pavelcherepan

39 minutes ago, Eise said:

For abiogenesis I think this is not relevant: without living hosts viruses cannot replicate. So life must have been first. Viruses are more degenerated life. We must not forget that evolution makes 'climbing mount improbable' possible, but it can also lead to simpler life forms.

What is your view on 'RNA world' hypothesis? If it's correct and self-replicating RNA existed before DNA came to existence, they didn't require living hosts to replicate as there wouldn't have been any. Maybe I was wrong in speaking about viruses, since in this case these RNA would act differently from a modern day virus, which indeed needs a living host to replicate.

6 hours ago, CharonY said:

Note that not all viruses are RNA viruses.

Sure. I just specified RNA viruses since according to relatively well accepted RNA-world hypothesis, this is what precluded the more modern DNA-based life.

6 hours ago, CharonY said:

Also, prions are spelled with an "i"

Ooops!

6 hours ago, CharonY said:

That being said, I agree that we have pretty much a post hoc definition of life, based on shared characteristics we observe in entities that we consider to be life forms. But for for the topic in this thread I think this has very little impact as such. As ultimately we are asking how a specific type of life (the ones on Earth with the shared history pointing to a singular origin).

Sort of agree. Mostly the discussion is centered around beecee's statement: "certainly we know that at one time there was no life [universally speaking] then there was". 

The way this is phrased alludes to some relatively sharp boundary between 'living' and 'non-living'. while in fact there seems to have been a progressive transition from one to another.

1 hour ago, beecee said:

I'm not that far into biology, and am actually learning as I go. Perhaps viruses are just another step or a biological entity towards actual full blown defined life.

Normally these days viruses are not considered 'living' even though they are based on an extremely complex self-replicating RNA molecule. Preons that I mentioned are even simpler - they are proteins but they work in such a way that when coming into contact with proteins in your body they will modify them to assume the same structure, causing nasty things like mad cow's disease. 

Simply put, the boundary between life and non-life is not really well defined at all. 

4 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Lets not jump down that rabbit hole here, it would be interesting in another thread.

But it's really hard to discuss the question of abiogenesis since it really depends on what we define as 'living'. Otherwise the discussion is quite meaningless.

5 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Not really guesses, we do know what it can't be.

Well, fair enough. Maybe a bad analogy, but all analogies are.

By the way, I totally forgot to ask a very important question - for the purposes of this discussion what do we define as 'life'? Are viruses 'life'? What about preons? Where is the boundary between life and non-life?

11 hours ago, zapatos said:

If there once wasn't life and there now is life, what else is there but abiogenesis? 

Taking it in a literal sense - yes, but on the other hand the term 'abiogenesis' currently refers to a mix of several hypotheses on origin of life, neither of which has gives any understanding of what might have happened. It's like dark energy - it's used as an explanation to an observed phenomena, but no one has any clue as to what it actually is, just guesses.

1 hour ago, beecee said:

The above, at least to me, shows how two seemingly distinct processes of abiogenesis and evolution can be combined and addressed together and as a logical sequence.

Just to be a devil's advocate, I'd say that even without any kind of blind faith in creation myths or religion that you mentioned in the other (now closed thread), there can be plenty of valid reasons to question abiogenesis. Personally, I surely don't, but let's face the facts. Apart from a few experiments where simple simulations of conditions in primordial oceans have been done and resulted in some rather complex molecules being formed as the end product, there are no real facts or models of how exactly simple chemistry could've lead to forming of something as complex as DNA or RNA.

17 minutes ago, beecee said:

I have been prompted to start this thread after a valid, logical statement I made in another thread, and which was foolishly and ignorantly I believe questioned by another member.

I think you're over-reacting a bit. First of all, this is not a great way to start a discussion unless you want it to go downhill from the very start. Secondly, the statement in question holds true in most cases, even where religion is concerned so I doubt that that other member was a creationist. 

48 minutes ago, beecee said:

I reject the Fermi paradox for obvious reasons....While we certainly have no evidence for any life off this Earth as yet, the sheer weight of numbers, and the extent of the universe, along with the stuff of life being everywhere we look, has the vast majority of scientists and cosmologists, certainly of the belief that it should exist. In fact if on the off chance we were alone, it would prompt far many more questions I suggest.

Sure, but also due to a sheer weigh of numbers, it's highly unlikely to have the first life brought to Earth even from one of the planets of Solar System. There's been quite a few meteorites from Mars found on Earth, most of those came during Late Heavy Bombardment. Those that have been studied so far, haven't shown any sign of life.

It's even far less likely that an asteroid from another star system in our galaxy managed to land on the Earth. The odds of that happening are so extremely small that it's not sensible to even consider them as an option while you have an entire planet capable of developing life. 

And I agree, there's likely life elsewhere in the universe, and Fermi did think so too, hence it's a 'paradox'. 

7 minutes ago, beecee said:

Or possibly any number of the probable billions and billions of other planets in the galaxy/universe.

