Evolution is simply amazing
The time that “evolution” has had to do all its creation of the machinery of life has been constant for over a century. Since around the year 1900 it has been the consensus that the earth is several billion years old. Before then it was variously argued at around a hundred million years by some, eternal by others, and just thousands of years by yet others. Back in Darwin’s day, when life at the simplest level was thought to be just blobs of protoplasm, “evolution” didn’t have such a big job to do. A hundred million years seemed adequate. Today we know that life isn’t blobs of protoplasm at the scale of single cells but in fact each of them is such a complex network of interdependent machines and codes it makes the US space shuttle, all its launch facilities, and all the engineering and manufacturing and support that makes it possible look like child’s play in comparison. Indeed, with every passing day we discover that life is more complex that we thought just the day before. Yet the time for evolution to perform all these miraculous inventions isn’t increasing. Here’s something discovered on one of those recent days that caught my attention:
Tunnelling nanotubes: Life’s secret network
New Scientist
18 November 2008
by Anil Ananthaswamy