Paul Fuller <pgf### [at] optusnetcomau> wrote:
> Makes you wonder what life on a Kuiper Belt Object might be like.

  I don't think it would be physically possible for any kind of life to
form that far from the Sun.

  Chemicals need to react with each other, which means that there must be
some kind of solution where they can freely float or otherwise move.
This usually means some kind of liquid. Obviously some kind of energy is
also needed or else nothing will move.

  Water would be the liquid of choice because it has two very special
properties that basically no other liquid has: It's extremely common,
and its solid form has lessed density than its liquid form. Without these
two properties there would be no life on Earth (or anywhere else). (There
are probably also many other necessary properties, related to solubility
and how water reacts chemically with other compounds, but I do not know
enough about chemistry to say anything about that.)

  It's hard to imagine how life could form without water.

  Of course for the water to be any good, it has to be in liquid form.
If you are too far away from the Sun, all the water will be frozen solid.
This isn't a very fertile ground for life to form. There are little chemical
reactions going on, chemicals are not very free to move, and there are
probably a huge bunch of other properties necessary for *any* kind of
life to form which just aren't possible with deep-frozen ice.

  Now, perhaps if there was a liquid which remains an liquid form at those
temperatures, it could ostensibly happen. However, such liquids are both
extremely rare (iow. there wouldn't be enough of it in any given planet),
and their chemical properties are probably inadequate for any kind of
lifeforms. (Also, most liquids other than water get denser when they
solidify, which is a big problem.)

  (Conversely, a planet which is too *close* to the Sun cannot form life
either, this time because there's no water because it's all vaporized away.
It also makes forming a viable atmosphere quite hard, making it a very
hostile environment, where strong radiation hits directly the surface
of the planet, destroying any complex chemicals that might form by chance.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 08/01/2011 3:47 PM, Paul Fuller wrote:
> Thanks for that.
>
> I never was good with irony.


Oops! Sorry for that.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> This is a rather fair assumption
>>> to make because it's the result of a measurement 
> 
>> Actually, I believe einstein hypothesized that because Maxwell's equations 
>> (amongst others) had it down as a constant.
> 
>   What I meant is that if you were to deduce the Lorentz transformations
> now (eg. for an article on relativity), you can refer to experiments such
> as the famous Michelson-Morley experiment (which predates special relativity
> by almost 20 years). Even if Einstein had never even heard of such an
> experiment (which I really find hard to believe, but whatever), it doesn't
> really matter. It's still a fair assumption to make because of that and
> many other experiments.
> 

I wasn't really disagreeing. Just pointing out where the hypothesis came 
from that the evidence turned into a theory.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> like reversable instructions (the idea 
> being that its less costly to "undo" some things, in terms of heat and 
> power use, than to completely replicate an entire set of processes, when 
> only one step in the whole process differs),

FWIW, that's not at all what reversible computing is about. Reversible 
computing is a necessary prelude to quantum computing.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Warp wrote:
>   I have been thinking that perhaps trying to find a unifying model is
> futile because gravity and quantum mechanics are *not* related to each
> other.

I sometimes argue that perhaps the universe is not logically consistent, in 
exactly this sense, and I usually get shouted down. Maybe there isn't any 
mathematical way to describe everything in the universe, and depending on 
what you measure, you will *always* have errors due to the fundamental 
nature of the universe.

Granted, I often raise this in the context of "scientists have faith that 
this isn't the case", in the sense that it would be very unlikely a smart 
scientist would give up looking, ever, for that elusive theory that applies 
everywhere.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Warp wrote:
>   I think your view is biased. I don't see how "the story of Genesis is
> only an allegory, it did not happen literally" would discredit the entirety
> of christianity.

What did Jesus die for, if there is no original sin? Indeed, why should 
anyone worship YHVH if he *isn't* the creator?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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andrel wrote:
> On 7-1-2011 17:51, Invisible wrote:
> 
>> And it's /still/ not science. You know why? No testable predictions. Not
>> a single damned one.
> 
> So mathematics is not science?

No, math is not science. Science is finding what versions of math (i.e., 
axioms and productions and such) are isomorphic to reality.  There are 
tremendous swaths of math that have nothing to do with science.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   I think your view is biased. I don't see how "the story of Genesis is
> > only an allegory, it did not happen literally" would discredit the entirety
> > of christianity.

> What did Jesus die for, if there is no original sin? Indeed, why should 
> anyone worship YHVH if he *isn't* the creator?

  The question is literal interpretation vs. allegorical interpretation.
Just because something is written figuratively doesn't mean that it's not
describing a real event. The details may be fictitious, but it may still
be describing what happened.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> No, math is not science.

  Define "science" (in a way that excludes math).

  (And don't confuse "science" with "natural sciences", which is a subset.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> No, math is not science.
> 
>   Define "science" (in a way that excludes math).

Investigation into the workings of the real world. Including the real world 
of human behavior.  Math only applies to the real world to the extent it's 
isomorphic to reality. It's trivial to make up mathematical systems 
completely unlike anything in reality.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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