Re: Experiment on Natural Selection
- From: rem642b@xxxxxxxxx (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t)
- Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2007 12:20:59 -0700
From: Zoe <muz...@xxxxxxx>
... it would help to test the suggested methodology for evolution
- selected beneficial mutations - to see if it is even a worthy
alternative to intelligence.
Your comment makes no sense. AFAWK The only intelligence capable of
deliberately inducing beneficial changes to a genome is humans, and
it's only within the past few years that human knowledge and
technology has gotten even close to that capability, and it's only
in the future that such capability might become practical. To
explain *past* evolution, from the first replicator to modern life,
by some *future* human technology, is utterly absurd.
I want to test the evolutionists' proposed mechanism for evolution.
If you want to test the sorts of changes that can evolve over the
course of a few years, you need a lot of money to pay for a lab and
skilled workers in the field. If you want to test the sorts of
chages that require millions of years, you need to help develop
space habitat, purchase your own asteroid and convert it into a
laboratory, hire an army to defend your lab for millions of years
against all future military activities of the rest of humanity, and
somehow convince your descendents to carry on your programme after
you are long dead. I suggest you stick to the short-term evolution
experiments. Do you have the money to pay for lab and skilled
workers?
Apparently - correct me if I'm wrong -- selection of beneficial
mutations is considered to be the key to the evolution of new life
forms.
No, there are several "keys":
-1- Raw fecundity greater than one;
-2- Genome that is copied very accurately;
-3- Differential survival that is caused a mix of:
-3a- genetic factors, and
-3b- happenstance events;
-4- Occasional mistakes in copying the genome.
-5- Limits to growth (resource depletion), which cause effectively
fecundity to drop below 1 for the less-fit tail of the
distribution while the effectively fecundity of the more-fit tail
remains greater than 1.
When you say "selection of beneficial mutations", you seem to be
conflating items 3a and 4.
the observation that mutations can and do change alleles is used
to jump backwards past the fully functioning organism into a time
where it is said that only chemical elements existed, to conclude
that the same mechanism in operation today was in operation back then.
No such time existed, except for the first few millions of years
after the Big Bang. As soon as the first stars blew their heavy
elements out into space, some molecules began to form in space,
ending the era of only elements. This was appx. 9 billion years
before the Earth formed, 10 billion years before life occurred on
Earth and biological evolution started happening.
This mechanism is responsible for the formation of the first
common ancestor that, over time, evolved into the myriad species we
see today.
The phase "first common ancestor" has no meaning.
Perhaps you meant to say "last universal common ancestor"?
In the evolutionary scenario, these basic chemical elements came
together in random combinations to form amino acids, and the amino
acids came together in random combinations to form various kinds of
proteins.
No. Proteins were a relatively modern invention *of* already-existing life.
It would appear that, at this stage, there must have been no law that
governed the reactions between oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen,
for if there were a law, then these elements would always come
together in one and only one combination.
It's apparent that you have not the slightest understanding of
chemistry, and are just making up combinations of words at random.
There are laws (from quantum mechanics) which determine the
position and properties of orbitals of each atom in various
circumstances such as ionization or excitation state. There area
laws which describe the statistical behaviour of atoms insofar as
they change ionization or excitation state in various circumstances
such as arrival of photons of various energies and physical
jostling. There are laws which determine the statistical likelihood
of various kinds of bond between the atoms caused by the orbitals,
and various other kinds of affinity between atoms such as
electrostatic attraction. Applying these laws, we predict a wide
range of various molecules and crystals that can be formed, and
observations show these predictions are a lot better than either
"all random combinations are possible" or "the atoms always come
together in one and only one combination".
so we now have a few basic elements that have formed a variety
of amino acids that have formed a number of simple proteins.
Nope, you completely misunderstand theories of abiogenesis. I
suggest you check Google Groups to find mention of clay-crystal
patterns, and also random auto-catalytic sets of chemicals.
As far as I know, reproduction occurs through a reproductive
system that has to be up and running in order for copies of the
original to be made. Is there some other way?
There is no need for a separate "reproductive system". It is
sufficient for there to exist some chemical system that synthesizes
various chemical species, some of which are the very same chemical
species that constitute the chemical system in the first place.
is there an answer that would allow me to do the experiment?
Yeah. How much money do you have for running millions of different
versions of the experiment simultaneously? How much money do you
have for computers and software for running simulated chemistry to
avoid the cost of physical chemistry experiments? Do you have
enough money to explore all the chains of chemical reactions that
can occur with only these starting chemicals:
- The four elements you listed (H, O, C, N) in large quantities
(all inputted as individual nucleons in a high-temperature plasma,
allowed to cool gradually as the plasma flows from the injection
vessel towards the Earth-temperature vessel);
- All other naturally occurring relatively stable elements in trace
amounts, different combinations of them in each different
experiment (88 other elements, hence 2^88 different combinations
of them possible) (likewise injected as plasma);
- Whatever unstable fragments occur when a high-energy UV (Ultra-Violet)
photon strikes one of the molecules that was already formed
(turned on only in the Earth-temperature vessel, only after the
initial measurement of various molecular frequencies was completed).
I predict that from just the four main elements, none of the trace
elements, you should quickly generate substantial quantities of
- molecular oxygen/hydrogen/nitrogen, water, carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia;
and if the amount of oxygen is limited, also:
- carbon monoxide;
and then after UV used, lesser but still substantial quantities of
- cyanide radical (as hydrogen cyanide or ammonium cyanide), formaldehyde;
and much lesser but still detectable quantities of several other chemicals,
which I won't specifically predict, but possibly some two-carbon sugars
and perhaps a one-carbon amino compound such as H3C-NH2.
So how soon can you do the first part of the experiment and test my
predictions?
.
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