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paul Offline OP
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there has been much talk recently and in the past about scientific belief and religious belief and the ever present
controversy over evolution vs creation.

but I think I have a great question to ask and that
question is why would the elements develop into life forms?

not how , now what caused them to develop or to come
into being but why they decided to develop.

the elements do not eat.
they do not feel.
they do not think.

or do they?

of course there will be the usual idiotic comments from
the peanut gallery who might think that the question is
not a scientific question , but we know that life consist
of elements and we understand each element that life consist of
so why not attempt to find a reason that the elements would decide to gather together and form the first life form.












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Because they can.

Bill Gill


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C is the universal speed limit.
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paul Offline OP
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Quote:
Because they can.


so you really have no idea why the elements formed life
from non life do you.


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Entropy! Life is just God's way to maximize entropy.

Life is just the easiest way for the elements to convert light into heat (increasing entropy).

~ wink

Last edited by samwik; 05/23/14 10:07 AM.

Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.
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Bill Gill, you are formally charged with failing to invoke the god-of-the-gaps. How do you plead?


"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler
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Originally Posted By: paul
Quote:
Because they can.


so you really have no idea why the elements formed life
from non life do you.


You didn't ask why hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water. It is the same thing, except that life is more complex.

Bill Gill


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paul Offline OP
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hydrogen and oxygen do not combine to make water because
they can or because they want to or feel as if they need to.

they combine because there is some external process outside of
the elements themselves than cause them to form together into a water molecule.

and that process occurs when they are in the vicinity of
a heat source such as lightning or fire.

in the absence of life we can negate fire as rocks
do not burn.

this answers why a water molecule forms , it does not
answer why life formed.

so its no where near the same but it is similar.

and the only similarity is that elements formed
together because of a process.








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Quote:
Life is just the easiest way for the elements to convert light into heat


there was no life at that time.
so the elements couldn't have known what life was or
how to form life.

and why would the elements need or want to convert themselves
into a machine that converts light into heat?

could you explain that a little further?
and if possible could you provide any evidence that you may have.




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Originally Posted By: paul
hydrogen and oxygen do not combine to make water because
they can or because they want to or feel as if they need to.

they combine because there is some external process outside of
the elements themselves than cause them to form together into a water molecule.

and that process occurs when they are in the vicinity of
a heat source such as lightning or fire.


If it is necessary to have a heat source of some sort to cause hydrogen and oxygen to combine where do you think the water in comets, which formed in the cold depths of space, came from?

They formed from a chemical reaction which is easily initiated in a great many ways. The chemicals of life can be formed in the same way, by simple chemical reactions. They can then be combined through other simple chemical reactions to form ever more complex chemicals until they all come together to produce life.

We don't know all the details of how it happened, but our understanding of chemistry is good enough so that we can figure out the general outline of how life came into being. It can be done without any great leap of faith. However, the idea of life being created by a higher intelligence does require a leap of faith, because all we can say is "God did it". Scientists are never happy with that kind of statement, particularly when they see good evidence that it is possible for it to happen in a non-miraculous way.

Bill Gill


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Quote:
If it is necessary to have a heat source of some sort to cause hydrogen and oxygen to combine where do you think the water in comets, which formed in the cold depths of space, came from?


first we need to establish the validity of the below.
as the remainder of your post depends on its validity.

Quote:
They formed from a chemical reaction which is easily initiated in a great many ways. The chemicals of life can be formed in the same way, by simple chemical reactions. They can then be combined through other simple chemical reactions to form ever more complex chemicals until they all come together to produce life.


I tried to find that information about how water formed
on comets , and was unable.
would you mind posting a link to the info.

I did find this about a actual comet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/science/07comet.html?_r=0

Quote:
Clays and carbonates both require liquid water to form.

"How do clays and carbonates form in frozen comets where there isn't liquid water?" said Carey M. Lisse, a research scientist at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University who is presenting the Spitzer data today at a meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences in Cambridge, England. "Nobody expected this."

Spitzer also detected minerals known as crystalline silicates. Astronomers had already known that comets contain silicates, but silicates line up in neat crystal structures only when they are warmed to 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit - temperatures reached at around the orbit of Mercury - and then cooled.

"How do you do that and then how do you put that stuff into a comet that forms out by Pluto?" Dr. Lisse said.

