Top Scientists on the One Mystery on Earth They'd Like To Solve (theguardian.com) 64
From the depths of the Amazon rainforest to the deserts of Antarctica, huge questions remain unanswered about life on Earth. The Guardian asked leading scientists and conservationists: what is the one thing you would like to know about the planet that remains a mystery? TLDR, the questions/wishes are:1. How many species are there on Earth?
2. I'd go back 540m years to see the 'biological big bang'
3. Could some of the smallest life forms help avert climate crisis?
4. What is the full biodiversity of the Amazon or Congo basin rainforests?
5. How do animals influence the functioning of Earth?
6. What will happen to the Gulf Stream?
7. Do universal rules govern how plants and animals evolve?
8. How many humans could Earth support?
9. Which species will adapt to the climate crisis -- and which will not?
2. I'd go back 540m years to see the 'biological big bang'
3. Could some of the smallest life forms help avert climate crisis?
4. What is the full biodiversity of the Amazon or Congo basin rainforests?
5. How do animals influence the functioning of Earth?
6. What will happen to the Gulf Stream?
7. Do universal rules govern how plants and animals evolve?
8. How many humans could Earth support?
9. Which species will adapt to the climate crisis -- and which will not?
540 million? (Score:1)
that's basically a biblical timeframe for a biological big bang, not a scientific one...
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The Cambrian "explosion" was when multicellular organisms learned, in fairly rapid order, to channel their calcium-balance metabolic pathways (which everything in the sea needs) into depositing (mostly) inorganic calcium mineral into either "teeth" or "test" ("shell"). As a consequence, they became much more visible to the fossil record.
The interesting events - getting cells to adhere after fission, to differentiate into tissues, to abandon their individual
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Re:540 million? (Score:4, Informative)
The full quote from TFA:
I’d go back 540m years to see the ‘biological big bang’
“As an evolutionary biologist, I would love a time machine to go back to the Cambrian explosion [when most major animal groups first appeared in the fossil record] to see why this short period resulted in the really rapid rise of most animal groups, and why some like trilobites [extinct marine arthropods] didn’t survive.”
Evolutionary biologist Dr Corrie Moreau is an expert on ants at Cornell University’s Moreau lab
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Evolutionary biologist Dr Corrie Moreau is an expert on ants at Cornell University’s Moreau lab
I'd hate to find myself on her island.
Re:540 million? (Score:4, Interesting)
The full quote from TFA:
I’d go back 540m years to see the ‘biological big bang’
“As an evolutionary biologist, I would love a time machine to go back to the Cambrian explosion [when most major animal groups first appeared in the fossil record] to see why this short period resulted in the really rapid rise of most animal groups, and why some like trilobites [extinct marine arthropods] didn’t survive.”
Evolutionary biologist Dr Corrie Moreau is an expert on ants at Cornell University’s Moreau lab
I always thought the prevailing belief was the Cambrian explosion followed the Precambrian extinction, giving a very big playing field for new species to fill in niches previously held by now gone species, and perhaps develop their own niches as the bio-load re-asserted itself. Now, it would be extremely interesting to go back and witness the hows and whys on individual species levels, but you'd need to be able to shoot around the timeline to watch in in a human lifetime. It's millions of years of back and forth, ebb and flow, die, evolve, die again. Though I do get the curiosity. One of my favorite areas of study, my entire life, has been the mass extinction events in Earth's past, and the subsequent recoveries after. It just makes it that much more amazing that we've developed during this bio-increase period to the point where we can even study and speculate about what happened 540 million years ago. Considering most life forms over the course of Earth's history have barely been able to think much further back than what their living relatives are able to share with them.
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Yeah, the wish has either an implicit addendum to where you could hop around in time (well, sure, you do have a time machine already) - or else you'd also be wishing for an extremely long life.
If the latter, the observations would probably get really monotonous before too long. Me, I'd spend the whole time wishing a grove of coffee trees would spring into existence.
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Yeah, the wish has either an implicit addendum to where you could hop around in time (well, sure, you do have a time machine already) - or else you'd also be wishing for an extremely long life.
