Moontanman

Azolla is one of the fastest growing small plants I know of. I grow it in large quantities to help purify water in ponds and aquariums.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla

This plant has huge potential in absorbing CO2 and may have been responsible for reversing a planet wide greenhouse effect 49 million years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event

Windmills and waterwheels and wave power would all be available, and from there all electric stuff.

How do you smelt metals with a windmill? How do you generate or even use electricity with no metals?

How about abusive mis-interpretation of the Constitution to do whatever the hell the legislators want even if it is forbidden?

No, I think it's pretty obvious they are only against mis- interpretation of the Constitution if it disagrees with their righteous family Conservative religious values

Well if you have a reducing atmosphere, you can keep a jar of oxygen as "fuel" that you can burn with the surrounding atmospheric gases. Or maybe hydrogen peroxide, if you prefer a liquid "fuel".

Yes but where do you get the oxidizer? I have given quite a bit of thought to the possibility of technology with out fire but i have to agree with Greippi, no fire no technology.

But! Huge word, lol, what if plants on the hypothetical planet made food as oxidizer instead of hydrocarbons as on earth? Is this possible?

Merged post follows:

I think that an oxygen atmosphere and with it fire are the bottleneck that determines technology on any planet. No oxygen no fire, no fire no technology more advanced that flaking stone tools or maybe beating out soft ceremonial knives from native copper or gold or some other very soft metal at most.

Still i have to ask, could useful numbers of things like i-beams be made by hammering? Most of modern technology is based on using fuel and oxygen to make energy to make other things. Would a reducing atmosphere allow this? Solar energy stored in plants is exploited by animals by oxidization, so to does our technology.

Well, in a reducing atmosphere you wouldn't need fire to have metals, since the metals would not be oxidized. In addition, there are other sources of heat, such as a solar furnace. Certainly not as easy to understand nor acquire as fire, but it would do the trick.

I know things like "native iron" would be possible but the smelting of iron requires fire, or at least a very high heat. Solar heat is a good idea but how would you generate it if you didn't have heat to begin with to make pure lenses or mirrors?

Now if you have an underwater civilization, the boiling point and heat capacity of water might be a problem, and likewise saltwater would mess with electricity and electromagnetic signals.

I honestly can't see under water going past stone age at most.

Merged post follows:

I should say making iron into useful objects requires heat, native iron would be great but how do you make i-beams and other steel objects with out fire?

I think can technology progress underwater has been asked before but what about advanced technology of higher than stone age or more advanced coming about in a non oxidizing atmosphere? If you can't have fire can you have anything more than stone age technology?

An example would if you had a super terrestrial planet with an hydrogen atmosphere could any life advance past the stone age since fire would not be possible in a reducing atmosphere.

Sisyphus, your avatar is from Futurama?

I see thanks for the help However the balloon might expand atleast a little bit if I suddenly decrease the atmospheric pressure right? It might not equalize it.

Yes, increase or decrease the ambient pressure the balloon will respond by getting larger or smaller, decrease the ambient pressure enough and the balloon will explode.

I used to have an avatar that had a message in it or with it about me (it was a bit of a brag really) but no one ever got it so i changed it to this one. i have an avatar that is a pic of me i used on some forums where I know many of the people personally in real life but even they often call me Moon. BTW, I think it's very much related to the old "CB handle" that was popular when i was in my late teens to early twenties. Everyone had a "handle" that in some way described them or was a in some way significant to it's owner. BTW, my current avatar reveals quite a bit about me to anyone who is on the same wave length as me, lol

BTW Michel, I think far too much is assumed when you see someone face or appearance. When you talk to someone in a coffee shop or where ever in real life you make automatic assumptions about nearly everything about them, using a avatar prevents people from making those automatic assumptions allows you get to know the real person not the cover.

Absolutely awesome photo by the way.

No, the pressure inside an inflated balloon is greater than the surrounding atmospheric pressure, when you make a hole all the air rushes to go out to the lower pressure outside through hole.

I have my doubts about colonizing Mars to begin with, Antarctica would be much easier but no one seems to be lobbying to live there.

