From the article:
A Blackbird jet flying nearly 2,000 miles per hour covers 32 body lengths per second. But a common pigeon flying at 50 miles per hour covers 75. The roll rate of the aerobatic A-4 Skyhawk plane is about 720 degrees per second. The roll rate of a barn swallow exceeds 5,000 degrees per second.
Select military aircraft can withstand gravitational forces of 8-10 G. Many birds routinely experience positive G-forces greater than 10 G and up to 14 G.
“Natural flyers obviously have some highly varied mechanical properties that we really have not incorporated in engineering,” said Wei Shyy, chair of the Aerospace Engineering department and an author of the new book “The Aerodynamics of Low Reynolds Number Flyers.”
“They’re not only lighter, but also have much more adaptive structures as well as capabilities of integrating aerodynamics with wing and body shapes, which change all the time,” Shyy said. “Natural flyers have outstanding capabilities to remain airborne through wind gusts, rain, and snow.” Shyy photographs birds to help him understand their aerodynamics.
Many in the anti-ID community believe that the mechanisms of evolution are all that is needed to explain everything we observe in nature. Eugenie Scott, Barbara Forrest, Steven Weinburg, Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers and the majority of scientists actively fighting ID are fighting against what they consider the supernatural boogieman, yet they have absolutely nothing better to offer in regard to the study of origins. Primordial soup is still big in the science classroom, but it's been found to be a ridiculous notion. Stanley Miller?...also a flop.
The most obvious scenario is that at the root of the massive engineering feats we observe in nature, we will find that the most obvious inference is that design implies a designer. But, unfortunately, science no longer follows the evidence where it leads in regard to origins. Unless we can infer a natural designer, the "scientific method" has ruled out other possibilities...even if they are correct.
