Astronomy, physics, archaea, evolution, Bible Proof, life, microbiology, psychology, debunking science, think stuff

THINK STUFF

Views on just about anything from a totally different perspective than the usual political correctness. Conservative. Definitely not passive.



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Tuesday, February 22, 2005

SOUNDS OF SCI(L)ENCE

Some pics are thumbs. You know the routine. LOL.

If ANYONE read the several previous posts here, you will understand that from my perspective, this is the most totally ridiculous statement from *science* that I have heard since they declared they had *found* a piece of *lost* universe...and that ain't been that long ago.

Who the heck lost it, and how could they find it if it was lost? Isn't there even room in their earthworm-like tunnels to admit it wasn't *lost* just because THEY didn't see it???
Every single building block, the in-progress growth of a world, is on Titan and every other *void of life* body they have set their sights on, yet they absolutely refuse to consider that such things are extremely obvious now, and have been proven right here in ancient, (very ancient,) times past.
I have previously asked the question, will *science* recognize life even if it does not conform to what we are at this very moment in time. The answer, it seems, is emphatically NO.
One has to wonder what they are so afraid of since something is most assuredly out-thinking them and has far out-distanced the arbitrary contraints man has placed on their own ability to think beyond themselves.
This illogical fear can not possibly be good for our far future and might severely limit our horizons. However, this might actually be a good thing in the long run for the universe at large. I wouldn't want these critters to ever believe they could possibly be *in charge* of anything because everything I've heard from this community of Lilliputians is bordering on insanity, i.e., life exists but it cannot exist, therefore we will ignore it.

Holy Lord, people!!!


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Latest Word from SCIENCE


Feb. 18, 2005, 11:13PM

Saturn moon had potential for life

By PAUL RECER


Associated Press


WASHINGTON - Data from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft suggest that Titan, a moon of Saturn, is a world with the potential of life that was frozen in its youth, prevented by deep cold from ever developing into a livelier place.



"Titan is the Peter Pan of our solar system. It's a little world that never grew up," said Tobias Owen of the University of Hawaii, a member of an international team monitoring the findings of the Huygens spacecraft on Titan's surface.


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Oh yeah??? Once WE were a little world that hadn't *grown up.* But, oh, my, look at us now. Though man as a whole might be regressing back to before the stone age, some of us think the REALITIES for life in any, and every, form isn't simply possible, but probable. To think otherwise is to admit to bordering on the heighth of stupidity and we should NEVER have these grunge brains in charge of any *new* frontier.


They don't even understand the planet we inhabit. How in G-d's Name are they going to understand worlds so spectacularly different from ours, and yet so spectacularly the same if they can't even bring themselves to admit what should be obvious to a child. Of course, small children haven't yet been taught by these creeps that G-d is impossible...yet.


THIS IS HOW IT STARTED:

Titan is 'shockingly Earth-like'29 January 2005


Stephen Battersby


So says a planetary scientist, amazed by data sent back by the Huygens probe after landing on Saturn's giant moon-


"TITAN is shockingly Earth-like." So says planetary scientist Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, Texas, who has been amazed by data sent back by the Huygens probe, which landed on Titan earlier this month. "These could have been pictures from an alien probe landing along the Florida gulf coast."


Titan is turning out to be a world in which alien materials form eerily Earth-like landscapes, as misfit streams of methane flow through rugged hills of ice. Even the mud appears familiar.

By combining different views from Huygens's descent, the camera team led by Marty Tomasko of the University of Arizona has been able to produce 3D images of the moon's surface. They show a ridge system with a peak 100 metres high. "These are water-ice ridges washed off by rainfall," Tomasko says.



This composite was produced from images returned January 14, 2005, by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. It shows the boundary between the lighter-colored uplifted terrain, marked with what appear to be drainage channels, and darker lower areas.
*(The lights, they glow.)



A single image from the Huygens Descent Imager/ Spectral Radiometer (DISR) instrument of a dark plain area on Titan, seen during descent to the landing site, that indicates flow around bright 'islands'. The areas below and above the bright islands may be at different elevations.



This image was returned January 14, 2005, by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. This is the colored view, following processing to add reflection spectra data, and gives a better indication of the actual color of the surface.


Initially thought to be rocks or ice blocks, they are more pebble-sized. The two rock-like objects just below the middle of the image are about 15 centimeters (about 6 inches) (left) and 4 centimeters (about 1.5 inches) (center) across respectively, at a distance of about 85 centimeters (about 33 inches) from Huygens. The surface is darker than originally expected, consisting of a mixture of water and hydrocarbon ice. There is also evidence of erosion at the base of these objects, indicating possible fluvial activity.


