years, GSENM and University of Utah and researchers, including dozens of
students and volunteers, have spent almost 17 months conducting field work
within the Monument boundaries.
GSENM encompasses 1.9 million acres, comprising a substantial
portion of southern Utah. Sampson states that, "due to the extremely rugged
nature of the terrain, this region was the last major area within the lower 48
states to be formally mapped. For the same reason, it now represents an untapped
and perhaps the last major dinosaur graveyard in this country to be explored."
The central region of the Monument, known as the Kaiparowits Plateau, preserves
one of the most complete records of Cretaceous life anywhere in the world.
However, access to the remote back country must be accomplished almost entirely
on foot, and fossils must either be carried out under human power or, if the
specimen involves a large dinosaur skeleton, via helicopter. u
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Amazing Discoveries (11/1/2006)
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"MAGIC" Anti-Aging Molecule Discovered
By J. R. Church
In
our December 2005 edition of Prophecy in the News, we reported that biologist
Cynthia Kenyon was looking for the key to longevity, having discovered "daf-2,"
a gene that had the potential to extend life. But now, it looks as if a South
Korean team has succeeded.
The Britain-based publication Nature
Chemical Biology claims that a team of South Korean scientists have discovered a
"cellular fountain of youth" — a small molecule that enables human cells to
avoid aging and dying.
Professor Kim Tae-Kook, at the Korea
Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, claims that the newly-synthesized
molecule, named CGK733, can even make cells younger.
Kim said, "All cells face an inevitable
death as they age. On this path, cells became lethargic and in the end stop
dividing but we witnessed that CGK733 can block the process."
The 41-year-old scientist continued, "We
also found the synthetic compound can reverse aging, by revitalizing
already-lethargic cells. Theoretically, this can give youth to the elderly via
rejuvenating cells.’’ Kim expected that the CGK733-empowered drugs that keep
cells youthful far beyond their normal life span would be commercialized in less
than 10 years.
However exciting the prospects are for
this new discovery, some were cautious about its practical therapeutic
application. Professor Kim Sung-hoon, at Seoul National University, said,
"Obviously, it is an innovative finding. But we need to see whether or not
CGK733 could really rejuvenate cells inside human bodies without generating side
effects.’’
The synthesized material was created using
magnetic nano-probe technology. Kim Tae-kook said, "We have the
magnet-associated technology to identify molecular targets inside living cells,
which allowed us to examine the mechanisms of CGK733 directly. Unlike other
research teams that must make candidates materials for drugs without being able
to see their intra-cell activities, we know the precise mechanism of CGK733. So
we have the better chance of making a success of the substance."
The team named their new discovery
"MAGIC," short for "magnetism-based interactive capture." MAGIC uses florescent
materials to check whether any drug can mix with targeted proteins inside the
cell. Kim said, "MAGIC is kind of a source technology to see inside cells. Based
on the method, we also found a pair of promising substances that can deal with
cancers."
Since Adam lived for 930 years, and other
antediluvian people were reported to enjoy similar lifespans, it stands to
reason that, given the right circumstances, the human body should still possess
the same potential. However, if you want to live forever, without the hazards
that eventually catch up with us all, then receive Christ as your personal
Savior. Jesus has the ability and the power to change our mortal bodies and
impart immortality. Now, that’s really living!
Library of Alexandria Discovered
In our September 2004 edition of
Prophecy in the News, we discussed the famed Library of Alexandria. We told
how Ptolemy collected the works of all the other libraries in the world, and how
the Arabian Islamic army burned the entire collection in the seventh century.
This year, archeologists have found the
ruins of that famous library. A Polish-Egyptian team, excavating the ancient
ruins of Alexandria, has uncovered 13 lecture halls, including central elevated
podiums where a lecturer could stand.
Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt’s
Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced the find during a conference at
the University of California, saying that the lecture halls could house as many
as 5,000 students.
Hawass said, "It is the first time ever
that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site
in the whole Mediterranean area. It is perhaps the oldest university in the
world."
Professor Wileke Wendrich, of the
University of California, said that the discovery was incredibly impressive.
The works of the world’s greatest minds
were collected and housed in the Royal Library of Alexandria. But, in A.D. 640,
Islamic Arab legions swept through Egypt on their mission to conquer the world
for Islam. It is said that the Arab military governor, baffled by the dusty
scrolls in the library, asked Mecca what to do with them.
"Burn them," he was told, for "either the
manuscripts contain what is in the Koran, in which case we do not have to read
them, or they contain what is contrary to the Koran, in which case we must not
read them."
The last of the treasures of antiquity burned for six months and were gone —
some forever — thanks to Islam.
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Amazing Discoveries (10/1/2006)
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Discovery of the Ultimate Stem Cell
By J. R. Church
No longer do scientists have to use stem
cells from embryos of aborted babies, or from leftover cells from an egg and
sperm bank. An adult stem cell has been discovered that can turn into any single
tissue in the body. Some think it is the most important human cell ever
discovered.
Until this discovery, only embryonic stem
cells were thought to have such properties. According to the Stem Cell Institute
at the University of Minnesota, it could mean cells from your own body could be
turned into all sorts of perfectly matched replacement tissues and even organs.
Just think! There would be no need to
resort to therapeutic cloning — cloning people to get matching stem cells from
the resulting embryos. Physicians would not have to genetically engineer
embryonic stem cells to create a "one cell fits all" line that does not trigger
immune rejection.
Researcher Ihor Lemischka of Princeton
University said, "The work is very exciting. They can differentiate into pretty
much everything that an embryonic stem cell can differentiate into."
Catherine Verfaillie, scientist at the
University of Minnesota found these cells in the bone marrow of adults.
According to a patent application, her team has carried out extensive
experiments. These confirm that the cells have the same potential as embryonic
stem cells.
Irvin Weissman of Stanford University
said, "It’s very dramatic, the kinds of observations [Verfaillie] is reporting.
The findings, if reproducible, are remarkable."
Two other labs claim to have found similar
cells in mice. One biotech company, MorphoGen Pharmaceuticals of San Diego, says
it has found them in skin and muscle as well as human bone marrow. But
Verfaillie’s team appears to be the first to carry out the key experiments
needed to back up the claim that these adult stem cells are as versatile as
embryonic stem cells.
The team extracted the adult stem cells in
a series of stages. Cells that do not carry certain surface markers, or do not
grow under certain conditions, are eliminated, leaving a population rich in
these special cells. Dr. Verfaillie says her lab has reliably isolated the cells
from about 70 percent of the 100 or so human volunteers who donated marrow
samples.
She said, "The cells seem to grow
indefinitely in culture, like embryonic stem cells. Some cell lines have been
growing for almost two years and have kept their characteristics, with no signs
of growing old."
If given the right conditions, adult stem
cells can turn into many different types of tissue: muscle, cartilage, bone,
liver and various types of neurons and brain cells. The team has shown that the
descendants of a single cell can turn into all these different cell types.
Furthermore, the group has done the tests
that are perhaps the "gold standard" in assessing a cell’s plasticity. For
example, she would place a single cell from a mouse into an early mouse embryo,
when it was only a ball of cells. Analyses of mice born after these experiments
reveal that a single stem cell can contribute to all the body’s tissues.
