Posted on 12/31/2005 1:32:58 AM PST by neverdem
Partial Ingredients For DNA And Protein Found Around Star NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered some of life's most basic ingredients in the dust swirling around a young star. The ingredients - gaseous precursors to DNA and protein - were detected in the star's terrestrial planet zone, a region where rocky planets such as Earth are thought to be born.
The findings represent the first time that these gases, called acetylene and hydrogen cyanide, have been found in a terrestrial planet zone outside of our own.
"This infant system might look a lot like ours did billions of years ago, before life arose on Earth," said Fred Lahuis of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands and the Dutch space research institute called SRON. Lahuis is lead author of a paper to be published in the Jan. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Lahuis and his colleagues spotted the organic, or carbon-containing, gases around a star called IRS 46. The star is in the Ophiuchus (pronounced OFF-ee-YOO-kuss), or "snake carrier," constellation about 375 light-years from Earth. This constellation harbors a huge cloud of gas and dust in the process of a major stellar baby boom. Like most of the young stars here and elsewhere, IRS 46 is circled by a flat disk of spinning gas and dust that might ultimately clump together to form planets.
When the astronomers probed this star's disk with Spitzer's powerful infrared spectrometer instrument, they were surprised to find the molecular "barcodes" of large amounts of acetylene and hydrogen cyanide gases, as well as carbon dioxide gas. The team observed 100 similar young stars, but only one, IRS 46, showed unambiguous signs of the organic mix.
"The star's disk was oriented in just the right way to allow us to peer into it," said Lahuis.
The Spitzer data also revealed that the organic gases are hot. So hot, in fact, that they are most likely located near the star, about the same distance away as Earth is from our sun.
"The gases are very warm, close to or somewhat above the boiling point of water on Earth," said Dr. Adwin Boogert of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "These high temperatures helped to pinpoint the location of the gases in the disk."
Organic gases such as those found around IRS 46 are found in our own solar system, in the atmospheres of the giant planets and Saturn's moon Titan, and on the icy surfaces of comets. They have also been seen around massive stars by the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory, though these stars are thought to be less likely than sun-like stars to form life-bearing planets.
Here on Earth, the molecules are believed to have arrived billions of years ago, possibly via comets or comet dust that rained down from the sky. Acetylene and hydrogen cyanide link up together in the presence of water to form some of the chemical units of life's most essential compounds, DNA and protein. These chemical units are several of the 20 amino acids that make up protein and one of the four chemical bases that make up DNA.
"If you add hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and water together in a test tube and give them an appropriate surface on which to be concentrated and react, you'll get a slew of organic compounds including amino acids and a DNA purine base called adenine," said Dr. Geoffrey Blake of Caltech, a co-author of the paper. "And now, we can detect these same molecules in the planet zone of a star hundreds of light-years away."
Follow-up observations with the W.M. Keck Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii confirmed the Spitzer findings and suggested the presence of a wind emerging from the inner region of IRS 46's disk. This wind will blow away debris in the disk, clearing the way for the possible formation of Earth-like planets.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. JPL is a division of Caltech. Spitzer's infrared spectrograph was built by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Its development was led by Dr. Jim Houck of Cornell.
For graphics and more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer . For more information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit http://www.nasa.gov/home/ .
Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here.
This story has been adapted from a news release issued by National Aeronautics And Space Administration.
You appear to be struggling with reading comprehension, much as you did with the Dover transcripts, and Behe's words in Darwin's Black Box. Narby said no such thing.
Where exactly is this 'information' in DNA?
Is it in the genes?
The introns?
Highly conserved non-coding areas?
Non-conserved non-coding areas?
Some combination of locations?
How do we determine this 'information'?
Is there a calculation that tells us how much information is contained by DNA?
Is there a calculation that will tell us how much 'information' is needed to evolve?
Is there some way to show conclusively that 'information' cannot arise through natural means such as replication errors and selection?
