At https://phys.org/print472815059.html … what before Big Bang is the title of this piece. The idea is to test inflation of the universe theory after Avi Loeb and others at Harvard and the Smithsonian raised concerns, saying inflation of the universe seemingly has endless adaptability that makes it impossible to test. Falsifiability is supposed to be the mark of a good scientific theory but inflation is such a flexible ideda it cannot be falsified in experiments. No matter what value people measure for some observable attribute there is always an inflation model to explain it.
At https://phys.org/print472806873.html … cool earth theory sheds light on diamonds we are told. Queensland University geology Balz Kamber has a new theory on the thermal evolution of the Earth – billions of years ago. It explains, he says, why diamonds have formed as precious stones rather than as heaps of graphite. The study looked at magnesium oxide levels in thousand of volcanic rocks dating back 2.5 billion years ago. The Earth was a lot hotter back then, it is thought, up to three times as hot. The common geological view is that the Mantle was significantly hotter at the time but Kamber begs to differ. He wants to explain diamonds – as they are. Volcanic rocks are thrown up from the upper Mantle. The Earth may have been producing more heat but it was also getting rid of it – expelling it (but only if it was hotter). Magnesium oxide levels were much the same as they are today he says, which is cooler than consensus allows. Diamonds created 2.5 billion years ago require the upper Mantle to be about the same as today and the test on volcanic rocks appear to show this is so. In other words, as he says, the lower Mantle could well have been hotter – but the upper Mantle was not.