By - Brett Vollert


They tumble through the blackness of space; frozen and isolated.  Their solar systems have abandoned them and the light from the star that gave them birth fades into the void of interstellar space.  Perhaps this journey began with tragedy.  A distant world in turmoil.  It's inhabitants scrambling to save their oasis of life from an impending collision.  But to no avail.  And from the ashes of this scattered world falls a freeze dried microcosm; a comet carrying with it the remains of its parent planet.  And it is headed for Earth.  Not an Earth we would recognize; instead a young and barren Earth.  The Sun slowly melts the comet's frozen skin during its approach; extending a tail 500 million kilometers long behind the solid nucleus.  The impact is just one of many during this adolescence of planet Earth.  The first billion years of our planet's existence are a violent chaos as it clears our orbit of floating debris left scattered from the explosion of a dying star.  But this comet is from an alien system and it brings with it the building blocks of life.  Seeding this new world with the ingredients of "us."  A first step in our long journey; a journey wrought with time.  It was not the blink of the eye or a flash of light that then gave rise to all of humanity.  It was the deep breath of a perfect storm, building to crescendo.  This is the theory of Panspermia and this is our modern day creation myth.




Sacrilegious and blasphemous as it may seem, this theory has actually been around longer than most religions.  First proposed in the 5th century BC by the greek philosopher Anaxagoras, a thinker far ahead of his time.  However, the idea took the support of the modern astronomers Sir. Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe to once again gain momentum; along with the help of some ground breaking experiments and discoveries.

We are still visited by extraterrestrial debris quite frequently, exemplified by the recent meteorite that exploded over Russia and the near miss fly by of asteroid 2012 DA14 that soon followed.  Many of these asteroids carry with them complex organic molecules and even amino acids.  Amino acids are the links in the protein chains and often referred to of as the building blocks of life.  Many astrobiologists claim these amino acids are suggesting that life could have been present elsewhere in the universe.  This is very similar to seeing the skattered parts of a machine and assuming that the machine had once been operational elsewhere.  But no machine is equal to the sum of its parts.  We needed to eliminate all doubt, we needed to leave earth.

NASA's Deep Impact mission was on a collision course with comet 9P/Temple.  The United States had launched a spacecraft whose sole purpose was to crash into a comet and study it's structure and composition.  This is yet another example of the childlike souls of scientists who simply want to break something apart and see what is inside.  When the craft collided at 23,000 miles per hour the immense debris cloud proved to contain a large amount of water and organic compounds.  Many speculated that Deep Impact had found a starter kit for life in that comet but this mission was far to violent to find life itself.  The less suicidal mission named Rosetta will attempt to instead land safely on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in May 2014.  This mission will be able to give us a more precise idea of what a comet is chemically and allow us to witness any chemical reactions, biological or non-biological, that might be taking place on these bodies.

Recent research on meteorites from Antartica and the famous Muchinson meteorite at NASA Goddard has found that amino acids aren't the only things found on comets. Nucleobases (adenine and guanine) are contaminating the solar system as they hitchhike upon comets.  These nucleobases are key molecules involved in the structure of DNA and are more foundational to life than even amino acids.  If amino acids are the building blocks of life, then these nucleobases are the letters in the instruction manual.  But the building blocks of life cannot be mistaken for evidence of life itself and the presence of these letters is not the same as having a ordered sentence.  In fact, this study confirmed the irrationality of that assumption.  Many of the nucleobases discovered are not found in any biological system, which suggests that either there is some strange life that formed them or that these compounds formed in a non-biological fashion.  The latter seemed more likely after laboratory experiments proved that a similar mix of organic molecules can be produced through reactions involving hydrogen cyanide.  This evidence convinced the team of NASA scientists that the compounds found were most likely not biological in origin but were instead produced by chemical reactions on the comet.  So this is not our falling microcosm of a once living planet.  However, this study still remarkably proves that meteorites can transport both the building blocks of proteins and DNA!  Even without the understanding of how those materials can independently materialize into a living organism, we now know that they were at least present for that mysterious event.

  

But what if I told you that all of life is left-handed?  That while the universe may have a mix of right and left-handed amino acids, our bodies only function using the left.  This might be the largest hurdle for the theory of panspermia to overcome.  All amino acids appear in these two mirror image forms.  Essentially the atoms in the molecules are the same but arranged in a mirror image pattern.  The forms are chemically identical, almost impossible to isolate and when an organism dies the left handed amino acids start to spontaneously convert back to a one to one ratio through a process called racemization.  It is as if life itself is characterized by this left-handedness, so much so that we can even use this process to date deceased organisms.

Scientists were befuddled by this affinity for the left-handed versions of amino acids in life, but once again a clue fell from the skies, this time above British Columbia's Tagish Lake in 2000.  This meteor contained two amino acids used in life, asparic acid and alanine.  The asparic acid had a 4:1 ratio towards the left-handed conformation while alanine had almost a completely even distribution.  Scientists theorized that this increased left-handedness of asparic acid was from a crystallization that organized the molecules into one conformation.  This left-handed excess could then have been exploited by the precursors of life to form functional proteins and organisms.  Biologists have proven that life can function as left or right handed entity, so the affinity for left handedness seems to have been due to a 50-50 chance.  This is just another factor that needs to be just right for life to exist, dropping the probability of life's spontaneous conception.

