Reflectorites
Here are excerpts from CNN, BBC and Electronic Telegraph articles from
1-22 June 2000, with my comments in square brackets.
Steve
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=QxpHkmHR&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/6/22/ecnafrica22.html
Electronic Telegraph 22.06.00 Our recent journey out of Africa ... OUR
ancestors left Africa to colonise the world some 50,000 years ago, much
more recently than previously thought, an international team reported this
week. The rough draft of the is about to be published and a study of the
way it varies among populations will shed new light on human origins. The
study of genetic code in 70 men worldwide... confirms earlier genetic
analyses which show that humans came from Africa. The team... concludes
that the most recent common ancestor of all living men is remarkably
recent, perhaps as recent as 50,000 years. Studies of other genes suggested
that the common ancestor lived between 150,000 and 800,000 years ago,
so the new date "is striking", said Dr Pritchard. The study is consistent with
fossil evidence suggesting that early modern humans swept west across
Europe some 35,000 years ago. ... [If true, this late date of 50 kya for the
last common ancestor of modern humans, will be *stunning*. It will be
sure to make Hugh Ross happy, since he has long held out for a `stretching'
of the Genesis genealogies back ~60 kya back to Adam! However, there
could be a fallacy here in that because many, if not most, lines have died
out, the LCA of all modern humans alive today would be more recent than
the LCA of all modern humans who had ever lived (i.e. Adam). Still, the
trend is in the right direction for those of us who think the Biblical
genealogies, though maybe summarised, are based on real, historical,
factual information which goes all the way back to the origin of modern
humanity.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=a2p8eJbL&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/6/15/ecfgen15.html
Electronic Telegraph 15.06.00 ... Has the genome been overhyped? A
rough draft of the entire human genetic code genome - has been completed,
a milestone in the biggest scientific race since the drive to put a man on the
Moon. This 'book of life', to be unveiled on June 26, will transform
society...Two distinguished commentators, Matt Ridley and Steve Jones,
disagree about the genome's significance Matt Ridley WITH an enthusiastic
book out about the genome, I am not just contributing to the genome hype.
I might even be said to have a vested interest in it. Before I started my
book, nearly three years ago, I thought the Human Genome Project was
going to make a big difference to biology. After a few months in the library
and on the internet, I had changed my mind: the Human Genome Project is
going to make a gigantic difference, and not just to biology. It really is BIG
NEWS... The human genome contains a universe of new information to
explore and understand. ...What for me is more important than all these
issues is the philosophical import of the new knowledge. Hidden inside the
genome are thousands of genes, and millions of non-gene stretches of
DNA, each of which tells a secret about the past, the present or the future.
There are genes that tell us what the first creatures on earth looked like
more than three billion years ago. There are genes that tell us how our
brains are equipped to produce grammatical language, one of the key
distinguishing features of being human. There are genes that tell us about
the body plan of an animal that lived 600 million years ago - the common
ancestor of people and fruit flies. There are genes that tell us which of our
ancestors took up dairy farming and when. There are genes that tell us how
rapidly we will age. There are genes that tell us which infectious diseases
our recent ancestors suffered from. Above all, there are genes that promise
to solve old mysteries of determinism and free will.. For example, we
already know of 17 human genes, expressed in the brain, whose job is to
lay down new memories by the creation of new connections between brain
cells. Those genes are at the mercy of our behaviour, so they do not
determine that behaviour as much as result from it. Yet in acting they affect
our future behaviour, too. That is why we experience the genuine sensation
of free will, while not being random beings. ... Steve Jones ...the four
letters most associated with the announcement of the (more or less)
complete gene sequence, which are H.Y.P. and E. The four real letters of
the code will, hyperbolists tell us, revolutionise biology, medicine and our
view of ourselves. Really? Here's a bit of real code: AACCGGCAG. That's
the start of a sequence of DNA unique to the human brain; one of the tiny
proportion of our genes not also found in chimps. Within it, apparently, is
written part of what it means to be human. Recite those letters, roll them
around the tongue. Feel different, any new philosophical insights? Of
course not: there is more to life than chemistry. ...to ban cheeseburgers and
cigarettes would do more to reduce mortality than anything molecular
biology can ever do. ... Now all that remains is to admit to the subject's
four-letter problems and to how little of any practical value that the gene-
sequencers have actually achieved. straight into the nozzle." ... See also:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=a2p8eJbL&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/6/15/ecngene15.html
Electronic Telegraph 15.06.00 ... Scientists finish draft of human genetic
code ... [Although I have a close relative with a genetic disease who might
benefit from HUGO, somehow I think my namesake Steve Jones is going
to be closer to the truth than Ridley. Genes actually don't do anything,
except store information which is transcribed and translated into proteins,
which then do *everything*! And even if we do work out what the proteins
do, who is going to pay for all these new treatments if and when they
eventuate?]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=a2p8eJbL&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/6/15/ecnrob15.html
Electronic Telegraph 15.06.00 ... Lamprey is brains behind 'robofish ... a
newly created part-fish, part-machine is one of the world's most advanced
cyborgs. The creature has a mechanical body fitted with wheels, motors,
circuit boards and light sensors but is controlled by the brain of a sea
lamprey. Although the robot contains only a few nerve cells from the eel-
like fish, it has learned to follow or avoid lights. Robotics experts are
convinced that it marks an important step towards a new type of biological
robot...They removed the brain stem and part of the spinal cord from a
primitive salt water fish under general anaesthetic and kept it alive in a
cold, salty solution ... The team then isolated a group of large nerve cells
called Muller cells. These help lampreys to orientate themselves in water.
