Ophiolite

You might think it a trifle pedantic, but the contact is made with Earth - not necessarily with humanity - lets here it for the dolphins, or, if you are a Douglas Adam's fan, the mice. So, I think the that means 4 and 5 are still assumptions whose validity is unproven. On what basis do you claim validity for assumption 2, that they are a conscious species?

I'm troubled by the fact that the questions to date, and the basic notion we could ask the aliens questions at all, have a strong geocentric-anthropocentric leaning. We are assuming the aliens have language. We are assuming the aliens are conscious. We are assuming the aliens can interact with another species in a meaningful way. We are assuming they want to interact with another species. We are assuming they would choose to intereact with us. We are assuming their responses would be truthful. We are assuming their repsonses would be meaningful. (I am not talking simply in terms of translation.) We are assuming so much. My questions would be formulated in an effort to elucidate the validity of these presumptions. That would be a huge task to get right, so the following are simplistic paraphrases of what would actually be asked. Are you conscious or self aware? Do you have a higher level of consciousness that extends beyond the individual? Is language your primary means of communication? Do you use language for internal reflection? Do you use other mediums of thought for internal reflection? To what extent do you consider yourself separate from other members of your species? To what extent do you consider yourself separate from other species? Will Hartlepool United ever win the cup? Do you view the Universe as an analog continuum, where digital categories (such as species, or atom, or me and you) have no place, or the reverese, or some amalgam of the two? Why is the Universe?

I believe that is the request myself, Big Moosie and Zaphod are making of you. Inaccuracy and rudeness do not further the cause of your argument. Thank you.

There is one....it's just not quite what it appears to be.

There is an interesting argument dating from 1997 that can be found here, along with a counterargument and a refutation of the counterargument: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5362/355a In brief the researchers found that the theropod dinosaurs (the proposed ancestors of birds) developed their hands from digits 1, 2 and 3, losing or suffering a marked reduction in digits 4 and 5. In contrast birds develop their 'hands', i.e. wings, and feet from digits 2, 3 and 4. This was determined from embryology studies. A quick scan of internet sources suggests this argument has been ignored rather than systematically dismembered.

We don't need to address the physics of the internal combustion engine because these are understood and accepted. We do need to address any plot device that is central to the story and is not an accepted part of life. This is not restricted to justifying scientific concepts, but applies to any aspect of the plot. In the Count of Monte Cristo, when Edmond Dantes is imprisoned in the Chateau d'If, it is the consequence of a series of actions by several individuals. If any one of them failed to act in the way that they did he would not be imprisoned, yet there actions are each odd, even abnormal. Dumas meticulously explores why each has acted as he has. That is good writing. Using a Deux ex machinaapproach is not. Clearly this is only an opinion, but I suggest if you browse through some of the books on novel and short-story writing at your library or bookstore you will find this point is made quite strongly.

Software should not degrade over time. I assume you have the software on a harddrive. The basic program will not vary by a single bit from the time it is installed. Any writing and re-writing will be restricted to the data used by the program. However, these data may fall into two categories, which I'll call setup data and process data. [i'm sure the programming community has much fancier terms for these.] Setup data in a program such as Excel, for example, would include options relating to the appearance of the work sheet, which you had established in an earlier session. This data would be written to your hard drive and then re-read when you next opened the program. Process data would, to continue the Excel example, the numbers placed in the spreadsheet cells. If there is damage or corruption of the hard disc that affects the program it is likely that the program will fail. If there is damage or corruption to the setup data the program may function partially. If there is damage or corruption to the process data you just wont be able to access that particualr data set properly or at all. Does this help at all?

Hmmm.... where to start. 1. I did not observe any ignorance of this fact on the part of the other posters: what I observed was the very practical recognition that the uncertainty in our knowlege of the number of atoms in the Universe is at least an order of magnitude greater than the change over the course of a human lifetime in the number of those atoms due to fusion or fission.2. Please cite an instance where radiation changes the number of atoms in the Universe (other than being involved as part of the fission or fusion process).. Oh, go on. Give it a go. How many atoms in the Universe? How many permutations on the chess table?My, look at this! http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/chess.html Number of atoms in the Universe 10^75 Number of possible chess moves 10^120 Hmm! What was that you were saying about stupid? Yes, just like chess players. Please explain the words "despreciable" and "significative". If this seems to you a rather agressive response to your post - you are right: it is a pure reaction to you presumptive, and inaccurate, use of the qualifiers "ignorant" and "stupid".

Geology rocks!