Tardirade

 
So perhaps life instead came to earth already fully functional, ignoring the fact that this life still had to coalesce on another world.  But could life survive the vacuum and radiation of space?   In 2007, the space shuttle Endeavor carried a unique passenger.  The tardigrade, commonly known as the water bear, was exposed to the vacuum of space.  These microscopic organisms were known to be able to enter a state of suspended animation in extreme conditions and then reasume functionality once the conditions have normalized.

The tardigrade lived up to its title as "the hardiest animal on earth" as it ventured out past the thin blue line of earths atmosphere out into the harsh emptiness of space.  Out in that black abyss it survived in hibernation and upon its return to earth the water bear once again came to life.  Perhaps, organisms like this water bear are the colonizers of the universe.  Hitchhiking their way to new worlds and spreading the infection of life.

And new worlds are discovered every day.  The Kepler satellite has scanned the skies and already found hundreds of earth-like planets.  The study has confirmed that almost all sun-like stars host orbiting planets.  With 200 billion stars in our galaxy and around 200 billion galaxies in the known universe, it seems that there is no short supply of homes for life.

If the theory of panspermia is true, than the universe might not be distant and disconnected.  Instead, it might be a living network; a hive of interplanetary relatives.
 


   










Deep Impact:
http://discovery.nasa.gov/impact.cfml

DNA in Meteorites: 

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/dna-meteorites.html

Left-handed Amino Acids:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/life-turned-left.html

Kepler:
http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=244

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130215.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130214.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20130103.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20121206.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/epoxi/hartley-2.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/epoxi/epoxi20110616.html

by - Brett Vollert


     Sadly, the human mind has an limited knowledge capacity.  So why then do our schools continue to waste student's valuable brain power on outdated paradigms and extinct scientific rationale?  Without even qualifying these dated lessons as science history or as a step in the progress of science we are building scientific scaffolding in the minds of our young students that leads them to build a incorrect view of our world, and even more frightening  it could prevent our future generations from being able to progress our scientific understanding.


     I will consent with Newton's sentiment that, "we stand on the shoulders of giants," but even Newton himself formulated most of his theories by inventing entirely new types of mathematics and physical theory.  Many scientific advances are not linear steps in scientific progress.  In fact, the most astounding discoveries of all time have contradicted conventional science and disproved a history's worth of thinkers.  Einstein's Annus Mirabilis papers, which revolutionized the world of physics, had exactly zero references.  Einsteins descriptions of special and general relativity,  Brownian motion, the photo-electric effect, and matter-energy equivalence all simply end after he finishes his arguments.  There is no bibliography or cited sources because he had none.  His thought was original yet contradictory to the modern thought of that day.  This was the type of discovery that invoked comments like, "after this every textbook in america will need to be changed."  But they didn't change the books.  Most students still learn study gravity as a Newtonian force rather tha as an warping of space-time.  And similarily, many people still believe there is a distinct difference between matter and energy even though E=MC^2 is probably the most famous equation of all time.  Some may argue that these concepts are too complicated for our students to understand, but that might be a assessment warped by the pre-conditioned minds of our educators.

      Another area struggling to break apart the scaffolding of a aged paradigm is particle physics.  No better example of the loss of understanding due to an aged model of reality is there than the classroom explanation of the atom.  In almost every classroom across the country the atom is described as a "mini solar system," with the nucleus (made of protons and neutrons)  in the middle and electrons spinning around it.  I have seen many people stumble over this model because it makes them ask the wrong questions.  They then ask why the atom is mostly empty space or if they could stick their hand into an atom if they were that size of perhaps they ask if we can determine the path of the electron and how fast it is going.  These questions are only useful in that they expose the inaccuracy of this model of the atom because this model makes people think of the atom in terms of solid objects and Newtonian motion.  Instead, the atom is ruled by quantum mechanics.  Quantum Mechanics does not operate like the physical world at our level, there is uncertainty of location and momentum, particles are constantly popping in and out of existence and they are often refereed to as realms of possibility rather that definite objects.  Quantum physics also tells us that electrons, protons and neutrons aren't even the building blocks of matter but instead there are things called quarks, which come in pairs of 3's are considered the foundational building blocks of matter.  The award winning physicist, Sean Carroll, says that the main reason many people struggle with particle physics is because of the name itself.  Physics at the very small scale is more about fields than particles and it the excitement of these fields that we call particles.  Without understanding physics in this manner we run into infinities and misunderstanding.  Perhaps if students were introduced to this type of thinking from their introduction to the subject, they would have a easier time understanding its principles.  And with this foundational understanding, perhaps these students will grow up to make the new greatest discoveries of human history.

Sean Carroll- From Particles to People

     We could be robbed of these discoveries if we continue "dumb down" complicated topics to make them more accessible or enjoyable.  How much more enjoyable and truer would a classroom be that aimed to teach students the cutting edge?  Not to say that students will be able to understand everything out at the edge but at lest the fundamental truths of that frontier can be conveyed.  Evolution brings us another example.  Most students are taught that evolution by natural selection is a force that works on the scale of organisms.  However, any biologist working on the edge of this frontier would tell you that the most accepted view among their peers is that natural selection works on the level of genes.  Richard Dawkins tried to make this point very clear with his book, " The Selfish Gene."  But still, we can hear the echoes of students reciting Charles Darwin's catchphrase, "survival of the fittest."  What incredible depth of understanding could we reach if we simply added one word at the end to make the phrase, "survival of the fittest gene?"

