How scientists know about punctuated equilibria

Is punctuated equilibria real? You bet. An engaging mini-documentary about punctuated equilibria, featuring Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge. Date: 1991

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Punctuated equilibrium
• evolution
• Gould
• Eldredge
• Darwin
• stasis
• natural selection
• trilobites

[boogeyman1967]

@Keinlicht thanks, i appreciate the comment.. As I mentioned before, this has much basis in fact.. instead of arbitrarily dismissing it as 'spurious pseudoscience', maybe approach it with an open mind.. knowledge is constantly evolving..take a look at the video.. i'd like to know what you think.. cheers..

[Keinlicht]

@boogeyman1967 Extraterrestrial = not on the earth.

I know what quantum entanglement is, but what you're saying sound more like new age spurious pseudoscience than anything else. I'm glad we could have a mostly civil conversation, but I think you should take a closer look at why rigor is important in scientific endeavors, and what exactly it means to be rigorous.

[Keinlicht]

@boogeyman1967 I just told you. Orbital factors cause the changes I'm talking about.

[boogeyman1967]

@Keinlicht no disrespect intended.. but why don't you take a look at David Wilcock's 2012 Event Horizon? It makes some very good points and explains, in detail, much better than I can.. with the evidence you are seeking..peace...

[boogeyman1967]

@Keinlicht extraterrestrial? we come from the stars.. we are made of the same material that the stars are made of.. if you're familiar with 'entanglement', you know that what happens to entangled objects, affects other entangled objects.. and since all atoms were created together at the moment of the big bang.. we are all 'entangled' therefore, as above, so below...

[boogeyman1967]

@Keinlicht what do you think causes the earth to go through these changes? what happens above, affects what is down below.. as above, so below.. our universe is evolving and so are we..the earth will be completing many cycles on Dec. 21, 2012. If you check, you will find that we are scheduled for another PE event on that date also..

[Keinlicht]

@boogeyman1967 Assuming such a cycle does indeed exist, it seems to me a little premature to jump to searching for extraterrestrial sources.

The earth has a great many of cycles, some evident, some very subtle. There is of course the advancing and retreating of glaciers, changes in multiple orbital factors and even chance combinations of weather which may have an impact on life. I simply dont see a reason to leave earthy explanations behind when there is still so much we don't know about Earth.

[boogeyman1967]

@Keinlicht Robert Rohde, Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division, says "It is also possible that a 140 million year fossil diversity cycle is driven by passage through the arms of the Milky Way galaxy".

[boogeyman1967]

@Keinlicht you may be right.. but there are still points to consider.. what about the 62 Million year cycle? A detailed and extensive new analysis of the fossil records of marine animals over the past 542 million years has yielded a stunning surprise. Biodiversity appears to rise and fall in mysterious cycles of 62 million years for which science has no satisfactory explanation.

[Keinlicht]

@boogeyman1967 What I mean by "made up" is "Asserted without adequate evidence".

If you actually knew the first thing about Gould and Eldrege's theory you'd understand that the stimulus, the reason, for rapid speciation i.e. "punctuations" is thought to be restriction of small breeding populations under heavy environmental stress.

Given occam's razor, it seems unlikely that speciation is of celestial origin, especially given speciation under laboratory conditions has been observed.