No, I'm not talking about government; I'm talking about the posts on this thread. At least 2/3 of the posts on this thread should be marked Off-Topic. Look, the title article is about NASA; could someone at least talk about NASA? Instead, so many are spewing off their political and economic philosophies.
OK, here's the deal: NASA just got a budget increase. Did anyone notice that? That's important, because it means the budget cuts are not to NASA, but to some programs. And, the reason, children, that the satellites are being starved, the number one reason for budget cuts everyone else in NASA, is not because Bush is President or the Republicans control Congress or the U.S. Vietnam War was a stalemate or the U.S. economy is deep in debt. No; the Number One drain on NASA's budget is the space shuttle program, followed closely by the space station program. As in, say bye-bye to 80% or more of whatever money NASA gets. THIS IS THE REASON BUSH IS CUTTING OUR LOSSES ON THE SHUTTLE AND SPACE STATION!! We (in the U.S.) have to get rid of those programs, or we aren't going to have a space program.
Yes, the Earth-observing satellite programs are in bad shape. They have been for a long time. Believe it or not, they were in bad shape before Bush became President. And, unless we cut our losses on the space station and come up with an economical replacement for the space shuttle, the EOS programs are going to be in terrible shape long after Bush leaves office.
Nothing I've said here is secret or novel. This is all common knowledge to anyone paying attention to the U.S. space program. So, how to explain the bulk of the posts to this thread?
Size isn't the issue; complexity is the issue. The reason a whirlwind won't assemble a 747 out of a junkyard is that a 747 is too complex for natural forces to produce.
The number of particles in the Universe might seem unimaginable, but it is not uncalculable. The number of of particles in the Universe is estimated between 10 raised to the 87th power (10^87).
"If the universe were packed solid with neutrons, there would still be only 10^128 particles, a number larger than a googol but much smaller than a googolplex."
Let's suppose there were 10^100 particles in the Universe, and each particle represented a tiny printing press, printing random characters at the rate of one character a year. If it does this for 20 billion years, then the particles would have printed 20 x 10^109 characters. If we increase the rate to the 10^20 characters per second, then we would have 10^100 * 10^20 * 6 x 10^17 characters, or 6 x 10^137 characters produced. Notice that this is more particles than are believed to exist in the Universe, and more time than the Universe is claimed to have existed (that is, around 14 billion years), all at a frequency greater than would produce x-rays. If the odds of something happening are 1 chance in 10^1000, then you should see there hasn't been enough time in the entire history of the Universe for that event to have happened. It is practically impossible. Indeed, an event with a 1 chance in 10^100 isn't likely ever to happen in the lifetime of the Universe.
There actually is practical application of such a concept. Alan Turing's Halting Problem is based on this principle; namely, there are some problems that a computer cannot solve, because it won't have enough time in the Universe to solve them. Substitute biological evolution for the computer, and you can see why evolutionists hate mathematical analysis of evolutionary theory.
**No, it's a restatement of what you originally claimed, as if you are telling us something new.**
A) Where previously did I mention the concept of building off of a scaffolding? B) Where previously did I mention cooption?
Given that was the main point of that line, I don't see how you could claim it was restatement.
Hey, if you don't want to admit that you used the word "evolution" in your fluff piece, that's fine by me.
**I question your use of the term, "replicator." That would imply that it is alive
No, that would be the word "life".
You need to expand your vocabulary.
A replicator means something that replicates. It does not imply life, and it's silly to pretend it does. You're arguing against the dictionary about the meaning of words.
I can take a die punch and replicate a pattern on a sheet of metal. I can even get a machine that, for a time, will do the same thing automatically. But, if I told you that machine or punch did the replication on its own, you should wonder at my statement.
**"Copier" would be better.**
A "copier" is a term you just made up to mean what "replicator" already means. Pardon me if I don't adopt it.
I can accept that; "copier" probably isn't a very good term for, anyway. After all, it isn't really doing anything more than contaminating a batch of proteins, by setting up a chain reaction.
Neither does DNA; it cannot replicate by itself.
**DNA contains a lot of information for self-repair and the assembly of components that are not DNA.**
Non sequiteur.
"It doesn't follow"? Well, tell me, then, what means the humble prion has for preserving its integrity?
DNA still cannot replicate by itself.
Now, it's after a statement like that where you should use the term, "non sequiteur." You are trying vigorously to argue that inanimate lumps are functionally equivalent to DNA. Oh, no doubt you will deny that, but that is what you are trying to do. For, when I pointed out that prions don't do any more than any other protein, you jumped to the point that bare DNA is not able to replicate, as if information content has no bearing.
At least I see why you are so frustrated that the mass of the scientific community won't accept your views about DNA and RNA. You want to redefine life into the lowest possible terms, so that your evolutionary fairy tale will seem more likely. This is not unlike the constant attempts by evolutionists to portray the cell as a mere bag of chemicals. No one who could appreciate the complexity of life would believe that it could arise by chance.
**A prion is just a mis-folded protein.**
Which, as I stated from the very first post, can self replicate when given a single precise input. Nothing more, nothing less.
Actually, you went a bit farther than that, with your proposed chemical evolutionary scenario leading to the first living cells. Even so, you shouldn't talk about the prion replicating when "given a single precise input." Prions are not computer programs; they aren't taking input and giving a repeatable output. Not every protein that a prion encounters will become deformed. And, your so-called "replication" of prions is nothing more than normal proteins switching to a defective folding pattern. There is nothing precise about it, and the mathematics you should be using is probability and statistics.
**I'm short on time, so I'll just cut to the heart of what has you confused. You think that the definition of life is, "That which replicates. You have one, now you have two, so they are alive. But, life is more than just multiplication. There is also response to environmental stimuli, particularly reponse to escape unfavorable environmental stimuli.**
And here we come to the heart of the problem. Nobody agrees what "life" is.
