Theory of Evolution

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#2164172 20-Jan-2019 14:10

I was thinking of an Drake's equation.

"The Drake Equation is used to estimate the number of communicating civilizations in the cosmos, or more simply put, the odds of finding intelligent life in the universe."

https://www.space.com/25219-drake-equation.html

An hour long video
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Where are the aliens?

KiwiTim

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#2164189 20-Jan-2019 14:44

There's got to be some aliens on Geekzone!. Hey, I might be one of them. Communicating from Planet Zogg! :)

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#2164229 20-Jan-2019 14:56

KiwiTim:

Rikkitic, I absolutely agree with you that the universe is very old and very massive, and there may well be planets very much like ours out there. Nevertheless, Planet Earth is very special compared to the planets we know of, in that it has all the requirements for us to have evolved to what we are today. I'm not saying that it hasn't happened elsewhere, but for it to happen there are a lot of very small probabilities that have to come together. The more small probabilities there are, the less likely it is. That's just a fact. The simple truth is we don't know if there are any other planet Earth's out there. Maybe, maybe not.

You are alluding to long known observation called the fine-tuned universe. Sorry I can't insert links because I'm typing from a mobile phone

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#2164230 20-Jan-2019 15:01

kingdragonfly: I was thinking of an Drake's equation.

"The Drake Equation is used to estimate the number of communicating civilizations in the cosmos, or more simply put, the odds of finding intelligent life in the universe."

https://www.space.com/25219-drake-equation.html

An hour long video
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Where are the aliens?

One possible explanation is that aliens have access to dimensions that we have access to, so we can't see them and they either can see us ignore us or can't see us (we are in a higher dimension). I'll try to find a link later

edit: note professor lisa randall is a world renowned theoretical physicist. go to 6th minute for explanation.

Rikkitic

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#2164233 20-Jan-2019 15:12

KiwiTim:

Many folks choose to exclude the possibility of any kind of designer/creator/god. But you have to ask yourself why must this option be excluded. Is that just personal preference or bias. I prefer to keep all options open.

Always with the creative designer. So what created Her? How many tortoises does She stand on? I exclude this because the alternative makes more sense to me.

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#2164237 20-Jan-2019 15:16

Rikkitic:

KiwiTim:

Many folks choose to exclude the possibility of any kind of designer/creator/god. But you have to ask yourself why must this option be excluded. Is that just personal preference or bias. I prefer to keep all options open.

Always with the creative designer. So what created Her? How many tortoises does She stand on? I exclude this because the alternative makes more sense to me.

Why does the creator have a gender?

I hope it's not planning to breed.

Rikkitic

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#2164280 20-Jan-2019 15:36

Fred99:

Why does the creator have a gender?

I hope it's not planning to breed.

Where do you think all those other dimensions come from?

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#2164293 20-Jan-2019 15:44

I feel like a judge forced to ask prosecuting counsel "Is there a question here?"

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#2164320 20-Jan-2019 16:32

Rikkitic:

Where do you think all those other dimensions come from?

Who knows.

The reason they come up with this is because using the standard 4 dimensions they cannot resolve the plausibility of existence of matter with any known science using 4 dimensions.

There is a branch of physics called string theory and its branches that, if you have upwards of 10 dimensions, then existence of matter is resolved.

Of course string theory may be wrong and there may not be more than 4 dimensions; other theories do exist but they are not as popular. But so far, scientifically, you and I can not exist.

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#2164337 20-Jan-2019 16:51

I said earlier that science is a work in progress. New theories that test the boundaries are constantly being proposed and discarded. Some survive and get incorporated into the body of accepted knowledge. Before Einstein, people thought Newton explained everything. Before Newton, it was Copernicus. Each builds on the ones who have gone before. There is more about the Universe that we don't understand than we do, but what we do is vastly greater than it used to be. Science is the wonderful expression of human curiosity, imagination and creativity. There seems to be no limit to what we can comprehend, though the steps may be small ones.

Contrast this with the received wisdom of religion, which says this is how things are, always have been, and always will be. I will take science over that any day.

