For a long time I’ve thought that many of the senior science writers of the New York Times have outlived their usefulness. It might not be a function of age, but simply poor quality journalism. Regardless, the Times could use a serious shake-up in its science section.
Happily, one of their senior writers, Nicholas Wade, retired in 2012, but he still writes occasionally for the paper, and he recently published a shamefully bigoted and ignorant book on human races, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (see the critical reviews in the Times itself, as well as in the New York Review of Books by my first student, Allen Orr).
And in the December 22 Wall Street Journal, Wade once again shows his failure to grasp my own field in a review of Bill Nye’s new book on the evidence for evolution, Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation. Wade’s review, called “Bill Nye, the Darwin Guy“, is deficient on a number of counts. I’ll highlight three (Wade’s piece is short):
1. What Wade considers the “most direct” and “most undeniable” evidence for evolution is dubious. Curiously, Wade touts that evidence as some molecular data on gene substitutions:
Mr. Nye writes briskly and accessibly. He favors short, sound-bitey sentences. He is good on the geological and fossil evidence for evolution, reflecting his background in the physical sciences, but devotes less attention to changes in DNA, which furnish the most direct evidence of evolution. A recent paper in the journal PLOS Genetics, for instance, describes the seven DNA mutations that occurred over the past 90 million years in the gene that specifies the light-detecting protein of the retina. These mutations shifted the protein’s sensitivity from ultraviolet to blue, the first step in adapting a nocturnal animal to daytime vision and in generating the three-color vision of the human eye. Such insights into nature’s actual programming language are surely the most undeniable part of evolution at work.
I haven’t read the PLoS Genetics paper, but I’ve been told that it involves using mutation-making technology to alter visual proteins, and then seeing which amino acids that have changed also alter the perception of different wavelengths of light.
But that kind of stuff has been going on for a long time, and it’s hardly “direct”. While it does support natural selection, it’s somewhat inferential and, more important, could be dismissed by creationists as simply showing “microevolution.” If you want direct evidence of natural selection producing microevolution, why not use the many observations we have of selection operating in the wild, most famously the Grants’ work on the Galápagos finches? Isn’t that actually more direct than looking at protein changes that have occurred over millions of time. Or how about the formation of new species of plants that we’ve seen occur in the last 50 years? Or the changes in lactose tolerance that have occurred in pastoral populations (those that keep animals for milk) in the last 10,000 years? What, exactly, does Wade mean by “direct”?
Further, why aren’t changes in fossils, showing both trait changes and the evolution of new “kinds” (e.g., amphibians from fish, birds from dinosaurs, land-dwelling artiodactyls into whales, etc. etc. etc.) just as direct as (and even more undeniable than) looking at historical changes in proteins? Or all the evidence from embryology, vestigial organs, and biogeography that I adduce in WEIT? Why isn’t that just as direct and undeniable as looking at changes in molecules that separate species? In fact, one could make the case that showing adaptive difference in protein function among species, as the PLoS Genetics authors probably did, don’t really count as decisive evidence for evolution. After all, couldn’t those protein differences have been put there by God? We weren’t there to see them happen, after all.
But one can’t make such a Goddy explanation for evidence like the fossil record or biogeography, and that’s why I downplayed protein-sequence evidence in my book. I was looking for the more undeniable evidence—stuff that creationists couldn’t easily counter. At any rate, Wade, excited by molecular biology, fails to realize that the case he cites might not be the most undeniable and direct evidence for evolution after all—and it could even be said to comport with creationism.
2. Wade sees a serious scientific problem in the supposedly short time during which life originated.
Mr. Nye’s analysis also glosses over bristling perplexity. He says that there are a billion years between the Earth’s formation 4.5 billion years ago and the first fossil evidence of life, plenty of time for the chemical evolution of the first living cells. But this fact is long outdated. A heavy meteorite bombardment some 3.9 billion years ago probably sterilized the planet, yet the first possible chemical evidence of life appears in rocks some 3.8 billion years old. This leaves startlingly little time for the first living cells to have evolved. Reconstruction of the chemical steps by which they did so is a daunting and so far unsolved problem. Mr. Nye might have done better to concede as much.
