Young Cosmos Discussions

Avida Basics and Experiments

scordova — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:50:35 GMT

A guided tour of an ancestor and its hardware

The virtual CPU, which is the default "body" or "hardware" of the organisms, contains the following set of components.

A memory that consists of a sequence of instructions, each associated with a set of flags to denote if the instruction has been executed, copied, mutated, etc.

An instruction pointer (IP) that indicates the next site in the memory to be executed.

Three registers that can be used by the organism to hold data currently being manipulated. These are often operated upon by the various instructions, and can contain arbitrary 32-bit integers.

Two stacks that are used for storage. The organism can theoretical store an arbitrary amount of data in the stacks, but for practical purposes we currently limit the maximum stack depth to ten.

An input buffer and an output buffer that the organism uses to receive information, and return the processed results.

A Read-Head, a Write-Head, and a Flow-Head which are used to specify positions in the CPU's memory. A copy command reads from the Read-Head and writes to the Write-Head. Jump-type statements move the IP to the Flow-Head.

One major concept that differentiates this virtual assembly language from its real-world counterparts is in the additional uses of nop instructions (no-operation commands). These have no direct effect on the virtual CPU when executed, but often modify the effect of any instruction that precedes them. In a sense, you can think of them as purely regulatory genes. The default instruction set has three such nop instructions: nop-A, nop-B, and nop-C.

Saturn moon shoots supersonic jets of water

JGuy — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:59:53 GMT

According to recent observations, one of Saturn's moons (Enceladus) has been observed ejecting "plumes" of dust & water (liquid and/or ice).

Though the scale and the actual causal mechanism are not neccessarily the same, the effect is very reminiscent of the supersonic jets of water & sediment, modeled in Dr Walter Brown's Hydroplate Theory.

Read more:
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081126/full/news.2008.1254.html

...

Human Population Genetics

Joe Smith — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:02:11 GMT

Hi. I'm new here. I'm a conservative evangelical and work in academia (non-scientific). I have been an "OEC" most of my life, but over the past couple of years was migrating towards theistic evolution. What stopped me in my tracks is the seemingly inevitable conclusion, from a "TE" perspective, that there was no Adam. This leaves me drifting a bit. I have to confess I've never been conviced by any YEC position, but I'm willing to listen.

Anyway, here's a question for y'all. Studies in human population genetics indicate that the minimum human (and pre-human hominid) population size, going back millions of years, is from 10,000 to 100,000 breeding individuals. (See, e.g., Ayala, "The Myth of Mitochondrial Eve"). As I understand these studies, they do not rely on macro-evolution, but rather relate to the diversity observed as a result of micro-evolution in some human genetic loci, such as the Major Histocompatibility Complex ("MHC").

Is anyone here familiar with these studies? Are there valid critiques of them? If Adam and Eve were the sole progenitors of the human race -- whether 6,000 or 100,000 years ago -- how do we account for the diversity of alleles in the human genome at sites like the MHC?

Thanks.

'Ancient Amphibians Left Full-Body Imprints'

JGuy — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:55:25 GMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071031/ap_on_sc/ancient_amphibians;_ylt=AgbxZIm92arhKcH5ayQKWf4PLBIF

Excerpt from the above linked source:

Quote:

Many ancient footprints have been found, but a full-body animal impression is unusual. The three impressions show the foot-long temnospondyls had webbed feet and smooth skin similar to modern-day amphibians, rather than armored bodies.

"The most remarkable thing about these is they exist at all. This is a very rare preservation," said John Bolt, curator of fossil amphibians and reptiles at The Field Museum in Chicago.

Details were being presented Tuesday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.

"They're really some of the oldest body imprints of land-living amphibians," said Spencer G. Lucas of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, who was making the presentation.

"They show you what the shape of the body was, they show you what the texture of the skin was like," Lucas said. "These are things we don't know from bones. They're giving us new information about the anatomy of these long-extinct amphibians."

The fossil could indicate social behavior or even courtship, Lucas speculated, or the impressions also could have been made at different times.

"The real question is why do you have three close together on a rock," he said.

[emphasis added]

That's a curious quesiton, because I'm not sure why is it such a "real question"? If we consider some sudden or rising watery catastrophe (both flood related), then it is not such a puzzle. The three organisms (if not more) could have sought higher narrowing ground that led them close together, or they could have been a close community of which suddenly became buried.