You creationists seem to know all the highly-contrived code words, but do you know what they mean? Do you know their use as advertised? Can you describe their function to someone that does not know them.
Throwing around some scientific sounding catch phrases such as 'information', 'complexity', 'random', 'probability', 'order' does not represent an argument. If you feel they have any real world validity then - apply them.
Define 'order'. What do you mean when you say 'order'? Can 'ordering' occur in nature?
How much 'ordering' did the molecules of C2H2 and HCN have to go through to reach their present state?
Vectors dear fellow, vectors. If raster information was used, it would be enormous.
Been there, done that, forgotten all 20 years ago.
"Natural", as understood by ID theory (and most normal people), is contradistinguished from "intelligent" or "artificial". As in: a food product that isn't "all natural" contains ingredients that were intelligently designed at the chemical level.
Now I know this has been explained to you more than once. Ironic, isn't it, given how your tagline complains about incurable ignoramuses?
Umm, there's just a slight bit of difference between getting involved in litigation for the sake of forcing an issue (as the ecowackos do) and getting involved in it for the sake of preventing the issue from being forced on an unwilling populace. Remember that it wasn't the ID'ers who brought on the litigation in the Dover case.
It's quite analogous to the difference between using a gun to attack people and using it to defend against an attack.
Actually, the Thomas More Law Center, which offered to defend the Dover School board for free if they were subsequently sued after making adopting the ID policy, had been "shopping" for a school board for years precisely for the purpose of generating a "test case" for ID. The fact that the Dover Board contacted TMLC before they ever voted to adopt the ID policy further shows this was the intent of the IDers all along. DI was also involved long before the case was filed in court, so it isn't like these folks were minding their business and suddenly got dragged into court one day out of the blue.
I'll stipulate that not all IF proponents are looking for a test case, but in this instance, the record is abundantly clear that both TNLC and DI were looking for a school Board to adopt an ID policy, thus baiting someone to file a lawsuit to stop it, so that they could have their day in court. They can't one the one hand actively seek a compliant school board to generate the test case they were itching for, and then when it goes bad, blame the plaintiffs for having brought the action in response to the School Board's "conspiracy" with TMLC and DI to get a legal action going in the first place.
They knew, in other words, that there were plaintiffs aplenty who'd be willing to use the courts (instead of the democratic process) to force their views on schools, so they decided to take a stand against it. Looking for a test case is just a way of standing up for oneself against those who refuse to mind their own business. There's no comparison between that and an environmental group hauling a logging business into court to try and shut it down.
The difference is that ID groups can advance their views in the public sphere just fine without the courts getting involved (and even without the same kind of lavish funding that environmental groups receive), whereas ecowackos and other leftists need the courts to impose their agenda.
The Grand Master requests that I wish you all a Happy New Year!
T'would be nice if the Grand Master would move the archives out of the Tortoise Wing in the coming year. Of course, his "Happy New Year" is also nice, too.
Plaintiffs' views had long been "present" in the Dover school system before this case was ever contemplated by plaintiffs; they thus had no need go to court to get them put there. It was instead a group of people on the Dover School Board, working in collusion with the TMLC and DI, who sought to PROVOKE litigation, in order to get courts to permit ID to be brought into the science class. You can't blame the plaintiffs for bringing a legal challenge in response to a course of action which the Dover School Board's own attorney warned them was doomed to litigation and failure, because (in his professional opinion) the courts would perceive it as a violation of the rights some members of the the Dover Community.
For a better insight into this, I refer you to the text of the Dover decision:
Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt anCase 4:04-cv-02688-JEJ Document 342 Filed 12/20/2005 Page 137 of 139
imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources. To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I,§ 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs' rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendants' actions. Defendants' actions in violation of Plaintiffs' civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs' attorneys' services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs' constitutional rights.
