No Shadow From the Big Bang? 178
ultracool writes "In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background (WMAP). Other groups have previously reported seeing this type of shadows in the microwave background. Those studies, however, did not use data from WMAP, which was designed and built specifically to study the cosmic microwave background."
In other news.... (Score:1, Offtopic)
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Too much eve for me maybe...
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Mini-bangs? (Score:1)
(I'm sleepy. I hope I didn't mess that up too badly with poor grammar.)
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No, it was the "not having any clue what the Big Bang theory is in the first place" where you went wrong.
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There is the overall Universe which would be a blank slate of neutralness. Galaxies, supercluters, whatever, would be the things to come into creation, but not from each other. I'm saying, isn't it possible that a bunch of big bangs happened to form our galaxies (or maybe something bigger than galaxies)?
Imagine having a pot of water. Bring that water to a boil. Bubbles start forming. Each bubble would represent a cluster, galaxy, whatever it might be. Then ot
Existensial? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Existensial? (Score:5, Informative)
Shadows require light, an object and an observer. The 'observer' is us here at the earth. The 'object' is this (from TFA):
Galaxy clusters are the largest organized structures in the universe.[snip] The gravity created at the center of some clusters traps gas that is hot enough to emit X-rays.
This gas is also hot enough to lose its electrons (or ionize), filling millions of cubic light years of space inside the galactic clusters with swarming clouds of free electrons. It is these free electrons which bump into and interact with individual photons of microwave radiation, deflecting them away from their original paths and creating the shadowing effect. This shadowing effect was first predicted in 1969 by the Russian scientists Rashid Sunyaev and Yakov Zel'dovich.
And the 'light' is the background microwave radiation, until now assumed to be from the edges of the universe, beyond these clusters.
I've always wondered about that... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Dark shadows (Score:1, Funny)
Re: Dark shadows (Score:5, Funny)
A B-Grade Sci-fi thriller
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Or a typical 3D game.
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The only reason you have anything to pay it with is that the government, at the point of a gun, forces the poor to respect your claim on a disproportionately large amount of this worlds limited natural resources. It is somewhat hypocritical to blame others for using government force to take something which you gained with government force in the first place.
But, if you want to avoi
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You get a voidstone, which can be used to make a sphere of annihilation. There's plenty of them in the Negative Energy/Material Plane.
Alternatively, you could use the inspiration to make a "moody" 3D shooter - I'm eagerly waiting for "Bleak Blakness of the Dark Side of the Lightless Shadows of the Coal Mine of Insufficient Lightning". They've promised it's going to have not a single pixel brighter than RGB(0,0,0) - no wonder it requires a GeForce
Not so simple as it seems (Score:4, Interesting)
My favourite explanation is that light and dark travel at different speeds...
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You mean like a wave propagates through a medium, but the particles in the medium don't need to travel along with the wave? So, darkness is the wave and light is the medium?
Shadows really expected? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now it is obvious that the number of photons reaching us from behind is reduced by the elastic scattering process. However one of the basic properties of the cosmic background radiation is that is is nearly isotropic. And that means there should be an about equal amount of radiation scattered into our direction which would not have reached us otherwise.
So is there anything I'm missing?
Re:Shadows really expected? (Score:5, Informative)
The article is probably a bit misleading. The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect [uchicago.edu] seems to come from inelastic Compton scattering. This leads to a distortion of the original blackbody spectrum of the CMBR. The term "shadow" merely comes from the observation that at lower frequencies there are less photons being detected since they are shifted to higher frequencies.
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If this radiation comes from the big bang, then it comes from every direction and this cluster of galaxies is as much the center of the universe as the earth itself. OTOH, having a "bright" and a "dark" side of this cluster would indicate that this radiation has a located source and therefore would invalidate the big bang theory.