Dr. Lisse said that the presence of the clays, carbonates and crystalline silicates indicated that material in the solar system's primordial cloud had somehow become well-mixed with dust from the inner solar system migrating outward, or that the minerals had formed through unexpected chemical reactions.

"Both of these are speculation," Dr. Lisse said. "Hopefully in a few months I can tell you."

Another possibility is that the changes are more recent. Within the last 10,000 years, Tempel 1 migrated to the warmer inner solar system, between Mars and Jupiter, but Dr. Lisse said he doubted that was long enough for the makeup of the comet to change much.


initially I was going to include pressure , as in impact pressure but I concluded that heat is a result of pressure
and you guys could figure that one out right away.

I could see how pressures from an impact could cause
water to form far from any heat source as long as there
was hydrogen and oxygen in the vicinity.

and especially when considering the water on comets that develop in the oort cloud beyond our solar systems planets where temperatures approach 0 Kelvin which would most likely dim the chances of chemical reactions taking place unless there was a heat source to warm the vicinity of any proposed chemical reaction.








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Originally Posted By: paul
Quote:
Life is just the easiest way for the elements to convert light into heat


there was no life at that time.
so the elements couldn't have known what life was or
how to form life.

and why would the elements need or want to convert themselves
into a machine that converts light into heat?

could you explain that a little further?
and if possible could you provide any evidence that you may have.
...so you have not read the book, Web of Life, by Capra?

Search dissipative systems. They evolve without being alive. Life, as a quasi-stable, complex system, can emerge out of a simple, robust, chaotic, dissipative system. ...in the way all stable complexity arises from chaos.
~


Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.
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Originally Posted By: Paul
I tried to find that information about how water formed
on comets , and was unable.
would you mind posting a link to the info.

I asked you that. You're the one that is making statements that don't agree with observations. We know that hydrogen and oxygen combine easily to form water, because there is so much water in the universe. Beyond water there are a great many other chemical compositions that occur naturally in the universe. So that we can expect that any that can occur probably does. Therefore the presence of life, which is based on chemical reactions, should not come as surprise. It is just an extension of the ability of the universe to create more and more complicated chemical compositions.

Bill Gill


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paul Offline OP
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Quote:
I asked you that. You're the one that is making statements that don't agree with observations.


no, you dictated your belief to me without any type
of evidence to show just like science dictated to you
what you should think.

ie...

Quote:
If it is necessary to have a heat source of some sort to cause hydrogen and oxygen to combine where do you think the water in comets, which formed in the cold depths of space, came from?

They formed from a chemical reaction which is easily initiated in a great many ways. The chemicals of life can be formed in the same way, by simple chemical reactions. They can then be combined through other simple chemical reactions to form ever more complex chemicals until they all come together to produce life.


my response to your dictation was to attempt to retrieve some
amount of evidence that you based your dictation on.

obviously you have none , you only have speculation and the
degree of lip service that science has dictated to you.

religion is not what is making a claim that science is wrong
about how life came into existence , science is the one that
is making a claim that religion is wrong and science has nothing to show as evidence nor has science observed life
coming into existence.

and the belief of creation has been around on earth a lot longer than any of the beliefs of science.

Quote:
So that we can expect that any that can occur probably does. Therefore the presence of life, which is based on chemical reactions, should not come as surprise.


I don't think that science has provided enough evidence to
support their claim about how science assumes that life came into being , so your use of the word "expect" is trumped up to say the least and you should use the word "assume" or "speculate" , and a surprise would be that science matures enough to admit it knows nothing about it and stops acting
a little less like the child that it is.


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paul Offline OP
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Quote:
They evolve without being alive.


do you mean like steel turns back into dust / rust?


Quote:
Life, as a quasi-stable, complex system, can emerge out of a simple, robust, chaotic, dissipative system. ...in the way all stable complexity arises from chaos.
~


can?

then please show me.

don't just say or repeat what others have said , lets see
some of the life that science has produced from non life.

this is kind of in your field , you should have proof of
what you say.

or should we "expect" that you "can" make the soil grow tomatoes without the need for seed.

all we need to do is burn the soil and it will grow gobs
of plants by itself because of the chaotic chemical reaction
in the soil.


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paul Offline OP
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I don't really know how this works.
I have no proof that it works.
so I certainly cannot say that it works.

but let me explain my belief.

it works because I have been told that it works , an assumption has been observed that assumes it works
many people in the past have assumed it works and
it works because words can be set side by side to
support the assumption that it works , therefore it
can be expected to work.

and I can claim that it works.
based on previous assumptions.


