Ibn Khaldun on Evolution

[Ibn Khaldun]

"It should be known that we notice that this world with all the created
things in it has a certain order and solid construction. It shows
nexuses between causes and things caused, combinations of some parts of
creation with others, and transformations of some existent things into
others, in a pattern that is both remarkable and endless. Beginning with
the world of the body and sensual perception, and therein first with the
world of the visible elements, (one notices) how these elements are
arranged gradually and continually in an ascending order, from earth to
water, (from water) to air, and (from air) to fire. Each one of the
elements is prepared to be transformed into the next higher or lower
one, and sometimes is transformed. The higher one is always finer than
the one preceding it. Eventually, the world of the spheres is reached.
They are finer than anything else. They are in layers which are
inter­connected, in a shape which the senses are able to perceive only
through the existence of motions. These motions provide some people with
knowledge of the measurements and positions of the spheres, and also
with knowledge of the existence of the essences beyond, the influence of
which is noticeable in the spheres through the fact (that they have motion).

One should then look at the world of creation. It started out from the
minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and
animals. The last stage 269 of minerals is connected with the first
stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants. The last stage of
plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of
animals, such as snails and shellfish which have only the power of
touch. The word "connection" with regard to these created things means
that the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first
stage of the next group.

The animal world then widens, its species become numerous, and, in a
gradual process of creation, it finally leads to man, who is able to
think and to reflect. The higher stage of man is reached from the world
of the monkeys, in which both sagacity and perception are found, but
which has not reached the stage of actual reflection and thinking. At
this point we come to the first stage of man after (the world of
monkeys). This is as far as our (physical) observation extends."

The Muqadhimah

About the author

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun

Also see this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugu3cZN-3jU

[Ron O]

Did Space aliens have anything to do with arranging the 269 minerals
to get the first plants? When did prokaryote bacteria get arranged
and did the space aliens create the bacteria or did they just
manipulate what had already been arranged out of the minerals? I'm
just asking for someone that I know.

Ron Okimoto

[Schenck]

On Oct 5, 4:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:


Its an interesting note, but it doesn't seem to be anything original.
Wikipedia says this book was written in 1377.

[Kleuskes & Moos]

Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but that's almost ancient
and everybody knows that ancient texts contain knowledge lost to modern
science!

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/ I'm mentally OVERDRAWN! What's that \
| SIGNPOST up ahead? Where's ROD STERLING |
\ when you really need him? /
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\
\
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{~._.~}
( Y )
()~*~()
(_)-(_)
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[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 5 Oct 2011 17:40:49 +0000 (UTC), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Kleuskes & Moos
<kle...@somewhere.else.net>:

>On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:32:57 -0700, Schenck wrote:
>
>> On Oct 5, 4:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Its an interesting note, but it doesn't seem to be anything original.
>> Wikipedia says this book was written in 1377.
>
>
>Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but that's almost ancient
>and everybody knows that ancient texts contain knowledge lost to modern
>science!

Need I point out that losing "knowledge" is not necessarily
a Bad Thing? Or that when it's Knowledge Fron Ancient Texts
(TM) the chance that it's a Bad Thing decreases markedly?
--

Bob C.

"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless

[wiki trix]

Ibn Khaldun was to Islam as Darwin was to Christianity.
Ibn Khaldun was great, but modern Islam hates him.

[Steven L.]

"Schenck" <schen...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:11c9918a-e128-4f41...@db5g2000vbb.googlegroups.com:

> On Oct 5, 4:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
>
>
> Its an interesting note, but it doesn't seem to be anything original.
> Wikipedia says this book was written in 1377.

One point is that Darwin didn't invent the notion of evolution.

That life on Earth evolves over time had been suspected by savants
centuries before.

But they had trouble making headway against the prevailing philosophical
mindset of essentialism.



-- Steven L.

[Kleuskes & Moos]

On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:58:00 -0700, Bob Casanova wrote:

> On Wed, 5 Oct 2011 17:40:49 +0000 (UTC), the following appeared in
> talk.origins, posted by Kleuskes & Moos <kle...@somewhere.else.net>:
>
>>On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:32:57 -0700, Schenck wrote:
>>
>>> On Oct 5, 4:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Its an interesting note, but it doesn't seem to be anything original.
>>> Wikipedia says this book was written in 1377.
>>
>>
>>Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but that's almost
>>ancient and everybody knows that ancient texts contain knowledge lost to
>>modern science!
>
> Need I point out that losing "knowledge" is not necessarily a Bad Thing?
> Or that when it's Knowledge Fron Ancient Texts (TM) the chance that it's
> a Bad Thing decreases markedly?

Not really... I was hoping the Little Britain allusion would suffice to
indicate that i was being less that totally serious. The knowledge of COBOL
for instance, should be lost forever in the mists of time. Spandex and
bell-bottoms come to mind...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
____________________________________
/ I've got a COUSIN who works in the \
\ GARMENT DISTRICT ... /

[Schenck]

On Oct 6, 7:14 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "Schenck" <schenck....@gmail.com> wrote in message

>
> news:11c9918a-e128-4f41...@db5g2000vbb.googlegroups.com:
>
> > On Oct 5, 4:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
>
> > Its an interesting note, but it doesn't seem to be anything original.
> > Wikipedia says this book was written in 1377.
>
> One point is that Darwin didn't invent the notion of evolution.

Again, interesting but not original.

>
> That life on Earth evolves over time had been suspected by savants
> centuries before.

But notice that Khaldun is saying that it evolved through the motives
of the creator and via a great chain of being. Thats more the standard
interpretation than a brilliant one.

>
> But they had trouble making headway against the prevailing philosophical
> mindset of essentialism.

Doesn't Wilkin's argue against this? In some book or two?

[Schenck]

On Oct 6, 3:50 pm, Kleuskes & Moos <kleu...@somewhere.else.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:58:00 -0700, Bob Casanova wrote:
> > On Wed, 5 Oct 2011 17:40:49 +0000 (UTC), the following appeared in

> > talk.origins, posted by Kleuskes & Moos <kleu...@somewhere.else.net>:

>
> >>On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:32:57 -0700, Schenck wrote:
>
> >>> On Oct 5, 4:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
>
> >>> Its an interesting note, but it doesn't seem to be anything original.
> >>> Wikipedia says this book was written in 1377.
>
> >>Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but that's almost
> >>ancient and everybody knows that ancient texts contain knowledge lost to
> >>modern science!
>
> > Need I point out that losing "knowledge" is not necessarily a Bad Thing?
> > Or that when it's Knowledge Fron Ancient Texts (TM) the chance that it's
> > a Bad Thing decreases markedly?
>
> Not really... I was hoping the Little Britain allusion would suffice to
> indicate that i was being less that totally serious. The knowledge of COBOL
> for instance, should be lost forever in the mists of time.

snip

How did Battlestar Galactica get involved in this? (and how can we get
Grace Park involved now?)

[John S. Wilkins]

Any way we can. Just do it!
--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre

[John S. Wilkins]

Schenck <schen...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Oct 6, 7:14 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > "Schenck" <schenck....@gmail.com> wrote in message
> >
> > news:11c9918a-e128-4f41...@db5g2000vbb.googlegroups.com:
> >
> > > On Oct 5, 4:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Its an interesting note, but it doesn't seem to be anything original.
> > > Wikipedia says this book was written in 1377.
> >
> > One point is that Darwin didn't invent the notion of evolution.
> Again, interesting but not original.

The idea that things might change over time goes back to the Greeks, as
Osborn noted back in 1894, so that's not news. The notion that this
change follows some hierarchy based on Aristotle is equally old, but ibn
Khaldun may have been one of the earliest to make that claim, although I
much prefer Al-Jahiz, who is much earlier still (9thC Persian) or
Al-Marwazi (12thC Andalusian).

> >
> > That life on Earth evolves over time had been suspected by savants
> > centuries before.
> But notice that Khaldun is saying that it evolved through the motives
> of the creator and via a great chain of being. Thats more the standard
> interpretation than a brilliant one.
> >
> > But they had trouble making headway against the prevailing philosophical
> > mindset of essentialism.
>
> Doesn't Wilkin's argue against this? In some book or two?

Ayup. At no point in history does essentialism constrain against
evolutionary views prior to around 1880.

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 6 Oct 2011 19:50:46 +0000 (UTC), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Kleuskes & Moos
<kle...@somewhere.else.net>:

>On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:58:00 -0700, Bob Casanova wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 5 Oct 2011 17:40:49 +0000 (UTC), the following appeared in
>> talk.origins, posted by Kleuskes & Moos <kle...@somewhere.else.net>:
>>
>>>On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:32:57 -0700, Schenck wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Oct 5, 4:55�am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Its an interesting note, but it doesn't seem to be anything original.
>>>> Wikipedia says this book was written in 1377.
>>>
>>>
>>>Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but that's almost
>>>ancient and everybody knows that ancient texts contain knowledge lost to
>>>modern science!
>>
>> Need I point out that losing "knowledge" is not necessarily a Bad Thing?
>> Or that when it's Knowledge Fron Ancient Texts (TM) the chance that it's
>> a Bad Thing decreases markedly?
>
>Not really... I was hoping the Little Britain allusion would suffice to
>indicate that i was being less that totally serious.

I was aware of that; sorry if it seemed I thought you were

serious.

> The knowledge of COBOL
>for instance, should be lost forever in the mists of time. Spandex and
>bell-bottoms come to mind...

....and disco.

[pnyikos]

On Oct 5, 6:38 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Oct 5, 3:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
> > One should then look at the world of creation. It started out from the
> > minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and
> > animals. The last stage 269 of minerals is connected with the first
> > stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants.

This is closer to the truth than Genesis, which already had fruit
trees with seed in their fruit on the third day. But unless "herbs
and seedless plants" refers to algae (and also cyanobacteria, which
used to be called "blue-green algae") he is just a small improvement
on the authors of Genesis.

> >The last stage of
> > plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of
> > animals, such as snails and shellfish which have only the power of
> > touch.

As one can see, this medieval Islamic writer was way off the mark.
Shellfish predate even the primitive vascular plants by well over a
hundred million years. As to palms and vines--forget it!

> > The word "connection" with regard to these created things means
> > that the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first
> > stage of the next group.

Palms and vines morphing into snails and shellfish? I hope that isn't
what this medieval writer was trying to say, especially since his last
paragraph is surprisingly modern:

> > The animal world then widens, its species become numerous, and, in a
> > gradual process of creation, it finally leads to man, who is able to
> > think and to reflect. The higher stage of man is reached from the world
> > of the monkeys, in which both sagacity and perception are found, but
> > which has not reached the stage of actual reflection and thinking. At
> > this point we come to the first stage of man after (the world of
> > monkeys). This is as far as our (physical) observation extends."
>
> > The Muqadhimah
>
> > About the author
>
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun
>
> > Also see this video
>
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugu3cZN-3jU
>
> Did Space aliens have anything to do with arranging the 269 minerals
> to get the first plants?  When did prokaryote bacteria get arranged
> and did the space aliens create the bacteria or did they just
> manipulate what had already been arranged out of the minerals?  I'm
> just asking for someone that I know.
>
> Ron Okimoto

Did you have me in mind? If so, your question is completely wasted.
I don't expect us to have answers to any of these questions for the
next 10,000 years except the "when" of prokaryotes [bacteria and
archae] to which I think we may get an answer of "3.9 billion years"
if we send out enough instrumental probes on flybys in that time
period.

The questions I am asking have a far better chance of being answered,
even within the next century, although I don't expect a huge amount of
progress in my lifetime. They have to do with the relative
probability of four different kinds of hypotheses:

(1) Earth organisms are due to abiogenesis that took place right here
on earth, without any outside intervention.

[The remaining three have to do with directed panspermy:]

(2) Earth was seeded by a species that had pretty much the same
genetic code we do. ["The Xordax Hypothesis."]

(3) Earth was seeded by a species that had a biochemistry based on
protein enzymes, but a much simpler genetic code than ours. ["The
Golian Hypothesis"]

(4) Earth was seeded by a species whose own biochemistry was based on
nucleotide-string enzymes, perhaps RNA ribozymes, perhaps with a
translation mechanism for producing simple structural proteins. ["The
Throom Hypothesis"]

In assessing the relative probability of (2), (3) and (4), there is on
the one hand the fact that the initial efficient self-replicators,
without the intervention of intelligent design, are easiest to
envision in (2) and hardest in (4), but then the probability of
evolving intelligent life from that basis comes in just the reverse
order. And so, it's a tossup at this stage which is the most probable
and which the least.

The three probabilities then combine in some way in any assessment of
which is more probable, homegrown abiogenesis ("Mother Earth did it")
or directed panspermia.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

[Kleuskes & Moos]

On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:38:41 -0700, Bob Casanova wrote:

> On Thu, 6 Oct 2011 19:50:46 +0000 (UTC), the following appeared in
> talk.origins, posted by Kleuskes & Moos <kle...@somewhere.else.net>:
>
>>On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:58:00 -0700, Bob Casanova wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 5 Oct 2011 17:40:49 +0000 (UTC), the following appeared in
>>> talk.origins, posted by Kleuskes & Moos <kle...@somewhere.else.net>:
>>>
>>>>On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:32:57 -0700, Schenck wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Oct 5, 4:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Its an interesting note, but it doesn't seem to be anything
>>>>> original. Wikipedia says this book was written in 1377.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but... No, but... Yes, but that's almost
>>>>ancient and everybody knows that ancient texts contain knowledge lost
>>>>to modern science!
>>>
>>> Need I point out that losing "knowledge" is not necessarily a Bad
>>> Thing? Or that when it's Knowledge Fron Ancient Texts (TM) the chance
>>> that it's a Bad Thing decreases markedly?
>>
>>Not really... I was hoping the Little Britain allusion would suffice to
>>indicate that i was being less that totally serious.
>
> I was aware of that; sorry if it seemed I thought you were serious.

You are forgiven. Now rise, brave knight...

>> The knowledge of COBOL
>>for instance, should be lost forever in the mists of time. Spandex and
>>bell-bottoms come to mind...
>
> ....and disco.

Well.... Most of it, anyway. Compared to some of nowadays stuff, some of
it ain't really that bad...

Hairdo's of the 80's. Definitely.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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/ When you get your PH.D. will you get \
\ able to work at BURGER KING? /
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\
\

[Steven L.]

"John S. Wilkins" <jo...@wilkins.id.au> wrote in message
news:1k8rq8p.aqcdtfu02g7qN%jo...@wilkins.id.au:

Then the Talk.Origins archive on this subject needs to be amended.
Because currently it says this:

"The great evolutionary theorist Ernst Mayr has, following the
philosopher Karl Popper, called this "typological essentialism", the
opinion that species have essences in some Aristotelian fashion [Mayr
1988]. While the "kinds" mentioned in the Bible ( Genesis 1:21-23) are
merely observations that progeny resemble parents, that is, that some
principle of heredity is active in reproduction, Aristotle held rather
that living things are generated in an approximation to a "form" of that
species. There is something that represents the perfect dog, for
example. [note 6] This view found its way into Christian theology
through the rediscovery of Aristotle from the Islamic tradition in the
middle ages, primarily through Thomas Aquinas, and was enshrined in
biology by Carl von Linne in the 18th century in what is now called the
Linnean system of classification.

"After the work of the mid-nineteenth century explorers and naturalists,
scientists were no longer able to view species in this way."

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/species.html

That certainly implies that essentialism hindered acceptance of
evolutionary ideas even before the 1880s. There is no statement on that
webpage comparable to what you wrote--that essentialism was never a
hindrance towards acceptance of evolutionary thought prior to the 1880s.

-- Steven L.

[John S. Wilkins]

Steven L. <sdli...@earthlink.net> wrote:

That whole FAQ needs to be radically revised. The trouble is that I
don't have the time right now. It reflects what I was taught as of the
date of composition - the latter statement about essentialism reflects
my won research.

[Otto]

"Ibn Khaldun" <IbnKh...@no-spamming.com> wrote in news message
news:j6h61q$7m5$2...@speranza.aioe.org...

A few centuries after the birth of Jesus Christ, there was a very strong
movement away from the purely spiritual and towards the acquisition of
knowledge relating purely to the physical world, of which the Academy of
Gondi Shapur is an example, according to Steiner. Ibn Khaldun seems to fit
nicely into this stream.

But long before this, of course, there were already Greek philosophers who
had deep thoughts about our world, such as Aristotle.

Otto

[John Stockwell]

Well, first of all, the first person to recognize that the writings of
Ibn Khaldun
are obsolete would be Ibn Khaldun, himself, if he were here. He had a
rudimentary notion
of the scientific method, and certainly he would recognize that his
preliminary
hypotheses have been completely supersceded by more modern methods.

-John

[Ron O]

On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Oct 5, 6:38 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 5, 3:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:

SNIP:

> > Did Space aliens have anything to do with arranging the 269 minerals
> > to get the first plants?  When did prokaryote bacteria get arranged
> > and did the space aliens create the bacteria or did they just
> > manipulate what had already been arranged out of the minerals?  I'm
> > just asking for someone that I know.
>
> > Ron Okimoto
>
> Did you have me in mind?  If so, your question is completely wasted.
> I don't expect us to have answers to any of these questions for the
> next 10,000 years except the "when" of prokaryotes [bacteria and
> archae] to which I think we may get an answer of "3.9 billion years"
> if we send out enough instrumental probes on flybys in that time
> period.

Actually, I did have you in mind. I don't expect you to have answers,
that was the point.

Why 10,000 years? Behe and his blood clotting and immune system
doesn't seem to have evidence for designer design for the past 400
million years or so. Blood clotting likely evolved before
vertebrates, the immune system that Behe is talking about is a
vertebrate system shared by sharks on up. Behe even posited that the
designer could no longer exist in his court testimony. Why would you
expect evidence to turn up in 10,000 years? Would you be looking for
extinct designers with space probes? How would that work?

Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
visited the earth from time to time to do the designing? Shouldn't we
find some on the moon? They couldn't have all hit the earth. Would
they have ignored the other planets and moons?

>
> The questions I am asking have a far better chance of being answered,
> even within the next century, although I don't expect a huge amount of
> progress in my lifetime.  They have to do with the relative
> probability of four different kinds of hypotheses:
>
> (1) Earth organisms are due to abiogenesis that took place right here
> on earth, without any outside intervention.

If your alien designers existed why wouldn't abiogenesis have been
possible on the earth? Where did the aliens come from?

>
> [The remaining three have to do with directed panspermy:]
>
> (2) Earth was seeded by a species that had pretty much the same
> genetic code we do. ["The Xordax Hypothesis."]
>
> (3) Earth was seeded by a species that had a biochemistry based on
> protein enzymes, but a much simpler genetic code than ours. ["The
> Golian Hypothesis"]
>
> (4) Earth was seeded by a species whose own biochemistry was based on
> nucleotide-string enzymes, perhaps RNA ribozymes, perhaps with a
> translation mechanism for producing simple structural proteins. ["The
> Throom Hypothesis"]

These hypotheses really rate names?

>
> In assessing the relative probability of (2), (3) and (4), there is on
> the one hand the fact that the initial efficient self-replicators,
> without the intervention of intelligent design, are easiest to
> envision in (2) and hardest in (4), but then the probability of
> evolving intelligent life from that basis comes in just the reverse
> order.  And so, it's a tossup at this stage which is the most probable
> and which the least.
>
> The three probabilities then combine in some way in any assessment of
> which is more probable, homegrown abiogenesis ("Mother Earth did it")
> or directed panspermia.

What kind of argument is this? You have no evidence that your aliens
did anything or were of any type.

No one knows what the first self replicators looked like. Ribozymes
and DNA likely came later than the first self replicators. Beats me
what came first. The self replicators could have been made of
anything. All they would have to do is self replicate and do
something else like make lipids or more complex carbon molecules.

It is likely a good bet that if the space aliens were using space
probes instead of coming here themselves that if they have been
manipulating life for billions of years that they have a DNA based
genetic system.

You have to posit that they used DNA to get their jollies if they had
some other genetic system. They have obviously been manipulating DNA
for billions of years, so how would they do that with space probes if
the probes didn't have DNA?

Why would the probes or aliens decide that some bacteria needed a
flagellum 2 billion years ago?

We are descended from a vertebrate ancestor that doubled their
genome. It was either an allotetraploid or a normal tetraploid, but
it had a doubled genome. Did the space aliens know what genome to
double and then manipulate or did they arrive after the fact and just
find the organism to manipulate?

