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To: eddie2
I doubt you can expect that Nobel Prize just yet. The mutation rate for unicellulars is usually a lot better than 1 per day, much less 1 per year. We're talking about organisms that in many cases tend to divide every few minutes.

And then you have that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. And then you have that lots of experiments are going on in parallel with the best out-competing the rest.

Your model doesn't look very realistic.

20 posted on 04/11/2006 6:27:45 PM PDT by VadeRetro (I have the updated "Your brain on creationism" on my homepage.)
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To: VadeRetro

You will have to refresh my memory. I thought the earth was supposed to be about 5 billion years old and that life started about one billion years ago.

Are you saying that cells mutate everytime they divide? It seems that with a mutation rate like you describe life forms would be constantly mutating into other forms in very short periods of time.


26 posted on 04/11/2006 6:38:25 PM PDT by eddie2 (we're being tested)
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To: VadeRetro

Don't forget, those mutations had to occur within, lets
say, the first billion years or so..you can't use the
whole 4.5 billion years...so if you work it out at
1 division every 20 minutes (per cell), and count the
numbers of cells, and the successful mutation rate
(i.e. the one that doesn't get corrected by correction
enzymes....oh, by the way, where did THEY come from?),
factor in bio. death rates of cells, DE-EVOLUTION (i.e.
DNA/RNA can back mutate too, can't it?), weather,
ozone, cosmic rays, heat, oxidizing molecules, precipitation problems...that should give you some idea of
how many mutations, and how much time, and how much
circumstances are needed. Appealing to time (Newtonian,
I suppose in your model) is not always going to help.
Someone has said that given enough time, the most
likely thing is going to occur. That usually involves
entropy, and destruction of formed materials. Some people think that given enough time, the most unlikely thing will occur.
P.S. what was the food source of the original bacteria...
did they come with biochemical instructions on how to
synthesis food, and exchange electrons, like from
O2, or Sulfur, or arsenic? ,....etc????
Or did the ones which had those properties already find "themselves" successful???? Chicken or egg,
enzyme, or DNA?


30 posted on 04/11/2006 6:44:44 PM PDT by Getready
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To: VadeRetro
Fastest doubling time on record is 8 minutes, Bacillus stearothermophilus. "Typical" bacteria are usually around 1 hour doubling time. Fast eucaryotes double typically once a day.
54 posted on 04/11/2006 7:37:34 PM PDT by furball4paws (Awful Offal)
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