As we’ll see below, Wade almost seems to feel that there is something problematic in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution that might render it wrong. Abiogenesis—the origin of life from nonlife—is something that he, along with creationists, sees as such a problem. But the paragraph above is misleading. “Sterilizing the planet” means “killing everything alive on Earth.” While that might have happened, it didn’t mean that the chemical precursors of life would be eradicated. Also, there is controversy about whether that meteorite bombardment had the effects he said it did, or even when it occurred. We know that indubitable evidence for life appears about 3.5 billion years ago (I don’t trust his 3.8-billion-year figure), so that gives about half a billion years for the first cell (a bacterium) to appear. Is that really “startlingly little time”? Has Wade made any models that show it’s an unrealistic time? It’s 500,000,000 years, which is pretty long, and if the precursor chemicals were there beforehand, the time for the origin of life becomes even longer.
Wade also doesn’t mention that the “living cells” he mentions are prokaryotic cells like bacteria, lacking a nucleus and much of the chemical and structural complexity of “true” eukaryotic cells, which didn’t appear until 1.6 billion years ago—2.3 billion years after the “sterilization”. What Wade sees as a daunting problem isn’t an unsuperable problem. Yes, it’s unsolved, but there are many things about evolution that we don’t understand, like what proto-bats looked like. What does Wade want Nye to concede: that we don’t yet understand the origin of life? Fine, then, concede it, but add that we’re making great strides in solving that problem.
3. Wade suggests a compromise between evolutionists and creationists which is simply insane. This is the most infuriating part of his review. Here’s what Wade says will bring amity between the two groups (my emphasis):
Mr. Nye’s fusillade of facts won’t budge them an inch. Isn’t there some more effective way of persuading fundamentalists to desist from opposing the teaching of evolution? If the two sides were willing to negotiate, it would be easy enough to devise a treaty that each could interpret as it wished. In the case of teaching evolution in schools, scientists would concede that evolution is a theory, which indeed it is. Fundamentalists might then be willing to let their children be taught evolution, telling them it is “just a theory.” Evolution, of course, is no casual surmise but a theory in the solemn scientific sense, a grand explanatory system that accounts for a vast range of phenomena and is in turn supported by them. Like all scientific theories, however, it is not an absolute, final truth because theories are always subject to change and emendation.
Yeah, like that suggestion is going to get fundamentalists to agree to the teaching of evolution! Note to Wade: creationists aren’t stupid enough to buy your little plan. They don’t want evolution taught as the only theory that explains the origin and diversity of life, however that theory is characterized.
Further, scientists have already “conceded” (as Wade puts it) that evolution is a theory. But it’s not only a theory, for it’s so well supported by the data that, as I show in WEIT, it’s also regarded as a fact. (What I mean by “evolution” here are these five tenets: genetic change over time, populational change that is not instantaneous, speciation, common ancestry of all species, and natural selection as the cause of apparent design.) Will creationists really allow the scientific notion of “theory”, as well as a summary of the mountains of evidence that show evolution to be not just a theory but a scientific truth, to be taught to their kids?
Yes, there are some conceivable observations that could invalidate evolution, but we’ve had over 150 years to find them, with creationists working furiously on that job, and no such observations have appeared. To say that evolution is “always subject to change and emendation” is like saying that “the fact that DNA is a double helix, viruses cause Ebola, the Earth goes around the Sun, and the formula of water is H2O” are all theories “subject to change and emendation”. The fact is that some “theories” are highly unlikely to change because the evidence supporting them is wickedly strong, and to claim that they are somehow shaky or dubious is misleading. I would never countenance saying that any of these scientific notions are “just theories,” for the word “just,” as Wade knows well, implies that the evidence supporting them is somehow shaky.
Wade goes on to fulminate about the dogmatism of evolutionists, and touts the uncertainty of evolutionary biology by using the example of group selection, which, he says, is undecided and therefore makes all of evolution appear as “just a theory.” But group selection is a modern add-on to evolutionary biology, and it’s an unsubstantiated hypothesis. Group selection is not a theory in Wade’s sense, something “that accounts for a vast range of phenomena and is in turn supported by them.” It accounts for no phenomena and there are no observations that require us to accept group selection. To say that evolution is “just a theory” because we haven’t settled the question of group selection is like saying that modern particle physics is “just a theory” because string theory is sitting out there as an unresolved problem.
