Marcos Eberlin: Maybe one could grant the evolutionary miracle a single time, but six times?
Plants
Researcher: “Environmental crisis” spurs some scientists to believe plants are conscious
He worries that their concern is “clouding their objectivity.” But isn’t objectivity the next two-minute hate?
Why do plant scientists need to tell the world that plants are NOT conscious?
You didn’t think plants were conscious, did you? Did you really think salad is murder? Yet telling us that plants are not conscious is the gist of a recently published major paper in Trends in Plant Science. (open access) Part of the background to the “plants think like people” movement in science, which they oppose, […]
Plant expert: Very ancient fungi made life possible for plants on Earth
The history of life keeps changing on us. Much more stasis, much less Darwin. Where will we end up?
Pre-existing genes a more likely cause of herbicide resistance than new mutations
It sounds as though the necessary evolution occurred a long time ago and that a Darwinian process just isn’t happening. But they are not likely allowed to discuss it that way.
How maize corn’s wild ancestor teosinte prevents maize from breeding with it
The researchers don’t hazard a guess as to why the wild plant rejects its descendant. It’s tempting to liken it to a wolf pack chasing away a stray dog (if not outright killing him). Interesting development.
Researchers: Plants protect stem cells via diverse backup plans
Steady on here. “Evolution” randomly evolved a number of complex and specified strategies that hit the same target? And we can achieve “intelligent crop design” by co-operating with it? Better take your Darwin pills before you talk about this with colleagues.
Drone finds Hawaiian plant, believed extinct
The plant, Hibiscadelphus woodii, was formally discovered in 1991 and had been declared extinct in 2016: In 2016, the same year the plant was listed extinct, the National Tropical Botanical Garden teamed up with drone operator Ben Nyberg to supplement the work of intrepid scientists like Wood, who rappel down cliffs and trudge through rainforests […]
Plants “evolve” during the course of an experiment?
Wait a minute. This isn’t evolution! If these traits developed during the experiment, the tendency to do this sort of thing must be coded into the plants. The question then becomes, what signal systems convey information throughout the plant about self-pollination or blossom size in response to environment changes?
Pest insect gets plants to transmit false information to other plants
The world of life is probably mostly information, not matter. And what is the source of information?
Plants turn out to have a “nervous system”
According to a piece in ScienceDaily (2006), “In 1998 scientists discovered that fungi split from animals about 1.538 billion years ago, whereas plants split from animals about 1.547 billion years ago..” If animals and plants developed these very detailed information-gathering systems independently (convergent evolution), it seems like the unrolling of a project rather than natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinism). Darwinism doesn’t think ahead like that.
Researcher: Origin of photosynthesis founded on “incorrect assumptions”
Cardona: I shall attempt to demonstrate that these three ideas are often grounded in incorrect assumptions built on more assumptions with no experimental or observational support.
Researchers build public “library” to help understand photosynthesis
From ScienceDaily: It isn’t easy being green. It takes thousands of genes to build the photosynthetic machinery that plants need to harness sunlight for growth. And yet, researchers don’t know exactly how these genes work. Now a team led by Princeton University researchers has constructed a public “library” to help researchers to find out what […]
Double genome sometimes creates advantages for a wild plant
Researchers studied the thale cress (an Arabadopsis relative) which can have either a single or a double genome. Genome doubling is not good news: “It’s almost always a bad thing to have too much DNA, but we think that sometimes it makes for a ‘hopeful monster’ that just might flourish.” They seem to have found […]
Evolution crime: Grasses are “stealing” genes from neighbors, researchers tell us
Horizontal gene transfer isn’t even that uncommon, as the researchers admit. If this is how people who are used to explaining evolution in Darwinian terms react, maybe they should just stick to propounding Darwinism and leave the rest to people who take a broader and more balanced view.