DigitalDingo

A âfiery meteorâ doesnât turn into apes right away. And just to point it out: life is not believed to have come on a rock â more likely it came in a comet. Comets are also called âdirty snowballsâ which is very appropriate. Comets are a combination of dirt and ice and it is not at all strange to believe that bacteria could have survived in the core of such a comet.At the time when Earth is supposed to have been hit by such a comet there was no atmosphere â it came along with the water! So before there was water there was no atmosphere. As there was no atmosphere the comet didnât evaporate like meteors do nowadays. The comet would crash down into the Earth and the impact made the ice melt and the bacteria to be released. The bacteria would then multiply and slowly new molecules were made by these bacteria resulting in water. And with the water came the atmosphere. I donât know the exact method used by these bacteria, but many bacteria and algae today make the same process so it is well known. Maybe a wise biologist could explain it⌠It has actually been proposed to send some of these bacteria to Mars and within 100,000 years they would have turned the red planet into a new Earth we could inhabit. When the water first was created the bacteria began to evolve into single-celled creatures and over time these became more complicated multi-celled creatures. This process continued for many hundred million years and small jellyfishes began to appear. The process went further and created fishes, amphibians, reptiles and in the end mammals. Small mammals evolved into bigger ones ending up with the apes. The evolution of apes into humans took a very long time. You should be aware that we donât descend from the apes that live on our planet today. Rather apes and humans have a common ancestor. Both apes and humans have evolved since that time depending on where each species lived. The apes lived in the jungle. Therefore it was an advantage to have long strong arms. As they rarely would walk on the ground they hadnât much use for running â ergo they didnât develop a good running technique. The humans on the other hand would live at the steppes and wide open spaces. It was therefore an advantage to stand up straight and in that way be able to see enemies from a longer distance. The price was that we became slow runners. Humans didnât need long strong arms to climb trees so over time the arms would get smaller. After several million years the humans and the apes would be so different that they were considered two different species. I think Iâve already answered that question. However youâll need someone else to explain to you the right biological and chemical reactions that happen inside the bacteria. Else Iâm sure you can find the answers somewhere on the internet. Remember Google is your friend!

I definitely don’t think Nessie is real. At first, there has never been a single good shot of it. Never! There has never been found anything that could prove that there’s something in that lake.The lake has been searched a million times, and there has never been found a sign of Nessie. Radio scans, cameras, infrared cameras – nothing has ever found a trace of the creatures.Yes, somebody say they have recordings of it, but you can’t see anything on these videos and pictures. They could just as well have been shot in China for that matter!In my opinion Loch Ness is far to small to be able to contain any creature as big as Nessie is said to be. The creature would starve to death in a few months because there simply aren’t enough foot in that lake for a “dinosaur”.If Nessie was a small fish I wouldn’t be surprised. It is very likely that there’re undiscovered species of i.e. fish in that lake. But they would be small, not as big as Nessie.What I think Nessie is is a history made by the locals. It could be because there once were some strange sounds coming from the lake. Or it could be a “ghost” the locals would blame when something went wrong.But most likely it is a story made to make the place more interesting. The local society is practically living of tourists there! So Nessie has made them famous, exactly like the inventors had in mind!

Thatâs the whole point in the evolution! You lose abilities and you gain abilities.For some reason the apes (that later would become humans) settled in the savannahs and vast plains instead of in the jungle and the forest. Out here they couldnât use their ability to climb trees, so over time they lost that ability. They didnât practise it, so it was forgotten so to say. Instead, out in the vast plains it was really useful to be able to see far away. So over time the apes began to walk on the hind legs, but the price was that they couldnât run so fast. But they had gained a very important ability; they could spot enemies from far distances. Yes, the apes would have been there in the first place. And before them the dinosaurs. And before them the amphibians. And before them the single celled creatures â and so on. So every creature on Earth has evolved from single celled creatures! People didnât just appear on Earth like you say. That process took billions of years! It all started out with small bacteria. Now, nobody knows how life began in the first place. One theory is, has all the fundamental atoms and molecules were on Earth already and just by âan accidentâ some of these molecules formed the first life together. Another theory is, that life came from space. Microbes or bacteria came travelling on a comet. They would probably âhibernateâ in some water ice in the comets core. When the comet crashed into the Earth the micro organisms were âwakenedâ. If this is true, then weâre actually aliens! Cool! These are just a few theories and there are many more of those. To me it is seems very logical that we evolved from microbes instead of some supreme power created us.

Actually computers that learn by their own mistakes have worked for some years now. Especially I remember a computer, which was running a “baby program”. The computer could form its own messages and communicate with the scientists, who built it. The program was designed so that it would evolve slowly, pretty much like a human baby. It started out by putting words together randomly, but slowly it learned how to make childish sentences. I psychologist with speciality in children were given a print of the computer’s conversation with one of the scientists. The psychologist said that it looked like a perfectly normal child at about five years old. But it is quite new to me that robots can build themselves and learn from their mistakes. This is actually quite cool! And no, I don’t believe the robots ever will be able to take the power from us humans. I’m sure they could do it if they were allowed to, but scientists will always make it possible to turn them off if something should happen.

Hmm… I have heard a lot about the new CS2, but I can’t really figure out where the revolution lies. Of course there are the new Vanishing Point and the other features some of you have mentioned. But is it really that much better that CS?I’m using CS now and then and I’m really amazed by its features. So is it really worth spending $500 on CS2?