At the end, Wade reiterates his brilliant suggestion for a pact between evolutionists and creationists:
If popularizers like Mr. Nye could allow that the theory of evolution is a theory, not an absolute truth or dogma, they might stand a better chance of getting the fundamentalists out of the science classroom.
Sorry, Mr. Wade, but we already allow that. No observation in science is an “absolute truth or dogma,” but some things are so likely to be true that you’d bet your house on them. One of those things is evolution. In any vernacular sense of the word, evolution is simply true—as true as the fact that DNA is normally a double helix and a normal water molecule has two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.
Wade’s suggestion is ludicrous and, in the end, shows that he really doesn’t understand the nature of science and scientific truth. Nor does he have the slightest idea of how creationists really behave. They’ll no sooner accept his compromise then they’ll admit that there’s no God. After this piece, and Wade’s egregious book A Troublesome Inheritance, the man’s Official Science Writer™ Card should be revoked.
Brain food. 🙂
Sorely needed, atm.
There comes a point where the only alternative to something being the truth is an insanely paranoid conspiracy theory.
It is conceivable, yes, that the Earth could, indeed, be flat and that the sky is a metal dome held overhead by pillars at the four corners. But the only way that could possibly be the case is if we’re brains in vats or otherwise led to believe all the observations we so casually make of the spherical nature of the Earth.
Such is also the case with Evolution. Perhaps we’re really just subroutines in the Matrix after all, and the Earth was programmed last Tuesday to appear old. But who has time for such nonsense?
Physicists are making great strides at broadening our understanding of the thermodynamics that lies underneath Darwinian evolution…but, even lacking that, we still know that Darwin got it (basically) right and that his theory is the best way to understand life on Earth over the course of the past few billion years. And even if some radically different theory is required to understand (proto-)life before then…so what? That no more invalidates Darwin than Einstein invalidated Newton; you just have to be sure to use the right theory at the right scale.
Cheers,
b&
If the NM -> NM + relativity + QM model is anything to go by, the real way scientific revolutions work is that new theories mostly just fill in the gaps the old theories missed. They predict the same things the old theories got right, but make additional predictions beyond the boundaries of where the old theory was accurate.
If there is some future theory revolution in biology, at this point I would pretty much expect the new/replacement to TOE to predict that the outcome of whatever new mechanism it purports is, most of the time, descent with modification via natural selection. Then it will go on to explain some patterns that the TOE either doesn’t explain well or some patterns we aren’t even currently aware exist. But provide some radical new explanation for things the TOE explains well now? No, I’d bet a lot of money that isn’t going to happen.
Reading Dennett’s books and Dawkins’ books, I would (will?! 🙂 ) be very surprised if it does not turn out that pre-life —> life also works by natural selection (the parameters being different; but the basic algorithm the same).
EBNS can work on any replicator. (The more I read on it, the more I think that it is nearly a law of nature.)
(I know you know this stuff; but I just wanted to say it explicitly.)
EBNS can work on any replicator. (The more I read on it, the more I think that it is nearly a law of nature.)
I agree, to a point: in fact, I would call it a law of everything that is like a replicator. I just returned from a consumer electronics convention that showcased hundreds of new products based on the latest technologies. Which ones will be in stores next year and the year after? Which technologies will live on in modified and repackaged forms? It’s a very, very loose approximation of evolution, in very large part because self-conscious humans are involved in a non-random process of change. Still, the concept of complexity and overall fitness to an environment applies to a kind of survival, with money standing in for reproductive success.
Having said that, I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate to say natural selection occurred in abiogenesis, except on the resultant replicators. When the precursor substance was one molecule (or whatever) away from replication, there was no selection at play because there was no reason, if you will, for replication to commence. Prior to replication, nothing was being passed-on from one compound to the next, so there was nothing to select-on.
And the properties of the elements determine what compounds could possibly become replicators in the first place. Whether the earth generated those compounds wasn’t affected by its success or failure to generate them – so there was random mutation, of a sort going on, but no selection.
Once replication did occur, then natural selection became a thing because only environmentally fit replication could continue to occur – and who’s to say how many times replication may have initiated but then dead-ended? Or if our ancestor compound was the only replicator ever? I think the idea is that the replicators then became theselves a selection pressure when they evolved to use newly- and almost-replicators as a food source, and maybe replicators “teamed-up” resulting in new replicating forms.
