Are we humans one day going to turn into huge sea-squirts?

Posted on by Opher

One day it is possible that humans will reach puberty and transform into huge rubbery, sedentary sea-squirts. Here’s why:

 

Most people now accept evolution. It is pretty indisputable unless you are a creationist nut. We humans are apes (a third species of chimpanzee actually). We are mammals who evolved out of reptiles. The reptiles evolved out of amphibia who evolved out of fish. All straightforward.

 

The interesting point I wish to make concerns the evolution of fish.

 

The fish evolved out of chordates – little fish-like creatures with notochords like amphioxus. That’s where the story gets interesting.

 

Once upon a time, long, long ago, at the bottom of the ocean, there lived a family of sea-squirts. They looked like plants but they were really animals. They never moved though. They sat on the seabed sucking water through their siphons and extracting particles of food. It was a lazy way of life. They never had to exert their long cylindrical bodies. They just sat and squirted water.

When they wanted to reproduce they simply released their eggs and sperm into the water. The eggs grew into little tadpole-like larvae who swam away to settle on a distant patch of ocean bed where they planted themselves and grew into indolent adults.

 

Something went wrong. A mutation in a gene meant that the larvae, instead of maturing into adults, became sexually mature and continued swimming around. This is known as neotony. These are what evolved into fish.

 

Now the genes that coded for the transition in sea-squirts lay dormant in fish. It will have been passed down the line to all subsequent animals. The majority of our DNA is rubbish. It is old genes and meaningless sections of DNA that code for nothing. It is called satellite DNA. But if those genes were to become activated we would, on reaching puberty, transform into giant sea-squirts. Wouldn’t that be fun?

 

Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned this? It might spark a government weapons policy. They might create a gene activator, put it into a country’s water supply and transform an enemy’s entire population into quiescent sea-squirts!

 

Still – I suppose that is better than using nuclear weapons?

Some basic improvements to human biochemistry.

Posted on by Opher

It is not just at the physical level that the human body is badly designed. There are numerous improvements that could be made at a biochemical level. Because our bodies have evolved and not been designed they have a number of inherent faults or areas that could function much better:

  1. The liver could manufacture and store all the 22 amino acids (like plants can). This would mean that we would not need to eat as much protein and we would not need to produce poisonous excretory products (such as urea) from the breakdown of excess amino acids that cannot be stored.
  2. We could have chlorophyll (like plants) which would enable us to produce some of our food from carbon dioxide and water (like plants do). It would mean we’d need less food and we’d produce some of our oxygen and use up some of our carbon dioxide – win, win, win.
  3. We could do away with deleterious genes. We all have a plethora of flawed genes which cause illnesses ranging from colour blindness to cancer, brain damage to heart disease and a range of other nasty illnesses. These are mainly recessive, which is why we are not allowed to marry close relatives (who will likely have the same damaged genes so the illnesses will be more prevalent) and it is best to marry someone from a different race (who is likely to have a different set of flawed genes so they are not likely to match up).
  4. We have many autoimmune problems that lead to such diseases as lupus, arthritis, multiple sclerosis. A better chemistry would deal with these.
  5. The liver could process lipids better so that cholesterol did not clog up arteries causing heart attacks and strokes.
  6. We could have more brown fat (rich in mitochondria) to burn off excess fats so that nobody became obese despite whatever diet they had.
  7. We could remove all the satellite DNA clogging up our chromosomes. Most of the DNA sequences are gobblegook, coding for nothing. They have built up over millions of years from defunct genes or copied sequences and have no purpose – like the old programmes and files clogging up our computers that require defragging.
  8. We could have a system that cleans the brain of impurities so that waste proteins don’t clog up the brain causing dementia.
  9. We could have articular cartilage that was more active at repairing itself so that our joints don’t wear out.

 

The possibilities for improving the human body on a biochemical level are endless. It is like it is because it is the product of evolution and not design. With a little thought the improvements would be immense.

Some basic improvements to the Human Body.

Posted on by Opher

 

 There are some who claim that the human body is a wonder that clearly demonstrates design.

As a biologist I find that ludicrous. The human body is a disaster of flawed design. That is because it is the product of evolution. Any fool can easily identify a number of basic improvements.

