Ophiolite

And Proton Head, when I asked you to define an information layer, you responded with a "Well, the idea is still pretty qualitative", or words to that effect, and followed with what, to me, in the absence of any definitions of terms, was verbose gobbledy gook. I think the message from the few posters who have taken the time to read your thoughts is "think more, be more specific". I hope you wont view these above remarks as hostile. They are not so intended.

21.28 days. Easier to bring the moon up to speed than Titan though. I think it's about 1/5 the mass of Titan.

So, we can mark you down as a 'glass half empty' person, then. TimeTraveller, I share your view on the need to move into space. If we reject Aardvark's rather bleak view of humanity then it is not only desirable, it is essential. (Though I'll go along with Aardvark, in that we shoudn't issue Jerry Springer with any shuttle tickets.) With reference to your notion for colliding a few comets into Titan, I have long contemplated the idea of bombarding the moon with sufficient comets to give it an appreciable atmosphere, but also doing it in such a manner that the moons rotational speed was increased to a more acceptable level. The downside of this approach is hurling tens of thousands of dinosaur killers at a point just 230,000 miles from home!

It sounds pretty well closed minded to me. Especially given the fact that ghosts do exist. What is is being debated is the nature of the ghosts. You feel they are due to imagination and spasms. Your friend believes they are departed spirits. Begin with that common ground, ghosts exist, then explore the possible explanations for them.

Now I shall show my age, of the top of my head: Gone With the Wind A Bridge to Far Alien 2001 Charade My Fair Lady Zulu Citizen Kane Lord of the Rings (The extended versions, seen back to back) Duck Soup damn, the list could quickly grow to three hundred. I guess I like films.

What is an Eaton centre? Do its features protect you from the rather nearby sun?

TimeTraveller is correct Auk. Please don't take offence, and feel free to poke back. I see I avergae around ten posts a day, so there is plenty of opportunity to find something amusing or just real dumb in my offerings. But being serious for a moment I really did not understand what connection you were making between permafrost on Mars and the Cassini probe discovering life. Would you clarify please?

Is it reasonable to assume that this is your normal viewing schedule TimeTraveller?

I enjoy Seinfeld also, but I would be astounded if aliens could even begin to understand it. Not to put to fine a point on it ..... they are ..... alien. Strange, different, unknown, unfamiliar. When we eventually meet aliens it may take us several years of intense effort to get to the "Hello, nice to see you stage." It may not even be possible to communicate with them at all, their thought processes could be so different. We are still somewhat unclear of the function of humour, so there is no gauruntee that aliens would have a sense of humour. So, I think it very unlikely that they will be fans of Seinfeld.

My reservations would not be with your equations, but with your assumptions, in particular the time to deccelerate. Were you given the .01 as part of the problem when it was set? This appears to disregard the compressibility of the flesh in the heels. In that case if the decelaration takes 0.02 seconds, still a short time, the bone does not break. The difficulty is that you are arrivng at an answer that is right on the bounary between break and not break. Perhaps I am making this needlessly complicated. Hopefully this will prompt someone who actually knows what they are tallking about to throw in their views.

v^2= u^2 + 2a.s. Where v= final velocity in metres/sec, u=initial velocity in metres/sec, a= acceleration due to gravity in metres/sec/sec and s= distance in metres. Edit: I'm curious as to why you didn't just google "equations of motion".

Thanks to Gilded for getting us back on track. I would have thought with the available solar energy that far out that would be a decidedly marginal proposition. Do you have any data to suggest it is even theoretically possible TimeTraveller?

Here my thoughts on some of the points you have raised.Let's remember what U.F.O. stands for - unidentified flying object. In other words something airborne, but we are not quite sure what. As you point out the vast majority of sightings have been explained. (The number of times Venus has been mistaken for a UFO is perhaps incalculable.) I suspect a sizeable proportion of the still unexplained objects remain so through lack of data, not because they are some alien craft. Further, I would not be surprised to learn that many/most/all othe remainder are some as yet unrecognised and comparatively rare phemomena. (I'm thinking of ball lightning and lightning sprites as examples of the sort of thing they could be.) The similarity of the abduction accounts is, I understand, one their major clues to the an origin in the subconscious. I don't have a link on this, but I have read an article or two and seen a documentary that I found to be a plausible explanation for the phenomena. Certainly easier to accept than alien abduction. Frankly, I don't think they actually care. They have reached the same conclusion as the scientific community at large, that UFOs are not alien craft.

