didn't this news first come out like, a year ago?

I'll take that as a challenge.

i, for one, would like to welcome our Eloi overlords.

Wasn't the big twist that the highly intelligent but ugly and amoral morlocks were breeding and pampering the eloi for later consumption?

Man, that's one of the best twists ever. Bitch, your ass is veal!

I think H.G. Wells did describe what may happen to humanity very well. Though he did not do it in "The Time Machine". He did it in "War of the Worlds" (and no... I am not talking about aliens coming to blow us all up with their heat rays).

In "The Time Machine" the different paths of evolution that led to the Eloi/Morlok species gap came about because of one devision of humanity being subjugated/pampered to* by another, and there fore physically and genetically isolated. After many thousands of years the two evolved into different species. What Wells described in "War of the Worlds" was much more interesting. He talked about a race of beings (the Martians in this case) having evolved into a form that was totally dependent on technology (Note: they look A LOT different in the book than in any of the movie adaptations).

This is what I think SockPuppet was trying to describe. As our technology develops and we become more and more dependent on it, we change our enviornment. Not just by pollution or global warming, but we change the factors that influence our evolution. Essentially living in an artificial enviornment and evolving to adapt to it.

For example: The appendix is now a virtually useless organ in the human body. I have heard that these days some people are even born without one. It's purpose was to store bacteria that aid our digestive system in breaking down vegetable matter. Something our bodies can't do by themselves, but also something that happens when we cook food. Since we have been cooking our veg for some time now, the appendix has gotten smaller and smaller from one generation to the next, until in modern times it has started to disappear.

We have made our bed now we shall Evolve in it. That is the one part of Curry's statement that may actually ring true:

We may very well end up looking like the aliens from "War of the Worlds". And we all know how that weak immune system worked out for them.

*Edited in respect of strangebeastie's comment

I had to check the calendar, October 27th not April 1st right? Is there a glut of scientists that this is the crap theories that they have to come up with to keep themselves entertained? This is as laughable as the crazy evangelists and their ridiculous ideas.

Yes I agree, I think a few dozen hydrogen bombs would "reshape" the earth quite well...into several million pieces, actually.

How do you see this as arrogant? I quite think that the attitude you have - that we can't possibly destroy the earth - is quite a bit more arrogant than that.

Exactly.
I'm saying that the original question is not very useful in any terms we care about.

Uhhh... If anything, the ugly and stupid would quickly outnumber and overwhelm the attractive. There's no way the pretty people would ever be able to put together their own distinct society. Which also brings to mention that being attractive has no connection at all with being intelligent.

That really wasn't what I meant...

I was suggesting that we have already changed in ways that our ancestors couldn't even understand, much less approve of - or breed with successfully (definitions of "successful" are important here); and that our changing is not via evolution in the way that it applies to other species.

Indeed. The man is an idiot. And IIUC not a scientist.

I think you are severely underestimating the amount of energy needed to destroy a planet of the earth's size. From what I have heard there is not enough hydrogen in all of the water on earth sufficient to completely destroy the planet. All life on the planet? Maybe. Make the earth uninhabitable for humans? Sure.

Of course if you have some data that supports your claim I'd be happy to hear it.

I have some serious problems with this theory. First of all, it doesn't seem to be based on any empirical evidence. I don't have any original documents written by Curry, but all of the statements above seem to be in the form "x would happen" or "x could happen." Nothing seems to be "x can be seen happening."

Also, if the catalyst in this transformation is supposed to be technology, then how would two distinct sub-species develop? Human use of technology is definitely not restricted to any social classes, ethnic groups, or even age categories. The sort of sexual isolation he predicts is quite unlikely.

In fact, I find it amusing that he predicts that one sub-species would acquire a set of overwhelmingly bad traits while another would acquire almost exclusively positive traits. Evolution, in its Darwinian form, does not include the teleological progression that Curry's evolutionary hypothesis offers. For Darwin, evolution is adaptation to an environment to allow for better reproductive success (and Darwin has a theory about how this process works). In the case of Curry's sub-species, I don't see how either group would be better suited for survival and passing on genes.

He also doesn't seem to indicate (and again I am relying on information in online newspapers) whether groups of people who rely on technology will become the "upper class" or whether those who shun technology will. So, yeah, I'm just not buying this theory.

In other news, Dr. Curry watches way too much porn.

I am impressed that centuries of evolution and technological advances will apparently turn women into hentai anime characters.

I think debating between rendering a planet permanently uninhabitable blowing it into chunks is semantics. There are plenty of human activities that left unchecked, could damage the environment beyond Earth's ability to repair the damage in steady state.

Earth might still be orbiting the Sun, but given a runaway greenhouse effect, it would be closer to what we think of Venus than what we think of Earth. Enough atomic blasts could irradiate and superheat the atmosphere to the point where it evaporates away from the planet leaving molten rock to slowly cool in the void of space.