Transcript FitPlace - 19thpsalm.org

A FIT PLACE TO LIVE:
INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND THE BIOSPHERE
by
David C. Bossard
“For this is what the LORD says--he who created the
heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the
earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty
[“a chaos”, NRSV], but formed it to be inhabited--he
says: "I am the LORD, and there is no other.”
Isaiah 45:18, NIV
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Fitness Scorecard
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Radioactive Dating
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First Period: Hadean Age, 4,550 to 3,800 My
-- The Earth is Created
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Planet Formation - 2
Painting by William Hartmann. Used by Permission.
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Moon Formation - Collision
Painting by William Hartmann. Used by Permission.
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Moon Formation +0.5 hr.
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Painting by William Hartmann. Used by Permission.
Moon Formation + 5.0 hrs.
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Painting by William Hartmann. Used by Permission.
Earth’s Magnetosphere
NASA illustration
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Moon Map
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Age Records on the Moon
Ranger 9 view of Alphonsus Crater (1965)
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Most Recent large crater: Orientale (far side)
Impact Shock
waves
Visible from
Earth (on West
Margin).
Approximately 3800 My
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Early Earthscape -- 3800 My
• Gloomy -- Dark, Cloudy Atmosphere
• Violent Storms and Volcanic Activity
• High tides due to low Moon orbit
• Very salty water -- much more than modern oceans
• No permanent dry land
-- only Volcano peaks that quickly erode
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Fitness Scorecard, End of First Period - 3800 My
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Second Period: Early Archaean Age, 3,800-3,400 My
-- Life Appears Suddenly
The first microscopic
fossils: 3,465 ± 5 My.
Note: Composite views
Pieced together due to
3-dimensional fossils.
Discovered by J. William
Schopf.
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Identification: Fossil Cyanobacteria
(blue-green algae)
Dessicated appearance
Environment for Cyanobacteria:
• Oxygen-poor
• Bathed in light
Modern cyanobacteria
(Anabaena)
Live in Stromatolyte colonies
between high & low tide.
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Modern Stromatolytes: Hamelin Pool,
Western Australia
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Modern Stromatolytes: Hamelin Pool,
Western Australia
Photograph courtesy of Jo and Martin W. Peters. Used by permission.
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Modern Stromatolytes: Hamelin Pool,
Western Australia
Photograph courtesy of Jo and Martin W. Peters. Used by permission.
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Problems Facing the First Living Species on Earth:
• Must be protected from lethal radiation
• Must have an energy source
• Must make and store food
• Must have nitrogen in a useable form
• Must Survive environmental extremes:
- freezing
- famine
- dessication (drying out)
… All this must be done by the first living species.
-- Thus the first living species MUST be
very complex (contrary to Evolution).
Solution: Cyanobacteria living in Stromatolyte Colonies
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Problem: Radiation
Problem:
• Must be protected from lethal radiation
Solution: A water environment.
-- The first living species lived in shallow water.
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Problem: Source of Energy
Solution: Photosynthesis
Energies:
Photon ~ 60 kcal/mole
Life processes ~ 1 to 7 kcal/mole
heat energy ~ 0.2 to 0.7 kcal/mole.
So … For light to be useful it must reduce
Photon energy by a factor of 10 or more.
How can light energy be made useful?
… Photosynthesis using Chlorophyll
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Photosynthesis Quotes
“Probably the most important evolutionary innovation on
Earth, if not in the solar system and the galaxy, was
photosynthesis, the transformation of the energy of
sunlight into useful form.”
Lynn Margulis, Five Kingdoms (1999)
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How Chlorophyll Works -- Pachinko Machine
• Over 200 genes
• Over 150,000
DNA codons
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Photosynthesis:
Light Reaction
2H2O + photons —> 4eWater
+
4H+
+
O2 .
—> (-)electricity + (+) electricity + Oxygen.
• Oxygen is a waste product
• (-) Electricity powers sugar production (food)
• (+) Electricity powers a “rotary motor”
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How the ATP synthase Motor works
ATP synthase
motor
ATP synthase motor
rotates up to
18,000 RPM
Thylakoid
membrane
(+) electric current
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Problems Facing the First Living Species on Earth:
• Must be protected from lethal radiation
• Must have an energy source
• Must make and store food
• Must have nitrogen in a useable form
• Must Survive environmental extremes:
- freezing
- famine
- dessication (drying out)
• Food -- Solution: Manufacture of sugar
(Glucose = C6 (H2O)6)
-- The Calvin Cycle, a complex “factory”
(Nobel Prize, 1961)
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Problems Facing the First Living Species on Earth:
• Must be protected from lethal radiation
• Must have an energy source
• Must make and store food
• Must have nitrogen in a useable form
• Must Survive environmental extremes:
- freezing
• Nitrogen in the
air is “water, water everywhere
- famine
nor any drop to
drink”* (drying out)
- dessication
-- Atmospheric nitrogen cannot be used by
living cells because it takes too much energy to
break down the nitrogen molecule.