“Conspiracy theory”
There you go again misusing what theory means. Call them Conspiracy Ideas, but they hardly qualify has a hypothesis. Maddening!!!
Yes, but that’s just what they want you to do! Everybody with properly-adjusted tinfoil (not aluminum!) hats knows this!
b&
Sad. I seem to recall Before the Dawn being a decent book.
As an established science writer, Wade should be embarrassed to actually pull the “just a theory” card. I can only guess what he means by saying we should “concede that evolution is a theory” is that we should be satisfied with people’s misunderstanding of the word “theory” in the scientific sense. What else is there to concede?
Exactly. Is he an idiot, or is he suggesting lying to them?
Wade sounds like an agent for the Creationists, using their particular turns of phrase like “just a theory” fits right into their wrong headed, and science poor point-of-view. They prefer to distort science to fit their mold.
What makes it especially embarrassing is that he thinks scientists need to concede that evolution is “just a theory” to creationists! The alternative creationists offer is so pathetic that is stands a central mystery of human cognition that anyone takes any part of creationism seriously! If it weren’t religion, taking creationism seriously would be tantamount to believing that Dr. Suess was a historian – making one a candidate for a mental institution.
IOW, if we could just downplay it without downplaying it, creationists would be happy?I don’t buy it.
I don’t buy it twice over. First, I doubt if sending the ‘just a theory’ verbal message to creationists while not sending the connotation ‘just a theory’ is even possible. Secondly, I laugh at the idea that this would make teaching it acceptable to them. They do not want a more nuanced view of ‘what a scientific theory is’ taught, what they want is to put prayer and God back in school, and to remove from school any idea that could undermine their children’s faith.
I’d like to take issue with the first point. (Caveat: I haven’t read Wade’s review, only the quotes you provide here.) But I’d agree with what I think he said, i.e. “changes in DNA, which furnish the most direct evidence of evolution”.
Note, first, that he refers here to evolution, not natural selection. It may be that he conflates the two, but that isn’t clear. My impression is that he’s talking about descent with modification and branching, i.e. common descent, rather than natural selection here. And for that the major support is the nested hierarchy of character traits in extant species. And these days the great bulk of the data that display that hierarchy lies in DNA sequences. The fossil record is perhaps more visually and intuitively appealing, but the DNA evidence is much stronger.
I’m not sure what “direct” means, as turning any sort of data into a conclusion requires some process of inference. But DNA certainly provides the strongest evidence. (Which is not to say that other sorts of evidence aren’t also strong enough to do the job. There’s plenty of evidence all over.)
Now, I may perhaps be biased. It may be that every evolutionary biologist thinks that the very best evidence for evolution comes from his or her own specialty. Maybe.
I disagree: the DNA evidence is no more “direct” evidence of evolution than the hierarchy of other character traits that has long been known. Also, one might impute that hierarchy to God’s making similar animals using similar DNA sequences, so it’s not that telling to me.
The whole thing is confused by Wade’s failure to say what he means by “direct”.
I don’t say the DNA evidence is more direct. I merely say that it constitutes the majority of the evidence, and since quantity has a quality all its own, it’s also the strongest evidence.
Since God can do anything and make it look like something else, he could also create species at such times as he like, even in a pleasant sequence. Why, he could even create the fossils directly. All evidence can be attacked by creationists in exactly the same way, and that makes neither DNA nor fossil evidence either more or less telling.
The idea that the nested hierarchy of life is just “similar animals using similar sequences” is a creationist distortion, no better than explaining the fossil sequence by hydrological sorting.
Since evolution and the totality of life forms that show an inter relatedness that defies the idea of Special Creation, they really can’t prove on their own that their Creation would be the pillar to hold up all biology.
But they can also dismiss whatever they want to as they do consistently, twisting others into their peculiar notions.
It just doesn’t seem plausible that Wade could be so naive and simple minded as to seriously make such a suggestion. But then, there’s the evidence right there.
Sub
This guy is British. I guess they have their problems too.
A MA from King’s College but does not say in what? Apparently nothing to do with science.
I’m not a doctor but play one on TV.
There is an implication of cultural homogeneity there that is not justified. You might as well say that redheads (Scots) have a drink problem (yes, I am in the pub) or Muslims are baby-fricasseing idiots.