The interesting thing is that broadly speaking sea water does not get saltier with the passage of time. Now, sea water is around 200 times saltier than fresh water. [There is very little fresh water that does not contain some dissolved salts.] But although it is comparatively fresh that small quantity of dissolved salt is still there. So, the water disgorged into the ocean every day adds salt. But every day a larger volume of water evaporates from the oceans and seas, leaving the dissolved salts behind. Some of this water falls as rain directly on the oceans, and so has no effect, but some falls on the land, flows to the sea, and along the way dissolves some more salts. You know this already. And it seems, as you say, that the concentration of salt should increase over time. [in the 19th century scientists tried estimating the age of the Earth from the salinity of the oceans.] But it does not increase. Something must be removing the salt, and keeping the concentration in approximately the same concentration over millions of years. There are a couple of mechanisms: 1) Water can become trapped in isolated basins, where it evaporates, perhaps eventually drying up entirely. During this process various salts are deposited in turn. (My memory may be faulty, but I think the sequence of the major items is calcium carbonate, gypsum, halite (common salt). The basin may periodically be exposed to the ocean again, receiving a fresh influx of water, so that a series of sequences are built up. These evaporite deposits are common in the Middle East, but we also find them in the remains of the old Tethys Ocean, which is represented today by the Mediterranean, Black, Caspian and Aral Seas. During the Permian and Triassic periods much of Northern Europe from Poland through to the UK was the site of a shallow sea in which thick evaporite deposits were laid down. These deposits can total 1,000s of feet thick, so that a substantial volume of salt can be removed in this way. (If all the salt in the oceans were extracted and psread out over the land surface it would be about 500' thick.) 2) Clay minerals may absorb some dissolved materials into their structure. 3) During diagenesis (the process of change in sediments that occurs as they are buried and subject to increasing temperature and pressure) water is squeezed out of the sediments, but the dissolved salts tend to be retained. Together these mechanisms remove salt from sea water at approximately the same rate at which it is added by rivers, so a balance is achieved. Some of this salt eventually finds its way back into the oceans, when the sediments are caught up in descending plates in subduction zones, and eventually get erupted as constituents of lavas, as noted by Coquina. [And I'll blame Coquina for my overly long, rambling reply, as she said "Until Ophie gets around to a more detailed reply", so I felt honour bound to make it lengthy. ]

Interesting. I can now add one Portugese word to my vocabulary. Good luck with the project.

Thank you Coral. I thought it was a passingly good imitation, barring the obvious fact it was way too short!

And again, and again, and again. Salt is continually being extracted from the seas by evaporation in closed or semi-closed basins. The salt deposits are then recycled into the mantle by subduction, some of which is then incorporated in the lavas that emerge from the descending plate. If this process was not continuoulsy extracting salt from the ocean's they would be substantially saltier than they are.

Mossoi, it's an interesting question. Do you have any specific sources that confirm this, or is it 'common knowledge' amongst fishermen? Also, is does this relate to freshwater fish, seawater fish, or both?

For most penetrating observation of the month on sfn I nominate Dak. Well, yes I was, since we don't want casual readers of the thread to go away with an unscientific idea. And in relation to Dak's observation, I do have to ask, 'Did the Earth move for you?':-)

Which rather suggests that your attack on the facts of the article is more an attack on the fact of Bob Woodward's existence. You also find it peculiar that "Information attributed to Deep Throat was also attributed to a White House Source." How so? Reputable journalists will not publish a controversial piece unless they can get validation from at least two sources. One of the few occasions the Washington Post had to print a retraction in relation to Watergate was when, in their haste, Woodstein sloppily misinterpreted the comments of one source as confirmation of another.

I think there are three reasons nobody has replied to your request: 1) Your question is very general. 2) The questions contains ambiguities and mistakes. (Quantum, not quantic. Consideration of the Big Bang at school project level would tend to focus on macroscopic events, not quantum level events.) 3) A simple use of google should provide the answers you seek. Here is a good starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang But a google for "big bang" hubble introduction basicturned up over 50,000 hits, so if that one doesn't help there are plenty more out there.

Incredibly your post in response to my last one is so tortuous I couldn't steel myself to read it all - I say incredibly because my ego would normally find it impossible to avoid reading and re-reading material though it contained a mere pseudonym rather than the real McCoy, or Harry Barnstable if you prefer. I did note this one: "You may or not be familiar with Buckminster Fuller's Gray (Yawn) Manuals, or the 54+ (boring) books of Bertrand Russel, or Immanuel Kant's triad of (ho hum) Critiques on Pure Reason; or the - often prolifically expansive; high English vocabularized - works of Descarte, Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Reed, Von Helmholtz, Whitehead, Freud, H.G. Wells, Noam Chomsky, James Michener, Clavelle, Bronowski, etceteras, whereas, you apparently are - notably - at least somewhat familiar with William - Brevity - Shakespeare..." I read Gibbon Decline and Fall, the unabridged version, when I was fourteen. I read most of Freud's work when I was fifteen. H.G.Wells' SF work preceded those of course, his conventional novels I am only getting round to now. I've no idea why you place Michener in such illustrious company, but everything he wrote prior to 1980 +/- has been digested. Locke and Hume have been recent, belated, additions to my completed reading list. Bronowski: well do you mean his popular works or his published papers? Chomsky? Of course, how could I not? Whitehead, no, unless by some pure accident. Etc. In short, having been long, your attempts to appear educated and well read lose much because plenty of people on this forum are at least as well read as you appear to imply you are - its just they don't normally mention it: it's impolite - I only raise my own list because I am impolite, especially faced with such an explosion of fecal matter. (And who the hell is Reed?)

In my carefully considered view the only contender is Newton. Just because he was wrong, dabbled in alchemy and was somewhat unpleasant does not diminish his achievements.

Then surely you must include Rosalind Franklin?

We also attract the Earth. It gets gravitons from us. It is a dynamic exchange, which leaves things as they were.

(Phi for All, did husmusen just strawman me?! I've stated that politicians, like all people, have a range of motives, and he sidetracks with the irrelevance that different atmospheres pervade different workplaces. So what?) Husmusen, All you are saying is that the extent to which an individual motivation is expressed is predicated upon the environment the individual finds themselves in, and that is contingent upon leadership. In no manner does that invalidate my contention that "Politicians have much the same range of altruistic and selfish motives as the rest of us."