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Resurrection Ecology Gives Life to Old Eggs
Ant writes "ABC News reports that scientists are bringing the past to life by hatching eggs once thought to be dead and producing colonies of animals as they existed decades ago. They are calling it 'resurrection ecology,' and it's a whole new field that quite literally allows scientists to observe evolution as it occurred, using animals that were quite different than their kinfolk today."
Resurrection Ecology Gives Life to Old Eggs
;-)
Maybe this will put an end to those viagra emails I keep getting too.
They call it 'resurrection ecology', I call it RePet. This goes along well with the last story about SimPal Cindy.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Jurassic Park anyone?
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Can this possibly be used as an argument for evolution?
How does this demonstrate evolution? Don't they know the eggs were planted there just to fool them???
Just KNOWING that creatures an be a hatched after that long stalled period makes you wonder about what life really is.. Offtopic, but this seems to help imply that death and birth don't really have beginnings or ends. Kind of scary to me at least.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
More SEA MONKEYS!
http://ut.water.usgs.gov/shrimp/ "The life cycle of Artemia begins from a dormant cyst that contains an embryo in a suspended state of metabolism (known as diapause). The cysts are very hardy and may remain viable for many years if kept dry."
As the article says (in the headline, at least), scientists made dormant eggs hatch by putting them under the right conditions. "They found that eggs that had been trapped beneath the sediment years ago had never hatched, but miraculously, were still alive."
It may be a landmark - I have no idea - but it's not resurrection.
You're using the popular definition of theory. Evolution will *never* be more than a /scientific/ theory. Gravity is "just" a theory, and will never become more than that.
This is freaking awesome. Jurassic park, except less Jurassic and more like last week, but I think anything that aids with understanding how evolution occurs is good for our possible survival as a species. We should make entire ecosystems of our own private galapagos, with different generations of creatures, to see if survival mutations end up being the same. I think it's an interesting idea, to really think of species as more as a temporal thing than just genetically different from others of their kind, they are different from others of their own family minus generations.
Human beings of eighty years ago would have been able to deal with this impending crisis much more efficiently, let's bring some of that natural genetic drift back, for example. Sort of gets away from another accidentally arbitrary classifications.
We've seen entire ecosystems of one region incredibly damaged by introducing species from another, I can only imagine the damage that will be done by species being introduced from one _time_ to another.
What more is there to be than "just" a theory?
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
I thought "de-volving" DNA was a 50's sci-fi movie myth. I understand that it is sometimes possible, at least in theory, to "turn on" suppressed DNA, and that one could mutate and selectively breed modern species into creatures with traits resembling extinct species, but without the full genome of the extinct species to "rewrite" your modern genome into a copy of, you would just end up with a vaguely dinosuar-like modified bird, which would exhibit any mistaken assumptions of the breeders.
Simply put, a bird would not "revert" into a real dinosaur, it would evolve into an immitation dinosaur. As far as frozen mammoth thread goes, I think it should be possible to reconstruct the mammoth genome from frozen DNA, as I understand that DNA is much more stable than most other organic structures. Once you had your genome to work from, if you had the time and money to devote vast biotech rescources I suppose a mammoth zygote could be synthesized, but it would be immpossible to guess the cost or time involved anywhere within several orders of magnitude. I have no proffesional training in any of this, I'm just an informed interested person throwing in my $0.02 worth in. However, if I was a betting man, I'd put my money on the mammoth resurrection group over the bird devolution group without a second thought!
Iran captures three CIA agents
it sounds like a plot for a good movie...I wonder if hollywood would be interested... quick to the batmobile.....
Most eggcellent!
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
Life when considered in the form of a spore is structure, which when energy (food) is added, becomes life. Life is structure and energy.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Let's hear it for the Dodo Bird!!!
Those things must have been tasty if they went so extinct.
Maybe I'll get to taste one in my lifetime...
Poached or Bulls Eye? Over easy?
Nope, I like 'em alive and kicking.
Jokes aside, this is cool - but wasn't it already known that only the fittest survive? How is the Red Queen Hypothesis any different?
Or are they both saying the same thing, and the resurrection ecology is merely confirming it?
The startling point is that we're talking about only 100 years. Given the number of generations the Daphnia can manage in that time, I guess I shouldn't be so surprised.
But think: if you can get that much useful change in such a short amount of time, how much more can occur over hundreds of thousands of years?
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Already, scientists have made huge strides in their research using this technique. Thanks to new technology and innovation, more and more creatures are able to be 'reanimated' in this way.
Hatching long dormant eggs is interesting, I wish the article had more about that in it. I have always been fascinated by the fact that wheat from Pharoh's tombs in Egypt has been sprouted.
However, this article merely takes that interesting subject and attempts yet again to twist it into another prove of the theory of evolution. The mass media does that with any major story in the life sciences area.
This should probably be phrased as: "Can this possibly be used to show that evolution is more than just a theory?"