I fully agree with many people here. My first thought when I heard about this sort of technology was that – in my point of view – would be extremely easy to copy. Think about the police investigating a murder for example. All the police have to do is to find some fingerprints and then find the suspect. If the fingerprints match the suspect’s the case is almost closed. It is so easy to find a good fingerprint. Also think about this: you are in a shop and you accidentally touch a surface made of glass for instance. Somebody, maybe the owner, could later find this fingerprint, copy it and then all he has to do is to try to get access to every bank in the town. Eventually he’ll find your bank and be able to steal your money. Also somebody has mentioned that it would give some problems if your finger got wounded one way or another. It would probably mean that you should get a new “credit card” i.e. get your new fingerprint scanned into the system. And before you could do that, you would have to prove that it really is you. In my opinion: a lot of trouble. Now I a better technology probably would be scanning of the eyes. Again you’ll have the same problem if your eye got damaged. But it would be more secure, because it is so much more difficult to copy an eye than copying a fingerprint.

Have you thought about the fact, that dragons look suspiciously much like dinosaurs? Theyâve just got a pair of wings and have the ability to burn things down just by their breath. The âfire abilityâ could very well be some sort of folklore. I mean, you canât proof the fire breath, unless you find a living dragon. And if we look at it in a biological way the dragon would get severe burns if it was flying around spitting fire at everything. Now, if you find a dinosaur with a pair of wings, it would probably (at least in the press!) be recognized as a dragon. But until somebody finds this creature or a fossil, the creature remains a myth.

As I see it dragons have never existed. When you say, that ancient people reports sightings of dragons I think they mean a dinosaur.But not a living dinosaur! What they saw were the fossils of dinosaurs. They probably saw enormous skeletons – skulls at the size of men. And they told these things to the people in the village they lived in. Over time these stories had travelled a long way and as we know from today’s world, the stories gets better and better the more people telling it.Someone probably said that they were still alive, then somebody said they could fly etc. And in a few hundreds years they were written into the myths.At least, that’s my opinion.

Exactly! And even though several people (I think) have mentioned Drakeâs Equation there are still a lot of people who donât want to believe in extraterrestrial life. I know that the equation requires that you believe that we are actually placed in a universe â and not in the centre of some dome⌠And I think most people here believe in the universe⌠But instead of saying âThere canât be any aliens because God only created us humansâ letâs hear some arguments! So far I havenât heard any good arguments for us being the only life forms in space.

Iâve tried to get this to work â but⌠I have two problems. The first is in this script: current=document.getElementById("index");  function change( item )  {   element=document.getElementById(item);  current.style.display="none";  element.style.display="block";  current = element;  }What should I put instead of âitemâ? Should I write âdivâ or something like that? Also, I canât really this script to work: <span onclick="change('guestbook');">Guestbook</span> The âbuttonâ shows up as plain text. Iâve tried looking for reference on different coding sites, but I canât find the answer. Can you help me?

But donât you think we would have heard more about such a discovery if it proved modern science wrong? To me this is totally unrealistic. Youâre right about the fact that we canât prove anything in science â we can observe our world and say âit must be like thatâ. So youâre right when you say that it is possible that this conservation of energy doesnât exist. But I would still say that we would have seen the headlines everywhere if this experiment rejected the theory of conservation of energy.

This definitely sounds great! B)To be able to grow plants and then burn them to produce electricity is a very welcome “invention”. Do you know how much electricity they produce? I doubt it is much… But hey, everything is better than oil and coal!Though we’ll probably see the same effects this time as always: big oil companies trying to keep this product out of the market. They did it with many of the hydrogen machines and they’ll probably do the same here. So let’s us just hope, that this will not happen here. I hope this will change many energy-producing methods today and be an energy source that will be taken seriously. Great news!

Hmm... Iâve played a little with these codes, but I just canât figure out where to put them. Itâs especially the JavaScript part I have troubles with. And do you mean, that I should put all these codes â and the all the pages â in the same file? Maybe you could put your codes together so I can see where to put them in my own file. Maybe I should also tell you, that the layout I attached to this thread is no longer the one Iâm working with. If it could help you, you can find my site at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ and see the source code. And thanks for helping me here!

Thanks for this informative post! I have only one question, which I can’t find any answer to anywhere. Why don’t I get credits for posting in certain forums like Politics & Economics (in the Life Talk forum)? I definitely think it contributes to the information base of this site!I don’t think it is fair not to get credits for posting in these forums. I mean, there’re lots of interesting threads there and then you don’t get credits for keeping up the standard?Maybe I can get an answer here?

You're right, I should have thought of that with the aging... But I still don't agree with you saying "We can get anywhere as fast as we would like." The theory of relativity forbids that - which you fully agree with later... Are you sure of this? I could have sworn that many scientists saw the tachyons as a possible solution to many observations, including the accelerating expansion of our universe. But nevertheless in 1973 Philip Crough and Roger Clay fell over an interesting observation using a large particle detector. They saw what some expects to be a superluminal particle (a particle that travels faster than light). This result has never been reproduced so we canât make any conclusions upon that. My intension was only to show, that some people still believe in these particles. Can I hear somebody say: â1973? Thatâs a ****ing long time ago!â? It is. But as recently as in 1996 the scientist Erasmo Recami came with the conclusion, that it actually is possible for tachyons to have real mass. So I still believe scientists are taking this particle seriously.