"Study Finds Anti-HIV Protein Evolved Millions Of Years Before The Emergence Of AIDS"
Mon, 16 Aug 2004 14:25:40 -0400
from Jerry Chancellor
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040730090543.htm
"SEATTLE – A protein that the body uses to attack the AIDS virus is actually a stealthy defense mechanism that evolved 32 million years before the emergence of HIV, according to new findings from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center."
"When comparing human Apobec3G genes with those of man's distantly related primate relatives, Malik and colleagues found, to their surprise, that the protein began to evolve in response to such Darwinistic pressure more than 30 million years before HIV-like viruses first infected primates, an event that occurred about a million years ago."
It seems to me that this fits very well into the "old genes" discussion. Cosmic Ancestry would predict that there is nothing new in the "genetic arms race", wouldn't it?
Jerry Chancellor / President / IT Professionals
Metazoan Genes Older Than Metazoa? is the referenced CA webpage.
Big Bang and CA
8:31 AM -0700 7/28/04
from Douglas Early
Brig, The "What's New" item "Big bang predictions are not upheld" ( 8 July 2004) got me thinking about the problem of Big Bang cosmology in the context of Cosmic Ancestry. It seems to me that neither the Big Bang idea nor the idea of an infinite past is in harmony with CA. If the universe began in a high-temperature state incompatible with life, then the principle of "life always comes from life" doesn't hold. OTOH, if natural selection has an infinite time in which to work, then it can produce any biological feature, no matter how complex and improbable.
I wonder if you have considered a third possibility that was outlined by David Bohm and Basil J. Hiley in the book The Undivided Universe (London: Routledge, 1993). Bohm created a realist interpretation of quantum theory; he took the quantum mechanical "wavefunction," which is usually interpreted as merely a mathematical device, and assumed that it corresponds to an actually existing wave. A consequence of this view is that in the early universe, around the time when large-scale objects such as stars, planets, and galaxies began forming, macroscopic quantum effects were common. A whole planet at that time could undergo quantum interference processes that today happen only in microscopic systems. It follows that the Big Bang theory is flawed because it ignores such large-scale quantum effects.
Bohm thought that the idea of a familiar three-dimensional world described by classical physics could not be extended backward in time indefinitely, either ad infinitum or to a sudden beginning. Instead, he showed that around the time of the first star formation the universe gradually changed from a truly quantum condition, in which quantum effects are the norm even for large objects, to the modern condition in which quantum effects affect microscopic objects only:
There is only one overall quantum world which contains an approximately classical 'sub-world' that gradually emerges under conditions that have been described throughout this chapter. (Bohm & Hiley, 1993, p. 178) That is, because of the dominance of nonlocal quantum effects in this "quantum world," it behaves nothing like the familiar classical world of time and three-dimensional space. But Bohm and Hiley showed how in the early universe the possibility of having macroscopic creatures who would perceive the appearance of such a classical sub-world came about, as quantum effects gradually became negligible for massive objects. Interestingly, Bohm and Hiley also pointed out that bacteria are midway in size between the scale of the current macroscopic (classical) realm and the scale of the microscopic realm in which quantum effects are still common (p. 176). They were saying that at certain stages in the early universe the same was true of planets, stars, and galaxies.
Bohm considered the quantum world to be an example of what he called an "implicate order": We can say that 'wherever you are' you may represent this as an 'ordinary local space' but that there will be a horizon in which this space 'dissolves' into an implicate order. Such a 'universe' would not have a definite boundary, but would simply fade into something that does not manifest to us beyond its horizon. Nor would it have a beginning or an end. But rather it would similarly fade in the distant past and in the distant future. (p. 377)
So in that sense time has no beginning, but neither is there an infinite unchanging past as in the Steady State cosmology. Rather, the idea of the existence of a universe consisting of objects interacting in space and time breaks down in the early universe. "Early" here refers not to the beginning of time but to the beginning of the classical sub-world. Before that, the idea of time would have to be replaced by some more general concept of causality.
But the main relevance of Bohm's theory for CA is that, although the early conditions in the universe did not permit the existence of large organisms that perceive a classical sub-world, there was no need for a high-density, high-temperature phase pervading the universe. So the possibility of the early existence of microorganisms could not be excluded on those grounds. As for where these organisms came from, answering that depends on understanding how to generalize current concepts of biology, physics, and philosophy to apply to the rather different conditions of that time.
