Largest Genome Ever

sciencehabit writes "A rare Japanese flower named Paris japonica sports an astonishing 149 billion base pairs, making it 50 times the size of a human genome — and the largest genome ever found. The genome would be taller than Big Ben if stretched out end to end. The researchers warn however that big genomes tend to be a liability: plants with lots of DNA have more trouble tolerating pollution and extreme climatic extinctions—and they grow more slowly than plants with less DNA, because it takes so long to replicate their genome."

Comments

Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Smidge207]

The universe had a beginning
Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else
Therefore, the universe was caused by something else (a creator)
Every part of the universe is dependent
If every part is dependent, then the whole universe must also be dependent
Therefore, the whole universe is dependent for existence right now on some Independent Being
Every event that had a beginning had a sufficient cause
The universe had a beginning
Therefore, the universe had a sufficient Cause
Every effect has a cause
The universe is an effect
Therefore, the universe has a Cause
An infinite number of moments cannot be traversed
If an infinite number of moments had to elapse before today, then today would never have come
But today has come
Therefore, an infinite number of moments have not elapsed before today (i.e., the universe had a beginning)
But whatever has a beginning is caused by something else
Hence, there must be a Cause (Creator) of the universe
An actual infinite cannot exist
An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite
Therefore an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist
The temporal series of events is a collection formed by successive addition
A collection formed by successive addition cannot be an actual infinite
Therefore the temporal series of events cannot be an actual infinite
Some things undeniably exist (e.g., I cannot deny my own existence)
My nonexistence is possible
Whatever has the possibility not to exist is currently caused to exist by another
There cannot be an infinite regress of current causes of existence
Therefore, a first uncaused cause of my current existence exists
This uncaused cause must be infinite, unchanging, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-perfect
This infinitely perfect Being is appropriately called “God”
Therefore, God exists
This God who exists is identical to the God described in the Christian Scriptures
Therefore, the God described in the Bible exists
7.2 Argument from cosmological natural theology

Time, space and matter came into existence at a certain point in the finite past.
Since time, space and matter began to exist they had a cause.
Therefore, whatever caused them was time-less (or eternal), space-less (not subject to locality, or omnipresent) and matter-less (immaterial, non-physical, or spirit).
7.3 Forms of the teleological argument

All designs imply a designer
There is great design in the universe
Therefore, there must be a Great Designer of the universe
7.4 Forms of the ontological argument

God is defined as a being than which no greater can be conceived.
Such a being can be conceived.
If there were no such being in reality, then a greater being—namely, a being than which no greater can be conceived, and which exists—can be conceived.
Yet nothing can be greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived.
Therefore a being than which no greater can be conceived—i.e., God—must exist.
God is the entity of which nothing greater can be thought.
It is greater to be necessary than not.
God must therefore be necessary.
Hence, God exists necessarily.
7.5 Forms of the moral law argument

Moral laws imply a Moral Law Giver
There is an objective moral law
Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver
There are objective moral laws
Moral laws come from a moral lawgiver
Therefore, a moral lawgiver exists
If atheism is true, everything is permissible.
7.6 Dostoevsky’s argument from the consequences of positive Atheism

If atheism is true then man is “the chief of the earth”
If man is “the chief of the earth” then he can abandon absolute standards (i.e., morality)
If man can abandon the absolute standards then “everything is permissible”
Therefore, if atheism is true, everything is permissible
7.7 The argument from joy

Every natural innate desire has a real object that can fulfill it
Human beings have a natural, innate desire for immortality
Therefore, there must be an immortal life after death!

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[norppalaho]

Please to be fucking off of my internet.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Delarth799]

Everyone on the internet who has read or come near your post is now dumber because of it. I award you no points, and may Al Gore have mercy on your soul

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact: Jesus was gay.

Mohammed was too, probably. They may be in heaven right now porking the shit out of each other.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[poopdeville]

Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else

You fail right there.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[nacturation]

The Universe is defined as something of which no greater can be conceived.
Such a thing can be conceived.
If there were no such thing in reality, then a greater thing—namely, a thing than which no greater can be conceived, and which exists—can be conceived.
Yet nothing can be greater than a thing than which no greater can be conceived.
Therefore a thing than which no greater can be conceived—i.e., the Universe—must exist.
The Universe is the entity of which nothing greater can be thought.
It is greater to be necessary than not.
The Universe must therefore be necessary.
Hence, the Universe exists necessarily.

QED.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Cwix]

Well first off TLDR.. I did read the first few lines though, and you have a logic issue.

Well you said:

Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else
Therefore, the universe was caused by something else (a creator)

Our universe could easily have been created by another universe. We could be living inside a black hole.

Now I know your response.. What created the other universe? That would be another logical fallacy. Who created the creator would be my reply.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[NotQuiteReal]

You confused me with all those big words, like "conceived" - but I think you just said the universe could (or has?) go fuck itself?

Please clarify and let me know how I can subscribe to your newsletter. (Assuming you are not a lightning struck smudge.)

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

The answer is simple:w

The earth was created by god. god was created by a giant frog. the giant frog was created by robotic jesus.

And all those lies were created by man, in particular, certain individuals who where trying to control the rest of the population.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[nbauman]

The Greek philosopher Thrasymachus said: With religion, the clever manipulate the foolish.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[bertok]

Converted to mathematics, the error in logic if more clear:

1) You say that for all 'x', there must be an 'x-1'. ("a cause", "antecedent", "precedent", or whatever)

2) You say that "we atheists" claim that the "first thing" is '1'.

3) Hence, if there's a '1', there must be a '0'. ("the first thing must be created")

4) Then, you basically make the unfounded claim that '0' must be 'God'.*

The problem is that this simply implies that all negative numbers must exist also, (-1, -2, -3, etc...), since there's no reason to stop at 0.

In other words, there's no reason to stop at "God". God must also have a cause. And the cause of God must also have a cause, etc...

If you say that "God" is special and has no cause, then (1) was not true, it's actually "for all 'x' except some 'x' there must be an 'x-1'", which is a different rule. Hence, the whole argument is hogwash, since the original rule cannot be true for it to work. That is, if there are exceptions to the rule, then there's no reason for the Universe itself to not be one of those exceptions. This argument, and it's counter-arguments have been known since ancient times, it's not exactly new. You're not exactly surprising any Atheists with a shocking new proof. For crying out loud, there's a 10-page Wikipedia article about it's long history.

* I assume that you refer specifically to the Abrahamic God that spoke to a barely literate goat herder on the side of a mountain in ancient Palestine, raped some woman who was apparently a virgin despite living with her husband, and then watched his illegitimate son get executed, right? Otherwise you could be speaking of any God. Lets say, Zeus. I like Zeus. He's the kind of womanising, lightning-bolt throwing God I can relate to! Some of his human consorts were even awake when he impregnated them -- what a gentleman! If we're going to start making assumptions that "the cause of the universe" must be a specific God, lets pick a good one!

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[atmurray]

“I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”- Stephen F. Roberts

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Sulphur]

We could be living inside a black hole.

If so, then is it still black?

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Artifakt]

What about Carl Sagan's argument?
He argued (in 'Cosmos') that if it was necessary to postulate a cause for the universe, it was necessary to postulate a cause for whatever caused the universe, and if it was not necessary to claim there was a cause for "God", it was also not necessary to claim a cause for the universe. But not 15 pages before he made that claim, he discussed the old Steady State theory and how it was succeeded by the Big Bang model. Sagan allowed the steady state to be causeless, since there was no first moment for an infinitely old universe. But if that's true, Dr. Sagan was also arguing that a 'Big Bang' type universe had a special reason for needing a cause that the Steady State version did not. He was claiming that it was sufficient in one case for science to simply say that not everything has to have a cause, but in the other case that science was only specifically able to skip reasoning about the cause of a thing because it did not have an origin. Why then was it fair to allow the steady state to be causeless, but demand that God must have a cause if the current (Big Bang) model must have a cause? Wouldn''t "God" be more like the steady state than the big bang (at least as most religions define God)? Why did Carl Sagan reason from Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else to conclude that something that had no beginning didn't need a first cause, and then reject the very same idea not 15 pages later? Why did he treat a question as strictly rhetorical when he in fact had given a straight, non-rhetorical answer to it not 15 pages before?
So, going by the way the first post was modded and responded to, Carl Sagan was nothing better than a slashtroll who made us all dumber. Personally, I disagreed with him on several points, but thought he was legitimately brilliant and certainly worthy of publication. I guess I should adopt some of your attitudes and burn his books instead.