What more is there to be than "just" a theory?
Evolution is "just" a theory because, although a theory is a statement of what we think something to be like, that includes in itself an inherent understanding that we can't know more than that, that we could always possibly be wrong . . . so evolution has trouble standing up to things like Creationism and it's masquerade/reinvention as "Intelligent Design", which offer eternal and proclaimed truths at their core. They have the gift of certainty; and unreal concreteness is often more persuasive than truthful equivocation.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
but it's already been shown the evolution is more then just a theory. It's a scientific theory which has stood up to many people trying to place the word of some book over the huge amounts of evidence in support of evolution.It's a theory backed in fact, and has reached the point where the only arguements over it are over some of the processes. Not, at least in any true scientific community, over if evolution is real or not.
What more is there to be than "just" a theory?
A theory with dancing angels, full symphonic orchestra and sacrificial lambs, i.e. religion or may sweeps. The more creative one can get in being able to get people to envision and believe a hypothesis, the more it can become part of the populaces understanding of reality.
The more we can show all the different ways evolutions happens, the greater in depth we can get people to look at the what's really there rather than what they'd like to be there. Make people focus on the real unanswerable questions, the greater the mind of the collective reasoning power of humanity.
Regenerate, brought to you by the Umbrella Corporation.
Why, was he trying to hatch them himself?
welcome our new extinct avian overlords.
Slashdot poster brings back memes thought to be dead and produces jokes as they existed decades ago. He calls it "resurrection karma".
Unfortunately, no good can come of it, as those memes are the same ones we have today.
Billy and the Clone-a-saurus
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Just wait till researchers bring back a disease that that has been laying dormant for millions of years that wipes the entire human race out.. lol, but i do think what they are doing is cool. I'm sure alot will be learned.
If you guys had taken the time to read the article prior to posting a response, you would have realized the article talks about evolution throughout its entire contents. It then goes on to explain that "sunlight and warmth" (page 3, website) were given to the eggs, and they hatched. This, is NOTHING like Jurassic Park. This is basically just preservation of eggs from long ago which were able to be warmed and hatched many years later. It then talks about how they could see evolution take place within these new life forms. Hopefully, in the future, you guys can appreciate the fact that a submission was made and accepted because it was a genuinely interesting article/topic, rather than another attempt for someone to be the 'first post'. You guys are not trolls, nor do you have to be. That isn't how you get on in life. Being a troll will get you nowhere. If you can troll, then you probably have enough skill to get a job making $10/hour at minimum. Go out there and get that job. If you are a troll making more than that, however, then I look at you in disgust.
This new-fangled 'resurrection ecology' has "bio-hazard" written all over it.
While in our Politically Correct Era the focus is on how mankind has exploited the eco-system - let's not be too quick to jump on the band wagon of thinking this is a wonderfull way to bring back the Do-do and other species that came to an abrubt end in modern history.
Exploitation of wildlife resources is only one of many reasons.
Another reason is because ecology changes and those species not well suited to adapt to the new environment naturally die out. And one major change to environment is DISEASE. Entire species can succumb to a communicable virus in rapid succession and those whose immune systems can not adapt or physically migrate to another suitable habitat will die and continue to die untill the disease either mutates or all the suitable hosts are dead.
You see -- it's called NATURAL SELECTION for a reason.
And while I'm not entirely against this use of technology, I'm highly wary of it's uncontrolled use.
By what standards are we to determine which species to attempt to cultivate and let loose into the wild or one ofour many splended zoos/aquariums? And how can we accurately model and predict the ecological impact these actions would have? Is it possible that the introduction of these since extinct animals immune systems back into a modern ecology cause viruses to mutate into potentially deadly forms for us and other modern animals? Or would we see entire colonies of animals brought back only to die off in short order as they once again prove themselves unable to cope?
Personally, I think this technique should be left in the realm of advanced research for decades to come untill a time comes where we are capable of knowing whether or not a reintroduction of specie posses a threat to modern organisms or to the potential resurrectee.
So now what? :P
Until they wipe us out, and devour our children. Run for the hills. Science will hurt us! Cloning is bad too, or so I am told.
There is a size limitation of about 14 micrometers beyond which scientists are unable to resurrect dormant eggs, or so a biologist uncle of mine explained. They hope to break that barrier by first reanimating the constituent cells of the eggs as opposed to merely attempting to reanimate the entire egg. He also stated that this latent capability is singular to oceanic life forms, and even in theory does not extend beyond oceanic life forms, because only oceanic eggs are inherently anhydrous, even completely immersed in water, which contributes remarkably to their longevity. I don't see what practical purpose any of this information serves, but if it eventually makes lobster cheaper, then I'm game. Also, all the aforementioned is completely made-up.
