Moontanman

Looks like a Dog to me, do you have the group pic?

I agree that the left has probably done the whole FUD thing but I get at least 2 or 3 FUD e-mails a day, average, some days i get several some days none but most days i get a couple at least. I always answer back to the sender (if i know them) and show them a snopes article that shows their wonderful Revelation is actually not true. But so far (years, several) I have never received a Progressive FUD e-mail, but hundreds, at least, of conservative FUD e-mails. I know it's anecdotal but still indicative of the problem and how it's aligned with the conservatives ...

Living longer in less gravity is very difficult to confirm, do you have any evidence of that? It's a little bit amazing how little info there seems to be about vertebrates living long term in space.

Why would trophic level be more important than the PCB, pesticide, and heavy metal content? Whales are very long lived creatures, even baleen whales eat fish, they have a very high food intake, and they build up very high levels of environmental toxins. And then there is all that whale poop! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101012101255.htm

Yeah, active sex life, dark beer, lots of hot peppers in my food, i did it and still....

Spam alert! But I will say that i am a chronic pain patient, the doctors have tried almost everything on me and Tramadol is a joke, not even equal to hydrocodone.

Not exactly... http://articles.cnn.com/2000-07-26/nature/toxic.whalemeat.enn_1_whale-meat-international-whaling-commission-iceland?_s=PM:NATURE http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST6359120070801 Whalemeat in Japanese school lunches found toxic

And as I pointed out the conservatives seem to operate best at that sort of FUD and do it far more often and nasty. BTW trying to equate republicans as always being conservative by invoking Lincoln is in it's self disingenuous. The party of he conservatives changes places with the part of progressives every few decades and during the time of Lincoln, he was a progressive big time, ending slavery was a progressive stance not a conservative stance...

Why not grow wood as a fuel, turn it into pellets, use them to power steam cars and homes even power plants. just regrow them to recycle the carbon...

I am looking, I did find this... http://news.worldwild.org/strange-living-animals-coconut-crab/ and this http://www.tradekey.com/product_view/id/720703.htm

Well it's certainly cost effective...

Yes, I agree, but the left is far less effective and less direct, I see no equal to, Obama is Muslim and is giving the country over to shia (sp) law, being mass mailed over and over to everyone every damn day...

Hell, if you're gonna vote crazy you might was well go all the way, Rush for Prez

I wanna pet robber crab! See if they really are interested in shiny objects... They'd be much cooler than a lizard!

While i am sure the left uses fear tactics as well i can't remember getting any of those e-mails swearing Obama is a Muslim or that they're trying to take god out of the pledge, or some other fear factor from any one but conservatives and I get them several times a day. They often give you a link to snopes that is supposedly a supporting link but if you go there you find it is not and often snopes does not support the letter at all. It's amazing how many of these things are being passed around as the truth but none so far from liberals...

Yes giant cock roaches are improbable at best, but if arthropods were free of competition by mammals we might see giant arthropods but they wouldn't resemble what we think of as insects. Even the really big arthropods we have now do not resemble insects much. They would have to evolve a better breathing system for sure and have their legs under them like mammals. The exoskeleton would have to evolve some strength for them to get even a fraction of vertebrate size. The cube square law is hard to get around, lol

Big difference in living somewhere and knowing what is up and being a back packer but I know he's in little danger but it doesn't help much...

This is demonstratively not true. Liquid Ammonia dissolves some important metals better than water is an easy example. Beings that evolved on a planet with liquid ammonia would see liquid ammonia was the perfect solvent. So if we were some other sort of life could we would still see evidence of the vastness of organic chemistry and know we were far less likely than carbon life? Yes we do agree on that. There are people who think that even our "humanoid" appearance is likely to be repeated, not like on star trek of course but more like the whole general shape, under this definition even a theropod dinosaur comes close to being humanoid. Much like when vastly different animals are shaped in a similar way due to environmental adaptations. Fish, sharks, Ichthyosaurs, dolphins, and even some squid take on the fast torpedo shape powered by fins. I have my doubts that disease organisms are likely to be capable of infecting life from another planet unless life is so very specific that all life is identical with carbon chemistry it seems unlikely that all life on all planets would be closely related enough to be cross infective very often if at all. For our type of life you are correct, water's polar nature is important for life that evolved in water but life that evolves in, say... liquid methane, polylipids, if I remember correctly, would do better in non polar liquids. While I agree that the safe bet is for carbon/water that breathes oxygen. I think we will find some interesting chemistries in unusual locations if nothing else...

