Isn't science fascinating? So much better than all the myths and nonsense on that other evolution thread where the average IQ is 87.

   I just found insights into some of my questions, such as how energy is "weighed". I remember reading about string theories and dark energy/matter back in the 80ies. Seems to me that not a lot of progress has been made since then.

"One of the biggest conundrums in modern astronomy is the fact that over 90% of the Universe is invisible. This mysterious missing stuff is known as 'dark matter'. 

The problem started when astronomers tried to weigh galaxies. There are two methods of doing this. Firstly, we can tell how much a galaxy weighs just by looking at how bright it is and then converting this into mass. 

The second way is to look at the way stars move. Everything in the Universe rotates. The Earth spins on its axis. The whole planet orbits around our parent star, the Sun.

The Sun rotates around the centre of the Milky Way, along with the billions of other stars in the Galaxy, forming a huge cosmic dance.

This rotation provides another way of weighing a galaxy. Studying how fast stars at the very edge move reveals the mass of the whole galaxy. The faster the Galaxy rotates, the more mass there is inside it. 

But when astronomers such as Jan Oort and Fritz Zwicky did the two sets of sums in the early 1930s they hit a big problem. For every galaxy they studied the two answers didn't match. They were very confident that both methods were sound as they'd been tried and tested for many years.

So they came to a startling conclusion - there must be stuff out there that we just can't see - and so they called it 'dark matter'. This dark matter was really important, as if it wasn't there then galaxies would fly apart as they spun round. 

This might seem like a strange conclusion, but it's not really that bizarre. Imagine looking at a tower block at night. Although you can only see lights coming from some of the rooms, that doesn't mean that there aren't any more rooms in the tower. Just like these unlit rooms, dark matter can't be seen, because it doesn't shine.

Astronomers are currently hunting for this missing matter. It may consist of lots of strange sounding things like MACHOs, WIMPs and neutrinos. Or there may be new solutions involving dark energy or superstring theory.

But whatever it is, finding it will help to answer one of the most fundamental questions in astronomy - what is the fate of the Universe?"

re:http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_energy09.htm

   Say, Elroch, isn't it nice having this thread all to ourselves? Even though there are hundreds of invisible lurkers (some just waiting to report a breach), it gives a sense of privilege, doesn't it?

   Hey, just in today:

Gamma Ray Emission From Dwarf Galaxy May Shed Light on Dark Matter

• Press Release Source: Brown University
• Posted Tuesday, March 10, 2015

   One more thing, from CERN:

Dark energy

Dark energy makes up approximately 70% of the universe and appears to be associated with the vacuum in space. It is distributed evenly throughout the universe, not only in space but also in time – in other words, its effect is not diluted as the universe expands. The even distribution means that dark energy does not have any local gravitational effects, but rather a global effect on the universe as a whole. This leads to a repulsive force, which tends to accelerate the expansion of the universe. The rate of expansion and its acceleration can be measured by observations based on the Hubble law. These measurements, together with other scientific data, have confirmed the existence of dark energy and provide an estimate of just how much of this mysterious substance exists."

re: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/physics/dark-matter

It's generally best to think in terms of energy. Mass is nothing more than energy in a form which localises it. As a good example, most of the mass of all matter is due to the kinetic energy of the components of nucleons. The reason this kinetic energy is part of what we call matter is that the nucleons are orbiting the centre of mass of the (much smaller) component of their mass that is in the quarks. And this mass can be thought of as being the result of a sort of rotation of massless fields due to the Higgs mechanism. Except for bound examples, all fields move at "the speed of light", I believe. This speed is fundamentally not a speed at all, but a constant in the symmetries of space-time.

And what the heck has this got to do with evolution? 

To answer pawnwhacker above - I'm listening and learning, but I don't know enough to comment at the moment. I'm one of the invisible lurkers; I probably do it on Elroch more than he thinks...  The threads about science are always interesting, so I listen even if I don't comment :D

   Well said, chessman...Elroch is just "peachy" with his knowledge of science and his integrity.

 Elroch: "It's generally best to think in terms of energy. Mass is nothing more than energy in a form which localises it. "

   I have said something very similar to this, going back to my opening thread elsewhere. I have often thought that mass is just energy in disguise. We, and everything around us, are made of atoms which are not solid but energy in the form of a nucleus and orbiting electrons. If all the energy in a simple teacup could be suddenly released it would cause quite an explosion.

 "And what the heck has this got to do with evolution? "

   Damned if I know. The main thing is that we are not talking about freaking religion or sleazy politics.

   On a serious note...

   If we are supposed to be talking about evolution, some of the things that have been discussed so far make a nice preface.

