Recently a group of 33 specialists of different scientific disciplines speculated that life might not have begun on Earth, after all. Well, some life.
I read the entire white paper (which can be downloaded here, Cause of Cambrian Explosion - Terrestrial or Cosmic?), and although in the paper some things are assumed, the fact remains that some instances of evolution simply don't make sense.
As some other scientific folks have reputed the basis for the paper's conclusions, based on no more than the acceptance of currently held theory, the essential factor here is not the data derived, but the mind set of the scientific community. As a part of the paper reads...
We certainly do not want this paper to read, as one reviewer has put it …
“ somewhat like a last-ditch and exasperated attempt to convince the main stream of the scientific community that in following neo-Darwinism they have gone seriously astray, because life has been carried to this planet from elsewhere in the universe on comets/meteorites and does not result from abiogenesis on Earth.” We actually consider that certain mechanistic aspects of neo-Darwinian and Population Genetic thinking is invaluable in biomedical research and clinical medicine (development of the “big data” algorithms that allow “personalised” navigation around the genetic features of thousands of human genomes by, for example, the Broad Institute in Boston and the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge). However these basic Darwinian based-concepts need to be circumscribed, in our opinion, and be placed in a Cosmic rather than a solely Terrestrial setting. In our view then both Panspermia and Lamarckian issues therefore contribute to our wider understanding as they go to the very heart of how life originated on Earth and how it subsequently evolved and diversified to the higher levels of sophisticated complexity that we witness today. In our view “Natural Selection” in its essence (survival of fittest) still plays a crucial role in a changing environment but it is now in a Cosmic, rather than a pure Terrestrial, setting; and it occurs in concert with both non-Darwinian and non-Mendelian inheritance mechanisms. Yet we recognize that the whole topic of 'evolutionary mechanisms' is, like political beliefs, both fraught and is a heated area of social and cultural discourse - certainly in all those areas lying outside of normal scientific investigation. Yet the simple fact that cannot be denied is that the terrestrial biosphere is an infinitesimal part of the far, far bigger system which is the astronomer's cosmos and the two systems are inextricably connected.
This then is a trigger warning: Accurate scientific terminology can be unsettling because of their history, yet sometimes unavoidable - the terms Panspermia and Lamarckian Inheritance despite their emotive implications and prejudicial overtones will be used where deemed appropriate in this paper.
Source: Cause of Cambrian Explosion - Terrestrial or Cosmic?
With this type of mind set acting against any new findings, no matter how much evidence is presented to support a valid conclusion, the outcome is pretty much the same.
Is it so hard to think that some, if not all, life on Earth came from else where in our universe. At this point the conclusions drawn from the study is merely conjecture, as there is no valid or reasonable way of proving that life on Earth did indeed come from some passing space rock. Yet, it shouldn't be readily dismissed because it is conjecture. Some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs occurred from speculative thinking.
As far as octopi are concerned, basically, they are different enough from the rest of Earth's creatures that they raise certain questions. Are they conscious? Are they intelligent? How intelligent? Do they react or act when stimulated?
If the number of neurons is any measure of intelligence then Octopus vulgaris, a common octopus, would be fairly intelligent. It has approximately 500 million neurons, that's about the same as a western tree hyrax, and almost as much as a common marmoset(New World monkey). A human has about 86 billion neurons, while an elephant has even a greater amount at 257 billion neurons.
But, what's a neuron and how does it indicate intelligence, you ask? Yeah, well, I wondered too.
Basically, a neuron is a nerve cell, and is an electrically excitable cell that receives, processes, and transmits information through electrical and chemical signals. Neurons are also the most important part of the human brain.
The number of neurons in the brain varies dramatically from species to species. The adult human brain contains about 85-86 billion neurons,of which 16.3 billion are in the cerebral cortex and 69 billion in the cerebellum. By contrast, the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has just 302 neurons, making it an ideal experimental subject as scientists have been able to map all of the organism's neurons. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, a common subject in biological experiments, has around 100,000 neurons and exhibits many complex behaviors. Many properties of neurons, from the type of neurotransmitters used to ion channel composition, are maintained across species, allowing scientists to study processes occurring in more complex organisms in much simpler experimental systems.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron
Now here is the interesting part, neurons probably do play a role in determining how intelligent a creature might be, but as the following excerpt explains...
The cerebral cortex is considered the ‘seat’ of intelligence and mind in mammals. During their evolution, there was a dramatic increase in cortical surface area with increasing brain size, while the thickness of the cortex increases only slightly. Among large-brained mammals, primates have the thickest cortices of 3–5 mm, while those of cetaceans and the elephant are surprisingly thin (1–1.8 mm). With increasing cortical volume, neuron packing density (NPD) usually decreases, but primates have unusually high and cetaceans and elephants unusually low packing densities. All this sums up to the fact that the human brain has the largest number of cortical neurons (about 15 billion), despite the fact that the human brain and cortex are much smaller in size than those of cetaceans and elephants (with 10–12 billion or even fewer cortical neurons).
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4685590/
As noted, the density of the neuron bundle has a lot to do with just how intelligent a creature is, and in most cases the neurons are located in the brain. With the octopus it's a bit different. The majority of neurons in a octopi are spread through their bodies, mostly in their arms, which allows them to independently taste and touch through each arm, and also control basic motions without input from the brain. Also, Octopuses and their kin (cuttlefish and squid) stand apart from other invertebrates, having evolved with much larger nervous systems and greater cognitive complexity.
Interestingly enough octopus brains and vertebrate brains have no common anatomy but support a variety of similar features, including forms of short-term and long-term memory, versions of sleep, and the capacities to recognize individual people and explore objects through play.
So to sum up, octopuses are intelligent, but that intelligence comes through a different mechanism than other animals, including humans, and they use their entire body as a "brain", rather than have it centrally located, plus they, along with squid and cuttlefish species, routinely edit their RNA (ribonucleic acid) sequences to adapt to their environment. In essence, cephalopods don't randomly evolve, but change their physiology as needed to fit their environment.
If all that taken together isn't alien, then I don't know what is.
Source:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... via%3Dihub
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_a ... of_neurons
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ws/508745/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... n-octopus/
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S009 ... 17)30344-6
Menu
Birthdays
Clock
Search
Attachments
Top Posters
Newest members
Link to us