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Old 31st December 2018, 06:00 PM   #121
The Great Zaganza
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Old 31st December 2018, 06:09 PM   #122
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Originally Posted by Ziggurat View Post
I haven't tried to derive percentages, but here's one source:

https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r...2-S!!PDF-E.pdf

Page 6 shows a plot of noise from several different sources at different frequencies, including cosmic background.
Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
Would you believe Universe Today?

https://www.universetoday.com/25560/...ang-tv-signal/

"when you are between channels on an analog television, the snow that you see on the screen is made up of interference from background signals that the antenna on your TV is picking up. Some of the “snow” is from other transmissions here on Earth, and some is from other radio emissions from space. Part of that interference – about 1% or less – comes from background radiation leftover from the Big Bang, called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The same is true for FM radios – when the radio is tuned to a frequency that is between stations, part of the hiss that you hear, called “white noise”, is leftover radiation from the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago."

Would you believe physics.org?

http://www.physics.org/featuredetail.asp?id=45

5. It's in the air around you - even in the room where you are now

It had absolutely nowhere to go since it was bottled up in the Universe, and the Universe, by definition, is all there is. Every cubic centimetre of space is currently being traversed by 300 photons from the big bang. Tune your TV between the stations and about 1% of the static on the screen is from the big bang fireball.




EDIT: BTW, "Every cubic centimetre of space is currently being traversed by 300 photons from the big bang." that is a very cool fact!
Thank you both for your links. I beleive they confirm some data I have in a book somewhere in a box (I moved recently).

But they don't seem to take into account a major source of noise in a receiver which is thermal noise generated in its front end. They seem to assume that all the static noise is coming from the outside which is what I think I'm disputing here.

If the snow on the screen looks about the same regardless of if the antenna is connected or not then I don't think the external contribution makes up such a large part of it. So we'd have to multiply the above 1 % by a factor less than 1, and my suspicion is that it's less than 1 by far.
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Old 31st December 2018, 06:24 PM   #123
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
It just comes down to the fact that there are more molecules in a breath of air than there are breaths of air in the atmosphere.

Say you have a box of tennis balls. You pull out a ball, then put it back in the box and stir. Then I come along and pull out a ball.

Chances are I've got a new ball.

But now let's say that they are ping-pong balls. You pull out a handful, then put it back in and stir. Then I pull out a handful.

If a handful contains five balls, but there are only 3 handfuls of balls in the box (15 balls), I've probably picked up one of your balls.

The total volume of ping-pong balls might be the same as the total volume of tennis balls, but it's the fact that there are more of them, and we mix them up in between, that means I'll probably take one that you'd touched.

Molecules in the air are really small, and they do get mixed up over time.
Yes I knew molecules are very small, but I never knew that the molecules in a breath exceeds the number of breaths in the atmosphere. Makes sense now.
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Old 31st December 2018, 06:31 PM   #124
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Originally Posted by TheGnome View Post
Thank you both for your links. I beleive they confirm some data I have in a book somewhere in a box (I moved recently).

But they don't seem to take into account a major source of noise in a receiver which is thermal noise generated in its front end. They seem to assume that all the static noise is coming from the outside which is what I think I'm disputing here.

If the snow on the screen looks about the same regardless of if the antenna is connected or not then I don't think the external contribution makes up such a large part of it. So we'd have to multiply the above 1 % by a factor less than 1, and my suspicion is that it's less than 1 by far.
IIRC, you were suppose to darken a channel (contrast etc.) that you were already receiving well so there was no discernible picture and just black (which really wasn't black on analog) and a certain amount of the random snow which is still visible is from the BB.

If you have any analog stations broadcasting in your area you can probably still do it. Its just that the digital converter is converting the picture to digital so technically it's a digital representation of a BB dot/pixel. But you can still pretend it's from the BB.
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Old 31st December 2018, 10:19 PM   #125
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Originally Posted by Mojo View Post
The Southern Hemisphere penguins were called “penguins” because they looked like the Northern Hemisphere ones.
I didn't know there were penguins in the northern hemisphere!
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Old 31st December 2018, 10:30 PM   #126
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Originally Posted by Elagabalus View Post
IIRC, you were suppose to darken a channel (contrast etc.) that you were already receiving well so there was no discernible picture and just black (which really wasn't black on analog) and a certain amount of the random snow which is still visible is from the BB.