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Ok, this will be my final post in this thread, unless you come up with some kind of an argument that actually makes sense, instead of just basically saying "I don't believe it". As far as I can tell you are making a case that only (unobservable) intelligence can create life. I have been making a case that life is the result of observable chemical reactions. Therefore your position, which you have stated previously, is that God is the only way to explain the presence of life in the universe. My position is that there are observable laws of nature which can be used to explain the development of life without the direct intervention of God.

What I am trying to say is that life is basically a large set of chemical reactions contained in a cell. Non-life is a large set of chemical reactions not contained in a cell. You are saying that there is no way to get from one set of reactions to the other without having God step in and say "let it be so". I see no reason why there could not be a transition from one state to the other under natural law.

Of course your interpretation of the creation of life is based on the creation story in the Biblical Book of Genesis. Most cultures have different creation stories. These stories vary widely in just how the world came to be created. Here is a Chinese creation story. The story is quite different from the biblical story. Now if I want to believe a religious creation story I have to sort through all of the different religions to find the one I want to believe. I really prefer the scientific version, which at least is consistent with our observations.

Bill Gill

Last edited by Bill; 05/24/14 06:55 PM.

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paul Offline OP
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you just don't read what you write I suppose.

Quote:
Ok, this will be my final post in this thread, unless you come up with some kind of an argument that actually makes sense,


you haven't come up with anything that actually makes sense
to me , you have basically stated that biscuit ingredients could make their own biscuits because flour and water and
sugar and milk and ovens exist.


I am saying that the biscuit ingredients cannot come together by themselves and make their own biscuits and cook themselves.

Quote:

instead of just basically saying "I don't believe it".


and that is also exactly what you are doing you haven't provided any sound evidence , you and science have only provided assumption.

Quote:
As far as I can tell you are making a case that only (unobservable) intelligence can create life.


well of course , who could have observed life as it was created other than the creator of life?

likewise , who could have observed life as it was developed
if there were no observers to observe?

Quote:
I have been making a case that life is the result of observable chemical reactions.


no, you have been asserting assumptions previously made
by science.

there are no observable chemical reactions that could
be used as evidence that life could be the result of
chemical reactions.

there are chemical reactions that can produce some of the ingredients of life , but without all of the ingredients
and a baker you just don't end up with biscuits.

Quote:
Therefore your position, which you have stated previously, is that God is the only way to explain the presence of life in the universe.


exactly.

Quote:
My position is that there are observable laws of nature which can be used to explain the development of life without the direct intervention of God.



Im open to evidence if you have any evidence.
and to win a case you need evidence of some sort
that the jury will consider.

I highly doubt that you do have evidence , in fact I think
its impossible for you to have any evidence.
but lets do this.

and remember your the one on sciences side claiming that science can explain how life developed.

and an explanation is not a gathering of assumptions and
speculations.

also any possible explanation will require a exact result
the only changes would be the events or processes that lead up
to the result.

but were not talking about possible explanations because
you already have the purported evidence of the events that
lead up to the result.

and you claim that the events were observed or can be
observed and can be reproduced or duplicated as is required
by the scientific method that is currently maintained ,
because you and science make these claims you and science
must provide evidence that support these claims.

therefore you are also bringing witnesses into the court room.

you may be able to avoid any negative findings of the court
by buying the judge and jurors and the prosecutor and the defense.


but there is a crowd slowly forming outside the court house
and they will have the final say and will be the final
barrier to clear.









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Originally Posted By: Paul
biscuit ingredients could make their own biscuits because flour and water and
sugar and milk and ovens exist.

Hey, that is great. You need to patent that, I bet homemakers will latch onto it and you can make a fortune selling the secret.

FYI for non Americans (especially from the UK). In the US biscuits are a type of self rising roll made with baking powder rather than yeast. They are very good, but they definitely aren't British style biscuits, which we here call cookies.

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Many geologists said that continental drift was impossible, because continents could not plough through solid basaltic rock. Later they discovered that although that objection was correct, their conclusion was incorrect because the mechanism was something quite different.

I was brought up to believe that creation took place exactly as in Genesis. I thought a lot about this, and later believed that it made more sense to consider that creation was an on-going process; still going on today.

