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.

Evolution through Natural Selection

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Evolution through Natural Selection

Both Darwin and Wallace simultaneously came up with a mechanism for how evolution operates. Their theories have been expanded and confirmed through detailed research.
They postulated that Natural Selection was the mechanism:
Organisms produce more offspring than can be supported by the environment.
There is a struggle to survive.
Only the fittest survive
The fittest, in different circumstances, could be the fastest or the slowest, the cleverest or the most stupid, the biggest, smallest, tallest or simply the luckiest. They could be the lucky one who just happened to have a mutated gene that provided immunity against a new virus.
Beneficial genes are selected

Given enough time, and we’ve had plenty of that, the selected changes and random mutations have created an amazing spectrum of life on this planet. It has been transformed from brown to green. Its atmosphere has changed from poisonous methane and ammonia to a gas laden with oxygen.
Animals have evolved with the miracle of consciousness (I use that word in a non-religious sense – more as recognition of the wonder and awe of its unlikelihood) and we are standing here able to comprehend, work out the mysteries, think, ponder and appreciate the beauty of it.
Life is truly wonderful. Breath deep!
Be glad for we live! It is a wonder!

Evolution and Natural Selection

Posted on by Opher

Evolution & Natural Selection

Evolution is not Natural Selection.
Natural Selection is merely the means through which evolution is brought about.
Evolution is the consistent change in the numbers of a gene within a population. If it is increasing or decreasing as a percentage the population is evolving.
If a new gene mutation comes along and bestows an advantage on individuals that increase their chances of surviving and having offspring then that gene will be selected and become more prevalent in the population – its numbers will increase – the population will be evolving.
All life is constantly evolving.
The great thing about evolution is that it is inherent in all living things.
When mankind has successfully eliminated all the plant and animal life on this planet, along with himself, it will not matter.
Even if we had flooded the world with a radio-active dust storm, eradicated everything with drastic climate change or polluted the air into unbreathable poison, it will not matter.
Deep in the ocean mud, in the rocks themselves are bacteria that can survive virtually anything. As long as we leave them a planet they will evolve and in a few billion more years they will, through natural selection, have evolved into an array of life every bit as wonderful as that we are now destroying.
A billion or two years from now a completely different intelligent creature will be studying the fossils and wondering how we messed up so horribly.
Hopefully, second time round, natural selection will have created an intelligence that was less cruel and stupid.

The Story of Life

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The Story of Life

Once upon a time there was time, more time than the human mind can imagine, billions of years, time enough to do the impossible, time enough for things that seem like magic to occur.
That is the incredible story of life, how it began and how its inception was more astounding than god and almost as unlikely.
Step by slow step the unbelievable happened. The slowness, unlikeliness and wonder of it, is beyond our conception. We would rather believe in dragons, magic and supernatural creatures who are spawned from nowhere, just like the universe itself.
But life did not come from nowhere. It formed ever so sluggishly by chance through more time than we can understand because it had all the time in the world.
In the primordial seas the chemicals accrued. All they needed was chance, the way molecules naturally develop, and time beyond imagination.
That is hard to believe.
We know it happened because we are here to tell the tale.

Global Warming is real and threatens us severely.

Posted on by Opher

Science is based on accurate observation followed by hypothesis and testing.

As is obvious with testing we do not have a control group for the planet.

We have observed the heating of the planet very accurately. It is heating up.

We have looked for reasons.

In previous tropical ages there were natural phenomena. In ice ages there were natural phenomena.

These changes were brought about by things outside our control – solar output variations or volcanic activity.

We have not observed any such activity.

What we have observed is that the greenhouse gas CO2 is building up in high levels due to human activity through burning fossil fuels. This correlates.

The greenhouse effect of CO2 has been verified using scientific method, with controls.

The global warming is having a marked effect on weather patterns and rises in sea level. If the temperatures rise much more those changes will increase dramatically.

Intelligence says that if you have a problem you look for a way of fixing it. Global warming is a hell of a problem.

We could put mirrors in space to reflect heat.

We could put my water into the air to form cloud to reflect heat.

We could reduce CO2 levels.