Most people agree to a minimum set. Rocks, for example, are not alive, even though they can reproduce and grow, too. The key is r
>>If evolution has shown us anything, it is that *nothing* stays the same for long. Everything builds up on the scaffolding of something simpler, something that had a different purpose or even no purpose.>A basic statement of facts.
No, it's a restatement of what you originally claimed, as if you are telling us something new. What do you think the word, "evolution" means? Stasis? No; it means "change." So, evolution isn't teaching us this; it is what the word means!
>>Picture the humble BSE prion. A simple self-replicator > You're disagreeing with my statement, "a simple self-replicator"? Then you need to argue that it's neither simple nor does it self-replicate (replicate without the assistance of other molecules except inputs).
I question your use of the term, "replicator." That would imply that it is alive, when that has not been demonstrated. "Copier" would be better.
By itself, it doesn't do anything that any other protein would not do.
Neither does DNA; it cannot replicate by itself.
DNA contains a lot of information for self-repair and the assembly of components that are not DNA. A prion is just a mis-folded protein.
An entire cell cannot replicate in a void; everything takes inputs. A self-replicator requires nothing else to help with the assembly, but still takes inputs. In the case of BSE, it requires a normal prion.
I'm short on time, so I'll just cut to the heart of what has you confused. You think that the definition of life is, "That which replicates." You have one, now you have two, so they are alive. But, life is more than just multiplication. There is also response to environmental stimuli, particularly reponse to escape unfavorable environmental stimuli. A prion doesn't do this... or, if you can show that it does, you will be on the cutting edge of science. There is no life cycle of a prion, beyond its formation and its destruction; it doesn't do anything. Even viruses do something more than replicate.
I really don't get the obsession (in discussions of the origin of life) with the concept that life must be DNA or RNA based, and that when it is no longer, it isn't life.
I haven't seen this obsession, certainly not among biologists.
If evolution has shown us anything, it is that *nothing* stays the same for long. Everything builds up on the scaffolding of something simpler, something that had a different purpose or even no purpose.
That would be a tautology.
Picture the humble BSE prion. A simple self-replicator
Not exactly; it's just a protein. By itself, it doesn't do anything that any other protein would not do. It's "replication" consists of increasing the likelihood that normal proteins surrounding it will adopt its deformed shape.
it is an extreme in the case of a "limited" lifeform.
Prions aren't alive, any more than cyanide is alive.
It can only take one very specific input for its reproduction, and cannot adapt. Other simple cases are ligases like the SunY self replicator or the Ghadiri peptide. They piece together two simpler pieces into themselves. Without those pieces, they're useless.
Yet, you can get simpler still: a ligase that *doesn't* necessarily make a copy of itself: a chemical that simply makes chemicals "similar" to it. In short, it concentrates "like" instead of "self". The more varied the inputs, the less predictable the output. However, over time, it and its family of "like" would become concentrated. How close such chemicals get to producing exact copies of themselves could steadily progress overtime, often involving the outputs of one catalytic reaction to lead into the next. In time, you have a regional hypercycle - a large glob of self-increasing chemicals in a given region which can take a variety of simple inputs to produce themselves.
And so the biological evolutionist explains why all water found today consists of H2O. Natural selection weeded out all the other variants of water.
DNA, RNA? Doubtful. It might well not even be peptides; there are all kinds of catalysts in the world, after all. But whatever is most efficient gets carried on to the future
In textbook Darwinism, that would be true. The real world is messier. Less fit creatures are not always killed off; more fit creatures do not always reproduce. Some junior evolutionists get around this fact by redefining "fit" to mean, "what actually survives." Circular reasoning.
the older, less effective mechanisms get weeded out. And soon it would start to get weeded: spacial constraints would cause "speciation" of the hypercycle as the reactions slowly drift apart. When such hypercycles from different regions end up merging back together, they will be competing for the same resources. Some catalysts will be common between them. Others won't be. Any that can poison each other's reactions will take the upper hand. Soon, walling yourself off at times becomes advantageous even if it limits your nutrient intake; simple membranes are pretty easy to make (phospholipids naturally form into sheets, for example).
That assumes the chemicals have the option of creating this wall, instead of merely benefitting from a wall that happens to be there. But, in the fairy tale world of abiogenesis, imagination rules.
Eventually your hypercycle is a haphazard Ur-cell, and from then-on, life steadily becomes more and more like we know it.
Again, that is merely a fairy tale, one without the least bit of empirical evidence. No one--not even Fox--has ever witnessed life arise from non-life.
in a junkyard the size of the universe, with a tornado the size of billions of galaxies, and it blew the materials around in such a way that they could only create structure and build off of their own structure, over the course of billions of years, i really think it would be impossible if many "Boeing 747s" weren't formed together.
Very amusing; so, you believe there are some 747s floating around somewhere else in the Universe, all formed by chance?
Evolutionists and mathemeticians have been at odds (pardon the pun) with each other for many years. Evolutionists know that anything is possible given enough time and particles, whereas mathemeticians know there aren't enough particles or time in the entire Universe for all the things evolutionists claim. And, you, my friend, have completely lost the sense of scale in probability, beyond which events may effectively be said to be impossible. Something that has a 1 in a google chance of happening can effectively be considered impossible; the last stars in our Universe will burn out before it happens.
http://www.newscientist.com/>New Scientist published an interesting article on a published analysis that says that most published scientific research papers are wrong.
"Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.
"John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false. But even large, well-designed studies are not always right, meaning that scientists and the public have to be wary of reported findings.
"But Solomon Snyder, senior editor at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, US, says most working scientists understand the limitations of published research.
"'When I read the literature, I'm not reading it to find proof like a textbook. I'm reading to get ideas.'"
