j_p

I might toss in a "... through an unforeseen confluence of unpredicted environmental changes brought about by sudden and drastic changes in energy policy by the EU ...", or two [be original; blame some government other than the US], but, yeah, if you can't explain it, don't.

Well, it definitely sounds as if we are married ...

Slow closure of eyes, defeated drop of shoulders, breathless determination to not sigh. I was proposing that the force of the distant explosion of the moon would push the earth straight on its axis and straighten out its orbit. Now, I am a scientist, but a chemist. As far as the interaction of planetary bodies goes, I am on par with a person who studies medival Basque poetry, and even I know that is just wrong; it wouldn't happen! Are you really going to force me to say it?

Looking for trouble? Really, I was just critiquing the article. I wasn't impressed; but then, the career-angst of unfocused ambitious young men isn't very interesting to me. I do not think it would have been possible for him/them to have lied about anything significant about the Watergate investigation. No conspiracy theories here; but I think his stance, "Gee, we never thought of that" disingenuous, to say the least. But the man has always annoyed me, I don't know why; I'll wait until I can get the book at the library.

Heavy sigh. No' date=' you misunderstand, I was referring to the [b']change, the removal[/b] of the moon, even without blowing it up and raining debris on the earth [imagine the moon is stolen by highly advanced beings from an alternate universe]. That the earth would be more stable without the gravitational interaction with the moon makes sense [at least to a chemist], but wouldn't the sudden change in the system cause a serious upheaval? I do NOT want earth-quakes; they would increase the particulates in the atomosphere, and, unless it leads to growing moss on clouds, I don't want that.

What do you need it for? Have your checked out the Application notes on column and instrument manufacturer's web-sites?

If both you and your wife sense the relationship is getting out of hand, you are probably right. Something that Coquina did not mention in her description of a widow[er]'s physical loneliness, and that has obviously not occured to your and your wife is that you are safe. You are married, a friend of her late husband, and, most importantly, a continent away; she doesn't have to worry about falling into bed with you. So she is free to fantasize about it. Practical advice on how to remove the latent sexual component in the relationship: have your wife start talking to the widow. She should email her occasionally, ask how she is doing, what the hot new travelling exhibit currently on display in "Vancouver" is like, whatever. Give the widow a new contact, relieve your wife's sensation that she is excluded, deny your fantasy lover status.

Do you really think so? There is very little that is new in it. And it doesn't seem particularly sincere.

Sigh. If the moon were to be removed, wouldn't the sudden absence cause severe earth-quakes, even without bombardment of the earth with large chunks of the moon? The problem with the plants: low light plants are seldom low water plants. There is a challenge for the gardeners among us. Re: rigorous science in science fiction I prefer the science to be as vague as possible; if the science is detailed, some detail is going to be wrong, either from ignorance or expediance. Like giant ants. I don't think that liberties should be taken; I just think that not all the details need be supplied. And I am not the idea person; I am a reader, sharing what would work for me in a work of fiction. Tell me something is "true", and I will accept it for the sake of the story [except giant ants]; bore with pages of detailed explanations, and I will take it as a challenge to tear those details apart. About religion: After the Great Flood, God promised Noah "neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth". That's all, I wasn't suggesting a religious sub-text.

As many as are necessary for the plot.

So, what would it take to blow up the moon? And what would be the immediate and short-term consequences? And could the moon blow up WITHOUT the earth getting hit with a lot of the debris?

Invalid; science fiction has long accepted the premise of parallel evolution; the humanoid form is universal because it is the 'best'. After all' date=' there are instances on earth of species with similar appearance evolving independently. Um, we don't beam down to plantets without breathable air, that's all. And do you really want to clutter up the movies with all the necessary medical treatments? After all, if faster than light travel is possible, general innoculations against the types of diseases likely to evolve on any planet with breathable atmosphere would be easy enough.

Um, I really did mix up reality and your fictional environment, didn't I? I was just to lazy to watch my verb tenses and toss in lots of qualifying clauses. That post was the result of abusing perfectly legal substances, i.e., caffeine and nicotine. Don't let Tecno scare you; if you want to stop all rainfall over the US, you can. Just face down a few technical quibbles. Remember, you don't have to be right, you just have to be consistent. [but I think stopping the rain on a single continental mass would be harder than my suggestion.] This thread is not getting enough attention; you need more feed back on details. For example, I did not know planetary obits could not be circular. And I strongly suspect that blowing up the moon will not work, as fond as I am of the idea. Do you mind if I do some research on what happens when the Moon blows up?