Though Gib65's friend seems to have demonstrated the capacity for 'rigid thinking'.

Anubis, while most(?) of the regular posters are scientifically oriented, a substantial number of them like to let their imaginations out for a 'run in the park' occasionally. If there were such a device you have briefly described out there, even as a theoretical possibility of quantum mechanics, someone here would have run across it. The device you are describing, like the beliefs it is associated with, would have to be taken on faith. It is my experience that people are quite discriminating as to where they place their faith. You have said several times that you were not here to start a debate, which I fully accept. However, a word to the wise: a statement such as 'this is 100% truth' is fighting talk around these parts.

There are lots of reasons why people find it comforting or attractive to think there are alien civilisations, especially ones that take an interest in us. Most of these reasons are ill founded and tell us more about the intelligence of Earth life than they do about possible extraterrestrial life. I can only think of two or three things more exciting than obtaining confirmation of ET, but wanting something does not automatically make it true. I shall remain an optimistic cynic.

Hold on a moment, you mean Seinfeld isn't an alien?

Here are the three domains and their major subordinate groupings: Archea - Extreme halophiles, Methanogens, Hyperthermophiles Bacteria – Green non-sulfur, Gram-positive, Purple, Cyanobacteria, Flavobacteria, Thermotoga, Aquifex Eucaryia – Animals, Cilates, Fungi, Plants, Flagellates, Microsporidia [source: Rare Earth, ISBN 0-387-95289-6 page 88, figure 5-1]

A little hyperbole creeping into your post? No? Pointless - of no value' date=' useless. On the contrary, it seems to me to be an excellent starting point. Asking the question forces us to examine characteristics clearly unique to the animate world and others restricted to the inanimate, as well as those common to both. It encourages us to explore the distinctions between the two, to speculate on characteristics that might exist in different environments, or in the same environment reached by a different path. Like all fruitful questions in science it spawns (almost as if it were alive) a further series of questions. Pointless? I rather think not. That's one inhabited world that has close to four billion years of life history on it.That's one inhabited world that has experienced several tumultuous environmental changes in those four billion years that make our current concerns for global warming look trivial. [The world of 2.2 billion years ago would have been unrecognisable to us, and deadly to virtually all the lifeforms we are familiar with.] That's one inhabited world that has varied dramatically in its climate, physiography, geology, atmosphere, etc over just the last six hundred milion years, playing host to a bewildering variety of life forms. That's one inhabited world that has a wide range of environments from deep within four kilometres of hot rock, to the sub-zero temperatures in the windswept Antarctic, to black smokers, to Kenyan game parks, to my living room. That's one hell of a good starting point for defining life. Not complete, not comprehensive, but a lot more than what you have dismissively called 'one letter of the 'alphabet'. And let us just take that analogy for a moment. One letter of an alphabet implies an alphabet, it implies a language. Language implies communication and some kind of culture, in the broadest sense. So from a single letter we can infer a great deal. So too with a 'single' occurence of life.

Let me echo Sayonara's point. The two words do have distinct meanings and should be used correctly. I came very close to getting fired some years ago by pedantically condemning my boss (in a very self-righteous fashion) for incorrectly using the words. That was bad tactics on my part!

Drat, Coquina, I missed your original query and an opportunity to prove geologists can do maths too! I came up with the same figures as Martin, but I cheated. I used Excel. I've made a nice little spreadsheet where you input the size, velocity and density of the incoming bolide and voila. If anyone is dumb enough to want a copy pm me.

With your permission I'm submitting this as one of the Top Ten quotes from the Forum. I must be missing something - permafrost on Mars, but despite that ....This does appear to be a hugh non sequitor (not helped by the misplaced full stop). And I am intrigued as to how a probe landing on a satellite of Saturn will discover life on a satellite of Jupiter. These NASA boffins are really smart. [Just because I'm acting like a bitch today, doesn't mean I am a bitch (or a bastard).]

YT the same happened to me. I have consulted my doctor and he says we are both brain dead. I said I wanted a second opinion. He said I was ugly.

Would you care to cite your top three problems.