Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 49

At Sci News: New Interactive Phylogenetic Map Shows Full Diversity of Life on Earth

LifeGate 2022 combines up-to-date phylogenetic knowledge with a graphical display of the richness and aesthetics of life on Earth. Image credit: Martin Freiberg / Leipzig University.

Dr. Martin Freiberg writes:

“I wanted to construct LifeGate in such a way that all species are of equal value, and that the incredible diversity of species can really be experienced and understood,” Dr. Freiberg explained.

LifeGate 2022 contains more than 150,000 photographs and more than 12,000 distinct phylogenetic trees.

The map view provides different levels of taxonomic detail and can be navigated by zooming between the following color-coded taxonomic levels: domain, phylum (the starting point of the map), class, order, family, genus, and species.

The surface area of a taxonomic group is relative to the number of its species — more species rich clades are represented with a larger area.

For instance, there are more than twice as many ant species in the family Formicidae than in the whole class of mammals.

Within a group, taxa are arranged so as to reflect their phylogenetic relationships.

Taxa with fewer species (often constituting relict taxa of phylogenetically older branches) have been placed to the lower left corner of their respective edge. Only living taxa are shown.

For the individual taxon, additional information can be retrieved, including phylogenetic trees.

Many of the cells have already been filled with photographs showing a representative of the respective taxon.

“During its creation, I based it on the family trees of nature,” Dr. Freiberg said.

“Biologists describe the phylogenetic evolution and relationships of living organisms in so-called phylogenies.”

“Only modern phylogenies already based on DNA analyses have found a place in LifeGate.”

“Such representations are usually limited to individual groups of species and show only birds or frogs, only begonias, orchids or only butterflies, for example.”

“I’ve brought the phylogenies together, in painstaking detail for the first time, so that the relationship positions of all species can actually be shown at the same time.”

“LifeGate began as a scientific clarification project for my students,” he added.

“Pictures are more memorable than mere numbers and make the topic of biodiversity more accessible. This is why the map also fascinates amateurs and laypeople. Not only biologists go to the zoo.”

Sci News

Classifying living organisms based on their inherent similarities is often assumed to form a “phylogenetic tree,” branching out from a common ancestor via evolutionary principles. Leaving aside, as much as possible, the personal bias or preference one may have for evolution or intelligent design, which model most compellingly fits the data? Other issues will certainly factor into the answer, but for now, what can be said about the topic of this article?

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At Phys.org: This Australian experiment is on the hunt for an elusive particle that could help unlock the mystery of dark matter

The ORGAN Experiment, Australia’s first major dark matter detector, recently completed a search for a hypothetical particle called an axion—a popular candidate among theories that try to explain dark matter.

People, planets, stars and galaxies are all made of “regular matter.” But we know regular matter makes up just one-sixth of all the matter in the universe.

The rest is made of what we call “dark matter.” Its name tells you almost everything we know about it. It doesn’t emit light (so we call it “dark”) and it has mass (so we call it “matter”).

If it’s invisible, how do we know it’s there?

When we observe the way things move in space, we find time and again that we can’t explain our observations if we consider only what we can see.

Spinning galaxies are a great example. Most galaxies spin at speeds that can’t be explained by the gravitational pull from visible matter alone.

So there must be dark matter in these galaxies, providing extra gravity and allowing them to spin faster—without parts being flung off into space. We think dark matter literally holds galaxies together.

How could we detect it?

Many scientists believe dark matter could be composed of hypothetical particles called axions.

Anyway, after the axion was proposed, scientists realized the particle could also make up dark matter under certain conditions. That’s because axions are expected to have very weak interactions with regular matter, but still have some mass: the two conditions needed for dark matter.

Shining a light on dark matter

An axion is believed to convert into a photon in the presence of a strong magnetic field. In a typical haloscope, we generate this magnetic field using a big electromagnet called a “superconducting solenoid.”

Targeting mass regions

An axion of a certain mass will convert into a photon of a certain frequency, or color. But since the mass of axions is unknown, experiments must target their search to different regions, focusing on those where dark matter is considered more likely to exist.

If no dark matter signal is found, then either the experiment is not sensitive enough to hear the signal above the noise, or there’s no dark matter in the corresponding axion mass region.

But why does dark matter matter?

Well, for one, we know from history that when we invest in fundamental physics, we end up developing important technologies. For instance, all modern computing relies on our understanding of quantum mechanics.