Fact: Dozens of distinguished scientists in the 1930s and 40s pointed to the Steady State model as a positive disproof of God, and fought against accepting the Big Bang model because they claimed it was bringing religious superstition back into science. Not one of them was willing to admit after the Big Bang won out by actual evidence that they had been wrong to interpret the science that way. Most of them, when pressed on it, stipulated two things: 1) That even if the Steady State and Big Bang theories were opposite in their predictions in just about every other respect, they were not opposite in their implications about religion, and 2) that the Big Bang would not be a scientific theory unless it shared the common property of disproving the existence of God.

I see several logical flaws in the initial post. In particular, the claim that an actual infinite cannot exist is highly suspect. A lot of the post is rehashed Augustine, and the debate about Augustine's reasoning has echoed through philosophy for over a millennium now. Some of it borrows from Pascal, but then, most people don't reject Pascal's contributions to probability theory and logic just because there are flaws with "Pascal's Wager". However, the refutations here are just as flawed, if not more-so, and I've seen some brilliant men make the same sort of errors many of you are mocking, in the modern era. If you're not prepared to stoop to Karma mods and dumb one-liners for them, maybe some of you just might want to set yourself a better standard here.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Z34107]

Thrasymachus wasn't as much as a philosopher as a giant douche invented to help Plato drive home some points in his Republic. Other tidbits from Thrasymachus: "Justice" is little more than getting ahead, and the "just" will stab anyone in the back should it benefit them.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

However, the refutations here are just as flawed, if not more-so, and I've seen some brilliant men make the same sort of errors many of you are mocking, in the modern era. If you're not prepared to stoop to Karma mods and dumb one-liners for them, maybe some of you just might want to set yourself a better standard here.

As a matter of fact, things without causes happen all the time. For example, look up "vacuum energy". I'm sure Sagan knew more about that than I do. You would have to ask him why he didn't bring it up. Presumably, it was because he was following Aquinas' line of thought (which would have been familiar to about a billion Catholics and surely many other Christian denominations at the time)

You can't refine your ontology so that the universe contains everything that exists while simultaneously postulating a cause for the universe (because then it is not a part of the universe, and so does not exist). Have you heard of Russell's Paradox? Initial elements are ur-elements. We don't (and can't) ask what they are. We build the theory around them and the ways in which they interact.

Modern physics has tended to look at the Big Bang as the "white hole" side of a black hole in some other universe. If you want to call that other universe "God", that is fine by me. But that universe cannot interact with us, because black holes destroy information.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[poopdeville]

Look! A Vim user!

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because God say's they're false?

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do believe that there is God but when you use this fact to believe the man made books you read I just laugh.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I shouldn't respond... But I think you only made two points, with the rest rehashing those.

> Every part of the universe is dependent

Mr. Heisenberg disagrees. Subatomic particles exhibit true randomness.

> If an infinite number of moments had to elapse before today, then today would never have come
> But today has come

Didn't recognize you Zeno. Are you still chasing that turtle?

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[nitehawk214]

The answer is simple:w

Are you typing your slashdot comment with vi?

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because God say's they're false?

I agree, Zeus wouldn't stand for it.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[edumacator]

Silly Troll...it's turtles all the way down.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[vjoel]

The earth was created by god. god was created by a giant frog. the giant frog was created by robotic jesus.

And all those lies were created by man, in particular, certain individuals who where trying to control the rest of the population.

You can't fool me, Mr. James. It's frogs all the way down.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[ooshna]

Nope he wouldn't, Zeus would just fuck his mother.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Wicked Zen]

This is a whole world of logic fail.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[ooshna]

Hey hey Giant Douche is property of the South Park Corp. It cannot be used without expressed written consent.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Tablizer]

The universe had a beginning
Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else
Therefore, the universe was caused by something else (a creator)

Or perhaps another universe that generated this one?

Every part of the universe is dependent

Not sure this is the case for particles accelerating away from us faster than light-speed, such as the other "side" of the universe.
   

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one of the worst arguments I've ever heard.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Jesus_666]

The universe had a beginning

[Premise I] HadBeginning(Universe) (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
A widespread assumption that can reasonably be introduced as a premise.

Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else

[Premise II] HadBeginning(x) -> CausedBy(x, y) ^ x != y (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
Not neccessarily something I agree with but you can of course introduce any premise you like.

Therefore, the universe was caused by something else (a creator)

[Sentence III] CausedBySomething(Universe, y) ^ x != y (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
This sentence follows from the premises you introduced.

Every part of the universe is dependent

[Premise IV] \forall x \in Universe: Dependent(x, y) (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
I assume you meant "dependent on something". Still, there's no reason not to allow this new premise.

If every part is dependent, then the whole universe must also be dependent

[Premise V] \forall x \in Universe: Dependent(x, y) -> Dependent(Universe, y) (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
Since this follows from nothing you introduced so far, I assume you want to introduce it as a new premise.

Therefore, the whole universe is dependent for existence right now on some Independent Being

[Sentence VI] Dependent(Universe, y) ^ x != y (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
You made an error here. There are no premises from which follows that the universe must be dependent on an Independent Being. It could also be dependent on itself or a part of itself.

Every event that had a beginning had a sufficient cause

[Premise VII] HadBeginning(x) -> HadSufficientCause(x) (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
I don't see why we shouldn't introduce this premise, even though it might have been better style to introduce all the basic premises first.

The universe had a beginning

You just repeated sentence I.

Therefore, the universe had a sufficient Cause

[Sentence VII] HadBeginning(Universe) -> HadSufficientCause(Universe) (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
This follows from the premises I and VII.

Every effect has a cause

[Premise VIII] IsEffect(x) -> HasCause(x) (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
Premise added. (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)

The universe is an effect

[Premise IX] IsEffect(Universe) (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
Premise added. (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)

Therefore, the universe has a Cause

[Sentence X] HasCause(Universe) (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
This follows from the premises VIII and IX.

An infinite number of moments cannot be traversed
If an infinite number of moments had to elapse before today, then today would never have come
But today has come
Therefore, an infinite number of moments have not elapsed before today (i.e., the universe had a beginning)

I'm going to skip assigning sentences to these since all you did with them was to restate premise I.

But whatever has a beginning is caused by something else
Hence, there must be a Cause (Creator) of the universe

These two sentences are just repetitions of premise II and sentence III.

An actual infinite cannot exist

[Premise XI] !\is x: Infinite(x) (Slashdot thinks my lines are too short.)
Given the fact that (for example) the set of rationa

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[morgan_greywolf]

Yep. How do you suppose a male deity, Yahweh, gave birth to Adam?

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Jesus_666]

If you take "creator" to mean "cause of our universe" then the sentence stands as another universe would work perfectly fine as a creator.

It's a good thing you didn't read further, though; the logic only gets more and more shaky as the proof goes on. For example, in the end the proof introduces "and this cause we're talking about is the Christian god" as a premise (well, two premises actually) and then uses that premise to derive "God exists". A shorter version that requires far fewer unprovable premises would be:

Something exists.
This something is the Christian god.
Therefore god exists.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[ooshna]

He didn't give birth to him. He is a mud man duh. Made out of dirt then God gave him CPR. check your bible before you start talking nonsense.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then he made Eve out of one of Adams ribs, making her his genetic sibling. The entire human race came from two siblings and is a result of massive inbreeding. Christianity big on inbreeding, not surprising...

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Kuruk]

The universe had a beginning
Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else
Therefore, the universe was caused by something else (a creator)

And who caused the creator then ?

