Threadjacking!

[von Boom]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxrxnPG05SU

Well. That's me convinced.

[The Legendary Shark]

Evidence that humanity existed will remain for millions of years. Things that will endure include city foundations, worked stone and quarries, various spacecraft such as Voyager and Pioneer, radio emissions, refined metals and cut gemstones. That's even before you get to the fossils of humans and domesticated animals, gases, radiation, artificial pollutants and plastics retained in ice/soil/rocks.
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Also, maybe there are up to 400,000 missing links and maybe there aren't. I don't know. Evolution is a great theory but I don't think it's either properly understood or the whole story. I suspect that there are several aspects to evolution, and processes concomitant to evolution, that we haven't sussed out yet.

[Goaty]

Also, maybe there are up to 400,000 missing links

And they out queues at stores this morning...

[Colin YNWA]

Evolution is a great theory

It is, as modern science defines a theory, don't get it confused with other uses of the word:

"In modern science, the term "theory" refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science." (with apologies for the lazy as Wikiquote!)

but I don't think it's either properly understood or the whole story.

But it is on both counts. Its observable, evidenced to the n^th degree and pretty much a fact, as far as science will ever go with the term. It is able to explain the development of life on the planet in all its rich and varied forms by and large definitively.

I suspect that there are several aspects to evolution, and processes concomitant to evolution, that we haven't sussed out yet.

Yep but that's the great thing about science, as opposed to belief, faith or fairy tale based systems, as it always strives for a deeper more complete understanding of what it investigates and questions rather than buying into dogma. That said the theory (see above) of evolution is very unlikely to change any time soon as its robust and does the job all but conclusively.

Right I'm off to get my head back down under the parapet and get back to talking about comics, like we all come here for.

[TordelBack]

Also, maybe there are up to 400,000 missing links and maybe there aren't.

No maybe about it, it's a logical necessity, unless you're positing divine creation or space aliens diddling monkeys.  Chimps and humans shared a common ancestor sometime around 6 million years ago.  Allowing 15 years for a generation (generally true for both Chimps and humans for most of our history, but change it to 20 if you want, makes little difference), that's roughly 400,000 individual ancestors linking you to that shared ancestor, and another 400,000 linking that shared ancestor to any given chimp.  By contrast, the first person to think about milking a goat was only 500 generations ago, and the first pencil monkey to scratch a burnt stick on a cave wall and pronounce it zarjaz was only 2500-3000 generations ago.  800,000 generations is an awful lot of time for even major structures to change, especially given the tiny populations we think humans must have been reduced to on at least one and probably several occasions.

With an almost negligible number of exceptions (most in the past 1,000 years) every single one of those people is a 'missing link' between you and the point of departure between our species and our closest cousins.

But I agree entirely that there's a lot about the details of evolution that we still don't know.  That's what mkes it fun.

[The Legendary Shark]

I'm not saying that the Theory of Evolution is wrong - it does seem to describe the observable world very well.
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I just don't think that we should simply accept it without question (I don't think any serious scientist would do that anyway) - but such a view is often taken in a religious context and met with some scoffing piffle about the only other option being Intelligent Design.
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There are problems with Evolutionary Theory, the biggest being the most fundamental - how did life begin? The current, widely believed hypothesis is that complex, non-biological chemicals came together entirely by chance in a priomodial soup on an abiotic world and, by a bolt of lightning, formed into complicated chains of replicating molecules. Given the complexity of the required molecules - their constituents and the necessary assembled order of those constituents - the chances of this being a random occurrence are vanishingly small - the equivalent of tipping all the jigsaw pieces in the world into the Pacific and expecting one completed jigsaw to wash up on a beach in Hawaii - possible but not very likely. In fact, if the origin of life depends entirely on chance then the possibilities of life beginning anywhere in the entire universe are virtually nil, as close to nil that the word 'impossible' just about covers it. If life on Earth does come from that random chance then we may very well be unique in the cosmos - and I don't like that idea at all.
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(As an amusing aside, scientists have been trying to create life in this way for ages - filling flasks with all kinds of primordial rubbish and then shooting lightning or fire or ice at it - to no avail. If they do ever succeed, however, the irony will be that they have not proven the 'chance' theory of the Origin of Life but the Intelligent Design theory!)
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Another puzzler is the origin of replication. In order to replicate, two things are required - blueprints and a 'factory'. The DVD analogy works well to explain this problem - a DVD disk is useless without a DVD player; but what if the instructions for building the very first DVD player were encoded on the very first DVD disk? How would one access the data on the disk to create the player? Similarly, replicating molecules containing information on how to replicate (and where did that information come from to begin with?) need external mechanisms that 'know' how to interpret that data and construct copies. Clearly, the two systems seem unlikely to have developed separately and so must have come into being at the same time.
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Evolutionary Theory, as far as it goes, seems solid enough - biology wouldn't make sense without it - but we (the generally scientifically illiterate person like myself) should not fall into the trap of thinking it's all done and dusted. When we start believing things like that we reduce science to the level of mere religion, full of dogma and forbidden questions, and destroy its usefulness to society.
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So when I argue with science or refuse to fully accept some of its hypotheses or even theories it is not through a dislike of science but a love of it. When I ask science a question I regard that act of questioning in much the same way that religion regards a prayer. Without prayers there would be no need for religion and without questions there would be no need for science.

[ZenArcade]

 Are we not supposed to be programmes running in an uber simulation set up by entities at the omega point? Z

[The Legendary Shark]

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Edited to add (but my time was up so posted here instead): If some of the strange observations coming from Quantum Research are taken into account, there may be totally natural mechanisms 'built in' to the universe that might seem 'Divine' and make the creation/evolution of life virtually inevitable. We simply have to discover these mechanisms and understand them. ("Simply"! Ha!)
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Yes, yes, Molchie, I know - bugger off to the "Science is Drokking Fantastic Because..." Thread :-D

[TordelBack]

Never accept anything without question!

However, how life began isn't part of the theory of evolution, which deals with how species evolve through natural selection from that point on. I completely agree that biogenesis remains a massive puzzle, and engages many minds, careers, and even spaceships.

The replication issue is really very well dealt with in embyrology, which can derive all the elements of the human body from the (ostensibly) simplest set of individual biochemical instructions at the point of conception so that the embryo bootstraps itself into existence.  The set of procedures that work get to reproduce, and thus encode and replicate those instructions, those that don't, don't.

I think if creationists (and I'm not in any way suggesting Shark is one) read a bit more about embryology, most of their questions (if such they are) would be answered.

[The Legendary Shark]

Heh, I like that - evolution has little to do with the origin of life. It's a similar thing with astronomy, which has little to do with the origin of the universe. In the Beginning, Something happened, we don't know what, exactly, but we pretty much understand what happened after that Something because we can see and analyse the results all around us.
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This is not a dig, Tordels, I agree with you. I look forward to the day, however, when the Theory of Evolution can be expanded to describe biogenesis as well.
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And now, I'm off to read up on embryology...

[ZenArcade]

We all zygote to start reading up on this eh Shark. Z

[Spikes]

Also, maybe there are up to 400,000 missing links

And they out queues at stores this morning...

I love you.

[Tiplodocus]

Also, maybe there are up to 400,000 missing links and maybe there aren't.

By contrast, the first person to think about milking a goat was only 500 generations ago

I often wonder what WAS going through that person's head. And the goat must have been "Seriously!!! Dude! WTF?"

[Dandontdare]

(nicked from Private Eye - for some reason, this just tickled me  )

[Theblazeuk]

Is there a 'trekkie' style term for 2000AD lovers? Dredd-Heads? Thrill-fiends?