links for 2009-05-08

"Without even addressing the question of how âlifeâ should be defined, we can ask what sounds like a subsequent question: does life make thermodynamic sense? The answer, before you get too excited, is âyes.â But the opposite has been claimed â not by any respectable scientists, but by creationists looking to discredit Darwinian natural selection as the correct explanation for the evolution of life on Earth. One of their arguments relies on a misunderstanding of the Second Law, which they read as âentropy always increases,â and then interpret as a universal tendency toward decay and disorder in all natural processes. Whatever life is, itâs pretty clear that life is complicated and orderly â how, then, can it be reconciled with the natural tendency toward disorder? "

"Hyperphysics is a network of cross-linked articles on topics from acceleration to the Zeeman effect â essentially an online physics encyclopedia. Unlike some sites featured in this column, Hyperphysics is far from new. In fact, by Web standards, it is positively ancient; when it was launched back in 1998 as a âhyperphysics exploration environmentâ, the search engine Google was still based in a California garage. Today, Googleâs algorithms place Hyperphysics entries near the top of results pages for most physics-related search terms â it receives some three million hits per year â and some readers may already have stumbled across the site while searching for physics information on the Internet. "

Could the T-Rex of Dinosaur Comics really become the world's greatest detective using physics? SCIENCE SAYS: NOT REALLY!