Of course, there are tons of effects I don't know or don't unerstand, so please expla
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Ambient Occlusion [wikipedia.org]. If there is light that seems to originate from every point (
Don't strike out the Big Bang yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
A little shadow anomaly isn't going to seriously dent the Big Bang theory. There is so much evidence for the Big Bang and predictions based on it have been observed that it will take more than a little inconsistency to make the theory suspect. You need something more substantial than shadows to expect a rehauling of the Big Bang.
Remember that there were serious questions about the applicability of Newtonian Dynamics on a large scale too when it was determined that galaxies could not have kept their structure if calculations were based on ND only. However, rather than modify ND, scientists chose to posit an unseen dark matter just to save ND. As it turns out, there is indeed dark matter!
Don't sound the death knell on the big bang yet.
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No, I wouldn't expect and overhaul of, or gross changes to, the Big Bang theory - but when a prediction made by the theory fails to pan out, it needs to be explained. Maybe the th
poorly designed "research"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I need to read the REAL article, since the "Science Daily" was a joke, but, here are some issues with the research as described:
#1 the universe has no "edge" in any layman's sense of word. We're no more in the middle than some galaxy 8 billion light years away in any direction.
#2 the CMB is NOT "pointed at" the Earth. It's going in every direction at the same time, including very, very small angles to "straight away" in any direction.
#3 the WMAP antenna is very good, but it is NOT 100% unidirectional, so it will pick up energy from a very narrow cone, not a line straight away.
Therefore the WMAP data will rarely show a "shadow" of much change in intensity, since the antenna will pick up significant CMB from off-axis of the line between the Earth and the nebula, even if the nebula is resolved to nearly all of the sample point. For that matter, it could be lensing on- or off-axis causing some of the intensity variation described in the artice.
The variations in CMB are incredibly small in the first place, and we don't have THAT many significant digits of intensity in the measurement range. We only really detected them when we got WMAP up there. Any additional small variation in CMB co-incident with an ionized nebula is going to be difficult to unambiguously assign to "shadowing", and the even smaller variations of variations from nebula to nebula are very close to the statistical noise values of the original samples.
As I said, maybe the "Astrophysical Journal" article is better presented, but so far, this doesn't sound well thought-out.
Big Bang (Score:2, Funny)
more info and a quick question (Score:3, Informative)
Linkys
A primer on the SZE [uchicago.edu]
[PDF WARNING]
Their paper on astro-ph [arxiv.org]
The WMAP 3 year results paper [nasa.gov]
[/PDF WARNING]
Why not track things backward, starting from now? (Score:2)
"Big Bang", whatever.
When one tracks an animal or a person, one typically starts from the last known certainty. "It was here, maybe yesterday."
Why don't we have the same expectations with all this investigation of origins? Why does everyone seem to be starting with some "In the beginning..." belief?
An investigation of the past from existing evidence should result in an expanding tree of possible causes. "This layer of rock could have been deposited over milions of years or in a single cataclysm
Re:Why not track things backward, starting from no (Score:2)
Now, I'm feeding a troll, but I think that this one deserves an answer...
Speed of light was compared on several directions by this (very famous) experiment: Michelson-Morley experiment [wikipedia.org]. It relies on the assumption* that Earth is moving, it may be around the Sun, or just rotating, but moving.
Now, there is a mechanism for maintaining the pedigree of scient
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The big bang theory started from the observation that all galaxies were "here" yesterday and have moved a bit further away today. It was developed the same way as every other scientific theory...
Observation => new/modified/stronger theory => prediction => observation, rinse and repeat.
"I'm not an advocate of Creationism, but they DO make one poin
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That's the same, lame response I always get. "Go read the published material." That's essentially like telling someone to "go read the web without a search engine."
Digging through yellowing documents and hunting down all their bibliographical references by hand is NOT the best
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Could it be that it's because it's the correct answer? With apologies to BadAnalogyGuy, it's like asking what is 2+2 and then complaining about the answer being 4 all the time. Science is not a pile of factoids you can just dive into, it is a methodical approach accompanied by a long history and seemingly odd customs.
"Go read the published material"
Perhaps you are dyslexic or something, you quote my answer in your post and then (directly under it) you s
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I'm not contesting the facts, I'm trying to point out that a hierarchical or dependency-related organization of that knowledge is necessary... especially for educational purposes.