How do we know dark matter is there? Why, because without it, visible matter would be moving differently, of course. And the strange paths of the planets are simply because we haven't included enough epicycles in their attachments to God's crystal spheres of heaven, right?
Ironically, you demonstrate the point you attempted to mock.
"Recently, for example, I was trying to track the changes in California's spending on its schools. In the 1960's, when I was in public school there, the legend was that only Connecticut spent more per student than California did. Now, the legend is that only the likes of Louisiana and Mississippi spend less. Was either belief true? When I finally called an education expert on a Monday morning, she gave me the answer off the top of her head. (Answer: right in spirit, exaggerated in detail.) But that was only after I'd wasted what seemed like hours over the weekend with normal search tools. If it sounds easy, try using keyword searches to find consistent state-by-state data covering the last 40 years."
I know from my own similar searches that finding answers on a Web search engine is not the easiest type of search. One problem is that a Web search engine can only find information that has been prepared and posted (usually on the Web) by someone. I have come to the conclusion that most of the specific information that people want (at least, that I and James Fallows want) is not posted on the Web.
It is possible that no one has ever compiled a list that compares school funding across states for the last 40 years and posted that list to the Web. But, sometimes searching for that information could take a person close to finding the answer. By using Mr. Fallows' hypothetical search question (minor modifications to make it more general), I quickly arrived at "The National Center for Educational Statistics," which devotes itself to answering questions like that asked by Mr. Fallows. My link wasn't direct; I first was taken to an old paper, titled, "Education policy a complete failure: Report: Pumping more federal money into system won't help." http://christianparty.net/juliefoster.htm The article also mentions the National Taxpayers Union, which might be another source of the desired information.
I would like to point out that Sandia Labs is working--at a different facility--on magnetic accelerators that are geared towards launching large-scale objects through the atmosphere. A decade ago, they could launch a 30-kg object at greater than the speed of sound from their big coil gun (which was pointed at the side of a mountain). That device has only the basic physics to do with the device in the original article.
Thank you for the link. I was wondering if someone would catch on that the original article's link is incorrect.
About 12 years ago, I took a class in Pulsed Power from Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute. We met in a building off campus that houses a particle accelerator (not as powerful as the Z machine, but still powerful enough to make a military tank radioactive if hit in the target chamber). PBFA was cranking away back then (actually, when I was in high school, I was given a tour through the PBFA facility). So, I recognize the device.
if you believe everything the brain does is measurable in terms of energy and matter, a computer can simulate it.
What if the human brain is not the source of thought?
I heard an interesting conjecture several years ago, that perhaps our thought processes require computation in a higher-order Universe. So, information is put into this arena with more dimensions, and an answer is extracted into our world.
It doesn't matter whether or not the Creator is part of the Universe or not.
Actually, it makes all the difference. If a being exists outside our Universe, that being is not subject to our physical laws. The very nature of time and space don't apply to that being, as they apply to us. As a result, that being cannot be described with our physics. Indeed, it may be that nothing outside our Universe (including the supposed metauniverse from which our Universe is proposed to have originated in Hawkings model) can be described by our physics, because our physical laws sprang into existence with the origin of our Universe.
If a Universal Intelligent Designer could manage to exist without being intelligently designed, then why can't WE exist without being intelligently designed?
Because we are finite beings, unlike the "Universal Intelligent Designer."
The only logical alternative to infinite recursion is to accept the existence of an universe without a creator.
That is insufficient. You could (and should) ask, "Where did our Universe originate?" This question could also become infinitely recursive, and just as beyond our capacity to answer. We may postulate that there was some metauniverse, of which a tiny bubble spawned into our Universe. What, then, of the origin of that metauniverse?
And the same goes for free will also. If you postulate the existence of some decision process inside your mind that isn't based purely on the interaction between material particles obeying the laws of physics you also fall into the infinite recursion paradox. If I have a soul inside me that governs my feelings, shouldn't this soul have a meta-soul inside it?
You are assuming that the soul works no better than the physical elements of the brain. That may not be a valid assumption.
Fortunately this last question will be solved someday, if Moore's "law" holds on for a few more decades.
You seem very sure of yourself.
We already have a rather good understanding of the basic interactions between neurons and of some of the basic structures in the brain. To make a good simulation of an entire human brain would need something like one million computers and we still don't know what is the overall structure of the brain, so we aren't there yet. But someday in the next fifty years we will probably have a personal computer that mimics so closely a human being that people will assume naturally that it's as conscious of itself as we assume our fellow humans are conscious of themselves.
I note that our society has heard this story for 60 years, and yet it still hasn't happened. Of course, you have the advantage of possessing a theory that cannot be proved wrong, because you can always claim that we simply haven't learned enough or advanced enough to make these kind of circuits. But, a theory that cannot be disproved is not a scientific theory.
First, it requires a hydrogen concentration greater than 90% for it to work. The (up to) 40% mentioned in the article is STILL not anywhere near the 90% required for Miller's experiment to be relevent.
I am not able to comment on that, as I have no information on that aspect.
Second, Miller's experiment only creates a few simple proteins.
That is my understanding. What is more, there must exist some sort of trap that isolates the products from the production environment, or the products will break down to their elemental state. Kind of difficult to build up more complex chemicals when the simple compounds keep breaking down!
It does not create life and it never has.
But, a good evolutionist will be able to imagine that it almost does!
There is STILL no answer for how these proteins formed to become a living organism with all the necessary functionality to burn energy and reproduce.
That is a key point that I have often made. Evolutionists simply avoid specifically addressing that issue.
Miller celebrated the formation of simple bricks, and eluded that skyscrapers were the next step. If you follow this analogy through, you can see how rediculous this argument is. Skyscrapers are infinately more complex than bricks. So it is with a "simple" cell.
People believe that evolution works because they greatly oversimply the nature of living cells.
