Today is the birthday of Charles Darwin. Despite those intellectuals like Sarah Palin who believe that Earth is only a few thousand years old and deny evolution as a “theory,” Darwin continue to rack up proof of his work. With perfect timing for the great man’s 205th, American and European researchers have confirmed the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction during which roughly 75% of the planet’s species were killed, including almost every dinosaur, by an asteroid impact. The result was the evolution of species best suited to deal with the aftermath of the explosion 66 million years ago. Of course, for creationists, the dating of material from 66 million years ago may be rejected as simply biblically inaccurate (if not immoral), but for the rest of us it is an important new development. While Darwin did not know of the asteroid theory or the demise of the dinosaurs, he knew a lot about adaptation and survival of the fittest. Dinosaurs went from being the dominant creatures to the least competitive in the new environment.
The asteroid that hit Chicxulub, Mexico released 420 zettajoules of energy — 100 teratonnes of TNT. The resulting dust cloud blocked out the Sun and triggered the die out — further accelerated by massive global fires. The problem is that previous attempts to date material showed that the asteroid impact occurred up to 300,000 years before the extinction of the dinosaurs. However, scientists decided to return to the site and use more modern equipment. The difference was considerable. The modern equipment reduced the gap to a period of 11,000 years or between 66.03 and 66.04 million years ago. The would make it almost simultaneous with the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction.
Those that could adapt then survived. Those who could not died off. Then 205 years ago, a man named Charles Darwin came along and explained it to the rest of us.
Source: Extremetech
Bron,
Nee how, nee how. And a kan pei to your honor.
idealist707 1, February 15, 2013 at 4:02 am
…
Shall we call them ultra’s Gene-ists.? Pun intended. And hope that GeneH is laughing. And Dredd too.
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Yes, I am laughing with you, crying with you, b*tch*ng with you, and all the other things that go on trying to figure out what Lamarck would say:
and why Darwin would say:
(from my comment up-thread). Lamarck is called the first evolutionist by some, but people don’t climb up your olive tree if you criticize him.
Pontification and Sainthood I suppose.
Gotta get back to my ultra-Juice now …
OT OT OT OT
SPACE ROCKS, BUT CAN WE ROLL FOR THE PUNCHES?
Thanks for the Slate link.
No speculation. The last video with the earth modelled and the asteroid not to scale to the earth size, gave a lot of insight.
What is lacking are at least 5 factors:
——How big was the near miss asteroid compared to the one which extinguished dinosaurs, and gave space to mammals?
—–The energy of our nuclear bombs as a defense is ridiculous. One, due to the energy differential. Two, splittering an approaching
asteroid would only produce thousands of meteorites with in total essentially the same energy content as the asteroid. Any better? I doubt it.
—–Does it matter if we destroy the earth (anthropogenic extinction) when asteroids might destroy all life through the usual effects of impacts as exemplified by the dinosaur extinction.
—–Anybody done any Dr Strangelove underground sanctuaries lately? Obama? Putin?
—–Is the universe telling us that it is time to shape up?
The Earth has been teetering on the edge of habitability for a billion(?) years. Ice ages, near-total freeze-overs, and even periods helpful to life’s development. The long term trend, sun-wise, is that it is getting more effective, radiating more. And some say that Gaia is trying to keep life alive.
Dreams of immigrating to another planet are just that…..and NASA budget propaganda. We are adapted to Earth, not space conditions, and our technology will not meet the challenge of planet takeover, even if we develop worm holes, etc.
We won’t be able to select or populate a planet for the nest umpteen centuries. Space travel is one factor. Adapting to a new planet unless by miracle it is a dupe of Earth, with all the appropriate bacteria and other life forms makes it an impossibility. These challenges would place greater hinders than we master now or in the future. Darwin’s saying that adaptation is always needed confines us to where we stand, literally.. Surely, we can’t choose a sterile planet, or what would be the purpose in choosing it. Science fiction aside. We can’t even engineer this planet and no sight of a possibility. Climate change says that.
