granpa

I tend to see the neurons as being interconnected by a sort of vast telephone switching network (probably through the pyramidal cells). some neurons communicate so often that they prefer to grow dedicated lines to communicate over.

I believe that its the map that hes interested in. whether the map is made of paper or plastic is irrelevant to its function as a map.

are you familiar with objects, actions, and rules comprising fields? http://www.warwick.ac.uk/staff/David.Tall/pdfs/dot2001a-symbol-bifurcation.pdf procedural thinking vs lateral thinking? http://www.edwdebono.com/debono/lateral.htm (think smarter not harder)

a slightly more informative article: http://bioenergyrus.blogspot.com/2009/05/origin-of-life-rna.html

you might want to read up on: logic programming belief propagation event-driven programming inductive/abductive vs deductive logic

it just occurred to me that the total angular momentum of the earth should be accurately known from its precession rate. that should give some idea of the mass distribution within the earth. (as long as the core isnt some kind of supersolid or something)

either that or transfer rna's and protein synthesis could simple have been accidental byproduct of rna replication it seems entirely reasonable to me to suppose that rna, at some point, learned to replicate itself using (preassembled) nucleotide triplets. this might have been more efficient for any number of reasons. the amino acid may have been added to the triplet simply to help the replication machinery to identify it.

then why do they say that jupiter is mostly metallic hydrogen?

all you need is 2 nucleotides that form a base pair and you can have self replicating rna and ribozymes. the rna would carry genetic information. the genetic information would be the sequence of its nucleotides. this sequence would be carried over to its offlsring. this is simple and self evident and I cant understand why you are having trouble understanding it. there is another thread where someone is asking where such a molecule would get the energy to replicate itself. is that what you are asking? hydrogen bonds (like those between base pairs) are very weak. they arent even 'real' chemical bonds. they form spontaneously between inert molecules. waves splashing on shore during a storm would probably be sufficient to break them. I suspect that the original nucleotides were entirely held together by hydrogen bonds. no chemical bonds at all (except within the nucleotide itself of course). thats what I was getting at here: A kind of pseudopolymer Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedbasically, the bases already spontaneously form base pairs by means of weak hydrogen bonds. there is no need for a 'code' (which from your postings I gather you think involves some elaborate mechanism involving transfer rnas and codons)

maybe the original living molecule was held together by weaker bonds. like hydrogen bonds for example. hydrogen bonds form spontaneously and waves splashing on the shoreline (especially during storms) may have been sufficient to break them apart. a never ending cycle of forming and breaking apart

is the iron in the inner core degenerate?

if you stick a short rna strand in a vial with a bunch of nucleotides it will AFAIK spontaneously replicate itself and its sequence of nucleotides because nucleotides spontaneously pair up. if some of those strands were to fold up and were to act as ribozymes that helped it somehow to replicate then you would have life. this really makes no sense. you have a misconception about something but I cant quite figure it out. we've all told you repeatedly what you need to know and you have ignored us. I dont know what more we can do.

whats an AA? it sounds like you just need to read up on base pairing.

I dont think that anyone believes dna is magic. digital just means not analog. the bases form a base four coding system. each base encodes 2 bits of information. thats clearly digital. if the early rna precursor had only 2 bases then it would have encoded 1 bit of information per base. also clearly digital. why scrappy thinks that it wasnt or couldnt have been digital is beyond me. the only requirement is that they naturally form pairs. in modern rna the base pairs form hydrogen bonds with each other.

you mean how did this primitive pseudo-rna molecule replicate (assemble) before the first ribozymes evolved? presumably it replicated spontaneously due to the hydrogen bonding of the base pairs. obviously the nucleotides themselves had to already exist in large numbers. explaining this is the hard part. I think comets deposited huge amounts of water and organic molecules on the early earth. maybe they came from there. if that is not what you are asking then I simply have no idea what you mean. ribozymes are pure rna so once you have rna replication its a simple matter for ribozymes to evolve. if this pseudo-rna molecule could replicate and evolve then it was a living organism and therefore not pre-biotic. maybe you are referring to a time even before that? fire can replicate but cant evolve so its not alive. perhaps there was some kind of even simpler pre-biotic rna-like molecule that could replicate (like fire) but the molecules carried no information. perhaps they grew at the ends and then split in two rather than forming the second molecule along their length due to base pair hydrogen bonding (like modern rna does). you might also find this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAH_world_hypothesis

if you look at the structure of rna you will see that it consists of flat plates stacked on top of each other. I'm of the opinion that the original nucleotides (whatever they were) were flat, aromatic, hydrophobic in the center, and hydrophilic on the outside. there was probably only 2 types of bases and they probably hydrogen bonded together (somehow) to form a base pair. thats my unstudied opinion and you can take it for what its worth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a type of molecule that consists of a long chain of nucleotide units. it is the exact sequence of nucleotides that give the ribozyme its properties.

What genetic information? the sequence of nucleotides.

the rna strand with its associated ribozymes was the organism. why on earth do you think it doesnt constitute an organism????? (the original organism may even have been a single molecule) I've already told you that NOBODY believes that dna is a literal blueprint. and nobody but you believes that anybody believes that. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedit cannot be analog. a single enzyme/ribozyme can only at most add a few nucleotides to a strand. it would take hundreds of different ribozymes to produce a single ribozyme. that obviously wont work. and if it could work, say by producing a strand of all one nucleotide then it couldnt evolve. the whole point of the rna world hypothesis is that rna can act as both ribozyme and as the carrier of genetic information. some ribozyme was able to produce a copy of the rna molecule thereby producing both ribozymes and reproducing the organism. thats digital. if you want to call that a blueprint and not a code then thats fine with me but I still fail to see why you think thats so important.

I define life as having the ability to reproduce and evolve. you are clearly just arguing the semantics of 'blueprint' and 'code'.

do you conceive of time as being analog or digital? if time is digital then the universe is a series of 'events'. each event being caused (or is it influenced) by the events immediately prior to it. if all of existence is nothing but discrete events then a chain of events would have the same units whether the chain was in space or in time.

first of all the rna world didnt need proteins. it had ribozymes. there was a digital code for producing the ribozymes. is that what you are calling 'tinkertoy/blueprint' stereochemistry? because the code was a mirror image of the resulting ribozyme? it still carried information telling exactly how to build the ribozyme. it still evolved. why you think that is somehow different is beyond me. the rna world was 'alive'. that was biological life. no one but you has mentioned magic or God.

the digits were the nucleotides. thas what rna is made of. the original rna may have been made of simpler molecules but they were still nucleotides. this 'alphabet' wasnt used to produce protein it was used to produce more rna. thats digital. no the rna world didnt have proteins. it had ribozymes. ribozymes are simply rna molecules that act as enzymes.

the dielectric is neutral overall. if the field is uniform then the positive and negative charges cancel and there is no net electrostatic force.

in a uniform field a dielectric will not be electrostatically attracted or repelled.