The Peon

Thank you for the replies!

In terms of entropy, if a chemical reaction is endergonic, will the reactants always have more total molecules than the products? And if exergonic, will it be the opposite, and the reactants will have more total molecules than the products? Ex: 2C4H10 + 13O2 ---> 8CO2 + 10H2O Reactants: 15 total molecules Products: 18 total molecules Reaction is exergonic, because the product has more total molecules than the reactants. Ex 2: CuSO4 + 2NaOH ---> Cu(OH)2 + Na2SO4 Reactants: 3 total molecules Products: 2 total molecules Reaction is endergonic, because the product has less total molecules than the reactants.

Thanks for the breakdown! I have 8 months of Chemistry coming up, I am really looking forward to it.

I once read long ago that the average human cell contains enough stored energy, that if it were released all at once, it would create a massive explosion. Could we estimate the amount of energy (thermal, sound, mechanical energy) released if every bond in a human cell were broken all at once?

Man I was rather crude back when I started this thread. I apologize for all the logical fallacies I committed THE PLOT THICKENS: http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/ancient-humans-had-sex-with-mystery-relatives-131203.htm#mkcpgn-fbnws1 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/science/at-400000-years-oldest-human-dna-yet-found-raises-new-mysteries.html?emc=eta1

Thank you so much my friend, TAR2. I appreciated your well thought out response. "Hum. Consciousness till the end of the universe. Don't you think by then we would have figured a way to even avoid that?" I was going to mention perhaps we will find a way to quantum leap through dimensions, if you want to go real far, even perhaps becoming deities of our own Universes. " But I am not so sure we are setup to look forward to great great great great great.....great grand kids. Plus, there is already a population problem we have been having for the last 50 years or so, and in places like China, normal "drives" are already dissuaded and rules put in place to have only one child and such. " True, but in places with high education levels and high standard of living among the populace, the birth rate is actually stabilizing and the population declining. It might be that as humans have more and more of their needs met, and they understand the world around them better, they naturally stop producing children. We see this in nations of various cultures. The nations where life is hard, the highest birth rates exist. I think that combined with the technology that will give us eternal life, we wont have to worry about procreation. What's more, if the entire galaxy is not colonized yet by other species of life, we will need to colonize entire worlds. " I am not thinking immortality will be achieved without concurrent problems and losses of some "human" attributes. For instance, it would no doubt take a lot of energy, and know how, and reliance on technology and such, which would probably be expensive, and not available to everyone. How then would we chose who gets to continue, and who has to die?" I think once the "holy grail" of immortality is within the actual grasp of humanity, an epiphany will take over the species as a whole. The technology will be achieved via nuclear fusion. Research groups such as Skunk Works have released public videos announcing discoveries in nuclear fusion, making it cheap and easy. As for who gets to live and who gets to die, I would honestly hope that with an entire galaxy to colonize and explore we would put aside petty differences, celebrate each others cultures and heritages, stop allowing bankers and politicians to run our civilizations, and press forth to reach our destiny. I think this can be achieved because I believe that if enough people think like me, it will happen, no matter who has what money or what weapons. I think an immediate open global education system needs to be set up, with international accrediting. Diplomas and trade skills can be learned primarily online, with local journeymen available to complete training if need be in developing areas. That should be the first right of every