What was I supposed to be running from in this post? It is all lame
speculation that you can't back up in any meaningful way.

You were just trying a lame and bogus ploy to try to claim that I was
running. There is nothing to run from in this post. Why did you even
try to pretend differently?

Ron Okimoto

[Steven L.]

"Ron O" <roki...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:a2627724-bc73-46b2...@by4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com:

AFAIK, the highest resolution map we have of the Moon's surface has a
resolution of about 100 meters.

A relatively small probe (say the size of Voyager) could not be
detected. Even its shadow could not be detected.

And the maps we have of other planets and moons have even coarser
resolutions.

> They couldn't have all hit the earth. Would
> they have ignored the other planets and moons?

They could be all over the Solar System. But if they're not
transmitting (their power packs have long since died out), we have no
way of knowing that they're there.

One project that has been proposed for SETI is for NASA to send probes
to the Lagrangian points, looking for alien spaceships there. An alien
civilization that wanted to keep tabs on Earth might have "parked" its
survey ships at the Lagrangian points. They could be there right now,
undetected by us.

> > The questions I am asking have a far better chance of being answered,
> > even within the next century, although I don't expect a huge amount of
> > progress in my lifetime.  They have to do with the relative
> > probability of four different kinds of hypotheses:
> >
> > (1) Earth organisms are due to abiogenesis that took place right here
> > on earth, without any outside intervention.
>
> If your alien designers existed why wouldn't abiogenesis have been
> possible on the earth? Where did the aliens come from?

If time travel is possible, then maybe *we* will be the designers.

Maybe in the 22nd century, a scientist will invent a time machine, go
back in time to the primordial Earth. And his own bacteria living on
his skin ("normal flora") will contaminate the primordial Earth and set
the evolutionary process in motion. And that would certainly explain
how DNA got started.

That would make life on Earth a self-sufficient loop in time: We're
here because we're here because....



-- Steven L.

[Randy C]

On Nov 29, 7:10 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "Ron O" <rokim...@cox.net> wrote in message

> -- Steven L.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

I actually debated someone in a forum such as this who insisted that
life on Earth is the result of what you suggest - humans traveling
back in time to plant the first life.

Chicken...egg

But of course another problem is that Darwinian evolution would
certainly result in some very different evolutionary outcome. If
those humans returned to the homes that they had left in the future
after planting the first life, they would be greeted by a very
different diversity of life than what they left.

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <a2627724-bc73-46b2...@by4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,

Ron O <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
>visited the earth from time to time to do the designing? Shouldn't we
>find some on the moon? They couldn't have all hit the earth. Would
>they have ignored the other planets and moons?

Consider how long prokaryotes have been around. Playing along wit the
seeding hypothesis for the moment, how much of the Earth's then surface
still exists today? Wouldn't the probe most likely have been lost to
subduction? I think the moon has had a makeover since then, too.
(Anyone have a good timeline of when Earth first had a surface you could
leave evidence on, when bacteria or archea first appeared, and when the
moon last became molten over most of its surface?) I would dearly love
to be able to search other bodies in the solar system in the kind of
detail required. We have tried to check Mars for life (though mainly
the wrong type--the concept of a "deep hot biosphere" was unknown when
the Viking probes were designed) but not so far as I know for evidence
of former life.

>If your alien designers existed why wouldn't abiogenesis have been
>possible on the earth? Where did the aliens come from?

The question is the relative rarity of abiogenesis vs. civilizations
with interstellar capability. The fact that microfossils appear in
the oldest rocks capable of having them could be used to argue for
either abiogenesis being easy and fast, or for samples having been
brought in by someone shortly after the Earth's surface settled down.

--
"Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS
crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in
TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in
bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither."

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <nIydndV0JoicR0nT...@earthlink.com>,

Steven L. <sdli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
>> visited the earth from time to time to do the designing? Shouldn't we
>> find some on the moon?
>
>AFAIK, the highest resolution map we have of the Moon's surface has a
>resolution of about 100 meters.

We now have photos that show enough detail to make out the leftover
descent stages at the Apollo landing sites.

>A relatively small probe (say the size of Voyager) could not be
>detected. Even its shadow could not be detected.

True. However, several sets of tracks, from both human feet and the
lunar rover, can be seen.

>Maybe in the 22nd century, a scientist will invent a time machine, go
>back in time to the primordial Earth. And his own bacteria living on
>his skin ("normal flora") will contaminate the primordial Earth and set
>the evolutionary process in motion. And that would certainly explain
>how DNA got started.

There is one SF short story in which somone sends a camera probe back
to the early Earth (for some reason they couldn't send it *less* far)
and neglects to sterilize it first.

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <32a57993-11da-42cf...@p16g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,

Randy C <randy...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I actually debated someone in a forum such as this who insisted that
>life on Earth is the result of what you suggest - humans traveling
>back in time to plant the first life.
>
>Chicken...egg
>
>But of course another problem is that Darwinian evolution would
>certainly result in some very different evolutionary outcome. If
>those humans returned to the homes that they had left in the future
>after planting the first life, they would be greeted by a very
>different diversity of life than what they left.

Everyone has heard of Bradbury's _A Sound of Thunder_, there is another
classic story that takes the meddling further back in the past as you
suggest:

http://www.univeros.com/usenet/cache/alt.binaries.ebooks/10.000.SciFi.and.Fantasy.Ebooks/William%20Tenn/William%20Tenn%20-%20Brooklyn%20Project.pdf

--
Money is Speech
Corporations are People
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

[Ernest Major]

In message <jb3fg6$ipe$1...@reader1.panix.com>, Paul Ciszek
<nos...@nospam.com> writes

>
>In article <nIydndV0JoicR0nT...@earthlink.com>,
>Steven L. <sdli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
>>> visited the earth from time to time to do the designing? Shouldn't we
>>> find some on the moon?
>>
>>AFAIK, the highest resolution map we have of the Moon's surface has a
>>resolution of about 100 meters.
>
>We now have photos that show enough detail to make out the leftover
>descent stages at the Apollo landing sites.

But not necessarily photographs covering the whole at the moon at that
level of detail. I did a little googling to check Steven L.'s claim, and
found a new press release announcing a lunar topographic map at 100m
resolution.

However Wikipedia says that the 1966/7 Lunar Orbiter program mapped 99%
of the moon at 60m or better resolution.

Fide Wikipedia the High Resolution Camera on the Clementine mission
photographed parts of the moon at between 7m and 20m resolution.

The Terrain Camera on SELENE had 10m resolution. A coverage figure isn't
coming immediately to hand.

>
>>A relatively small probe (say the size of Voyager) could not be
>>detected. Even its shadow could not be detected.
>
>True. However, several sets of tracks, from both human feet and the
>lunar rover, can be seen.
>
>>Maybe in the 22nd century, a scientist will invent a time machine, go
>>back in time to the primordial Earth. And his own bacteria living on
>>his skin ("normal flora") will contaminate the primordial Earth and set
>>the evolutionary process in motion. And that would certainly explain
>>how DNA got started.
>
>There is one SF short story in which somone sends a camera probe back
>to the early Earth (for some reason they couldn't send it *less* far)
>and neglects to sterilize it first.
>

--

alias Ernest Major

[pnyikos]

On Nov 28, 9:10�pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Oct 7, 3:55�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 5, 6:38�am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 5, 3:55�am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
>
> SNIP:
>
> > > Did Space aliens have anything to do with arranging the 269 minerals
> > > to get the first plants? �When did prokaryote bacteria get arranged
> > > and did the space aliens create the bacteria or did they just
> > > manipulate what had already been arranged out of the minerals? �I'm
> > > just asking for someone that I know.
>
> > > Ron Okimoto
>
> > Did you have me in mind? �If so, your question is completely wasted.
> > I don't expect us to have answers to any of these questions for the
> > next 10,000 years except the "when" of prokaryotes [bacteria and
> > archae] to which I think we may get an answer of "3.9 billion years"
> > if we send out enough instrumental probes on flybys in that time
> > period.
>
> Actually, I did have you in mind. �I don't expect you to have answers,
> that was the point.
>
> Why 10,000 years?

Because, unless SETI turns out to be a resounding success, it is
highly unlikely that we will find an extraterrestrial civilization any
sooner that really has direct, concrete evidence that either (1) it
and we are the result of homegrown abiogenesis or (2) we have been
seeded by another civilization.

However, 10,000 years might be enough time for us to check out enough
planets to ascertain whether abiogenesis really is a common occurrence
or what looks to be a one-in-a-galaxy (or rarer) event.

One possiblity is that there are many planets with organisms that
share our genetic code or insignificant variations thereon, and NO
others. That would be indirect evidence supporting a common origin,
and the only reasonable alternatives are directed panspermia and
undirected panspermia of the Arrhenius-Hoyle-Wickramasinghe variety.

>�Behe and his blood clotting and immune system

> doesn't seem to have evidence for designer design for the past 400
> million years or so.

Correct, but so what? these systems are hardly likely to be the
product of design. I was aware of that already in 1997 when I saw
Keith Robison's explanation, involving autocatalycity, of how these
two systems could have arisen gradually from much simpler precursors.

> �Blood clotting likely evolved before

> vertebrates, the immune system that Behe is talking about is a
> vertebrate system shared by sharks on up.

Correct, but so what?

> �Behe even posited that the

> designer could no longer exist in his court testimony. �Why would you
> expect evidence to turn up in 10,000 years?

Don't confuse necessary conditions with sufficient conditions. But
see above for why I chose that figure.

> Would you be looking for
> extinct designers with space probes? �How would that work?

If they are long extinct, then the best that could be hoped for is
that there is an unbroken string of intelligent species reaching back
to that time, handing on information. Other possibilities are more
speculative.

> Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?

Why on earth should I? Francis Crick did not envision such visits to
any but the most nearby systems, and there are compelling reasons, due
to the vast interstellar distances and loose gravitational links
between stars in the galaxy, why I don't envision them either.

Over and over Crick reiterated that "prokaryotes travel farther".

Continued in next reply.

Peter Nyikos


�Shouldn't we

[pnyikos]

Picking up where I left off in my previous post:

On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 5, 6:38 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:

> Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?

My hypothesis, which I share with Crick, is that all the designing
took place before the probes were sent:

The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
combine all the desirable properties within one single type
of organism or to send many different organisms is not
completely clear.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
Simon and Schuster, 1981

> Shouldn't we
> find some on the moon?

Of course not. Meteoritic bombardment would have obliterated or
buried all signs eons ago. Didn't you read what I wrote earlier?

[reposted from above after having been deleted above]

> > I think we may get an answer of "3.9 billion years"
> >if we send out enough instrumental probes on flybys in that time
> >period.

[end of repost]

>They couldn't have all hit the earth.

Don't be silly. There would have been guidance galore, just to get
the space probes to our solar system. Why stop with the guidance
inside the earth-moon system?

> Would
> they have ignored the other planets and moons?

Perhaps, perhaps not. Exploration of Mars and Europa and Titan might
give us clues as to whether they were ever promising targets.

>
>
> > The questions I am asking have a far better chance of being answered,
> > even within the next century, although I don't expect a huge amount of
> > progress in my lifetime.  They have to do with the relative
> > probability of four different kinds of hypotheses:
>
> > (1) Earth organisms are due to abiogenesis that took place right here
> > on earth, without any outside intervention.
>
> If your alien designers existed why wouldn't abiogenesis have been
> possible on the earth?

The issue is not possibility, it is probability.

> Where did the aliens come from?

Homegrown abiogenesis. According to my hypothesis, THEIR planet was
the one-in-a-galaxy (or rarer) lucky one. The hypothesis goes on to
give details about why a planet with intelligent species, chosen at
random, might be more likely the product of secondary seeding than
primary abiogenesis. I've posted on this feature in the thread,
"Directed panspermy, Nyikos style II":

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/5e840a9968c6d5fe/a3f67b2251d84e5a

>
>
> > [The remaining three have to do with directed panspermy:]
>
> > (2) Earth was seeded by a species that had pretty much the same
> > genetic code we do. ["The Xordax Hypothesis."]
>
> > (3) Earth was seeded by a species that had a biochemistry based on
> > protein enzymes, but a much simpler genetic code than ours. ["The
> > Golian Hypothesis"]
>
> > (4) Earth was seeded by a species whose own biochemistry was based on
> > nucleotide-string enzymes, perhaps RNA ribozymes, perhaps with a
> > translation mechanism for producing simple structural proteins. ["The
> > Throom Hypothesis"]
>
> These hypotheses really rate names?

Huh? what do you mean by "rate names"? They are just catchy names,
nothing more.

Remainder deleted, to be replied to when I have more time.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 29, 8:10 am, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "Ron O" <rokim...@cox.net> wrote in message

>
> news:a2627724-bc73-46b2...@by4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com:
>
>
>
> > On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > On Oct 5, 6:38 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:

> > Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> > visited the earth from time to time to do the designing? Shouldn't we
> > find some on the moon?

See my own reply to Ron O about this a few minutes ago.

> AFAIK, the highest resolution map we have of the Moon's surface has a
> resolution of about 100 meters.

I think Ron O had in mind extensive exploration of the moon, in the
future. Lots can be done in the 10,000 year time frame he was
reacting to, but I don't think answers are going to come from
exploring the moon. See my replies to him.

> A relatively small probe (say the size of Voyager) could not be
> detected.  Even its shadow could not be detected.
>
> And the maps we have of other planets and moons have even coarser
> resolutions.
>
> > They couldn't have all hit the earth.  Would
> > they have ignored the other planets and moons?
>
> They could be all over the Solar System.  But if they're not
> transmitting (their power packs have long since died out), we have no
> way of knowing that they're there.

After 3.9 billion years, I don't expect them to be anywhere.

> One project that has been proposed for SETI is for NASA to send probes
> to the Lagrangian points, looking for alien spaceships there.  An alien
> civilization that wanted to keep tabs on Earth might have "parked" its
> survey ships at the Lagrangian points.  They could be there right now,
> undetected by us.
>
> > > The questions I am asking have a far better chance of being answered,
> > > even within the next century, although I don't expect a huge amount of
> > > progress in my lifetime. They have to do with the relative
> > > probability of four different kinds of hypotheses:
>
> > > (1) Earth organisms are due to abiogenesis that took place right here
> > > on earth, without any outside intervention.
>
> > If your alien designers existed why wouldn't abiogenesis have been
> > possible on the earth?  Where did the aliens come from?
>
> If time travel is possible, then maybe *we* will be the designers.

I leave that kind of speculation for people who take pulp science
fiction seriously.

> Maybe in the 22nd century, a scientist will invent a time machine, go
> back in time to the primordial Earth.  And his own bacteria living on
> his skin ("normal flora") will contaminate the primordial Earth and set
> the evolutionary process in motion.  And that would certainly explain
> how DNA got started.
>
> That would make life on Earth a self-sufficient loop in time:  We're
> here because we're here because....

Our universe seems to be following a linear trajectory, with hydrogen
being converted to helium relentlessly and little production of
hydrogen to compensate.

Peter Nyikos

[Ron O]

On Nov 29, 2:38 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
> In article <32a57993-11da-42cf-a9cb-d9d6d757b...@p16g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,

> Randy C  <randyec...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> >I actually debated someone in a forum such as this who insisted that
> >life on Earth is the result of what you suggest - humans traveling
> >back in time to plant the first life.
>
> >Chicken...egg
>
> >But of course another problem is that Darwinian evolution would
> >certainly result in some very different evolutionary outcome.  If
> >those humans returned to the homes that they had left in the future
> >after planting the first life, they would be greeted by a very
> >different diversity of life than what they left.
>
> Everyone has heard of Bradbury's _A Sound of Thunder_, there is another
> classic story that takes the meddling further back in the past as you
> suggest:
>

> http://www.univeros.com/usenet/cache/alt.binaries.ebooks/10.000.SciFi...

>
> --
> Money is Speech
> Corporations are People
> Freedom is Slavery
> Ignorance is Strength

Q takes Picard back into time and sticks his hand in the primordial
ooze and then says how sad the goo didn't get together to form life
and it got killed off before it could get started. When you think of
how many bacteria Picard shed during their stay, I would expect life
to have a pretty good chance.

Ron Okimoto

[Ron O]

I do think that it is stupid to argue about this junk because you
aren't ever going to get to an answer until the aliens show up.

My question still stands. Why 10,000 years instead of a million or a
billion? If aliens seeded life on this planet over 3 billion years
ago, why would you expect confirmation within 10,000 years?

>
> However, 10,000 years might be enough time for us to check out enough
> planets to ascertain whether abiogenesis really is a common occurrence
> or what looks to be a one-in-a-galaxy (or rarer) event.

How many planets is that when we might be talking about just one?

How will you tell the designers planet from another seeded planet?

>
> One possiblity is that there are many planets with organisms that
> share our genetic code or insignificant variations thereon, and NO
> others.  That would be indirect evidence supporting a common origin,
> and the only reasonable alternatives are directed panspermia and
> undirected panspermia of the Arrhenius-Hoyle-Wickramasinghe variety.

You'd have to get out of the solar system for that one. We might find
life in our solar system, but we know that we can have rocks from Mars
and likely from anywhere else that there has been collisions large
enough to spray pieces of the planet or moon out of orbit.

Some of the impacts in earth's history could have done it. You might
not expect the lifeforms to survive in space for that long due to the
radiation and extreme conditions, but you can't rule it out. If you
find similar genetic codes in other star systems that would be
evidence of something. It is highly unlikely that life could survive
in the radiations of space for the thousands of years that it would
take to get to earth or from earth to another solar system.

>
> > Behe and his blood clotting and immune system
> > doesn't seem to have evidence for designer design for the past 400
> > million years or so.
>
> Correct, but so what?  these systems are hardly likely to be the
> product of design.  I was aware of that already in 1997 when I saw
> Keith Robison's explanation, involving autocatalycity, of how these
> two systems could have arisen gradually from much simpler precursors.

So when did the designers do their designing. It sounds like you
don't have a clue and can't even put forward a guess. At least Behe
had some time frame for a visit.

>
> > Blood clotting likely evolved before
> > vertebrates, the immune system that Behe is talking about is a
> > vertebrate system shared by sharks on up.
>
> Correct, but so what?

It means that you don't have a clue or even somewhere to start looking
for evidence of visitation.

>
> > Behe even posited that the
> > designer could no longer exist in his court testimony. Why would you
> > expect evidence to turn up in 10,000 years?
>
> Don't confuse necessary conditions with sufficient conditions.  But
> see above for why I chose that figure.

It still doesn't make sense. I don't see why 10,000 years is any type
of estimate except just some number that sounds big enough and far
enough in the future to insure that you aren't accountable for
anything, but idle speculation. You don't even know if the designers
are in this galaxy. Maybe they used worm holes to send out their
probes?

I hope that we are off this planet and have colonized another star
system in the next 10,000 years, but I don't see any reason why there
would be thousands or even hundreds of interstellar probes launched.

>
> > Would you be looking for
> > extinct designers with space probes? How would that work?
>
> If they are long extinct, then the best that could be hoped for is
> that there is an unbroken string of intelligent species reaching back
> to that time, handing on information.  Other possibilities are more
> speculative.

Well they supposedly did something over 3 billion years ago and they
aren't around here, so you are likely out of luck.

>
> > Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> > visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?
>
> Why on earth should I?  Francis Crick did not envision such visits to
> any but the most nearby systems, and there are compelling reasons, due
> to the vast interstellar distances and loose gravitational links
> between stars in the galaxy, why I don't envision them either.

Crick was likely wrong about genetic material raining down from space
too. Just think of how much radiation shielding would be required to
get intact genetic material between star systems. The problem is even
worse if you posit that the probes could travel at a significant
fraction of the speed of light.

>
> Over and over Crick reiterated that "prokaryotes travel farther".

Probably not far enough. How many thousands of years did the genetic
material take to get here? You need shielding and shielding is
heavy. Just taking an asteroid large enough might do, but you would
have to contend with background radiation within the asteroid. They
are as radioactive as earth rocks. The bigger the mass the longer it
is going to take to get where ever you are going because you not only
have to accelerate the mass, but you have to slow it down.

Ron Okimoto

[Ron O]

On Nov 29, 4:19 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Picking up where I left off in my previous post:
>
> On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Oct 5, 6:38 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> > Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> > visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?
>
> My hypothesis, which I share with Crick, is that all the designing
> took place before the probes were sent:
>
>      The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
>       microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
>       conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
>       combine all the desirable properties within one single type
>       of organism or to send many different organisms is not
>       completely clear.
>                 --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
>                   Simon and Schuster, 1981

This just means that the probes had to be very sophisticated and had
to be able to survive eons in space. How many such probes were sent?
Who kept up this program of progress from abroad over billions of
years? These probe makers were very patient designers.

