# ALIEN PLANET on Discovery Channel



## TheOldSalt

"Alien Planet" is about to come on. I've been waiting all week for it! I hope it's good. 
If it's like most Discovery Channel premieres, it'll be rerun immediately after the first showing, so you might still have time to catch it.


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## Celeste

meh. i caught the end of their last thing, evolution or something. i saw the part with the giant squid that became terrestial and it all seemed really bogus and fakey to me. i'm not an evolutionist, but i just cannot see how it would benefit squids to come up on land. it's like they just totally made it up without really thinking about how the evolutionary changes would *actually* benefit (or not) the animal. i really have no intrest in watching the alien thing.


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## Osiris

thanx g/f is watchin some remodel show so set it up on my moxi to record it in background thank god for charter's new moxi box


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## TheOldSalt

Well, Celeste, why would it have benefitted anything else to come up onto dry land?

Anyway, I thought it was pretty good, but not great. Some of the stuff they came up with didn't make much sense. The best part was the commentary from the scientists, I thought.


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## Osiris

i missed first 15mins of it, but thought odd how the blue sea looked more like geletan lol.


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## Celeste

i caught the end because there was nothing else on. it was all complete BS. all those scientists were talking aout there behinds. Evolution makes NO sense to me. i don't understand how anyone could believe in it. they claim that life began because of a series of accidental mutations. well, then howcome now whenever a human or animal has an "accidental mutation" it results in brain damage or permanent physical dissability or death? did you know that Darwin recanted all of this theories and found God before he died? his whole evolutionary theory on humans evolving from apes was based on a PIG TOOTH!!! 

what about otters? they have roughly 50,000 more hair follicles per square inch of skin than humans. they are mammals, meaning they diverged from humans somewhere along your supposed evolitionary chain. well, if that's so, at some point, humans and otters were part of the same critter and had the same number of hair follicles. well, otters would have had to "grow" or "evolve" roughly 50 hair follicles every hundred years or so. but otters back a million years ago would have had to have the same number of hair follicles to survive as they do now. their hair acts like a barrier to keep them dry and warm in frigid water. they would have died without all those hair follicles 100,000 year ago. not to mention that sea otters 100 years ago had the same number of hair follicles as they do today.

then if you want to argue that humans just LOST all that hair.....well what's the point of that? all that hair would have greatly benefitted humans. we would have been able to keep warm so much easier! but the same theory as above applies to this one, only in reverse. humans would have had to LOSE 50 hair follicles per inch of skin every 100 years, and we know that humans 3000 years ago had about the same number of hair follicles as we do today.

besides all that. i have a REAL problem with evolution being presented as fact. it's NOT, it's a theory. it has NEVER been proven as absolute, unquestionable fact. therefore, it is still a theory, and it needs to be taught and presented as one. and in public schools, if they teach me evolution, they damn well better treat it as a theory AND they better teach Creationism along with it.


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## TheOldSalt

I suspected that this thread could degrade into a religious debate, but I was really hoping it wouldn't.

I could sit here and tear apart your comments with dreaded facts, starting with Darwin's recant being that in the end he figured out that God invented evolution, not that evolution didn't exist. I could go on about random mutations aplenty which don't cause any problems at all. Otters? Don't get me started.

However, I won't go any further. There is obviously no point. You have your opinion and you're welcome to it.
If you think that God didn't have the sense to implement such a wonderfully useful mechanism for longterm universal maintenance as evolution, then that's what you think, and that's that. 

Let me guess, you don't believe in life on other planets either, do you?


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## shev

All mutations are completely random. but it is the natural pressures from the environment from which the animal is located that "weed out" the traits not suited for that particular environment.



> well, then howcome now whenever a human or animal has an "accidental mutation" it results in brain damage or permanent physical dissability or death?


inferior traits are weeded out through natural selection.

example: malaria in africa was a very large problem. a mutation occurred that's called sickle cell anemia. this trait, or mutation, made the blood cells that malaria attack sickle shaped. malaria enlarges red blood cells until they die, but the sickle shaped blood cells were immune. this allowed the human with the mutation to live longer than others, making the human more able to pass on that superior trait.

thats all evolution is. random mutations being passed on. heck, they mutations dont even have to benefit the animal acording to the definition. but over millions and millions of years those little traits can really build up.


