LucidDreamer

Just one small addition. If I had a choice between using hydrogen peroxide or triple antibiotic cream on a minor wound, I would use triple antibiotic cream. It's less likely to leave scars.

One scientific explanation for dreams is that they help with the storage of memories. When you dream you are really organizing, categorizing, examining, and then restoring the things that you have learned. It is a way of understanding and permanently storing the information that you have learned that day and storing the day's information with the rest of your memories. That would explain why sometimes when you don't know an answer it’s useful to sleep on it.

I think your probably right treadstone. But wouldn't it seem that way from the only planet that it occurred on. I mean if you just happened to be on the only planet with life wouldn't you think that it must have occurred other places. Every planet probably has some unique factor or combination of factors. What if Earth's unique factor is life?

Good job guys.

I was just curious about what people thought about the origins of life on earth. I could not start a poll so Ill just do it like this. Do you believe that: A) Life originated on earth through natural processes and has formed independently on many planets and it’s a common occurrence with the right circumstances. B) Life originated on Earth by natural processes but it’s a very rare occurrence. C) Life originated on another planet and migrated to Earth (Panspermia). D) God must have created life all at once (creationism) or He helped out with evolution. E) Aliens created life on Earth because they were lonely or because they wanted to see if they could do it. F) Other Give your choice and your reason. If you believe life originated on Earth how do you think it occurred? If you believe life originated on Earth, do you think that it's possible that earth has spawned life on other planets through panspermia?

What is your experience in microbiology? This sounds like a tough experiment to start out with. I took a micro lab once and I remember we were just happy when we could show that we grew antibiotic resistant strains.

I kinda wish cool stuff like that was possible, but I suspect it was just imagination.

Well, I haven’t left the academic world yet so I don't have firsthand knowledge of what the business world is like. I do know that in America grad students and Ph.D. students are used as educated slave labor. But I do have some friends with chemistry/biochem masters degrees that were hired right our of grad school with big starting salaries. For the most part I think creativity and original thinking are encouraged as long as it is somewhat grounded in scientific fundamentals. Every new idea is going to be criticized but I think that this criticism serves a vital function. It prunes away the bad theories and forces us to refine our ideas. People like Einstein and Newton came up with brilliant, radical new ideas that changed our world by using their creativity. However, both of these men and nearly every scientific genius were very knowledgeable of their day's science that led to their new ideas. In order to be brilliant you have to be creative and knowledgeable. Scientists need other scientist to evaluate their ideas because it is part of the education. I definitely see your point though. I feel that to some extent in college we are taught how to be drone workers. It seems like some of professors don't care whether you have an original thought as long as you know how to operate the equipment.

Do I believe that we made a significant strike against terrorism-somewhat. Do I believe that the Afganastanias are going to be better off in the end-I have no clue. Do I believe we could have done a better job-probably.

Yes there are. There actually seem to be several methods. One of them is them is a gene sequence mutation that results in an incorrect amino acid sequence. Here is a link to a very informative journal article with many links to other good articles. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/95/23/13363#B16

I was going to write a 20,000 dollar check to you but I have misplaced my pen.

I think we are just beating a dead dog now.

Microwaves are harmful to you if you are exposed to a large, intense amount of them. The amount of microwave exposure from a microwave oven is pretty small if it is operating correctly. Most of the inside of the microwave oven has metal sheeting around it to keep the waves in the oven to cook the food and protect you from radiation. Once the oven is turned off neither the food nor the oven should contain residual microwaves. Microwave food is safe unless you fail to cook meat thoroughly and consume harmful bacteria. You might also want to avoid peering through the plastic window for long periods of time, lol. The amount of harmful radiation from microwave ovens is pretty small; you probably get alot more from your cell phone. http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/consumer/microwave.html

Sooo much fun.