Electrodes attached to the neurons allowed them to be stimulated with
frequencies they would normally receive in the fish's body. When lights
were flashed at the robot, the lamprey brain cells learned how to control
the motors. The cyborg was able to follow and dodge a moving light
source and move in a circle. Researchers were confident that there could be
medical benefits. ... [This might support Penrose's claim in "Shadows of the
Mind" that each cell has a fantastic amount of computing power in its
microtubules, which if it were true, would far exceed by orders of
magnitude anything that today's computers can do.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_790000/790659.stm BBC
... 14 June, 2000 ...Atom smasher revs up... Deep in the sandy woods of
New York's Long Island, physicists are travelling back to the dawn of the
Universe. We have just detected the most spectacular subatomic collisions
ever witnessed by humankind ... They have begun smashing the nuclei of
gold atoms together at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the
world's newest and biggest particle accelerator built to study the building
blocks of matter. The facility aims to recreate the conditions of the early
Universe. Scientists will use data collected during the experiments to
explore the particles known as quarks and gluons that make up protons and
neutrons. The RHIC has gone online after a publicity campaign sought to
reassure local people that its work was safe and would not result in the
creation black holes that would destroy the Earth ... The high temperatures
and densities achieved in the collisions should, for a fleeting moment,
reveal the quarks and gluons in a soup-like plasma, a state of matter that is
believed to have last existed just millionths of a second after the Big Bang.
Physicists ... say early work has already revealed amazing images of
particles streaming away from a collision point. .. "We have just detected
the most spectacular subatomic collisions ever witnessed by humankind,
and are launching a new era for the study of nuclear matter." Previous
studies with lower-energy collisions at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland
have hinted at the existence of a quark-gluon plasma. "But RHIC will
produce far more definitive results..." ... Detailed studies of the properties
of the quark-gluon plasma,...will help explain the origins of protons,
neutrons and other elementary particles ...These magnets guide ions of gold
around each of the circular rings in opposite directions. The ions move at
99.995% of the speed of light and collide at points where the two rings
cross. For a fraction of a second, the colliding ions reach temperatures one
hundred thousand times hotter than the core of the Sun - hot enough to
"melt" the ions into their component quarks and gluons. ... [Well, we are
still here, so they got that right at least! :-) One wonders how close to the
Big Bang conditions they can get, and whether they can prove or disprove
cosmic inflation and multiple universe theory?]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_793000/793988.stm BBC
... 16 June, 2000 ... Sugar in space sweetens chances of life ... The
Universe, it seems, could have a sweet tooth. Astronomers have discovered
a simple sugar molecule in space. The discovery of the molecule
glycolaldehyde in a giant cloud of gas and dust near the centre of our own
Galaxy was made by scientists .... "The discovery of this sugar molecule in
a cloud from which new stars are forming means it is increasingly likely
that the chemical precursors to life are formed in such clouds long before
planets develop around the stars," .... "This discovery may be an important
key to understanding the formation of life on the early Earth," ....
