Image copyrightVELIZAR SIMEONOVSKI, THE FIELD MUSEUM/REUTERS

Scientists in China have made a colourful discovery – a bird-like dinosaur with rainbow-coloured feathers. The fossilised remains were found in the north-east of China and it’s believed to have lived 161 million years ago during the Jurassic Period.

It’s been called Caihong juji, which is the mandarin word for ‘rainbow with the big crest’. When dinosaur experts studied the fossil they could see evidence of brightly-coloured plumage.

Cardiologists at the Catharina hospital in Eindhoven have succeeded in the localized cooling of the heart during a heart attack, a world first.

By cooling part of the heart prior to and following angioplasty, the cardiologists believe that the damage from a heart attack can be limited. On 11 January cardiologist Luuk Otterspoor received his doctorate at Eindhoven University of Technology for this study.

Perhaps the key experiment which led to Einstein postulating his theory of relativity in 1905, in particular the invariance of the speed of light and the complete absence of a medium (the “aether”) for light being a wave, was the Michelson-Morley Interferometer Experiment of 1887 (see image above).

Despite noticing some potential dependence of light speed with direction, this was considered far enough below the expected result to declare the result “null” – namely there is no aether medium for light as originally proposed by Maxwell and others.

For well over three decades now the world has been held to ransom by a perceived “consensus science” that has convinced scientists and politicians alike that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) cause a myriad of “extreme” weather events and other claimed but unrelated issues.

We have been told repeatedly that the “consensus science” has been settled for over a century and that carbon dioxide is a so-called “greenhouse gas” that “traps heat” and thus makes the earth “warmer than it would otherwise be”. ^{1, 2}

There exists on the internet, at the time of this writing, a video, purported to be: ‘Climate 101 with Bill Nye’
-although we never actually see his face- with the comment that anyone can replicate it.

In this video, a simple experiment is presented where two glass jars with thermometers in them, one filled with air and one filled with CO2, are exposed to energy from heat lamps, to show how CO2, as compared to normal air, causes excess temperature rise when exposed to heat.

Frustration with criticism over the fate of polar bears decades into the future has plagued consensus experts since they first brought their concerns to the attention of conservation organizations in the mid-2000s.

But now that catastrophe has not materialized, these researchers have shifted their defensive style from logical reasoning to relentless insult.

Many people are actively worried about global warming. And it frustrates them that skeptics and “deniers” refuse to acknowledge the “science” of such an urgent, man-made problem.

But there may be valid reasons to dispute the theory that man is responsible for climate change. And to demonstrate why the issue isn’t so clearcut here’s a basic climate question to ponder:

As the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere increases, does its ability to absorb heat increase, decrease, or remain the same?

The recent cold snap was “highly unusual in the current climate,” and not the product of man-made global warming, a new study found.

But wait, other scientists said the two-weeks of frigid weather and snow in the eastern U.S. was “very much consistent with our expectations of the response of weather dynamics to human-caused climate change.”

Fresh analysis of government scientific records reveals the idea of ‘long-settled’ science in the greenhouse gas theory is a myth. The claim human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) act as a control knob on climate only appeared in consensus science since the 1980’s. Prior to that time, official records show the theory as “abandoned.”

Climate scientists grossly underestimate the effect cloud cover has on global temperatures, according to researchers at Princeton University’s environmental institute.

Climate models factor in too much of the sun’s daily heat into their projections about what the Earth’s land temperatures could look like long-term. Inaccuracies in accounting for daily cloud cycle distorts the effectiveness of a tool scientists use to measure climate change, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.

A broad survey of climate change literature for 2017 reveals that the alleged “consensus” behind the dangers of anthropogenic global warming is not nearly as settled among climate scientists as people imagine.

Author Kenneth Richard found that during the course of the year 2017, at least 485 scientific papers were published that in some way questioned the supposed consensus regarding the perils of human CO2 emissions or the efficacy of climate models to predict the future.

The search for aliens has taken another mysterious turn after scientists said they have discovered the essential ingredients for life on ancient meteorites.

It could be a groundbreaking year — in the worst way possible. Normally, when someone tells you terrible things are going to happen in the year ahead, it’s not worth fretting about.

After all, from climate change to rapidly dwindling biodiversity to, well, a chocolate crisis, we’ve already got plenty to worry about. Why add another dollop of despair?

But when that someone is Roger Bilham, a prominent geologist at the University of Colorado, it may be prudent to strap on our seismic seat belts.

Image copyright: DR SETH SHOSTAK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Astronomers have fresh insight on a mysterious source of recurring radio pulses from space. Fast radio bursts (FRB) are one of the most persistent puzzles in astronomy. While usually short-lived, one source in the sky was sending out repeated flashes.

Now, a team says the emission may be caused by a dead star located in a very powerful magnetic environment.

Details were reported here at the 231st American Astronomical Society meeting.

Why is there snow on mountain tops was one of the very first questions that I asked my scientific mentor, Hans. It is indeed a difficult question. If say the summit of Mt Everest or Mt Blanc is nearer the Sun, surely these summits should be hot.

It seems illogical, especially in view of the one piece of pure Physics that I have proposed, namely that Radiation must encounter mass for heat to be generated. Inter alia.