Moontanman

Why do they need a God, why not elves or fairies? Why can't people believe in each other? God is not a theory, God is not even a hypothesis, has no evidence what so ever, it is just what someone claims to be true nothing more...

I can't believe i just got pushed/sucked/pulled into reading this thread...

I always figured it was something that came out the other end...

Another one of those weird videos that appears to show something really odd... It does look odd for sure... Sorry, I should have known considering where it came from, i saw it before the comments exposed it as CG enhanced probably a dog...

I would suggest that either street lights haven't been around long enough to have a large effect or the behavior is still doing it's job and not enough moths are affected by it to matter or it's not as big a maladaptation as it looks...

I never thought of triceratops being a pig like animal but I see no reason to state conclusively it was not. An interesting point of view, wild pigs like warthogs certainly seem to have the attitude not sure if they really scavenge much. I always thought of a triceratops as more of a rhino analog. Something new to think about for sure..

I'm not sure it would be correct to suggest feathers instead of scales either. Dinosaurs shared many of the characteristics of birds, hollow bones specialized breathing, even sauropods had these. It has been suggested that hatchlings of theropod dinosaurs had feathers to keep them warm until they became big enough to conserve body heat with mass. Velociraptors were almost certainly covered with feathers and in fact may have had what we would see as long flight feathers on their arms. Feathers would have been used as decorative displays and for warmth as well, crests and other sexual displays could have been made up of feathers as well... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur

Neptune is an ice giant not a gas giant or a dwarf planet, it is made mostly of various ices, water, ammonia, methane, any chunk of ice would have lots of impurities... Again, no, Neptune is an ice giant and at the pressures on Neptune methane is an ice... I'm not sure where this comes from but helium if mixed with oxygen is quite breathable. And again neptune is an ice giant not a dwarf planet. Neptune almost certainly has a rocky/metal core btw. and helium has no effect on oxygen at all. and the ices would almost certainly be mixed up, not in chunks of one or the other and good luck dragging any large quantity of anything out of Neptunes gravity well.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune The internal structure of Neptune: 1. Upper atmosphere, top clouds 2. Atmosphere consisting of hydrogen, helium and methane gas 3. Mantle consisting of water, ammonia and methane ices 4. Core consisting of rock (silicates and nickel-iron)

Actually it is the radiation from jupiter that creates much of the H2O2, it's is most prevalent on the side facing into it's orbit around jupiter, it's trailing face has much less H2O2. This would indicate to me that UV may not have as big an influence in Europa's acquisition of H2O2 as was first postulated. It would seem that even on the Earth it comes down to volcanism, stop the flow of heat and the chemicals that are released by the heat and everything runs down to full stop... Wouldn't that be true if A is true? Also if A is true I would expect Europa's ice to be quite thick and this alone would negate the idea of life... If we can use Saturns moon Titan as a guide all may not be lost, Titan has volcanoes of water, wouldn't this indicate that gravitational heating may indeed be enough to assure B is the most likely scenario? http://www.space.com/10486-ice-volcano-saturn-moon-titan.html

I'm not sure what you mean by lack of evidence that any asteroids have been mined, how many have we really looked at closely? Some odd groves and such have been seen on the few we have looked at closely. I have my doubts about the need to mine asteroids for metals, I suggest that advanced civilizations would use mostly carbon to build their structures not metals. I'm sure metals would be needed but we tend to think of metals as the main ingredient in anything large we build but carbon fibers and nanotubes are superior in almost all ways to metal in building large scale structures, in zero G this advantage would be greatly magnified. Also even in the kuiper belt or ort cloud there would be some metals in the icy bodies, comets are not 100% ices... The none detection of heat sources in the Ort Cloud or Kuiper bothers me as well but I have been told that so far we have not put a telescope into orbit sensitive to detect such small sources of heat. There is still the problem of the fermi paradox, why don't we detect their communications? The power problem is valid, without a power source there can be no ort cloud colonies... I have my doubts that such civilizations would consume all resources before moving on, the resources we are talking about is a great deal more vast than what we are used to dealing with, the idea that a civilization could or would colonise every star system in the galaxy in a few million years is based on the old idea that they would colonise planets, the ort cloud offers a few orders of magnitude more space and resources. You do realize this analogy fails completely don't you? Chemistry is not random, it is deterministic and some reactions will occur more often than others and some are impossible no matter how much time you give them.

The constitutional amendment to ban civil unions and make gay marriage illegal took a while and no one thought it could possibly pass but you have so many people like this in my state... Oh yeah, then there is this... We already have a one year wait for a divorce in NC now they want to make it two years...

Yeah, I live in NC, it is a weird place sometimes... ruled by fundamentalist religious crazies who control the politicians by controlling who votes for whom via threats of hellfire and "the Gay agenda" They are trying to change NC law so NC can have an official state religion, oh my! sounds peachy keen to me...

I don't think that was what was being suggested, I still read the assertion as lightning striking a pool of water created life. Read in the context of what he was suggesting in that a bolt of lightning could do the same thing now I stand by what I said...

The lightning striking a pond and creating a cell is bogus, cloud to cloud and or cloud to ground strikes create some of the chemicals that form the dissolved contents of the pond. This is the question my reply was for. The idea of a warm little pond being struck by lightning creating life is not the current scientific consensus...

