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When NASA scientists opened the sample return canister from the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample mission in late 2023, they found something astonishing. Dust and rock collected from the asteroid Bennu contained many of life’s building blocks, including all five nucleobases used in DNA and RNA, 14 of the 20 amino acids found in proteins, and a rich collection of other organic molecules. These are built …

The James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021 and on active duty since 2022, has gotten its legs viewing already known exoplanets but can now take credit for its first direct image of a previously unknown one. Exoplanets have been detected since 1992 when two, named named Poltergeist and Phobetor, were found orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. Since then they have become key targets in astronomy…

Nasa’s Curiosity Mars rover has detected the largest organic (carbon-containing) molecules ever found on the red planet. The discovery is one of the most significant findings in the search for evidence of past life on Mars. This is because, on Earth at least, relatively complex, long-chain carbon molecules are involved in biology. These molecules could actually be fragments of fatty acids, which …

Despite claims of anti-vaccine activists no different than groups that used to claim vaccines cause autism, COVID-19 vaccines do not impact fecundability—the probability of conception per menstrual cycle—in female or male partners who received the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson vaccines. The prospective study instead indicates that COVID-19 infection among males may temporarily re…

You all may recall the memorable, late Tito the wonder dog. Hank Fox has done something thought-provoking: he has frozen away some of Tito's cells, on the chance of cloning him. At 325 degrees below zero, the essence of Tito sleeps. I got a call today from Genetic Savings & Clone, the company that stores tissue samples of pets, and they told me the culturing of the samples I'd sent them was succe…

Here's an excellent case: applying evolutionary principles to cancer improves diagnosis. You are a collection of (mostly) dividing cells, a population moving forward in time, and understanding that explains a great deal about how changes, like cancer, can occur. Okay, I wasn't paying close enough attention, I guess. Who was saying doctors didn't need to know evolution? yeah, but that's just *micr…

I seem to have become Art—I've been rendered by Nemo Ramjet at a fascinating site that contains much strange and alien art, and (warning!) some of a rather sexual nature. Somehow, it does seem fitting, with this nice picture of yours truly bearing a corona of larvae and in the embrace of a cephalopod. Thanks, Nemo! The thanks goes to you PZ, for your wonderful weblog. I always try to combine "art…

They do seem to have some more sensible leaders. The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women. "To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," she said to me last week. "I will personally esta…

From the comments, here's something bizarre: creationists (at least the ones at Answers in Genesis) have defined life…and it excludes squid! I have yet another reason to reject the Bible, in this case for disrespecting perfectly wonderful invertebrates. Many scientists make the distinction that vertebrates have hemoglobin, hence red blood, and invertebrates contain other oxygen transporting prote…

I've been reading Hazen's Gen-e-sis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). I haven't finished it yet, but it led me to appreciate this post and this diagram more. Isn't that the truth? What creationists see as a weakness, that we have so many ideas (and so many gaps), we see as a strength. I thought the creationist idea of abiogenesis was "Dirt ---> Man". Back when I studie…

We need more mathematical analysis to counter the claims of creationists, and here's a good one: Mark Chu-Carroll has started a new weblog titled Good Math, Bad Math, and it right now is an excellent post that takes apart Dembski's mangling of the NFL theorem. Recommended, and welcome to blogtopia! When I first saw that blog it took me about 10 seconds to decide it HAS to go in the Bloglines. Imm…

Juravenator starki is a new small theropod dinosaur from the late Jurassic—the specimen is exceptionally well-preserved, and retains fossilized imprints of its skin. The surprising thing about it is that its anatomy puts it smack in the middle of a large clade of coelurosaurs, members of which are known to have feathers…and its skin is bare and scaly. What it suggests is that feather evolution wa…

Atrios was getting some heat (most of it misplaced) for saying he was sick of the Christian whiners on the Left who make up stories of their martyrdom in the Democratic party—the same nonsense I was snarling about. While Atrios can say he's not hostile to religion—he's just apathetic—I can't, and reading some of the other reactions to the whole business just confirms my contempt. I like Avedon Ca…

There were all kinds of rumors today (from Drudge, of all places) that NASA was going to announce some major discovery related to life elsewhere in the solar system. While that would be incredibly cool, I was dubious—anyone remember the Martian "bacteria"? NASA has a rather poor reputation for this sort of thing. Anyway, Bad Astronomy has the actual news: it's interesting, but the media blew it w…

Ah, the life of the female giant Australian cuttlefish…males fight for her affections, and during the mating season she will have sex with 2-8 different males each day, with an average total of 17 copulations per day. She can be picky, too, and rejects most of the mating attempts (yet still manages to mate up to 40 times a day). It must be a good life. Males have a rougher time of it, I would thi…

My daughter is learning about evolution in high school right now, and the problem isn't with the instructor, who is fine, but her peers, who complain that they don't see the connections. She mentioned specifically yesterday that the teacher had shown a cladogram of the relationships between crocodilians, birds, and mammals, and that a number of students insisted that there was no similarity betwe…

Yesterday's [21 November 2005] post about squid had a most unsatisfying conclusion, so I feel compelled to mention two things: squidblog has a brief explanation of squid jet propulsion, and I've dug up another older paper on squid movement. Even better, it's about squid nuptial dances and mating. Here, see? Pretty squid post coitus planting a string of fertilized eggs on the sea floor. This work …

As part of the ongoing migration to the new site, I've brought over some strangely popular articles: Tentacle sex, Tentacle sex, part deux, Squid nuptial dances, and Octopus sex. All across the world, people are wondering what the etiquette is if they should find themselves in a romantic situation with an amorous cephalopod, and it is my duty to provide the answers. If only I'd thought of bringin…

Matthew Nisbet has a good list of things we ought to be doing. Number one on the list is what I also think is the biggest thing we have to do: SCIENCE EDUCATION REMAINS CENTRALLY IMPORTANT. And I have to admit that educating you, the readers of this weblog, is actually a small part of the task. The real job lies with our public school teachers—they're the ones shaping the education of the next ge…

nice bauplan on that mollusk Well, now I know what kind of critter lived in that shell I found on Catalina Island last summer... Holy crap! That's amazing! Absolutely beautiful animal! Would love to have a underwater time machine for the period in history when cephalopods were common. It's beautiful! Gorgeous. Where and how deep does that critter live? That is one pretty nautiloid! Incredible! Ab…