 

  1. The brain – a highly delicate organ yet exposed outside of the main body where it is subject to trauma and injury. If it was housed inside the thorax it would be protected much more and closer to the heart for a far better blood supply. It is where it is because of cephalisation (grouping the brain and senses together at the front end) which occurred as early as in the annelids (worms).
  2. The respiratory system – with only one opening shared with the digestive system it is subject to choking and asphyxiation. I doubt there is one human being who has not choked or spluttered and a number die from blocked tracheas. This is because the lungs evolved out of the swim bladder of a fish which is attached to the gut. A better design would be to separate the digestive and respiratory tracts and provide multiple openings so that we can’t suffocate.
  3. The reproductive system – having the reproductive system open with the excretory and egestory systems means that the bladder and vagina and uterus are prone to contamination from faeces and urine and hence infections. The systems evolved from the common cloaca of a fish. The problems did not manifest in water. The systems need separating so that the openings are not close together.
  4. The birth canal – as the reproductive system evolved from a fish common cloaca the birth canal opens through the pelvic girdle creating a dangerous and highly painful birth. If it opened through the abdomen birth would be neither dangerous nor painful.
  5. The neck – as the brain is stuck out on top the neck is very precarious. It has major blood vessels near the surface to supply the brain and a spinal cord inside vertebrae which is prone to being broken resulting in death or paralysis. If the brain was in the thorax and the spinal cord not in the vertebrae then the risk of death and paralysis would be greatly reduced.
  6. Testicles – putting the testicles outside the body in a vulnerable place is absurd. If sperm production occurred at 37 degrees the testes could be safely housed inside the body where they wouldn’t be vulnerable. Anyone who has been kneed in the balls would know what an improvement that would be – (we could have a retractable penis while we were at it).
  7. The vertebrae – the backbone has evolved for quadrupedal walking (as per chimps and gorillas). Bipedal walking causes major stresses because the spine is the wrong shape. This results in many people having major back pain. Redesign it for walking upright.

 

Well I could go on through a series of other poorly evolved organs – joints, hearts (why not two?), digestive tract, teeth, senses (why only two of eyes and ears?), regenerative organs (why can’t we regrow limbs like the Amphibia do?) but it would start to get boring.

The creationists believe we were designed. If so we have a god who obviously enjoys seeing people choking, getting needless infections, brain damage, paralysis, great pain and suffering the agony of childbirth; all of which could, like so many other things, be easily avoided.

If I were to design a better human body I would do a much better job and I’m only a mere human.

The Arrogance of Human Beings – Awe and Wonder

Posted on by Opher

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We are microbes on the surface of a small planet.

Our planet orbits around a small, insignificant star – Sol.

Our star is out in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy – not even near the middle.

There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. It is a mere 100,000 light years across. (It would take light 100,000 years to get from one side to the other!)

The biggest galaxies are 2 million light years across – hugely bigger – with 10 trillion stars. They make ours look tiny.

We know of 2 trillion galaxies so far.

The distances between them are beyond our comprehension. The universe is 46 Billion light years from the centre to the expanding edge.

Yet human beings, with our tiny brains, think we can understand something as stupendous as this. We can work out where it came from, its laws and its future. What a remarkable arrogance.

It is the equivalent of bacteria living in your toilet for brief seconds thinking they can work out the nature of the backside lowering itself into position.

The fact that we have worked out so much is amazing! Science is stupendous and exciting.

For those fundamentalists of all religions who think that god created all this for the sake of us little bacteria on this insignificant planet – I find your belief ludicrous. That is the height of arrogance and super-inflated egos.

The universe is a wondrous, mystical place. The one thing I’m certain of is that it wasn’t created for us. We have a brief lifetime in which to be astounded by it and enjoy it. How lucky we are.

The Infinite Possibilities of the Unobserved

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There is nothing quite so strange as quantum. The act of observing matter affects what it does. The power of mind. Is matter conscious?

Poetry – Creation – The beginning of the banishment of dark.

Posted on by Opher

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Creation

I wrote this poem after watching a Horizon programme on the creation of the universe. I stole various wonderful phrases that seemed to capture the essence of the wonder.

For me the universe is a mystery and one that slowly we are unravelling. Science is the greatest provider of wonder to me. Perhaps we will never know all the secrets of the universe and life. The further we extend our knowledge the stranger it all becomes. I’m fine with that. The wonder and awe are in the perpetual discovery. It wouldn’t do to understand it all. Where’s the fun in that?


Creation

The first star was born;

The first light;

The story of us.

