Moontanman

I think that question has been answered, red and blue light power chlorophyll so the plants reflect green light. In environments where the light spectrum is significantly different other pigments have evolved but they work with chlorophyll. Chlorophyll's resemblance to other organometallic compounds commonly used by life suggests that chlorophyll came about because it was easier to modify existing compounds chemosynthesis was already based on rather than start over from scratch. I don't see why you can't see that...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-kean/the-extraordinary-ufo-sig_b_1342585.html

Earth's magnetic field is not strong enough to hover anything in the sky The moon is not stationary in respect to the earth surface, hooking the "cable" to the moon would result in the cable being wrapped around the earth like a spool of thread. Hovering sky station?

Well if not evolution then where did intelligence come from? magiced out of a imaginary sky daddy? Are you suggesting that no new information can not come from natural selection? It's also true that "evolutionary progress" often occurs by small steps building on things that are already present. It should be noted that the chemical reactions of photosynthesis are similar to the chemical reaction of Chemo-synthesis that is used by the various Bacteria and Archaea and almost certainly evolved from it, in fact Hemoglobin is similar to Chlorophyll but where Chlorophyll has a magnesium atom Hemoglobin has an iron atom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalloprotein http://alliedhealthblog.com/2010/11/the-similarities-between-chlorophyll-and-hemoglobin/

Isn't it Jupiter and Venus we are seeing in the night sky right now?

While it is well known at this site i am an atheist I see no reason generally to proselytize atheism, and A Trip, you my friend are a trip. I know you are religious and I respect that simply because it's your right and you seem to be somewhat less than fundamentalist but seriously Trip, there are religions and their are religions. Jehovah's Witnesses are not exactly a live and let live type group. I would say they are every bit a cult by any definition of the word, in fact i would say an extremist cult. Every last one of them I've spoken to that got away from them described it as "escaping" They actively seek to not only convert you, visit my house almost any Saturday morning, they pursue apostates vigorously and demand their members do not associate with apostates or any unbelievers or as they put it anyone not in the "Truth" and do their best to make it impossible to leave. They demand you cut everyone out of your life who is not JW, this makes it ever more difficult to get out since all your "friends" and "family" and possible support outside JW do not exist. I honestly have no tolerance for them or their "beliefs" what so ever... They are creationists and believe every word of the bible is absolute truth.. but they decide on what those words actually mean. I know it's anecdotal but I have heard some horror stories from apostates that make you want to call the police when they show up at your door. Jehovah Witnesses are a danger to modern society in my estimation, in some ways a bit like Mormons and Scientology mixed together... More on topic, all you can do is provide your dad with the information, extremist religions have a real hold over their members, brain washing is difficult to over come, he is your dad, be kind, but be who you are not what others want you to be... and as Trip said, let your Dad be who he is, it's sad he can't let you be who you are but that is the way of many religions and especially the Jehovah's Witnesses... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah's_Witnesses

yes, it originated from greedy bankers being allowed to play with no rules, want some more of this suck assed economy? Vote republican and see how much help you'll get, well unless of course you are rich or a politician. Before you try to blame all this mess on Obama think about Bush, he f**ked this crap up by trying to make the rich richer on the backs of everyone else. While it's true that everyone cannot be rich in a successful economy everyone cannot be poor either... Trickle down economics, the art of pissing on people and convincing them it's rain... Republican politics... the art of pissing on everyone and making them pay for it with a smile....

The northern lights generate their own light, they are just as active in the daytime as they are at night, we just can't see them during the day because sunlight washes them out and the northern lights have nothing to do with the moon, light on the moon, lunar eclipses, or anything else to do with the moon... When you see the moon turn red during a lunar eclipse you are indeed seeing the light of all the sunsets on the planet reflecting off the moon...

this might be loosing something in translation but I see no way an impact of that magnitude could significantly change the gravitational pull of the Earth...

I think the number of negative votes you get per day should be increased. With out negative votes the reputation system is somewhat less than accurate. I'm not looking to drown people in negative votes but lately we've had some real wieners posting. maybe you should be limited to one negative vote per person or thread per day? This is a bit weird, when I first started out on science forums i thought negative votes were too subject to emotional influence, but I have changed my mind. I still like having lots of positive votes, I love giving those out, especially to new members who make good arguments.

