Pharyngula tells of another religious assault on education.
But it's not the Falwellistas this time. It's Hindutva types.
From the article:
Conservative religious groups are once again making grade school textbooks the battleground. In California, supremacists and revisionists are trying to make radical changes to kids' textbooks, inserting propaganda and absurd assertions that are not supported in any way by legitimate scholars. The primary effort is to mangle history, but they're also trying to make ridiculous claims about scientific issues.
Such as that civilization started 111.5 trillion years ago, and that people flew to the moon and set off atomic bombs thousands of years ago.
Teach the controversy, eh?
The isotope thorium 232 has a half life of 14.05 billion years. The claimed age of 111.5 trillion years is a bit more than 7900 half lives -- enough time for a galaxy-sized chunk of thorium to decay into lead, down to the last atom.
And yet thorium still persists here on Earth.
But wait, there's more. About one third of the known thorium deposits are located...in India. And the Indian government is actively pursuing a thorium-based nuclear fuel cycle.
I'm sure the Hindutva types can come up with some sort of special pleading to explain away all that thorium. Maybe it wasn't as radioactive a billion years ago as now.
But of course none of this will be pleasing to Duane Gish and his followers.