Also, it seems to me that, if Bohm was right, then macroscopic nonlocal quantum processes in the early universe would produce large-scale structures earlier than the Big Bang cosmology predicts. You could compare the early universe to a plasma, in which long-range electromagnetic forces between ions make possible all kinds of collective motions and structures that do not occur in a neutral gas. Similarly, if nonlocal quantum correlations across vast distances existed from the earliest era of star formation, then not all large-scale structures would have to gradually grow bottom-up from smaller-scale inhomogeneities. Some of them might form that way, but others would be primordial. So you'd expect to see fewer massive galaxies in the past, because some galaxies have become massive by gradual accretion, but you'd also expect to see primordial massive galaxies no matter how far back you look, at least to the start of star formation. This is pretty much what has been observed.
Another good book on Bohm's theory is Peter R. Holland's The Quantum Theory of Motion: An Account of the de Broglie-Bohm Causal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
--Doug Early / EARLY ARTS / Bellingham, WA
[Klyce replies] Many thanks for you thoughtful reply about my "Big bang predictions are not upheld". I like the Bohm that I read 20 years ago. However, in general, I think we know way too little to accurately speculate about the universe of >10 billion years ago. Also, I disagree with your sentence that begins "OTOH, if natural selection has an infinite time...". In my view, darwinian evolution only goes sideways or downhill, no matter how much time is available.
But I am delighted with your interest. I will probably rephrase my next comments on the infinite past because of your suggestions.
At 9:10 AM -0700 7/30/04, Douglas Early wrote:
Brig, I should have said "chance" rather than natural selection. With infinite time, any arbitrarily complex biological system will assemble by chance, as long as the probability has some lower bound. Even if the probability is no bigger than that of a Hoyle's tornado assembling a Boeing 747 by blowing through a junkyard, the assembly will happen if you wait long enough. Of course, "long enough" expressed in years might be 1 followed by 40 pages of zeros. After the system is assembled by chance, I agree, Darwinism is at best a way of slowing the system's decline. Darwinism is really a theory of extinction, not evolution.
[...] I only meant to offer Bohm's quantum theory as an example of another type of cosmology, besides the cosmologies of finite and infinite pasts. Some people dismiss CA because they reject the steady-state theory on the evidence and conclude that the big-bang theory doesn't permit life to exist in the early universe. So Bohm's theory shows that there's a third possibility. Also, Bohm's theory is interesting because its only new assumption is realism; everything else follows from that. It's a very parsimonious theory in that sense.
There's a good biography of Bohm, Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm (F. David Peat, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997). You might find it interesting because of parallels in the way physicists reacted to Bohm's ideas and the way Darwinists react to Hoyle's ideas and CA. Bohm was one of a very few truly original scientific thinkers of recent decades, along with Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold, who kept on questioning nature even in the face of huge pressure to conform their thinking to the currently fashionable paradigms.
BTW, I don't know if you have heard that Thomas Gold died about a month ago.
--Doug
[Klyce replies] Dear Doug -- I am the most argumentative guy you ever met probably. Anyway, I think your two sentences above ["With infinite time..." and "Even if the probability..."] are false. There are at least two kinds of infinity (countable and uncountable.) Because infinities can differ in this way, infinite time and space do not guarantee every imaginable eventuality.
To: "Brig Klyce" From: Douglas Early
I've met argumentative people who make the folks at META seem downright open-minded. I don't mind if someone disagrees with me because sometimes they know something I don't, in which case I'll learn something.
Here's an opportunity for me to learn something. This argument about countable versus uncountable infinities is one I haven't heard. I'd like to know what it is, or if you could point me to a reference that explains it, I'd appreciate it.
BTW, I didn't mean to imply that every imaginable eventuality will occur, only that those which have some nonzero lower bound on their probability are likely to occur if you wait long enough. This is just a consequence of probability theory. If, for example, the probability of an event happening per unit time is p, and p > 1/(b - a) during some finite time interval a <= t <= b, then the probability that the event has occurred will reach 100% before time b.
