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Jack, do you have sources for the numerical data you quote?

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Colin,

As usual, there will be a pdf of the post at https://gordianknotbook.com which will have all the

\cite's translated to real references. The endogenous vs radiation DSB numbers are discussed in more detail at https;//jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-case-for-1-msv-per-day}. Not sure if that answers yr question.

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Imagine that... life forms that use ionizing radiation as an energy source have to be resistant to... ionizing radiation.

I’m sure this explanation is slightly oversimplified, but it makes logical sense and can be explained in a short conversation. It could easily be memeified into something like “if you think radiation caused oxidative damage is so dangerous then stop breathing because that will kill you!”

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Interesting. 250 mGy/d means 0.003 mGy per second, which we are accustomed to and can cope with. It's therefore not surprising that doses of around 1 mGy in one second cause cancer.

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Interesting theory, sounds plausible and definitely more plausible than the radiation models that have been used to justify killing off nuclear power. A chart with memorable quantities contrasted with each other would be useful here. Something like low to normal, a threshold where damage becomes significant compared to the background damage from oxidative processes, and some examples of large dose events (6 hour flight, Chernobyl core containment crew for a day, Manhattan project criticality accidents, visiting Kerala for a week).

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Food can be sterilized in its packaging using ionizing radiation. Exposures are limited to 1000 Gy, I think. I wondered where the food-borne bugs would fit on your Figure 2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation

https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/food-irradiation.html

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I liked the 1st part of your link on "to repair radiation damage" and will pass it on to my daughter who teaches microbiology. She's well versed on O2 metabolism and the repair mechanisms in RNA, and will be interested to know where radiation fits in and the facts on dosages. But when you go on about "Cyanobacteria were around for about two billion years before oxygen breathing organisms developed.", that's not science - It's pure unfalsifiable speculation and belongs in books on fairy tales.

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Interesting. Archean biology could not be farther from my area of expertise. So I just regurgitate what's in the text books. So cyanobacteria did not cause the Great Oxidation Event? How long were they around before O2 breathers showed up?

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Thank you for not getting mad at my rude portrayal of the pseudo science of unverifiable hypotheses of our biological history. The theory (better described as a hypothesis) of evolution requires more faith than simply believing that God created. There is solid evidence that the early atmosphere of earth was not devoid of oxygen, so there is no evidence of any "Great Oxidation Event" - it's pure conjecture. Evolution has no viable explanation of how life could have formed from non-living matter, or how single-celled life could "evolve" into multi-celled life. Evolution requires millions or billions of years to even be a remotely plausible story, but as an expert on nuclear physics, you know that radioactive dating methods are based on several assumptions that cannot be proven. Are we positive that decay rates have never changed? And how can we know what the starting ratio of U235 vs U238, for example, was in any sample - it has to be assumed. C14 has been found in coal and in diamonds, which were supposedly formed millions of years ago, even though, as you would know, it should be undetectable at those ages because of its short (about 5000 years) half life. Since this is right up your alley, check out a good link on the subject:

https://answersingenesis.org/geology/radiometric-dating/radiometric-dating-problems-with-the-assumptions/

You would also be aware of how hard it is to get published when you're not agreeing with the "consensus", so you can well imagine how hard it is for a scientist to get past peer review when he is presenting evidence that evolution is not true and his "peers" are only the ones approved by the "consensus". There are over 1000 scientists at the PhD level who have been brave enough to buck the consensus on evolution and the age of the earth, but who knows how many more are afraid to come out in the open for fear of not getting their doctorate or losing their grants or their jobs? Thank you for listening to my rant.

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