Dancer

 

Who Are We/You?

Some of us claim to be Americans while a vast majority of us (globally) claim that we are part of the race of human beings.

Humans are primates. Physical and genetic similarities show that the modern human species, Homo sapiens, has a very close relationship to another group of primate species, the apes. Humans and the great apes (large apes) of Africa -- chimpanzees (including bonobos, or so-called “pygmy chimpanzees”) and gorillas -- share a common ancestor that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa.

Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans. Scientists do not all agree, however, about how these species are related or which ones simply died out. Many early human species -- certainly the majority of them – left no living descendants. Scientists also debate over how to identify and classify particular species of early humans, and about what factors influenced the evolution and extinction of each species.  SOURCE:  Smithsonian National Museum of  Natural History

So, from the Smithsonian's perspective, we are primates and have a very close relationship to the great apes, chimpanzees, and gorillas...  and, if we are very close to these hairy critters, then why/how did we evolve so much differently?  And, can our evolution be contributed to Darwin's Theories of Evolution?

Our transformation seems not just dramatic but accelerated in its advancement while other primates have not evolved that fast at all over the years.

BUT...  in 2014, Scientific American published a piece about a missing genetic link in human evolution...

Although scientists aren’t sure how, the core seems to sweep up neighboring segments of DNA, duplicating the entire stretch and inserting the new copy into a new location on the chromosome. “Then it picks up again and duplicates some of the sequence around it and moves to another new location,” Eichler said. “It seems to be an extremely unstable genetic element that provides a template for evolutionary change.”

It is this process that appears to create new genes: When new duplications are inserted into the genome, they bring together two previously foreign pieces of DNA, which can lead to new functional components, such as proteins. This chaotic mix-and-match approach is different from the traditional model for the creation of a gene, in which an existing gene is duplicated and the copy is free to develop new functions.

“This mechanism appears to be seminal in our evolution,” said Philip Hastings, a geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston. “It’s possible that we are the way we are largely because of this mechanism that generates dramatic episodes of chromosomal structural change.”

Now we are totally confused as to how our DNA got altered in Africa all those millions of years ago in order to start the evolutionary process that created how human beings look today...  these mysteries are profound, outside of a religious context, because it could imply that some other species messed around with our DNA millions of years ago.  And, while the results were positive, it is still puzzling how our development was initially generated in order for us to be who we are today.

In What Do We Live?

We live on a planet that lives in a solar system that floats around in the Milky Way Galaxy that is simply one of billions and billions of galaxies that exist in our universe...  so, our small planet is unique but not altogether dissimilar with other small planets in other galaxies and other solar systems that are part of those galaxies.

We...  or some of us anyway...  believe that there are other universes that somehow interact with our own universe to create a multiverse or sorts...  but, it is uncertain how many of these other universes there actually are interacting with us...  2-3-4-5-6...  etc.

In other words, life on earth (as we know it) could be replicated in these other universes so that there is a slightly different variation of our lives here taking place there.

How odd/cool is that?

But, all of this is taking place on a MACRO level...   what about life taking place on a MICRO level?

How many dimensions do we live in here on earth?  FOUR...   is the typical answer:  height, width, depth, and time.   But, what if there were 12 dimensions?  What would life be like in those other dimensions?

We are all aware of the atom and its components:  electron, neutron, and proton...  and as the various atoms combine they form various compounds.   How many of us are aware, that these electrons, neutrons, and protons can be further broken down into sub-atomic particles and that those sub-atomic particles can be further broken down into strings of pure energy.

It is unpredictable how these strings of energy move from one location to another location, so scientists believe that this unpredictability is what could be causing all these various dimensions to exist...  and, in turn, the various dimensions cause all the parallel universes to exist as well.

Still odd and cool?

Do We Even Exist?

The Latin cogito, ergo sum, usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am", is the "first principle" of René Descartes's philosophy. He originally published it in French as je pense, donc je suis in his 1637 Discourse on the Method...

Descartes continues with his thinking and writes the following:

"...What of thinking? I find here that thought is an attribute that belongs to me; it alone cannot be separated from me. I am, I exist, that is certain … I know that I exist, and I inquire what I am, I whom I know to exist … [W]hat then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, conceives, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels … For it is so evident of itself that it is I who doubts, who understands, and who desires, that there is no reason here to add anything to explain it..."

Herein lies the problem... as a thinking man, he is claiming that he also doubts... as well as understands...  surely Descartes must see that if he doubts and understands that logically should understand that he doubts I THINK THEREFORE I AM...  doubt his own logic and understanding that he doubts his own logic is by definition part of his own concept of thinking.

For many years, Descartes's logic was the sole source of proof that we existed...  but then the movie THE MATRIX came along and logic was taken to a whole new and different level.  How do we know that we are not living in some sort of giant matrix and that all of our perception and awareness, understanding, doubting, and thinking is just the side effect of some complex and comprehensive computer program designed by THE ARCHITECT...  the fact remains, that we don't know for sure and right now there is no way to prove it one way or another.

The other side of this concept for me is spiritual or religious...  and revolves around the concept that the Bible claims that we will have eternal life...  eternity is a hell of a long time...  and, we compare that with living 80-100 years on earth...  our life on earth seems rather meaningless in comparison, doesn't it?

As we ponder this comparison maybe our 80-100 year life isn't real at all...  maybe the only life is after we die...  and, for centuries, especially in Egypt, once a person died all the blood was removed...  so, maybe it is the blood that creates this false life...  maybe it is the blood that puts us into some sort of virtual reality computer program existence in which we pretend to be alive experiencing what we do.

Or, once the blood is created in our body, an essence is initially created that we later have come to label our soul or spirit and the combination of the soul and blood provides us with our matrix-type existence...  and when we die, our true shapes are automatically created by the soul that leaves our body...

Something leaves our body because after we die, our bodies weigh a few ounces less than they did before...   that's some weird shit, isn't it?

Bird Feeding

 

The Founding Population of Mexico

Archaeologists have recovered DNA from 10 colonial-era inhabitants of Campeche, Mexico, revealing the diversity of the founding populations of European settlements in the Americas.

Campeche was an early colonial settlement in Yucatán. It was founded in 1540, less than 20 years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, once conquistadors secured their rule.

The important port was initially served by a parish church until it was replaced by a cathedral in 1680. The church was rediscovered in 2000 during rescue excavations when archaeologists found 129 early colonial burials at the site.

Early attempts to extract DNA from these burials failed. Now advances in aDNA research have allowed Professor Vera Tiesler and a team of researchers from Harvard University to gather genetic data from this important site. Their work is published in the journal Antiquity.

“Ancient DNA methods have improved to the point where we can generate robust data from warm, humid environments,” said Dr Jakob Sedig, from the Reich Laboratory at Harvard University and co-lead author of the research, “Using the petrous bone, we were able to generate excellent data from all 10 individuals we tested, which is encouraging for future ancient DNA analysis in this region.”

The aDNA revealed the 10 individuals interred in the colonial cemetery were made up of six females and four males, and none were close relatives. Most were local Indigenous Americans, but people of European and sub-Saharan African ancestry were also identified. READ MORE...

Fireflies

 

A Rogue Star & Our Solar System

In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his magnum opus, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which effectively synthesized his theories on motion, velocity, and universal gravitation.

In terms of the latter, Newton offered a means for calculating the force of gravity and predicting the orbits of the planets. Since then, astronomers have discovered that the Solar System is merely one small point of light that orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. On occasion, other stars will pass close to the Solar System, which can cause a dramatic shakeup that can kick objects out of their orbits

These “stellar flybys” are common and play an important role in the long-term evolution of planetary systems. As a result, the long-term stability of the Solar System has been the subject of scientific investigation for centuries. 

According to a new study by a team of Canadian astrophysicists, residents of the Solar System may rest easy. After conducting a series of simulations, they determined that a star will not pass by and perturb our Solar System for another 100 billion years. Beyond that, the possibilities are somewhat frightening!

The research was led by Garett Brown, a graduate student of computational physics from the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences (PES) at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He was joined by Hanno Rein, an associate professor of astrophysics (and Brown’s mentor) also from the PES at UT Scarborough. 

The paper that describes their findings was recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Journal. As they indicated in their paper, the study of stellar flybys could reveal much about the history and evolution of planetary systems.  READ MORE...

Coral

 

Faster Than Light Travel

For decades, we've dreamed of visiting other star systems. There's just one problem – they're so far away, with conventional spaceflight it would take tens of thousands of years to reach even the closest one.


Physicists are not the kind of people who give up easily, though. Give them an impossible dream, and they'll give you an incredible, hypothetical way of making it a reality. Maybe.

In a 2021 study by physicist Erik Lentz from Göttingen University in Germany, we may have a viable solution to the dilemma, and it's one that could turn out to be more feasible than other would-be warp drives.

This is an area that attracts plenty of bright ideas, each offering a different approach to solving the puzzle of faster-than-light travel: achieving a means of sending something across space at superluminal speeds.

There are some problems with this notion, however. Within conventional physics, in accordance with Albert Einstein's theories of relativity, there's no real way to reach or exceed the speed of light, which is something we'd need for any journey measured in light-years.

That hasn't stopped physicists from trying to break this universal speed limit, though.

While pushing matter past the speed of light will always be a big no-no, spacetime itself has no such rule. In fact, the far reaches of the Universe are already stretching away faster than its light could ever hope to match.  READ MORE...

