Message 13/13
Date: 05-Dec-06 @ 09:02 AM Edit: 05-Dec-06 | 09:03 AM -
RE: awesome site!!
quotepsylichon wrote:I recently learned via the Discovery Science channel how geckos walk on walls and ceilings.
Wanna take a guess?
Its not sticky pads or glue or barbs or suction cups or anything like that, yet you can lift a kilogram or more with a gekko before you will harm it, making it one of the strongest forces of its type in the animal kingdom.
Wanna guess how it does it?
Quantum physics!
Each foot has a pad with over 20 million nanohairs, each of which splits into frayed ends. These tiny hair tips are so small that they entagle themselves with the quantum foam of whatever they touch, no matter how smooth the surface. The individual force of each hair is tiny, but the accumulative effect is so great that they need to literally peel their feet off of whatever they walk on. They have extremely flexible joints that peel back from that toe when they walk. Crazy shit!
These sorts of things tend to discredit Darwinian evolution as a theory, in my opinion. I mean how does an animal of such limited intelligence evolve to utilize such an esoteric and hidden facet of nature? It seems that such unreal traits exist all over the animal kingdom, and I believe they are hints to the secrets of the universe, not evolutionary advantages.
Besides, evolution requires the existence of time, which is just another illusion worth investigating. In another thread.
In what way are they 'unreal traits'. They have simply taken advantage of a purely natural phenomenon... the weak interactions between atoms/molecules which only come into play at a small enough scale. The hairs are very small, therefore they can exploit the electrical attractive forces between them and the surface molecules.
In which way this is supposed to discredit Darwinian evolution I would ask you enlighten us.
Mind you,
this is a great example of 'Intelligent Design' if I ever saw one....