    I cant even count how many times in school I was forced to learn the long method for solving a problem or I was discouraged from arriving at an answer in a improper manner.  And while there is merit in learning of how we arrived at the answers we now have, there might be more utility in understanding where we are now.  I remember taking calculus in high school and my professor told me about how if we continued to pursue mathematics we might one day learn Einstien's theory that proposed that time travel is possible.  I was excited but also upset becuase I was taught that time was a constant my whole life.  I was enamered with the idea that time could be slowed or sped up but confused why I hadn't been told sooner.  These are the ideas that inspire our youth, the edge where science fiction becomes science fact.  All young sientists dream about these ideas and we should encourage them like we did in the days of apollo that brought a intelectual revolution to our whole world.  As for me, I dream that we will once again be a society that teters on that jagged edge of fact and fiction.

    The problem with proving the theory of multiple universes is that these universes are inherently not apart of our own.  Due to this seemingly obvious fact, designing and tediously carrying out experiments in our universe have failed to detect anything beyond it.  But still our great minds ponder a bubbling foam of multiple universes.  Our whole universe trapped inside only one of these many bubbles.   Perhaps we will soon decipher a method for crossing through the thin skin of our cosmic bubble.  Just maybe we will travel through the space between space and find ourselves to be but one of a multitude of different worlds.

    But for now the idea of multiple parallel universes is entirely theoretical and mathematical.  Quantum theory suggests these hidden worlds with cornerstone principles such as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Bells Theorem of Non-locality and Quantum Retroactive Causality.  There seems to be something nonsensical at the base of matter.  Something that acts in probabilities and not actualities, something caught between worlds.  And that something builds upon itself to form our world.  It clumps together to afford us our daily lives.  Their probabilities get lost in their combined immensity, but on a individual scale these particles are still caught between worlds.  And so theories like the popular String Theories (Often called as a collection "M Theory") explain this behavior with multiple dimensions and paralleled universes.  Many of these theories are brilliant mathematically.  However, the beauty of science is that no matter how elegant the mathematics or logical the argument; something is not true until it has been proven experimentally.  And since there are no experiments that have even been proposed to prove this theory, we are left to live in a world of wonder.  Could there be other worlds out there?  Not across the vastness of space but beyond space itself.  It is as if we reach out to grab it and it slides through our fingers, like grasping for the wind.

     The Anthropic Principle takes this theory of multiple universes and uses it to explain the fine tuning of our universe.  The fine tuning being the precision of the elements needed for life to exist on our planet; the enormity of factors that had to be just right for our existence.  How is it that our universe be the one with such precise tuning?  The Anthropic Principle states that this question is flawed because it can only be asked by a life source that inherently must live in a finely tuned universe.  The problem is the source of the question.  No such question would arise in any of the multitudes of universes that could not sustain life.  So in the same breath of this question we are also proclaiming its answer.  We are here because if we were not, you would not have even wondered why.

(Richard Dawkins --- The Anthropic principle)

   Any student schooled in logical fallacies might call this argument, "circular reasoning," and they may even be right.  The argument does seem to dance around the issue.  But we must remember it is based on the assumption of a infinite amount of universes.  This is not a theory proven true.  But if there were infinite amount of universes, there would be some lucky ones out there that could foster life.  If this then is the case, it does seem foolish for the inhabitants of those universes to question why they are so lucky.  Random chance has no why, there is no mind behind a roll of the dice.  They are a inevitability of a infinity of possibilities.  We may ask this question with some hope for a purpose or as a search for the security of design, but the many worlds theory robs us of that.  Perhaps if this theory proves true we can take solace in the wonder of a infinite frontier.  But I doubt we will ever stop asking why.  Nor should we.  It may just have been what was keeping us alive so long.

     Here is where I branch off from real "feet on the ground" science and back into science-fiction; however, I prefer to think of it as logical philosophy.  If there are these branching universes, and they allow for a infinite amount of possibilities, then how does our consciousnesses steer through these forks in the road?  We can imagine ourselves as navigating a continually branching pathway, the universe we live in is one winding path in this sea of possibilities; constantly choosing to go down one road or the next, even if we might not feel a turn.  Is it random chance that determines which universe we are in, or is there someone in the drivers seat?  Is there some driving force that guides us?  And are the versions of ourselves in the other universe even us?  There might have been one universe where I died on the way to work today, another where I die at age 80 after a long and fruitful existence, and possibly (if there are truly a infinite amount of universes) there is one where I don't die at all.  To clarify, this may not be something I believe or even want to believe but we must follow the assumption of multiple universes to its logical end.  If time travel to the past is possible, then it suggests parallel universes to avoid paradoxes.  If these universes are numerous, even unlikely events are possible, but if these universes are infinite, anything that is possible is inevitable.  So, then I am brought back to my original question:  which universe do I live in?