If you have any analog stations broadcasting in your area you can probably still do it. Its just that the digital converter is converting the picture to digital so technically it's a digital representation of a BB dot/pixel. But you can still pretend it's from the BB.
I don't exactly get what you are saying but I think the discussion is futile anyhow. I don't expect a source to be presented that the noise is not dominated by thermal noise. And that was all I was hoping for I think.

I just have a gut feeling here which, as such, of course is highly suspect. But I also haven't seen any data that oppose it.
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Old 31st December 2018, 10:38 PM   #127
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
I didn't know there were penguins in the northern hemisphere!
facts are stranger than fiction, but in this case the two are not closely related genetically. Rather they are a product of convergent evolution.
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Old 31st December 2018, 11:39 PM   #128
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Originally Posted by Brainache View Post
Maybe I'm just nitpicking here, but when a cell reproduces itself it doesn't simply 'divide'... The original cell eventually dies, the new cell continues...
Incorrect. After cell division, there is no original cell and no new cell. They're the same, so neither can be identified as producing or being produced by the other. One mother-cell becomes two daughter-cells, no more, no less. Of course, either daughter can die if something deadly happens to it, but they're the same, so neither is inherently "the one that's about to die" or "the one that's supposed to live".

If that weren't true, then it would be impossible for multicellular organisms to grow.

Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
Although another wrinkles is just how much of an extreme outlier the Blue Whale is in size. Take it out of the equation and the next biggest whale, The North Pacific Right Whale, is only about 50-60 feet long and weighs in about 60 tonnes which does put it closer in scale to some of the very biggest dinosaurs
...and on the subject of size-outliers: Indricotherium (technically another name is supposed to be preferred but that one sounds stupid) was a mammal with a torso & legs about like those of an average sauropod and a bigger head... just a shorter tail & neck. And it's more closely related to a horse or rhinoceros than to an elephant.

