Edtharan

I have been looking for the reference to the paper, but am not able to find it. It was around 5 or 6 years ago (so I can;t bring the exact details to mind). If I remember correctly it was an article in New Scientist or some other magazine like it, that referenced an aricle in "Nature". In the aricle they described research into the "Mad Cow" deseaes and how they worked. Mad Cow is caused by a missfoled protein that causes correctly folded proteins to be folled in the incorrect way (thus spreading the desease). The reserchers also found that some proteins cause missfolded proteins to be folded correctly. This research answered one of the puszzles about protein folding and how protiens "knew" how to fold correctly.

yes, both have means of dispersal, but they also are subject to the effect of population pressure. When corals grow in a reef, they can get too close to eachother. This results in a fight where each coral trys to digest the other (they do this by pushing their intestines out onto the other and digesting them). Also Koalas on Kangeroo Island (IIRC) and a few other places have an expanding population. These Koalas are eating all the available food and are starting to die of starvation. It is only through relocation and culling) schemes performed by humans that they are not completely eating out their food supply. Even with their own ability to relocate, the members near the centre of these ares could not move out to the edge in time before they starved.

Im think the most effective use of a conventional ICBM would be using it as a delivery platoform for multiple conventiaonal warheads. If you could stock an ICBM with several conventional curise (like) missiles, you could use the ICBM to put the cruise missiles in place wihtin minutes, far faster than a ship or plane. These cruise missiles could then be directed to individual targets as if they were fired form a ship or plane. With a Hybrid ICBM/Cruise system, you could get effective air domination over any battlefield anywhere on Earth.

If you switch a light on then off, it does not mean that the light was not on. The fact that the DNA was changed means a mutation took place, but then it wa repaired. Permanant mutations is another thing altogether. I think that here we are arguing over a dictionary definition rahter then the actual meaning in context so I will not persue this any further. Some protiens can cause a mutated protien to change into the correct one. It can also go the otherway as in a Prion. These protines can be passed on from Mother to child as these protiens may exist in the egg cells. As I said, "Whenever a cell devides". I did not specifically say germ cells. Mutations can arrise in cells that are not sperm or eggs, not just at conception. Protiens and other chemical scan influence DNA. They can cause mutations or even cause the DNA to fold/pack differently. These can cause the DNA of the organism to express its self differently. I was not saying that the protiens changed the DNA "letters".

Yes natural bananas are small and inedible. It was only through a mutation (which it is known when it occured) and selective breeding that the bananas that we eat are like they are. Yes the eating banana was design... by humans

Actually a solar sail could be used to move to a closer orbit. It is a bit like a sailboat tacking into the wind. First you would have to use the solar wind to slow down your orbit. This would cause it to decay, bringing you in closer to the star. Then you would have to use it again to speed your self up to stabilise your orbit (as you are closer you need a higher orbital velocity). A solar sail spaceship would not just be going directly away from the star. It would have some angular velocity (ie: it would orbit). By using the sail to adjust this angual velocity, you will be able to control your orbit. But I think for habitats, a solar sail would not be effective. The pressure of the solar wind is small. A habitat would be like a small moon or large asteroid (Think of the Rama space ship in the book "Rendvous with Rama"). A Solar Sail would have to be enormous to have any apreciable effect on a object of that mass. You could build a habitat with thin walls to reduce the weight, but you still have the mass of the population and the walls would still need to be thick enough to stop radiation (both from your star and from cosmic rays too). I think the exploer instinc would come about with any race that develops technology. To develop technology, a species needs to have curiosity, without this there is no drive to discover new technologies to improve what you have. This curiosity would lead to exploration.

