Dr. Dalek

Pardon a simple Microbiology major for asking but why?

I don't know much about physics myself. From reading the article it sounds like they are saying that the Univers is a self-recycling mass. If you were to reflect on the nature of more well understood phenomenon . . . Stars born, stars die, matter recycled, more stars born. Tree sprouts, tree dies, matter recycled, more trees born. It would only make sense in my opinion that these smaller systems would reflect the larger one.

I often wonder how much technology may alter modern evolution. In "The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells the Martians are described as having an ultra-simplified anatomy as they have evolved to have massive brains and are physically dependant on a variety of machines.

I say this having done some review insane_alien, ID is probably more opinion than fact. More religion than science. However ID may have a place in the future when science is more advanced. A book called "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukav, is an over view of modern physics. At one point it compares Hindu Beliefs to Quantum Physics. For instance on page 309 Gary says "While it would be naive to overstate the similarities between Bohm's physics and eastern philosophies, it would be foolish to ignore them." Perhaps when science is more advanced and our understanding of who or what the “intelligent designer” might be (god, space aliens etc.) is more developed, someone could describe ID in the form of a theory based on their new found understanding that could be proven incorrect or otherwise through experimentation or observation. Nevertheless perhaps it would be best for ID to take a back seat to other theories for now, theories with more credibility. And Ecoli is right, I often read newspapers and see news footage about science related topics, when they mention almost as a foot note, the opinions of these “credible scientists” and the mysterious “experts” who always seem to appear out of no where just for the report.

In order to encourage "speciation" you would need to seperate humans from the general breeding population. But if their diet, lifestyle, and other such factors remain similar the seperate humans would follow a generaly similar path of evolution and possibly remain basically the same as the general population outside of the quote "isolated habitat."

Sometimes it does occur one mutation at a time, especially in complex organisms where several genes are used to control a single trait. Multiple mutations occurring in the same set of genes are necessary to change a significant trait and can take thousands of years for that single trait to be altered.

Don't be too hasty, I quote here a NASA Scientist named David Grinspoon and his opinion on Intelligant design . "If we reject these theories out of hand just because we find the ideologically repulsive, then we are practicing pseudoscience." Granted it is hard to refute or confirm the possibility through experiments, however it must also be said it has never been tried.

"No creature in the two races common ancestry had anything like eyes, yet both developed very similar eye anatomy." I apologise the proper term is not "races" it is phylum.

"Hive" may have been the wrong term, "communal group" would be more appropriate after giving it some thought. All the same I do not think that it is inevitable, or even nearly so, for a intelligant species to destroy itself. Also alien evolution may have some parallels to earth. After all eyes, an important sensory organ, developed on earth for the first time in two evolutionary separated groups. Mollusks, and vertebrates. No creature in the two races common ancestry had anything like eyes, yet both developed very similar eye anatomy. This is an example of parallel evolution, two different types of life with similar requirements, or in some cases ecological niches, will occasionally develop very similar traits. Another example would be the similarity between rodent, and rabbit related species. Some people, assume rabbits and rodents are closely related. They are not, they have similarities because of common ecological niches.

Very pessimistic, I also must add it's rather absurd to assume that it is so likely for a civilization to destroy itself, and everything around it. Aliens would not be likely to have the same kind of motavations as humans do for making weapos of mass destruction, or massive pollution, or such wasteful things as plastic mountable fish. How do you know they would even have fish on their planet? There are a thousand ways for a civilisation to be destroyed, not all of them are self destruction. Besides life on their planet would not nessisarily have gone caput with them, the biggest environmental dissaster on earth happend over a billion years ago when life began poluting it's own atmosphere with a chemical which was back then very poisonous. Oxygen. Only the extremophiles, aerobic life, survived and look what they have become. Us.