Sunday, April 22, 2007

Why do people age and die ?

Here is again an explanation found in 'the selfish gene' regarding the phenomenon of aging and death.

Aging is attributed to a lethal gene which gets activated only after a certain point of time. Why has this gene survived ? simply because this gene does not come in the way of reproduction and such stuff. If this gene had got activated much before, say at the age of 11, then, probably it would not have survived.

Why isn't there an allele(competing gene - which has some other effect than aging) for this gene ? May me at some point of time because of mutation and such stuff it may get created. Or may be it was there before and people used to live for ages and it got extinct because of natural selection - it wasn't favorable! As to why it is, requires another session of thinking.

The master programmer

Back to the genes. Again according to Richard Dawkins:

The gene is a master programmer. He draws a beautiful analogy between the chess playing computer and the gene as below.

A programmer feeds the chess playing program into a programmer taking into account the rules, strategies and many other things. He does not feed each and every scenario into the computer. That would take a hell lot of a memory. Based on the program, the computer analyzes each scenario, simulates different moves and chooses the best move by which it can survive for a longer time.
This is exactly what the gene does. It writes a master program which, like the chess program, basically contains strategies,policies to survive. Based on this program the survival machines(we and all other living things) are built, which again works based on the program's strategies and try to survive as long as possible!!

Friday, April 20, 2007

Why is the earth round ?

Why is the earth round ? Here is a simple explanation that i found in Feynman's lectures on physics:

It is because of gravitation. Everything attracts everything else. Earth has attracted itself as far as it can. Hence the shape. It is not a perfect sphere as centrifugal forces at the equator makes it a little elliptical.

Interesting!

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The Selfish Gene

Have you ever thought that your gene can be selfish ??

I started reading this book 'The selfish gene' by Richard Dawkins and i was struck with amazement. Dawkins has presented a totally new picture of life altogether. It was very witty of him to think that way - out of the box. Here is what i have grasped from the early chapters:

Billions of years ago before 'life'(we still dont have a definite definition of what it is) started there was nothing on earth. Then gradually atoms began to combine and form molecules under certain conditions. Molecules then began to interact with each other and form complex molecules. There was a 'natural selection' involved here at a very low level - molecules choosing other molecules.

Slowly, some of the complex objects began to become stable and they started to replicate under some conditions. Here comes 'survival of the fittest'. The objects which replicated faster, which survived longer and which can inhibit/destroy other objects gradually became predominant.

From now on we will call these Objects - the genes. later on these genes started using the available material to build coats around them - for protection. They developed mechanisms to
get substance into the coat - use it - throw whatever is not necessary out and all that stuff.

The coat gradually became more and more complex and advanced and the gene started creating parts and delegating some specific work to those parts. It happily sat inside and controlled all the work. the genes learnt how to survive effectively.

I guess thats what we are today - 'survival machines' for the gene - the selfish gene.

I have started getting a wierd feeling about this whole idea. I am just a sack-full of some selfish genes which just get work done by me and they survive!!

Think about it :)
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