BACKPACKER CHARLIE

It’s early morning on Monday 18^th January, 1836, and here comes a 26 year old British 'backpacker' from the Blackheath Inn, going for a stroll to check out Govett’s Leap cascading into the Grose Valley in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. Charles R. Darwin has recently completed his studies in theology at Cambridge University and has been enjoying the trip of a lifetime aboard HMS Beagle as a friend of the captain. He stands at a lookout 997 metres above sea level, in fact 92 kilometres from the Pacific Ocean, and imagines that this valley was formed “by the undulations of an open sea…and slow elevation of the land…narrow gorges were cut by the retreating sea….”                                                                                                   

Slow elevation? - or not so slow?...                        

Maybe it happened quicker than you think, Charlie!

That waterfall is a Scottish ‘leap’ and this backpacker’s leap of imagination is so descriptive of the Great Flood is it any wonder today’s geologists ignore it. 

We can't have Science admitting there was once a global flood!

WIDE-A-WAKES

Wake up!

Our hometown of Port Macquarie services Lord Howe Island, 590 kms out in the Pacific Ocean. Among the vast variety of birds on the island we could find maybe 100,000 sooty terns (Sterna fuscata) nesting.

Lord Howe Island was not discovered until 17 February, 1788 when HMS Supply was sailing to Norfolk Island to establish yet another British penal settlement. Would you believe?...Wildlife from LHI saved the mighty British Navy in Port Jackson (Sydney) from dying of starvation!

Mt. Lidgbird and Mt. Gower tower over the lagoon

What’s so special about sooty terns?                                        

They are pelagic - living out over the vast ocean for most of the year - so must sleep ‘on the wing’ by shutting down half of their brain while flying.                                   

No wonder they’re called ‘wide-a-wakes’!...plus they like to share with you their noisy awakeness at night.

So did one of these clever little birds just think it was a good idea to take a nap in cruise, then showed his mates how to do it?                    

Or did our clever Creator give them all this ability?

THE BIONIC EAR

Meet an otolaryngologist!

250,000 people world-wide can now hear thanks to Professor Graeme Clark developing the ‘bionic ear’… but first he had to ask God for help. Designing the cochlear implant baffled him until he was led to pick up a blade of grass and poke it into a turban shell, while holidaying in 1977 at Minnamurra Beach on the Illawarra Coast of NSW. Eureka!

What inspired his career as an ear-nose-throat surgeon?              

As a 10 year old he noticed his pharmacist father, who was hard-of-hearing, shouted at customers: “Speak up!”
How embarrassing.

How does the bionic ear work? The processor behind the ear converts sound to digital code transmitted wireless to the receiver stimulator under the skin, which sends electrical impulses to stimulate the cochlea’s hearing nerve which sends impulses to the brain. 

All thanks to God creating a turban shell and a blade of grass!

HI-TECH OPTICS

Beautiful too!

 Introducing the most sophisticated, binocular digital video camera system the world has ever known - the human eye. Check out its features:
sensitive to just 1 photon of light
sensitivity 10 billion:1
120 million rod receptors for light & movement detection
6 million cone receptors for technicolour & detail detection
auto synchronised focus for depth-of-field detection
auto aperture for light control
lens caps (eyelids) and dust resistant (eyelashes)
auto recycled tear lubrication
water & infection resistant
self-healing
Just new on the market?

Nah....been around since Adam was a boy!

Photocredit: gopixpic.com

PLANET EARTH

We continue our series: ‘Holy Bible of Science’ following the 4th article: ‘More science…wind & waves’: http://hotspuds.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/more-sciencewind-waves.html

 

Does Planet Earth look round or flat to you?...from the first ever colour photograph taken from outer space.                 

The Jewish prophet Isaiah wrote in about 700 BC:

"It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth..."        Isaiah 40:22

…and that’s centuries before Aristotle claimed the Earth was spherical.                             

By the way, that’s just a colour chart below Earth which hangs on nothing in space, just as Job said about 3,500 years ago:

“He…hangeth the earth upon nothing.”          Job 26:7

Okay then, what about Earth’s continents?                                              
In 1912, German meteorologist Alfred Lothar Wegener proposed the theory of slow ‘Continental Drift’ from one super-continent now known as Pangaea (‘all lands’), comprising Laurasia in the north and Gondwanaland in the south.

Earlier, in 1859 French-American geographer Antonio Snider-Pellegrini proposed “rapid, horizontal divergence” at the time of the Great Flood.