Titan Weather



Evidence of changing weather patterns in the skies over Titan’s southern region are revealed in these false color images obtained by the Cassini spacecraft's visual infrared mapping spectrometer over two recent flybys of this largest of Saturn's satellites. In the first image (left), obtained on the Oct, 26, 2004 Titan flyby, from a distance of some 200,000 kilometers (124,300 miles), Titan’s skies are cloud-free, except for a patch of clouds observed over the south pole near the bottom of the image. In contrast, the image on the right shows a recent view of this same area of Titan obtained seven weeks later on the second close Titan flyby on Dec. 13, 2004, from a distance of 225,000 kilometers (139,800 miles). This image clearly shows that several extensive patches of clouds have formed over temperate latitudes. The appearance of these clouds reveals the existence of weather.



This graph shows data acquired by Cassini as it flew by Titan at an altitude of 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) on Oct. 26, 2004 - its closet approach yet to the hazy moon. The data is from Cassini's ion and neutral mass spectrometer, which detects charged and neutral particles in the atmosphere.


The graph reveals a diversity of hydrocarbons in the high atmosphere above Titan, including benzene and diacetylene.


This image taken by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer clearly shows surface features on Titan. It is a composite of false-color images taken at three infrared wavelengths: 2 microns (blue); 2.7 microns (red); and 5 microns (green). A methane cloud can be seen at the south pole (bottom of image). This picture was obtained as Cassini flew by Titan at altitudes ranging from 100,000 to 140,000 kilometers (88,000 to 63,000 miles), less than two hours before the spacecraft's closest approach. The inset picture shows the landing site of Cassini's piggybacked Huygens probe.


Among the surprises from those early pictures, the Titan lander revealed a landscape apparently modelled by erosion. Titan had an intricate maze of drainage channels, shoreline-like features and even pebble-shaped objects on the surface.




Titan Shoreline


The temperature measured at ground level was indeed supercold, about minus 180 degrees Celsius (or minus 292 Fahrenheit). There is no place on Earth even remotely like Titan's winter. The lowest temperature ever recorded on earth (minus 129 °F, minus 90 Celsius) was at Vostok, Antarctica on July 21, 1983.


(I believe we mentioned that too. So what difference does -100 make if you can survive the heart of the sun?)


Titan's atmosphere was probed and sampled for analysis at altitudes from 160 km (96 miles) to the ground, revealing a uniform mix of methane with nitrogen in the stratosphere. Methane concentration increased steadily in the troposphere down to the surface.


Clouds of methane at about 20 km (12 miles) altitude and methane or ethane fog near the surface were detected.



This image shows Titan in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. It was taken by Cassini's imaging science subsystem on Oct. 26, 2004, and is constructed from four images acquired through different color filters. Red and green colors represent infrared wavelengths and show areas where atmospheric methane absorbs light. These colors reveal a brighter (redder) northern hemisphere.


Blue represents ultraviolet wavelengths and shows the high atmosphere and detached hazes.



Cassini-Huygens supplied new evidence about why Titan has an atmosphere, making it unique among all solar system moons, a University of Arizona planetary scientist says. Scientists can infer from Cassini-Huygens results that Titan has ammonia, said Jonathan I. Lunine, an interdisciplinary scientist for the European Space Agency's Huygens probe that landed on Titan last month. "I think what's clear from the data is that Titan has accreted or acquired significant amounts of ammonia, as well as water," Lunine said.


"If ammonia is present, it may be responsible for resurfacing significant parts of Titan."

Titan is one of only four solar system terrestrial bodies that has an atmosphere.
That mostly nitrogen atmosphere probably came from liquid ammonia on Titan, according to UA's Jonathan Lunine.


He predicts that Cassini instruments will find that Titan has a liquid ammonia-and-water layer beneath its hard, water-ice surface. Cassini will see -- Cassini radar has likely already seen -- places where liquid ammonia-and-water slurry erupted from extremely cold volcanoes and flowed across Titan's landscape. Ammonia in the thick mixture released in this way, called"cryovolcanism," could be the source of molecular nitrogen, the major gas in Titan's atmosphere.


Lunine and five other Cassini scientists reported on the latest results from the Cassini-Huygens mission at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C. (Feb. 19).


Cassini radar imaged a feature that resembles a basaltic flow on Earth when it made its first close pass by Titan in October 2004. Scientists believe that Titan has a rock core, surrounded by an overlying layer of rock-hard water ice. Ammonia in Titan's volcanic fluid would lower the freezing point of water, lower the fluid's density so it would be about as buoyant as water ice, and increase viscosity to about that of basalt, Lunine said. "The feature seen in the radar data suggests ammonia is at work on Titan in cryovolcanism."