Some of my favorite short bits of science are from "evo-devo" (evolution & development; how ontogeny & phylogeny contain & illustrate fragments of each other).
  • Lungs and swim bladders start as a patch of the esophagus, then that patch starts to dip out and away from the rest of the esophagus.
  • Your uppermost vertebra that's easily recognizable as such by the time you're born is actually the fourth one in line; the first three are the core blocks of your occipital, sphenoid, and ethmoid bones, which run in a line through the middle of your head below your brain. So in an embryological sense, your spine terminates right behind your nose & between your eyes, forms parts of your eye sockets, and contains some of your sinuses. Part of how we know this is by comparison with fish in which the brain is not enclosed at the back, the skull is mostly just a face with a few plates extending back from the sides & top, and those first few embryological vertebrae remain obviously vertebrae, running straight through to the face-mask, with the brain on top. This also makes it more clear that the brain is an enlargement & semi-fusion of the neural ganglia associated with those first three vertebrae.
  • If you've ever thought your hyoid bone looks like an echo of your lower jaw, there's a reason for that; not only are those two things developed from what was once a repeating series of identical parts, but in some eels that second thing also ends up as internal jaws, which bite and pull back to tear off pieces of what's being held in the first jaws. Because other parts from that same original repeating series end up (more radically reshaped & shrunken) as the bones of your inner ear, you use what were once fundamentally the same thing to both produce & modulate your own voice and hear others' voices.
  • Along with vertebrae, ribs, & pharyngeal arches (the things your lower jaw, hyoid, ear bones, & trachea cartilage rings came from), another thing that originally consisted of a series of repeated identical parts is our ancestral/fetal circulatory system, before parts of it started enlarging, twisting around, or fading away to create the heart & major vessels you have now. That was all just a central line and a series of arches/loops branching off from it at first, and it's still that or something closer to it in some fish. It's like we're modified from an original body plan that was segmented.
  • Did you ever hear us described as "bilaterally symmetrical", then look at some anatomical diagrams complete with organs that don't seem to fit that picture at all, and think "wait, that means we aren't really bilaterally symmetrical, so why do they say we are"? Well, the organs which seem to defy that description developed from your endoderm (the innermost of your 3 layers of tissue to start with), so you can eliminate the contradictions/exceptions here by just figuring that the rule is that your ectoderm and mesoderm are bilaterally symmetrical. (The heart is mesoderm, but it's just getting pushed around by endodermal parts near it.)
  • Starfish and their relatives start out bilaterally symmetrical as larvae, and the adult form develops from only the left half, which digests & absorbs the right half.
  • As is most easily visible in sharks, teeth grow in the same pattern as scales grow in scaled animals. And the earliest things to appear in fossils with a microscopic structure that looks distinctly like teeth, and not like bones or other kinds of scales, is an external covering which grew from the skin. So teeth in your mouth are a long-lost ancestor's original rock-hard armor, relocated, which is less of a stretch than you might think if you consider that gums are a type of skin anyway. This is probably also behind the fact that tooth-like bits are sometimes found on remnants of absorbed twins even when practically no other distinct part except hairs (another thing growing from skin) is identifiable.
  • I know now you're thinking, "If the structures we chew with are made from pieces of external armor, then what do arthropods make their chewing structures out of?". Answer: they make them out of legs.
  • More fun with comparing us to arthropods: our main nerve is in a dorsal location, and theirs is ventral; the biggest parts of our circulatory system (originally derived from a simple contracting vessel running along the body length parallel with the nerve and gut) are ventral, and theirs are dorsal. There's a single set of genes which lead to development of the nerve in both, and there's a single set of genes which lead to development of the primary circulatory vessel in both, but the set that's active in the dorsal region of embryos in one group is active in the ventral region of embryos in the other group. Conclusion: one of us is flipped upside-down, as if descending from an ancestor that swam on its back but just stuck that way long enough to adapt to that being its new right-side-up. (And it's us; we can tell because of related differences between us and some other deuterostomes.)
  • The same reversal also shows up in left-right asymmetry, which is controlled by a chain of chemical reactions called the Nodal Signalling Pathway. The trigger that sets the NSP off originally has to do with fluid flow controlled by spinning cilia. The direction of that spin is set by the asymmetrical shapes ("handedness") of the proteins it's made of. So if our organic molecules were flipped the other way around, our whole bodies would be.
  • More fun with comparing deuterostomes and protostomes: you've probably heard before about the digestive tract in both forming by sort of tunneling through the body so one opening is present before the other is, and it's the mouth in them but the anus in us. (Actually, I read once that in protostomes it's more like the single original opening pinches in from the sides to split into two, like a "0" turning into an "8", after which they migrate to opposite ends of the body, but either way, there's a difference.) But what we have in common is that the end where mesodermal cells first appear is the end that develops into the mouth. So it might not really matter, or at least might not have mattered at first, which end opens first or if they do it as one and then separate; development would then have been determined entirely by whichever end happens to get mesodermal cells first. If so, there would have once been a species in which some members had developed like protostomes and others had developed like deuterostomes, with no way to tell the difference.
  • Some tunicates have a pair of simple light-sensing patches of skin at the front near the mouth, clearly homologous with our eyes... and some have such spots randomly scattered all over their skin. I guess that would equate to the characters in Revelation with eyes all over.
  • The way the cells of your dermis create your epidermis is the same general kind of process by which trees create bark... and the same thing, oriented in the opposite direction, creates wood on the inside.
  • Did you ever hear it said that flowers are "modified leaves" and think that didn't sound possible because the ancestors would have needed to reproduce and leaves don't do that? You were right. What that idea came from was the fronds on fern plants; fronds have both functions, photosynthesis and reproduction, and at a glance they look like just leaves. So both flowers and the leaves on flowering plants are better described as modified fronds, and leaves are different from fronds because they've lost the reproductive function.
  • The basic life cycle among plants is the equivalent of us producing sperm/egg cells that grow into complete independent multicellular organisms with the genomes of a sperm/egg cell, which live separate from us for a while and wouldn't even be likely to resemble us much, then get together to produce something like us again for the following generation. In mosses, ferns, and some similar other groups, the two alternating halves of the cycle have so little resemblance that they were typically thought of as unrelated species until it was determined that one produces the other. This cycle is just disguised in the most easily visible lineages like flowering plants & conifers because one half of the cycle is so diminished; it's contained entirely in either the pistil or the pollen grain, like what you'd get if species that do have this kind of cycle were trying to imitate those of us that don't.
  • Back to vertebrates: lobe-finned fish, the group from which tetrapods evolved, include fish with more than four fins, the extras being located on the bottom of the tail or the top of the tail & back. The bones & muscles in those fins were originally the same as the ones in the four that evolved into our limbs, so they're anatomically equivalent to "tetrapods" with more than four limbs, like some versions of dragons.
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Old 31st December 2018, 11:49 PM   #129
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Prime numbers are always interesting. There is a set of numbers called Wilson Primes. Although there are probably an infinite number of Wilson Primes, only 3 have been discovered. They are 5, 13, and 563.
First, Wilson's Thereom: (P - 1)! + 1= x The x is divisible by P (a prime number). In other words x/P = a whole number.
Also, this only works for prime numbers.
For example: (7-1)! +1 = 721 and 721/7 = 103
But : (9-1)! +1 = 40,321 and 40,321/9 = 4,480.1111...

