Is the clock speed of evolution faster on bigger earths?

[drl2]

Does evolution on Earth go faster while Superman is flying around it?

(Flying in the same direction as the planet's rotation, of course; everyone knows that flying against the rotation turns time backward.)

[Atheist-Lite]

Does evolution on Earth go faster while Superman is flying around it?

(Flying in the same direction as the planet's rotation, of course; everyone knows that flying against the rotation turns time backward.)

[Coito ergo sum]

Evolution doesn't have a purpose and it still went from 'living gunk' to the versatile human being we see today. Just wondered would that timeframe be shorter on a larger planet? by the law of averages....these things are full of variables doing their varying, I realise.

Shorter to do what? Evolution on a different planet might not result in anything like human beings. For most of this planet's history it got along just fine without humans. We're not a necessary byproduct of evolution. We showed up blip ago in the scheme of things.

I think there is something in that. Not all planets will develop intelligent life and why should they? Those which do might benefit from a large planet. We are needing 2 or so earths to sustain our current current civilization - a larger planet would give a intelligent species longer to adopt a sustainable technological model?

You have to try to avoid anthropomorphizing evolution. It's not for a purpose. It's not "out to do" anything. It's like gravitation - it operates as it does, and that's it. Whether "we need" anything has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is just the variation in alleles for all the genes in a population and natural selection operating to allow certain genes to survive from generation to generation where others don't. It's not about need, or advancement.

As for your question regarding the size of the planet - someone would need to establish a connection between the the rate that evolution occurs and the size of a planet. Nobody can possibly have done that because there aren't any other planets where evolution has been seen to occur. So, the only answer is - nobody knows.

[Atheist-Lite]

Evolution doesn't have a purpose and it still went from 'living gunk' to the versatile human being we see today. Just wondered would that timeframe be shorter on a larger planet? by the law of averages....these things are full of variables doing their varying, I realise.

Shorter to do what? Evolution on a different planet might not result in anything like human beings. For most of this planet's history it got along just fine without humans. We're not a necessary byproduct of evolution. We showed up blip ago in the scheme of things.

I think there is something in that. Not all planets will develop intelligent life and why should they? Those which do might benefit from a large planet. We are needing 2 or so earths to sustain our current current civilization - a larger planet would give a intelligent species longer to adopt a sustainable technological model?

You have to try to avoid anthropomorphizing evolution. It's not for a purpose. It's not "out to do" anything. It's like gravitation - it operates as it does, and that's it. Whether "we need" anything has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is just the variation in alleles for all the genes in a population and natural selection operating to allow certain genes to survive from generation to generation where others don't. It's not about need, or advancement.

As for your question regarding the size of the planet - someone would need to establish a connection between the the rate that evolution occurs and the size of a planet. Nobody can possibly have done that because there aren't any other planets where evolution has been seen to occur. So, the only answer is - nobody knows.

Couldn't it be modeled on a supercomputer?

[Atheist-Lite]

Maybe clock speed isn't the right term. Perhaps simply having more diversity hotspots, inevitable on a larger planet, might allow for more to happen and any advanced industrial civilization similar to ours to become more robust by having a greater number of species that can be domesticated, more resources to exploit and more space for recovery from things like nuclear war? It'd be interesting to map how this human civilization would manage things like climate change given more time rather than less?

[hackenslash]

From whose frame of reference? Time itself runs slower on more massive planets.

[Clinton Huxley]

A larger planet wouldn't necessarily have more different types of environmental niche, though it may have more space in each one. My guess is that if you had a planet with twice the Earth's land surface area and a technological civilization on it, you'd probably end up with the same population density as the Earth and 12 billion inhabitants rather than 6 billion. It's not as if the extra surface area is just going to sit there empty until its needed.

But as CES says, we only have one data point so no-one knows.