Dogs at Window

 

Having and Using the Mind is Wonderful - Part II

From Part I (even though it was not labeled as Part I), we touched on purpose, and the complexities of the human body, and were left with the realization that there might be other forms of life in our solar system and/or Milky Way galaxy and/or our universe...  we were left to ponder on the concept and through a little introspection decide if we believed that or not.

Sadly some of you who read the first part do not agree with me, but there are some of you that do agree with me...  so lets proceed.

There are an increasing number of scientists that not only believe in UFOs but who believe extraterrestrials or aliens...  and, I suppose one could say that UFOs don't fly themselves...  but yes they can...  so we actually have two distinct events here.

• UFOs
• Aliens

Now, once you have agreed to aliens...  then you face another challenge as to whether or not these aliens have visited earth before...   and, once you get over that hurdle, you have to decide if these aliens bred with both males and females from our human race...  if that conclusion is in the affirmative, then there must be alien/human race offsprings.

These are some difficult conclusions to make based entirely upon logic and speculation.

Some DNA specialists are now saying that our own human race evolution has been far too fast to get to where we are today...  and, there is speculation that aliens altered our DNA so that we would advance/evolve faster.

How is it that we are able to have only a handful of very smart people, like:

• Einstein
• DaVinci
• Michaelangelo
• Von Braun
• Turing
• Tesla

The United States went from the atomic bomb to space flight in 12 years (1957) and to space travel in 16 years (1961)...  this is accelerated knowledge and technology that had to come from somewhere...

And, what is even more amazing is that the first functional digital computer was designed and used to break the German code in 1944 in Bletchley Park, England.

HOW DID WE GET SO SMART SO QUICK?

Solving a Problem

 

The Science of Aliens

All cellular life on Earth is based on DNA, which transfers information—about everything from hair color to personality traits—from one generation to the next. The four chemical bases that convey this information are adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T).

The other essential “information molecule” on Earth is RNA, in which thymine (T) is replaced by uracil (U). RNA has a one-string structure rather than a double-string structure like DNA. 

The first cellular life on our planet is thought to have relied exclusively on this means of transferring genetic information—in the so-called “RNA world”—and even today there are viruses (like the one that causes COVID) that only use RNA.

In a paper recently published in Science, a research group led by Dona Sleiman from the Institute Pasteur in Paris has discovered that some viruses show more variation in their genetic coding than was previously known. In the RNA of these viruses, adenine (A) is replaced with Z, where Z stands for diaminopurine.

This follows an earlier study by Zunyi Yang and colleagues at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida, showing that an artificial genetic system could be created by adding two additional non-standard bases to ordinary DNA. 

Amazingly, the artificial six-base system continued to evolve rather than reverting back to the natural four-base system. This implies that the DNA we take as standard—made of A, C, G, and T—is just one of many viable solutions to the challenge of biological information transfer.

The variability does not stop here. Strings of DNA are organized in base triplets that determine which of the standard 20 amino acids are assigned to synthesize proteins. However, these triplet assignments are not universal. 

For example, CUG, which usually codes for the amino acid serine, instead codes for the amino acid leucine in some types of fungi. Also, some organisms naturally encode for two additional amino acids instead of the standard 20 amino acids.  READ MORE...

Splash

 

The Aliens are Us

On a geologic timescale, the emergence of the human “dataome” is like a sudden invasion by extraterrestrials or an asteroid impact that precipitates a mass extinction...

Something very old, very powerful and very special has been unleashed on Earth.

Humans are strange. For a global species, we’re not particularly genetically diverse, thanks in part to how our ancient roaming explorations caused “founder effects” and “bottleneck events” that restricted our ancestral gene pool. We also have a truly outsize impact on the planetary environment without much in the way of natural attrition to trim our influence (at least not yet).

But the strangest thing of all is how we generate, exploit, and propagate information that is not encoded in our heritable genetic material, yet travels with us through time and space. Not only is much of that information represented in purely symbolic forms—alphabets, languages, binary codes—it is also represented in each brick, alloy, machine, and structure we build from the materials around us. Even the symbolic stuff is instantiated in some material form or the other, whether as ink on pages or electrical charges in nanoscale pieces of silicon.

Altogether, this “dataome” has become an integral part of our existence. In fact, it may have always been an integral, and essential, part of our existence since our species of hominins became more and more distinct some 200,000 years ago. This idea, which I also pursue in my upcoming book, The Ascent of Information, leads to a number of quite startling and provocative proposals.

For example, let’s consider our planetary impact. Today we can look at our species’ energy use and see that of the roughly six to seven terawatts of average global electricity production, about 3 percent to 4 percent is gobbled up by our digital electronics, in computing, storing and moving information. 