“Mr. Nye’s analysis also glosses over bristling perplexity.”
what a sentence.
As if Mr. Wade himself never glossed over for the lay reader.
And, as you’ve noted many times, Jerry: The majority of creationists self-avow that no scientific facts would cause them to change their belief in special creation by their god.
Total waste of time to try and talk to such people.
On the contrary!
Quite a few diehard creationists have simply never faced a serious challenge to their beliefs, and huge numbers of ex-fundamentalist rationalists can trace their journeys to sanity back to exactly such a challenge — even if that was merely the start of a long and bumpy road.
And, sure, the Hamster and Banana Man are beyond hope. But, if you’re engaging with them or their ilk in the public sphere…you’re not directing your words to them, but to everybody else who’s listening, and many of them will be open to reason to some degree or another.
b&
I wish to highlight this, because I think it is of particular importance.
So the ‘compromise’ is to lie to them by encouraging equivocation on the word ‘theory’ and figure they’re too stupid to know the difference between ‘a casual surmise’ and a ‘solemn scientific sense?’ What sort of negotiation is involved in agreeing that the theory of evolution is a theory?
Or is the compromise to lie to ourselves and marvel at the lovely and precious diversity of opinions in the world?
As others have pointed out, the fundamentalists who would be happy with this so-called compromise are already allowing their kids to be taught the ‘casual surmise’ of evolution. The rest of them won’t budge.
So what’s the best way to persuade the fundamentalists to accept scientific fact? I’m not sure, but I suspect that being honest enough to stop moaning on about how wonderful faith is might provide a needed jolt. So much advice of this kind is to soothe, reassure, coax, and comfort the recalcitrant. “You’re not wrong, you just need to make this teeny weeny little adjustment and then your faith will be even better! Improved!” Lull them.
No. Maybe we try waking them up. Yeah, you’re not only wrong about evolution — you’re wrong about Christianity and you’re wrong about God, too. And if they eventually decide to negotiate and compromise on that one back to “fine, I’ll accept evolution but not the rest” then so be it. At least they were treated like adults for once in their lives.
“Tell them it’s ‘just a theory.'” Oy.
IMO that mission is secondary to the mission of persuading them to accept secularism. I can live (mostly) happily and peacefully with a religious person who agrees that government-funded schools and local politicians should not be using the instruments of government to promote religion. Its the folks who see government as a proselytization opportunity that I’m going to butt heads with. If you want to do a Sunday ritual in which you don ritual clothing, eat ritual food, say ritual words, contribute money to some pot, and stand up and sit down according to some wierd social convention, have at it. You call your ceremony ‘church’. I call mine ‘watching football.’ To some visiting extraterrestrial, they probably appear equally pointless.
Outright honesty in debate might also be the best means in the long run of getting them to accept secularism, too. It would give them an additional reason to want to keep their views private.
19% of US citizens accept Evolution from the stand point of science alone. Which is good, it has gone up 5%.
42% are die hard Creationists only.
39% which accept parts of Evolution as created after their deity finished making life.
The problem is “just a theory” *as a phrase* does not mean “an established explanative framework subject to revision as are all scientific claims.” It means “just a speculative idea.” Obama forged his birth certificate with the help of Goldman-Sachs; just a theory. The Mossad is behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks; just a theory.
I’m picturing the treaty bargaining table, with eminent scientists on one side, knuckledraggers on the other. Let’s negotiate, now, and no one gets a bathroom break until we nail this down. Refreshments after. Shall we start with an icebreaker exercise?
What a maroon.
As someone with a journalistic background, I’m embarrassed that an otherwise reputable newspaper chose to print Mr. Wade’s review. Jerry is correct in his criticisms, but I didn’t need him to see the faults myself, even with my layman’s knowledge of the subject.
I think you mean USED to be a reputable newspaper–as a long time WSJ subscriber I have seen the changes since the Murdoch takeover in the editorial and op-ed pages, which have become outlets for the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute,Hoover Institution and various religious and neocon nutjobs. Most of the journalism side is still top notch with the exception of occasional liberal bashing “news”stories on climate change, Obamacare,and alternative energy (they love coal and oil!) The recently added daily book reviews also are often slanted, as this one was.
I believe Wades’ review was in the NY Times. The WSJ did some good journalism but its editorial pages have always been populated by conservatives and neocons, even before the Murdoch takeover. Now they are, indeed, worse.
