foodchain

Well I am not trained in physics but as far as I know the item in question has not even been verified to exist in nature. "It has been proposed that tachyons could be produced from high-energy particle collisions, and tachyon searches have been undertaken in cosmic rays. Cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere with high energy (some of them with speed almost 99.99% of the speed of light) making several collisions with the molecules in the atmosphere. The particles made by this collision interact with the air, creating even more particles in a phenomenon known as a cosmic ray shower. In 1973, using a large collection of particle detectors, Philip Crough and Roger Clay identified a putative superluminal particle in an air shower, although this result has never been reproduced." Quoted from http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Tachyon.html So I would have to ask if you are attempting to answer a question in say reality of in mathematical models, and if its in model form then you really do need someone grounded in physics to help you, and I think the answer could probably go in the running for a Nobel prize actually.

I don’t know if this is the right place for it, so if the admins disagree that is fine of course. Over my lifetime I never knew that theology was so widely held. I grew up with an interest in life and at eight years of age I was making field journals and drawings of various life forms such as birds or slugs for instance. Dinosaurs and the entire variety of scientific knowledge was my normal reality. I was sadly wrong. As I have come into contact with more and more people I have found that science and its endeavors don’t have that much of a sway on culture as say theology. Not to say this is wrong but I do follow that a fact based reality is the best reality. I never knew until around my twenties really that evolution was so contested giving all of its scientific support, and going from this I have noticed that such has a damaging effect on science and of course biologists. I have attempted to debate people on evolution before, and I quickly come to find that such people typically never have a clue of what they are talking about, such as the misuse of entropy for example, I typically ask them if they have ever bought sunscreen before or what they think about a breeze, but such is a sad reminder and a bad joke. What I would like to get at is how much do you think this damages scientists that work in biology, do you think it leaves a form of trauma that puts a unneeded amount of stress on even talking hypothetically about biological science? Moreover is such ultimately creating a negative situation overall for biologists to attempt to relate what they learn to general intelligence? How would you deal with such issues while attempting to maintain a positive environment for all? Lastly should this be a prime area of focus for science writers?

About the black hole part. My wondering if it breaks conservation of mass or energy was respective overall to wondering about the big crunch idea. That the big bang and the big crunch could be a cycle, which made some sense to me from those laws of conservation really. If black holes worked as Stephan Hawking described though I don’t see how such a cycle could have ever repeated, at least not without losing considerable amounts of itself on a regular basis. I know black holes right now are in a more theoretical state of existence but we do have some pretty strong evidence to show existence of such entities, but the put forward explanation of function seems to boggle my tiny mind a bit:D Thank you for the energy and time relation explanation. I was going from general relativity and moreover I was just thinking if studying time could be made indirectly via energy simply because to date I don’t know if time is its own tangible physical variable such as a form of energy like light.

Hi, I have a primitive understanding of physics overall though of course I am interested in what it studies. I have a couple questions I was wondering if people here could clear up for me simply because I think I am just confused on what is being said really. What is the relationship between the laws of conservation such as mass and energy and how a black hole functions. I have read up on Stephan Hawkins’s and I was just wondering if his idea as originally put forth would break such laws. Also, when viewing atomic structure and related properties I came to wonder it time and energy(no specific form) have any relationship overall.

Not to interrupt but looking at various tests on the subject the mechanisms behind mutation, drift and so on are dynamic and of course happen to be tied to the environment in terms of fitness. Tigers teeth represent something needed in order to survive for example, such as it does not have the type of teeth you would find in something that feeds on plants. Taking evolution into account of course the tiger evolved from some other life form and at some point did not exist. Its evolution and of course survival is based on its ability to survive in its host environment, or niche. On a molecular scale the mechanisms behind evolution are not fully understood. The idea to me though is the amount of genetic load an organism has comes into play with mutation, and that generic mutation is not rapid. The amount of variance from say humans to our closest ancestor is around 2% if memory serves. Studying the timeline though of how long this evolution took you can see how long it takes for a successful or surviving 2% of mutation takes. Plus we are not error free overall. This to me feeds the idea of micro adding up to macroevolution. Another avenue to look at such is that what mechanisms are behind evolution on a molecular scale and are they the same across the board. IN an article I posted in another debate on this forum virus attempt to mutate to survive in the host environment in response to the immune system. The immune system has a rate that cannot match the virus though, or the virus can mutate fast enough for surpass the immune system response, the other end of this though like anything is that the virus population can be killed of by its own mutation just as it can survive by such, it could be studied as both pertaining factors to the evolution of both you will then. This is why many biological mechanisms exist if I remember correctly to actually combat mutation and mutation on its own might simply naturally occur even in the form of an error. Though If memory also serves mutation in itself is not simply just one type, there are many types of mutation along with different reasons or mechanisms behind them. Here is a brief link on the subject from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code I also have another link that would be of interest to you I think as the debates probably cross paths. http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23324&page=2

That’s some dangerous ground to tread, politics and philosophy that is. Really getting into subjective matter at that point... I participate in some of those boards also, compared to say a board like this there is a large difference. Coming here things are well, clean, nice and neat. Go to one of those boards and oh boy, not the same by any stick of measurement.

