Monday, March 28, 2022
There's No Good Evidence Genetic Engineering Can Yield Animals With Better Intelligence or Better Memory
Thursday, March 24, 2022
Be Very Wary of Astronomers Talking Of Prebiotic Molecules in Space
The scientists who call themselves SETI scientists use giant radio telescopes to search for radio signals coming from other planets. This method has been used for 60 years, and has not produced any promising results. The same scientists use optical telescopes to search for signs of optical radio beacons or signs of engineering by super-advanced civilizations. Such methods have also failed.
Such methods have been used fruitlessly to a gigantic extent. An article in Scientific American has a headline of "Alien Supercivilizations Absent from 100,000 Nearby Galaxies." Below are some of the failed searches:
- The Southern SERENDIP project surveying a large portion of the sky, the portion depicted in Figure 2 of the paper here.
- A SETI project surveying a significant portion of the sky, the portion depicted in Figure 2 of the paper here.
- The all-sky SETI survey discussed here, which operated continuously for more than four years.
- The two-year southern sky SETI search discussed here, which observed for 9000 hours and "covered the sky almost two times."
- A recent failed search of 10 million stars using the latest and greatest technology.
"The carbon-rich complex molecules that are essential for the kind of life we know about, are fantastically abundant. They litter the universe. We see them in asteroids, and comets, and the moons and the outer solar system, and even in the cool dark spaces between the stars. So the stuff of life is everywhere."
He thereby led his listeners to think that “stuff of life” has been discovered in outer space. No such thing has occurred. The “stuff of life” would be things such as nucleic acids and functional proteins, and they have never been discovered in outer space. There are virtually no signs of the building blocks of life in outer space. None of the twenty amino acids used by living things has been discovered in space, other than the two simplest amino acids, glycine and alanine (which were not found in space while Sagan lived). The claimed detections of glycine and alanine are "tiniest trace amount" things that are rather dubious, and we cannot be sure that such things were really found. Sagan frequently repeated this "stuff of life is everywhere" falsehood in a variety of places.
"All RNA clones were prepared from the plasmids by in vitro transcription with T7 RNA polymerase (Takara) after digestion with Sma I (Takara). The remaining plasmids were treated with DNase I (Takara), and the transcribed RNAs were purified using the RNeasy Mini kit (Qiagen)...164 rounds of replication were performed, started with the RNA population in round 74 of the main experiment (total 240 rounds). In round 1, 10 μl of reaction mixture containing 1 nM HL0–0 and the translation system was vigorously mixed with 1 ml of buffer-saturated oil using a homogenizer (POLYTRON PT-1300D, KINEMATICA) at 16,000 rpm for 1 min on ice to prepare water-in-oil droplets....Next, the droplets were incubated at 37 °C for 5 h to induce RNA replication through protein translation. From round 2 to 240, 200 μl of water-in-oil droplets in the previous round, 10 μl of the translation system, and 800 μl of buffer-saturated oil were homogenized by the same method to prepare a new droplet population, followed by incubation under the same condition (at 37 °C for 5 h) to induce RNA replication....The recovered solution was mixed with four volumes of diethyl ether, centrifuged (11,000 × g, 1 min) to remove the diethyl ether phase, and purified using RNeasy Mini kit (Qiagen). Obtained RNA samples were then subjected to 8% polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in 1× TBE buffer."
There were many other further manual manipulations and high-tech interventions to produce the uninteresting results reported in the paper, which our hugely false news story has told us involves RNA that can "replicate, diversify, and develop complexity all on its own." That's as misleading as describing a printing plant and saying it shows that books can make copies of themselves "all on their own." No actual functional complexity was produced through all this complex manual and hi-tech manipulation. No natural replication of RNA was observed. There is no truth to claims that the paper does something to support the "RNA World" hypothesis about life's origin.
A spacecraft gathered a mere 5 grams of material from an asteroid, and the material was brought back to Earth. A recent article on www.space.com says, "Pristine asteroid Ryugu contains amino acids that are building blocks of life." Amino acids are not actually buiding blocks of life, but merely the building blocks of the building blocks of one-celled life. The building blocks of microscopic life are functional protein molecules, which have never been detected in space.
The scientific paper says that only two of the twenty amino acids used by earthly proteins were found in the asteroid: the two simplest amino acids, glycine and alanine. In what abundance were such amino acids found? The paper does not say, and we therefore cannot have much confidence in such claims. We may presume that any traces of such amino acids were merely the tiniest traces, such as I part in a billion. If the authors had found any higher abundance, they no doubt would have mentioned the abundance found. Unfortunately, when something is detected in only the tiniest trace amounts, or when paper authors decline to mention in what abundance something was found, we should always doubt the claim that a detection was made. It's too easy to misidentify (or get something from trace earthly contamination) when you are dealing with the tiniest trace amounts.