Third, Miller's experiment did not create the exact proteins found in nature. Miller's experiment produced equal parts of both left and right handed proteins. Only one type occurs in nature.
This is one of the mysteries in abiogenesis that I have seen some advocates attempt to solve. I recall that polarized light was one suggested solution (though that doesn't really pan out).
So explain to me... exactly how DOES Miller's experiment apply?
All Christianity had done up until that point was to be used as an apologetic for tyrants of various types
That is incorrect. The early Christians invented the concept of the orphanage, which contrasts with the alternatives of 1) being reared by relatives (no good if you don't have any relatives up to the job), 2) being exposed (as the term for abandoning infants on the hillside was called), 3) being kept as a slave, 4) left to roam the streets like an animal. The Christian orphanage was the first to care for needy orphans who were not relatives and without turning the orphans out as slaves.
Apparently, you believe that Christianity was not much different than the customs of the ancient pagans. You must be mystified why Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is considered by so many to have been a radical departure from common practice, or you know of non-Christian groups that required their followers to "go the extra mile," or "turn the other cheek," or "don't seek revenge." Maybe you think the lethal Coliseum blood sport was simply a fad that died when the next fad came along, instead of being opposed by growing numbers of Christians until it was outlawed. You must not know of the history of the Waldenses, or the missionary efforts that confronted every imaginable barbaric practice with the light of peace and hope.
You've obviously never been to a state funded school in the UK? Where they almost always stuff it down your throat.
I guess that's why they don't believe in evolution in the UK, right? Because, if they did, they would have to have warning stickers on their evolutionary textbooks and that would lead to people complaining about stickerless Bibles. It's just here in the U.S., where we shove the Bible down the throats of public school students every chance we get, that there is an issue with stickers on the evolutionary textbooks.
Take a batch of fruit flies (100,000 plus). Not squish any with wings.
I think you mean, "Squish any with wings," or "Don't squish any without wings"?
Let them breed, and repeat. Do this 20-30 times and you now have a population of wingless fruit flies.
Ironically, a primary reason for breeding wingless fruit flies is so they DON'T survive (i.e., they become fish food). So, this is an example of artificial selection, as nature would not be so favorable of this result on its own. But, even though you now have wingless fruit flies, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that these are still fruit flies. They don't turn into some other species simply because their anatomy can be bred to different characteristics. Researchers have been mutating fruit flies through many thousands of generations--the equivalent in humans of millions of years--and the end result is... fruit flies!
Because this re-establishes a strongly reducing early atmosphere therefore Urey-Miller is once again very relevant!
Which leads back to my original question, when was the Urey-Miller experiment not relevant? Or, more precisely, when would you abiogenesis advocates have admitted that it was not relevant? Because, as I stated, I haven't found any of you in the last 20 years who would make that admission.
None of this has anything to do with O2 concentratio of early earth
I never said anything about oxygen. I said oxygenating. All the direct evidence we have of the early Earth's atmosphere is that it has always been oxygenating, not reducing.
I'm just saying that, since such an atmosphere is reasonable scientific conjecture...
It is an interesting hypothesis, but it is not worth very much until the experimental evidence substantiates it. I believe that if you are more interested in scientific knowledge than in parsing sentences, you will be more interested in what the reliability of this UW study is. After all, not every University is located on top of Mount Sinai!
Ever think that maybe you're shot down "every time" you have pointed out your pet theory to "evolutionists" is possibly because you're dead wrong?
You prove my point.
Please cite a scientific source which says "early Earth had an oxygenating atmosphere". There are none because its preposterous. Just about all the oxygen in the atmosphere came from autotrophic organisms. ie. PLANTS!! It can only have accumulated after life appeared. The data on O2 concentration in the atmosphere of ancient earth is WELL constrained [columbia.edu].
OK, bright guy, tell me this, then: Why would the topic study be such a big deal if the scientific community generally agreed that the early Earth atmosphere was depleted of oxygen? Why does one news report state that this study, "could lead to a revival of interest in an experiment conducted by University of Chicago graduate student Stanley Miller in 1953," if there were never a reason to question the relevance of Miller's experiment? What would have led people to question the relevance of Miller's experiment?
You are simply another person who refuses to acknowledge weaknesses in evolutionary/abiogenesis theory, even when it is presented in front of by the scientists you study.
This article just destroyed his strongest creationist argument.
That's a pretty strong statement for a mere simulation. Are we going back to the mythology of the ancient Greek "scientists," who believed that truth could only be found by reason, not by experiments? If not, then we need some experimental results showing that early Earth had a reducing atmosphere. It's nice that these models say our atmosphere was mostly hydrogen; but, if they are correct, there had to have been a physical record created by this environment. There must be an explanation for the lack of evidence supporting the model in the rocks we examine. Otherwise, the UW theory is just wishful thinking that you have latched onto too eagerly.
"I think this study makes the experiments by Miller and others relevant again," Toon said. "In this new scenario, organics can be produced efficiently in the early atmosphere, leading us back to the organic-rich soup-in-the-ocean concept."
(From the UW article)
I have a question for the abiogenesis advocates on this forum. When was Miller's experiment NOT relevant? Toon says the experiments are relevant *again*; that implies they weren't relevant at some time in the past. When was that?
Of course, I don't ask the question without knowing the answer. I also ask it because it points out a significant flaw in the way we teach abiogenesis theory. The answer to my question is, Miller's experiments were rendered moot several DECADES ago, when all the models pointed to early Earth having an oxygenating atmosphere. No one ever has come up with a model or scenario that would give early Earth the required reducing atmosphere that would make Miller's experiment relevant. But, every time I have pointed this out to evolutionists/abiogenesis advocates over the last 2 decades (and I have done so several times in the last 20 years), they have uniformly denied its significance.
