Velocity_Boy

Nanotechnology. Hands down. A couple of people have said quantum mechanics. Which is fine and good but mostly theoretical and not applied at present. With nanotech, you would use some of the same concepts but at perhaps at a level a couple of clicks up the scale in size. And many clicks up insofar as applicable uses. Nanotech will change our world over the next three decades as significantly I think as computer science and IT has over the past two decades. The applications are limitless. And best of all. NOT confined to the high tech world. Nano will spill into things like construction and food and clothing. House paint that will change color depending on sunlight and heat for maximum insulation and energy efficiency. Sid walks that will met snow and ice! Tires that never wear out. Ad nauseum. I feel so strongly about this that there is zero doubt in my mind, and I have been telling anybody who would listen for a few years now, that if I had to begin college all over again I would go into Nano tech without ANY reservations. Remember that scene in The Graduate? "One word for you........plastics?" One word for YOU, my friend................NANO!!

I will do my best to answer in the most simplified way possible: Mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA is thought to have a separate evolutionary origin than nuclear DNA. OK...so, it's now thought that mitochondria originated when an early ancestor of eukaryotic cells engulfed a Proteobacterial cell (whether because the cell was going to "eat" the bacteria or because the bacteria was going to be a parasite--although I think the latter is more plausible). Instead of digesting the bacterium completely the cell derived energy from it and the proto-mitochondria was able to survive and reproduce in this environment. Eventually much of the the endosymbiont's (the bacteria's) genome became incorporated into the host cell and became what we now would know as an organelle. We have evidence to support the hypothesis that mitochondria originated from a bacterial cell: Mitochondria divide in a cell in a way that is very similar to bacterial cells Mitochondria contain their own circular (like a bacterial cell!) DNA and the genome is similar to bacterial species that are thought to be related They have a transport proteins in their outer membranes called porins and have ribosomes that are similar to bacteria If the mitochondria are removed from a cell it will be unable to create new ones. There is more evidence but these are just some of the simpler ones.

While there is nothing in the present field of neuroscience that would explain your "extra-sensory location" phenomena, I would ask you if you are familiar with the works of the Brit Biologist Rupert Sheldrake. If you are not, I think you would find his primary theory (really a hypothesis) of "morphic resonance" very interesting. Google him--or that idea--and you will get a slew of hits. I myself am a Biologist and Sheldrake was an early hero of mine. IN fact, though I don't admit this too often, due to his very controversial (to say the least) reputation in the science community, he was one of the main guys who made me want to enter the field back in undergrad school, when I switched my major from Information Technology. He would claim, or his theory would, that you and your friend, by dint of your past times together, have become linked within a morphic field that allows communication through nature. That is, communication without the necessity of line-of-sight, or electronic devices, or speech, or any of the common methods. Sheldrake has had a very difficult time proving his ideas. He was once a brilliant cutting-edge microbiologist who did some Pulitzer worthy stuff on increasing crop yields in India. It was while he was there, in fact, that he became enamored in the morphic resonance stuff. Give him a look, and I would be interested in hearing what you think. Thanks.

LOL...you took the words right out of my mouth. Or perhaps more accurately, the keys right out from under my fingers. The OP put me immediately in mind of that old ditty about "an entire universe in a drop of water............" Or that part in the movie "Animal House" where the kid Pinto is high on pot for the first time at his professor's house and he's going on about how a whole universe might be on his fingernail, or whatever.

Yeah...sounds like heat lightening that is caused due to high moisture content (humidity) in the atmosphere. It is usually exacerbated when a cool front moves through, which clears out the clouds (most of them) but when it comes into contact with the arm moist air, creates the static discharge. I live in Texas where we have this fairly often this time of year, and on into the summer months. I notice you live in PA? If I am not mistaken you guys get pretty humid up there, doncha? http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/274/