You will find that species will lose a characteristic rather than gain. eg. we have gone from very hairy to very little hair. The tail bone has shrunk. New kinds do not miraculously mutate over night. Species may lose little things over periods of thousands of years, some species travel to other climates. while there, the range that a species can vary within their genetic makeup change. Mix these processes with others over thousands or millions of years and this is what will cause new species to evolve.
Humans do not need anything else to wipe us out, we are already doing a great job at this ourselves. This is because we are, as a species, so extremely short-sighted. We are currently cutting down ten times more trees than what is naturally being produced, the same applies to our usage of most other resources. And this is new, this is in my eyes news, we have only been doing this for few hundred years - we have had the same brain capasity for 200.000 years. The people on easter island cut down trees until there were none left - this is what we are currently doing to the planet as a whole. The civilization at easter island did not see this coming, nor will our global civilization do before it will be too late in fifty to a hundred years or so. Great, we are now bringing a few dormant eggs back to life, but that is nothing compared to the vast number of species we are forcing into extinction.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
for samples of microorganisms from Lake Vostok
From the article: Daphnia retrocurva are zooplankton that live in lake waters for one summer and then die, leaving eggs behind. Scientists have found eggs that didn't hatch for years -- and are hatching them to see how the animal has adapted over time. (University of New Hampshire)
We're not talking about bringing back Dodos!
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I've had a few dates that had big helmets, big spines. And, really, they weren't appetizing!! :-P
The researchers had hi
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
I think I've started an eggscrutiating trend...
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
Yes, but at least when aliens land on earth ten thousand years from now and find nothing but barren earth, they'll be able to hatch sea monkey eggs and bring sea monkeys back to their kids.
Hey, here's an idea: encode all of human wisdom- Shakespeare, Plato, the Library of Congress, _Abbey Road_- into DNA and then inject that into sea monkey eggs!
Originally, the scientists thought that they changed to become less apealing to predators, then when predator population died out, they changed back.
The researchers found that the specimens in the lab changed and then later changed back, just as fossil records had shown.
If anything this disproves evolution as the cause.
Did they have predators and competition in the lab? It wasn't mentioned and I highly doubt they recreated the lake.
They removed the predators and the same thing still happened. This disproves their theory.
So why is it so hard to say that the DNA of the specimen was programmed to change in this way over time which had the nice side effect that the predators didn't like the change?
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
organisms that *can* mate and produce offspring capable of same.
This does sound as close as any evidence so far however, since unwilling and unable produce the same end result - extinct. Can you point in the direction of more information?
I know i'm splitting hairs here, but it would be nice to have undeniable evidence, non? The point is that we haven't, with the possible exception of the example you cited, any direct observation of evolution (in higher species). A counterexample by analogy would be the possibility that social pressures would cause two human races to avoid mating together, even though they are capable of it.
I haven't read any articles on this project however so if this example is real speciation, then we know that it can occur since it did at least once.
Creationists will still be able to hang their hat on one point though: Just because it has happened once to one species does not prove that it has happened to us specifically. It is probably not possible to devise an experiment to show this either way.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Creationism, on the other hand, is not a theory because there are no facts to back it and none predicted that we could check creationism against.
It's merely random gibberish spewed forth by braindead zombies.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
These eggs taste like they're 30 years old.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
As for the difference between unwilling and unable, give it time. Any reasonable estimate as to how long such an event would take runs into hundred(s) of generations. We simply haven't had enough time for one to take place. Now, you can prove that it has taken place, but you have to accept genetic evidence for it. There is tons of genetic evidence for 'speciation' that has resulted in 'unable' but creationists don't seem to be willing to accept such genetic evidence.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
What are you talking about? How on earth can scientists tell what they evolved, or why they did it that way?
xyzzy - operation overload.
I mean, you have heard of Albert Einstein and the general theory of relativity? Gravity doesn't exist. It's not a force. It's a pseudo- or false force.
Timespace is curved, and it's that curvature that gives the acceleration. There is no such thing as gravity, just as there is no such thing as centrifugal force.
So there is a consensus on gravity - and that is that it isn't a valid theory.
I'd like to point out that there is no real discussion between evolution vs. creationism, except in the minds of people who misunderstand science. Evolution is a really great theory, just like the General Theory of Relativity is a really great theory. You do know that physicists do not accept it as gospel truth and in fact are looking for a better theory to replace it, right? Aren't biologists looking for a better theory than evolution to replace it one day, or have they accepted it as a religion and begun treating it like a faith?
Creationism is a completely different concept. It doesn't try to explain the origin of the diverse creatures. Believers of creationism instead look towards all things in the world around them and accept it as testament of the glory and intelligence of God. They also accept themselves as created in the image of God as children of God. Many scientists are creationists. That isn't contradictory. They treat science the same way as people did from previous generations: By understanding the natural world around us, we will understand the nature of God, and thus ourselves, better. In fact, for many of these scientist, it was a sort of divine inspiration to discover new intelligence or knowledge. Each point of science, each bit of evidence, each theory that seemed to work, was treated as a gift from God.
