On his widely popular Cosmos science program in 1980, Carl Sagan described our paltry existence in pathetic terms: "We live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star, lost in a galaxy, tucked away in some forgotten corner of universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." Several developments since then have altered this perception dramatically.

The most volcanically active body in the solar system is a little moon of Jupiter named Io. This moon is pumping out the hottest lavas known, from equator to pole, 24/7. That a small body could be this hyperactive is one of the major mysteries for adherents to the billions-of-years-old universe hypothesis.

Perhaps the question most often asked of Biblical creationists is how light from distant stars could get to the earth in a few thousand years. People usually want a quick one-sentence answer to this question, but to discuss it fairly would require understanding of many complex and seemingly counterintuitive laws of physics.

They had told us a particular supernova exploded 10,000 years ago. How then, did the Chinese see it in AD 185? The answer is a case study in scientific inference.