An example of the "give you the wrong idea" news coverage about prebiotic molecules in space is a recent NASA page asking the rhetorical question "Could the blueprint for life have been generated in asteroids?" The idea that DNA is a blueprint for making living things is a mythical claim that scientists have long advanced for ideological reasons. Having only low-level chemical information, DNA does not have any blueprint or recipe or algorithm for making an organism or any of its organs or any of its cells.
The article refers to some new analysis of old meteorites, one that reports finding two prebiotic molecules that were not previously found when such meteorites were analyzed. This reported discovery is very questionable. If such molecules were there, why would they have not shown up in previous investigations of the meteorites? The NASA page conveniently fails to mention the abundances reported. When we look at the scientific paper, we find that we have a mere claim that the tiniest trace abundances were found. The paper says, 'Other pyrimidine nucleobases, such as cytosine and thymine, as well as their analogs containing a pyrimidine ring, were identified by their chromatographic retention times, accurate mass measurements of their parent masses, and mass fragmentation patterns in the MS/MS measurements (Supplementary Table 1), with concentrations ranging from 0.02 to 6 ppb (Table 2)." That is an abundance of less than 7 parts per billion (ppb means parts per billion). We should not have great confidence in such detections, since the reported abundances are so very small.
Like the NASA page, a press release news story on this paper totally fails to mention the trivial abundances reported (less than 7 parts per billion), and incorrectly states this:
"We still don't know just how the first life emerged on Earth. One suggestion is that the building blocks arrived here from space; now, a new study of several carbon-rich meteorites has added weight to this idea."
No, since the study reports only negligible abundances of less than 7 parts per billion, it does not add weight to the idea that life arose by building blocks arising from space.
Sunday, March 20, 2022
Any Pathway to an Afterlife Realm Implies the Possibility of Reverse Visits
The site www.archive.org is an invaluable resource for scholars of psychic phenomena and the paranormal. Using the site, you can find very many books written by witnesses of the paranormal and scholars of the paranormal. The full text of very many of these books can be read by a user who does not even bother to register at the site. Examples of such books are below:
- The astronomer Camille Flammarion's monumental three-volume work Death and Its Mystery (which you can read here, here and here);
- Flammarion's also monumental opus The Unknown;
- Catherine Crowe's long book The Night Side of Nature;
- The often cited work two-volume Phantasms of the Living by Gurney, Podmore and Myers, which you can read here and here;
- The long and very fascinating work Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World by former US congressman Robert Dale Owen;
- The Debatable Land Between This World and the Next by the same author, a worthy successor volume of equal length;
- The Voices by Vice-Admiral William Usborne Moore, a fascinating account of mysterious auditory phenomena during seances;
- On the Edge of the Etheric by James Arthur Findlay, a book on the same topic;
- The Proof Palpable of Immortality by Epes Sargeant;
- Planchette, or the Despair of Science, a longer work on paranormal phenomena by the same author;
- Natural and Mesmeric Clairvoyance by James Esdaille MD, written by a doctor who was very successful in getting very large numbers of patients to be pain-free during surgery without anesthesia (using only hypnosis);
- The very long two-volume work Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death by Frederic Myers, which you can read here and here;
- From the Unconscious to the Conscious by Gustave Geley;
- The Widow's Mite and Other Psychic Phenomena by Isaac Funk, the same Funk of the famous Funk and Wagnall's dictionary;
- The Watseka Wonder by E.W. Stevens, a contemporary account of one of the most notable cases in the history of the paranormal, discussed here;
- Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occurrences by W. F. Prince, a book documenting how countless illustrious names have reported paranormal experiences;
- Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism by Sir William Crookes, one of the most accomplished physicists of the nineteenth century;
- The Survival of Man by physicist Sir Oliver Lodge;
- Out-of-the-Body Experiences by Robert Crookall;
- More Astral Projections by the same author, containing some fascinating cases I discuss here;
- What Happens When You Die by the same author;
- Dead and Gone by James S. Pollack, a very readable description of paranormal phenomena;
- Ghosts and Poltergeists by Herbert Thurston and J.H. Crehan, one of the most in-depth examinations of poltergeist cases;
- Phenomena of Materialization by Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, discussing very interesting results described here;
- Letters to a Candid Inquirer, on Animal Magnetism, by William Gregory M.D. professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh University, a book abundantly documenting the reality of clairvoyance, as discussed here;
- New Frontiers of the Mind by J. B. Rhine, the foremost twentieth century researcher on ESP;
- After Death -- What? by Cesare Lombroso;
- Thirty Years of Psychical Research by Charles Richet, a Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine;
- The Seeress of Provost by physician Justinus Kerner, an astonishing case history described here;
- There Is No Death by Florence Marryat;
- Mysterious Psychic Forces, another great work on the paranormal featuring abundant first-hand testimony by the astronomer Camille Flammarion;
- Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery by Casper S. Yost, a book documenting one of the most interesting cases of the twentieth century;
- Seen and Unseen by Emily Katherine Bates, a remarkable account of a woman's observations of paranormal phenomena around the world;
- The Proofs of Life After Death, a balanced book presenting the opinions of many scientists, heavy thinkers and investigators regarding whether there is good evidence for life after death;
- An Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism by the Baron Dupotet de Sennevoy, a book that abundantly testifies to the reality of clairvoyance during hypnotic trances;
- The "Report on Spiritualism" by the Dialectical Society of London, a document of more than 400 pages containing some of the most shocking and interesting testimony ever given (the contents of which are discussed here).