Both Cassini's Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer and Huygen's Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) sampled Titan's atmosphere, covering the uppermost atmosphere down to the surface. But neither detected the non-radiogenic form of argon, said Tobias Owen of the University of Hawaii, a Cassini interdisciplinary scientist and member of the GCMS science team. That suggests that the building blocks, or "planetesimals," that formed Titan contained nitrogen mostly in the form of ammonia.


Titan's eccentric, rather than circular, orbit can be explained by the moon's subsurface liquid layer, Lunine said. Gabriel Tobie of the University of Nantes (France), Lunine and others will publish an article about it in a forthcoming issue of Icarus.


"One thing that Titan could not have done during its history is to have a liquid layer that then froze over, because during the freezing process, Titan's rotation rate would have gone way, way up," Lunine said. "So either Titan has never had a liquid layer in its interior -- which is very hard to countenance, even for a pure water-ice object, because the energy of accretion would have melted water -- or that liquid layer has been maintained up until today. And the only way you maintain that liquid layer to the present is have ammonia in the mixture."


Cassini radar spotted a crater the size of Iowa when it flew within 1,577 kilometers (980 miles) of Titan on Tuesday, Feb. 15. "It's exciting to see a remnant of an impact basin," said Lunine, who discussed more new radar results that NASA released at an AAAS news briefing today. "Big impact craters on Earth are nice places for getting hydrothermal systems. Maybe Titan has a kind of analogous 'methanothermal' system," he said.


Titan Layers



These Titans are almost as good as Ray Harryhausen's.


Radar results that show few impact craters is consistent with very young surfaces. "That means Titan's craters are either being obliterated by resurfacing, or they are being buried by organics," Lunine said. "We don't know which case it is." Researchers believe that hydrocarbon particles that fill Titan's hazy atmosphere fall from the sky and blanket the ground below. If this has occurred throughout Titan's history, Titan would have "the biggest hydrocarbon reservoir of any of the solid bodies in the solar system," Lunine noted.


In addition to the question about why Titan has an atmosphere, there are two other great questions about Saturn's giant moon, Lunine added.


A second question is how much methane has been destroyed throughout Titan's history, and where all that methane comes from. Earth-based and space-based observers have long known that Titan's atmosphere contains methane, ethane, acetylene and many other hydrocarbon compounds. Sunlight irreversibly destroys methane in Titan's upper atmosphere because the released hydrogen escapes Titan's weak gravity, leaving ethane and other hydrocarbons behind.


When the Huygens probe warmed Titan's damp surface where it landed, its instruments inhaled whiffs of methane. That is solid evidence that methane rain forms the complex network of narrow drainage channels running from brighter highlands to lower, flatter dark areas. Pictures from the UA-led Descent Imager-Spectral Radiometer experiment document Titan's fluvial features.


The third question -- one that Cassini was not really instrumented to answer -- Lunine calls the "astrobiological" question. It is, given that liquid methane and its organic products rain down from Titan's stratosphere, how far has organic chemistry progressed on Titan's surface? The question is, Lunine said, "To what extent is any possible advanced chemistry at Titan's surface at all relevant to prebiotic chemistry that presumably occurred on Earth prior to the time life began?"


Source: University of Arizona


TO WHAT EXTENT????? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!


Some process is renewing Titan's supply of methane. My, oh, my. Now what could that possibly be?


Remember THIS little METHANE guy? (Human's Race)

Scientists Discover Methane Ice Worms on Gulf of Mexico Sea Floor



WATCH IT MOVE

TITAN

ICE, ICE, BABY


SEZ NITZANA

Sunday, February 13, 2005

HUMANS' RACE

Please click thumbnails for larger images.

I have just added the most recent article about Life on Mars. It is at the bottom of this page. Please look at it...
Sometimes, I am SO right I scare myself.
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You and I are members of the Eukaryota; our cells have the organelles and nuclei to confirm this. Organelles and nuclei are not present in the other two groups. Does that mean that Archaea and Bacteria are more closely related to each other, or could it be that one of these two groups is more closely related to eukaryotes? It turns out that you (as a eukaryote) are more closely related to Archaea than to Bacteria.

Gee. Who'da thunk it?

Isolated and characterized set of thermo-sensitive Sulfolobus acidocaldarius mutants. These are the first conditional-lethal mutants that have been described for any archaeon or hyperthermophile. Furthermore, we have discovered that in several euryarchaeal species, including Methanocaldococcus (Methanococcus) jannaschii, the cells contain multiple chromosome copies. In an extension of our work to include halophilic archaea, the ftsZ cell division gene of Haloferax mediterranei has been isolated. We have also studied chromosome replication patterns and replication origin locations in Archaeoglobus fulgidus and M. jannaschii using marker frequency analysis.


