John Cuthber

If we dropped a few litres of DNA onto the surface of an earth-like but uninhabited planet the most likely outcome would be that it was destroyed by sunlight. If, on the other hand, we dropped a bucket of sea-water into their ocean we might start something more interesting.

Hang on a minute. On a human scale the three litre estimate for enough DNA to store "everything" is very small. But packing all that into every single cell of an organism just isn't going to happen.

"I have made a suggestion. I suggested that children in k through 12 public schools receive mandatory gun safety training. " So, guns in schools make kids safer? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Unless they did because they want some of the silver in solution as the complex [AgCl2]- ion. Having said that, it seems an odd choice to me. Jandette, where did you get the recipe from? Are you able to measure the current flowing?

The thing is that colour is entirely subjective so "white" means different things to different people at different times. BTW, if you want to be pretentious about the plural of octopus, it's "octopodes". If you are writing in English, it's "octopuses" and the one thing it never was nor will be is "octopi". Feel free to discuss this- in a different thread.

so?

On a practical note, how would you gather "all human knowledge" for example, how would you capture the fact that I think the takeaway meal I just has was OK, but had too much parsley in it? It might be more realistic to "download" the internet onto DNA estimates vary but that's something like 10 zetabytes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte Stored on DNA that's' remarkably little volume (though it's a pig to read) "With recently demonstrated technology using DNA computing for storage, one yottabyte of capacity would require a volume between 0.003 and 1 cubic meter, depending on number of redundant backup copies desired and the storage density: " from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yottabyte

Monosodium glutamate is not only not a preservative, but it's also naturally present in many foods. Perhaps it would be better if Lyudmilascience explained what problem they think they are trying to solve- because that problem might not exist.

You are mixing two different things here. We may well be able to distinguish ten million colours, but I doubt we can distinguish a thousand wavelengths. 500nm looks pretty much the same as 501nm. But 500 nm at 1 watt per metre squared an be distinguished from 500 nm at 0.9 watts per metre squared. the colours aren't just peak wavelengths but relative intensities too.

Last time I checked, coal, in air, was metastable.

it's worse than that. Pink and brown are colours. Good luck to anyone trying to define the wavelengths.

"From the most recent posts I'm inclined to conjecture that the "white" light that we receive from a source like the Sun is not always "White" (although as stated aforesaid the eye makes us believe otherwise). Am I on the right track ? " yes

It's impossible to answer the question about a boiler without knowing what the size, efficency and fuel are but I guess you know how much fuel it uses. Soda lime will take up about a third of its weight of CO2. And if you burn a fuel the carbon in that fuel is converted almost entirely to CO2. So, if we imagine that you burn pure carbon, each atom of carbon will be converted to a molecule of CO2. And the (relative) weight sof those are about 12 and 44 So a given weight of carbon will give 44/12 times that weight of CO2. And it will take about 3 * 44 /12 = 11 times as much weight of soda lime to absorb all that CO2- though I'd suggest using about twice than much to make sure that there is still plenty of soad lime left to absorb the last of the gas at the end of the 48 hours. You could redo this calculation for coal (with a known carbon content) or oil but it won't make much difference. The soda lime would weigh about 20 times as much as the fuel. Obviously, that's not practical on a large scale. They do this sort of thing instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine_gas_treating As a side point, I could have told you about that earlier if you had said that you were looking at capturing the gas from a steam boiler- rather than gas sampling for analysis. When someone asks you why you want to do something it is often because the best way to do it depends on why you are doing it. So, I will ask you again. Why are you doing this?

Because , if the combination doesn't look white, we call it something else. But the combinations are not "stable" in any meaningful way. The first three spectra here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Phosphor_composition are completely different, but they all look fairly white because the eye is a very poor sensor.

OK, say it only works nine times out of ten. If it reduces the toll to 2 kids a day would you consider that a failure?

It isn't really, but your eyes fool you by adjusting automatically. This may help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_balance All the colours you see on a TV or computer screen are made up from mixtures of different amounts of different coloured lights. Almost all of them are not white. The yellow of that smiley face is made from red and green. It's a mixture, but it isn't not white. I have to agree with what others have said . Why do you keep asking "why is...." without checking first if it actually true, even when the evidence is right in front of you?.

Coal, with pyrites in it.

Any competent scientist will (or, at least, should) do that sort of analysis.

Soda lime is fairly cheap and is so old it can't be patented these days. But the real question I'd still like you to answer is why bother?

To be fair, if you have been lied to long enough, consistently enough and often enough you might believe it. It's like kids believing in Santa Claus.

So, all we need is food as long as by "food" we mean all the things we need.

Which is fine, but it looks like it cost six bucks (whether you think the fact that the cells are a lot smaller might be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view, but it's moving the goalposts a bit). Let's face it, you can have an element collection wrapped in old newspaper- but that's hardly the point. I'm not sure that Rasiel is ever going to make money on this, but it looks good.

you seem to have overlooked costing one of these into the project, which is unfortunate. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Plastic-Injection-Moulding-Machine-Sandretto-150Tonne-SERIES-8-ReconScrewMotor-/252085178012?hash=item3ab1728e9c

I bow to superior knowledge. But seriously, the list reminds me of the Mark twain quote about what he thought mankind would be without women; "Scarce- Mighty scarce".

Oh, I see, the free state is the one where slavery and guns were allowed. But the UK ,where slavery was never legally permitted, and guns are restricted, isn't free. Well, I'm glad we got that sorted out. You seem to miss the point that,even with your guns, if you were actually up against the state, your best hope would be to be an outlaw at grave risk of death at any second when the drone found you. Strictly speaking, that's not slavery- but it's not freedom either. But I already pointed that out and you think you would win against an army that spends more than the next dozen or so put together. I don't think that's a viewpoint I can sensibly make any headway against.