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Ninguém Nos Virá Salvar

Quarta-feira, 30.12.20

Why is Earth still habitable after billions of years?

In part, we're just lucky.

 

earth_with_without_water.jpg

 

When you look around you, almost anywhere on Earth, you see life. Earth seems exquisitely supportive of life: We see it in the air, in the water, in the land, and even deep underground.

 

But was that inevitable? We know that there have been mass extinction events in the past, some taking out the majority of life on Earth. However, since life got started and spread around on Earth there hasn't been any event that completely eradicated life. Of course! Else we wouldn't be here to ponder it.

 

(texto: Bad Astronomy/Phil Plait/syfy.com ─ imagem: David Gallo/WHOI and NASA/NOAA)

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publicado por Produções Anormais - Albufeira às 20:40

Existem outros Bichos para além do Homem e do Covid-19

Quinta-feira, 09.04.20

[Como existem outros doentes (agora abandonados e morrendo em segredo, em casa ou nos hospitais) para além dos originados por este novo coronavírus – “na moda, na média, na mediana, na bissetriz, etc.”, conforme o desejo dos “matemáticos” (os ditos “especialistas”) e o “interesse” (não tendo mais nada para dizer) da DGS.]

 

Tiny tardigrades might hold the key to the origin of life

(Kazuharu Arakawa − Rowan Hooper/japantimes.co.jp)

 

e7m2B3eCRZ3ZLoYcfyfRsR-650-80.jpg

 

Fluorescent staining shows a tardigrade's full stomach

(livescience.com)

 

“Tardigrades can come to a complete stop of metabolism with almost complete loss of water but can still restart life upon rehydration”. By removing all water, the animals can put life on hold. This form of “life pause” is called anhydrobiosis.

“We have no idea how life arose from matter several billion years ago.”

 

By studying tardigrade revival, we can get an idea of how molecules assemble in the spaces between cells in the tardigrade’s body. Before cells and life evolved, organic molecules had to put themselves together without the shelter provided by the cell, so what happens in tardigrades provides a good insight into that.

It seems that when the animals dry out and rehydrate, other bits of DNA can easily slip inside. Rather than cause a problem, tardigrades have embraced the benefits this can bring.

 

[artigo: japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/03/23/national/science-health/tiny-tardigrades-might-hold-key-origin-life/#.Xo8KTHLOUdU]

 

Tagide de Carvalho: Vencedor do prémio internacional de fotografia (aqui utilizando o microscópio) “Global Image of the Year Life Science Light Microscopy Award”.

 

(texto: japantimes.co.jp – imagem: Tagide de Carvalho/Olympus Image of the Year Award/ livescience.com)

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publicado por Produções Anormais - Albufeira às 13:17

Evolution

Sexta-feira, 18.10.19

WE MIGHT BE THE ONLY INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

(Nick Longrich/theconversation.com)

 

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Universo

 

  • Are We Alone in The Universe?

 

“The universe is astonishingly vast. The Milky Way has more than 100 billion stars, and there are over a trillion galaxies in the visible universe, the tiny fraction of the universe we can see. Even if habitable worlds are rare, their sheer number – there are as many planets as stars, maybe more – suggests lots of life is out there. So where is everyone? This is the Fermi paradox. The universe is large, and old, with time and room for intelligence to evolve, but there’s no evidence of it.” (Nick Longrich)

 

  • Could Intelligence Simply Be Unlikely to Evolve?

 

“Unfortunately, we can’t study extraterrestrial life to answer this question. But we can study some 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history, looking at where evolution repeats itself, or doesn’t.”

“Humans couldn’t evolve until fish evolved bones that let them crawl onto land. Bones couldn’t evolve until complex animals appeared. Complex animals needed complex cells, and complex cells needed oxygen, made by photosynthesis. None of this happens without the evolution of life, a singular event among singular events. All organisms come from a single ancestor; as far as we can tell, life only happened once.” (Nick Longrich)

 

  • Curiously, All This Takes A Surprisingly Long Time.