OCEANIC THERMAL VENTS

OTHER PLACES ARCHAEA THRIVE:

CHAINS (XRAY:)

MORE PLACES:

Research Team Discovers First Evidence of Microbes Living in a Rock Glacier Rock glacier, photographed at the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research site.
December 13, 2004

Archaea adapted to live in extreme environments, such as the hot springs in Yellowstone National Park.
New Map Reveals Hidden Features of Ice-buried Antarctic Lake
Measurement shows that two distinct ecosystems may exist.


Scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) at Columbia University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York State have developed the first-ever map of water depth in Lake Vostok, which lies between 3,700 and 4,300 meters (more than 2 miles) below the continental Antarctic ice sheet. The new comprehensive measurements of the lake—roughly the size of North America's Lake Ontario—indicate it is divided into two distinct basins that may have different water chemistry and other characteristics. The findings have important implications for the diversity of microbial life in Lake Vostok and provide a strategy for how scientists study the lake’s different ecosystems should international scientific consensus approve exploration of the pristine and ancient environment.
The new measurements are significant because they provide a comprehensive picture of the entire lakebed and indicate that the bottom of the lake contains a previously unknown, northern sub-basin separated from the southern lakebed by a prominent ridge.
Using laser altimeter, ice-penetrating radar and gravity measurements collected by aircraft, Studinger and Robin Bell, of LDEO, and Anahita Tikku, formerly of the University of Tokyo and now at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, estimate that Lake Vostok contains roughly 5400 cubic kilometers (1300 cubic miles) of water. Their measurements also indicate that the top of the ridge dividing the two basins is only 200 meters (650 feet) below the bottom of the icesheet. Elsewhere, the water ranges from roughly 400 meters (1,300 feet) deep in the northern basin to 800 meters (2,600 feet) deep in its southern counterpart.
The scientists also point out that the waters of the two basins may, as a result of the separation, have a very different chemical and even biological composition. Indeed, Lake Vostok, is also of interest to those who search for microbial life elsewhere in the solar system. The lake is thought to be a very good terrestrial analog of the conditions on Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter. If life can exist in Vostok, scientists have argued, then microbes also might thrive on Europa.

Yep. They just Might at that.
The oldest fossils of bacteria/archaea are 4 billion years old.
The oldest multi-celled creatures, like jelly-fish, are 500 million years old.
The earliest signs of humans are 200 thousand years old.
Bacteria, aka Archaea, to complex cells-
around 2.5 billion years
Cells to colonies (or bodies), where cells become specialized for handling different things for the body as a whole-
an unknown period of time.
The development of a nervous system (intelligence)-
this process seemed to be finished by the time when the dinosaurs roamed freely.
Intelligence to mammals and Homo Sapiens-
this process seemed to take 250 million years on Earth.



Some of the colorful thermophiles...
(heat loving organisms: algae, bacteria and Archaea) which grow in the hot water (up to 160F, 71C) that flows out from the geysers.

Dieter Söll and Karl Stetter collect archaea on a Chilean mountain top.

Pyrite-a crucial mineral and surface for microbial life in extreme hydrothermal environments.
Geochemical constraints on the ecology of some of the deepest lineages within the Bacteria and Archaea.


Yellowstone's Microbes
Labelling tubes and waiting for the next measurement during a blizzard at "Shark Spring"*, Calcite Springs, Yellowstone National Park.


CYANOBACTERIA (ARCHAEA)

First discovered in Thai rice paddies, the microbe known as Heliobacillus mobilis belongs to a group of bacteria called Heliobacteria. These bacteria respond to light and contain a form of chlorophyll that is intermediate to that found in green plants and cyanobacteria-the first bacteria to release oxygen on earth. Some scientists believe that early forms of cyanobacteria used energy from sunlight to transform the earth's atmosphere into an oxygen-rich blanket suitable for animal life.
Structural similarities between the two bacteria suggest the possibility that the Heliobacterium chlorum microbe could be the direct descendant of the ancient bacterium that produced cyanobacteria.
Further evidence to support this possibility includes the comparison of molecules called ribosomal RNA that are found in Heliobacteria and other microbes. Ribosomal RNA, which plays a crucial role in making proteins, has evolved slowly over the years. The type found in Heliobacterium chlorum closely matches the ribosomal RNA found in some older bacteria that do not respond to light, yet the RNA are strikingly different from that residing in other, more common light-sensitive bacteria. The Heliobacterium chlorum related to both cyanobacteria and older more primitive microbes seems clearly marked as an evolutionary link.