Case 4:04-cv-02688-JEJ Document 342 Filed 12/20/2005 Page 138 of 139
As you can see the court held that the defendants and their ID-crazed advisors were ultimately responsible for provoking this litigation, and further that the Dover School Board's actions were violative of the constitutionally protected rights of plaintiffs, under BOTH the US and Pennsylvania constitutions. The defendants and their defenders can spin this however they like, but it doesn't change reality embodied in the court's decision.
Please also take note of the fact that in pre-trial pleadings, instead of arguing that they shouldn't even be in court at all, defendants instead willingly sought to present their case, and even stipulated that "Lemon" was the standard by which the case should be decided. In short, the defendants in this case, to paraphrase Mencken, "got what they asked for, and they got it good and hard." Under such circumstances as these, it would be grossly unfair, inaccurate, and ultimately disingenuous to attribute the litigation to the machinations of plaintiffs, when it was the defendants who, by their actions, chose the time, place, and circumstances of litigation.
Sounds familiar; who was it who said 9/11 was "punishment" inflicted by God for all the "homos" and other "sins" of America...?
In other words, they wanted the court to acknowledge that there's a limit to the courts' authority to meddle in cases like this. No comparison at all to those who want to use a court to impose an agenda that would never get anywhere at all through the political process.
(quoting the judge: )
"Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy."
Apart from his obvious lack of impartiality (is it really his place to be saying whether or not a particular policy is "prudent"? - in fact the whole paragraph reeks of judicial unprofessionalism and lack of restraint), this is horrid logic on his part. Of course there were activists on the ID side. There's nothing wrong with being an activist per se. He's trying to pretend that because one of the litigants was activist, he therefore wasn't being activist. Doesn't work that way.
Please also take note of the fact that in pre-trial pleadings, instead of arguing that they shouldn't even be in court at all, defendants instead willingly sought to present their case, and even stipulated that "Lemon" was the standard by which the case should be decided.
Of course they were going to argue that. When's the last time a lower-court judge ever went against a supreme-court precedent? They may have misread their chances of getting a halfway constitutional ruling, but they at least had some grounding in political reality.
Is there any doubt in your mind, any doubt at all, that they would have much preferred that the courts not get involved in this sort of thing at all? That's what distinguishes them from leftist groups, who can't get anywhere at all without the courts.
This statement contradicts the defendant's stipulation that "Lemon" was the appropriate standard for deciding this case. If you want the court to rule that it lacks authority to rule, you don't stipulate to a precedent that gives the court the authority it needs to rule in the case! Stipulating to Lemon says to the court: "we, the defendants, agree the court has the authority establish by the Lemon case to rule in this matter." Furthermore, I'd be careful about arguing that that is unlike an organization trying to get courts to mandate that which "... would never get anywhere at all through the political process" -- considering that the ALL the ID advocates on the Dover School Board up for re-election in Novemeber were beaten.
Is there any doubt in your mind, any doubt at all, that they would have much preferred that the courts not get involved in this sort of thing at all?
I hope this is an attempt at New Year's eve humor.
Of course I believe the TMLC and DI wanted to get the courts involved, and that they talked the Dover School Board into being the guinea pig for their legal experiment, which blew up in their face, because that's what the overwhelming body of evidence in this case indicates. The Dover School Board consulted with their attorney BEFORE they adopted the ID policy, and the attorney warned them they would 1) get sued, and 2) would lose. If they sincerely wanted to stay out of court, they would have have dropped the ID policy right there, BUT THEY CHOOSE NOT TO. TMLC has been shopping ID around to school boards for years precisely in order to provoke litigation -- that was the goal of all of this stuff!
Look, nothing I'm going to say is going to change your mind, so instead, I strongly urge you to read the Dover decision in it's entirety. You owe it to yourself to see what really transpired in that courtroom, and to fully appreciate the reasoning behind the judge's ruling. Judge Jones is not some sort of liberal lunatic judge; he made no new law in his ruling; he's a conservative judge appointed by Bush to the Federal bench.
Enjoy the New Year....
Cheers!
placemarker
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