Only with Wilson Primes, you can do it twice. I mean, you can take the result and it is divisible by P.

So, (5-1)! + 1= 25 and 25/5 = 5 and 5/5 = 1
(13 - 1)! +1 = 479,001,601 and 479,001 601/13 = 36,846,277 and 36,846,277/13 = 2,834,329
563 is too big to write here.

It doesn't work for any other primes. For example:
(11-1)! + 1 = 3,628,801 and 3,628,801/11 = 329,891 But 329,891/11 = 29,990.0909...

Wilson Primes don't really serve any purpose, it's just cool that somebody found them.
And only 3 have been discovered 5, 13, 563. Also, they know that no other Wilson Primes exist below
20,000,000,000,000.

Here are links to the YouTube videos explaining Wilson Primes;

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eZUa5k_VIZg&t=35s

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AiplrfFB6h0&t=68s
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Old 1st January 2019, 12:05 AM   #130
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Old 1st January 2019, 12:05 AM   #131
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
I didn't know there were penguins in the northern hemisphere!
There still are.
(They’re still are?)
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Old 1st January 2019, 12:06 AM   #132
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Originally Posted by Delvo View Post
Incorrect. After cell division, there is no original cell and no new cell. They're the same, so neither can be identified as producing or being produced by the other.
And yet one cell was produced from the other. They aren't the same cell. They haven't "divided". One cell has reproduced a copy of itself.

Quote:
One mother-cell becomes two daughter-cells, no more, no less. Of course, either daughter can die if something deadly happens to it, but they're the same, so neither is inherently "the one that's about to die" or "the one that's supposed to live".
I never said anything about "the one that's supposed to live" or "the one that is supposed to die". All cells eventually die and none of them has been functioning continuously for 4.5 billion years, which was the original claim I was responding to.

Quote:
If that weren't true, then it would be impossible for multicellular organisms to grow.

...
I agree. I must have phrased things badly if you thought I meant that every time a cell reproduces itself it has to immediately die. It certainly wasn't what I meant.

I was simply pointing out that while there is a continuous chain of DNA replication going back billions of years to the origins of life on earth, this statement:
"You have been alive for more than 4.5 billion years, sort of. Literally every living cell in your body has been functioning continuously for all that time."

Is untrue.
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Old 1st January 2019, 04:33 AM   #133
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If I remember correctly.

You started your life in your grandmother’s womb.

Human females are born with all their ova which become the next generation so the ova that went on to form you was formed when your mother was formed in your grandmother’s womb.
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Old 1st January 2019, 06:42 AM   #134
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Originally Posted by Darat View Post
If I remember correctly.

You started your life in your grandmother’s womb.

Human females are born with all their ova which become the next generation so the ova that went on to form you was formed when your mother was formed in your grandmother’s womb.
Only if you believe that life begins when the egg is formed, which not even the most ardent anti-abortionist claims.

God, imagine if there were "anti-periodists".
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Old 1st January 2019, 07:04 AM   #135
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The volume of a sphere is 2/3 the volume of a cylinder of those dimensions. It works with a hemi-sphere too. Duh. Now I wonder if it works for any partial sphere?

