Monday, March 24, 2008

Finished Brazillian Wax

bounceback

This left here is a very unassuming beach in East Africa. Because of the prevailing dangerous underwater currents called it "Bab-el-Mandab" or "the gates of sorrow." Here is the narrowest part in the Red Sea, and it tells a story of courage, fear and hope. This story was reconstructed using advanced genetic techniques and procedures. And it comes not from a dime novel.


... There was a minor species of mammals that lived about 70,000 years ago in Africa. She was neither particularly big nor particularly fast or strong, and her beauty was within manageable limits. She supported in principle by all that met her - a bit of fruit, roots, fungi hunt, and they could also reasonably. Unfortunately, the climate was much to her - the former glacial caused that more and more water was pooled in the form of ice, so that the earth more and more dried out. Food was scarce. The poor species have escaped first by collecting shellfish on the beach, but soon also the stocks were exhausted. Of the poor animals there were on earth, only about 2,000 copies - they were threatened with extinction by today's standards. A group of them sat hungry at the beach of Bab-el-Mandab and counted the survivors. It was in this group 150, a maximum of 200th This species was homo sapiens sapiens. She was at the end. But

see her! - On the other side of the strait attracted the mountains of present-day Yemen. There was food in abundance - just as is you there? Long live the Red Sea coast or along the Nile? Probably not - you had to overcome the inhospitable Sahara, which at that time was particularly hostile. What remained was the breakneck companies crossing the waters - 20 km of sea with no nautical experience. But the group has done it. Of these 150-200 people, we are all - apart from some African tribes - really from all . This could be observed by comparing the mitochondrial (inherited from the mother) and Y-chromosomal DNA (from papa). Once the adventurers were on the Arabian peninsula, they could (or their children) along the coast of Persia, India and Indonesia penetrate as far as Australia. Lateral branches were swept away to Europe and the Neanderthals ( here you can hear the songs). Humanity was a poor little group of the last survivor to a 6.3 billion-strong army.

An important consequence of the fact that there were then only 150 -200 folks, is the degree of genetic similarity of most people. In a group of gorillas, one can find a greater genetic diversity than in the whole of humanity. The idea of any "superior race" can lubricate the brown "thought leaders" on the nose - we're all so close together related, as it does not get any closer.

Strange thoughts go through your mind. - What if the few desperadoes would not have married at that time? If they were lost in the sea? If it had on the other side but not given as much food as expected? Would we then still a minor subspecies of mammals in equatorial Africa? Or we could have managed not to this day and had been carried off by a virus, which is in Africa are not known to too few? Who has been the leader of the group, who then proposed the dangerous action, as he was or looked like, we do not know. However, we should from time to remember him gratefully. If I have time and money, I would definitely like to go to this beach, there idly throwing stones into the water and eagerly look across to Yemen.

( Here can find out the walk of his own ancestors by DNA testing. The project, for example, a Greek woman and an Indian together who have a common great-mother. This was the first reunion of the two distant " siblings "since 30,000 years ago.)

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Headphone Cord Container

The audacity of life

I will now provide two times the statements in the room that are very closely linked. How - that you learn at the end of this paper. 1: Nylon stockings for breakfast to eat, tastes awful. No. 2: We are certainly not the only life form in the universe.

Confused? And rightly so. But I promise that two paragraphs later, the matter is resolved. There is no more and no less to the old question of whether we're alone in the universe "or whether there are other life forms. No, I do not (only) the green creatures with antennae on his head, get out of flying saucers. But in general the question of whether life in all its complexity, we can observe on earth (our brain is demonstrably the most complex object that people have ever seen), a unique exception in the dreary cold darkness out there.

Although we will probably never know for sure - the exchange of information in the universe is limited by the speed of light and therefore due to the incredibly huge distances in space far too slowly - we can try for example the probability. On the one hand, the chances for such ideal conditions, as we have on Earth, is rather limited (read more here ). On the other hand, even if the probability, so to grab a 5-star spa hotel as our earth is only 0.0001%, one must remember how incredibly, incredibly there are many stars. A popular saying among astronomers is that already in the known, observable universe, there are more stars than grains of sand on all the beaches on earth. And even if not nearly every star has planets at all, it is among the billions of stars certainly be quite a plethora of favorable constellations.

And if the conditions are acceptable or less, are making life not long in coming. You can see very well in the history of our planet. A billion years after the formation of the Earth, the surface is fairly cool, and the constant bombardment by meteorites stopped slowly. About the same time already created primitive life forms. Life was So, as soon as circumstances allowed reasonably, fairly quickly there and has since not get rid of the blue planet. Where were the so-called extremophile life forms not found it - in boiling hot springs (up to 113 ° C), sulphate of mud holes, underground oil drains, oxygen-free and dark mountain caves or highly concentrated brine. This microbe survived the 1000 times the lethal dose for humans radioactivity by using its DNA completely torn to pieces composed just like a puzzle again. Even in the hostile vacuum of space to survive these comrades here. There are now even bacteria, which - as promised tension closes! - Feed on nylon . And if those are related to gourmets everywhere before our eyes - then can not escape the thought that the chemistry of life is such a way that it takes many forms and adapt to all possible living conditions. And we can also relate only to the carbon-based nukleotidvererbende life as we know it - the sky with respect to other biological concepts are no limits.

Life seems to be quite cheerful, cheeky and also tough. Alone in the universe - what an arrogant idea!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Doenlod Vido Bangbros

The end of the world

"Some say, the world will end in fire, some say - in ice" Robert Frost once wrote and thus to the current state of research not so wrong. The end of the world, the moment when everything, absolutely everything we know ceases to exist, has engaged the people a long time. songs were written about in religious end-time scenarios, the most terrible things disclosed . Most of the world goes in a huge disaster in, the fantasy adventure of all animals, not pain is sadistic, not a battle tableau to gigantomanic. In ice is rather rare among the world (a rogue, while the higher the narrative action of the fire inferno compared to the boring cooling assumed). Fascinating the end of the world was in any case always. Doomsday cult members committed suicide in droves even voluntarily so they escaped the earthly apocalypse, could start a new life on distant planets with their astral bodies. We now know pretty much what will the drain end of the world - depending upon what is defined as the end of the world, he is free after Robert Frost, very hot or icy cold.

If we leave on our Earth, then we should get in about five years Miliarden a good sunscreen. For then shall the sun due to changes in nuclear fusion processes to "red Giant inflate swallow , Mercury and Venus and the Earth will fry. With evaporated oceans and surface temperatures over 1000 degrees can survive difficult.

shocking? No, not yet. So far it is that is does not come. Just two billion years before it will prevail by a capital collision between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy ( here an animation). you can fly at the time pretty much each other. stars will collide, gravitational waves shatter the space-time, the career of the sun and distort planet and plunge the Earth into either the sun or move away from the sun, so they of flying asteroid collisions and other waste can be taken.

fire, fire everywhere - what about the ice? Well, then we have to wait real end of the world - the end of the whole universe. The mysterious "dark energy" that preceded whips the expansion of the universe ever, suggests the conclusion that it will expand more and more and more. At the end there is the Kältetod . The last stars are extinguished, the atoms fall apart, a dark, empty, infinite gauge on the absolute zero (-273 ° C) to meet us yawn. So the world ends in the ice. But until then, we still have a lot of time at each other weapons of mass destruction to slaughter, to pollute the earth beyond endurance and succumbing to new generations of viruses. So let's enjoy the happy prospect!

Oh - the next date of would-be prophets of doom for the expected end of the world currently is the year 2012 . Gaudeamus igitur!