Posts

The Known Universe

Here is a short clip on the known universe from the American Museum of Natural History. Starting from Earth zooming out to the solar system, the Milky Way, all the way to the outer frontiers of space that human technology can possibly detect.... and finally back to Earth! -PTS

A Creationist Argument on the Origin of Life

This article  holds a rare strong argument on the creationist view of life.  It attempts to show us that  not enough time has elapsed from the birth of the universe to allow for all the necessary trial and error in spontaneously creating and then mutating life to where we are today .  Though well written, there is one fatal flaw with its primary argument.  The probability argument does not stand, because to beat it, all you need to do is to be "lucky." I will admit that in our case, we need to be really lucky. Despite the seemingly improbable odds however, it is still possible that one hits the jackpot on the first try.  Just look at the lottery, there is almost always a winner.  And we happen to be one of many lucky winners over time! -PTS

Book Review: The God Delusion

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Back in August, I wanted to do a deep dive on the origin of life. Well, my hectic 9 - 5 delayed this exercise by four months. Anyway, I started off by reading  The God Delusion , a bestseller written by the famous Richard Dawkins . This book not only defends atheism, but it goes so far as to attack the religious position. Here are some of the main principles explained: The God Hypothesis - Dawkins contends that if god really created life, then who created god in the first place? He goes on to remind us that the whole problem we started with was to explain the statistical improbability on the origin of life. Thus it makes no sense to take the god position because there is the larger problem of who designed the designer. In comparison, evolution by natural selection becomes a more probable and hence preferrable theory. Evolution of complex organs is possible - creationists argue that complex organs like the eye could not have evolved in a piecemeal fashion over time. This is be

Future Evolution of Homo Sapiens

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Darwin's On the Origin of Species . It is great that we humans have made it this far in the evolutionary journey. Where will we go from here?    Prediction 1 - Humans Cease to Evolve One condition for evolution to occur is the isolation of a species for beneficial mutations to become norms. In today's ever-shrinking world however, it is hard to find isolated human populations. Instead, cross-breeding over geographic distances is the norm. Thus Darwin's evolution machine has clogged and will eventually come to a complete halt. What is more, the concept of survival of the fittest is being discounted in our species. With medical advances in developed countries, almost everyone can live long enough to produce offsprings. It is not bad news to see people living longer, but don't expect to see X-men any time soon either. Prediction 2 - Humans Continue to Evolve A recent study suggests that due to ovulatory

Gold Coast and Brisbane Bound!

I have family in town this week. This means I will be taking a break from my 9-5 and (albeit, part time) blogging next week. A road trip to Gold Coast and Brisbane is in the cards. Of course, we are stopping along the way for some zorbing, sandboarding, and scuba diving. Can't wait to bring some adventures back into my life! -PTS

Happy Halloween -- Zombies in the Animal Kingdom

Halloween is tomorrow, though I find it not as celebrated in Australia than in Canada. Let's not stop learning just because it is that trick or treating time of the year. To play the Halloween theme, here is an interesting post on nature's walking dead! From frozen frogs to zombie fire ants that gets their brains devoured by mother fly larvae, Mother Nature never ceases to amaze us! -PTS

40 000 Generations of E. Coli Culturing

Here is an exciting experiment through 21 years and 40 000 generations of E. Coli culturing later. Amazingly, some 653 mutations had occurred by the 40 000th generation. The moral of the article is that successive mutations do generally allow organisms to become more efficient dwellers in their environment. Turns out once again that Darwin was right! -PTS

Ten Key SETI Moments

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, was founded fifty ago. Here are 10 notable moments that deserve honourable mention. Interesting enough, the invention of the Drake equation was noted as one of those key moments. Of all listed candidates, my vote goes to the Arecibo Message. With our technology today, it is difficult to conceive that we will discover extraterrestrial life forms in the near future. We may as well let a technologically superior alien civilization track us down from our interstellar broadcasts. What is your favourite moment? -PTS

The Drake Equation

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Ever heard of the Drake equation? Devised by Dr. Francis Drake in 1960, the equation estimates the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy with which we might come into contact. The main purpose of the equation is to allow scientists to quantify the factors that determine the number of such extraterrestrial civilizations. The Drake equation states that: where: N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible; and R * is the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy f p is the fraction of those stars that have planets n e is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets f ℓ is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point f i is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life f c is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space L is the

Harnessing Energy from Speed Bumps

Here is an interesting post on the use of special speed bumps to harness, convert and store energy from braking cars only to be released back to the grid. This seems like an interesting innovation that holds promise for the environment. I have always hated speed bumps with a vengeance. Next time I work the brakes on these bad boys however, I can take comfort in helping the world. Hopefully, this will become mainstream some day. -PTS