Do you see how evolution doesn't even really enter the argument for creationists?
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
The interesting thing about these small little varients that happen during periods of less drastic survival is that they are not selected by necessity; rather they are the normal drift that comes from the melting pot of dna alteration and intermingling. Because of random variance and chance, the genetic makeup of a different times will be different.
What you were babbling on about is learned phenomena which is not at all genetic and therefore has no place in a discussion regarding offspring. The interesting thing about separate but recent generational stratification is the genetic differences; these differences have nothing, nothing to do with learned behavior.
as any experiment run to 'proove' relativity or gravity.
Obviously we don't orbit a Moon in the lab to proove that gravity affects very large objects the same way it affects small ones, nor do we need to demonstrate more than a few microseconds time difference due to velocity to demonstrate relativity.
Adaptation is the mechanism of evolution, and it can be demonstrated in the lab. As soon as you can demonstrate a supernatural force creating a new kind (in a controlled experiment), you'll have something 'scientific' to crow about.
The fact that closely related species can interbreed and produce offspring (sometimes sterile--Liger, sometimes fertile--Wolf-Coyote) is another clear demonstration of evolution, as is it when these offspring are sterile. If all kinds were created, there would be no (scientific) reason why this pattern would be there.
Also, show me a mutation that was for the better of the species.
Pesticide/herbicide resistence, happens with increasing frequency. Predicted by evolution: change the environment and a mutation that confers an advantage in dealing with the new environment will rapidly spread through the population.
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/
Them pesky biologists! Cut their funding, that'll teach 'em to contradict your gut feelings about the world!
Did anyone else read that "Resurrection THEOlogy"?
it's like "microgravity" or "microrelativity", a construct of our minds, a false category.
"Microevolution" is the same thing as "Macroevolution", just that microevolution is what we 'see' in a few (human) generations, just like we don't get to 'see' what happens if we drop the Moon or accelerate to lightspeed.
FTA...
Yeah? Well F you too!
sudo ergo sum
There are so many accounts of passenger pigeons *darkening the daytime sky*. It's hard to imagine an animal that was alive in great numbers just a few generations ago, that is now *completely* extinct.
It went from being *the* most abundant species of bird, to *extinct* in the span of maybe 50 years, during a period of relatively low population and industrializaion, compared with today.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Adaptation is essentially the same as evolution. They just refer to different scales of time and at organism or species levels.
In both adaptation and evolution the driving force is selection of those attributes that are favourable to survival.
They essential element of evolution theory is selection, and selection takes place at all levels of biology. Even learning and behaviour are selection-driven changes in the brain, and is therefore evolutionary, at the individual level.
The selection principle can also be found in economics and other non-biological sciences.
Hi, First, YIIAS, and a mathematician. But I have a big problem with evolution since I have yet to see a definition of species that works for the theory. IMHO, if you can't define after >100 years one of your key concepts, your "theory" is junk. Before you jump the guns, ask yourself- is your definition transitive? Let == mean "the same species as". Now, if A==B and B==C, does A==C? Now assume that every child is the same species as its mother. Then by transitivity, we can go right back up the family tree and show that you are the same species as that first mammal who shared the earth with the dinosaurs. Now as for this "slow genetic drift" thing, via random mutation. Odd type of randomness, if it does not revert to the mean, isn't it? Oh, ok, the mean is time- and space-varying. Still, does it vary enough to drift from one "species" to another? Oops, forgot, can't answer that because we haven't defined "species"! Do keep in mind that most "species" as understood in the vernacular, have tremendous variation in phenotype, often a full order of magnitude or more (obviously true for dogs (chiwawa to great dane) horses (japanese toy pony to draft horse) humans (pigmy to basketball player)). The swedish dairy cow, the american bison, and the indian buffalo all can interbreed and produce viable offspring. By the way, so do ALL the finches on the Galapagos islands. These supposed different species interbreed quite happily, and their offspring generally do better than the parents. Are these different species? Think how they vary. So, given this level of variation, exactly HOW FAR does the random distibution need to vary to produce a new species? Oh, do remember that the more extreme a breed gets, the less fit it is. Have you every considered the health problems faced by purebred dogs vs muts? bulldogs with eyeballs that fall out, hips that give way early, etc. Yea gods, I've been caught up in a rant! Stop me! Stop me!!
Fully grown daphnia and other small animals have been re-hydrated and brought to life before. That works even for ones that were on the shelf for over a century. But they die right away. The longer the dry period, the shorter the life after re-hydration. Apparently, the cause is thought to be free radicals which accumulate during the dry period and kill the organisms within minutes.
The title was a bit misleading, I was naïvely hoping for an article about bringing back the passenger pidgeon, dodo or blue pike.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I often wondered if there were some type of feedback loop in evolution. I'm not a biologist and would know how such a loop would function, but I am a systems engineer and a feedback loop would seem "necessary" for evolution to function properly.
