Re: Hands and brains

[T.L.G.vanderLinden@student.utwente.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

To Kevin:

>Even if we can keep such foods, my carrots example shows that it's 
>cheaper in both mass and space to grow many foods rather than carry them .

Yes, I had not forgotten that :)

>>In a world without photosyntisis the non-oxegen forms could still dominate.
>
>you could have photosynthesis, without having oxygen.  in our system, 
>plants break down water into hydrogen and oxygen, the hydrogen is tacked 
>onto a CO2 subunit, and then built up into carbo-hydrates.  It is no 
>large stretch of the imagination to envision a system where the [Plants] 
>break down H2S and release S2 into the atmosphere tacking the hydrogen 
>onto a CO2 etc etc

Yes, I almost assumed directly that photosynthesis was used as we know it best.

6H20 + 6CO2 + energy --> C6H12O6 + 6O2

6H2S + 6CO2 + energy --> X + 6S2    where X=C6H12S6 ?

To break down H20 takes much more energy than needed for H2S.
2.86/0.201=14.2 times more to be exact. But the other way around: Organisms
using S2 get much less energy while using it as an oxidator.
Also I'm not sure what X should be, C6H12S6 probably doesn't exist. Maybe
all Sulphur is formed to S2 while leaving CnHn which could react to S2 but
how well?
So to be short S2 levels should be 14 times higher than oxigen levels or the
organisms must have bigger "lungs". Finally, I'm not sure about the
distribution of chemicals in planets, but often there is a lot of reacted
oxigen present (SO2 CO2 H2SO4 etc.) When oxigen is present it will react to
the S2 and that means again a loss of energy per Sulphur-atom.

>Kevin speaks:
>chauvinist -- one who has a prefrence for a particular group of which he 
>is a member.  applied to gender, to would mean a man who thought that it 
>is better to be a man than a woman, not really one who thinks that men 
>are better than women, just one who thinks it is better to be a man.  It 
>is a milder form of racism.

I don't think that is what Kelly means, I figured it meant something like
some one who likes to cut off fingers and limbs, but as said before I can't
find a dictionary to confirm that.

>> About Dolphins, they are a species that went back to the sea after living on
>> land, they are also air-breathing. So that may explain some of the size of
>> the brain.
>> You said proportionally, but for intelligence only the absolute size is
>> impotant. Besides that, dolphins are almost the same size we are. So if they
>> have big brains, they have to use them somehow otherwise it would be a bad
>> evolutionary design which is unlikely. I really wonder what a "fish" could
>
>there is some evidence that dolphins devote a large portion of their 
>brains to sonar image processing.  and perhaps even language.  as to 
>absolute size, that is not true.

I'm not sure, what you mean regarding absolute size of the brain. To prove
that the absolute size doesn't matter, you say that prairy dogs with a lot
smaller brain than ours are less smart than we are. To me this seems like
prove for the opposite: A certain absolute size is needed to become
intelligent the way we know it.

By the way, I saw a serie on the television where some other animals did
exactly the same. I'm not sure how these animals were called, but they lived
in hills and always stood on their back legs looking being on watch.

Timothy

==========================================================================

>in fact, I would say that _any_ carbon based life could be killed with 
>the proper chemicals (and leave us unharmed,) the Question is how long 
>would it take for us to find the proper chemicals?

I also never doubted that, neither did Kelly, but we all don't know for sure
what it takes to kill them. What a goal... we go to a planet and first thing
we do is try to kill the live that's living there.

>Kevin (to whom 1E18 Watts of maser energy sounds really good right now)

What is it that are you engineering? 1E18 still sounds awfull to me.

Tim

P.S. Quantum physics is still coming...