Scientists find missing link between whale and its closest relative, the hippo

UC Berkeley News ^ | 24 January 2005 | Robert Sanders, Media Relations

[WildTurkey]

I think you had "according to the Bible" somewhere in there.

No.

[WildTurkey]

um, unless i am greatly in error, combustion does NOT convert mass to energy.

You are greatly in error.

[King Prout]

nice.

[shubi]

Here is one source for you to study:(there are many others)

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

[King Prout]

indeed?
are you quite certain of that?

[shubi]

Looks like seabirds like gulls would be the most likely vectors.

[shubi]

The only thing? I will try to get you some of my analyses.

[King Prout]

yes, the only thing. that's the only thing I have found in Genesis that, with no need for interpretation, manages to make a concrete statement of fact that could not be derived from the data set available at the time and has been largely corroborated by modern empirical science.

if you have a list of others, please do.

but I am not interested in examples requiring arcane and convoluted abstractions from the text.

[stremba]

I'm not a migratory bird expert, so I don't know if this makes any sense at all, but... Perhaps the ancestors of these birds that perform a transatlantic migration lived during a time in which there was no ocean between N. America and Europe. (These may even have been flying reptilian ancestors). Perhaps the destination of that migration was somehow retained even after the American and European plates separated (not sure how this might have happened, maybe something to do with the magnetic field, height of the sun, etc.) If this happened, then the endpoints of the migration would be programmed instinctively into these birds. Again, I don't know if this makes any sense or not, so I am donning my asbestos suit and await my flaming.

[shubi]

What do you think of "let there be light" as the impetus for the Big Bang? That is pretty straight forward.

[WildTurkey]

um, unless i am greatly in error, combustion does NOT convert mass to energy.

E=MC²

Heat is released in nuclear fission due to a change in the binding energy of the nuclei of the particles. Mass is converted to energy.

Now where does that heat come from is a chemical reaction that results in a difference in the energy state of the molecules?

[King Prout]

"let there be light" and the "Big Bang"

first: I do not buy the BBT.
second: the sun rose and set back when the book was composed, so I don't find the phrase to be needfully indicative of anything other than the author's poetic description of a dawn of creation.

[King Prout]

nuclear fission is not combustion. nuclear fission and fusion are processes involving restructuring the nuclei of atoms. combustion is a chemical reaction involving the recombination of electron patterns of combinations of atoms/molecules. last time I checked, E=MC² did not apply to low-end electron-based chemistry.

[King Prout]

huh? I dunno why that got bolded - such was not my intent.

[WildTurkey]

last time I checked, E=MC2 did not apply to low-end electron-based chemistry

Interesting that you would think that the laws of conservation of mass and energy apply to the nucleus but not to the electrons ...

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Smyth/Smyth1.html

[malakhi]

um, unless i am greatly in error, combustion does NOT convert mass to energy.

You are greatly in error.

Combustion is a chemical reaction, not a nuclear reaction. In combustion, the bonds in the reactants are broken, and new bonds are formed in the products. There is a net release of energy because the energy released in the bond formation in the products is less than the energy absorbed in the bond breakage in the reactants. There is no conversion of mass into energy.

[King Prout]

oh... put a <b> in instead of a <p>

[WildTurkey]

huh? I dunno why that got bolded - such was not my intent.

You mistakenly entered <b> instead of </b>.

[King Prout]

close! ;)

[WildTurkey]

Combustion is a chemical reaction, not a nuclear reaction. In combustion, the bonds in the reactants are broken, and new bonds are formed in the products. There is a net release of energy because the energy released in the bond formation in the products is less than the energy absorbed in the bond breakage in the reactants. There is no conversion of mass into energy.

A common misconception. See my posted link above.