 

In the beginning,

A bright beginning,

The Big Bang

And dust.

 

New,

White hot

And searing light,

With hydrogen gust.

 

Then cooling,

A vast blackness,

A fog

Of hydrogen gas.

 

Welcome,

Welcome to the Dark Ages;

The long night

Of then –

But no us.

 

Then the first pinprick of light

And a dim cosmic dawn

As the first of zillions of stars was born.

The light of creation;

A fusion of elemental force

In the dark,

Forging metals

And hurling them back out

To leave their mark.

 

The supernova of nuclear storm

Creating planets

For a brand new morn.

All the gold silver and iron

Created in stars

Through fiery aeons.

 

Gravities pull

On that diffuse pool

With uneven spread

Fusing quarks

Into carbon and lead.

Giving forth sustaining light

With suns a hundred times bigger

Than our sun

With its heavy metal trigger.

As violet blue,

The elements they spew,

Cutting through the fog

With a cosmic knife.

Providing the building blocks

For life.

 

Now on this rock

Conceived in the maw of a star

We have eyes

That can peer near and far

And minds

To fathom the nature

Of a quark

And the wonder

Of that first

Bright spark

That lit up a tiny corner

Of perpetual dark.

 

Opher 20.9.15

Creation – the beginning? Or was it?

Posted on by Opher

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Creation

There is much debate as to the moment of creation. Was it the moment of the Big Bang? Or did something exist prior to that? Was the Big Bang the result of two universes touching within the structure of the polyverse system creating a third? Was it the outpouring of a Black Hole? Did it come about through a sudden burst of expansion within one area? Or was it created spontaneously from nothing.

The religious amongst us would naturally say that God did it. But that still poses the same set of conundrums, if slightly different. Where was God before the universe, space and time began? Was God created spontaneously? Did he always exist? If so where and how?

The standard response to those questions is that only God knows which, in my opinion, is dodging the question.

For me the concept of God explains nothing and is merely one of man’s attempts to explain something that pushes our minds to the limit.

Putting that to one side let us go forward.

Perhaps the moment of real creation was when the first stars lit up the heavens and signalled the beginning of the universe as we know it, fusing hydrogen into the heavier elements and enabling life to emerge? After all, what is a universe if there is no one to see it?

In the beginning the universe was pure hydrogen, so hot with the moment of its birth and pressure that it glowed white. The heavens were incandescent with searing light. Fortunately there were no eyes around to see it or they would have been instantly blinded.

After its inception the universe expanded and cooled into darkness.

At this point it was pure hydrogen present in separate atoms, not bound into molecules, spread so thin that they formed a dark fog to the edges of all time ans space (created along with the matter).

If that hydrogen had been completely uniformly distributed that is where it would have ended. It would have gone forth forever as a dark expanding cloud of hydrogen atoms. Fortunately that was not the case. The distribution was not completely uniform. The physical laws took effect and gravity, over billions of years, drew the atoms together. As they clumped and aggregated their gravitational pull increased until they were sucking in all around them. These were the formation of the first generation of stars.

Once again we were fortunate. For with condensation comes heat. The gravitational force pulled those hydrogen atoms together but the heat drove the atoms apart. It would have resulted in a balance that stopped short of reaching the temperature and pressure necessary to initiate fusion. Fortunately the hydrogen atoms joined together into hydrogen molecules which were able to absorb sufficient heat to enable the process of fusion. The hydrogen began to fuse to create larger elements of helium and carbon giving out huge amounts of energy and light.

This is the moment of creation.

First one and then over millions of years a second and blinking on in ever increasing numbers the heavens erupted in light. This was not the light we see today. Those stars were fewer and hundreds of times bigger and brighter than our stars. Their fuel was hydrogen and they were short of all the heavier elements. The light they produced was obscured by the hydrogen gas surrounding them so that they must have shone like headlights in a dense fog.

Those huge first stars quickly sucked in their fuel, clearing the vicinity of hydrogen and lived out their relatively short lives to go out in a huge meganova that must have set the heavens ablaze with its fury. In so doing they hurled out the heavier elements they had created within themselves to fuel a second generation of stars.

If we only had a speeded up film of the universe in those early billions of years – the years of darkness, the first pinprick of light in the fog, the lights blinking on one after another until the heavens were awash with hazy light, the hydrogen being gobbled up leaving great empty holes and then the explosions as those stars erupted in gigantic fury to dissipate their energy and those precious elements. It is beyond imagination as a spectacle of such immensity, a firework display on a magnitude beyond our understanding. Yet it happened.

