Evolution

[smudge]

If aliens came to earth I'm sure our 'dope' would be of little interest to them... the fact that THC has any effect on us is largely because of the fact that it evolved in the same environment that we did.

[Fenchurch]

<A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Highrise/7256/" target="lank">Yautja</A>: what the Predators call themselves.

Although the presence of someone calling themselves Yautja is fucking with my limbic system.



[This message has been edited by Fenchurch (edited 21 July 2000).]

[FB]

Fred: "If you want a credible threat be worried about an AI with a nano-constructor and an innate curiousity about the world..."

haha - you read that article too - that is the only major threat I can see to us in the future.


Any people commenting on my prooving an atom exists... I obviously know they exist - i'm a very scientific person, but my point is that theres really no way to proove it.. much like evolution..

FB

(Fred you once told me after asking if you did physics or something that you "dabble alot" - fark - thats some serious dabbling man :P)

[Yautja]

Well in order to stop/absorb all form's of radiation PK it would have to be a perfect black body(something that absorb's all radiation). I don't know of any particles that are like this.

Only thing like a perfect one is event horizons - in black holes/singularity's where the force of gravity becomes greater than the speed of light.

To stop all light it would have to cut off the entire 'universe' from you version of space.

Many theory's about the cosmic horizon (edge of the universe) are that it is an event horizon.
So everything inside is cut off from the rest of the 'space', so why would god created 'space' infinite, if he was just going to limit our universe to finite.

Star's dying and growing old don't account for it either because
infinte alive star's + infinite dead stars = still equals infinite star's
(that's a funny thing about infinity , add 2 infinity's and you get infinity, mulyiply/divide by any interger and you get infinity)
And PK's theory reckon's time has alway's existed so the light has had infinite time to get to us.

And if god was so all powerful and stuff why did it take him 6 day's to make the earth (and why did he need a rest afterwards). Sounds like he has human limitation's to me.

(im impressed PK, you displayed some reasoning - now we can start having a discussion )

[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 22 July 2000).]

[Fenchurch]

I think -since I don't read the original Hebrew or Aramaic- that the "day" concept in Genesis isn't our 24 hour Babylonian idea, but more like the idea of "age" or "period".

So, it's more like our metaphorial "the dawn of the day " of [whatever buzzword here].

Which makes a trifle more sense.

Heh, ok pred.

You know when its dark? At night time?

Well, there is no direct sunlight, because there is this dirty great planet, called eath, in the way. And, there is also another huge lump, called the moon, and it reflects the suns light, back down onto the dark side of the earth.

On a smaller scale, you can put a rock in front of a torch. And gee, the light does not travel through the rock.

Very very simple concept, pred.

Light from distaint stars, does not get here, because there is plenty of items in its way.

Even mirrors absorb light energy, and rocks and particles aint the best mirrors, so you go fiugure out why light from other stars dont quite reach us pred.

Oh, and try turning the light on in your room, and hide under your blankets, and see how tricky the light finds it to get to you and say 'Hi, just thought you might want to see', as another example.

And infinte time, yep, true. But just because light had ages to get here, does not mean it hangs around and keeps building up does it?

[Necro]

PK, great!

finally some logic, keep it up...

[Yautja]

Yeah that would explain why visible radiation cannot be seen .
But that sort of stuff dosn't have much effect on gamma ray's and some particles (neutrino's).

And as i said no type of matter is a perfect black body, so some of the radiation from our star's would be reflected back to us at the same rate it is reflected away from us, you seem to think that is 100%, so it would still be full of radiation in every direction.

(not to metion the fact the matter would heat up from aborbtion, and re-emit another form of radiation, an example is nebulae, they absorb the radiation from stars/pulsars and re-emit it as light we can see [in addition to other non-visible radiation]).

[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 21 July 2000).]

[Yautja]

Yeah about light, you idea about the universe is it is infinite, so there are infinite stars emiting infinite radiation into space.

So no matter where you look there will be radiation of all types, at infinite brightness.

(damn this thing need's a spellchecker, keep it up pk - had to think about your last post for a while)

[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 21 July 2000).]

[BaM]

PK: "But just because light had ages to get here, does not mean it hangs around and keeps building up does it?"

You make it sound like you think we're the centre of everything, and all the light from other stars is "..heading right for us!!" . How can we be at the centre of an area that's infinite?
The small amount of light that reaches us is definitely just passing through. I'm sure it's got better things to do than hang around these parts anyway.

Bam, I dont mean we are the center of the universe, I just mean that this is where we are, and this is from where we see the light.

Pred, if you get a perfect mirror box, and send a light in there, so it reflects inside it self, it will eventually fade out.