Adult stem cells contain many of the
properties of embryonic stem cells, but are not identical. For example, they do
not seem to form cancerous masses if injected into adults. This would be highly
desirable. She said, "The data looks very good. It is hard to find any flaws."
However, some scientists want to be shown
further proof to see if the adult stem cells actually function as suggested.
Freda Miller of McGill University said, "Stem cells that differentiate may
express markers characteristic of many different cell types, but simple
detecting markers for, say, neural tissue does not prove that a stem cell really
has become a working neuron."
Dr. Verfaillie’s findings also raise
questions about the nature of stem cells. Her team thinks that these are rare
cells present in bone marrow, and that they can be fished out through a series
of enriching steps. But others think the selection process may actually create
the adult stem cells.
More testing must be done to prove its
viability, but the prospects of extracting adult stem cells from a patient and
using them to grow new nerves, brain tissue, or organs, such as livers and
hearts, is enormous.
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Amazing Discoveries (9/1/2006)
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Wild Oxen Frozen in Time
By J. R. Church
While camped there, they looked
across the tundra and noticed some black objects on the surface of the
frozen river. Upon closer inspection, they discovered a troop of about
50 wild oxen frozen in ice. The oxen were trying to swim across the
river when they were suddenly frozen. Their bodies were held fast in the
transparent ice and looked as if they had been swimming. Their heads,
all pointed toward the distant shore, were still adorned with horns, but
birds had pecked out their eyes (see illustration).
This strange find defies
explanation. Normally, streams freeze from the top down. The ice
insulates the warmer liquid water below. The thicker the ice grows, the
harder it is for the heat below to vent. Freezing a stream fast enough
to trap more than 50 oxen in the process of swimming across is
practically impossible. The temperature would have had to plummet too
quickly for normal earth climate conditions.
Dr. Walt Brown, Ph.D., in his
book, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the
Flood (7th Edition), suggests that this story bears some striking
similarities with the discoveries of frozen mammoths in the Arctic. He
feels that the oxen could have only been frozen in the same great
catastrophe. The water would have had to plunge several hundred degrees
below zero within a matter of minutes.
His book explains how such a thing
could have happened. In the 1950s geologists discovered the Mid-Oceanic
Ridge down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (see inset). It wraps around
the Earth for a distance of 46,000 miles, literally from the Arctic to
the Antarctic, turning eastward under the horn of Africa, continuing
east past Australia, and turning northward up through the Pacific Ocean
all the way to Alaska. The scientific community calls these "tectonic
plates" but he calls them "hydroplates" (hydro, meaning "water").
He suggests that before the global
flood, a vast underground ocean lay beneath the Earth’s crust and a
single huge land mass covered these areas. Pressure in the subterranean
water "ruptured the crust, breaking it into plates." The escaping water
flooded the Earth and caused continents to push away, forming, for
example, North and South America as they appear today. Some landmasses
sank, changing the face of the planet and plunging certain mild climate
areas, namely Siberia and Alaska, above the Arctic Circle. It is also
possible that water and volcanic debris shot up into the stratosphere
with such force, the axis of the Earth shifted.
Some of Earth’s magma escaped the
gravitational pull of the planet and didn’t stop until they eventually
settled in an orbit about the sun somewhere between Mars and Jupiter,
creating the "Asteroid Belt."
Dr. Brown suggests that when the
fracture started, it traveled both north and south, wrapping around the
globe in a matter of a few hours, "jetting subterranean water above the
atmosphere," where some of it "fell back as hail." Some animals were
suddenly "buried, suffocated, frozen, and compressed by tons of cold,
muddy ice crystals. Blankets of super-cold ice, hundreds of feet thick,
insulated and preserved many animals during the flood phase."
Dr. Brown continues: "As the flood
waters drained off the continents, the icy graves in warmer climates
melted, and the flesh of those animals decayed. However, many animals,
buried in what are now permafrost regions, were preserved."
For more information, go to the
Internet website:
www.creationscience.com.
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Amazing Discoveries (8/1/2006)
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Where Did All the Muck Come From?
By J. R. Church
Inside
the Arctic Circle, a vast region of Eastern Siberia and Alaska (one-seventh of
the earth’s land mass) is covered in muck. This stuff is spread over a treeless,
flat terrain, with no surrounding mountains from which it could have eroded.
Where it came from remains a geological mystery.
According to In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for
Creation and the Flood, by Dr. Walt Brown, geologists in Russia have drilled
through as much as 4,000 feet of muck without hitting solid rock. In Alaska, one
group of oil drillers found an 18-inch-long chunk of tree trunk 1,000 feet below
the surface. It wasn’t petrified, just frozen. But the nearest forests are
hundreds of miles away.
At Prudhoe Bay, the ground remains frozen 1,900 feet down.
Wherever a hole was drilled in this area, oilmen found an ancient tropical
forest — between 1,100 and 1,700 feet below the surface. There were palm trees,
pine trees, and tropical foliage "lapped over each other," as though they had
"fallen in that position."
Dr. Brown asked, "How were trees buried under a thousand feet
of hard, frozen ground?" It seems that there was a "sudden dramatic freezing
accompanied by rapid burial in muck — now frozen solid."
With continual spring thaws, more and more wood is surfacing
and drifting ashore off the New Siberian Islands. The photo (right) shows a
shoreline well above the Arctic Circle, and thousands of miles from comparable
forests today. This driftwood was washed ashore on Bolshoi Lyakhov Island. The
wood was probably buried under the muck that covers the area. North flowing
Siberian rivers, during early summer flooding, eroded the muck, releasing the
buried forests. It is called "fossil wood" and is used as a main source of fuel
and building materials. Many of the trees were fruit bearing plum trees. Today,
no trees of this size grow in the area. Found on some of these trees, however,
were leaves and fruit (plums).
Muck is different from normal soil in that it contains
decaying matter. It could be described as "a black moist manure" used as
fertilizer. Much of the rest of the world contains topsoil called, "sediment."
It seems to me that a significant amount of topsoil worldwide probably started
out as muck, but was washed clean by four thousand years of rains. The soil in
North-Central Texas is black. But in Oklahoma much of it is red clay. The sands
in many desert areas could have been washed over the continents by incoming
giant tsunamis. Only a polar shift could have caused such a catastrophe.
About two feet under the sandy soil of West Texas is a layer
of cliché — a limestone deposit containing the bones and shells of sea
creatures, laid down before the topsoil covered it.
In 1942, during road construction in the Liglikhtakha River
Valley (the Kolyma Basin) an explosion opened a subterranean lens of transparent
ice encasing frozen specimens of some huge fish. Apparently the explosion opened
an ancient river channel with representatives of the ancient "ichthyological"
fauna. The superintendent of construction reported the fish to be of amazing
freshness, and the chunks of meat thrown out by the explosion were eaten by
those present. Any explanation for this strange discovery must recognize that
streams freeze from the top down. The ice formed insulates the warmer liquid
water below. The thicker the ice grows, the harder it is for the liquid’s heat
to pass up through the ice layer and into the cold air. Freezing a river so fast
that many large fish are frozen, edible, and underground, defies belief.