That was in my teens. I have moved a lot further since then, and have a more open minded attitude to religious beliefs of all kinds, including Atheism which is as much a belief system as any of the others.

Very little in life is certain, but one thing that is is that threads like this may raise some interesting issues, but they never reach a conclusion. Stick at it folks; there’s still “Rev’s” record to challenge. laugh


There never was nothing.
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Quote:
Ok, this will be my final post in this thread, unless you come up with some kind of an argument that actually makes sense


I agree biscuits do make sense.

they just dont make themselves.

but it would be nice. wink



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Quote:
Many geologists said that continental drift was impossible, because continents could not plough through solid basaltic rock. Later they discovered that although that objection was correct, their conclusion was incorrect because the mechanism was something quite different.


like scientist say that creation is impossible and creationist
say that creation is possible.

we certainly dont know for a fact which is correct.


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Originally Posted By: paul
"...to win a case you need evidence of some sort that the jury will consider."
"you should have proof of what you say."
===

"...and remember your the one on sciences side claiming that science can explain how life developed.

and an explanation is not a gathering of assumptions and speculations."
...so how do you define "an explanation." Paul, I think you're getting "explanation" and "proof" conflated in your postings.
===

You asked why (and how), not who; so I was answering the “Why would the elements develop into life" question.
Entropy is the answer. It's part of the "intelligent" design underlying this Creation.

If you define God as the Creator, then once you have a Creation such as this...
Life develops inexorably, given a sufficiently diverse environment. Recall that early Earth had a "reducing" atmosphere.

You don't need to define God as also creating living systems,
if your definition recognizes He designed the system to do that naturally.
===

Sciences, such as thermodynamics and physics and chemistry, are ways of revealing the design of the system.
We are the
eyes of our ancestors.

We are the universe, comprehending itself. We are (ultimately) the eyes of the elements.

...but if all your eyes saw of 'dissipative systems'
was about the rusting of iron, then you need to look further.
Search: dissipative systems Prigogine.

===


~ Life is just Nature's Process for Converting Light into Heat (Life is the most evolved of dissipative systems).


Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.
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Quote:
how do you define "an explanation." Paul


the structure of the processes involved.

play by play action

step 1 step 2 step 3 step 4
.... step 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,--> etc

until the processes have made / developed / built life.

even with every single scientist and all of the tools that science has acquired on the earth since the earth came into being and every elemental ingredient that comprises life science can not build the simplest form of life.


and that's without first having to create the
initial ingredients that start the process.

you may think that that type of an explanation is too strict.

but if you look around beyond its shell inside the human
cell you will find a billion macroscopic machines all performing intelligent functions.



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http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/...20&type=cta

I recall reading about Miller’s work in the 50s, remembering my reaction then provides some empathy with Paul’s possible reaction now.


There never was nothing.
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Quote:
remembering my reaction then


Im just being curious , what was your reaction then?


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Quote:
Im just being curious


No argument with that. smile

Quote:
what was your reaction then?


That's not the most comfortable idea I have ever come across.


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Originally Posted By: Bill S.
http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/...20&type=cta

I recall reading about Miller’s work in the 50s, remembering my reaction then provides some empathy with Paul’s possible reaction now.

Bill, I just recently figured out that this link you occasionally post for laboratoryequipment…&type=yadayada is not just some spam ad.
It is a link to a neat site, with relevant information, actually pertaining to the topic OP.

If you added a few quotes, from those neat stories, it might draw more interest.
If you're familiar with copyright laws, this is okay....
I enjoyed reading this, from your link, and hearing about one of my favorite topics.
Quote:
The first-ever analysis of some of Miller’s old samples has revealed another way that important molecules could have formed on early Earth.

An electric discharge experiment simulates early Earth conditions using relatively simple starting materials. The reaction is ignited by a spark, simulating lightning, which was likely very common on the early Earth.

"What we found were some of the same products of polymerization that we found in the original samples,” Parker says. “This corroborated the data that we collected from analyzing the original samples.”


While science often finds what it is looking for,
I never wondered what other chemicals that yellow goo must be comprised of.


