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Mimi
climber
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What's really wild is that all water on the planet is due to comet strikes. Who can wrap their head around that?! Add 3 billion years and here we are. Try creating that in the lab. Sorry if this was brought up already but what is life really? At the molecular level or higher? What are the criteria?
Let's level the playing field and agree on an amoeba. Anyone pulling this off is bad ass.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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I don't know what it would take to create an amoeba, but I know for sure
that they are harder than hell to kill because their composition is so much like ours.
In the old days we used arsenic to get rid of them and now it's metronidazole,
both poisons which you hope kill those miserable parasites before they kill
you.
Another demonstration no doubt, of the unity of life.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Largo, you focus on the whole measurement thing too much, as if scientists and people who espouse science are little pinheads with slide rulers and incapable of understanding "big" concepts. By and large, belief in evolution doesn't require much in the way of measuring things. It's almost all reasoning and conceptualizing. Darwin hit on it without having a single, actual date for a fossil. What he had were relative dates (the fossil higher in the section is younger than the fossil lower), and a lot of general knowledge about distribution of species and observations of the natural world.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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If you only knew . . .
That's the whole bloody point - I don't know - and neither do you, and that's o.k...
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Healyje:
I don't refute your belief that I "don't know," though I'm not sure what you mean here,.
Again, not wanting to claim I know anything whatsoever (ask my daughter), I'd like to hear about the means by which you came to such knowledge about me.
I understand how one comes to know about muffler bearings, photons, and malt liquor, but per that other stuff, how does one arrive at the conviction that someone else knows or does not know?
And are we talking about quantifiable stuff, the "meat" in Ed's pantry, or other non-things?
So far as what you know, I have no idea.
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I understand how one comes to know about muffler bearings, photons, and malt liquor, but per that other stuff, how does one arrive at the conviction that someone else knows or does not know?
If you only knew...
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mimi,
The presence of so much water on Earth (which should be named "Water,") is still debated.
It is a little out of my area of knowledge, but I do try to keep up on the early earth. Unfortunately this involves watching the Science Channel and reading Scientific American.
I imagine that many of us get some of our science info like that. Not the best way at all.
The great thing about the Earth is the magnetic field. It deflects all sorts of nasty radiation. The Ozone layer stops the UV radiation. Does anyone remember Reagan telling everyone to wear a hat over the ozone/flourocarbon gig? UV radiation would kill many things on Earth. Mars gets doused with tons of it.
Mars almost certainly had a magnetic field and lots of water far in the past. It is much smaller than the Earth, so the core cooled down and froze. Then the atmosphere was scavenged by solar wind after the magnetic field disappeared. The Martian atmosphere is incredibly thin. A friend of mine studies the Martian dust devils. They are huge.
We see many morphologic evidence of flowing water on mars, as well as past vulcanism. We know that there was a strong magnetic field on mars long ago, because Martian meteorites have strong paleomagnetism. Palomag is a geoscience of its own. You can look at a rock, most of which contain some magnetic iron, place it in a device which nulls out the Earth's magnetic field and measure the remnant magnetism. It is huge in reconstructing the past, becuase you can tell latitude from suitable rocks. Then you can reconstruct the motions of plates, along with stratigraphy. It is highly developed and is at least 25 years old.
Venus is still very active, but has no magnetic field. Its day length is very long. I would have to look it up, but it is almost as long as its year. So you need a spinning liquid core for your magnetic field.
I'm not sure how venus has hung on to its massive atmosphere without much of a magnetic field. It is so thick that the Russians (who did all of the Venus landings) quickly figured out to cut away the parachute very high in the atmosphere and then let the landers just sink to the surface much like an object sinking through the ocean. That is pretty cool.
That leads to the goldilocks sydrome. Venus too hot. Mars too cold. Earth just right.
I regret not going to ASU and studying planetary geology. I wouldn't have to wear slacks to work.
We are all hung up on organic life. The chemistry is so complicated. There was a lot of complicated organic molecules, including amino acids, present on the early earth, so life forming from non living chemicals is an interesting idea.
My guess is that we will be able to create machines which are intelligent, can reproduce, and find their own energy source. That is probaly only fifty years into the future.
