Evolution's new wrinkle: Proteins with cruise control provide new perspective (DIRECTED MUTATION!)

Princeton University ^ | November 10, 2008 | Kitta MacPherson

[GodGunsGuts]

A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution.

The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature...

[js1138]

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/071011_universes.htm

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/dest_pb_test-2.html

[muawiyah]

The incontrovertible conclusions of detailed analysis of so-called "string theory" is that other universes are out there.

It's believed that the excess gravity observed in the local galaxy (and in all the others as well) arises out of matter/energy which we can neither sense or manipulated ('cause it's in an adjacent or nearby universe).

Recently an evaluation of the location of dark matter in a nearby galaxy was consistent with a string theory hypothesis regarding what happens to dark matter when regular matter accelerates.

Thought that was a neat photo.

[muawiyah]

http://users.ameritech.net/equalizer/darkandnormalmatter.jpg

[Texas Songwriter]

Incontrovertible? Drs.Michio Kaku and Lane Collins state there is “not a shred of experimental evidence”that has been found to confirm superstring theory. Neither is there evidence to support inflationary cosmology. The fact that some appeal to the theoretical existence of many universes to avoid the implications of the finely-tuned circumstances of the universe at hand, still requires explaination of design.
The skeptic needs to invent a whole new set of physicl laws and a whole new set of mechanisms that are not a natural extrapolation form anything we know or have experienced. If a theist profered such theories to explain a theology they would be run out of town on a rail.

[muawiyah]

Please let me be among the first to admit there’s a great deal of controversy, but there’s always a great deal of controversy.

[Texas Songwriter]

Thank you for your honesty...but you first said ‘incontrovertible’. I have looked and found much speculation, but no evidence derived from methodological science.

[muawiyah]

Here's the big problem with string theory, there's no evidence that it doesn't work to describe this and any other universe.

It may well be the "answer to everything" ~ unfortunately.

[muawiyah]

Oh, yeah, almost forgot. Way out at the edge of the universe it was recently discovered that things there are definitely responding to gravity "over the horizon".

This is postulated to be a partial explanation for the discovery that the universe is expanding an accelerating rate.

So, what's "over the horizon" outside of our universe?

Could it perhaps be "another universe"?

Gotta' be something!

[GourmetDan]

"No they don't. The methods and procedures of science depend on success, not belief. The methods of science work the same whether you are a Christian or a Buddhist or communist or whatever."

You are committing the fallacy of equivocating the existence of natural physical laws with philosophical naturalism. The fact that natural physical laws exist does not mean that philosophical naturalism is also true. That is a non sequitur, but is the basis for the Weak Anthropic Principla, the Big Bang, abiogenesis and evolution. Yes, the fallacy of philsophical naturalism underlying 'science' does need to be discussed.

"They work when natural explanations are sought,and they go astray when supernatural or political explanations are sought."

They also go astray and do not 'work' when philosophical naturalism is assumed, which is what we have today.

[GourmetDan]

"Wrong. You asserted fallacies. You didn't explain why anyone should agree with you."

Fallacy of appeal to popular opinion noted! LOL!

[mlo]

"Wrong. You asserted fallacies. You didn't explain why anyone should agree with you."

"Fallacy of appeal to popular opinion noted! LOL!"

Uh, rather obviously, no. I pointed out that you must explain why you believe something is a fallacy, not just declare it to be so.

Your failure to understand this basic point, and another false claim of a logical fallacy, is noted.

[mlo]

"Yes, the fallacy of philsophical naturalism underlying 'science' does need to be discussed."

Then discuss it. Don't just assert it.