This continues the characteristic that I find universally in the evolutionary community. They refuse to acknowledge any flaws in their accepted evolutionary model until after they believe they have a solution to those flaws.
Even if I shut my eyes, I would still recall the event. I simply have no memory of that moment in time. It's like watching a video and noticing that a few seconds have been cut out. The flow of the video either side is continuous, but those few seconds are completely gone.
Maybe it is a supressed memory? Maybe it is sensory overload? I don't pretend to know. But, I do leave the possibility open.
I don't see why people find this so incredibly difficult to believe. It's quite straight forward, and repressed memories actually aren't considered to be an imaginary concept, like the earlier poster made out. They're quite common, and I have a personal example of one of the starkest varieties of them.
One point in the supressed memory concept is that your subconscious retains the memory. Contrary to your earlier statement, a supressed memory is not erased; only, your conscious self does not recall the memory. So, if this is a supressed memory, it is still roaming around in your mind, and you won't really be able to heal until it is resolved. That's the theory as I understand it. It is also the reason that people are so eager to restore suppressed memories.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'm not talking about government; I'm talking about the posts on this thread. At least 2/3 of the posts on this thread should be marked Off-Topic. Look, the title article is about NASA; could someone at least talk about NASA? Instead, so many are spewing off their political and economic philosophies.
OK, here's the deal: NASA just got a budget increase. Did anyone notice that? That's important, because it means the budget cuts are not to NASA, but to some programs. And, the reason, children, that the satellites are being starved, the number one reason for budget cuts everyone else in NASA, is not because Bush is President or the Republicans control Congress or the U.S. Vietnam War was a stalemate or the U.S. economy is deep in debt. No; the Number One drain on NASA's budget is the space shuttle program, followed closely by the space station program. As in, say bye-bye to 80% or more of whatever money NASA gets. THIS IS THE REASON BUSH IS CUTTING OUR LOSSES ON THE SHUTTLE AND SPACE STATION!! We (in the U.S.) have to get rid of those programs, or we aren't going to have a space program.
Yes, the Earth-observing satellite programs are in bad shape. They have been for a long time. Believe it or not, they were in bad shape before Bush became President. And, unless we cut our losses on the space station and come up with an economical replacement for the space shuttle, the EOS programs are going to be in terrible shape long after Bush leaves office.
Nothing I've said here is secret or novel. This is all common knowledge to anyone paying attention to the U.S. space program. So, how to explain the bulk of the posts to this thread?
Size isn't the issue; complexity is the issue. The reason a whirlwind won't assemble a 747 out of a junkyard is that a 747 is too complex for natural forces to produce.
The number of particles in the Universe might seem unimaginable, but it is not uncalculable. The number of of particles in the Universe is estimated between 10 raised to the 87th power (10^87).
"If the universe were packed solid with neutrons, there would still be only 10^128 particles, a number larger than a googol but much smaller than a googolplex."
http://www.stormloader.com/ajy/reallife.html
Let's suppose there were 10^100 particles in the Universe, and each particle represented a tiny printing press, printing random characters at the rate of one character a year. If it does this for 20 billion years, then the particles would have printed 20 x 10^109 characters. If we increase the rate to the 10^20 characters per second, then we would have 10^100 * 10^20 * 6 x 10^17 characters, or 6 x 10^137 characters produced. Notice that this is more particles than are believed to exist in the Universe, and more time than the Universe is claimed to have existed (that is, around 14 billion years), all at a frequency greater than would produce x-rays. If the odds of something happening are 1 chance in 10^1000, then you should see there hasn't been enough time in the entire history of the Universe for that event to have happened. It is practically impossible. Indeed, an event with a 1 chance in 10^100 isn't likely ever to happen in the lifetime of the Universe.
There actually is practical application of such a concept. Alan Turing's Halting Problem is based on this principle; namely, there are some problems that a computer cannot solve, because it won't have enough time in the Universe to solve them. Substitute biological evolution for the computer, and you can see why evolutionists hate mathematical analysis of evolutionary theory.
**No, it's a restatement of what you originally claimed, as if you are telling us something new.**
A) Where previously did I mention the concept of building off of a scaffolding?
B) Where previously did I mention cooption?
Given that was the main point of that line, I don't see how you could claim it was restatement.
Hey, if you don't want to admit that you used the word "evolution" in your fluff piece, that's fine by me.
**I question your use of the term, "replicator." That would imply that it is alive
No, that would be the word "life".
You need to expand your vocabulary.
A replicator means something that replicates. It does not imply life, and it's silly to pretend it does. You're arguing against the dictionary about the meaning of words.
I can take a die punch and replicate a pattern on a sheet of metal. I can even get a machine that, for a time, will do the same thing automatically. But, if I told you that machine or punch did the replication on its own, you should wonder at my statement.
**"Copier" would be better.**
A "copier" is a term you just made up to mean what "replicator" already means. Pardon me if I don't adopt it.
I can accept that; "copier" probably isn't a very good term for, anyway. After all, it isn't really doing anything more than contaminating a batch of proteins, by setting up a chain reaction.
Neither does DNA; it cannot replicate by itself.
**DNA contains a lot of information for self-repair and the assembly of components that are not DNA.**
Non sequiteur.
"It doesn't follow"? Well, tell me, then, what means the humble prion has for preserving its integrity?
DNA still cannot replicate by itself.
Now, it's after a statement like that where you should use the term, "non sequiteur." You are trying vigorously to argue that inanimate lumps are functionally equivalent to DNA. Oh, no doubt you will deny that, but that is what you are trying to do. For, when I pointed out that prions don't do any more than any other protein, you jumped to the point that bare DNA is not able to replicate, as if information content has no bearing.
At least I see why you are so frustrated that the mass of the scientific community won't accept your views about DNA and RNA. You want to redefine life into the lowest possible terms, so that your evolutionary fairy tale will seem more likely. This is not unlike the constant attempts by evolutionists to portray the cell as a mere bag of chemicals. No one who could appreciate the complexity of life would believe that it could arise by chance.
