If you see a straight line between fishes and humans then you
better think again. There can be a distinct line between us in evolution terms, but evolution is far away from linear. Seeing the tree of life, with all the relative species together, you will see that line mention before in new terms. We even have common genes with the tree because all the
life on Earth is related in some way. Very different but related, and for one reason only: life want to continue and it will do everything it can to survive, so all the living creature will change themselves and their behavior to current environment in space and time, and the
planet has changed a lot in the last billion years.
Natural selection acts to ensure the ‘survival of the fittest’, and that does not mean strenght or intelligence alone. Sometime the creatures that survive are the ones that run away or hide the best. Random chance has also played a huge role in the history of life on Earth, from meteorite strikes to massive earthquakes, and Robin May speaks about that random chance recorded on 15 November 2023 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London. Randomness also lies at the core of evolutionary processes; the impact of a chance mutation, or the ‘lottery’ of sexual selection.
In this lecture, the Gresham college team and their followeres look at some remarkable examples of evolutionary chance and reveal why they are sometimes less random than you might expect.
Robin May is Gresham Professor of Physic, he is also Chief Scientific Adviser at the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham.
On the other hand, Jim Al-Khalili is telling us how quantum biology might explain life’s biggest questions in this TED Talk. How does a robin know to fly south even when we considering that the Earth magnetic field has a very small value? The answer might be weirder than you think: Quantum physics may be involved. Jim Al-Khalili rounds up the extremely new, extremely strange world of quantum biology, where something Einstein once called “spooky action at a distance” helps birds navigate, and
quantum effects might explain the origin of life itself.
Is this a part of random chance in evolution? Probably noboy knows so far, but people or birds may find out about it in the nect century.
