Moving to another thread, as this is going to get fun. For arguments sake I am going to assume no one reading this knows what The MIller Experiment is. Scientist Stanley Miller shot electricity through an atmosphere like the one on the primitive earth, creating amino acids, the building blocks of life. From 1954 through today the Miller Experiment is in most Biology texts and taught as one of the fundamental pillars of evolution. The atmosphere Miller used was based on the theories of his doctoral advisor, Nobel laureate Harold Urey. Jonathan Wells, PHD, PHD, studied Geology at Princeton, undergraduate from Cal Berkley in geology and physics and a minor in Biology at Yale Graduate School, where he also earned a Doctorate in religious studies. Pretty smart dude huh? Born into a Presbyterian home, his work at Princeton made him become an Atheist. Still with me? Heres what he has to say about Millers early atmosphere. Well nobody knows for sure what the early atmosphere was like, but the universal consensus is that the atmosphere was not at all like the one Miller used. Miller chose a Hydrogen rich mixture of methane, ammonia, and water vapor (which was all consistent with what scientists believed in 1953). In the 1960s a geophysicist from the Carnegie Institution asked what is the evidence for a primitive methane/ammonia atmosphere on earth? The answer is that there is NO evidence what so ever for it, but much evidence against. Still there? By the mid 70s Belgian Biochemist Marcel Florkin was declaring the concept behind Millers theory has been abandoned. Two of the leading origin-of-life researchers, Klaus Dose and Sidney Fox, confirmed that Miller had used the wrong gas mixture. Then, in 1995, Science magazine experts publicly dismiss Millers experiments because The early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey simulation Still with me? So back to Jonathan Wells. When asked on the current thinking of scientists concerning the gas content of early earth The best hypothesis now is there was very little hydrogen in the atmosphere because it would have escaped into space. Instead, the atmosphere probably consisted of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water vapor. So my gripe is now that textbooks all over this country STILL present the Miller experiment as though it reflected earths early environment when most geochemists since the 1960s would say it was TOTALLY UNLIKE Millers still there?? It gets better but for fact sake...now onto the next part of this... mhhe/cgi-bin/netquiz_get.pl?qfooter=/usr/web/home/mhhe/biosci/genbio/maderbiology7/student/olc/art_quizzes/0049fq.htm&test=/usr/web/home/mhhe/biosci/genbio/maderbiology7/student/olc/art_quizzes/0049q.txt&answers=/usr/web/home/mhhe/biosci/genbio/maderbiology7/student/olc/art_quizzes/0049a.txt
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 01:59:46 +0000