It's astounding to me that they insist on linking this to a function of natural selection. This is one of the biggest reaches yet. How else did the bird sense that there was a magnetic field to follow in order to even conceive of the idea of manufacturing a means of following it? If that weren't so impossibly difficult for non-intelligent organic matter to come up with on its own! It's mind boggling. Truly, God is glorified in His creation!
http://news.illinois.edu/news/09/0622birds.html
Toxic Molecule May Help Birds "See" North and South
CHAMPAIGN, lll. � Researchers at the University of Illinois report that a toxic molecule known to damage cells and cause disease may also play a pivotal role in bird migration. The molecule, superoxide, is proposed as a key player in the mysterious process that allows birds to �see� Earth�s magnetic field.
Changes in the electromagnetic field, such as those experienced by a bird changing direction in flight, appear to alter a biochemical compass in the eye, allowing the bird to see how its direction corresponds to north or south.
The discovery, reported this month in Biophysical Journal, occurred as a result of a �mistake� made by a collaborator, said principal investigator Klaus Schulten, who holds the Swanlund Chair in Physics at Illinois and directs the theoretical and computational biophysics group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. His postdoctoral collaborator, Ilia Solov�yov, of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, did not know that superoxide was toxic, seeing it instead as an ideal reaction partner in a biochemical process involving the protein cryptochrome in a bird�s eye.
Cryptochrome is a blue-light photoreceptor found in plants and in the eyes of birds and other animals. Schulten was the first to propose (in 2000) that this protein was a key component of birds� geomagnetic sense, a proposal that was later corroborated by experimental evidence. He made this prediction after he and his colleagues discovered that magnetic fields can influence chemical reactions if the reactions occur quickly enough to be governed by pure quantum mechanics.
�Prior to our work, it was thought that this was impossible because magnetic fields interact so weakly with molecules,� he said. Such chemical reactions involve electron transfers, Schulten said, �which result in freely tumbling spins of electrons. These spins behave like an axial compass.�
Changes in the electromagnetic field, such as those experienced by a bird changing direction in flight, appear to alter this biochemical compass in the eye, allowing the bird to see how its direction corresponds to north or south.
�Other researchers had found that cryptochrome, acting through its own molecular spins, recruits a reaction partner that operates at so-called zero spin. They suggested that molecular oxygen is that partner,� Schulten said. �We propose that the reaction partner is not the benign oxygen molecule that we all breathe, but its close cousin, superoxide, a negatively charged oxygen molecule.�
When Solov�yov showed that superoxide would work well as a reaction partner, Schulten was at first dismissive.
�But then I realized that the toxicity of superoxide was actually crucial to its role,� he said. The body has many mechanisms for reducing concentrations of superoxide to prevent its damaging effects, Schulten said. But this gives an advantage, since the molecule must be present at low concentrations � but not too low � �to make the biochemical compass work effectively,� he said.
Although known primarily as an agent of aging and cellular damage, superoxide recently has been recognized for its role in cellular signaling.
However, its toxicity may also explain why humans do not have the same ability to see Earth�s electromagnetic field, Schulten said.
�Our bodies try to play it safe,� he said. �It might be that human evolution chose longevity over orientational ability.�
According to a 1991 Gallup Poll, of the scientists and engineers in the US, only about 5% were creationists. Considering only those working in the relevant fields of earth and life sciences, there are about 480,000 scientists, but only about 700 believe in "creation-science" or consider it a valid theory (Robinson 1995). This means that less than 0.15 percent of relevant scientists believe in creationism. And that is just in the US, which has more creationists than any other industrialized country. In other countries, the number of scientists who accept creationism drops to less than one tenth of 1 percent.
This was in 1991, way before the human genome project, after which evolution was basically established as a fact. No real scientist denies the fact of evolution anymore. The debate is over. Face it.
My question is, no one in this discussion (and I would venture to say on this site) is a scientist. I am not a science major but I took some hard sciences in college and even that was very challenging. I can't even imagine how difficult it must be to get a PhD in science. Imagine all the writing, publishing work, thousands of pages and articles to read; it's ridiculously difficult.
What astonishes me is the sheer arrogance of certain religious people without any serious training in the sciences who dare stand up to the whole, world-wide academic institution of science, and who dare to say that scientists are wrong on evolution because of [insert creationist argument].
Seriously, don't you think scientists have thought of that objection? Just imagine, hundreds of thousands of evolutionary biologists around the world who devote their daily lives ONLY to the study of evolution--and they all come to the same basic consensus. Don't you think they've thought of your silly creationist objections? Seriously.