If the latter, the observations would probably get really monotonous before too long. Me, I'd spend the whole time wishing a grove of coffee trees would spring into existence.
Everybody always talks about how big space is. Imagine if you could move through time as just another of the four dimensions we occupy and think about how big that bastard is. You think minutes tick by like days when you're at work. Think about all the minutes from the beginning of the Earth, or worse, before the Earth to now. Yikes.
Re: 540 million? (Score:1)
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that's basically a biblical timeframe for a biological big bang, not a scientific one...
The biblical timeline is based on the concept of the earth only being 16k years old. You ain't going back 540 million years in biblical terms. That'd be a void.
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Well, you're only wrong by a factor of about 2.7, which is a lot better than the YECs (Young Earth Creationists - mortal enemies of OECs) error factor of 750k. But still an avoidable error.
Unless ... you're talking about VD's alien-gods (Von Daniken, Graham Hawking's spirit guide). They were allegedly around 10~20 kyr ago.
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Well, you're only wrong by a factor of about 2.7, which is a lot better than the YECs (Young Earth Creationists - mortal enemies of OECs) error factor of 750k. But still an avoidable error.
Unless ... you're talking about VD's alien-gods (Von Daniken, Graham Hawking's spirit guide). They were allegedly around 10~20 kyr ago.
I had a creationist guy that I used to be friends with that swore the Earth was 16k years old and the fossil record was planted by God to test our faith. And in a single sentence you see why the words "used to be" must be added to the word "friend" when discussing him. It got really weird after that. That was the "I can still sort of understand what you're saying, but disagree" stage. Oi.
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I too remember dealing with a "MEC" who had some issue with Ussher, but I can't remember why. He also had a real hard-on for the "Flood" having re-floored the oceans, so mid-ocean ridges and subduction zones running at miles-per-hour, not finger
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Yeah, the earliest microbial life can be traced to between 3.7 and 4.1 billion years ago. The Cambrian explosion (540mya) would be interesting, but not as interesting as the process(es) whereby inanimate matter became cellular life.
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There are several that amount to "how many species are there?" which really isn't a particularly interesting number. Abiogenesis missing the list is a pretty major omission.
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They do agree that all detected life on Earth has a Last Universal Common Ancestor ("LUCA") with DNA, RNA translation of DNA into proteins, Krebs cycle and ... arguments still rage over ot
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And the answers to all, or any of that, are probably more interesting than 8.7 million.
Spoiler: coming in at a close #10 (Score:2)
10. Where are my car keys?
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Why not (Score:3)
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It reads like they only asked biologists and environmental scientists
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None of the Scientists polled were in the physical sciences - all life sciences (other than one climate scientist). Hence all the questions are about living organisms.
Of course, the stated goal included "...on Earth", which kinda limits the "knowledge of the universe" questions, although Fusion is most definitely an "..on Earth" kinda question.
Re: Why not (Score:1)
That's for white men, you pig.
They asked the most impractical questions possible (Score:5, Interesting)
A more useful list of questions might include things like:
How can we redirect or limit the eruptive power of supervolcanos to mitigate their destructive impact?
How can we generate, store, and distribute hundreds of Terawatts of energy quickly, cheaply, and cleanly at a cost of less than $0.01 per kilowatt hour?
How can we quickly and cheaply desalinize and distribute large volumes of seawater to meet freshwater needs without too much negative impact?
How can we achieve practical faster than light communications and transportation?
How can we create medicines that will cure cancer and other major diseases?
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Good grief they had limited imaginations.
No.
Almost none of their questions had any practical use,
So?
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Why bother? Humans can out-breed them. Or (in the very foreseeable future) be elsewhere.
Energy : (re-)learn to stop wasting it. That'll always be cheaper then finding a way to make it "too cheap to meter".
Water : stop living in near-desert environments.
Is any sort of FTL communication or transportation possible? It's not as if we need it to become a pangalactic species.
For medicine - I've always heard t
#1: Just low-ball it and wait... (Score:2)
for the true answer to decline until it reaches the number you specified. :-(
7? (Score:2)
Yes.
There you go, if that's all you care about, it's answered.
The real question is "What are those rules, and how are they expressed in different scenarios?"
