Evolution it's not 4 to the 9 - more like 10 to the 15 years worth.

Stick that into your pipe and smoke it. :slight_smile:

This is one impressive talk,

It’s about more than Remarkable Diversity of Life.

It looks at Evolution from a more function perspective: “Evolution in a Rapidly Changing World”

from wiki: Sarah Perin “Sally” Otto FRSC (born October 23, 1967) is a theoretical biologist, Canada Research Chair in Theoretical and Experimental Evolution, and former director of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia (2008 - 2016).[1] Otto was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow.[2] In 2015 the American Society of Naturalists gave her the Sewall Wright Award for fundamental contributions to the unification of biology.

 

From the talk:

… evolution is a process of mutations appearing leading to genetic variation within species some of those variants allow individuals to survive and reproduce whereas others lead to death and sterility that process of mutations arising being tested in the environment explains why we see amazing adaptations to the world around us why species have evolved to tolerate heat and acidity at deep thermal vents the High Arctic why I even just read about species of bacteria that is growing near Chernobyl where we had the horrific nuclear accident in 1986 and they’ve evolved to take the energy from gamma radiation and turn that into life …


 

... so in that context I want to talk about how we as humans are changing this tree of life in a permanent way how are we shaping the evolutionary tree of life so that's going to be the topic of my talk today and some of the research that I and my students do is peppered in here ... (but her talk is an overview of many studies) ...
Dr. Sarah Otto, University of British Columbia, discusses how the evolutionary trajectory of life being altered by human activity.

Thanks for sharing

"IS THERE ENOUGH TIME FOR SPECIATION FOR MILLION SPECIES?"
More and more it's looking like a firm yes. Things is, while studying evolution, scientists achieved a startling insight recently. We should not limit our thinking to the term of Earth's age = 4^9 years.

We need to think of the cornucopia of life and compound those numbers into the 4^9 year time span available.

Looking at it that way scientists point out that Earth had the equivalent of 10^15 years worth of evolution unfolding.

Plenty of time for amazing things to happen.