> besides all that. i have a REAL problem with evolution being presented as fact. it's NOT, it's a theory. it has NEVER been proven as absolute, unquestionable fact. therefore, it is still a theory, and it needs to be taught and presented as one. and in public schools, if they teach me evolution, they damn well better treat it as a theory AND they better teach Creationism along with it.


a theory isnt just an educated guess. theres a lot more that goes into a theory, like evidence. creationism lacks any real scientific evidence.


theres lots and lots of proof. but science is rarely fact. newtons LAWS of motion, are technically just theories too. some proof is similarities in early development, homologous body structures, geographic distribution, and vestigial organs. until there is enough proof against evolution, then it should be the main theory, and taught in schools.


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## Pac-Man

celeste, you seem kinda offended by this whole alien planet thing. keep in mind its only a tv show, discussion, no one is trying to offend your religious beliefs.


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## shev

oldsalt's right. I dont want a religous discussion either.

we've actually been through this before.
http://www.fishforums.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=210
the "do you like science" thread derailed into creationism and evolution.


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## Celeste

no, i don't. i know that short-term "evolution" exists. like there were these finches on an island, and one year the nuts of the trees that they ate had thicker hulls due to climate change or rainfall or something like that. well, in response to this environmental stressor, the finches developed thicker, stronger beaks to crack open the nuts. but the next season, when the nuts went back to normal, so did the finches beaks! 

i also believe that Humans and Dinosaurs existed at the same time, and that the earth is roughly only 8-10 thousand years old and that carbon dating is complete BS. i also don't understand how evolution starts. ok, life was created from the "muck" but where did the "Muck" come from? where did the rocks that the "muck" sat upon come from? where did the earth and the universe come from? i don't care how old you think the universe is, it had to have "started" somewhere and somehow. it hasn't just always been here. if you go far enough back, all the molecules and atoms in the universe didn't just "Appear" one day. they were created by someone, or something.


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## shev

> no, i don't. i know that short-term "evolution" exists. like there were these finches on an island, and one year the nuts of the trees that they ate had thicker hulls due to climate change or rainfall or something like that. well, in response to this environmental stressor, the finches developed thicker, stronger beaks to crack open the nuts. but the next season, when the nuts went back to normal, so did the finches beaks!


read through the link to an old thread. thats macro-evolution. already been adressed.


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## Celeste

Pac-Man @ Sun May 15 said:


> celeste, you seem kinda offended by this whole alien planet thing. keep in mind its only a tv show, discussion, no one is trying to offend your religious beliefs.


i'm offended by the fact that evolution is treated and taught as fact. on the show, they presented all these theories about life on other planets and evolution as if they were proven fact, which they are NOT. it has not been proven in any way shape or form. they are simply theories and should be presented as such along with other theories on how we got here.


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## Celeste

shev @ Sun May 15 said:


> a theory isnt just an educated guess. theres a lot more that goes into a theory, like evidence. creationism lacks any real scientific evidence.
> 
> 
> 
> there's plenty of scientific proof of creationism, you just never hear about it because all the people in power in the scientific community don't want you to hear about it. besides that, the majority of people in the US are Christians and believe in Creationism. therefore, i believe it should be taught in schools, along side evolutionism. i can respect other peoples choise to believe in something i don't, but they have to respect my choise to believe in something they don't. i just want both creationsim, and evolution, and whatever other "How we got here" theories there are out there taught in schools and taught as theories, and let the kids and their families decide, based on what makes sense to THEM what they believe.
Click to expand...


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## Pac-Man

hmm i disagree on the whole thing of Earth being 8-10 thousand years old and what you said about humans and dinosaurs existing at the same time. i believe in evolution over creationism also because i just dont seem to think that a whole bunch of organisms could just poof out of mid air. just my views though... . I do agree however, that other people's beliefs should be addressed in school, and not just evolution. actually, i think they should stop teaching these theories altogether, to avoid arguements like this :lol:


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## shev

> i also don't understand how evolution starts. ok, life was created from the "muck" but where did the "Muck" come from? where did the rocks that the "muck" sat upon come from? where did the earth and the universe come from? i don't care how old you think the universe is, it had to have "started" somewhere and somehow. it hasn't just always been here. if you go far enough back, all the molecules and atoms in the universe didn't just "Appear" one day. they were created by someone, or something.


theres the big bang theory trying to explain that one.

what about god then? did he just appear one day, or has always been there. If time exists then everything has to have a beginning. If god always is and always has been it goes against the laws of time.


from the old thread:

it went: abiotic stew (lifelss pool) ---->simple organic molecules ----->rna---->replicated into protein----> i dont remember. today complex living molecules dont randomly form because oxygen is very reactive and would destroy any organic molecules. but when the earth formed it didnt have oxygen in the atmosphere, and if they did form anyway, bacteria would eat them. but there have been experiments having hydrogen, ammonia, and methane (the atmosphere at the time) and sparked it like lightning. amino acids were made, which are building blocks for protein. I think whoever first did the experiment won a nobel prize or something.