That might not sound too bad—except the growth trend of our digitized informational world is such that it requires approximately 40 percent more power every year. Even allowing for improvements in computational efficiency and power generation, this points to a world in some 20 years where all of the energy we currently generate in electricity will be consumed by digital electronics alone.

And that’s just one facet of the energy demands of the human dataome. We still print onto paper, and the energy cost of a single page is the equivalent of burning five grams of high-quality coal. Digital devices, from microprocessors to hard drives, are also extraordinarily demanding in terms of their production, owing to the deep repurposing of matter that is required. 

We literally fight against the second law of thermodynamics to forge these exquisitely ordered, restricted, low-entropy structures out of raw materials that are decidedly high-entropy in their messy natural states. It is hard to see where this informational tsunami slows or ends.  READ MORE...

Duck Walking

 

They Are The Borg

In the TV series Star Trek, the Borg are cybernetic aliens that assimilate humans and other creatures as a means of achieving perfection. So when Jill Banfield, a geomicrobiologist at the University of California, Berkeley, sifted through DNA in the mud of her backyard and discovered a strange linear chromosome that included genes from a variety of microbes, her Trekkie son proposed naming it after the sci-fi aliens. 

The new type of genetic material was a mystery. Maybe it was part of a viral genome. Maybe it was a strange bacterium. Or maybe it was just an independent piece of DNA existing outside of cells. Whatever it is, it's "pretty exciting," says W. Ford Doolittle, an evolutionary biologist at Dalhousie University who was not involved with the work.

Researchers have found many examples of DNA floating independently outside the chromosome or chromosomes that make up an organism's standard genome. Small loops called plasmids, for example, exist inside microbes and ferry genes for thwarting antibiotics among different kinds of bacteria.

But Banfield wasn't looking for DNA that could move between organisms. Instead, she and graduate student Basem Al-Shayeb were searching for viruses that infect archaea, a type of microbe often found in places devoid of oxygen. 

They would dig 1 meter or more below the surface and collect mud samples that might harbor archaea and their viruses. Next, they would sequence every stretch of DNA in the samples and use sophisticated computer programs to scan for sequences that signified a virus, rather than any other organism.

"We started off with a piece of mud and 10 trillion pieces of DNA," Banfield says. One sample, taken from the mud on her property, contained a gene-filled stretch of DNA almost 1 million bases long—and more than half the genes were novel. 

This linear stretch of DNA also had a particular pattern of bases at its beginning and end, distinct stretches of repetitive DNA between its genes, and two places along the sequence where DNA duplication could begin—which indicated the Borg could make copies of itself. Together, this suggested it was not just a random concoction of genes.

After they identified the first Borg sequence, the researchers began to scan microbial DNA in public databases to see whether they could find anything similar. They found a few variations in groundwater from Colorado—there, the first purported Borg showed up about 1 meter deep and got more abundant deeper down. 

Other versions showed up in DNA from the discharge of an abandoned mercury mine in Napa, California, and from a shallow riverbed of the East River in Colorado.

Altogether, the researchers isolated 23 sequences they think may be Borgs—and 19 they have identified as having all the characteristics of the first Borg they discovered, they write this week on the preprint server bioRxiv. 

Some are almost 1 million bases long. "I don't think anything else that's been discovered is as big as these guys are," among previously known extrachromosomal DNA elements, Doolittle says.  READ MORE...

Petra

 

Morning Coffee

 

Up at 7am most mornings, the first thing I do after giving a treat to our three cats is to make myself a cup of coffee with a coffee pod...  I add three spoons of cappuccino mix and sit down on the couch to enjoy.

Morning coffee gets me to reflecting to myself since there is no one up but me and the cats and they don't give a shit about what I am thinking.,

Illegal Immigration is on my mind this morning and not just because they are breaking the law but because the current administration is bussing these illegal immigrants all over the USA to spread the joy.

But what happens next?

1. Who takes care of them?
2. Who pays for their food?
3. Who pays for their shelter?
4. Who pays for their clothes?
5. Who checks them for diseases?
6. Who takes them where they need to go?
7. Who gives them work?
8. Who protects them from crime?
9. Who stops the females from getting raped?
10. Who stops the children from being trafficked?
11. Who keeps slums from developing?
12. Who sends the children to school?
13. How do they learn with no English?
14. Who takes care of them when they are sick?
15. Who buries them when they die?

My morning coffee is a ritual just like you and others have their morning rituals...  I cannot begin my day without coffee...  And, I cannot drink my morning coffee without thinking...  My thoughts are not always pleasant but they are honest, fair, and truthful and try to reflect my current concerns about our country.  No one pays any attention to my reflections but I write them down anyway...  it is just some sort of silly habit.