Here are some news items that may be of interest to those who have read my previous articles on Amazonia, the fitness environment, and Fibonacci numbers. They are united by the theme of “hidden” things that are now revealed.
city hidden in the jungle
In 2022 (here), we shared news about an “amazing” discovery made using LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) in the Amazon rainforest. Forest-penetrating techniques have uncovered “geoglyphs” (giant structures) built by a previously unknown group of people. Last fall (here), I updated the article with a new estimate that there may be thousands more to discover.This was a classic test Design reasoning: Eliminate chance with a specified complexity and small probability.
It has since been reported that a ‘huge ancient city’ has been revealed by LIDAR BBC News, explored by ground personnel. The large site contains around 6,000 mounds, probably the foundations of houses.
“It changes our view of Amazonian culture. Most people imagine small groups, perhaps naked, living in huts and clearing the land. This shows Ancient people lived in complex urban societies” says co-author Antoine Dollison.
This city was founded approximately 2,500 years ago, people lived there for 1,000 yearsaccording to archaeologists.
difficult to estimate accurately how many people Scientists say it once lived there If not 100,000 then definitely in the 10,000 range. [Emphasis added.]
look new scientistArticle about this discovery, including extensive LIDAR scans of the scene. moreover,
In 2015, Rostain’s team conducted an aerial survey using LIDAR, a laser scanning technology that can create detailed 3D maps of the surface beneath most vegetation, revealing features that are normally invisible to the eye. did. The findings, only now made public, show that the settlement was much more extensive than anyone realized.….
The survey also revealed: straight road network It is made by digging out the soil and piling it up on the sides.The maximum extension period is at least 25 kilometersHowever, it may continue beyond the surveyed area.
Jay Silverstein, an archaeologist known for discovering hidden artifacts in places like the Amazon, wrote this month: conversation About these surprising discoveries. The title of his essay promises big news: “A valley of lost cities discovered in the Amazon — technological advances in archeology are only the beginning of the discoveries.”
A valley of lost cities has been discovered in the Ecuadorian Amazon. When you hear about discoveries like this, you might imagine archaeologists with chisels and brushes or explorers in pith helmets wandering through ruins deep in the woods. Instead, there is no need to brave the dangers of the forest. Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) revealed a network of buried roads and earth mounds.
The point of exploration science is to uncover what was previously hidden. Whether it’s to the edge of space with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to the bottom of the ocean with an underwater autonomous vehicle (UAV), or through the canopy of the densest forests with Lidar. We are discovering things that reshape our understanding of the world.
Seeing a city-sized structure beneath the forest canopy for the first time is like finding the key to a code text or the numbers in a stereogram. Silverstein believes scientists are running out of things to discover. LIDAR and aerial search systems have revolutionized archeology, but the need for ground-based search and excavation will always exist. This means there will continue to be plenty of opportunities for design discovery. (This does not mean that designing a forest leaf with an ATP synthase motor does not warrant its own design inferences.)
Hidden assumptions in the fitness industry
Like letters that pass through the mail, scientific papers can contradict each other.Author of Oxford University paper International Journal of Organic Evolutionhad thoughtlessly assumed there was wisdom in Wright’s “fitness landscape” metaphor, but apparently did not realize it. PNAS A paper last month debunked that (see my post about that paper here). Indeed, authors may innocently miss the work of others due to the time lag between research, writing, and publication, even if they conduct a literature search, but this shows the problem. It has been tampered with.
Oxford evolution The 18-author paper “Fitness Landscapes of Darwin’s Finch Communities” builds its argument on the concept of Gaussian landscapes, failing to recognize that landscapes are flat with trapdoors (according to the paper) ) PNAS authors) and believe that the “porous landscape” represents a “dominant evolutionary process.”
Although drivers of adaptive radiation have often been conceptualized through the concept of “adaptive landscapes,” formal empirical estimation of adaptive landscapes for natural adaptive radiations has not yet been performed. proved elusive. Here we use his 17 year dataset of Darwin’s Gypsy Finches (Genus Geospiza.) estimated the apparent lifespan of individuals in relation to beak characteristics at an intensively studied site on Santa Cruz Island (Galapagos).
They are eager to perpetuate this symbol of evolution that Jonathan Wells debunked 24 years ago. Now, with the collapse of Wright’s “fitness his landscape” metaphor (at least a smooth Gaussian shape with curved hills and valleys), their research has been doubly debunked. It’s kind of sad. They mention fitness peaks 90 times, fitness valleys 16 times, landscapes 154 times, and “fitness” 194 times.It would be another thing for them to claim to be Doctor Man. other. They incorrectly assessed that the landscape metaphor was “full of holes.” PNAS However, these authors do not seem to be aware of the problem that composite traits cannot gain fitness in flat terrain. They can only disappear through one of the trapdoors.
One wonders how long it will take for the landscape myth (that organisms gradually become fitter through natural selection) to collapse. As this new paper suggests, the “landscape of fitness” metaphor is so useful to Darwinists that it may remain a useful lie for some time. Perhaps Dr. Wells could use this as another example of zombie science.
The hidden glory of infrared light
The James Webb Space Telescope mission team released a blockbuster image set at the end of January. This is a catalog of spiral galaxies displayed in exquisite detail. NASA scientists are combining images from the Hubble Space Telescope with data from other instruments such as the Very Large Telescope’s Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, which includes observations in the ultraviolet. This has further enhanced the splendor of the gallery. What you can see and the light of radio waves. ” The combined dataset provided a colorful, high-resolution image gallery that fascinated astronomers and delighted the public.
The caption for one image of spiral galaxy NGC 628 (top photo) includes the note that “the spiral thread-like structure resembles a cross-section of a nautilus shell.”This reminds me of a post here evolution news About the mysterious ubiquity of phenomena exhibiting the Fibonacci sequence (here, here, here, here, here). Why should a nautilus shell mimic the structure of a spiral galaxy that differs in size by many orders of magnitude? Even though modelers have tried to explain an example of a plant stem, as mentioned in this link However, this question remains unresolved.
In the meantime, enjoy these images from NASA. They are amazing! Only a finely tuned universe could produce structures so grand, so glorious, so humble.