     This is now a much more personal question, for no one else can come with you on this journey.  If we are continuously branching off into different universes, then so are our friends, family, and acquaintances.  We can only live and experience from within our own individual perspective.  With every random event we leave version of ourselves and others behind for a new world.  This thought reminds me of the movie "The Prestige."  In this movie a magician clones himself every night before a crowd of adoring fans.  Every night one version of himself falls into a tank of water that is sealed shut with chains and then covered in a veil.  Unbeknownst to the crowd, this clone inevitably drowns behind the veil.  Meanwhile, the other version of the magician arises from the back of the room to surprise the masses and claim his glory.  When finally discovered, the magician lamented that every day he would flip the switch and wonder; would he be the man in the water?  Or the man being applauded?  But every night that he flipped the switch he found himself lucky, lucky to be the man alive.  Spending a few moments to think, one realizes that this is not luck, but instead a logical conclusion.  Who else could this man be besides the one that survived?  If he was not, the interrogator would have been speaking to a glass container filled with water and one very dead magician.  So then, which version of myself would I be in this infinity of universes?  The one that survives.  In some sense, this Anthropic theory of everything alludes to a fountain of youth that has been right before us since the beginning of life itself.  That each of us will live forever in our own separate timelines.  That we will be as immortal islands separated by the branching of worlds.


-by: Brett Vollert

 


       Time is such a familiar mystery.  We boast ourselves intimately acquainted but with one question we are at a loss, straining to describe the face of a stranger. What is time?  Einstein describes time as, "the reason things don't happen all at once," even though at times it seems that they do.  However, many people are dissatisfied with such a simplified explanation (and frankly so was Einstein) .  Scientifically, time is most often described as a measure of change, in a closed system this net change is always from ordered to disordered.  For a system to go from configuration A to configuration B, it will have to travel a distance through time to allow for change to occur.  A description of this type, explains time as having distances or durations and spawns the idea that time is also a dimension.  Not a dimension like the 3 spacial dimensions we are very familiar with in our physical world, but instead a temporal dimension.  A dimension in time.  However, Einstein also proved with his theory of general relativity that time and space are linked and that our universe can be thought of as a web of space-time.  Einsteins theory also showed that time itself is effected by the warping of space-time by mass (coined time dilation).  The most common example of this effect in real life is the global positioning system satellites (GPS).  These satellites need to be calibrated with atomic clocks regularly or they would be inaccurate by miles a day!  This is because at the high altitudes they are less effected by the mass of the earth and their clocks actually tick faster in orbit.  The remarkable part of this discovery is that it proved that time is not a static, unchanging entity.  Instead, time was proven to be highly malleable and with enough mass or energy it could be sped up, stopped, or possibly even reversed.  And so the topic of time travel has drifted away from fantasy world of science-fiction and into the very real realm of science-fact.

Stephen Hawking explains: Time Dilation

       So according to Einstein, there are two things that effect time, mass and speed.  Time passes slower near more mass or with more speed; and conversely, time moves faster near less mass and with less speed.  Immediately this shows that time travel to the future is possible.  Theoretically, if we had enough energy, we could send a spaceship away from the earth close to the speed of light.  Traveling this fast, time would slow for the space travelers but time would move much quicker back on earth.  When these space travelers returned, they would return to a world much further into the future than their trip should have allowed.  Depending on how fast they traveled, this world could be days,  years, or even centuries into the future.  Einstein imagined two twins, one that shot off into space and the other that stayed on earth.  When the space traveler returned, his twin would be an old man but it would have been only a short trip for the still young rocket brother.  The same slowing of time could be done by closely circling a black hole or any other object with a large mass.  However, this would be a one way trip because while we may be able to slow the rate of time or speed it up comparably, the arrow of time is always pointing in a future direction and travel to the past seems unreachable.  This would explain why we are not frequently visited by future time travelers. However, there are a few hypothesized ways to reverse the arrow of time and travel into the past.
       The most common method suggested for time travel is an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, which is most commonly referred to as a worm hole.  This is essentially a tear in the fabric of space-time, a portal to a different place and time.  This idea spawned from the study of black holes but is strictly theoretical because a portal like this would require an enormous amount of energy (energy on the order of stars and galaxies) and the gravity involved would most likely rip a time traveler apart atom by atom through a process properly coined, spaghettification.  So in order for this backward time travel to work, a person would have to be shielded from the gravitational forces and the portal would also have to be stable enough for it to remain open at a large enough size for a traveler to cross through.

   
      It is not mathematically impossible to travel to the past, so perhaps our understanding is simply too juvenile at this point to accomplish backward time travel.  And just maybe, one day, we will have advanced enough technology to make this dream a reality.  Perhaps we should utilize forward time travel until we reach a civilization that has mastered backward time travel.  But what then?  What precautions must we take before leaping into the past, and what ramifications will this discovery have on our understanding of the world.  We all remember from the movie "Back to the Future"  that most important thing we want to make sure we do not to do is anything that could possibly prevent us from ever being born (like killing your grandfather or preventing your parents from meeting).  However, if you were foolish enough to kill your grandfather you would inevitably create a paradox.  Because by killing your grandfather you cause yourself to not exist.  But then if you do not exist,  who killed your grandfather?  This "grandfather paradox" is the reason that Stephen Hawking, along with many other scientists, do not believe time travel to the past is possible.  This notion is based on two assumptions: that there is only one universe, and that it acts logically.  Most research, barring quantum mechanics, points towards a logical universe.  But as I stated earlier, according to logical math, time travel is possible in both directions.  The way theorists explain away this issue of paradoxes is by suggesting that there is not just one universe but instead that there are many parallel universes and that when you travel back in time you are also traveling into a different universe, or a different timeline.  One can then imagine that there are a infinite amount of these universes and possibly these universes are all branching out and splitting like forks in the river of time or branches on a tree.  Each branch slightly different from another, infinite possibilities and infinite diversity.  (I will speak more about Multiple Universes in my next post)  However, these extra universes are very hard to prove because any experimentation in this universe would not directly effect them.  Because of this, extra dimensions are only spoken about in theory by primarily string theorists who have been scratching their heads for more than 30 years now.

