Ok, so that happens, and then that is when Natural Selection comes in right? Things are going to evolve radomly and then nature will determine which species sticks around. 

I'm gonna formulate this as a statement rather than a question, but please Hamby, or anyone else knowledgable, go ahead and correct me, because really I don't know anything about genetics. This is just the impression I've picked up by my superficial interest in science.

As far as I've understood it, radiation from the sun hits the entire Earth all the time.

Because, as I think I remember from Psychics-class in primary school, the distance between the nucleous of an atom and the electrons circling it would be equivalent to several football (soccer) fields if the nucleous was the size of a pea, by far the majority of neutrons and other radiation doesn't hit anything but just pass right through rock, flesh and whatever.

But since we are being bombarded with raditation from the sun, sometimes a molucule that is part of us is hit, and is therefore changed into something else.

However, if a cell at the tip of my index-finger, or the inside of my stomach has one molucule changed in it's DNA, that doesn't make any difference, because that one cell will soon be discarded as dead skin anyway, or will just be one of millions that divide and continue to produce "me" the effect will be neglible, or none.

IF it creates a mutation in ME, then that becomes a cancercell, and not a mutation in my genetic profile. So I can't "evolve" myself, by being hit by radiation from the sun (or a radioactive material), only my offspring can.

So only when a sperm of a man, or a egg of a woman is altered in this way does it potentialy create a mutation, and then only a tiny one, because the DNA of one egg or sperm cell is made up of millions of molucules, and they won't all be altered by exposure to radiation.

To my understanding this is because all children start as a sperm and an egg, holding only one version of the DNA-profile that will one day make up the person they are going to become.

So at this point, at the beginning of a lifeforms life, it is most vulnerable, since the chromosomes of the egg and sperm exist in only one copy, and so all the cell-division that that lifeform is about to go through will carry with it any changes that exist in the sperm or the egg from the beginning.

It's like if you are going to xerox 1000 copies of a letter.

If one copy of the letter gets a small error, like if the xerox machine runs out of ink during the last copy, you still have 999 copies that are perfect, and just one with greyed out letters.

This is the equivalent of an adult having one, or a few cells altered because of radiation. It doesn't really make any difference.

But if there is a little smudge on the glass in the xerox machine, that covers one word in the letter, then that error will be transferred to all 1000 copies of that letter, and also any copies that you might make of any of the copies.

This is the equivalent of an egg cell in a female animal having been exposed to radiation, or a sperm in a male. The offspring resulting from that particular sperm or egg will carry with it the mutation into every cell of that offspring.

When the people who cleaned up after Thernobyl, or lived downwind from Thernobyl were exposed to radiation, alot of serious mutations where found in the children born in the years following the Thernobyl disaster.

But none of the adults that had been exposed to raditation got a third arm on their shoulder for example, because for that to happen each of the millions of cells on their shoulder should have its DNA changed in exactly the same way: specifically to grow "arm-cells". This is offcourse impossible, because the raditiation should enter millions of cells, and hit the same specific point on millions of DNA chains, to alter the same part of the DNA code.

But if a man's balls, or a woman's abdomen is hit by radiation, and just one sperm or egg is altered a little, and that sperm or egg happens to be one that becomes an offspring some day, then that alteration will make a difference.

Incidently, I think human men produce new sperm all the time, though I don't know how quick the turnaround is: days or weeks before all the old sperm has been replaced by new?

But as far as I remember, human women create all their eggs when they are still an embreyo, and caries these eggs with them into adulthood, expelling one every month, until they hit menopause.

So these eggs have a whole lifetime to be exposed to radiation while in the mother, while men will... ahem... expell mutated sperm regularly.

So maybe, if you, and more importantly, your balls, have been exposed to plutonium, maybe you should wait a while before trying to conceive a child.

But now I'm really moving on to shaky ground. This is mostly things I've deduced myself from bits of information I've heard here and there. I'm not sure how accurate any of it is.

But maybe someone knowledgable will come and correct all this, and thus, educate both you and I on the subject.

Hamby?

Or DG? Is DG still on these boards?