Here you run into both the Occam's razor and Fermi paradox. It's both extremely unlikely for the life to have been brought to us from outside the solar system and also there's no indication that complex life has in fact evolved in one of those billions and billions of other planets. Until we know for certain that abiogenesis was impossible on Earth, we should really stick to the idea that life did in fact form here.

28 minutes ago, zapatos said:

That seems a pretty bold statement. Do you have a citation?

Don't have a citation. Just a generalisation. I agree it's possible that for a short periods there could've been other places where conditions have been just as good. Should paraphrase it to: For majority of history Earth has had the best conditions for life developing.

Mars could have had decent atmosphere and liquid water but those ended very early on, water was almost completely gone by 3.5 bya. Venus also could have had conditions to support life, but then very early into the history underwent a runaway greenhouse effect and since then has most certainly been completely lifeless. Moons of giant planets have liquid water oceans, but depending on the size of the moon, there can be too little of valuable nutrients coming into the water which limits the chances of favourable chemical reactions. Also the low temperature slows down reactions.

15 hours ago, beecee said:

It is though just a hypothetical at this time, but certainly we know that at one time there was no life [universally speaking] then there was. 

The reason I can't accept Panspermia is rather simple application of Occam's razor. If life has developed from 'non-life' somewhere, why would we assume it happened somewhere other than the Earth which (in our Solar system) has and always had the best conditions for life developing? I'm not saying it's impossible, but we would have to accept a) life forming first in a less hospitable environment, say Mars; then the life would have b) to survive some asteroid impact that would kick bits of the rock that it lives on into space; then c) the rock would be so lucky as to hit the Earth, then d) life would have to have survived the journey and e) life has to have survived the re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

How likely does this set of coincidences look compared to life simply forming on Earth?

I always find it fascinating that people consider the possibility of panspermia when exactly the same chemical components were available on Earth combined with an environment much more conducive of a complex chemistry.

On 6/22/2019 at 5:07 PM, Danijel Gorupec said:

" Despite severe risk, all three survived the mission, and, in 2018, were awarded the Order For Courage by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko."

One of them died in 2005 from heart condition so he was awarded posthumously. Two others are still alive.

On 6/22/2019 at 5:07 PM, Danijel Gorupec said:

Regarding the three divers... I read somewhere (hardly I would be able to find it again) that the three men considered it their duty

There are recent interviews with two of them, for example here: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9298446/chernobyl-diver-averted-second-blast-devastated-europe/

Here Ananenko does in fact state that they didn't consider it an act of heroism and that they were just doing their job.

31 minutes ago, beecee said:

Agreed but when some of the wives and relatives were at the hospital to see their stricken Husbands, they were not allowed. All clothes etc were removed and confined in safe quarters, so their was no contaminant on any of the patients. At least that is what I recall. 

Bodies of firefighters were radioactive due to neutron activation. Even after clothes were removed they were still dangerously radioactive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation

On 6/16/2019 at 7:54 AM, beecee said:

The Russians of course may not be happy with the general message of the failed government cover up and their general handling of the truth but that's life when things like that are attempted.

Who told you that Russians were unhappy? Only some freaks and commies maybe. It had a very positive review from our Minister of culture, a very positive review from President's assistant in cultural relations and on largest Russian review aggregator site kinopoisk.ru it has a rating of 9.1 out of 10 from audience and 100% positive from critics.

On 6/16/2019 at 7:54 AM, beecee said:

If one "error" did stand out as I was watching it, is the suggestion in the movie that radioactive poisoning is contagious.

It's never mentioned that it was contagious. "No touching" was simply due to the fact that firefighters were contaminated with radioactive dust and not all of it can be washed off easily. In fact, today their overalls are still where nurses left them - in the basement of the hospital in Pripyat. Also, neutron radiation is actually "contagious" due to neutron activation. If you remember, firefighters have been standing around blocks of graphite from reactor and big chunk of radiation they received was neutron which would induce radioactivity in their bodes too.

15 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

I wasn't there at the time, so I don't know what really happened.

Of course it's impossible to know now what happened in some meeting behind closed doors, but main turn of events and the efforts to contain and manage the accident have been recorded and the accuracy of their representation can of course be judged.

8 hours ago, beecee said:

I just finish watching a series doco

It's not a documentary. It's just a drama series based on real-life story.

8 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

Not really. 

Which parts? I'd read a lot about Chernobyl and for most parts the series does describe things reasonably accurately. There are of course some factual errors here and there and some liberties taken as part of artistic license, but overall I found it very close to real chain of events without having a need to go through an undergrad course of nuclear physics to understand what exactly went wrong.

58 minutes ago, Sensei said:

They love to be cosmonauts or astronauts.

I agree with you, with the caveat that some people (by the time colony gets to 500k people) will have been born on Mars and quite possibly some don't want to be there. It wasn't their choice really.

But as for money, you are correct. In fact, market economy is not possible unless you have excess and diversified sources of all critical resources. Otherwise, there is no opportunity for negotiation, as in the absence of agreement, situation becomes a very clear lose-lose for both parties. 