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Amazing Discoveries (7/1/2006)
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What Froze All the Mammoths in the Arctic?
By J. R. Church
Some say the big freeze came about 10,000 years ago. But
Carbon 14 tests have found one leg to be 29,000 years old, while the attached
head was 44,000 years old. Oops! Some "scientific" estimates go back as far as
325 million years, while one carcass was dated to about 4,000 years old.
However, it is evident that they all died in the same great catastrophe — frozen
within minutes, some with food still in their mouths and stomachs, and some
beasts still standing.
The first frozen mammoth was reportedly discovered in 1693.
Since 1800, there have been 58 reported discoveries, most in Siberia and six in
Alaska. One mammoth, discovered in 1799, was said to be "so fat ... that its
belly hung below its knees."
Rumors that their meat was a delicacy on the Czar’s dinner
table is probably not true. Nor did gold miners eat mammoth steak. But it is
true that hunters fed their dogs and other animals the mammoth meat. How did the
mammoths freeze quickly enough, so as to preserve their flesh and meat?
According to expert meat-packers, nothing short of a sudden -150 degrees below
zero could account for the near-perfect condition of the carcasses. Such extreme
temperatures have never been recorded on this planet.
According to Dr. Walt Brown, author of the book,
Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, the answer can only be found
in the causes of Noah’s Flood, some 4,500 years ago. He wrote:
"Let’s put aside all possible explanations for the frozen
mammoths and just ask what physically must happen for atmospheric temperatures
to drop to at least -150°F (so rapidly that large animals, as well as food in
their warm bodies, are preserved)."
Of the many explanations offered by the scientific community
(many of which border on the ridiculous), Dr. Brown’s explanation is the most
plausible. He said that only the extreme temperatures above our planet — in
outer space — could account for the "quick-freeze." Do you remember the Bible
saying that the "fountains of the great deep" were "broken up"
(Gen. 7:11)? Aside from fresh water near the surface, there is a deep abundant
supply of subterranean salt water containing, of all things, carbon dioxide.
Volcanic eruptions shot streams of carbon dioxide-laden water into outer space
where it was converted into "dry ice" and fell back to earth in the form of
muddy hail — so much of it, that the tiny frozen carbon dioxide droplets of
dirty muck covered some areas hundreds of feet thick. Dry ice is made from
carbon dioxide.
Dr. Brown explained: "Before the flood, the subterranean
water, sealed off from the atmosphere, contained no dissolved air. As the
"fountains of the great deep" exploded up through the atmosphere, rapid and
steady evaporation from the rising liquid forced gases away from, rather than
toward, each rising liquid particle. Therefore, the water that froze above the
atmosphere had little dissolved air and a lot of carbon dioxide. Both froze to
become a mixture of "water ice" and frozen carbon dioxide, or "dry ice."
Also, it has been found that frozen mammoths, along with
rhinoceroses, horses, and many other smaller animals contained particles of
silt, clay and small gravel in their lungs and digestive tracts. They had
breathed the worst "sand storm" (so to speak) that had ever swept over this
planet. Where did all the dust and dirt come from? Dr. Brown suggests that the
earth shifted, causing Siberia and Alaska, once a tropical region, to end up
within the Arctic Circle. Such a violent shift could have caused hurricane-force
winds, hundreds of miles per hour, to sweep across earth’s surface, pushing down
forests and animals into heaps of debris. Brown writes, "Mammoth carcasses are
almost exclusively encased in frozen muck. Also buried in muck are huge deposits
of trees and other animal and vegetable matter."
Some frozen mammoths were found upright. One mammoth, found
in 1901, near Berezovka, Siberia (see photo), had a broken pelvis and shoulder
blade, and a crushed leg. The violence preserved in the frozen tundra of
Northern Siberia and Alaska probably occurred all over the planet. But water
covered the earth and did not allow more temperate regions to preserve the flesh
of animals. Therefore, the bones of mammoths have been found as far south as the
United States and Mexico. The bones of dinosaurs and other creatures ended up in
pools of debris as well, but only their fossils remain.
We should take note of one more thing: this catastrophe
happened worldwide and at the same time. Furthermore, it happened, not 55
million years ago, as some say, but 4,500 years ago. How else could mammoth meat
be so well preserved? There is more to be said on the subject than we can
express in this article. For more information, go to www.creationscience.com.
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Amazing Discoveries (6/1/2006)
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Jewish Holy Days: The Making of a Baby
By J. R. Church
Zola
Levitt discovered an amazing correlation between Jewish Holy Days and the
gestation of a human baby, from conception to birth. While preparing for writing
a book for new parents, Zola contacted a gynecologist for some help in
understanding gestation. During that session, the gynecologist showed him a
series of pictures, pointed to the first one (an egg and a sperm) and said, "On
the fourteenth day of the first month, the egg appears." The statement struck a
chord in his Jewish mind because that was the date of Passover. He remembered
the roasted egg on his family table every Passover. Now, for the first time, he
knew what it meant! Not wanting to lead the gynecologist off from the subject at
hand, he didn’t say anything, but continued to listen.
The gynecologist continued: "The egg must
be fertilized within 24 hours, or it will pass on." This reminded Zola of the
Feast of Unleavened Bread and the seed or grain that "fell into the ground
and died" in order to produce a harvest, the firstfruits of which was
presented to God. Next, the gynecologist said, "Within two to six days, the
fertilized egg attaches itself to the wall of the womb and begins to grow." And,
sure enough, the Jewish evangelist thought, "The Feast of Firstfruits is
observed anywhere from two to six days after Passover!"
Next, he was shown a photo of an embryo
showing arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet, toes, a head, eyes, etc. The caption
said, "Fifty days." The gynecologist continued, "Around the fiftieth day, the
embryo takes on the form of a human being. Until then, we don’t know if we have
a duck or a tadpole." Zola thought, "That’s Pentecost!"
The next picture showed the embryo at
seven months. The gynecologist said, "On the first day of the seventh month, the
baby’s hearing is developed. For the first time, it can hear and distinguish
sounds outside the womb." Zola knew that was the date for the Jewish Festival of
Trumpets.
The gynecologist continued, "On the tenth
day of the seventh month, the hemoglobin of the blood changes from that of the
mother, to a self-sustaining baby." Zola thought, "That’s the Day of Atonement,
when the blood was taken into the Holy of holies!"
Next, the gynecologist said, "On the
fifteenth day of the seventh month, the lungs become fully developed. If born
before then, the baby would have a hard time breathing." And Zola thought,
"That’s the festival of Tabernacles, a time of celebrating the Temple, home of
the Shekinah glory or Spirit of God." In the New Testament, the Greek term
pneuma, normally translated as "breath," is applied to the "Holy Spirit."
Birth takes place on the tenth day of the
ninth month. Eight days after birth, in Jewish families, a son is circumcised.
Zola noted that the eight days of Hanukkah are celebrated right on schedule,
nine months and ten days after Passover.
