Moontanman

I was watching an old UFO video with Bob Lazar and he kept on about a stable isotope of element 115, I am not asking you to verify his claims but it got me to thinking about what the properties if such an element might be. Is there any way to predict the properties of such an element? Density? Chemical? Hardness? I'm not saying there is a stable isotope of that element but can we predict the properties of it if it occurred? Would the properties be the same if it wasn't stable? I have heard of "islands" of stability, I never thought they meant totally stable but more like U-238 or something.

Maybe I could have been a bit more specific, civilizations is more of what i had in mind, not spores. Having said that is there any reason spores couldn't be the precursor to a civilization ie the entire ball of wax programmed into a spore that starts life and has a preprogrammed goal in mind?

It was in layman terms i was talking about although i do have some old science books that blurred the lines more than a bit..

Dinosaurs are a specific group of animals, creatures like dimetrodon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimetrodonand quite a few others often asserted to be dinosaurs were not..

A great many ideas behind the existence of aliens make some sort of assumption, often, i think, unwarranted. There are of course as many different ideas about aliens as there are people who hold these ideas but they seem to revolve around a few basic ideas. Super beings Super technology being wielded by either super beings or regular beings Machine civilizations that either include or do not include biological beings Please feel free to list your own fav if it differs from what I have listed. Super beings are often seen as god like or angelic and if they use super technology to support the illusion of their supernatural nature it is not readily apparent. An example from fiction Might be Q from Star Trek. Super technology would seem to be a bit more difficult to define, I see it as similar to the technology used by starfleet in Star Trek, it is recognizable as technology but has little connection to what we know as technology. Super technology used by super beings brings us back to Q like beings. Machine civilizations that include biological beings might be somewhat like the Borg in Star Trek and purely technological beings might be like the computers in the Novel "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge where computers become so transcendent they become dangerous or sometimes simply vanish from space time. I think there are of course other possibilities, combinations of possibilities and probably some i haven't thought of. What are some of your thoughts on this matter?

My main beef in this is the implied assumption that everything alive at the time fit into neat categories and that there were three of them or two or 22, we really don't know and the mammal like reptiles are generally identified as dinosaurs and they were a very diverse group and the mammals we see today are the result of a tiny offshoot. Reptile is not a useful term any more than fish is a useful term. Don't take me too seriously, I used to think the number of animals was small and easy to separate out of the herd as well. It has become somewhat more interesting now that I know (think I know) that the ecology was far more diverse and included animals we really can't classify accurately. Amphibian is yet another term that we look at modern examples for guidance and get a totally wrong idea, mooeypoo taught me that!

Is it really a fight? Only if a toddler going against Mike Tyson is a fight...

I generally fish in the ocean but I do release any fish i am not going to eat or use as bait, I see no reason to kill just to be killing...

Do you understand the concept that animals must be thinned out due to the fact that they are no longer limited by natural means? I wonder if your take would change if you were being eaten alive by a bear or a mountain lion in your backyard or on a city street. In some cases it does have to do with food, humans still hunt for food, in some cases it both has to do with controlling natural populations and food, yes even large predators are eaten but mostly this applies to animals like deer. Where i live we do our best to live with things like bears or alligators but they cannot be allowed to live inside areas where people live. A controlled cull reduces the pressure for animals like bears to move into urban areas. You seem to have the impression that hunters are sadistic humans that enjoy killing and hurting animals. Not hunting results in far more suffering and death than hunting...

You may still be correct but i know I have never heard that...

The ecology of highly populated areas are no longer natural, large predatory animals and humans do not mix well, populations of such animals spread unless there is a check on their numbers, while i agree that in some areas humans have been spreading out into land that was once the preserve of such predators this is true everywhere, just because these predators were wiped out in your area before you were born doesn't mean they never existed... Your ideas presented here show a distinct lack of knowledge about land management, ecology and history... I disagree, can you show me a scientific study that agree with you in the circumstances we are talking about? Do you hunt or fish? How much contact with wild animals do you have regularly? Death, hunting and killing are a completely natural part of our world, humans are a natural part of that as well and hunting is a natural human activity...

Can you provide a citation for that last?

I'm not sure how to address the idea that hunting is abnormal for humans, the question is self explanatory to me humans have made their living through hunting from the very beginning of being human, even chimps hunt. As for mountain lions their population has to be controlled, there is no longer a natural control on their numbers, in some areas they have actually hunted and killed humans. While it might be nice to think that the animal world is separate from the human world, the fact is that we are now more a part of it than ever. Human have altered the ecology to the point that human intervention is now necessary to prevent over population of various animals not to mention keep a fear of humans instilled in various predatory populations. If anyone has another option I've like to hear it...

I gave you a pos rep for that but I really think you took it a little too far, dinosaurs evolved from reptiles for sure but ultimately so did mammals, it's really not proper to say that mammals and dinosaurs split off before reptiles became well... reptiles, there were a great many more different types of reptiles than we see today, turtles are anapsids and using your logic not true reptiles. Reptiles is really not a useful term to use in this context, about like the term "fish" it's far more proper to use more accurate terms. I know, I'm being pedantic but so much real inaccuracy exists in phylogenetics and to be fair much of it is propagated due to science being dumbed down for "laymen" I've been mislead by this on several occasions and I may still not have it right but if we followed mammals back in time their ancestors and the ancestors of dinosaurs would have both been identified as reptiles, probably lizards but they wouldn't have been lepidosaurs because they didn't evolve until after both dinosaurs and mammals had evolved. At the earliest era we had diapsids, anapsids, and synapsids and other groups that did not fit into any of these three categories. All of them would have been identified as reptiles today Like for instance dimetrodon which was a synapsid which are what we mammals are..