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## Celeste

i have seen proof at least of the dinosaurs. i can't remember where i got the 8-10 thousand years thing, i'm not totally set in stone on that one, but i DON'T believe that the earth is 500 gazillion years old like everyone else seems to. i think the earth is a lot younger than is widly accepted. 

i'm not going to go any farther because i sound like a freak conspiracy theorist even to myself, and i have no quotable proof and i'm not going to go looking for it. but that's what i believe. i believe in God, that he created us and all the animals on the planet as they appear today. i believe that the complexities of life on this planet are far to great and intricate and incredible to have been "dumb luck and chance" i believe that dinosaurs existed with humans and this planet is not as old as we think. i believe there are a lot of strange animals out there that are extinct that we find the remains of and because they almost look like one kind of animal, and have a few properties of another, oh! they must be a missing link, is complete idiocity. 

but mostly, i like to believe that i'm not an accident. that i was put on this earth with a purpose, and that there is a being out there who loves me, and who is looking out for me, and who has a plan for my life, because i certainly dont!


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## osteoporoosi

The muck was formed when supposedly a star exploded, and the remains started to form planets (=our solar system). At first Earth was just magma and volcanos, that released aqueous steam and other gases such as Co2 and nitrogen. Atmosphere started forming, after that heavy rains started and formed the muck, where life began.

In a nutshell, i think this makes sense and in my opinion is the safer way, and it is almost proven in everyday life. I don't think evolution theory offends christians, I'm a christian too. And as someone mentioned, maybe God started the whole thing?

Aren't both creationism and evolution taught already at school? Creationism at theology and philosophy classes and evolution at biology classes?

And sorry for all the folks that are sick and tired of this kind of debates, I couldn't resist :wink:


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## Celeste

lots of kids don't take theology and philosophy classes, at least not in the US. at my school they stayed away from "how we got here" all together. i think that if they teach evolution in a biology class, they need to teach creationism right along with it in biology class. it's not against the "sepparation of church and state" (which is a WHOLE other can of worms i won't get into) to teach christianity or creationism in schools. it merely has to be taught with other major religions and "how we got here" theories so that nobody plays favorites.


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## TheOldSalt

Some other guys took a bunch of amino acids and slammed them together in such a way as to simulate an asteroid or cometary impact. The result? Peptides!

I have no problems with the idea that the building blocks of life can be formed by simple physics. Frankly, all life is is a complex series of self-resetting electrochemical reactions interacting with each other and governed by the laws of physics. In effect, nothing is really alive when you really think about it. We are made of the same elements as the rocks, but those elements are simply arranged differently.

On the other hand, I don't believe for a minute that the arrangement of those molecules happened all by accident. 

I believe in evolution. There is no definition of life, but life has characteristics, and one of those characteristics is the ability to change in response to stimuli.
Evolution is only a theory, but then so is gravity.

The thing I don't understand is why so many people think that it doesn't exist. To say that something so wondrous and perfect and useful as evolution does not exist strikes me as a grave insult to God. These same people seem to think that He got everything else right, so why don't they give Him any credit for coming up with something like this?
Why can't God have used His nifty labor-saving tool to shape the world?


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## Pac-Man

speaking of the separation church and state... are ppl still getting mad about the us national anthem having "one nation under god" in the lyrics???? just wondering since i havent heard about it in a while...


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## Celeste

Pac-Man @ Sun May 15 said:


> speaking of the separation church and state... are ppl still getting mad about the us national anthem having "one nation under god" in the lyrics???? just wondering since i havent heard about it in a while...


the funny thing about that, the guy who started complaining about it, was an athiest, but his daughter, whom he's supposedly fighting this for, is a christian, as is her mother, his Ex wife! his daughter has no problem with saying "One Nation Under God" because she believes it.