Some new idea is proposed, predicting some outcome from some set of conditions. Over what range of conditions does this apply? Over what range of conditions has it been tested and to what accuracy, or what concrete evidence appears to support it? Who did the testing or found the evidenced, where, and how?
If a comprehensiv
Why should there be shadows? (Score:2)
Grrrrrr! (Score:5, Insightful)
First get this in your head. At this point in history, evolutionary biology is a certainty in the way that gravity is a certainty. We may reconceptualize certain parts of it from time to time, but it is clear and obvious that it is there and happening.
The big bang is NOTHING like this. This is because, unlike in biology, in physics at the moment we have massive unknowns (dark matter, dark energy, no clue what the elementary building material of the universe is, no way to connect quatum mechanics to relativity). At this point the best we can say is all clues seem to hint toward a big bang and that seems the most likely explanation to explain currently observed phenomena.
Big difference!
P.S.: Most Christian fundimentalists don't actually understand the difference between evolution and the big bang. They often see the two in their own heads as linked and think by argueing against one, they are arguing against the other as well. See Kent Hovind [youtube.com] and his crazyness, for example.
Re:Grrrrrr! (Score:5, Funny)
Heretic! Don't you know that there's no such thing as gravity? All things are held in place by God's will, so that His flock may live without fear of being smitten by flying boulders.
(Excepting brimstone obviously.)
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Honestly, even if I believed in God I'd be pretty disappointed if I found out God spends his time micromanaging gravity. You'd think he'd create a rule and move on to more important things.
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Wouldn't it be a pretty amazing feat to be able to micromanage every single gravitational interaction in the entire universe? In real time?
That would be a proper god.
Re:Grrrrrr! (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, a god who's clever enough to set the initial conditions, set the universe off on a 15-billion-year-plus rendering process and still get the results he wanted - that's a real god.
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Although I think you meant alpha-release, unless you really meant we were made out of beer [wikipedia.org]...
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If 2 was correct, he wouldn't be much of a god, would he? More like some celestial retiree pottering about in his garden shed trying to see if he can crossbreed striped roses...
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Or, y'know, we just evolved from a random bunch of slime on a random planet in a random solar-system in a random galaxy, possibly even in a random universe.
I try to keep an open mind, since there's precisely no evidence either way.
The only thing I'm remotely sure of on the subject is that we're definitely not what any god I would believe in would have had in mind as a final perfect product. Frankly if we were, God w
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The Blind Watchmaker (Score:2)
I'd suggest reading The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins [amazon.com]. You may find it interesting.
Nope. (Score:2)
Pronunciation: i-'van-j&-"lIz
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -lized; -lizing
transitive verb
1 : to preach the gospel to
2 : to convert to Christianity
intransitive verb : to preach the gospel
Main Entry: 1gospel
Pronunciation: 'gäs-p&l
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English gOdspel (translation of Late Latin evangelium), from gOd good + spell tale -- more at SPELL
1 a often capitalized : the message concerning Christ, the kingdom of God
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Actually you're kind of right (Score:3, Funny)
Big Bang (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the big bang gets attacked more in the sense of attacks on exactly what the initial thingy was. There's no real doubt that the universe is exploding and has been for most of physically evident history. It may not be the initial event, the universe could be eternal, cyclical, or whatever -- but it's certainly exploding now, and seems to have been for at least 12 billion years.
There isn't so much an attacking of the big bang as trying to nail down what exactly the big bang was. In other words, it's the same kind of attacks that people like Stephen Gould and Lynn Margulis make on evolution. They don't doubt that evolution is a real phenomenon for a second; they just want to nail down what exactly evolution is, what makes it tick, how it happens. It's the good kind of attacking, and it's what makes science jump.
Fundies, in turn, seem to assume that the big bang was invented for the sole purpose of trying to support evolution, which is so ridiculous that it defies the belief of real people. In fact, they seem to think that every branch of science exists solely to provide support for an otherwise untenable theory of evolution. This despite the fact that many of these ideas preceded Darwin (in a few cases by millenia).