      Possibly we fail to be able to move backward in time because we fail to understand times role biologically because physically time should not have a definite direction.  Our limitation in time travel then might be a biological one.  Perhaps, we are stuck in this one way trip because of our minds.  Like all things in this universe, all information we collect is done through the filter of our minds.  There is still so much we dont understand about how our minds work.  The human brain is truly a complex machine, a machine that is bound by the laws of thermodynamics.  It seems the mind is born a blank slate and then slowly grows and develops memories and functions.  But how does the mind do this when the laws of thermodynamics require order to decrease in the forward direction of time?  It does so by expending energy and doing work to create an ordered network in the mind.  Memories are then formed in the forward direction of time because of this formation of cells that create neural synapses.  So we are slaves to our minds.  Trapped on this journey by their structure.

    So then why does it seem that only events in the past can affect those in the future and never the other way around?  Again this may be a trick of the mind.  We are so sure of free will.  So sure that our choice is our own, that we can change the world.  On a cultural and philosophical level this paradigm is assuring but it does not seem to agree with our physical understanding of the world.  Physically the world is predictable at the scale of humans.  That is to say that with enough understanding an calculation a outcome of a physical interaction is predictable.  The firings of the human mind do not suggest anything different.  Perhaps the future is just as set in stone as our past, just that in this moment our brains lack the structure to know it.

Darwinius masillae holotype fossil (46 Million Years Old)

  "I am not a monkey and my grandfather was not a monkey so how could evolution be real?"  This statement might seem ridiculous to some and yet this sort of misunderstanding of evolution is found throughout society.  Perhaps it is the expansive temporal scale of evolution that is leading to so many misconceptions and false ideas.  Or maybe there are too many cultural barriers that are obstructing its progress.  Either way, I thought I would take this opportunity to to address Seven Misconceptions of Evolution:

1. Humans evolved from monkeys, so why are there still monkeys:   

    Humans did not evolve from modern day monkeys.  Instead, humans and modern day monkeys both evolved from a common ancestral species who was definitely monkey-like, but not at all the same as modern day monkeys.  From this common ancestor we see a split in the evolutionary road, some of these roads lead to modern day monkeys and other species of primates, and one of them leads to Homo Sapiens, modern man.  So instead of thinking of Apes as our evolutionary fathers, we should then view them as our cousins from a very ancient common ancestor.  Example of one of our common ancestors link


2. We have no evidence of speciation (one species evolving into another):  

    Actually....Yes we do, there are multiple cases in both plants and animals where we have seen speciation events where one species evolves into a completely separate species in the modern age.  (examples: Cichlid fish, Rhagoletis pomonella, goatsbeard plants, Epilobium angustifolium: Speciation examples.)  But what is a species?  Most people who ask for this type of evidence are unknowingly unfamiliar with this term.  A species is most commonly classified as a organism that can interbreed and create viable offspring in a non-laboratory environment.  This definition does not require large physical differences that can be evaluated with visual cues.  Many species have close evolutionary relatives and look very similar but cannot interbreed with and thus they are different species.  So what these skeptics really want to see  is something like a fish turning into a monkey in modern times.  This is a misconception that stems from a inability to grasp the large timeline of evolution.  For large scale evolutionary change to take place time is needed, on the scale of millions of years.  Life has been evolving on planet earth for 4 billion years and it has had a lot of time to change and evolve.  Luckily, we do have the fossil record to show us transitional stages between species and the vast diversity of life.  List of Transitional Fossils


3. Evolution denies the existence of a creator:  

     First of all, there is no clause in evolution that denies the evidence of a creator.  Evolution simply outlines a theory that can most accurately describe the observed changes in biological history.  Same as how the theory of gravity (Newtonian and Einsteinian) does not deny God made the cosmos because it can accurately describe the birth and death of stars and the formation of galaxies.  The strength of a theory depends on its ability to describe phenomena and be backed by evidence both experimentally and observation-ally.  Using this criteria, evolution does prove to be a very strong theory based on evidence and is very helpful when making predictions and explaining events.  This is not to say that evolution could not be a mechanism of God's creation.  In fact, it might be more profound and truer to suggest that God created us using the unchanging and steadfast laws of nature that are such a great reflection of God himself.

Bill Nye "the science guy" Perspective:

4. We do not know how life began so then evolution must be wrong:  

    It is true that science is still at a loss for exactly how life began.  We do see the building blocks for life (amino acids) throughout the universe and the elements of life are among the most common in the universe. (H, O, C, N)  So the materials of life are not rare, but the configuration of these materials to form an organism does seem relatively rare.  Seeing as there is only one known planet that harbors life.  And so there are many theories for how life first formed (none with definitive evidence): some suggest it to be a eventuality of complex chemistry, some state it to be pure luck, and some even proclaim that life carries with it the necessity of a intelligent creator.  Whatever the right answer for this question is, the misconception here is that evolution is dependent on which of these is correct.  Evolution describes the behavior of living organisms over time, not the initial creation of life itself.  We similarly do not know exactly how matter and energy came to be, but we still have theories (even laws) that describe the behavior of that same matter and energy. However life first formed does not matter to evolution.  But once life did arrive, it seems evolution arrived with it.