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## Pac-Man

hehe thats pretty funny :lol:


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## Osiris

see now that makes sense with the explotion, but it literally takes a very long time for evolution to take place, so i it would have to happen very rapidly in the 8-10k years like ya think, but if that's the case then we now are not evolving rapidly, thing that i believe slows us down from evolving further is of course $$ wish could just toss it out, and work to better ourselves and to have flying cars, come on


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## shev

> besides that, the majority of people in the US are Christians and believe in Creationism. therefore, i believe it should be taught in schools, along side evolutionism.


I thinkt he majority of christians believe in evolution. it would be hard to teach creationism, or what is now being renamed inteligent design, without bringing religion into school walls.



> speaking of the separation church and state... are ppl still getting mad about the us national anthem having "one nation under god" in the lyrics???? just wondering since i havent heard about it in a while...


yes, some people also want the words "in god we trust" off of money and stuff too.
although I may not be a very religous person, I dont mind them. but they havent always been there. I hate the argument americas founders and fore fathers were religious people, so religion should be a part of the government. our founders also had enough sense to keep that religion out of state, and an American republic based primarily on individual rights

I think the words "one nation under god" were added to the anthem around the cold war? because we were just trying to do the opposite of the communists.


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## osteoporoosi

In my opinion religion shoudn't be mixed up with politics at all. But that kind of intolerance against any religious group is just ridicolous.


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## Pac-Man

hmmm... the funny thing is we still may be evolving... u know wisdom teeth??? the teeth that u get when u get older??? well, more and more people are not getting them as they may not be necassary. thats what i was told at the dentist. and guess what, im one of those ppl, my bottom wisdom teeth are non-existent. just thought id share that story with you guys... :wink:


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## Celeste

MalawianPro @ Sun May 15 said:


> see now that makes sense with the explotion, but it literally takes a very long time for evolution to take place, so i it would have to happen very rapidly in the 8-10k years like ya think, but if that's the case then we now are not evolving rapidly, thing that i believe slows us down from evolving further is of course $$  wish could just toss it out, and work to better ourselves and to have flying cars, come on


your getting mixed up.  i believe the earth is quite young, but i do NOT believe in evolution.  i believe the earth and all it's inhabitants were CREATED several thousand year ago, not 500 gazillion like everyone else.

those who believe in evolution believe the earth is 500 gazillion years old, leaving plenty of time for slow evolution to take place

and i'm not going to get into sepparation of church and state. i've gotten banned from forums for telling people there's a natural cure for autism and ADD......


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## osteoporoosi

This may seem like off topic but what the heck:
It has been studied, that womens bikini lines, leg hair and armpit hair have shrunk in the last hundred years. Most women shave them off anyway, and the hair has started to get thinner and even disappearing. Sounds pretty wild, but can be true. Who knows.


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## Celeste

every time you rip hair out by the root, some of the hair follicles die.  many women wax those areas on a weekly basis, thus killing off the hair follicles from the trauma of ripping the hair out by the root, so eventually the hair does not grow back.

it also has to do with genetics. my dad has very fine hair, so do i, since i take after him more than my mom in many ways. so my hair is blonde like my moms, but very fine and soft in texture like my dads. that's including my leg hair.


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## Pac-Man

the thing about earth being so young ..... theres some evidence that disproves it. let me reword that, some THEORIES that SEEM to TRY and disprove it,lol. take the continents for example. if u look at their shapes, it seems that at one time they were all adjoined and connected. they seemed to have separated however. this process of separation wouldve taken millios of years, and just does not coincide with the theory that earth is only 8000 to 10000 years old.


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## shev

> every time you rip hair out by the root, some of the hair follicles die. many women wax those areas on a weekly basis, thus killing off the hair follicles from the trauma of ripping the hair out by the root, so eventually the hair does not grow back.





> This may seem like off topic but what the heck:
> It has been studied, that womens bikini lines, leg hair and armpit hair have shrunk in the last hundred years. Most women shave them off anyway, and the hair has started to get thinner and even disappearing. Sounds pretty wild, but can be true. Who knows.


lol. If you mean people start evolving less hair there, then I dont know how that would happen. there has to be some selection, natural or artificial for traits to be passed on. why would those traits be passed on then? oh wait... nvm. its now starting to make a little more sense.

thats more lamarcks wrong theory of evolution, use and disuse. thats like saying arnold schwarzenegger's kids will have big muscles when they are born, because arnold worked out so much, and got such big muscles.


