Xyph

I'm sure a ladder with 3 legs could work, it'd just be more complicated, or 2 people could climb it at once if it was leaning on something. Anyway, a Google for "triple helix DNA" yields plenty of results, but I don't really know enough about biology to understand any of it - so what are they all about?

Yes you can. Creationism isn't science. What you've said to Tycho amounts to "The Big Bang theory isn't perfect. People have proposed alternatives. Therefore Creationists must be right." This is obviously nonsense. I'm not about to say religion hates science. Whether or not you hate science individually, the Creationist movement as a whole is a science-hating one, because it isn't scientific yet pretends to be and the more educated of it's proponents will use everything short of outright lies to present their flawed "science" as fact. And by the way, religion doesn't equal Christianity. No thanks. I've seen the so-called "proofs" and their refutations. But you don't need to be a scientist to know that starting from a conclusion and looking for proof to support it is not science whether the proofs are credible or not (but more often than not, they're not, nonetheless). But look, I don't want to turn this into another ridiculous debate about Creationism versus Evolution. If you want to continue, start a new thread, or something.

Some of the earlier pictures might as well be skinned frogs for all the detail their limbs have. Would you still oppose an abortion if the fetus would fit into the palm of your hand? Surely you can't claim something that small could carry the machinery of human sentience. That said, I'm not necessarily for abortion. I'm for responsibility. But that doesn't mean I'd stand in the way of someone who wanted one, although the earlier the better, perhaps. As for therapy, I think the right to it should be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Creationism is moronic unscientific nonsense and everyone worth having much to do with knows it. Kindly take your science-hating deception elsewhere. Just to clarify, when I said "going through oscillations" I didn't quite mean that as going through Big Bangs and Big Crunches infinitely, but rather, as a whole, galaxies going through periods of apparent decay before (for whatever reason) sudden mass births of new stars, without any universal collapses and expansions.

I'm just wondering what the current consensus is, or, if the consensus is still in the affirmative, whether there are any growing beliefs in alternative theories (besides Creationism, obviously). For a while now I thought that the Big Bang was essentially proven beyond any reasonable doubt, but quite recently I read an article that claimed otherwise, citing (if I remember correctly) the discovery of red giants in galaxies too distant for them to have had time to form if the Big Bang model of the universe holds true. Anyway, there was some other theory proposed, in which the universe could have been trillions of years old, going through oscillations of galaxy formation and decay. I can't find the article now, anyway, so does anyone have any information on this theory, a link to an actual article, comments on it's plausibility, or just general thoughts about it?

Does it exist? Can it exist? Could it evolve naturally? Are there any inherent advantages to being a triple-helixed animal? How would a triple-helix lifeform differ from a double-helixer? What about multiple helixes? What effects would DNA of multiple helixes have on the creature that possessed it?

As far as I'm aware, there's nothing in physics at the moment that would even remotely suggest the possibility of creating the sort of forcefields that act as solid barriers except to certain wavelengths of light (like the visible range), and can be "projected" at will (unlike glass and plastics, for example). But that said, am I wrong? Is there anything whatsoever in the physics of today that could be used to create something like a forcefield? I've read some articles on using plasma shielding, but that seems to be mainly to shield against radiation, and although one article made allusions to stopping solid projectiles with an extremely dense version, I'm somewhat skeptical that this could actually be done. If there is nothing in today's physics, what are the chances such a field will ever emerge? (I'm guessing minimal at best, but I could be wrong.) If it did, what field of science would it be likely to come from? Quantum mechanics? Something String-Theory related? I'd appreciate your thoughts on the topic.

It seems like, given the vast internal surface area of a dyson sphere, even if the technology did exist to supply artificial gravity to the entire inner surface it would probably take a significant amount of the power generated by the star just to maintain it. If this were the case it would make the entire process pretty pointless, since the only real reason to build a dyson sphere in the first place is to harness the energy of the star within it - there are far easier ways to just get more living space.

Well, while it seems fairly likely that the light speed barrier will remain unbreakable, that doesn't mean there won't be ways around it. That some form of traversible wormhole or warp drive will one day allow us to work around this inconveniently slow universal speed limit while still adhering to the laws of Physics as we know them at the moment isn't completely implausible.

Faster than light travel isn't a necessity for long range space travel. If the sun does engulf the Earth when it becomes a red giant (which isn't yet an absolute certainty, as far I'm aware, although it'll make little difference either way since if its not engulfed it'll certainly be roasted to uninhabitability long before it would be swallowed) it'll be in 5 gigayears or so. It'll only take a fifth of that time for the Earth to become dangerously hot, I think, but that's still plenty of time to expand even at speeds well below lightspeed.

That thing about the dolphins is pretty interesting - I'll have to try and watch that thing about the sentient squid as well. I was thinking more about what sort of technology sentient aquatics could achieve assuming they had the dexterity for it, though - how would their technology be limited by their lack of fire? Could they build huge underwater cities? What sort of chance would they have of building vehicles to get them around faster? Would they ever be able to use electricity?

I remember reading that there should theoretically be another region of stable elements beginning somewhere around 110~120. Is this true? If so, is it cyclic, with alternating regions of stable and unstable elements? Is there much chance that any of these multitudes of potential manufactured stable elements would actually be any use for anything?

Assuming an aquatic species achieved some semblance of sentience, what would be the chances of their developing a technological society on a par with (or, at least, recognisable as industrialized by) our own? I can see they'd encounter some obvious difficulties (lack of fire, mainly) but could these perhaps be overcome?

Hmm, yeah, I suppose that could be a problem. What about a hexapod?

Hm, so, generally, once a reasonably successful species has emerged with a certain number of limbs, it's descendants will adhere to this without any significant variation? Does that mean, then, that had whatever creature is ancestor to all today's tetrapods been a tripod (for example), the vast majority of today's vertebrates would be tripods as well?

Hypothetically, would there be any environments that would be conduicive to the evolution of vertebrate land-based animals with more than four limbs or asymmetric numbers of limbs? Is having four limbs almost always inherently more advantageous, evolutionarily, or is it just a case of tetrapods gaining the advantage early on, when things could have turned out differently?

So could this sort of thing be used to provide something like gravity in spacecraft, as opposed to somewhat clumsy looking centrifugal effects? Thanks for the welcome, Teotihuacan.

Is it true?