Your magenetism analogy with god is flawed. Why? Well, because magnetism is a proven occurrence. It is a Law. We have seen it work millions of time and it is used everyday. Probably millions of times. It can be seen and witnessed and felt and touched and experienced. We have mathematical proofs and equations outlining its process and methodologies. Several pretty famous scientists--Gauss comes to mind--have made it a central work of their opus. God? LOL. Not so much. In fact, that idea has NONE of those things. As far as declining church attendance, here's a bit more.......http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/139575-7-startling-facts-an-up-close-look-at-church-attendance-in-america.html

I don't think the Believers "try to invent" that conflict. I believe it is a very real one. And many of our more strident and vocal atheists, like the late Chris Hitchens, along with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, have exacerbated this conflict. They claim that religion has had it too easy for too long and the time is nigh for it to be eradicated as the harmful viral plague it is to Science and Progress. I personally agree with that view, BTW. Religion has no choice but to conflict with science if they continue to believe in some of their absurd dogma and fables like we find in the bible. Where unicorns exist; serpents speak and seduce; sky gods stop the sun in the sky so as to allow more time for slaughter; seas divide to allow people to walk through them; and plants were created before the Sun. Wow. Yeah the more I think about it the more I totally disagree with you. In fact. I think religion has lamely TRIED to help close the gap between itself and science. Like with ID. Which is nothing but old Creationism gussied-up with some psuedo science in an attempt to get it snuck past school administrators and be taught in schools. Religion HAS to concede to science like this, and do more, really, if it wants to survive. As it is, as every decade passes religion is swept further and further into the dark corner of superstition where it so rightfully belongs. People are leaving the churches in droves. Evolution gets more evidence and proof every single year. It is all but a LAW! Soon it will be. "Science flies us to the Moon. Religion flies us into skyscrapers." I don't think the Believers "try to invent" that conflict. I believe it is a very real one. And many of our more strident and vocal atheists, like the late Chris Hitchens, along with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, have exacerbated this conflict. They claim that religion has had it too easy for too long and the time is nigh for it to be eradicated as the harmful viral plague it is to Science and Progress. I personally agree with that view, BTW. Religion has no choice but to conflict with science if they continue to believe in some of their absurd dogma and fables like we find in the bible. Where unicorns exist; serpents speak and seduce; sky gods stop the sun in the sky so as to allow more time for slaughter; seas divide to allow people to walk through them; and plants were created before the Sun. Wow. Yeah the more I think about it the more I totally disagree with you. In fact. I think religion has lamely TRIED to help close the gap between itself and science. Like with ID. Which is nothing but old Creationism gussied-up with some psuedo science in an attempt to get it snuck past school administrators and be taught in schools. Religion HAS to concede to science like this, and do more, really, if it wants to survive. As it is, as every decade passes religion is swept further and further into the dark corner of superstition where it so rightfully belongs. People are leaving the churches in droves. Evolution gets more evidence and proof every single year. It is all but a LAW! Soon it will be. "Science flies us to the Moon. Religion flies us into skyscrapers." I will go along with us scientists not attacking religion and doing our damndest to keep it (and it's show pony, ID) out of the classrooms, so long as they stay where they belong. Which is in the arena of literature and Mythology and Superstition. And NOT in any real discussions about how the Earth or the Cosmos came into existence. Genesis as a guide to the Creation of the Cosmos is about as useful as reading "Lord of the Rings" to learn about Geoscience. What really irks me about the religious zealots and biblical literalists is their continued hypocritical refusal to hold their own holy book up to the same level of criticism and analysis they try to do with science. Never mind that we can explain 95% of how the Big Bang or Evolution work--they take the remaining as-yet-explained 5% and say, "Aha! You can't explain it because god did it!" Jeez that ticks me off. OK I better quit, I get too worked up on this topic! LOL