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## Celeste

what if i don't believe that the continents used to be connected?  just because a few sort of look like they MAY have been able to at one time fit together like a puzzel doesn't mean they actually did.

besides that, i don't exactly think the earth is 8-10 thousand years old, i more believe that it's much younger than many people believe, however, i'm not positive on an exact age.


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## shev

> the thing about earth being so young ..... theres some evidence that disproves it. let me reword that, some THEORIES that SEEM to TRY and disprove it,lol. take the continents for example. if u look at their shapes, it seems that at one time they were all adjoined and connected. they seemed to have separated however. this process of separation wouldve taken millios of years, and just does not coincide with the theory that earth is only 8000 to 10000 years old.


exactly, you would have to not believe in pangea. the fossil record greatly supports pangea though. as the continents began to drift animals were seperated, thats why there are fossils of the same animal on the coasts of continents that would fit together. take us as example. there are new world, and oldworld monkey. new world monkeys being the primates from south america and the western hemisphere, and old world ones being from africa. when the gene pools became seperated, they both evolved differently depending on their environment. we are still related to those primates over there. there are also fossils of the same plants where they did connect.


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## Celeste

i'm not going to reply anymore. i bleieve what i believe, your never going to change my mind. you've prooved that you have more on-hand information about your theories than i do about mine. great. i can respect that you believe in something different than i do, let me believe in what i want to, you can believe in what you want to. lets agree to disagree.


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## shev

and to not belive in pangea, it would be hard to believe in any continentaly drift, then it'd be hard to belive there are tectonic plates, and then how can you explain earthquakes, and mountains.


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## Pac-Man

with my infinite knowledge about the continents, i should be a billionare by now :lol:


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## Osiris

Pac-Man @ Sun May 15 said:


> hmmm... the funny thing is we still may be evolving... u know wisdom teeth??? the teeth that u get when u get older??? well, more and more people are not getting them as they may not be necassary. thats what i was told at the dentist. and guess what, im one of those ppl, my bottom wisdom teeth are non-existent. just thought id share that story with you guys... :wink:


You know what, my g/f had to have them pulled but i did not have any problems. But get this, my back molars one on the right side got damaged and had to be pulled, and voila i have a brand new tooth in it's place, lol weird since i am 21 can't figure out if it was a baby tooth that just never came out cuz it's in the exact place old tooth was.


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## shev

back on topic. I'm sure they will re run a couple hundred times, then I will catch it.


http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/alienplanet/alienplanet.html

is the trailer. looks pretty cool

is it new? i saw one about a squid that came up to land, but that was quite a while ago. there were also squid swinging through trees. is this like a sequel?


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## Shaggy

I like it, it just seem to go a little over board with all the big creatures, but great computer graphics!!


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## shev

I didnt know it showed part of the show. I think I'll catch it next time it comes on. im sure theyll replay it a bunch of times.


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## Ownager2004

Wow im still amazed that people dont believe in evolution. Let me think of the simple example....

Oh yeah a peacock. Geuss why they have all those fancy feathers. Its because the female peacock likes to look at all those fancy feathers. And seems to prefer the fanciest and biggest. So over many generations the males with the largest and flashiest feathers got the most mates. Therefor the genes with the large and flashy feather variety get passed on more and more often, and gets pronounced.

Now lets call nature the "female peacock" its chooses its "mate" based upon survival, strength, hardiness, adaptability, and you know all that stuff that matters. And boy o boy what do you know those "male peacocks" traits that allow them to survive, mate, and flourish start to prounounce themselves. Amazing...

Now lets seperate different groups of these guys at different times and in different enviroments for o say a couple billion years and wow stuff looks different and it appears that someone just didn't bust out the pixie dust and make millions of different of species of animals.

I on the other hand choose to believe in faeries and pixie dust? Whose with me?


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## shev

ownager, dont take her beliefs so personally. It doesnt really matter what she believes in. I just ask to show a little respect, and not degrade and make of her beliefs. thats when threads get locked, when people take issues too personally. and religion is a very personal and sensitive thing.

just wanted to add, if the 2 are seperated it isolates the gene pools from eachother. but if they are in a similar environments, with the same natural pressures they evolve parallel to eachother, and both get characteristics similar to eachother to help with the natural pressures. natural pressures being densitiy dependent factors, with the peacock example, it would competition. competition for a mate to pass on those genes.

but yeah, thats a very good example of how I think things work.


"it just seem to go a little over board with all the big creatures"

those were my favorite parts.


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