Thoughts, ramblings and other stuff

When you are faced with impossible, like - let's say FTL neutrinos - you check everything. You check your methodology, calculations and most of all repeat it over and over again. If you still can't find the cause you go and ask other people to help you figure out what you did wrong. And if they have no idea you wait for them to try to repeat it and see if it sticks. Meanwhile, the public goes wild with speculations and hope for all the SF possibilities. So, it'll be kind of embarrassing if it was just a faulty cable all this time.

In other discredited sensationalist news - Y chromosome is not going to disappear in us (or rather on men) any time soon. It was loosing genes fast ever since X stopped recombining with it but since it went down to just essentials it slowed down to almost nothing. This means shrinking isn't linear but it closed to asymptote and, like falling to black whole, the rest of the way to nothing could take forever.

The things that shrink from heat include clothes in dryers and mammals in warm climates. It happened to horses last time Earth went through overheating period. Not that they were big to begin with - just the size of a small dog but the whole species went down to a cat size and then back again as the world temperatures went up and down. Then they moved north and ice ages happened and now we can ride them. And I need to draw that photo.

The physics of vomiting milk superpower (it's not what you think)

In the newest Nature magazine (the most important science magazine) the cover story are the oldest footprints of the footed animal ever found. They were discovered in Poland in in the Zachelmie Quarry in the Holy Cross Mountains which are very old mountains (that means pretty low now) that used to be shallow sea. That's where these creatures lived about 395 million years ago. This is about 20 millions year earlier then the actual first animals with legs and feet were previously thought to walk the Earth. This means that the four legged animals exist for longer and were actually living with fish that had pairs of lobed fins not simply after which once again shows that evolution is not linear and old forms continue to exist even when old arise. This find is very important as they clearly show the footprints, not drag marks which means these creatures had jointed limbs with knees and elbows and lifted them and really, truly walked.



This is also big day for Polish science because it is first time in 40 years that Polish scientist publish in Nature research that was done in Poland. All I knew about before was the work done in laboratories abroad. The guy who is the first author for this - Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki - studied in Warsaw University's Faculty of Biology. Now he's getting his doctorate at Department of Paleobiology and Evolution - just few hundred meters from my lab. He is few years younger then me so I already left when he was studying but a friend who works with me now at lab knows him. She says that he told people who were in his group at site that this signs will get him a publication in Nature and nobody believed him. Well now he made it and he got interview on Poland's leading news channel. My friend also said he always insisted that the best finds can be found in Poland because almost noone digs here so there still a lot big stuff around. Seems he was right about that too.

Dla tych co wolą po polsku i jeszcze nie widzieli - włącznie z wywiadem.

As to be expected Ida made creationist freak out - PZ Myers has a round up post. He also explains why the distorted image of find can do damage to the public perception of evolution and paleontology.

The New York Times explains why the media frenzy might be necessary to reach more people. Sensationalization of the discovery was certainly intentional. But I think I'm with PZ Myers on that it can do more damage then good especially in the long haul.

Here I come with more celebratory links. After all I'll have to wait another 50 years for another anniversary so prettily round as this.


The BBC Darwin page - with information about programs dedicated to Darwin.

Youtube Darwin Day 2009 videos - see how other people celebrate.

The Daily Show's Best Evolution Moments - I've first notice the existence of The Daily Show when I happened to see the International Edition on CNN and it was the one about evolution, creationists and Kansas. It was also the day I've learned about people who believe, or at least say they do, that dinosaurs lived with humans in Eden. I've still am not sure if I believe in the existence of those people (we have crazies here but not as many nor as crazy) but I had to agree with Einstein  wholeheartedly - human stupidity knows no bounds.

And now something in Polish

Racjonalista.pl - portal propagujący racjonalne myślenie i prezentujący racjonalny obraz świata.

