In 1926, a Russian biologist tried to create a human-chimpanzee hybrid - Popular Science

The first episode of the NOVA PBS documentary series Evolution, which aired last night and you can see here, makes it sound like a land animal coming to live full time in the sea is pretty much a breeze. The creature is shown probing cautiously in the water with a forelimb, and almost the next thing you know, we’ve got fully ocean-going cetaceans including dolphins and whales. As biologist Richard Sternberg explains, there simply isn’t enough time for that transition to have occurred through unguided chance mistakes alone, as PBS imagines it. Watch: They forgot to ask Dr. Sternberg about this problem. The smooth narrative of the documentary is expected to carry the viewer along, not asking any questions. More details of the issue are discussed by Sternberg in my book Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Isaiah Santistevan led the development of three-dimensional simulations exploring how a nuclear device could deflect or disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. Credit: Blaise Douros/LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.