http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/~smaloy/MicrobialGenetics/topics/mutations/fluctuation.html Mutation rate sheet http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/1/85 Here is two links that I found. In such I find that mutation simply is not as rigid as it may come out to be one viewed from a population biology perspective. I would also like to point out again for what we can gain from studying life from a population angle is great, its only so much of the picture overall. I am interested in the underlying mechanism (which I imagine are many an dynamic) of such and as such I find that with math its not so rigid yet, though that could be from not knowing fully also. Here is another link of interest to me. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=310490 Understanding the biology from a total view, such as molecular and cellular is just as important to me as from a population perspective for total understanding, and in like many cases such is an interdisciplinary method. Here is a neat article to articulate my point. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=552327 And one more. http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/mcl153v1 I think the reality is as I understand it currently far more complex then we simply grasp at this point and again simply cannot be fully understood through just population means alone, not to say population biology is not important its very important in my eyes just that it alone will not in total solve for the questions posed about evolution in total. We need a tree of life to represent many angles such as the appearance or change to homeostasis, chemicals, just about everything over all. Like within a specie, its not so simple to go and compare what proteins are in one, compared to a similar specie. Say for Protists, we cant compare specie to specie on various degrees of difference such as protein appearance or changes in homeostasis or other various functions in some mapped our and accessible way, we also cannot access some geographic database to take into account other considerations such as food viability and temperature or even the average water current. I have my goals in college currently set on biochem, but I really wonder if I wont try to go into GIS at some point to press interdisciplinary methods of research. On a side note my use of the word expression was to simply mean that genetics express in the organism, such as hair color.

noun (biochemistry) a long linear polymer found in the nucleus of a cell and formed from nucleotides and shaped like a double helix; associated with the transmission of genetic information; "DNA is the king of molecules" [syn: deoxyribonucleic acid] Sorry, my bad on that one. Yes, evolution works within populations, I am not trying to argue on this. My point is that the change does not occur in some universal shift all it once in the population is all. As such is simply just using a population as the only marker truly good enough to reflect the reality of evolution and the mechanisms behind it. Overall I think on an individual level much could be gained. To follow that we evolved would imply that such could be traced, which it is of course, on many levels such as fossils, or the pattern that leads to cephalization to simply the fact we all have dna or what not. To simply just stay at arms distance though with populations is a bit of a problem to me because populations are made up of individuals for the most part right? So what if say you have the same specie but one population is in a part of India and the other is in say New York, would you just assume that because you know that mutation rate in India is .1% that such is the same in the population in New York? For that matter what on an individual level, is it .1% for every individual. I mean if you stretch the questions out pretty soon I think you would find just looking at it from a population level simply does not suffice overall. I also agree that evolution appears slow to us because a radical amount of change I doubt ever occurs save for maybe deleterious forms overall. That minor changes over time add into big changes as you go farther in time, such as again my example that evolution has to be studied over a very long period of time, not that last week we evolved from toads or something. I also think that in physics we don’t directly view sub atomic particles because we might not have the ability to directly view them as maybe we would like, save for in atom smashers or what not. Overall I trust direct observations and validations of such via repetitiveness, this is all. The problem as I see it is that in real time with biology you cant have the mathematical rigidness that you can find in simply math with an example of 1 +1 equals two and to attempt such would surely lead to nothing more then fallacy. With the experiments I read involving simple organisms mutation, the rates of and success of for the matter in various cycles in the same environment causing the change never produced a pattern or a repeat for the matter.

No, I got it. The polymer changes in small fashions which the comes to express overtime in the population from individuals of that population breeding. I think though to escape from saying that such is how it works, thus why evolution is such a long and slow process overall in regards to our perception is because a cow wont ever birth such a radical amount of change as a goat, or that statistically or some other numerical formula I think goes to support evolution being a slow gradual process based on the population through such functions like sexuality. I though thought that different types of mutation had different rates, like hotspots or what not? I mean does the Y chromo have a different rate of mutation or pressures then the X? I also am unsure how compartmentalization and homeostasis has to do with this. I read a small article on inter contest evolution, if I have the term right or ICE for short, I would think it odd to say lump mutation into one single factor unless it was various factors going over a population under observation and it being based on genome in total but that would be of course just population genetics. I would think that such a practice has some downfalls simply from the lack of direct observation in all levels biologically such as the individual, something medicine seems to lack most the time.

If you take a mutation rate as a constant, I don’t know if organism to organism if mutation rates happen to be constant or what the rates happen to be for specific specie to specie or other variables but lets just say we have a .001% rate of mutation overall per say a one year unit of time over a million years within a certain population I am sure such would compound into a larger degree of variance of course giving other variable such as if the changes happen to be fit enough in relation to again more variables to persist. It a short term look at things it might be why we have so much variance in say ants. Long term I am sure is what allowed say wasps to become ants under current understanding. Such is why there is no direct links to say a cow giving birth to a goat or something like that as an example and possibly why evolution has to be studied really over such a large span of time and why we are not so much genetically different then our closest ancestors.