This picture is relevant to this topic, only humans? I mean it in the sense of only humans do what ?

I'm not completely sure of what you are saying here. Are you saying that herbivores couldn't have evolved after the K/T extinction? At the time of the K/T extinction most if not all mammals were insectivores, various herbivores and carnivores evolved well after the K/T extinction.

A comet is headed for Mars in 2014, newly found comet C/2013 A1 seems to be headed for a close encounter with the planet Mars. Calculations at this time indicate the comet has less than a 1/2000 chance of actually impacting Mars but even a close encounter should have significant effects on Mars and some of the space craft currently investigating the Red Planet. An actual impact of the comet on Mars would release about 1/3 the energy thought to have been released by the impact that caused the extinction of the Dinosaurs on Earth. Unless the impact was close by the Curiosity Rover should survive since it is nuclear powered but the Solar powered Opportunity Rover would not survive as well. ​Conditions on the surface of mars would change drastically if an impact occurred but even a close flyby could affect the orbiters currently at Mars...

Seems to be too much concentration of the details of what happened before the book starts instead of the story line, character development is far more important than details of the Illuminati and such...

I agree but even if we can indeed do this we would have to do it by using the air to cool the exhaust, a colony in space would not have this luxury. The only reasonable way to shed heat in space it by radiators, since space is much like a vacuum bottle radiating away waste heat would be a problem, you might be able to to do it in a specific direction but that would imply you were trying to hide to begin with which implies any alien colonies already either already had an agenda of stealth before they ever arrived or are relative newcomers to the solar system which would refute my idea completely..., Oh yeah, I agree with pwagen, some citation for this idea about the F-22 Raptor is needed...

I've been in a situation where death appeared to be inevitable, I was snorkeling in about 20 feet of water and got caught in a roll of fencing lying on the bottom when i tried to extract a lobster, my dive buddy couldn't get to me to help and I was under water long enough for him to have to got the surface and take three breaths. My vision started to fade as i worked to get myself free, god never occurred to me, i never thought to pray or to ask for supernatural help, if i had I would have died, I see no reason to assume a person who lacked belief in the supernatural would suddenly stop working to live and decide to pray, the concept is less than productive and when you are in that situation non productive thoughts are not where you go... it's amazing just how narrow your mind can focus when you have to...

It seems unlikely that such creatures would ever leave their home planet much less colonize the ort cloud... I was thinking more along the lines of artificial space colonies that would use ort cloud objects as raw materials, not actually colonize the ort cloud objects themselves. The radio signal is a stumbling block for sure unless they have some over riding reason to hide from each other which would of course make them very difficult to detect by us as well... I guess they could use signals in wave lengths we do not use but I'm not sure that would hide them from us. Oh well it was a good idea slain by the reality of the situation...

I could suggest a few i bet you would like.

I'm not sure what you mean here, lets take humans as an example, if you could take a photo of every one of your direct ancestors, back several thousand generations at no point would you be able to say, here is where we became human and before that we were apes, the graduation is so slow that this would be impossible. The same is true for whales or ichthyosaurs, or sea going crocodilians. BTW, there were no sea going dinosaurs we know of... unless you count penguins... And the steps from water dwelling to land dwelling is quite well represented in the fossil record and we have fish today that can survive both ways, air breathing and water breathing... And some reptiles have indeed re-evolved the ability to breath under water... turtles that breath through their anus... http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_Turtles_breathe_through_their_butts

Your gelded version of Christianity doesn't do those things ewmon but your religion once not only did those things but made that the law of the land or are recent Christians the only true Christians? Feel free to explain how this is relevant to this conversation ewmon, obfuscation is the same as lying ewmon... If you had actually read your own holy book you might understand them... I should have known you would not be able to under stand what an analogy is.. More obfuscation ewmon, i am disappointed in you... I don't believe their system is any better than yours ewmon and most cases of child abuse is done by professed Christians sometimes they use the bible to justify it... In fact i would ask where is your god when children are being sexually brutalized by adults and all they have to do is repent and go to heaven while someone who lived a decent life burns forever in a lake of fire.. .one punishment for all crimes is immoral, allowing someone who has committed horrendous crimes to live forever in heaven is immoral as well... Being a Wiccan doesn't give you free reign to do bad things any more than being Christian does... no wait, actually the Christian holy book does say you can do such things and be moral while Wiccans believe that anything you do comes back to you three fold so most Wiccans, if they follow their own teachings would avoid such things, are you sure you are not talking about a Satanist...? BTW, I suggest you do a little research of Wiccans, often labeled as Satanists by ignorant Christians who think they worship Satan. No one has suggested that atheists march in lock step to anything but a lack of belief in deities. your constant equivocating in this matter is tire some, you believe in following your Christian religion and yet you do not follow the holy books of your religion.... so where do you get your morals ewmon? "edited due to my misunderstanding of wicca"

So you are assuming that such colonies would be broad casting TV signals? Both radio and TV signals leaked from the Earth are not detectable over interstellar distances but I do see your point about such colonies communicating with each other but would they necessarily do it via omni directional radio waves? I admit this is a weakness in my hypothesis, hard to see why we wouldn't detect then unless they were intentionally trying not to be detected. If a great many species are involved then I can see the possibility they might want to make their communication cryptic...