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And if asked, would surely say that they would like their son to marry a pretty girl. I used to have a lot of fun baiting people like that but it just not the same these days. Its gone stale.
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Chuckle. The way you phrased it pretty much says Fundies aren't real people.
I only wish that that were somehow true. The sad fact is that "real people" all too often and all too easily bend their perception of reality to confirm what they already want to believe and they mentally filter away things that threaten things they want
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That's called Day-Age (Score:2)
What you describe is called Day-Age creationism [wikipedia.org], as opposed to young Earth creationism [wikipedia.org]. Some people believe in Day-Age [godandscience.org]; others believe in young Earth [answersingenesis.org].
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Wrong (Score:2)
Redshift (Score:2)
Redshifting implies increasing distance.
First, redshifting is not about distance, it's about how fast things are moving away from you. It's about distance increasng, not just distance. Second, light waves don't stretch out as they age, so age isn't really at issue here either. Red shifting would occur even if the radiation sources in question were only ten seconds old and only ten metres away, so long as they were moving away from us at a goodly speed. Thirdly the phrase "if and only
Re:Grrrrrr! (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the original inventors of the Big Bang was a Catholic priest, Fr. Lemaître. [wikipedia.org] And some scientists were uncomfortable with the idea of the Big Bang, partly because it seemed suspiciously like the traditional Jewish (and Christian and Muslim) accounts of a creation of the universe at some finite time in the past.
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
Why do you only get mod points when noone has anything worthwhile to say? Sigh.
Re:Grrrrrr! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly I see the grandparent's attitude among many otherwise smart Christians (I myself am a Christian... just to get that out of the way). Many mistakenly think that evolution contradicts the creation story and they insist it's wrong. They won't even take the time to learn about it or, in the case of private Christian schools, teach it. I didn't learn about evolution in a classroom setting until I was 19, but I'm glad I did. My picture of my faith now encompasses evolution, just like it encompasses a round earth that isn't in the center of the universe--Remember that whole Galileo thing, the church messed up real bad there, and I can't help but thing we're doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING AGAIN. All the independant scientific evidence to support evolution can't be ignored. We as Christians need to acknowledge several things: 1) The core of our belief is that Jesus Christ came to earth to in human form to show his love for us and to give us the chance to have a relationship with him. Evolution does not change this. 2) The Bible is not a scientific textbook and should not be treated as one. Jesus spoke to his people though parables all the time... why would God have chosen a 100% accurate word-for-word report on the beginning of life? Note I am just saying we should be more open-minded about this. 3) Evolution does not say God did not create the world, it merely changes the way He created it. I find it much more exciting to think that God planned the entire process of evolution, and the path of every thing on this world, from the beginning to the end of time, and then started everything rolling and let nature itself take over. After all, God is unchanging, right? Why would he then shape and mold the world for a week and then completely withdraw from managing nature? I'm not saying God is absent in the world... indeed, his current presence has simply been unwavering since the beginning of time.
As you can see I've thought a bit about this, and this excites me. So to my fellow Christians: don't be ignorant about Evoltion, get yourself educated and open your mind! Just like Galileo did.
The Sane Christian Position (Score:2, Troll)
That being said, there is no reason to believe in the existence of dieties of any sort. Richard Dawkins gives a nice short explanation of this in his documentary, The Root of all Evil [youtube.com].
For a longer an more detailed explanation I'd recommend The Blind Watchmaker [amazon.com].
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I'd take exception to that. Here are a few things to keep in mind
* The Big Bang -- including the fact that time began at the same instant as all the matter and energy in the universe, and the fact that the laws of physics and the physical constants were set at that time (or about 10^-40 seconds after) to values within extremely narrow ranges that would permit the possibility of any life at any time or place in t
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Your first point is, to me, the most compelling one. If there's no god, where did the universe come from? Only one problem. If there IS a god, where did he come from? By postulating a god you're not solving the problem, you're adding to it. Now instead of postulating that a universe popped out of nothing you have t
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I think that rejecting it all based on that is also a bit simplistic. We have numerous factors in our universe and our earth and life that *do* actively suggest design. It makes sense to look at all the evidence with an open mind and go wherever the evidence leads.