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Nitrogen
fixing
Solution: Nitrogen
fixing using
with Nitrogenase.
BUT Further problems:
• A very complex molecule
• A very SLOW, energy-intensive process
-- takes 1.2 seconds to convert a single
molecule of nitrogen gas.
• Nitrogenase is very scarce.
-- the entire world’s supply could be
carried in a single bucket
• Oxygen (a waste product of photosynthesis)
poisons nitrogenase.
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SOLUTION -- Specialized cells called Heterocysts
Heterocysts
… About every 10th cell in a chain of cyanobacteria
-- Their sole role in life is to fix nitrogen.
-- They use food and ATP energy provided by other cells
and share usable nitrogen in return.
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Problems Facing the First Living Species on Earth:
• Must be protected from lethal radiation
• Must have an energy source
• Must make and store food
• Must have nitrogen in a useable form
• Must Survive environmental extremes:
- freezing
- famine
- dessication (drying out)
Solution: Akinetes
Akinetes
(surrounding a
heterocyst)
- Another specialized cell.
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Bacterial Survival for long periods:
Amber bees
30 My old amber bee fossils found to have living bacteria in gut.
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Inventions of the first living species
• How to convert light to useful energy
-- Chlorophyll: Convert light to energy
-- ATP: universal energy storage
(and make the first electric motor!)
• How to make sugars
-- Invention of complex Calvin cycle
-- Use of many enzymes
• How to fix nitrogen
-- Invention of nitrogenase
• How to form specialized cells
-- Heterocysts and Akinetes
• How to form mutually cooperative bacterial colonies
• How to survive environmental extremes
-- Akinetes
PLUS … Inventing the Genetic “Central Dogma” that records
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and translates the DNA instructions to do this.
Fitness Scorecard, End of second Period - 3400 My
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Why did Life start with Bacteria?
• Bacteria can survive a harsh environment.
• Bacteria have a “flexible” genetic make-up.
--Viruses can add code to bacterial DNA
-- Bacteria may absorb genetic code from food.
-- Bacteria have fewer ways to protect against
genetic errors.
Genetic flexibility is good for bacteria but very bad for
plants and animals which are much more complex
and require accurate gene expression (or bad things
will surely happen!)
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Third Period: Preparing for more complex life
3,400 to 1,600 My
Third Period Tasks:
• Build up organic food and fixed nitrogen
• Build a stable supply of atmospheric oxygen
• Create stable dry land.
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Task:
• Build up organic food and fixed nitrogen
Complex plants and animals need ready-made organic food
- They burn up food faster than they can make it.
Organic food includes abundant nitrogen
- Production of available nitrogen is a very slow process.
SO … A long time is needed to distribute nutrients worldwide.
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Task:
• Build up atmospheric oxygen
• Early Earth was poor in free oxygen.
- The salty oceans and crust had a lot of “reduced”
material (that is, not fully oxidized).
• Oxygen was a waste product for the only life on Earth.
RESULT: Boom and Bust Oxygen cycles
-- for 2000 My.
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Boom and Bust Oxygen cycles
• First Billion years:
-- Uranium salts combine with oxygen and precipitate
from the oceans until most has been removed.
• Second Billion years:
-- Iron and silicon precipitate to form sand and iron ore.
A record of boom and bust is
recorded in the banded-iron
formations, deposited at this time.
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Finally --- (after 2 billion years)
--- Earth’s crust is fully oxidized.
• Atmospheric Oxygen builds up to its present 20-25%
Problem: Oxygen is a poison!
-- What will keep it from stifling life?
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Task:
• Create Stable Dry Land
At first,
• Earth covered with water (to 800 feet)
• Volcanic peaks quickly eroded.
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Formation of stable dry land
• Convection Currents move crust
-- Cause fractures & collisions
-- The crust forms into plates
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Formation of stable dry land
• At subduction points, the plates melt and lighter materials rise
to form land and mountains.
• Eventually a balance between land formation and erosion leads
to stable dry land. -- at about 1,800 My.
Subduction off Western South America
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Status at 1800 My
• Only life is single-celled bacteria
• Atmosphere steady 20-25% Oxygen content.