I haven’t read Bill Nye’s book and I’m not going to read the whole review. Based on the snippets here, I have a hard time understanding Mr. Wade’s point: it’s a long-established truism at WEIT that “facts” are of no use in changing the minds of believers, and in that light it would seem only less productive to concede that one’s “facts” aren’t really “facts” at all – believers already think that!
If a science book for the mass market sticks to the most understandable evidence (as Bill Nye’s seems to do), apparently it’s a failure because it leaves out more esoteric examples. I am confident however that if such a book goes into detail on complicated genetic concepts, it will be panned for losing readers’ interest and/or for being “too hard” for the common reader.
The gripe seems to be the lack of some theories undermines the author’s thesis, but not because the theories are incongruent with the theories as presented. As if an elementary explanation of magnets (how the f**k do they work?) is a failure if it doesn’t put magnetism in context with all atomic fields and forces of attraction and repulsion.
My sense is that what Mr. Wade is trying to say is just that he is very, very smart and sensitive to the needs of the little people (who, he would acknowledge entre nous, believe in magic and fairy tales).
Wade has not only co-opted creationist language in using the “just a theory” lingo, but has also embraced their entire campaign. If educators “concede” the theory part, then why shouldn’t evolution be taught along side various creation “theories”? And by “various” I mean “one” – the Christian one.
Are we sure Wade isn’t working for the DI?
Maybe he has his eye on some sweet, sweet Templeton money….
b&
“It might not be a function of age”
or it is a property of an ageing brain that does not or cannot remain vigilant..
“..the man’s Official Science Writer™ Card should be revoked.”
sadly for his own good and probably ours.
🐾
> A heavy meteorite bombardment some 3.9 billion years ago probably sterilized the planet
I doubt that. According to this paper, the impact rate was at max 1000 times higher than today – meaning one dinosaur killer every 500.000 years or so, and smaller ones at much higher rate still, which sounds a lot, but is in my opinion hardly sufficient to wipe the whole surface clean:
http://geoscience.wisc.edu/geoscience/people/faculty/john-valley/a-cool-early-earth/
The early evolution of life most – likely took place in the oceans, and that provides a LOT of thermal buffer.
It is interesting ( but possibly coincidental ) that the extremophiles top-out temperature -wise around the boiling point of water (at our current atmospheric pressure). But 10 km deeper in an atmosphere carrying a lot of ocean, b. p. would have been notably higher. That suggests to me that we’re seeing biochemical relics of life persisting through the LHB.
Regarding point number 2, the asteroid bombardment of 3.9 BYA (if it really happened) may have been just what was needed to create a ready supply of precursor molecules. Recent simulations of comet-earth impact produces all four nucleobases found in RNA.(http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/12/asteroid-impacts-may-have-formed-life-s-building-blocks) Coupled with some interesting ideas about open thermodynamic systems (which any planet is)creating a “driver” for self organizing systems and abiogenesis seems nearly inevitable – at least possible – in 500M or even 100M years.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/
It’s only January, but we already have the likely winner for “Understatement of the Year”:
” It’s 500,000,000 years, which is pretty long…”
I have recent fossils at home of Torridonian stromatolite which are only a smidgen over a billion years old.
The astronomers will likely win this particular wall-wetting contest.
Bah. But an eyeblink!
I have water molecules in my own body whose hydrogen atoms are over thirteen billion years old!
Most all of them, indeed, if I’m not mistraken….
b&
“mistraken” … sounds like a dating site for sea monsters. (Kraken)
Dear, there’s a Mr. Cthulhu on the phone, says he’s crazy about you and wants to know if you’re free for coffee and chaos next Thursday….
b&
I’ll wear my best tentacles!
The Cthulhu spawn are not water beings. It is trapped under there when all the cities were dragged under the sea. So no calls being made till the “stars are right.”
That may once have been true…but, you see, they’ve evolved since then…and not in any fashion that Darwin would have recognized, mind you, but Hollywood style.
b&
Sounds like the name of a dominatrix Cthulhu!
Like ships…passing in the night….
b&
Diana, meet Ben. Ben, Diana.
Sorry, I was trying to drown out the disco {hawk, spit} with a podcast about Anomalocaris. .. .. In Wales.?? Rewind.
