very interesting discussion

[Mark]

I think it's kind of creepy a bunch of little molecules can collaborate to leap the fence and form a small universe of cells such as you or I. It was a good point Swift makes. Who's to say the universe out there isn't yet another life form of even larger size, and in that case we may never know if this larger being is eating too much, expanding his or her waistline or conversely getting ready to go on a detox diet. ha

On the secret of life by Loren Eiseley, last chapter in "The Immense Journey"...
"I do not think, if someone finally twists the key successfully in the tiniest and most humble house of life, that many of these questions will be answered, or that the dark forces which create lights in the deep sea and living batteries in the waters of tropical swamps, or the dread cycles of parasites, or the most noble workings of the human brain, will be much if at all revealed. Rather, I would say that if "dead" matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men, it must be plain even to the most devoted materialist, that the matter of which he speaks contains amazing, if not dreadful powers, and may not impossibly be as Hardy has suggested, "but one mask of many worn by the Great Face Behind. "

[larry cottrill]

Mark -

Well, not having read Swift (nor much else of substance), I delivered it as I read it somewhere about 50 years ago.

It's very hard for me to check or attribute my sources, because most of what I remember is several decades old.

Thanks for the corrected version -- very clever set of lines. Swift was very sharp, by all accounts.

L Cottrill

[larry cottrill]

I think it's kind of creepy a bunch of little molecules can collaborate to leap the fence and form a small universe of cells such as you or I. It was a good point Swift makes. Who's to say the universe out there isn't yet another life form of even larger size, and in that case we may never know if this larger being is eating too much, expanding his or her waistline or conversely getting ready to go on a detox diet. ha

That's a sort of vastly expanded version of Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud. Old (early 1960s, maybe) but it was a good read from a really good astronomer. One really interesting thing Hoyle did (though I don't know if it's ever been validated or successfully repudiated by others) was to show how the earth's rotation on its axis is perfectly stabilized at its current rate by the tidal action of the moon. Amazing, if the hypothesis is still standing. (I could look it up, I guess ;-)

L Cottrill

[Viv]

You're on the sun and the sun explodes. That is bad news so you want to warn the people on earth and you have a theoreticall 8 something minutes to do so before the effects reach earth (speed of light). Luckily, you already have a pencil, stretching some 160.000.000km, placed on the earth with the other end in your hand. you write the warning an the earth is saved -right? BUT that would mean information has traveled faster the light.. or has it?

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/ ... d/3163/P0/

My answer to the original question would be quantum entanglement between the particles at ether end of the pencil

Heres a nice explanation from a different application of entangled photons. http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ghost ... n_999.html

Enjoy

Viv

[Ghrey]

As to the Pencil query, it is to say the least a flawed construct, requiring us to suspend several physical limitations.

It can be said that of the universe we are largely ignorant.

If you invoke quantum theory it gets weird, but I have come to doubt much of that construct.

The observation of a simple capacitor makes one wonder...

Re: Discussions of the true nature of matter and life;

Do not dig to deeply for the all-mighty, He/she/it/they is/are endowed with a larger shovel.


On the nature of discussions of this sort;

Firstly sorry for the obtuse first post, it all addresses the initial question and following discussion but obtusely, sorry about that, it is sadly very Me to be that way.

I personally prefer to poke the universe with a stick rather than theorize about it, this is a change from my younger days, but I became disappointed with the results, or rather lack of, I was getting.
I went looking for a hammer, I've decided to break something.