You know what – I think CO2 reduction is the easiest and best way to solve the problem.

Dark Matter becomes weirder than Sci-fi as Opher names the DM

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Dark Matter becomes weirder than Sci-fi as Opher names the DM atoms and sub-atomic particles.

 

It appears that only 4% of the universe is visible, the rest is made of Dark Matter. That’s right – 96% of the known universe is made of something we can’t see.

And as for Dark Energy (DE to us buffs), that accounts for 70% of all the energy in the known universe and we haven’t a clue what it is.

All the ‘ordinary’ matter in the universe is made of atoms and all atoms are made of quarks. Everything is made of the same building blocks.

But Dark Matter (DM to us authorities on the subject) is made of something else. It does not appear to be quarks. So I will deign to name them prior to their discovery. I want it noted that the subatomic particles that make up the ‘atoms’ (or Goodwins, as they are now termed) of Dark Matter are to henceforth be known as Ophers.

I predict that there will be a number of different Ophers just as there are with quarks. Rather than calling them upward, downward, strange and charm as with quarks I want them named after my favourite Rock stars. So, depending on how many we later discover, in descending order, I want them named Roys (after Roy Harper), Dylans (after Bob Dylan) Beefies (After Captain Beefheart), Jimis (After Jimi Hendrix and Woodys (after Woody Guthrie). If there are more discovered then I would like them called Elmores (after Elmore James) and Nicks (after Nick Harper). Hopefully we’ll eventually discovered loads more and we can deploy Howlins (after Howlin Wolf) and Muddy’s (after Muddy Waters) as well as Beatles and Countrys (after the Fab Four and Country Joe and the Fish).

The interesting thing about Dark Matter is that it is probably all around us but we cannot see it or feel it. It is only detectable by its gravitational effect. There is a whole world out there made of Ophers all constructed out of Roys, Dylans, Jimis, Beefies, Nicks, Elmores and Woodys. There are people just like us moving through us right now having a conversation that is a conjecture about what the other 4% of their Dark Matter (our matter) might be made of.

I told you it was weirder than imagination.

In the UK – paperback and digital:

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/card?preview=inline&linkCode=kpd&ref_=k4w_oembed_bwZ4eDYWobfMOo&asin=B018YJBYWG&tag=kpembed-20

In the USA in both paperback and digital:

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The Purpose of Life – Religion and Hardwiring.

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I believe that to an extent religion is hardwired into our brains through evolution. We have evolved intelligence. Our success is our ability to see patterns and solve problems. There is a purpose to everything. That works great with hunter gathering. It enables us to work with the patterns of seasons and weather, to see the patterns of behaviour in predators and prey, to find water, to seek out fruits, berries and plants, to make tools, invent things and develop knowledge and technology.

This problem solving ability has enabled us to become masters of science and technology to the point where we are actually not only the predominant species but we are actually changing the whole planet. This is now the Anthropocene. Science and technology, stemming from our intelligence, our ability to see patterns and solve problems, has brought us control over our environment and all creatures. It has brought us agriculture and civilisation and enabled us to prosper in huge numbers – now pushing 8 Billion.

It falls down when confronted with the big questions that there are no answers for. Such as what is this immense universe? Where did it come from? What is life? Where did it come from? Am I immortal?

As I said at the beginning – we are hardwired to provide answers. We do not have answers to these and other such questions. They are too immense for our puny brains. Those brains have evolved to solve more mundane, practical problems. But that does not stop us from searching for answers and providing answers.

Early man was subjected to the vagaries of nature. If they could not find food through hunting or their crops failed because of unseasonal weather they starved.

They worshipped things such as the sun which gave life. They thought they could control it, appease the god they had created and performed rituals to please her. They performed rituals to produce rain, to have a good hunt, to harvest crops, for fertility, health and prosperity. They had holy men who could converse with the gods they had created. They invented explanations for the world, the sequence of life and death, creation myths and morality stories. They created reasons for when things went wrong and how they could put them right. They created fascinating tales of the afterlife to remove fear of death – death that was so prevalent.

