Sayonara

At the risk of keeping this thread off-topic, I'd have to say I don't think there's much chance of the Chinese and Africans diverging any further. In fact they're likely to start converging, like everyone else on the planet. Cumulative effects over time do result in wildly different creatures, yes, but that's not really going to be anything new to an exobiologist. Imagine a humanoid alien living on Xxxxyyyup, looking at Earth through a giant telescope. He sees a gazelle curled up under a tree. He moves the telescope a bit and sees a crocodile waddling into a lake. Is he going to be surprised at such diversity? No. Is he going to wonder why gazelles and crocodiles on Earth aren't like gazelles and crocodiles on Xxxxyyyup? No - because there are no gazelles and crocodiles on Xxxxyyyup, and even if there were he wouldn't necessarily realise they were "equivalent" species. If that makes any sense.

Way to contradict yourself. You are not discussing the factors that affect the chances of intelligent life off Earth, which is the topic of the thread. If it continues in this thread, I'll simply split off the posts and put them somewhere more appropriate. I don't need the least scientifically disciplined person in the thread telling me how to moderate.

Again: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2378 Oh, and here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1406 Eye related: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=68

Ever seen the controversial "United Colours of Benetton" advert with the three near-identical human hearts on it, labelled "black", "white" and "yellow"? The differences between the physiology of different human races are pretty minimal. They are not anywhere near significant enough to even approach speciation, never mind qualify as dismilar forms of life.

I agree with Daisy. There are some things you don't want to take chances with.

I see what you're saying, but I don't see what 'similarity to us' or level of technological advancement has to do with the overall chances of finding intelligent life off Earth.

Aren't they pure metals because they use that bonding?

Galaxies "further out" than ours are more numerous and have had more time to become populated. I don't follow your point at all. (Not to mention the fact that with billions of star systems per galaxy, we probably don't need to look that far.)

Pinch in "Brain affected by drugs" shocker. j/k

I've never heard of an expansion toward specifics before. I am intrigued.

Some of us add or remove more reputation than others, which I'm fairly sure has been mentioned once or twice already. Everyone I've given +ve rep to has instantly gone up to two green blobs

Why?

I think something along these lines is what you need to be thinking about. The weight is the resultant of gravity on the plane's mass. Or something.

Using stem cells doesn't involve killing anything, and it's one of the most promising fields at the moment for any decent chance of solving some of the world's most desperate medical problems. I suggest doing some research on stem cells (from reputable sources, mind), as it's very interesting and will probably affect your life in some way in the future. This gives an overview of one of the more controversial ways of obtaining stem cells: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3481159.stm Pro-life campaigners lobby that using cells in this way is unethical as they have the potential to become a human. There are two problems with this approach: 1 - the chances of that particular few eggs being fertilised and carried to term, had they not been donated, are significantly low. 2 - if one is to object to the removal of these eggs from the 'breeding pool', one might as well posthumously condemn women for failing to get all their eggs fertilised before dying.

That's you leaping to conclusions based on flawed assumptions I broadly agree!

No. AdSense allows you to generate revenue by placing the banner on your site. You get n cents per click on a banner that is placed through crawling of relevant material, where n is the "cost per click" chosen by the owner of the ad (using the complementary AdWords system). You get nothing for clicks on banners that were placed randomly if the spider could not crawl relevant material on your page, although facilities exist to allow you to show different banners if no relevance is returned by Google's crawl. The AdWords program allows you to place targetted ads on Google (those that appear at the top right of search results) and their affiliates. You can choose how much you want to pay for every click on one of your ads, and the cents-per-click you choose directly affects the frequency with which your ads are shown. Keyword-hogging is prevented by ensuring that a banner has to generate a certain number of clicks for every matching keyword that summons the ad. This system is how Google gets around the whole issue of people paying to go up in the rankings, which is a practice they don't believe in.

For instance, "a body at rest will remain at rest until a[n appropriate] force acts on it", which is mirrored by "a body in motion will remain in motion until a[n appropriate] force acts on it".

Check out those crazy Newtonian laws of motion.

You'll get positive reputation for making positive posts that add value to a discussion, presumably. The more reputation and posts someone has, the more points they can give out in one go. So you need to impress the likes of Blike, Faf, YT and myself

Don't ask. He thinks whatever he can imagine is 'as likely as' the latest models.

As much conflict as is undergone by the kids who are adopted by heterosexual parents? I doubt there's a significant difference. It would be a risable folly to assume that homosexual adoptive parents will teach their children to "be gay", and amusing that people see this as some sort of "risk" in the first place. But it's actually stupid to assume that: A) heterosexual adoptive parents will never teach an adopted child that they should be heterosexual, or that homosexuality is wrong, immoral, undesirable, a disease etc., or B) Children won't find reasons to persecute the adopted children of heterosexual parents too.

I thought it was worded to guide you to a particular answer, so I didn't bother. I have better things to do than find out which buzz-words I didn't properly avoid falling for can be attached to me

It's like a Dyson Sphere, only it's a ribbon instead of a shell. Slightly more feasible

Certainly a Halo would have a gravitational pull, assuming of course it has mass which the thing you're talking about invariably would. How close it was to Earth's gravitational pull would depend on the ring's dimensions and density. I'm not sure how to work it out exactly but it would probably have to be one fat (or deep) ring.