>
> > Shouldn't we
> > find some on the moon?
>
> Of course not.  Meteoritic bombardment would have obliterated or
> buried all signs eons ago.  Didn't you read what I wrote earlier?

Why? Another probe could arrive tomorrow.

>
> [reposted from above after having been deleted above]> > I think we may get an answer of "3.9 billion years"
> > >if we send out enough instrumental probes on flybys in that time
> > >period.
>
> [end of repost]
>
> >They couldn't have all hit the earth.
>
> Don't be silly.  There would have been guidance galore, just to get
> the space probes to our solar system.  Why stop with the guidance
> inside the earth-moon system?

Why not target Mars?

I think the silly one is the one that takes this junk seriously.

>
> > Would
> > they have ignored the other planets and moons?
>
> Perhaps, perhaps not.  Exploration of Mars and Europa and Titan might
> give us clues as to whether they were ever promising targets.

That would be my guess. 3.9 billion years ago Mars might have been a
pretty nice place and Venus may have been more promising.

>
> > > The questions I am asking have a far better chance of being answered,
> > > even within the next century, although I don't expect a huge amount of
> > > progress in my lifetime.  They have to do with the relative
> > > probability of four different kinds of hypotheses:
>
> > > (1) Earth organisms are due to abiogenesis that took place right here
> > > on earth, without any outside intervention.
>
> > If your alien designers existed why wouldn't abiogenesis have been
> > possible on the earth?
>
> The issue is not possibility, it is probability.

Well, it is possible that I will flip a coin a thousand times and they
will all be heads, but I'm not going to cry about anyone taking me
seriously about it.

The designer could have created the universe after I supposedly wrote
this, but just before you read this post. That is possible too. My
guess is that you can't calculate the probability of that any more
than you can calculate the probability of space aliens doing your
designing when you don't even know that the space aliens ever existed.

>
> > Where did the aliens come from?
>
> Homegrown abiogenesis.  According to my hypothesis, THEIR planet was
> the one-in-a-galaxy (or rarer) lucky one.  The hypothesis goes on to
> give details about why a planet with intelligent species, chosen at
> random, might be more likely the product of secondary seeding than
> primary abiogenesis.  I've posted on this feature in the thread,
> "Directed panspermy, Nyikos style II":
>

> http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/5e84...

Well then you do have nothing more than nothing to support that. What
made their planet the one and not ours? Did they have more water?
Less water? A milder climate? More or less carbon? Do you see your
problem? When did the right mix of elements come to exist in our
universe? How many stars had to die to produce an earth like planet?
Were such planets available around 4 billion years before the earth
existed? The universe is only around 14 billion years old. When did
life originate on the alien designers planet if we took around 4
billion years to evolve with their help? Even if they were on one of
the first planets after the Universe cooled enough to form planets (it
would be a pretty element poor planet) they would only have around 10
billion years to evolve before they were far enough along to help us.
Is that enough time?

>
> > > [The remaining three have to do with directed panspermy:]
>
> > > (2) Earth was seeded by a species that had pretty much the same
> > > genetic code we do. ["The Xordax Hypothesis."]
>
> > > (3) Earth was seeded by a species that had a biochemistry based on
> > > protein enzymes, but a much simpler genetic code than ours. ["The
> > > Golian Hypothesis"]
>
> > > (4) Earth was seeded by a species whose own biochemistry was based on
> > > nucleotide-string enzymes, perhaps RNA ribozymes, perhaps with a
> > > translation mechanism for producing simple structural proteins. ["The
> > > Throom Hypothesis"]
>
> > These hypotheses really rate names?
>
> Huh?  what do you mean by "rate names"?  They are just catchy names,
> nothing more.
>
> Remainder deleted, to be replied to when I have more time.
>
> Peter Nyikos

So no one else uses these names?

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:19:36 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>Picking up where I left off in my previous post:
>
>On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>> On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>> > On Oct 5, 6:38 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
>> visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?
>
>My hypothesis, which I share with Crick, is that all the designing
>took place before the probes were sent:
>
> The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> combine all the desirable properties within one single type
> of organism or to send many different organisms is not
> completely clear.
> --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> Simon and Schuster, 1981

You really should stop trotting out this hoary reference. Crick and
Orgel later publicly rejected your ideas:

http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf

They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
speculative", and then make a relevant observation:

"The lesson is clear: speculation is fun, but even correct hypotheses
without experimental follow-up are unlikely to have much effect on the
development of biology."

Finally, they conclude with this telling confession:

"We did not seriously consider the possibility that there was a
midwife, a replicating pre-RNA world of quite different chemistry
[...] Such a pre-RNA world would have possessed the catalytic activity
necessary to start the RNA world but it may not have needed to
transfer its genetic information directly to that of the new (RNA)
replication system. We now find this idea attractive."

So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",
has little effect on additional research, and their reasons for
suggesting it in the first place are superceded by additional research
for home-grown abiogenesis.

[pnyikos]

On Nov 29, 3:10 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
> In article <a2627724-bc73-46b2-862c-b7c4a6441...@by4g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,

> Ron O  <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> >Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> >visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?  Shouldn't we
> >find some on the moon?  They couldn't have all hit the earth.  Would
> >they have ignored the other planets and moons?
>
> Consider how long prokaryotes have been around.  Playing along wit the
> seeding hypothesis for the moment, how much of the Earth's then surface
> still exists today?  Wouldn't the probe most likely have been lost to
> subduction?  I think the moon has had a makeover since then, too.
> (Anyone have a good timeline of when Earth first had a surface you could
> leave evidence on, when bacteria or archea first appeared, and when the
> moon last became molten over most of its surface?)  I would dearly love
> to be able to search other bodies in the solar system in the kind of
> detail required.  We have tried to check Mars for life (though mainly
> the wrong type--the concept of a "deep hot biosphere" was unknown when
> the Viking probes were designed) but not so far as I know for evidence
> of former life.
>
> >If your alien designers existed why wouldn't abiogenesis have been
> >possible on the earth?  Where did the aliens come from?
>
> The question is the relative rarity of abiogenesis vs. civilizations
> with interstellar capability.  The fact that microfossils appear in
> the oldest rocks capable of having them

Are you sure about this detail, Paul?

> could be used to argue for
> either abiogenesis being easy and fast, or for samples having been
> brought in by someone shortly after the Earth's surface settled down.
>

Excellent analysis, Paul! There are a few isolated fragments of
continental crust still around from the old days, in Australia and (I
think) the Canadian shield, and a few other places, but while
microfossils are being found there, I don't think we'll ever find
remains of interstellar probes.

Peter nyikos

[John Stockwell]

On Nov 29, 11:24ápm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:19:36 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
>
>
> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >Picking up where I left off in my previous post:
>

> >On Nov 28, 9:10ápm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> >> On Oct 7, 3:55ápm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>
> >> > On Oct 5, 6:38áam, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> >> Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> >> visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?
>
> >My hypothesis, which I share with Crick, is that all the designing
> >took place before the probes were sent:
>

> > á á The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> > á á ámicroorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> > á á áconditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> > á á ácombine all the desirable properties within one single type
> > á á áof organism or to send many different organisms is not
> > á á ácompletely clear.
> > á á á á á á á á--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> > á á á á á á á á áSimon and Schuster, 1981
>
> You really should stop trotting out this hoary reference. áCrick and

> Orgel later publicly rejected your ideas:
>
> http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf
>
> They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
> speculative", and then make a relevant observation:
>
> "The lesson is clear: speculation is fun, but even correct hypotheses
> without experimental follow-up are unlikely to have much effect on the
> development of biology."
>
> Finally, they conclude with this telling confession:
>
> "We did not seriously consider the possibility that there was a
> midwife, a replicating pre-RNA world of quite different chemistry
> [...] Such a pre-RNA world would have possessed the catalytic activity
> necessary to start the RNA world but it may not have needed to
> transfer its genetic information directly to that of the new (RNA)

> replication system. áWe now find this idea attractive."

>
> So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",
> has little effect on additional research, and their reasons for
> suggesting it in the first place are superceded by additional research
> for home-grown abiogenesis.

You have to forgive Peter. He is a mathematician, and in the world
of mathematicians, there is no rule against "multiplying entities
unnecessarily". In fact, mathematics operates precisely by multiplying
entities at every apparent impasse. Create a mathematical object
that seems to have properties that conflict with the rest of
mathematics,
and you invent a new mathematical object that has the necessary
properties, and *does* agree.

In Peter's world the existence of biology and the absence of a clear
understanding of abiogenesis invites constructivism. So Peter has
constructed a race of RNA-based organisms who intelligently designed
interstellar space probes and colonizing bacteria. (Scientists on the
other hand will look closer to home for the answer, such as
perhaps we need to look for new chemistry.)

Combine this with the fact that Peter is a Catholic of Hungarian
ancestry, then his cultural preconditioning makes him a natural
religious apologist. (I was in Hungary in June and discovered that
the Hungarians are really rabid Catholics.)

If he can get a significant number of people
including himself, to accept an "engineered biology" solution,
then by a limiting process, he hopes (not necessarily consciously)
that it will turn out that the aliens are
indistinguishable from God. And hence, he will have a "proof of the
Creator" and his professional life and his religious life will be
a closed loop.

-John

>
> >> Shouldn't we
> >> find some on the moon?
>

> >Of course not. áMeteoritic bombardment would have obliterated or
> >buried all signs eons ago. áDidn't you read what I wrote earlier?

>
> >[reposted from above after having been deleted above]
> >> > I think we may get an answer of "3.9 billion years"
> >> >if we send out enough instrumental probes on flybys in that time
> >> >period.
> >[end of repost]
>
> >>They couldn't have all hit the earth.
>

> >Don't be silly. áThere would have been guidance galore, just to get
> >the space probes to our solar system. áWhy stop with the guidance
> >inside the earth-moon system?
>
> >>áWould

> >> they have ignored the other planets and moons?
>

> >Perhaps, perhaps not. áExploration of Mars and Europa and Titan might

> >give us clues as to whether they were ever promising targets.
>
> >> > The questions I am asking have a far better chance of being answered,
> >> > even within the next century, although I don't expect a huge amount of

> >> > progress in my lifetime. áThey have to do with the relative

> >> > probability of four different kinds of hypotheses:
>
> >> > (1) Earth organisms are due to abiogenesis that took place right here
> >> > on earth, without any outside intervention.
>
> >> If your alien designers existed why wouldn't abiogenesis have been
> >> possible on the earth?
>
> >The issue is not possibility, it is probability.
>
> >> Where did the aliens come from?
>

> >Homegrown abiogenesis. áAccording to my hypothesis, THEIR planet was
> >the one-in-a-galaxy (or rarer) lucky one. áThe hypothesis goes on to

> >give details about why a planet with intelligent species, chosen at
> >random, might be more likely the product of secondary seeding than

> >primary abiogenesis. áI've posted on this feature in the thread,

> >"Directed panspermy, Nyikos style II":
>

> >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/5e84...

>
> >> > [The remaining three have to do with directed panspermy:]
>
> >> > (2) Earth was seeded by a species that had pretty much the same
> >> > genetic code we do. ["The Xordax Hypothesis."]
>
> >> > (3) Earth was seeded by a species that had a biochemistry based on
> >> > protein enzymes, but a much simpler genetic code than ours. ["The
> >> > Golian Hypothesis"]
>
> >> > (4) Earth was seeded by a species whose own biochemistry was based on
> >> > nucleotide-string enzymes, perhaps RNA ribozymes, perhaps with a
> >> > translation mechanism for producing simple structural proteins. ["The
> >> > Throom Hypothesis"]
>
> >> These hypotheses really rate names?
>

> >Huh? áwhat do you mean by "rate names"? áThey are just catchy names,

[jillery]

I have to agree with you on your last sentence. Think of it as an
early Christmas gift.

[jillery]

On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:48:19 -0800 (PST), John Stockwell
<john.1...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Nov 29, 11:24�pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:19:36 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>>
>>
>>
>> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> >Picking up where I left off in my previous post:
>>

>> >On Nov 28, 9:10�pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>> >> On Oct 7, 3:55�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>>
>> >> > On Oct 5, 6:38�am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>>
>> >> Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
>> >> visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?
>>
>> >My hypothesis, which I share with Crick, is that all the designing
>> >took place before the probes were sent:
>>

>> > � � The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
>> > � � �microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
>> > � � �conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
>> > � � �combine all the desirable properties within one single type
>> > � � �of organism or to send many different organisms is not
>> > � � �completely clear.
>> > � � � � � � � �--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
>> > � � � � � � � � �Simon and Schuster, 1981
>>
>> You really should stop trotting out this hoary reference. �Crick and

>> Orgel later publicly rejected your ideas:
>>
>> http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf
>>
>> They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
>> speculative", and then make a relevant observation:
>>
>> "The lesson is clear: speculation is fun, but even correct hypotheses
>> without experimental follow-up are unlikely to have much effect on the
>> development of biology."
>>
>> Finally, they conclude with this telling confession:
>>
>> "We did not seriously consider the possibility that there was a
>> midwife, a replicating pre-RNA world of quite different chemistry
>> [...] Such a pre-RNA world would have possessed the catalytic activity
>> necessary to start the RNA world but it may not have needed to
>> transfer its genetic information directly to that of the new (RNA)

>> replication system. �We now find this idea attractive."

>>
>> So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",
>> has little effect on additional research, and their reasons for
>> suggesting it in the first place are superceded by additional research
>> for home-grown abiogenesis.
>
>You have to forgive Peter. He is a mathematician,

Despite the risk of sounding contrarian, no I don't. I hold people
who describe themselves as mathematicians (and other professional
disciplines) to a higher standard than I do run-of-the-mill trolls.

>and in the world
>of mathematicians, there is no rule against "multiplying entities
>unnecessarily". In fact, mathematics operates precisely by multiplying
>entities at every apparent impasse. Create a mathematical object
>that seems to have properties that conflict with the rest of
>mathematics,
>and you invent a new mathematical object that has the necessary
>properties, and *does* agree.
>
>In Peter's world the existence of biology and the absence of a clear
>understanding of abiogenesis invites constructivism. So Peter has
>constructed a race of RNA-based organisms who intelligently designed
>interstellar space probes and colonizing bacteria. (Scientists on the
>other hand will look closer to home for the answer, such as
>perhaps we need to look for new chemistry.)
>
>Combine this with the fact that Peter is a Catholic of Hungarian
>ancestry, then his cultural preconditioning makes him a natural
>religious apologist. (I was in Hungary in June and discovered that
>the Hungarians are really rabid Catholics.)

IIUC this is a consequence of their proximity to an expansionist
Ottoman Empire.

>If he can get a significant number of people
>including himself, to accept an "engineered biology" solution,
>then by a limiting process, he hopes (not necessarily consciously)
>that it will turn out that the aliens are
>indistinguishable from God. And hence, he will have a "proof of the
>Creator" and his professional life and his religious life will be
>a closed loop.
>
>-John

I wish him well on that endeavor.

>> >> Shouldn't we
>> >> find some on the moon?
>>

>> >Of course not. �Meteoritic bombardment would have obliterated or
>> >buried all signs eons ago. �Didn't you read what I wrote earlier?

>>
>> >[reposted from above after having been deleted above]
>> >> > I think we may get an answer of "3.9 billion years"
>> >> >if we send out enough instrumental probes on flybys in that time
>> >> >period.
>> >[end of repost]
>>
>> >>They couldn't have all hit the earth.
>>

>> >Don't be silly. �There would have been guidance galore, just to get
>> >the space probes to our solar system. �Why stop with the guidance
>> >inside the earth-moon system?
>>
>> >>�Would

>> >> they have ignored the other planets and moons?
>>

>> >Perhaps, perhaps not. �Exploration of Mars and Europa and Titan might

>> >give us clues as to whether they were ever promising targets.
>>
>> >> > The questions I am asking have a far better chance of being answered,
>> >> > even within the next century, although I don't expect a huge amount of

>> >> > progress in my lifetime. �They have to do with the relative

>> >> > probability of four different kinds of hypotheses:
>>
>> >> > (1) Earth organisms are due to abiogenesis that took place right here
>> >> > on earth, without any outside intervention.
>>
>> >> If your alien designers existed why wouldn't abiogenesis have been
>> >> possible on the earth?
>>
>> >The issue is not possibility, it is probability.
>>
>> >> Where did the aliens come from?
>>

>> >Homegrown abiogenesis. �According to my hypothesis, THEIR planet was
>> >the one-in-a-galaxy (or rarer) lucky one. �The hypothesis goes on to

>> >give details about why a planet with intelligent species, chosen at
>> >random, might be more likely the product of secondary seeding than

>> >primary abiogenesis. �I've posted on this feature in the thread,

>> >"Directed panspermy, Nyikos style II":
>>
>> >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/5e84...
>>
>> >> > [The remaining three have to do with directed panspermy:]
>>
>> >> > (2) Earth was seeded by a species that had pretty much the same
>> >> > genetic code we do. ["The Xordax Hypothesis."]
>>
>> >> > (3) Earth was seeded by a species that had a biochemistry based on
>> >> > protein enzymes, but a much simpler genetic code than ours. ["The
>> >> > Golian Hypothesis"]
>>
>> >> > (4) Earth was seeded by a species whose own biochemistry was based on
>> >> > nucleotide-string enzymes, perhaps RNA ribozymes, perhaps with a
>> >> > translation mechanism for producing simple structural proteins. ["The
>> >> > Throom Hypothesis"]
>>
>> >> These hypotheses really rate names?
>>

>> >Huh? �what do you mean by "rate names"? �They are just catchy names,

[Mitchell Coffey]

On Nov 30, 1:42 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:48:19 -0800 (PST), John Stockwell

[snip]

> >You have to forgive Peter. He is a mathematician,
>
> Despite the risk of sounding contrarian, no I don't.  I hold people
> who describe themselves as mathematicians (and other professional
> disciplines) to a higher standard than I do run-of-the-mill trolls.

[snip]

"Before his business career, he worked as a mathematician in
ballistics as a civilian employee of the United States Navy."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain

Mitchell Coffey

[Mitchell Coffey]

On Nov 30, 10:48 am, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]

> Combine this with the fact that Peter is a Catholic of Hungarian
> ancestry, then his cultural preconditioning makes him a natural
> religious apologist. (I was in Hungary in June and discovered that
> the Hungarians are really rabid Catholics.)

[snip]

Oh, come, come. Obviously it's because he lives in South Carolina.
They're the folks who fired on Ft. Sumter, for goshsake. And recall
how readily Charleston fell to the British in the Revolution. You've
got to get your causalities straight.

Mitchell Coffey

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <1acbc7e4-2b33-46ca...@o1g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>,

pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>On Nov 29, 3:10 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
>>
>> The question is the relative rarity of abiogenesis vs. civilizations
>> with interstellar capability.  The fact that microfossils appear in
>> the oldest rocks capable of having them
>
>Are you sure about this detail, Paul?

I'm quoting some popular science article. Possibly Gould, I don't know.
According to Wiki there is evidence of life throughout the Archean, not
many rocks any older than that, and even some of those arguably show
traces of what might be biological activity. Other non-Wiki sources
give 3.4Gya as the oldest evidence of life. Your mileage may vary.


--
Please reply to: | "Evolution is a theory that accounts
pciszek at panix dot com | for variety, not superiority."
Autoreply has been disabled | -- Joan Pontius

[pnyikos]

On Nov 30, 1:24 am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:19:36 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
>
>
> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >Picking up where I left off in my previous post:
>
> >On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> >> On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >> > On Oct 5, 6:38 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> >> Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> >> visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?
>
> >My hypothesis, which I share with Crick, is that all the designing
> >took place before the probes were sent:
>
> >     The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> >      microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> >      conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> >      combine all the desirable properties within one single type
> >      of organism or to send many different organisms is not
> >      completely clear.
> >                --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> >                  Simon and Schuster, 1981
>
> You really should stop trotting out this hoary reference.  Crick and
> Orgel later publicly rejected your ideas:

This claim is NOT supported by the following reference.

> http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf

You start backpedaling immediately, but you need to backpedal further
by noting that the words "higly speculative" refer not to what you
called "this hoary reference" but to two biochemistry papers.

> They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
> speculative", and then make a relevant observation:

False. I did not refer to any original statements in any of the
papers they reference.