Same diff with light from space.

Now, as for these gamma rays, doesnt the ozone take care of a lot of that? Who knows what else there is out there to go out and absorb radiation.

And what about the moon. Does that reflect, or absorb gamma rays and the like from the sun? Because its pretty tricky to get sunburnt at night, no?

[Yautja]

A mirror box would fade out because some of the light get's converted to heat and is transported to the outside into to the air thru the matter of the box.
A lazer is a close example - the big ones get pretty hot - some even need to be cooled with liquid nitrogen.
Matter has nowhere for this heat to go in space, so has to re-emit it as radiation.

Even if it was true we would be able to detect this light because some of it would return to us a few times before it faded out.

[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 21 July 2000).]

Its pretty damn cold in space pred.

[Layzeeboy]

Space is actually a little over 0 degrees celsius... of course that's an average since bits of it, the ones next to suns and suchlike, are fairly warm.

The idea that helped me get around the "finite space" idea was this:
Imagine that you own a 2-D world. You can look down on it, and not be seen- because you exist in depth-you can look down- and not beeing seen, can see how to these people, you can move in 4 directions- north, south, east, west. They cannot even imagine a 3rd dimension. If they lived on a really, really big ball, but still retained their 2-dimensionallness, they wouldn't know they lived on a ball, but this ball could grow and shrink and so on all the same... Our universe is like a 4 dimensional ball, and we can't see the 4th dimension.

'Course, I could be wrong. More than likely in fact... But it stopped me from going nuts when I thought about it.

[Boofhead]

Fenchurch: Actually, I think it's the other way around... the word translates best as a "24 hour day".

Fred:
If this was true, then radioactive dating of _any_ rock would show a young age below the discrimination level of most techniques. This isn't the case and unless you care to invoke the assumption that the biblical God created a world 'pre-aged' then you have a contradiction between the Bible and scientific result. This wouldn't be a new thing, lets just say 'mustard seed' and leave it at that.

When you say "pre-aged", I take it this means that subjecting them to a radioactive testing would find a different ratio of radioactive material to product material(the result of the radioactive decay) than what was expected (radioactive testing depending of course on the amount of product material originally present?)
What I am saying is that God would create rocks with the appearance of being old because they have unexpected amounts of radioactive product material... does this make them "pre-aged"?

Yautja: Every word ending in an 's' doesn't need an apostrophe

To anyone else who believes the theory of Evolution to be true, what about:
<ul>[*]The unbelievably astronomical odds against the creation of a living cell by chance?[*]The Second Law of Thermodynamics (left to itself, a system and its environment will move to a lower energy state, or one that is less organised)?[*]The incomplete fossil record?[*]Genetic mutations (they hardly ever produce new, usable genetic code - how much new information is required to change a scale into a feather, for instance)?[*]The evolution of an eye?[*]The missing link?[/list]
ciao!

[Spoon1]

Question: Neutrinos travel through matter do they not? Does it slow them down?

[FB]

"The unbelievably astronomical odds against the creation of a living cell by chance?"
Given over a billion particles, and over a million years ... dont you think that its possible that 2 of these paticles could come together in a certain way? - Think of it like a bag of 200 marbles. 50 red, 50 blue, 50 yellow, and 50 green. if you shook this bag for 200 years do you think thats its possible that a green marble could be touching a blue and red marble at the same time at least once? i'd say yes..

"The Second Law of Thermodynamics (left to itself, a system and its environment will move to a lower energy state, or one that is less organised)?"
Water's particles are vibrating around madly and have so much energy they jiggle about. in a closed system - say - space, the water would freeze requiring less energy because the particles would not be moving.

"The incomplete fossil record?"
Incomplete fossil record? umm.. thats just because not all of them have been found.. yet..

"Genetic mutations (they hardly ever produce new, usable genetic code - how much new information is required to change a scale into a feather, for instance)?"
Hardly ever? what time frame are you using.
You could say i hardly ever breath in and out if your thinking in the timeframe of seconds, but if you were talking about millions of years, how many times would i have breathed in and out... alot me thinks..

FB

Heh, id say its more like a bag of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 ^ 10,000,000 blue marbles, and the likely hood of picking out a bright pink marble.

Heh, and then, even if these two particles 'come together', how the sods wallop is it going to 'evolve' or even live and produce more of its self?

[Mabd]

On the same thoughtwave, what are the odds that a "God"like being waved a hand and went "poof" -a universe and some beings?

Where's the proof? If it is something you feel, i don't feel it and does that make God not exist?

etc etc common argument themes rehashed

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Hail to the King

Blah... YAY! 300th post

[Whiplash]

This recurring mention of 'how can we have evolved, we haven't "found" a missing link yet' gets up my urethra and annoys me a lot.