JUST DAMN!!!
(Obviously, what science considers LIFE is limited to what it thinks it is, not what is.) I guess those old *primitive* microbes that have built virtually everything never were life although life as we know it and life we DON"T know yet, could never have existed without it, and have no future in the entire cosmos. Still, life is expanding in the cosmos faster than we can read all the data being sent back. What they can't explain, they hide and that makes me angry. Denial of truth is worse than a lie. Science lies and swears to it. And though happenstance sometimes allows breakthroughs, there is no understanding as to why or how...only that they tried one thing and got something unexpected. Science will not and cannot tell you our origins because if they had nothing to do with it, it couldn't have happened...even with proof.

FLORIDA
The conditions at Jewfish sink representing a transition from a freshwater to a marine system are similar to those proposed for a large sediment-filled sink in the Florida Keys (Shinn et al. 1996). My graduate student (Michael Garman) and I have measured dissolved oxygen, temperature, sulfide, nitrate, ammonia and conductance while exploring the sink using SCUBA on a series of dives approximately every other month for the past 18 months. Our preliminary observations can be summarized as follows: The water in the sinkhole appears to be stagnant except for the annual sinking of cold surface water during the winter. By summer, the sink may reach an equilibrium in which sulfide production driven by organic carbon oxidation in the anoxic bottom water is in equilibrium with oxygenated surface water. The sink becomes a diffusion system in which oxygen diffuses downward from the surface where the water is in equilibrium with the atmosphere, and sulfide diffuses upward from the bottom water where sulfate reduction occurs. Both oxygen and sulfide concentration are near zero at the chemocline. Sulfide measurements in the water below the chemocline range from 1 to 15 mg/L, while nitrate and ammonia range from 1 to 6 mg/L. The sulfide below the chemocline appears to support two communities of sulfur oxidizing bacteria as evidenced by two pH minima.
There is an upper community at the chemocline that likely uses oxygen as an electron acceptor and a second community below the chemocline that likely uses nitrate as and electron acceptor. The density relationships between the two sulfur oxidizing bacterial communities and the concentrations of oxygen, sulfide and nitrate can be expressed as a series of diffusion equations with initial concentrations of sulfide and nitrate dependent on the flux of organic carbon in the sinkhole There are extensive bacterial mats in the anoxic regions of Jewfish Sink that support both prokaryote and eukaryote microorganisms.
We have collected samples from the water column in Jewfish sink from several depths above and below the chemocline as well as samples of sediment and bacterial mats. We have amplified 16S rRNA genes with eubacterial primers (Lane 1991) and cloned libraries of the 16S amplicons. We currently have several hundred independent clones from the different samples and have begun to sequence them with the intent of identify the members of the bacterial communities present in the Jewfish system by phylogenetic analysis with known sequences from Genbank. We are just beginning to repeat the process with primers specific for Archaea .



The sediment on horizontal ledges and fissures within and around the mouth of Jewfish spring support what appears to be a thriving community of nematodes and other meiofaunal animals. Meiofauna are microscopic animals between 50 and 500 microns in length and have been used as indicators of biodiversity (Kennedy and Jacoby 1999). The only macrofaunal invertebrates appear to be some encrusting sponges. Because of the high sulfide levels in these sediments, we suspect that the meiofauna are sulfide tolerant and it is likely that some of them have bacterial symbionts (ref). Hand sorting and identification of meiofauna is tedious and requires expertise that few scientists possess so we are taking a molecular approach to meiofauna similar to the approach for bacteria. To measure the biodiversity of the meiofaunal community, Melissa Adorno, an undergraduate in the lab has extracted DNA from the sediment and amplified metazoan 18S rRNA genes.
Scientists Discover Methane Ice Worms on Gulf of Mexico Sea Floor
"It's very cool that while we're busy speculating about life on other planets we continue to discover new forms of life in the most unlikely habitats on Earth," commented Erin McMullin, a Penn State graduate student and a member of the research expedition that discovered the methane-ice worms. Methane ice, a gas hydrate, forms naturally at the high pressure and low temperature of the deep sea, but is usually buried deep in marine sediment. The Gulf of Mexico is one of the few places where hydrate can be found exposed on the ocean bottom. Occasionally this seeping, solid methane bursts through in mounds, often six to eight feet across.

Very cool? Oh my!



Methane hydrates are mounds of ice (crystallized structures of methane & water) that can form under conditions of low temperature and high pressure. This methane hydrate mound (right side of photo), discovered by Charles Fisher 700 meters deep in the Gulf of Mexico, is over 6 feet in diameter and has thousands of polychaete worms living on its exposed surface. The structures on the left side of the photo are tube worms.
(Photo credit: Charles Fisher, Penn State)


This close-up photo shows a dense colony of one-to-two inch-long polychaete worms living on and in the surface of the methane hydrate. These worms were discovered on July 15th 1997, by Penn State Associate Professor of Biology Charles Fisher and his research team, which is just beginning to study them. They speculate that the worms may colonize the hydrates even when they are buried and that the worm's nutrition is tightly tied to the hydrate itself.
(Photo credit: Charles Fisher, Penn State)


And THIS is just ONE of THESE:


GARDENS OF EDEN
Bioluminescent organisms



Microscopic photo of metal-oxidizing bacteria found in biofilm samples taken from a South African gold mine.