human being. The second right to every human being is the right to travel anywhere one pleases. This will ensure morally inferior societies will dwindle away in time, or so I predict and hope. The third right of every human is the right to all resources and technology, barring the kind that can harm other human beings. That technology will be regulated by global councils whose primary purpose should be to organize a global military to defend against any possible hostile alien life. All this can really be achieved is a lengthy discussion, perhaps you can imagine a vast global distribution network primarily run by automatons and AI. This will all be powered by aforementioned fusion power. The fourth right is freedom of speech in all forms. Even hate speech should be open to ridicule, because by it's very essence it's ridiculous. An educated society would reject that form of banter. The fifth and final right should be freedom of transparency. Every public official and person serving on any council must be open to complete scrutiny. I would even recommend the more critical the position, the more transparent the position become. This may seem counter intuitive, but if you force the entire species to be as one with information vital to the survival of the species, honesty will ensue. "the consciousness of my maternal grandparents was embodied in my mom, and that of my paternal grandparents, embodied in my dad, and my parent's consciousness embodied in me. My dad is alive, my mom has passed away, but I still remember her, and have her as part of my consciousness, as if, in a way, she is continuing. Perhaps just the way we are doing it, is already a plan that will take us, and our consciousness into the future, past our deaths. Socrates is already immortal. The Pharos have their pyramids, still...Plus I still hate Bin Laden, even though he is dead. If we lived forever, would we carry grudges that long?" That is very poetic and beautiful. A deep spiritual way of looking at it. As for the great ones, and the great things, and the evil ones, and the evil things that lead to grudges... I think the Universe is a VAST place, and civil, advanced beings will respect each others immortality and perhaps find peace elsewhere from each other. Perhaps at that point such petty disputes will mean nothing and we will be as true brothers and sisters as a species. "And what if we planned the situation incompletely and left out some important component that we missed having?" I am confident that if we use proper scientific techniques we can develop ways to fail safe technology. The way I see it we will progress in stages. The first is Cyborgism. We are entering that stage now. After that will be merged interfaces. We will have nanobio implants that will allow us to interface with technology. Then finally, we will merge with the machines and become quantum beings. This is the stage that perhaps we will leave the Universe, and that is perhaps why we do not see galactic empires of aliens. Perhaps it's the destiny of all creatures to leave this Universe. Maybe travelling through space is restricted by laws of physics and travelling through dimensions is a much better route to go. " Like what if you had to do without taste buds or something like that. Or sex? Might not be worth it. Living forever might not be a workable situation for 10 million consciousnesses. " Those sensations are merely interpretations of energy. Once we can master the laws of the Universe in a more refined fashion, we will be able to "see" and experience things unimaginable right now. I always believed the reason for living was that you are rewarded for actions you perform, and thus quality of life dictates if you want to live or die. If you are happy, why would you want to die? Even if you were 10²²² years old, if you were happy you would not need to die or want to die. I hope this response has given you hope. You are around my mothers age, and it would be so tragic to me, where I to attain immortality in my lifetime, and my own parents are the generation that died off before it was achieved I wish more people took this seriously and dedicated their lives to this pursuit. Cheers my brother.

