Ophiolite

I'm going to answer this briefly now and more fully later, if you wish, with proper references.1. I only view it as a possibility, by no means a certainty. 2. We are identifying increasingly complex organic molecules in dust clouds in space. 3. This then becomes an excellent souce of pre-biotic chemicals akin to the famous primodial soup. 4 Don't worry about temperature, a collapsing dust cloud gets pretty hot 5 You have so much more VOLUME to play with in space, so that concerns about the probability of life emerging are reduced 6 I don't think the 'microbes' are coming in alone, but on meteorites, so that's protecting them 7 And yes life had to come from somewhere, but since there is so much more of 'there' than 'here'...... I know most of the objections to each of these points and have, I think some reasonable supporting evidence I can supply. Its not conclusive just suggestive. Take your best shot at any or all of them and I'll see how I can respond. Or google Hoyle & Wickramasinghe, or go to the link on my previous post. (If you find the bit about the spectral signal of interstellar dust clouds really only being a match for a particular bacteria, ignore it. I think even they conceded that was too far out in left field.)

Could you expand on that please, if you have rough figures to hand? How much money? How small? Thanks.

True, but it has to be said that the commentary on the TV is much better than the real thing, and nobody ever tried to sell me a mummy's hand in my own living room.

Philbo how can we say your evidence is true or false if we have not seen your evidence? I had googled for some of the material right after my last post. This is a science forum yet nothing I saw in scanning around fifteen articles met the standards of scientific evidence. If you can point me towards something of substance I would appreciate it. Alternatively, if this is the best there is and is what you have taken as evidence then I have to ask you two things. Do you have any scientific training? Do you have any interest in science? These are genuine questions. I am not trying to put you down, I am not being ironic. I just find your approach so far...unscientific. I would truly value a response. On a lighter note, I had to give up the juggling on account of a bad back.

Please try not to shout. Making a series of statements is not presenting evidence, it is merely making a series of statements. Please provide references for your evidence so we can assess it ourselves. Authors, paper title, Journal and date will be sufficient. Don't trouble yourself to provide this material for all of these claims, unless you have them conveniently to hand. References for one would suit me at present, and I am sure would delight Sorcerer and AzureBlue. I am especially intrigued by the example of the man crushing the trilobite in the age of dinosaurs. I hope you can confirm that the trilobite was either of the Brachymetopidae or the Proetidae family and that the dinosaurs were prosauropods. That will let us narrow down the gap we have to bridge between the extinction of one and the appearance of the other to a manageable twenty million years or so. (Sorcerer, I used to be psychic, but I lost the power after an unexpected blow to the head.)

Only if he was trying to keep abreast of developments in cell biology.

My maths never got past the calculus, but this discussion seems to be more about classification. Molecular Man's proposal seems logical. Surely there would be real benefit in having theorems grouped in some heirarchical structure. Many (most, all?) people learn by consciously or sub-consciously grouping objects, concepts, etc. If there is an already established grouping, then that can facilitate both learning and application. I would have thought that would have been beneficial. Certainly it would be resource intensive to develop and maintain, but the rewards could well justify it. Finally I was perplexed by your remark that there are just to many theorems to number. A mathematician running out of numbers. Really, Dave, pull the other one.

I can't find anyone that is claiming it as ancestral to all vertebrates. It does fall into the same Group as vertebrates, the deuterostomes, which include vertebrates, hemi-chordates and echinoderms. So it shares a common ancestor with the vertebrates. A few species have remained remarkably unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. The text book example given is usually the bi-valve Lingula. Here are a couple of links on Xenoturbella, reporting on the original article in Nature. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3170245.stm http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12931184&dopt=Abstract&holding=f1000 http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002847.html

Come on YT2095 it was a joke. Perhaps not especially amusing, but a joke. And there was also an deeply buried implicit statement that runs like this - "I can't immediately see why this information would be useful or relevant. The poster has not explained his purpose. So, it seems to me to be trivial. So I'll give a trivial response." Now please make me feel a lot better by telling me your post was ironic, although it did contain a coded interpretation of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. For the record, 5 10 3/4". Never could get to the 6.

