Moontanman

Why open a thread on an oxymoron?

Lots of possibilities but how many are really likely? Ammonia in place of water suffers from the fact that water and ammonia dissolve in each other forming a hybrid liquid, hard to separate them in any planetary biosphere. On earth bacteria consume any ammonia dissolved in water and oxygen reacts with it. Isaac Asimov suggested that life might be based on silicon oxygen chains with methane radicals attached to the silicon atoms. Possibly sulfuric acid as a working fluid and metabolizing gaseous sulfur as a breathing gas. Of course the temps would be quite high, lower than Venus but quite a bit higher than Earth. I agree, "life" suggests it is self replicating but completely artificial life forms, like "Data" from Star Trek might be a compromise assuming that such a thing is possible.

Um...die?

I didn't know about the cheating, Will is acting out his horns instead of wearing them well.

Putin is a loose cannon, I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Maybe, maybe not, we'll have to see how this plays out, it's still disturbing to see Will in that situation with the look of a man who is not all there. Popularity of the academy awards has fallen off so much in recent years I am sure they would desperately like more publicity.

Actually silicon life would require low temps and has been suggested as a possibility for titan using liquid hydrocarbons for a working fluid, for high temps it would require silicones and possibly sulfuric acid as a working fluid. The mechanical life possibility is one I feel is most likely for long term survival of a civilization but AI is not necessarily needed. Perhaps we could down load our own minds into machines at some point.

I know where he got it, the sun doesn't often shine there. I agree with you to a point, there is some evidence of odd chemistry of Titan that is consuming hydrogen reacting it with acetylene and producing methane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Titan This is IMHO evidence, just not proof. Finding such life on Titan would revolutionize our thought on how life starts and indicate that life arises much more often than we currently think. Finding life, water life, anywhere would beg the question of where is originated. Planets sneeze on each other often and such events like the Chicxulub impact could splash relatively large rocks into the solar system for them to be picked up by other planets and moons in the solar system. A unique second genesis of life in our solar system would be a scientific boon of major proportions.

I still think it was faked, publicity, any publicity, is good publicity.

I think something is wrong with WS, I've watched the clip several times, his facial expressions do not match his emotions, not even close. The slap itself was weird, If someone had insulted my wife to the extent I thought physical punishment was mandated a slap would not have cut it. The whole thing was far too deliberate and strange, if it wasn't play acting them WS is one strange dude.

This may be relevant due to Russa asking china for help. If the video is accurate it would seem China's military is not exactly a fighting machine but rather capitalism at it's finest. https://youtu.be/-5hENyRScto

I have a prophecy to make, "someone" is going to use a weapon of mass destruction before this is over with. I'm betting he will use a tactical nuke when cornered and dare the west to do something about it. Someone's cheese has slid off his cracker and can't grok the present or the future due to his desire to go back to the good old days.

Best Yet!

Does Putin understand that his nuclear saber rattling is hollow and meaningless? Who is he trying to scare? We may not be in the era of MAD but it is still as insane as it ever was to use nuclear weapons.

Ok, I acknowledge your experience on this but scientists at NOOA seem to take a different view, possibly the areas with only lionfish and lacking in small fish is a transient phenomena.

I am not sure you are seeing the tree due to the forest, seasonal variations in fish populations do not match the density of the lionfish populations. In general native fish do not prey on lionfish. This seems to be changing but is takes a quite large predator to eat an adult lionfish, they spread their pectoral fins to make themselves appear much larger than really are. This makes predators view them as too big to eat even if the predator is in fact plenty big enough to eat them. I've seen films that show dozens just swarming a isolated rock in the ocean. Divers can go down and spear hundreds of them in one day and not make a dent in the populations. I am a certified open water diver, it's been a long time since I dived, but I have seen how fish swarm around isolated rocks and I have never seen fish thickly cover areas like lionfish, not even close btw. The almost absolute lack of the small native fish that normally school around such rocks is probably the most disturbing thing, this indicates the bottom of the food chain has been disrupted. I am sure that eventually the ecosystem will absorb these lionfish but is has not happened yet. Native predators will learn to recognise them as food but scientists have told me it is a slow go so far. I've had native octopus climb from one aquarium to another and eat captive lionfish so I know they are not invulnerable but as i said lionfish are good to eat and a fishery has sprung up in some areas and restaurants are listing them on menus so maybe they will prove to be a boon to commercial fishermen in the long run. As for invasive species, Florida is famous for it's fresh waters being full of nonnative fishes released by the aquarium industry as well as by home hobbyists. The Florida DNR is also famous for releasing non native fish for their sportfishing industry and tourism... the peacock bass comes immediately to mind. I tried to lobby for Pseudoscaphirhynchus hermanni to be released into a smallish river in WV that was recovering from years of pollution and fish populations were beginning to recover. In it's own range is is rare and dying out due to habitat destruction. Being so small i thought it would be a great addition to the biodiversity of this river but I was shot down do to the possibility, no mater how remote, that it would become invasive. I guess i should have lobbied for it be released in Florida.

