Reflectorites
Here are excerpts from web articles for the period 19 - 28 July 2000, with
my comments in square brackets.
Steve
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http://www.cnn.com/2000/books/reviews/07/28/review.rareearth/index.html
CNN ... Review: Is anybody out there? July 28, 2000 ... "Rare Earth: Why
Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe" By Peter D. Ward and David
Brownlee ... (CNN) -- The notion that life existed anywhere in the universe
besides Earth was once laughable in the scientific community. Over the
past thirty years or so, the laughter has died away. As the vast scale of the
Universe has become clearer, the notion that life could have arisen only on
Earth seems increasingly unlikely. The law of averages alone would
suggest that there must be many places in the cosmos that harbor life. ....
"Not so fast," say Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee. The two ... argue
that the recent trend in scientific thought has gone too far. They suggest
that even if the universe is teeming with life, complex organisms are not
likely to appear on many - - if any -- planets besides our own. They make
their case in "Rare Earth." The authors draw on a wide variety of scientific
disciplines, from geology to paleontology to astrophysics, as they lay out
the evidence that Earth may be a singular habitat for animal life. ... Ward
and Brownlee acknowledge that life arose fairly quickly on Earth, and they
allow that simple life forms, of the single-cell variety, might be common on
many other planets. But they insist that the evolution that led to everything
from butterflies to redwoods to humans is the result of a peculiar, and
perhaps unique, sequence of events on Earth. There is a long list of
interrelated factors leading them to this conclusion. They include the
presence of the planet Jupiter in an orbit sufficiently far away from Earth to
deflect much of the cosmic debris floating around the solar system. If
Jupiter weren't there, or if it were in a different orbit, a lot of that junk
would be crashing into Earth and extinguishing complex plant and animal
life. Only Earth, among the inner planets of the Solar System, has plate
tectonics, a process that serves as a sort of regulator on our global
temperature, as well as providing enough dry land for complex organisms
to inhabit. They also cite the happy accident of Earth's position in the
galaxy -- not too close to the intense radiation of the central core, not so
far away that it's left without the chemical building blocks of life. And
there's the position of the galaxy itself -- not in a globular cluster, not in a
metal-poor quadrant, but in just the right spot to foster the rise of complex
life. ... "The continued marginalization of Earth and its place in the
Universe perhaps should be reassessed," .... "We are not the center of the
Universe ... But we are not so ordinary as Western science has made us out
to be for two millennia. Our global inferiority complex may be
unwarranted." [For most of the last "two millennia" Christianity taught that
we were special, until science thought it knew better. Another example of
how science has had to come back to the Christian position. But as Kuhn
points out, the way science works by eradicating history they can never
admit it!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000801/sc/space_aliens_dc_1.html
Yahoo! ... August 1 ... Huge New Telescope to Boost Hunt for Alien Life
... SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - With millions of dollars in funding
pledged by two of the men behind software giant Microsoft, the search for
intelligent life on other planets got a big boost ... as officials unveiled plans
for a massive new telescope to scan the skies. The Allen Telescope Array -
- named for Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, who put up $11.5
million for the project -- will be "the world's most powerful instrument
designed to seek out signals from civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy," the
SETI ... Institute said. Joining Allen in funding the project was former
Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold, who contributed $1
million toward the total of $26 million needed to build the field of hundreds
of linked radio telescope dishes in northern California. "While the best
scientific estimates tell us the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the
universe is fairly high, there is great uncertainty and some controversy in
the calculation," ...SETI Institute ... researchers have never before had their
own installation devoted exclusively to hunting down signals from alien
worlds. ... which has been going on for more than four decades. While
researchers have carefully screened records of extraterrestrial radio
emissions, they have yet to come up with a signal displaying a pattern that
could clearly indicate it was produced by intelligent life. ... Unlike
mammoth dishes .... the Allen Array will be constructed from between 500
to 1,000 small, mass-produced dishes resembling those used for home
satellite television reception. ... but their signals will be electronically linked
to form one picture ..." ... astronomers were ... focusing on those suns
which most resemble our own Solar system and are closest to us as the best
possible chance for discovering nearby intelligent life. The new telescope
will incorporate ... large amounts of affordable computer processing, which
will enable it to look at up to a dozen candidate star systems
simultaneously, ... the full telescope [is[ scheduled to become operational in
2005. ... [Myhrvold's "the best scientific estimates tell us the probability of
intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is fairly high" conflicts with more
recent thinking like Ward & Brownlee's. A lot of small dishes might be easy
to hoax?]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/07/28/blind.cavefish.reut/index.html
CNN ... Blind fish show eyes can grow back July 28, 2000 ....
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Researchers said ... they had caused eyes to
grow in fish that have been blind for aeons -- simply by inserting a lens
from sighted fish. They said the lens seemed to send out signals that
instructed the eyes in the blind cavefish to grow -- a finding that sheds light
on how eyes evolve and develop. A fish known as Astyanax mexicanus
lives deep inside caves off the coast of Mexico where there is no light.