I should know better. I should just stop typing now, or at least limit myself to the eloquence of 'atinymonkey's one word response. How do I reply without infringing the rules of the forum? This is a science forum. Science is above all else a methodology. A way of seeking to discover about the world and the Universe. We build that understanding through painstaking observation, experimentation and theorising. We take almost as many steps back as we do forward, and sometimes we have to make a major retreat, from the wrong path, in order to achieve a significant advance in a new direction. We do not just dream up ideas because they are fascinating or cool or different. (They may begin that way, but before they reach the light of day they need some substantiation.) One of the other posters (I don't recall who) signs off with a quote from Carl Sagan, which goes something like 'Exceptional claims require exceptional evidence.' If you are going to post something that will appear like nonsense to many then at least attempt to justify it to a far greater extent than you have. Specifically you could have done the following: 1. Substantiated your claim that ancestors of the apes are rare. 2. Referred to such tree dwelling mammals as are known from the Mezozoic 3. Explored the evolutionary benefits of tree dwelling 4. Countered the arguments against the disadvantages increased size would bring for an animal that wants to stay unobserved 5. Postulated peculiarities of the environment, in detail, that would have explained the absence of ANY fossils. And all of that would still not have countered the problem you face of a reasonable chain of evolutionary types from Mezozoic mammals through to todays apes. Just a thought.

I've been telling the same jokes for years. Does that count?

How tall? Is that standing up or lying down?

QUOTE=Edisonian] I think extraterrestrials have already visisted the earth millions of years ago and they continue to stop by in the form of alien microbes embeded in rocks and particles. These microbes are the building blocks for life on earth..

Here are some basic facts that might be of use to you. Any life on Earth may be placed in one of two groups. The prokaryotes and the eukaryotes. The prokaryotes were, as the name suggests the first to appear about 3.8 billion years before present. They have the more the more primitive cell type (though it is still pretty complex) and most life with this structure is single celled. All bacteria are prokaryotes. There is some debate as to when the eukaryotes first appeared, but it was likely around 2 billion years ago (fossilised remains are common by 1.6 billion years ago). They had several distinctive features, but the most critical was that they were much more structured than the prokaryotes. In particular the chromosomes, carrying the cells genetic instructions, were located in a central nucleus. Also there were other structures, or organelles, which specialized in other necessary cell functions. The early eukaryotes were single celled also. All plants and animals are eukaryotes. Between one billion and 500 million years ago multi-celled organisms developed, increasing in complexity. In the Cambrian period, around 600 my ago, all the major forms of animal life appeared (though often in very primitive form). A major difference between plant cells and animal cells are the chloroplasts. These are where the chlorophyll is located that plants use to capture the energy of sunlight. These two cell types are nicely illustrated here: http://sun.menloschool.org/~cweaver/cells/ There is even more information here http://www.cellsalive.com/cells/3dcell.htm Now all that is by way of background and probably does not answer your question. (But its an area I’m comfortable with. I m now moving out of my comfort zone.) The animal cells of invertebrates like clams or squid, or vertebrates like fish, reptiles or mammals are all broadly similar. Because these animals are very complex and have a highly differentiated anatomy, there are big differences between the cells in different body parts. Your brain cells are quite different from your muscle cells or skin cells for example. In some ways the muscle cells of a salmon and a pig will be more alike than are the muscle cells and brain cells of a pig. The pig – salmon difference is expressed in its bodily structure more than in its cellular structure. I am not aware of any distinct and reasonably consistent difference between mammal cells and other animals. Or, to put it another way, mammal cells do not have features unique to them. Of course there are exceptions. Here is an example: “Erythrocytes in mammals are unique among vertebrates in that they are enucleated (i.e., contain no nuclei) and circular rather than elliptical.” From http://www.genomesize.com/cellsize/mammals.htm I trust this is of some use and hope the biologists out there will jump in quickly to correct my laughable errors and educate both of us.

So, let me understand what you are saying. Either you feel that the risks of exposure to chickenpox at parties is the same or lower as the risks of taking the vaccine, or you do not consider it unethical to expose children to a higher level of risk. Which is it?