> "The lesson is clear: speculation is fun, but even correct hypotheses
> without experimental follow-up are unlikely to have much effect on the
> development of biology."

And this speculation did NOT have to do with "this hoary reference"
which isn't even MENTIONED in the article.

> Finally, they conclude with this telling confession:
>
> "We did not seriously consider the possibility that there was a
> midwife, a replicating pre-RNA world of quite different chemistry
> [...] Such a pre-RNA world would have possessed the catalytic activity
> necessary to start the RNA world but it may not have needed to
> transfer its genetic information directly to that of the new (RNA)
> replication system.  We now find this idea attractive."
>
> So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",

Completely false, see above.

Did you even READ the article, or are you just passing on quotes
cherry-picked by someone else?

> has little effect on additional research, and their reasons for
> suggesting it in the first place are superceded by additional research
> for home-grown abiogenesis.

Which quote did you think established this?

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 30, 10:48 am, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Nov 29, 11:24 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:19:36 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
> > <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > >Picking up where I left off in my previous post:
>

> > >On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> > >> On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>
> > >> > On Oct 5, 6:38 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > >> Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> > >> visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?
>
> > >My hypothesis, which I share with Crick, is that all the designing
> > >took place before the probes were sent:
>

> > >     The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of

> > >      microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic

> > >      conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to

> > >      combine all the desirable properties within one single type

> > >      of organism or to send many different organisms is not

> > >      completely clear.

> > >                --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_

> > >                  Simon and Schuster, 1981
>
> > You really should stop trotting out this hoary reference.  Crick and

> > Orgel later publicly rejected your ideas:
>
> >http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf
>
> > They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
> > speculative", and then make a relevant observation:
>
> > "The lesson is clear: speculation is fun, but even correct hypotheses
> > without experimental follow-up are unlikely to have much effect on the
> > development of biology."
>
> > Finally, they conclude with this telling confession:
>
> > "We did not seriously consider the possibility that there was a
> > midwife, a replicating pre-RNA world of quite different chemistry
> > [...] Such a pre-RNA world would have possessed the catalytic activity
> > necessary to start the RNA world but it may not have needed to
> > transfer its genetic information directly to that of the new (RNA)

> > replication system.  We now find this idea attractive."

>
> > So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",
> > has little effect on additional research, and their reasons for
> > suggesting it in the first place are superceded by additional research
> > for home-grown abiogenesis.
>
> You have to forgive Peter.

Yes, it is terrible to have one's post shot down as thoroughly as I
shot down the post that you are replying to, just a few minutes ago.

Jillery may find it hard to forgive me for this, but I hope [s]he will
rise to the occasion.

[snip usual Stockwell "tough love" baloney, with some ridiculous
stereotyping of Hungarians, etc. to boot]

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 30, 1:42 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:48:19 -0800 (PST), John Stockwell
>
>
>
> <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Nov 29, 11:24 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",
> >> has little effect on additional research, and their reasons for
> >> suggesting it in the first place are superceded by additional research
> >> for home-grown abiogenesis.

As I indicated in my own reply to this earlier post of yours, the
above is pure baloney.

> >You have to forgive Peter. He is a mathematician,
>
> Despite the risk of sounding contrarian, no I don't.

Oh, dear, does this mean that you will seek revenge on me for shooting
your post down?

> I hold people
> who describe themselves as mathematicians (and other professional
> disciplines) to a higher standard than I do run-of-the-mill trolls.
>

That explains why you hold yourself to such a low standard, I
guess. ;-)

>
> >and in the world
> >of mathematicians, there is no rule against "multiplying entities
> >unnecessarily". In fact, mathematics operates precisely by multiplying
> >entities at every apparent impasse.  Create a mathematical object
> >that seems to have properties that conflict with the rest of
> >mathematics,
> >and you invent a new mathematical object that

...is of interest because the contrast is not real, only counter-
intuitive.

> >In Peter's world the existence of biology and the absence of a clear
> >understanding of abiogenesis

...by anyone in the world, especially Stockwell.

> invites constructivism. So Peter has
> >constructed a race of RNA-based organisms

This is only one of my three directed panspermia hypotheses, and if
John Stockwell has ever indicated why he thinks it is less probable
than either of the other two, I missed it.

But I'm pretty sure Stockwell doesn't give a fig about how accurate
his fantasy about me is.

> who intelligently designed
> >interstellar space probes and colonizing bacteria. (Scientists on the
> >other hand will look closer to home for the answer,

...except for Crick, Orgel, and perhaps others who are of the same non-
hidebound mentality, who also look far from home from time to time.

> >Combine this with the fact that Peter is a Catholic of Hungarian
> >ancestry, then his cultural preconditioning makes him a natural
> >religious apologist. (I was in Hungary in June and discovered that
> >the Hungarians are really rabid Catholics.)

He must have hobnobbed with a different set of Hungarians than I do.
My mathematical Hungarian "colleagues" [meaning: fellow researchers in
set-theoretic topology] are, without any exception I know of, Jews or
heathens. My close relatives include a half-cousin-once-removed who
was raised as a heathen, and a cousin once removed who may be heading
the same way. These are my two closest blood relatives in that
particular generation.

More to the point: from all that I have read, the majority of
Hungarian "Catholics" are about as Catholic as atheistic/agnostic Jews
are adherents of Judaism. Church attendance is miniscule compared to
that of Poland.

> IIUC this is a consequence of their proximity to an expansionist
> Ottoman Empire.

Actually most of present-day Hungary was PART of the Ottoman Empire
for well over a century. It was the biggest single calamity Hungary
ever suffered, although one year of genocide by the Golden Horde was
almost as bad.

> >If he can get a significant number of people
> >including himself, to accept an "engineered biology" solution,
> >then by a limiting process, he hopes (not necessarily consciously)
> >that it will turn out that the aliens are
> >indistinguishable from God.

Utterly false, and yet another symptom of John Stockwell's fantasy
world picture of me.

[GIGO by you and Stockwell deleted]

Peter Nyikos

[Ron O]

On Nov 29, 2:32 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
> In article <nIydndV0JoicR0nTnZ2dnUVZ_gqdn...@earthlink.com>,

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html

Not very good resolution.

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

<changed subject back to the one to which I replied>

Really? Where? Try backing up your assertions for once.

> but you need to backpedal further
>by noting that the words "higly speculative" refer not to what you
>called "this hoary reference" but to two biochemistry papers.

Let's see if I can explain this so you can understand. I'll write it
slowly just for you.

These papers you challenge are not just biochemistry papers. Crick
and Orgel wrote them. They consider them relevant to the issues
concerning the origin of life on Earth. IIUC that's why they cited
them in this article in the first place.

IIRC both you and Crick have stated that a basis for directed
panspermia is (in your opinions) the relatively high improbability of
abiogenesis and relatively higher probability of the successful
transplantation to Earth of life designed by technologically advanced
beings in another solar system.

IIUC the papers Crick and Orgel wrote are part of the basis for their
earlier opinions that abiogenesis is highly improbable. For these
scientists to publicly state they now consider their papers to be
"highly speculative" suggests to me they changed their opinions about
the probability of abiogenesis on Earth, and for that reason their
support of directed panspermia.

Further on in my cite, Crick and Orgel describe newer work by
additional scientists which are also evidence against the high
improbability of abiogenesis on Earth.

HTH

>> They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
>> speculative", and then make a relevant observation:
>
>False. I did not refer to any original statements in any of the
>papers they reference.

I misattributed. Please replace in my statement "you" with "they".

>> "The lesson is clear: speculation is fun, but even correct hypotheses
>> without experimental follow-up are unlikely to have much effect on the
>> development of biology."
>
>And this speculation did NOT have to do with "this hoary reference"
>which isn't even MENTIONED in the article.

This speculation relates to the basis for their original opinions
regarding the high improbability of abiogenesis on Earth.

>> Finally, they conclude with this telling confession:
>>
>> "We did not seriously consider the possibility that there was a
>> midwife, a replicating pre-RNA world of quite different chemistry
>> [...] Such a pre-RNA world would have possessed the catalytic activity
>> necessary to start the RNA world but it may not have needed to
>> transfer its genetic information directly to that of the new (RNA)
>> replication system.  We now find this idea attractive."
>>
>> So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",
>
>Completely false, see above.

Completely true, see above.

>Did you even READ the article, or are you just passing on quotes
>cherry-picked by someone else?

Ah yes, another of your attention-getting devices for which you are so
famous, the "when did you stop beating your wife?" question.

I read the article long ago when I first cited it to you. Too bad you
didn't read it then.

Unlike you, I make no unattributed quotes.

>> has little effect on additional research, and their reasons for
>> suggesting it in the first place are superceded by additional research
>> for home-grown abiogenesis.
>
>Which quote did you think established this?

Sigh. This must be your "...but you can't make him drink" phase. Be
more clear what you mean by "this". For my first phrase I cite:

"even correct hypotheses without experimental follow-up are unlikely
to have much effect on the development of biology."

For my second phrase I cite:

"We did not seriously consider the possibility that there was a

midwife...  We now find this idea attractive."


Let me know if I guessed correctly what you meant.

[pnyikos]

On Nov 30, 4:32 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
> In article <1acbc7e4-2b33-46ca-9288-5dafb1600...@o1g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>,

>
> pnyikos  <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >On Nov 29, 3:10 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
>
> >> The question is the relative rarity of abiogenesis vs. civilizations
> >> with interstellar capability. The fact that microfossils appear in
> >> the oldest rocks capable of having them
>
> >Are you sure about this detail, Paul?
>
> I'm quoting some popular science article.  Possibly Gould, I don't know.
> According to Wiki there is evidence of life throughout the Archean, not
> many rocks any older than that, and even some of those arguably show
> traces of what might be biological activity.  Other non-Wiki sources
> give 3.4Gya as the oldest evidence of life.  Your mileage may vary.

I'm more interested in the implicit statement that the oldest rocks
capable of having microfossils are 3.9 billion years old. Did the
asteroid bombardment that kept the earth from having a stable crust
last that long?

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

Yet another one of your famous attention-getting devices;
congratulating yourself before you even scored.

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back.

[jillery]

On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:08:47 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Nov 30, 1:42 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:48:19 -0800 (PST), John Stockwell
>>
>>
>>
>> <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >On Nov 29, 11:24 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",
>> >> has little effect on additional research, and their reasons for
>> >> suggesting it in the first place are superceded by additional research
>> >> for home-grown abiogenesis.
>
>As I indicated in my own reply to this earlier post of yours, the
>above is pure baloney.
>
>> >You have to forgive Peter. He is a mathematician,
>>
>> Despite the risk of sounding contrarian, no I don't.
>
>Oh, dear, does this mean that you will seek revenge on me for shooting
>your post down?

I didn't notice. You must have missed.

>> I hold people
>> who describe themselves as mathematicians (and other professional
>> disciplines) to a higher standard than I do run-of-the-mill trolls.
>>
>
>That explains why you hold yourself to such a low standard, I
>guess. ;-)

That would be your low standard, not mine.

<snip Hungarian Rap-sody>

[pnyikos]

Not a definitive answer, no. But we may get a lot of indirect
evidence in the next 10,000 years if we actively look for it. This
would include information about earth-like planets and what kind of
life (if any) exists on them.

> My question still stands.  Why 10,000 years instead of a million or a
> billion?

Because, if we undertake a serious project of interstellar
investigation, 10,000 years is a reasonable amount of time to expect a
big accumulation of information from instrumental probes. Whether we
send anything except instruments will depend on what we find.

> If aliens seeded life on this planet over 3 billion years
> ago, why would you expect confirmation within 10,000 years?

I don't expect it. Keep reading.

>
>
> > However, 10,000 years might be enough time for us to check out enough
> > planets to ascertain whether abiogenesis really is a common occurrence
> > or what looks to be a one-in-a-galaxy (or rarer) event.
>
> How many planets is that when we might be talking about just one?

There are probably millions of planets within 1000 parsecs with
characteristics similar to those of earth, and many thousands similar
to early earth.

> How will you tell the designers planet from another seeded planet?

I don't expect the designers' planet to be ever found, since its sun
may have obliterated it by now. And that is a clue as to why they
may have begun a panspermia project.

> > One possiblity is that there are many planets with organisms that
> > share our genetic code or insignificant variations thereon, and NO
> > others.  That would be indirect evidence supporting a common origin,
> > and the only reasonable alternatives are directed panspermia and
> > undirected panspermia of the Arrhenius-Hoyle-Wickramasinghe variety.
>
> You'd have to get out of the solar system for that one.

Of course. I've been assuming that all along.

> Some of the impacts in earth's history could have done it.  You might
> not expect the lifeforms to survive in space for that long due to the
> radiation and extreme conditions, but you can't rule it out.  If you
> find similar genetic codes in other star systems that would be
> evidence of something.  It is highly unlikely that life could survive
> in the radiations of space for the thousands of years that it would
> take to get to earth or from earth to another solar system.

Yes, that is why I prefer directed to undirected panspermia.
Intelligent panspermists could provide a great deal of shielding for
the organisms, and cut down drastically on the amount of time it
takes.

> > > Behe and his blood clotting and immune system
> > > doesn't seem to have evidence for designer design for the past 400
> > > million years or so.
>
> > Correct, but so what?  these systems are hardly likely to be the
> > product of design.  I was aware of that already in 1997 when I saw
> > Keith Robison's explanation, involving autocatalycity, of how these
> > two systems could have arisen gradually from much simpler precursors.
>
> So when did the designers do their designing.

I answered that in my second reply, to which you replied two minutes
after the post to which I am replying here.

You had no comment to make on the quote from Crick, which refutes your
next comment.

> It sounds like you
> don't have a clue and can't even put forward a guess.  At least Behe
> had some time frame for a visit.

If he did, I missed it.

> > > Behe even posited that the
> > > designer could no longer exist in his court testimony. Why would you
> > > expect evidence to turn up in 10,000 years?
>
> > Don't confuse necessary conditions with sufficient conditions.  But
> > see above for why I chose that figure.
>
> It still doesn't make sense.  I don't see why 10,000 years is any type
> of estimate except just some number that sounds big enough and far
> enough in the future to insure that you aren't accountable for
> anything, but idle speculation.  You don't even know if the designers
> are in this galaxy.  Maybe they used worm holes to send out their
> probes?

Worm holes are too speculative. I stay within known physics, etc. in
my hypotheses.

> I hope that we are off this planet and have colonized another star
> system in the next 10,000 years, but I don't see any reason why there
> would be thousands or even hundreds of interstellar probes launched.

Terraforming would probably be the initial impetus, for the systems
that are closest to the home system and likely to stay that way for a
long time. But if they come to the conclusion that there are no life
forms within, say, 3000 parsecs, they might undertake a massive
project to bring life to lifeless worlds.

[...]

>
> > > Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> > > visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?
>
> > Why on earth should I?  Francis Crick did not envision such visits to
> > any but the most nearby systems, and there are compelling reasons, due
> > to the vast interstellar distances and loose gravitational links
> > between stars in the galaxy, why I don't envision them either.
>
> Crick was likely wrong about genetic material raining down from space
> too.

Huh? I don't recall anything like that in his writings.

> Just think of how much radiation shielding would be required to
> get intact genetic material between star systems.  The problem is even
> worse if you posit that the probes could travel at a significant
> fraction of the speed of light.

They could, with present technology, be pushed to between one-
thirtieth to one-tenth the speed of light. Shielding would be a
problem, of course, but there is a lot of optimism that the problem is
not insurmountable.

>
>
> > Over and over Crick reiterated that "prokaryotes travel farther".
>
> Probably not far enough.  How many thousands of years did the genetic
> material take to get here?

If ours is one of the first planets seeded, maybe no more than fifty
years. But on the scale I envision, simple probability would suggest
10-100 thousand years.

This is one respect in which the Crick-Orgel paper was out of date a
few years after it was published. They envisioned solar sails that
are very slow, and were very tentative about even 1/100th of the speed
of light being attainable. But the teams of scientists on Project
Orion and Project Daedalus gave estimates in the 1/30th - 1/10th
range.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 1, 12:16 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> <changed subject back to the one to which I replied>
>
> On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:41:15 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
>
>
> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >On Nov 30, 1:24 am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:19:36 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
> >> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> >> > The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> >> > microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> >> > conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> >> > combine all the desirable properties within one single type
> >> > of organism or to send many different organisms is not
> >> > completely clear.
> >> > --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> >> > Simon and Schuster, 1981
>
> >> You really should stop trotting out this hoary reference.

The *Icarus* article by Crick and Orgel is even older (1973):

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf

Yet, I have seen no sign that either of them has rejected the ideas
therein. Quite the contrary: see quote from Joyce and Orgel below.

> > > Crick and
> >> Orgel later publicly rejected your ideas:
>
> >This claim is NOT supported by the following reference.
>
> >>http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf
>
> >You start backpedaling immediately,
>
> Really?  Where?

I said "immediately" didn't I? This is what you wrote next:

> >> They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
> >> speculative"

I consider this sentence a considerable backpedal from "publicly
rejected". But maybe your metaphorical bicycle has so many reverse
gears, you don't see any difference.

[flamebait by "jillery" deleted]

>
> > but you need to backpedal further
> >by noting that the words "higly speculative" refer not to what you
> >called "this hoary reference" but to two biochemistry papers.
>
> Let's see if I can explain this so you can understand.

All you need to say is, "I did read the site I posted the url for" for
me to perfectly understand that you are indulging in a huge
extrapolation from what they wrote.

[flamebait by "jillery" deleted]

> These papers you challenge are not just biochemistry papers.  Crick
> and Orgel wrote them.  They consider them relevant to the issues
> concerning the origin of life on Earth.  IIUC that's why they cited
> them in this article in the first place.

Except that the article is general enough so that "on Earth" does not
really enter into the equation. They were trying to figure out how
life as we know it could have arisen, period.

> IIRC both you and Crick have stated that a basis for directed
> panspermia is (in your opinions) the relatively high improbability of
> abiogenesis and relatively higher probability of the successful
> transplantation to Earth of life designed by technologically advanced
> beings in another solar system.

Yes, but they nowhere speculate about how likely or unlikely
abiogenesis was in the article you provided the url for above.

However, in the same year (1993) when this was published, Orgel co-
authored something that strongly suggested he might still have thought
the probabilities in favor of directed panspermia:

Scientists interested in the origins of life seem to
divide neatly into two classes. The first, usually
but not always molecular biologists, believe that
RNA must have been the first replicating molecule
and that chemists are exaggerating the difficulty
of nucleotide synthesis. ... The second group
of scientists is much more pessimistic. They believe
that the de novo appearance of oligonucleotides on
the primitive earth would have been a near miracle.
(The authors subscribe to this latter view). Time
will tell which is correct.
--G. F. Joyce and Leslie E. Orgel, "Prospects
for understanding the origin of the RNA
world," in: _The RNA World_, ed. R. F.
Gesteland and J. F. Atkins, Cold Spring
Harbor Press, 1993, p. 19.

> IIUC the papers Crick and Orgel wrote are part of the basis for their
> earlier opinions that abiogenesis is highly improbable.

So much for that word "earlier," at least where Orgel was concerned,
eh?

Do you see yet why I wrote "hugely extrapolating" up there?

> For these
> scientists to publicly state they now consider their papers to be
> "highly speculative"

Surely you are not so stupid as to think they considered ALL their
papers to be highly speculative?!?!?

The question next arises, which ones did they consider to have been
speculative. Did you read the two papers which they cite in
connection with that comment?

>suggests to me they changed their opinions about
> the probability of abiogenesis on Earth, and for that reason their
> support of directed panspermia.

Lots of farfetched things are suggested to you, unfortunately. This
one may not be farfetched, but that remains to be seen.

> Further on in my cite, Crick and Orgel describe newer work by
> additional scientists which are also evidence against the high
> improbability of abiogenesis on Earth.

Read that quote from that Cold Spring Harbor paper again, and make up
some more plausible stories.

> HTH

What do those letters stand for?

> >> They describe their original statements to which you refer as
"highly
> >> speculative", and then make a relevant observation:
>
> >False. I did not refer to any original statements in any of the
> >papers they reference.
>
> I misattributed. Please replace in my statement "you" with "they".

But the fact remains, those original statements did not mention
directed panspermia.

[flamebait-loaded sequel by "jillery" deleted.]

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Look in the mirror when you write such things, "jillery". You and
Stockwell were having quite a cozy ThreadDilutingKaffeeklatsch up
there, and even afterwards, drawing all kinds of conclusions about me
on the basis of your supposed "victory" over my hypotheses.

