Sorcerer

I think I just had a brilliant idea, and since I am feeling generous I am gonna share it with the world. Since ribosomes can catalyse the formation of peptides using amino acids from information encoded in strands of RNA, why shouldn't they be able to catalyse the formation of RNA strands from nucleotides using the information encoded in proteins? I think this may be on its way to a new hypothesis on abiogenesis..... Protein first hypothesis, I am sure there are some already out there, do they use a similar mechanism?

I don't think thats very important, if he wants to speed up the growth of pine seedlings for his experiment he just have to have it equal all around, so added nutrients, extra light and extra water and care... plus K isnt that important unless the plant is flowering/cones.... N and P are important for leaves and roots respectively. One thing that will have to be taken into account in the study is that it will be the effect of Microhorrizae on pine seedlings growth under excellerated growth conditions..... not under normal conditions, perhaps you could find a faster growing plant with external symbotic mycellium.

Make sure you have your marshmellows on a stick ready.

I think its more likely to observe it happening on another planet than be able to recreate the environment needed to do it here. This is because in my opinion there were a variety of micro-climes which contributed to the chemical evolution of life, each had a particular role to play, chance also had a role to play, I don't think staring at a vat for eons will get you any kind of practical experiment.

Or under 24hr lights.... pehaps 18/6 because plants do need time to rest.... well it doesnt increase their growth rate anyway... not for *cough* tomatoes anyway.

"Stop spamming!", noone spammed, everyone was trying to be helpful. "This has all been very helpful thanks", this is the about face. You seemed to maintain integrity with you frustration and lack of understanding though.

Actually a click anywhere in one of those pop-up boxes can be a yes. But if u r referring to installation box, yeah be careful what you agree to.

Well thats an about face.......you have about as much integrity as a yoyo.

It seems odd, considering you would noramlly be put into a mental institution for self mutilation or attempted suicide..... but I guess its just as odd as making suicide illegal. I agree, I take a completely non-paternalistic stance.

This is from a population genetic point of veiw, can you do the calculations again if you knew the frequency of alleles in the two parents, I think he'd be a little closer...... Im a bit to inebriated and rusty on the subject to do it myself... at a quick guess 3:1....

Thats travelling into the past, not into the future.... The arguement states "if travelling into the future is possible"..... then goes on to say the guy has to travel back into the past, why would u need to travel into the future?? I can build a time machine to travel into the future, its a cardboard box, step inside for an hour and come out 1 hour in the future!! what a amazing technological break through.

We are infront of it in space-time, its light from the past.

Ummmm actually, the after glow of the big bang is from the production of matter and antimatter, which then annihilated and produced the background radiation. The reason its so cool and at the wrong wavelength is because its been redshifted by the expansion of space and has traveled for 14 billion years.

Why waste energy sending your body into space when it should remain here, it is a valuable source of organic matter.... it makes no sense to throw away parts of the earth. I want my body to be dissected, all usable organs to be donated, then the rest minced up composted and spread on a garden.

Well I always thought the, "always existed argument" applied, since it removes the first cause paradox. This is the exact same argument theists use when trying to rationalise the existence of God without a creator of God. Its anyones guess...... however if the universe and God are one and the same then both would have always existed. Theres no doubt in my mind that we evolved though, I also doubt the existence of a soul, and because my only reason for holding the possibility of God is because I cannot disprove it, I also doubt the existence of a Heaven and Hell....... however the agnostic argument gets silly when I start saying its possible that their are invisible pink fairies dancing round my keyboard..... Its ironic being a Humanist who is also for the abolishment of anthropocentricity..... my reasons are that if we realise that Humans aren't the most important thing in this world, then we can begin to save the planet and thus save Humanity..... Well I certainly side-tracked on that one.

Either #2 or #3, theres no way to tell the difference between them, so I won't vote.

Not a dumb question at all. Todays life forms are more complex than the original replicating molecules which first started life. To give an example of something which can replicate and mutate and evolve but never "dies" because it never truely lives: this would be viruses. Modern eukaryotic (higher life) and prokaryotic (bacteria) organisms rely on a complex chain of events to support their metabolism (constructing internal bio-chemicals and maintaining the offset of equilibrium), if something happens to disrupt this chain, e.g. blockage by poison, or organ failure (in animals), then the chain quickly breaks down and all sorts of chaos insues. Once a chaotic environment is reached within the cell, the cell has no mechanism to revert to the original... this is irreversable death. An analogy would be this, a manufactoring plant relies on every step of the chain for the end product, we can call this end product life, along the line are the workers (proteins/enzymes), a thug(poison) breaks into the plant and knocks out one of the workers, quickly one of the products on the line builds up and floods the floor of the manufacturing plant, it procedes to interfer with work in all areas of the factory, and cleanup is impossible..... this is death. Edit: By the way, all the "stuff" isn't in the right place, its all jumbled up because the cells function which keeps everything balanced, working and repaired has broken down.

What? Your reasoning is screwed. How the hell did u leap from you die when your heads cut off to - therefore your spirits in your head..... wtf

They once had consciousness and so have experience, in a coma, or unconscious their brain is still active (arguably) so they can still be remembering these experiences (dreaming) if there is a chance they can still awake then declaring them dead and pulling the plug would be murder, but if not then why not. They are still alive, but they are not "living" by the definition that living is consciously experiencing things. Much like the sperm, eggs, blastula and embryo are all alive, but they are not living untill they can consciously recall their experience.... this need not necessarily be a long term thing either, I don't think recollections of experiences in the womb hang around in the conscious for very long.... perhaps they do in the unconscious... e.g. sound of mothers voice etc.

LoL..... I guess. So in your opinion is the predator always superior to the prey/consumer to the producer? Are fungi the rulers of the world then?