A coherent pathway which starts from no more than rocks, water and carbon dioxide and leads to the emergence of the strange bioenergetic properties of living cells has been traced for the first time in a major hypothesis paper in Cell this week.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
A Coherent Pathway
Quoting from a preview of an article in Cell:
A coherent pathway which starts from no more than rocks, water and carbon dioxide and leads to the emergence of the strange bioenergetic properties of living cells has been traced for the first time in a major hypothesis paper in Cell this week.
The preview we link to goes into detail about these latest ideas on the origin of life.
How was the early earth warm enough for life to develop
The evidence for these two facts about the early Earth–a dim sun and liquid oceans–were already strong in the 1960s.
Various solutions are reviewed in this National Geographic article; none so far has majority acceptance among scientists.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Planetary collision resulted in moon we see
The evidence is now firmer for collision between the earth and another planetary body, the size of Mars, being the source for our moon, and as the article notes, this means the earth we know.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Science News, the 'Golden Corral' Buffet
A Bunch of interesting science blog posts at this link -- The finalists for the Three Quarks Daily science contest. Lots of fun, and the winner will be selected by Sean Carroll (who, though he has blocked me from posting on his facebook wall, still lets me comment on his posts, and who in fact, is a heck of a nice guy.)
A few posts I ,at least, noticed the title of, include---
Eruptions: The Mysterious Missing Eruption of 1258 A.D.
Double X Science: Real science vs. fake science: How can you tell them apart?
[ I didn't read the above post--- I was miffed my essay"God will smite the climate change deniers" didn't even make the first round, of candidates]
Cosmology Science Blog: Observation of two early yet mature galaxies: Rare objects or is Big Bang model inaccurate?
Galileo's Pendulum: Is Cosmology in Shambles?
[nice]
The Beast, the Bard, and the Bot: Are Humans Still Evolving?
[don't get too excited here; the evolution of human intelligence seems not to have occurred to the writer.]
Thursday, June 7, 2012
So how did the climate change in the Miocene Era?
Scientists are puzzled today by the discovery that millions of years ago levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were lower [than they are today] - and yet,[the water] temperatures [then] were higher than today's [are].
So begins a writeup about a paper in Nature just published. If you don't have access to the magazine the writeup I reference still contains information about how they determined what the temperature in the miocene era WAS, and how surprised they were to find that apparently the levers of climatic change were different in the miocene than the mechanisms of global change today.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Mind body connection progress perhaps
Quoting a blurb about an article in Nature, an article which may represent a step toward understanding the mind body connection---
Though i don't have a subscription to Nature, nor could I understand the article probably, my guess is its a very tiny step, because the headlines for any part, typically, of a scientific solution, will grandify the results, which is only apparent when you look at the actual article. That is just how the mind operates. Guess they won't be identifying the part of the brain, where a guess, a step towards progress, ie, any verbal formulation, is taken by the brain to be more significant than it actually is, ---- too soon. What brought my comment up, is the observation that even the title of the article here, is modest. "Involved" rather than "discovered", "explained," .... the usual hyper conclusions typically found in headlines, book titles, etc. This is not a scientific jargon matter, this is the way words work in general. (kind of) -- that is, unavoidably overstating their own, significance. My favorite example, which I am not quoting exactly, is books titles, Like "The Evolution of Consciousness" which you find quickly, is held out by the author or authors, as nothing so definitive. The interesting thing is this blurb is atypically modest---
Nature, June 3
—Washington University in St. Louis
My source for the above quotation is --Newswise SciWire for 04-Jun-2012
Thursday, May 31, 2012
No traffic lights in the early solar system
A Professor Minton has some new ideas to explain the puzzle that, when, two billion years ago, the sun was only 70% as bright as it is now, the earth did not become a frozen ball of ice. The answer is clever and involves the mechanics of solar system formation. It does involve another collision of two bodies as creating a night sky feature. Since recently it was theorized the moon was made of two different bodies that collided, it certainly makes for a busy scenario in the early solar system.
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