Fools. Can't even follow simple logic.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

The universe had a beginning
Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else
Therefore, the universe was caused by something else (a creator)

That is correct if we assume that the axiom "everything has a cause" exists independently of our universe (which is a pretty big assumption). But even if that assumption is true, your post is incomplete. It needs run like this:

The universe had a beginning
Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else
Therefore, the universe was caused by something else (a creator)
Therefore, the creator was caused by something else (a creator-creator)
Therefore, the creator-creator was caused by something else (a creator-creator-creator)
Therefore, the creator-creator-creator was caused by something else (a creator-creator-creator-creator)

And so on and so fourth...

I guess you just gotta pick one among the infinite number of creators, pray to him and hope that he is the one of them that runs Heaven. (Pro tip: creator number 42 runs Geek Heaven.)

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[ChrisMaple]

Among the pervasive flaws in your arguments is the failure to understand Zeno's Paradox.

Generally, your statements are huge masses of non sequiturs. Look at 7.6

• If atheism is true then man is "the chief of the earth". What makes you think (hah) that atheism implies that, or that "the chief of the earth" actually means anything?
• If man is "the chief of the earth" then he can abandon absolute standards (i.e., morality). Depending upon content, "absolute standard" implies that it is not possible to abandon the standard or that there are cause-and-effect repercussions for abandoning the standard. In the first case, your statement is trivially false. In the second, man is not special in being able to abandon the standard, and nothing is able to evade cause-and-effect.
• If man can abandon the absolute standards then "everything is permissible". Huh? Where does "permission" have a connection to standards?
• Therefore, if atheism is true, everything is permissible A conclusion based only upon 3 nonsenical statements has no logical support.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you just gotta pick one among the infinite number of creators, pray to him and hope that he is the one of them that runs Heaven. (Pro tip: creator number 42 runs Geek Heaven.)

Actually, not. Mathematics has already worked this out, through the use of transfinite induction. If this line of thought is to be believed, the greatest God "is" the proper class of all things including gods (which is slightly different than the set of all things).

I would prefer to not have to justify this assertion. Unfortunately, it takes quite a few years of mind bending math for this to make any sense at all. The theory of sets is the place to start. Russell's paradox follows, and then the creation of the stratified set theories, which introduces transfinite induction. In short, transfinite induction is an injection of the proper class of ordinals into some structure. The proper class of ordinals is "basically" the biggest thing we can ever talk about, even abstractly. Anything "bigger" is contained in it, specifically because of how it is constructed.

This is not a joke or exaggeration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_(set_theory)

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[poopdeville]

One thing I find interesting is that many people seem to want a beginning point. On a cosmic perspective, we are tiny. If we start dealing with creators, and their creators, and theirs and so on, we see that what we live in is a consequence of a process that has been going on "forever" (in some strange inter-cosmic sense of time) and will never end.

A surprising amount of Hindu "mythology" is meant to bring this point out. Whatever you can imagine, it isn't even a tiniest fraction of what we can talk about.

I forget some of the specifics, but there is an old Hindu story of a king who ascended to some kind of godhood, and met Ganesh in a weird infinite space (a cube of inward facing mirrors is a good way to picture it). There was an "uncountable" line of ants on the "ground" crawling by Ganesh. The new god had domain over "uncountably" many universes. And was very full of himself, because of that. Ganesh laughed, and said, "Each of those ants is one of your predecessors". The god-king became humbled. (Obviously I'm paraphrasing. I heard this from a Joseph Campbell lecture)

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[sortius_nod]

Never seen that quote, I like. Very valid and very true.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Patch86]

All we can infer from Big Bang theory is that the current state of the observable universe originated from a single point of space some 13.5 billion years ago, and has expanded out from that point ever since.

It makes no judgement on what the universe looked like immediately before, or it's cause. Possibilities such as a cyclical universe, or the observable universe as part of a greater whole (such as a multiverse), are not ruled out by BB theory (and predicted by some theories, such as M-String theory).

The possibility of "all of existence" essentially following a Steady State model is still an open one. And unfortunately due to the nature of the observability of the universe, probably impossible to prove conclusively one way or the other.

IANATheoreticalCosmologist, by the by.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Guignol]

:) I'm not the poster you are asking that question to
But I, for one, do use vi(m) to post on /. (or anywhere else for that matter)
This is thank's to this very nice firefox addon
You might want to try it :)

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[vadim_t]

Other people spoke of the other parts of this already, but I thought I'd make a point I rarely see:

When people speak of religion being the source of morality, it becomes obvious they never actually read the bible. In it, Moses, Abraham and a few other people actually argue with God and get him to change his mind on smiting some people. If they can argue with God on smiting, then they must have a source of morality that's not God, because otherwise whatever God says is the moral thing, and there can't be an argument.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[ockegheim]

...which reminds me of my philosophy professor telling us Gasking's proof (an ontological argument for the non-existence of God. He would have had many beers with Gasking.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[TempeTerra]

Exactly! We have a designated source of nonsense. Ad-libbing will not be tolerated.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I got is that you don't understand physics and math(including logic) enough to make your point.
Time, space, cause and effect ... they are concepts of our mind. If you don't know, what they mean to describe, don't know the ideas behind it, the assumptions that are made, then you are unable to built up a flawless argumentation.
Physicist should know the difference between their models and reality. Creationist seem do not know, otherwise they would try to prove that they are right that way.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Sique]

Because you don't know a reply on that?

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are logical errors in every single one of your conclusions.

The Ontological argument has been shown to have several flaws, for instance.

Moral laws do NOT imply a moral law giver.

I dispute that the idea of God as the "prime cause" is IDENTICAL with the Christian God.

I dispute that anything that exists with a structure is necessarily "a design".
And as for your final argument: "everything we desire must exist". I desire you to learn some logic. Somehow I don't think that will be fulfilled.

Finally, what did you expect, posting this on Slashdot?

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Sique]

Wouldn"t "God" be more like the steady state than the big bang (at least as most religions define God)?

I take issue with that statement. It should read "at least as most monotheistic religions define God". Only a few religions are monotheistic at all, most of them being in the tradition of Zoroastrism.

Many other religions don't have a problem with the sudden appearence of a god and his disappearance again. So those religions would rather tend to a big bang universe. The Greek with their aeons would even accept the idea of several universes appearing in a big bang and dissappearing again to make room for a newly formed universe. Also the Aztek myths know at least about the creations of five suns, the first four being somewhat unstable or unbalanced and being replaced by other suns.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[anguirus.x]

I may understand why you dismiss my God, but I will contend that your assumption, that the criteria which eliminate all the other Gods extends on to my God, is a faulty assumption. I understand why you would make your conclusion, and it is a false conclusion.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

The following are some of the reasons these arguments fail:
7.1: (By the way, if you're going to copy and paste, at least try to copy and paste the whole thing, thanks.)
"If an infinite number of moments had to elapse before today, then today would never have come"
You assume here that a "moment" is a non-reducible quantity of time. However, this is untrue. Just as there are an infinite number of real numbers between 0 and 1, there are an infinite number of moments between any two nonequal points of time. Yet you can still reach 1.
"Therefore, God exists / This God who exists is identical to the God described in the Christian Scriptures / Therefore, the God described in the Bible exists"
Absolutely NOTHING supports this. This sequence could be replaced with "Therefore, God exists. / This God who exists is identical to the Flying Spaghetti Monster described in the Pastafarian religion. / Therefore, the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists." with the same validity.
"Every part of the universe is dependent / If every part is dependent, then the whole universe must also be dependent"
Every part of the universe is dependent upon the existence of the universe. Therefore, the whole universe must also be dependent upon the existence of the universe.

7.2:
"Time, space and matter came into existence at a certain point in the finite past."
This is unproven. Time could be infinite. We don't know.

7.3:
"All designs imply a designer / There is great design in the universe"
This assumes the universe is "Designed", as in, there is no way for a non-influenced sequence of events to lead to the universe in its current state, even by random chance. Granting that life in its current state is incredibly unlikely, there's still no proof that we aren't simply the output of a "monkey on a typewriter". Arguments against the human body being designed (especially by a "perfect" being) are numerous, including: The appendix, the ability to choke, and cancer.