I had two possibilities in mind. For one, the keyword is "cherry-
picked" and for the other, the keywords are "huge extrapolation". The
latter refers to a post I made a few minutes ago and, Google being
what it is, this short reply of mine might get posted before that one
does.

If so, please wait for it before you go off half-cocked again.

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

The usual date for the end of the Hadean is 4 billion years. The few
surviving rocks of that era are ultramafic, suggesting that plate
tectonic processes were quite different then, probably due to high heat
flux as well as that bombardment.

[jillery]

On Thu, 1 Dec 2011 10:45:50 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Dec 1, 12:16 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> <changed subject back to the one to which I replied>
>>
>> On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:41:15 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>>
>>
>>
>> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> >On Nov 30, 1:24 am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:19:36 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>>
>> >> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>> >> > The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
>> >> > microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
>> >> > conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
>> >> > combine all the desirable properties within one single type
>> >> > of organism or to send many different organisms is not
>> >> > completely clear.
>> >> > --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
>> >> > Simon and Schuster, 1981
>>
>> >> You really should stop trotting out this hoary reference.
>
>The *Icarus* article by Crick and Orgel is even older (1973):

And if you cited it I would have commented on it. You did not so I
did not.

>http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf
>
>Yet, I have seen no sign that either of them has rejected the ideas
>therein. Quite the contrary: see quote from Joyce and Orgel below.
>
>> > > Crick and
>> >> Orgel later publicly rejected your ideas:
>>
>> >This claim is NOT supported by the following reference.
>>
>> >>http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf
>>
>> >You start backpedaling immediately,
>>
>> Really?  Where?
>
>I said "immediately" didn't I? This is what you wrote next:
>
>> >> They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
>> >> speculative"
>
>I consider this sentence a considerable backpedal from "publicly
>rejected". But maybe your metaphorical bicycle has so many reverse
>gears, you don't see any difference.

It is a publicly available pdf file, which rejects their original
evidence wrt the improbability of abiogenesis. Unlike you, I directly
support my assertion. If you can't understand that, I can't help you.

>[flamebait by "jillery" deleted]


Since you leave your flame bait intact, I will assume your intentions
and delete same.

Troll.

[jillery]

Really? Then cite where I congratulate myself. Otherwise, you're
just blowing hot air out of your arse.

> You and
>Stockwell were having quite a cozy ThreadDilutingKaffeeklatsch up
>there, and even afterwards, drawing all kinds of conclusions about me
>on the basis of your supposed "victory" over my hypotheses.
>
>I had two possibilities in mind. For one, the keyword is "cherry-
>picked" and for the other, the keywords are "huge extrapolation". The
>latter refers to a post I made a few minutes ago and, Google being
>what it is, this short reply of mine might get posted before that one
>does.

It shouldn't surprise you to know I have a few choice words for you
too.

>If so, please wait for it before you go off half-cocked again.

As opposed to you, who is a full cock.

[pnyikos]

And so, this string of four replies to the same post comes to
conclusion here.

On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:

> No one knows what the first self replicators looked like. Ribozymes
> and DNA likely came later than the first self replicators.

When I say "efficient self-replicators" I assume some powerful
"catalysts" like a host of ribozymes or protein enzymes to speed up
the process immensely. Otherwise you have the spectacle of strings of
nucleotides patiently waiting for the right pyrimidine-based nuclotide
to match the next purine-based nucleotide, or vice versa, to come
along and settle down for a long spell.

>Beats me
> what came first. The self replicators could have been made of
> anything. All they would have to do is self replicate and do
> something else like make lipids or more complex carbon molecules.

Yes, including all kinds of structural proteins. See (4) again, for
which one scenario is that the first protein self-replicators were
made in a laboratory that was originally set up for nanotechnology for
making structural proteins for incorporation into genetically
deficient individuals. Protein enzymes might have been developed for
that nanotechnology, until one scientist realized that he/she/whatever
had all the necessary parts for a cell based on protein translation,
as in alternative (3) or even alternative (2).

> It is likely a good bet that if the space aliens were using space
> probes instead of coming here themselves that if they have been
> manipulating life for billions of years that they have a DNA based
> genetic system.

Why billions? We could do some pretty exciting manipulating in the
next thousand years, if we have the motivation to do it.

They evolved through billions of years, of course, and for that I
agree, DNA is best, even in (4); it's just the enzymes that would be
RNA, and for catalytic activity, RNA beats DNA hands down.

> You have to posit that they used DNA to get their jollies if they had
> some other genetic system. They have obviously been manipulating DNA
> for billions of years, so how would they do that with space probes if
> the probes didn't have DNA?

I can't make head nor tail of this. The organisms they sent would
have DNA, on that much we can agree.

> Why would the probes or aliens decide that some bacteria needed a
> flagellum 2 billion years ago?

"Oh, reckon not the need"--King Lear, quoted from memory.

A flagellum is a great means of locomotion, and I have yet to see
strong evidence that the first cyanobacteria with flagella emerged
that late in earth's history. So until you or someone else provides
some, I will go on hypothesizing that they were in the original batch
sent ca. 3.9 billion years ago.

> We are descended from a vertebrate ancestor that doubled their
> genome. It was either an allotetraploid or a normal tetraploid, but
> it had a doubled genome.

...as opposed to its chordate ancestor? Just when did this
duplication take place?

> Did the space aliens know what genome to
> double and then manipulate or did they arrive after the fact and just
> find the organism to manipulate?

Neither. I suspect the process was part of the grand march of
evolution from panspermia to our technological civilization.

Perhaps by now you know enough about my hypotheses so that I don't
have to belabor this.

> What was I supposed to be running from in this post?

The realization that I am not the dupe of Discovery Institute or any
other "ID perps". You've invested so much emotional baggage into that
silly *idee fixe* of yours, that the realization that I have my own,
totally independent and often contrary reasons for taking Intelligent
Design seriously, could be extremely unsettling to what mental
stability you have.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:

> On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

Picking up more or less where I left off yesterday in reply to this
post of Ron O.

>
> > (2) Earth was seeded by a species that had pretty much the same
> > genetic code we do. ["The Xordax Hypothesis."]

This is one of three alternative directed panspermia hypotheses; the
other two were:

> > (3) Earth was seeded by a species that had a biochemistry based on
> > protein enzymes, but a much simpler genetic code than ours. ["The
> > Golian Hypothesis"]
>
> > (4) Earth was seeded by a species whose own biochemistry was based on
> > nucleotide-string enzymes, perhaps RNA ribozymes, perhaps with a
> > translation mechanism for producing simple structural proteins. ["The
> > Throom Hypothesis"]

I tried to be too concise in the following paragraph, and so I need to
explain things now:

> > In assessing the relative probability of (2), (3) and (4), there is on
> > the one hand the fact that the initial efficient self-replicators,
> > without the intervention of intelligent design, are easiest to
> > envision in (2) and hardest in (4),

"envision" means "for creatures like ourselves, with no experience in
any life forms except those with an almost identical genetic code".

> >but then the probability of
> > evolving intelligent life from that basis comes in just the reverse
> > order.

Here I really misspoke. I should have prefaced this by saying "But
the probability of those efficient self-replicators coming into being,
assuming it is possible to have efficient self-replicators of the kind
envisioned, seems to be highest in (4) and lowest in (2). This is
the order that is actually reversed in the next huge step, evolving
intelligent beings starting with these initial efficient self-
replicators.

> > And so, it's a tossup at this stage which is the most probable
> > and which the least.
>
> > The three probabilities then combine in some way in any assessment of
> > which is more probable, homegrown abiogenesis ("Mother Earth did it")
> > or directed panspermia.

And for a complete picture, we also need to consider undirected
panspermia a la Arrhenius, Hoyle, and Wickramasinghe.

> What kind of argument is this?  You have no evidence that your aliens
> did anything or were of any type.

If you can think of yet another biochemical basis for an intelligent
organism, I'm all ears.

But the playing field is level. Maybe the evidence for some of the
five players is better than that for others, but that remains to be
seen.

Concluded in my next reply.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Should anyone reading this be surprised that you deleted it?

> >> > > Crick and
> >> >> Orgel later publicly rejected your ideas:
>
> >> >This claim is NOT supported by the following reference.
>
> >> >>http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf
>
> >> >You start backpedaling immediately,
>
> >> Really? Where?
>
> >I said "immediately"  didn't I?    This is what you wrote next:
>
> >> >> They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
> >> >> speculative"
>
> >I consider this sentence a considerable backpedal from "publicly
> >rejected".  But maybe your metaphorical bicycle has so many reverse
> >gears, you don't see any difference.
>
> It is a publicly available pdf file, which rejects their original
> evidence wrt the improbability of abiogenesis.

...but leaves the reader up in the air as to how improbable it is in
the light of the latest evidence. The quote from Joyce and Orgel,
which you deleted, suggests strongly that directed panspermia was
still a viable proposition in their eyes:

Scientists interested in the origins of life seem to
divide neatly into two classes. The first, usually
but not always molecular biologists, believe that
RNA must have been the first replicating molecule
and that chemists are exaggerating the difficulty
of nucleotide synthesis. ... The second group
of scientists is much more pessimistic. They believe
that the de novo appearance of oligonucleotides on
the primitive earth would have been a near miracle.
(The authors subscribe to this latter view). Time
will tell which is correct.
--G. F. Joyce and Leslie E. Orgel, "Prospects
for understanding the origin of the RNA
world," in: _The RNA World_, ed. R. F.
Gesteland and J. F. Atkins, Cold Spring
Harbor Press, 1993, p. 19.

Note that your "support" for your assertion was dated January 1993.
The obious conclusion is that while some of the initial reasons for
believing abiogenesis to be "a near miracle" were no longer valid,
others remained. And you can even get a hint of this from the last
sentence in the article whose url you gave up there.

> Unlike you, I directly
> support my assertion.

Unlike you, I do not so flagrantly delete quotes that seem to make
hash of my support for my assertions, let alone go on to compare
myself favorably to others after similar actions.

> If you can't understand that, I can't help you.

Actions speak louder than words. Your action in deleting the above
quote strongly suggests that you are seriously projecting your
flamebait-loving personality onto me.

> >[flamebait by "jillery" deleted]
>
> Since you leave your flame bait intact,

You certainly did not label it as such when you had the chance. Nor
did you use your own word for flamebait ("trolling") until now:

> I will assume your intentions
> and delete same.
>
> Troll.

I suppose it is trolling, in your lexicon, to post unanswerable
refutations like the Joyce-Orgel quote that I reposted up there.

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

Just following your lead.

<snip remaining rockhead troll rant>

[pnyikos]

On Dec 1, 2:40 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Dec 2011 10:51:07 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
>
>
> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >On Dec 1, 12:41 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:44:40 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
> >> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> >On Nov 30, 10:48 am, John Stockwell <john.19071...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> On Nov 29, 11:24 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> >> > On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:19:36 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
> >> >> > <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> >> > >Picking up where I left off in my previous post:
>
> >> >> > >On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> >> >> > >> On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> >> >> > > The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> >> >> > > microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> >> >> > > conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> >> >> > > combine all the desirable properties within one single type
> >> >> > > of organism or to send many different organisms is not
> >> >> > > completely clear.
> >> >> > > --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> >> >> > > Simon and Schuster, 1981
>
> >> >> > You really should stop trotting out this hoary reference. Crick and
> >> >> > Orgel later publicly rejected your ideas:

This aggressive assertion was already shot down in my first reply to
jillery, who then tried to draw some inferences from the things
written in the following reference:

> >> >> >http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf

Published in 1993. This is significant in the light of a 1993 quote
by Joyce and Orgel that I've posted and re-posted in reply to jillery,
which makes hash of the use to which jillery put the following:

> >> >> > They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
> >> >> > speculative", and then make a relevant observation:
>
> >> >> > "The lesson is clear: speculation is fun, but even correct hypotheses
> >> >> > without experimental follow-up are unlikely to have much effect on the
> >> >> > development of biology."

Neither the above statement, nor the "telling confession" below, made
any reference to their directed panspermia hypothesis; the connection
was all in jillery's mind.

> >> >> > Finally, they conclude with this telling confession:
>
> >> >> > "We did not seriously consider the possibility that there was a
> >> >> > midwife, a replicating pre-RNA world of quite different chemistry
> >> >> > [...] Such a pre-RNA world would have possessed the catalytic activity
> >> >> > necessary to start the RNA world but it may not have needed to
> >> >> > transfer its genetic information directly to that of the new (RNA)
> >> >> > replication system. We now find this idea attractive."

The following is pure speculation by jillery, shot down by the 1993
quote from a Cold Spring Harbor paper by Joyce and Orgel:

> >> >> > So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",
> >> >> > has little effect on additional research, and their reasons for
> >> >> > suggesting it in the first place are superceded by additional research
> >> >> > for home-grown abiogenesis.
>
> >> >> You have to forgive Peter.
>
> >> >Yes, it is terrible to have one's post shot down as thoroughly as I
> >> >shot down the post that you are replying to, just a few minutes ago.
>
> >> Yet another one of your famous attention-getting devices;
> >> congratulating yourself before you even scored.
>
> >> Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back.
>
> >Look in the mirror when you write such things, "jillery".
>
> Really?  Then cite where I congratulate myself.

It was implicit in your favorable response to Stockwell, including
your demurral from his "You have to forgive Peter." Just what is
unforgivable about trotting out that "hoary" reference?

> > You and
> >Stockwell were having quite a cozy ThreadDilutingKaffeeklatsch up
> >there, and even afterwards, drawing all kinds of conclusions about me
> >on the basis of your supposed "victory" over my hypotheses.
>
> >I had two possibilities in mind.  For one, the keyword is "cherry-
> >picked" and for the other, the keywords are "huge extrapolation".  The
> >latter refers to a post I made a few minutes ago and, Google being
> >what it is, this short reply of mine might get posted before that one
> >does.
>
> It shouldn't surprise you to know I have a few choice words for you
> too.

....thereby illustrating your inability to forgive me for showing,
once again, that your "support" for your aggressive claim (see your
words immediately before the url) was so much hot air.

> >If so, please wait for it before you go off half-cocked again.
>
> As opposed to you, who is a full cock.

Such formulaic repartee is all you have going for you now.

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

Only in your wet dreams.

>in my first reply to
>jillery, who then tried to draw some inferences from the things
>written in the following reference:

To which I already replied.

>> >> >> >http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf
>
>Published in 1993. This is significant in the light of a 1993 quote
>by Joyce and Orgel that I've posted and re-posted in reply to jillery,
>which makes hash of the use to which jillery put the following:

Keep playing with yourself. I understand it's good for relieving
tension.

>> >> >> > They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
>> >> >> > speculative", and then make a relevant observation:
>>
>> >> >> > "The lesson is clear: speculation is fun, but even correct hypotheses
>> >> >> > without experimental follow-up are unlikely to have much effect on the
>> >> >> > development of biology."
>
>Neither the above statement, nor the "telling confession" below, made
>any reference to their directed panspermia hypothesis; the connection
>was all in jillery's mind.

So you say. Too bad you didn't cite Joyce and Orgel before you
started your stupid troll rant.

>> >> >> > Finally, they conclude with this telling confession:
>>
>> >> >> > "We did not seriously consider the possibility that there was a
>> >> >> > midwife, a replicating pre-RNA world of quite different chemistry
>> >> >> > [...] Such a pre-RNA world would have possessed the catalytic activity
>> >> >> > necessary to start the RNA world but it may not have needed to
>> >> >> > transfer its genetic information directly to that of the new (RNA)
>> >> >> > replication system. We now find this idea attractive."
>
>The following is pure speculation by jillery, shot down by the 1993
>quote from a Cold Spring Harbor paper by Joyce and Orgel:

Only in your mind.

>> >> >> > So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",
>> >> >> > has little effect on additional research, and their reasons for
>> >> >> > suggesting it in the first place are superceded by additional research
>> >> >> > for home-grown abiogenesis.
>>
>> >> >> You have to forgive Peter.
>>
>> >> >Yes, it is terrible to have one's post shot down as thoroughly as I
>> >> >shot down the post that you are replying to, just a few minutes ago.
>>
>> >> Yet another one of your famous attention-getting devices;
>> >> congratulating yourself before you even scored.
>>
>> >> Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back.
>>
>> >Look in the mirror when you write such things, "jillery".
>>
>> Really?  Then cite where I congratulate myself.
>
>It was implicit

You mean you inferred. I accept that you're incapable of
understanding the distinction.

>in your favorable response to Stockwell, including
>your demurral from his "You have to forgive Peter." Just what is
>unforgivable about trotting out that "hoary" reference?

Because your hoary reference is citing as fact something that has been
superceded by more recent references. As if you didn't know.

>> > You and
>> >Stockwell were having quite a cozy ThreadDilutingKaffeeklatsch up
>> >there, and even afterwards, drawing all kinds of conclusions about me
>> >on the basis of your supposed "victory" over my hypotheses.
>>
>> >I had two possibilities in mind.  For one, the keyword is "cherry-
>> >picked" and for the other, the keywords are "huge extrapolation".  The
>> >latter refers to a post I made a few minutes ago and, Google being
>> >what it is, this short reply of mine might get posted before that one
>> >does.
>>
>> It shouldn't surprise you to know I have a few choice words for you
>> too.
>
>....thereby illustrating your inability to forgive me for showing,
>once again, that your "support" for your aggressive claim (see your
>words immediately before the url) was so much hot air.

Just following your lead.

>> >If so, please wait for it before you go off half-cocked again.
>>
>> As opposed to you, who is a full cock.
>
>Such formulaic repartee is all you have going for you now.

IBID

[Ron O]

That's why I don't bother to speculate, and I pretty much have zero
interest in this topic. There are a lot of problems that you can work
on and get real answers. You can work on this kind of junk as a
hobby, but you have to realize that you are likely not going to get
anywhere with it no matter how hard you work.

>
> > My question still stands. Why 10,000 years instead of a million or a
> > billion?
>
> Because, if we undertake a serious project of interstellar
> investigation, 10,000 years is a reasonable amount of time to expect a
> big accumulation of information from instrumental probes.  Whether we
> send anything except instruments will depend on what we find.

There has to be a good reason to expend the resources to do this. Our
resources will likely be spent on searching for nearby colonization
prospects so that we can get all of the eggs out of one basket. Once
that has been accomplished the energy will likely go into searching
out the safest star systems in the area, and getting away from any
star capable of frying the human race. These probes are not going to
be cheap. The electronic components have to be shielded just as any
genetic material because you want it to function decades or hundreds
of years after launch. You want data back.

>
> > If aliens seeded life on this planet over 3 billion years
> > ago, why would you expect confirmation within 10,000 years?
>
> I don't expect it.  Keep reading.

That isn't what you claimed before.

>
>
>
> > > However, 10,000 years might be enough time for us to check out enough
> > > planets to ascertain whether abiogenesis really is a common occurrence
> > > or what looks to be a one-in-a-galaxy (or rarer) event.
>
> > How many planets is that when we might be talking about just one?
>
> There are probably millions of planets within 1000 parsecs with
> characteristics similar to those of earth, and many thousands similar
> to early earth.

Where does this estimate come from? You likely have to exclude star
cluster or regions forming stars because nearby stars blowing up
likely make the places not worth exploring in terms of evidence for
the designers. Why would they waste their time on planets that would
be sterilized every few hundred million years.

>
> > How will you tell the designers planet from another seeded planet?
>
> I don't expect the designers' planet to be ever found, since its sun
> may have obliterated it by now.   And that is a clue as to why they
> may have begun a panspermia project.

That is one of my points. It took us almost 4 billion years to evolve
with supposed designer help. Without help how long did it take the
designers to evolve? They only have around 10 billion years to do it
and stars like the sun would likely go red giant before they could
bang two rocks together if we really need designer help. Wouldn't you
expect them to take an order of magnitude longer or millions of times
longer if all the bogus calculations mean anything?

If it is only a two fold difference why even suspect alien designers?

No you didn't. Was it at the start of life on earth? Did they diddle
fart with life along the billions of years that life was evolving on
this planet. When did they do their designing? You made a big deal
about IC, so did they design the flagellum 2 billion years ago?

>
> You had no comment to make on the quote from Crick, which refutes your
> next comment.
>
> > It sounds like you
> > don't have a clue and can't even put forward a guess. At least Behe
> > had some time frame for a visit.

