Dawkins: Lecture 4. The ultraviolet garden (4 of 7)

[butlerlog]

I think mount improbable would be a little too steep for those plants :)

[MotaroMKD]

Maaan this is brilliant!!! Dawkins is king! And only 6,462 views?? Peanut butter jelly timeeee

[tumarkhan]

Richard Dawkins teaching is analogous to mine when I work with my brothers and sisters. The foundation of centurys education system is being built. Im glad that these children have chance to learn logics and facts by a great educator.

[alliswel]

That computer animation film wasn't that bad actually - I was pleasantly suprised.

(I know it's complete fantasy) but the idea of a plant being able to launch a spore into space is hilarious. The speed at which it would need to be ejected would just be ridiculous. But yes. Entertaining.

[RajahBrooke]

If you assume it has a thinner atmosphere and lower gravity than our planet, it's slightly more plausible that it could work. Either way, it get's the job done.

[Matt7895]

Seeing that robot is a reminder of how far technology has come since the early 90s when these films were made.

[GBart]

Not only that, think of the other evidence he could have displayed - we've since built much better computer models, found a lot more fossils, and decoded the genome.

[Eyedunno]

There's no "Planet Caravan" in the soundtrack! :D

[kankerklootzak]

Man, this guy KNOWS what he's talking about. Unlike most religious nutcases and creationists.

[SteveDurnin]

"Most"?

[theinquisitor]

Would panspermia need to be so macroscopic? Maybe bacterial spores could escape the gravity of a planet and spread in a billion directions, thrown up into space simply by wind and volcanic effects.

[BayerLexan]

The idea is fascinating. This would lessen the probability of life randomly occuring on our planet.

[whichrich68]

Occasionally a meteorite impact with Mars will be sufficient to send pieces of Mars rock up into space and some of these rocks have landed on earth. A few years back research showed that the core temperature of some of these rocks never exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, or about 100 degrees Fahrenheit either during ejection or re-entry. As a general principle then meteorites could carry simple life from one planet to another.

[BlackApollo666]

Chemical evolution is how it had to happen, the results from the Miller-Urey (and alike) experiments are just too convincing.

[theinquisitor]

Indeed, in fact I recently heard that after Stanley Miller died in 2007, the original vials that produced the organic sludge were found and re-analysed with modern techniques. Originally Miller found five amino acids, but the re-analysis has found twenty two amino acids and five amines.

Found that on PZ Myers blog Pharyngula, google: "Old scientists never clean out their refrigerators" for the article.

[DrMontague]

Miller-Urey et al experiments. Would be the correct academic way of saying 'and others' or 'and alike'. Hope you don't mind me pointing this out.

[BlackApollo666]

I am an aspiring scientist; I thrive on correcting and being corrected. I do not mind.

[2Dlion]

Incredible