Poetry – The First Waves – A poem about the creation of life.

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Poetry – The First Waves – A poem about the creation of life.

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The first waves

This is another poem about the creation of the first organism; the progenitor from which all life on this planet evolved.

That molecular voyage was a miracle of stupendous complexity -0 the origination of life. Because of its wondrous unlikely inception we have layered it with mysticism and religion. I see it with awe and wonder as miraculous science – another incredible product of this incredible universe.

We should pay homage to the brilliance of such a manifestation.

Life is probably the greatest glory of the amazing universe we live in.

Life is so complex and unlikely event that it is almost beyond belief.

But in an infinite universe, which is so vast and has existed so long, even the most unlikely event is bound to happen.

It happened here and we may be unique. Not only that but we have the senses and intelligence to experience it.

This is a homage to that first simple coming together of organic molecules that was the first step towards the stupendous range of life we see around us.

 

The First waves

As the first waves broke

On the lonely shore

The prime molecules cloyed

To create

In total blindness

On the first day

A new

Origination.

 

New merging,

New combination,

Forever changing,

Rearranging,

Endlessly,

With no destination,

Just because

They could.

 

Opher 30.10.2015

Poetry – First Feet – A poem for the first humans – the crazy chimps

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Poetry – First Feet – A poem for the first humans – the crazy chimps

Stanzas and Stances cover

First feet

I am intrigued by the idea of the first humans. Somewhere on the African plains a small group of chimp-like apes were isolated from other groups and underwent various mutations. Within that group the genes became distinct and a series of beneficial changes created sufficient difference to be considered a new species.

There had to be a moment when those changes were distinct enough to be considered human. A mother held her baby in her arms. When it took its first steps human civilization was born.

I am aware that in practice this would have been a continuum and that moment would be arbitrary but it is nice to give it a concrete moment.

The strength of humans, which gives us our dominance on this planet, is due to our ingenuity/intelligence and ability to solve problems coupled with our teamwork. We, as hunters, even with weapons, when on our own, were no match for predators, but when in a group we proved formidable. Our brains created technology, weapons, civilization, war, hunting, farming and religion.

I just hope that our abilities are sufficient to deal with the huge problems we are creating ourselves.

 

First feet

 

First feet

Treading the grass

Of the savannah

With the cunning

Of a predator.

 

Brother to the right

In trust of

Bravery,

Safe within

The magic

Of ingenuity.

 

Working fearlessly

In collaboration

Lies the strength,

Cold and calculated

Of imagination

Throughout their length.

 

Opher 30.10.2015

Anthropocene Apocalypse – Malthus and the catastrophe of overpopulation.

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Anthropocene Apocalypse – Malthus and the catastrophe of overpopulation.

Overpopulation

Thomas Robert Malthus was a reverend from the eighteenth century who foresaw the effects of a huge burgeoning world population. He thought it would be a catastrophe. It would take room, use up resources and create famine and pestilence. He proposed that measures needed to be taken in order to restrict the population.

He was a man of vision.

Unfortunately Malthus’s ideas were aimed at restricting the increase of the working class! He was a trifle elitist.

Malthus is being proved right though. The population increase is building in pace, threatening food, water, mineral resources, the natural environment and most wild animals. It is changing the climate of the planet.

The answer does not lie in forcing poor people from breeding. It requires a much greater application of intelligence. We have to address the social issues that create the need for big families, the religious stupidity that is preventing people from regulating the number of progeny, the political policies that encourage big families and do not penalise  having too many children and the means to access contraception and use it effectively.

Education and social change is the answer.

Step 1 – recognise that we have a major global problem.

Step 2 – bring in social changes so that there is health care and pensions which remove the need for large families

Step 3 – Bring in contraception and education to limit children

Step 4 – begin an awareness raising campaign to highlight the need to reduce population

Step 5 – limit the places that humans can live, exploit nature or hunt and conserve the wilderness (50% for humans – 50% for the rest of life)

Step 6 – Stop religions going through their silly games to try to win through sheer weight of numbers by encouraging large families

Step 7 – Bring in political inducements and disincentives to encourage small families.

If action is not taken now we will be heading for disaster – a virus, a catastrophe, famine, starvation, emigration, climate change and the devastation of the wilderness.

I don’t want that. I want a beautiful world for my beautiful grandchildren. I want action!

Humans and why we’re not evolving.

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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.

The most likely selection pressure will be a virus – though we could find ourselves victims of our own greed as we destroy the natural world on which we depend. We could precipitate a disastrous climatic change or even a radical change in our atmosphere.

The Creation of Life

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The Creation of Life

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The Creation of Life

After all the gases and dust created by the Big Bang had swirled its way into galaxies and coalesced into stars the remaining debris orbiting those suns was attracted together through its own gravitational pull to form the planets and moons.

The Big Bang occurred 13.8 billions years ago – a length of time too long for human minds to grasp.

Our planet formed 5.2 Billion years ago.