I learned it in a machine shop, so it may only de true to a couple decimal places.
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Old 1st January 2019, 07:18 AM   #136
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Originally Posted by Brainache View Post
Maybe I'm just nitpicking here, but when a cell reproduces itself it doesn't simply 'divide'. Chromosomes duplicate themselves using molecules taken from the environment (ie: the food you eat). A new set of chromosomes made of new DNA copied from the previous chromosome's DNA goes off into a new cell. The original cell eventually dies, the new cell continues the process of taking in more food and producing copies of itself and then dying.
Which one is "the original" cell, and which one the "new" cell?

When the DNA replicates the original DNA splits into two strands, both of which replicate the other strand from molecules in the environment. So which is the original and which is new? I'd say both are the original.
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Old 1st January 2019, 07:25 AM   #137
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Old 1st January 2019, 08:23 AM   #138
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Originally Posted by Brainache View Post
And yet one cell was produced from the other. They aren't the same cell. They haven't "divided". One cell has reproduced a copy of itself.
I don't understand your point at all.
When a cell divides it splits in two. There is no original and copy. Both daughter cells are are on equal footing.
Originally Posted by Brainache View Post
I was simply pointing out that while there is a continuous chain of DNA replication going back billions of years to the origins of life on earth, this statement:
"You have been alive for more than 4.5 billion years, sort of. Literally every living cell in your body has been functioning continuously for all that time."

Is untrue.
That "continuous chain of DNA replication going back billions of years" all happened inside living cells. How is that not continuously alive?
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Old 1st January 2019, 08:46 AM   #139
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We're pretty much arguing a "Ship of Theseus" problem at this point.
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Old 1st January 2019, 09:09 AM   #140
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
We're pretty much arguing a "Ship of Theseus" problem at this point.
I don't think so, which is the original, or if the original is still the original after all it's parts have been replaced is beside the point.


The point is that it's alive before it split and both cells are alive afterwards and nowhere between was it dead.


The most basic parts of your metabolism has probably been continuously running since before there were any cells as such.
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Old 1st January 2019, 10:59 AM   #141
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I would like to see citation and elaboration for most of these facts.

Originally Posted by casebro View Post
The volume of a sphere is 2/3 the volume of a cylinder of those dimensions. It works with a hemi-sphere too. Duh. Now I wonder if it works for any partial sphere?

I learned it in a machine shop, so it may only de true to a couple decimal places.
I assume you mean the diameter of the sphere is equal to the diameter of the cylinder?

Last edited by ahhell; 1st January 2019 at 11:00 AM.
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Old 1st January 2019, 11:21 AM   #142
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The New Horizons spacecraft is today doing a flyby of a TNO nicknamed "Ultima Thule". We have very little idea what it looks like or, indeed, what it is. Soon we'll have a better idea.
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Old 1st January 2019, 11:42 AM   #143
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Originally Posted by Trebuchet View Post
The New Horizons spacecraft is today doing a flyby of a TNO nicknamed "Ultima Thule". We have very little idea what it looks like or, indeed, what it is. Soon we'll have a better idea.
https://www.space.com/42873-ultima-t...ons-photo.html

That soon enough for you?
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Old 1st January 2019, 11:51 AM   #144
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Originally Posted by Cheetah View Post
I don't think so, which is the original, or if the original is still the original after all it's parts have been replaced is beside the point.


The point is that it's alive before it split and both cells are alive afterwards and nowhere between was it dead.


The most basic parts of your metabolism has probably been continuously running since before there were any cells as such.
This is essentially absolutely accurate. Most cells represent the stuff of the parent cell. Sometimes the division is asymmetric and the two cells are not identical. But they both have guts from the parent, identical copies of the DNA (one strand each of the parents and one strand each newly synthesized) and both start metabolically active. In asymmetric stem cell reproduction one of the resulting cells continues to replicate and the other differentiates, but both cells start with guts from the parent.

As noted upthread gametes are put aside early in embryonic development and can be considered to be half stem cells that come together at fertilization.

By all criteria our cells have true continuity with those of the primordial ooze.

One might make a George Washington’s Ax argument, but that is true of the cell development in each of use from fertilized zygote to adult: virtually all of the molecules in the single cell zygote are replaced with new ones as we grow but the process is continuous.