Like I've said before the safe money is on carbon. But as I pointed out there are some scientists that acknowledge that chemistry can be quite different at various temps and pressures, Thomas Gold explained this in his book "The Deep Hot Biosphere" and no I'm not a chemist but chemistry is one of my real life interests, but no i am not a chemist by any possible definition... I'm JAFO I misspoke when I said 300C while lots of vents spew out bacteria laced very hot and full of dissolved minerals super critical water at up to 400C so far the highest temp we have been able to grow bacteria has been 122C and while some seem to think it will go up drastically as we explore this habitat so far it's just speculation. but I do indeed agree that if there are any non carbon extreme life forms they will be at best just another odd bacteria like life form. Complex life is likely to be carbon based and using water as a solvent and breathing oxygen. But like what we call extremophiles on earth thses other life forms will be very interesting and might prove very valuable. Silicon chemistry would have to proceed at very low temps and is almost certainly very unlikely,,, lol. But silicone chemistry is more likely and much tougher, so inert it would have to be at very high temps Issac Asimov ( a real biochemist) suggested that silicone life in concentrated sulfuric acid at very high temps might be possible. Under high pressure chemistry is different than it is at low temps. The super critical water is an example of this, water turning to ice at extreme pressure even at well above freezing temps is another example of how pressure can change the basic properties of chemicals. Thomas Gold says that under extreme pressure like that deep in the earth could suggest silicone life there and sited some geological deposits of quartz and some metals, gold and silver, as being possibly the result of a similar biological process that results in gold and silver being found in hydrocarbon deposits, early gold miners often used veins of carbon as leaders to find gold and silver due to this effect. This I cannot argue with, the trace elements they need could vary between biospheres but you are probably correct in the main players in all but extreme cases... I think it's very telling that on the Earth silicon is far more common than carbon but we are still carbon... I like the speculative. No I'm not a chemist but other people who are have said these things, I believe them from examples of real differences in chemistry at different temps and pressures. And I agree with in it's basics...

It depends on whether or not there is a suitable solvent for the temps and pressures on Venus, silicone (not silicon) chemistry is capable of at least some complex chemicals at the temps involved but there really doesn't seem to be a solvent to replace water although concentrated sulfuric acid comes close. No you are not stuck with carbon, silicon, boron, nitrogen/phosphorus, boron/nitrogen, and few other chemicals can under the right conditions form complex molecules. Not as complex as carbon in most cases as far as we know but we only know our one little planet... Not true, even at high temps carbon still makes complex molecules, life, earth life, can and does thrive at temps as high as 300 degrees C pressure makes this possible. I think this suggests that all that is really needed is a solvent and carbon just might be able to step up to the plate at quite high temps and that ignores things like silicones. Just because we don't see silicone molecules complex enough for us to see how they could be alive doesn't mean they couldn't develop life with chemicals quite dissimilar to what we know as carbon life. There are other possibilities, we just don't see them on the Earth although Thomas Gold suggests that at temps and pressures deep with in the Earth silicone life might thrive today. He sites evidence of silicone biochemistry deep in the earth is his book the Deep Hot Biosphere. This I cannot necessarily agree with, all we know is earth life, earths version of carbon life, we really don't know what is possible in other planets environments. I'm pretty sure the smart money is on carbon as the basis of life but we really don't know enough about what might go one in very high temperature high pressure environments, such environments can change the very nature of how chemicals react, we have no idea if this would allow life based on other chemistries but it's sure thing that other chemistries work in unknown ways in radically different environments. Then you have very low temp environments, silicon (not silicone) might be just the ticket at such low temps as Titan, methane or ethane as a solvent. Both temps and pressures can radically change how chemicals react, we just don't know enough to rule out these possibilities under radically different conditions.... The idea of more things necessary for life dissolves in water is biased, all we know about is life dissolved in water, life that evolved to live in ammonia might look at water say exactly the same thing... I do think you have a very good point in that in any environment that would hold liquid ammonia would also almost certainly have water, possibly a mix of the two and oxidation would eventually destroy the ammonia but the idea that comets are made of ice and therefor water is more abundant is flawed due to the fact that frozen hydrogen compounds are called ice and comets are made up of many different ices. I don't any data to refute that assertion other than a lack of data to confirm it either... Almost certainly true...

So you want to know why there is so much sodium and chlorine in the universe?

Extreme life forms, I like the idea, it would a mirror of our earth, it makes a odd kind of sense that only one or two types of life might be viable past very primitive cells. The Rare Earth theory assumes that most life is simple bacterial type. Of all the cell lines present on the earth, only one is thought to have developed into complex animals and plants. If aliens land I'd make the same bet... But when we get to Titan will strange plants and animals great us?

Airbrush, something inside me really wants to disagree with you on this, Life on the earth evolved in water, it would highly unlikely we would look at another solvent and say "wow that looks like it would be better for life than water", how could it? We are evolved to live on a planet with liquid water, Earth life suffers from a chauvinism, water and carbon chauvinism. From the inside looking out any other type of life seems unlikely. How ever life that evolved in sulfuric acid at high temperatures might see it differently and be absolutely amazed at life on a cold planet covered in an inert liquid like water. Ammonia does a few things better than water does, dissolving metals is one of them. On a planet with liquid ammonia oceans even the things we see as problems for liquid ammonia life might be a plus from the stand point of liquid ammonia life forms, maybe they will be made up of boron or boron/nitrogen polymers .... Or maybe we are being far too speculative, I for one would be flabbergasted if an alien space craft came our way piloted by anything other than carbon based, water solvent, oxygen breathing life forms but even then I still say it would be unlikely they could use or would want to use our planet... Thinking way outside the box.... polylipids instead of proteins .

Well since evidence doesn't seem to matter here, lemur, michel.... I think you're both totally wrong.

Yes America treated their aboriginal population in much less paternalistic way, they just gave us blankets saturated with small pox virus.... I think our crazy slide into the politics of extremes and fear of any who can really think have been our undoing and will continue to be. As long as lies and fear will motivate the voters why bother to tell the truth? BTW does everyone really think that an advanced culture automatically has the right to destroy a primitive culture and force them into the "modern" world? Are we so jealous of them we have to force our problems on them? If people want to live in their ancestral homes and eat grubs and live in camps in the wild this should be celebrated as just as viable an option as our own life of technology and expensive homes... at least...