I take back everything bad I ever said about Michael Crichton...(ever read "PREY?")
Posted on 03/29/2004 5:33:56 PM PST by dogbyte12
More than 3.5 billion years after nature transformed non-living matter into living things, populating Earth with a cornucopia of animals and plants, scientists say they are finally ready to try their hand at creating life.
If they succeed, humanity will enter a new age of "living technology," where harnessing the power of life to spontaneously adapt to complex situations could solve problems that now defy modern engineering.
"There's nothing we could make that could compete with the predators that are out there and have had 3 billion years to evolve," he said. "Bacteria eat anything. They eat jet fuel, oil deposits, chlorinated hydrocarbons, anything. They will eat anything that we put out there to compete with them."
Another safeguard scientists are designing to provide total control over artificial cells is to make their lives dependent on chemicals that do not exist in the environment. Withdrawing the critical chemicals would result in the death of the cells, particularly if they should escape into the environment.
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
Mmmm ... Styrofoam is a rather popular building material for everything from houses to commercial buildings, and sterility isn't guaranteed, maybe not feasable.
Classic.
Trajan88
...who were physicists, not biologists or paleontologists. In any case, they sure weren't scripture-quoting zealots, either.
They DID write things recognizing the majesty of the universe, but that's a far cry from saying it was created in six days.
That was rather a fat pitch; I'm glad to have a reason to believe it wasn't his best work.
According to scientists, there should be over a million civilizations as advanced as our own in the galaxy. Yet SETI researchers have not found a single one.
That would seem to indicate between our current level of technology and the level of technology required to colonize other star systems, something inevitably happens to a planetary civilization . . . something really bad.
Great idea! Let's also have them piss gasoline.
More than 3.5 billion years after nature transformed non-living matter into living things, populating Earth with a cornucopia of animals and plants...
I take back everything bad I ever said about Michael Crichton...(ever read "PREY?")
What's the big deal? If creationoids are free to ignore facts which clearly do exist, then why can't they be free to invent "facts" which do not exist?
More like hypotheses. Theories, in science, are consistent with the available evidence, and capable of being used to make predictions (which is one way to test a theory). Theories such as Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Evolution, Light, etc., fall into this category (which is why they are called "theories").
According to scientists, there should be over a million civilizations as advanced as our own in the galaxy. Yet SETI researchers have not found a single one. That would seem to indicate between our current level of technology and the level of technology required to colonize other star systems, something inevitably happens to a planetary civilization . . . something really bad.I'm skeptical of SETI researchers sho say there should be a million civilizations out there. Someone has to be the first. Why not us?
I guess OJ didn't kill his wife, either, since there were no witnesses.
Create a new life form? It'll happen in the next decade or so. Then what?
I have a sneaky suspicion that his idea of Life and your idea are two completely different things.
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