From EurekAlert:

Planetary scientists have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs — an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth’s history.

The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. And the gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years — the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out.

Its size and location — in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia — also suggest that it could have begun the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent by creating the tectonic rift that pushed Australia northward.

Scientists believe that the Permian-Triassic extinction paved the way for the dinosaurs to rise to prominence. The Wilkes Land crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, which marks the impact that may have ultimately killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub meteor is thought to have been 6 miles wide, while the Wilkes Land meteor could have been up to 30 miles wide — four or five times wider.

A federal judge told the DOJ and NSA that they can’t stop a domestic spying lawsuit.  Hey, another smart judge who’s more interested in justice than politics.  “U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor also criticized the Justice Department for failing to respond to the legal challenge…”  Apparently the government felt no response was necessary if the case would be thrown out under the “state secrets privilege” — which is what the judge temporarily denied, although she will hear the government’s case in that regard after the summary judgment hearing.

The Iraqi Prime Minister lashed out at US troops for the mounting civilian casualties, especially in light of recent discoveries regarding intentional assaults on civilian targets — incidents that can only be described as massacres.  What the hell has gone wrong with our country, with our ideals?

It looks like yet another example of un-Intelligent Design occurring as we watch.  An African fish shows signs of forming two separate species.  Researchers have identified significant evidence that indicates “[t]he fish appear to be on the verge of forming two separate species.”  This would be the first documented example of the evolutionary process called sympatric speciation.  I wonder how the IDiots will spin this very clear example of evolution in action.

Friday Ark #89, as always, has all sorts of cool animal news and is updated through Sunday.

All I can say is “Wow!”  Meet Chance, a 13-year-old wildlife ambassador who has been working with animals and promoting conservation since he was but a wee tot (he was helping with rescue and rehabilitation when he was five!).  This kid is impressive and well spoken.  To get a good idea about him, just read his 6th-grade English paper that explains it all.  This kid is awesome.  I just wish more adults could see what this child already clearly understands, not to mention have the level of conviction he has to take a stand at such an early age.  Again, “Wow!”

Jon does it again.  Why do you think the DHS cut anti-terrorism funds for both New York and Washington, DC by 40%?  The explanation was that those cities had few or no national monuments or places of interest.  You know, like the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, New York Stock Exchange, Times Square, and places like that, stuff we’d want to protect and that likely represents excellent “places of interest” for the enemy.  Well, Jon explains that this is a perfect example of Homeland Security thinking outside the box.  Hysterical!

This is very interesting.  Let’s see what other researchers find during their tests.  From Popular Science:

Is It Raining Aliens?
Nearly 50 tons of mysterious red particles showered India in 2001. Now the race is on to figure out what the heck they are

As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis’s laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens. In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples—water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis’s home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001—contain microbes from outer space.

Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600°F. (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250°F.) So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.

There is a lot more work to do in this case and not all terrestrial explanations have been disproved, but the initial results are compelling nonetheless.  If it is some innocuous event, so be it.  If not…

For here we may mount from this dull Earth, and viewing it from on high, consider whether Nature has laid out all her cost and finery upon this small speck of Dirt. So, like Travellers into other distant Countrys, we shall be better able to judge of what’s done at home, know how to make a true estimate of, and set its own value upon every thing. We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorned as well as our own.

— Christiaan Huygens