Anything that would motivate you to want to be alive.

Call me an idealist and a dreamer, but I view death as the greatest enemy to sentience. I have a slightly different view and hope... I think mankind can and will find a way to reverse aging, and then eventually figure out how to control the chemistry of life. Perhaps later, we will be able to use technology to transfer our consciousness into an artificial device, which would then perhaps, just maybe, grant us immortality until the Universe ends. My point being, rather than try and change culturally how we view death, we should unite and make it a prime objective of our species to overcome. I am in university right now in the hopes to enter the Biomedical sector, and help push along the technology needed.

Can you explain how any sentient creature would care about living, without some form of a reward system?

Now if only they could make it look less like the car for a man with a very small penis, that would be sweet.

Hehehe how do you figure?

Well not sure if anyone is still following this, but I have passed several more classes with an A. I am still holding a 4.0 GPA and scored a perfect 100 in my Chemistry class (104 on my final since I scored all 4 bonus questions right). I really enjoyed Chemistry, I never knew it would be so much fun. Seriously considering changing my end goal from Biotechnology to Chemistry.

So the new universe will "snip off" like a small bubble from the parent universe. The question then is, how is time handled in the outer-universal expanse? It seems to me that nothingness is an impossibility when it comes to energy, and thus somehow some force must react on anything and everything that is travelling between the parent/daughter universe (similar to the Casimir Effect), including any and all forces emitting from either of them reacting with any and all forces from the other. Just like bubbles inflating in a bubble bath, they will always be "touching" if you will, and expanding at the same time to an outside observer. That makes sense when we look at our universe and see that black holes, including super massive black holes are forming right now, which would explain the "bubble bath." What lies beyond the outside of this mass of bubbles who knows...possibly endless energy forming and creating bubbles with no edge, literally infinite? That would explain our Universe, since given an infinite amount of bubbles one would inevitably wind up like ours at some point in the infinite expansion. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it seems logical to assume this applies uniformly throughout the bubble bath since the data also suggests that "nothingness" in it's true essence and form is one thing that cannot exist and is simply a figment of our human creative imaginations. We are literally the Universe itself trying to imagine what it would be like if it did not exist.

Speech has been annihilated. Final grade of 98. I retain my 4.0, and what's more the teacher was very impressed with my speaking skills. He asked me the first week if I ever did public speaking before. I guess all those years as a fundamentalist Jehovah's Witness really helped (I am an agnostic atheist now, if you were wondering). I originally thought the class would be boring. The teacher though, was great, and along with the learning we did a lot of really fun activities. In a way I am glad it is over though, since I am not a fan of speaking in front of strangers. My next class is Biology. It's just a basics class, but I certainly need to brush up and master all the terminology. I will be studying extra hard this class to make sure the information sticks. I may double up my classes next month and finish my last two gen. ed. classes in one shot to get them over with. Then I can finally move on to my core classes and start learning really cool stuff.

The Butterfly Effect man. Even a very minor change to history, be it technology or an assassination of a leader or inventor could radically change history, especially in the long term since the changes would be exponential as time passed.

I have finally finished English Comp1. I feel like I learned a lot in the class, and I hope my grammar is a little better now. The final score was 96, so I remain at a 4.0 GPA. After one more class I will have completed 25% of the credits needed to attain my first degree. It's all very exciting stuff! My next class is Speech, and I am not sure how much I am going to like that one.

That is really cool. I guess we found supermans home planet

Why would soft tissue not be relevant? I thought you could extract DNA from it? Also would you think Erectus should be given human rights, kept in a zoo, or what?

I have read a while ago they were able to extract soft tissue of T-Rex via encased fossils. Or perhaps I am misunderstanding the article? Could it be possible to do the same with hominids? I am also assuming future technology which may open more possibilities. I was more curious in the ethical question itself. If it were possible, would you be for or against such a cloning? http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0324_050324_trexsofttissue.html

With the recent news of cloning a Neanderthal man, I pondered the possibility of one day being able to clone an Erectus. Neanderthal is a much easier subject to debate, given he was probably fully intelligent on our level and closely resembled modern man. Erectus would be a whole other beast though, more intelligent than any ape on Earth, yet clearly not on the same level as humans. Would Erectus be given a normal life? Would he be kept in a Zoo or lab? I for one would love to study a real living Erectus as I am fascinated with Human origins. What are your thoughts?

I think any rational, sane society that cares about the advancement of our own species would be wise enough to accept the reality that we will eventually have to have a generation of "betters." Is it not our desire as parents to see our children succeed more than we have? To advance in all things beyond what we were able to? I dare say that is a normal biological desire among a healthy individual.

Thanks for the reply and the honesty. I just started English Composition so I am hoping it will improve my grammar and writing ability. I am not sure exactly where I will take this education, but I am still leaning towards Genetics, possibly MD in Pathology. My brother is a Neurosurgeon so he has been encouraging me to take that route. I still have many years to decide A lot can change till then.

Finished my Intro to Psych class with a 95 final score. The 4.0 saga continues! I really enjoyed Psychology. It was interesting learning about the history of it and how it's applied today. Our teacher was amazing, very insightful and patient. Next is English Composition. I can't say I am looking forward to this one. I guess its kinda like one of those classes you just get through. But thankfully I have been told I am a good writer so it should be easy enough. I just hope it's not boring. My peers tell me that the teacher is one of the best in the University. So that's a plus. This train is still moving forward! Looking forward to posting in this thread 6 years from now saying how I finally have my PhD!!!