What happens when someone dies. To their physical body I mean. They rot, they decompose and they get broken down and are eventually indistinguishable from a pound of Whizzo butter or a dead crab... Now think of the timeframe. About 1 million years ago Mr Homo habilis (this is 1 million, our sun is approx 5 billion years old, thats a lot of time there isn't it) tripped up and fell into a mushy thingee swamp whose conditions were just right to preserve the bone structure for a million years until it was found. This doesn't happen often obviously because otherwise we'd be up to our noses in fossils.
The idea of a missing link, a half modernape/halfmodern human like bigfoot or whatever is just daft... There are plenty of links between the australopithacines (sp?) and such with the modern human, but enough difference to make them a different species... and that was millions of years ago.....


Ok, lets say God made all these species 6500 years ago. Where are they now? Gone. Why? Well, we as Homo sapiens sapiens must have killed them/eaten them. What a wonderful bunch of people we are, truely Gods chosen if we managed to wipe everyone else out. ph34r human r33tness...

[Jingo]

Actually, some guy did experiments quite a while ago (twas in my Bursary Chemistry text book which unfortunately I had to return before I left school in which he had some substances or other (forgive my memory) and got some massive voltage running through, and in a a couple of (insert time period here) amino acids or proteins or something formed.

Yeah, sorry about being vague but I remember reading it and going, "Hmm."

I once heard a guy trying to debunk evolution in the same way about saying "Pick up the marble". He used the analogy of breaking up his watch, and placing the pieces in a jar. He then asked the audience how long it would take before the pieces reformed themselves into a watch. In a way, that's like saying, "Righty-o, get some flour, water, and milk and stir it up. How long is it going to be until you get English scones, my son?". Of course, adding heat gives you the scones. So... there's a possibly of some greater force that could put the watch together. (/me screams as he realises work starts in 20 minutes). Erm, yeah. Take from that what you will.

Love ya.

[Mabd]

Nice Python referrence PepperpotWhippy.

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Hail to the King

[Yautja]

Alrighty then.

Add energy(radiation) to matter and it either 'heats up' (that particle's become excited, and beguin to vibrate more , or gain momentum) or it emit's another form of radiation.
Heat we feel without touching something is caused by infrared which is a form of radiation.

Examples - put a peice of metal in a fire , then take it out and you'll be able to feel it emiting infra-red (and anything less than that in the spectrum).
Put it in a hotter fire and it'll come out glowing in visible light and .
Put it even a hotter fire and it'll start to emit gamma ray's as well as visible, infrared , microwave ,radio etc(arc welder's have to wear protection because of this).
Now if matter heat's up to few million degrees it's going to be emiting radiation in many forms(eg the sun).

Everything you can see is the result of light being absorbed and re-emited. Color's are caused because light of certain wavelenghts gets absorbed and converted to heat , while wavelenghts that are not absorbed are re-emited - which then mix to give colors.
White re-emits alot of the visible spectrum , while black absorbs most of it and heat's up - emmiting it as infrared which we can't see (or other forms of energy depending what the matter is made of).

If matter dosn't get rid of energy , it starts to break up into simpler peices , if you're talking about an atom - it'll lose electrons first (releasing energy, and when it's got none left it'll be plasma). Heat that some more and and the proton's and neutron will seperate (releasing more energy , a example of this is nuclear fission - which is splitting atoms).More heat an neutrons will split into protons and electrons.More heat and they'll split into sub-atomic particles and so on and so on until the only thing left is radiation (matter is nothing more than energy condensed).

So matter cannot exist in a universe with infinite energy, the early universe was pure energy for a very short period of time after the big bang (not because it was infinite, but was compressed into a very small space)- before it expanded and cooled

This energy can be still be detected as Cosmic Background Radiation, and was a by product of the big bang when it was extremely hot , but as space expanded it spread out this radiation and streched the waves into radio waves
(pure energy only existed very small fraction of a second, when the universe got bigger than around the size of our solar system matter began to form )

They can determine how hot the universe is right now (3.7 K, at this temperature a perfect blackbody will emit radiation at the same wavelenght as CBR), and at any point in the early universe using CBR.

(sorry about the crapy spelling and grammar boof [too many commas too ], but as you may of noticed, english has never been my favourite subject).

[Glacius]

I haven't read much of this.. only some of page.. 4 I think it was (all about time and shit) and started thinking about this...

If you sent an atom WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY back in time etc, to change something... then wouldn't it have already happened... or something like that ?

