Mr Skeptic

If the satellite were allowed to reach a low enough orbit, wouldn't there be enough atmosphere to stop all the debris? It is my understanding that many satellites are in a sufficiently low orbit as to need boosting every once in a while so they don't fall down. In fact, if the satellite is falling, then there is sufficient atmosphere to slow it down, so I don't think there will be much problem of space debris. Now, if the satellite was in a high orbit, that would be a different story.

They land just the same as they take off -- extremely awkwardly

I suspect that whatever area 51 was used for before, it would now be being used for moderately secret research and as a distraction from wherever they do their actual top secret research.

One of the biggest aspects of cuteness is simply having big eyes and a large head compared to the rest of the body. Kind of like a baby. In this way, all juvenile mammals appear much cuter than the adults. I think it would be possible to make cats permanently look like kittens, though I would much prefer a selective breeding approach, or knocking out developmental genes than doing surgery. Edit: I think having "baby fat" also helps with cuteness.

You got the right idea. However, so far it has taken more energy to heat up the plasma and contain it than it has generated, though I think they recently got one to reach breakeven for a short time. A proper fusion reactor would be able to power itself and supply extra power once it is started.

Yes, gravity plays a role in the sizes of things on earth. Other factors are food supply, volume:surface area ratio, heat production/loss, stresses due to moving, etc. For example, in islands, the limited food supply shrinks large animals, and the lack of predators makes small ones bigger, the rule being animals move closer to the size of rabbits. We have somewhat extended our surface area:volume ratio by using convoluted lungs and guts; otherwise we would never be able to get enough food and oxygen. Likewise, elephants have their big ears to increase their heat dissipation. Remember that our metabolism is based on volume, implying food usage, oxygen usage, and heat production increase as the cube of the size, as does mass. Meanwhile, oxygen supply, food supply, and heat exchange occur at the surface, which increases as the square of the size. Bone strength increases as the cross section of bone, which increases as the square of size, while mass increases as the cube. Then there are limits on actually finding food. This is more complicated, but if you get too big, you won't find enough to eat. Basically, if you wanted to make a particular animal much bigger or smaller, you would run into some kind of problem. At some point a design change would need to be made to keep everything in balance, and there are limits in size that I don't think could be overcome.

The energy released by the reaction. What form it takes hardly matters, eg you could extract energy directly from the ions (using the ions as the moving part of a generator), from the radiation released (like solar cells), or simply use the heat to drive a turbine, or a combination of the above.

Cars have just evolved to a higher state, transcending biology. They have lost their ability to reproduce, relying instead on their primate slaves to assist them. In this they are like viruses. The cars that maintain better control of their primate slaves reproduce more effectively. This forces cars to evolve into shinier, better models. Bad car analogies FTW! Of course, a single living cell is far more complicated than a car.

Why thank you. It quite describes my philosophy for learning. I notice you don't have a sig. You can get one here; I'm curious what kind of sig you would get.

Oh, I forgot about viruses. I'm not sure where they came from. They could potentially be a separate line from our cell ancestor, or an unfortunate messenger RNA accident. Most people don't consider them to be alive though. Anyone know where viruses originated?

geoguy was anemicpsycho without his caps lock key broken, IIRC.

Have what, boobs? Some guys like big boobs, some like small boobs. A few like very young girls (paedophilia). Are you trying to restart a thread that was previously closed?

Yay, I guess. Glad to see the judiciary arm assert itself a bit.

It is due to the evolved nature of humans. The body measures stresses on it and strengthens the appropriate parts. Trees do a similar thing, where they strengthen the parts that get stressed the most. Interfering with this process is likely to be incredibly difficult, on par with eg curing aging.

The meaning of life, the universe, and everything is 42. The purpose of language is to communicate clearly and effectively. This forum likes when people use proper grammar and spelling, as those who do not take time to write seldom take much time to think either. If you compare the quality of conversation in proper english to that of text-speak, you'll see what I mean.

If a brain were grown without sensory input won't develop the portion of their mind that processes that input. For example, a child born blind will not develop it's visual cortex properly, instead it will be taken over by other senses such as hearing. If there were no input at all, the brain might not develop.

