We've discovered that most trees have regular periodic changes in shape, synchronized across the whole plant... which imply periodic changes in water pressure.Trunk 'Pumping' Motion
Our findings challenge the idea that present-day animal species are millions of years old. A short summary of our view is "life keeps evolving." What we show is that most (90 percent) of animal species have similarly low mitochondrial DNA variation. This is surprising because theory predicts that older species and species with large populations should have more genetic variation. We propose that most present-day animal species, including humans, arose in the past 100,000 to 200,000 years.Thaler added, "We studied the amount of a certain type of variation that occurs within each of many thousands of different animal species. We found that measured in this way humans are an average animal species. We humans are used to looking 'close in' and being very sensitive to differences among people. The approach we used allows one to 'zoom out' and see variation in humans on the same scale as variation within other species."
The recent work (1) involving "DNA barcoding" of some five million specimens covering over 100,000 animal species, including humans, has been claimed to yield a result utterly incompatible with Darwinian evolution confined to the Earth. Humans, house sparrows, sandpipers are just a few examples of species that have been found - according to this paper - to display an exceedingly narrow range of genetic diversity, and this data is claimed to be consistent with all the crucial genes of 90 percent of all animal species arriving on the Earth 100,000-200,000 years ago. You could not ask for a more startling demonstration of the validity of the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe model of panspermia that was recently reviewed in an article by Steele et al (2). Evolution can only take place on a scale that vastly transcends the size of our planet, the size of our solar system, even perhaps that of the galaxy. The Earth receives injections of "evolved" genes sporadically from the cosmos at large (3). We now know that there are over 100 billion habitable planets in our galaxy alone so exchanges of material between them is well nigh impossible to avoid. It is only in such a way that all the facts about life on our planet can be understood. Viva Panspermia!Perhaps not the only explanation of the data, but interesting nonetheless.
Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe
References
- Stoeckle, M.Y. and Thaler, D.S., 2018. Human Evolution, 33 (1-2), 1-30
- Steele, E.J., et al.,2018. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology (http://www.panspermia.org/causeofcambrianexplosion.pdf)
- Hoyle, F. and Wickramasinghe, N.C. 1980. Evolution from Space (J.M. Dent, Lond)
NASA's Curiosity rover has uncovered organic material in an ancient lakebed and confirmed a seasonal cycle of methane - offering the strongest evidence yet of potential life, past or even present, on the Red Planet.
The discoveries were revealed by NASA researchers in a highly-anticipated announcement on Thursday, and details have been published in the journal Science.
The revelations build on a similar announcement made by NASA in 2014, where scientists confirmed that they had discovered chlorinated molecules on the planet for the first time. This latest evidence, however, is far more compelling.
The Curiosity rover discovered organic matter preserved in 3-billion-year-old mudstones at the Gale Crater. The material was located in the first layers of rock, some four miles away from where the chlorinated molecules had been found.
"All life as we know it is based on organic molecules," Jen Eigenbrode, a research scientist at Goddard, said during the press announcement, suggesting that, while this evidence doesn't definitely prove there is life on Mars, the signs are there to investigate further.
Questions remain, however, as to how the organic material was formed. "While we don't know the source of the material, the amazing consistency of the results makes me think we have a slam-dunk signal for organics on Mars,"Eigenbrode said. "It is not telling us that life was there, but it is saying that everything organisms really needed to live in that kind of environment, all of that was there."
Another team of scientists, led by Christopher Webster from the California Institute of Technology, presented evidence that methane concentrations detected on Mars follow strong seasonal variations. The seasonal variation provides an important clue for determining the origin of martian methane.
Webster explained that this is an exciting discovery because 99 percent of methane produced on earth has a biological origin, giving examples of rice paddies and termites. He also pointed out that as methane only lasts for 300 years in the atmosphere and any detections mean that it was created or released relatively recently.
Overall, the latest discoveries bode well for future endeavours. "The chances of being able to find signs of ancient life with future missions, if life ever was present, just went up," said Curiosity's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada.
Comment: This author seems to go a little overboard, here. The discovery of an organic molecule on Mars is not proof of life on other planets, and neither are Navy pilot's encounters with UFOs. While it seems quite likely that we are not alone in the Universe, let's not get ahead of ourselves and keep in check what we call 'proof'.
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