I hurts my head to try and picture stuff like this... but I still find it so fucking interesting.

Good work all you hardout guys (and gals)... share your knowledge.

[Yautja]

The deal with thing's wanting to get into a lower energy state, in order for there to be structure there has to be energy input (eg jigsaw or card castle - you need an input of energy to make them from chaos/randomness).

And even though things want to get to a lower energy state, it dosn't happen in a instant - if that were true all the matter in the universe would be converted to energy . An example is halflifes - radioactive elements are unstable but they decay at different rates (depending on how unstable they are), some take picoseconds, some take billions of years.

This is why all theorys on the begining of life include energy sources - heat , UV ,lighting etc, most of which (in)directly come from the sun or the earth (volcanic activity - there are lifeforms that live off heat and S0^2 on earth - and thats what they are hoping for on Mars and Io).

One thing you'll find common to all life is the need for energy to create/maintain structure. Animal's , fungi and volcanic lifeforms get it from breaking down molecules to release energy (to get structure you have to input energy, take away stucture and that energy is released , energy can't be destroyed - it just gets converted into different forms).
Plants get it from sunlight, the biggest source of energy on this planet, thats why most food chain's start from them.

Life will evolve to fill anywhere on earth that an energy source is not being taken advantage of - then it becomes a matter of which lifeform can be the most efficent (at taking advantage of energy and reproducing the fastest).

I think most pre-christian religions had it right with sun worshipping. Most religions have mystical beliefs associated with the sun, usually to so with life.

[im problably a bit too excessive in the bracket department too, but that's what my ideas are like in my head - so its either spend a few minutes translating into a more linear form, or typing it as it comes (im also lazy so the choice is obvious)]

[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 23 July 2000).]

[FB]

PK:"Heh, id say its more like a bag of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 ^ 10,000,000 blue marbles, and the likely hood of picking out a bright pink marble."
"Heh, and then, even if these two particles 'come together', how the sods wallop is it going to 'evolve' or even live and produce more of its self? "

Your assuming that there was one kind of particle floating around in the water (where life started) to begin with. This is wrong, there are many types of particles and adding one to another produces a new one - its like binary..

Say we had heeps of 1's and 0's floating around in water, and each 1 or 0 can stick to another one..

you could have 11, 10, 01, 00

So we have 4 types of secondary particles.. made up of two primary..

Now lets say that each secondary particle can stick to another secondary particle.. except this time there are 4 diff. types..

you could have 1111, 1110, 1101, 1100, 1010, 1001, e.t.c --
the point is every "next level up" the particles get, there are more types to combine with, so even two particles can form an amazingly complex structure.

A perfect example is what your typing now, everything on your monitor is produced from 2 types, 1's and 0's

Anyway - thats just one of my theories which seems plausable.

FB

[Yautja]

PK [and anyone else it may concern]

If there is even the tinyest chance that life could evolve (even 10 ^-4351347568161461046144[sorry if you have low res]64475374246567472[ ]18634784362632649), and the universe is infinite like you say, then it dosn't matter how small that problability is, it WILL happen.[an infinite amount of times]

Anything multiplyed with infinity is infinity [except multiplying by 1/infinity, that'll give you 1].

We can also argue that there are infinite big-bangs/universes/time-demensions and this one was only one (of an infinite number that have life) that every thing happened right for life , because if anything wasn't right we wouldn't be here (you can say according to plan if you want - but that would imply someone created the universe ).

Basically do not underestimate infinity, its more powerful than you could possibly imagine
[I wonder if PK will get the last joke :/].

[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 23 July 2000).]

[Eagle64]

Basically i'mn about to say the same thing Yautja said in his last post as i was thinking it too.

If each bag of marbles represents one planet or even one solar system or even one galaxy the the chances of it happening in one bag are a certainty becuase there are so many in just this universe

[This message has been edited by Eagle64 (edited 23 July 2000).]

[BLAiR`o_o]

I have many many many theories on life/evolution etc... too many to tell about.

But a theory of mine with religion is..
That the idea of religion spawned in much the same way as verbal language came about in the development of the human brain over time.
The human brain was not large enough or capable of comprehending the answers to many of life's questions... So therefore a way of thinking evolved to help humans explain things and reach desired mental ease, and grew from the way people interacted and communicated with each other.. Now as we come into the 21st century... The human brain is more advanced and is capable of comprehending and resolving *some* of lifes' questions...Therefore the need of religion is slowly dying out.. Humans now have a sense of responsibility on them.. (with if u look at the way our earth is getting fucked up.. they are not worthy of having that responsibility).
There are still many unanswered questions.. the universe, god, etc.. And the only reason we dont have the answers are because our brains have not developed enough to comprehend these answers...
Remember this is just my theory... And I only come to conclusions about stuff when I have someone to discuss it with...There are prolly heaps of flaws in my idea..