- Incidents in My Life by D. D. Home, one of the most famous mediums;
- The Case for Astral Projection by Slyvan Muldoon;
- Supernormal Faculties in Man by Eugene Osty, one of the most carefully documented accounts of clairvoyance, including the very interesting case discussed here;
- Man and His Relations by Samuel Byron Brittan, a very long and little-known classic of parapsychology with contents described here.
- Glimpses of the Unseen by B. F. Austin, a 500+ page book documenting a great variety of paranormal experiences;
- The 633-page book "Psychical and Supernormal Phenomena, Their Observation and Experimentation" by Dr. Paul Joire, which you can read here (it includes the extremely interesting case I discuss here);
- Studies in the Out-lying Fields of Psychic Science by Hudson Tuttle;
- Mollie Fancher, the Brooklyn Enigma, a long case history of one of history's most astonishing clairvoyants;
- China's Super Psychics by Paul Dong and Thomas E. Raffill;
- Man's Survival After Death by Charles L.Tweedale, a long book that includes many cases from the annals of the Society for Psychical Research, as well as many fascinating first-hand cases of paranormal observation by Tweedale and his family;
- Psychic Science: An Introduction and Contribution to the Experimental Study of Psychical Phenomena by Emile Boirac, which you can read here.
If you take the time to register at www.archive.org, which does not take long, the door will be opened to a huge number of more modern books, which you can "borrow" on an hourly basis simply by pressing a Borrow button after logging in. By clicking on the Borrow button after registering, you will be able to read important works on the paranormal such as these:
- Life After Life by Raymond Moody;
- Hidden Channels of the Mind by Louisa Rhine, who was one of the leading collectors of accounts of spontaneous telepathy and spontaneous precognition;
- Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder;
- The Gift: ESP, the Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People by Sally Rhine Feather and Michael Schmicker;
- What Happens When You Die by Robert Crookall PhD, which contains many interesting accounts of out-of-body experiences;
- Out-of-Body Experiences: A Handbook by Janet Lee Mitchell;
- Extraordinary Experiences: Personal Accounts of the Paranormal in Canada by John Robert Colombo;
- At the Hour of Death by Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson.
An aspect of www.archive.org that I particularly like is that there are individual URLs for each page. So if a scholar is citing page 347 of some book, he can include a link that takes the reader exactly to that specific page.
A technique I recommend for serious students of psychic phenomena is to read works at www.archive.org, and look for references in such works to other books that sound worth reading. When you hear an interesting book mentioned, then look and see whether that book is also available for free at www.archive.org. If so, save the URL for that other book in a reading list to be finished later.
I have recently found quite a few interesting works at www.archive.org on the topic of what is called after-death communication. In such an event someone may experience some mysterious effect he may regard as having come from some person who died. For example:
- Someone may report that while awake he heard the voice of someone who died.
- Someone may report that while awake he saw some human form that looked like someone who died.
- Someone may report some mysterious hard-to-explain event occurring at the time someone died or shortly thereafter.
- Someone may report having some "feeling of presence" in which he somehow gets the idea that some deceased person is near.
- Someone may report some very hard-to-explain event that he regards as some kind of sign of manifestation of someone who died, which may occur months or years after the person died.
- Someone may have an unusually high number of dreams about someone who died.
- Someone may have some particularly vivid dream about someone who died.