What remains. Make the best of what we have.
All become Jewis, at least in life aims. Stop the climate change, if we can. And stop the greed machinery. And hope for near misses the next 10,000 generations. Until we develop god-like powers.
The Neanderthals were around, it is said, for about 400,000 years. We have had at best 200,000 years, as a good guess, as Homo sapiens.
Neandertals played bone flutes. WTF are we doing that is so much better human-wise. Haven’t seen much of ethical value lately. They buried their dead too. No pyramids, but WTF are you asking for.
The technological paradigm changes are going faster that we or our society can adjust to them. Our brains and society are geared after the agricultural life’s pace.
Am I fighting progress? No, not at all. As Gandhi said when asked about English culture, he replied: “Is there any?” (Or some such)
Haven’t seen any signs of progress. And no reason to go through the list of plagues and the history of the USA,. You know it all.
Asteroids and meteorites. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
So we would need a powerful deflector or a humongous force to steet one of these life lethal monsters away from impacting Earth..
As for watching, we think that we have a count of the regular visitors. Optimistic. But given that, there remains the occasional stray from the Oort Cloud and beyond Space is full of rocks, at least near the Sun vicinity. Otherwise it is about 3 atoms per cubic meter.
nee how ma Idealist707
Idealist707, AP,
Thanks for the information that the Russian meteorite video had been removed.
This post has two good ones with NOISE …
Posted wrong thread.
idealist7071, February 15, 2013 at 3:52 pm
Dredd,
Watch how you tease mad dogs! Or ex-pat Americans.
I wrote myself that I had not found anything in English by or on Bjursell which would convey his talent as a lecturer.
Fine. You did not find anything either. Google crapped out or whatever search engine you used.
Proves that he should have lectured less and published more papers in English, and addressed american scientific conferences. Or whatever.
He’s not perfect. Are you? If you can’t speak another language, don’t take it out on me. See language post above.
Crypto-criticism etc makes me angry, and I will expose you for the proto-bully that you are.
Now go back and challenge GeneH. He is more in your league. Denigrating the handicapped*** is BAD IMHO.
I know a little about a lot, but not a lot about anything. And that I have said before.
***Sat briefly beside a mentally handicapped Chinese child on the underground today. I said Hello in Mandarin (universally spoken nowadays by educated Chinese as second language) and got no response in the eyes. The mom/minder lifted her up, a heavy child, after only one station.
I don’t aspire to be an alpha dog, in any genre. I am content to express myself, and take the ridicule that I deserve. But yours stank of bullying.
Dredd, you used me to laugh at to kick off your lecture. Abhorrent, IMHO. We know what you think. Your words show that.
BTW, the video link led to “Removed by the poster” Hope AP has another.
A coffee break from catastrophe is an everyday occurence but seldom shown in the heavens. Imagine all the ICBMs poised with computer fingers on the launch button
OT OT OT OT OT
LANGUAGES ARE DOORS TO NEW WORLDS
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Languages open new cultures. Europe, on the other hand, needed a lingua franca. It became English—-American English, which was chosen apparently.
On the underground today, I watched a group conversing in English. I assumed he was Spanish and the three girls were Swedes.
WRONG!!! The guy was Spanish who spoke fluent Swedish after 4 year here. The girls were from Germany, Tjeckoslavakia, And Rumania.
English is their common language. Be glad that it isn’t Russian.
I, belonging to their grandfather’s generation, did not enjoy that possibility when I came to Europe, Englsh was not common in most European countries in the 60’s. Not even in Sweden.
So I opened my mind then by learning Italian, French and Spanish. Not well as I would have liked, but that depended on me. The three have opened these cultures to me.
Traveling with English is convenient. More so today than ever.
But to go to the Musée de Louvre, the Vatican tour, the Prado in Madrid or just ordinary tourist visits, without knowing the culture or my chance to deepen my knowledge of it, would seem terrible even today.
