Tranquility

My Grandmother is a devout Christian with Alzheimer's, My field is Astro-Physics...

Will give it a go! Wish me luck.

What I thought would be an interesting genetic engineering project would be to breed plants that use solar energy to pump water to a height. The water runs downhill to generate electricity.

 

I can picture a riverside, full of these solar pump plants pumping and/or weeping into an elevated canal system, which merges into a larger downhill pipe, that runs a turbine. Besides power, we get purified water. It is sort of low tech except for the plant genetics.

That is exactly the sort of thing I mean!

How far are we from doing that sort of genetic engineering.

Thanks everyone for you help.

I did pass on the message, and he even looked quite impressed when I told him about golden rice.

I guess what I am wondering is are we able to create an organism that could say behave like concrete, or to do any of the industrial process we have now. Can we control what it requires to live such as carbon dioxide or methane instead of oxygen?

I know this is all a bit vague but biology, and genetic engineering especially is not my best subject.

Hello all

I was asked today by a pupil how close we are to being able to genetically engineer a new species?

I said "a long way" to put off any other questions but he did make me wonder... the little swine!

So in my best inner London school boy accent... "Sir, Aow close is science geezers to making a hole nu animal like?"

Any help will be greatly appreciated by me and met with a non-interested blank gaze by him no doubt!

Hi all,

watched this Horizon episode recently and was really impressed, thought I'd post the links to it for others interested in fusion energy.

BBC Horizon: Can we make a star on Earth?

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part five

Part six

I don't know what you lot think but I tend to agree with the presenter, fusion could well be our only hope.

Merged post follows:

Just wondering if anyone has any info on how these fusion reactors (JET, KSTAR, etc) are performing?

I stayed once in the arazona desert. The moon's scenary is very similar ..... And not worth the money. I would personally prefer a personal station orbiting earth or ideally Jupiter

Biology is by far my weakest science.... And it appears the kids in my class have realized this.

I have been asked the following question and have no idea. Any help is greatly appreciated

Why is mammalian blood warm? how is it warmed? and where is it warmed?

While teaching a class of 11 year olde I was stumped by the question why is bogey green? Any help would be appreciated

Gold has been used as the basis for global economics for centuries, not so much now admittedly. I think most of its current perceived value is due to its previous importance.

Thanks for the input guys and gals, I find this subject fascinating I have to admit, not the is there, isn't there a god question. I am aware that some of science's most renowned scientists have been very religious. I guess believing in god doesn't effect your ability to be a good scientist.

Still wonder which religion has supplied the most science (although I think the results would be very debatable). A Muslim friend of mine claims quite adamantly that Islamic scientists discovered many of the breakthroughs that western science has claimed long before western science made the discovery. The friend is not a fundamentalist but a layed back friendly guy. Yet he remains adamant that what he said is true. If that is true could it be argued that islam is more of a "scientific religion" compared to say Hinduism. I wonder what the league tablle would look like

Hello all

While speaking to a friend yesterday I discovered he is a devout Christian and a biology teacher. I was raised an atheist and still consider myself so. What I would be interested in is what proportion of the scientists out there adhere to any of the religions. Leading on from that is which of the religions accomodates scientific advancment most, or are they all the same?

Personnaly I cannot see how a devout Christian can believe in evolution but claim that the bible is the word of god. But that's my opinion.

I don't want this thread to be seen as inciting any trouble. I am just interested how religious scientists balance what I see as contradicting theories.

Any/all replies welcome. Thanks

Wow, thankyou insane alien for your reply. I hadn't thought these things through, was just throwing ideas out. But your science is correct. Think I will limit my responses in future.

As I understand it the planet is able to recover from the increased levels of CO2, but only if we stop adding to the problem. If we had a space elevator surely we could generate the energy we need in orbit, venting any CO2 that is created. The energy could either be beamed down to earth using a high powered laser or sent down a very long super conducting cable attached to the elevator?

Alternatively If the CO2 was created in orbit in a controlled environment surely it could be used to grow plants to create a useful biosphere in orbit. Nuclear energy would also be far cleaner when generated in orbit as the largest problem from fission based nuclear energy is the abundant radioactive waste from the coolant and spent fuel rods. The coolant may not be needed to the same degree as the cold vacuum of space would surely help there, and the spent fuel rods can be collected and then sent on one way trips to our sun.

I do however agree that this planet has a wonderful ability to recycle the material that makes the planet, if we start sending huge amounts of carbon into space we are reducing the amount we have down here. surely we need to find a better method of recycling the CO2 that is produced.

i'm not sure if it can be classed as an achievment but the discovery of climate change and the effects that will have is I believe going to become the most important scientific progress thispast decade

More importantly however is the question can they do it again? and if so can I book one over my garden on new years eve? that trumps fireworks everytime

You mention that light is a wave but also acts like a particle. This is exactly the case. In some situations it behaves like a wave (it can be defracted for example) but it also behaves like a particle in other situations. When we talk about light as a particle we assign the term photon, light is made up of photons. Each photon is a quantity of energy. Light at different wavelengths (colours) have different amount of energy when seen as photons.

In conclusion we think we understand light, but honestly we cannot really explain it's particle wave duality. Hope this helps

as a novice physicist I am interested to understand how electricty generated from solar panels could be used to generate a black hole. Also you mention feeding the BH, I asume, just like a large animal, this should be done using a long stick? But seriously how much would you need to feed the BH and how often, I would imagine carrying around hundreds or thousands of tonnes of "BH food" is going to be complicated. Finally I thought that BHs radiate spherically how could you channal this radiation into a driving force?

Sorry if these questions are dumb

thanks for the swift reply!

I will look into those devices thankyou

I need 12v but have been told that running a motor as a generator only generates about 40 percent of the voltage the motor uses. A 30v motor should easily provide the 12v I need. That's the theory anyway.

Hi all, this will be my first post.

I have decided to attempt to build my own wind turbine using canablised parts for as cheap as possible.

Iknow I can get the wind to drive a permenant magnet motor. But which one? I need a high voltage (30v ish), high current, low rpm (400 ish) motor that I can canablise

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Tranq