I'm not sure what this means but I used to kill palmetto bugs with a BB gun with no BB's you'd have have to be quite close, two or three inches but the air blast would tear the bugs apart.

Honestly, if he is too stupid to understand science what is he doing working at NASA to begin with and if he is not smart enough to keep that bullshit to himself then he needs a reality check. If your religion requires that you believe things that are either stupidly wrong and anti what ever it is you are doing then you shouldn't be doing it. Like letting a NAZI work at a Jewish school or something. He might have a right to his "beliefs" but if there is a conflict of interest between his beliefs and his job then he should look for a new job... To be honest I am a bit tired of theist bullshit artists who think everyone owes their particular fairy tale some kind of automatic respect.

Yrreg, so far you have shown nothing but totally unsupported assertions about what you think about god, you cannot support the assumption of any god or gods much less the assumption that your own god exists. To be completely honest your god, if he is real, is not worthy of my worship, as described in your holy book he is a psychopathic monster. If your god exists then the universe is nothing but a machine built to make humans suffer by lies and confusion followed by punishment for not being able to follow horrific rules designed to make sure we fail. You are either willfully ignorant or far to brain washed to see your error. i think someone on this forum described religion as being the same as "Stockholm Syndrome" I do not reject god, I see no reason to believe in god, no evidence for god, no reason what so ever to live my life by rules that are laid down by an insane individual that benefit only those in power. Show me some real verifiable evidence for god, he could easily show his existence to everyone, the bible is full of stuff he supposedly did for bronze age sheep shaggers, why can't he show himself to us now in a verifiable way? I honestly feel bad for you, you obviously are not stupid, you do have the necessarily skills to learn but you choose to worship a god who's very existence defies reality and requires we ignore the evidence all around us in favor of a book that is nothing but legends about what people 3500 years ago though about god. We must also ignore what every one else has written and or imagined about god, some of those writings are far older and far more complex than the drivel you believe in, why not them? Why the one you are pimping out? Or to be more accurate is pimping out you?

But if we don't eat meat then we'll have to eat all those tree embryos.... yes, we'll have to grow trees just so we can eat the baby trees. poor little helpless defense less tree embryos... Save the tree embryos! Seriously, i am not one of those people who have never killed anything higher on the food chain than a cockroach, I know what it's like to kill and butcher an animal, to look them in the eye as you shoot them in the brain to make sure they feel as little pain as possible. I can say I never kill anything for the fun of it, I see no fun in killing anything and I don't kill it unless I am going to use it in some way, preferably to eat it. Humans are omnivores, we evolved to kill and eat things. Even what we think of as vegetarian apes eat animals flesh in the form of insects and other arthropods. If you are going to go that way I suggest you try bee larvae, really great mushed up in honey and spread over pumpernickel bread. If you are against killing and eating anything vertebrate how about shrimp? Oysters? Lots of sea food that have little or no brains and are easy to justify killing. If you want to change up factory type farming and push for more human conditions I'll be on your side, don't even think peta is against the killing of animals they kill thousands of them every year, what do you think they do with all the animals they supposedly save. http://www.petakillsanimals.com/ I am however for the humane treatment of animals, against the feeding of ground up cows to cows, I have no sympathy for chickens, they are just nasty goomers, the only thing that keeps them from defecating in their own mouths is their heads won't reach their anus. yes we could treat our food animals more humanely, we should, and no, ground that is used for beef production cannot always be used to produce edible plants, many food animals can live on marginal land that most of our food plant crops will not grow on. I grew up on a farm, we hunted and grew our own meat and plants, i do feel like far too many people think meat is grown on Styrofoam cartons, meat comes with some real suffering built in, if you can't deal with that then you shouldn't eat meat but you'll find it not as easy as you think to eat nothing that comes from dead animals and I still kill cockroaches, nasty bastards for sure... maybe someday it will be both possible and practical to grow meat like we do plants, possibly as fruit that has meat inside it rather than plant products but until then i see no way around eating some sort of animals at least part of the time for the vast majority of the population, until then try to avoid the pink slime they sell at fast food places and cut back on meat, maybe trying growing your own goats and pigs to make sure they are grown humanely, I'm sure your neighbors won't mind the smell when you tell them how inhumane it is to eat meat form stores...

