Evollution and viruses

There are many ideas on evolution though most of you likely have not heard mine. I believe all that we have learned about natural selection is true. I am not disputing this. But I think there may be another factor.

Lets look at viruses for a moment. If you have ever seen one under magnification, you will see something that closely resembles the Loonar Lander.


http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/9369/virussm10ik.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Inside the pod constructed of protien you will find strands of DNA or RNA. The sole purpose of a virus is to float around looking for a host cell. When it finds one it will latch on with it's legs (tails in photo), stick a needle like probe into the cell, then inject it's genetic material inside. This is how it reproduces. Using the cell to manufacture it's own design. Each cell concored reeps exponentually countless offspring.

Now none of what I've said is anything new so far. Here comes the doosey.

Imagine this taking place over the entire existance of man and every other organism throughout the course of history. I believe that DNA strands (the genetic blueprints of life) have been added to by these viruses. Pieces started fitting in voids. Viruses began to add it's doner's DNA in with it's own, forming a vast melting pot and transfering this information to the next host. Longer and more complex strands began to yield more and more sophisticated life forms.

Now for lesson two. It has been proven that viruses can withstand deep space temperatures. Now imagine that a virus was floating around in space. This is a thing that has virtually no mass at all, and once it started to get pulled to a gravitational force it would continually accelerate towards that source relatively fast. Any larger of an object would resist building up speed and arrive at the same destination a lot later, so something this small would be ideal. For this reason and one other. Anything of substantual mass will have difficulty entering the atmosphere of a new found planet. It will burn up like a shooting star does. The virus just spreads it's little legs and gentlely comes down like a dandylion seed floating in the wind. We have been visited daily by these extra terestrials since the begining of time.

Yes, I am insinuating that viruses have traveled through distant space to arrive here on our planet. Then found ready hosts to influance. It is this that I believe has happened here, and accross the universe. Helping organisms evolve and perhaps even sparking life on a planet.
So the next time you get a cold or catch the flu, know that you accually did something that day instead of just resting in bed. You did your part in the evolutionary cycle. Just try explaining that to your boss, who believes that the only universe is in his/her office.



my :2cents:

Like this one then check out : How life passes from planet to planet in a solar system.

Next one to come : Imortality within our reach. :eek:

yea, sounds more interesting than most to me, but my question is about the virus' resilliance to the impact of it meeting the planet, but first lets look into a few things.

first, mass is unimportant, its weight we're after. sound confusing ? let me explain.

mass and weight are different, mass is an amount, mass measures the amount of something (very complicated, really boring) mass never changes.

weight however is different, if we went to the moon our weight changes, not our mass. weight is the force we exert on the earth (in this example) our weight is literally the amount of force (dont confuse with amount for mass) that we sort of produce, its the force with which we push down on the earth with. this is met by reaction, but thats complicated too. so if the mood is one eigth the mass of the earth (size is irrelevant, if the materials making the moon are different in density then thats whats important)

let me explain what i mean; everything has a gravitational force. we need to know about the density an mass for the gravitational force (like how dense it is, how much of it is there)

so if i take 100 cubic centimetres of wood and 100 cubic centimetres of iron, they are the same amount (100 centimetres cubed) but they have different wieght due to density, so the larger weight the larger the gravitational pull it exerts.

so it the iron block is 10N (N=Newton, 9.98 newtons to the kilo, as they are different) and the wood block is 1N. then the iron block has 10x the gravitational force.

any ideas where im going with this ?

so, lets say the virus is in space, suddenly it reaches a planet's gravitational pull threshold (my name for it) if the planet has no atmosphere then there will be no eqivalent of air resistance, and as you said it will continually accelerate) now, as it accelerates the pushing force on it is infinitely more that that of the resisting force acting on it.

when it hits the planet's surface it will have such a massive force behind it that it may be destroyed under its own weight, this is however dependant on the size of the planet, bigger planet, bigger gravitational force, bigger weight of virus (not mass).

umm.........sorry to go an rip up your theory like that.

i hope everything i've put here is right, if not go ahead to correct me, dont take my word for whats here, there's every chance it could be wrong.

but i like the theory, the question remains though where did "X" (X being what everything came from) come from, everything had to start somewhere.

my question is about the virus' resilliance to the impact of it meeting the planet,

though your explanation is very good and correct, i can't help but wonder if the extremely small size of the virus actually DOES make a difference just because of it's size in comparison to the nitrogen/oxygen/etc. molecules that make up the atmosphere.

