Green Logging and Our Rare Galaxy | Stars, Cells, and God
Join Hugh Ross and Jeff Zweerink as they discuss new discoveries taking place at the frontiers of science that have theological and philosophical implications, including the reality of God’s existence.
Green Logging
Eleven environmentalists have developed new techniques for determining forest ecosystem health based on the energetics of plants, trees, birds, mammals, and insects living within tropical forests in Malaysian Borneo. They compared measurements from five old-growth, unlogged forests with those from four selectively logged forests and one palm oil plantation. These environmentalists found that wise selective logging of forests maximizes possible lumbering income while simultaneously optimizing the forest ecosystem and maximizing global warming mitigation.
Resources:
Logged Tropical Forests Have Amplified and Diverse Ecosystem Energetics
Our Rare Galaxy
Our Milky Way galaxy is not unusual when it comes to size, but astronomers continue to find ways that it’s unlike the vast majority of other galaxies in the universe. The latest example relates to how large the Milky Way is when accounting for the unusually small velocity dispersion of galaxies in our local neighborhood. Simulations reveal that we have to look outside a box nearly 600 million light-years on a side to expect another galaxy matching the Milky Way’s size and velocity dispersion.
Resources:
The Unusual Milky Way–Local Sheet System: Implications for Spin Strength and Alignment