For 1.7 billion years it raged, boiled and shook as a ball of molten rock with an iron core.

Finally it developed a crust and became cool enough for the creation of life.

Through the searing heat, UV Light, hard radiation, electric storms that bombarded the poisonous atmosphere of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, nitrogen, and water vapour, along with the catalysts of silica and metals, the simple chemicals fused into the building blocks of life – the protein chains and RNA bases.

It took a billion years or so.

The complex organic chemicals built up into a soupy broth in those primordial seas.

All that is possible will happen given enough time. And time there was.

Simple organisms of protein were formed. Then RNA was incorporated to provide greater organisation. One can only wonder at the extraordinary role of chance and unlikeliness of circumstance that conspired through those billion years.

What we know is that 3.5 billion years ago, when conditions had calmed, the first simple, one-celled organisms based on protein and RNA were created. The DNA came later.

Life was a single cell. It prospered and multiplied and evolved for nearly 3 billion years until the planet was a mass of microscopic bacteria-like organisms flourishing on the soup and each other before developing the means of harnessing their own energy through chemosynthesis.

Then the ability to photosynthesise mutated and the atmosphere changed, the oxygen providing greater possibility.

The creation of life was a wondrous thing. One wonders how many other times anything as astounding has happened in this universe. But then time is immense and chance plays its part. In a universe of this immensity we are almost certainly not alone.

Creation might even be easier than we think and a fairly common occurrence. Time will tell.

Isn’t it absolutely awesome????

The future and saviour of the world – Fusion energy!

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The future and saviour of the world – Fusion energy!

 

fusion fusion 2

No not fracking or burning fossil fuels. That way leads to climate change and the same old scene.

Not even solar, wind and alternatives.

The future lies in Fusion. Once we have created the technology to do this industrially we will have unlimited power. It will be unpolluting and transformative.

We can have unlimited electricity for transport, producing fresh water to irrigate, and power to light the world.

It will lead to an age of plenty, the end of fundamentalism, migration, poverty and war.

Fusion is the future.

This is where we need to be investing big-time right now.

Fusion is beautiful! The sun works on it. We will bring a little sun on Earth. The old Sun Gods will be worshipped all over again (in a non-religious way).

Science and education are the saviours of mankind just as fundamentalism and fanaticism are its major threats.

Give me the power of fusion any day! Free energy for all mankind!

(The one caveat is that we will need to reduce our population so that there is room for the rest of life on this tiny planet!)

The whole universe is made of nothing!

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The whole universe is made of nothing!

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I’ve just read an article about string theory and quarks.

All atoms are made of quarks. Quarks are the smallest particles of matter known to man.

The theory is that a quark is made up of a piece of space fabric that is folded up and exists in six dimensions.

My understanding of space fabric is that it is nothing. So all matter is thought to be made of nothing folded into six dimensions. Amazing.

I have trouble getting my head round a universe with three dimensions (four if you count time). I can’t imagine what six dimensions would actually be. My brain hurts.

So the whole universe is basically nothing folded. Shakespeare was right. All life is but a dream.

Isn’t science incredible. I can’t wait to find out more. Ruth is certainly stranger than Richard!

Is there intelligence in space?

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Is there intelligence in space?

While the possibility for life is hugely likely, given the immense time and enormous quantity of planets, the evolution of intelligence is another matter. That requires even greater overcoming of limitations. Intelligence requires sophisticated cells. The development of such sophistication is an immensely unlikely event on a par with that of the formation and incorporation of DNA.

On this planet the incorporation of DNA took place early on when the Earth had cooled and conditions were right. The formation of Eukaryotic cells (sophisticated cells that would support complex multi-celled life) requires two incredible occurrences. Firstly they have to incorporate or evolve cellular powerhouses to provide energy. On Earth this happened when bacteria (that were mitochondria-like) became symbiotically incorporated into cells. Secondly they have to have incorporated chlorophyll-rich chloroplasts to break down water to release oxygen and produce food.

The plants incorporated chlorophyll rich bacteria symbiotically. In so doing they changed the atmosphere of the planet and the oxygen enabled life to become more complex.

These two limiting factors are incredibly difficult leaps.

Not only do planets have to be in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ and have given rise to life that incorporates DNA (or its equivalent) but it would also have to evolve through these two other immensely difficult bottle-necks in order to achieve the complexity necessary for intelligence.

The consensus is that this will only occur on an incredibly small number of occasions.

Fortunately – with the zillions of planets out there and the colossal periods of time involved even the most unlikely events will occur. That is what is so incredibly awesome.

All things are possible given enough time and an almost infinite system.

There are probably billions of planets on which life will have occurred and there are likely to be hundreds of thousands of planets out there supporting intelligent life!

Which is more scary? Having a universe with other intelligent life or that we are the only ones?

If there is intelligence out there! How do we contact it?

Is there life out there?

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Is there life out there?