We never would have discovered electricity, or radio waves, if we didn’t pursue things that, at the time, appeared to be strange physical phenomena beyond our understanding. Dark matter is the same.

Consider everything humans have accomplished by understanding just one-sixth of the matter in the universe—and imagine what we could do if we unlocked the rest.

Full article at Phys.org.

The point about the value of fundamental research yielding useful technology seems consistent with purposeful intelligent design, otherwise, one would probably have to just chalk it up to luck.

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At EurekAlert: Taking your time makes a difference – Brain development differs between Neanderthals and modern humans

Dresden and Leipzig researchers find that stem cells in the developing brain of modern humans take longer to divide and make fewer errors when distributing their chromosomes to their daughter cells, compared to those of Neanderthals.

After the ancestors of modern humans split from those of Neanderthals and Denisovans, their Asian relatives, about one hundred amino acids, the building blocks of proteins in cells and tissues, changed in modern humans and spread to almost all modern humans. The biological significance of these changes is largely unknown. However, six of those amino acid changes occurred in three proteins that play key roles in the distribution of chromosomes, the carriers of genetic information, to the two daughter cells during cell division.

The effects of the modern human variants on brain development: To investigate the significance of these six changes for neocortex development, the scientists first introduced the modern human variants in mice. Mice are identical to Neanderthals at those six amino acid positions, so these changes made them a model for the developing modern human brain. Felipe Mora-Bermúdez, the lead author of the study, describes the discovery: “We found that three modern human amino acids in two of the proteins cause a longer metaphase, a phase where chromosomes are prepared for cell division, and this results in fewer errors when the chromosomes are distributed to the daughter cells of the neural stem cells, just like in modern humans.” To check if the Neanderthal set of amino acids have the opposite effect, the researchers then introduced the ancestral amino acids in human brain organoids – miniature organ-like structures that can be grown from human stem cells in cell culture dishes in the lab and that mimic aspects of early human brain development. “In this case, metaphase became shorter and we found more chromosome distribution errors.” According to Mora-Bermúdez, this shows that those three modern human amino acid changes in the proteins known as KIF18a and KNL1 are responsible for the fewer chromosome distribution mistakes seen in modern humans as compared to Neanderthal models and chimpanzees. He adds that “having mistakes in the number of chromosomes is usually not a good idea for cells, as can be seen in disorders like trisomies and cancer.”

“Our study implies that some aspects of modern human brain evolution and function may be independent of brain size since Neanderthals and modern humans have similar-sized brains. The findings also suggest that brain function in Neanderthals may have been more affected by chromosome errors than that of modern humans,” summarizes Wieland Huttner, who co-supervised the study. Svante Pääbo, who also co-supervised the study, adds that “future studies are needed to investigate whether the decreased error rate affects modern human traits related to brain function.”

For further consideration, please refer to this Evolution News article. Also, one needs to bear in mind that a 3-amino acid change, resulting in a beneficial adaptation is reportedly unlikely to occur in any time frame covering humans and Neanderthals, as summarized in this article at EN.

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At Mind Matters News: Pioneer environmentalist: Cyborgs will rule the planet

In one of his last pieces, James Lovelock (1919–2022), famous for the Gaia Hypothesis argues that half-human/half-machines will be vastly superior to humans:

He is very confident that the workings of evolution underpin his thesis but it is hard to see how. First, most life forms, whether snails or mushrooms, pass on life to their offspring without thinking about it. But humans invent things that are not human — and not alive — explicitly by thinking about it and working out every detail. The continuity Lovelock assumes depends on the assumption that there is no meaningful distinction between mental and physical activity.

But that can’t be correct. For one thing, mental activity — the source of our technology — enables humans to make or mar the environment beyond any other species. If we had no technology, we would have about as much environmental impact as chimpanzees. So it’s just not the same thing.

Second, it’s unclear why Lovelock thinks cyborgs would be so much more intelligent than humans. The general trajectory of AI has not gone that way.

News, “Pioneer environmentalist: Cyborgs will rule the planet” at Mind Matters News (July 31, 2022)

Takehome: Lovelock is hard to classify. He has boundless faith in both Gaia and AI — in almost anything, it would seem, except humans.

You may also wish to read: Astronomer: ET is more likely to be AI than to be a life form. Royal astronomer Lord Martin Rees explains that, apart from other issues, AI would last much longer in the hostile galactic environment. But if the extraterrestrials are AI, they may simply reiterate indefinitely the programs they were designed to execute long ago — we must hope, friendly ones.