No human being could have understood the
gestation period 3,500 years ago. The establishment of the Jewish Holy Days was
given to Moses by Jehovah, Himself. Its correlation with the human gestation
period is not only remarkable; it proves "Intelligent Design." It proves the
existence of an intelligence beyond this world. It proves that there is a
Creator God that guides the affairs of man.
Promoted to the Home Office
On Wednesday, April 19, 2006, Zola Levitt
went home to be with the Lord after a battle with lung cancer. The announcement
on his website added: "What a soldier’s testimonial — to stay at his post until
called away by Yeshua! Happy is the man whose work is his play."
In giving his testimony, Zola wrote:
"I came to the Lord on March 14, 1971,
through the urgings of Campus Crusaders at Indiana University. They challenged
me to read the Scriptures, particularly the Book of John. I went by night, like
Nicodemus, to the campus director’s home and brought a New Testament bound by
itself (what Dr. McCall, our ministry senior theologian refers to as ‘The
Amputated Bible’).
"When I read John’s cosmic views of the
Lord and the plan of salvation, I realized that I was reading Jewish writing
about a Jewish Messiah, and a Jewish way to God. All the Campus Crusaders might
have been Gentiles, but I knew Jewish thought when I read it. My prayer of 28
years ago was extremely simple. I said to God, ‘If You’re there, show me.’ An
open-minded look at the life I have led since that moment would have to conclude
that He has indeed shown me wonders."
The correlation between the Jewish
festivals and the birthing of a baby was just one of those "wonders."
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Amazing Discoveries (5/1/2006)
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Marco Polo’s
Discovery of Kublai Khan’s China
By J. R. Church
The sight was breathtaking for young Marco
Polo, barely in his twenties. Before him lay a city more magnificent than any he
had seen before. To him, it looked like Paradise. There were landscaped
highways, public parks, marinas, and canals with hundreds of arched bridges —
many of them so high that ships with masts could pass beneath them. There were
underground drainage systems, police and fire brigades, and a postal service.
The city’s name was Hangchow, more beautiful than the Emperor Kublai Khan’s
capital of Peking or Marco’s own home city of Venice, Italy.
Marco had traveled to China with his
father, Nicolo, and uncle, Maffeo — a three-year journey by caravan across the
entire width of Asia. Their route took them through Iran and Northern
Afghanistan, over the high Pamir Plateau, along the lower Silk Route, and across
the Gobi Desert into Mongolia. Finally, in May 1275, they reached Emperor Kublai
Khan at his summer capital just north of China’s Great Wall.
Marco described their struggle to climb
frozen mountain ranges and their battles against torrential rains, sandstorms,
floods and avalanches. In Afghanistan, they were delayed for a whole year when
Marco became ill. Bandits and local wars forced them to make many detours and
new plans.
One of the wondrous sights he encountered
was the burning of "black rock," which, when lighted, "burned like charcoal and
gave out a considerable heat [coal]." He saw a "substance spurting from the
ground that was used for burning in lamps [oil]." He also saw a material that
could be spun into thread and woven into "a cloth that would not burn when
thrown into a fire [asbestos]." He described crocodiles as "huge serpents ten
paces in length with jaws wide enough to swallow a man." He saw "wild cattle
that could be compared to elephants." Then, there were these strange "nuts the
size of a man’s head, pleasant to taste and white as milk [coconuts]."
The emperor was so impressed with Marco
Polo that he took him on hunting trips, in which he rode on royal elephants.
Marco was given the run of Emperor Kublai Khan’s opulent marble palaces and
summer resorts. He wrote that he was dazzled by the gilded carvings, art
treasures, and the elegant courtiers of the Emperor’s world.
Marco Polo was the first Western man to
describe China and its bordering countries, the first to outline a route across
the Asian continent, and the first Westerner to see the Pacific Ocean. While his
father and uncle amassed a fortune by trading, Marco spent 17 years working for
the Emperor, who made him his personal emissary and sent him on missions across
the empire. He visited such places as Indochina, Burma and Tibet. Later he
served three years as governor of the rich city of Yangchow, a center of arms
manufacturing, with 24 towns under his jurisdiction.
By then, the Emperor was getting old, and
Marco, his father and uncle decided they might not be safe under another
Emperor. Early in 1292, they set sail from the port of Zayton in ships
especially designed on the Emperor’s instruction, and headed home. They finally
arrived in Venice — after an absence of nearly 25 years. No one recognized them,
not even their own servants, who refused them admission to their own villa. The
servants had given them up for dead.
In order to convince people that they were
not impostors, they hosted a banquet; produced their travel-torn Tartar clothes;
then dramatically cut the seams to let a shower of precious gems fall out. This
was conclusive evidence of their claims, for who, but the Emperor Kublai Khan
could have provided such riches!
The world might never have heard about
Marco Polo, had it not been for the fortunes of war. Venice became embroiled in
a war with Genoa. Marco served as a "gentleman commander" and was captured and
thrown into a Genoese jail.
While incarcerated there, Marco Polo wrote
memoirs about his journeys through the kingdom of Kublai Khan. After the war, he
published a volume of his travels entitled: "A Description of the World."
When first published, it was denounced as a pack of lies.
Even on his deathbed in 1324, a priest
urged him to retract some of his tallest tales. With his last breath Marco Polo
declared: "I have not told half of what I saw!"
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Amazing Discoveries (4/4/2006)
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Neutrino: The Ghost Particle
By J. R. Church
It has been concluded that all matter
comes from neutrinos. Matter is made up of atoms. But atoms are made up of even
smaller "subatomic" particles — a nucleus consisting of protons and neutrons,
surrounded by a cloud of electrons.
But even that concept proved to be less
than adequate. On December 4, 1930, Wolfgang Pauli, a scientist from the Federal
Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, suggested that something else
has to be involved in the process of radioactive decay. Electrons alone do not
account for all of the energy released in nuclear fusion.
Scientists suggested that a tiny neutron
existed, dubbed a "neutrino" meaning "little neutral one." They thought that it
had no mass, no positive or negative charge, and moved at the speed of light.
With no electrical charge, it could flow through matter as if it wasn’t even
there. It could "walk through walls" ... so to speak.
In the early 1950s, Fred Reines
established the "Project Poltergeist." He thought, that since the neutrino had
no electric charge, it was invisible. However, there was a way neutrinos could
be detected by proxy. Although neutrinos usually flowed straight through matter
without any effects, just very occasionally a neutrino might collide with a
nucleus and cause it to eject a charged particle like an electron. Neutrinos may
be invisible, but neutrino interactions weren’t. He set up an oscilloscope near
a nuclear reactor. In Reines’ experiment the sign should be a distinctive double
pulse of energy on the screen of the oscilloscope — one from the ejected
particle, the other from the transformed nucleus.
It was a matter of watching an
oscilloscope and waiting for that double pulse. On June 14, 1956, Reines and his
colleagues announced the detection of the neutrino. He had seen the "double
pulse" — the poltergeist!
Zillions of these ghost particles are
created within the nuclear fusion of the sun. They stream out into the universe
and move through matter as if it wasn’t even there.