I think the Dyson Swarm (a better and more accurate term than bubble or sphere) would still suffer from instability as individual statlites effect each other. Of course with smaller objects it would be easier to addjust their positions. Therefore it would be posible to stabilise the swarm, but at a cost. The fuel to do so must come from somewhere. Without using any physics breaking technology (sci-fi stuff), we know of no way that a swarm could maintain its positions for long periods of time wihtout having to loose mass (ie rocket engines or ion engines) to do so. the best solution to this that I can come up with is that they produce matter/antimatter from the energy of the sun and use this as rocket fuel to maintain their positions. The "Rockets" would be angled so as to anhilate the matter antimatter outside the habitat (to eliminate any damage to other habitats by stray antimatter) after the thrust is gained from their acceleration. this process is highly innefficient, but it could be maintained as long as sufficent power is available (wether or not they would be able to produce enough matter and antimatter so as to provide enough thrust is another question altogether).

I actually think that a dyson sphere (or shell or ringworld) would be highly unstable. First an orbit of a plaent is an elipse. Any dyson sphere would have to be in orbit of the partent star, a circular orbit would be unstable because any planet in that solarsystem (not to mention passing stars, etc) would peturb the orb into an elipse. An eliptical orbit would requier the components of the sphere to beable to move relative to one another (this could be solved by flexable joints, but that is not a system that would last for millions of years - the timesacle that a sphere would need to exist for). Second: As I said a circular orbit is unstable, and if you did make a solid ring or sphere then if there is any distrubance to the sphere then one side would get closer and the other side would get further. Gravity would amplify this and the closer side woudl get closer because gravity is stronger and the further side would get further away because the gravity is weaker. This would result in the rapid infall of one side of the sphere into the parent star. If a civilization had the power to move a sphere so as to keep it in orbit of the star and correst these peturbations, then they would have enough power (or thrust capabilities) to move their entire civilization through space. A situation I think would be more likely is that there would be indipendant "Satalites" in orbit of the star with large solar collectors. These islands would likely be factories of some type and also used in the storage of power (equivalent to batteries - which could be hydrogen for fusion power plants or such). I think a space fareing civilization would not want for power, but a mobile power source. Also if nanotechnology and engineering pans out the way we think it will, then an advanced society would most likely develop some sort of manufacturing similar to it. With it we could take any matter, extract the elements that we need and then recombine them in the form we want. This means that they would not need to visit planets. A steady source of hydrogen that would be fused for power and turned into heavier elements and then a nanofactory would build any device that they wanted. This is not just an arbitary guess on my part. I have based these on a rational suposition: Any Alien species that could develop technology to the point of space travel, must have a certain number of characteristics. First: They must be tool users. It takes tool to build spaceships and spaceships themselves can be seen as tools. Second: They must have logical thought. This is so that they can understand the principles of the world around them. I won't use science, but they would have an equivalent, based on logical thought. Third: They must be curious and have imaginations. Curiosity and Imagination must be a prerequsite for advanceing the quality of tools. If you can't wonder about a better tool, then how can any advancement of that tool come about in a reasonalbe time. These 3 factors will allow a species to develop technology and advance it to a point where they would be capable of intersteller travel. A species with these traits may not develop space travel, but they would be nessesary for that species to do so. This also means that any space traveling species (or even technological species) would have some things in common with us. That bodes well for contact and communication between us.

A civilization with constantly growing populations are going to run into trouble. If the population is growing fast enough then the ability to found new colonies will be outstripped by the growth of the populations. This means that the centre colonies of this civilization will experience overpopulation and the results of this (was over resources as whole planets are plunged into famines, etc). This might even progress to the point where the population can no longer afford to send out colonization attempts. So this creates a situation where any civilization that is going to survive long enough to colonize a larger area of the galaxy will need population controll, or it will repeatedly fall back into war. This will slow, halt, or even reverse the colonization that the civilization is doing. This culd be why we have not had any contact. They all have suffered population growth that exceeds their rate of colonization. Or that they have achieve population stability and no longer need to live on planets.

