Was It Designed?

Was it Designed?



Biomimetics. A lot has been said about this topic, and there are some really nice threads here on ATS about it. Basically, it is man copying the design of nature to make better things. Take as a simple example. Velcro. The Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral studied the little burs that clung to his clothes and noticed that they had tiny hooks. He spent the next eight years trying to reproduce it.

How was the burr designed? If it took an engineer eight years to copy the design of nature, is it reasonable to conclude that blind chance did it?

Hopefully this will be a series of posts that will investigate fascinating details about different animals and creatures on earth, and leave us wondering: how did that come about?

The Head of a Woodpecker


How many g-forces would it take to give a person a concussion? About 80 or so, give or take. The woodpecker’s head can withstand g-forces equivalent of 1,200!

Looking closely at this marvelous creature (that drills with its bill against wood) the following has been observed:
Its bill is strong and flexible.
A hyoid (this is bone and tissue that encircles the skull).
A place in the skull that is made of spongy bone.
A small space for cerebral-spinal fluid going between the skull and the brain.

Each of these components put together make it so that the woodpecker’s head absorbs the shock received when pecking at a tree, at up to twenty times a second.

Talking of biomimetics, copying the design of this marvelous creature’s head, a casing has been developed that can take g-forces up to 60,000!

Kim Blackburn, engineer at Cranfield University in the UK says that this is “a fascinating example of how nature develops highly advanced structures in combination to solve what at first seems to be an impossible challenge.



The Paper Wasp

The paper wasp gets its name because, as its name gives away, it creates its nests with its own special paper that it creates itself. How does it manufacture this paper? It collects fibers from different plants and from dead wood. This dead wood could be from any on a number of places. Afterwards, it chews it adding a sticky saliva to it, high in proteins. When the applied paste dries, it creates a light, firm, and tough paper. Adding to this, there is a property in the saliva that allows the paper to generate and absorb heat, regulating temperature.
After building its nest with its mouth, little by little, the result is a waterproof, and hexagonal nest. The hexagon gives it a wonderful strength and efficiency.

If the wasp lives in a more humid content, it merely applies more saliva, which has water-resistant properties as well.

Interestingly the manufacturing process of the wasp to create paper leaves no pollution. Something that humankind has not solved. We leave behind pollutants in the fabricating of paper that contaminate the air, water, and land.

Engineers are also looking at this so that they make superior designs that are lightweight and more flexible, durable, and biodegradable.

The size of the brain of this wasp is that of two grains of sand.

Where did it receive its chemical and mechanical engineering skills?



A Butterfly’s Wing

There are butterflies that have wings that can change color depending on the angle at which they are viewed. There is one butterfly that has wings that can be seen a half a mile away.

What makes these wings so wonderful? The rows of concave surfaces on the swallowtail butterfly reflect light by different means. In the center of each concavity, yellow-green is reflected, while at the edges, blue is reflected. The light in the center of the concave surface reflects directly, but light hitting the sides have to bounce through multiple layers, and these amplify and partially polarize the light waves. This mix when combined is called structural color because of the complexity of its production.

How long do you think it took for researches to duplicate a replica, simplified, of the surface of a butterfly’s wing? Ten years. They are hoping to mimic nature to create credit cards more difficult to forge, and solar cells more efficient at collecting energy.

Yet a complete duplication is extremely challenging. “Despite the detailed scientific understanding of optics,” writes Professor Ulrich Steiner of Cambrige University’s Nanoscience Centre, “the astonishingly varied color palette found in nature often surpasses the optical effects that can be generated by technological means.”



The Elephant’s Trunk

The arm “goes far beyond anything currently available in industrial automation.” That is what was said of a group trying to develop a robotic arm with the inspiration of an elephant trunk.

An elephant trunk weighs three hundred pounds (140 kg). It has been referred to as the most versatile and useful appendage on the planet. Why? It can serve as a nose, a hand, an arm, even a straw. Elephants breath through them, these use it to smell, to drink, to grab things, and even blair a trumpeting blast!



The trunk has forty thousand muscle fibers, allowing it to move any which-way it needs. The trunk’s agility is so precise it can pick up a coin with its tip. And with the same trunk, it can lift loads up to 600 pounds (270kg).



