Biologists, what is your response to this?

Question

Evolution has been disproven!

Bacteria undergo meiosis every twenty minutes. This would mean that a given population of bacteria doubles every twenty minutes. Bacteria don't just double without bound, however. They die as well. Not counting new bacteria produced, the half-life of a population of bacteria is twenty minutes plus fifteen microseconds.

The growth rate of 100 percent /20 minutes minus the decay rate of 49.99997473 percent /20 minutes provides bacteria with an overall global growth rate of about 1.1762 percent annually.

There are roughly 5E 30, or 5 nonillian, bacteria on our planet today. If we work backwards from 5E 30 with a 1.1762 percent growth rate, compounded every twenty minutes, we find that the first bacterium appeared about 6000 years ago, just as Creation Science predicted.

Try this on your financial calculator:

FV=5E 30

PV=1

Int=1.1762/(3*24*365.25)

compute NPER=157935000 twenty minute intervals

158045000 / (3*24*365.25) = 6009.77 years.

GLORY!

There is some rounding going on in there. I suspect the true number of bacteria on the planet is closer to 5.0004832E 30, which would mean the first bacteria appeared exactly 6010 years and three days ago, on the third day of creation, along with the other plants.

However, if we assume as the evolutionists do, that the first bacterium appeared 3.5 billion years ago, we wind up with a ridiculously large number of bacteria, approximately 1E 26510000, or 1E 26509970 times the number of bacteria we actually have.

A single bacterium weighs 95 picograms. The number of bacteria that evolution predicts would weigh 9.5E 26509984 kilograms, a clearly ridiculous value. But our whole planet, including all of the bacteria on it, only weighs about 6E 24 kilograms.

That's the wacky world of evolution for you!

* 12 minutes ago

* - 3 days left to answer.

Answer 1

I already answered this.  It's laughable.  He even gets the terminology wrong.

Few bacteria can even grow that fast, and his "calculations" ignore competition for limited resources.  This keeps the population generally stable for any organism, from animals to bacteria.

His numbers are certainly wrong too.  We can't even try to estimate the bacterial population of the world.

I do wonder where he found this BS though.

Answer 2

This is how I replied to it (begin quote)

Here is several ways your "logic" fails.

1- there is more than one strain of bacteria on this planet

2- your decay rate of "twenty minutes and fifteen microsecond" is a value you pulled out of your nose so that it would mach your fantasy conclusion. No one could measure half lives with an accuracy of one part in 80 million as you assumed. Conversly, bacterial meiosis every twenty minutes is a totally bogus over generalization; under optimal conditions, a bacterial population can double in less than 10 minutes (check your sources, and I recommend serious documentation, not fairy tale fantasy bible)

3- you also assume that all bacteria survive, save for those destined to decay at your prescribed rate. Ever head of things like vocanic eruptions, natural bactericides, and even bacteriophage virus? Those would keep a bacteria population in check, perhaps even wipe them out over large area, sterilizing the very soil in which they live.

4- there are about 10^15 bacteria living inside the typical human digestive system. As per your "brilliant" computation, Adam or Eve should have had only one between themselves, so who had it? What strain was it? How did the other acquire it from the other? How did they digest their food before they managed to get the right numbers? Getting to the number of 10^15 (of up to 100000 strains living on and in the human body) would have required almost 17 hours, assuming NO bacteria died, at your fantasy "fixed" rate of doubling of 20 minutes (and 41 days using your equally fantasy rate of growth with decay picked just so it would fit your other fantasy 6010 years to now), what did those bacteria lived on until there was enough of them to allow for proper digestion, what did they grew from? And what was living in the digestive systems of all the animals?

5- (and here is the real smash) the estiamte of 5*10^30 bacteria on the planet can be found in the Wikipedia page on bacteria (of November 21 2006), itself taken from a University of Georgia news dated Saptember 8 1998). Today, 10 years later, how many bacteria should there be? And how many will there be 20 years from now? How many were there just a couple of centuries ago, when plague (a bacterial pathogen, should it be pointed--and when was that one created by the way?) was rampant? Fit that in your calculator, I am curious...