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Michael Egnor: Mathematics can prove the existence of God

Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne finds that difficult to believe but neurosurgeon Michael Egnor says it’s really a matter of logic:

What’s remarkable about the reality of universals as proof for God’s existence is that it points in a simple and clear way to some of God’s attributes, such as infinity, eternity, and omnipotence. To see how, consider again the set of natural numbers, which is infinite. Therefore:

The Mind that contains them must itself be infinite.

Because the Mind in which natural numbers exists is infinite, it is also omnipotent. Limitations on power are finite and are inconsistent with an infinite Mind.

Because numbers exist independently of the material universe, they are eternal (e.g., the truth that 1+1=2 is independent of time) and thus the Mind that contains them is eternal.

I find the Augustinian Proof of God’s existence via the reality of universals in the Divine Mind a compelling proof. It is a highly satisfying and an even beautiful concept — our abstract thoughts have a real existence in the Mind of our Creator, and we, who are created in His image, participate in His thoughts.

Michael Egnor, “Mathematics can prove the existence of God” at Mind Matters News (July 31, 2022)

Takehome: Because mathematics can show infinity, eternity, and omnipotence, it can only have proceeded from a mind with those characteristics. That’s God.

You may also wish to read: The Divine Hiddenness argument against God’s existence = nonsense. God in Himself is immeasurably greater than we are, and He transcends all human knowledge. A God with whom we do not struggle — who is not in some substantial and painful way hidden to us — is not God but is a mere figment of our imagination. (Michael Egnor)

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At Mind Matters News: Fossil scientists ask, Could a Neanderthal meditate?

A paleoneurology research team suggests they couldn’t. But how can the researchers be sure?:

… neuroscientist Emiliano Bruner and psychologist Roberto Colom hope to probe the mind of Neanderthal man, who ranged across Eurasia from about 400,000 years ago through 40,000 years ago but now survives only in small percentages of the genome of the much larger modern human population…

Although they don’t come right out and say it in so many words in the media release, they think that Neanderthal man was not smart enough to meditate…

But how sure can anyone be sure that Neanderthals couldn’t meditate, based on endocasts? Even the brains of recently deceased modern humans may not be especially informative. There is a dramatic saga associated with Albert Einstein’s preserved brain but, while it showed some differences from other brains, we don’t know how many people have shown such differences who lived and died without revolutionizing physics or anything else. And Einstein’s brain is preserved wetware, not a cast.

Here’s a bigger background problem: Many people function normally with split brains, a brain missing key components, or only half a brain, (or maybe less.) Recently, Game of Thrones star  star spoke of leading a normal life despite having “quite a bit” of brain missing due to an aneurysm.

News, “Fossil scientists ask, Could a Neanderthal meditate?” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: How much can we rely on casts from fossil skulls when the relationship between the mind and the brain is unclear even in currently living human beings?

You may also wish to read:

Why is Neanderthal art considered controversial? It makes sense that whenever humans started to wonder about life, we started to create art that helps us think about it. Science writer Michael Marshall reports that some researchers are accused of banning others from taking samples that would prove a Neanderthal was the artist.

and

Researchers: Prolonged meditation alters the brain. The changes were detected mainly in the frontal and parietal lobes. Andrew Newberg and colleagues found changes in brain functional connectivity in participants in a seven-day Ignatian spirituality retreat in Pennsylvania.

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Eric Holloway: Artificial neural networks can show that the mind isn’t the brain

Because artificial neural networks are a better version of the brain, whatever neural networks cannot do, the brain cannot do:

If humans can solve problems that neural networks cannot solve, the human mind is doing something a neural network cannot do. Hence, the human mind is also doing something that the brain cannot do.

At this point, we can say that, because neural networks can’t compete against the human mind except in very narrow fields, then neural networks won’t ever match human performance — and hence the mind is not the brain.

Though compelling, this argument will not satisfy nerds, who want hard scientific data. So, I will give you some hard scientific data in my next post where I present a logic experiment that shows that humans can provably outperform neural networks.

Eric Holloway, “Artificial neural networks can show that the mind isn’t the brain” at Mind Matters News (July 24, 2022)

Takehome: The human mind can do tasks that an artificial neural network (ANN) cannot. Because the brain works like an ANN, the mind cannot just be what the brain does.

You may also wish to read: The Salem Hypothesis: Why engineers view the universe as designed. Eric Holloway: Not because we’re terrorists or black-and-white thinkers, as claimed. A simple computer program shows the limits of creating information by chance. Engineers doubt chance evolution because a computer using an evolution-based program would be chugging away well past the heat death of our universe.