The Namib Beetle

When you get thirsty where do you get your water to drink? If you are in the developed world, most likely from a bottle in the refrigerator, or perhaps even the tap, or a water purifier. Sadly, almost a billion people on earth though, do not have access to clean drinking water. There are people who trek long distances every day just to get drinking water.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are looking to the Namib beetle to provide inspiration to help them.

In Africa a fog rises and drifts through the Namib Desert in the morning.

During this brief time-period the beetle faces the wind at just the right angle and bumps on its wings, composed of hydrophilic substances, attract moisture. It builds, forming droplets, and then when heavy enough, gravity does the rest taking the moisture down the wing cover into the beetle’s mouth.

How did the hydrophilic wing cover of the Namib beetle come to be?

The Clusterwink Snail

Bioluminescence. Creatures who are able to produce light. The clusterwink snail is unique though. When threatened by a crab, it retreats into its shell and begins making flickering flashes of light that scare the predator away.

How does it’s shell work?

The shell diffuses light. Dimitri Deheyn and Nerida Wilson, scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, U.S.A., discovered that light created by the snail spreads uniformly throughout the entire shell, diffusing ten times more efficiently than any commercial diffuser of the same thickness. (.02 inch; 0.5 mm).

The ability of the snail to transmit this light is eight times more efficient than man-made diffusers. The ability to transmit and diffuse light is not found in any other shell of closely relate marine snails who are not bioluminescent. Also, without coincidence, this is the color that travels furthest in seawater.

Dr. Deheyn says learning about the clusterwink snail is important for helping us to understand how to build “materials with better optical performance.
Biophotonics which uses light for medical analysis and treatment stands to benefit from said research as well. In the area of light-emitting diodes, diffusers capable of better and more efficient amplifiers of small light sources will contribute to great energy savings.
Was this remarkable shell the product of mere chance?



The Lens of a Newt

This small salamander is known for its ability to regrow body parts. How do the replacements hold up?

Newts convert iris cells into lens cells in the eye to regenerate a missing lens. Biologists spent over fifteen years studying a group of Japanese newts to understand this process. After eighteen times the biologists took the lens off the newt, each time a new one grew back.

At the end of the study, they had newts that were thirty years old. Although, living longer than the expected life-span they were able to regrow lenses as quick as when they were young. And the lenses that were reproductions of the original, a paper form the University of Dayton Ohio, U. S. A., states, “were virtually identical to intact lenses removed from full-grown newts, which had never undergone lens regeneration. Biologist Panagiotis Tsonis, a member of the team stated: “Even I was surprised a little.” Terming the lens that had regrown “perfect.”

Tsonis hopes that studying these animals will help us to better understand how to regenerate damaged body tissue. “The newt is an excellent source for finding answers to regeneration…particularly as it relates to old age.”

Was chance able to help the newt's marvelous regeneration abilities?

The Jellyfish and its Propulsion System

The broom has a memorable experience from when he was traveling on a farrie to Seattle, Washington as a kid and seeing myriads of jellyfish in the sea. They are captivating creatures. Beautiful to look at. They are made up mostly of water. And can be very tiny or huge, over six feet in diameter.

How does the jellyfish move?

Scientists wanting to better understand this creature have come to discover that while not fast, there is an interesting method of their propulsion. Each contraction of the body creates a doughnut-shaped vortex which they then push away from themselves. The momentum of the rings creates an opposite reaction that propels them forward, like a jet, but with pulses of energy instead of constant thrust.

Sound simple? Maybe, but the magazine New Scientist states that it has been very difficult to actually copy the mathematical model of its vortex rings.

Researchers hope to use the understanding of this creature’s propulsion to make better underwater vehicles. Another application may even include the human heart, due to the fact that movement of blood within sections of it generate vortex rings. They say that by checking to see if a human as abnormal ones, we may have an indication of early heart disease.

I want to inject one, this is beautiful!

mating of leopard slug
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoGn9bRWuHQ
www.youtube.com...

Beautiful Thread!!



I love how wasps(some) and bees(some) make hexagon structures by instinct!!

Broom
Was it Designed?

Long posts, and yes I did read them, but I think a shorter version would be:
God did it.
Looking at your previous posts, its clear that's the answer you want.
Edit - actually it would also have saved time if you'd just written: Watchmaker argument, William Paley, 1802.

