Posted by Pasti on Dec 24, 2002 at 06:57
(64.10.126.76)
Re: Blue sky and back toward the main topic (Southern Man)
"Bingo!!! But it isn't me who is making the claim. I am only relating my understanding with backup support using links to Wikipedia, Adrian Popa of Hughes Research Laboratories, Brandon Allvin of the University of Arizona, and Daniel Chuof of Blue Sky Research as reported by EETimes. I am certainly no expert in this field but your equation is at odds with the one given on http://www.u.arizona.edu/~bcallvin/report.html"
I haven't got to the rest of your refs, and you can hold this against me if you like.But in the link that you provided, the equations are not at odds with what I posted. The first equation indeed shows a dependence on the size of the sphere(and a dependence on the electron radius!!!, whatever that is), but if you go to the last equation (Su/Sinc)is pretty much an extinction coefficient, and as you see, due to the averaging over a large volume(I would like to see how he averaged, though), any dependence of the size of the molecule has vanished. So, despite some numerical factors, the extinction coeff is not dependent on the size of the molecule.
The formula I posted is derived in a slightly more general case, and does not assume spherical molecules,just slight perturbations of the electromagnetic characteristics - electric and magnetic permeabilities - of the medium through which the wave travels.In the end,they both display the same independence on the size of the molecules.
"Agreed. It is not possible to say molecule X is N.nnn nanometers in diameter. It is possible however to say that molecule X is twice the size of molecule Y."
How?And I mean in a consistent manner.
"The more places we find life on earth, the LESS likely it is that we will find life everywhere in the universe. We continue to prove life is very hardy once started and so, when we don't find it immediately, it is because it must be because it has never gotten started."
I am aware of the statement about how easy/probable it is to find life in the universe based on arguments pertaining to Earth and some reasonable person(who would that be?8-)).But again,it is only a statement.
Personally I wish it were true, but it does not seem to be so.
I remember however, from about 20-25 years ago,there was a famous conference at Greenbanks regardind the existence of life in the Universe(Carl Sagan, Fred Hoyle,etc) and they came up with the famous Greenbanks equation,concluding that there should be about 150000000 (or maybe 150000, I don't remember exactly)planets in the universe capable of sustaining life. I never got to see the actual reasoning and how they got to the numrical values they used in the equation, but at the time, I remember, it caused a lot of waves and noise.
Re: Blue sky and back toward the main topic Southern Man 24/12 10:35
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