   That and, believe me, it is easy to steer a thread in a zig zag pattern. Just wait, you'll see, when the lurkers start speaking up. Did I say hapless, e99, MW, Lola, zborg, zapped, trysts and etcetera and so forth? Some of them have an axe to grind, so beware. 

Already the insults have started....

edit: i am sad you left me out 

You're silly

It's ok for you to smile....he knows you by your name

It really doesn't feel like a compliment

   True. But take hapless, for instance...I think he is feeling quite turbid towards me. Not that zborg or zappidoodle feel any less so. Most of the others? Eh...lukewarm.

   Oops! I forgot to mention pp. Just noticed. He likes me a lot (yeah, right). There was no insult there. If there was, the wolfpack would have reported me. That's what they do.

   kstevens67, nice to meet you. As far as the links, they should still be available.

   Anyway, your avatar is of a decrepit, old man who looks far older than me but your age is about the same as one of my daughters who looks quite in her prime. This is puzzling to me...just as quarks are.

   Alright, already...evolution. How did it start? Magic? Maybe. But here is some food for thought:

How did life originate?

Living things (even ancient organisms like bacteria) are enormously complex. However, all this complexity did not leap fully-formed from the primordial soup. Instead life almost certainly originated in a series of small steps, each building upon the complexity that evolved previously:

1. Simple organic molecules were formed.
   Simple organic molecules, similar to the nucleotide shown below, are the building blocks of life and must have been involved in its origin. Experiments suggest that organic molecules could have been synthesized in the atmosphere of early Earth and rained down into the oceans.RNAandDNAmolecules — the genetic material for all life — are just long chains of simple nucleotides.

   

2. Replicating molecules evolved and began to undergo natural selection.
   All living things reproduce, copying their genetic material and passing it on to their offspring. Thus, the ability to copy the molecules that encode genetic information is a key step in the origin of life — without it, life could not exist. This ability probably first evolved in the form of an RNA self-replicator — an RNA molecule that could copy itself.

   

   Many biologists hypothesize that this step led to an "RNA world" in which RNA did many jobs, storing genetic information, copying itself, and performing basic metabolic functions. Today, these jobs are performed by many different sorts of molecules (DNA, RNA, andproteins, mostly), but in the RNA world, RNA did it all.

   Self-replication opened the door fornatural selection. Once a self-replicating molecule formed, some variants of these early replicators would have done a better job of copying themselves than others, producing more "offspring." These super-replicators would have become more common — that is, until one of them was accidentally built in a way that allowed it to be a super-super-replicator — and then,thatvariant would take over. Through this process of continuous natural selection, small changes in replicating molecules eventually accumulated until a stable, efficient replicating system evolved.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2bDetailsoforigin.shtml

One problem PW, you still have to have biological syntax, or language. Also, a compliment molecule to any replicase would entail a library of molecules the mass of the earth( evolutionists figures). Exactly how and out of what molecules is a replicase built.

What about aminoacylation reactions, you're gonna need proteins, but it takes proteins to make proteins. A formidable barrier here. 😕

Good to see this thread going again. Hope we can mention design within the cell. 😕

Skipping over the usual wild misinterpretation of the work of real scientists, there are some very simple points here.

(1) We know all of the processes of life continue with no guidance other than the special state that they start in (known for sure to be the result of life over a long period - even over a generation is sufficient for the point) and the laws of physics.

(2) If the Universe is infinite, literally any state of chemicals will occur by chance somewhere among all the random variation, with probability 1.

(3) Even ignoring the fact that there is a plausible route to modern life from nothing, point (2) means that all probability arguments fail in an infinite Universe. Let me emphasise this: if it was the case (which it isn't) that a living cell would have to form by chance without being preceded by RNA-based evolution - an event so extraordinarily unlikely it is mind-boggling - this event occurs for sure in an infinite Universe.

(4) It is known that RNA can replicate and then can gain a fitness advantage by harnessing peptides. The ribosome is an RNA structure bolstered with proteins: all of the chemically active parts reveal its origin in the RNA world.

Note that although even the most unlikely things do happen, they happen so rarely it is difficult to comprehend. As a result what causes what we see is almost certainly something very close to the least unlikely route. This is the one involving processes that are kinetically favourable. As you once studied chemistry, you should know what I mean.

You're coming around Elroch, now we need an infinite universe.

Aminoacylation reactions are highly energetically unfavorable reactions Elroch. How you gonna hold the whole system together without the protein transferase?😕

I've heard of a self replicating peptide molecule of about five amino acids. What about a self replicating nucleic acid chain? Are not these chains DESIGNED in a laboratory?😕