Bioluminescence is a complex chemical reaction within a cell, which releases energy in the form of light. Researchers theorize that this illumination is a form of intra-species and inter-species communication. This natural light show can be seen in a wide variety of marine organisms, such as the Aequorea aequorea, pictured here.


The bacterium Listeria monocytogenes (shown in red) travels in a cell using comet-like tails.


This image shows a model of cells within the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), a structure deep within the brain that relays visual information obtained from the retina onto the visual cortex located near the back of the head.


This arch was composed with petri dishes "painted" with bioluminescent bacteria.


Plant Genetically Modified with bioluminescent bacteria.

Colonies of the bioluminescent marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri. The photograph on the left of colonies growing on agar was taken with a light source. The photograph of the colonies on the right was taken using their own bioluminescence as a light source.
STILL MORE: Pristine Water...


The Cyclotella ocellata species of diatom pictured here is the most common planktonic diatom in Lake Hovsgol, Mongolia. Diatoms are a large group of microscopic algae that grow as single cells or small colonies. The lake is estimated to be over 1.6 million years old.
Dr. Edlund's team discovered that a number of species originally described were still alive and well in Lake Hovsgol. And a number of diatoms were endemic to that lake. He confirmed the results by taking a sediment core of material from 150 years ago. He found the same species complex existed in both the core samples and in the lake today.



The periphyton community (sessile organisms that live attached to surfaces projecting from the bottom of freshwater aquatic environments) in Lake Hovsgol contains hundreds of diatom species. Diatoms are a large group of microscopic algae that grow as single cells or small colonies.


This underwater photograph of the Eleutherobia species of coral was taken in a remote part of Western Australia near the town of Exmouth. This soft-bodied coral (suborder Octocorallia) has developed a powerful chemical defense system to aid in its survival. Researchers conducting chemical studies have defined the major defense agent as "eleutherobin," a chemical compound of an unusual type. In subsequent studies, they found that eleutherobin is a powerful inhibitor of cancer cell growth. Even more significant -- the compound shows selective effects against breast, ovarian, and melanoma cancers in preliminary testing. Eleutherobin is an important lead compound in the development of new treatments for these forms of cancer.
DNA Components:


This computer-generated image depicts a molecule reacting to form a DNA base.


The DNA sequencing process makes it possible for researchers to discover the amino-acid sequence in a substance. Shown here is step five in the process: the end result. Once the gel plate has been moved to the DNA sequencer (see Step 4), the sequencer produces the images that allow researchers to see the nucleic acid sequence. Each color represents one of the four base chemicals that make up DNA -- A (adenine), G (guanine), C (cytosine), and T (thymine). In this image, one of the lanes on the gel image is translated into a chromatogram (the lane on the far left).
Model of esperamicin A1 with the warhead portion displayed in orange.
Esperamicin A1--an enediyne--binds to DNA immediately prior to activation of its "warhead" which will cleave the DNA. Enediynes are naturally occurring molecules commonly called biological warheads for their ability to bind to and split tumor's DNA backbones.

EARLY INTERVIEW: Pre Voyager:

DAVID GERGEN: By comparison--you say that the ocean goes down seven miles--what’s the highest mountain?
WILLIAM BROAD, Author, The Universe Below: Everest is about five miles. So it’s going much deeper than the highest mountain on Earth in these deep trenches. And we know virtually nothing about it. Scientists estimate that in the huge dark biosphere that we’re talking about we might have laid eyes on maybe a hundredth or a billionth of it. It’s just a tiny, tiny fraction of what’s out there.
DAVID GERGEN: So what they’re looking for as they go to Mars and Jupiter--there’s a landing coming on Mars this July 4th--with the Explorer--they’re looking for water; they’re looking for signs of life.
WILLIAM BROAD: They’re looking for water. Yes. If you have liquid water, you get--the chances for life, by all estimates, are great. And that’s what they’re--that’s what they’re interested in.
DAVID GERGEN: So they could find the origins of life, itself, somewhere out there?