As others have said, it is especially important for young people to get their sleep. Among other things, a large chuck of your growth occurs while sleeping, so unless you like being short, you should sleep enough. Also, lack of sleep increases your stress, and that is fattening. Your body will be very mad at you if you don't sleep. As a young adult, I've tried skimping on sleep, and I always regretted it the next day. The best way I've found to cut down on sleep is to always go to bed and wake up at regular times (whether early or late). Then my body knows when to prepare for sleep mode and when to prepare to wake up. I've heard that it is possible to cut sleep to about 2-3 hours per day by taking 15 minute naps every two hours. However, I don't have a schedule that will allow that.

No, all living things come from a single common ancestor. This is due to certain similarities shared by all cells, implying the ancestor had DNA, ribosomes, cell membrane, etc; a very complex cell. First came bacteria, then archaea, then bacteria and archaea merged somehow to form eukaryotes. Eukaryotes have genes from both archaea and bacteria, and also some organelles that appear to have originally been specialized bacteria that became the mitochrondria and chloroplasts. Eukaryotes are the more familiar group that include plants, animals, fungi, protists. Note that bacteria are able to transfer genes between themselves even if they are not the same species.

I'd assume it is possible. However, I think animals evolved from heterotrophs of some kind, as plants would have little reason to become mobile and predatorial. If it was more than one, the other one(s) got eaten by the cell. I don't think anybody is going to be finding that kind of fossils... I guess the answer would depend somewhat on what you mean by life.

Now the obvious question (to me) is, can we put this Chlorophyll D in our plants that already have Chlorophyll A and B, to make them more efficient, hence improving our food and biofuels production? According to wiki, Chlorophyll D is similar in structure to Chlorophyll A and B which already play nice together.

Keep in mind that a proof by "irreducible complexity" is a type of proof by ignorance. Hence, it only means anything if we know what we are talking about. For example, I might say, mathematicians have been trying to find an easy way to find prime numbers for a thousand years but still haven't -- hence, there probably is no easy way to find prime numbers. If I said instead, "My 12 year old brother spent 5 minutes trying to find an easy way to find prime numbers but couldn't, hence, there probably is no easy way to find prime numbers," it just wouldn't be as convincing. At this point, we are just beginning to understand genetics, so an argument from ignorance based on genetics isn't very convincing. Also, the people arguing irreducible complexity have been moving the goal posts every time that someone found an answer to one of their irreducibly complex arguments, so don't be surprised if that happens again.

How about a cookie? Do you like chocolate chip? Though I don't think crenation is the exact opposite of a cell exploding, I'm pretty sure that's what he was looking for. Of course, only animal cells lyse (intake enough water to explode) and crenelate (shrivel), whereas plant cells become turgid (take in water but held by the cell wall) and undergo plasmolysis (cell wall remains mostly undisturbed, but the plasma shrivels and the chloroplasts all bunch together). Don't mind me, I'm just refreshing my bio knowledge so I don't forget. Edit: The word is crenation, not crenelation: Definitions of crenelation on the Web: * Battlements at the top of a tower or wall. http://www.castlesontheweb.com/glossary.html Definitions of crenation on the Web: * Crenation is the contraction of cells in a hypertonic solution, due to the loss of water through osmosis. The word is from the latin "crenatus" meaning scalloped or notched, and named for the scalloped-edged shape the cells take on when crenated. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crenation

The famous water pipe analogy: voltage is like the pressure of the flow, amperage/current is like the volume of the flow, and wattage is like the energy (volts times amperes) of the flow. Resistance is like the size and/or drag slowing the flow. Simplified explanation: Batteries provide a certain amount of voltage and a certain amount of current, kind of like a water pump. If you connect them in series, you are increasing the voltage but not the current. If you connect them in parallel, you are increasing the current but not the voltage. If you do not know the basics, you are likely to burn out something, start a fire, or hurt yourself. I think you should follow Fswd's advice of getting a book, or better yet, work with someone who knows what he's doing.

But cells do exactly that. They take in sensory input, and switch genes on or off based on that. They have their own daily cycle, that they can retain even without input from the sun. Some of the genes switched on or off get passed on to the offspring, essentially telling their offspring about what has happened. All this is mostly due to the nucleus, of course. However, single cells cannot deal with "abstract" data of any sort as far as I know. So "control center" would be better than "brain" to describe the nucleus.

I think a lot of that depends on what it is that you ate. Consider that the time for a laxative to work is far less than 24 hours... Also, some foods are easier to digest than others, and some produce more bulk than others, etc. You hunt, I assume?