See: Seven Theories of How Life Began

5.  Complex structures, like the eye, are too complex to evolve in one stage and the parts would have no benefit to be selected for:  

    Yes there are many complex structures throughout biology.  The eye is a great example of this.  And for each part of the eye to evolve, the genes that brought forth each part individually had to give some advantage to the organism as a whole.  An advantage that allows it to better pass on these genes.  What we forget is that a trait can be a addition or a subtraction from a structure.  For a building to be built, there must be a scaffolding that is first erected that gives stability and functionality to the structure.  Once it is complete this scaffolding can be removed.  In many cases in evolution it can be theorized that a scaffolding allowed for a complex structure to be built that still gave the organism a distinct advantage.  In the case of the eye, light sensitive cells were definitely a advantage, allowing organisms to orient themselves or even seek out heat.  Later came the focusing of this light through some rudimentary device, that was then removed as the lens of our eyes became the prominent mode of focusing light.  We see many different levels of complexity of eyes throughout the animal kindgom and the fossil record that point to a gradual evolution of this complex structure through addition and subtraction of components.  Evolution can change structures, re-utilize structures, or even take structures away completely.  The only rule is that the trait must promote the proliferation of that gene in the given population.

6. Humans are the pinnacle of evolution:  

     I hate to stomp on the ego of man but we are far from perfect.  If we were, we wouldn't be so preoccupied battling disease, starvation, and war.  A main principle of evolution is that there is no end goal, it is not traveling in any specific direction.  Clearly humans are dominant at this time on our planet and it is easy to conjecture that we are a superior species.  But drop one of us in the Jurassic period or in a early earth before the ozone was formed and quickly we seem much less equipped for survival.  This is because evolution only works to generate species that are best adapted for their current environment.  And since environments are constantly changing, so are species.  Yes, there are some traits (possibly intelligence or population cooperation) that a case can be made for their advantages in any environment but even still, their definition and biological utility is constantly changing.  It seems as though evolution is in the nature of biology itself and it's forces will always be felt in living populations.  However, it is a mysterious force and our own preconceptions of progress and goal oriented mechanisms can often get in the way of our understanding.

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson calls some aspects of human anatomy, "Stupid Design."

7. Why aren't organisms still evolving?:   

      One of the biggest hurdles when trying to understand evolution is the vastness of the time scales involved.  It is very difficult for people to understand what a million years means,  let alone hundreds of millions of years.  These amounts of time are not experienced in our lives and yet even in our lifetimes we do see change.  We see adaptation in organisms, we see changes in some species' physical appearance, and (as I stated earlier) we can even see speciation events in our lifetimes.  So then, we can extrapolate these changes over the large evolutionary timeline and see that life is in fact still evolving.  Though it might be a small rate of change, the amount of time involved is so staggering that small changes can give rise to incredible transformation and diversification.


-by: Brett Vollert

Homo Futurus: A Challenge to Darwinian Thinking

(documentary on the evolutionary past of humanity and its future through a unique posible counter-darwinian mechanism)

    There is a lot of misinformation out there so let's set the record straight before we all start running for the hills.  Because after a few ridiculous blockbuster movies and  some thought-provoking history channel documentaries we are now a society closely approaching a highly anticipated date.  The Mayan calender known as the long count will end its 13th baktun (a period of 144,000 days) which marks the end of the first "Great Cycle" on December 21, 2012.  There are questions on the accuracy of this date due to the calendar not accounting for leap years, however the issue of leap year only plays a role in calendars that count years.  This calendar simply counts days and is independent of the solar year.  The Mayans have just been counting the sunrise and sunset for thousands and thousands of days.  Perhaps the misconception has stemmed from use of the word calendar and the Mayan Long Count is more of a day recorder.  None the less, it has been recording for something like 1.8 million days since the beginning of the first baktun (August 11, 3113 BCE).  And on December 21 of this year the calendar will reach 1,872,000 days, the day recorder will reset, and we will enter into the 14th baktun.  The number 13 was considered a holy number by the Mayans who thought there to be 13 levels of heaven, thus the "Great Cycle" comprises of 13 baktuns.

   So that is what the Mayan Long count "is," but what did the end of this "Great Cycle" actually mean to the  ancient Mayans?  To see time as the Mayans did we have to strip away the prejudices and preconceptions of our Western thought.  Western man sees time as linear, it begins at some point and ends at another.  However, the Mayans saw time as cyclical; what has happened in the past will happen again and time is comprised of looping events.  Their culture makes no claims that the end of the world occurs when the "Great Cycle" ends in 2012.  Instead, it is the turning over into a new era, a period of change and renewal, which has been speculated as meaning that this world must be destroyed for a new one to begin.  This is not necessarily the case.  We see similar renewing mentalities in our own culture each January when our calender resets and the gyms are swarmed by new years resolutioners.  What we don't see is people worried the world is going to end every year on December 31st.  At least not sane people because it is simply the beginning of a new cycle around the sun.