I apologise for us not having answered clearly enough earlier. Many people. Not in percentage terms perhaps, but in absolute terms, very many. Most of them are not the rich, who will be able to afford the early flights, but 'ordinary' people. I have absolutely no problem accepting that you find the prospect mind numbingly pointless. Lots of people will feel the same way. I am puzzled by your apparent unwillingness to accept that others may have a different perspective. Neither are right or wrong, merely different. "A1985 opinion poll carried out for the American Express company in the U.K. showed that more than 50% of those under 45, and 65% of those under 25, would like a holiday in space" That's from here - http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/potential_economic_implications_of_the_development_of_space_tourism.shtml And I acknowledge that a large majority of those people wouldn't want the twenty five minutes locked in a box option - but some would. You can logically object to it on the grounds that it is a waste of resources, as you have done. I don't agree, but it is a debatable point. I do not see how you can logically object to it on the grounds that you wouldn't like it. Heh, if you are right nobody will front up to buy a ticket anyway...........Apart from me and Sayonara.

I share your surprise at Sayonara's attack on your post, or certainly at the character of the attack. That said some of your earlier statements were comtroversial without some form of substantiation. That was why I asked, and why I now repeat, 'in what way(s) do you feel evolution through natural selection is inadequate?'. I trust you will be hangover free in the morning.

"...To account for these strings, a theory called superstring theory postulates that space and time exist in ten dimensions. ......The current prevailing string theory, called M-Theory (5), came after what scientists refer to as the "second superstring revolution." It proposes an eleven-dimensional space that consists of objects with multiple dimensions called p-branes. One type of p-brane is the d-brane, which can be related to the end points of the strings. Another string theory postulates a twenty-six dimensional space (3). Yet another seeks to use a five-dimensional space to describe the universe. The mathematical principles and equations associated with these theories are all extremely complex and difficult for the average undergraduate to understand." The above paragraph is extracted from an article by this gentleman: Vikram Pattanayak Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of Pennsylvania at this web site http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume5/issue3/features/pattanayak.html I love the last sentence of the extract!

Well conventional views have the West Indies discovered 'recently': Columbus et al. However, there is abundant suggestive evidence pointing to much earlier contacts between the Old World and the New. For example: 2000-year-old Mediterranean amphorae found in wrecks of Honduras and Brazil. http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/romanbust.htm Traces of cocaine in Egyptian mummies (cocaine was originally only available from S America) http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/courses/en570/papers_2000/wells.html Thor Heyerdahl's successful trans-atalantic voyage on Ra, a reed raft of Egyptian design. http://www.plu.edu/~ryandp/RAX.html?CFID=10280761&CFTOKEN=22971753&jsessionid=0630be544710$3D$DC$0 The evidence is strongly disputed and Heyerdahl's voyages dimissed as irrelevant by many experts, but largely on the grounds that it runs counter to the accepted view. So, not conclusive, but worthy of further consideration.

Dave, I am not well versed in e-m radiation, but surely 5614 has a point. If you have a powerful enough receiver you should be able to pick up the signal. If it is designed to operate smoothly and reliably over 10-15 feet, it seems reasonable that, in favourable circumstances and with more receiver power (I guess that's as much antennae configuration as amplification and processing?)you could get something out to the couple of hundred feet 5614 suggests? Where is my thinking faulty? Later edit: I see you answered my qestions in your last post that went out while I was writing the above. Are you telepathic? What sort of range do you get with that?

I'm not quite sure what you mean, in this context, at taking a theory at face value. At any rate, why do you feel it is inadequate? Where specifically does it fall down?

I wonder if a spherical, ablative cocoon could be used to enclose the Sky Surfer until he got down to a sensible altitude and velocity. You aren't going to be able to see anything through the interval of maximum decelleration anyway. Or give it an aerofoil shape so you have some controllable glide capability. I think this idea was proposed twenty-five years ago in an SF novel, possibly by Jerry Pournelle in "Jannisary", but I can't put my hand on a copy to check. If it wasn't, then I bag patent rights!

Exactly. At the risk of generalising, the Creationists could be placed in two categories, the Educated and the Ignorant. I don't mean the latter to be derogatory. The Ignorant creationist is not schooled in scientific methods and so, quite reasonably, does not readily understand the arguments that derive from them. The Educated creationist fully appreciates the methods, but makes a value judgement beyond those methods. Many scientists do themselves and science no favours when they overstate their case. I would almost go so far as to say that Science is never wrong, but Scientists frequently are.