Millions of years ago it had eyes but soon after it starts growing in the egg,
the eyes start to degenerate and the fish are born blind. Fish of the same
species that live on the surface, where there is light, grow eyes and see
normally ... They implanted a lens from the eye of a surface-dwelling fish
into a cave-fish cousin and then watched to see what would happen. Within
eight days, an eye started developing from underneath a flap of skin ....
After two months the cave fish had grown a large eye with a distinct pupil,
cornea and iris, they said. The retina of the eye had photoreceptor cells
known as rods. Yamamoto said he was not sure what the lens did to
stimulate development of the eye. "Maybe some growth factor but we are
not sure what kind of growth factor," ... the lenses of eyes were known to
secrete a variety of growth factors, which ... stimulate cell growth and
development. "This offers clues about what sort of molecules are involved
in eye growth of any vertebrate and it shows the growth of an eye is
controlled in a large part by the lens" ... [See also
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000727/sc/cavefish_eyes_dc_1.html. If
this holds up it will shows that the eye simulation by Nilsson & Pelger
(1994) was bogus, since they thought that light alone acting on layers of
cells would do it. It is a good illustration of how Darwinian just-so stories
can be seductive delusions. Just because one can reverse-engineer
something, break it down into small steps and then re-run it forward on a
computer to arrive back where one started, is no evidence that is how it got
there in nature in the first place. That is confusing logical with *biological*.
The best refutation of Nilsson & Pelger's simulation was unintended - see
my tagline.]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/07/25/bc.life.monument.reut/index.html
CNN ... US judge blocks Ten Commandments monument July 25, 2000 ...
FRANKFORT, Kentucky (Reuters) -- A federal judge Tuesday told the
state of Kentucky it may not install a monument of the Ten
Commandments on the grounds ... Judge Joseph Hood ... said the nine-foot
monument would give the impression that the state has "expressed favor"
for the ancient rules, which are a cornerstone of both the Christian and
Jewish faiths, in violation of the Constitution's guarantee of church-state
separation. The monument ... stood on the capitol grounds until 1980 when
it was moved to make way for a new building. ... The Kentucky Legislature
earlier this year passed a resolution requiring the monument to be brought
out of storage and reinstalled ... The American Civil Liberties Union sued
the state to prevent the monument from being brought back ... [The Ten
Commandment are common to Jews, Christian and Moslems, and I doubt
that other religions would object to them. And I suspect the overwhelming
majority of the public would have no objection to them either. So whose
"civil liberties" is the ACLU *really* protecting? It is one thing not to have
a State established church as in Europe, which is obviously what the
Founding Fathers were trying to prevent. But it is quite another to
completely banish from public life any trace of religion. The re-erecting of a
monument of the Ten Commandments is hardly "Congress" making "a law
respecting an establishment of religion" Haven't these judges any common
sense? Or is their real motivation the imposition of their own private
minority atheistic/agnostic beliefs on the majority?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000726/sc/birds_dc_1.html Yahoo! ...
July 26 ... Size of Bird Genome Linked to Longevity LONDON (Reuters)
The secret to a long life, in birds at least, is in the size of their genome ...
Birds live much longer than mammals and birds of the same size have very
different sized genomes. Researchers at Glasgow University have
discovered that birds with the biggest genomes, the amount of DNA in
their cells, tend to live the longest. "Across the animal kingdom there is a
huge variation in the amount of DNA different organisms have. People
have long been interested in trying to see if they can link that to any feature
in the organism," ... "Even though birds tend to have relatively small
amounts of DNA, the birds which have a lot for their body size live a long
time, so birds with the biggest genomes live the longest," ... "We were
surprised that there was such a good relationship with lifespan, or potential
longevity," she said, though it was not possible to tell if the finding holds
true for other animals. ... [Since it is likely that most, if not all, this extra
DNA is non-coding so-called `junk' DNA, this would be another example
of how it is not `junk'. Perhaps if non-coding DNA gives protection against
mutations, helps the immune system, and increases cell surface area, then
this could manifest itself in longer life.]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/07/19/space.survey.ap/index.html
CNN ... Study: Women less inclined to support space exploration July 19,
2000 ... LOUDONVILLE, New York (AP) -- Men may be from Mars, but
a new study says women are, well, earthbound -- at least when it comes to
supporting space research and exploration. Surveyors for the Siena College
Research Institute in New York asked hundreds of state residents if they
feel the United States spends too much on space research. Forty-four
percent of the women surveyed said yes, as opposed to 29 percent of the
men. And while 50 percent of the men said they supported attempts to send
people to Mars, just 27 percent of the women did. ... [I wonder if this anti-
space exploration attitude of women carries over into the
creation/evolution area. Are there any polls which show if more women are
sceptical of evolution than men. I was reading something the other day
which pointed out that Darwin, Freud and Einstein* failed to convince their
own wives of their theories! * in Einstein's case this was his second wife.