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At Mind Matters News: Exoplanets: Life forms made one third of Earth’s minerals

Researchers hope detection of such minerals on exoplanets can narrow the search for life:

Of known minerals, 296 known are thought to pre-date Earth’s formation. Of these, 97 are known only from meteorites, the oldest of which are 7 billion years old — much older than our solar system at about 4.2 billion years old. Human activities have created more than 600 minerals; over 500 derive from mining — including 234 which were formed by coal mine fires.

So how will this help us with exoplanets?: Just for example, 77 biominerals originate in the processes of life forms. The detection of such minerals’ chemical signatures on an exoplanet or exomoon would be a biosignature — evidence of life forms, past or present…

News, “Exoplanets: Life forms made one third of Earth’s minerals” at Mind Matters News (July 30, 2022)

Takehome: If life is “a cosmic imperative that emerges on any mineral- and water-rich world,” say the researchers, then life emerged early on Earth along with minerals.

“Cosmic imperative” is interesting language for introducing journal papers. The authors’ observations about minerals and life are fascinating and instructive.

You may also wish to read: You may also wish to read: Earth’s weirdest life forms show that ET life is possible. Whether it’s living in boiling water, breathing sulfur, or eating radium, we’ve found life forms that do just that right here on Earth. Many life forms eat and breathe things we used to think were lethal. Life seems to want to come into existence any way it can.

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At Evolution News: Much Ado About Lactase Persistence

Michael Behe provides insightful comments on the recent report discussing lactase persistence.

Nothing shows the feebleness of Darwinism quite so much as breathless stories about brand new results. This week the topic was “lactase persistence” — the ability of some humans to continue to metabolize the milk sugar lactose past weaning and into adulthood. A bunch of news stories1,2,3,4 reported on a research article5 that claimed to demonstrate the old way of thinking about the topic was probably wrong.

The old hypothesis was pretty straightforward. Like the young of other mammalian species, human babies produce an enzyme (lactase) that breaks down the sugar (lactose) in mother’s milk, which is the first step in the metabolism of lactose. The gene for lactase is normally switched off after weaning, so adults can’t drink milk without suffering unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms (no need to be explicit about that here). About ten thousand years ago, some human societies began to herd cattle. Thus, the old thinking went, any person then with a mutation that allowed them to drink cow (or sheep or goat) milk as an adult without getting sick would have a new source of nutrition that wasn’t available to nonmutants. So random mutation and natural selection kicked in and a few hundred generations later most folks in Europe do indeed have a mutation that causes lactase to be produced into adulthood. Who could ask for a more compelling example of the power of the Darwinian mechanism?

Well, I Could

The gene for lactase is about fifty-thousand nucleotides long, is composed of 17 exons, and has a one-thousand nucleotide promoter region preceding it. On the other hand, mutations that cause LP are single-nucleotide changes (any of several distinct ones will work) — just one (count ‘em, one) unit out of more than fifty thousand. What’s more, the change results in what in Darwin Devolves I termed a “loss-of-functional-coded-element” (loss-of-FCT). The mutation apparently (the situation is still not nailed down) destroys a pre-existing binding site near the gene for a regulatory protein that once switched off the gene at the appropriate developmental age. That’s not evolution — it’s devolution. An analogy might be to a small screw falling out of your car that renders the emergency brake inoperable. That might actually help in some odd driving circumstance but it is not the kind of process that would build an emergency brake — let alone a car — in the first place.

As simple and plausible as the lactase scenario sounds, the new paper says the old conventional wisdom doesn’t fit the facts. In reality, a lot of modern people who don’t make lactase as adults happily drink milk (or eat ice cream) anyway and shrug off the minor digestive consequences. Using data from ancient pottery samples and genetic analysis of ancient human remains, the authors showed there was also no correlation between milk consumption in antiquity and the presence of the lactase mutation in a region. They pooh-pooh the selective value of the mutation by itself and claim that it wouldn’t have spread so quickly if it gave such a slight advantage.

So what does explain the spread of the mutation? All the authors have to offer is speculation. They suggest that, although the mutation wouldn’t be of much help in ordinary times, in times of famine or plague a bit of intestinal distress can be fatal, perhaps jacking up the selective value. They gesture at some data they say supports the association of the mutation with times of famine and disease, but it’s hard to have any confidence in their more convoluted story when the simpler story was very persuasive, widely accepted, and wrong.

