Folks, I’ve been punked.

One of my greatest scientific essays, one which put forth the ground-breaking hypothesis that rock & roll was responsible for originating life on Earth... a theory published right here on these useless pages in April 2006, in full view of all ten of my faithful readers no less—has been utterly plagiarized by Helen Hansma, a researcher at the University of California, in Santa Barbara.

Rock on, Helen.  Rock on, girl.  You shameless hussy.

Apparently, (and for your children’s sake I will try to refrain from further swearing), Useless-Knowledge Magazine hasn’t been fully accepted by the scientific community at large, as a legitimate source of serious biological research.  You can just imagine my dismay, when I lurched spryly out of bed this morning at 11:30 AM, and discovered on Ray Kurzweil's website that Dr. Helen Greenwood Hansma was on her way to Washington DC, to present her “new” hypothesis that life’s earliest molecules may have formed inside layers of mica, located near ancient oceans.  Mica is a type of rock, by the way, in case you were absent that day in school, and nobody knows how to roll better than our friend the ocean, and its rhythmic waves.

Now, I’m fully aware that by recognizing Hansma’s work here on U-K, I’m giving it a considerably larger stage than it could ever warrant under the little-known auspices of the National Science Foundation, but here it is nonetheless:

The Hansma mica hypothesis proposes that the narrow confined spaces between the thin layers of mica could have provided exactly the right conditions for the rise of the first biomolecules –– effectively creating cells without membranes. The separation of the layers would have also provided the isolation needed for Darwinian evolution.

“Some think that the first biomolecules were simple proteins, some think they were RNA, or ribonucleic acid,” said Hansma. “Both proteins and RNA could have formed in between the mica sheets.”

Mica layers are held together by potassium. The concentration of potassium inside the mica is very similar to the concentration of potassium in our cells. And the seawater that bathed the mica is rich in sodium, just like our blood.

The heating and cooling of the day to night cycle would have caused the mica sheets to move up and down, and waves would have provided a mechanical energy source as well, according to the new model. Both forms of movement would have caused the forming and breaking of chemical bonds necessary for the earliest biochemistry.

Thus the mica layers could have provided the support, shelter, and an energy source for the development of precellular life, while leaving artifacts in the structure of living things today.

“New model”, indeed.  (Clearing throat and spitting.)  Compare this passage to what I posted on our very own useless front page, in April of 2006:

People, life itself evolved through long exposure to Rock & Roll music!  Gazillions of hours of it, non-stop, directly into our primordial ears.  Quite literally stone ground into our skinny, soggy chromosomes.  There.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Willie “Darwin couldn’t do DAT!” Dembski.

It’s completely possible that humble, murky, amino-acid-laced gunge, trapped beneath the constant shifting and sliding of tidal pool rocks, was literally VIBRATED into RNA-like precursor molecules by billions of years of the crashing yet rhythmic rock & roll action produced by the stirring music of relentless ocean waves.  The first organic molecules capable of effective self-replication and genetic encryption – the keys to biological life -- were formed in the waterlogged mosh-pits of Earth’s greatest and longest running Rock and Roll show:  tidal pool concert halls.  You thought I meant The Rolling Stones, but they came a little later.

Yea, life itself literally crawled out from under a rock.

So, as the good Doctor Hansma was wined and dined yesterday in her little Washington soiree by obsequious members of the American Society of Cell Biologists, I, the true originator of her now-celebrated theory, was busy teaching the quadratic formula to snot-nosed high school math students.  However, and perhaps because she was feeling a twang of guilt, Helen did throw me a bone in the Physorg.com article—albeit a purposefully vague and self-aggrandizing one:

Hansma came upon her idea one day last spring when she was splitting some mica under her dissecting microscope.

Splitting mica, my ass.  (Sorry, kids.)  This plagiarizing pretender was busy reading the April 2006 issue of Useless-Knowledge Magazine!

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