Science: Mt. Bikini

Sometimes the mills of science grind exceeding slow. Recently the U.S. Navy announced that it had corroborated a Darwinian theory 110 years old.

In 1831, when the great, grave, bearded Charles Darwin was a bubbling young naturalist, he began his famous voyage on the Beagle. While crossing the South Pacific, he was fascinated by the ring-shaped coral islands, which he decided to call "by their Indian name of atolls." He wondered about those saucers of coral standing on steep-sided platforms above the deep ocean floor. Why their ring shape? How had they been formed? It was known that reef-building corals did not...