[Texas Songwriter]

Other universes may be detectable, published study claims Oct. 11, 2007 Special to World Science If there are oth­er un­iverses out there—as some sci­en­tists pro­pose—then one or more of them might be de­tect­a­ble, a new study sug­gests. Such a find­ing, “while cur­rently spec­u­la­tive even in prin­ci­ple, and probably far-off in prac­tice, would surely con­sti­tute an ep­och­al dis­cov­ery,” re­search­ers wrote in a pa­per de­tail­ing their stu­dy. The work ap­pears in the Sep­tem­ber is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Phys­i­cal Re­view D. Cos­mol­o­gists gen­er­ally hold that even if oth­er un­iverses ex­ist, a con­tro­ver­sial idea it­self, they would­n’t be vis­i­ble, and that test­ing for their ex­istence would be hard at best. A half-sky map of slight tem­per­a­ture vari­a­tions in the cos­mic mi­cro­wave back­ground ra­di­a­tion, thought to map struc­tures in the very ear­ly uni­verse. Blue stands for colder ar­eas; red for hot­ter re­gions, where it's be­lieved mat­ter was dens­er. These dense re­gions are thought to have lat­er be­come ga­laxy-rich zones. The boxed ar­ea marks an un­u­su­al "cold spot" re­search­ers rec­og­nize in the da­ta. An un­ex­plained gi­ant cos­mic void has also been found in the di­rec­tion of that spot. In a new stu­dy, the­o­ret­i­cal phys­i­cists ar­gue that some sort of ir­reg­u­lar­ity in the mi­cro­wave back­ground, and in mat­ter dis­tri­bu­tion, might in­di­cate where our uni­verse once knocked in­to an­oth­er one. But the re­search­ers take no po­si­tion on wheth­er this cold spot could be the anom­a­ly they're look­ing for. Much more work is needed, they say. (Im­age cour­te­sy WMAP Sci­ence Team, NA­SA) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But the new stu­dy, by three sci­en­tists at the Un­ivers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz, pro­poses that neigh­bor­ing un­iverses might leave a vis­i­ble mark on our own—if, per­chance, they have knocked in­to it. For such a scar to be de­tect­a­ble, they add, the col­li­sion might have had to take place when our un­iverse was very young. Just how the bruise might look re­mains to be clar­i­fied, they say. “The ques­tion of what the af­ter­math of a col­li­sion might be is still quite open,” wrote Mat­thew C. John­son, one of the re­search­ers, in an e­mail. One the­o­ry even holds that a clash be­tween un­iverses could de­stroy the cos­mos we know. But John­son, now at the Cal­i­for­nia In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Pas­a­de­na, Calif., and col­leagues are ex­am­in­ing quite a dif­fer­ent sort of sce­nar­i­o. Sev­er­al lines of rea­son­ing in mod­ern phys­ics have led to pro­pos­als that there are oth­er un­iverses. It’s a rath­er dodgy con­cept on its face, be­cause strictly speak­ing, “the un­iverse” means ev­ery­thing that ex­ists. But in prac­tice, cos­mol­o­gists of­ten loos­en the def­i­ni­tion and just speak of “a un­iverse” as some sort of self-en­closed whole with its own phys­i­cal laws. Such a pic­ture, in con­cept, al­lows for oth­er un­iverses with dif­fer­ent laws. These realms are of­ten called “bub­ble un­ivers­es” or “pock­et un­ivers­es”—partly to side­step the awk­ward def­i­ni­tional is­sue, and partly be­cause many the­o­rists do in­deed por­tray them as bub­ble-like. A key thread of rea­son­ing be­hind the idea of bub­ble un­iverses, which are some­times col­lec­tively called a “mul­ti­verse,” is the find­ing that seem­ingly emp­ty space con­tains en­er­gy, known as vac­u­um en­er­gy. Some the­o­rize that un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances this en­er­gy can be con­vert­ed in­to an ex­plo­sively grow­ing, new un­iverse—the same pro­cess be­lieved to have giv­en rise to ours. The­o­ret­i­cal phys­i­cists in­clud­ing Mi­chio Kaku of ­city Col­lege of New York ar­gue that this might go on con­stant­ly—he has called it a “con­tin­ual gen­e­sis”—cre­at­ing many un­iverses, coex­isting not un­like bub­bles in a foamy bath. How might one de­tect anoth­er un­iverse? John­son and his col­leagues rea­son that any col­li­sion be­tween bub­bles would, like all col­li­sions, pro­duce af­ter­ef­fects that prop­a­gate in­to both cham­bers. These ef­fects would probably take the form of some ma­te­ri­al ejected in­to both sides, John­son said, al­though just what is un­known. This would in turn af­fect the dis­tri­bu­tion of mat­ter in each pock­et un­iverse. If such col­li­sions hap­pened re­cent­ly, they might be un­de­tect­a­ble be­cause our un­iverse might be too huge to be markedly af­fected; but not so if the events took place long enough ago, ac­cord­ing to the Un­ivers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia team, whose pa­per is al­so posted on­line. If a knock oc­curred when our ex­pand­ing un­iverse was still very small, they ar­gue, then the af­ter­math might still be vis­i­ble, blown up in size along with ev­er­ything else since then. When the un­iverse was less than a thou­sandth its pre­s­ent size, it’s thought to have un­der­gone a trans­forma­t­ion. As it ex­pand­ed, it be­came cool enough for atoms to form. It then al­so be­came trans­par­ent. Be­fore that, ev­er­ything had been a thick fog, but with ti­ny varia­t­ions in its dens­ity at dif­fer­ent points; dens­er parts would eventually grow and co­a­lesce in­to ga­lax­ies. This fog is still vis­i­ble, be­cause many of the light waves it gave off are just now reach­ing us: this is how as­tro­no­mers ex­plain a faint glow that per­me­ates space, called the cos­mic mi­cro­wave back­ground. It repre­s­ents the edge of our vis­i­ble un­iverse and is de­tected in all di­rec­tions of the sky. A col­li­sion would lead to a re­ar­ranged pat­tern of dens­ity fluctua­t­ions in this back­ground, ac­cord­ing to the Un­ivers­ity of Cal­i­for­nia team. It’s un­clear just how this re­ar­range­ment would look, but it would probably ap­pear as some sort of ar­ea of ir­reg­u­lar­ity cen­tered sym­met­ric­ally on a patch of the sky—s­ince “each col­li­sion will af­fect a disc on our sky,” John­son wrote in an e­mail. An anal­o­gy: if you lived in a beach ball and it bounced off anoth­er beach ball, you’d see a change in a cir­cu­lar ar­ea of your wall. “Noth­ing like this has pre­s­ently been ob­served, al­though no one has ev­er looked for this par­tic­u­lar sig­nal,” John­son added. On the oth­er hand, re­search­ers have found at least one strik­ing ir­reg­u­lar­ity in the back­ground glow—a “cold spot,” thought to be re­lat­ed to a vast and anom­a­lous void in the cos­mos. Could that be the mark of a sep­a­rate un­iverse? “I’m go­ing to re­main com­pletely non­com­mit­tal” on that, John­son said. “I can’t even tell you if it would be a hot spot or a cold spot.” Tem­per­a­ture varia­t­ions in the cos­mic mi­cro­wave back­ground are be­lieved to re­flect dens­ity varia­t­ions in the early un­iverse. John­son and col­leagues stressed that their pro­pos­al may be only the be­gin­ning of a long, pains­tak­ing re­search pro­gram. “Con­nect­ing this pre­dic­tion to real ob­serva­t­ional sig­na­tures will en­tail both dif­fi­cult and com­pre­hen­sive fu­ture work (and probably no small meas­ure of good luck­),” they wrote. But “it ap­pears worth pur­su­ing.” * * *