Of course, it's easy to imagine scenarios in which the probability p of the spontaneous assembly of a system has no nonzero lower bound. For example, if some necessary energy or material is in short supply, then p could be zero. So depending on the circumstances, all kinds of imaginable eventualities might not occur even with endless time.
This subject has a long history in the study of the relationship of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. It's possible to maintain that the second law of thermodynamics always holds, but then you have to set it up as an independent postulate not derivable from quantum theory. People have tried to derive this non-statistical form of the second law from quantum theory, but these attempts have failed, although nobody has shown it can't be done either. That is, it might be that many-body correlations conspire to uphold the second law always, or it might be that the correlations provide more rather than fewer opportunities for violating the second law.
In the absence of a proof, many physicists split the difference and assume the correlations have no effect either way. Then the second law is statistical--that is, it says that large-scale entropy decreases are rare but not forbidden. Then infinite time can explain not only biogenesis but why entropy currently is increasing. The explanation is that after a monstrously long wait, a random fluctuation precipitously lowers the entropy of the universe, and then for a few billion years the universe enjoys a period of rising entropy, which among other things makes life possible. Then after another monstrous wait of nothing much happening, another fluctuation gets the whole thing going again, and so on, over and over. I don't buy this idea, but it's hard to avoid it if you believe in infinite time.
--Doug
8 July 2004: Big bang predictions are not upheld [the referenced What'sNEW item].
Extra terrestrial intelligence
Tue, 11 May 2004 13:33:16 -0500
from Charles Scott
BK,
In an email Brian Harris asked: "... why has SETI so far been unable to isolate evidence of higher forms of life? "
My view is, possibly we are using the wrong techniques for discovery. Man-made radio waves are so puny that after traveling for a few light years they become distorted and swamped by conditions in outer space. The same for radio broadcast directed toward us. A more advanced race would look around for a powerful broadcaster - a natural transmitter. (1) Most likely this would be a nearby star. They would have a way to very subtly modify or modulate some aspect of its radiation, e.g., neutrino, or even a range of photons. For example, native Americans intruded upon the nature of smoke only a little to form signals that could be seen from a great distance. (2) Jets from black holes and some stars are natural and powerful producers of radio waves. We should study these closely for signs of intelligent manipulation. (3) For an Earth-based system the encoding of one twin of a Gemini particle pair suggests a means for galactic communication with Them. (Longer description: http://www.all-new-biz.com/id54.htm.)
Thanks for your insightfulness, CS
Possible Flaw in Cosmic Ancestry Hypothesis is Brian Harris's email of 7 Feb 2004.
Documentary Film Release
23 Apr 2004
from Gabriele Manzotti
Dear Brig.
Maybe you are interested in the following Documentary Film release.
The film highlights the major contradictions in Big Bang Cosmology and is an up to date point of the alternatives to the Big Bang itself.
It collects Interviews with Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, Jayant Narlikar, Fred Hoyle, Halton Arp, Eric Lerner and many other Big Bang opponents.
I strongly recommend it to you.... Best regards, Gabriele Manzotti
www.universe-film.com
Dim sun conditions of AD 536
18 Feb 2004 (posted 29 Feb)
from Dr. Michael R. Rampino
to CC-Net
...Claus Hammer and his co-workers have now substantiated and redated the volcanic ice-core peak that Richard Stothers and I believed for many years to be associated with the dim sun conditions of AD 536.
There is absolutely no physical evidence for a comet impact or airburst at that time, so speculation about this "impact event" should now end. ...Mike
Dr. Michael R. Rampino / Associate Professor / Earth & Environmental Science Program / New York University
A small comet impact caused sixth century global chill? is the related CA What'sNEW item, 4 Feb 2004.
Sulfulr loving bacteria in Mars
28 Feb 2004 10:58 AM
from jacob navia
This was posted in sci.astro
"During the spring gemmule "hatch", the peripheral thesocytes differentiate into a pinacoderm that balloons out, like a bubblegum bubble, through the micropyle. This micropyle bubble makes
contact and attaches to the substratum
http://64.78.63.75/samples/04BIORuppertInvertebrateZoology7ch5.pdfhttp://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/m/028/1M130672510EFF0454P2933M2M1.HTML
Jonathan"
Life on Mars! is the related CA webpage.