I've been following this "invasion" for many years, home aquarium release is being blamed but at the very beginning it was assumed that a large number of individuals escaped from a public aquarium/lab during a hurricane and the spread began from there. I have no doubt many have been released by thoughtless home aquarists as well. The actual volume of biomass represented by the hordes of large lionfish currently occupying the ocean where there was once nothing but small native fish is very concerning if nothing else. They have even invaded the water of my coastal Carolina area, mostly deep water, but the sheer numbers being caught have only one enduring quality, they are very good to eat. Anytime a nonnative species begins to reproduce in huge numbers it is a threat and considered invasive. Sometimes, over long periods of time the ecosystem will find a new balance with the invasive species, European carp are an example of a long established species that still has negative consequences long after it's introduction but it's effect on native populations cannot be ignored even now some 250 years after it's introduction. Asian carp are an example of an evasive that has not, as of this time, settled into the ecosystem and is still very disruptive. Introducing large native predatory fish to the Asian carp's new range that had been hunted to extinction are one of the efforts currently being used to try and control them... alligator gar being one of carnivores of choice. Again the unnatural hordes of lion fish are a quite good indicator they are not harmless and native predators are not, for the most part, interested in eating them. That may change as time goes on but for now we are pretty much stuck with them. BTW, I predicted the Asian Carp invasion, not because I am smart but because I can see the writing on the wall, I was told it could never happen because of hormonal problems caused by some species of native fish that wouldn't allow Asian carp to reproduce in water where the natives lived... never say never.

Well it looks like excrement has made contact with the rotating air movement device, I live near a first strike zone so I guess I will not feel it... I might live long enough to see the flash, if the missiles are targeted accurately.

I am going to be real with you, this image disturbs me, having interacted so much with octopus and the intelligence they showed it's like some one hanging a cat or a dog out to dry on a line. I had real interactions with them and could judge their emotions at least if not their thoughts by watching the colors run around their bodies. I would give them gifts of unusual materials and they acted as thought they really enjoyed the odd objects i gave them to build their houses. They really seemed to relish the oddities, except for ping pong balls they hated ping pong balls. They loved golf balls... go figure. BTW, squid are calamari, and i bet cuttlefish are smarter than octopus...then you have the very brainy mormyrids which i currently keep.

Yes, up until last year I had a culture I'd kept going for 40+years, I got it from a local lake. Azolla

If you set up a kiddie wading pool, maybe one of those 8' ones in a sunny place, add a handful of Azolla, by the end of the summer you'll have a 55 gallon drum full of very nitrogen rich Azolla that can be composted or even plant things directly in compressed Azolla in a pot, I used to use half sawdust and half Azolla for my birds nest ferns, Azolla fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere using photosynthesis. I used to harvest and compost it regularly.

Why is everyone assuming that octopus could not adapt to living on land? Given opening up of evolutionary niches on land by, say a mass extinction of vertebrates, The octopus would seem to be a contender for being amphibious quite easily. Their reproductive strategy could change and they could become land animals, and having nine brains could result in a creature beyond our imagining just like pikaia, I bet no one here would have seen pikaia evolving into humans 450 million years ago. How many changes did pikaia have to go through to become us. Imagine that on an alien planet vertebrates never evolved, pikaia could have gone extinct. There is no guarantee that vertebrates would evolve on another planet. Speculative evolution video

I honestly do not think that assuming that an octopus, given a few hundred million years of evolution, couldn't evolve into a space fairing species is a bit of hubris considering what was to be our ancestor several hundred million years ago. Pikaia

Actually I've kept them in captivity, not much fun as you can't interact with them. I've managed to keep small squids for short periods of time, weeks, I'd love to try cuttlefish I think they are quite special in intelligence and communication. All octopus have a beak and can bite and inject poison but they mostly use it on crabs or other crustaceans. But my point is that on another planet even vertebrates are not a sure thing much less humanoids.