I agree that we don't know everything, and would a
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You're restricting God to time here. If God created the universe via the Big Bang, and if time itself began then, as science seems to suggest, then God exists completely outside of time and is capable of creating space and time dimensions at will. With this type of God, there s
Sigh. (Score:2)
I take exception to your exception. :-P
* The Big Bang -- including the fact that time began at the same instant as all the matter and energy in the universe, and the fact that the laws of physics and the physical constants were set at that time (or about 10^-40 seconds after) to values within extremely narrow ranges that would permit the possibility of any life at any time or place in the universe.
This is not a good arguement for
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Are you not doing something similar, with the idea that God does not exist?
Do the origins of life possible solutions you refer to take into account the homochiriality problem, or the oxygen-ultraviolet paradox (the fact that oxygen disrupts processes that must have happened, but that oxygen is necessary to stop deadly ultraviolet radiation)?
>> There are numerous factors that need t
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I think you may be missing the point.
>> Are you not doing something similar, with the idea that God does not exist?
> No. You are attempting a God of the Gaps argument, wherein a (purported) inability of science to explain one thing or another is taken as evidence of your default position (God must exist to explain it).
The question was whether you and the other poster who bothered to register start with the assumption that God doesn't exist, then interpret the e
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Not to get into a theological debate, but I see this statement a lot, and it's almost always associated with some strange handwaving or equivocation over the definition of the word "information." The statement is absolutely true if you define information as something that comes from intelligence, but if you don't define it that way, I don't see how one can come to the conclusion that it's true. Too often, I see a statement like this thrown out and then a bu
Thank you (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14681924/ [msn.com]
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Actually, it was Galileo messing up back then, and doing it big time. There simply wasn't any conclusive evidence that a heliocentric system was correct, compared with a geocentric one. And in fact the lack of an observable stellar parallax greatly suggested that the geocentric system was, in fact, the physically correct one. Without conclusive proof to the contrary,
Can't breed Dalmatians back into wolves (Score:2)
And they do this by shedding genes. Under my personal interpretation of young Earth, each family of animals was created with genes for all niches, set in mutual inhibition during the first week. Mutations corrupt genes and allow their inhibitors to be expressed, and natural selection helps these mutations propagate in habitats where the inhibitor would allow the animal to thrive in a niche. However, those genes can't as easily come back. You'r
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The post you replied to was intending to say that evolution is, just as gravity is. Our theories about how these things work may not be nailed down just yet, but just because you have a problem with the currently accepted theory of gravity doesn't mean gravity do
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is HUGE news.
Before this date, there had been no recording of a mutation that has resulted in a new structure, organ or other mechanism that makes an organism more fit to survive. So far people have only seen bacteria or viruses in a petri dish cycling through pre-existing immunity combinations, or some natural selection cases like peppered moths.
Can you please point me to the relevant scientific paper? Thanks.
Beneficial Mutations (Score:4, Informative)
Evolution of a new enzymatic function by recombination within a gene. Hall BG, Zuzel T, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1980 Jun 77:6 3529-33
Abstract: "Mutations that alter the ebgA gene so that the evolved beta-galactosidase (ebg) enzyme of Escherichia coli can hydrolyze lactose fall into two classes: class I mutants use only lactose, whereas class II mutants use lactulose as well as lactose..." (Obviously, in a lactose-rich environment, this makes E. coli more fit.)
Now that I pointed you to the paper will you give up your unfounded belief?
I'd also suggest reading this [talkorigins.org] to start and maybe this [amazon.com] to learn a bit more about evolution.
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The original parent claimed that no mutations (rather than recombinations) caused beneficial effects in organisms and challenged anyone to find a paper that said otherwise. So weird...it just vanished.