The expression of a mutation is a failure of the repair systems. A mutation is not. Cell in your body suffer mutations each time it replicates, but most these mutations are repaired (the ones that don't might cause the cell to die or turn cancerous.) There are methods that a cell can use to switch off certain sections of DNA. This is why you can have different cells form from the single egg cell. A cell can detect damage like mutation and can use this to either attempt repair, or cause its self to die (so as to stop a cancer forming). If this fails it can lead to cancer. Remember every cell has another copy of that chromosome that it can use as a template to detect some errors and other cells can send protines, rna and other chemicls through to a nearby cell that can also be used in this fassion (just compareing protiens can be enough - eg if two cells have differnet protien expressions that can both die as one of them is in error and there are other cells can replace them). Each cell ingerits not only the DNA from it parents, but als some of the protines and other chemicals too. This means it does have some point of reference as to what protiens and chemicals should be produced. So by this method it can detect mutations in its DNA. But there are so many methods that a cell can use to catch bad mutations and even attempt to repare them that not all bad mutations are expressed. So if all you are going on is expressed mutations, then you are only sampeling a small fraction of the mutations that occure.

I agree having a high IQ does not solve the basic problems of life (a recent test put my IQ around 140). As a child I had a lot of social problems because I easily out performed most other children in my year and was therefore picked on. Having a high IQ does not make someine a nice person. I have know high IQ people that were real slimes and some other low IQ (below 90) that were amazing people (and the reverse too). Having a high IQ does not change human nature. I have heard of experiements at the Reding University in England where one of the professors had a chip implanted into his arm and converted this into a signal that could control a robotic arm. This was even done across the atlantic over the internet. Another experiemtn with it was that someone else (his wife I think) had another chip implanted in her arm and the chips were linked together. Sensations one felt was felt by the other. So it does seem that human nural signals might be compatable. As infomation is being shared solutions to these problems and the plight of these peolple is becomeing more public. I think technology like the ability to link your mind directly to the memories of these people would be a big benifite to them, as then everyone would know what these p[eople were going through from their perspective. I think this would be an enormous aid for them infact. this is not realy an argument. We are presented with erronious infomeition every day of our lives. We have to examine this inflmation and slecet what we think is true. Not only that, our memories are very mallable. There has been experiemnt done where a persons memories were changes so that they had a memor of hugging Bug Bunny at Disney land (this is imposible as BB is a trademark of Waner Bros/Loony Tunes not Disney). Infact some of the people in the experiemnt had never been to Disney Land at all. So that fact that the net contains erronious infomation is not anargument against having a chip that allow us to directly access that infomation. LOL. Actually I think it wuold be that you would "remember" being told about this spam. The hipocamus does not directly connect to the visual cortex (afaik).

I once had a go at comeing up with a free energy device (just as a way to pass time in a tea room - I think that someone was reading an article in a magazine or something). My device was microscopic. It consisted of two conducting metal plates in a V shape (although not touching - a small gap was at the apex of the V). Near this was tow powerful magnets so that the field lines are perpendicular to the V (if the V was printed on a page the magnets would be either side of the page) and were allinged North to South (so they would be attracting). My reasoning for this was that virtual particals would curve in the magnetic fields. If the strength of the magnets was set so that the particles (going dow the page) would collide with the metal plates, but because of the assimitary of the plates, they would not collide if the were going up the page. This would result in the anitmatter virtual particles only hitting one plate and the matter particles only hitting the other. This w9ould cause a chage imbalance between the plates, and thus provieing energy for free. Ofcourse I don't actually believe this would work (but I do not know the math to prove or disprove it - theres a chalenge for the members of this site ), but I did get the "most plauseable" vote of the tea room. If someone here can do the math, I would like to know if it would or wouldn't work (just curious).

This remindes me of a joke: Ther is an egg and a chicken lieing in a bed. The chicken has a depressed look on its face and the egg has a satisfied grin. The egg turns to the chicken and says "Well, that answers that question."

I also suffer from a chronic pain (and chronic injury) condition where 6 years ago I dislocated my left (primary) shoulder and it regularly partially dislocates (subluxes). I have had 6 opperations and countless physiotherapy sessions (about twice a week for around 5 years) and have had very little improvment and also am not able to work. Although I do not have extensive nerve damage ther is some there (not crushed, but there seems to be some pulling on the nerve that runs through the shoulder). Nerve injureies can be very painful and so my sympathy and understanding go out to you. My advice it to see your physiotherapist and to keep up with the treatments that they give you. Although I haven't had much improvement from them, I do know that I would have been deteriorating if I didn't. So despite 6 years of injury and 6 opperation I have been able to retain around 90% of the mobility (although not without signifcant pain) of the shoulder. As this injury is to my donimate arm, this has allowed me to retain a good degee of independance.

