"In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions." - Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986By the theory of natural selection all living species have been connected with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not greater than we see between the varieties of the same species at the present day; and these parent-species, now generally extinct, have in their turn been similarly connected with more ancient species; and so on backwards, always converging to the common ancestor of each great class. So that the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great. But assuredly, if this theory be true, such have lived upon this earth. Origin of Species (1859) pp.281-282"And [mention] when your Lord said to the angels, 'Truly, I will create a man from clay. So when I have completed him, and breathed into him of My spirit, then fall down prostrate to him.' And the angels prostrated, one and all. Save for Satan, who was too proud to, and disbelieved. He said to him, 'O Satan, what prevented you from prostrating to what I have created with My two hands? Are you arrogant, or too exalted?' He said,'I am better than he; You created me from fire and created him from clay'" (Qur'an 38:71-76).The first law of thermodynamics is equivalent to the principle of conservation of energy: the total energy of a closed system is constant; any energy change must be compensated by a corresponding inflow or outflow from the system. Einstein showed that mass and energy are equivalent, by E=mc2. So, if the universe started from "nothing," energy conservation would seem to have been violated by the creation of matter. Some energy from outside is apparently required. However, our best estimate today is that the total energy of the universe is zero (within a small zero point energy that results from quantum fluctuations), with the positive energy of matter balanced by the negative potential energy of gravity. Since the total energy is zero, no energy was needed to produce the universe and the first law was not violated. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo...Note also that one cannot ask, much less answer, "What happened before the big bang?" Since no time earlier than the Planck time can be logically defined, the whole notion of time before the big bang is meaningless. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo...The simplest form of the Casimir effect was predicted in 1948 by H.B.G. Casimir and consists in the attraction between a pair of neutral, parallel conducting plates placed in the vacuum. This attractive force has a purely quantum origin and cannot be obtained using the classical description of electromagnetic field since it is a direct consequence of the existence of Zero-Point Fluctuations: a turmoil of virtual particles that come in and out of existence and that can violate the energy-momentum conservation of the system for very short periods of time, as described by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The fluctuating virtual particles exert a "radiation pressure" on the plates which on average is greater outside the plates than between them - as shown in the diagram.http://www.casimir.rl.ac.uk/Other vidsChaddag vid on retrovirushttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKsMsz...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5yYNk...RabidApe's Vidhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKb1LX...

Video providers : , and this video is stored with all copyright by