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Feeding a troll (Score:5, Informative)
* peppered moth: selection for wing coloring
* mutations in HIV after it jumped species to humans. Many other mutations are observed in bacteria and other pathogens that make them resistant to drugs. We are currently waiting in fear for the birdflue to undergo such a change.
* Invasive species: many mutations are observed in invasive species that make them more adapted to the environment.
* Recently, direct observation of the evolution of beak size in Darwin's finches was reported (Science 14 July 2006: Vol. 313. no. 5784, pp. 224 - 226)
* Evolution of RNA sequences: many experiments have evolved RNA sequences that perform various functions. One example among many is converting an RNA enzyme to a DNA enzyme (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060
* Artificial evolution: in many experiment run in computers, evolution is able to create new structures, from bridges to sorting algorithms
Finally, I think it is worthwhile to mention one important piece of evidence that has recently been completed. When Darwin suggested in the 19th century that humans and apes had a common ancestor, he was ridiculed. Till then humans were seen as different from all animals, having been created on a different day of creation. In that time, nothing was known of the DNA. Today, we managed to sequence the human and the chimp genome. We know that humans and chimpanzees differ in 1% of their DNA sequence. In fact, the DNA sequence of a human is closer to that of a chimp than the chimp is to an Orangutan, or than the chimp is to any other living species, with the exception of the bonobo. The human is the chimp and bonobo's closest relative.
I think that is quite an amazing prediction to make more than 100 years in advance. In fact, predictions like this are the strongest corroborations in science: making a prediction that is absolutely unthinkable based on the current belief.
mutation does not make speciation (Score:2)
Mutation is observable and observation makes for good science. Extrapolation allows for the possibility of mutation combining to make new types of creatures, but that has not been observed - just postulated.
Of course mutations occur. Frankly they are almost always "less fit" and become a failure.
Adaptation through natural selection appears to make "more fit" creatures and does create specia
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It's not.
You may as well be asking the exact same question back in Galileo's day. People fighting over whether the earth moves around the sun, and you come along blaming the science side for being anti-faith. Wrong, and rediculous.
Not only are some of the best scientists of TODAY men of deep unwavering faith, in the ballpark of half of all scientists of today consider themselves faithfu
Certainly off-topic now (Score:3, Insightful)
Science is not about truth.
Science is a method that we have built to understand and predict the universe. However, the thing that science comes up with is not the truth, and does not approach the truth.
Thus, the truth could be that the universe was created 2 minutes ago, with a complete slashdot discussion on the big-bang/evolution, and everything else in it. And it could be that it was created so
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Sure, it's not an ape evolving into a human, but the fact that we HAVEN'T seen something like that is a prediction of evolution: changes on that scale o
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An environment that undergoes a change will cause members of a species that are not capable of handling that change to die off. Those that are left behind will have trait
So you're real? You're not a troll? (Score:5, Informative)
Lets jump over your yawns to darwin's finches. How many species of finches live on the galapagos islands? I think it is wrong to call them all "one species". What about the different species of giant tortoises, are they also all one species? How come we can not recreate the species from which we have a single male left over - (lonesome george)? Before Darwin, people had no problem with calling all the different finches on the Galapagos island different species. It is just that on the Galapagos island it is so obvious that they all had a common origin, that Darwin had to conclude that species can not be stationary, they must change. And, after "on the origin of species" was published, people had to change the concept of species in order to try to still hold the immutable species concept. The changes that are observed now in one species of finches on the galapagos are similar to the changes that lead to the evolution of the different species. Are they a new species? Not yet. Will the become a new species? Who knows, but our current observations and thought do not provide any barrier that would prevent them from doing so.
* In vitro evolution, or artificial evolution are models. Just as we compute the path of a spaceship or the planets, or an atomic bomb in a model, we do a model of evolution. Without models, science would not exist. A model turns theory into predictions. These models tell us that conceptually, Darwin's idea of natural selection works. This is not clear to begin with, and certainly not all types of natural selection work.