So I played along and read the OP story and was pretty much believing it was a true account. Until I got to this part, that is................. Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey? Professor: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do. Student : Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir? (The Professor shook his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument was going.) ................................................................................................... Then I realized this was probably all made up and was just written by the debate author as a tactic, a vehicle, if you will, to espouse and justify his own personal belief in god. The reason I feel this was is that no college science professor would have answered that question of Evolution like that. Since we did NOT evolve from monkeys. Not even close. This is not how it works and anybody with even a cursory understanding of Evolution knows this. At least they should. Also the Proff would have been able to come up with examples of observing evolution with his own eyes. This is an easy one for any Evolutionist. I myself would cite our very own vestigial traits that we h. sapiens have. I would also mention the plethora of transitional fossils we have in museums all over the planet that show us a step-by-step account of Evolution. I would also mention modern day species that have evolved in very recent time, such as that "spotted soot moth" in England that got darker in the cities during the Industrial Revolution. I would then as a professor explain to the little snot the difference between justified faith and unjustified faith. Sure, in science we use faith. But usually because of a past track record. Past observations. Past experiences that show our expected result has a very good chance of occurring. I expect water to boil at 212 degrees or so at sea level since every time I have heated it to this temp in the past it has indeed boiled. Faith in gods or Jewish carpenters who rise from the dead after three days in a cave, however, do not enjoy this past track record of proven and observed results. The student's claim that there was no such thing as cold is also word-fencing at its worst. We all know what cold is and we have experienced it. We can define it with numbers and formulas. Not so with gods. So I gotta call "cough cough (bool-shite) on this account. Nice try at getting your belief across however. But next time you would do well to give college level science guys more credit than you gave your fictitious professor. Thanks!

But why? What would the advantage be to a laser beam based power generator? In case you aren't aware, lasers are expensive. Plus you would need modems to convert the light to useful amps. Meanwhile electricity is easy and cheap. As fast as light, almost. We just need to learn in America that we screwed the pooch when we ditched nuclear power plants back in the seventies in the wake of the three mile island non-event! Another example if the liberal media harming technology and progress. Fossil fuels are primitive and dirty and obsolete. Except for natural gas. And our a.c. electricity methods are just fine thank you. Lasers are just more complexity to go wrong. Turbines are easy and cheap.

Now I know you're a troll. Why haven't you claimed James Randi's one million bucks yet if you are so adept at a.p?

A supernova is an exploded star. During a stars death throes, it steadily and exorably burns through all of the elements, beginning with the lightest, like helium and hydrogen, and then steadily moving through the periodic table toward the heavier elements. This of course includes those in the metals group. I believe the process ends with iron and lead. So the star explodes and this is the supernova. Btw there have been ones so big they would have encompassed our entire solar system. The dust of these elements are tossed out into space. Till they become ensnared by gravitational pull of a star. Through a process called accretion they spin and orbit and get more compact and condensed till they are planets in the solar system of that staff that us how their Sun. So that's off the top of my head and is greatly simplified but gives you the basic answer of how those metal ores get into our Earth.

The closest I could come to agreeing with that question would be if you allowed me to slightly amend it. I could agree that, a life form's thoughts are a part of what comprises the meaning of life for that particular life form. Like Descartes said, you think so you are! But no, what you think about life of anything else does not affect my reality not my Existentialist thoughts and ideas.

Some of us probably accept it and some don't. I'm not really sure it deserves the title of Theory, however. Is it not really more of a hypothesis? Evolution is a theory. The big bang is a theory. From what I have heard and read on String Hypothesis the amount of evidence for it is nowhere near the formidable levels that Evolution and the BB enjoy. In fact I was under the impression it fell out of favor for several years after that initial Elegant Universe deal had its fifteen minutes? LOL. And thaf only recently it's ideas have resurged a bit. In fact, have any if those LHC's or Super Colliders ever even detected those tiny vibrating strings that are alleged to comprise the most fundamental particles? If they were I didn't hear about it. Hell, we can smash neutrons together and get s.a. particles even smaller than quarks that last for a nanosecond, but no pictures of those elusive vibrating strings? Nah, I ain't buying, amigo. I propose here and now that the whole thing be renamed String Hypothesis. http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2015/12/23/why-string-theory-is-not-science/#6bfbe88217e7