I am sure that it would not matter if the virus impacted a planet that had no atmosphere. This would be a planet most likely not able to suport life in the first place. Any planet with an atmosphere will slow the virus down upon entry.

though your explanation is very good and correct, i can't help but wonder if the extremely small size of the virus actually DOES make a difference just because of it's size in comparison to the nitrogen/oxygen/etc. molecules that make up the atmosphere.

well, dont forget that nitrogen/oxygen are made of nigtorgen/oxygen atoms, forming a molecule, now those atoms are held together be incredibly strong covalent bonds, the amount of energy need to break these bonds is immence, so if they hit the planet's surface they might be unharmed, however the virus is made up of all these molecules etc.. so under the impact they may be seperated.

e.g. putting carbon (12) as C2 (just two atoms of carbon) in comparasin with a giant covalent structure, lets use diamond. now we're comaparing two seperate things, with different properties that are made of the exact same atoms (carbon, well given that the diamond is pure) the diamond can be smashed/shattered with the force exerted by a hammer, i dunno how much force but i'd imagine a sledge-hammer could do the trick. but splitting the carbon's covalent bonds and seperating the two atoms that make up C2 would require much more energy.

so put the two example of carbon-based structures and compare that to something made purely of nitrogen/oxygen/whatever you want.

i understand that the viruses are not made of solely one element, but im making this simple for those who dont know this kind of chemistry (im not boasting, this is for my exams.)

from what i know giant covalent structures, such as diamond and graphite, have the strongest bonds.

of course this all depends on the planet's gravitational field (in terms of strength, if thats the right word) if the planet was tiny then the force behind the accelerating virus would be a lot different in comparasin to that of a planet like jupiter, which is huge.

i hope this makes sense, if not just ask an i'll do my best to explain it.

Well if the virii in space are accellerated so quickly toward anything with mass, then wouldn't we have all the virii possible on Earth already, and no others would enter since they are all already on other planets and whatnot?

You have a very interesting theory and it is very believable and logical.

depends if for whatever reason there are some floating around, dunno why there would be but if there were, i mean remember this is all theoretical too, its just about impossible to say, we cant "watch" an motior all of space to see this.

i dont see why the virus wouldnt survive... do you have any idea how small they are?

lets look at it this way...

a cloud... it floats in the sky but it is condensed water droplets that are attached to peices of dust, floating in the air.... the DUST is floating in the air... when drops of water are attached to it, it still remains floating... viruses are the smallest (questionable) living things on the planet, being thousands of times smaller than bacteria... viruses also infect bacteria by the way... even under the earths gravitational pull, the virus would wiegh practically nothing... when you blow dust into the air, it stays airborn for a good period of time... if viruses did enter the earths atmosphere, it would take a LONG time to reach the surface... the speed the wind pushing it would probably be faster than the force of gravity pulling on it...

gravity and weight is definately not a factor on the virus's survival

also, i dont understand what you mean by them influencing evolution.. if anything we had to evolve BECAUSE of them... to be able to survive from them... thats why our bodys have RNAi which protects us from viruses...

the reason the dust floats in the air is because of the air resistance, there's a film clip from the moon landing, where a hammer and a feather are dropped at the same time, they land at the same time. why ? because there is no air resistance.

without air resistance, the virus would accelerate constantly, if there is no atmosphere then there is no air/gaseous resistance.

see what i mean ?

there was an atmosphere before life on earth

so IF there was no atmosphere then yes, but there was

yea, true, i get what you're saying. what im saying is purely theoretical, im not sayin you're wrong. yea i know without an atmosphere they wouldnt survive (or would they ? i dunno)

"also, i dont understand what you mean by them influencing evolution.. if anything we had to evolve BECAUSE of them... to be able to survive from them... thats why our bodys have RNAi which protects us from viruses..." -Quote

I believe that viruses have added their own DNA that they carry to the infected host's DNA chain. Perhaps not every time someone catches a virus, but occationally when the circumstances are right. Maybe a virus could enter reproductive genitalia and infect sperm or overies. This could greatly effect the DNA of the offspring.

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You're really into this whole space travel thing...not that thats a bad idea....

I'm in an anthropology class and we've been talking about evolution and lately about the Avian Flu. The Avian Flu is just an evolved version of a bird flu. The flu traveled from birds to humans just like many other diseases have passed from animals to humans in the past. Diseases like the bubonic plague, AIDS, trichynosis, and countless other diseases have traveled from animals to humans and evolved infect their human hosts.

Viruses are scary because they are still debating on wether to classify them as "living" or "non-living". They are inert till they activate, yet move around and duplicate. A bit like dx-prions... it's going to take a while to understand them, but one thing's for sure: they are unlike any other form of life here on earth. Their inorganic geometric structre, like the T4 image above, is something that nature doesnt usually do. Their life cycle is really different from most bacteria and other prokaryotic life forms.

Tell me more about these DX-PRIONS. I haven't yet heard of these.

Prions (pree-ons) are thought to be a highly destructive, malformed and degenerate protein configurations that is responsible for the mad cow disease variants and BSE. It is a radical idea to think that anything without genes can cause such destruction, but the theory is new and they are still currently formulating various hypothesis and tests. Imagine that... a non-gene controlled entity with the power to completely destroy an organism's brain. "dx"-prions are just a type of prion.

just to add this in, the force of gravity is several orders of magnitude less than molecular forces. Example, if u jump off a 20 story building, you hit the ground, possibly make an imprint 2 inches into the ground, and bounce up. You don't go through the ground to the center of the earth. The molecular forces in the concrete (or whatever) prevent you from going through. i saw that in a nerd video.