In 1965, physicists Ray Davis and John
Bahcall designed another experiment to detect neutrinos. They found a gold mine
in South Dakota for the site of the experiment. Some 4,850 feet below the
surface of the earth, Davis built a huge vat to hold 600 tons of chlorine
cleaning fluid. He figured that neutrinos would penetrate the earth, strike the
chlorine nuclei and produce argon. In 2001, he was awarded a Nobel Prize for his
discovery.
Working with Einstein’s theory of
relativity, the scientific community came up with a theory or "recipe" for
matter, which they called, "The Standard Model."
Basically, The Standard Model
determined that everything is made from just 12 basic ingredients. Among them,
the symbols of Ne, Nm, and Nt stand for three types of neutrinos. The Ne
represents a negatively-charged electron neutrino; the Nm (muon) represents a
neutrino with no charge at all; and the Nt stands for a positively-charged
neutrino. Some scientists call these "three flavors" in the "recipe."
Einstein determined that when something
travels at the speed of light, it moves in a state where time does not exist.
Therefore, if the neutrino has no mass and travels at the speed of light, then
it could not oscillate. When it was learned that the neutrino changes from one
form to another as it travels (oscillating through three stages over and over
again), then it has to have mass, and travel as less than the speed of light.
Ghosts? The Bible says, "Things which
are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Hebrews 11:3).
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Amazing Discoveries (3/3/2006)
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Atlantis — Legend or Fact?
By J. R. Church
Historians have long thought that the title, "Pillars of
Hercules," was a legendary name for the Strait of Gibraltar. Plato said that the
size of the island was "greater than" Libya and Asia.
He said that Atlantis had a huge land mass of about 800,000
square miles. An island that big could only have existed in a large ocean.
Therefore, historians were convinced that it could only have been located in the
Atlantic Ocean.
Plato related the story as told to him by Solon who, in turn,
had heard the tale from Egyptian priests. He said that Atlantis was once a
beautiful island, prosperous and powerful ... and that it consisted of an Empire
that dominated a vast region stretching from Africa and Europe.
The people of Atlantis were technologically advanced and
educated in the art of war. But, said Plato, when they offended morality, they
were swallowed up by the sea.
Men have searched the Atlantic Ocean for centuries, but have
never found evidence that supported Plato’s claim. However, there is an island
in the Aegean Sea, about halfway between Greece and Crete that might just solve
the mystery. It was once called Thera, but today, it is known simply as the
island of Santorini.
The civilization that Plato described closely resembled the
ancient Minoan Empire, which was thought to be centered on the island of Crete.
It was a highly advanced society, with written laws and skills in metalworking
and engineering.
However, late in the 15th century B.C., the Minoan Empire
disappeared, as abruptly and mysteriously as Plato’s Atlantis. For centuries its
disappearance puzzled scholars, who were unable to see how such a sophisticated
society could be eclipsed in such a short time.
Around 1470 B.C., its volcanic mountain, said to be 4,900
feet high, erupted with a blast that virtually destroyed the island. It exploded
with such violence that the central portion of the island collapsed into the
rapidly emptying volcanic chamber, and sank some 1,200 feet below the sea. It
seems that Thera’s mountain simply disappeared beneath the waters of the Aegean
Sea.
Perhaps Plato simply got his facts wrong.Remember, he
translated the story from the writings of his ancestor, who heard the story from
some Egyptian priests. After so long a time, and passing through so many lips,
stories seem to get stretched in the telling.
Instead of being destroyed 9,000 years before, Santorini was
destroyed 900 years before. And instead of the island consisting of 800,000
square miles, it had only 80,000 square miles.
But, Plato said that the island was "greater than" Libya and
Asia. Well, the Greek term for "greater than" is remarkably close to another
term that means "midway." Perhaps the mysterious island nation was simply
"midway" between Libya and Asia, rather than being "greater than" Libya and
Asia. Libya is located on the northern shore of Africa, west of Egypt, and Asia
probably referred to Asia Minor, today known as Turkey.
And what about the Pillars of Hercules? Doesn’t that refer to
the Strait of Gibraltar? Doesn’t Atlantis have to be west of the Mediterranean
Sea — out in the Atlantic? Well, there are two promontories on the coast of
Greece, near Crete, that are also called Pillars of Hercules.
Recent findings suggest that the Minoan Empire was destroyed
by a single volcanic explosion. Archeologists have uncovered a complete town in
the ashes of Santorini. Its similarities to the fabled Atlantis leave little
doubt that Plato’s paradise is no longer a legend.
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Amazing Discoveries (1/6/2006)
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The Valley of the Golden Mummies
By J. R. Church
This was reported to Zahi Hawass, the
Secretary-General of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities, who immediately
sealed the area and set about to plan one of Egypt’s largest digs. Hawass
estimates that the cemetery covers about three square miles and contains some
10,000 mummies, dating back over 2,000 years.
Unlike the tombs in the Valley of the
Kings, these tombs have never been plundered by robbers. These new tombs show no
sign of theft. Hawass said that most of the cemetery dates to the time when the
Roman Empire ruled over Egypt. He has found Romans as well as Egyptians buried
there.
So far, Egypt’s team of archeologists
explored four tombs containing 105 mummies. None were royalty, but many were
wealthy Egyptians — probably involved in the trade business in that area around
the oasis. The oasis is located near the Nile River Valley — an area known for
its wealthy businessmen who traded in dates and grapes. The mummies were laid on
top of each other in neat stacks. Each chamber had its own entrance and a hiding
room.
Some mummy coffins were carved in a thin
layer of gold. Rich Egyptians have masks made of a plaster-coated fabric, some
painted with Egyptian gods and goddesses. Other mummies were placed in pottery
coffins decorated with human faces. Poor Egyptians were simply wrapped with
strips of fabric.
The ancient Egyptians had a tradition of
surrounding the dead with items they could take to the afterlife — bracelets,
charms, statues, pots, and figurines of the gods. Many of the mummiew were
decorated with drawings of a winged figure, thought to be the sky goddess, known
as Nut. Others were decorated with depictions of the soul of the person who
died. There are wall painting of Anubis, the jackel-headed guide of souls to the
netherworld. Hawass also found coins dating from the days of Queen Cleopatra
VII, indicating that some of the mummies were buried around the time of her
reign.
Egypt’s team of archeologists, headed up
by Zahi Hawass, has only just begun to excavate this vast treasure that lies
just beneath the surface of the Egyptian oasis. The 105 mummies recently
excavated are thought to belong to the middle class. Hawass is convinced that
tombs of richer people will soon be located nearby. He is hoping that those
tombs will provide fabulous objects to help them learn how Egyptians lived 2,000
years ago.
On September 25, 2005, a festival on the
fabulous find was held at the Mubarak Library in Cairo. The festival offered a
view of some of the treasures, along with five of the mummies. They also
promoted a new book with photos of the excavations entitled
"The Valley of the Golden Mummies."