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Old 1st January 2019, 11:58 AM   #145
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Originally Posted by ahhell View Post
I would like to see citation and elaboration for most of these facts.

I assume you mean the diameter of the sphere is equal to the diameter of the cylinder?
Yes, and the length of the cylinder is also the diameter of the sphere.
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Old 1st January 2019, 12:04 PM   #146
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Old 1st January 2019, 12:47 PM   #147
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How "Split Brain" Patients react and what it tells us about how our brains operates.
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Old 1st January 2019, 12:50 PM   #148
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Old 1st January 2019, 01:55 PM   #149
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Old 1st January 2019, 01:58 PM   #150
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Old 1st January 2019, 02:00 PM   #151
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Originally Posted by Red Baron Farms View Post
That doesn't look like any roof rack I've ever seen - made in Sweden or no!



ETA: nice hi-res photo!
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Old 1st January 2019, 03:10 PM   #152
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
Which one is "the original" cell, and which one the "new" cell?

When the DNA replicates the original DNA splits into two strands, both of which replicate the other strand from molecules in the environment. So which is the original and which is new? I'd say both are the original.
It is kind of irrelevant, because neither of them has been living continuously for 4.5 billion years. The process by which they reproduce has been operating for billions of years, but those cells in your body each live for a finite amount of time (a few years typically).

Originally Posted by Cheetah View Post
I don't understand your point at all.
When a cell divides it splits in two. There is no original and copy. Both daughter cells are are on equal footing.

That "continuous chain of DNA replication going back billions of years" all happened inside living cells. How is that not continuously alive?
Because a cell is more than the process of DNA replication. A cell contains more than just DNA: https://training.seer.cancer.gov/ana...structure.html
Originally Posted by Seer website
... A cell consists of three parts: the cell membrane, the nucleus, and, between the two, the cytoplasm. Within the cytoplasm lie intricate arrangements of fine fibers and hundreds or even thousands of miniscule but distinct structures called organelles.
Originally Posted by Giordano View Post
This is essentially absolutely accurate. Most cells represent the stuff of the parent cell. Sometimes the division is asymmetric and the two cells are not identical. But they both have guts from the parent, identical copies of the DNA (one strand each of the parents and one strand each newly synthesized) and both start metabolically active. In asymmetric stem cell reproduction one of the resulting cells continues to replicate and the other differentiates, but both cells start with guts from the parent.

As noted upthread gametes are put aside early in embryonic development and can be considered to be half stem cells that come together at fertilization.

By all criteria our cells have true continuity with those of the primordial ooze.

One might make a George Washington’s Ax argument, but that is true of the cell development in each of use from fertilized zygote to adult: virtually all of the molecules in the single cell zygote are replaced with new ones as we grow but the process is continuous.
The process is not the same as the cell it produces.

Deep in the past, the first self-replicating molecule was probably some kind of primitive form of RNA floating around its environment not enclosed by any membrane and copying itself as much as possible. Eventually there were enough of these things making copies of themselves with occasional errors that natural selection came into play and more efficient forms evolved. Membranes, respiration, colonies, complex cells, multi-cellular organisms etc etc... Throughout this process cells formed, divided and died over and over again evolving more efficient forms, complexity and different ways of exploiting their environments.

The cells now living in your body are not the same as that original primitive self-replicating RNA any more than your car is the same as the first palaeolithic hand-cart because they both have wheels.

The statement: "You have been alive for more than 4.5 billion years, sort of. Literally every living cell in your body has been functioning continuously for all that time." Remains untrue because a cell is more than a replicating strand of DNA.

Plus, I have grown a whole lot of new cells since I was a baby and all of the cells that made up my body when I was a baby have since died and been replaced. My current compliment of cells contain (among other things) copies of my specific DNA which didn't exist prior to my conception some time in 1963, a long time ago to be sure, but not 4.5 billion years...