This is a great question and you are in agreement with many historians who think that the discovery on how to use metal ores to produce tools and weapons was perhaps the most crucial for any early peoples who would soon become a dominant and successful culture. Especially insofar as warring with other factions. Which, face it, History is mostly comprised of! If you read a bunch of history you inevitably read alot about War! For good or bad, it is what it is. Here is a nice little article I found on the History of Metallurgy in our World..............http://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=6101

Well, there IS a way to produce an image wihtout needing a solid two dimensional wall, or a movie screen. And what's even better, is this image is not confined to just being two dimensional, as a movie screen is. But rather: THREE Dimensional. 3D baby! It's called a Hologram. The area into which the image is projected is called a "Holo-Box." We have the technology now, but not on the retail movie watching level for the general public. But it has been my contention for several years now that this process will be the next step in our movie-going experience. Theaters all over will soon not have a movie screen, but rather, Holo Boxes! I am guessing we're about 7-10 years away from seeing this offered around the country as much as today we see the iMax or even the 3D movies. And no, unlike with the 3D's, for the Hologram experience you don't have to wear those goofy glasses. Here is a bit more on how those Holograms work..........http://holocenter.org/what-is-holography

A few hundred strategically-placed nuclear warheads should do the trick! "World War Three may be fought with nuclear weapons but world war four will be fought with sticks and stones." --Albert Einstein

Well that's like asking if an art critic's review of a painter's exhibition is as meaningful as the art. Or if Rolling Stone's Magazine's review of a newly released album is as meaningful as the music itself. The answer to both of those is no. You also asked to different questions, right? I mean, is the Wikipedia page REALLY a critical review? I would have to say that whenever I have read one on a movie or a piece of music or a painting even, they indeed were NOT so much as subjective reviews as they were objective (pretty much) descriptions of the item in question. Usually with a bit of history and context, such as listing the genre. They seem to be more along the lines of an Encyclopedia entry than a critical review. And I believe this is the intention as well. Strange question you ask, I must say. But thanks. (are you currently doing some sort of school project or essay on Art Critique? I ask this in light of some of your other questions this past week.

So what if the experiment is "old?" Which is a very relative term anyway. Copernicus' discovery of a heliocentric solar system and not a geo-centric one predates the M&M experiment by a good 300 years. Newton; Kepler; Jennings; Curie; Rutherford. All old by your standards I guess? Yet the M&M findings of there being no Aether ARE correct. So maybe instead of calling it old and inaccurate we should instead say they were ahead of their time? LOL

To avoid sinking, you need to generate thrust equal to your weight. You generate this by pushing water down and backwards with each step. For a size 9 shoe, you can’t push more than around 3.5 litres of water at a time or you would sink too far and friction with the water would slow you down too much. So that 3.5 kg of water has to be pushed back fast enough to offset your weight. If you weigh 75 kg, my back-of-an-envelope calculation suggests you’ll need to push it back at around 11 m/s. Since the water moves back as you push it, you need to go twice as fast as that or you would stand still. So that’s a running speed of almost 80 km/hr, which would be quite impossible even in my idealised calculation that ignores things like fluid drag.

When Clerk Maxwell wrote to D.P. Todd of the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office in Washington in 1879, he inquired about the possibility of measuring the velocity of the solar system through the ether by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons. Roemer had used measurements of the eclipse times to obtain a number for the speed of light. Maxwell concluded that the effects he sought were too small to measure - but that assertion came to the attention of a young naval instructor named A. A. Michelson who had just been transferred to that office. In 1878, Michelson had made an excellent measurement of the speed of light at the age of 25, and he thought the detection of motion through the ether might be measurable. Michelson proceeded to invent a new instrument with accuracy far exceeding that which had been attained to that date, and that instrument is now universally called the Michelson interferometer. In trying to measure the speed of the Earth through the supposed "ether", you could depend upon one component of that velocity being known - the velocity of the Earth around the sun, about 30 km/s. Using a wavelength of about 600 nm, there should be a shift of about 0.04 fringes as the spectrometer was rotated 360°. Though small, this was well within Michelson's capability. Michelson, and everyone else, was surprised that there was no shift. Michelson's terse description of the experiment: "The interpretation of these results is that there is no displacement of the interference bands. ... The result of the hypothesis of a stationary ether is thus shown to be incorrect." (A. A. Michelson, Am. J. Sci, 122, 120 (1881))

Transfer RNA. Small RNA molecules that carry amino acids to the ribosome for polymerization into a polypeptide. During translation the amino acid is inserted into the growing polypeptide chain when the anticodon of the tRNA pairs with a codon on the mRNA being translated. So..........I would say "A, B, an C" are accurate statements. What do I win?