And yes, in school I was taught natural selection--but that loop seems awefully slow and tedious. I'm thinking one quicker. Maybe a way environmental changes are "written" back into the genome somehow.
"producing colonies of animals as they existed decades ago"
Not so. They are producing colonies of animals hatched from eggs that failed to hatch decades ago. The resurrected colonies could be drastically different from those that did hatch and were active in the past. Unfortunately there is no way to tell how different/divergent the resurrected sample is.
You motivation has little baring on the facts and the logic of what you say, but it is the kind of motivation that the truth-seeker should be weary of, and possibly even deliberately compensate for.
Wikileaks, no DNS
> To overcome his next stage of disbelief you'll need to show formation of a species. Then that of a higher species. The last stage is that of showing that a human being can evolve.
Actually you'll have to show them God not creating the universe 6009 years ago.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> I can accept life adapting to its environment, but adaptation does not prove or disprove evolution.
I can accept moving goalposts, but I don't feel obligated to chase after them.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
not that I'm not excited as the next dinosaur freak...but they want to witness evolution? So while thier hatching dino eggs thier also going to train them to find the foutain of youth i guess cause last time i checked evolution TOOK MILLIONS OVER MILLIONS OF YEARS!!!
Also, I'd suggest an experiment...
Dear creationist, inject yourself with some dangerous bacteria. Take half a pencillin cure, wait a while and take the other half. If the bacteria hasn't evolved protection from the antibiotics, you'll live.
Repeat a few times.
We others will think of it as evolution in action -- and as a creationist you should be happy to receive a Darwin award.
Enough humor.
I also have a belief that I'd like to share with you, since you have wasted my time by posting your ignorant beliefs onto a (more or less) serious web page.
The human mind's ability to filter out facts and believe whatever it has emotional needs to believe, is the main reason I classify myself as a misanthrope.
I see true believers like you as worse than psychopats. You are the main problem with humanity that destroys discussions about society and everything else.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Add something about evaluation of fitness functions.
Or write about neutral mutations (genetic drift). Then it becomes obvious how isolated populations can speciate from that.
Consider a career in education.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
However, you can observe genetic drift, and human selection has been relied upon for centuries. Natural selection has been observed, although the Google obscures the result with copious quantities of debate, and there's plenty of evidence for macroevolution.
Proof by forcing artifical categories and finding that they don't work doesn't get you very far :o)
Wikileaks, no DNS
A little bit off topic pehaps, but anyway, is it just me or they are reviving the ducks... ops, dragons from the atari 2600 adventure game? I woundn't like to be a square near that thing, at least not without my slaying-duck arrow. :-D
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
It was a joke. Misinterpreting "FTA" as "Fuck the article".
sudo ergo sum
Satan, the Devil, has no Power but if you are of weak Faith He does.
The Good Lord bade Satan to put the dinosaur fossils in the ground to tempt and corrupt the wek-minded (scientists, athiests, liberals and "reasonable men").
Dinosaurs are the work of Satan, and meddling in Satanic affairs will bring no Good, only Hellish Torment(TM) and terror upon those foolish enough to dabble in the Occult.
By playing with Dinosaurs' eggs, the Occult is being dabbled with, and Bad Men will unleash a thousand years of Darkness upon the face of the Earth, just like in liberal socialist Europe where they're all athiests, muslims and catholics anyway.
Pay heed, my children and shun the Work of the Devil. Do not dabble in the occult. Do not fiddle with the eggs of Dinosaurs lest ye should unleash Satan's unholy demonic army of plague, death, pestilence and Heavy Metal.
Stick Men
By "god" do you mean, ozzy osborne?....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Where the hell do you people get this stuff?!! You can't see evolution happen?
Try bacteria. If you add, say, a poison to a colony, most of the bacteria die off...some don't. Those which don't - and have a specific set of traits - continue to populate. You end up with a new colony of bacteria which have a specific trait.
That's not enough for most creationists. They want to see the bacteria change into a higher life form or something. If you repeated the process of selective breeding over and over, that's exactly what begins to happen. Dogs seems to have a common ancestor, but different breeds today vary wildly.
What creationists really want, I think, is proof of spontaneous evolution...and even that 'ridiculous' idea has some merit. How about species of frogs which can spontaneously change gender, so that a breeding population can be maintained, etc?
Any sort of religious belief cannot be accepted as undenyable truth by a scientist, because doing so requires him (or her) to accept the core hypotheses on faith. That is antithetical to the scientific process. So while a scientist can certainly have a spiritual bent, he must accept his scientific findings on face value only; e.g. the Theory of Evolution seems to be the best explanation we have, even if he believes that something else is true.
Would egg revitalization technology work on long-dead female mummies or bog people, assuming one could actually find ova in them?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They've been doing this for years, taking old eggs and creating life from them.. they are called Sea Monkeys
:-)
The Technomancer
"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active."-
"I can accept life adapting to its environment, but adaptation does not prove or disprove evolution."