**A prion is just a mis-folded protein.**
Which, as I stated from the very first post, can self replicate when given a single precise input. Nothing more, nothing less.
Actually, you went a bit farther than that, with your proposed chemical evolutionary scenario leading to the first living cells. Even so, you shouldn't talk about the prion replicating when "given a single precise input." Prions are not computer programs; they aren't taking input and giving a repeatable output. Not every protein that a prion encounters will become deformed. And, your so-called "replication" of prions is nothing more than normal proteins switching to a defective folding pattern. There is nothing precise about it, and the mathematics you should be using is probability and statistics.
**I'm short on time, so I'll just cut to the heart of what has you confused. You think that the definition of life is, "That which replicates. You have one, now you have two, so they are alive. But, life is more than just multiplication. There is also response to environmental stimuli, particularly reponse to escape unfavorable environmental stimuli.**
And here we come to the heart of the problem. Nobody agrees what "life" is.
Most people agree to a minimum set. Rocks, for example, are not alive, even though they can reproduce and grow, too. The key is r
>>If evolution has shown us anything, it is that *nothing* stays the same for long. Everything builds up on the scaffolding of something simpler, something that had a different purpose or even no purpose.>A basic statement of facts.
... or, if you can show that it does, you will be on the cutting edge of science. There is no life cycle of a prion, beyond its formation and its destruction; it doesn't do anything. Even viruses do something more than replicate.
No, it's a restatement of what you originally claimed, as if you are telling us something new. What do you think the word, "evolution" means? Stasis? No; it means "change." So, evolution isn't teaching us this; it is what the word means!
>>Picture the humble BSE prion. A simple self-replicator > You're disagreeing with my statement, "a simple self-replicator"? Then you need to argue that it's neither simple nor does it self-replicate (replicate without the assistance of other molecules except inputs).
I question your use of the term, "replicator." That would imply that it is alive, when that has not been demonstrated. "Copier" would be better.
By itself, it doesn't do anything that any other protein would not do.
Neither does DNA; it cannot replicate by itself.
DNA contains a lot of information for self-repair and the assembly of components that are not DNA. A prion is just a mis-folded protein.
An entire cell cannot replicate in a void; everything takes inputs. A self-replicator requires nothing else to help with the assembly, but still takes inputs. In the case of BSE, it requires a normal prion.
I'm short on time, so I'll just cut to the heart of what has you confused. You think that the definition of life is, "That which replicates." You have one, now you have two, so they are alive. But, life is more than just multiplication. There is also response to environmental stimuli, particularly reponse to escape unfavorable environmental stimuli. A prion doesn't do this
I haven't seen this obsession, certainly not among biologists.
If evolution has shown us anything, it is that *nothing* stays the same for long. Everything builds up on the scaffolding of something simpler, something that had a different purpose or even no purpose.
That would be a tautology.
Picture the humble BSE prion. A simple self-replicator
Not exactly; it's just a protein. By itself, it doesn't do anything that any other protein would not do. It's "replication" consists of increasing the likelihood that normal proteins surrounding it will adopt its deformed shape.
it is an extreme in the case of a "limited" lifeform.
Prions aren't alive, any more than cyanide is alive.
It can only take one very specific input for its reproduction, and cannot adapt. Other simple cases are ligases like the SunY self replicator or the Ghadiri peptide. They piece together two simpler pieces into themselves. Without those pieces, they're useless. Yet, you can get simpler still: a ligase that *doesn't* necessarily make a copy of itself: a chemical that simply makes chemicals "similar" to it. In short, it concentrates "like" instead of "self". The more varied the inputs, the less predictable the output. However, over time, it and its family of "like" would become concentrated. How close such chemicals get to producing exact copies of themselves could steadily progress overtime, often involving the outputs of one catalytic reaction to lead into the next. In time, you have a regional hypercycle - a large glob of self-increasing chemicals in a given region which can take a variety of simple inputs to produce themselves.
And so the biological evolutionist explains why all water found today consists of H2O. Natural selection weeded out all the other variants of water.
DNA, RNA? Doubtful. It might well not even be peptides; there are all kinds of catalysts in the world, after all. But whatever is most efficient gets carried on to the future
In textbook Darwinism, that would be true. The real world is messier. Less fit creatures are not always killed off; more fit creatures do not always reproduce. Some junior evolutionists get around this fact by redefining "fit" to mean, "what actually survives." Circular reasoning.
the older, less effective mechanisms get weeded out. And soon it would start to get weeded: spacial constraints would cause "speciation" of the hypercycle as the reactions slowly drift apart. When such hypercycles from different regions end up merging back together, they will be competing for the same resources. Some catalysts will be common between them. Others won't be. Any that can poison each other's reactions will take the upper hand. Soon, walling yourself off at times becomes advantageous even if it limits your nutrient intake; simple membranes are pretty easy to make (phospholipids naturally form into sheets, for example).
That assumes the chemicals have the option of creating this wall, instead of merely benefitting from a wall that happens to be there. But, in the fairy tale world of abiogenesis, imagination rules.
Eventually your hypercycle is a haphazard Ur-cell, and from then-on, life steadily becomes more and more like we know it.
Again, that is merely a fairy tale, one without the least bit of empirical evidence. No one--not even Fox--has ever witnessed life arise from non-life.
Very amusing; so, you believe there are some 747s floating around somewhere else in the Universe, all formed by chance?
Evolutionists and mathemeticians have been at odds (pardon the pun) with each other for many years. Evolutionists know that anything is possible given enough time and particles, whereas mathemeticians know there aren't enough particles or time in the entire Universe for all the things evolutionists claim. And, you, my friend, have completely lost the sense of scale in probability, beyond which events may effectively be said to be impossible. Something that has a 1 in a google chance of happening can effectively be considered impossible; the last stars in our Universe will burn out before it happens.
"Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.
"John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false. But even large, well-designed studies are not always right, meaning that scientists and the public have to be wary of reported findings.
"But Solomon Snyder, senior editor at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, US, says most working scientists understand the limitations of published research.
"'When I read the literature, I'm not reading it to find proof like a textbook. I'm reading to get ideas.'"
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7915&f eedId=online-news_rss091>New Scientist: "Most scientific papers are probably wrong"
Ironically, you demonstrate the point you attempted to mock.
The linked article states,
"Recently, for example, I was trying to track the changes in California's spending on its schools. In the 1960's, when I was in public school there, the legend was that only Connecticut spent more per student than California did. Now, the legend is that only the likes of Louisiana and Mississippi spend less. Was either belief true? When I finally called an education expert on a Monday morning, she gave me the answer off the top of her head. (Answer: right in spirit, exaggerated in detail.) But that was only after I'd wasted what seemed like hours over the weekend with normal search tools. If it sounds easy, try using keyword searches to find consistent state-by-state data covering the last 40 years."
I know from my own similar searches that finding answers on a Web search engine is not the easiest type of search. One problem is that a Web search engine can only find information that has been prepared and posted (usually on the Web) by someone. I have come to the conclusion that most of the specific information that people want (at least, that I and James Fallows want) is not posted on the Web.
It is possible that no one has ever compiled a list that compares school funding across states for the last 40 years and posted that list to the Web. But, sometimes searching for that information could take a person close to finding the answer. By using Mr. Fallows' hypothetical search question (minor modifications to make it more general), I quickly arrived at "The National Center for Educational Statistics," which devotes itself to answering questions like that asked by Mr. Fallows. My link wasn't direct; I first was taken to an old paper, titled, "Education policy a complete failure: Report: Pumping more federal money into system won't help." http://christianparty.net/juliefoster.htm The article also mentions the National Taxpayers Union, which might be another source of the desired information.
You are correct in all that.
I would like to point out that Sandia Labs is working--at a different facility--on magnetic accelerators that are geared towards launching large-scale objects through the atmosphere. A decade ago, they could launch a 30-kg object at greater than the speed of sound from their big coil gun (which was pointed at the side of a mountain). That device has only the basic physics to do with the device in the original article.
Thank you for the link. I was wondering if someone would catch on that the original article's link is incorrect.
About 12 years ago, I took a class in Pulsed Power from Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute. We met in a building off campus that houses a particle accelerator (not as powerful as the Z machine, but still powerful enough to make a military tank radioactive if hit in the target chamber). PBFA was cranking away back then (actually, when I was in high school, I was given a tour through the PBFA facility). So, I recognize the device.
What if the human brain is not the source of thought?
I heard an interesting conjecture several years ago, that perhaps our thought processes require computation in a higher-order Universe. So, information is put into this arena with more dimensions, and an answer is extracted into our world.
Consciousness seems to be an elusive property.
Actually, it makes all the difference. If a being exists outside our Universe, that being is not subject to our physical laws. The very nature of time and space don't apply to that being, as they apply to us. As a result, that being cannot be described with our physics. Indeed, it may be that nothing outside our Universe (including the supposed metauniverse from which our Universe is proposed to have originated in Hawkings model) can be described by our physics, because our physical laws sprang into existence with the origin of our Universe.
Because we are finite beings, unlike the "Universal Intelligent Designer."
That is insufficient. You could (and should) ask, "Where did our Universe originate?" This question could also become infinitely recursive, and just as beyond our capacity to answer. We may postulate that there was some metauniverse, of which a tiny bubble spawned into our Universe. What, then, of the origin of that metauniverse?
And the same goes for free will also. If you postulate the existence of some decision process inside your mind that isn't based purely on the interaction between material particles obeying the laws of physics you also fall into the infinite recursion paradox. If I have a soul inside me that governs my feelings, shouldn't this soul have a meta-soul inside it?
You are assuming that the soul works no better than the physical elements of the brain. That may not be a valid assumption.
Fortunately this last question will be solved someday, if Moore's "law" holds on for a few more decades.
You seem very sure of yourself.
We already have a rather good understanding of the basic interactions between neurons and of some of the basic structures in the brain. To make a good simulation of an entire human brain would need something like one million computers and we still don't know what is the overall structure of the brain, so we aren't there yet. But someday in the next fifty years we will probably have a personal computer that mimics so closely a human being that people will assume naturally that it's as conscious of itself as we assume our fellow humans are conscious of themselves.
I note that our society has heard this story for 60 years, and yet it still hasn't happened. Of course, you have the advantage of possessing a theory that cannot be proved wrong, because you can always claim that we simply haven't learned enough or advanced enough to make these kind of circuits. But, a theory that cannot be disproved is not a scientific theory.
I am not able to comment on that, as I have no information on that aspect.
Second, Miller's experiment only creates a few simple proteins.
That is my understanding. What is more, there must exist some sort of trap that isolates the products from the production environment, or the products will break down to their elemental state. Kind of difficult to build up more complex chemicals when the simple compounds keep breaking down!
It does not create life and it never has.
But, a good evolutionist will be able to imagine that it almost does!
There is STILL no answer for how these proteins formed to become a living organism with all the necessary functionality to burn energy and reproduce.
That is a key point that I have often made. Evolutionists simply avoid specifically addressing that issue.
Miller celebrated the formation of simple bricks, and eluded that skyscrapers were the next step. If you follow this analogy through, you can see how rediculous this argument is. Skyscrapers are infinately more complex than bricks. So it is with a "simple" cell.
People believe that evolution works because they greatly oversimply the nature of living cells.