7.4:
"God is defined as a being than which no greater can be conceived. / Such a being can be conceived."
What proof is there that such a being can be conceived? Not just "given a name", that's not conceiving. Even putting this aside, however, such a being would be completely unable to act. Any act, whether it be creating, or making a decision, would cause this Being to become something else, which is by definition not "perfect" (because it's different than the previous, which was defined to be perfect), and thus there is something "greater": the Being that had not performed that action.

7.5:
This argument mixes "Moral Law" (as in Natural Law, as in the laws the natural universe follows such as Physics) and morality (as in the rules that people should adhere to). As such, it is completely worthless in all ways. The "permissible" would claim to state that anything is possible (for example, that we could fly because there is no natural law to state we can't), but atheism never, at any point, makes that suggestion. A similarly nonsensical argument would be, "Apples must be oranges. But apples are not oranges, therefore God is real."

7.6:
"If man is “the chief of the earth” then he can abandon absolute standards (i.e., morality)"
And yet, many Christians do exactly that. Or are all the altar boys lying?
"If man can abandon the absolute standards then “everything is permissible”"
This assumes that one cannot be atheist and yet have any moral code of their own at all. Patently false. Not every moral standard has to end with "Or else my imaginary invisible daddy in the sky will spank you forever and ever and ever!" after all.

7.7:
"Every natural innate desire has a real object that can fulfill it"
Completely ridiculous. I don't even have the energy to point out WHY this is such a pointless, useless statement anymore.

Troll's source: http://creation.com/atheism
Hardly an unbiased source. Learn to read and think about what you copy and paste, please.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Late Adopter]

Without going into my own beliefs, I don't think that follows logically. I know Catholic doctrine states that other religions actually worship the same God, they just have a faulty understanding of him. Their view is that there's SOMETHING out there, and they think they have the most complete and accurate explanation of what that is. So to apply their own stance to their own faith (that their interpretation is ALSO wrong) still leaves the presupposition (correct or not) that there is some sort of higher power.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone just speculates about the unknown or the unknowable, we call them a philosopher. When someone uses the scientific method to try and prove a speculation, we refer to them as a scientist. Sometimes, scientists wear the hat of "bad philosopher."

A priest is someone who knows the unknown or unknowable. Watch out for those guys; they can be easily spotted by their sheep clothing.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[maxwell demon]

He didn't give birth to him. He is a mud man duh. Made out of dirt then God gave him CPR. check your bible before you start talking nonsense.

God gave them Car Plate Recognition? Or the Canadian Pacific Railway? Or a Common-Pool Resource? Or the Critique of Pure Reason?

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[maxwell demon]

Not only that. Adam and Eve had two sons, Kain and Abel. But where did their wives come from? The bible doesn't tell us, but since there were just one woman which could have born them, it's quite obvious.

Moreover, after there were quite a few people on earth, and therefore marrying close siblings was no longer necessary, God decided to kill all of them but one family by a great flood. So again, inbreeding was enforced.

Maybe the whole world is just an experiment about the results of inbreeding? :-)

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[maxwell demon]

The name "black hole" is now considered non-PC. Please use "African-American hole" instead.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Damn! Nop, I'm an Emacs user, but I posted that comment from my cellphone. I hate touchscreen keyboards.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

>The universe had a beginning

There you go quoting scientists again. Look, scientists are evil atheists. The fact is, nobody knows if the Universe had a beginning, any more than anyone knows if the Universe is a big stage, and if you go Stage Left enough, you go clear off of it into the curtains. If the Universe "had to" have a beginning, doesn't it "have to" have a beginning of its stage? The answer to both questions is "no, it doesn't."

>Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else
First of all, you still don't know if it had a beginning. (Except for scientist's "big bang", the same scientists who tell you there is no God). Secondly, the natural numbers (1, 2, 3, etc) have a beginning: 1. Does that mean somebody "caused" 1? No, it is just a fact that it is the first natural number. 2 is the first prime. Did anyone "cause" 2 to become the beginning of all primes? Obviously no. It just is that way.

>Therefore, the universe was caused by something else (a creator)
First of all, where do you get "by something else"?? Maybe the creator made a small part of the Unvierse, and the Universe made the rest of itself.

>Every part of the universe is dependent
How do you know there aren't two halves of the Universe, like the Old and New Worlds (Europe and America) with currently no dependency or contact?

>If every part is dependent, then the whole universe must also be dependent
As you just saw, perhaps it is not all dependent.

I can go on and on, but why bother.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Urkki]

“I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”- Stephen F. Roberts

I wonder if that was a smart argument originally, or if it completely missed the point, but I bet many of the atheists don't understand it when they read it.

Better way to put it would be "I contend we are both same kind of believers, even though I'm an atheist and you're not. You have religious faith in the god(s) you know in your heart to exist. So do I."

Though that doesn't yet account for the two groups of atheists, those who have faith that there is no god, and those who just don't have faith in any god.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[maxwell demon]

And who caused the creator then ?

Fools. Can't even follow simple logic.

Fools caused the creator?
Well, that explains a lot, I guess.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Kashgarinn]

"The universe had a beginning"
- according to current deductions: yes

"Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else"
- that's a logical statement, and there's no way to say that it is true regarding the big bang, or false. Don't you just love the uncertainty?

"Therefore, the universe was caused by something else (a creator)"
- well, that's a logical fallacy. you might think it's true, but logically you haven't proven your case because there's no way of knowing why the universe began. There's not even the certainty that you can use logic before the beginning of the universe. It's a complete unknown, you just don't know, but you try and fill that unertainty with something. Try acknowledging that uncertainty instead.

You basically reiterate the same logical fallacy, so I'll cut that out, i.e.

"This God who exists is identical to the God described in the Christian Scriptures"
- what about the gods of egyptian cultures? Your (incorrect) reasoning has in no way ruled out that it might mean other gods, rather than stick to your incorrect reasons, do the right thing, accept the uncertainty.

"Time, space and matter came into existence at a certain point in the finite past."
- this is the same argument as the first sentence above, i.e.: true.

"Since time, space and matter began to exist they had a cause."
- This is the same as second sentence form you above, i.e. false. There's no way to know whether we can really say whether logic can explain what caused the beginning. It's a complete uncertainty. Embrace it.

"Therefore, whatever caused them was time-less (or eternal), space-less (not subject to locality, or omnipresent) and matter-less (immaterial, non-physical, or spirit)."
- Because of the uncertainty, you can't use logic, and because of the inability to use logic, this can't be proven, because this can't be proven, you can't prove a higher power exists.

"All designs imply a designer"
- A cosmological fart of space/time/matter which expands randomly isn't a design.. but this is what the universe is, there's no sign that anything we all can see and corroborate and theorise about has been designed. It has all been explained by theories of gravity, relativity, electro-magnetism and other provable scientific theories.

"There is great design in the universe"
- no there isn't, take a ball, throw it. can you design the path to do an S-shape while it falls? Can you ask your god to do it for you? Everything we see is designed by natural forces. there's no design other than human design, and that's mostly to make dildos and other less self-entertaining enterprises.

"God is defined as a being than which no greater can be conceived."
- that's a logical statement, i.e. there's no truth in it in and of itself, no more than if I were to say "god is made out of peaches". these 2 statements are equally true, and equally false. there's an uncertainty just within making that statement. If you can disprove that "god is made of peaches", then you can disprove that god is "a being than which no greater can be conceived". If you can prove that god is "a being than which no greater can be conceived", then you have also proved that "god is made of peaches".

"Moral laws imply a Moral Law Giver"
- I would take this to mean "Human laws imply Human law giver", who else but humans are interested in what is ethical and what isn't? Ever heard of bears or ants being interested in that?