Uh, yeah, sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the Ether hypothesis (never was a full-blown theory!) was effectively debunked and disproved over 120 years ago with the Mickelson-Morley Experiment. Here's a bit more on that..............http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ/mmhist.html

I happen to have had the misfortune of reading that book a couple months ago. What a waste of time. The book establishes two points as far as I could tell.......... 1. Extinction is a thing 2. Creatures have gone extinct, sometimes because of humans If you already realize these two points, you do not need to read this book. To add to the page count, the author relates uninteresting anecdotes of walking around jungles and streams. Other filler includes endless quotations and lists of species names. Unoriginal and uninspiring. One star, maybe. She is short on facts and long in hypothesis and layman extrapolation. Also please know that Ms. Kolbert is NOT a scientist, not even an undergrad degree in ANY STEM discipline, but instead is a staff writer for that well-known bastion of objective Science, The New Yorker. LOL

Since this IS a science forum I think any posts or thoughts on religion or its attendant gods and goddesses should be confined--relegated?--to the eponymous sub-forums. I also think the reason you see the level of ire and irritation raised a bit in discussions of gods or religions as compared with chats about aliens is because the former have a stronger and more obnoxious lobby who has an alarming propensity to force their opinions and ethos where it does not belong and is most certainly not welcome: in a Science Forum. Aliens could be construed as a science topic, you know. As in Exobiology or even Cosmology. Conversely, I can think of no science discipline where talk of gods belong? Hmm..maybe abnormal Psych? Thanks.

Of course Psychology is a science. Though I have heard some scientists in the STEM fields, including those in the so-called "hard science" disciplines refer to it as a "soft science." I love psych personally, almost majored in it instead of Biology, and I'm thinking of doing my Dissertation on a topic in the realm of Evolutionary Psychology, so I can combine the two things I love the most into one discipline. But yeah, Psych--definitely a science IMHO. And also you have to remember that it incorporates some indisputably "hard science" disciplines, such as molecular biology; neuro-chemistry; as well as various types of Brain Mapping or medical imaging technologies such as fMRI's and PET scans. I guess it could be argued by an adamant detractor of Psych that those technical and hard science disciplines I just mentioned actually belong in the realm of Psychiatry and NOT Psychology, but I would argue that. Psychology is usually concerned more with human behavior and the therapies and other treatments like medication to cure psychiatric illnesses, while I think Psychiatry has gotten to be concerned more with the organic reasons in the brain itself that cause the problems. Things have changed in the field a LOT since, say, Freud and Jung's days. It is rare nowadays for an MD Psychiatrist to actually to therapy with his clients. Those guys usually just throw meds at them. And then if a client DOES want therapy as part of his trx the shrink will refer him to a therapist--usually a PhD or an MPsych in his network. Of course the regulations that stipulate what a person needs in the way of education and credentials to do therapy DO differ wildly from state to state. IN some states almost ANYbody can hang out a shingle for therapy. This practice undoubtedly has allowed some under-qulaified people into the realm and sure hasn't done the overall science of Psychology any favors in maintaining its credibility. Remember too that the entire field of Psychiatry is still in its infancy. It wasn't so very long ago that we were doing frontal lobotomies. And not too long before that where we believed in Phrenology, and not too long before THAT when we figured that boring a hole into the skull to let the demons or the bad humors escape from the brain was effective therapy. Hell, lobotomies were done up until the early 1960s when thankfully a bunch of new psychotropic meds came into the field.