Wow! 16k lenses in an Anomalocarid eye… “just cool animals”.
I’ve worked with Dave Marshall offshore -mad in a good sense – so I have no shame in advertising his (and others) Palaeocast podcasts at … it’s a short search. If you can fake enthusiasm, who needs adverts ? http://www.palaeocast.com/
Warning! Do not visit that link unless you’ve got a spare lifetime or three to listen to hours upon hours of podcasts….
b&
That’s the thing about audio podcasts – you can plug them into your ears and get on with other things while paying enough attention to go “what?”, then do a rewind and review (which isn’t an option when taking notes in lectures, meetings etc.)
You can just nudge the guy next to you, “psst what did he just say?” 😉
When I was in college I’d normally be the nudgee not the nudger. It made revision easier. If only I’d had more classmates of the nubile persuasion … but I suppose I did OK out of it. Bloody AIDS crisis coming along and ruining the fun.
Oh, another persistent use of a female suffix: dominatrix.
/@
Terminator had a terminatrix and I’ve read about gladiatrix too.
It’s grammatically valid, constructed from the genitive.
Oh, yes. But we were discussing a while ago on another page how “actress”, “executrix”, &c. were falling into disuse. Here, “dominator” just would not do.
/@
For LOLz I should start using “executrix”.
To quote somebody else’s sig from distant memory: “Welcome to the abode of the Donimatrix. There is no Spoonerism.”
b&
Would you rather have a well-oiled bicycle
or a well-boiled icicle?
I’ll take the bottle in front of me, if you don’t mind….
b&
“Take the Cash, and let the Credit go.”
– Omar Khayyam
Hmm. Now I’m curious. What is the age distribution of water molecules. How many have been water molecules for billions of years, and how many are from recent chemical reactions, and everywhere in between?
Another question I’ve always had along those lines – if practically all heavier elements are the results of supernovae, how many supernovae make up me (or anything else)?
To the Google.
As you note, it’s going to be a distribution.
Most hydrogen and helium is left over from the Big Bang, but non-trivial amounts of helium result from alpha decay, and anything that emits a proton…well, a free proton is, by definition, an hydrogen ion.
Trace amounts of lithium and other heavier elements were created in the Big Bang, but, save for that minor exception, it’s all the result of stellar nucleosynthesis.
But, the catch is…the heavier stuff generally doesn’t get made save in the presence of the lighter stuff. You’re not going to get much (if any) uranium out of a star that’s pure hydrogen and helium.
So, what happens, is the first generation of stars is just hydrogen and helium (and traces of lithium, etc.), and they create lighter elements like carbon and nitrogen and oxygen and more lithium and the like. When they go supernova, if they’re big enough to do that, they’re still nearly pure hydrogen (with a bit of helium), but now there’s a fair amount of these slightly-heavier elements in the debris that gets scattered in the explosion.
Given a long enough period of time, the debris from the first supernovae clumps. Again, it’s still mostly hydrogen, but with traces of heavier stuff. And when the clumps from the debris form second-generation stars, some of that heavier stuff gets fused into still heavier stuff that again gets scattered in a supernova explosion, again if the star is big enough to do that.
Re-do that a few more generations over the course of about eight billion years, and you get molecular clouds with compositions like the one that our own Sun coalesced from, with everything on the periodic table up to uranium in at least some trace quantity. (You get the transuranics, too, but they’ve all long since decayed away over the past few billion years.)
If I remember right, the Sun is something like fifth- or sixth-generation or so. But there’re astrophysicists who could give you much more precise and detailed answers, if you’re so interested….
b&
Two questions from someone too lazy to search the web:
1 If the sun is 5-6th generation, and is 4.5 billion years old, this would mean that, if the universe is 13.8 billion years old, each of the previous 4-5 generations were very short, on the order of 2 billion years each. Is this possible?
2. If star junk has been continually blown into interstellar space, why is it that nothing (significant) older than 4.5 billion years has found in meteorites or moon samples?
1. Not all stars go kaboom! Those that do are the big ones, the ones with lots of mass that form from larger molecular clouds. The bigger a star, the hotter it burns…and the shorter its lifespan and the more cataclysmic its death. It’s the tiny little stars that have the oldest lifespans in a long, slow, steady, cool burn.