"Conditions in interstellar clouds may, in some cases, mimic the conditions
on the early Earth, so studying the chemistry of interstellar clouds may help
scientists understand how biomolecules formed early in our planet's
history" .... Some scientists have suggested that Earth could have been
"seeded" with complex molecules by passing comets.... Glycolaldehyde is
an 8-atom molecule composed of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. It can
combine with other molecules to form the more complex sugars ribose and
glucose. Ribose is a building block of nucleic acids such as RNA and DNA,
which carry the genetic code of living organisms. Glucose is the sugar
found in fruits. Glycolaldehyde contains exactly the same atoms, though in
a different molecular structure, as methyl formate and acetic acid, both of
which have been detected previously in interstellar clouds. And
glycolaldehyde is a simpler molecular cousin to the sugar you stir into your
coffee, ... The sugar molecule was detected by its faint radio emission in a
large cloud of gas and dust called Sagittarius B2, some 26,000 light-years
away, near the centre of our Galaxy. So far, about 120 different molecules
have been discovered in such clouds. Most of these molecules contain a
small number of atoms, and only a few molecules with eight or more atoms
have been found. "Finding glycolaldehyde in one of these interstellar clouds
means that such molecules can be formed, even in very rarified conditions,"
.... "But we don't yet understand how it formed." ... [Molecules will form if
their precursors and energy are present. This discovery, while interesting,
only underlies the rarity of such sugars in space, and in particular, the non-
existence of ribose, which is difficult to make and unstable. Even if this was
a component of life (which it isn't), the detection of an *average* level of a
compound in space would be of no use if the *individual* molecules were
short lived. Moreover, molecules in a vast "rarified" cloud would not tell if
the components were close together. For the synthesis of life as we know it
one would need very close together at the same time (within a membrane?),
in pure form, *all* 19 of the 20 optically active amino acids in their L-
isomer form, plus the 4 nucleotide bases, plus the phosphate and ribose
backbone molecules, plus the catalytic enzymes to stitch the nucleotides
base pairs into a DNA or RNA helix, plus the ribosomes and enzymes to
read the code and start forming the proteins, as well as a source of energy!]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_790000/790569.stm BBC
... 14 June, 2000 ... Woven cloth dates back 27,000 years Clay bearing a
textile imprint together with a cast ... Woven clothing was being produced
on looms 27,000 years ago, far earlier than had been thought, scientists
say. It had been thought that the first farmers developed weaving 5,000 to
10,000 years ago. But Professor Olga Soffer ... is about to publish details
... of 90 fragments of clay that have impressions from woven fibres. Prof
Soffer first revealed her findings in previous research when she said that a
25,000 year old figurine was wearing a woven hat. If confirmed, this work
will change our understanding of distant ancestors, the so-called Ice Age
hunters of the Upper Palaeolithic Stone Age ... The evidence was obtained
from a number of sites in the Czech Republic. They were the sporadic
homes of the Gravettian people who roamed between Southern Russia and
Spain between 22,000 and 29,000 years ago scratching out a living on a
semi-frozen landscape. ... A detailed examination of the impressions reveals
a large variety of weaving techniques. There are open and closed twines,
plain weave and nets. ... twining can be done by hand but plain weave
needed a loom. It may be that many stone artefacts found in settlements
may not be objects of art as had been supposed but parts of an ancient
loom, which should now be considered as the first machine to be made
after the wheel and aids such as the axe, club, and flint knife. ... This
research will force a re-evaluation of our view of ancient man, who lived
tens of thousands of years ago, before the last Ice Age had ended and
before the invention of agriculture. The traditional view is of the male Ice
Age hunters working in groups to kill large prey such as mammoths. But
this may be a distorted and incomplete view of their lives. ... All that
scientists have from these ancient times are mostly solid remains such as
stone, ivory and bone. Now they have evidence of textiles. The discovery
that they developed weaving as early as 27,000 years ago means that we
must consider the role that women and children may have played more
carefully. ...Further revelations are to be expected in this area of research.
There are recent reports that fragments of burnt textiles have been found
adhering to pieces of flint. ... [More confirmation of the Biblical picture
that ancient man was more sophisticated than the evolutionary picture had
envisaged. Machines presupposed plans and advanced conceptual
intelligence. Compare this level of sophistication with the Neandertal article
below.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_787000/787918.stm BBC
... 12 June, 2000, ... Taste for flesh troubled Neanderthals ... The extinction
of the Neanderthals could have been caused by their choosy appetites -
they ate virtually nothing but meat, according to new a study. "They were
picky eaters," says Dr Paul Pettitt, ..."And this tells me that they are really
unchanging - doing the same old thing year after year." If their prey, such
as bison and deer, then became scarce, they would struggle to survive.