The Starkest Lesson

And that is the starkest lesson of the paper. One of my major points in Darwin Devolves was the impossibility (not just difficulty) of knowing that Darwinian evolution drove the unfolding of life. Much of the prestige of science derives from the power and elegance of the laws of physics, which are indeed wonderful predictors of the behavior of bodies — for a few steps. But try predicting with just Newton’s laws where a particular billiard ball will end up after a few bounces around a pool table that also holds a dozen other balls. Better yet, try predicting the weather in detail for Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for 2:18 p.m. on the first Thursday in October — it can’t be done, even though all the particles involved obey the known laws of physics. Those same laws of physics that accurately calculate the trajectory of a cannon ball are close to useless with complex systems.

And, as we see clearly with the example of lactase persistence, life is a complex system. So we get the spectacle of nearly a hundred brilliant scientists working for years, publishing their best results in one of our most prestigious journals — and they report their struggle to understand why one nucleotide change out of fifty thousand might have given some sort of advantage in some sort of circumstance or other. Contrast that poignant struggle with the smug pronouncements one routinely reads in textbooks and scientific society bulletins, that science most assuredly knows that all of life — from the genetic code to molecular machines to eukaryotic cells to worms to elephants to the human mind — is the result of a Darwinian process.

Talk about straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

Referenceshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/07/28/lactose-intolerant-europe-study-milk/https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/07/dairy-lactose-intolerance-causes/670966/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/famine-and-diseases-likely-drove-europeans-ability-to-digest-milk-180980483/https://phys.org/news/2022-07-famine-disease-drove-evolution-lactose.htmlhttps://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02067-2

Evolution News

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At Live Science: Scientists discover 200 ‘Goldilocks’ zones on the moon where astronauts could survive

Scientists discover pits on the moon that are room temperature in the shade.

Lunar scientists think they’ve found the hottest places on the Moon, as well as some 200 Goldilocks zones that are always near the average temperature in San Francisco. 

The moon’s Tranquillitatis pit (Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

The moon has wild temperature fluctuations, with parts of the moon heating up to 260 degrees Fahrenheit (127 degrees Celsius) during the day and dropping to minus 280 F (minus 173 C) at night. But the newly analyzed 200 shaded lunar pits are always always 63 F (17 C), meaning they’re perfect for humans to shelter from the extreme temperatures. They could also shield astronauts from the dangers of the solar wind, micrometeorites and cosmic rays. Some of those pits may lead to similarly warm caves. 

These partially-shaded pits and dark caves could be ideal for a lunar base, scientists say. 

Of the 200 pits discovered, two to three have overhangs that lead to a cave, while 16 appear to be “‘skylights”‘ to collapsed lava tubes. On Earth, lava tubes are hollow caves found close to the surface in volcanic regions — most notably Kazumura Cave in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and La Cueva del Viento on Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

“As the lava flowed, the top of it solidified while the lava continued to flow beneath it, in some places the lava actually evacuates completely and leaves a lava tube,” Horvath said. If a lava tube collapses, a pit is created that acts as a “skylight” to a long cavity.

That same process happened billions of years ago when massive volcanic events on the moon created the famously dark lava fields on the lunar surface called “maria,” which is Latin for seas.

“These pits likely formed due to small impacts punching a hole into the lava tube’s ceiling or seismic activity weakening the ceiling,” Horvath said.

In the new study, researchers analyzed the temperatures within a cylindrical pit about 328 feet (100 meters) deep in the Mare Tranquillitatis — the Sea of Tranquility — near the moon’s equator. The team’s findings revealed that while the pit’s floor is illuminated at lunar noon, it’s probably the hottest place on the entire surface of our natural satellite, at around 300 F (149 C); meanwhile, temperatures within the permanently shadowed reaches of the pit fluctuate only slightly from Earthlike hoodie temperatures. 

The pit is relatively close to where two of NASA’s Apollo missions landed. “The Tranquillitatis pit is actually the same distance from the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 landing sites, about 375 kilometers [233 miles] away,” Horvath said. “If we end up going there it would be incredible to see the bookends of the Apollo program and how well it’s been preserved.”

Complete article at Live Science.

Note: The article’s claim that these lukewarm lunar pits represent Goldilocks zones is weakening this term for planetary habitability to a single, narrow criterion – temperature. Certainly, many more parameters need to be aligned within finely-tuned ranges in order to classify the zone as habitable.

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