the edinburgh city observatory sits atop calton hill at the east end of the city centre adjacent to burn's monument, scotland's national monument modelled on the parthenon, and nelson's monument with the time ball that falls at 1pm every day except sundays.. .
the second astronomer royal of edinburgh was charles piazzi smyth (jan. 1819 - feb. 1900).
smyth was a man of many and varied interests including meteorology, producing weather observations that still form an important part of uk climate records to this day.. building on the work of james taylor, smyth became fascinated by the great pyramid of egypt at giza.
Good points TD. Barbour was the inventor of the chronology. To be more precise he "corrected" the eschatology of Wm Miller after "The Great Disappointment" of 1844.
If I remember rightly 1799 was also part of the picture. I think it was the beginning of the Last Days as manifested by the French Revolution.
i intend for this to be one of a series of bite-sized ops on the evidence for evolution.. introduction to dna genes are sequences of dna made up of words (codons) each of which are three letters (bases) long.
there are only four letters in the genetic alphabet (acg&t) each word or codon is the recipe for one amino acid.
there are 20 different amino acids in living organisms.
Hooby - Ever since Darwin presented his evidence for evolution by natural selection taxonomists have been trying to work out the exact relationships between species.
The most obvious source of information is physical similarities like analogous structures. Later new fields of research such as biogeography added to the picture. Atavistic and vestigial features provide more useful information. Paleontology has continued to supply an abundance of evidence confirming and refining the picture. Studying the geographic distribution of fossils and their appearance in time provides strong evidence for how modern species evolved. Aquatic mammals are a fantastic example where a whole series of fossils found in Pakistan traces the history of whales back to land mammals.
When it became possible to study DNA it presented a massive source of new knowledge. Either it was going to confirm that the "tree of life" was correct or provide irrefutable proof that that there was no historical relationship between species.
It turns out that even if not a single fossil had ever been discovered genetic evidence proves evolution to be correct. DNA confirmed the relationships between species in most cases and resulted in refinements to the tree in others. There are so many different types of evidence and a few of them are covered in this series. The OP of this thread considers just one of them "Protein functional redundancy".
Please don't think that all scientists do is look for similarities between DNA sequences. That would not be proof of anything. Imagine you are a teacher who suspects your students have been copying from each other in assignments. Just because lots of your students state that the Normal Conquest happened in 1066 is not proof of cheating but there are limitless ways of being wrong about the Battle of Hastings. If 12 of your students all say it happened in 1376 you would have evidence for plagiarism. If you could find dozens of similar common errors you could build up a "family tree" of copying errors. If you studied hundreds of big and small common mistakes you could work out who wrote the original assignment and who copied who, adding new mistakes.
DNA evidence is something like that. The proof is of the same sort that is used to establish paternity and convict violent murderers and rapist.
if you identify as a christian but you have accepted that the diversity of life - including humans - resulted from a process of biological evolution could you add your name please?.
just to be clear i am referring to the fact that our physical lineage could literally be traced back all the way to non-human species.. if you like maybe you could comment on why you see not conflict between evolution and your christian faith.. there is a tendency to conflate evolution with atheism.
it would be good to show that this is not the case..
I don't like to think me and a monkey are cousins
You can't choose your relatives Chook
hey everyone.
i don't post here often, but i lurk pretty much everyday.
i just created the following infographic based on the recent yearbook stats.
Really interesting graphic Happyx3
i intend for this to be one of a series of bite-sized ops on the evidence for evolution.. introduction to dna genes are sequences of dna made up of words (codons) each of which are three letters (bases) long.
there are only four letters in the genetic alphabet (acg&t) each word or codon is the recipe for one amino acid.
there are 20 different amino acids in living organisms.
I think I understand your question. You think there is a danger of circular reasoning and confirm bias.
I am typing slowly on my phone at the moment. I will answer your question later when I get home.
i intend for this to be one of a series of bite-sized ops on the evidence for evolution.. introduction to dna genes are sequences of dna made up of words (codons) each of which are three letters (bases) long.
there are only four letters in the genetic alphabet (acg&t) each word or codon is the recipe for one amino acid.
there are 20 different amino acids in living organisms.
Hooby - The DNA evidence for common ancestry is the same sort of evidence used used prove paternity and familial relationships.
