and one of them is the second reason for including it here. The faction in question has been very active in the United States lately in advocating a pseudo-science called creationism. This is an important topic because of its relevancy to the subject, and because it is actually employing the Scientific Method in trying to disprove many of science's discoveries.
Robert V. Gentry is one of the scientists who subscribe to a creationist view of the Universe. He is involved in researching the halo rings left in various rocks by radioactive isotopes; his research leads him to believe that, " . . . the Earth may only be on the order of 10,000 years old - a factor 4.5 x 105 smaller than the age most geochronologists give it."6 It appears that his research is very well regarded by his colleagues and only his conclusions are disputed.

     Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe is another creationism believer; his background is very different from Mr. Gentry's and so are his views. Mr. Wickramasinghe is a Hindu raised in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and he says, " . . . he doesn't even share the basic premise of the Christian faith, much less the Christian fundamentalists' trust in the general "inerrancy of the Bible in its original autographs'." That is actually Mr. Gentry's belief and it is probably mentioned in the original, in order to point out that this is indeed a different opinion on the subject. "Mr. Wickramasinghe currently heads the Department of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at University College in Cardiff, Wales. And for the past 20 years, his work has tended to focus on inquiries into the possible composition of interstellar dust. "He is quoted as saying, "Two years ago, Sir Fred Hoyle and I reached the conclusion that a whole body of astronomical data pointed to microorganisms being present on a colossal scale in space - some 52 individual cells being present in our Galaxy." Mr. Wickramasinghe is further saying that, "Other experiments using 'contamination-proof' techniques identified 17 amino acids within the Murchison meteorite; "Amino acids are some of the building blocks of life and, based on that, and on the detection of living cells in the Earth's upper atmosphere, he is concluding that life came to Earth from outer space. When speaking about evolution