Another thing to consider is that with agriculture and modern medicine, humans are not really subject to natural selection anymore. The population of the planet has doubled in my lifetime. This number of people is not sustainable. So birth control is a big thing not only in politics, but human health. People like to screw. The chinese recognized this and put in a one child law.With a couple of generations of this, the human population would fall rapidly and put less of a strain on resources. I know, it sounds like a horrible idea, but the hyperbolic rise in human population is just setting us up for famines and disease.
I dunno why some people have so many kids. That, and the people who are having kids, sets us up for the excellent movie "Ideocracy." That is a hilarious must see movie.
Anyway, intelligent machines could replace humans, or we could be symbiotic with machines. That is a real and well grounded idea. Scary one, but humans can easily do some things that are difficult from machines. So it could be good all around.
Machines have so invaded our lives that we are dependent on them in our lives. They are very useful.
Then you have the idea of messing around with human DNA and creating super humans. It isn't legal in this country, but it is in others, and trust me, there are exellent scientists all over the planet. So it will get done just like water flowing downhill. There is a really great movie called "Gattica" which explores this idea. You genetically engineer your kids. If you are an uningineered love child, you are pretty much a janitor, and there is vast social "racism."
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WBraun
climber
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intelligent machines could replace humans,
Could?
Those machines are everywhere already replacing humans.
They have what's called artificial intelligence.
Stupid machines, that's why nobody has work.
Stupid people want instant gratification, make machine and put humans out of work.
Eat nuts and bolts and drink oil. All idiots in body consciousness only.
Stupid stupid idiots running the world and they are so proud of their stupidity .....
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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I am not talking about idiots. I am talking about machines that are smarter than humans.
The present machines ARE stupid. They can't perform many acts that are easy for humans. We have a great sensory system.
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WBraun
climber
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Humans program the machines and they're stupid.
Machine smarter than humans are spiritual.
Those machines already exist and have for trillions of years.
The stupid analogy that if one does not know something no one else knows either like healyje says is another idiotic projection.
They think because I'm stupid then everyone else is stupid too.
In the future we will become smart.
No in the future you will remain stupid because you have stupid logic and reason and can't think.
Healyje doesn't know therefore no one else knows.
Modern science doesn't know then know one else knows. Stupid idiotic statement.
Stupid stupid stupid brainless idiots .......
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Oxygen is a pretty good marker for life. Without life, Oxygen, which is very reactive, would vanish from the Earth's atmosphere. I need to look up how long it would take, but it is a pretty long time from human standards. Not too long by geologic standards.
The early atmosphere of the earth contained lots of CO2. Where is it?
There are massive limestones in the Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian that are still preserved. Limeston is Ca CO3. Dolomite is Mg CO3. Basically, little organisms had carbonate tests and rained to the seafloor and created layers thousands of feet thick. You can also get carbonates form just chemistry. Water gets saturated with Carbonate and precipitates.
Lots of CO2 is locked up in rocks. LOTS of CO2.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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For those who can't lead their lives based on what science says (evolution and all that), "Under Jehovah" remains a strongly adaptive fiction around which to congregate even in the 21st century.
March 2, 2012, on Piers Morgan Tonight...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
America, Under Jehovah, God of Moses and Abraham
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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"Most people don't need to know much science and shouldn't have it pushed on them if they don't like it."
This irks me.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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We should not make our children take science classes, have it "pushed" on them
Everyone but me is "stupid"
Education and science are for the "elites", the highbrows.
That's why I like to call everyone else stupid and pretend to be mocking education and "science".
Mostly because I am a dumb sh#t, and too stupid to see it or admit it.
Maybe, just maybe, that is why everyone just ignores my posts.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Practically speaking, one of the biggest problems in America is that we don't have
enough qualified science teachers at any level. The universities depend on
foreign graduate students and the high schools depend on the football coach.
No wonder most people don't know much about it or like it.
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go-B
climber
Habakkuk 3:19 Sozo
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Mar 31, 2012 - 01:10am PT
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The chance of life without God's will is like picking the winning Mega lottery numbers every drawing!
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 31, 2012 - 02:13am PT
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No god required - never was, never will be.
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