From:
Originally Posted By: Library
Ecology of Humic Substances in Freshwaters: Determinants from Geochemistry to Ecological Niches
Steinberg, Christian; 2003, V, 440 p. 213 illus., ISBN 978-3-540-43922-6
Library of Congress Call #: QH541.5 .F7S725 2003

“…in the pioneering studies of Stanley L. Miller (1955) on the origin of life in the primitive reducing atmosphere 4 billion years ago, colored tarry substances (1) were present, however were not described or characterized in further detail since Miller focused on the amino acids to identify them as the missing biomolecules to prove the hypothesis….” p.36

...also:

“…HS [Humic Substances], or at least HS-like materials, also form in this experiment, as shown by UV and IR spectra…. According to their elemental composition, these materials are somewhere between humic acid precursors (HAP) and HA [humic acid].”

“Zeichmann (1994) sees the most important role of HS to be in chemical and biological evolution (Fig. 2.3). HS eliminate reactive radicals….
Thus, without HS …evolution would not be possible….”

“The discovery of HS formation in the primitive atmosphere has further far reaching consequences for the understanding of ecosystem functioning.” –page 36


Quote:
- page 37: “Once organisms have evolved, and through the formation of humus from dead biomass, the quality of HS becomes more diverse and its quantity greater. For organisms, the adaptive pressure rises.”

“We hypothesize that this chemical stress exerted …since the primitive Earth, is likely one major reason for the fact that the ‘defense’ systems are very similar in all organisms.”


"The HS are to be granted the role of an independent ecosystem component,
such as atmosphere, water, or light, since they come into being simultaneously with early life.

This means that living organisms have to adapt to humus or HS-like materials with which they come in contact from the very time they evolve."
~p.36/37 (2002, Steinberg; Ecology of Humic Substances....)

~ cool


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I am not sure this was meant to be a humorous thread but it is ... The old choice argument smile

How do oxygen and hydrogen make a choice to combine?
Why did life make a choice to come into existence?
Do I have a choice on fate or is it predestined by allah/god?
Given a bagel on the table do I have any choice but to eat it?

Time to eat bagel and contemplate.


I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
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Quote:
Given a bagel on the table do I have any choice but to eat it?


perhaps the bagel decided its own fate so that it could
become at least a part of life!


3/4 inch of dust build up on the moon in 4.527 billion years,LOL and QM is fantasy science.
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But the bagel at one time was part of life, because the grain and yeast it was made from were alive. Do you imagine that those grains of wheat and that yeast made the decision to sacrifice themselves to make your bagel? If you do that, then the very history of the bagel becomes inordinately complex. Having themselves been part of life, they pass through death to become a bagel which becomes part of you when you eat it. It's as if they were born again.


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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Humic Substances, or humus, may be the key....
Originally Posted By: Amaranth Rose II
It's as if they were born again.

http://faculty.yc.edu/ycfaculty/ags105/week08/soil_colloids/soil_colloids_print.html
(d) Fulvic Acid

After you’ve seen a picture of the organic molecules that comprise humus,
then you can see why, when dried out, humus turns into dust.

Of course in the soil, hydrated humus is bound with various ions,
salts, metals, and minerals; which are the components of ash.

The phrase, ‘Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,’ seems to accurately reflect the “Conservation of Matter” principle.
===

From humus we have come, and to humus we shall return.
~ wink


Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.
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Haha well done Paul and Rose.

There are so many great articles written about this topic and one of the matrix movies was almost entirely about it.

Now to add some science into this perhaps we can ask does anyone know how you can scientifically test if a choice is made and what assumptions underpin it.

That will get you as close as you can get to the OP answer in a scientific sense and will show the problem with the question as posed.

As it's fairly tough I will give a start point hint:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory

Last edited by Orac; 09/05/14 05:35 AM.

I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
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paul Offline OP
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A Rose and an Amaranth blossomed side by side in a garden, and the
Amaranth said to her neighbor, "How I envy you your beauty and your
sweet scent! No wonder you are such a universal favorite." But the
Rose replied with a shade of sadness in her voice, "Ah, my dear
friend, I bloom but for a time: my petals soon wither and fall, and
then I die. But your flowers never fade, even if they are cut; for
they are everlasting."


3/4 inch of dust build up on the moon in 4.527 billion years,LOL and QM is fantasy science.
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Amaranth leaves and seeds are also edible. The Amaranth has its claim to fame, as all its parts are edible.


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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Quote:
That will get you as close as you can get to the OP answer in a scientific sense......


Surely the OP question precludes a scientific answer by including the word "why".


There never was nothing.
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