Straight from the dictionary....
evolution Audio pronunciation of "Evolution" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (v-lshn, v-)
n.
1. A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. See Synonyms at development.
2.
1. The process of developing.
2. Gradual development.
3. Biology.
1. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
2. The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.
4. A movement that is part of a set of ordered movements.
5. Mathematics. The extraction of a root of a quantity.
So, as you can see, genetic adaptation is evolution.
~X~
~X~
you see that there was no "changing back", there was a change to a new morphology with smaller spines and helmets when the predator's numbers fell. Which is predicted by evolution: change the selection pressure on an organism and the organism adapts (or goes extinct if it can't adapt fast enough). When enough adaptations add up, you have a new species (which is just an intellectual construct to descibe a certain amount of observed differences).
This would give proof of evolution?
How long until the Bush administration puts an end to their research?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I'm not sure which I like best about this argument: that it is respectful of the opposing viewpoints or that it is simply well constructed.
Wish I had moderator points today...
Amen.
Congratulations, that is exactly what evolution is. Um.. no. The process described is called natural selection. Natural Selection != Evolution. While a change appeared to take place, it was still the same basic species. No change of species was observed.
It's zooplankton eggs, so it's more like...
~~~~~ 40 year time warp ~~~~~
Real Live Sea Monkeys(TM)!
Mail us this coupon along with $1.89 and in 2-3 weeks you will receive your very own package of Sea Monkeys(TM).
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This should probably be phrased as: "Can this possibly be used to show that evolution is more than just a theory?"
Nope. All scientific generalizations and explanations are "just" theories. More evidence just makes a theory stronger; it never stops being a theory. The only real facts in science are specific observations. "The apple dropped today" may be a fact. "Apples fall under the influence of gravity" will always be "just" a theory, no matter how many apples you drop.
Thank you for a very good description of natural selection. Natural Selection != Evolution. While a change appeared to take place, it was still the same basic species. No change of species was observed; instead, a subset of the species showed predominance due to external factors. In all cases, it was still the same bug.
The meat was bad for human consumption.
....
But the pigs and other domestic animals eat the eggs which the dodo lied on the ground because there were no animals predating on them in their natural habitat.
But big GM companies will make you believe they know all the unintended consequences of introducing new species in the ecosystem
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The bugs that are uglier are like that because a few genes here and there changed.
i.e. DNA changed.
Duh!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... Evolution needs Natural Selction. It is the meachnism it uses.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Oh Bill... I actually think it's a good thing he didn't make it this far because the reign of King George II (or Reagan III, if you prefer) would have made his fricking head explode.
RIP.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Creationists and idiots (sorry) are always demanding proof.
When they get one, they shoose to ignore it, for unfathomable reasons.
I all honesty I admire people trying to put them straight.
It is a hopeless, thankless task of which they will reap no benefits.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
> colonies of animals as they existed decades ago
> literally allows scientists to observe evolution as it occurred
I don't think that word, 'evolution', means what you think it means.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
There is no "scientific/faith union" as long as the "science" part is missing in that mix.
See, science is _not_ about just having a set of truths, so you can't just take any set of truths dressed in pseudo-science babble and call it science. In fact science has _no_ truths. It's all about doubting everything, or trying to improve it.
Every scientific theory has to have not just a list of experiments that prove it, but also some very clear conditions that would _disprove_ it, or at least show its limitations.
Science makes clear predictions. If they don't happen, you've just found a limit of that theory. Any law of physics that comes with a formula, also contains the way to test its validity: you just need to find find a situation where that formula doesn't hold true.
E.g., we have quantum mechanics or relativity precisely because the newtonian mechanics were possible to disprove. So someone did find ranges where they're no longer a good approximation. That's how scientiffic progress happens.
"Intelligent Design" is not science, no matter what pseudo-scientific babble it's dressed in, because it lacks that. It's based on something that can't possibly be tested, disproved or improved. Unlike science, it has its set of immutable "truths", and that's that.
There is no clear prediction that can be made based on some supernatural creator's will. Much less a prediction that can be _tested_.
So, no, sorry, "scientific/faith union" it ain't. It's just faith dressed in pseudo-science nonsense babble. But at the end of the day, it remains just that: "faith". No more. There is _no_ science in it.
What makes it even more hillarious is that science the sworn enemy of that "mix", and constantly attacked. So it's like saying that Operation Barbarosa (WW2 invasion of USSR by Germany) was a "welcome union between Germany and the USSR". It's so much bullshit it could fertilize a few acres.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Many egg forms as well as bacteria can exist intact in a cysted state for a very long time under surprisingly harsh conditions. From a USDA anthrax fact sheet: "When cells of B. anthracis escape from the animal's body through bloody discharges from the natural openings of the body after death, and are exposed to oxygen, they form spores. These spores are highly resistant to heat, cold, chemical disinfectants, and long dry periods. B. anthracis spores are reported to survive for years in the environment."
m
More here http://www.usda.gov/homelandsecurity/anthraxfs.ht
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Noone has a problem with your faith. Sure, you can believe in the Great Game Designer in the sky, flying giraffes, or whatever floats your boat. Go ahead.