They held great ceremonies, pageants and developed elaborate sacrifices and costumes. They built pyramids, temples and powerful spectacle.

The bigger and more lavish the greater the ease in believing in the story.

Through time these religions grew in sophistication and adapted as our knowledge of the universe and life grew. We see this with Christianity. In the beginning Hell was under the ground, Heaven was just above the firmament, the heavens were a dome. The stars chinks in that dome letting through the light of god, the sun rotated around the earth. As our knowledge grew these concepts were changed. We no longer look for hell under the ground or burn people for saying the earth goes round the sun.

We still cling on to the supernatural explanations though. Our minds have evolved to require answers. We still need to believe there is a purpose. Even in the face of no evidence we cling to the supernatural answers we find satisfying. They give us the assurance of order, purpose and answer our questions. They are much more psychologically satisfying than to accept there are no reasons, no order and no purpose. The universe just is. Life is an accident. We have a life and that is it. The only reasons we have are the ones we sort out for ourselves.

But I reckon that it is best to face up to the truth and accept it as it is. I see no evidence of god, an afterlife or a purpose for life.

Best to get on with it and enjoy it while we can. All we have is now. Let’s try to make this wonderful experience as good as we can make it, wring as much love, fun, creativity and pleasure out of it as we can and make the planet as good as we can make it for everybody else and all living things. That’s fulfilment enough for me.

Hasn’t Genetic Engineering been around for thousands of years.

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Haven’t we always been doing genetic engineering for thousands of years? Didn’t we just call it selective breeding?

Yes we have been doing this with animals and plants (and even humans sometimes) with various techniques of selective breeding. We have selected the genes we want. But this has been a slow and uncertain business and perfection is not possible.
It would be possible, over many generations, for humans to breed for selection of intelligence. At the end of that we would undoubtedly have more intelligent offspring but they would not be optimal.
Intelligence is 80% genetic. There are around 500 genes involves in a polygene system. All of those genes would each have a number of alleles (maybe up to ten alleles each – I’m guessing). To get maximum intelligence the top allele would have to be selected for each one of those genes. The chances of doing that through selective breeding would be nigh on impossible – even if you went through a hundred generations of careful selective breeding.
With genetic engineering it would be possible to insert the optimum allele into each one of those genes. You could produce a human with the greatest possible intelligence in one single generation.
I think that is a bit different to anything we’ve done in the past. It is like comparing an old biplane with the Space Shuttle.

Genetic engineering has opened up new possibilities – not just for intelligence but all other aspects of human attributes and possibly even behaviours.

Brain enhancing drugs.

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We are on the start of a new epoch. Brain enhancing drugs are on the horizon. Some people are already buying them on the internet.

A new range of drugs are becoming available. They enhance performance. They stimulate the brain and make it work better. They enhance IQ.

They were developed to boost those suffering from dementia. They can alleviate the symptoms.

They are being used by students to help them perform better in studies or exams.

They could help out geniuses become bigger geniuses. They could help our bosses make better decisions. They could even help our stupid politicians!!

Shouldn’t we all we taking them? We might even vote better!

Clean Meat!! The Future without Animals.

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Imagine that we can all have our steaks, hamburgers and chops without having to kill any animals?

That is quite possible.

In the future we will grow our meat in factories in the animal equivalent of hydroponics. We will take some animals muscle cells and culture them so that they grow into steaks.

The problem at the moment is that we can’t get the flavour or texture right. But we will.

Think of the benefits once we’ve cracked how to do it:

It will be cheap.

There will be no disease or parasites to catch.

It will not take up so much room as a farm or ranch.

It won’t be so polluting. No farting cows or transporting animals from farm to abattoir to butchers to warehouse to shops.

But best of all it will not involve any cruelty or pain. There won’t be terrified animals being trucked long distances to be electrocuted, have their throats cut or shot with a stun gun.

So I’m all in favour of it. The sooner they solve how to get it right the better.

We will be able to eat meat guilt free. There will be lots of redundant land that we can return to nature and encourage nearly extinct species to recover their numbers. We will have lots of cheap tasty protein that can feed our malnourished.

So roll on the era of clean meat!! I can’t wait!!