My biological wish item (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to see how photosynthesis evolved
Re:My biological wish item (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not all that mysterious to me. It's fairly straightforward that cells had other energy production pathways and synthesis pathways that, following gene duplication events, were mutated to produce photosynthesis. I mean, if you look at the the chlorophyll molecule and the heme molecule they look very similar because they are both produced by enzymes that act on protopophyrin. And then if you look at how protopophyrin is made you can see that each of those precursor molecules independently had some use. For example, the step of turning porphobilinogen to hydroxymethylbilane, releases ammonia which some ancient cell may have needed.
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I explained it in the next few lines. I'll be sure my phone ringer is on and watch for calls from Sweden.
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Useless fucking questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Knowing those answers won't help anything. Instead how about "how do I fucking cure Alzheimer's?" or "how do I slow down the aging process?"
"Top Scientists" (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a bit of a stretch. Top conservationists would be more accurate.
Not even one person asked an energy related question (honorable mention for how many humans can Earth support).
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A: Depends on how shitty the living conditions you are willing to accept are.
28 Billion Humans (Score:2)
Years ago I've seen (channeled) information that says the Earth can support ~28 Billion people IIRC. The problems are
* Looking at Population Density [wikipedia.org] maps we see that people are clustered near each other especially in North America. Technically we have people living in Alaska but most don't want to deal with extreme (cold or hot) weather. Likewise we have vast plains of flat land and most don't want to live their either.
* We waste SO much of the surface area (and do nothing to stop the spread of the Sahar
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As a species, we do pretty much damned all to stop the spread of any of the growing deserts on the planet.
The reason is simple - only poor people live there. Where rich people live, there is a lot of effort spent (wasted) on trying to beat back change there. But essentially nothing is done about the causes of the spread of those deserts, and all the others. Because rich people can move away more cheaply than fixing the problems.
10. How to solve human stupidity? (Score:2)
Ooops, my bad. This one is unsolvable and strong.
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I think the real question is, Why do Slashdot trolls always post their seriously stupid comments as cowardly AC's?
Re: The questions the world need answered now: (Score:1)
And most of the rest is run by your rabid right.
There's very slim pickings left for normal, decent people.
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I think you've hit the main point there.
Well those are the wrong questions (Score:2)
Not a scientist, but I'm intrigued by exoplanets. (Score:2)
Re: Not a scientist, but I'm intrigued by exoplane (Score:1)
And Quantum Gravity, size of the universe, destiny of the universe, etc etc
The Grauniad doesn't care about the important questions, let alone unbiased journalism .
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You've always got to test your measurements against a null hypothesis.
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So that would only imply 6 gigadeaths to achieve, not 7. It's only a gigadeath, but some people might consider it important.
And that's why nothing improves. (Score:2)
Seriously? The number of species is the MOST important question you could answer? Please fire them all now.
And here are a few "better" answers (ala Roxanne) (Score:2)
How to cause people to live happy healthy lives, reliably. Why people hurt for no "good" reason. What about things that impact "energy" and the desire to act?
Do we have free will? If "no" then how should the world change (punishment, school, etc).
Are authoritarian structures (person A in charge of the rest) necessary, or even useful? And by how much?
How much of each day is "wasted"? What "wasted" time is actually useful, and how much?
What if no technology had protections? Might nothing actually change
Human Migration (Score:2)
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You're better tool would be?
Bearing in mind that the people who developed from those first settlers, who lived near societies that had metal-processing technologies, and live less than 1000 years ago, are almost invisible to all the other types of archaeological tracking that have been applied over the last century (since it became unpopular to rape or massacre the survivors). Nomads who don't use much pottery are hard to see. Ev
Question 5 (Score:2)
The atmosphere : a lot.
The hydrosphere - less. Eventually we'll lay down a mm or so of weird organic sludge.
The lithosphere - very little. OK, locally, we're creating a few cubic kilometres a year of weird hydrated igneous-sedimentary agglomerates (concrete, to non-geologists) and some isotopic anomalies that will barely last longer than the atmospheric changes. Moving metals around a bit. One tectonic cycle and they'll be an interesting debate for the