Kapra wrote:First cause is a moot issue in an infinitely regressive universe.
Kapra wrote:
There is no infinite regress which I addressed to you many postings back on this thread.
Really? And you can support this assertion or am I just to accept your say-so?
kapra wrote:
The universe is expanding not infinitely regressing.
Chuckle...infinite regress doesn't mean the universe is infinitely regressing. It basically means the universe had no beginning because it has always existed in some form or another. As to expansion it would seem many astronomers and physicists do not accept current BB cosmology as an accurate explanation, especially in relation to expansion and velocity:
Observed: The Hubble Relation.
An article of faith in current cosmology is that the relation between faintness of galaxies and their redshift, the Hubble Relation, means that the more distant a galaxy is the faster it is receding from us. With our galaxy redshifts a function of age, however, the look back time to a distant galaxy shows it to us when it was younger and more intrinsically redshifted. No Doppler recession needed!
The latter non-expanding universe is even quantitative in that Narlikar's general solution of the General Relativistic equations (m = t2) gives a Hubble constant directly in term of the age of our own galaxy. (H0 = 51 km/sec × Mpc for age of our galaxy = 13 billion years). The Hubble constant observed from the most reliable Cepheid distances is H0 = 55 (Arp, 20023). What are the chances of obtaining the correct Hubble constant from an incorrect theory with no adjustable parameters? If this is correct there is negligible room for expansion of the universe.
Observed: The current Hubble constant is too large.
A large amount of observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope was devoted to observing Cepheid variables whose distances divided into their redshifts gave a definitive value of H0 = 72. That required the reintroduction of Einstein's cosmological constant to adjust to the observations. But H0 = 72 was wrong because the higher redshift galaxies in the sample included younger (ScI) galaxies which had appreciable intrinsic redshifts.
Independent distances to these galaxies by means of rotational luminosity distances (Tully-Fisher distances) also showed this class of galaxies had intrinsic redshifts which gave too high a Hubble constant (Russell, 20028) In fact well known clusters of galaxies gives H0's in the 90's (Russell, private communication) which clearly shows that neither do we have a correct distance scale or understanding of the nature of galaxy clusters.
DARK ENERGY: Expansion now claimed to be acceleration.
As distance measures were extended to greater distances by using Supernovae as standard candles it was found that the distant Supernovae were somewhat too faint. This led to a smaller H0 and hence an acceleration compared to the supposed present day H0 = 72. Of course the younger Supernovae could be intrinsically fainter and also we have seen the accepted present day H0 is too large. Nevertheless astronomers have again added a huge amount of undetected substance to the universe to make it agree with properties of a disproved set of assumptions. This is called the accordance model but we could easily imagine another name for it.
Kapra wrote:
Further Abiogenesis isn`t a proven scientific theory
True, however, it is gaining momentum: An elegant experiment has quashed a major objection to the theory that life on Earth originated with molecules of RNA.
John Sutherland and his colleagues from the University of Manchester, UK, created a ribonucleotide, a building block of RNA, from simple chemicals under conditions that might have existed on the early Earth.
The feat, never performed before, bolsters the 'RNA world' hypothesis, which suggests that life began when RNA, a polymer related to DNA that can duplicate itself and catalyse reactions, emerged from a prebiotic soup of chemicals.
"This is extremely strong evidence for the RNA world. We don't know if these chemical steps reflect what actually happened, but before this work there were large doubts that it could happen at all," says Donna Blackmond, a chemist at Imperial College London.
Molecular choreography
An RNA polymer is a string of ribonucleotides, each made up of three distinct parts: a ribose sugar, a phosphate group and a base — either cytosine or uracil, known as pyrimidines, or the purines guanine or adenine. Imagining how such a polymer might have formed spontaneously, chemists had thought the subunits would probably assemble themselves first, then join to form a ribonucleotide. But even in the controlled atmosphere of a laboratory, efforts to connect ribose and base together have met with frustrating failure.
The Manchester researchers have now managed to synthesise both pyrimidine ribonucleotides. Their remedy is to avoid producing separate ribose-sugar and base subunits. Instead, Sutherland's team makes a molecule whose scaffolding contains a bond that will turn out to be the key ribose-base connection. Further atoms are then added around this skeleton, which unfurls to create the ribonucleotide.