Mother tongues are primary here in Europe. Then American English, fluently spoken.
And most can at least another language, related or completely different.
How many do the Americans know WELL? How many can speak Spanish, in spite of the incentives? Of course I mean in the non-hispanic groups there.
I love America, but not people who think that they are the exception: politically, culturally, or scíentifically. Most “American” discoveries of the last 30 years are by teams led by ex-immigrants. And not just asian ones.
When will you wake up? There is a world out here.
How many can a word Arabic? Thai? Japanese? Chinese. Just a word only.
And don’t say chow meng.
And being culturally ignorant leads to conflicts. “otherness” and wars.
But then maybe TPTD likes it like that. MIC etc.
Skit happens, some say. I’m getting my bit, they say.
Good luck with that. How long will Wall Street let you keep it.
Nature and climate change does not care what language we speak. We know that in Europe. Do you?
Skit samma. some would say. English just lessens the need for translators when we meet, buy gifts or point guns at them. Real or economic ones.
American reigns. Except 50 percent are in the poverty class and the near-poverty one. Any here? Hold up your Medicaid card and show us that you are one, who is not middle class..
“Scientist without proper fashion evolution says asteroid will miss us by about a cup of coffee on the fifteenth: -Dredd
The asteroid missed, but…
Meteor Streaks Across Russian Urals, Leaves Nearly 1000 Injured (VIDEO, LIVE UPDATES)
By JIM HEINTZ and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV 02/15/13 02:30 PM ET EST AP
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/meteorite-streaks-across-russian-urals_n_2691904.html
Excerpts:
MOSCOW — A meteor streaked across the sky and exploded over Russia’s Ural Mountains with the power of an atomic bomb Friday, its sonic blasts shattering countless windows and injuring about 1,100 people.
The spectacle deeply frightened many Russians, with some elderly women declaring that the world was coming to an end. Many of the injured were cut by flying glass as they flocked to windows, curious about what had produced such a blinding flash of light.
The meteor – estimated to be about 10 tons – entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a hypersonic speed of at least 54,000 kph (33,000 mph) and shattered into pieces about 30-50 kilometers (18-32 miles) above the ground, the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
…
One of the most popular jokes was that the meteorite was supposed to fall on Dec. 21 last year – when many believed the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world – but was delivered late by Russia’s notoriously inefficient postal service.
The dramatic event prompted an array of reactions from prominent Russians.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, speaking at an economic forum in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, said the meteor could be a symbol for the forum, showing that “not only the economy is vulnerable, but the whole planet.”
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a nationalist leader noted for his vehement statements, blamed the Americans.
“It’s not meteors falling. It’s the test of a new weapon by the Americans,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the incident showed the need for leading world powers to develop a system to intercept objects falling from space.
“At the moment, neither we nor the Americans have such technologies” to shoot down meteors or asteroids, he said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Jim Green, NASA’s director of planetary science, called the back-to-back celestial events an amazing display.
“This is indeed very rare and it is historic,” he said on NASA TV. “These fireballs happen about once a day or so, but we just don’t see them because many of them fall over the ocean or in remote areas. ”
Asteroid vs meteor:
http://youtu.be/a7DP263vRQI
idealist707 1, February 15, 2013 at 2:29 pm
Dredd,
…
Don’t lecture me on Darwin, reductionism, my objection (trivial) to ultra-Darwinist (the term as such), Don’t use me.
If you want to use somebody, use GeneH. Are you a crypto-bully or a proto one?
I objected to ultra-Darwinism because it groups him with the ultra-Darwinists.
All religions are dangerous. Particularly in science. Semmelweiss was not the first. Who was? Socrates? There are, as long as religion is used to get power over others, lots of religionists in science.
UltraDarwinists should create a name for their own skit, but now it is established, so too late now.
When I defer to you for an opinion, why do you kick back?
Second time you have done this. Months since last. What is my/your problem?
Don’t let your rants get a hold of you. No snark, just direct advice.
