Why wouldn’t the human body adapt better to being hit with radiation when literally the entire universe revolves around radiation and radioactive material?
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What do you mean by “revolve around radioactive materials”? The vast, vast majority of matter in the universe is Hydrogen and helium, neither of which are very radioactive. (And even the “radiation” part is wrong, only about 5% of the energy of the universe seems to come from the regular matter and the photons/radiation they create. The other 95% is dark matter and dark energy, neither are radiation)
And why would life on Earth have to tailor itself to survive not on Earth? Until the 1940s, there hadn’t been anything that could get life *off* of earth. So there was no reason to care about what went on there, from an evolutionary perspective.
The entire universe has nothing to do with what’s advantageous to have here on earth. People even today don’t encounter enough radiation for that be actually useful. Evolution works on “good enough to reproduce” not whatever we might think is best.
We can handle the normal amount of background radiation that we experience on a daily basis just fine. We’ve never adapted to more than that because it was never necessary.
If a human ever mutated some gene to be able to withstand high radiation, it was not evolutionarily beneficial at the time, and so it was not naturally selected.
We can handle the normal amount of background radiation that we experience on a daily basis just fine. We’ve never adapted to more than that because it was never necessary.
If a human ever mutated some gene to be able to withstand high radiation, it was not evolutionarily beneficial at the time, and so it was not naturally selected.
What do you mean by “revolve around radioactive materials”? The vast, vast majority of matter in the universe is Hydrogen and helium, neither of which are very radioactive. (And even the “radiation” part is wrong, only about 5% of the energy of the universe seems to come from the regular matter and the photons/radiation they create. The other 95% is dark matter and dark energy, neither are radiation)
And why would life on Earth have to tailor itself to survive not on Earth? Until the 1940s, there hadn’t been anything that could get life *off* of earth. So there was no reason to care about what went on there, from an evolutionary perspective.
The body is suited to dealing with the amount of radiation we normally encounter. Earth shields us from a lot of cosmic radiation and what we see from terrestrial sources isn’t a lot. For radiation to cause real damage it typically needs to damage DNA at multiple spots that are close to each other which makes it difficult to repair. A small amount of radiation is unlikely to do much more than single breaks which the body is able to deal with. Also evolution only cares that we live long enough to reproduce. Through most of human history people would die from disease long before they could get any radiation induced cancers.
The entire universe has nothing to do with what’s advantageous to have here on earth. People even today don’t encounter enough radiation for that be actually useful. Evolution works on “good enough to reproduce” not whatever we might think is best.
The entire universe has nothing to do with what’s advantageous to have here on earth. People even today don’t encounter enough radiation for that be actually useful. Evolution works on “good enough to reproduce” not whatever we might think is best.
We can handle the normal amount of background radiation that we experience on a daily basis just fine. We’ve never adapted to more than that because it was never necessary.
If a human ever mutated some gene to be able to withstand high radiation, it was not evolutionarily beneficial at the time, and so it was not naturally selected.
The body is suited to dealing with the amount of radiation we normally encounter. Earth shields us from a lot of cosmic radiation and what we see from terrestrial sources isn’t a lot. For radiation to cause real damage it typically needs to damage DNA at multiple spots that are close to each other which makes it difficult to repair. A small amount of radiation is unlikely to do much more than single breaks which the body is able to deal with. Also evolution only cares that we live long enough to reproduce. Through most of human history people would die from disease long before they could get any radiation induced cancers.
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