The final connection is to add a phosphate group. But that phosphate, although only a reactant in the final stages of the sequence, influences the entire synthesis, Sutherland's team showed. By buffering acidity and acting as a catalyst, it guides small organic molecules into making the right connections.
"We had a suspicion there was something good out there, but it took us 12 years to find it," Sutherland says. "What we have ended up with is molecular choreography, where the molecules are unwitting choreographers." Next, he says, he expects to make purine ribonucleotides using a similar approach.
The start of something special?
Although Sutherland has shown that it is possible to build one part of RNA from small molecules, objectors to the RNA-world theory say the RNA molecule as a whole is too complex to be created using early-Earth geochemistry. "The flaw with this kind of research is not in the chemistry. The flaw is in the logic — that this experimental control by researchers in a modern laboratory could have been available on the early Earth," says Robert Shapiro, a chemist at New York University.
Sutherland points out that the sequence of steps he uses is consistent with early-Earth scenarios — those involving methods such as heating molecules in water, evaporating them and irradiating them with ultraviolet light. And breaking RNA's synthesis down into small, laboratory-controlled steps is merely a pragmatic starting point, he says, adding that his team also has results showing that they can string nucleotides together, once they have formed. "My ultimate goal is to get a living system (RNA) emerging from a one-pot experiment. We can pull this off. We just need to know what the constraints on the conditions are first."
Shapiro sides with supporters of another theory of life's origins – that because RNA is too complex to emerge from small molecules, simpler metabolic processes, which eventually catalysed the formation of RNA and DNA, were the first stirrings of life on Earth.
"They're perfectly entitled to disagree with us. But having got experimental results, we are on the high ground," says Sutherland.
"Ultimately, the challenge of prebiotic chemistry is that there is no way of validating historical hypotheses, however convincing an individual experiment," points out Steven Benner, who studies origin-of-life chemistry at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, a non-profit research centre in Gainesville, Florida.
Sutherland, though, hopes that ingenious organic chemistry might provide an RNA synthesis so convincing that it effectively serves as proof. "We might come up with something so coincidental that one would have to believe it," he says. "That is the goal of my career."
Kapra wrote:
anymore than creationism is a proven scientific theory.
Chuckle...creationism is not a scientific theory.
kapra wrote:
Abiogenesis violates the law of biogenesis and cell theory.
Cell theory? You mean the scientific fact that living organisms are comprised of living cells? This goes way beyond theory.
Let's see...the law of biogenesis has two meanings:
(1) The principle stating that life arises from pre-existing life, not from non-living material.
(2) Recapitulation theory: the theory formulated by E.H. Haeckel in which the individuals in their embryonic development pass through stages analogous in general structural plan to the stages their species passed through in its evolution; the theory in which ontogeny is an abridged recapitulation of phylogeny.
Supplement
The theory has been discredited in time when modern science and genetics have raised doubt as to its validity.
Kapra quoted:
A Multiverse violates Occam's Razor
In what way?
Kapra quoted:
-An Eternal Universe violates the second law of thermodynamics
In the first place the 2nd law of thermodynamics is applicable only to a closed system and has never been observed on the scale of a universe such as the one in which we exist. In the second place, if matter is indestructible and energy inexhaustible then the universe as an eternal system of dynamic equilibrium prevents total entropy allowing for mechanisms that recycle matter/energy rather than decay. There is far too much distance and development of interstellar systems thruout the universe to have occured in the time alloted by BB cosmology, even allowing for inflation. BB cosmology has never made any predictions prior to observation. Eric Lerner, a noted physicist in Plasma science and astronomy has developed a model of an eternal universe and made predictions based on his model, before the fact of observation, that have actually been verified. BB cosmology has been falsified and continues to invent more and more gap stuffers, such as hypothetical dark matter and energy, (which has never been confirmed to even exist), to make it somewhat correspond to current observations.
I simply don't have time to continue this. From now on, it would be much appreciated if you would make an effort to support these assertions.
October 16th, 2010, 9:49 pm
Sorry, OT, just cannot resist, so funny it was! It is not "something" which gets lost, it is "someone" - someone with an Idealistic perspective.
