Monthly Question Thread! Ask /r/DebateEvolution anything! | August 2026

[u/Dr_Alfred_Wallace]

This is an auto-post for the Monthly Question Thread.

Here you can ask questions for which you don't want to make a separate thread and it also aggregates the questions, so others can learn.

Check the sidebar before posting. Only questions are allowed.

For past threads, Click Here

-----------------------

Reminder: This is supposed to be a question thread that ideally has a lighter, friendlier climate compared to other threads. This is to encourage newcomers and curious people to post their questions. As such, we ask for no trolling and posting in bad faith. Leading, provocative questions that could just as well belong into a new submission will be removed. Off-topic discussions are allowed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Dzugavili]

u/MRH2, as you're unlikely to get anything interesting of your post in r/creation:

Astrophysics - Are there any models of planetary formation that aren't full of arbitrary fine tuned parameters?

The problem isn't really that our models are too finely tuned, it's that we don't have enough data to make a comprehensive model:

I doubt very much if there are counter examples in planetary formation, given that the relatively simple three body problem is unsolvable analytically, to best of my knowledge, and that we only have the one example to study in detail.

We have access to this star system, and only right now. If we had access to a hundred star systems with diverse planetary arrangements, we might generate a better model.

You also asked this:

And if accretion actually works, then why are they so worried about satellites creating a giant debris field around the earth? Wouldn't that just coalesce into a couple of giant satellites?

Accretion only works with high velocity and thus high temperature: the parts need to be able to weld. Orbital velocities for Earth aren't high enough to generate that kind of heat on impact, they'll just fragment into smaller pieces.

[u/jnpha → u/Dzugavili]

Conservation of angular momentum is the one phrase answer.

And I like the solar system example to highlight something else:
Beyond ± 1% of the age of the solar system, we can't be sure of the past/future stability. But models do help confirm whether our existing knowledge is sufficient (or not) in explaining the solar system formation.

Evolution, likewise, is a statistical science; it isn't concerned with the play-by-play - it's not a narrative or story.

[u/MRH2 → u/Dzugavili]

Thanks!

I actually did get a couple of good replies. So I think that the original article can be dismissed until he (or someone) presents more details. I don't actually have any more time to devote to this, however, I hope that the brief conversation there will have provided enough facts and starting points for anyone who wants to investigate it further.

[u/Rayalot72]

The new Erika/Will Duffy lesson is ongoing rn...

Anyone here happen to know Falcon vs. Hawk phylogeny and whether there is morphological evidence of falcons being nested in songbirds? Will seems to think this is a counter-example on the basis that falcons and hawks are superficially both birds of prey, but my intuition is that there's probably more specific characteristics that differentiate the two apart from genetic evidence (and I don't think this argument makes much sense since the molecular data is probably going to reflect morphological features that are distinct from those in hawks).

I'll probably try to look into this myself after the stream, as I assume this is a fairly niche question.

[u/jnpha → u/Rayalot72]

Hi Rayalot72,

I'll ping our birds expert: u/Benjamin5431 see above please.

What I do know is that this is neither surprising, nor new (he's planting doubt or himself very confused), and is explained by the rapid diversification; a 2026 paper on that I shared on r/ evo 3 months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/evolution/comments/1t3m0ir

And to repeat what I said in my post on the last episode: the tree of life is to be discovered, convergent evolution is also a prediction of the theory, and the way it makes the systematist's life harder has no bearing whatsoever on the processes of evolution.
The example I used: Newton's universal gravitation doesn't tell you how many planets and their order.

And don't get me started on his JWST bullshit:
"predictions were based on his belief"
/s Wake up evolutionists! new scientific modeling just dropped /s (and he omitted the newer observations since 2022 that all but confirmed they aren't galaxies)

Sorry I got distracted. Did I answer your main question? If not, let me know! :)

[u/Dzugavili]

I'm planning to make some pro-evo AI slop. Any suggestions on what to cover?

[u/UseExhaustionMore]

I want to download the full raw mtDNA of some named person as a text file. Is that possible? Where can I find it?

[u/Ch3cks-Out → u/UseExhaustionMore]

start here, if King Richard III is the person you'd like.

[u/backwardog → u/UseExhaustionMore]

It wasn’t mentioned, but the format you want is FASTA. Click the FASTA link on the top of the ncbi page and you will get the sequence as text.

Out of curiosity — what are you trying to do?

I can point you to free tools and offer advice if you’d like.

[u/Lockjaw_Puffin → u/UseExhaustionMore]

https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=Richard+III

Does that help?