The second and subsequent generations of stars took those elements further creating all the elements the universe has ever known and spewing forth the matter that created planets and ultimately all life.

For me the moment of creation was that first spark of fusion in that very first giant star. That was the moment the universe came to life.

Human evolution – It was the cows wot done it!

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Human evolution – It was the cows wot done it!

As hunter/gatherers our diets were varied but dependent on the success of the hunt. We needed the protein from the meat but hunting was precarious and difficult. Life was hard and lived on the dge. There were times of famine.

Then we had the brainwave of farming. ‘Why go off hunting the buggers when we can capture a couple and breed ‘em up so that they’re easy to get and always available’, and ‘Why go out gathering the stuff when it’s hard to find and spread out? Why not sow some seeds and get it all to come up in one place and there’s lots of it?’ Intelligence is wonderful.

But even that did not solve our problems. The crops grew in season. There were gluts and shortages. Storage was hard. There were still periods of starvation.

We had evolved to digest milk as babies but lost the ability in adulthood.

Natural selection weeded out the starving.

But now there was milk available and you could make butter, cheese and yoghourt if only it didn’t make you sick and you could digest it.

There was a mutation in a gene for lactose tolerance. It enabled adults to digest milk. The ones with the mutated gene had added nutrition through winter and their survival rates rocketed.

They were selected.

Nowadays we can see the prevalence of this gene. It is throughout populations in Europe and Asia.

It is an example of human evolution.

The Sci-fi novels assume the big evolutionary changes will be in intelligence. There is no reason why it should. It will only be beneficial if it gives a clear advantage. The most likely evolution in humans will be a mutation that affords resistance to a disease. Intelligence will count for nothing.

We owe our present success in temperate regions to cows and milk.

It is the cows wot done it!

Human evolution and skin colour – the dreadful truth!

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Human evolution and skin colour.

As we migrated out of Africa a mere sixty thousand years ago we hit a problem. The sunshine and hence UV light was greatly reduced. We needed that UV light in order to make Vitamin D. Without vitamin D we got ill. When you are living on the edge any small advantage becomes crucial.

In strong UV Light the black pigment melanin provides protection against skin cancer.

We all stem from Africans who had black skin.

Outside of Africa black skin was a disadvantage. A mutation occurred that reduced melanin and resulted in lighter skin that upped our vitamin D production.

Pale skin was selected in subtropical regions.

It is interesting to observe the way natural selection has occurred to optimise protection against skin cancer and vitamin D production. I tropical regions with harsh UV the skin colour is black. In subtropical regions with less intense UV it is brown and in temporate regions it is very pale.

This is a good example of changes in the ratio of genes in a population and hence evolution.

Humans and why we’re not evolving.

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Humans and why we’re not evolving.

It is unlikely that we are evolving much at present. We have removed most of the selection pressures that cause evolution. Our amazing brains have produced science and technology that have removed much of the Natural Selection that operated on our populations in the past – at least in the developed countries and increasingly in the undeveloped ones.

We have:

  • Killed off predators
  • Conquered most diseases that would previously have killed us off before we had a chance to breed
  • We have improved sanitation and clean water
  • We have gained a secure food supply.All that is killing us off early is war, accidents and selfish greed.However there is some evolution. The fact that some people choose not to have children while others have many will, in time, skew the numbers of genes in the population. Is it a worry that it is the least intelligent and least educated that are reproducing most? Probably in the long term, if it is a trend that continues. Education is probably the answer to that one.Overpopulation will lead to war, food shortage and disease. Probably a new virus will emerge to which we have no resistance. Only those with a mutation that provides immunity will survive – or maybe nobody.The only difference between all of them and us is that we will be the first to do it to ourselves through our own greed, arrogance and foolishness. So much for intelligence. Without other qualities it counts for little.Time will tell.
  • So will we evolve? Be a blip? A tiny layer in the strata of time?
  • Science has demonstrated that 99.9% of all animals that have evolved have passed into extinction.
  • But this state of affairs is a blip. It will not last. Soon the selection pressures will return with a vengeance. Our numbers have grown out of proportion and our intelligence will not outdo the threats.
  • 95% of us survive long enough to have children.