So
Not Fukushima Fallout then? I'll be over here waiting for the hippy sites to publish corrections.
American scientists have identified a mysterious seagoing virus which has caused millions of suffering starfish to "melt" into slime, strewing awful fluids all over the place. Boffins were baffled when they first saw the effects of the gruesome underwater epidemic. First an infected starfish's arms would fall off, before the …
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It's awfully hard to describe many natural processes as anything else than a method, even though there is no sentient actor involved. E.g you could read in a book "sweating is a method used by the body to regulate temperature", as if Mr body had decided to regulate its temperature, had tried different systems for getting rid of waste heat, and had settled on this one.
The proper way to see it, of course, is that because of bits of DNA randomly generated millions of years ago, the way the body is built happens to include a system generating sweat, which happens to have the beneficial effect of getting rid of waste heat, which presumably led to the survival of this body over all the bodies which did not happen to include this sweat generation system. But since it's impossible to think of it that way without feeling like a random chemical process, we tend to prefer more active words, like "method".
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Darwin was wrong to say that Natural Selection superseded conditions of existence and unity of type.
In my terms, Condition of Existence is the driver of evolution and not Natural Selection and it IS random. With hindsight everything appears to be deterministic but at the time immediately prior to entering the present in any location the condition that will exist is both unknown and unknowable for all components entering that existence and MUST, I believe, consequentially be random. Change (mutation) is constant and 'stable' components of existence enter the present, their new existence, with a high degree of probability that their new 'present' condition will tolerate their existing state, hence giving rise to the expectation of continuity of form and the appearance of non-random being. However the realisation that the new condition is itself a product that IS random means that the influence it has on its components must be random. The components of existence have varying degrees of tolerance to the prevailing Condition of Existence, the greater the tolerance the higher the likelihood of continuation of form for the individual components into the future (e.g. simplistically, liquid water has a tolerance range governed by temperature and pressure) but the process IS random.
(Many will contest the assertion that Condition of Existence is the driver of evolution but for me Condition of Existence preceded Natural Selection, the evolutionary process of components of existing possessing the attributes of life, it is more fundamental; evolution is the process of existence not just of life forms; although the primary concepts are the same.)
Get very small amount of fluid from wild sick starfish #1 and inject into healthy aquarium bred starfish #2. #2 gets sick. Get very small amount of fluid from starfish #2 and inject into healthy aquarium bred starfish #3. Starfish #3 only exposed to a very very very small amount of the original atoms from starfish #1. If the effect on starfish #3 is the same, then you can rule out radioactivity because any isotopes would be diluted to extremely low levels both in the body of starfish #2 as well as diffuse into the water of aquarium.
for confirmation, seal the fluid from starfish #1 in a sealed vial then sterilize it with heat. Inject into starfish #2 which remains healthy. Radioactivity would not be removed by heat
this has been done (see the picture in the article linked below) so its unlikely to be radioactivity
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/scientists-solve-mystery-of-west-coast-starfish-deaths/