Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Convergent evolution: Our most distant relatives were sponges, not comb jellies, say researchers

Re the researcher’s comment, "It may seem very unlikely that such complex traits could evolve twice, independently, but evolution doesn't always follow a simple path,” well, he is virtually admitting that Darwinism stretches (snaps?) the bounds of probability but no one is allowed to discuss that honestly. That is most likely why there is a controversy in the first place. Read More ›

Researchers search for the “last bacterial common ancestor” in a world of horizontal gene transfer

One senses that the reconstruction will be subject to considerable revision. It’s not entirely clear what “ancestry” means in a world of rampant horizontal gene transfer. Read More ›

Researchers: Radioactive snowflakes will destroy stars!

A pair of researchers with Indiana University and Illinois University, respectively, has developed a theory that suggests crystalizing uranium "snowflakes" deep inside white dwarfs could instigate an explosion large enough to destroy the star. (No, it doesn't matter much but it's Saturday night.) Read More ›

Life and Fate: Coming to a Country Near You?

Vasily Grossman was a war correspondent in the Soviet Union during World War II.  After the war he became a novelist, and Life and Fate, about life in the Soviet Union during the Battle of Stalingrad, is considered his masterpiece.  Written in 1960, the novel was suppressed by the KBG and not published until after a manuscript was smuggled to the West in the 70’s.  Last night I finished watching the 12-part TV series adopted from Life and Fate (Amazon Prime; Russian with English subtitles).  As you might expect, life in Soviet Union under Stalin was a dystopian nightmare where political persecution was so commonplace that various slang terms developed around it.  For example, one character warns another “Don’t you Read More ›

Researchers: Contrary to a century-long assumption, we are more closely related to snails and flies than to starfish

If things are really uncertain at such a fundamental level (protostomes vs. deuterostomes), evolutionary biology could do with a lot less dogmatism in addressing the public. Read More ›

Researchers: Trilobites breathed through their legs

How this finding situates trilobites "more securely in between older arthropods ... and crustaceans" is unclear. Apparently, crustaceans don’t breathe through their legs. Did the older arthropods breathe through THEIR legs? In any event, this find implies that the crustaceans underwent a dramatic switch in breathing mechanics, of which we apparently don’t have an account. How could we? We only found out about what the trilobites do very recently. Read More ›

Gregory Chaitin asks, if the universe is information, not matter, does that help explain consciousness?

Chaitin: The normal view if you dabble in metaphysics is that the universe is made from mathematics. That’s a Pythagorean idea, that God is a mathematician. And I prefer to say God is a … a computer programmer or a programmer. Read More ›

American Museum of Natural History: Whale and hippo skin adaptations evolved independently

Researcher: "Our latest findings contradict the current dogma in the field—that relatives of the amphibious hippo might have been part of the transition as mammals re-entered life in the water." Read More ›

Horizontal gene transfer: Human gut microbes exchange genes more frequently in urban areas

It’s not yet clear why there are fewer types of microbes in urban people’ guts or why they favor horizontal gene transfer more often. But note: At one time, the researchers would be trying to explain it all in terms of Darwinism. That alone shows how much has changed without people really noticing. Read More ›

Minimal synthetic cell turns out to be an argument against naturalist origin of life, says biomedical engineer

Rob Stadler: Abiogenesis [random origin of life] advocates claim that life started with "protocells" because extant life is far too complex to have started by natural processes. But, all of our efforts to simplify extant life to produce a "protocell" have shown us that extant life is about as simple as it can be. Read More ›