Posted on 07/15/2010 5:17:18 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Scientists wielding a powerful supercomputer have cracked the mystery of which came first, the chicken or the egg.
The short answer: the chicken.
The long answer is contained in the analysis called Structural Control of Crystal Nuclei by Eggshell Protein by British scientists Colin Freeman and John Harding of the University of Sheffield and David Quigley and P. Mark Rodger of the University of Warwick, published in the current journal Angewandte Chemie.
“It had long been suspected that the egg came first, but now we have the scientific proof that shows in fact the chicken came first,” said Freeman.
Sort of.
What came first was a particular chicken protein found in the bird’s ovaries that governs crystal growth and how it spawns an eggshell overnight.
The protein ovocledidin-17 (OC-17) is found only in the hard part of the shell, but scientists have long wondered what its role has been in the creation of calcite crystals and an eggshell.
Using the U.K. national supercomputer in Edinburgh to simulate how the protein clamps on to a surface, the researchers also noticed that OC-17 sometimes just falls off on its own.
The research took 5 million core hours of computer simulations using a tool called metadynamics, the team reported.
What evolves is “an incredibly elegant process” of formation, detaching and more formation that manages to produce an eggshell within 24 hours.
That knowledge, said Harding, “can also give clues towards designing new materials and processes.”
Whether the Warwich-Sheffield solution definitively answers the age-old conundrum remains to be seen.
A few years ago, a British geneticist, a philosopher and a chicken farmer pooled their resources and concluded that the egg came first. The first egg to have the DNA of a chicken would hatch into a chicken, said professor John Brookfield of the University of Nottingham in 2006.
Chimed in scientific philosophy professor David Papineau of King’s College London:
“If a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatched, that would surely be an ostrich egg, not a kangaroo egg.”
Brookfield and Papineau were speaking at the behest of Disney as a promotion for the film Chicken Little. But their theory has been the prevailing one.
According to How Stuff Works, “Two non-chickens mated and the DNA in their new zygote contained the mutation(s) that produced the first true chicken. Prior to that first true chicken zygote, there were only non-chickens.”
Alice Shirrell Kaswell took a different tack in her 2003 experiment. Using the U.S. Postal Service, she separately mailed a chicken and an egg.
The chicken arrived first.
I wonder if the slimists believe infants of any species slithered from the slime first?
I could have told you the answer to this question right off the top of my head: 42.
Of course. I bet they still get billed/budgeted by the core hour :).
Genesis 1:21-23 “So God created great sea creatures and every living things that moves, with thich the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
As one, among many, who believes the Bible from beginning to end; I knew that the chicken came first as did the Israelites of Moses time. It is good to see that some others are finding out the truth - even if it is about 4000 years later.
By the way, 800 BC all who believed the Bible knew it was round as well. For Isaiah stated that fact when God led him to write Isaiah 40:22 where he stated that the earth was a ‘sphere.’ (Interesting that it took many centuries for others to find that out as well.)
Goo-goo-ga-joob!
There are many things than man believes, religiously speaking. When we finally go Home we will all find out we were wrong about almost everything. And, He will lovingly set us straight.
As to which came first? To spend much time at all pondering this age-old perplexity is futile. The answer (even IF all agreed upon a particular conclusion) would not matter in the least.
Nope. I was there, and I'll tell you how it happened.
The Lobster clamped onto my nether regions, and after I got it loose, I threw it into the campfire.
One of the wolves pulled it out and started eating it. The wolf had cracked the shell, and we could see the meat sticking out. So we grabbed it away, and ... the rest is history.
So, Thank the Wolves for Seafood.
The article is a bunch of semantic nonsense.
Who wasn't, back in those days?
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I found this ‘knowledge engine’ site.
You give it something to calculate, it gives you an answer.
I asked it “what is the meaning of everything”
It’s response: 42
I kid you not.
Unless you're a chicken.
So... there used to be non-chicken farmers?
That's the real answer.
Thus... the comments.
No it doesn't. Genesis only discusses the "what", not the "how".
The same guy who thought an oyster looked tasty.
Genesis is WHAT and HOW. It is the Word of God.
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