    But all ancient Mayan cultural speculative significance aside, why would we trust a ancient civilization to predict the end of the world in the first place?  Where does this confidence in their astronomical and temporal predictions come from?  To their credit, the Mayans were in fact great astronomers for their time, thought to be obsessed with the happening of the stars.  Without a sextant or any modern technology, they were able to predict lunar events within seconds 1,500 years into the future and they also very accurately charted the orbits of planets, such as Mercury,  Mars and Venus.  The Mayans are also thought to have predicted the alignment of the earth, the sun and the center of the Milky Way galaxy on December 12 of 2012.  Some have suggested that this alignment will invoke gravitational effects that could throw the earth off its axis or even out of orbit. And while the gravitational effects of this alignment are mathematically negligible, there is a easier way to prove this theory wrong.  The Earth, the Sun, and the center of the galaxy will align on that day, that much the doomsday theorists have gotten right.  But what often is overlooked is that this alignment occurs EVERY YEAR on December 21, which is known as the winter solstice.  And since we have survived every previous winter solstice, our past suggests we will also survive this one.  There are also many other fabricated theories on alignments of planets which will cause the planets to waver off their orbits.  These are simply not true, there is no special alignments of planets on 12/21/12, and the only significant sources of gravity on the earth are the Sun and the Moon.

December 21, 2012...Just Another Day

NASA Jet Propulsion Lab

   Doomsday 2012 advocates will tell you that the precision of Mayan astronomy must have been influenced by gods or aliens because their knowledge is too great for their time period.  Also that these aliens shared with the Mayans their knowledge of the universe and even told them the date of the end of the world (a idea made even more famous by the TV show: Ancient Aliens).  However, if the Mayans did have aliens telling them the secrets of the universe, a lot of the basic secrets were left out.  For instance, the Mayans thought the world to be flat and resting on top of a giant crocodile and they also were unaware of the structure of our solar system, viewing the planets as simply faster moving stars.  More significantly, if December 21st is the end of the world, that would mean the Earth began at the beginning of the Mayan "Great Cycle" on August 11, 3113 BCE, which is only a couple thousand years ago.  However, geological and astronomical evidence has proven the earth to be just over 4.5 billion years old.  This means the Mayans wrongly calculated the beginning of the Earth by over 4 billions years! Why then should we trust the Mayans to predict the Earth's end?

   But even more far-fetched are the rumors surrounding the proposed planet, Nibiru.  This planet was first introduced by the writer and ancient alien theorist, Zachariah Sitchin.  Sitchin stated that the ancient Sumerian culture was aware of a extra planet that follows a very elliptical orbit around the sun.  This planet has no real link to the Maya other than their shared interest in astronomy.  Nibiru is speculated to be slowly approaching the earth and will either crash into the earth or have intense gravitational effects on it.  However, if this planet was approaching it would be very visible at this point and there has also been no effects on any neighboring planets that suggest a unwelcomed visiting planet.  Some suggest that the planet has been observed by NASA and other government agencies and they are working hard to keep it under wraps.  If this is true then they would have to confiscate every telescope in the world.  Honestly I haven't checked in a while, but I'm fairly certain my telescope is still collecting dust in the garage.  On top of that, this is based on only one mans interpretation of a ancient text that at the time very few people could read.  However, the few that can now read ancient Sumerian assert that Sitchin has twisted the language to fit his own theories and in some cases even gotten translations completely wrong.  The errors in his translations were so great that some accused Sitchin of not being able to read ancient Sumerian at all.

Zachariah Sitchin Debunked

   Conveniently, most of the astronomical claims of  the 2012 doomsday advocates are very testable with a telescope or a astronomy computer program.  However, there are a few that would have little more warning than a flash of light immediately before our destruction.  A solar flare followed by a coronal mass ejection is a emission of high energy particles from our sun that if aimed directly at earth with a large enough energy could do considerable damage.  These ejections happen very frequently and our planet is fairly consistently bombarded with material from the suns solar flares.  Luckily for us, the Earth has a magnetic field that shields us from these particles.  But if the solar flare was large enough or if the shields were down, we would be showered with radiation and electromagnetic waves that could incinerate all life in a instant.  However, there is no indication that the Earth's magnetic field will shut off.  Even during periods of magnetic pole inversion (when the north and south poles switch their orientation) it continues to protect us from solar radiation even though our compasses would need re-calibration.   Moreover, the sun is currently in a period called a solar minimum, which is a time of low solar activity.  During this time it is extremely unlikely that there will be a coronal mass ejection large enough to devastate the earth.  Instead a solar flare on this day would simply treat some penguins and Eskimos up north to an aurora borealis or "Northern Lights" that this radiation causes.

    The other unpredictable and perhaps most destructive of all celestial events is a supernova.  If the world is going to end on 2012, this is how it would happen without any warning.  When a star runs out of its hydrogen fuel, gravity compresses the mass of the star and it becomes a fiery ball of immensely unstable plasma.  When all this energy is then released the explosion outshines entire galaxies.  The high energy particles of this explosion then carry a shock wave demolishing anything in its path and remodeling portions of galaxies.  The blasts can carry across thousands of light years and travel nearly the speed of light.  Any creature living on a planet in the path of this blast would be bathed in light and then instantaneously treated to a swift death by heavenly fire.  This might be the most terrifying of all the solar calamities but fortunately it is also one of the most unlikely and modern astronomy has found no candidate stars close enough to cause us harm.  So once again earthlings can rest at ease knowing that if there is a supernova, it is much more likely some other poor fools on a far away planet that will draw the cosmic short straw.