The in-vitro models of evolution allow us to understand how the process of evolution works. There actually is a branch of the philosophy of science that believes that one can not test theories using observations. That one always needs a controlled experiment, and that observations in nature can never be controlled enough. (But I don't buy into this)
One needs to distinguish between concepts.
* Common descent
* Natural selection
* Speciation
* Evolution
Common descent is what tells us that chimps and humans had a common ancestor. Do you have any other reason for explaining why the DNA of chimps and humans are so close?
Natural selection is what creates functions in organisms. As was stated above, this is observed often - though the timescale at which things happen is quite long.
Speciation is a complicated concept. It seems that there are different ways in which a new species can arise - it can first use a different niche, and then stop being able to mate, or fist stop being able to mate (maybe because of a mountain in the middle), and then diverge in function. We do observe all stages of speciation separately, but the concept of the species is not defined well enough to point at cases where we observed a new species arising (see HIV example above).
Evolution includes all the concepts above. You seem to want to talk about evolution as speciation - I have no problem with that. Let us talk about that for a second. However, I'll drop the species concept. I think the species concept is a historical artefact that we inherited from pre-darwinian biology. Instead I'd like to know which two organisms that we observe on earth, according to your opinion are so different that they do not share a common ancestor.
So, you do accept that HIV and SIV share a common ancestor, right? As do the finches with the shorter beaks and those with the longer beaks mentioned above?
What about the other finches on Galapagos island? Do they have a common ancestor? Which of them do?
What about the chimpanzees? Currently we have chimps living in Africa all the way from the Kongo to the western shores of Africa. It is debated
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You call that a troll? Weak, dude.
But if you're in any way serious, just look at Penicillin. Why are bacteria increasingly resistant to it with each passing year? The fittest survived and reproduced. Evolution at work.
My high school biology teacher used to say (actually, he'd often sing it... he was an odd fellow) that he was a part of the luckiest generation on the planet today, because his lifespan has generally coincided with the effectiveness of Penicillin. By the time it's no longer useful, he'l
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The real issues are whether humans evolved from apes, whether life as a whole evolved from single-celled organisms, etc, etc.
Many people find it easy to dismiss religious folks by saying they reject the concept of evolution, period. No, by not differentiating between evolutionary theories and referring to them as one whole, people find it easier to dismiss those religious people by not understanding what
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The point isn't whether evolution occurs or not. It's "Where did man come from?" and "How far has life evolved, and what was its origin?"
Assuming the absence of a creator, it's natural to assume that humans evolved from their closest genetic relatives, and that all life itself began from one point, from which everything else evolved. We don't have concrete eviden
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Right.
Just as religious folk in Galilo's day believed in a creator.
Based on what they believe about that creator, they believe that humans did not evolve from apes and that life itself did not evolve from one point, but several (early humans being one of the original points).
Wrong.
Why is it wrong? Just put your exact same comment in the context of Galileo's day:
Based on what they believe about that creator, they believe that the earth does not move.
Yo
Big Bang observations (Score:3, Informative)
Point a microwave receiver at the sky, as Penzias and Wilson did in 1963, and you're directly observing something called the "surface of last scattering", only a few hundred thousand years removed from the Big Bang.
>the singularity. It's the elephant in the room.
It's funny how confident textbook authors can get when physics can't answer questions a child would ask. At the end of the 19th century stuffed shirts were saying
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Re:No Big Bang, just cycles of expansion/contracti (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, are there decent alternatives to the Big bang theory these days? All I can remember from college are the steady state and oscillating ones.
For that matter, this news doesn't disprove the theory either. AFAIK other factors like the distribution of stellar matter are still suggestive of a Big Bang.
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For example, light can be modeled as particles or waves. Actually, neither may be an entirely acurate description of light, but both theories may make useful predictions. They both describe light in very good (if not complete) ways [thespectroscopynet.com].
More than one model of the shape and origin of the universe may contribute to a view that helps explain observations and make predictions.
These models are not for "believing in". That would prevent us from con