Broom
... is it reasonable to conclude that blind chance did it?

"Blind chance"?
Oh dear, once again we have somebody who is either deliberatly misrepresenting evolution, or is simply misunderstanding of it.
Either way doesnt look good.

reply to post by alfa1


Perhaps it has eyes then. -.O

All that aside, you seem to be pretty hostile toward a simple broom for no reason.

Broom
All that aside, you seem to be pretty hostile toward a simple broom for no reason.

A bit of annoyance yes, because:
1. It would be nice to, just once, find somebody who actually knows what evolution is, and yet still disagrees with it,
2. A creationist argument that is new, and hasn't been kicking around for more than a hundred years.

reply to post by alfa1


What if Creationists and Evolutionists are both right??

A Duality??

A yin and yang??

Can't have one without the other kinda deal...

reply to post by alfa1


If your ire is at a broom because you think he is a "creationist" and doesn't know what evolution is, then it is misplaced, for I am neither.

:|

Your annoyance, your ire, your attacks, they are all pointless, off topic, and seem unworthy of someone as yourself. Actually it was quite petty, and immature. The broom apologizes if he is too direct in what he says. But there was no reason to get off topic to accuse someone of something he is not.

Who doesn't look good?

A broom never looks good. Well, unless there is a big mess that needs cleaning on the floor.

Broom
reply to post by alfa1

 

If your ire is at a broom because you think he is a "creationist" and doesn't know what evolution is, then it is misplaced, for I am neither.

If you think evolution occurs due to "blind chance", then yes, you do not know what evolution is.

Broom
If your ire is at a broom because you think he is a "creationist" and doesn't know what evolution is, then it is misplaced, for I am neither.

Well forgive me for the misunderstanding because you posted:
1. A long version of William Paley's "watchmaker" design argument from 1802. An argument posted many many times over by creationists using such examples as woodpeckers, the paper wasp, the Butterfly wing, and the elephants trunk.

2. and then followed up with a "blind chance" statement about the alternative, a statement often used by creationists when talking about evolution.

In short, you presented me with an animal that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, smells like a duck, swims like a duck, and sounds like a duck.
Forgive me for assuming the obvious.

reply to post by alfa1


You seem to digress further and further from the OP, and have added nothing to the thread. Is that the point of your posts?

Again you seem to be above what you are doing. Perhaps not. Perhaps you may pretend to know who or how another person believes or feels. But you really don't, unless first you get to know them.

Remember that our world-view is narrow and restricted to our own personal experience, and that is quite scanty and limited. To try to narrow people into a world-view you have, without understanding others exist is quite ignorant, but understandable. Usually those who have the most fanatical ideas about a subject, or who are most vehement, are the least informed. Religious or otherwise.

Yet you have not added anything of value to the OP, and it is curious that that is how this board is run.

Lets keep up the Beauty of Design!!

patterns in nature
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGKLZ3NO9Qk
www.youtube.com...


Nature by Numbers
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkGeOWYOFoA
www.youtube.com...

reply to post by AbleEndangered


Really beautiful videos. One of those quotes, by William Blake was on Jeopardy the other day too, about seeing the world in a grain of sand.

Watching the video on the flowers brings to mind something an astro-physicist who worked at NASA for awhile once told me. He said (paraphrasing of course),

'Every artist has his own design, his signature, as it were. You can study a painting and know if it is a forgery or not by these patterns they always use. When I look at the universe I see a unique design of an artist from large clusters of galaxies, down to the infinitesimal parts of the sub-atomic atom. If you look at them all, there is a definite signature of an artist. The atom, the solar system, the galaxies, the universe. It all bears the unique signature of a grand artist at work.'

Broom
How was the burr designed? If it took an engineer eight years to copy the design of nature, is it reasonable to conclude that blind chance did it?

It took nature way over 8 million years of trial and error to come up with it, and the engineer copied it in eight years?

That makes the engineer look pretty good, over a million times faster than nature.
But if by "blind chance" you mean that nature's approach to design isn't as methodical as the engineer's, I guess that's why it takes nature over a million times longer, because there's a lot more stumbling and bumbling in nature's design process of throwing out things that didn't work. Maybe that's why Over 99% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct.. It seems to me like nature tries lots of different things, and most of them don't work. The small percentage that do work survived and that's mostly what we see today, and those impress us. Since nature has come up with some pretty good designs, why not try to copy good designs when we see them? Seems like a great idea and thanks for providing examples of that.