This glossy volume, published by
arrangement with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, was printed and bound in
Japan. In this book Zahi Hawas, director of the Giza Pyramids, shares his
experiences in excavating the tombs in area. These mummies date back to the
first and second centuries.
Unlike many other ancient Egyptian grave
sites excavated, these are not mummies of members of the royal family but rather
of wealthy individuals who were perhaps merchants of the oasis. The elaborate
golden masks and chest plates, bas-reliefs and hieroglyphic inscriptions
survived almost intact. The site thus offers a unique opportunity for
Egyptologists to study various aspects of social, political and religious life
in ancient Egypt. Since the excavation site remains closed to the public — only
five mummies are currently on display at the Bahariya museum — this book is for
the time being our only peep-hole into this amazing discovery.
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Amazing Discoveries (12/1/2005)
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How Would You Like to Live 500 Years?
By J. R. Church Cynthia Kenyon is a biologist. About ten
years ago, she was studying the genetics of nematodes … tiny transparent worms
and their offspring. They only grow to about a centimeter long and live about 20
days. One day, she forgot to throw out the lab dish, and came across it about a
month later. These tiny worms were now old … very old. They were shriveled and
lethargic. Their life-span was almost over.
As she gazed upon the elderly nematodes
she felt sorry for them, and the thought occurred, "I’m getting old, too."
Suddenly, the idea came to her that she should study their aging process! She
had never seen an "old" worm before, and their plight challenged her to see if
she could figure out why and how they were getting old.
In the course of her research at the
University of California-San Francisco, she learned that the worm only has 6
chromosomes, making it rather easy to find the gene that she dubbed "daf-2."
Though her colleagues tried to discourage her, in 1993, she discovered that
daf-2 was responsible for making a protein similar to the human insulin
receptor.
Back then, very few scientists expected a
single gene to have much effect on an organism, but Kenyon pursued the study.
She discovered a way to turn off the gene … and was surprised to see the worms
live twice as long! Eureka! She had found the proverbial "fountain of youth!"
Recently, she discovered another gene
(daf-16) which also has a similar effect. She was able to increase the lifespan
to six-times longer! She expanded the 20-day lifespan to over 125 days. Even
more important, the worms remained young and robust most of that time. They
looked and acted young. This is equivalent to 500 years for a human being.
After finding out that tiny worms could
live six times longer, she set out to see if it could be done in larger animals
… such as mice, the mammal used for most lab experiments that lead to
discoveries for humanity. Earlier this year, another lab reported that altering
the daf-2 gene in mice increased their life span by 26 percent, with no ill
effects. She thought, "If targeting this gene works in mice … much closer to
humans that roundworms are … why not in people?"
Finding the secret to longevity has become
her calling. Most diseases invade the elderly. If she could keep people young
and healthy, and turn off the daf-2 gene and the daf-16 gene (which she calls
"sweet sixteen") then she sees no reason why people shouldn’t live to be 500
years old!
As a young adult, she dropped out of the
University of Georgia, unsure what to do with her life. One day, her mother (a
college professor) brought home a book by James Watson entitled, "The
Molecular Biology of the Gene." It captured her imagination and led to her
study of genetics. She said, "It was like a path to understanding the secrets of
the molecular underpinning of life."
For her, the most intriguing thing about
genetics was the aging process. For example, she wondered why mice only live two
years, while similar-size bats live 50 years. Finding the answer has been her
life-long ambition.
She helped set up a biotech company aimed
at finding life-extending therapies, especially, for example, regulating daf-2.
She said, "If our company could make a pill, everyone would want it."
The proverbial "fountain of youth" is not
a fantasy anymore!
I have long felt that Jesus knew the
answer to long-life. When He comes to establish a 1,000-year kingdom, humanity
will live longer. Isaiah wrote, "There shall be no more thence an infant of
days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an
hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed"
(Isa. 65:20).
If Adam lived 930 years, what happened to
the rest of us? Adam’s fall and Noah’s Flood brought down the life span of the
human race. However, according to the Bible, such longevity was once possible.
Now, scientists are on the verge of discovering the secret. Perhaps such
research led to Daniel’s prophecy that in "… the time of the end: many shall
run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" (Dan. 12:4).
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Amazing Discoveries (11/1/2005)
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Adult Stem Cells Restore Feeling in Spinal Cord!
By J. R. Church
Scientists
in Korea used stem cells from an umbilical cord to restore feeling and mobility
to a paraplegic patient who had been paralyzed for 19 years. They gave her an
infusion of adult stem cells, with stunning results. After 15 days, she could
move her hips, feel her hip skin and raise her legs slightly. After 25 days, she
developed feeling in her feet.
Their research was published in Cythotherapy, a
peer-reviewed journal. The article said that she not only regained feeling, but
after 41 days, she showed some regeneration of the spinal cord at the site of
the injury. The scientists concluded that adult stem cells could be "a good
treatment method" for paraplegic patients.
Stem cells from an umbilical cord are considered "adult stem
cells" in contrast to embryonic stem cells. A human embryo has to be destroyed
in order to harvest its stem cells, thus raising ethical concerns. Some have
expressed enthusiasm over the use of adult stem cells, because human embryos
don’t have to be used.
Bioethics specialist Wesley J. Smith, was enthusiastic about
the study, but, writing for Lifesite. Com, said, "We have to be cautious.
One patient does not a treatment make." Dr. Smith is a senior fellow at the
Seattle-based Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the
Center for Bioethics and Culture.
Dr. Smith continued, "But still, this is a wonderful story
that offers tremendous hope for paralyzed patients. The fact that the patient
has a very old injury makes the results even more dramatic."
Dr. Smith said that he had known about the study, "but
because I didn’t want to be guilty of the same hyping that is so often engaged
in by some therapeutic cloning proponents, I waited until it was published in a
peer-reviewed journal."
Smith then pointed out that the study had been completely
ignored by the mainstream media in America. He remarked, "Can you imagine the
headlines if the cells used had been embryonic?
Roslin Institute Is Now Cloning Human Embryos!
The Roslin Institute first cloned Dolly the sheep. At the
time many expressed fear that they were paving the way toward cloning humans.
Now, they’ve done it. A report from Dublin, Ireland, says that scientists have
created the first embryonic human without the use of sperm — from the genetic
material of the mother alone.
They stimulated an egg to divide without the use of a human
sperm, to a stage of development where they hope they can harvest cells for
experimental research. Dr. Paul De Sousa, spokesman for the Roslin Institute
said, At the moment we have not managed to get stem cells from these embryos but
that continues to be our ambition." He made these remarks at the British
Association’s Festival of Science in Dublin. It was reported by the BBC.
Current British law allows the creation of cloned embryos for
so-called "therapeutic" use. Such tiny humans can be used in scientific
research, but not implanted into a mother and allowed to mature into a viable
baby.
This procedure has been given a new name — Parthenotes — from
the Greek term "parthenogenesis," meaning, "virgin birth."
By the way, when used in animals like monkeys, this technique
often results in abnormal development. Matthew O’Gorman, a spokesman for the
opposition, said, "It is another example of Frankenstein science, which
illustrates how out of touch with public opinion these recent scientific
developments are!" He continued, "They were granted a license by an unelected,
unaccountable quango!"