The problem is that creationism and ID actively attack science. Not just via the anti-science lobbies. What irks me even more is the more perverse propaganda of trying to distort what "science" even means. The whole shameless propaganda assault that science is just another faith, or that any pseudo-scientific-sounding bullshit is just another science.
No, it's not. Science is that-a-way, faith is in that other direction. Saying that ID is anywhere near science, is like saying that deer is a mushroom, or that fish is a herb.
So here's the deal: the moment you guys stop the anti-science propaganda, including the actively trying to pervert and distort what "science" means, you'll find that most of us science meanies will be more than happy to leave you alone.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
in expressed traits due to environmental conditions? In other words, is there really new information in the genes that never existed before in parents? Maybe these observed differences are nothing more than say the way some bird's plumage has brillant colors when in hot climates but dull colors if in cold climates.
I'm asking for the flames here but I feel I should point out the laziness of creationists. All creationists I've met are lazy Christians.
Jews learn Hebrew (regardless of their home language) because its the laguage of their holy texts.
Muslims learn Arabic (regardless of their home language) because its the laguage of their holy texts.
Cristians seem to be content to let other people interpret their holy texts for them because learning a language is too hard.
If these people are too lazy to learn what their own bible *really* says (while talking about their faith), how can they be expected to learn anything about the universe they are inhabiting. They choose to be ignorant (about their religion and their world), and thus choose to be easy to manipulate.
Big surprise, other people manipulate them.
Ignorant people believe what the people around them tell them. If they grow up hearing the world is flat, they will not believe a stranger telling them its round. If they grow up being educated and skepical, then they will challenge what a stranger says and accept or reject based on its merits.
The majority of us who believe in evolution have neither studied or experienced it. We have read and studied the works of those who have. We can also challenge it. We can compare different theories. We can look at many sources of physical evidence.
Creationists have not experienced creation, they believe the people who tell them it happened (3rd or 4th person). They have but one source of data. They have no physical evidence.
Evolutionists, say the "theory of evolution". This means it should be challenged and changed as our knowledge increases. Just calling evolution a theory by its nature asks you to question it. This creates the mental state of a free thinker.
Creationist say creation is a fact that can not and should not be challenged. This neither begets understanding or growth. Blind acceptance creates a mental state more accepting of a slave.
It is sad that people who claim to be religious love their god so little as to not even try to learn Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic? The majority of people living in first and second world countries (except one) speak more than one language.
It is sad that they love their world so little to want to learn a little bit about how it functions.
It is even sadder that they will raise children to be ignorant as they are.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
>don't know for you but i still have a lot of pigeons
> arround my house ( seems that's a gang...)
"Rock doves" columba livia, certainly not the same: Not migratory, not good to eat, and serves little purpose except to chase off more attractive birds and shit on your car.
Just in my own observations, I've noticed a local extinction of a few things: fireflies, which we used to see in large numbers every night, are completely gone, horned lizards, which were extremely common, but I haven't seen one in >30 years, army ants (benign red ants, now replaced by fire ants), and the scissortail bird Muscivora forficata, which has definitely decreased its population since I've been alive.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It's evolution in action.
Everything that exists is evolution in action.
What?
Everything around you is evidence of the creation.
QED.
PS. You yourself are also evidence of the creation.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
People who claim that religion and reason are mutually exclusive are themselves ignorant about what religion is.
The people most likely to do this are the religious themselves, typified by creationist groups that seek to get their 'theory' into textbooks as a direct contrast to evolution. If the religious stuck to religion and stopped trying to interfere with or invalidate science we wouldn't even be having this debate.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I'm not saying that they are mutually exclusive, I'm saying they need to be mutually exclusive. Why, you may ask?
... that is human nature].
Well it's quite simple, the current system isn't working. You are right, that is how religion operates in the world but religion is tearing our world apart. Something needs to change and religions need to become less dogmatic. Why does a religion have to prove that their God is the one and only God? Because the dogma told them, which is fucking bullshit and I'm sick of people defending this mindset. I'm all for Muslims believing in Allah, I'm all for Catholics beliving that Jesus was the son of God, I'm all for all of that stuff as long as it is relegated to a personal set of beliefs that is not forced upon other people and accepts the possiblity that some other way could also be correct.
Your critique holds because semantically I have not been clear enough, when I say "reason" what I really mean is a theory that explains the world concretely. I do not mean the use of logic to build a position; this is my fault because I was not clear. What I have been attempting to express though is the idea that no one religion will ever encompass the beliefs of every person in this world, nor should it. Our religions need to be accepting of this difference and stop using it as a means to gain economic power over each other [let's face it, even if a war is religious someone started it to get rich
From my experiance the true evangeical is convinced that translaters who translated the king james bible were inspired by god. No need to learn a new language, because the king james bible is more accurate than the original text it was translated from.
