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One interesting stud that I actually consulted on involved taking pretty much every chemical reaction known to man, starting with a few simple molecules, then working outwards- reacting them in any reaction that could happen and studying the results. Remarkably energy profiles tended to lead towards biotically relevant molecules though we have no idea why and its something we are thinking about.
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Lets see, about 110 elements on the current periodic table (can't remeber the exact figure and we're not even including variants such as different forms of Fe), say 110P3 (and even then, nothing is made of just 3 elements), you're looking at forming 1294920 different compounds and you've not even hit different methods of reaction. Would take a loooong time.
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In this way the argument is that natural selection cannot actually select for fitness, it selects for traits that come packaged together- one or two of which cause increased fitness.
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On the other hand, although the difference in say, the average length of a species neck affects a lot of other traits, the trait itself is chosen independantly and other develop from it's own occurence.
Also, while we're talking about evolution (and by extension, Darwin), a little side fact is that he was part of a club that endevored to eat one of every species on Earth.
06-03-2010, 10:13 AM
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