But if you look in natures wastebasket at the other 99% that didn't make it and are extinct, I think you have a clearer answer to your question about the design issue. Try to do something a million different ways and one of them is bound to work. A good designer doesn't need to try that many failed approaches to get something to work.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


You get a double Jean Luc Picard for that!!

Picard Double Facepalm
www.youtube.com/watch?v=13eDfrMgFQM
www.youtube.com...

Arbitrageur

Broom
How was the burr designed? If it took an engineer eight years to copy the design of nature, is it reasonable to conclude that blind chance did it?

It took nature way over 8 million years of trial and error to come up with it, and the engineer copied it in eight years?

That makes the engineer look pretty good, over a million times faster than nature.
But if by "blind chance" you mean that nature's approach to design isn't as methodical as the engineer's, I guess that's why it takes nature over a million times longer, because there's a lot more stumbling and bumbling in nature's design process of throwing out things that didn't work. Maybe that's why Over 99% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct.. It seems to me like nature tries lots of different things, and most of them don't work. The small percentage that do work survived and that's mostly what we see today, and those impress us. Since nature has come up with some pretty good designs, why not try to copy good designs when we see them? Seems like a great idea and thanks for providing examples of that.

But if you look in natures wastebasket at the other 99% that didn't make it and are extinct, I think you have a clearer answer to your question about the design issue. Try to do something a million different ways and one of them is bound to work. A good designer doesn't need to try that many failed approaches to get something to work.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Interesting perspective. And one can understand why you would come to such an assumption, the one where you take it that millions, or even billions of years, is enough time to come up with the variety of life that exists.

But isn't it interesting that if you take something like a human cell and look at it, you realize that the odds you give to variety don't add up.

The human cell needs three main components to exist. The DNA the RNA and chromosomes. We all know this. Of course the DNA is the genetic blueprint written out in digital code with an alphabet that contains all of the information of a person. RNA is needed to replicate DNA and it uses chromosomes to do this.

Now there are, perhaps, 50,000 chromosomes in the human body. Each of these are folded onto itself in a certain way to provide the function it needs. What were the chances of one single chromosome folding upon itself correctly? 1 in a billion billion billion. That is, you would not only need some prelife organic soup to get this to come about by chance, the size of the earth, but the size of the entire universe, and then it would be longer than the entire existence of the universe before you would get one to come about, by chance. Of course you may say it is not so blind, but also we should probably refer to it as Chance (just replace it with God) because this Chance, is given God-like qualities, and fairytale like abilities.

The thing is, that is just one chromosome. And you need all three, the DNA, the RNA, and chromosomes, all at the same time. You see, one won't work without the other. It is called irreducible complexity.

The minute amount of time you give life on earth to form by Chance, any thinking person, who isn't blinded by an agenda, has to come to grips with the impossibility of it happening.

This is the short of the matter. Huge threads could be written on it, but this brief example seems to sum it up.

Extraordinary designs exist in the world. The OP was made, not to force an idea into anyone. Or to create argument. Rather to explore ideas and possibilities. To reason on the complexity behind these things, and think about it logically.

Love the thread!

Thank you.

alfa1

Broom
All that aside, you seem to be pretty hostile toward a simple broom for no reason.

A bit of annoyance yes, because:
1. It would be nice to, just once, find somebody who actually knows what evolution is, and yet still disagrees with it,
2. A creationist argument that is new, and hasn't been kicking around for more than a hundred years.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to find two evolutionists who agree on what evolution is and can explain it rather than scoff at those that THEY say "don't understand".
Evolution has bloated and is rapidly becoming the "theory of everything".

reply to post by Quadrivium


I disagree, The Holographic Universe theory bloated. Theory of Evolution and Creationism will both fall under the Simulation, Electric or Living Multi-verses...

A unified field....A Unified Theory!!

AbleEndangered
reply to post by Quadrivium

 

I disagree, The Holographic Universe theory bloated. Theory of Evolution and Creationism will both fall under the Simulation, Electric or Living Multi-verses...

A unified field....A Unified Theory!!

How did the Simulation get started?