2. Matter in the galaxy is both hugely spread out and moves largely in unison not unlike a solid disc. Indeed, that motion is the most significant reason how we know that dark matter is real, even if we still don’t know what it is. Regardless, there’s very little intrastellar migration of matter. It takes a lot of kinetic energy to reach escape velocity for a star, and the odds are rather against any random bit of space debris achieving such velocity…and, once it does, stars are so widely spaced that the odds are even more against it encountering another star system for quite some time. To top it all off, any it does encounter may well have formed from a similar generation of stars….
Cheers,
b&
Do I correctly remember reading somewhere that protons theoretically, eventually decay after a huge amount of time? (Maybe I dreamed it; don’t mind me.)
There is no mechanism by which protons decay in the Standard Model, and no proton has ever been observed to decay. The Standard Model is one of those overwhelmingly-successful theories that ain’t never gonna be overturned, just like heliocentricism and Darwin and the Periodic Table. However…the big question in physics right now is whether or not the Standard model is complete, and nobody thinks it is and everybody hopes it’s not. In some of the theories that hope to go beyond the Standard Model (in the same way that Quantum and Relativistic Mechanics go beyond Newtonian Mechanics), the proton would indeed decay.
So…if I had to hazard a guess, we likely won’t know if protons decay until we know how to reconcile gravity at both large and small scales. The good news is that there’re rumors that the good folks at CERN may already be seeing hints of physics beyond the Standard Model, and various astronomical observations may well have even more pieces of the puzzle….
b&
Enough of playing sophistic games with the word, theory.
Evolution, common ancestry, is a fact to the same extent that it is a fact that the earth orbits the sun. Both are evident to a degree that warrants belief.
Recurrent laryngeal nerve.
Oh that’s comedy gold: if we pretend they’re right they just might accept evolution! Yeah, that’ll work.
I am so damned tired of explaining evolutionary biology to people who cannot or will not understand science. I do not care if they sit in science class. I do not care if they go to college. For the life of me I have no idea what it means to concede. Let’s just all hold hands and agree that radiation decay rates have changed so dating is a farce? That god created everything with the appearance of age so what looks like evolution is just a trick? I might concede that two plus two is five with my four year old daughter because it makes no sense to argue with children and that is exactly what Wade is arguing for. FWIW I reviewed Undeniable on Amazon with three stars. There’s nothing new and it’s a kind of talkind head compendium. There are much better books. But I support any effort to put facts in front of people. That Wade detracts from that effort tells me he is more interested in popularity than accuracy.
I submit that we compromise with flat earthers and say the planet is actually the shape of a convex lens.
Well, that’s true!
/@
Exactly.
🙂 enjoyed my morning reading…
I don’t know whether a typo has occurred, or an excellent turn of phrase has just been Coyned, but I assume the latter, and shall henceforth strive to incorporate it into everyday conversation.
Jerry, regarding group selection, would you care to comment on this article about an experiment on group selection in spiders by Pruitt and Goodnight (2014)?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7522/abs/nature13811.html
I know little about biology. But based on the quotes and arguments that were made in the blog post, I thought some of it was unfair. One specific example here, Wade made the suggestion of compromising with creationists by teaching evolution as a ‘theory.’ The post was outraged by this, claiming that Wade does not appreciate what a scientific theory is. Yet, the non-highlighted parts of the Wade quotes in the post clearly suggest that Wade understood evolution as a theory as solid as gravity. His mentioning of using ‘theory’ as a way to compromise was just really an attempt to exploit the creationist misunderstanding of ‘theory’ against themselves, thereby allowing evolution to be taught in school.
I did enjoy the eukaryotic cell exposition, however.
This was nice. But I’m so tired of having to prove evolution. Unless the proof is that shrimp-thing with the proto-eye on its back. That’s damn cool. Or dinosaurs.
Anyway it sounds like Bill Nye, unlike Reza Aslan in his Jesus book, 1) acknowledges he is gathering up information from professional academics and just making it accessible; and 2) getting that information right and using up-to-date stuff. So a rating for Nye of 5 dinosaurs. And Aslan gets a rating of 4 naked emperors.
PS Because I’m disabled I use my computer’s dictation. Because of how I pronounce the common name for decent with modification my computer has created the exciting comic book character Eva Lucian! (I just dictated that!)