===============================================
I had asked, above:
I found what is probably the answer or a clue in that direction:
(The Evolution of Anthropogenic Extinction, quoting historian J. Sapp, emphasis added). Darwin would probably have been a climate change denier, while Lamarck would not have.
He was a racist and probably more inspirational to Eugenics, one of the great scourges of the early 20th century, than I had previously contemplated.
BTW, I am not lecturing you, I am quoting professors of the history of science who have been so for decades.
idealist707 1, February 15, 2013 at 2:29 pm
Dredd,
I object! Dammit!
I díd NOT say that all should speak Swedish. Are you mad?
I said that if you could speak Swedish***then you would have the pleasure of enjoying a good presentation by Gunnar Bjursell, retired professor, on the net.
Stop repeating that skit please. . That is the third (or fourth) time you have said it.
===================================
No, just teasing you.
I looked everywhere I could to find English pages for him but couldn’t at that time.
Dredd,
I object! Dammit!
I díd NOT say that all should speak Swedish. Are you mad? I said that if you could speak Swedish***then you would have the pleasure of enjoying a good presentation by Gunnar Bjursell, retired professor, on the net.
Stop repeating that skit please. . That is the third (or fourth) time you have said it.
Don’t lecture me on Darwin, reductionism, my objection (trivial) to ultra-Darwinist (the term as such), Don’t use me.
If you want to use somebody, use GeneH. Are you a crypto-bully or a proto one?
I objected to ultra-Darwinism because it groups him with the ultra-Darwinists.
All religions are dangerous. Particularly in science. Semmelweiss was not the first. Who was? Socrates? There are, as long as religion is used to get power over others, lots of religionists in science.
UltraDarwinists should create a name for their own skit, but now it is established, so too late now.
When I defer to you for an opinion, why do you kick back?
Second time you have done this. Months since last. What is my/your problem?
Don’t let your rants get a hold of you. No snark, just direct advice.
Funny Malisha, kids are miraculous at times.
I was looking at some date sequences, when some of them jumped out at me.
It seems that when Darwin wrote his On The Origin of Species, he was a scientist in the shadows of some of the most (to us today) ignorant scientific beliefs imaginable.
They believed that disease was caused by magic, that they just appeared from “nowhere”.
Up-thread I mentioned that Semmelweis, a physician, had tried to convince them otherwise.
Semmelweis had reduced death by disease in his clinic to near zero, while women in clinics of the doctors who had him committed died in shocking numbers because they spread disease by not washing their hands.
Anyway, Darwin published his book during this time:
Pasteur did not prove the germ theory of disease until late 1862, some three years after Darwin published his hypothesis.
Therefore it is questionable whether or not Darwin was intimidated by the bullying of Semmelweis.
Perhaps if he knew of germs, Darwin kept his knowledge of germs hidden in secret rebellion, or did the believe Semmelweis was a heretic?
Did Darwin think, like his peers, that germs appeared from nowhere at will?
Anyone know?
Two cartoons:
One shows a conference of dinosaurs. The bronto at the podium addresses the 100 attendees. He says: “Gentlemen, the news is grim. The climate is changing, the mammals are taking over, and we all have brains the size of walnuts.”
The other shows an old style personal computer with the boxy screen at a podium addressing 100 more like it in the audience. It says: “Gentlemen the news is grim. Systems are speeding up, laptops are taking over, and we all have memories the size of a floppy.”
My kid got this in 1992 and he said, “MY MOM!”
Was the meteorite that hurt hundreds in Russia this morning a satellite of Asteroid 2012 DA14?
Even in mathematics, which some believe is a pure segment of science, ultra-reductionism has not panned out:
(Wikipedia, Reductionism, emphasis added). Turing and Penrose took that further, into the computing world and software constructs, causing somewhat of a furor as to the limits of artificial intelligence.
It then turns back on the evolutionary stream of thought, in that, how are you going to build an artificial version of intelligence when we don’t know what intelligence is?