Hey, Tecno, work with me here. We are not creating a functional environment, we are working up an explanation that will take maybe one paragraph and be read primarily by people who don't even remember that the earth's orbit around the sun is elliptical, never mind understand why. This is fiction; the idea comes first, then the underlying details. So, for the sake of fiction, we are going to assume equilibrium is reached, and then tackle the details of how. I came up with a starting point. Thank you for the other issues to address. Greenhouse gasses, especially CO2; how to achieve the restricted cloud cover; sublimation at the poles; impossibility of circular orbit. You have no problem with me blowing up the moon to knock the earth straight on its axis? And don't be snippy. Ok, here goes: The greenhouse gasses, including CO2. Well, we are going to achieve the new water cycle equilibrium BEFORE the temperature gets hot enough to bake the CO2 out of the rocks. We have already stopped burning fossil fuels and wood; toss in a few more low light, low water plants to suck up the CO2; mosses are out, they need too much water; check out a gardening site, they have databases that suggest plant for any conditions; there is a consequence you might not have thought of, greatly reduced number of plant species. I would really like to grow a layer of moss on the underside of the cloud cover; that would be fun. Any ideas how to do that? Restricting cloud cover to the temperature zone Well, the weather will be different at the equator and poles from temperate zones. So, the cloud cover will be only at the temperate zones. Now we have to come up with a reason why. I have theorized it is because the greater sun's energy at the equator means that the air gets hotter, rises faster, and rolls over the cloud cover. I think that hellacious storms are going to be necessary. Sublimation at the poles No problem; water sublimates at the poles. I think. What the hell, we can leave that detail out; even if I am right, too many people will dis-believe it for it too work in the story. The last thing we want is to push at the willing suspension of disbelief. Impossibility of circular orbit Well, if we can't have a circular orbit, we can't. How close to circular can we get? And while we're at it, what would messing with the orbit to do the period of rotation? Would we end up with a longer or shorter daylength? Additional points Remember, the earth is a very complicated system; current theories about the consequences of global warming could be wrong; so we CAN create our own scenario of exactly what happens. I think tossing in an abrupt end to the burning for energy is a good idea. If we need to keep up current energy use, I think we should use wind power; that will tie in with the hellacious storms. And our scientists will not know exactly why the earth's environment changed so rapidly to our current configuration; they will theorize and argued and contradict one another, so we don't need to have all the details right. We are NOT evaporating all the water, just enough to create a semi-permanent cloud cover over about half the earth's surface. Does anyone know how much water that would take? We might have to sublimate, or MELT, the poles after all. I have rethought my plot device about having a non-scientist explain things to a child, way too obvious. Do NOT use it. Here's another idea; have the religious fundamentalist believe that the change in the environment is God preparing the earth for the Great Conflagration by which he will destroy the earth; introduce any scientific 'facts' you want in arguments with the RFs. Sorry, I'm not the writer; just an idea.

