From Ars Technica:
Sometimes, scientists announce things that are breathtakingly stupid. The Guardian, which generally has pretty good science coverage, has an article up reporting that some top scientists believe that the comet 67P may harbor lots and lots of life. The purported evidence for life is the presence of complex hydrocarbons on the comet’s crust. Of course, this article is just based on a press release, and the data won’t be available until it’s presented later today at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society.
But The Guardian could at least have done some background reading on the person behind the claim, Chandra Wickramasinghe. It would have found that he has a long history of making claims about extraterrestrial life (and that he testified in favor of teaching creationism in US classrooms). Or, the reporter could have talked to someone who knows a little bit about surface chemistry—like me.
I am here to make a prediction: this claim will vanish, never to be heard from again. More.
Oh hey, Ars Technica. The claim won’t vanish as long as pop science culture needs the space alien.
See also: Don’t let Mars fool you. Those exoplanets teem with life!
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My pulse quickened a bit when I read that story yesterday. Then I saw the name “Wickramasinghe”. Oh well.
As to ‘breathtakingly stupid’ Chandra Wickramasinghe, well, it seems he had at least one friend in none other than Fred Hoyle:
Why would Fred Hoyle associate his name with such a ‘breathtakingly stupid’ person as Chandra Wickramasinghe? Well it was because Fred Hoyle realized that the chance of life originating on earth was fantastically improbable:
From this number, 1 in 10^40,000, Fred Hoyle also infamously compared the random emergence of the simplest bacterium on earth to the likelihood “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 therein”.
Fred Hoyle (1915-2001), is the famed astrophysicist who established the nucleo-synthesis of heavier elements within stars as mathematically valid in 1946.
Years after Sir Fred discovered the stunning precision with which the element carbon in particular is synthesized in stars he stated:
Sir Fred also stated:
Of related interest to a ‘super intellect’ monkeying with physics, chemistry, and biology in order to produce carbon in stars, it is now found that, besides the Cosmic Background Radiation, there are two other places in the universe where ‘exceptional roundness’ is found. One place of ‘exceptional roundness’ is the sun:
and another place ‘exceptional roundness’ is found in the universe is the Buckyball carbon molecule:
Of related interest to ‘buckyballs’
Verse and Music:
If they do find the presence of life in the crust of a comet, it will confirm a creationist prediction. Not that that would ever impress anyone who has eyes but can’t see.
http://www.creationscience.com.....mets2.html
How is life on a comet a creationist prediction? Does the book of Genesis mention panspermia according to creationists?
@4
From that Wikipedia article:
So it’s not that creationism expects life on a comet, it’s more the other way around.
If you’re expecting life on a comet because it’s highly unlikely life arose through natural processes on Earth, then you’ve got two choices:
1. It was more likely life arose through natural processes elsewhere. Which as up there with multiverse theories for unfalsifiability.
2. God. Also unfalsifiable scientifically. But more causally adequate.
Of related note:
notes:
Professor Harold Morowitz shows the Origin of Life ‘problem’ escalates dramatically over Hoyle’s 1 in 10^40,000 figure when working from a thermodynamic perspective:
Dr. Morowitz did another probability calculation working from the thermodynamic perspective with a already existing cell and came up with this following number:
semi OT:
A checkpoint enzyme for flawless cell division – Jul 07, 2015
Excerpt: The segregation of the 23 chromosome pairs of human cells only occurs when all parameters are correct. This is ensured by a surveillance process, a so-called checkpoint. Central to this checkpoint is an inhibitor formed on the chromosomes, called mitotic checkpoint complex (MCC), which prevents cell division until all settings on the mitotic spindle, the chromosome segregation apparatus, are correct. “Just like the enzyme Mps1, Plk1 also ensures the assembly of the MCC and finally the inhibition of cell division,” says the first author Conrad von Schubert. “Plk1 thus also has a checkpoint function and consequently safeguards chromosome segregation.”
In the past, various functions have been attributed to the enzyme Plk1, including the correct assembly and disassembly of the mitotic spindle. “The newly uncovered checkpoint function of Plk1 had been overlooked, however, since other functions obscured this phenomenon,” explains Conrad von Schubert. The research team could now demonstrate that Plk1 influences the inhibitor MCC via at least two pathways. In a nutshell, Plk1 supports the enzyme Mps1, whose checkpoint function had already been known for some time. “Plk1 ensures rapid and robust checkpoint activation by acting in a similar way to Mps1, thus reinforcing Mps1 activity,” says Conrad von Schubert.
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-c.....=item-menu
OT: Organization of human brain is nearly ideal – July 7, 2015
New research reveals that structure of the human brain has an almost ideal network of connections
Excerpt: The paper,,, reveals that the structure of the human brain has an almost ideal network of connections–the links that permit information to travel from, say, the auditory cortex (responsible for hearing) to the motor cortex (responsible for movement),,,
“An optimal network in the brain would have the smallest number of connections possible, to minimize cost, and at the same time it would have maximum navigability–that is, the most direct pathways for routing signals from any possible source to any possible destination,” says Krioukov. It’s a balance, he explains, raising and lowering his hands to indicate a scale. The study presents a new strategy to find the connections that achieve that balance or, as he puts it, “the sweet spot.”
Krioukov,,, in the new research, he and his co-authors used sophisticated statistical analyses based on Nobel laureate John Nash’s contributions to game theory to construct a map of an idealized brain network–one that optimized the transfer of information. They then compared the idealized map of the brain to a map of the brain’s real network and asked the question “How close are the two?”
Remarkably so. They were surprised to learn that 89 percent of the connections in the idealized brain network showed up in the real brain network as well. “That means the brain was,, designed to be very, very close to what our algorithm shows,” says Krioukov.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....120101.htm
Of note, the superfluous word ‘evolutionarily’ was deleted from before the word ‘designed’ from the preceeding article for the sake of honesty and clarity.
Also of note, the deletion of the superfluous word has absolutely no effect on facts of the finding.
BA77 at #8
Aren’t you afraid their gods will be angry with you for not giving them the credit they are due?
Mapou at #4
That’s why I embedded the link that takes you to the page that explains how life on a comet is the result of the historical events recorded in Genesis.