Moontanman

yes it can be done... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event We keep hearing about ways to remove CO2 from Earth's atmosphere and this is a good idea but this tiny fern has in the past taken the earth from a hothouse earth to an icehouse earth. Can we use it to sequester CO2 now? Azolla has many interesting uses, it can be used as cattle feed, or to feed ducks and geese. I suspect, but I am not sure, that humans can eat it as well. Any body of water it grows across is cleaned by the fern and the fern squashes the reproduction of mosquitos. shallow bodies of water could be used to grow the stuff and harvest it to either feed to animals or even use as a fuel source. Organic material can be turned into hydrocarbons and possibly genetic engineering could cause azolla to make oil like certain species of algae have been GM'd to do. This is impressive, I have used it as potting soil and the nitrogen content makes higher plants grow like crazy. At the very least azolla could be used to replace nitrogen fertilizers since the plant fixes atmospheric nitrogen. Any thoughts?

Evidently we have different ideas about the definition of the surface of Jupiter and it's temps. the article I showed you said the the "surface" is considered to be at the 10 bar level which is 20 c, higher up it is cold and so is the earth, you seem to be defining the surface at the 1 bar level but as you go down the temps go up fast reaching a blazing 24,000 degrees at the center. Since there is no real surface I guess it's a moot point, sorry for bringing it up. http://www.universetoday.com/15097/temperature-of-jupiter/

Where in that wiki does it say the surface temperature of Jupiter is very low?

John... are you sure your last name isn't McClane?

Oh hell, I can see the conspiracy nutters coming out of the woodwork on that one...

Can someone explain metaphysical to me? How can anything that can be measured be beyond the physical? If it can not be measured how can it be said to exist? This is connected with my question of what "first principal" means in this thread. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/69026-theory-of-everything/

Of course he is, he has nothing against women, he thinks everybody should own one...

How old is your nephew ajb?

Isn't aviation fuel just kerosene? I know piston engine aircraft do use hi octane "gasoline" but commercial jets burn kerosene.

I remember reading someplace, i can't remember where, that in the eventual heat death of the universe after all the black holes have evaporated all that will be left is positronium but with the particles separated by something like several light years... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe

I have to ask... What is a "first principal"?

This is a great idea, if it can be scaled up why not scale it down? How about a small condensed unit for home use? I can see a small box, maybe a cubic meter that does this for me while I sleep... Power grids supplied by nuclear (I live near a nuclear reactor) or sources like wind or tidal supply energy not based on burning hydrocarbons turn this into enough "petrol" to run my car every day... Best of both worlds... Carbon neutral and higher energy density than batteries...

Not true, Jupiter is very hot, it radiates more energy than it receives and below the cloud tops the temps increase very fast. The Earth's atmospheric temps high in the atmosphere are very cold so you can't say that high in Jupiter's atmosphere is the real temperature of the planet. But there is an atom lighter than hydrogen... positronium... I know irrelevant to this conversation... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positronium

yeah, hard to draw a curve with one data point...

Actually Ophiolite is correct, my opinion is just that an opinion. In this particular case I happen to be siding with someone who is not exactly well thought of in this area, Thomas Gold. His work along with others has convinced me that life forms easily and fast at great depth and pressure but I have to agree with Ophiolite in that i am not qualified to actually assert any of these things as true and the only honest answer is that we don't know. Having said that I consider myself to be pretty good at logical thinking (i know a legend in my own mind) and to me the idea of metabolism first is the most logical alternative. This stuff has been an intense interest of mine for most of my adult life, knowing some basic parts of several fields related to biology was and is a big part of the things I do as hobbies. I know most scientists have a rather low view of hobby types like myself, other than in astronomy, but I have managed to gain a small bit of respect from some real scientists in the tiny area that i have done work in. Admittedly that work is intensely focused on biological cycles that occur in nature and is for my own pleasure but a part of me requires that what i do be a bit more accurate than just guessing. I am not qualified to argue this stuff beyond my own opinion... I would like to say that the asinine cretin has a good point about bottlenecks in the evolution of life and the closer you look the more of them seem to appear. some that come to mind are the nickel, iron, methane, and oxygen bottle necks that occurred but life always seems to adapt and turn famine in to feast. We can only guess at the bottlenecks that might have appeared before life as we see it evolved on this planet.

Does this mean i have to delete the 57 sock puppet accounts I am currently running? 57 channels and nothing on

What they want is to indoctrinate everyone's children with their particular brand of religion, it's called YEC or simply fundamentalism. They do not want a passing mention they want it presented as "revealed truth" it's dishonest, the entire premise is built on lies and I'm not saying those lies are in the bible. They make the claim that only atheists believe in evolution when this is clearly not true. The leaders of this YEC stuff are nothing but snake oil salesmen fleecing the sheep to make money. The dishonesty of these people knows no bounds... They distort real science by trying to teach creation science which is a lie, creation science exists only as an apologetic arm of fundamentalism, they do not try to investigate reality all they do is lie about what science says to distract people from the truth, if I was religious I would think that creationism is the religion of the anti christ, satan is the author of all lies....

Actually oxygen and methane is proof of something. An extensive oxygen atmosphere is unstable and can come about only with a mechanism to keep producing oxygen, life is the only way known that oxygen can be a large part of an atmosphere. methane is also unstable in an oxygen atmosphere. in both cases biology produces the oxygen and produces the methane. Unless there is life, you cannot have the two together. Actually just a large percentage of oxygen is indicative of life.

So you're saying what? Uranium 235 can crystallize out and become pure enough to fission? No laws of physics has to be broken, lets put it another way, it's possible for all the molecules of air in the room you are in to suddenly all rush to one corner of the room and suffocate you... it's improbable but not impossible, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to happen. You are suggesting that several times in relatively recent history a uranium meteor, somehow made mostly of uranium 235, has struck the earth and exploded leaving a layer of nuclear glass... is that about right? Are you thinking this through?

That does make more sense but it's not what he asked...

Then your garden is rather limited... many plants including many trees need not just separate flowers but separate male and female flowers on separate plants. Some plants blooms are self fertilizing, some require separate flowers and some plants effectively clone themselves. Some animals actually have only female individuals but have to mate with another animal of a separate species to procreate. Oh yes it's wild world... Oh yes, i knew you were going to ask... http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/101/suppl_1/S55.full

What does this word salad have to do with a critical mass assembling it's self naturally? Yes you keep saying it's improbable and everyone else says it's impossible. There is a big difference between the two terms. Falling out of an airplane at 25,000 feet and surviving is improbable, swimming across a lake of molten lava is impossible... do you see the difference?

Most plants? Some maybe but not most. Virtually all plants and animals above the microscopic level have male and female or just female individuals. There are a very few macroscopic asexual organisms, most are female that can reproduce without males...

You need to explain this in more detail, as it is it just reads as nonsense...