 

In order for life to have evolved on a planet conditions have to be perfect. The planet has to be in a narrow band the right distance away from a sun. This is called the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ (not too hot and not too cold). Not only that but it has to be the right sort of star; one that will be stable and not give out devastating radiation.

That narrows the possibilities down substantially.

Fortunately the number of stars out there with planets just in our own galaxy is trillions. When you narrow it down there are billions of suns with the right attributes and planets that exist in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’.

Given the early emergence of life on this planet shortly after it had cooled (it took one and a half billion years to cool and is now four and a half billion years old) it is extremely likely that there is life on hundreds of thousands of planets. The limiting factor here is the formation and incorporation of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) to create the replication, information, organisation, mutation, change and stability necessary for life to reproduce and undergo evolution.

Time is the factor here. Given enough time (a billion years or so) anything that can happen does.

The consensus is that our galaxy alone is probably teeming with life. If it wasn’t for the vast, as yet insurmountable, distances involved we would already had discovered it. As it is we are unlikely to in the foreseeable future because distances between stars are too large. Even light takes hundreds and thousands of years to get here.

There are possibilities that we will discover extra-terrestrial life in our own solar system. It could be on Mars or the moon Europa. Time will tell. What we can be sure of is that this life is not likely to be as complex as us.

This life will probably be in the form of prokaryotic slime (bacterial scum).

We are not alone! There is life out there!

The bigger question is does this life ever evolve to create intelligence?

I’ll look at that next!

Wonder and Awe – Man and Intelligence.

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Wonder and Awe – Man and Intelligence.

 

The saddest aspect of being a human being is that there is only one species of us. It has led us to believe we are something special, something that is above all other life. Many people struggle to think of us as animals.

We are animals. We are intelligent animals. We have fabulous brains that give us consciousness. We think that sets us apart. It doesn’t.

We are not the most intelligent animal that has ever lived on this planet, let alone what intelligences may exist on other worlds. We are not even the most intelligent organism on this planet now. We are not even the most intelligent species of human who has ever lived on this planet.

Brains operate like super-computers. It is the size that is important. Our brains contain 85 billion brain cells – neurons – which is about the same number of stars as in a small galaxy. However each of those cells is connected via dendrites to between 10,000 and a 100,000 other brain cells. That is a staggering number of connections.

The human brain is between 1300 grams (the racists) and 1400 grams (the rest of us).

By comparison the brain of a chimpanzee (our closest relative with whom we share 99% of our genes) is only 400 grams.

There was a rapid evolutionary change occurred around 1.8 million years ago (very recent in evolutionary terms). Our brains grew from 400 grams to 1400 grams.

I said earlier that we are not the most intelligent animal on the planet. That distinction falls to the cetaceans. Not all of us consider them super-intelligent because they do not build cities and weapons. That is how we judge intelligence.

Whales and dolphins do not have limbs to create tools. They live in the sea and do not need shelter. They have plentiful food and do not need to work.

They play, sing, spend time together and enjoy themselves. They do not pollute, overpopulate or destroy one another. They are not cruel, barbaric and vicious. They do not create religions.

That sounds like intelligence to me.

The size of a sperm whales brain  is a staggering 7800 grams. That is over five times that of a human.

The brain of a bottle-nose dolphin is between 1500-1700 grams – bigger than a human.

Of course you may like to suggest that intelligence is not all about brain size. The evidence from bird intelligence (with small brains) is that there are other factors though size is crucially important.

If you take into account body mass to brain ratio then we still do not come out too good. Even the tree shrew outdoes us.

The obvious intelligence of the cetaceans is extant in numerous ways and makes it even more disgusting when you consider the incredibly callous way we have treated them. We have deployed our technology to kill races of gentle, intelligent creatures. We have blown them up with explosive harpoons, stabbed and hacked them to death. In the Faroes they are still gaffing and sawing through their necks. The barbarity is appalling.

These creatures are probably more intelligent and sensitive than humans. Stop the slaughter!

It seems incredible to me that we spent billions trying to find even the most crudest form of life elsewhere in the galaxy while ignoring the obvious intelligent life under our own noses. Perhaps we should be trying harder to communicate?

Back to the subject.

I said earlier that we are not the most intelligent human that has lived on this planet. That accolade goes to the Neanderthals. We share a common ancestor and we even have some of their genes. There was some successful interbreeding. The Neanderthals, far from being the shambling cavemen of our cartoons, were more intelligent than us. Their brain size was 1500 grams to 1800 grams.

As more intelligent humans they were probably gentler. We – the moronic cousins – were more cynical and vicious. We lived side by side up until as recently as a mere 150,000 years ago. Then we destroyed them.

How I wish we hadn’t. Wouldn’t it be great if there were two intelligent species of human beings living on this planet now? It would blow all that religious superiority out of the water – particularly when we were clearly the lesser of the two in intelligence. The biblical stories would simply not hold water.

But that was not to be. We, the inferior intelligence, prevailed.

It goes to show that there is more to being human than intelligence.