SOMEWHERE...OUT THERE



This image shows a giant star-forming region in the southern sky known as the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), combining the light from 3 different filters tracing emission from oxygen (blue), hydrogen (green), and sulphur (red). The color is also representative of the temperature in the ionized gas: blue is relatively hot and red is cooler. The Carina Nebula is a good example of how very massive stars rip apart the molecular clouds that give birth to them. The bright star near the center of the image is Eta Carinae, which is one of the most massive and luminous stars known. This picture is a composite of several exposures made with the Curtis-Schmidt telescope at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO) in Chile.
ONE MORE *IMPOSSIBLE THING.*



This image is one of the first images ever taken of atomic bonding. The image shows the electronic bonds that hold together atoms of oxygen and copper in a compound called cuprite.
This image represents the first time the covalent bonds between atoms have ever been "seen" in cuprite. The invisible nuclei of the copper atoms are at the center of the dumbbells. Nuclei of the oxygen atoms are at the center and corners of the superimposed cube. The fuzzy green clouds are less defined electron clouds representing covalent bonds between the copper atoms.
Many chemists do not believe that such metal-to-metal bonding can occur in the material. Cuprite is a superconductor and like many similar metal oxides, it has strange electrical properties that may now be explained by these never-before-seen bonds. The work may have broad implications for new materials used in computer compounds, medical equipment and other devices.

They SEE it but don't believe it. Science. Hoo, boy!
SOMEWHERE DOWN HERE:



A team of researchers at the Natoinal Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory have captured video evidence from the ground of a lightning phenomenon known as a blue jet. The discovery is the first ground-based evidence linking the ionosphere with cloud tops in blue jet events.
According to Victor Pasko of Penn State, an electrical engineer working at Arecibo, "Pilots and others reported observations of red sprites and blue jets long before the first one was captured on video, and numerous undocumented reports of similar phenomena have appeared in scientific literature for over a century."
Blue jets develop at cloud tops at 12 to about 26 miles. They appear blue to the naked eye, last for up to several hundreds of milliseconds, and are cone-shaped. According to Sunanda Basu, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences, which funded the research, the video is the first ground-based evidence of a direct electrical discharge from a thundercloud top to the lower edge of Earth's ionosphere. The electrical contact may represent an important component of the global electrical circuit, says Basu.
The event was recorded using a monochrome low-light video system, but the researchers all agree that the phenomena was seen visually as blue in color. The top of the jet appears to look much more like a red sprite than a blue jet, with hot spots and a fuzzy diffused appearance. Scientists do not yet know if this is a new phenomenon.


A biosurfactant green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter organism fluoresces as biosurfactant is produced.

Surfactants--or surface-active agents--are substances that lower the surface tension, a membrane-like barrier between different liquid phases that affects the ability of molecules to move from one phase to another. In addition to synthetically produced surfactants, these substances are also produced by a wide diversity of microorganisms. Some types of "biosurfactants" can bind tightly to toxic metals such as lead and cadmium. Some types can adhere strongly to surfaces, sometimes completely changing the properties of the surface.
We want to (1) discover how much of the class of biosurfactants known as rhamnolipids are produced in soil; (2) discover how these rhamnolipids complex toxic metals such as lead and cadmium; and (3) determine how these biosurfactants interact with soil surfaces in the presence and absence of metals.


An anemone fish hides from predators in the tentacles of an anemone living in a coral reef in the waters of Fiji.

These Diatoms were found in a water sample taken from the Neuse River in North Carolina. When present, Diatoms--SILICON ENCASED ALGAE--indicate good water quality. The water sample was taken as part of an on-going study of the Neuse to determine how pollutants are being transferred into the river.


Algae Beds in Tranantarctic Dry Valleys.

Tubeworms inhabiting a deep-sea hydrothermal vent along the East Pacific Rise. This image was recorded at 9°North .

Well. What DO they know?
By now you might think they WOULD know that without ALL of the above and zillions more just as diverse, what comes after would never have been possible. Nano technology is frankly nothing more than the use of already present building blocks, (Archaea,) in a different setting. It is Archaea adapting to its surroundings by whatever means, but it is not the creation of new life. Yet some idiot scientist is trying to fleece the public for money to CREATE a complete and new LIFE from what he perceives as nothing. The insane become more insane.
Now we know water is not the be all and end all for life out there. The trouble is, will science accept life even if it isn't like us? Will they call it life and allow it to proceed as it should, or will they, as I hear is being speculated by armchair space cowboys, *inject* greenhouse gases onto a planet that already has thriving life which might be destroyed?
This isn't science. It would be abuse of the cosmos and a prime example of our vanity. There are other places out there that could be perfectly suited to us, but we'll never get the chance to find it if we try to murder everything in our line of tunnel vision. We have been given the opportunity to learn the majesty of what is. After all, something is keeping our little machines in perfect working order. We are not Archaea that can live in any environment. They are all there is. G-d. Creation. We can never create what has already been. But we can do as our parents did in a place they could survive without destroying what was already here when they came. They gave us a part of themselves and a chance to do unto others. But not like this. They will destroy us first. And we will deserve it. The planet can survive without us. We can not survive without IT.

