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Everything posted by Genady
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Why is a fine-tuned universe a problem?
Genady replied to 34student's topic in Astronomy and Cosmology
OK, there is no string theory without SUSY. Is there SUSY without string theory? If so, does it predict sparticles independently of the string theory? -
Why is a fine-tuned universe a problem?
Genady replied to 34student's topic in Astronomy and Cosmology
AFAIK sparticles are predicted by SUSY rather than string theory, aren't they? -
Can self replicating robots ever be invented?
Genady replied to Jalopy's topic in General Philosophy
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It is skewing the stats. Talking of WTC. I was there on 9/11 at 9am.
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Why is a fine-tuned universe a problem?
Genady replied to 34student's topic in Astronomy and Cosmology
I don't have any attachment to the string theory. Just curious, what do you refer to in "a decade after [it] was proven wrong"? The LHC experiments? -
The myth of invasive lionfish
Genady replied to Genady's topic in Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology
Well, I was not talking about seasonal variations, but rather about changes in populations from year to year. And, being a (former) SCUBA instructor with about 3000 logged dives, I see the "invasion" first hand. The bottom line, what I see here is very different from what you describe. Maybe the process is just different in different parts of the ocean, but here we don't see these disturbing things. The lionfish seems to be just another fish in our "aquarium". BTW, there are many native fishes that are not preyed on by other native predators. For example, nothing eats adult green morays, barracudas, jacks, scorpionfish, rays. This is not something that is special about lionfish, not a factor that makes them different. Yes, sometimes we find them swarming around a rock. But then there are thousands rocks without them and with plenty of native fish doing there usual things. -
Einstein said that nationalism is a disease. He didn't say nations.
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Thank you. I'm very glad to hear this, because I don't like the sensationalistic hint in the original report about a possible discovery of a "missing link" between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Although, I have to clarify, this "missing link" speculation appears only in the pop sci report, NOT in the primary report in bioarxiv.
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Yes, however until this recent discovery they all were less than 1 mm in size and didn't have a DNA pouch. The new one is almost 1 cm long, has DNA pouch, and has been discovered in some Caribbean mangroves.
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Don't hold your breath.
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I wondered how fast this bacterium reproduces considering its size. But anyway, their evolution occurring faster they could evolve this feature really recently. How about in the last million years, for example?
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Yes, 75 million years I consider not long at all on the 3-4 billion years scale. Mostly, after the dinosaurs. Of course they have changed their habitat many times. This is evolution. The unknown we are talking about is, when during this evolution they evolved this peculiar compartmentation.
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Yes, not enough data. The only knowledge is that they evolved some time during the last 3-4 billion years. At any time during this window. They live on mangroves. How long do mangroves exist? Not very long.
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As a former Soviet citizen with a part of the family coming from Ukraine I have to say that I never thought I will have such a high respect to the Ukrainian people and to their president (whose last name rhymes with mine.)
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We don't even know that it remained unchanged or changed very little. Maybe they evolved relatively recently.
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They have had the same billions of years to evolve to what they are today as the eukaryotes. Isn't it just another line of evolution from whatever common ancestor we share? The bacterial DNA is not actually distributed throughout the cell. Their DNA is arranged in chromosomes, which differ from eukaryotic chromosomes in being circular rather than linear. Curious, what is a shape of chromosomes of these new organisms? BTW, the article says that their ribosomes are in the same pouch, with the DNA. This is crucially different from the eukaryotes whose ribosomes are outside the nuclei. This pouch doesn't resemble the eukaryotic nucleus functionally. Looks more like a superficial resemblance to me.
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What do they mean when they call an extant organism a "missing link"?
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They are interchangeable in some languages in some cases, but even then they mean different things. Here is one analysis: