Moontanman

Abiogenic or not, the coal and oil are still very much older than the dinosaurs.

I'm not sure what your point is in saying this.

I dunno, given the fact that we actually find giant logs and such made of coal, with dead animals inside, I find the abiogenic idea rather farfetched.

Actually fossils in coal are quite rare. Many reasons have been proposed, one idea is that fossils are destroyed by the heat and pressure precesses that make coal. One thing pointed out by Gold (I personally found it very difficult to think of coal as abiotic) were cases where logs were fossilized by coal and the log would continue above the coal seam as a fossil made of other minerals. He proposed that the coal was originally a thick liquid and the logs and or other fossils were in place before the coal was deposited and the coal hydrocarbons replaced the fossilized tissue much like other fossils are made when carbonate rocks (or other types of minerals) replace the bone when other fossils are formed. One thing that supported the idea of coal as a thick liquid is that there is often coal deposits above oil reservoirs where the oil has transformed into coal.

BTW, abiogenic oil is a crock.

No, the way the hypothesis of abiotic oil became totally distorted by the people who wanted desperately to prove that there was no way we could run out of oil is a crock. Thomas Gold came out with a book suggesting that hydrocarbon deposits are geology reworked by biology instead of biology reworked by geology and the crazies went nuts. People who wanted to prove oil was an unlimited resource hijacked the idea so thoroughly every one assumed it meant oil was being created at a pace we could never use up. Nothing could be further from the truth but as in most displays of emotion the truth has little place among the fantasies. So much ideology, emotion, and money rode on an idea that did not support the idea of unlimited oil to begin it was never really investigated properly. Any attempt to investigate the idea of geology reworked by biology is met with such venom that no one wants to risk even suggesting it might have some merit.

Spinning a coin would allow you to know your were not in a gravity field. A spinning coin acts as a gyroscope and would not spin properly inside a rotating cylinder. It would fall over immediately.

So far this has been a great thread, many of the points made are addressed in the link I put in the first post. What amazed me was the number of places this idea was taken at least semi seriously.

All sorts of caveats can be made to explain lack of evidence, like maybe they cremated their dead or the population was less dense than our or they lived clustered around geologically unstable areas.

The idea of Gas and oil is I think a good point except that new gas and oil deposits are being created all the time and destroyed all the time by nature. Even if you don't believe the abiogenic oil you have to admit that oil is refilling old fields (at a rate far too slow to affect the oil crisis) at a slow rate and even though we might very well have sucked the planet dry, in several millions of years new oil fields may very well come into being near the surface again. Iron deposits are another matter and may very well be a deal breaker.

For me the only way it could be true is if the population was small, not world wide, and their impact on the Earth was minimal, but of course this negates the basic premise of them having some thing to do with the demise of the dinosaurs to begin with.

This is an interesting idea:

Caches of bones of a single species are regarded by paleoanthropologists as suggesting husbandry. In the development of man, various cultures seemed to concentrate on ibex, horses, reindeer and so on. Could it be that ceratopsians and hadrosaurs were actually domestic animals like cows and sheep kept for food?

All in all the idea makes for some good Science Fiction ideas but even if intelligent dinosaurs happened I have to agree with the consensus that they did not cause the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Thanks for the great discussion dudes and dudettes, here are some more links to this idea

http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/03/dinosauroids_2008.php

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/D/dinosaurintell.html

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/print/1444/smartasaurus

Stir up trouble? You assume a dichotomy where none WHATSOEVER exists. Seeking truth IS often a very good way to stir up trouble.

I agree, when do you intend to start?

You can keep you for-show apologies for someone else. Caving in to cowards does not earn their respect, and everyone knows this. Including said cowards.

Caving in to creationist bullies is counter productive to the truth as well.

Now let me explain one more thing. When the existence of a thing is disputed, the burdens of proof are well known. The affirmative side must present credible, consistent evidence, and the negative side is obliged to consider the evidence fairly. In this case, the thing itself should by all means be handily available, yet the only evidence of any attempt at to find it consists of a link which the provider gives no evidence of having bothered to read. (An efficient call!)

How many times does it have to be spoon fed to you?

Okay, here's a challenge: Link me to a thread where someone caved in to harassment (interweb harassment, at that - oooh, what a scare thing!) and was subsequently treated with respect.

You have to show respect to get it CTD, just being a bully is not good enough. I suggest you go to a Christian fundamentalist forum CTD, you'll get all the sunshine pumped up your skirt you can handle.

I don't mean to be rude, but is this a joke?

 

If we hypothetically discover the ability to do something presently thought physically impossible it's proof of intelligent design. Zuh?

 

Even if the universe is flush with humanoid life, that doesn't indicate intelligent design any more than it could indicate convergent evolution.

Not trying to prove anything bascule, I am just speculating on ID. i am not an a supporter of ID (not even close) and i see them trying to use all sorts of things like irreducible complexity to try to prove their point usually what they claim is just plain silly but if indeed the universe turns out to be not only to be user friendly in the extreme ( i mean the Hypothetical Star Trek universe is about as close to user friendly as possible and still resemble the reality we see) but to contain aliens that are basically humans (they can interbreed) wouldn't it give the strong anthropomorphic principle a big boost at the very least? I thought maybe a discussion about this was appropriate in the silly claims forum. Just BS'ing about speculative stuff. Not science.

Merged post follows:

That the designer was working on a small budget, too?

 

Good one Jill Lets assume the STNG universe instead of TOS universe;) at least the budget was bigger

 

I can see your logic. However, I'm not sure that such strong similarities would suggest a rather unimaginative designer, or perhaps suggest that environments that allow or "encourage" intelligence tend to be similar enough that the other phenotypes are also similar.

 

To be serious I can't see any possible mechanism that would account for aliens we could interbreed with humans

 

 

I think I'd actually be more likely entertain the idea of a designer if all the intelligent races were dramatically different, but were surprisingly easy to communicate with.

 

To me that is the flaw in most ideas about aliens, even the ugly grays. is they look to much like humans for me to "believe"

After the intelligent dinosaur thread I think I'll go ahead and completely destroy any credibility i have and ask this question.

If indeed at some point (preferably in the near future) we discover a way to travel FTL easily on the scale of the Star Trek Universe and we find the galaxy is full of very humanoid intelligent beings what does it say about the idea of intelligent design? I used to argue with a friend who said that TV shows like Star Trek were Satanic because they led people away from the idea of God. My answer was that they show is quite the opposite because if the real universe would turn out to be similar to the Star Trek universe it would pretty much prove the existence of, if not god, an intelligent designer. Not only would the discovery of such easily controlled power sources and FTL indicate the universe is designed to be user friendly the idea of very human aliens on other planets could not be accounted for by random chance (weak and strong anthropomorphic principle) Any thoughts?

Me me me, let me help too!

GMO's have great potential, they also have great potential problems. Accidentally creating a super bug would be a very bad thing but it seems highly unlikely. Imagine if you will a coconut like fruit that contains meat of some sort, a beef roast, shrimp, abalone, or chicken. Perennial corn with complete proteins, tomatoes that grow in salty water or even better rice that will grow in salty water. The idea of more nutritious foods would seem like a universally good idea. Organizations like Greenpeace tend to be anti corporation but they ignore the reality of need for more food. Small organic heirloom vegetable farmers cannot provide the world with food. The potential is great. i think that with just a little regulation the potential good of GMO's far out weight the problems.

I live in a cave dude, fires don't worry me, cave bears are a problem though.....

Only 40,000 generations? I would have thought it would have been millions over that time span. Interesting results though.

CTD you don't want a theory you just want to raise hell

He wants to get to heaven toasty, he has to drag us down to get points with god.

"if you want to get to heaven, you have to raise a little hell!">

I do indeed wish my state would allow medical MJ, I am a chronic pain patient but a few years ago i had to stop taking opiates like oxycontin simply because they were not only killing me but i had forgotten almost 10 years of my life. opiates kill, MJ does not!

Thanks all of you for inspiration. Its very difficult for me to deal with this new disadvantage of mine.

Daniel, please do not think of this as a disadvantage. IQ tests do not measure your self worth in any way. It may very well be that you are like a great many people and tests just make you nervous. There so very many variables and as Jill pointed out your own drive and determination are the real Xfactor, not some tenuous IQ number. Pursue your dreams, do not allow anyone or anything to tell you what you cannot accomplish.

CDT, males do not breast feed, the male breasts are only there because all fetuses start out as female. The male breasts have nothing to do with breast feeding. Your assertion is nothing but obfuscation to throw the thread off topic.

At the end of the Cretaceous period dinosaurs were tending toward larger brains and grasping hands (some of them) In this thread lets discuss the possibility that a civilization of intelligent dinosaurs may have exacerbated the ecological collapse at the end of the Cretaceous and the proposed impactors might have just delivered the straw that broke the planets ecological back. Some say we are in the middle of a vast extinction caused by human activity, could an civilization of intelligent dinosaurs have had a similar effect? Here is a supporting thread to get the debate started.

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/michael.magee/awwls/00/wls143.html

So far there is no suggestion that the two comets (Chicxulub and Shiva) were related. But earth really doesn't get hit that often by large comets, so it would be extremely unfortunate if it got hit twice in a relatively short period.

 

The Shoemaker-Levy comet contained 21 fragments that all hit Jupiter. Could it not be that earth got hit twice by the same comet?

Jupiter got hit on the same latitude, but spread out widely on its southern hemisphere. The fact that Chicxulub and Shiva are on the other side of the world, but (nearly) on the same latitude (just like the Shoemaker-Levy fragments) only seems to agree with my little theory here.

 

Soil samples should be able to tell if the two are of the same origin perhaps.

Or perhaps we can find a third crater from the same era and on the same latitude? Somewhere in the Sahara perhaps?

 

I've often wondered if the Cretaceous Tertiary boundary might have been marked by more than one impact. It always seemed unlikely to me that the Chicxulub impact event could have done in the entire planet but there is evidence on the moon that craters are sometimes caused by multiple impact events in the from of strings of craters and Shoemaker-Levy gave us some evidence of a comet breaking up after a close encounter and coming back to cause a multiple impact event. Such an event, even if it was several small impactors, would be devastating to the planets ecology, far more so than a large single impact event.

 

 

p.s. Moontanman, your post is totally off topic, but would be a nice thread in itself. Perhaps the dino's cremated their dead, and that would be a good reason why we don't find fossils.

 

I know, just me being a smart ass but in the pseudoscience forum it might be cool.

CDT, what do you mean "an aversion to discussing the topic of this thread"? I read it, it was out of date but still good read and it still contains good information about the ideas that stand at the root of modern evolutionary theory. You seem to be intent on arguing if it is still right or something similar. cut to the chase, what do you want to do besides use straw man arguments to support creationism? If you want to support creationism start your own thread and go for it, rest assured that dog won't hunt unless you have a completely new dog. The old dog is dead and fossilized.

Today it was overcast with a high pressure of 121170 millibars. The high was 495c with a light mist of sulfuric acid throughout most of the day. Winds were out of the West at 3 to 4mph..... Oh you mean in 2009! Well that was way before global warming went out of control......

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Why-Do-Women-Have-Breasts-46783.shtml

And, in fact, most of the woman's breats is not made of mammary glands (which produce milk) but of a mix of conjunctive tissue and fat tissue (that's why when a woman slims, breasts face the risk of getting smaller).

 

The development of conspicuous breasts with a characteristic shape seems to be a way of sexual signaling. This fact was encouraged during the human evolution by the nude skin, which emphasized them.

 

When men are attracted by a woman's breasts they do not think "Oh, she's gonna be a good mother!", they simply experience sexual arousal. And when a woman wears bras and other methods to emphasize her breasts, she does it to improve sexual appeal, not to show how good she is for breast feeding �Nor do I believe that women who want to have breast implants aim at improving their baby's nutrition...

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_women_have_breasts

Some zoologists (notably Desmond Morris) believe that the shape of female breasts evolved as a frontal counterpart to that of the buttocks, the reason being that whilst other primates mate in the typical piggy-back position, humans are more likely to successfully copulate mating face on. A secondary sexual characteristic on a woman's chest would have encouraged this in more primitive incarnations of the human race, and a face on encounter would have helped found a relationship between partners beyond merely a sexual one.

 

Others believe that the human breast evolved in order to prevent infants from suffocating while feeding. Since human infants do not have a protruding jaw like our ancestors and the other primates, the infant's nose might be blocked by a flat female chest while feeding. According to this theory, as the human jaw became recessed, so the breasts became larger to compensate.

Secondary sexual characteristics seem to be part of the answer and breastfeeding helpless infants seem to be the two most accepted answers.

CDT what if anything does either of your links have to do with the OP?

 

Okay if the photon is its own anti-particle through wave interference' date=' quantum physics views all particles as waves-particle dualities, then would not all particles be there own anti-particle?[/quote']

 

No.

Jill, the idea that birds did not evolve from tyrannosaurs is a totally straw man argument, both birds and tyrannosaurs evolved from a dinosaur much smaller and quite different from both birds and tyrannosaurs, this guy is just trolling for converts.

Right. My point is just that hitting the earth with a 0.9999c relativistic velocity 100kg iron cannonball and hitting it with a black hole of the same mass and velocity will have very different effects. The cannonball would collide with the Earth and transfer all of that energy into heat, shockwaves, etc. The black hole would only transfer a small amount its energy to the Earth, via gravitational drag, and nobody would notice. (This is of course ignoring radiation the black hole emits as it decays.) Kind of like firing a stream of neutrinos through your head, vs. punching you in the face.

What if the earth was struck by a relativistic neutron star? Would it just trash the Earth (similar the pic i posted) or would it vaporise the earth? I once read a story about aliens destroying the earth. (some sort of interstellar war of whack a mole) but they used basket ball sized chucks of neutronium, one was anti-matter and one was was matter neutronium, they dropped them into the Earth and they orbited inside the earth until they finally came together at the center of the earth and "wump there it is" or was! The point is the neutronium didn't do much damage when it hit the earth, it acted like the earth wasn't even there. So if a black hole would just go straight through would a neutron star a few miles in diameter do the same thing?

is there an anti-matter black hole in the universe?

While it would be foolish to say absolutely not, it would seem that if what we currently understand about the universe is true then an anti-matter black hole would be improbable to say the least.