Third, Miller's experiment did not create the exact proteins found in nature. Miller's experiment produced equal parts of both left and right handed proteins. Only one type occurs in nature.
This is one of the mysteries in abiogenesis that I have seen some advocates attempt to solve. I recall that polarized light was one suggested solution (though that doesn't really pan out). So explain to me... exactly how DOES Miller's experiment apply?
This is a great question!
That is incorrect. The early Christians invented the concept of the orphanage, which contrasts with the alternatives of 1) being reared by relatives (no good if you don't have any relatives up to the job), 2) being exposed (as the term for abandoning infants on the hillside was called), 3) being kept as a slave, 4) left to roam the streets like an animal. The Christian orphanage was the first to care for needy orphans who were not relatives and without turning the orphans out as slaves.
Apparently, you believe that Christianity was not much different than the customs of the ancient pagans. You must be mystified why Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is considered by so many to have been a radical departure from common practice, or you know of non-Christian groups that required their followers to "go the extra mile," or "turn the other cheek," or "don't seek revenge." Maybe you think the lethal Coliseum blood sport was simply a fad that died when the next fad came along, instead of being opposed by growing numbers of Christians until it was outlawed. You must not know of the history of the Waldenses, or the missionary efforts that confronted every imaginable barbaric practice with the light of peace and hope.
I guess that's why they don't believe in evolution in the UK, right? Because, if they did, they would have to have warning stickers on their evolutionary textbooks and that would lead to people complaining about stickerless Bibles. It's just here in the U.S., where we shove the Bible down the throats of public school students every chance we get, that there is an issue with stickers on the evolutionary textbooks.
I think you mean, "Squish any with wings," or "Don't squish any without wings"?
Let them breed, and repeat. Do this 20-30 times and you now have a population of wingless fruit flies.
Ironically, a primary reason for breeding wingless fruit flies is so they DON'T survive (i.e., they become fish food). So, this is an example of artificial selection, as nature would not be so favorable of this result on its own. But, even though you now have wingless fruit flies, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that these are still fruit flies. They don't turn into some other species simply because their anatomy can be bred to different characteristics. Researchers have been mutating fruit flies through many thousands of generations--the equivalent in humans of millions of years--and the end result is... fruit flies!
Which leads back to my original question, when was the Urey-Miller experiment not relevant? Or, more precisely, when would you abiogenesis advocates have admitted that it was not relevant? Because, as I stated, I haven't found any of you in the last 20 years who would make that admission.
None of this has anything to do with O2 concentratio of early earth
I never said anything about oxygen. I said oxygenating. All the direct evidence we have of the early Earth's atmosphere is that it has always been oxygenating, not reducing.
It is an interesting hypothesis, but it is not worth very much until the experimental evidence substantiates it. I believe that if you are more interested in scientific knowledge than in parsing sentences, you will be more interested in what the reliability of this UW study is. After all, not every University is located on top of Mount Sinai!
You prove my point.
Please cite a scientific source which says "early Earth had an oxygenating atmosphere". There are none because its preposterous. Just about all the oxygen in the atmosphere came from autotrophic organisms. ie. PLANTS!! It can only have accumulated after life appeared. The data on O2 concentration in the atmosphere of ancient earth is WELL constrained [columbia.edu].
OK, bright guy, tell me this, then: Why would the topic study be such a big deal if the scientific community generally agreed that the early Earth atmosphere was depleted of oxygen? Why does one news report state that this study, "could lead to a revival of interest in an experiment conducted by University of Chicago graduate student Stanley Miller in 1953," if there were never a reason to question the relevance of Miller's experiment? What would have led people to question the relevance of Miller's experiment?
You are simply another person who refuses to acknowledge weaknesses in evolutionary/abiogenesis theory, even when it is presented in front of by the scientists you study.
That's a pretty strong statement for a mere simulation. Are we going back to the mythology of the ancient Greek "scientists," who believed that truth could only be found by reason, not by experiments? If not, then we need some experimental results showing that early Earth had a reducing atmosphere. It's nice that these models say our atmosphere was mostly hydrogen; but, if they are correct, there had to have been a physical record created by this environment. There must be an explanation for the lack of evidence supporting the model in the rocks we examine. Otherwise, the UW theory is just wishful thinking that you have latched onto too eagerly.
(From the UW article)
I have a question for the abiogenesis advocates on this forum. When was Miller's experiment NOT relevant? Toon says the experiments are relevant *again*; that implies they weren't relevant at some time in the past. When was that?
Of course, I don't ask the question without knowing the answer. I also ask it because it points out a significant flaw in the way we teach abiogenesis theory. The answer to my question is, Miller's experiments were rendered moot several DECADES ago, when all the models pointed to early Earth having an oxygenating atmosphere. No one ever has come up with a model or scenario that would give early Earth the required reducing atmosphere that would make Miller's experiment relevant. But, every time I have pointed this out to evolutionists/abiogenesis advocates over the last 2 decades (and I have done so several times in the last 20 years), they have uniformly denied its significance.
This continues the characteristic that I find universally in the evolutionary community. They refuse to acknowledge any flaws in their accepted evolutionary model until after they believe they have a solution to those flaws.
Maybe it is a supressed memory? Maybe it is sensory overload? I don't pretend to know. But, I do leave the possibility open.
I don't see why people find this so incredibly difficult to believe. It's quite straight forward, and repressed memories actually aren't considered to be an imaginary concept, like the earlier poster made out. They're quite common, and I have a personal example of one of the starkest varieties of them.
One point in the supressed memory concept is that your subconscious retains the memory. Contrary to your earlier statement, a supressed memory is not erased; only, your conscious self does not recall the memory. So, if this is a supressed memory, it is still roaming around in your mind, and you won't really be able to heal until it is resolved. That's the theory as I understand it. It is also the reason that people are so eager to restore suppressed memories.