[This message has been edited by BLAiR`o_o (edited 23 July 2000).]

[BLAiR`o_o]

Back to the point concerning breasts and evolution... I think that the reason for a sexual attraction to breasts was brought about AGAIN by the development of the human brain and the body evolving around that.
I beleive that humans reached the intelligence level that enabled them to find other things than SEX to do with thier time.
Sports/parties (centuries ago im talking about) Therefore this went aginst the evolutional force... Human's breast evolved bigger and the male brain evolved to be attracted to them...
(not to sound obscene) But I have heard more than once, about the idea that Woman only developed the 'clitorus' or at least the feeling in which woman get from it, within the last 200 to 1000 years. My my answer to that (which is also supported by the attraction to breasts idea)is that because humans werent having sex enough the evolutionary force developed these to encourage humans to breed...And continue breeding like every other living thing strives for.
Breeding is the point of life... I'm just not sure why.

*theory*

[Mabd]

The change from sex for procreation and sex for recreation, perchance?

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Hail to the King

[Yautja]

Mutations are random, they do not happen according to a plan or a need to adapt to the enviroment.
Evolution on the other hand is not random - it takes only accepts the best mutations , and breeds out/kills the worst ones.

Evolution is also how science works, only the best theorys are allowed to continue because scientists are always trying to prove them wrong.

(competition - scientists are always trying to prove they are better, by disproving/creating theorys you make yourself look better - take those creationist scientists (thousands of 'em) for example - they've been trying for 200 years to disprove evolution, now that sort of dedication is in all areas of science)

Evolution of eyes, they would of evolved from photosensitive cells (ones that detect light). A predator develops eyes, all of a sudden it has a huge advantage over its prey (you can't deny we have advantages over blind people), so the prey gets selected against unless it has something to counter eyes, which just happens to be developing its own eyes.

Take video camera's for example - only took a few decades for us to develop them (and they're constantly becoming more accute, they used to be black 'n white too). Now evolution has had billions of years to develop eyes.

Incomplete fossil records , missing link.
Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense (you creationist should know this beleiving in god with no physical proof). Until every square meter of the earth and ocean floor has been dug up, you won't be able to convince anyone otherwise.

[Yautja]

All you're arguments are based on things that have been disproven decades ago (science is not like the bible - it is constantly evolving)

If you're lack of knowledge of this proof is why you don't beleive , then i understand where you're coming from.
(it is the same reason i don't beleive in christianity - there is no proof behind it)

I seem to just be defending science, you can't win an arguments that way - time to fight fire with fire.

Any one want to explain the creation in 7 days thing yet ?

If you can do anything in heaven, can you do things that go against the bible/christianity?

If god is so powerful why dosn't he just remove all evil and start over (destroy satan, he used to be one of his servants didn't he - so satan should be less powerful than him).

The bible etc, it has spawned dozens of seperate faiths from this one concept - which has caused countless wars , if i was god id be pretty pissed about this and had armageddon centurys ago.
(and don't say hes not like that - the whole bible is filled with examples of him acting vengeful).

And I won't accept 'god works in mysterious ways' as an answer.

[Ajax]

More tea, Vicar?

[FB]

Yautja - why hasnt god had armageddon yet..

Fighting on the other side for a sec here, perhaps from gods perception its only been a nanosecond since the universe was even created at all, and he hasnt got around to giving us an armageddon yet..

FB

[BLAiR`o_o]

I dont beleive that evolution is random at all...
I think there is a plan or a formula rather (i dont beleive in fate), But that formula is so advanced uncomprehendably more advanced than we could imagine.. Things that we see as error in the concept of life, are just results of growing (ie. teething problems so to speak).

[BLAiR`o_o]

Perhaps his purpose is not to help humans... or even animals.. or even life... but to manage it or even prepare it for something greater?


I would say something controversial about christianity... but I dont want this forum to turn into yet another religion forum.


I compare the evolution of humans to tetris... yes tetris.
When u first start off its slow an easy to manage... but once it speeds up, it eventually gets to a point where u can no longer move fast enough for it and u lose - I dont think an explain is needed for that..

[This message has been edited by BLAiR`o_o (edited 24 July 2000).]

[Marshall]

FB- If it was all a nanosecond to him then wouldnt that mean he wouldnt have had time to give the 10 commandments and chat to all the people that he did.

God seemed pretty active when the bible was being written and now he seems to have just forgotten about us. Maybe he went and made something better