The Daily Creationism guy:

you believe that sometime way back it evolved from a rock any way! So who cares where cows come in.

Rocks are inorganic material. Most rocks are >95% silicates, silicon and oxygen. To be organic it requires carbon, from which all life is made. So no we didn't evolve from rocks.

I wouldn't talk like that about cows, you'll make a certain somebody angry.

But that is what the text books say. The text books say that there was this dot and it span and span and span faster and faster...

No book, scientific paper, or press release I've ever read has said that the universe was a spinning dot. Please list which books said that and their page numbers.

"The universe (due to the above) was much hotter than it is today." There are a few things that i think you should consider here. The earth is spinning. The earth is slowing down.

Yes the Earth is spinning, and yes the Earth's rotation is slowing down due to tidal forces from the Moon, the Moon has already been tidally locked with us which is why it shows the same face. What's your point?

If the earth is slowing down then that means that it must have been going faster. Because of the earth's rotation, the earth is already about 20 miles wider than it is high. Now if the earth was hot, and the earth was spinning much faster than it is today. Wouldn't that mean that the earth would have been stretched our like a disc?

The universe was "hot" long before the Earth formed. The Earth certainly was hot when it formed, but it wasn't spinning fast enough to really stretch it out, you see there's this thing called gravity that holds the Earth together.

By the way if you see galaxies moving away from each other than doesn't that puts some kind of limit to the age of the universe.

Correct that was one of the first ways we came up with the age of the universe. What's your point?

Just seen this amazing image from the Cassini spacecraft:

Both these moons I captured below, Enceladus is always a tough one because it's so small, luckily it is pretty bright and I managed to pick it up in this image.

Titan is famous for being the giant moon with an atmosphere, and better yet and atmosphere rich in organic compounds. We landed the Huygens probe on it which was carried by the Cassini spacecraft. Enceladus is now famous for the massive jets of water which erupt out of it's southern pole.

From the press release:

Many denizens of the Saturn system wear a uniformly gray mantle of darkened ice, but not these two moons. The brightest body in the solar system, Enceladus, is contrasted here against Titan's smoggy, golden murk.
Ironically, what these two moons hold in common gives rise to their stark contrasting colors. Both bodies are, to varying degrees, geologically active. For Enceladus, its southern polar vents emit a spray of icy particles that coats the small moon, giving it a clean, white veneer. On Titan, yet undefined processes are supplying the atmosphere with methane and other chemicals that are broken down by sunlight. These chemicals are creating the thick yellow-orange haze that is spread through the atmosphere and, over geologic time, falls and coats the surface.

The thin, bluish haze along Titan's limb is caused when sunlight is scattered by haze particles roughly the same size as the wavelength of blue light, or around 400 nanometers.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained on Feb. 5, 2006, using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of 4.1 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) from Enceladus and 5.3 million kilometers (3.3 miles) from Titan. Resolution in the original images was 25 kilometers (16 miles) per pixel on Enceladus and 32 kilometers (20 miles) per pixel on Titan. The view has been magnified by a factor of two.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

This is an interesting little snippet I've harvested from the Daily Creationism.

Most thinking people will agree that:

1) A highly ordered universe exists.

Highly ordered compared to what? It's true that the universe is governed by the laws of nature, but how could we know of an alternative.

2) At least one planet (probably only one) (earth) in this complex universe contains an amazing variety of life forms.

Earth is probably the only planet with life on in the whole universe? You've made a claim that we can test, which we can demolish. Now you've nearly entered the realm of science.

It would be extremely unlikely that Earth is the only place in the whole universe with life. We see the materials needed for life throughout the universe. It is far more likely for the universe to be absolutely crawling with life than for the Earth to be the only place.

3) Man appears to be the most advanced form of life

Depends what you mean by advanced. By DNA complexity? We're not the most complex form of life by this measure. By success? We're hardly successful compared to bacteria. By technology? Well that's true. But if dolphins had evolved hands they would probably be running the show, they already teach tool use to their children, that's a pretty "advanced" stuff, they've already got a larger brain than us, if they had hands or an ability to manipulate their environment as well as us, their brains would be highly technology-prone after a few million years. Go back ten million years and try and decide what the "most" advanced form of life is. Much harder to do. But yes, most people would probably agree with this statement even if they can't explain why.

But the key point is number 2. The Earth being the only place with life on. Highly unlikely and not highly probable.

To be formally announced tomorrow so I hear.

Nyx and Hydra join Pluto and Charon. Interesting choice of names, Pluto being named after the god of the Underworld. Nyx is the goddess of night (the Sun is very faint all the way over there) so that's a good one. Hydra was the offspring of Styx and Styx was the river that Charon ferried across dead souls to the Underworld.

With a bit of Pluto talk probably coming up in the next few days the issue of its planetary status will no doubt crop up. The International Astronomical Union have it on the table for the 26th General Assembly held in Prague in August this year. Hopefully the word planet will have some precise definition to it.

In my opinion the only logical thing to do is to come up with a definition that removes Pluto from planetary status. In the next few years we could well find dozens of objects similar to Pluto beyond Neptune. Even astronomers will have a hard job remembering all the planets in the system, let alone the general public.

Pluto should not keep planetary status for historical reasons alone.