If you read the OP again more carefully you will serve that it contains irrefutable evidence that all living things evolved from a common ancestor. If we then look at this multiple other molecules as well and examine their amino acid sequence and drill down into their nucleotide sequence the proof becomes astonishingly powerful.
I hope you refuse to do jury duty on the grounds that genetic evidence conflicts with your religious beliefs.
making little or no difference to our daily lives, comes the claim that most of our human genome is not functional.. dan graur an (evolutionary) biologist at the university of houston and other academics made the claim in a paper published in an online journal, genome biology and evolution.. the group's calculations suggest that not more than 25% of the human genome is functional - the rest is seen as 'junk' dna,.
see science dailys coverage of the report at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170714140234.htm .
coverage of similar research at the uk's oxford university (reported in the guardian aust.
ENCODE dishonestly misused the word "function" in order to make their results look more significant.
I know Perry won't read the following paper but here it is anyway.
On the Immortality of Television Sets: “Function” in the Human Genome According to the Evolution-Free Gospel of ENCODE.
making little or no difference to our daily lives, comes the claim that most of our human genome is not functional.. dan graur an (evolutionary) biologist at the university of houston and other academics made the claim in a paper published in an online journal, genome biology and evolution.. the group's calculations suggest that not more than 25% of the human genome is functional - the rest is seen as 'junk' dna,.
see science dailys coverage of the report at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170714140234.htm .
coverage of similar research at the uk's oxford university (reported in the guardian aust.
The vast majority of our genome is free-loading junk.
This is also true of most other eukaryotic species but not of prokaryotes.
There is a species of very ordinary onion Allium ursinum that has a genome ten times as large as the human genome - lots and lots of parasitic code.
Consider one type of non-coding DNA known as the ALU element. These tiny bits of parasitic code, just 300 base pairs long, don't code for anything they just hitch a free ride in the genome of all primates. Imagine highlighting 300 characters in a bit of computer code, pressing Ctrl+C, then clicking at a random place and holding down Ctrl+V. Sometimes called "jumping genes", ALU elements have done this so many times that they now make up 10% of the 3 billion letters in our genome.
Most of them are harmless but some land in the middle of important genes and are associated with diseases such as hemophilia, leukemia, breast cancer, heart disease and anemia.
Since ALU elements are found in all primates and since their location in the genome is random, they provide a perfect opportunity to study human relationships with other primates. If two identical ALU elements are found in analogous places in the genome of different species it would be evidence that they share a common ancestor.
The results of this work brilliantly confirmed the common ancestry of humans with other primates. Looking at just one gene, the alpha-globin cluster, seven separate ALU elements have been discovered. All seven of them are found in precisely the same location in the corresponding chimpanzee gene. This puts the evolutionary relationship between humans and chimpanzees beyond all reasonable doubt.
Anybody who rejects this evidence for human evolution ought to be consistent and refuse to serve on a jury where forensic evidence will be presented.
the edinburgh city observatory sits atop calton hill at the east end of the city centre adjacent to burn's monument, scotland's national monument modelled on the parthenon, and nelson's monument with the time ball that falls at 1pm every day except sundays.. .
the second astronomer royal of edinburgh was charles piazzi smyth (jan. 1819 - feb. 1900).
smyth was a man of many and varied interests including meteorology, producing weather observations that still form an important part of uk climate records to this day.. building on the work of james taylor, smyth became fascinated by the great pyramid of egypt at giza.
Hi Rachael. Thank you for your detailed information. I assure you I was not offended but perhaps I misread your initial comment as dismissive.
Best wishes, Bill.
the edinburgh city observatory sits atop calton hill at the east end of the city centre adjacent to burn's monument, scotland's national monument modelled on the parthenon, and nelson's monument with the time ball that falls at 1pm every day except sundays.. .
the second astronomer royal of edinburgh was charles piazzi smyth (jan. 1819 - feb. 1900).
smyth was a man of many and varied interests including meteorology, producing weather observations that still form an important part of uk climate records to this day.. building on the work of james taylor, smyth became fascinated by the great pyramid of egypt at giza.
"Lo! millions now living have yet to learn that a prophet of the Lord has been among them."
Some prophet!