Is this the ship of Theseus? Only if someone claimed that the USS Mount Whitney (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mount_Whitney_(LCC-20)) was the same as a viking long-ship because of a continual tradition of ship building since the middle ages.
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Old 1st January 2019, 04:05 PM   #153
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I've always been a little bit fascinated by how fortunate we are that water ice is one of the few common solids that is less dense that it's liquid phase.
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Old 1st January 2019, 04:28 PM   #154
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Originally Posted by Brainache View Post
It is kind of irrelevant, because neither of them has been living continuously for 4.5 billion years. The process by which they reproduce has been operating for billions of years, but those cells in your body each live for a finite amount of time (a few years typically).
Take a cell living now. It divides. Now there are two cells. Which one was living before the division and which one wasn't yet alive? In my view they are both the original, so both were living prior to division. It's certainly not the case that neither was.

Now one of those two cells divides again. Once again both of them were alive prior to that division.

If you can't differentiate between the two cells to determine that one is the original and one is the copy, then clearly both are the original. If both are the original then both were alive prior to division. But in that case both can trace their lives back for billions of years in this way.

This doesn't mean that cells don't die. There's always some chance that a particular cell will die before it divides again.
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Old 1st January 2019, 07:52 PM   #155
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When you pass through the Panama Canal from Pacific to Caribbean, you are traveling in a westerly direction.

Speaking of canals, Hood Canal in WA state isn't a canal. It's a fjord. (The tourism dept blew it with that name.)

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Old 1st January 2019, 08:10 PM   #156
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Originally Posted by Brainache View Post
a cell is more than the process of DNA replication. A cell contains more than just DNA: https://training.seer.cancer.gov/ana...structure.html
And all the rest of it gets retained through mitosis as well. It's 100% the same stuff as before in there.

Originally Posted by Brainache View Post
Is this the ship of Theseus? Only if someone claimed that the USS Mount Whitney (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mount_Whitney_(LCC-20)) was the same as a viking long-ship because of a continual tradition of ship building since the middle ages.
The analogy would only work if ships were produced by dismantling and reassembling the parts of previous ships, instead of with new raw materials.

Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
If you can't differentiate between the two cells to determine that one is the original and one is the copy, then clearly both are the original.
The opposing claim appears to be not that one of the two daughters is the original and the other is just a copy, but that both are just copies, and thus neither is original.
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Old 1st January 2019, 08:11 PM   #157
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Originally Posted by varwoche View Post
When you pass through the Panama Canal from Pacific to Caribbean, you are traveling in a westerly direction.
And one American state contains both the USA's easternmost points and its westernmost points.
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Old 1st January 2019, 08:22 PM   #158
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Originally Posted by Delvo View Post
And one American state contains both the USA's easternmost points and its westernmost points.
Maybe if you're talking only states but not if you include US territories.
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Old 1st January 2019, 08:23 PM   #159
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
Take a cell living now. It divides. Now there are two cells. Which one was living before the division and which one wasn't yet alive? In my view they are both the original, so both were living prior to division. It's certainly not the case that neither was.

Now one of those two cells divides again. Once again both of them were alive prior to that division.

If you can't differentiate between the two cells to determine that one is the original and one is the copy, then clearly both are the original. If both are the original then both were alive prior to division. But in that case both can trace their lives back for billions of years in this way.

This doesn't mean that cells don't die. There's always some chance that a particular cell will die before it divides again.
What has my inability to differentiate between two cells got to do with the fact that they are both more complex than a strand of DNA?

The first life on earth was not a cell. Cells didn't evolve until millions of years after life started. Cells continue to evolve as time goes on.

The cells which make up your body right now are made from food that you have consumed during your lifetime. None of them has existed as a living cell for 4.5 billion years.

Take one cell. Now trace its existence backwards in time. At some point you will see its beginning as it divided from its mother cell. Before then it didn't exist, its mother cell did. It contains copies of the mother cell's DNA, but it isn't the same as the mother cell, anymore than you are the same as your parents. You contain copies of their DNA, are you your parents? Are clones the same as the parent? What about identical twins, are they the same individual because they contain the same genetic material?

Cells are complex structures which exist for a time and then die. The process continues for billions of years, a great chain stretching back to the beginning of life on earth. Any one link in that chain is connected to all the others, but it also exists as its own thing. The latest link in the chain is ultimately connected to the first link, but it isn't the same as the first link.
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Old 1st January 2019, 09:04 PM   #160
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Originally Posted by Delvo View Post
And one American state contains both the USA's easternmost points and its westernmost points.
Hawaii?
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