Gee, this doesn't look like science. There are a lot of "ifs","buts","possible's","perhaps"....I have underlined a few of their notations of conjecture. If this is your science....go to it. It looks like science fiction. Theories are made up to avoid real observations. These physicists are so committed to the Stan Lee theory that they essentially say the laws of physics in this make-believe universe "probably" won't apply. If a theology made such a statement you would tar and feather them. Ad absurdum ad nauseum. Keep those federal researdh dollars coming.

[Texas Songwriter]

Are There Other Universes? By Andrew Chaikin Editor, Space & Science posted: 07:00 am ET 05 February 2002 But if these other universes do exist, are we really destined never to detect them? Some theorists have speculated that gravitational energy from other universes might leak into ours, and that someday we might figure out how to detect it. But even the most open-minded cosmologists say that's a long shot at best. "That is also pure speculation," says Impey. "It’s maybe reasonable speculation, but it’s speculation in a very similar vein to the speculation of someone like Kip Thorne about wormholes and time travel and white holes and black holes. It’s very careful speculation by a highly trained theoretical physicist who knows what the boundary of the current theory is." It wouldn't be the first time that a wild idea turned out to be right. Table --> SCIENCE TUESDAY Visit SPACE.com to explore a new science feature each Tuesday. >>Go to Science Tuesday archive page Images Astronomers believe the Big Bang first produced atomic nuclei in the first three minutes of the universe. 300,000 years later, atoms formed and light was released. Today we can still observe evidence of these primordial reactions. Click to enlarge. Did the early universe resemble a sponge or a spider web? A group of European researchers has done some long-distance sleuthing, looking way back in time to when the universe was just 15 percent of its current age, to uncover some vital clues. This chart shows how much of the universe is made up of dark energy, dark matter, and ordinary matter. Related SPACE.com STORIES The Grid: A Computer Web for Astrophysics and More 'Brane-Storm' Challenges Part of Big Bang Theory 'Milestone' Study Challenges Basic Laws of Physics, Universe TODAY'S DISCUSSION What do you think of this story? >>Uplink your views A bit more than 100 years ago, in the second half of the 19th century, Albrecht says, most scientists didn't accept the idea that matter was composed of atoms -- an idea supported not by direct observation, but by inferences based on theories of temperature, heat, and viscosity. "Atomic theory had some great things to say about that, and seemed to give a consistent, unified picture," Albrecht says, but "the majority of physicists at that time didn't really believe atoms existed; they thought it was just some flight of fancy." Like quantum mechanics, Albrecht ponts out, atomic theory was a construction that went way beyond what anyone could see 100 years ago. And if it's a challenge for scientists now to embrace wild ideas like other universes, he says, that just comes with the territory. "So far, everything we've done to try to understand the universe has pulled us out of our shell, so to speak, and made us think about things that are way beyond what we see, and way beyond what we'll see in the foreseeable future. So we're just stuck with that… Unfortunately, it's part of the nature of always being at the frontier of what we understand."

Even the author says all of this is pure speculation. Pure Speculation. You have propagated not a single fact. You and the author essentially say, "This is a fairy tail, but we will call it science." It is fine and well to muse on fiction. My family and I just watched the 1951 version of "The Day the Earth STood Still-". Klatu and Gort were entertaining. Sometimes I will watch UFO files. It is interesting and complete fiction and without scientific foundation, just like the 2 articles you sent to me.

I underlined a few of the most salient points of the articles. Concentrate on those remarks.

[allmendream]

Still nothing to contradict the clear and unambiguous DNA data that shows a chimp is closer to a human being than it is to a gorilla.

The data says that your “logical impossibility” is the truth.

You obviously cannot wrap your brain around the data so all you do is attack the messenger.

Rather pitiful performance.

[GourmetDan]

"Then discuss it. Don't just assert it."

Have been. Respond. Don't just assert it hasn't been discussed.

[GourmetDan]

"Uh, rather obviously, no. I pointed out that you must explain why you believe something is a fallacy, not just declare it to be so."

No, you said I should explain why people should agree w/ me. That's the fallacy of appeal to popular opinion.

"Your failure to understand this basic point, and another false claim of a logical fallacy, is noted."

Your failure to understand this basic point and your use of another logical fallacy is noted.

[js1138]

You are obviously incapable of making proper sense of the data.

:)

[allmendream]

Yeah, because DNA similarity is SO HARD to decipher. You count up the number of DNA differences between human and chimp and human and gorilla and chimp and gorilla and you get a larger number counting between human and gorilla or chimp and gorilla than when counting between a human and chimp. Thus chimps are closer to a human than they are to a gorilla according to DNA.

Hard to make much more sense of it than that!

[js1138]

Not just the count of differences, though. There’s nesting.