"There is an objective moral law"
- that's a logical statement. same as above with the pears, there's a basic uncertainty regarding its validity because its validity isn't based on truth or untruth. Accept the uncertainty and you'll understand that the content of this sentence is and can be completely arbitrary (i.e. the laws about peaches).

"Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver"
- a logical fallacy, see above.

"If atheism is true, everything is permissible."
- finally, a true sentence. Everything which

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. Thanks for that.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Sulphur]

Silly Troll...it's turtles all the way down.

There are only three Ninja Turtles.

Turtles are not recursive.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[edumacator]

Suppose we change the subject.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[TangoMargarine]

If atheism is true then man is "the chief of the earth". What makes you think (hah) that atheism implies that, or that "the chief of the earth" actually means anything?

If there's no higher authority than whatever animals may be on hand, wouldn't it fall to the most dominant animal to define the rules? Whether anybody actually follows them is another matter, so yes, your last "actually means anything" is true.

If man is "the chief of the earth" then he can abandon absolute standards (i.e., morality). Depending upon content, "absolute standard" implies that it is not possible to abandon the standard or that there are cause-and-effect repercussions for abandoning the standard. In the first case, your statement is trivially false. In the second, man is not special in being able to abandon the standard, and nothing is able to evade cause-and-effect.

I think what he meant might have been "if man is the chief of the earth, there is no reason the standards have to be absolute and he is thus free to abandon them." Or if he didn't, I guess I might as well say it. But I didn't really understand your argument so I dunno, you could very well be right.

If man can abandon the absolute standards then "everything is permissible". Huh? Where does "permission" have a connection to standards?

I'm guessing this is a reference to 1 Corinthians 6:12, " 'Everything is permissible for me'--but not everything is beneficial. 'Everything is permissible for me'--but I will not be mastered by anything,' " which is a quote of somewhere else. The way I understood it is "just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean it's a good idea to." If we interpret his argument this way, then it seems to me to pretty much be a tautology.

If you have better ideas than what I've slopped out here, by all means I'd like to hear them (no sarcasm implied).

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[segwonk]

"Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?"

Rest assured: It is just *your* observation.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[ooshna]

Maybe the whole world is just an experiment about the results of inbreeding?

Well that explains the British royal family and the American legal system.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[Pseudonym]

I'm an Omnist, you insensitive clod.

Re:Can atheists refute one simple fact?

[atmurray]

My condolences :)

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why exactly does this matter to anybody?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It means that there is compensation for a population that has very tiny penises.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it needs MULTIPASS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksWAgjBe3TU&feature=related

Re:So what?

[someone1234]

If intelligent design exists, that plant may store the genome of 49 different people besides its own.
I guess it is just spaghetti, but still...

Typo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang it. I read it as "Largest Gnome Ever". My brain was already thinking: "WTF? Why would someone need a large desktop manager? Larger than what?" Then, I read the summary. All became clear.

Re:Typo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang it. I read it as "Largest Gnome Ever". My brain was already thinking: "WTF? Why would someone need a large desktop manager? Larger than what?" Then, I read the summary. All became clear.

Reading comprehension jokes are original and hilarious.

Re:Typo?

[rubycodez]

I saw that as Needling compression yokes are original and hilarious. but you know, sometimes a hypodermic needle is just the thing to force the valve open, you shouldn't make fun of improvisers.

Picture

[Glonoinha]

Since the article was light on visuals, I found a picture of the largest genome ever.

Re:Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

I am tired. I really just read "largest gnome ever", and couldn't quite figure out what they meant.

Obviously:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Does ist need a Multipass...?"

Thanks for the warning.

[Anonymous Coward]

The researchers warn however that big genomes tend to be a liability: plants with lots of DNA have more trouble tolerating pollution and extreme climatic extinctions—and they grow more slowly than plants with less DNA, because it takes so long to replicate their genome.

I'm glad they warned me. I was considering enlarging my genome, but now that I know the dangers I guess I'll pass.

er what

[Idimmu Xul]

The genome would be taller than Big Ben if stretched out end to end.

How big is this flower .... ?

Re:er what

[Anonymous Coward]

If the DNA was stretched out, and unpacked, then yes, it could be that tall. The DNA in each one of your cells, and in turn, each one of the cells of this plant, is highly packed through the use of histones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histones) and supercoiling. So what would take a great deal of space, ends up being quite small. That is also how you get those wonderful little shapes of the chromosomes as well. Not all the DNA needs to be exposed all the time. When the time comes to transcribe, then it is uncoiled. But until then, this massive genome is packed up nice and tight.

Being a molecular biologist does the body a world of good!

Re:er what

[Col. Bloodnok]

It's as tall as Big Ben - a really big bell in St. Stephen's Tower, Westminster.

Weird unit of measurement, but there we go.

Re:er what

[publiclurker]

That's annoying is that it's hard to tell if they mean the bell or the tower it's in. American's generally don't know the difference.

Re:er what

[TangoMargarine]

I suppose the reason why these lengths (also e.g. intestines) seem so ridiculous is because, in terms of a limit, as diameter approaches zero length approaches infinity.

Re:er what

[the_womble]

Its fine laughing at foreigners (especially Americans) for getting things wrong that the British can get right: how to pronounce Cholmondley or Kirkcudbright (or even Edinburgh).

The problem with "what is Big Ben?" is that the British usually get it wrong as well.

Largest Genome ever

[cappp]

My girlfriend always said it's not the size of the genome that counts, its what you do with it.

Re:Largest Genome ever

[frank_adrian314159]

Yeah, they always say that if you have a small genome.

Re:Largest Genome ever

[vux984]

Yeah, they always say that if you have a small genome.

What do they say if you have the largest genome in the world?

"Not tonight dear, I have a headache."

Re:Largest Genome ever

[fahrbot-bot]

I thought the funny bit was where he said, "My girlfriend" -- especially since "she" obviously thinks he has a small genome.

Actually ...

[niclas.l]

Big Ben is, technically, the nick-name of the Great Bell inside the clock tower. That bell is only slightly taller than 2 meters.

Re:Actually ...

[nedlohs]

It's a nickname, there is no "technically".

It is commonly used to refer to the bell, or to the clock, or to the clock tower.

Re:Actually ...

[ian_from_brisbane]

It's a nickname, there is no "technically".

It is commonly used to refer to the bell, or to the clock, or to the clock tower.

So how tall is this genome?

Re:Actually ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Ben is, technically, the nick-name of the Great Bell inside the clock tower. That bell is only slightly taller than 2 meters.

So it is also slightly taller then Ben Roethlisberger?

Re:Actually ...

[Dachannien]

Ben Roethlisberger is as big as a womp rat?

Re:Actually ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're both right. Because it's common parlance to call the tower "big Ben", that's certainly not wrong, but I think originally it was the name for the just the bell.

Re:Actually ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's commonly used to refer to the clock or the clock tower by morons, you mean. Just because the ill-educated call something by a certain name, doesn't make it right.

Re:Actually ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I came here to say that nobody in the US knows how big Big Ben is anyway. I was hoping the editors would clarify TFS instead of giving meaningless units.

Wikipedia says:

• The tower ... is 96.3 metres (315.9 ft) high (roughly 16 stories).
• The clock faces are set in an iron frame 7 metres (23 ft) in diameter.
• The main bell, officially known as the Great Bell ... is 2.2 metres tall and 2.9 metres wide.

Re:Actually ...

[nedlohs]

It's a nickname, it means whatever people agree it means. And most people understand the the tower meaning just fine. The fact people had to post pointing out it is the nickname of the bell indicates even they knew what was meant (or else they wouldn't have had to point it out). So it communicated the intended meaning just fine.

Re:Actually ...

[kostmo]

Yep, also see metonomy

So lots of things.

[jd]

Well, a large genome generally means lots of redundancy. Lots of redundancy is theorized to mean high resistance to radiation. This plant should, therefore, be highly resistant. That is potentially quite useful knowledge. Back in the days when people looked to hydroponics and Biosphere 2 as a way of getting oxygen into an artificial environment, they forgot to take into consideration that most plantlife won't cope with the radiation on, say, Mars. In order to be able to get a livable environment for humans, you must first create a livable environment for the plants needed. Obvious solution - use rad-resistant plants as part of an initial program for building up the environment.

