JoeSchmuckatelli

Throwback to middle school science question about microscope use: I sent the kids to the nearby creek to gather water samples intending to show them what kind of critters live in the water. I put a drop on a slide and covered it with a glass sheet... And then nothing. We did not find anything interesting. This contrasts with my 35 year old memories of doing this in school - where we found lots of critters. Am I missing a step? Do I need some kind of contrast added to the drop? Anyone know off hand or remember how to do this?

That may be true - but if you recall, RNA works with DNA. They're kind of a feature of the same system There is a possibility that my view is 'modern-centric' as I'm certain that life codes for luck currently. However, for a very long time life seemed to code for size, and some almost impossibly large creatures stomped around the planet with exceptional success. I presume that life also coded for luck during the period - but it may have been less important than sheer size during the age of dinosaurs... And then, abruptly, those that were lucky survived the unexpected catastrophe to bring in the modern age

Not particularly... I wrote that life codes for luck Smarts allows the critter to tip the scales - in other words to be more efficient than other competing critters and thus survive and thrive Yup

Eye roll. (grin)

Welcome to the 'slow news week' phenomenon

I'm not so sure. Life seems to code for Luck. Every hunter knows this. I think it's probably inevitable that any place that supports life long enough ends up with an efficient, intelligent species walking about. Reason being - if you are smart, you can tip the scales of luck just enough to matter... And given time, that matters a lot.

Ummmm.... Please list examples of living organisms that have no DNA, especially anything cellular and able to reproduce. Thanks Oh - sorry to confuse. No, I don't want to eat any foreign sentient - but any space-cow or other non-sentient should be fair game. Antares IV isn't going to be any fun if the only thing we can eat are pigs and chickens imported from Earth. I want to be able to hunt the fabled bugblatter beast and share its steaks with my friends... Don't you?

Wouldn't we be immune to alien life supporting planet's viruses if not DNA based? (also - if they're not DNA based... Wouldn't they be immune from us eating them?) OTOH the common cold on Antares IV could be a flesh eating bone jellying disease in humans

Halon too? It's what we used for military applications. Breaks the fire triangle. Don't know how it would work with something that large and open air... But maybe?

Juno is cool. Looking forward to a new 'National Geographic' special on its discoveries.

My understanding is that it's going to have 'seasons' where parts of the sky are not available for viewing. But over a year it should be able to cover everything

Really is.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-cop26-beijings-coal-addiction-key-climate-summit-rcna3277 Couple of interesting lines in the article that explicate spin "And while China is the world’s No. 1 carbon dioxide emitter, it isn’t even in the top 40 when those emissions are broken down per person. The worst large countries in terms of pollution per capita are Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada and the U.S. Many international experts say there is also an inherent unfairness in global emissions calculations, which are based on what countries produce rather than what they consume. Put simply, the U.S. and others outsource much of their cheap and dirty manufacturing to China, allowing Americans to buy iPhones and Nike sneakers without taking responsibility for the carbon... "

D'oh!

If I were a betting man, I would say yes. Merely because of the efficiency, flexibility and redundancy. Like water, life tends to take the path of least resistance and then fill in all the nooks and crannies DNA is a fundamentally simple system that can create complex things - why do it any other way?

There have been several discussions about this in the past year - consensus is that space mining is for the space economy and just bringing raw ores to the surface isn't worth it.

I wasn't making that comparison. My point is that every nation views the issue through different lenses. Some might say that Europe and America promoting ACC and calling for the developing countries to cut emissions equates to trying to slow their development and preserve the status quo. (Forcing them to skip the intermediate, cheap and effective use of coal and fossil fuels in favor of buying more expensive, non-native low pollution technology similarly keeps them as client states). External pressure to places like India and China will not be effective. Any more than trying to get Europe and the UN to pressure the US. There are too many benefits to living in an industrial society, where so many more people than any other time in history can enjoy 'plenty' that no rational nation will ever forego those benefits. It's when the people want change and say they are willing to take a different approach, that they have a competing rational interest to merely 'cheap and effective' that change will occur.

They do have ATMs where you can get actual gold in lieu of cash.

That's actually smart - place with no lawsuit friendly laws like the US, oil rich playboys hoping to impress friends and media control. Plus deniability.

This touches on some of the arguments I made back at the start of this thread - when I objected to the 'sky is falling' alarmisms used by some people. There are some really good things we can do, simple things, like pointing to air quality. Things that people will respond to: things that are real, immediate and easily understood... not esoteric and with a range of possible outcomes from unpleasant to DeathStar. Tell China they have to stop industrialization because they are contributing to global climate change and you get ignored. Let the Chinese people get sick of worse than 70s LA smog and demand clean air for themselves and their children... (The easiest fix is less reliance on coal... meaning more modernization and more prestige...) And zwoop - we are moving in the right direction. It's like some of the consumer side demands in the US resulting in eliminating or reducing DDT, PCBs, BP-A, freon, etc. Realistic talk and education about consequences is powerful.

That's the point of the question I posed above. How fast did DDT affect life, vs how fast do you really expect anthropogenic climate change to adversely affect us on a species wide scale? Chemicals are decades... climate is not.

That's one of the reasons I love the study of extremophiles. This entire planet is infested with life; from the deepest oceans and caves to the thinnest parts of the atmosphere. Panspermia seems entirely probable given the tenacity and ubiquity of life on this wet rock.

I choose my words carefully! Swearing Is Actually a Sign of More Intelligence - Not Less - Say Scientists (sciencealert.com)

Frequency of stronger storms is, indeed, up these last years. Number of storms, not so much - but yes, larger storms. These, while destructive, are point-events. Both in time and space. The storm that hits Houston does not affect Miami. The one that hits Miami, leaves New York high and dry. But to say that Miami will be subsumed by rising seas in any reasonable time-span is exceedingly unlikely. This is a different argument from why I'm wanting a less polluted world; the ubiquity of plastics means that we are running a completely uncontrolled experiment on ourselves with no way to opt out. Or - to put it in a different frame: we stopped using DDT because, despite its being fantastic at killing the bugs that were eating our crops and giving us diseases, it was getting into the food chain and killing off top predators, like raptors (California Condor, Bald Eagle, etc.). Yet we are dumping tons and tons of crap into the water (bottom of the food chain) and all those plankton (see article I referenced) scooping up microplastics are then being eaten by the things we eat. Guess what happens when all that endocrine and hormonal stuff hits us -- because that's about all we can do is guess, given the experiment is uncontrolled. Our kids and their kids won't appreciate us keeping this up, just because a bag of chips is cheaper and easier than a glass jar of chips. IKR - what will we do when 10 days of power-outage means we lose touch with the Kardashians!

liquid expands when it freezes.