Orundellico

Here you can find a four-dimensional Tic Tac Toe game, just in order to imagine the fourth dimension: http://www.kanitrino.../sonstiges.html (P.S.: I have programmed it myself)

Can "nothing" have a boundary ? What would be a "nothing" near the boundary ? If it is something else than a "nothing", what would be the "nothing" next to the "something else" ? So, I think that "nothing" cannot have a boundary. But, if it had no boundary, it would be unlimited. So, the whole world world would be "nothing". This ist not the case. Therefore, I think that there is no "nothing".

If the problem of the Earth are the humans - what should be wrong with them ruining themselves ?

I see the difference between evolution and breeding in the "authority" that takes the decision, which individuals / which genetic mutations will survive and procreate. In the case of evolution, it's the natural environment (food, climate, predators,...), in the case of breeding, there is a will of an inelligent being and a target of how the animal should look like. However, a very important factor of evoluion is sexual selection : The female selects a male that looks "good", according to her own taste. This can lead to some strange characteristics, such as monstrous feathers, horns or teeth (or even Lambeosaurines that had a trumpet integrated in their sculls) that are useless or even obstructive for surviving. As there is a will and a target, I am asking myself (and you) if sexual selection should be classified as breeding rather than as evolution.

It's not evolution but breeding

Sorry, the last link has changed, it is now http://kanitrino.org/en/Page/Grippe.html

I wanted to distill acetaldehyde (bp. 20.6 °C), but did not consider that first I had to cleave the cyclic trimer. So, I heated the flask on an oil bath (too much) and wondered why the distillation went so slow. When I was taking a look, the whole apparatus exploded and I got it all in my face. The residue was a bakelite-like black solid. Fortunately, the bath temperature had not yet been really high and I had been wearing protection glasses, which were now entirely brown. The floor of the lab was brown, too, except for my "shadow". ---- An accident of a student fellow : He wanted to epoxydize styrene with benzoyl peroxide, PhCOOOH. Unfortunately, he grabbed some dibenzoyl peroxide (PhCOO)2 instead. So, he initiated a radical polymerisatin reaction, which was exothermic. Very exothermic. ----- Another one : A student fellow used a bar of sodium, which was stored under a paraffin oil. When he wanted to put back the bar into the storage flask, he grabbed another one with bars of yellow phosphorus under water. The sodium reacted with the water giving a nice explosion.

If you want the human race to vanish from this planet, you'll have to make them vanish all. Otherwise, there will always be the problem that the remaining people would make the whole game start all over again. (Natural) diseases or hunger won't be sufficient. I see four (virtual) strategies which might be successful 1. Get them all at the same time 2. Destroy their means of existence 3. Block their offspring. § 1 - Could always be reached by a cosmic catrastophe, such as a meteorite impact, but I think, this is not really the topic of this thread. I think that we are technically already able to blow ourselves all up. On the other hand, it is not the purpose of a war to kill oneself, too, so this could only happen by unprofessional handling of this tool. On the microbiological level, I think it is/will be also possible to create a virus more efficient than the pest, which let anyhow two thirds of the European population alive in the Middle Age. How probable is this to happen within the next 1,000 years ? We'll see. § 2 - Man is very versatile concerning his food stock and the physical conditions of life. So, it won't be sufficient - as it is for other species - to clear some square miles of rainforest to exterminate him. As we know, a climate change can be induced by the human race, but it must be a really extreme change in order to make end to any agriculture and to anything else to eat or to drink. I think that our species will only leave Earth as one of the last ones. Soil erosion is potentially also effective to make an end to agriclture and to wildlife, but in such a case, the last survivants will be smart enough to live on the residues. To make vanish or to poison all drinking water is obviously very difficult to realize as long as the cycle of evaporation and rainfall remains intact. I myself at least wouldn't know how to make it collapse. § 3 - One theory of the extermination of the mammouth is that the ice age people only hunted their calves, with a weight below one ton. In any case, attacking procreation is a very effective virtual stategy to make end to a species. What could make us stop to have children or what could kill them systematically or make them infertile ? One reason is that it could be "out of fashion" to have kids - in many indrustial countries the birth rate is much lower than 2 children per woman, so below the rate of self-reproduction. However, I doubt that this could really be extrapolated down to zero - before, some people could change their minds. What else could stop the procreation ? Poisons, diseases, socially or educationally induced asexuality, food ? As a conclusion, I dare the prediction that there will be a big crisis for our species, but not (yet) the real end.

Hello all, My name is Klaus, I am a chemist. I have joined this forum for having interesting discussions, but also for language reasons (I am German).

Is it intelligence ? Is it instinct ? Take the example of a slime mold, an amoeba which is able to form colonies that work like mulicellular organisms : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyostelium_discoideum They organise themselves by emitting pheromones. These pheromones trigger a reaction of the next cell, which emits pheromones again, which trigger a reaction... A set of a few rules carried out by a great number of individuals can create a system of linked cells interacting with each other and creating something new. Such a mechanism also works in entirely different systems, for instance in oscillating chemical reactions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov-Zhabotinsky_reaction) or for the propagation of a flu epidemy ( http://www.kanitrino...eEN/Grippe.html). It can be computer-simulated and abstracted from any biological subject. So, I would neither call it instinct nor intelligence. What is another word for "following abstract rules"? -> It's mathematics.

As an example (and an inspiration), please find below the link to my 3D- and my 4D-version of the - normally 2D - game "Tic Tac Toe". http://kanitrino.de/.../sonstiges.html