Once you've got an artificial environment that is biologically stable and sustaining good O:CO2 ratios for plantlife, you can look to advancing that environment. I'd suggest having a two layer dome, with the gap between the inner dome and outer dome flooded at as high a pressure as the domes can take something that'll filter the radiation. By having an organic system that can cope, you can take your time getting it right. Regardless of what is actually done, these plants will provide a rich topsoil that will be valuable to the plants that are actually needed by humans.

Re:So lots of things.

[poopdeville]

Well, a large genome generally means lots of redundancy.

You said "generally", so I'm not jumping on you for this, but "how do we know"? Who is to say the plant doesn't have hundreds of meters of codings for proteins that are no longer useful to the species? We only just sequenced the human genome a few years ago. This thing is 50 times as long. (Yeah, Moore's law is good stuff for the biotech industry, so it might be possible to sequence this plant in under a year, say, but still)

So if there are hundreds of meters of inactive protein coding ... things, they're redundant, but not in any useful way.

Re:So lots of things.

[pecosdave]

Wouldn't filling the gap between the domes with water do the job? I mean water does a great job of stopping radiation anyways and I'm sure there's other inventive things that could be done with that.

Re:So lots of things.

[jd]

We don't know, until someone tries an experiment (eg: analyzes the genome, takes it to some relatively unshielded part of the IIS, or drops seedlings from a transport plane over Chernobyl).

Indeed, it is because we don't know - and because exceptions are bound to happen - that I used the term "generally". Right now, we know it's a great candidate for testing what we think we know. At 50x the genome, it should be possible to test many ideas out about how the genome evolves.

In fact, if it turns out that there isn't much duplication, it could be interesting in other ways. With a genome that long, if there's little or no redundancy, the extra would presumably be a record of how the plant has evolved. Given the normal rate of evolution for plants, that would be one hell of a long record, which might well make a lot of biologists extremely excited.

So I'll freely admit that there are other (exciting) possibilities in addition to the one I suggested at first and possibly some other not-so-exciting possibilities (such as a dinosaur geneticist experimenting with genetically modified food).

Re:So lots of things.

[jd]

Water would work, but water is also very very heavy. On the other hand, if the domes could be made strong enough to support sufficient water, you'd have a great way to create artificial rain via sprinklers.

Re:So lots of things.

[spqr0a1]

not-so-exciting ... dinosaur geneticist

Does not compute.

Re:So lots of things.

[nbauman]

Well, a large genome generally means lots of redundancy. Lots of redundancy is theorized to mean high resistance to radiation.

Another reason why plants have large genomes is that they tend to duplicate their genomes. One theory is that it makes speciation easier.

Mind you, it's not as if the designer said, "I'll duplicate plant genomes to make it easier for them to separate into species." They just duplicate and it works out well.

Apparently plants can double their genomes without the disasterous consequences that it has in animal cells. Animal cells don't double their entire genome unless they're really messed up, like in cancer, and then they're swiftly disposed of.

Re:So lots of things.

[Vreejack]

Super-large plant genomes are usually the result of chromosome-doubling. This is usually quite fatal to animals, but plants tolerate it well, and often use it to create new genes as duplicates are free to evolve in new directions. Most of the extra genes are simply redundant, however, and do nothing but consume resources. If a plant species undergoes repeated doublings it can quickly become the genomic monstrosity we have here, which is likely to become extinct if it does not fix itself.

Re:So lots of things.

[Camshaft_90]

In Zero gravity, water weights nothing. Kips and the required strength should be very low unless there is movement from an external source. I missed the pun.

Re:So lots of things.

[Dersaidin]

Its a possibility, but you can shield radiation in other ways. Resilliance and high oxygen production would be more important. Ideally, breed plants for all of these things (and start ASAP).

Re:So lots of things.

[jamesh]

While you can't discount it completely, Mars is only about 10% of the mass of Earth so weight is not such as big a problem. On a planet heavier than Earth it could be worse though...

On a planet where water is hard to find you might want to use something else as your shielding too.

Re:So lots of things.

[swillden]

Regions of long-term zero gravity are hard to find on Mars.

Re:So lots of things.

[poopdeville]

I guess I was hoping for a more positive answer, like, "We've figured out that if chromosomes are in this shape, then ..." I already knew that skepticism is our (as scientists) collective default attitude. ;0)

Re:So lots of things.

[poopdeville]

Good job. And the mass that will have to be accelerated? Indeed, you are no longer in a "zero gravity" frame of reference if you are accelerating.

Re:So lots of things.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a fair bit of experience with these genome thingees and it being saturday night I have been drinking some complex carbohydrates mixed with alcohol so the activation energy for posting to slashdot has been reduced (normally most people alive would have something better to do- i know I do). Now, plant genomes expand for two reasons 1) polyploidy events - where the genome is oops accidently doubled (soybean), or 2) massive transposon expansion where small bits are copied many times to give a big genome (eg maize). It sounds like P. japonica is of the #2 variety, ie a small genome of a flowering plant that as been expanded over time by transposons and lost its ability to prune them back out again. So to answer the parents question: It is unlikely to prove radiation resistant as most transposon expanded genomes still only maintain a single copy (x2 for a diploid) of each gene, so a vital function is easily disrupted by radiation induced mutations. If however, P. japonica was massively polyploid, then perhaps it would offer so additional radiation protection- but as the polyploid state, is for most sexually reproducing plants, a temporary state, it could very likely collapse back down into a non-radition protected species quite quickly over time.

Re:So lots of things.

[treeves]

FYI, while the mass of Mars is about 10% of Earth's mass, objects on Mars' surface have about 37% of their weight on Earth.

Re:So lots of things.

[Anonymous Coward]

not entirely true....there are some polyploid fish, among other things. but it's a decent generalization

Re:So lots of things.

[Ubi_NL]

I'm sorry but that is just the biggest load of nonsense ever encountered. First and foremost, there is no such thing as complete redundancy in genomic information. THe simplest explanation is that there is exactly zero evolutionary benefit of it, as destruction of a redundant copy does not reduce fitness but in fact increases it due to reduced energy requirement to copy the redundant pair in mitosis. In other words, the redundant copy is removed from the genepool very quickly. There are more elaborate reasons but that would make me repeat a few hunderd scientific manuscripts on the topic from the last 10 years or so. Also, there is no point in having redundant pairs of genes to shield from radiation. It is much better to have an improved DNA repair system and remove individuals from the gene pool that fail to stabilize their genome.

Seeing this being +5 insightful is something I'd expect from 4chan, not /.

Re:So lots of things.

[ancient_kings]

What if this plant utilizies radiation as a source of energy? The collision area for its genome must be huge enough for multiple bond breakages induced by radiative particle collisions. These collisions are going to create extremely energetic radical "pieces" on its genome that this plant might be able to harvest. Naturally, the mutiple copies of genome would allow this plant to easily recover? I'd bet this plant probably grows like nuts in high altitude places...

Re:So lots of things.

[Sique]

Also animal cells can multiply their genomes. Some butterflies for instance are known to appear with polyploid chromosome sets. One of the main reason why this plant has such a large number of genes is that it is an alloploid - a polyploid hybrid of at least four other species of plants. It is basicly a big heap of ammassed genes not yet sorted out.

Re:So lots of things.

[anguirus.x]

Hi id These plants are susceptible to extreme conditions, pollution, toxins, etc. because of their extraordinarily large genomes. The hypothesis is that the size of the genome necessitates the cell spend an inordinate amount of energy maintaining and duplicating the genome. The mutation rate for the plant in a polluted area is largely maintained by the error rate of it's error-correction proteins. The cell must spend more energy creating these proteins to scan the larger genome, as well as proteins for packing the genome efficiently and to allow for rapid unpacking. With a larger genome there are a greater absolute number of errors and so more errors overall. The cell must spend more energy to correct this greater volume of errors. Overall the effect is to make the cell ill-suited to facing extreme conditions, and slow to grow.