ELECTRON MICROSCOPE

Complex flow of pollutants in three dimensions over time.

NANO
Tetrahedral carbon atom that creates tight and stable bonds to form tiny tubes only six atoms across--the smallest diameter theoretically possible.

A view down the middle of a boron nitride nanotube.

A view from within a flattened twisted carbon nanotube.

Self assembled Germanium 'pyramid' (base 10 nanometer x 10 nanometer) on Silicon.

The nanoscale pyramid of germanium atoms is formed spontaneously atop a ground of silicon. Each small sphere represents an atom. It would help researchers develop new generations of tinier electronic devices that are govern by quantum phenomena.
Three-dimensional nanostructure grown by controlled nucleation of silicon carbide nanowires on Gallium catalyst particles. As the growth proceeds, individual nanowires 'knit' together to form 3D structures.
Nanometer scale wires (about one thousandth the diameter of a human hair) of a silicon-carbon material (silicon carbide) are grown from tiny droplets of a liquid metal (Gallium) on a silicon surface, like the chips inside our home computers. The wires grow as a gas containing methane flows over the surface. The gas reacts at the surface of the droplets and condenses to form the wires. By changing the temperature and pressure of the growth process the wires can be controllably fused together in a natural process to form a range of new structures, including these flower-like materials.



This is a picture of a new cluster molecule involving carbon, silicon, and boron. The compound should be useful as a building block for larger supramolecules. Supramolecules can be built in long chains, or by adding on branches around a central core, or as lego blocks in larger geometric structures.
Say there. Haven't we seen that phrase before?
Like I said. What DO they know?


This 220-million-year-old fossil offers evidence that dinosaurs were not ancestral to birds.

An archosaur called Longisquama insignis, a small reptile roughly the size of a mouse, has ignited scientific controversy due to the six vane-like appendages attached to either side of Longisquama's back. Longisquama's lived about 220 million years ago in Asia, during the late Triassic era. Some researchers believe the appendages were non-avian feathers and that early archosaurs were the ancestors of modern birds. Longisquama is controversial because it's not a dinosaur, and most paleontologists believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
In 1999, a team of scientists who studied the fossil found arresting parallels between the appendages and feathers, most notably, a hollow shaft with a sheath characteristic of modern feathers. Some scientists believe this shows that the genetic and developmental potential to produce feathers was present in these early archosaurs. The team also reached the conclusion that the feathers weren't used for thermoregulation but likely allowed the creature to glide between trees.
However, many scientists believe that features as specialized as feathers had only one path of evolution so if feathers evolved from Longisquama's, which occupies one branch of the archosaur family (a subclass of reptiles), they are unlikely also to have evolved in another archosaur, like theropods. Paleontologists who do believe that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs cite skeletal similarities to back up their claim.

Anybody heard about the *new* HIV strain. It ain't new. It's just faster. I keep telling you, time has speeded up.

Jan. 13, 2005:

Magnified approximately 1,700 times with a scanning electron microscope, a group of single-celled algae (euglenophytes) show their ability to change within a second or two. The change is thought to be caused primarily by one of the cell's cytoskeletal components called microtubules.


At approximately 32 million years old, these are two of the oldest skulls ever found that appear (???) to belong to the direct ancestry of humans. The skull on the right is that of a mature male, the other that of an adult female. Both come from an excavation site in the wind-swept badlands of the Fayum Province southwest of Cairo, Egypt.

UMMM. DOES ANYBODY NOTICE THE EXTREME DIFFERENCES IN THE FACIAL AND CRANIAL STRUCTURES OF THIS PAIR?
The only thing that relates them to each other is that they both have eye sockets and teeth. Yet science has displayed them as a pair though the facial and cranial bone structures are totally incompatible.
Where are the thick bony prominences of the skull on the *female*? Where is the wide bony bridge between the mouth and the nose on the female? Where is the protruding bone on the chin of the female? Why does the female's whole face slope gently back and the *male* looks simply gorilla-like? Why is the female cranial cavity so much smaller and the bone looks so much more fragile?
If *science* says these two were human, they have deliberately perpetrated a hoax on themselves. One skull is clearly leaps and bounds ahead of the ape-like skull that looks as if it was formed to butt itself against rocks and fight off falling boulders.

Life? On Mars?

16 February 2005----- 02:09 pm ET


CRIKEY!!!!

SEZ NITZANA

Bible Stuff on the Way. What do YOU believe?

I do not aim to please, I aim to teach...