So, you won't blow up the moon? Do you have to have a reason? In The Children of Men, the author just had humans stop reproducing; possible reasons were suggested, but never clearly explicated. Whatever the reason is, use the narrative device of having a non-scientist explain it to a child; then the readers can mentally attribute any factual inaccuracies and over-simplications to the characters, and not to the science. From Coquina's link: "As air is cooled, the evaporation rate decreases more rapidly than does the condensation rate with the result that there comes a temperature (the dew point temperature) where the evaporation is less than the condensation and a droplet can grow into a cloud drop." You want to create a stable environment where evaporation and condensation are in equilibrium. That should be easy enough. Warm the surface of the earth; increased evaporation will increase the overall cloud mass; as the cloud mass increases and traps radiant energy against the earth, the temperature will increase further, more water will evaporate, increasing the cloud mass, and, subsequently, the earth's surface temperature. Eventually, an equilibrium is reached in which there is a permanent cloud cover over the earth. Water will have to be mined from the clouds. Maybe you could restrict the cloud cover to the temperate zones; then in the tropics, evaporation would occur, warm wet air would rise, hit the significantly cooler upper atmosphere [radiant energy trap by the cloud cover would be unavailable to the upper atmosphere]; I think you'd get primarily nasty hail-storms, so precipitation would be a curse. The warmer air from the tropic would flow over the temperate zone cloud cover, and push down on the poles. That, combines with the sun's energy, would heat the caps, causing them to sublimate; that would dramatically increase the amount of water available for the cloud cover. Push the cooled air back under the cloud cover. You get some hellacious weather. Particulates in the atmosphere encourage the formation of rain droplets, so remove as many sources of particulate air pollution that you can; create a world-wide ban on burning wood and fossil fuels. Combine this with a period of no volcanic activity. [aside]Then, if you want, you can use a massive volcanic eruption [increased particulates, more and larger rain drops, decreased cloud mass and surface temperature] as a deus ex machina.[/aside] The seasons will interfer with all this, so get rid of them. You will need to straighten out the earth on its axis, and change its orbit from elliptical to circular. A massive explosion in space on the side of the earth away from the sun at the Winter Solstice should do the trick. So, blow up the moon.

To aid in the escape? If you are going to kill someone, do you really want anyone to hear the shot? I love the weird shimmering yellow green color they always use for science gone wrong.

One additional piece of advice; study how to take the tests, too. There are loads of books on SAT prep that will teach you how to take standardized tests; the local library should have them, and check out yard sales, and even book-stores [this is the off season for college prep, so they are probably remaindered.

I think you should concentrate on less important body parts than bones, like hair and nail clippings. A great deal can be learned from a person's health and diet, as well as illegal recreation, from hair. As you are interested in elements, you could start with an acid digestion [do you have a muffle furnace?].

Human tissue can be grown over inorganic material. The key is the surface, rather than the compositiion, of the material. Check out mechanical hearts.

Well, people survive in and around deserts now, so, theoretically, life would continue some how. The US, Russia, China are all too big to survive; too many people and too much land mass with no water. Make Norway the greedy powerful country; they have fjords and glaciers. They can perfect de-salinization [making use of the decreased humidity some how] and OUR HERO can steal their largest glacier, maybe using the last of the world's oil in the process. While OUR other HERO [make this one a female] works on genetically modifying food plants to grow in salted soil. But who'll stop the rain? Actually, we don't have to stop the rain, we can move it [well, actually, we probably can't]; would it work if rain only fell over the oceans, or at the poles? Or even around the equator? That would mean that, let's see, only South America, including northern Brazil, Indonesia and Africa would be getting rain. It doesn't look like a lot of land mass on my globe, but maybe enough to feed a sharply curtailed population if the entire area was intensively farmed. Brazil and Norway can form an alliance; the Congo can refuse to officially join, but work with them, and Indonesia, et al, can be torn apart by countries fighting to control their rain. Of course, those pesky trade winds and ocean currents would keep trying to move the rain; I don't think we can stop the earth's rotation [the day/night thing is kind of important]... What would happen to the weather if we got rid of tides? Can you blow up the moon? Ok, stealing the glacier is silly.

Why the split functionality in the eyes?

I wouldn't say, 'distorting'... Defining the means by which we explore? We can not understand life, the universe, and everything, as a whole; we need to approach understanding in parts, through specific disciplines. Howver, we know that this fragmented approach is inadequate, because we can experience the, um, unity of the universe in epiphanies that go beyond our rational and linear understanding. So, I meant my first answer. We need three to act against our intellectual tendency to define reality in terms of conflict and opposites. Don't you need three points to define the circumference of a circle?

I like three. Three keeps us from defining everything as opposites; there are protons and electrons, but also neutrons. Three keeps us balanced.

Are "they" the developing nerves? Haven't a clue, I'm a chemist. Thinking back, the shift toward chemistry probably started in the Developmental Biology class. The experiments we learned about were disquieting to say the least. I found the technical expertise and the design of the experiments fascinating, but envisioned the poor mouse doomed to a life of never being able to scratch an itch.

Ich studierte Deutsche im hoch schule aber kanne [oder kenne] genug fur diese. Mein Wortschaft ist sehr klein.