Nope, you don't seem to have a clue. Just claiming that the designers
did the designing before they launched the probes doesn't answer the
question of when the probes arrived and diddle farted around with life
on this planet.

>
> If he did, I missed it.

He claims that they would have designed the IC systems. We have an
estimate as to when these designs evolved on earth. The flagellum is
estimated to have evolved around 2 billion years ago. Due to common
descent we can tell that the immune system and blood clotting system
that Behe makes a big deal about evolved around 400 million years
ago. So Behe has some time frame even if he doesn't talk about it so
that he can keep scamming the YEC rubes.

>
> > > > Behe even posited that the
> > > > designer could no longer exist in his court testimony. Why would you
> > > > expect evidence to turn up in 10,000 years?
>
> > > Don't confuse necessary conditions with sufficient conditions. But
> > > see above for why I chose that figure.
>
> > It still doesn't make sense. I don't see why 10,000 years is any type
> > of estimate except just some number that sounds big enough and far
> > enough in the future to insure that you aren't accountable for
> > anything, but idle speculation. You don't even know if the designers
> > are in this galaxy. Maybe they used worm holes to send out their
> > probes?
>
> Worm holes are too speculative.  I stay within known physics, etc. in
> my hypotheses.

You made me laugh at that one. Too speculative...what are we talking
about?

>
> > I hope that we are off this planet and have colonized another star
> > system in the next 10,000 years, but I don't see any reason why there
> > would be thousands or even hundreds of interstellar probes launched.
>
> Terraforming would probably be the initial impetus, for the systems
> that are closest to the home system and likely to stay that way for a
> long time.  But if they come to the conclusion that there are no life
> forms within, say, 3000 parsecs, they might undertake a massive
> project to bring life to lifeless worlds.

So the aliens should have colonized billions of years ago. If they
wanted an oxygen atmosphere why did they diddle fart around for a
couple billion years before introducing cyano bacteria?

>
> [...]
>
>
>
> > > > Shouldn't you be looking for the alien designer probes that must have
> > > > visited the earth from time to time to do the designing?
>
> > > Why on earth should I? Francis Crick did not envision such visits to
> > > any but the most nearby systems, and there are compelling reasons, due
> > > to the vast interstellar distances and loose gravitational links
> > > between stars in the galaxy, why I don't envision them either.
>
> > Crick was likely wrong about genetic material raining down from space
> > too.
>
> Huh?  I don't recall anything like that in his writings.

One of Crick's proposals was that nucleic acid could have rained down
with comets. He seems to have touched as many bases as he could
because he really didn't have a clue about what could have happened.

>
> > Just think of how much radiation shielding would be required to
> > get intact genetic material between star systems. The problem is even
> > worse if you posit that the probes could travel at a significant
> > fraction of the speed of light.
>
> They could, with present technology, be pushed to between one-
> thirtieth to one-tenth the speed of light.  Shielding would be a
> problem, of course, but there is a lot of optimism that the problem is
> not insurmountable.

Too speculative....

>
>
>
> > > Over and over Crick reiterated that "prokaryotes travel farther".
>
> > Probably not far enough. How many thousands of years did the genetic
> > material take to get here?
>
> If ours is one of the first planets seeded, maybe no more than fifty
> years.  But on the scale I envision, simple probability would suggest
> 10-100 thousand years.

The prokaryotes would have had to survive for 10,000 to 100,000
years? So you aren't going to wait around for any answers from most
of the probes that you intend to send out.

>
> This is one respect in which the Crick-Orgel paper was out of date a
> few years after it was published.  They envisioned solar sails that
> are very slow, and were very tentative about even 1/100th of the speed
> of light being attainable.  But the teams of scientists on Project
> Orion and Project Daedalus gave estimates in the 1/30th - 1/10th
> range.
>
> Peter Nyikos

The faster you go the more radiation shielding that you require, and
the longer it takes you to get there the more radiation shielding that
you need. Has anyone worked out the optimum and if it is doable? The
lifeforms could survive higher radiation levels if they were kept
alive and reproducing so that their repair functions and natural
selection could cope with some damage over time. You'd have to launch
a mini biosphere. This is likely what you would want to do in the
first place if you wanted the biosphere to remain in orbit over an
extended period of thousands of years of gradual terraforming a
suitable planet.

Ron Okimoto

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <70669431-4ce6-48a5...@g7g2000vbd.googlegroups.com>,

What kind of rocks are capable of showing fossils of bacteria?
What are the oldest examples of those types of rocks?

I'm not a geologist myself. I was just repeating somone else's claim.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia claims that there is evidence of life throughout
the Achean.

[John Harshman]

Paul Ciszek wrote:
> In article <70669431-4ce6-48a5...@g7g2000vbd.googlegroups.com>,
> pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> On Nov 30, 4:32 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
>>> In article <1acbc7e4-2b33-46ca-9288-5dafb1600...@o1g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>,
>>>
>>> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>>> On Nov 29, 3:10 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
>>>>> The question is the relative rarity of abiogenesis vs. civilizations
>>>>> with interstellar capability. The fact that microfossils appear in
>>>>> the oldest rocks capable of having them
>>>> Are you sure about this detail, Paul?
>>> I'm quoting some popular science article. Possibly Gould, I don't know.
>>> According to Wiki there is evidence of life throughout the Archean, not
>>> many rocks any older than that, and even some of those arguably show
>>> traces of what might be biological activity. Other non-Wiki sources
>>> give 3.4Gya as the oldest evidence of life. Your mileage may vary.
>> I'm more interested in the implicit statement that the oldest rocks
>> capable of having microfossils are 3.9 billion years old. Did the
>> asteroid bombardment that kept the earth from having a stable crust
>> last that long?
>
> What kind of rocks are capable of showing fossils of bacteria?

Very fine-grained sedimentary ones, mostly. And usually those in which
some kind of chemical precipitation is involved. Cherts and phosphates
can be good. But this also depends on what you mean by "fossil". Even if
there are no preserved bacteria, there can be fossils. Stromatolites are
layered deposits of lime mud indicative of bacterial mats. And there are
chemical fossils: certain compounds and even elemental isotope ratios
that suggest bacteria. The latter can be dubious. The oldest suggested
chemical fossils are 3.8 billion years old. The oldest clear and
undoubted fossils are 3.2 billion years old. There are other candidates
as old as 3.5 billion years, but they aren't universally accepted. 3.5
billion might be a reasonable single date, as long as you put in an
asterisk.

> What are the oldest examples of those types of rocks?

Hard to say. Almost all really ancient sedimentary rocks have been
metamorphosed to some extent. Sometimes metamorphism destroys fossils,
sometimes it doesn't. Together with the special conditions of
deposition, this makes a good answer to your question difficult. The
oldest metasediments, as far as I know, are 3.8 billion years old.
Zircon grains in these quartzites show signs of rounding by water
transport, suggesting that there may be older, undiscovered metasediments.

> I'm not a geologist myself. I was just repeating somone else's claim.
> Meanwhile, Wikipedia claims that there is evidence of life throughout
> the Achean.

That's "Archaean". And yes, if you believe the 3.8bya chemical fossils.

[pnyikos]

I knew already in December of last year that "jillery" was the kind of
destructive Usenet participant who acted as though my deleting
ANYTHING gave her *carte blanche* to delete things and then lie about
what she had deleted [a despicable act to which I have never
stooped].

She continues this shabby tactic below, alleging that she was just
following my lead. The lead, again, consisted of deleting things.
But either

(A) this is a new lie on her part or

(B) she is profoundly amoral and doesn't know the difference between
(1) deleting things and speaking truthfully about them, or (2)
deleting things and lying about them in a self-serving and defamatory
manner.

[By the way, I call jillery "she" because I remember someone
identifying her gender as female. I've never seen this confirmed by
"jillery", but I'm going to adopt this "she/her" convention regularly
just for the sake of convenience.]

On Dec 1, 3:48 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Dec 2011 12:27:41 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
>
>

> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >On Dec 1, 2:36 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Thu, 1 Dec 2011 10:45:50 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
> >> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> >On Dec 1, 12:16 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> <changed subject back to the one to which I replied>
>
> >> >> On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:41:15 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
> >> >> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> >> >On Nov 30, 1:24 am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> >> On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:19:36 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
> >> >> >> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >> >> >> > The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
> >> >> >> > microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
> >> >> >> > conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
> >> >> >> > combine all the desirable properties within one single type
> >> >> >> > of organism or to send many different organisms is not
> >> >> >> > completely clear.
> >> >> >> > --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
> >> >> >> > Simon and Schuster, 1981
>
> >> >> >> You really should stop trotting out this hoary reference.
>
> >> >The  *Icarus* article by Crick and Orgel is even older (1973):
>
> >> And if you cited it I would have commented on it.  You did not so I
> >> did not.

A rather pointless comment, since I wasn't criticizing you at this
point, "jillery".

> >> >http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf
>
> >> >Yet, I have seen no sign that either of them has rejected the ideas
> >> >therein.  Quite the contrary: see quote from Joyce and Orgel below.
>
> >Should anyone reading this be surprised that you deleted it?

And Jillery deleted it again, "justifying" her action with the
despicable use of the "carte blanche prerogative" of which I spoke up
there:

> Just following your lead.
>
> <snip remaining rockhead troll rant>

What you deceitfully call a rockhead troll rant was my pointing out
that the thing you deleted made hash of your allegations about me not
having refuted you already in the first round.

I knew when I shot your allegations about Crick and Orgel down because
I knew that I had Orgel's separate words in 1993 in reserve. You
apparently didn't, so you are forgiven for the first round ot thinking
you had a valid argument for your allegation that they had rejected
directed panspermia.

But your subsequent behavior is beyond the pale. Here is that Joyce-
Orgel quote again:

Scientists interested in the origins of life seem to
divide neatly into two classes. The first, usually
but not always molecular biologists, believe that
RNA must have been the first replicating molecule
and that chemists are exaggerating the difficulty
of nucleotide synthesis. ... The second group
of scientists is much more pessimistic. They believe
that the de novo appearance of oligonucleotides on
the primitive earth would have been a near miracle.
(The authors subscribe to this latter view). Time
will tell which is correct.
--G. F. Joyce and Leslie E. Orgel, "Prospects
for understanding the origin of the RNA
world," in: _The RNA World_, ed. R. F.
Gesteland and J. F. Atkins, Cold Spring
Harbor Press, 1993, p. 19.

You've deleted this twice now because you want to go on pretending
to have won the argument. And you did go on pretending in your next
post.

Hence, you are a troll in the worst sense of the word.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Unless she is of well below average intelligence, Jillery knows she
has lost the argument, so she gets in a bunch of insults in
retaliation for having been proven wrong.

On Dec 1, 4:27 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Dec 2011 12:41:48 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
>
>

Here comes the first insult:

> Only in your wet dreams.

That is a bare-faced lie. I knew already that only one of two things
was true: either you blindly posted cherry-picked things without
knowing what the Crick-Orgel article was all about, or else you
extrapolated hugely from what you read.

Granted, your extrapolation may have seemed reasonable at the time,
but now that I've posted that Joyce-Orgel quote, about which I knew
all along, it should be obvious that your extrapolation was invalid.

I posted that Joyce-Orgel quote all the way back in 1997:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/4c0ee8dd86913db3

And I reposted it in my previous reply to you, still the last post on
this thread in Google as I write this.

> >in my first reply to
> >jillery, who then tried to draw some inferences from the things
> >written in the following reference:
>
> To which I already replied.

...with a bunch of IIUC's which turned into invalid extrapolations
when they departed from the actual content of the following Crick-
Orgel article, which is all the on-topic documentation you brought to
the table:

> >> >> >> >http://www.fasebj.org/content/7/1/238.full.pdf
>
> >Published in 1993.  This is significant in the light of a 1993 quote
> >by Joyce and Orgel that I've posted and re-posted in reply to jillery,
> >which makes hash of the use to which jillery put the following:

Unable to say anything on-topic, Jillery resorts to a guttersnipe
insult:

> Keep playing with yourself.  I understand it's good for relieving
> tension.

> >> >> >> > They describe their original statements to which you refer as "highly
> >> >> >> > speculative", and then make a relevant observation:
>
> >> >> >> > "The lesson is clear: speculation is fun, but even correct hypotheses
> >> >> >> > without experimental follow-up are unlikely to have much effect on the
> >> >> >> > development of biology."
>
> >Neither the above statement, nor the "telling confession" below, made
> >any reference to their directed panspermia hypothesis; the connection
> >was all in jillery's mind.

Jillery now starts grasping at straws, but can't resist another
baseless insult at the end:

> So you say.  Too bad you didn't cite Joyce and Orgel before you
> started your stupid troll rant.

See above. You are expecting me to be gifted with precognition, or
clairvoyance.

I decided to hold off with the reference until I got an answer to the
question, "Did you even READ the article...". Had it turned out that
you had not, you would at least have had an excuse for naively
believing what others had written about it, and there would have been
no need to trot out the quote in the first place.

[As a matter of fact, it took me quite a few minutes to find it when
I saw I would need it after all, and I'm quite short on time these
days.]

I knew you were caught between a rock and a hard place, so there was
no need to go hunting for that quote until your second reply, where
you made it clear that extrapolation was what you were banking on.

Continued in next reply.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 1, 4:27 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Dec 2011 12:41:48 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
>
>

> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >On Dec 1, 2:40 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Thu, 1 Dec 2011 10:51:07 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
> >> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> >On Dec 1, 12:41 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> >> >> >> > Finally, they conclude with this telling confession:

Telling about certain theories of theirs which did NOT include
directed panspermia as far as anyone can glean from the article where
the following appeared:

> >> >> >> > "We did not seriously consider the possibility that there was a
> >> >> >> > midwife, a replicating pre-RNA world of quite different chemistry
> >> >> >> > [...] Such a pre-RNA world would have possessed the catalytic activity
> >> >> >> > necessary to start the RNA world but it may not have needed to
> >> >> >> > transfer its genetic information directly to that of the new (RNA)
> >> >> >> > replication system. We now find this idea attractive."
>
> >The following is pure speculation by jillery, shot down by the 1993
> >quote from a Cold Spring Harbor paper by Joyce and Orgel:

The quote appears near the end of this post.

Jillery is reduced to a Pee Wee Hermanism in reply, since she cannot
show how her claims about Orgel's attitude towards abiogenesis can
hold water any more:

> Only in your mind.

Earlier in the post to which this is a second reply, you had used a
favorite formula of polemicists wanting to rule information out of
order:

> Too bad you didn't cite Joyce and Orgel before you
> started your stupid troll rant.

I suppose the inference is that since I had not brought it up on YOUR
timetable, you have *carte blanche* to (1) label whatever you want a
"stupid toll rant" without even quoting any of it and (2) claim
victory in our debate since the following is ruled "out of order" by
you:

Scientists interested in the origins of life seem to
divide neatly into two classes. The first, usually
but not always molecular biologists, believe that
RNA must have been the first replicating molecule
and that chemists are exaggerating the difficulty
of nucleotide synthesis. ... The second group
of scientists is much more pessimistic. They believe
that the de novo appearance of oligonucleotides on
the primitive earth would have been a near miracle.
(The authors subscribe to this latter view). Time
will tell which is correct.
--G. F. Joyce and Leslie E. Orgel, "Prospects
for understanding the origin of the RNA
world," in: _The RNA World_, ed. R. F.
Gesteland and J. F. Atkins, Cold Spring
Harbor Press, 1993, p. 19.

> >> >> >> > So, Watson and Orgel acknowledged your idea is "highly speculative",
> >> >> >> > has little effect on additional research,

They were referring to something completely different. Jillery knows
that, but acts as though her reasoning (extrapolation) is still valid,
with the unanswerable refutation (in the form of the above Joyce-Orgel
quote) being "ruled out of order".

[She is our self-appointed Parlimentarian, you see.]

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 1, 2:14 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Nov 30, 4:32 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
> >> In article <1acbc7e4-2b33-46ca-9288-5dafb1600...@o1g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>,
>
> >> pnyikos  <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >>> On Nov 29, 3:10 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
> >>>> The question is the relative rarity of abiogenesis vs. civilizations
> >>>> with interstellar capability. The fact that microfossils appear in
> >>>> the oldest rocks capable of having them
> >>> Are you sure about this detail, Paul?
> >> I'm quoting some popular science article.  Possibly Gould, I don't know.
> >> According to Wiki there is evidence of life throughout the Archean, not
> >> many rocks any older than that, and even some of those arguably show
> >> traces of what might be biological activity.  Other non-Wiki sources
> >> give 3.4Gya as the oldest evidence of life.  Your mileage may vary.
>
> > I'm more interested in the implicit statement that the oldest rocks
> > capable of having microfossils are 3.9 billion years old.  Did the
> > asteroid bombardment that kept the earth from having a stable crust
> > last that long?
>
> The usual date for the end of the Hadean is 4 billion years.

That's an interesting neologism, alluding to the "hellish" conditions
prevailing back then. The Wikipedia article mentions that it was
coined in 1972 and says that it had previously been referred to as the
"Pre-Archean [*sic*]."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadean

What the author of that entry seems to have been unaware of is that
even earlier, the Archaean was referred to as the "Archaeozoic" and
what came before as the "Azoic". I wonder what became of that very
descriptive designation.

>The few
> surviving rocks of that era are ultramafic,

I'm not familar with the term. Are the Australian zircons metioned in
the article ultramafic?

Of course, one would not expect there to be much free oxygen in the
atmosphere, despite what may be the presence of photosynthesis at that
early date:

"The Greenland sediments include banded iron beds.
They contain possibly organic carbon and imply
some possibility that photosynthetic life had
already emerged at that time. The oldest known
fossils (from Australia) date from a few hundred
million years later."

> suggesting that plate
> tectonic processes were quite different then, probably due to high heat
> flux as well as that bombardment.

The article says something interesting about that:

"A September 2008 study of zircons found
that Australian Hadean rock holds minerals
that point to the existence of plate tectonics
as early as 4.0 Ga.[8] If this holds true,
the previous beliefs about the Hadean period
are far from correct. That is, rather than a hot,
molten surface and atmosphere full of carbon dioxide,
the Earth's surface would be very much like it is today.
The action of plate tectonics traps vast amounts
of carbon dioxide, thereby eliminating the
greenhouse effects and leading to a much cooler
surface temperature and the formation of solid rock,
and possibly even life.[8]

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Mostly specialized ones, not nearly as interesting as the question of
how life came to be on the early earth.

> You can work on this kind of junk as a
> hobby, but you have to realize that you are likely not going to get
> anywhere with it no matter how hard you work.

You are disregarding the possibility of spinoffs. I've already gotten
a few insights from it, such as the realization that the proportion of
stars of various kinds might have been very different in the first
billion years of the universe.

Howard Hershey may not have taken this into account when he said that
heavy metals were in appreciable quantities only ten billion years ago
at the earliest. I think 12 billion years ago is already a
possibility. Just think like you do about biological evolution, and I
think you will see why.

Also, the directed panspermia hypothesis makes it very relevant to try
and find out how early the first bacterial flagella are to be found.
That can be inferred from cladograms even in the absence of direct
fossil evidence.

>
>
> > > My question still stands. Why 10,000 years instead of a million or a
> > > billion?
>
> > Because, if we undertake a serious project of interstellar
> > investigation, 10,000 years is a reasonable amount of time to expect a
> > big accumulation of information from instrumental probes.  Whether we
> > send anything except instruments will depend on what we find.
>
> There has to be a good reason to expend the resources to do this.  Our
> resources will likely be spent on searching for nearby colonization
> prospects so that we can get all of the eggs out of one basket.  Once
> that has been accomplished the energy will likely go into searching
> out the safest star systems in the area, and getting away from any
> star capable of frying the human race.  These probes are not going to
> be cheap.

The cost of one per year may not be much more than the amount nations
spend on space exploration annually already.

> The electronic components have to be shielded just as any
> genetic material because you want it to function decades or hundreds
> of years after launch.  You want data back.

Yes, but electronics can be given plenty of redundancy so that the
loss of one bit here or there does not make a huge difference. The
Pioneers and Voyagers seem to have functioned nicely all the way to
the heliopause. In fact, aren't some of them still functioning?

> > > If aliens seeded life on this planet over 3 billion years
> > > ago, why would you expect confirmation within 10,000 years?
>
> > I don't expect it.  Keep reading.
>
> That isn't what you claimed before.

I took your word "confirmation" to refer to such a high degree of
evidence as to silence all critics. I never claimed we could get that
far even in 10,000 years.

