An interesting post at physorg.com on recent work by University of Utah scientists Henry Harpending and Gregory M. Cochran, who have previously argued that the high IQs of Ashkenazi Jews can be attributed to genetic selection. Their more recent work suggests that 7 percent of human genes are undergoing rapid, recent evolution.

The quotes Cochran as saying: “History looks more and more like a science fiction novel in which mutants repeatedly arose and displaced normal humans - sometimes quietly, by surviving starvation and disease better, sometimes as a conquering horde. And we are those mutants.”

Harpending is now studying whether the mutation that made Indo-European speakers lactose tolerant “gave them more energy, allowing them to conquer a large area. ”

got milk?

snikt ™

The properties of one of Saturn’s moons may ring the death-knell for atheism, NASA/JPL announced today. Astronomer Gerhard Baalschmidt was routinely scanning the files of the hundreds of small orbiting objects imaged by the Cassini-Huygens space probe when he came across a newly-identified moon that caught his attention.

The small moon, known as S/2005-S3.14, can seen in this image below the rings of Saturn. The other moon in the picture is Enceladus, which is many thousands of times larger than S/2005-S3.14, but is much further from Cassini’s camera. The odd shape of the moon made Dr Baalschmidt’s look closer.

“I sent the photo to our image processing people, and they tightened up the picture,” said Dr Baalschmidt. “The first I knew about, the head of the department was calling me to ask what sort of a stunt I was trying to pull. It was really hard to convince him that the data was raw. He wouldn’t believe me until he pulled the original file for himself and reprocessed the image from scratch.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Dr Baalschmidt. “I’d read Bertrand Russell rejecting God for the same reason he rejects teapots orbiting Saturn. And yet, there it is. Right there.” He jabbed his finger at the screen. “You should see it magnified. It’s amazing.”

The image has not been released until now to give time to verify the extraordinary finding. “The guys at the European Space Agency were skeptical,” said Baalschmidt. “They were convinced it was a mistake, then a joke, and when that was ruled out they grilled the old NASA teams responsible for the Voyager and Pioneer missions to see if any of the engineers had snuck a teapot on board and dumped it in Saturn orbit.” It stood up to every bit of scrutiny. It really is a teapot, says Baalschmidt, although he concedes that not everyone is convinced.

“Those godless heathens at the ESA are still holding out on their promise to eat their hats. I’ll be sending them a taco-shell sombrero in the next mail.”

The discovery of a fossilised rabbit in the Burgess Shale may demolish one of the pillars of modern science, the theory of evolution. The late J. B. S. Haldane famously said that all it would take to falsify evolution is a single Cambrian rabbit fossil, and that is exactly what has been uncovered by paleontologist Dr Wilfred Splenebyrst of the London School of Ergonomics.

“I checked and double-checked the dating, and then checked it again with three independent labs,” said Dr Splenebyrst. “There really is no doubt. This is a 520-million year old rabbit fossil.”

The new fossil, Paleohyrax reprobae, differs from modern rabbits in a number of subtle anatomical ways, lending weight to it being truly a new species from the Cambrian era. “This is definitely not a modern rabbit,” said Dr Splenebyrst. “It was about half the size and may even have been carnivorous. It appears to have been foraging for trilobites in the ancient tidal pools.”

Due to its profound impact, the scientific paper has been released by Nature ahead of next week’s official publication. In a related story, the journal Nature will be renamed Realm from the next volume.