Supernova Simulation

   It seems that all evidence points towards the continual existence of the earth as a beacon of life in the universe.  Our planet has weathered 4.5 billion years without being wiped away.  But then again, it has also seen many extinctions and destructive events.  More than 99% of all species of life that have lived on our planet are now extinct and through studying the skies, we have learned that cataclysm in this cosmic shooting galaxy is humbling eventuality.  The Earth will most likely survive December 21, 2012 and many December 21's to follow but someday this will all come to an end.  This is a fact that no doubt every prophet of doom is counting on.  And so it seems man will keep prophesying its end until by sheer inevitability one of us is proven right.



*Thus, if I was to predict the end of the world it  would have to be April 13, 2036.  The day that the asteroid Apophis, according to NASA, has a one in 45,000 chance of hitting the earth.  (see video)

Neil Degrasse Tyson: Death by Giant Meteor

End of the World in 2012 - Maya Calendar

Ancient Maya: Tools of Astronomy (History Chanel Documentary)

by: Brett Vollert

Sources:

http://www.nasa.gov

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nasa-crushes-2012-mayan-apocalypse-claims

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html#mayans

http://web.archive.org/web/20070602162121/http://members.shaw.ca/mjfinley/calnote.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20070702005434/http://www.crystalinks.com/precession.html

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/oct/HQ_09-232_Apophis_Update.html

     I love a good UFO conspiracy as much as the next guy.  However, traveling across the universe and through the vacuum of space to probe some humans seems ridiculous.  And while the numbers are clearly on the side of the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligent life, it is hard for me to believe that these same advanced aliens fail to be able to land securely and crash into the the deserts of New Mexico.  Although if these are aliens are crashing into our planet, I have new found confidence that we could successfully defend ourselves against a alien invasion.  Because while they might be extraterrestrial, they clearly are not all that intelligent.

    There are roughly 200 billion stars in the our Milky Way galaxy and there are around 200 billion more galaxies just like it throughout the universe.  It would then make sense that there would be at least one other planet circling one of these 400 billion billion stars that fosters intelligent life.  Especially because extra-solar planets are being discovered on a weekly basis and we have even found planets that fall into the "Goldy Locks Zone," whose orbits are the right distance from their stars to allow for biological life.  Using all this information, a scientist by the name of Frank Drake devised a equation that took into consideration all of the factors that would need to be aligned in order for intelligent life to exist in the universe.  The equation showed that there are likely millions of civilizations throughout the universe and thousands even in our galaxy.  (estimated at: 10,000 radio communicating civilizations in the Milky Way)

    And so we search the skies for some like us.  Organizations like SETI (http://www.seti.org/)  dedicate their resources to listening for radio waves from distant stars.  Our radio waves from early radio broadcasts have now reached out over 100 light years from the earth and the aliens circling our closest star, 4.3 light years away, are now caught up in the drama of the TV series, LOST.
   
     But after all our searching, there is no definite evidence that we have company in the universe.  Some may think that we have looked long enough and that the lack of evidence can be considered proof.  However, we have only been listening to the universe's radio waves for a little over 30 years, and to definitively state that there is no evidence of life is tantamount to scooping a cup of water out of the ocean and concluding that there are no whales in our seas.  It will take time, but why not keep looking?  Are we afraid that we might find we are not unique?

   We are made from the most common chemicals in the universe (H, O, C, N).  So the chemicals that make us are not unique, simply their configuration.  But perhaps life is a eventuality of complex chemistry.  It was very early in the earths history that life arose, in fact, it appeared almost immediately when the earths surface stabilized after the violent period of heavy bombardment.  One would think if it was a unlikely happening that it would take billions of years to arise.  But then again life seems to make logical sense.  On the very basic level, life is simply repeating chemical patterns.  Could we then even apply the evolutionary rules of natural selection to chemicals themselves?  Would it be to far a leap to say that life itself was naturally selected?  That even matter evolves?   Because all evolution is proclaiming is that structures that have attributes that promote their continual existence, continue to exist and to multiply. The second law of thermodynamics (order in a closed system always decreases and "entropy" increases) might suggest otherwise but that law is looking at the universe as a whole. In a non-closed system, physics allows for order to increase.

    With all this said, I am still weary to believe your UFO story.  Well...I believe you saw a UFO, a UNIDENTIFIED flying object, but not a alien.  Lets not jump to any conclusions when we see a object in the sky.  Too often people see a light in the sky and they claim it was a alien craft visiting earth with no proof other than their ignorance of what the object was.  Occum's Razor is a scientific law that states that usually the simplest answer is the correct one, in biology this is called the law of parsimony.  Using this law, I conclude that there was no alien craft because it is more likely that you are simply a idiot.  Sorry but not sorry.  To over throw this law all we need is some sort of concrete evidence that aliens are in fact visiting our planet and a photo-shopped blurry flying saucer does not count.  Instead lets try to get a piece of the craft or maybe even a living or dead alien.  Because if it truly a alien craft, as Neil deGrasse Tyson suggests, the technology would be like nothing we have ever seen and the alien will likely not be DNA based.  Until that time, please stop mistaking weather balloons and low flying planes for aliens.  If we keep doing this, aliens might eventually visit and find the earth to be void of intelligent life.

      But like I said the whole alien conspiracy topic is incredibly interesting and I too find myself often falling into the drama of it all.  The way I see it; either these people are crazy, they are wanting attention and money, or they actually saw aliens.  Any of these three possibilities I find fascinating    With that said, I will leave you with my favorite clip from the "Disclosure Project," a organizational effort to bring together the most reliable sources on the Alien Conspiracy.  Clifford E. Stone was supposedly a government employee who worked on recovering crashed alien ships.