Even if more mutations were detrimental than beificial, this doe not mean that they will lower the fitness of an organism. In sexual selection each organism gets 2 coppies of their genome, each from a different parent. Any bad mutations on one can be canceled out by the other. Also DNA has many repair mechanisms that can detect and either repair the mutation, or switch it off so it doesn't cause a problem. And lastly, an bad genome might stop the organism developing in the first place (even in humans, each time an egg is fertilized does not mean that a baby will be produced). So the fact that there are many more bad mutations, than good mutations does not mean that the organism's gene pool will nessisarily become corrupted.

Due to an injury I have visited with rehabilitation specialists that have taught me a lot about strength. In one session we talked about how, if we don't use muscles, we will feel pain in them when we use them (I think most people have experience muscle stiffness at some point). This pain is not from actual damage or injury, but from the fact that our muscles are not used to that movement or strain (proreception - spelling?). Streching just makes our muscles more use to this movment and so we don't get the pain response. This is also the case with strength. Muscles do bulk up with excersize, but a lot of the strength we feel comes from knowing that we can use it. In times of stress (when the adrenalin is flowing) we are capable of what, to normal experience, seems like a superhuman effort. Actually, what is occureing is that the adrenalin is suppressing this feeling of a limit and allowing the full strength to be acessed. There is a good biological need for this limitation. If we were to operate at the full level all the time, we would stand a greater chance of injuring ourselves. So by having a learned limit, we are better able to operate without injury. The fact that it is a learned response means that it is posable to unlearn it. And this is what a lot of training is all about, not just building the muscles, but reteacing us the limit (and because a lot of athletes do operate with a higher limit, they are more prone to injury - what I was saying about why the limit is needed).

When I suggested a ploice force, I was not saying that an armed force should be labled as one. I was talking about a police force that is trained in phorensics (spelling? - dislexia sux) and detective strategies, they would not be an armed force sent to "put down" insergents (as this is currently part of the peacekeeping military force. What happens after the initial violence is over, an military force still sees these as enemies, rather than crimainals. An armed responce will make them dig deeper (and then requier more force), where as a police force will be less visible and more able to find the instegators of the violence in a nonviolen (or less violent) way. Also a military force is seen as an enemy and in a warrior mentality, they can prove their bravery and dedication to a cause by fighting them (even if they loose). Where as a police officer brings with it the stigma of the dishonerable criminal (and I am not so nieve that I think that they would nessesarily think this, but the communities they operate in would more likely think this way, so reduce the alure of the insergents). Also an army is realy only answerable to the governing body that controls it. A police force, as a civilian body, is answerable to the people (and by this I mean th people of the countries that make up the UN and the countries that they are deployed in), not just the governments. This is a big difference between the two forces. You can invade with an army, but not with a police force (unles you trained them to do so - and then they would be an army).

I also seriously doubt this too. I was saying this exact thing. Earth's atmosphere is greatly out of equilibrium. The oxygen in our atmosphere is not usual for planets. A visiting alien race might well have sen Earth and looked at another planet (or moon) in our solarsystem and though it would be easier to colonise that one (it would more likely suit their atmosphere. Also the preasence of life on earth that is producing this toxic atmosphere of ous would be very difficult to get rid of (you would essentially have to blast the planet to bedrock to get rid of it all or it would just start producing more toxins). It would be much easier to start from a location without much life (hence why Mars is actually feasable). I think that if ailens have visited our solarsystem, we will find the evidence on other planets or moons (none of which have been explored even near enought to make any predictions about it).

