My father was one of the participants in this encounter and there are a few details that haven’t been made public, and probably shouldn’t be, that only make this more interesting.

Maybe one day I’ll get around to blogging about this.

There is overwhelming evidence in support of evolution. I’m not aware of any evidence that supports creationism that stands up to scientific rigor. Someone can still choose to believe a hypothesis, until the day arrives when for them the evidence contradicting their view becomes too overwhelming to ignore.

The value of the scientific community using the term “theory” is that it admits that we may still discover evidence that disproves or modifies the original statement. In fact, that happens on a regular basis.

I am not sure what the light are. One bright one is a thunderstorm on Earth for sure. Some of them appear to be marks on the camera lens or the Shuttle window: if you watch the transition between the scene of the view outside to a scene with the guy lecturing at a blackboard, you can see the Earth rotate a bit– this must be from the camera moving. This is literally the last second or two of that scene. Most of the lights move with the Earth, indicating they are outside, but some don’t indicating they are on the camera.

I thought the lights might be storms, but we still see them after they are above the limb of the Earth. I don’t *think* that’s a refraction effect from the Earth’s air, but you do get a lot of funny optical effects when you look toward the Earth’s horizon from space.

In general, the best thing to do is to get the mission number (like, “STS 118) and do a search on that plus the name “James Oberg”, who has done excellent analysis of such video.