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KiwiTim

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#2164353 20-Jan-2019 18:09

Rikkitic:

KiwiTim:

Many folks choose to exclude the possibility of any kind of designer/creator/god. But you have to ask yourself why must this option be excluded. Is that just personal preference or bias. I prefer to keep all options open.

Always with the creative designer. So what created Her? How many tortoises does She stand on? I exclude this because the alternative makes more sense to me.

Your thinking from the perspective of an organic being with a finite life cycle. As for the tortoises, well, I think we care ignore them. Spontaneous or incremental formation of first life is based on faith, nothing more, and so is belief in a designer. They are both unobserved phenomena that can only be guessed at.

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#2164355 20-Jan-2019 18:23

There's no shortage of ideas how life started

https://www.livescience.com/13363-7-theories-origin-life.html

Introduction

Life on Earth began more than 3 billion years ago, evolving from the most basic of microbes into a dazzling array of complexity over time. But how did the first organisms on the only known home to life in the universe develop from the primordial soup?

It started with an electric spark

Lightning may have provided the spark needed for life to begin.

Electric sparks can generate amino acids and sugars from an atmosphere loaded with water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen, as was shown in the famous Miller-Urey experiment reported in 1953, suggesting that lightning might have helped create the key building blocks of life on Earth in its early days. Over millions of years, larger and more complex molecules could form. Although research since then has revealed the early atmosphere of Earth was actually hydrogen-poor, scientists have suggested that volcanic clouds in the early atmosphere might have held methane, ammonia and hydrogen and been filled with lightning as well.

Molecules of life met on clay

The first molecules of life might have met on clay, according to an idea elaborated by organic chemist Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. These surfaces might not only have concentrated these organic compounds together, but also helped organize them into patterns much like our genes do now.

The main role of DNA is to store information on how other molecules should be arranged. Genetic sequences in DNA are essentially instructions on how amino acids should be arranged in proteins. Cairns-Smith suggests that mineral crystals in clay could have arranged organic molecules into organized patterns. After a while, organic molecules took over this job and organized themselves.

Life began at deep-sea vents

The deep-sea vent theory suggests that life may have begun at submarine hydrothermal vents spewing key hydrogen-rich molecules. Their rocky nooks could then have concentrated these molecules together and provided mineral catalysts for critical reactions. Even now, these vents, rich in chemical and thermal energy, sustain vibrant ecosystems.

Life had a chilly start

Ice might have covered the oceans 3 billion years ago, as the sun was about a third less luminous than it is now, scientists say. This layer of ice, possibly hundreds of feet thick, might have protected fragile organic compounds in the water below from ultraviolet light and destruction from cosmic impacts. The cold might have also helped these molecules to survive longer, allowing key reactions to happen

The answer lies in understanding DNA formation

Nowadays DNA needs proteins in order to form, and proteins require DNA to form, so how could these have formed without each other? The answer may be RNA, which can store information like DNA, serve as an enzyme like proteins, and help create both DNA and proteins. Later DNA and proteins succeeded this "RNA world," because they are more efficient.

RNA still exists and performs several functions in organisms, including acting as an on-off switch for some genes. The question still remains how RNA got here in the first place. And while some scientists think the molecule could have spontaneously arisen on Earth, others say that was very unlikely to have happened. Other nucleic acids other than RNA have been suggested as well, such as the more esoteric PNA or TNA.

Life had simple beginnings

Instead of developing from complex molecules such as RNA, life might have begun with smaller molecules interacting with each other in cycles of reactions. These might have been contained in simple capsules akin to cell membranes, and over time more complex molecules that performed these reactions better than the smaller ones could have evolved, scenarios dubbed "metabolism-first" models, as opposed to the "gene-first" model of the "RNA world" hypothesis.

Life was brought here from elsewhere in space

Perhaps life did not begin on Earth at all, but was brought here from elsewhere in space, a notion known as panspermia. For instance, rocks regularly get blasted off Mars by cosmic impacts, and a number of Martian meteorites have been found on Earth that some researchers have controversially suggested brought microbes over here, potentially making us all Martians originally. Other scientists have even suggested that life might have hitchhiked on comets from other star systems. However, even if this concept were true, the question of how life began on Earth would then only change to how life began elsewhere in space.