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Where do you think this is happening? Pretty certain it’s not, but can’t comment on other nations. 

I wasn't sure about US but I'm certain that in some countries they still do.

5 hours ago, nec209 said:

A colony of 500,000 people or million people may not be enough!! You may need 2 million people or more?

You're basing your assumption that a Mars colony will be a carbon copy of Earth society on a slightly smaller scale. This is unlikely to happen in reality until the colony has grown a lot. As others mentioned due to limited human resources, many people will fulfill different roles. I doubt that the size of 500k people will be sufficient to establish a modern-day capitalist economy and social-economic structure is likely to be more akin to socialism, closer to the likes of Norway or Sweden (but without money and much less private enterprise). 

With the lack of finance and other aspects associated with capitalism, the population will have a much higher percentage of blue collar and science workers and white collar population might be as low as 10%, compared to slightly over 60% in US currently. And majority of these white collar workers would be in government system as there is less likely to be widespread private business.

This all of course depends on whether you have the entire population in one main colony with some smaller mining satellites or scenario where these 500k people are divided into dozens of much smaller colonies. With each of them being 10-50k population and being created for a particular purpose, it's much less likely that modern day Earth-like social-economic structure will be established.

A colony will be created around original landing site, another colony will be created further away in the area with large amount of mineral resources, another colony close to the pole aimed at mining and shipping water ice. Possibly separate smaller colonies for scientific research in various areas of scientific interest. Other colonies for some other purposes, for example you won't place your refinery or a nuclear reactor next to your main hub and so it's likely be moved far away and become it's own settlement.

Therefore, your estimate based on the modern-day capitalist economy will not work at all. Unlike modern economy, there will be less competition within the same area, but rather there will be separate colonies working together to allow everyone to survive. 

Once overall population has grown a lot and there are multiple sources of everything the overall population needs, transition may start to a capitalism, but not at 500,000 people.

5 hours ago, nec209 said:

A high emotional IQ can lead to crime and killing becuase the person is too emotional and fines he or she cannot control his or her emotional outpust. Say your girlfread left you or you lost your job some one may feel sad or angry where people that score high on emotional IQ have a outpust and cannot control them self thus can lead to crime, killing or assault.

Can lead to unpretective sex thus could get HIV, sleeping around with 10 people a day, and robbery, assault and break ins so on.

 People with high emotional IQ have harder time in school and drop out of school more and get stress out easy becuase they have very hard time with their emotions.

They get stress out easy and do not do well with lot of work. They are too emotional.

Where did you get that information? It really conflicts the actual science results. Studies have shown that people with LOWER EIQ have higher chance of being involved in bullying, are less likely to have good leadership qualities and are more likely to develop drug and alcohol dependence. 

On the sideways topic, I'm more interested as to why do we still use normal IQ test at schools.

On 6/9/2019 at 8:13 PM, fredreload said:

If you've ever been on a commercial airplane, the buckle sign lights up before the airplane goes through heavy wind that would drift the airplane ups and downs. And so the aircraft must have a way of predicting the wind current. I want a way to travel faster on a commercial flight, but you know you need all things in check including airplane integrity. You could have a magnetic field to filter out the air turbulence, but then you'll have to work on traveling counter to the earth's magnetic field instead of air.

A commercial aircraft would have a Doppler weather radar, but weather radar doesn't locate turbulence. It is used to locate areas of precipitation and identify what kind of precipitation we're talking about. Whether it's hail or rain, or snow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARINC_708

Turbulence is identified either by ground reports or weather forecast that a pilot gets before the flight and also by the crew own observations so when it suddenly gets shaky they will turn on seatbelt sign. 

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

On a related topic, this same principle is one of the reasons we tend to launch missions to planets further from the sun than us (Mars, Jupiter, etc.) rather than those closer to the sun than us (Mercury, Venus)

I would agree in the case of Mercury, but Venus has only slightly higher delta-v requirements compared to Mars and quite a bit lower than Jupiter. Check out this handy Solar System Delta-v Map. 

Also Venus has a significantly more sizable atmosphere which can assist with aerobraking and if you decided to land on it, doesn't require retrorockets or space cranes etc. The biggest downside is that Venus missions require a boatload of protection for the spacecraft if landing is planned.

2 hours ago, Dagl1 said:

For science. (feel like this could become a cult slogan "for the greater good" becomes "for science.".)

Nah, it's a part of a quote by GLaDOS (Portal 2 by Valve): "I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."

1 hour ago, Dagl1 said:

Oh that's a good one I didn't think about... But even when you do it quick enough, your T/B cells and macrophages will attack the body. Changing their DNA won't make them not attack the body, except if we would go over every B-cell individually and change each one to a different genetic code. 
 

There's probably a way. A way that will likely kill the DNA recipient.

For science.

We subject the person to a strong radiation in order to completely destroy bone marrow. Then we quickly change all DNA and also do a bone marrow transplant from the DNA donor and a blood transfusion from him/her as well.