Remainder deleted, to be replied to when I have more time.

Peter Nyikos

[Ron O]

It doesn't matter how "interesting" something is when it is mostly
bullshit. Some people think that Pyramid power or crystal power is an
interesting subject, but so what?

>
> > You can work on this kind of junk as a
> > hobby, but you have to realize that you are likely not going to get
> > anywhere with it no matter how hard you work.
>
> You are disregarding the possibility of spinoffs.  I've already gotten
> a few insights from it, such as the realization that the proportion of
> stars of various kinds might have been very different in the first
> billion years of the universe.

When the spinoffs come then you can talk about them. Legitimate space
interests will produce the spinoffs more effectively. Can you deny
that? There are people right now that are likely trying to design
space probes that can go to other star systems and send back useful
data. You don't need to worry about if some space aliens diddle
farted around with life over 3 billion years ago.

You have to determine when life was possible. I don't have to. It
took around 10 billion years to produce the material that made our
star system. What other data do you have?

>
> Howard Hershey may not have taken this into account when he said that
> heavy metals were in appreciable quantities only ten billion years ago
> at the earliest.  I think 12 billion years ago is already a
> possibility.  Just think like you do about biological evolution, and I
> think you will see why.

I haven't seen anything that would back you up. There always can be
pockets where just the right conditions could have happened to produce
local areas of high densities of the required materials, but would any
of them be expected to be close enough to us to matter? Again, this
is your problem and not mine. I just have the obvious data that it
took around 10 billion years to produce the materials to make our
planet.

>
> Also, the directed panspermia hypothesis makes it very relevant to try
> and find out how early the first bacterial flagella are to be found.
> That can be inferred from cladograms even in the absence of direct
> fossil evidence.
>

This is a stupid proposal. Just take the basic data. Flagellum
evolved at least once. Looking at the different types of bacteria and
flagellum that are out there, flagellum may have evolved a couple of
times. What would be different about approaching this problem? The
only means we have is by looking at extant bacteria and the materials
that make the flagellum and look for related proteins and try to
figure out how they are all related.

Demonstrate that Panspermia would have any impact on how the problem
could be approached. If you could do that, you might have something
if you could convince someone to waste their time on such an approach
when you have no evidence of this directed intervention.

>
>
> > > > My question still stands. Why 10,000 years instead of a million or a
> > > > billion?
>
> > > Because, if we undertake a serious project of interstellar
> > > investigation, 10,000 years is a reasonable amount of time to expect a
> > > big accumulation of information from instrumental probes.  Whether we
> > > send anything except instruments will depend on what we find.
>
> > There has to be a good reason to expend the resources to do this.  Our
> > resources will likely be spent on searching for nearby colonization
> > prospects so that we can get all of the eggs out of one basket.  Once
> > that has been accomplished the energy will likely go into searching
> > out the safest star systems in the area, and getting away from any
> > star capable of frying the human race.  These probes are not going to
> > be cheap.
>
> The cost of one per year may not be much more than the amount nations
> spend on space exploration annually already.

You would spend the entire world space budget to send out a probe a
year when you likely have to send out hundreds of thousands of probes
to get any type of reasonable answer?

>
> > The electronic components have to be shielded just as any
> > genetic material because you want it to function decades or hundreds
> > of years after launch.  You want data back.
>
> Yes, but electronics can be given plenty of redundancy so that the
> loss of one bit here or there does not make a huge difference.  The
> Pioneers and Voyagers seem to have functioned nicely all the way to
> the heliopause.  In fact, aren't some of them still functioning?

We will see when the plans are on the table and someone has to put
their butt on the line and say that this multi billion (trillion? How
much sheilding?) project is going to work.

>
> > > > If aliens seeded life on this planet over 3 billion years
> > > > ago, why would you expect confirmation within 10,000 years?
>
> > > I don't expect it.  Keep reading.
>
> > That isn't what you claimed before.
>
> I took your word "confirmation" to refer to such a high degree of
> evidence as to silence all critics.  I never claimed we could get that
> far even in 10,000 years.
>
> Remainder deleted, to be replied to when I have more time.
>
> Peter Nyikos

I still don't see why you would expect any type of confirmation in
10,000 years. It seems to be just some number that is large enough so
that you aren't accountable for anything.

I really don't care about this topic. Why not go back and deliver
your second and third knock down, or incorporate what you know about
the ID perps running the bait and switch on you and all other IDiots
for the last 9 years into some post that makes sense out of your bogus
position. Really, you know how the ID perps are continuing to sell ID
and how they sold ID in the past, so deal with the fact that they are
scam artists that have been perpetrating the bait and switch on their
loyal IDiot rubes for the last 9 years.

You could apologize for what you wrote about me in the Insane logic
thread, the dirty debating thread, all the other threads, and your
last thread where you were lying about me running and possibly
suffering a nervous breakdown due to this bogus thread. Did I have
any problem dealing with the inconsequential material in this thread?
What kind of person would do those degenerate things? Directed
Panspermia isn't any excuse for such behavior. It isn't the space
alien's fault. Someone named Nyikos did all those dishonest and
degenerate deeds. What was not degenerate about your last thread?
Who is the one that is actually running and in danger of suffering a
nervous breakdown due to the bogousity of what he is doing? His name
is Nyikos.

What is laugable is that it isn't just one thread or one post, but you
should count them and report back as some type of atonement. Just
count up the ones you are running from since Oct. 7 so that you can
use your own definition of running. You can count the others if you
have no intention of responding and are planning to run.

You can get back to the threads using the links that I put up in my
response to your bogus thread.

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/4108b380260450e2?hl=en

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

Pnyikos, here's my problem. I'm find your obsessive-compulsive
behaviors offputting. To be precise, I consider your subject-changes,
reply-splits, self-congratulations, self-promotions, references to
prior posts which weren't relevant in the first place, cites which
lead nowhere, namecalling, insults, illogic, and general pettifoggery,
to be things to which I prefer not to subject myself. These are all
features of attention-getting devices, to which you have already
admitted doing. When I see such things in your posts, I admit I
assume the primary purpose is to attract attention, a behavior which I
prefer not to encourage.

So, here's my deal. If you wish to engage in intelligent conversation
with me, please limit yourself to responding to the actual point(s)
under discussion, and deliberately inhibit your apparent compulsions.
If you do so, I promise I will do the same. OTOH if I see that you
exercise your attention-getting devices, I will assume you aren't
interested in intelligent conversation with me, and I will lower my
standards to your level, to that of a attention-deprived child, or
simply ignore you, depending entirely on my whim of the moment.

The choice is yours.

<leave following pnyikos post untouched for purposes of illustration>

[pnyikos]

On Dec 4, 4:38 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Pnyikos, here's my problem.  I'm find your obsessive-compulsive
> behaviors offputting.  To be precise, I consider your subject-changes,
> reply-splits, self-congratulations, self-promotions, references to
> prior posts which weren't relevant in the first place, cites which
> lead nowhere, namecalling, insults, illogic, and general pettifoggery,
> to be things to which I prefer not to subject myself.  These are all
> features of attention-getting devices, to which you have already
> admitted doing.  When I see such things in your posts, I admit I
> assume the primary purpose is to attract attention, a behavior which I
> prefer not to encourage.
>
> So, here's my deal.  If you wish to engage in intelligent conversation
> with me, please limit yourself to responding to the actual point(s)
> under discussion, and deliberately inhibit your apparent compulsions.
> If you do so, I promise I will do the same.

Do you really think you can hold yourself to that promise? You pepper
your posts with all kinds of condescending comments like "I'll spell
it out nice and slow, just for you" and "can you support what you are
saying, just this once?" Harshman has observed on one occasion that
you are "much too prickly".

One time, I resolutely ignored such comments and stuck to on-topic
discussion with you, you quit the thread when it became obvious that
you could not rescue Doolittle from the plain fact that:

(1) he had misread an article about mice that had had two of their
blood clotting genes knocked out and

(2) he had failed to make a dent in Behe's claim that the part of the
clotting cascade "beyond the fork" is irreducibly complex.

The url for the relevant post is here:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9e9e49fe7100f7b2

On another thread, I pointed out how you had ignored what I had
written for over a month, reposting the above post in two
installments:in the following two posts:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/87906948aa55a47f

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/6ff75f7ccbcf440a

You ignored both of those posts as well.

Will you now shower me with abuse for "claiming victory when [I]
hadn't even scored"?

> OTOH if I see that you
> exercise your attention-getting devices, I will assume you aren't
> interested in intelligent conversation with me, and I will lower my
> standards to your level,

Actually, to far below my level, with vulgar comments suggesting
masturbation, etc. as you have done on this thread.

You were the quintessential sore loser, posting such drivel in lieu of
ANY attempt to refute my on-topic observations.

> to that of a attention-deprived child,

Who is more childish, one who makes vulgar comments like I described
just now, or one who refrains from such guttersnipe behavior?

>or
> simply ignore you, depending entirely on my whim of the moment.
>
> The choice is yours.

You have all kinds of huge choices to make about your general attitude
and behavior. But I'm willing to go back to the behavior I manifested
in that Doolittle thread if you do your best to keep your side of the
bargain.

> <leave following pnyikos post untouched for purposes of illustration>

Thanks. Note that none of it is childish attention getting. Instead,
it is an analysis of how you are trying ot snatch victory from the
jaws of defeat with insults, such as the ones in another part of the
post to which I was replying.

Peter Nyikos

> On Fri, 2 Dec 2011 15:14:00 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>

[pnyikos]

It's no more bullshit than the claim that life arose spontaneously ON
EARTH. The direct evidence for it is zero, just like it is for
directed panspermia.

> > > You can work on this kind of junk as a
> > > hobby, but you have to realize that you are likely not going to get
> > > anywhere with it no matter how hard you work.
>
> > You are disregarding the possibility of spinoffs.  I've already gotten
> > a few insights from it, such as the realization that the proportion of
> > stars of various kinds might have been very different in the first
> > billion years of the universe.
>
> When the spinoffs come then you can talk about them.  Legitimate space
> interests will produce the spinoffs more effectively.  Can you deny
> that?

I don't see how anyone could either confirm or deny that at this point
in time. Certainly, someone trying to prove the above hypothesis
would be motivated to learn a lot about the populations of stars in
the early universe. The evidence of a significant proportion of
supergiants and even hyper-supergiants lasting for less than ONE
million (million, not billion) years seems to be piling up already.

> There are people right now that are likely trying to design
> space probes that can go to other star systems and send back useful
> data.

And there were whole teams back in the 1970's: Americans in Project
Orion, British in Project Daedalus:

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-daedalus-starship

http://www.damninteresting.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-atomic-spaceship

There were also people studying the possibilities for an interstellar
ramjet, using huge magnetic fields to scoop up interstellar hydrogen
and fusing it into hydrogen.

Do you know of any similar research going on today? I'd love to hear
about it.

> You don't need to worry about if some space aliens diddle
> farted around with life over 3 billion years ago.

But the information such probes gather could prove highly relevant to
how likely abiogenesis is. And that in turn has a huge effect on the
probability of whether another technological civilization seeded
earth, or whether "Mother Earth did it".

> You have to determine when life was possible.  I don't have to.  It
> took around 10 billion years to produce the material that made our
> star system.

That's neither here nor there. The really relevant question is how
long it takes to form the stuff for earthlike planets from the time of
the. I'm holding out for the hypothesis "one to three billion" and
the questions about stellar populations are highly relevant for that.

> What other data do you have?

Item: banded iron formations ended about 1.9 billion years ago. Only
then could atmospheric oxygen begin to accumulate in appreciable
quantities. Another planet with shallow oceans could have cut the time
in less than half, with more time left over for the advance from
replicators on the prokaryote level to creatures on the metazoan
level.

> > Howard Hershey may not have taken this into account when he said that
> > heavy metals were in appreciable quantities only ten billion years ago
> > at the earliest.  I think 12 billion years ago is already a
> > possibility.  Just think like you do about biological evolution, and I
> > think you will see why.
>
> I haven't seen anything that would back you up.

Do you know about Seyfert galaxies? Perhaps our galaxy was one in its
earlier stages.

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. I have a subcommittee
meeting in 12 minutes.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Dec 5, 10:50 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> There were also people studying the possibilities for an interstellar
> ramjet, using huge magnetic fields to scoop up interstellar hydrogen
> and fusing it into hydrogen.
>

For the second hydrogen read "helium".

Haste makes waste:

[...]

[pnyikos]

On Dec 1, 7:20 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Dec 1, 12:12 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Nov 29, 7:39 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Nov 29, 4:03 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

Picking up roughly where I left off in an earlier sequence of replies.

> > > > However, 10,000 years might be enough time for us to check out enough
> > > > planets to ascertain whether abiogenesis really is a common occurrence
> > > > or what looks to be a one-in-a-galaxy (or rarer) event.
>
> > > How many planets is that when we might be talking about just one?
>
> > There are probably millions of planets within 1000 parsecs with
> > characteristics similar to those of earth, and many thousands similar
> > to early earth.
>
> Where does this estimate come from?

I've seen various estimates as to the number of stars within 500 light
years, and extrapolated. I forget the calculations for "probably
millions" but could probably reproduce them without too much trouble.

The figure of 1000 parsecs was chosen because AFAIK it takes us to the
top and bottom edges of the disk of the galaxy where we are, and I
don't think the panspermists would go further than that, due to the
law of diminishing returns.

> You likely have to exclude star
> cluster or regions forming stars because nearby stars blowing up
> likely make the places not worth exploring in terms of evidence for
> the designers.

That depends on the composition of the cluster. Our little local
cluster doesn't have any stars that pose such dangers.

Loose clusters like ours probably don't last very long anyway. The
panspermists' planet, if it still exists, could be just about anywhere
in the spiral arms of the galaxy, or even kicked out of the galaxy
altogether, the way things change in the course of billlions of years.

>Why would they waste their time on planets that would
> be sterilized every few hundred million years.

They wouldn't, but ours had been around for about 500 million years
already.

> > > How will you tell the designers planet from another seeded planet?
>
> > I don't expect the designers' planet to be ever found, since its sun
> > may have obliterated it by now.   And that is a clue as to why they
> > may have begun a panspermia project.
>
> That is one of my points.  It took us almost 4 billion years to evolve
> with supposed designer help.  Without help how long did it take the
> designers to evolve?

Hard to say. An optimistic estimate is this: planet forms 1 billion
years after the Big Bang. Heavy bombardment ends half a billion
years later and amino acids, etc. start being generated
spontaneously. Prokaryote level 6 billion years later. Intelligent
species in another 2 billion years thanks to a shallow ocean. [See my
reply to you earlier today for that last bit.] That brings us to 4
billion years ago.

That 6 billion years gives plenty of room for revising the other
estimates upward. No matter how long it took, I maintain it was still
a lucky fluke. See my oft-reposted quote by Joyce and Orgel, or the
following similar quote by Crick:

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available
to us now, could only state that in some sense, the
origin of life seems at the moment to be almost a miracle,
so many are the conditions which would have had to have
been satisfied to get it going.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_,
Simon and Schuster, 1981, p. 88.

The number of those conditions had apparently diminished by 1993, but
enough still remained for Joyce and Orgel to use the phrase "a near
miracle".

> They only have around 10 billion years to do it
> and stars like the sun would likely go red giant before they could
> bang two rocks together if we really need designer help.

Our own sun is a little hotter than need be for life, so they may have
had more time. But they didn't have any designer help according to my
hypothesis, just a great streak of luck. Given enough universes like
ours, almost anything can happen.

> Wouldn't you
> expect them to take an order of magnitude longer or millions of times
> longer if all the bogus calculations mean anything?
>
> If it is only a two fold difference why even suspect alien designers?

Even with the 12-fold difference to the first prokaryote that the
above optimistic estimate gives, I think it was a fantastic stroke of
luck.

[snip things that got no response from you this time around]

> > > So when did the designers do their designing.
>
> > I answered that in my second reply, to which you replied two minutes
> > after the post to which I am replying here.
>
> No you didn't.  Was it at the start of life on earth?

A tad before, since they had to deliver the designed organisms to
earth. I thought that was obvious from what I wrote.

I gave a 3.9 billion year figure because I thought that was the latest
estimate for when life began here, but Harshman has indicated it could
be 3.5 billion years ago. That is my basis for saying "12-fold
difference" up there. But if 3.9 takes us to prokaryotes, then we
have a 60-fold difference.

> Did they diddle
> fart with life along the billions of years that life was evolving on
> this planet.

I doubt it. We were probably too far away by then. See above.

> When did they do their designing?  You made a big deal
> about IC, so did they design the flagellum 2 billion years ago?

The bacterial flagellum for gram-negative bacteria, and it would have
been 3.5 billion years ago or whenever the first prokaryotes appear on
earth.

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

I'll take this as a "no".

You question my ability to hold to that promise, and then attempt to
justify yourself by unleashing the very attention-getting devices for
which you are so famous. You can't even control yourself for one
post. If it was anybody else, I'd wonder if you're being deliberately
ironic, but it seems you just can't stop yourself from pissing in your
own well.

<snip self-righteous self-indulgent attention-seeking rockhead rant>

[Ron O]

This must be the new math. Life obviously exists on earth. Your
aliens do not exist anywhere that you know of.

Zero must have some other definition in Carolina.

>
> > > > You can work on this kind of junk as a
> > > > hobby, but you have to realize that you are likely not going to get
> > > > anywhere with it no matter how hard you work.
>
> > > You are disregarding the possibility of spinoffs.  I've already gotten
> > > a few insights from it, such as the realization that the proportion of
> > > stars of various kinds might have been very different in the first
> > > billion years of the universe.
>
> > When the spinoffs come then you can talk about them.  Legitimate space
> > interests will produce the spinoffs more effectively.  Can you deny
> > that?
>
> I don't see how anyone could either confirm or deny that at this point
> in time.  Certainly, someone trying to prove the above hypothesis
> would be motivated to learn a lot about the populations of stars in
> the early universe.  The evidence of a significant proportion of
> supergiants and even hyper-supergiants lasting for less than ONE
> million (million, not billion) years seems to be piling up already.

Wasn't my point that you had no point? What does it mean if you can't
confirm nor deny what you said? If they are already accumulating the
evidence what does panspermia matter?

>
> > There are people right now that are likely trying to design
> > space probes that can go to other star systems and send back useful
> > data.
>
> And there were whole teams back in the 1970's: Americans in Project
> Orion, British in Project Daedalus:
>
> http://www.damninteresting.com/the-daedalus-starship
>

> http://www.damninteresting.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-lov...

>
> There were also people studying the possibilities for an interstellar
> ramjet, using huge magnetic fields to scoop up interstellar hydrogen
> and fusing it into hydrogen.
>
> Do you know of any similar research going on today?  I'd love to hear
> about it.

You seem to have missed the fact that the research came to nothing.
Someone has to come up with better ideas. If curiosity or the danger
of massive solar flares coming from our own star that can pretty much
destroy all life on earth isn't enough to get people off their butts
and putting some money into deep space exploration isn't enough, what
good would positing imaginary aliens do?

>
> > You don't need to worry about if some space aliens diddle
> > farted around with life over 3 billion years ago.
>
> But the information such probes gather could prove highly relevant to
> how likely abiogenesis is.  And that in turn has a huge effect on the
> probability of  whether another technological civilization seeded
> earth, or whether "Mother Earth did it".

That would be true whether panspermia was a factor or not. Why
wouldn't we send back all the information about lifeforms that we
could if we found them?

>
> > You have to determine when life was possible.  I don't have to.  It
> > took around 10 billion years to produce the material that made our
> > star system.
>
> That's neither here nor there. The really relevant question is how
> long it takes to form the stuff for earthlike planets from the time of
> the.  I'm holding out for the hypothesis "one to three billion" and
> the questions about stellar populations are highly relevant for that.

What do you have to back up that hypothesis? Didn't it take 10
billion years to produce the materials that our planet is made of?
Why would less material be better?

>
> > What other data do you have?
>
> Item: banded iron formations ended about 1.9 billion years ago.  Only
> then could atmospheric oxygen begin to accumulate in appreciable
> quantities. Another planet with shallow oceans could have cut the time
> in less than half, with more time left over for the advance from
> replicators on the prokaryote level to creatures on the metazoan
> level.

Don't these formations mark the evolution of photosynthesis and the
production of atmospheric oxygen that created these iron formations?
It took over a billion and a half years to evolve photosynthesis.
Your aliens were pretty lame designers.