Why are plants green? All plants are not green. You have photosynthetic organisms that are Purple Blue green Golden brown Brown Red and Green Oh! So you mean complex organisms... Well then you have Brown Red and Green Please specify what color organism you are talking about Ok, I'll get down to brass tacks, for the most part as hypervalent_iodine has said it has to do with the chlorophyll and energy levels of photons, photon saturation levels, yada yada yada, you guys should really listen to him, he knows what he is talking about. The plants, complex plants at least, that are not Green still use chlorophyll as their primary way of making sugars but they also use other pigments to harvest the photons/energy and then transfer it to the chlorophyll to make sugars. the reason for the various pigments colors is the primary colors of the light available. Red algae harvest, green and blue light. Brown algae harvest pretty much all colors of light but most intensely blue and violet. If you are going to grow brown algae you need blue and violet light. If you really need the info i can look up the exact light absorption curves but I see no reason to do that in this conversation. Before you say "yes well, they are algae and not complex plants" you should spend some time scuba diving. Brown algae form immense forests, sometimes more than 100 feet tall in water that is less than clear and the algae must harvest every possible photon to exist. Red algae form huge mats over rocks in water that is deep enough at least part of the day to filter out most of the red light. Under water red algae appear black, if you have ever cut your self under water deeper than 30 feet or so you might have noticed the blood appears to be florescent green not red because there is no red light to reflect off the blood to your eyes, with out red light the other pigments in blood reflect the light our eyes see. If you want to use evolution to support or show some lack of support for the reasons vascular land plants are green you should as it was suggested read a few science books. maybe develop some expertise at a hobby that requires the reasons why plants use the colors of the spectrum they do to be successful. I can also add that some animals use pigments that harvest UV light to transfer energy to plants that use chlorophyll to grow and feed the animals... any one want to guess what animals they are? So... evolution has indeed produced other pigments to harvest light from the sun, it could be as simple as chlorophyll was the first (I'm not sure about the purple sulfur bacteria) and the other pigments were easier to evolve as supplements to chlorophyll than evolving new chemical pathways from scratch. I'm not as much of a chemist to tell you how this is done but hypervalent_iodine has the knowledge to tell you this, listen to him. Another thing to remember is that the human eye is a very inefficient way to judge light color and intensity, all is not as it seems to the human eye... Light and color are unusual things, hard to really pin down, in air under sunlight there is no need to use other pigments to supplement chlorophyll it is also true that vascular plants have not been evolving as long as the red and purple and brown plants have. It is also true that vascular plants use other pigments as well, its the reason the fall tree leaf colors are so vivid and striking, I'm not sure how much these pigments have to do with harvesting photons but I'd be surprised if they had nothing at all to do with it.

Ok the difference is that afterlife does not affect reality in anyway therefore it is meaningless...

So you think first we need to assume the existence of a god... then it's your particular god.... then accept the words in a book that is demonstrably false... you can't show any evidence of a god or gods much less evidence of your god, in the absence of any positive evidence the default position is, "there are no gods... or magic... or spells... or supernatural powers... none" you have made a positive assertion, please back it up or admit you cannot produce said evidence... and withdraw the assertion

http://bible.cc/joshua/10-13.htm Abrahamic Theists consistently claim this to be true and they claim their holy book is proof. If god would do this again it would prove not only his existence but the veracity of the holy book this incident is described in. If you want something more generic for proof of existence of a god then all he needs to do is something omnipotent, like swap the orbits of Venus and Mars with out disturbing the order and arrangement of the other planets... A god or goddess or multiple gods and or goddesses could easily show proof of their existence... It's a bot iNow....

There is also this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic_universe not much info here but it is also a universe with no big bang as it is often thought of.