Oh, and if you thought all that was mysterious, consider this: Scientists admit they don't even have a good definition of life!

kingdragonfly

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#2164392 20-Jan-2019 18:27

https://www.livescience.com/64355-missing-ingredient-in-origin-of-life.html

This May Be Life's 'Missing Ingredient'

Billions of years ago, molecules on a lifeless and tumultuous Earth mixed, forming the first life-forms. Eons later, a larger, smarter form of life is huddling over lab experiments trying to understand its own beginnings.

While some say life emerged from simple chains of molecules, others say early chemical reactions formed self-replicating RNA. A relative of DNA, RNA acts as a decoder or messenger of genetic information.

A new study provides evidence for the RNA idea, which is known as the "RNA world hypothesis."

highly technical chemical explanation removed

"It all makes sense now, but based on the older results, we didn't expect inosine to work as well as it did," said study senior author Jack Szostak, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University, who is also a Nobel laureate.

Szostak and his team are now trying to figure out how else that primitive RNA might have been different from modern RNA — and how it eventually turned into modern RNA. Also, much of their lab is focused on how RNA molecules replicated before enzymes evolved. (Enzymes are proteins that speed up chemical reactions.)

"This is a big challenge," Szostak told Live Science. "We've made a lot of progress, but there are still unsolved puzzles."

Sutherland also noted that the field is generally moving on from a pure "RNA world hypothesis" into one that sees more components mixed into the cauldron that created life. Those include lipids, peptides, proteins and energy sources. He added that in researchers' minds, "It's a less purist RNA world than it used to be."

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#2164410 20-Jan-2019 19:09

Hammerer:
gsr:

Science is not a belief system; if something cannot be observed, measured, repeatedly tested, no scientific explanation exists. Scientists can offer 'proposed' hypotheses that may or may not be easy to test (sometimes the technology is not quite there yet, for e.g higgs boson). An existing hypothesis is no longer considered valid if it is incompatible with any other empirical evidence or observation.

Science is most definitely a belief system! It is built on a number of important coherent beliefs.

Nonsense (from my perspective)

I see this kind of stuff on the web - often repeated by people that dont have a background in science.

In the form being discussed in this thread - we are clearly referring to the process of following the scientific method.

The scientific method is a process. A process is a set of steps/actions (alternatively called procedures) that must be performed in a set order.

I might propose that there is no requirement at all in the process for belief, either before, during and after the process is executed, alternatively, belief can be used as an input and formed as an output - but the process itself, I think, knows nothing about belief, emotion or bias.

And I might suggest, There is no requirement that one has to agree with the findings. Although - as I said before, if the process is followed correctly one cannot call the findings wrong.

There are two other related issues. The first is the inability of people to check facts (sometimes referred to as souces), the second is the inability to understand the specific terminology used when presenting information (such as in a paper). An example can be found in my previous sentence in the use of the words ‘agree’ and ‘wrong’.

I would suggest that Belief on the other hand can be said to be a personal, subjective, opinion. Often held in a temporal manner - that is, until more information appears allowing the opinion to be changed. It could be said that the output of following the scientific method can be a belief, but the method itself is not.

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#2164449 20-Jan-2019 21:29

I think people are confusing scientific theory and theory. These are distinct things.

an explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can be repeatedly tested and verified in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Where possible, theories are tested under controlled conditions in an experiment.^[1]^[2] In circumstances not amenable to experimental testing, theories are evaluated through principles of abductive reasoning. Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and embody scientific knowledge.^[3]

The meaning of the term scientific theory (often contracted to theory for brevity) as used in the disciplines of science is significantly different from the common vernacular usage of theory.^[4]^{[Note 1]} In everyday speech, theory can imply an explanation that represents an unsubstantiated and speculative guess,^[4] whereas in science it describes an explanation that has been tested and widely accepted as valid. These different usages are comparable to the opposing usages of prediction in science versus common speech, where it denotes a mere hope.

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