Just another funny point: the current Jewish calendar year, which is supposed to be set to 1 at creation, is 5768. Not 6010. Where do you find the missing 262 years? Wanna fudge and massage your various rates again to reach the conclusion you so much want while dismissing all logic? C'mon, give it another try...

Basically, this question shows the full extent, and in this respect is a brillant demonstration, that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".  You are deluding yourself. Get real.

(end of quote)

For the record, this is a repost of a question asked a few minutes earlier, in another category, by someone else (so the Walkin Dude is not the one with an over active imagination and poor understanding of science, logic and intelligence)

Original question is at

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 3

Dude... this question made my brain hurt!

Answer 4

> "Bacteria undergo meiosis every twenty minutes."

Bacteria don't undergo meiosis - they undergo binary fission. Meiosis is the process which produces haploid gametes for sexual reproduction, which bacteria do not perform.

And a typical bacterium will divide once every hour under optimal conditions. They do not reproduce once every twenty minutes, and they are almost never in "optimal conditions" outside a laboratory.

And the growth-curve of a bacterial population follows a standard sigmoid curve shape. There is an initial "lag phase", followed by an exponential "log phase", then followed by a slowing of growth and plateauing of population-size as resources are exhausted. Finally, the population starts to decrease in numbers as the existing bacteria start to die due to lack of resources.

> "the half-life of a population of bacteria is twenty minutes plus fifteen microseconds."

Really? Where is your reference for this. This seems a ludicrously accurate measurement of population growth half-life.

You are also assuming a constant rate of population growth and decline. Where is your evidence for this? In fact, from algal blooms and similar phenomena, it is well-known that bacteria grow and then die-back - like every other species on the planet.

> "the first bacteria appeared exactly 6010 years and three days ago, on the third day of creation, along with the other plants."

Bacteria are not plants. Plants are eukaryotic, multicellular organisms. Bacteria are prokaryotic, unicellular organisms.

> "A single bacterium weighs 95 picograms."

Which species of bacterium? There are hundreds of thousands of different species of bacterium with a wide range of sizes.

Wherever you got this from cannot even get their basic biology right. There is zero reason to suppose that theyir stance on evolution is any more accurate or reasoned.

Answer 5

First of all, bacterias don't multiply by mitosis/meiosis. Those are exclusive eukaryotic cells' processes. And only germinal euckaryotic cells do meiosis.

Then, if who wrote that didn't know something so basic in Biology , I don't think he knows a word about something more complex like evolution.  

Answer 6

whats wrong with you?

6000 years? you gotta be freaking kidding me!!!

we have fossils of humanoids as old as 6 Million years.

at 6000 years ago the freaking pyramids were being built.

Answer 7

Well for starters I am a christian and believe in creation, however there are a few variables that are not taken into account in the theory. Wise Duck listed some great ones. First the great flood of Noah would have wiped out innumerable bacteria. If a large meteor was the demise of the dinosaurs then that would have incinerated billions of bacteria right there, not to mention any other great natural disasters that may have taken place including man made disasters such a detonated nuclear devises and such.

Also that growth rate assumes optimal growing conditions including temperature and an abundance of food etc which rarely if ever occurs in nature. Even if those conditions exist, it would only be for a short time and not continuous throughout time so the growth rates would vary greatly. This argument is specious and inaccurate.  A better argument would be the discovery of the fact the mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited.....that would suggest at some point in the distant past a first female or Eve if you will.

Answer 8

They completely ignore population caps like competition for resources.

They're actually also fudging their numbers quite a bit to make them come out to what they want.  Using an unchecked exponential growth, bacteria would have had to originate within the last 30 years or so.  I saw someone who did a similar calculation with houseflies and determined that houseflies must have originated in 1982.

Just more of their stupidity.