Related link:
http://www.livescience.com/animals/071030-body-imprints.html

'Oldest Known Jellyfish Fossils Found'

JGuy — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:06:41 GMT

http://www.livescience.com/animals/071030-oldest-jellyfish.html

New Edition of Setterfield Critique

G. P. Jellison — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 01:08:08 GMT

There is an updated version of my critique of the Setterfield c-decay theory. Dr. Tom Bridgman has posted it for me at

http://homepage.mac.com/cygnusx1/cdecay/cdecay_2007Jellison3.pdf

This includes the full analysis of Setterfield's work I posted earlier this year, plus a summary of my interactions with Setterfield on this forum over the summer, some updated analysis, and some comments on Setterfield's new online report "Reviewing the Zero Point Energy."

Thanks,
Jerry Jellison

'The Biological Big Bang model..'

JGuy — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:57:51 GMT

http://www.biology-direct.com/content/2/1/21

'Scientists: Appendix Protects Good Germs'

JGuy — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:13:25 GMT

Another function for the appendix:

http://www.physorg.com/news110864235.html

Ritzian Relativity

scordova — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:02:03 GMT

I'm opening this thread to explore the topic of Ritzian relativity.

I'm studying the various forms of relativity right now at JHU in an introductory sense. We reviewed:

1. Galilean-Newtonian Relativity
2. Lorentz-Fitzgeral contraction
3. Einsteinian Relativity

Curiously we studied de Sitter's supposed refuation of Ritzian relativity on the first day of class! Ritz's name was not mentioned explicitly, but I knew that was what was being explored.

We learned about the various Aether formulations, etc.......

I'm curious to know if there are any physical experiments which can be done to affirm Ritzian relativity. Van Flandern believes Lorentzian relativity will prevail over Einsteinian
relativity. This would be a rather curious result because it is the Lorentz-Fitzgerald transformation that keeps showing up in Einsteinian relativity.

PS
FYI, just for fun

I had to derive the following on an homework assignment. I had to show that the form of the electromagnetic wave equation is covariant between stationary frame S and moving frame S' under a Lorentz transformation.

The calculation was semi-trivial, but awfully tedious, and the derivation below skips many of the steps for brevity. I hadn't done vector calculus in more than 10 years!

If we take the creationist Maxwell's Equations for Electrodynmics, we can derive the classic electromagnetic wave equation:

and this can be expanded to:

Amazingly, one can observe the propagation of an electromagnetic wave in stationary reference frame S and also in moving reference frame S' yet still see the above form of the equation holding. This happens on the assumption that the coordinates from S to S' are mapped via a Lorentz transformation (as opposed to a Galilean transformation).

The Lorentz transformation is from stationary fram S to S', with S' origin having velocity v in S, and c is the assumed constant speed of light:

where:

The covariace between reference frames related under the Lorentz transformation can be shown via the following trivial calculations.

First, consider the following partial derivatives of the equations of the Lorentz transformation:

Applying the chain rule we can describe the first partial derivative of phi with respect to x and expressed in terms of the S' coordinate system:

Applying the chain rule again to arrive at the 2nd partial derivative of phi with respect to x (and for the sake of brevity I'll skip some steps) we have:

In comparable manner we can calculate the 2nd partial derivative of phi with respect to t expressed in terms of prime coordinates:

By substituting the above 2nd derivatives (along with those expressed in z' and y') into the electromagenetic equation, and simplifying, we show the Lorentz covariance from the S-frame to the S'-frame:

What will happen to Lorentz Covariance between reference frames S and S' in a Young Earth cosmology? If the cosmos is young, the creationists would do well to provide answers. As it stands, this is still an open question. The current answer is that the covariance is only approximate, and is preserved for short time intervals in the current day and age. But what of larger time intervals especially near the beginning of time? Is covariance non-existent in a VSL cosmology for such conditions? This is an open question at this time....

Supernova 2006gy as a nearby neighbor

Robert Fritzius — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:05:23 GMT

Supernova SN 2006gy

Chandra X-Ray and Lick IR images
Note the symmetry of the X-Ray lobes.

The astrometry of SN 2006gy reveals proper motion, which when converted to a linear speed, (for the assumed distance to it's host galaxy) would give a figure of about 4500 times the speed of light.

To me, the star that gave us SN 2006gy is more consistent with being a member of a very nearby binary system. I haven't run the numbers yet, but I think it will turn out to be less than 3000 light years from the solar system.

Please see: SN 2006gy as a Possible Ritzian System
http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/sn2006gy.htm