>
> > > Howard Hershey may not have taken this into account when he said that
> > > heavy metals were in appreciable quantities only ten billion years ago
> > > at the earliest.  I think 12 billion years ago is already a
> > > possibility.  Just think like you do about biological evolution, and I
> > > think you will see why.
>
> > I haven't seen anything that would back you up.
>
> Do you know about Seyfert galaxies?  Perhaps our galaxy was one in its
> earlier stages.
>
> Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.  I have a subcommittee
> meeting in 12 minutes.

Seyfert galaxies sound deadly for anything trying to survive in them.
I doubt that our galaxy was one unless they can blow up and start
over. You might check to see if our galaxy passed by one 4 or 5
billion years ago.

Ron Okimoto

>
> Peter Nyikos

[Ron O]

On Dec 5, 11:31 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> On Dec 1, 7:20 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Dec 1, 12:12 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Nov 29, 7:39 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Nov 29, 4:03 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Oct 7, 3:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> Picking up roughly where I left off in an earlier sequence of replies.

I really don't care about this topic. This post is just rehashing
junk that you can't back up in any meaningful way. It is obvious that
you have no real argument so that there was nothing for me to run
from. What I will respond to is a post from you in this thread and
the bogus accusation thread stating that you were wrong and that there
was no excuse for making up lame and degenerate stories about me just
to fulfill your fantasy projections of your own bogus behavior. I
went back to the Insane logic thread and there are 11 posts that fit
your definition of running that were posted before Oct 7. That is
just the most recent thread. Not only that, but you are running
because you had to prevaricate and lie about the issues, so you really
have a reason to run. There is no such reason here in this thread.
It was just a bogus thread started by a troll or worse. Face the
facts and stop pretending.

What kind of degenerate person would have started that bogus thread
when he himself is guilty of so much more that it is pathetic to even
think about how sad the situation actually is.

Really, if you can't come up with something better than this, even
someone as lost as your are has to realize what a bogus person you
have to be.

>
> > > > > However, 10,000 years might be enough time for us to check out enough
> > > > > planets to ascertain whether abiogenesis really is a common occurrence
> > > > > or what looks to be a one-in-a-galaxy (or rarer) event.
>
> > > > How many planets is that when we might be talking about just one?
>
> > > There are probably millions of planets within 1000 parsecs with
> > > characteristics similar to those of earth, and many thousands similar
> > > to early earth.
>
> > Where does this estimate come from?
>
> I've seen various estimates as to the number of stars within 500 light
> years, and extrapolated.  I forget the calculations for "probably
> millions" but could probably reproduce them without too much trouble.
>
> The figure of 1000 parsecs was chosen because AFAIK it takes us to the
> top and bottom edges of the disk of the galaxy where we are, and I
> don't think the panspermists would go further than that, due to the
> law of diminishing returns.

You admit that the stars that you are interested in might not even
exist anywhere that you can get them. Where can the alien's star
system be after 4 billion years? Wouldn't most of the stars that you
are looking for be just as lost?

>
> > You likely have to exclude star
> > cluster or regions forming stars because nearby stars blowing up
> > likely make the places not worth exploring in terms of evidence for
> > the designers.
>
> That depends on the composition of the cluster.  Our little local
> cluster doesn't have any stars that pose such dangers.

So you don't think that the aliens were even in our local cluster?
You just hope that they picked out several stars in our cluster to
muck with?

>
> Loose clusters like ours probably don't last very long anyway.  The
> panspermists' planet, if it still exists, could be just about anywhere
> in the spiral arms of the galaxy, or even kicked out of the galaxy
> altogether, the way things change in the course of billlions of years.

It has lasted for 5 billion years. A third of the life of the
universe.

>
> >Why would they waste their time on planets that would
> > be sterilized every few hundred million years.
>
> They wouldn't, but ours had been around for about 500 million years
> already.

You mean 5 billion. 500 million would be about Lord Kelvin's estimate
and he was wrong. Radioactivity and nuclear fusion were discovered
since then and the first law has been rewritten to account for that.
Just something to get you up to date and into the last century.

>
> > > > How will you tell the designers planet from another seeded planet?
>
> > > I don't expect the designers' planet to be ever found, since its sun
> > > may have obliterated it by now.   And that is a clue as to why they
> > > may have begun a panspermia project.
>
> > That is one of my points.  It took us almost 4 billion years to evolve
> > with supposed designer help.  Without help how long did it take the
> > designers to evolve?
>
> Hard to say.  An optimistic estimate is this: planet forms 1 billion
> years after the Big Bang.  Heavy bombardment ends  half a billion
> years later and amino acids, etc. start being generated
> spontaneously.  Prokaryote level 6 billion years later.  Intelligent
> species in another 2 billion years thanks to a shallow ocean.  [See my
> reply to you earlier today for that last bit.] That brings us to 4
> billion years ago.

These are just numbers that you are pulling out of your butt and you
have nothing to back them up.

The fact is that you don't have much more than a 2 fold difference in
time to evolve the aliens and that you know that it took 10 billion
years to generate the materials that our star system is made of. With
those limitations there is no reason to assume that space aliens were
any more probable than evolving us so why posit that we needed their
help when there isn't any evidence that help was needed?

Not only that, but they would have had to evolve in a highly active
pocket of the universe, avoid obliteration in that active pocket, and
they just happened to come close to our star 4 billion years ago to
diddle fart with life on earth.

>
> That 6 billion years gives plenty of room for revising the other
> estimates upward.  No matter how long it took, I maintain it was still
> a lucky fluke.  See my oft-reposted quote by Joyce and Orgel, or the
> following similar quote by Crick:
>
>        An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available
>         to us now, could only state that in some sense, the
>         origin of life seems at the moment to be almost a miracle,
>         so many are the conditions which would have had to have
>         been satisfied to get it going.
>                 --Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_,
>                   Simon and Schuster, 1981, p. 88.
>
> The number of those conditions had apparently diminished by 1993, but
> enough still remained for Joyce and Orgel to use the phrase "a near
> miracle".

This just supports my contention that no aliens were needed. Why not
stick with one lucky fluke instead of compound all the luck that it
would take to evolve the aliens before there were a lot of material to
evolve them from, and get them into a position to diddle fart with us.

>
> > They only have around 10 billion years to do it
> > and stars like the sun would likely go red giant  before they could
> > bang two rocks together if we really need designer help.
>
> Our own sun is a little hotter than need be for life, so they may have
> had more time.  But they didn't have any designer help according to my
> hypothesis, just a great streak of luck.  Given enough universes like
> ours, almost anything can happen.

Just means that there is a range were life can exist, so what? The
likelihood space alien intervention is even less with this proposition
because you are now limiting the types of stars suitable for evolving
life that the aliens could have existed in. This doesn't make things
better.

>
> > Wouldn't you
> > expect them to take an order of magnitude longer or millions of times
> > longer if all the bogus calculations mean anything?
>
> > If it is only a two fold difference why even suspect alien designers?
>
> Even with the 12-fold difference to the first prokaryote that the
> above optimistic estimate gives, I think it was a fantastic stroke of
> luck.

Where did this twelve fold difference come from. I claim that it took
the aliens even less time to evolve prokaryotes and that their problem
was generating lifeforms suitable for multicellular life. Do you see
the problem?

>
> [snip things that got no response from you this time around]
>
> > > > So when did the designers do their designing.
>
> > > I answered that in my second reply, to which you replied two minutes
> > > after the post to which I am replying here.
>
> > No you didn't.  Was it at the start of life on earth?
>
> A tad before, since they had to deliver the designed organisms to
> earth.  I thought that was obvious from what I wrote.
>
> I gave a 3.9 billion year figure because I thought that was the latest
> estimate for when life began here, but Harshman has indicated it could
> be 3.5 billion years ago.  That is my basis for saying "12-fold
> difference" up there.  But if 3.9 takes us to prokaryotes, then we
> have a 60-fold difference.

These numbers are meaningless. It is horse shoes and hand grenades.
So even 3.5 billion misses the evolution of flagellum by around 1.5
billion years. The eubacterial flagellum supposedly evolved around 2
billion years ago.

>

> > Did they diddle
> > fart with life along the billions of years that life was evolving on
> > this planet.
>
> I doubt it.  We were probably too far away by then.  See above.

So what evidence do you have that they were ever here?

>
> > When did they do their designing?  You made a big deal
> > about IC, so did they design the flagellum 2 billion years ago?
>
> The bacterial flagellum for gram-negative bacteria, and it would have
> been 3.5 billion years ago or whenever the first prokaryotes appear on
> earth.

The estimates that I have seen is around 2 billion years ago for the
evolution of the flagellum. The paper I recall had the estimate of
between 1.7 and 2.something. The space aliens would have been a
billion years further away by then. I can't find the paper, but Wiki
claims that the archea and eubacterial flagellum are not homologous
and evolved independently. The space aliens would have had to seed
plans for both of them, probably after the populations split.

See. Nothing worth discussing. Nothing worth running from. You were
wrong. Admit, at least that. You really should appologize for
starting that bogus and degenerate thread and making up those lame
stories about me when you did it. You are bogus enough to claim to
other posters in that thread that I am the one that is puking on you,
but who was the degenerate that started that thread. Who is the one
that is really running from posts?

I have said this before. If I was as lame as you are, I would just
not post. I'd have given up years ago and found something else to
do. There is a very big difference between telling it like it is and
prevaricating and lying your butt off in any way that you think that
you can get away with.

Ron Okimoto

[pnyikos]

On Dec 5, 3:31 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Dec 2011 07:33:43 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>
>
>
> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >On Dec 4, 4:38 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

> >> So, here's my deal.  If you wish to engage in intelligent conversation
> >> with me, please limit yourself to responding to the actual point(s)
> >> under discussion, and deliberately inhibit your apparent compulsions.
> >> If you do so, I promise I will do the same.

And I went along with this [see below], refining the wording a bit.

> >Do you really think you can hold yourself to that promise? You pepper
> >your posts with all kinds of condescending comments like "I'll spell
> >it out nice and slow, just for you" and "can you support what you are
> >saying, just this once?"  Harshman has observed on one occasion that
> >you are "much too prickly".

And now comes a recounting of an occasion when I actually did what you
are asking me to do now:

> >One time, I resolutely ignored such comments and stuck to on-topic
> >discussion with you, you quit the thread when it became obvious that
> >you could not rescue Doolittle from the plain fact that:
>
> I'll take this as a "no".

Prematurely, since in the part you deleted, I made a very reasonable
counteroffer:

"But I'm willing to go back to the behavior I manifested
in that Doolittle thread if you do your best to keep your side of the
bargain."

The ball is in your court.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

So what? The issue is how it came to be there.

Note, I said "direct" evidence. And life being here is not direct
evidence for it having arisen on earth, rather than elsewhere.

> Your
> aliens do not exist anywhere that you know of.

The conventional wisdom for many decades has been that there are
thousands, perhaps millions of other planets in the galaxy where
intelligent life has already existed. And, the Fermi paradox
notwithstanding, this conventional wisdom is still prevalent AFAIK.
Are you of a very different opinion?

If NOT, then your previous sentence loses all its evidential force.

OTOH If you DO think that abiogenesis leading to a technological
situation on the same planet could be a once-in-a-galaxy occurrence,
then this could easily FAVOR the theory of directed panspermia.

Here is how: If the panspermists undertook a large enough seeding
operation, encompassing a million plantets where conditions were good
for life prospering once it got a foothold, there is a good chance
that several of those planets have developed intelligent life via
evolution by now. And so the odds that any given intelligent species
arose by panspermia outweigh the odds that it arose by evolution that
began with abiogenesis on the home planet.

I am, of course, making one big assumption here ("encompassing a
million planets") but it does not seem unreasonable to me, nor did it
seem unreasonable to Crick and Orgel.

> > > > > You can work on this kind of junk as a
> > > > > hobby, but you have to realize that you are likely not going to get
> > > > > anywhere with it no matter how hard you work.
>
> > > > You are disregarding the possibility of spinoffs.  I've already gotten
> > > > a few insights from it, such as the realization that the proportion of
> > > > stars of various kinds might have been very different in the first
> > > > billion years of the universe.
>
> > > When the spinoffs come then you can talk about them.  Legitimate space
> > > interests will produce the spinoffs more effectively.  Can you deny
> > > that?
>
> > I don't see how anyone could either confirm or deny that at this point
> > in time.  Certainly, someone trying to prove the above hypothesis
> > would be motivated to learn a lot about the populations of stars in
> > the early universe.  The evidence of a significant proportion of
> > supergiants and even hyper-supergiants lasting for less than ONE
> > million (million, not billion) years seems to be piling up already.
>
> Wasn't my point that you had no point?  What does it mean if you can't
> confirm nor deny what you said?

I think like a scientist. Ever hear the old saying about physicists
before the quantum theory really took hold? It went something like
this: "On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we believe the wave theory;
on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays we believe the corpuscular
theory." It would have been unreasonable to ask any of these
physicists to either confirm or deny that the wave theory is the
correct one.

> If they are already accumulating the
> evidence what does panspermia matter?

It's a question of priorities, of actually being motivated to look for
things rather than just passively having them drop in your lap. By
the way, I got this idea back in the mid 1990's and it is only in the
last five years that I've seen any sign of accumulating evidence.

Anyway, the point is that right now we have no good idea where the
best spinoffs will come from. Spinoffs are like that.

[pnyikos]

On Dec 5, 6:55 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Dec 5, 9:50 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Dec 3, 9:43 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Dec 2, 6:57 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Dec 1, 7:20 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> > > > > On Dec 1, 12:12 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Nov 29, 7:39 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > On Nov 29, 4:03 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > > On Nov 28, 9:10 pm, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:


> > > > > > > I do think that it is stupid to argue about this junk because you
> > > > > > > aren't ever going to get to an answer until the aliens show up.
>
> > > > > > Not a definitive answer, no.  But we may get a lot of indirect
> > > > > > evidence in the next 10,000 years if we actively look for it.  This
> > > > > > would include information about earth-like planets and what kind of
> > > > > > life (if any) exists on them.

I return to the theme of 10,000 years below.

[deletia of things dealt with in my first reply]

> > > There are people right now that are likely trying to design
> > > space probes that can go to other star systems and send back useful
> > > data.
>
> > And there were whole teams back in the 1970's: Americans in Project
> > Orion, British in Project Daedalus:
>
> >http://www.damninteresting.com/the-daedalus-starship
>
> >http://www.damninteresting.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-lov...
>
> > There were also people studying the possibilities for an interstellar
> > ramjet, using huge magnetic fields to scoop up interstellar hydrogen
> > and fusing it into hydrogen.
>
> > Do you know of any similar research going on today? I'd love to hear
> > about it.
>
> You seem to have missed the fact that the research came to nothing.

...due to lack of financing. But then, exploration of the moon also
came to nothing by the same standards. It looks as though it will be
half a century after the last landing before the next one occurs.

> Someone has to come up with better ideas. If curiosity or the danger
> of massive solar flares coming from our own star that can pretty much
> destroy all life on earth isn't enough to get people off their butts

No nation is going to sink trillions of dollars to guard against
something that hasn't happened in billions of years and may never have
happened before. Guarding against earth-grazing asteroids will take
priority over that.

Now you see another reason why I gave that 10,000 year figure. I
think it will take at least another thousand years before humans are
willing to commit to a long-term exploration of other solar systems by
instrumental probes. But by that time we will probably have tamed the
asteroids, so to speak, to ensure that none worthy of the name
"asteroid" [what ever happened to that useful old word "meteoroid"?]
ever hits earth again.

The resources that go into such a project could then be turned
outward, and mankind could finally reach for the stars in earnest.

For a few thousand years, instrumental flybys to planetary systems
within about 100 parsecs is all we can be expected to launch and get
back meaningful data from. The next few thousand would expand this
outward and also feature closer looks at conditions on some of the
earthlike planets. By then we would know whether any of the ones
within 100 parsecs harbors life.

Finally, by the time the 10,000 years are up, I will expect that one
of two things will have happened: either we discover that there is no
life worthy of the name on any of the earthlike planets within 100
parsecs, or there will be a number and we will have had a chance to
see what their genetic code (if any) is. And that's when we can
really begin to make progress on the question of which is most likely:
homegrown abiogenesis, directed panspermia, or undirected panspermia.

> and putting some money into deep space exploration isn't enough, what
> good would positing imaginary aliens do?

It would put a high priority to sampling the genetic code of any life
we encounter out there, for one thing.

> > > You don't need to worry about if some space aliens diddle
> > > farted around with life over 3 billion years ago.
>
> > But the information such probes gather could prove highly relevant to
> > how likely abiogenesis is. And that in turn has a huge effect on the
> > probability of whether another technological civilization seeded
> > earth, or whether "Mother Earth did it".
>
> That would be true whether panspermia was a factor or not. Why
> wouldn't we send back all the information about lifeforms that we
> could if we found them?

Because our resources are limited, and the probes could only look for
the information they are designed and programmed to look for. Just
think of how the various Mars lander probes might have been redesigned
if we had already know as much about Mars back then as we do now.


[snip for brevity of something we could return to talking about later]

> > > > Howard Hershey may not have taken this into account when he said that
> > > > heavy metals were in appreciable quantities only ten billion years ago
> > > > at the earliest. I think 12 billion years ago is already a
> > > > possibility. Just think like you do about biological evolution, and I
> > > > think you will see why.
>
> > > I haven't seen anything that would back you up.
>
> > Do you know about Seyfert galaxies? Perhaps our galaxy was one in its
> > earlier stages.

[...]

> Seyfert galaxies sound deadly for anything trying to survive in them.

I had in mind before the first life anywhere. I'm speculating that
whatever drives Seyfert galaxies also produces heavier elements in
abundance.

> I doubt that our galaxy was one unless they can blow up and start
> over.

Actually, an astronomy text I have takes seriously the possibility
that our galaxy was one anywhere up to a hundred thousand years ago!
But the activity would have taken place far inside, near the galactic
center.

> You might check to see if our galaxy passed by one 4 or 5
> billion years ago.

I doubt that there is enough evidence of that remaining after all this
time.

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 11:22:53 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:


>"But I'm willing to go back to the behavior I manifested
>in that Doolittle thread if you do your best to keep your side of the
>bargain."
>
>The ball is in your court.

I honestly don't know if you demonstrated some measure of self-control
later in the Doolittle thread, because I refused to read any more of
it after I had witnessed enough of your attention-getting exercises
earlier in the thread. AFAIC whatever you did after that might as
well never happened.

AFAIC your offer above amounts to me accepting what you have always
done. IOW you offer nothing at all.

Your attention-getting devices poison the well. They pollute, spoil
and bury anything worthwhile in your posts. You only hurt yourself by
continuing them. Other people may have less problems than I do in
enabling your antics, but I will not enable you to do them to me.

You might fool yourself by withholding your compulsive childish
attention-getting devices for one post in a thread, just to continue
them in your next posts. But you can't erase the posts you already
made.

You kicked the ball out of the court in your first reply to me.
Congratulations.

[pnyikos]

On Dec 6, 11:00 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 11:22:53 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
>

> <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >"But I'm willing to go back to the behavior I manifested
> >in that Doolittle thread if you do your best to keep your side of the
> >bargain."

I should have said, "the behavior I manifested in the last two posts I
did in reply to you in that Doolittle thread":

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/cc67be0a4fdb28ad

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9e9e49fe7100f7b2?dmode

You replied to the first [see url below] and the second was my reply
to that, but then you disappeared from the thread.

> >The ball is in your court.
>
> I honestly don't know if you demonstrated some measure of self-control
> later in the Doolittle thread, because I refused to read any more of
> it after I had witnessed enough of your attention-getting exercises
> earlier in the thread.

This means that you posted your response to the first of the two posts
referenced up there, giving no clue as to you being fed up with me,
and then didn't bother to check how (or whether) I replied. You even
asked me a couple of questions in it.

It was a long response, almost all of it on-topic. Here it is:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/ae708ea7f029b240

> AFAIC whatever you did after that might as
> well never happened.
> AFAIC your offer above amounts to me accepting what you have always
> done.  IOW you offer nothing at all.

Are you sure? please do check that last post of yours to that thread,
and the posts of mine before and after it.

If you are willing to make a comparable effort to the one I made in
those last two posts, we can seal the deal, as long as we agree on two
other things:

1. Neither of us is bound by the agreement to be nice to anyone
except the other party to the agreement.

2. Making nasty remarks about the other party in any post whatsoever
constitutes breaking the agreement.

If we can agree on this, the deal is done.

Peter Nyikos