Neanderthals lived in Europe between about 120,000 and 30,000 years
ago. The cause of their extinction has been the subject of much debate and
speculation has included their being killed off by early humans and their
disappearing through interbreeding with humans. "Excellent hunters"
"Neanderthals were excellent hunters... "But the issue that was at stake
was whether they hunted every day of their lives or whether it was just a
summer outing." Now new information, derived from remains found in
Croatia, suggest that hunting was nearly all they did to gather food. This
leads to the speculation that the more versatile diets of the early humans
allowed them to survive when Neanderthals did not. The early humans
themselves may have been better hunters than the Neanderthals, depriving
them of their kills. Or the hunted animals may have been struck by disease
or migrated away. It has been very hard to assess the variety of
Neanderthal diets because although animal bones are often preserved in
caves, easily rotted food like vegetables, fruit and grains rarely remain. But
the scientists found a way. They measured the ratios of the different types
(isotopes) of carbon and nitrogen found in Neanderthal bones. ... Plants
and animals have contrasting isotopic ratios, so when these are eaten they
leave different signatures in a Neanderthal's bones. And because the bones
grow slowly, the signature represents a 10 to 20-year average of the
individual's diet...They "calibrated" the analyses by comparing the
Neanderthal bone ratios with those from contemporaneous animals at the
top (bears) and bottom (bison) of the animal food chain. The ratios showed
that the Neanderthals were top-level predators, getting about 90% of their
protein from meat... The rest of the protein would have come from nuts
and grains. ... [This is consistent with the picture of Neandertals lacking
forward planning, and ekeing out a hunter-gatherer existence.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_791000/791385.st BBC ...
14 June, 2000 ... Giant elk survived the freeze ... The giant Irish Elk
survived the last ice age - but probably only just. The enormous deer,
which sported antlers 3.6m wide (10 feet), was thought to have perished
along with woolly mammoths in the frozen wastes. But new fossil dating
evidence shows that at least some of the beasts survived to warmer times.
The revelation raises the possibility that humans, not the climate, may have
driven the majestic creature into extinction. ... The bone samples were
found in Britain on the Isle of Man and in southwest Scotland. They were
only dated, using radiocarbon techniques ... Lister ... was surprised when
the analysis of two fragments revealed ages of 9,200 and 9,400 years ago.
... he pointed out that only 20 radiocarbon dates have ever been obtained
for giant elks, leaving the possibility that many elks survived the ice age. ...
The last ice age stretched from 100,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago. ...
the evidence that they survived the ice age leaves open the possibility that
human hunters may have finally wiped out the elks. [but] so far, no post-ice
age evidence of human presence has been found in the area before 7,000
years ago ...the elks did not drift through the ice age unchanged. In the
UK, at least, they got smaller, which may be the result of food becoming
scarce. Intriguingly though, their spectacular antlers remained as huge:
"You would especially expect the antlers to get smaller as they are so-
called luxury organs - they should be the first thing to go," .... "But we
found the exact opposite, that these little animals had got relatively large
antlers." This suggests that the need for large, "expensive" antlers
outweighs even the threat of starvation ... [A good example of what Colin
Patterson probably meant when he called evolution "an anti-theory, a void
that had the function of knowledge but ... conveyed none." If the antlers
got smaller, it would no doubt be because the elk no longer "needed" them
large. But if they stayed large, it was because it still "needed" them large!]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=pISMeQBe&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/6/8/ecfmil08.html
Electronic Telegraph 08.06.00 ... Too much too young: the curse of
Sudden Wealth Syndrome It may be the problem you wish you had, but the
wired world's wealthy have real difficulties coming to terms with their new-
found mega-fortunes. Now depressed net millionaires are turning to
psychologists to find a meaning in their money. ... Silicon Valley THEY
should be the happiest souls on earth - the young cyber hot shots, who
have ridden the wave of the internet revolution, are the living proof of the
modern American dream. After working quite hard for not very long at an
internet start-up, they have too many millions swishing around in their bank
accounts... But something has gone awry. Instead of experiencing the
unadulterated happiness modern success is supposed to bring, these
cavaliers of modern capitalism are succumbing to a strange new malady of
the mind. Local psychologists have even given it its own medical
classification - Sudden Wealth Syndrome. One of the millennium's newest
maladies results in a deep identity crisis, anxiety, guilt and dysfunction,
psychologists ... say. They have recently established a clinic for depressed
millionaires called The Money, Meaning and Choices Institute, which
operates out of smart offices spread around the San Francisco area at the
northern tip of Silicon Valley. ... once the initial euphoria of immense
wealth wears off, they begin to notice that their open-top Porsches are
stuck in traffic under the baking sun, that they can only sleep in one bed
even if their house has 40, and that all the cash in the world cannot buy
calm. ... One 24-year-old internet whizzkid, who sold his dotcom start-up
for more than $100m, complains that his e-fortune has failed to make him
happy. "I have the feeling that I have reached my peak. It's all downhill
from here. I've achieved my dream and now I'm depressed." [A
commentary on how materialism doesn't satisfy-note the "Meaning"
component of the course. But the psychologists will no doubt help solve
their problem of having too much money! :-) ]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/06/02/stellar.collisions/index.html
CNN ... Astronomers: Star collisions are rampant, catastrophic ... June 2,
2000 ... NEW YORK (CNN) -- Astronomers once thought stellar
collisions never or rarely happened. But new research has convinced many
that stellar mergers are commonplace and perhaps capable of producing the
most violent and energetic events observable in the universe. ... But in the
center of many galaxies, including our own, dense swarms of stars make
such events inevitable ... "Suddenly we're starting to get lots of collisions.