Advocates of human cloning claim that there is a difference
between human beings and human embryos — that therapeutic cloning requires that
cloned human embryos be killed for experimentation prior to birth.
However, Archbishop Renato Martino, the former Vatican
representative to the United Nations, said that therapeutic cloning is "an even
more serious offence against human dignity and the right to life, since it
involves human beings who are created in order to be destroyed."
He said therapeutic cloning "must be" prohibited, calling it
an "exploitation of human beings, sought by certain scientific and industrial
circles, and pushed forward by underlying economic interests.
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Amazing Discoveries (10/1/2005)
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Early Morning Heart Attacks and Strokes
By J. R. Church
Why
do people have strokes and heart attacks during early morning hours while
sleeping? A doctor once told me that blood pressure usually goes down during
sleep.
Ah-hah! That is not quite the way the body
works! In the early 1950s, Eugene Aserinsky, a graduate student at the
University of Chicago, did a sleep study, dividing non-REM sleep into four
stages, and accounting for about 75 percent of total sleep.
In each stage, brain waves become
progressively larger and slower, and sleep becomes deeper. After reaching stage
4, the deepest period, the pattern reverses, and sleep becomes progressively
lighter until REM sleep, the most active period, occurs.
REM sleep and dreaming are triggered by
the "pons" (see picture) and neighboring structures in the brainstem.
The pons sends signals to the thalamus and
the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for most cognitive activities. The
pons also sends signals to shut off the neurons in the spinal cord, thus
paralyzing us during this dream-state (probably to keep us from throwing our
arms about and hitting someone).
Then the brain tells the heart to pump
more blood. This raises one’s heart rate and blood pressure. It seems that
during this time, we could become ticking time bombs.
Many people have strokes or heart attacks
early in the mornings, either in their sleep, or after getting up with chest
pains. During this time, any sudden exercising or straining can be fatal.
A few years ago, before my heart surgery,
I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and noticed that I had a "black eye"
— a small bruise on the inside area of my right eyelid.
I thought, "Did I hit myself during
sleep?"
The next morning, I woke up with the
inside area of my left eyelid blackened. When I checked my blood pressure, I
found that it was extremely high — about 200 over 105. I am confident that I
came very close to having a stroke or heart attack.
When I expressed concern to my physician,
he dismissed it, saying, "I don’t even want to talk about it. It is of no
consequence."
However, my continuing concern eventually
led to the discovery that I had a birth defect — a coarctation (or narrowing) in
my aorta artery. The aorta is the half-inch tube leading out of the top of the
heart and descending behind it to feed blood to the lower parts of the body.
About four inches down behind my heart,
the aorta artery was closed to a narrow passageway of about 1/16th of
an inch. My heart was having to work extra hard to pump blood to the lower parts
of my body. This birth defect could have killed me at any time during my 63
years of living with it.
The surgeon told me that he had repaired
coarctations in some 5,000 babies over 30 years, but that I was his first adult
patient. When I asked him why, he said that he had never known anyone to survive
that long with my problem.
During a nine-hour procedure, he went into
the backside of my heart area, cut out about a two-inch section of my aorta
artery and replaced it with a dacron tube. Over the next year, the wall of my
aorta grew over the outside and inside of the dacron patch, permanently
embedding it in a new section of artery.
Even today, I keep a close watch on my
blood pressure. Normally, my blood pressure stays at about 120 over 70, but
during the night, it has gone up as high as 165 over 85. Most of the time, it
only goes to about 145 over 80.
Not being a doctor, I cannot advise anyone
on what to do about this, but I have started taking a blood pressure pill and an
aspirin before retiring for the night.
I used to take a blood pressure pill in
the mornings, but it seems to me that the time I needed it most was during those
early morning hours before waking up. I think the pill is more effective in the
first few hours after being taken. Who knows how many people could be spared if
they would take, at least, an aspirin before going to bed!
Also, when I wake up, and before I get out
of bed, I reach over to the end table, get my blood pressure device, and take my
blood pressure.
Whether or not it is high, I rise gently,
making sure that I do not overly exert myself. It seems to me that alarm clocks
can be dangerous for older people by startling the sleeper during that possibly
dangerous period.
I hope this amazing discovery about the
brain paralyzing the body and raising the heart rate during REM will help save
somebody’s life. Consult you doctor if you have any questions.
u
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Amazing Discoveries (9/1/2005)
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We’ve Got a Code in the Nose!
By J. R. Church
If
the eyes detect light wave frequencies and the ears detect sound wave
frequencies, what does the nose detect?
There is a small patch of sensor
cells in the roof of the nasal passage, about the size of a postage stamp called
the "olfactory epithelium." It contains neurons that send messages directly to
the olfactory bulb, located in the very front of the brain.
When an odor excites a neuron,
the signal travels along the nerve cell’s axon and is transferred to the neurons
in the olfactory bulb. From there, odor signals are relayed to both the brain’s
higher cortex, which handles conscious thought processes, and to the limbic
system, which generates emotional feelings.
But how does the olfactory
epithelium detect various odors? That is the question that has puzzled
scientists for years.
There are several possible
theories as to how smells are detected — two of which are the "physical" theory
and the "chemical" theory.
The physical theory proposes that
the shape of an evaporating molecule determine the smell.
The concept is that each receptor
cell in the nose has several different types of molecular receptor sites, and
that the selection and proportion of the various sites differ from cell to cell.
On the other hand, the chemical
theory assumes that the odorant molecules bind chemically to protein receptors
in the membranes of the olfactory cilia.
The type of receptor in each
olfactory cell determines the type of stimulant that will excite the cell.
Binding to the receptor indirectly creates a receptor potential in the olfactory
cell that generates impulses in the olfactory nerve fibers.
In 2004, Richard Axel (Columbia
University) and Linda Buck (Harvard Medical School) received a Nobel Prize for
their research in the science of smell. They are convinced that a thousand odor
receptor cells make up the olfactory epithelium, and that each receptor cell can
only become activated by an odor compound with specific molecular features, just
as certain keys fit certain locks.
An odor can be made up of a
compound of several molecular features, triggering different olfactory
receptors, in varying degrees.
The combined diversity of the
receptors themselves and the molecular features they capture generate a huge
breadth of signals fed into the brain, which form a unique odor "fingerprint"
allowing us to determine some 10,000 different odors.
These cells in our noses seem to
be activated by both the shape of the molecules and the frequencies they emit.
In a recent experiment, a particular compound, emitting the smell of almond, was
found to be the mirror image of another compound that emitted the smell of
coriander.
Both molecular structures were
identical, but opposite in construction. However, both compounds emitted the
same molecular frequency. The chemist noted that a particular chemical was
attached to both molecular structures, but in opposite positions. He thought
that if he could add that chemical to the molecular structure, it might be
attached differently. At least it was worth a try.
When he added more of this
particular chemical to the compound, the smell of coriander became the smell of
almond, thus proving that the shape of the molecules, plus the frequencies
emitted, determined how our brains perceived the smell. The compound was made up
of several chemicals and, therefore, produced a virtual symphony of frequencies.