Flemish mapmaker Abraham Ortelius was the guy who ‘put the world on the map’ with the first ever atlas: Thesaurus Geographicus. Way back in 1596 he suggested: “…Americas were torn away from Europe and Africa…by earthquakes and floods…”

So was there once just one super-continent? Absolutely!...  

“And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas: and God saw that it was good.”      Genesis 1:9-10   

No arguments there, but were today’s continents torn apart or have they been drifting apart over millions of years? Who was right?                                                    

Why not check with eye-witness account?                                                            

”For in [Peleg’s] days was the earth divided…”         Genesis 10:25                               
(Peleg lived 239 years)       

Based on eye-witness report, it takes only half a dozen words to describe the parting of the continents only ~4,000 years ago!

What do you know!...plate tectonics in the Bible - long before the science of ‘geology’ existed.   
Fantastic?  Of course!

This is the 5th article in the series: 'Holy Bible of Science' which appears on hotspuds.blogspot.com.au

NEXT:
 

Acknowledgements:  
scienceblogs.com  
geologyfreak.wordpress 
en.wikipedia.org   
pubs.usgs.gov     
ortelius.com        

Image credits:
commons.wikimedia.org      
antiqua-global.art.com      

A TURKEY FOR A DAD

Allow me to introduce this handsome bird, Alec. 

His proper name is Alectura lathami (Australian Brush Turkey) and he checks out the visitors at Shelly Beach near Port Macquarie, NSW.  His Mum and Dad never taught him any lifeskills, in fact, he may have never met them, but he will care for the eggs in his magnificent nest as if they were solid gold.  "Why bother mate? Those chicks will leave home as soon as they hatch."  

Let's find out more about Alec's incubator skills and those very special eggs, prized by dingoes, pythons, goannas and people.

The male Brush Turkey laboriously builds his nest on the ground, 4 - 5 metres in diameter and 1-1.5 metres high, from sticks, leaf litter and soil.  One or more females will lay their eggs in his jealously guarded nest over a 5 month period, with the eggs requiring incubation for 50 days.  He will maintain the temperature of the nest at 33 degrees C (91 F) and the humidity at 99%, checking regularly by testing soil in his beak from test holes in the nest.  When the chick hatches it must struggle unassisted to the top of the nest and immediately begin its independant life of finding food, running, retreating into branches of trees and nest building or egg laying, without any training from Mum or Dad.
The question is, why does it take an American biologist to tell us this about our local bird?.....  Apparently the thick egg-shells have pores that are cone shaped, so that as the chick scratches for more air, the holes dilate and admit more oxygen.
Wow!  Is that good design or good luck?

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Michael Morcombe, 'Field Guide to Australian Birds', 2000, Steve Parish Publishing, Archerfield,    
Reader's Digest 'Complete Book of Australian Birds', 1990, Surry Hills, NSW
Dr. Jobe Martin, biologist
Photo Credit: Tony Sullivan

'BY JUPITER!'

“E fantastico!", exclaims Galileo.                                                                                                     

“Nah...listen Galileo, that’s just JUPITER with a few moons to keep it company.”                                  

Is that so??

It’s January 1610 and Galileo Galilei is 35 kms from Venice, checking Jupiter through his new-fangled telescope. Although he can’t realize Jupiter’s size he finds 4 moons. For cryin’ out loud - he's even inclined to agree with Copernicus proposing that outrageous theory that the 6 known planets orbit around the Sun...but he still 'hedges his bets' on that one. Is Galileo wrong to refer to these moons as planets? 

‘Jou pater’ (Father Jove) is HUGE: a mass greater than all other planets put together, and compared with Earth: 318 times greater, a volume 1000 times larger, and a magnetic field 14 times stronger. Could you take 10 hours to rotate your belt at 45,250 kmh?  This unique gaseous planet RADIATES twice the energy it receives, being the centre of its own MINIATURE SOLAR SYSTEM with at least 64 satellites including the very unique Galilean Moons: volcanic Io, icy Europa, rocky Ganymede and Callisto of silicate and ice. Its Great Red Spot alone is three times the size of Earth and has been storming for at least as long as we’ve been watching.

By the way, Jupiter sits right where Bode’s Law says it should be at 5.2 times further from the Sun than Earth, and in its 12 year orbit spends one year aligned with each of the constellations of the Zodiac – right now it’s Cancer’s turn.  How neat.

Did we learn anything new?

Photo credit: noao.edu