 

“Photosynthesis evolved 1.5 billion years after the Earth’s formation, complex cells after 2.7 billion years, complex animals after 4 billion years, and human intelligence 4.5 billion years after the Earth formed. That these innovations are so useful but took so long to evolve implies that they’re exceedingly improbable.” (Nick Longrich)

 

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Fotossíntese

 

  • An Unlikely Series of Events.

 

“These one-off innovations, critical flukes, may create a chain of evolutionary bottlenecks or filters. If so, our evolution wasn’t like winning the lottery. It was like winning the lottery again, and again, and again. On other worlds, these critical adaptations might have evolved too late for intelligence to emerge before their suns went nova, or not at all. Imagine that intelligence depends on a chain of seven unlikely innovations – the origin of life, photosynthesis, complex cells, sex, complex animals, skeletons and intelligence itself – each with a 10% chance of evolving. The odds of evolving intelligence become one in 10 million … (or) intelligence will evolve on just 1 in 100 trillion habitable worlds. (Nick Longrich)

 

  • And Yet, We’re Here.

 

“If evolution gets lucky one in 100 trillion times, what are the odds we happen to be on a planet where it happened? Actually, the odds of being on that improbable world are 100%, because we couldn’t have this conversation on a world where photosynthesis, complex cells, or animals didn’t evolve. That’s the anthropic principle: Earth’s history must have allowed intelligent life to evolve, or we wouldn’t be here to ponder it.” (Nick Longrich)

 

  • Earth’s History … (and) … Intelligent Life to Evolve.

 

“Intelligence seems to depend on a chain of improbable events. But given the vast number of planets, then like an infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters to write Hamlet, it’s bound to evolve somewhere. The improbable result was us.” (Nick Longrich)

 

[theconversation.com/evolution-tells-us-we-might-be-the-only-intelligent-life-in-the universe-124706]

 

(imagens e texto/extractos: Nick Longrich/Evolution tells us we might be the only intelligent life in the universe/October 18, 2019/theconversation.com)

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publicado por Produções Anormais - Albufeira às 23:06

A Possível Ligação entre a Evolução de Marte e o Futuro da Terra

Sábado, 10.01.15

Quando olhamos para o planeta Marte poderemos estar a olhar para nós!

Possible Signs Of Ancient Life On Mars
(Jacqueline Howard – The Huffington Post)

 

n-LIFE-ON-MARS-PHOTOS-large570.jpg

 

"We can detect sedimentary structures in rocks on Mars using the rover images" (Dr. Nora Noffke)

 

"The structures I describe belong to a group of microbial structures that form by the interaction of benthic (living on the ground) microbes with sediment dynamics (erosion) in clastic deposits such as sand" (Dr. Nora Noffke)

 

In other words, if such structures do exist on Mars, that suggests the planet may have once harbored microbial life. The microbes would have existed on Mars less than 3.7 billion years ago

 

For her research, Noffke looked at the structures seen in rocks on Mars and compared them to geological structures on Earth that are formed by microbes living in communities called microbial mats.

 

"Mats are composed of trillions and trillions of microbes that assemble on the floor of lakes, rivers, oceans," Noffke said in the email. "The microbes communicate with each other, they arrange into a dense layer and collaborate in gaining nutrients and light." (Dr. Nora Noffke)

 

(huffingtonpost.com)

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publicado por Produções Anormais - Albufeira às 18:02

A Terra Tem Buracos

Segunda-feira, 18.06.12

Arctic Expedition To Prove That The Earth Is Hollow

 

 

Carefully crafted plans and millions in funding have been secured for a journey to locate the passageway to Inner Earth. I certainly hope that the North Pole Inner Earth Expedition happens:

 

This $1.5 million pledge gets the ship charter in place by August of 2012. The Expedition launches in July of 2013. The science is real. The story is more than 5,000 years old. The legend says that at a certain place above the Arctic Circle, there exists an oceanic depression or an entrance into the Earth. It’s a place where the maritime legend claims sea level isn’t level anymore.

 

The discovery that the earth is hollow would forever shatter our long-held beliefs about how planets are formed. More importantly, however, discovering life beneath the earth’s crust could potentially provide us with new tools that would allow life on the surface to regain environmental balance, harmony, and possibly even peace.

 

(disinfo.com)

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publicado por Produções Anormais - Albufeira às 11:43