Re:So lots of things.

[anguirus.x]

Redundancy may provide for resistance to mutations (though in some cases more copies of critical portions of the genome could reduce resistance) but greater numbers of base pairs do not.

Re:So lots of things.

[Randle_Revar]

Gene sequencing speed/cost is moving faster than Moore's law

This system does 400-600 million base pairs per 10 hour run.

149,000,000,000bp/400,000,000bp/run ~ 373 runs

3,730 hours ~ 155 days

I don't how long setup times between runs might be or what other factors are involved, though. On the other hand, a big lab would have more than one sequencer.

Re:So lots of things.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not new:

# zfs set copies=10 tank

Re:So lots of things.

[atisss]

OMG, that means the remaining 27% is mass of Martians.. so there must be huge population of Martians on Mars, so much that they generate gravitation.

Probably multiploid

[morty_vikka]

Not that I have read TFA, but this is probably another plant with multiple copies of each chomosome. In which case it's not really a newsflash; this is the case for many plants. Sugar cane and many other monocots have extremely multiploid genomes.

Re:Probably multiploid

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I have read TFA, but this is probably another plant with multiple copies of each chomosome. In which case it's not really a newsflash; this is the case for many plants. Sugar cane and many other monocots have extremely multiploid genomes.

It is true, and also most plant genomes have an extreme abundance of mobile elements that make up most part of their genomes. So basically, a larger genome do not necessarily imply a more complex genome. The human genome is probably far more complex than this plant.

think i saw this before...

[Ubergrendle]

So does this plant run around asking for a MUL-TI-PASS?

In short

[unity100]

they have all the sensitivities of an advanced life form.

I misread the title...

[RobVB]

And started thinking about what size a gnome must be in order to not be a gnome.

Re:I misread the title...

[Anonymous Coward]

As tall as Big Ben? Using what size font, line spacing, and page indentation?

Re:I misread the title...

[morgan_greywolf]

That's why I think we need different units. Maybe someone could express the size in Libraries of Congress or Volkswagen Beetles or something.

comression

[thoughtsatthemoment]

Perhaps the DNA is not compressed properly.

Thats Big

[SuperTechnoNerd]

It must be made by Microsoft. Far too many lines of code. :)

Re:Thats Big

[troll8901]

Maybe the code doesn't have any functions - everything is dumped in the main() block. That will lead to much redundancy.

I for one welcome our flowery overlords

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of them genomic combinations will probably produce Jurassified species that can eat humans for dessert. And that's after spending the rest of the day converting sunlight into carbohydrates.

Ding Dong

[AmigaHeretic]

Taller than Big Ben? I assume they mean the "Clock Tower" as Big Ben is actually just the bell inside the tower.

Re:Ding Dong

[maxwell demon]

Taller than Big Ben? I assume they mean the "Clock Tower" as Big Ben is actually just the bell inside the tower.

Of course anything which is taller than the clock tower is also taller than the bell, or the bell would not fit into the tower.

Useless comparison

[halestock]

As tall as Big Ben? That hardly expresses how much data is packed into this genome. I need to know is how many Library of Congresses this genome is in order to fully comprehend the size.

Re:Useless comparison

[HybridST]

Since nobody's stepped up yet and just in case you're serious let's see if i get this right...

human+genome+base+pairs"...just over 3 billion DNA base pairs"

3 billion (short count) 3.0*10^9
150 times that is 4.5*10^11

2^(3.0*10^9 * 4.5*10^11) which simplifies (with googles help!) to 1.35*10^21 bits

divide by size of data in loc"...perhaps about 3 petabytes (3000 terabytes)" which is 3.0*10^15bytes

Search google for "(1.35*10^21bits)/(3.0*10^15bytes*8)" and get "7 031.25"

So you are looking at roughly 7 thousand loc...
Results vary if 4 base pairs allow for base4 storage rather than binary...

Re:Useless comparison

[pjt33]

The summary says "149 billion base pairs". I agree that it's probably 1E9 in a billion in this context, so 1.49E11 base pairs. Each base pair is 2 bits - 2.98E11 bits. 3.725E10 bytes (assuming 8 bits per byte, and stating it to save the other pedants pointing it out).

So 34.7GB to 3 s.f., which is all we can justify with 3 s.f. in the original figure. Far too small to be worth expressing in Libraries of Congress.

And of course, that's assuming that most of it isn't just redundant copies. The actual information contained may be far less.

Same as bloated code

[loufoque]

Bloated code is unmaintenable.
Likewise, a bloated genome means it's hard to evolve.

Re:Same as bloated code

[Tablizer]

It was all fine until the plant used an Object-Relational Mapper.

A self contidicting logic tree

[Anonymous Coward]

"The universe had a beginning"
A conclusion without facts...

"Anything that had a beginning must have been caused by something else"
True

"Therefore, the universe was caused by something else (a creator)"
Where did the creator come from?

Let me answer for you... The creator has always existed...

So lets simplify our model of everything and just state for simplicity that the universe has always existed.
No creator required. NOTE: Usually, the simplest model is correct.

sfdsfdsf

[Anonymous Coward]

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Smidge207 is an obvious troll

[Anonymous Coward]

My name is Skyler, but everyone calls me Alphabet because i'm the ALPHA male and you can BET on it. My boys sent me the link to this messageboard. They told me it was full of fat pale basement dwelling neckbeards OCD Asians and pathetic gay virgins. Wow they weren't kidding. I haven't seen this level of homosexuality since my broseph Vince got totally zonked on X and mouthkissed Zane. Of course you fags do this shit ON PURPOSE You chumps make me sick hanging out on your nerd website all day jerking off to fat chicks making your gay little posts about Apple and dressing up like faggots and ejaculating to tranny porn.

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Lets face it the chicks can't resist my bangin guns. When I walk up into the club the bitches can't wait for the Alphabet to wrap his pimp mitts around their titties. I have a .312 batting average not that you fags even know what that means and can drink all of your children under the table.You losers need to get a fucking life.

Re:Smidge207 is an obvious troll

[Anonymous Coward]

a .312 batting average with men's butts. da doom che

Re:Smidge207 is an obvious troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Teach me! I want to know how to be like you!

Re:Smidge207 is an obvious troll

[mr_bubb]

This is the greatest post ever, anywhere.

Re:Smidge207 is an obvious troll

[Wicked Zen]

ROFL-McWaffle

Re:Smidge207 is an obvious troll

[ooshna]

Wtf dude not all, of us are Asian.

screw that story, here's a real Largest Gnome Ever

[rubycodez]

http://www.kcci.com/r/23101808/detail.html

Largest Gnome Ever

[RapmasterT]

Did anyone else misread this as "Largest Gnome Ever" and momentarily get excited that someone had discovered a species of Gnomes that was larger than expected?

Ok, sure it sounds stupid when you say it out loud, but dammit for a second there...

Re:Largest Gnome Ever

[maxwell demon]

I would have interpreted "Largest Gnome Ever" as code bloat in a new version of the desktop environment.

Thanks for the warning about big genomes

[Anonymous Coward]

The researchers warn however that big genomes tend to be a liability: plants with lots of DNA have more trouble tolerating pollution and extreme climatic extinctions--and they grow more slowly than plants with less DNA, because it takes so long to replicate their genome.

Thanks for the warning; I'll remember it when designing future plant species.

- God

Re:Thanks for the warning about big genomes

[DEmmons]

dang, i was about to be all like "who the heck are the scientists 'warning', anyway?", and then you one-upped me. it wouldn't be funny now.

congratulations, we've got a new Unit

[CAIMLAS]

Congratulations, we now have a new unit of measurement to join the myriad:

* Libraries of Congress
* Landmasses of Texas
* States of Massachusetts
* California Economies
* Lines of Code
* Man-Hours
* Kilobits per second

Welcome to the fold, Big Bens!

