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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> What, you mean despite the minor detail that DNA molecules slowly
>> decompose into simpler molecules and we're talking about animals that
>> lived 70,000,000 years ago? :-P
>
> Yep.
Riiiight. Oh well, please, don't let the laws of thermodymanics bother
you... ;-)
>> Regardless, I doubt we'll be reanimating any long-dead animals any
>> time soon.
>
> Nope, likely not. Altho I wouldn't bet my life on it... :-)
That's what the scientists are doing, isn't it? (If JP is anything to go
by...!) ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> What, you mean despite the minor detail that DNA molecules slowly
>>> decompose into simpler molecules and we're talking about animals that
>>> lived 70,000,000 years ago? :-P
>>
>> Yep.
>
> Riiiight. Oh well, please, don't let the laws of thermodymanics bother
> you... ;-)
>
Well, to be perfectly clear decomp requires either a) enough heat to
break the molecular bonds of a material, or b) chemical reactions,
usually microbial. If the conditions that preserve something doesn't
produce the former, and the later is suspended or halted, then you don't
get as "fast" a decomp. Its.. like the difference between sticking an
book on a shelf for 500 years, or in a sealed glass case, with an inert
gas. The former is going to disintegrate at a rate that varies a great
deal on humidity, temperature, and if anything touches it at all, the
later, might last a billion years, presuming the seal never fails.
However, "some" of the legibility, structure, etc. will fail, so you get
a very fragile, and possibly partly damaged, copy when its all over.
That said, there is also the matter that "some" DNA is more resistant to
that erosion too, so lasts longer (in fact, one entire species, called
water bears, could conceivably survive thousands, or maybe even
millions, of years, in extreme dry, cold, or vacuum, and come back to
life when the conditions allow (they don't really know how long the
things "can" survive in a dormant state, but some revived in like... 200
year old moss, or something). This is because the molecular bonds, sans
anything to "actively" disrupt them, will remain "sort of" intact, and
its possible for some configurations to be so stable, even in a
multi-cell organism, so as to come close to making them indestructible,
at least within a survivable range of conditions. And, finally, its
possible from "some" structure to maybe be preserves, even if some
replacement happens, in which case, since the replacement is likely to
be a chemical process itself, as long as "most" of the structure is
intact, you might be able to predict what was replaced, based on simple
chemical rules.
All of which says only that you can possibly recover scattered fragments
from say 5% of the animal's DNA? But, its **still** way more than
thought possible, and enough to make "some" comparisons. The question
comes down to, if 5% survived, is that the only 5% that "could", and if
not, could other 5% amounts survive in other samples, eventually
resulting in a 70-80% recovery, or some such. An amount that "may" be
sufficient to reconstitute the original pattern (or close enough).
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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null> wrote: