Jupiter is a planet believed to be composed mostly of gas. It is characterised by bands of different layered and coloured gasses. Last year, after Jupiter hid behind the sun, away from our vision for three months, it emerged with one of its major bands missing. As surprising as this is, the planet actually losses or gains a band every fifteen years on average. We (our scientists) still do not know why.

For many of those who still deny the ever-strengthening influence of religion in Australia, arguing that maybe if we ignore religion, it will go away, perhaps they would be alarmed to know that Queensland State Schools will soon be teaching Creationism / Intelligent Design in their classrooms.

How can Australia begin to influence the world when it is allowing its children to be brain-washed with such baseless, simplistic answers to humanity's biggest questions? We are living in 2010 and all the evidences we have discovered that can explain much about our existence, amounts to nothing if the knowledge of those who have gone before us are not passed on to the next generation.

Further, in a multi-cultural society, why should tax payers money be used to favour one branch of religion by teaching only a Judeo-Christian explanation of who we are and why we are here? There are Buddhists, Muslim, Aboriginal versions too? What benefit is this for them? Our public education system needs to remain secular. Tax payer's money are supposed to benefit everybody... not just the Christians.

It was somewhat held that Neanderthals were completely different to us, Homo Sapiens. There's a new twist to this story arising from the studies made by the team/s led by Dr Svante Paabo, of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany and Dr David Reich, of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

• The prevailing scientific theory at the moment is that human beings first evolved in Africa.
• A part of this group of individuals migrated out of Africa and they populated the rest of the world.
• With the recent study, Neanderthal DNA was found in the blood of Europeans, Asians and Australasians. Neanderthal DNA, however, is not found in the blood of Africans whose ancestors remained in the continent.
• This implies that the group of Africans who migrated out of Africa interbred with Neanderthals at some stage during their migration out of Africa around 80,000 years ago.

Notes: Previously, getting DNA from the remains of Neanderthals themselves is difficult because their DNA did not preserve too well. Scientists have Neanderthal bones that are 30,000 to 40,000 years old. So in this study, 97% of the Neanderthal DNA was gathered using a new method that allowed them to collect Neanderthal DNA from bacteria and fungi, something which would be interesting to read about in the future.

Jacob Bronowski (18 January 1908 – 22 August 1974) was a British mathematician and biologist of Polish-Jewish origin. Just recently, I have started watching a documentary he made called, The Ascent Of Man on DVD. I have only finished watching the second episode and it is turning out to be a wonderful documentary. It is very powerful, very insightful and I want everyone to watch it. I found the links for it in Google so you can preview it for yourself. I have orderred them according to how they were titled in the series. 

1. Lower than the Angels — Evolution of man from proto-ape to 400,000 years ago.
2. The Harvest of the Seasons — Early human migration, agriculture and the first settlements, war.
3. The Grain in the Stone — Tools, development of architecture and sculpture.
4. The Hidden Structure — Fire, metals and alchemy.
5. Music of the Spheres — The language of numbers.
6. The Starry Messenger — Galileo's universe.
7. The Majestic Clockwork — Explores Kepler and Newton's laws.
8. The Drive for Power — The Industrial Revolution.
9. The Ladder of Creation — Darwin and Wallace's ideas on the origin of species.
10. World within World — The story of the periodic table.
11. Knowledge or Certainty — Physics and the clash of absolute knowledge, the oppressive state, and its misgivings realizing the result of its terrible outcome.
12. Generation upon Generation — Life, genetics, and the cloning of identical forms.
13. The Long Childhood — Bronowski's treatise on the commitment of man.