With all the ‘monkeying around’ that can go on in this thread, it seems we could easily be directly descended from monkeys! 🐵
This is the conjecture. Seems like a very counter intuitive means of progression. The intuitive part of it is that to make it work, you need a "helping hand" so to speak. Chances of success seem remotely fortunate. It also seems counter to the apparent hundreds of millions of years prior life forms had little trouble maintaining their status without the need for change.
I've tried to unpick the folowing from a variety of reference sources, so bear with me.
In the cyclic model, the large-scale structure of the universe is determined by a contraction phase that occurs before the Big Bang happens.
The concentration of energy during contraction is relatively small and thus the contraction would not produce large amplitude gravitational waves.
In contrast, in the Big Bang model, the large-scale structure of the universe is determined by the period of rapid expansion (inflation) that happens after (before?) the Big Bang. With inflation occurring at high energies, gravitational waves would have been produced at large amplitudes.
Therefore, an inflationary Big Bang will have produced primordial gravitational waves which still echo through the universe today. However, they will be much fainter and more difficult to detect than the gravitational waves which originate from colliding black holes and neutron stars.
It all sounds a bit hazy, but the bottom line is, if we can detect these primordial gravitational waves we can disprove the cyclic model of the universe.
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When you put all the universe matter and energy into a ping-pong ball sized "cracker" - the "big bara boom" will be hard to calculate. I dint think we got the physics for that. But inflation is for sure what we call the first phase of that boom. I could be that gravity is established here and its a wave that is pushed out in the universe forming the space - that wave front has no c limitation and has noting to reflect against so it might be an event that we can never "hear" - it has just passed. After this, matter is formed and distributed, driven by the gravitation field in place. And it all starts again 🙂
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It is counter intuitive - but then again, much of the natural world is profoundly counterintuitive and evolution does not need a helping hand. It’s certainly not viewed as conjecture by the people that study this stuff - and the DNA proves it because we can now trace back how organisms have developed (mutated/adapted) with very high degrees of certainty.
For the first 2 billion yrs of life on earth, there were only a few simple organisms that indeed showed little or no change. The reason was they didn’t have to change. There was nothing stressing them and they did not need to adapt. Sometime 1.2 to 1.5 billion years ago, an organism developed that was able to strip the carbon atoms off CO2 and release oxygen into the atmosphere and that changed the course of life on earth - it still took another billion years or more for the Cambrian explosion to take place after which the number of species explodes. I have read that the estimated number of species during all of Earth’s history is between 10 billion and 100 billion. Every single niche is filled because organisms find it easier to live there or they get pushed there. Along the way, millions die off, unable to adapt to environmental changes. The balance of life viewed over the long term is always precarious - nothing is permanent and even more so now that there are many orders of magnitude more species than there were 500 million yrs ago during the Cambrian explosion.
BTW we touched on this subject on the intelligent alien life discussion and it was pointed out that it takes billions of yrs for life to evolve into complex multi- cellular organisms and then hundreds of millions of years (provided the conditions are right and with a lot of luck) to get to anything remotely intelligent as we define it. The end destination of evolution is not intelligence. We are here by pure luck, the monkeys swinging in the trees and the fish swimming in the seas less so.
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It should be noted that Darwin did not use the noun 'evolution' to describe his theory when first published.
Before Darwin, the word evolution implied a predictable unfolding of possibilities.
Darwin's theory is based on variants which occur in an undirected way and then selected for or against by an environment that may also alter irregularly.
Evolution is not like a progression along a ladder.
Before Darwin, the word evolution implied a predictable unfolding of possibilities.
Darwin's theory is based on variants which occur in an undirected way and then selected for or against by an environment that may also alter irregularly.
Evolution is not like a progression along a ladder.
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What's to stop a creationist from declaring the universe was created today along with all the history, data and experiences we understand today (except of course the Bible). Not so different from the all outcomes exist simultaneously multivariate conjecture. I have been enjoying this thread for some time, but am quite a weakling compared to most of you regulars. Thanks for helping enlighten the likes of me.
I'm glad to hear that there are others out there who are enjoying the thread. 😎
If its any consolation, I'm also a weakling in regard to the majority of the topics discussed in this thread.
I have only a modest scientific background, and certainly don't claim to be an expert in cosmology!
This thread provides me with the opportunity and incentive to acquire new scientific knowledge and to share it with others.
Please continue to join in, we need the company!
This statement needs to be qualified.