Like Heinlein said if you can worship a trinity and convince yourself you are a monotheist any stretch of logic is not too difficult.
Aye aye. Well put.
"I reject your reality and substitute my own."
Vincent Price, is that you?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
evolution's lack of direct observation
This is false. Evolution has been observed in bacteria adapting to poisons, in white/brown moths during the industrial revolution, and in insects adapting to pesticides.
That falls right under the heading of "evolution". So please elaborate on what you were trying to say.
Last post!
The fact that intelligent design is possible in no way suggests that it must be responsible for our existence.
Oh the irony. Just because evolution is possible doesn't mean it's responsible for our existence. Or at least existence of every spieces on Earth.
I'm getting really sick of this. You get a decent post on evolution, and someone latches onto a single statment, misses the point, and acts as if they won the argument. Of course evolution "is possible, but didn't necessarily happen" - that's the bloody definition of a theory! It's not "ironic" to define the very thing you're railing against.
This is not a game, this is not a fight, this is not a war. There is no "winner". Those who support evolution are simply looking for the most plausible explanation as to the origins of species. There has been no other reasonable theory put forth that is based on observable mechanisms. Until there is, we'll stick with evolution, thank you very much.
Last post!
When you let go of something, God flips a coin to decide whether it falls up or down. At some time in the past, Satan switched the coin for a two-headed one and that's why things always fall down and not up.
The evidence for it is all around you. In your heart, you know its true!
Now, I must be off. I have an appointment with the Texas State Education Board Textbook Selection Committee to explain my scientific theory to them and make sure it is given equal time in all school textbooks.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
'It may be different in the U.S., though.' no, in the us, the scientists aren't less logical, it's the senators: the need to posses som - ah - 'faith sympathetic viewpoints' to be elected in certain states. thus, their votes lead to funding for some less-than-objective scientific studies.
copyright © 2005 Flamsmsmark the ravings of a melancholly i
A root premise of science is that logic works.
It's not much of a leap of faith. You can look around you and see that logic and reasoning works. It *is* a leap of faith to believe that *everything* has a logical explanation, but you don't need to make that leap to be a good scientist.
Play Command HQ online
The great irony is that Creationism is so much less creative and more banal than even the tiniest, most mundane slice of reality.
Play Command HQ online
because faith is absolute and immutable, even in the face of the strongest evidence.
copyright © 2005 Flamsmsmark the ravings of a melancholly i
my name is dr. khalid, i have been practicing medicine for 42 years, looking for cure for Aids i have it...if any one needs to know the cure reply back
Variation != Evolution
I don't think this is evolution but rather variation. first off, none of these critters has evolved into anything else, and If it evolved a bigger helmet... then it devolved back? WTF?
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
He's right
Last post!
Sounds like some people need to read 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.
-Valiss
My goodness, did you get a yummy? What I've been 'fed' comes from graduate work in genetics, which included hundreds of 'on topic' peer reviewed journal articles. Which article showed daphnia "changing back" to a previous genome? How did they know what genome to "change back" too? How do you know it was reversion rather than convergence?
Boring! Have they cloned a mammoth yet?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The question was: What evidence is there of the creation?
The answer is: The universe and everything in it.
If someone posed the question: What evidence is there that the creation occured according to the Bible and not some other method, such as science or other religions teach?
That is a more complicated question.
About circular logic: It isn't bad. Circular logic is merely a set of steps that gets you back to where you started. Being able to do such a thing doesn't show that the starting point (and thus the ending point) are incorrect. It only shows that you haven't made any progress.
There is a God because there is a God. Then you build on top of that, and you eventually reach the logical conclusion that the universe was created by a God. Sure, there is circular logic there, but just because it has circular logic doesn't mean it is incorrect.
Let's look at Quantum Mechanics. (I am a physicist by training, BTW.) The Schrodinger equation is the equation that determines the behavior of particles because it is the equation that determines the behavior of particles. (Circular logic!) The repercussions of this equation are the wave-particle duality of matter, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and so on. We know that Quantum Mechanics, for the most part, is very correct, because it happens to correlate well with reality. Circular logic doesn't mean QM is wrong. Instead, we turn to how the theory of QM maps to reality.
The same can be said for the argument I made above. There is a God because there is a God. God created the universe. The universe is here, so so far, everything makes a heck of a lot of sense. So we know that so far, everything is fine with this theory.
Now, I can build on this theory of God, incorporating pieces of information based on observations by myself or other people. We can come to a pretty reasonable view of the universe by tweaking parts of the theory, identifying weak and contradictory areas, and trying to resolve those areas with more solid foundations to build on.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.