Obchody Roku Darwina na Uniwersytecie Warszawskim

Tydzień Karola Darwina w Polskim Radiu - jeszcze paru audycji można posłuchać

Ten czarny diabeł Darwin - artykół o Darwinie z Przeglądu.

Today is the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. This year it’s also 150^th anniversary of the publishing of his masterwork On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (The man had the presence of the mind to publish the book when he was 50 – this made all the round anniversaries really round – in 2059 it’ll be 250 and 200).

Charles Darwin is an icon. Everyone heard his name. That guy with beard who said we are apes not dirt. And that’s about it. Because number of people who know what the theory of evolution is all about is much, much smaller. Most people don’t even understand the difference between evolution and the theory of evolution. It leads to them agreeing with pseudoscientist when they say that since scientist discuss theory of evolution then evolution itself isn’t real and therefore myths are as valid theories.

This comes back to the basic problem of confusing the description of the object with the object itself. The belief in the magical properties of words, especially written ones. This is how magic works. Like in Earthsea – change the name of the thing and you can change the thing itself. This is the Bible – with the Word becoming the reality. And Jew myths with golems made animated by writing. The underlying belief that if you tell people something, and write it down, and convince everyone it’s true it will be true. That there is some magical connection between thing and the words describing it. That if you change the description of things you can change the things you are describing. After all it works for social stuff, in human interactions. Why not the universe? If we close our eyes and really believe the Earth is flat and lying on the backs or four elephants that are standing on the giant turtle, it will be. Or something like that.

Unfortunately words are just words. They don’t change the nature of reality. They are describing it. The process of evolution was going on for billion of years before it was described. It took Darwin decades to put the words together. But when he did it he didn’t make evolution. He didn’t invent it. He described what he saw in the world. He made us understand where we came from and how it happened. He showed us how evolution works and how a simple process can lead to incredibly complex results. But it was always there.

The evolution theory changed since it was first postulated. The most important was the discovery of DNA as the inheritance factor. It allowed us to explain things Darwin could only say happen but didn’t know how. As we learn more evolution theory is still changing to accommodate the new information but the core stays the same. We get a more detailed description. Not a different one.

Not believing in evolution working because not all details of phylogenetic tree are resolved or we don’t know what and how exactly happened is like if people would insist the gravity didn’t work before it was described by Newton or that it stopped working when Einstein presented new version but it wasn’t widely accepted yet. And angels kept us from flying into space in the meantime. Theories are just our description of reality – the best approximation we can make – not the reality itself. Some day there will be better theory of gravity. And a more detailed evolution theory. But I doubt angels or any other beings will be involved in either one of them. The beauty of these theories lies in the fact that no one has to be involved.

So thank you Charles Darwin (and Alfred Wallace) for giving us a great description of the basic natural process that captured the minds of many. May it one day get to the minds of all (besides maybe the Flat Earth Society – they have bigger problems).

So I and everyone repeated ad nauseum that evolution is based on random change. Random mutations in the DNA that then go through selection and those that warrant better fit their particular environment propagate.
But what if it is not exactly random? What if biological systems evolve in tandems?
That is what some recent data suggests. Genes coding proteins of on closely connected system - like respiratory chain proteins - stimulate each other evolution into a better functioning system. Mutations not random but correcting mistakes in the system.
It's not that improbable after all wouldn't it give an edge to a organism? Evolution of more efficient evolution. To out evolve the competition.

The sea sponges evolved fiberoptics. If you can't be where the light is you find a way to bring light to yourself. And friends. Deep in the Ocean. Glass skeletons - Mr. Glass of Bob Squarepants.

Sometimes you can benefit from someone else's evolution. A man has been (most likely) cured of AIDS thanks to bone marrow transplant from a resistant person. The man seemed twice unlucky - he had AIDS and leukemia. He was given marrow transplant two years ago and it turned out he was lucky after all because marrow came for one of those people who are naturally resistant to HIV. There hasn't been a sign of the HIV virus since. It's a very complicated, hard and expensive but looks like cure.