nealsdomain

I don't have as much experience as some of these other posters, but I want to add a point to the Python basket. I have learned Basic, a little java, and a good amount of python and the latter is my favorite simply because the amount of support it has. The tutorials and documentation are amazing for learning it. It is great for a beginner. Also, it is built for object-oriented programming, but can be used very easily for procedural programming. It also has a lot of cool modules like Pygame for making 2d games very easily along with PIL (the python imaging library; where you can do literally anything you can imagine with an image). I have played a lot with Natural Language programming too, and python has a lot of support for that too. Modules include NLTK and MontyLingua. Even if you aren't into NLP, I really recommend playing with MontyLingua or ConceptNet 2.0. It's fun to watch AI do it's thing. Anyway...I have rambled enough.

By supernatural, I mean weird or miraculous. If anyone had the ability to do this, I like to imagine it would be comparable to when we try to hold our breath. The person would only be able to do it for a few seconds, then he would have to make it start beating again out of pain or the like

Alright well, I stand corrected

There are a number of species that make the gender line gray naturally. One such organism is the paramecium, which is found to have two sexual classes and reproduce by conjugation. However, if it wants, it can also reproduce asexually to create a clone of itself. Not only that but it can also self-fertilize through a process called Autogamy. What a complicated animal!

I am pretty sure we don't fully understand the mechanisms of cellular differentiation. A lot of computer scientists are researching this in a field called Amorphous Computing. While it is in basic stages, amorphous computing believes heavily cells in gathering signals from neighbors in order to direct their own behavior. Starting from the single cellular zygote to a multicellular colony of identical cells in the blastula undergoing cleavage, they are all getting signals from their neighbors to see "what everyone else is doing." As immortal discussed, the signalling that I am talking about is actually genetic regulation using molecules such as the autoinducers that bacteria use for quorum sensing.

Whatever it is, I would guess that the magnification is greater than 40x and that whatever we are looking at isn't on the cellular level. Looks like a cut up plant product to me. Not sure what plant though.

If anyone has the ability to do this, I would consider it supernatural. No ordinary human can do this because visceral functions, such as heart rate, are controlled by the autonomic nervous system. Personally, I am glad that visceral functions are controlled subconsciously. I would hate to have to control my own digestion, heart rate, breath, kidney function, liver function, etc. Talk about multitasking!

I don't think you would. To only create amino acids, the Urey-Miller experiment relied on a more complex system involving electricity and a miniaturized atmosphere (with evaporation and condensation of water). To fully create life, the system would likely have to be even more complex. (Understand that by complex, I mean relative to a bucket of molecules in a vacuum. The Urey-Miller experiment astonished people by its simplicity in creating amino acids through a simulated natural environment.) If I remember correctly from skimming a book called Life Ascending, the most plausible explanation is that life was created with the aid of continuous thermal cycling from deep volcanic vents in the ocean. Something like that would probably be necessary. Nobody has created life in laboratory though, so we can't know for sure.