There's probably one about every ten seconds," ... Super-dense neutron
stars emit powerful bursts of energy when they crash into one another.
Some of the conference astronomers speculated that such collisions are
responsible for intense explosions of gamma rays, observed in the distant
reaches of space. "They are the most violent energetic events in the
universe," .... "Some release a thousand times as much energy in a few
seconds as the sun would in its lifetime." Even black hole mergers "almost
certainly happen" in some cases when galaxies run into each other, ...
Current research indicates that stellar collisions are quite common in dense
star clusters, where millions of stars can be found within a space spanning
less than 100 light years. But terrestrial dwellers take heart. Such
catastrophes are infinitesimally rare in cosmic backwaters far removed from
the centers of galaxies, like a spiral arm of the Milky Way where the sun
resides. Our neighborhood star will burn out long before another crashes
into it. ... [More evidence for design and against Directed Panspermia. This
`parking lot accidents' argument was, strangely enough, noticed by the
atheist George Greenstein (see tagline) who however rejected design on
materialist philosophical grounds, despite the evidence.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=pIpeNM4e&atmo=6666665J&pg=/et/00/6/1/ecnice01.html
Electronic Telegraph 01.06.00 ... How life survived when Earth was a
snowball ... EARLY life was saved from extinction during a big freeze
millions of years ago by a belt of open water around the equator, according
to research published last week. Scientists believe the planet froze over
about 600 million years ago, creating a phenomenon known as Snowball
Earth, which coincided with the most important period of evolution for
multi-cell life forms. But if, as is believed, the continents and oceans were
completely covered by ice sheets, it raised the question of how life
survived. Prof Richard Peltier ...created computer simulations of the
climate thought to have been characteristic of that time. They reduced the
amount of sunlight to account for the fact that the Sun was about six per
cent less luminous than it is now, and varied the concentration of
atmospheric carbon dioxide. In most of their experiments, analysis revealed
a belt of open water near the equator. Prof Peltier told the journal Nature:
"It is this open water that may have provided a refuge for multicelled
animals when the rest of the Earth was covered by ice. The extreme climate
may even have exerted pressure on animals to evolve, possibly leading to
the rapid development of new forms of animals." ... [More on this
"snowball Earth loophole. Yet another argument from design - if this
loophole didn't exist, then presumably we wouldn't be here today? If this
was 600 mya (and also 750 mya - see
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s63479.htm) then it cannot
have been a cause of the Cambrian Explosion, since that was ~550 mya.
Maybe the Designer knew the Proterozoic glaciation was coming?]
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"A parking lot is filled with cars, all in rapid, frantic motion. Their drivers
are acting without the slightest regard for safety, turning the steering
wheels this way and that, stepping on the gas and slamming on the brakes,
and all completely at random. Not only that, but every last one of them is
blindfolded. There are going to be some dented fenders soon. That is the
danger facing us. The peaceful scene about me is subject to the most
deadly danger. How long do we have? But hold on a moment! Don't
concentrate on the future. Concentrate on the past, on all the thousands,
even millions of years of history that have led up to this moment. The
longer one waits, the greater the chance of collision, and if one had
occurred at any point in the past nothing of what I see would have come
into being. Had the Sun collided with a passing star in the epoch of the
ancient Sumerians, none of us would have been born. The same would be
true had the cataclysm occurred in the time of the dinosaurs. Our existence
depends not simply on the avoidance of disaster this year or next, but
throughout all of previous history." (Greenstein G., "The Symbiotic
Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos," William Morrow & Co: New
York NY, 1988, pp.17-18)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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