In the future gravity wells will be avoided, any colonies will be artificial habitats. Resources in space such as asteroids and comets are far to rich and easy to waste time on planets and gravity wells.

We'll construct artificial ecosystems inside huge rotating torus's and ignore planets as we spread across the galaxy. Even at far less than light speed we could could colonize the entire galaxy in a few million years.

Michael is my name but i've been called moontanman for a very long time, from way before my computer. many of my friends shorten it to moon but I don't like Mike!

It not a worm dude, it's sea slug, a mollusk.

Anywhere where i can buy pure culture online.

It would depend heavily on exactly which microbe you want to culture, algae cultures are easy to obtian.

http://www.carolina.com/category/living+organisms/protists/algae+cultures+and+sets.do?KickerID=int_t_gtw_living_algaecultures

Why does the universe have to have a beginning? maybe the universe is the result of many never ending natural processes that just can't see beyond if we could see beyond the beginning of the big bang we could see an entirely new way energy and matter is constructed and in an infinite multi verse infinite processes can happen continuously over infinite stretches of time giving birth to finite processes that get swept back into the infinite swirl every few trillion cycles or so. and we are only capable of seeing finites ones. Brane theory would seem to point that direction.

Hissomonia, it's a small place, 3/4 of an acre, but I rule it with an iron fist.

Well depending on the exposure it could cause death. Exactly how much bleach are you talking about? How big is the animal? I use bleach to sterilize culture vats quite regularly, it kills microbes to fish quite well at a rate of one gallon bleach to 1000 gallons of water.

swaha, there is big difference between spanking your child and beating the hell out of them. I started both my boys out when they were just toddlers by taking their hands in mine and saying no gruffly when they would reach for something I didn't want them to do, or swat on the butt when they did something wrong, by the time they were 5 or 6 i no longer had to punish them in any way other than showing disapproval through speech instead of popping them.

I never actually hurt them, the punishment was more along the lines of showing my disapproval than pain. A child has to shown love and approval for behaving as well, good behavior has to be rewarded. Rewarding good behavior is as much or more important than punishment. The most important thing is to be constant, do not punish them for one thing and later ignore it. Both my boys are great kids, they did well in school and either have or are graduating from universities.

You can't ignore a child's behavior until they are teenagers then try to beat them, it will only make them more defiant. Too much punishment is as bad as not enough. actually inflicting pain on a child is counter productive and will only serve to cause them to seek ways to get around your rules instead of looking to follow them.

Nope, no conifers around either.

I think supernatural by definition is non falsifiable.

I use a broadcast antenna inside my house, the wind cannot shake it or disturb it in anyway.

The stuff is without doubt "Paranormal", and if the "normal" laws don't apply to it, would it be "Supernatural" as well?

 

No, the prefix "super" does not imply unknown, it implies powerful as in superman.

 

Living, thinking entities can be made from normal matter. Can this also be true for Dark matter? If such entities existed and since by definition the normal laws don't apply to them, would that make them Gods? Angels? Fairies? Ghosts? Demons? None of the above?

 

None of the above, dark matter doesn't (or at least is not supposed to) interact with even it's self except through gravity, no dark matter chemicals or life forms or even stars.

 

Is it possible that there are "Dark" Galaxies, with "Dark" Suns shining "Dark" light on "Dark" Planets?

 

All of the above is pure speculation of course, but they are to me logical questions to ask based on the existence of Dark Matter.

 

It sounds like you are talking about mirror matter.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_matter

 

Or is the idea that there might be substances and energies that we can't detect and that follow their own Laws just silly?

 

 

But if we don't know all the Laws, how do know whether or not something is following them?

 

Not being able to detect or know them does not make them supernatural, possibly paranormal but not supernatural.

 

I grew up going to some quite fundamentalist churches that took the supernatural nature of God to be literally true, no matter what laws we discover God can operate outside them and defy them with impunity. god operates totally outside any laws, no laws define him or restrain him.

 

According to them there is just one thing god does not know.

Why does windy weather seem to impact digital TV signals? Since we went to digital signals I have noticed the weather has a big effect on Digital TV signals but I can't explain why wind on a clear night seems negatively effect TV signals?