I think the peace keeping agenda would be better severed as a police force, not as a military force. A police force (in most western countries - military police is not what I am proposing) is a civilian body and thus has a differnet legal coverage. A police officer has limits on the force that they apply and they can be repremanded for excessive force. Military forces do not have as much restraint on them (although there is some). A police force would see them not as enemies, but as criminals. They would use investigation and forensics to track down the ones instigating the problems and arrest them. A UN police force would only be brought in if the UN could impose laws (essentially what a peace keepers try to do by force). These laws might just be the Humanitarian laws, or might be something more detailed and complete. The reasoning behind the removal of force to keep the peace, is that if you push people, they will push back (as this escalates, this is called a battle). A lot of the power of the trouble makers comes from the groups, if you can isolate them from the groups they loose their power. A ploice force could identify them, locate them and take them out without needing to gather large numbers of people, thus eliminating or reducing the "Push". Also a police force is less threatening that a military opperation.

Here is another reason that aliens might give our planet a wide bert (or at least not visit the surface and leave junk there): Our planet is covered witha massive blanket of toxic gas. This gas is Oxygen. Oxygen was not needed when life firs developen on earth, when it did, it produced a crisis and organisms had to adapt to it (that is why it is not extremely toxic to us). We (life on earth) developed a resistance to it and eventually found a use for it. So this means that life on another planet might not have had to addapt to oxygen and so they could find our atmosphere hightly toxic.

Serrated edges can have many reasons for evolving. Sometimes it is to deter predators. A leaf with a serated edge and small spines would cause damage to the mouth of a herbivore and even just animals moving past it (there are some plants in Austraila - and I expect in other countries too - where just brushing past some of these can tear the skin open and cause bleeding - I have had it happen to me and it is like a big paper cut ). Another reason is the control of water running off the leaf. The serrations can help scatter the water over a larger area and so stop too much water running off in one place and causeing erosion around the roots of the plant. These are just 2 that I can think of off the top of my head, but there probably is as nearly many reasons as there are plants with serrated edges.

I think this kind of phnomina can be put down to selective reporting. If we ask just 2 questions we can attemt to put this in perspective: 1) How many people who have had heart (or other organ) transplants and not had a change in personality? 2) How many people change certain aspects of their personality without having any transplants? I think the ration would be similar to the one that undergo transplants and have personality changes. If one only foccuses on reports that match with you expectations, then your expectations will be supported. But, if you look at the whole picture, then you may see that your expectations might be wrong.

Actually Chimeras are sort of real. It is a condition that stems from multiple (3 or more) germ cell lines (sperm and eggs) occureing in a single organism. But as the traditional monster, I'd like to see how they might justify it (although my money would be on symbiosis)

No devolution is not a word (this has been covered in another thread so I am not going to restart it here). The best term for this would be "Genetic Engineering". They have genetically engineerd a gene sequance that is the same as an aincent gene. There has been no evolution, just Genetic Engineering (the closest you could come is "dramatic neutral mutation").

As far as I know life on earth started around 3.5 to 4 billion years ago. It seems that, no sooner than life could develop, it did. I think that SkepticLance has nailed it. Life on Earth is dependant on some of the heavier elements (like carbon) and what was produced in the earlier generations of stars. But the Sun and our solar system is not the first of these 3rd genration of stars to form. Scince there are some 3rd generation stars that have formed around 2 billion years before the sun then it is posible that life developed on there too. But the big question is: If they have had 2 billion years development ahead of us, then where are they? Here on earth the average time for a species to survive is around 1 million years (ther are exceptions and a big spread of survival times). Usually because the environemnt changes too much (and therefor the species needs to adapt to the changes and a new species is seen in the fossil records), a natural catastrophy (just ask the dinosaurs ) or some other event, a species will either evolve into a different one or become extinct. If we assume (and this is a big assumption) that this same average survival time occures on other planets with life, then 2 billion years is a long time for a species to survive. In the 4 or so billion years that life on Earth has existed, only in the last million years (approx) has inteligent life existed that we know of. In a million years most traces of humanity will be destroyed, very little will survive. So the infrequency of inteligent life, the fleetingness of species and the decay over time of any fossil eveidence (coke bottles or otherwise), means that if any alien species did visit us in the past, it is unlikely that we would find any trace of them.