Re:congratulations, we've got a new Unit

[nitehawk214]

If the unit refers to the bell, it is only slightly taller then an average person. If the unit refers to the clock tower itself, it is close to a football field. It would seem this unit is redundant.

Oblig Simpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

Worst... Genome.... EVER!

biggest genome I've ever seen!

[Cyko_01]

that's what SHE said!

Someone phone Blizzard

[Foofoobar]

Wow! Been playing too much Warcraft. Thought that said largest GNOME EVAH

Re:Can slashdotters refute one simple fact?

[davidwr]

Fact: TOO LONG, DID NOT READ.

Fact 2: "Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING." gets in the way of posts that are intended to be only 6 words long.

So not world of warcraft?

[Snaller]

For a moment there I thought it was "Largest Gnome Ever"!

Mohammed? Gay? I think not

[davidwr]

They say he married a 7-9 year old girl and consummated the relationship at the socially acceptable appropriate time - presumably the onset of her puberty.

If he was gay why would he even bother?

By the way, before anyone jumps in with "OMG Mohammed was a pervert!!!" it wasn't uncommon in that culture to marry someone before puberty but hold off having "marital relations" until she was older. Heck, Mary mother of Jesus was probably barely old enough to get pregnant and she was about to marry Joseph and according to all surviving accounts was impregnated by a being older than the universe. I'm not saying that marrying a girl still in single digits is right by modern Western values, only that it wasn't wrong by the social standards of the time.

made-up Comic Book Guy quote

[davidwr]

"Largest [pause] Genome [pause] Ever"

Not so fast

[ebuck]

A large genome might mean more copies of the same protein encoded, but it might also mean more proteins to do the same job.

There could be a lot of "two step" processes, where a one step process is possible.

There could be a mutation which generates an extra lethal chemical. Dominate genes exist, and they are not always beneficial.

I'd stick with the article's premise that while there's more possibility to resist failure, there's also more moving parts to fail, and the cost to replicate the redundancies is more expensive than just having one good working gene.

Re:Mohammed? Gay? I think not

[Eskarel]

I suppose there's also a matter of scale, when you're probably not going to live to see 30, waiting till 25 seems a bit of a stretch.

Not the size!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another proof that it's not the size, but how you use it!

On another note, plants are around much longer than animals, so they probably have more complex DNA. I guess this is an example of this.

Bloatware...

[SpaceAmoeba]

Clearly humans are more efficiently coded.

I Am Honored to Have Made Your Signature

[eldavojohn]

From your sig:

Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?

That's the only part of your post that wasn't stark raving stupidity. I understand you don't like me. That's fine, I'm even happy that you don't like me. Because your behavior is beyond help. You copy amazon reviews as comments (and I've called you out on it because you keep doing it). And I'm calling you out again. The above post that you put up there is copy pasted from creation.com. You can't even come up with your own troll posts.

You have the weird CmdrTaco sexual fetishes under your name. You manage to pack homophobia and xenophobia all into one post. You are well versed in the art of cruise control for awesome. You're all over the road in the spectrum of what's wrong with posts on Slashdot ... and yet you login to relay these ramblings to us. Does not compute.

I'm honored to be so diametrically opposed to you that you must call me an idiot in your sig but seriously what drives you, man?

Godzilla

[confused one]

The researchers warn however that big genomes tend to be a liability:

That is until it's irradiated in a nuclear test and goes all Godzilla on us

Re:Godzilla

[maxwell demon]

You mean, most of that genome is actually a Godzilla genome, which is waiting to get activated?

BTW, for those who understand German, it somehow reminded me of this story.

OP raises an important question:

[Zangief]

"plants with lots of DNA have more trouble tolerating pollution and extreme climatic extinction"

What kind of genome do you need to survive extinction?

Secret to extending life?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I have viruses infiltrate my cells and add on another billion pairs to my dna ... will that slow down my cell replication and let me live as long as a giant redwood?

No I'm not volunteering.

Re:Mohammed? Gay? I think not

[Azaril]

Interestingly, the average life expectancy of a 16 year old in most civilisations since roman times has been higher than 60. The reason we commonly think they died young is a matter of statistics - infant mortality was massive.

Don't feed the trolls, fuckwits!

[Anonymous Coward]

but seriously what drives you, man?

Probably the fact that you and so many other Slashdotters bother to feed such a lame troll. Thanks to your collective idiocy, this mind-numbingly offtopic thread contains the majority of posts in this story.

YOU ARE ALL FUCKING RETARDS.

Re:Don't feed the trolls, fuckwits!

[TangoMargarine]

If there is a troll, that troll must have had a beginning...

;-)

polyploidy

[DrYak]

polyploidy, when the whole genome is duplicated (every single chromosome, unlike trisomy where 1 pair of chromosome has one of the two in 2 copies instead),isn't that much problematic because all the genetic material is evenly duplicated, there is no disbalance with some genes with more copies as the others (unlike trisomy, again).

this only leads to a nucleus having more DNA material, and thus being bigger. As in lots of situations cells tend to evaluate their size and growth stage based on the ratio of the nucleus and the rest of the cell, this can lead to bigger cells,and some time even to bigger specimens or bigger parts. (in addition to the redundancy mentionned elsewhere in the comments).

lots of human-selected and made crops are polyploids.

the phenomenon even occurs naturally in some human cells through a phenomenon called endomitosis, where the cell doesn't split or sometimes doesn't even separate its chromosome copies). It occurs naturally in human liver cells. Could be a mechanism acquired through evolution to make the cells bigger, and providing a useful redundancy given the fact that this cells' role in detoxification and thus their exposition to aggressive chemicals.

indeed

[DrYak]

you joke, but that's indeed the case :
- were're hot blooded and thermally regulated
- we live in an environment with a very narrow varability
(i mean the direct environment next to our skin. When it's cold outdoor, we just put more clothes on, instead of going out naked)

thus our enzymes have only to work in a very specific range of conditions. Unlike this plant which has to sustain a wide range of variations, and thus needs lots of different genes coding for similar proteins,but each optimised for a slightly different set of conditions to cover the whole range (to be able to carry on a reaction no matter the temperature, plant just picks up the variant which works best at the current temperature. Meanwile, we just set the internal thermostat on 37C, use only the 37C-optimized enzyme, and be done with it)

Not under Wikipedia's watch!

[zoidran]

Can a biologist confirm the summary/TFA are right? Wikipedia seems to disagree...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome#Comparison_of_different_genome_sizes
Which one is trustworthy?

Re:Not under Wikipedia's watch!

[jack2000]

The one that doesn't have its nose up its own wikiality.

Re:Mohammed? Gay? I think not

[Sique]

A second reason was death in childbirth, due to infections because of the unclean environment. It makes no difference if you die at 18 after giving birth or at 36 after giving birth.

repetitive

[kharchenko]

Large plant genomes tend to be polyploid (>2 copies of chromosomes) and full of repetitive elements. In other words, the overall complexity is similar to other plants, even though the total size is much larger.

Re:Can slashdotters refute one simple fact?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not yelling if it's only six words?

Where is his minion?

[BatGnat]

Where is his minion?

Wikipedia says otherwise

[canatech]

A minute or two on Wikipedia says that this would be the largest plant gemome.

It lists the largest genome as that of Polychaos dubium ("Amoeba" dubia) with 670,000,000,000 pairs.

IANAG

Re:Wikipedia says otherwise

[canatech]

I guess that would make it about 5 'Big Ben clock towers' long.

HHGttG

[TangoMargarine]

"In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea."

This theist can easily refute your whole argument.

[Anonymous Coward]

The universe had a beginning

Prove it. Does a continuous line traversing a moebius strip have a beginning?

As the ancient Indian scriptures say (roughly paraphrase) "Men cannot know how the universe began, because no man was there to see it". Everything we think we know about the universe's origins is just theory.

A mishmash of unsupported premises and conjecture does not make a logical argument. Your premises must be valid, and they aren't, since they do not rest on observable, repeatable, falsifiable data.

You'd be better off using the argument of faith than trying to chop logic, given the conclusions you are determined to reach.