It boils down to poke and hope — poke on the keyboard and hope some artificial intelligence comes out.
It gets better, Penrose went on to say that he thinks human intelligence in the sense of consciousness is somewhere down there with the Higgins Boson, yet:
(The Memes of Penrose). In the video below, Penrose argues abiotic functionality as the source of consciousness, not biotic functionality.
Darwin never considered that either in his concept of natural selection.
If the ultimate biological realm, human consciousness, is abiotic then natural selection is not all biotic.
Thus reductionism which argues otherwise is not correct, it is just more of the gospel of ultra-Darwinism.
Dredd, Saw that too, good catch. The Slate article has some vids that capture the sonic boom and its effects- scary, just plain scary.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking_huge_meteor_explodes_over_russia.html
idealist707 1, February 15, 2013 at 4:02 am
… I object to the term “unltra-Darwinism” (-ian, etc)
========================================
It is in common use:
(link is in my comment above). Perhaps your objection is reductionist based on the notion that all scientific papers should be written in Swedish.
Be careful, that is what religionists did once upon a time, “do it in Latin.”
Then they put words in people’s mouths that those people, like Darwin, did not say.
Darwin never conceived of abiotic plays (asteroid impact @ “unfitness to survive”) nor genetics, yet the ultra-Darwinists often use his term “natural selection” as if abiotic evolution and genes is all he talked about.
He did not talk about a magic natural selection the reductionists have spread about, beginning with the synthesis in the 1930’s.
Einstein, who was not a scientist who focused on the biotic world, but rather on the abiotic world, is purported to have indicated:
The gist of it is that reductionism is ok so long as it stays within the boundaries of science and does not skip over the traces into magical thinking through ultra-reductionist blather.
Idealist707,
Sir Keith Richards of The Rolling Stone Institute, a modern reductionist, summed natural selection up as “shit happens.”
The criticism of reductionism is broad and wide, because like Sir Keith, it ignores an honest appraisal of “who, what, where, why and how” to make scientific issues into a magic aura that insulates a hypothesis from intense scientific scrutiny.
Religion.
Here is an example of the critisism reductionist bring:
(Ultra-Darwinists and the pious gene). These pius ultra-Darwinists religiously pump out the mantra “shit happens” so who cares about detail.
Perhaps asteroids travel in groups. One hit Russia ahead of the larger one to miss us today:
http://youtu.be/7c-0iwBEswE
More based ond Dredd’s blog, not substantive matter, but misuse or unuse of proper terms. Specifically, I object to the term “unltra-Darwinism” (-ian, etc)
Since as Dredd maintains, Darwin was a pluralist in re causes of species variation, and kept his survival theme intact, it is incorrect to saddle him with “ultras” who only support gene modification as a cause.
We do Darwin a disservice, he did not know of genes. And we use his name but not his thought to define a group (and lend them credence in the course of discussions).
Shall we call them ultra’s Gene-ists.? Pun intended. And hope that GeneH is laughing. And Dredd too.
Back to Darwin.
Just for the hell of it, I will start with an unformed idea and get snarled up.
No, I don’t. I usually start with a clear idea, and snarl IT up.
Lets us a assume abiogenetics had two routes to follow (and maybe more which we leave undiscussed).
Now modern viruses don’t have an energy nor replication system.
Assume that was true of the proto-virus.
Assume that the proto-cell was, as characterized by some, grew through absorption of small cells and perhaps even gorged on other stuff.
Now getting the virus to find this a congenial environment and it did even at that stage effect the proto-cell. Ie the primitive cell. So why did it leave. And why does it kill its host. These are modern characteristics. Necessarily ancient one?
I leave the tattered entangled remains for Dredd et al to solve.
Gotta ean breakfast, which is as good an excuse as a dinner date New Mexico style (although it wasn’t) or “wetback special” although I’m sure that term was never uttered.
PS I ordered some spices and chiles last night. No good reason. I just could. And that is enough reason for many deeds. Much oxytocin dopamine, etc. No cortisol.