There are some who claim that Einstein's physicist first wife Mileva Maric
actually *discovered* his theory!]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/07/27/ocean.methane.ap/index.html
CNN ... Mass extinction traced to oceanic methane burp July 27, 2000 ...
(AP) -- Huge reservoirs of methane trapped beneath the ocean floor rapidly
escaped during prehistoric global warming and depleted much of the sea's
oxygen, according to new research into why many forms of life suddenly
vanished 183 million years ago. The findings ... shed new light not only on
the disappearance of as many as 80 percent of some deep-sea species but
also a process suspected in other prehistoric mass extinctions. ... The study
also raised questions about today's sea floor reservoir of methane hydrate,
which the federal government plans to study as a possible energy source.
"One of the important questions that is debated a lot today is the stability
of this methane hydrate reservoir ... Methane hydrate is formed beneath the
sea floor when algae from the surface dies and sinks. Normally a gas, the
methane is locked in an ice- like state but is susceptible to changes in
pressure and temperature. ... The researchers believe massive volcanic
eruptions during the Jurassic period initiated global warming by spewing
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. ... "A
number of important fossil groups disappeared at exactly that time," ...
Hardest hit were bottom-feeding clam-like organisms known as bivalves:
An estimated 80 percent of the species disappeared. ... the event took place
over a period of 5,000 years - - a blink in geologic time. ... "It's not
necessarily that they've found the absolute smoking gun, but they're
probably on the right track." ... [Another cause of extinction. But I saw
somewhere that the K/T extinction was partly caused by the asteroid
igniting the methane hydrate? Bit of a worry if this present global warming
heats this up.]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/07/27/brazil.dinosaur.ap/index.html
CNN ... Brazilian scientists unveil reconstruction of Tyrannosaurus
ancestor July 27, 2000 ... RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - Scientists on
Thursday unveiled the reconstructed skeleton of a sheep dog-sized
dinosaur they said was an ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus rex. ... the
discovery was important, both because of how well it was preserved and
the clues it provided about the origins of Tyrannosaurus rex. "The material
is perfect, it's as if it was buried yesterday," ... Because the Santanaraptor
lived right at the time when the South American continent was separating
from Africa, Kellner believes the discovery proves the Tyrannosaurus rex's
roots lie in the Southern Hemisphere. Even though his team only managed
to uncover the dinosaur's two legs and parts of the hips and tail, they were
able to reconstruct the whole body by looking at dinosaurs with similar
bone structures at around the same stage of evolution and extrapolate. ...
[Sounds a bit "iffy", reconstructing a whole dinosaur from legs, hips and
tail, and then claiming that even though dog-size it was T-Rex's ancestor.
The ICR should like the bit about it looking "as if it was buried
yesterday"!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000726/sc/health_liver_dc_2.html
Yahoo! ... July 26 ... Study: Parasite Makes Rats More Vulnerable to Cats
.... LONDON (Reuters) - A parasite found in mammals causes behavioral
changes in rats that makes them more vulnerable to cats, scientists said ...
Rats normally have an innate aversion to their feline foes but British
researchers at the University of Oxford have discovered that a parasite
called Toxoplasma gondii makes rats less fearful and an easier prey for
cats. The parasite lives in the intestines of cats and is excreted with feces.
In infected rats, it alters their behavior toward cats, which eat them,
completing the parasite's lifecycle. "Parasites are amazing things, if they can
manipulate behavior to increase their chance of completing their life cycle
they will," Professor Joanne Webster .. said ... "Toxoplasma gondii is an
ideal parasite to do this. It has a two-stage lifecycle, with rats as the
intermediate host. "There is a whole suite of behaviors it seems to change,
all of which makes them more likely to be preyed on by the cats, the
definitive host," .... The findings ... are particularly interesting because
many humans, including 22 percent of Britons, are infected with the
parasite. ... ... "We shouldn't be ignoring such a prevalent parasite in our
brains. Indeed there is evidence that we can expect subtle behavioral
differences in humans too," ... [If this holds up it might be an example of
how natural `selection' can do *something*? Maybe it will replace the
Peppered Moth? :-)
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"An increasingly fruitful approach in evolutionary biology involves
modeling selection mathematically and then allowing the computer to
compress millions of generations into a few minutes of digital activity. Such
electronic experiments can determine whether or not a model is plausible
and provide a rough idea of the time required for particular changes to
occur. Dan Nilsson and Susanne Pelger took this approach in an attempt to
see whether camera eyes can evolve from a patch of light-sensitive cells. ...
Thus, by a series of exceedingly tiny selective events, each required to
increase the fitness of the individual involved and constrained to operate on
a very small level of morphological variation, the essentials of the most
advanced optical system in nature appear spontaneously in fewer than 2000
generations - 2000-20,000 years for a typical vertebrate species. So rapid is
this process when modeled that the perennial question of how eyes could
evolve must now be replaced with an equally puzzling problem: how could
eyes have taken so long to evolve?" (Gould J.L., Keeton W.T. & Gould C.G.,
"Biological Science," [1967], W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY, Sixth Edition,
1996, Vol. 1, p.463).
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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