I'll give my very uneducated opinion on this one. First of all, I don't believe that the objects on the earth really cause a net force in any direction. Say you decided to jump up in the air in order to move the earth. By pushing down you are exerting a force down and the earth is exerting a force upward so you push the earth down a miniscule amount while you move upward a larger amount. While you’re in the air the earth is exerting its force of gravity on you so you return to where you jumped, but so does the earth. You exert a very miniscule force of gravity upward on the earth to the same degree that you moved it down when you jumped. Net result is that you both return to where you started. Also, I don't believe that the earth's orbit has always been exactly the same. Say a meteorite comes crashing into the earth and manages to pass through atmosphere and reach the Earth. This meteorite is only the size of a TV though so it exerts a very small force on the massive earth. The earth will change its orbit ever so slightly but its not enough to make any real difference. Satellites around the sun are fairly stable. If you exert a small force on them they will adjust their orbitals slightly but wont go flying into outerspace.

Instead of the energy rich environment that we live in early life was more restricted. Early life organisms were probably chemoautotrophs that used Hydrogen sulfide, which is formed at vents in the ocean floor. This is a very specific environment with limited resources. I think for the theory of abiogenesis to work early life must have developed all of its current fundamental mechanisms (DNA, RNA, ATP etc) before it spread to other more fertile environments. If early life could have taken advantage of the sun with huge amounts of available energy and had an entire ocean to spread out in than more types of mechanisms would exist today. I think that in order for what Sayonara has said to work early life must have been confined to a limited environment. I do not believe that competition could eliminate the other mechanisms throughout the entire planet with the incredible resources of the sun. Lots of evolutionary branches would form by taking advantage of various niches. One form would not be able to stamp out all of the others before these branches had time to evolve to forms that could compete.

You have to admit that it is a bit strange that all life on Earth has as much chemistry in common as it does. It would mean that all life on Earth originates from one ancestor that already had the modern mechanisms of replication, translation, transcription, phospholipid membranes, about 20 or so amino acids, energy in the form of ATP, etc. That’s a lot of chemistry without much deviation surviving. It seems like other mechanisms would have survived through the exploitation of a niche. I guess it just shows how fragile early life's existence was.

What I mean is in a different system where gravity was Gmm/r or Gmm/r^3 could orbitals be formed by changing the radiuses of the orbitals or speed of satellites, etc?

Krystal, here are two websites that may be of some interest to you. http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefittingfluor/shoe.htm http://www.mtn.org/quack/devices/shoexray.htm It's hard to know whether any health problems that you may have are related to the flouroscope. Some things like cancer have been liked to radiation, but many other diseases have no known links to radiation.

Could planets obtain orbitals with a force of 1/r or 1/r3 by traveling faster or slower?

Of course, there is always the theory of pansporia.

I've actually gone about 7 days without sleeping during a period of insomnia. I too experienced visual hallucinations. It's really not possible for your body to go that long so your body makes you microsleep. Microsleep is a brief period of semi-consciousness (maybe five minutes) where your mind keeps itself from going insane. Insomniacs that say they have gone weeks without sleeping are really just microsleeping. Otherwise, after about 5 days they will experience severe sleep deprivation with strong hallucinations and other problems.

Good point. It's all speculation anyway. The argument that I can make for the pro-biotic soup argument is that early life evolved in an extreme environment like hydrothermal vents. This environment had a limited amount of energy and there was an enormous amount of competition. Any small chemical advantage allowed that organism to greatly out compete the other organisms. This very specific and limited environment did not encourage diversity. The basic chemical mechanisms today like left-handed amino acids, DNA with four bases, RNA, ATP, etc. probably evolved before life evolved the ability to take advantage of the enormous amount of energy given off by the sun with its many different kinds of environments that encourages diversity. The DNA/RNA/protein system was already firmly embedded and it would have been very difficult to evolve a new system after a certain point because you have to change the whole system, which is all tied together, all at once. Evolution works on small mutations.

And another thing, the second law of thermodynamics has little to do with chirality. Whether a left-handed or right-handed molecule is formed depends upon the particular reaction that forms them in a particular environment. Left-handed amino acids are formed in life because their enzymes control their formation. Racemic mixtures (mixture of right and left-handed) are formed in vitro because the methods used to produce the amino acids have an equal or somewhat equal chance of producing them. Pressures to have an equal mixture of left-handed and right-handed molecules would only occur in the absence of any selective pressures of formation. If there is any advantage to life having homochirality or in the continuation of homochirality then that pressure will determine the likelihood of left-handed or right-handed molecules. Any violation of entropy in the formation of complex, high-energy molecules is overcome by the input of energy.