The average person can
distinguish between 4,000 and 10,000 different odor molecules. However, it is
believed that there are seven primary odors: camphor, musk, floral, peppermint,
ether, pungent and putrid. Combinations of these primary smells account for
thousands of variations.
Recently, researchers found a
large family of genes that develop codes for odor receptors. The gene family is
one of the largest discovered — programming 500 to 1,000 different types of
receptors.
These receptors are randomly
arranged throughout the olfactory bulb. Scientists have shown that every neuron
in the olfactory bulb participates simultaneously in the act of smelling.
When information about the
stimulus hits the olfactory bulb, the entire bulb is active, rather than just a
few neurons. When the actual stimulus is received, however, the bulb takes on
different patterns according to the various smells. This forms a sort of map or
code that the brain recognizes as a unique scent.
So, we do have a code in our
nose! It seems that everything in this universe is constructed of a series of
codes that emit its own set of frequencies. It seems that Jesus created all
things as a sort of software ... a series of codes that make up all elements.
Think of it. We smell the frequencies emitted by
odor molecules. Someday, if we could reproduce those frequencies through some
electronic means, we might be able to build a "smellavision" in our television!
Well, maybe, that’s not such a good idea, after all.
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Amazing Discoveries (8/1/2005)
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New Invention: Diving Without an Oxygen Tank!
By J. R. Church
Israeli
inventor Alon Bodner has discovered a way to retrieve volumes of oxygen from
water, making it possible for humans to breath under water without the need for
cumbersome oxygen tanks. In fact, divers can now stay underwater as long as they
like. There are no heavy tanks with limited supplies of oxygen, and no weights
needed to counter-balance the buoyancy of the air tanks.
Bodner’s invention will also be able to
supply oxygen for submarines which, until now, have had to surface from time to
time to re-supply their oxygen tanks. Nuclear submarines currently use
electrolysis to separate oxygen and hydrogen from water, but standard submarines
do not have enough energy on board for electrolysis. Such equipment requires too
much energy to be practical. However, this new method, developed in Israel,
provides plenty of oxygen without heavy equipment or energy.
Bodner said that he got the idea from
fish, who do not perform chemical separation of oxygen from water. Instead, they
use the dissolved air in water to breathe.
IsraCast, a
news media in Israel, reported: "In the ocean the wind, waves and underwater
currents help spread small amounts of air inside the water. Studies have shown
that in a depth of 200 meters (yards) below the sea there is still about 1.5% of
dissolved air. This might not sound like much but it is enough to allow both
small and large fish to breathe comfortably underwater. Bodner’s idea was to
create an artificial system that would mimic the way fish use the air in the
water, thus allowing both smaller submarines and divers to get rid of the large,
cumbersome compressed air tanks."
His system uses a physics principle known
as "Henry’s Law," which states that the "amount of gas that can be dissolved in
a liquid body is proportional to the pressure on the liquid body."
Bodner used a rotating centrifuge to
create increased pressure inside a small sealed chamber containing sea water.
His centrifuge was able to extract enough oxygen from the water for a person to
breathe.
His discovery will absolutely
revolutionize the way divers maneuver and work under water. A laboratory model
of the system has already been built and tested. It runs on rechargeable
batteries, and can be worn in the form of a vest (see above).
Alon Bodner is now building a full-sized
prototype, and has already received a patent for the invention in Europe. He is
expecting to receive one in the United States as well.
According to the news report, "Meetings
have already been held with most major diving manufacturers as well as with the
Israeli Navy. Initial financial support for the project has been given by Israel
Ministry of Industry and Commerce and Bodner is currently looking for private
investors to help complete his project.
The idea of breathing underwater without
air tanks has been the dream of science fiction writers for many years. In the
George Lucas "Star Wars" movie, "The Phantom Menace," Obi-Wan whips out a
little Jedi underwater breathing apparatus and dives in. Now, it looks like
science fiction has turned into scientific fact.
In Deuteronomy 29:29, Moses wrote:
"The secret things belong unto the LORD
our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children
for ever, that we may do all the words of this law."
Therefore, it is quite fitting that this
scientific discovery should be made by a Jew. Not only do they have a mental
capacity for such discoveries, they have a divine promise for it as well.
In Daniel 12:4, the prophet is told that
in the last days, "knowledge shall be increased." Here is another sign
that we live in those days. A hundred years ago, there were no fancy
automobiles, no jet airplanes, no radios, no televisions, and certainly no
computers. There have been more inventions in the past century than in all the
other centuries combined.
Today, transportation has advanced beyond
the wildest dreams of mankind. We can drive an automobile from the frozen tundra
in Alaska to the southern tip of South America. We can board an airplane and be
anywhere we want to go in the world in a matter of hours. Rockets propel men
around the world in less than 90 minutes.
Over the past century, many of our modern
conveniences were invented by Jews. For example, the telephone was invented by a
Jew in Europe, but Alexander Bell stole his invention, and is credited with its
discovery. Albert Einstein not only discovered the formula for the atomic bomb,
he invented television. Today’s new invention by Alon Bodner is God’s way of
blessing the world through the Jews.
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Amazing Discoveries (7/1/2005)
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Vendyl Jones Plans to Find the Lost Ark This Summer!
By J. R. Church
Archeologist
Vendyl Jones has been looking for the ashes of the red heifer in the Judean
wilderness for over forty years. He has moved a lot of dirt, found a large pile
of incense and a small jar of anointing oil, but so far, has not found the famed
ashes. However, this year marks the 38th year since Israel gave the Temple Mount
back to Moslem control (1967), and Jones is convinced that he is on the verge of
finding, not only the ashes, but the Mosaic Tabernacle, complete with the golden
ark!
During all these years of digging, Jones
has followed the descriptions of buried treasure written in a copper scroll,
found in a cave near Qumran in the early 1950s. In the opening paragraphs of the
copper scroll, Jones sees a reference to 40 boulders, all of which he claims to
have located. He said that his current search is simply a matter of drilling a
small hole, lowering a miniature TV camera and spotting the Temple treasures.
Recently, an unnamed Kabballist has
granted a special blessing to his efforts, encouraging Jones that the "time is
right" to find it. He expects to locate the treasure on or before "Tisha B’Av"
— August 14, 2005. Tisha B’Av (the ninth day of the Jewish calendar month
of Av) is a solemn day to the Jews. Historically, it is the day the
twelve spies came back from the Promised Land. Ten of them told tales of woe,
scaring the people with stories of giants. The hearts of the people melted and
they refused to enter the land that God had promised to them.
Both Solomon’s Temple and Herod’s Temple
were burned on the ninth of Av. Because of Israel’s unbelief during this season
in 1967, many believe that God added another 40 years to Jewish agony. Jones has
refined it to only 38 years and says that Israel will be granted a special
divine blessing this August.
According to the Talmud, the Ark
was hidden in a secret passage under the Temple Mount. Vendyl Jones says that
the tunnel actually continues some 18 miles underground toward the east and once
exited in the cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea. He has been in that tunnel, but
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