As I'm as good as dead anyway, I might just pop in for interest's sake -
sorta kill time before time kills me ...
>> a) If life had to start again from zero, true. But if only a few bacteria
>> are left, there should be enough time judging from the record.
>
>On the contrary, it would not, and the continuing (entropic) expansion of
the
>universe has effects at the atomic level, destructuring and de-energising
the
>fundamental quanta form which life evolved. There would not be enough time,
because
>the evolution of life in *this* universe was a one-time-only, one-shot
locker. If we
>blow it now it is gone forever.
I'm tending to Julien's side on this one, Mark. Macro trends to entropy
needn't have effects at the level of a particular potential habitat, need
they? For instance, he Tommotian and Atdabanian eras of the Cambrian
period saw nearly all the world's animal phyla come into existence. What's
significant about that is the timelapse involved (a mere ten million years)
and the recency of it (only 520-530 million years ago - about four per cent
of the universe's reputed age). You'd have to argue in much more detail to
make a claim for some kinda macro-entropy crisis point lying behind us, I
suggest.
And if memory serves, Gould used this as an exhibit in support of his
'evolution = apparently stable states separated by explosive punctuations'
theory. Which also fits Marx's tectonic plates metaphor for how change
manifests. Stuff's always happening underneath, of course, but manifests at
the surface in revolutionary spasms, when a crisis point has been attained.
And on someone else's point, Gilbert and Dorit took a 729-base-pair sequence
out of the Y-chromosomes of 38 blokes, selected to reflect maximal 'racial'
diversity, in 1995. They found even less genetic variation than the western
school had expected, tracing the split-off of Homo Sapiens to 270000 years
ago. Which all fits like a glove with 'Eve', and circumstantially supports
the 'Out of Africa' thesis.
One minor complication goes to a speculation of Charles's: that Neanderthal
and Homo Sapiens might be different species - yet recently discovered
skeletal evidence (the remains of a lass of about four years of age) from
Western Europe indicates the two could breed together (the remains were, I
think, about thirty thousand years old). I realise I've next to zero for a
sample here, but it might be that the poor girl's fate was typical of the
fruit of these matches (be it for physiological or social reasons), and that
this explains the genetic similarity mentioned above.
Either that, or we all have a bit of Neanderthal in us, I s'pose ...
Cheers,
Rob.
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