-- But …
* Oxygen is a poisonous waste product
* No effective way to recycle oxygen
• Stable dry land now exists.
• Dry land is sterile
-- due to cosmic and solar radiation
• Life experiences booms and busts on the local level
-- Busts caused by
* Overcrowding
* Pollution (Oxygen build-up)
* Food scarcity.
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Fitness Scorecard, End of Third Period - 1800 My
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Fourth Period: Prepare for Plants and Animals
1,800 to 600 My
Fourth Period Tasks:
• Build a radiation shield to protect dry land
• Create a new kind of cell that can be used
to make plants and animals.
… AND uses oxygen, thus
providing complete recycling of wastes.
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The Radiation Shield for Dry Land
Problem: Earth is bombarded with high-energy rays
• Most charged alpha and beta rays are deflected by
Earth’s magnetic field (the magnetosphere)
• Uncharged gamma rays get through.
Problem: Max lifetime human exposure is 500-1000 Rems
• Cosmic radiation near Earth is about 400 Rem/yr.
• Solar flares can produce up to 200 Rem/hour.
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On Solar flares …
• Follow about 11 year cycle
(recent peak about 2002)
Solar Activity year to year
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On Solar flares …
• Can produce up to 200 Rem/hr. near the Earth
A Solar Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)
ultraviolet image (gamma rays)
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On Solar flares …
Sunspot 486
21 October to 4 November, 2003
(frame from November 3)
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On Solar flares … Sunspot 486
21 October to 4 November, 2003
QuickTime™ and a
Video decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
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On Solar flares …
Sunspot 486
21 October to 4 November, 2003
(frame from November 3)
The November 4 burst from Sunspot 486 is
the largest ever recorded. Since the spot was
pointed away from Earth, we did not get the
full blast.
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Aurora on October 30 caused by Sunspot 486
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Photo by Lauri Kangas, Ontario, Canada. Used by permission
The Ozone Shield
• Ozone forms when oxygen
is zapped with cosmic rays.
• It forms a shield in the outer
atmosphere.
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Task -- The Second Creation of Life:
Eukaryotes
Fourth Period Tasks:
• Build a radiation shield to protect dry land
• Create a new kind of cell that can be used
to make plants and animals.
… AND uses oxygen, thus
providing complete recycling of wastes.
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Eukaryote Innovations - The Nucleus
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Nucleus Reduces random
change
-- Protects the genetic code from damage
(the complexity of plants and animals requires
this added protection).
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Eukaryote Innovations - Organelles
Specialization within the Cell
Organelles provide microclimate for specialized cell processes.
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Cell Specialization in a Paramecium
Example: Gullet
Example: Contractile Vacuole
Example: Mitochondria -- the cell’s power plant
(consumes oxygen to make ATP)
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Eukaryote Innovations - Cytoskeleton
• Connect organelles and the cell walls
• Provides structural strength to cell.
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The Cytoskeleton provides structural strength.
• Bacteria are “balloon-like” because their shape depends on
fluid pressure and the cell wall construction.
From the Merck Manual, home edition (on line).
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The Cytoskeleton provides structural strength.
• Eukaryotes have internal structure that allows a fantastic
range of shapes and locomotion.
paramecium
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Ciliate Diversity Chart
Eukaryote Innovations - Kinesin Motor
• Moves food and waste over cytoskeleton.
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Internal transport systems
Bacteria: Only diffusion (so cell must be small)
Eukaryotes: Kinesin transport (and other means)
• Moves internal products efficiently
• Allows much larger cell size
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Ecological Consequences of Eukaryote Creation
• Basic instability before eukaryotes arrived:
- Oxygen had the potential to poison the bacterial world
- Oxygen was not adequately recycled.
=> Eukaryotes were created just after atmospheric oxygen
built up to a useable level.
• Over the next 1,200 My, eukaryotic life made the final
preparation for complex plants and animals.
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Fitness Scorecard, End of Fourth Period - 600 My
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Look ahead: Fitness Scorecard, 400 My
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Why Would God Create Life In This Way?
• God loves those who investigate his Creation, and he
Rewards them with special insight.
See Psalm 19:1-4.
• God wants us to learn the capabilities and limits of
natural development.
- He uses natural processes when they will do the job
- He uses special creation when natural processes will
not do the job.
• God is not limited by time and space.
- Billions of years may be required to do some things
naturally, but that is no problem to God.
• God’s Creation points to Him at places in Nature’s Creation
account, where natural processes are inadequate.
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