Evolution

Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules.

All life on Earth shares a common ancestor known as the last universal ancestor, which lived approximately 3.5–3.8 billion years ago, although a study in 2015 found "remains of biotic life" from 4.1 billion years ago in ancient rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth ... then it could be common in the universe."

Repeated formation of new species (speciation), change within species (anagenesis), and loss of species (extinction) throughout the evolutionary history of life on Earth are demonstrated by shared sets of morphological and biochemical traits, including shared DNA sequences. These shared traits are more similar among species that share a more recent common ancestor, and can be used to reconstruct a biological "tree of life" based on evolutionary relationships (phylogenetics), using both existing species and fossils. The fossil record includes a progression from early biogenic graphite, to microbial mat fossils, to fossilized multicellular organisms. Existing patterns of biodiversity have been shaped both by speciation and by extinction. More than 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates of Earth's current species range from 10 to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented.

Bill Nye

William Sanford "Bill" Nye (born November 27, 1955), popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy, is an American science educator, comedian, television presenter, actor, writer, scientist, and former mechanical engineer, best known as the host of the Disney/PBS children's science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–1998) and for his many subsequent appearances in popular media as a science educator.

Early life and education

Nye was born on November 27, 1955, in Washington, D.C., to Jacqueline (née Jenkins; 1921–2000), a codebreaker during World War II, and Edwin Darby "Ned" Nye (1917–1997), also a World War II veteran, whose experience without electricity in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp led him to become a sundial enthusiast. His maternal grandmother was French, from Dancevoir.

After attending Lafayette Elementary and Alice Deal Junior High in the city, he was accepted to the private Sidwell Friends School on a partial scholarship and graduated in 1973. He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University (where he took an astronomy class taught by Carl Sagan) and graduated with a B.S. in mechanical engineering in 1977. Nye occasionally returns to Cornell as a guest-lecturer of introductory-level astronomy and human ecology classes.

Ken Ham

Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Ham (born 20 October 1951) is an Australian-bornyoung Earth creationist and Christian fundamentalist living in the United States. He is the president of Answers in Genesis (AiG), a Creationist apologetics ministry that operates the Creation Museum. Ham is a former high school science teacher.

Ham advocates Biblical literalism, taking the Book of Genesis as historical fact. His belief, based on a literal interpretation of the Bible that the universe is approximately 6,000 years old, is contradicted by the scientific consensus that the age of the universe and the age of the Earth are on the order of billions of years.

Personal life and education

Ham was born on October 20, 1951 in Cairns, Australia. His father was a Christian educator who settled his family in Brisbane as a school principal. According to Ham:

Ham first rejected what he termed "molecules-to-man evolution" during high school, and became influenced by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris's The Genesis Flood in 1974 during college. Ham earned a Bachelor of Applied Science, with an emphasis in Environmental Biology, at Queensland Institute of Technology, and a diploma in Education from the University of Queensland.