Ophiolite

Was that a serious remark, in which case please argue your case. If not a smiley would have been helpful. Does your argument boil down to TANSTAAFL?

It is, in my opinion, very relevant. Peter has declared he would not wish to receive the Nobel prize because Sweden is governed as a Kingdom and he further implies that the Nobel prizes are directly related to this "royal governance". Spyman has demonstrated the incorrectness of Peter's thinking. This calls into question Peter's overal thought processes in terms of logic and rationality. This supports the reservations based on the speculation itself.

This paper might lead you somewhere.

Since the Mokkatam Eocene limestones of which G1 is largely constructed are not the product of a single environment I should be surprised if there was a single preferred orientation. This paper reports on four basic fabrics, including one with an imbricate structure, where clearly the orientation must be varied. You might find something of relevance here, though a quick scan turned nothing up. The emphasis in the literature on their high porosity, low density and the consequence ease with which they can be reworked leads me to conclude a preferential orientation, while possible, is unlikely. Here is a more detailed analysis that may prove useful to you: Hydrodymanic Behaviour of Nummulies: implications for depositional models.

I have not yet re-read the thread. Your argument, as I recall is that thermal expansion and contraction of the core as a consequence of variations in geomagnetic field strenght lead to expansion and contraction of the mantle that in turn cause plate tectonics to alternate between subduction and oceanic crustal generation. If my understanding is correct, please state what phase we are in at present and how you reconcile the fact that both conditions are presently occuring and are measurable.

Since your last post was made, I think, on September 24 it is possible you have decided to leave the forum. If you are still around I offer this thought. You may find this unpleasant to consider, but a large part of any problem you may perceive you have here is likely due to the your inability to express yourself clearly. Your posts are filled with ungrammatical and ambiguous constructions that are neither clear nor concise. In the absence of a well-structured, meaningful sentence readers are apt to jump to the conclusion that the writer is illogical, ill-informed and irrelevant. I'm sure that's not the perception you are aiming for. I would urge you to proof read, edit, then edit again before posting, if you wish to change that perception and have your ideas given the attention they likely deserve.

I am interested in your choice of phrase "if we are supposed to be". Are you implying a teleological aspect to the specific results of evolution, or was it just a bit of colloquial english slipping into a technical question?

arc, I am saddened to hear this news. Beyond that there is very little else I can say that is of any value. The only way I can now show my concern for you is by taking the time to respond properly to your tectonic hypothesis and by attacking it as vigorously as I am able. I believe, based on what I have read of your posts, that you will understand this is not as perverse as it may sound to some, but is a mark of respect.

No we cannot agree to disagree. I will not accept your willful disregard for facts, your readiness to consider baseless claims, your insistence of confusing complex phraseology with evidence, and your inclination to accept apparently authoritative statements without applying due scepticism. These are all unacceptable positions that I find greatly disagreeable.

Oblique.

The division on this point seems to have multiplied the responses.

Cladking, I think, if I set aside your preference for absolute statements and your apparent dismissal of orthodox interpretations that you may have something of interest here. So work with me, if you will, to convince me. You can begin here. This should be a very easy thing for you to demonstrate. Please provide citatitions from published work by recognised Egyptologists that reflect a fundamental disagreement on the interpretation of at least one 'sentence'.

My knowledge in this area is limited, but I am quite confident that this would be wholly contrary to known physics: i.e. it is impossible.

No astronomer believes that. The impact, if it occured, would have been a by a substantially sized proto-planet, possibly another ice giant, not a miniscule asteroid. This is just silly. It is clear that the moons of Uranus have multiple origins. Your speculation falls at the first hurdle.

Subject it to the gravitational attraction of a large body.

In discarding the "typical evolution answer " you appear to be throwing the baby out with the bath-water. In adding the codicil, "without any evidence" you are in danger of being mistaken for (or identified as) a creationist. The vast majority of "typical evolution answers" I have seen came with extensive evidence, implicit or explicit. But let's start with our DNA. Would you accept that our DNA is responsible for our basic neurological structure? If so, would you further accept that there is abundant evidence for the placebo effect arising from our psychology, which is in turn a reflection of that neurological structure amended by enfvironment? And do you find it to be a leap to far that expectation can produce results, by the same mechanism, for negative results as for positive? The above statements are not based on either ignorance, nor guesses. I hope that helps.