So this is the crux of the argument and what I am hung up on. Of course it's reasonable to assume a progressive sequence of events to explain how life 'emerged' on Earth. But just what was the sequence? Where are the transitional fossils? It's easy to formulate a hypothesis to explain it but consider the fossil record, all neatly placed one above another. We have access to all of them and yet no gradual transitional examples of anything. A bit curious, no? No doubt the people who "study this stuff" are feverishly digging for it. I have no issue whatsoever in "Creationism" taking billions of years to come to fruition. There's no problem putting things into context. The problem with it is that those who seem to feel their views are being threatened tend to focus on the kooks, of which there are many, either singularily or more prominently on this topic, collectively.
I’ve explained to you in my earlier post why transitional fossils are so rare. Whole communities of organisms do not gradually drift to a new species. Instead, they all die out because of external factors save for a few that have some small, marginal genetic advantages that alow them to pass through the bottleneck, adapt further and then prosper until the next catastrophe impinges upon their existence. Genetic diversity within a population is key to it being able to adapt.
I understand the school of thought. That still doesn't reconcile the fact there are actually no transitional fossils, not even one sequence. We have yet to observe the incremental progressive fossil record over millennia of just one creature, never mind the rest.
Oops!
That was a 'missing link'. 😀
Here it is: https://www.thoughtco.com/about-tra...e hypotheses as to how fast evolution happens.
That was a 'missing link'. 😀
Here it is: https://www.thoughtco.com/about-tra...e hypotheses as to how fast evolution happens.
There are still things to settle regarding evolution.
Darwin believed that evolutionary changes happened slowly, or gradually, over very long periods of time. This view is called "Gradualism".
There are scientists who believe that change happens very rapidly with long periods of stability and no change in between. This view is called "Punctuated Equilibrium". In this view, the driving force of change is some sort of change in the environment that necessitates a need for quick change.
Both views look to the fossil record for support. However the fact that there are many "missing links" in the fossil record lends evidence to the view that there really aren't any intermediate forms and that large changes happen suddenly.
https://www.thoughtco.com/patterns-of-macroevolution-1224823
Darwin believed that evolutionary changes happened slowly, or gradually, over very long periods of time. This view is called "Gradualism".
There are scientists who believe that change happens very rapidly with long periods of stability and no change in between. This view is called "Punctuated Equilibrium". In this view, the driving force of change is some sort of change in the environment that necessitates a need for quick change.
Both views look to the fossil record for support. However the fact that there are many "missing links" in the fossil record lends evidence to the view that there really aren't any intermediate forms and that large changes happen suddenly.
https://www.thoughtco.com/patterns-of-macroevolution-1224823
I think this sort of thinking falls into a trap. You want ONE THEORY that explains EVERYTHING. 🙄
Foolishness, IMO. Consider the Strange Case of the Mediterrainean Elephant. These Creatures used to live on isolated Islands South of Italy about 10,000 years ago. We know this because Bones have been found.
How Big were they? Not as Big as you think. About 4 foot high! About the size of a Sheep.
So why are African and Indian Elephants so BIG these days? Think Lions and Tigers. A predator thinks twice about taking on something bigger than it is, even if it is a creature of a normally gentle nature. 😀
There were no Lions or Tigers on those Mediterrainean Islands. Evolution is partly driven by stress.
Foolishness, IMO. Consider the Strange Case of the Mediterrainean Elephant. These Creatures used to live on isolated Islands South of Italy about 10,000 years ago. We know this because Bones have been found.
How Big were they? Not as Big as you think. About 4 foot high! About the size of a Sheep.
So why are African and Indian Elephants so BIG these days? Think Lions and Tigers. A predator thinks twice about taking on something bigger than it is, even if it is a creature of a normally gentle nature. 😀
There were no Lions or Tigers on those Mediterrainean Islands. Evolution is partly driven by stress.
But in all fairness - it all co-exists and works together so there must be a way to describe all this in a coherent way. It may not be possible in a single equation but require an equation system - so be it - that's nice to. Sabine says "beautiful" and/or symmetric... is not necessarily to be expected 😉
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There aren’t any that can easily be found, because remember they are likely to be a few individuals out of a very large population.
I have a feeling if we ever meet an ugly alien, they're going to realize just how ugly they are after a gander at us.
Which brings me to the point of the fact we are actually beautiful( I mean the Planet as a whole including all it's parts). Now might that be an evolutionary strategy for survival?
There are many vectors involved in evolution. Evolutionary drift does take place. I listen to a podcast called ’The Common Descent’ where they discuss this stuff. One example is how species that become isolated on islands shrink in size. They give the of the Sicilian rhinoceros (became extinct about 40k yrs ago) that shrinks from a horse sized animal to a dog size in 200 k yrs before finally vanishing. So, there isn’t one kind of evolutionary path that explains everything - it’s very complicated and evolution does not look for the optimum solution - just one that works.
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