You may remember the amusing turns of logic that used to settle around my discussions of God’s use of Cosmic Rays?
Well, here is a video link i think will further amuse!
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Does it mention the word gonads? Because if not, I don’t know if it’s going to be worth my time. I have high entertainment standards.
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I think the moral of the story is, if only you could type with a smart sounding British accent, people would not be able to help but take your cosmic ray explanation more seriously.
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It seems to be a giant leap from demonstrating cosmic particles to claiming they are responsible for altering DNA. Where is the study that shows this actually happens?
Nice! Makes me wince a little to know I’m being bombarded like that, though reproduction is no longer an issue.
Its been shown that a water molecule can corrupt DNA replication. So I think you are being a little silly that a cosmic ray is somehow LESS potent.
Speaking of God’s work in evolution…
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George, there are many peer reviewed papers reporting a correlation between space weather such as geomagnetic storms Kp index and CME’s and human physical and mental health.
I started to dig into this a bit, and then discovered it would take a bit of work to deconvolute all of the data. It is certainly true that ionizing radiation can and does mutate DNA, but the real question is what proportion of new mutations in any species is due to radiation, and how would we go about determining that.
At first, I thought it would be as easy as pointing to the natural bias in mutations that are the product of our biochemistry, which @glipsnort wrote about here. However, some of those same biases may exist with substitutions caused by ionizing radiation. For example, one of the papers I read saw a bias towards CpG mutations with ionizing radiation, which also happens in the absence of radiation. Another paper saw the same frequency of transition and transversion mutations with ionizing radiation, but due to the higher number of possible transversion mutations at each position this might indicate a bias towards transition mutations just as we see with mutations caused by other means.
I was hoping that there was an easy and accessible answer for someone with my knowledge base, but it looks to be more complicated.
For those who are curious, here are a couple of papers I found:
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interesting. Of course, will long duration space travel, those things will be good to know. I would guess our knowledge of mutations with radiation is more concerned with cancer and malignant mutations than evolution.
That’s a good point, and it reminded me of the experiments Scott Kelly has been a part of. He’s the guy who spent a year on the International Space Station, and the cool thing is that he has a twin brother. They took samples from both of them before and after the time on the space station, and I think they published data on mutation rates.
I would strongly suspect that there is much more research into cancer than into germ line mutations and evolution. The important bit to remember is that evolution is primarily affected by germ line mutations (i.e. mutations in sperm and eggs) since somatic mutations are not passed on.
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The point I was making a few years ago was that I was responding to being dared to explain how God could ever use nature to create a mutation.
I said Cosmic Rays as just one example.
The reaction was rather surprising to me… the thought that God would touch anyone’s DNA was considered a cause for mirth…
If I remember correctly, it was more the specific wording you used that was entertaining. I hereby publicly agree that, theoretically, God can use whatever means he chooses, cosmic rays and asteroids included, to create the diversity of life we see on the planet.
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Not to mention Theia, early on.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
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Conditions had to be set up perfectly to allow life to exist. The formation of the moon was a big factor.
I prayed and prayed… and my prayers were answered!
Cosmic rays were important to Evolution … even before there were GONADS!!!
This is big news in the E.G.G. world.
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