I don't agree with this statement. There is frequent discussion within appropriate segments of the scientific community. Interstellar travel has little scientific relevance to most scientists. Interstellar destinations would be mightily relevant, but the means of getting their is quite unimportant. There are several thousand hits in Google Scholar for Interstellar Travel - I don't see how that equates to scarcely spoken of. I strongly disagree with this statement. The decision to leave the planet is a political and social decision, not a scientific one. Scientific knowledge and engineering expertise may inform the decision, but it is not a scientific decision and therefore scientists have no more part to play in discussing it than any other human. This is questionable. We currently employ a hughely wasteful approach to supporting a material and energy intensive culture. Use of renewable energy and effective recycling can be great solutions in this regard. After that we have a whole solar system at our disposal. The reasons for interstellar travel are twofold: 1. Don't put all your eggs in one basket 2. I wonder what is on the other side of the hill. These are different from - and, I think more important than - your proposed motivation. Yes, but rather difficult. Generation ships, using hollowed out asteroids seem the easiest route. Or a combination of von Neumann devices, AIs and frozen embryos. We are doing that already. Within twenty years we will have positively identified likely candidates. Within a millenium the first interstellar colonies will be established.

I'm not sure if this contains a typo. Did you mean abiogenesis, which you have mentioned several times, or did you really mean biogenesis. The latter, life-from-life, would certainly be the foundation of evolution, but hardly requires any faith. So, I'll assume you meant abiogenesis. So, I challenge you on this point - I do not accept that abiogenesis is seen as the foundation of evolution. Obviously, the many variants of biologists tend to accept that the life forms they study arose originally by abiogenesis, but they do not consider this relevant to their evolutionary studies. If I am mistaken you can very easily prove me wrong. Randomly select forty or fifty research papers from peer reviewed journals whose declared topic is evolution. Now show that a substantial number of them mention abiogenesis. Indeed, prior to the Miller-Urey experimental work in the early 1950s, and despite the Oparin-Haldane theoretical work twenty years earlier, abiogenesis was a no-go area for biologists. Why? Because it was not thought that there was any viable method of testing hypotheses in this area. Therefore it fell outside the realm of science. Yet this is the same period in which the Modern Synthesis was born. If modern concepts of evolution were being formulated at the same time as abiogenesis was rejected as a valid area of scieintifc research you cannot say it forms the basis of evolution. Perhaps you will retract that part of your argument now.

Is this an accurate representation of what you are saying: 1. A large proportion of our body's activities occur with minimal, or zero input from the brain. 2. A large proportion of our body's activities occur via subconscious control by the brain. 3. The conscious contorl of our actions requires the use of only a small proportion of the brain. If this is not what you are saying could you make another attempt at clarifying. If this is what you are saying, then why are you saying it? This non-controversial and would be accepted by most people with just a moderate knowledg of neurology, etc. There is perhaps some other conclusion you are seeking to draw from this - if so it is not clear to me what this is.

I speak for my own motivations: I participate in science forums to learn. I generally learn most when I am seeking to explain why someone is mistaken. When they are badly mistaken, deluded and intransigent, that can require a great deal of explaining. A simple question, on the other hand, can be dealt with simply and with a single reply.

I don't see how a star, producing energy from fusion, no matter how little, could fail to be brighter than a planet whose excess energy output was the result of gravitational contraction. Am I missing something?

I have long felt that the problem with how abiogenesis is presented in the popular science media and to a significant degree by researchers in journal articles is that the depth of our ignorance is ignored, or at best grossly understated, and the depth of our understanding of mechanisms is greatly exagerrated. There are some very large gaps that have to be filled in. Research of this type is exactly the ind of painstaking effort that will bre required to, eventually, come up with a high probaility solution.

You clearly have never heard of the Cargo Cults. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult I find myself unable to relate to the OP premises. If aliens arrive as described my thought would be "What are these bastards really up to." Far from worshipping them my inclination would be to investigate and interrogate them.

Arc, clearly you have done an extensive amount of research on this idea. To properly address it I shall have to devote many hours (totalling, I should imagine, man-weeks of effort) to thoroughly considering your argument and exploring the relevance of your cited evidence. I am not willing to do this until and unless you assure me that you will be willing to abandon this hypothesis if I demonstrate with clear, evidence based argument, that it is flawed. Are you willing to give me that assurance?

In this instance - since your OP was not clearly worded - I suggest that the frustration is a fear response arising from feelings of inadequacy.