I know the sand often sparkles at night when you step in it, in some places it distinctly squeaks as well. Maybe such glowing sand whipped by the wind could do this? I used to live in the mountains and often at night under clear skies the tops of mountains would flash and glow, we called it heat lightning, not sure what caused it, could be a similar effect. I currently live near the coast in NC and spend a lot of time on the beach at night, I've never seen what you describe but I'll keep my eyes peeled to see if i have been just missing it...

I thought the point of this thread was people killed by the police...

I keep a gun for home defense, police investigate crimes, they do not prevent them, but I know my gun is not a toy, I do not play with it, I clean and lube it irregularly, the one i currently have has never been shot except at the factory. If i had the money I could see myself collecting certain guns but i have no illusions about being a cowboy or saving the world. I do not carry my gun around outside my own property, generally not even my house. I did point it once at a car full of drug dealers and their associates who were harassing me for turning them in, they immediately stopped driving by pointing pistols at me but that was several years ago in another place. The Sheriff actually advised me to buy a shotgun due to my exposed location and the out of state nature of the drug deal I had ruined. They were eventually arrested and went to jail I moved away and I kept my shot gun, one of many guns I have had owned in my life. I used to hunt squirrels when i was a kid, I bought my first gun when I was around 11 or 12 years old, i went to hardware store are bought it myself and a box of shells for $20, that was almost 50 years ago. I know more than a few people who are obsessed with guns and own guns and probably shouldn't be allowed to own a slingshot but guns have been at least a part of my life pretty much all my life, I never remember having a fascination with guns, they were always there, usually in the open or in a closet. to touch one with out permission was "death" lol, but by asking I was taught to shoot and allowed to handle guns almost whenever I wanted. Guns can be safe, they can be useful tools, I am not a big fan of assault rifles or hand guns although I have owned handguns (actually my wife did) I still think the real problem is people and not guns but a person with a gun is a lot more dangerous than a person with a knife or a ballbat and sane laws controlling guns is something i feel strongly about... BTW, proper training of "Peace Officers" is a big issue and should be addressed in a very aggressive manner...

He is a right wing terrorist, a white supremacist, a racist and almost certainly had some sort of mental problems if not a straight up racist upbringing. I give him no slack whatsoever...

I see a lot of assertions that seem more than a little far fetched to say the least. Comparing the Culture of the USA to the UK seems more than a bit like comparing apples and grapes. I doubt guns were ever as wide spread in the UK in the hands of private citizens, guns have been a big part of american culture from the beginning then there is the Mythology surrounding the cowboy era and while much of it might have been based in truth I do know that violence by gun and other means was an accepted part of american society in the early part of the 20th century, my own family was involved in some of the infamous border wars between states and trafficking in illegal alcohol. I had a great uncle who was killed by the local sheriff by being dragged for 20 miles behind a model T ford police car because he refused to pay the sheriff a bribe. Corruption and the police have gone hand in hand since I can remember in my own life as well, the crime of simply being a member of a minority is not an exaggeration and was and continues to be a problem. Modern cam phones have made it seem like it's something new but it's something old that is finally being recognized. The idea that the general population could somehow stop the US government from doing what ever they wanted is silly, but the problem of actually taking everyone's guns is equally problematic. First of all no one knows who really has the guns, that horse left the barn a long time ago, now days the best you could do is stop gun sales and take guns from honest citizens, the chaos that would ensue from trying to just take guns from honest citizens would be tragically deadly to a great many people just because of the general idea that taking guns from my cold dead fingers type of mentality that is rampant even among honest citizens. I live in an are where gun violence is, at least in recent years, rather unusual, it wasn't always like that and i had two personal friends who were killed by cops in simple traffic stops in separate incidents back in the 1970's. The cops in both cases the cops said the shootings were accidental and were never charged and yes both my friends were black. One was on his way to work... A real effort was made to professionalize the local police and sheriff and the problems with both police and citizens slowly went down. It's not perfect but I no longer fear the police or my fellow citizens even though guns are commonly carried openly. Getting a gun permit is quite difficult, especially for a handgun, I have yet to see the effect of relaxing the laws of owning assault style weapons but I am not a big fan of such weapons and my expectations are kinda grim but so far so good in my general area. I do live in a rather liberal university town and police are generally nice people and the general population is believe it or not almost overly polite to each other. Still crime does happen and we do still have racial problems but gang related problems seem to be a bit lower due to a real effort by local police and other officials. Although we did have a nearby sheriff that went on a personal; vendetta against gangs and quite few were killed under suspicious circumstances, he is no longer sheriff and it remains to be seen if that is sorted out or not. Either there is a strange kind of armed truce between gangs and the local citizens and police or the efforts are effective, not sure which but gang signs and such graffiti are not as common in the last several years as they were in the past. Other NC areas are not as lucky and i often wonder if we are just charmed in some way or if the crime is just not as widely reported for some reason. I do know police are quick to respond to crimes and often in force but not in the swat team type overwhelming force but a crime scene usually looks like a police car parking lot very quickly...

Why would water be radioactive?

Can you elaborate on this assertion?

I hadn't seen this one but even if you have it is worth revisiting. Awesome demonstration of a rocket sled!

That would turn the Earth into a water world, if i remember correctly, a google search could confirm this, Europa contains more water than is currently on the earth by a couple times or more. Other ice moons would be similar if not contain even more water...

Birds are to dinosaurs as bats are to mammals, dinosaurs didn't evolve into birds any more than mammals have evolved into bats. It's just that avian dinosaurs survived the KT event and the large ground dwellers did not...

One thing to think about is that most of those moons are mostly water ice and would melt down to basically ocean worlds if they were heated up, no land surface at all...