She Blinded Me With Science!

Quoting one-hit wonder Thomas Dolby, the topic title is certainly apropos!

This thread is for the whimsical side of science, similiar to the topics discussed in the time travel thread, where we delve into unknown possibilities.

I'll go first;
In the Jetsons, people fly around in cars, personal conveyances, etc. Wouldn't it be nice if gravity could be 'cut' off for ourselves? For example, if I could somehow cut off gravity binding me to the earth, I could 'fly' in the air.

You'd think it'll be a great idea, right? Well, consider this; depending on where you are, the Earth rotates at a minimum of at least 1,000 mph. If gravity beneath your presence was somehow cut off, the earth is still moving and you could find yourself being a literal bug on a windshield, splattered all over some skyscraper in the Midwest.

I've got one more in the queue to unleash on the unsuspecting AllDeaf population. I'll wait a bit and see how this thread develops.

Have you seen where they tried to make a hypothesis about what creatures on other planets might be like? One creature they theorized about was one that would exist on a planet with much more gravitational pull than ours - the creatures were low and almost flat and moved at a crawl. Very interesting. I love science.

I admit it - I am pretty much a geek.

I saw the National Geographic show where they took two planets, a planet tidally locked to a red dwarf star and a planet that is a moon of a gas giant and came up with creatures that could survive on such planets.

They're also planning to launch spacecraft to search for signs of such planets like the Kepler one in 2008 and the Terrestrial Planet Finder in 2015.

Thanks for the Nat'l Geographic link! It was pretty fascinating. Too bad Lewis Carrol wasn't around. He would have not penned poems about pigs that fly.

The Nat'l Geographic link reminded me of a story about a planet that 'orbited' around six suns. As a result, light was a constant presence, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, etc. Everywhere, the citizens of that planet were busy with their lives, etc.

Then came an eclipse, occurring once every 2,000 years, that blacked out one side of the planet, resulting in darkness. Can you guess what happened to the people living in darkness for the very first time? This gripping short story was written way back...in 1941, and is considered one of the most influential science fiction stories ever.

I haven't read the original short story, and it's on my reading queue! Right after Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. It's a good thing the state of artificial intelligence hasn't progressed all that much! I'd hate for my computer to start making unreasonable and emotional demands for my attention and time.

I read the novel version of that story, Nightfall. It was interesting.

RedFox- Nice to know there's another Sci-Fi reader here in this forum. I love to read them, too, but I really don't have the time.

I recently read a Slashdot article about designer mice with fascination. I'll imagine not too far off in the future, the human DNA genome will be fully mapped. Another 50 years, people will be able to play the 'role' of God, and actually enhance/remove certain traits of their offspring before they're born.

Let's forget religion for a moment; I know that Man shouldn't play the role of God and I'd rather not debate it here. The more important question, is 'genetic' engineering desireable for the human race? Imagine this; certain inheirited diseases are wiped out. certain vulnerabilities are eradicated. Desireable attributes such as adult height, weight and looks are programmed in before they're born.

The future population could look remarkably all the same internally, free from inheirited diseases and afflictions. This leads to the crucible of monoculture. And that could be a very bad thing to happen to the human race! Monoculture isn't a new phenomenon. Check out the dangers and pitfalls, which Ireland faced in the 1840's with their potato crops.

Let's step out of the box for a minute; Already, a monoculture of sorts have taken root everywhere in the world. In fact, you may even be using it now... I refer to, of course, Windows-operated PC's. Windows PC's occupy like 95% of the worldwide computing market and certainly be characterized as a monoculture. An intelligently designed virus could wipe out all sorts of computers running Windows and be a source of concern for all individuals affected. (See the Register's take on this phenomenon.)

In a nutshell, diversity is appreciated and valued! Now, I'm gonna feast on a couple of Idaho spud potatoes and fire up my Fedora Core 4 Linux box.

The recent evolution debate here at AllDeaf reminded me of a similiar phenomenon observed by Charles Darwin, who observed coral reefs, of all things.

Corals depend on the very base of the food chain in the undersea kingdom--Plankton and related varieties. What I find so fascinating about the 'food chain' and its related 'pyramid' is that it connotes dependency.

Let's take the garden variety Great White Shark as an example; They are at the apex of the underwater food chain and shares this honor with no other animal, save Man. Conversely, the tiny plankton and its numerous cousins occupies the nadir, creating the base of the pyramid.

What happened if plankton were to become extinct? (I know it's impossible, though!) The base of the pyramid would be wiped out and the ripple effects would travel all the way to the apex, affecting even the Great White Shark. The end result is not pretty and would wind up with mass extinction of many different species of all shapes and forms.

Despite its tiny stature, plankton is definitely not a puny organism! This does hold a parallel for the human race, as well. We are at the apex of our food chain occupying the entire world, including surface, air and underwater organisms. Although I could be wrong, I would venture to guess that the ordinary plant occupies the 'base' of our food chain.

What would happen if the entire world was totally devoid of flora? A 'nuclear' winter may make this a very real possibility. This would have repercussions, wiping out nearly all fauna in the world and would severely wipe out nearly the human race as well.

In a nutshell, I'm gonna enjoy a couple of potted plants I have in my condo, and respect even the littlest and unseen things occupying Mother Nature's universe.

I have always been fascinated with time travel, and came across this interesting MSNBC article;

Time Travel Not (Really) Possible

Read the last paragraph. Interesting, no?

Might as well as give this topic a wee bump!

Here's another one; You know about that teleportation thingie you see in Star Trek movies, right? Where you instantaneously pop up anywhere you wanted to go? For starters, I would love to have this kind of transportation! I would be living in paradise, and commute to work 8,000 miles away!

But, there's a snag, as you may have suspected. I introduce you to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and how it may wreck your Star Trek fantasies... Granted, the Wikipedia was a little bit dense; in a nutshell, things in motion remain in motion...

The human body is an incredible and living organism. It is full of fluids moving all around, full of organs rhythmically oscilliating, full of electrical activity, and millions of mocules working all together in unison. If you 'teleport' a person, how can you do so safely? Even if the teleportation was 'instantaneous', things are still moving. Electrical impulses get out of sync, leading to a heart attack, for example. Molecules in the body could get messed up and lead to cancer. Blood flow gets disrupted in a spot or two, leading to amptutation.

The list goes on... Hence, the 'Uncertainity Principle' plays a huge factor here, seriously dousing that fantasy down. On that note, I'm gonna beam outta here and and yell, "Khaaaaaannnnnn!"

MorriganTait said:

Have you seen where they tried to make a hypothesis about what creatures on other planets might be like? One creature they theorized about was one that would exist on a planet with much more gravitational pull than ours - the creatures were low and almost flat and moved at a crawl.

Click to expand...

That terrific book was Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement. I read it when I was a stary-eyed pre-teen.

And of course Heisenburg says the variables of time, distance, velocity, gravity, (perhaps a ever-expanding universe) and several other factors we can't calculate with accuracy may reassemble us all over space as well as infused within solid matter.

Even if Scotty's computer can do the math, an angry wife could hack in and send the parts of you she despises into a star going nova.

But then we can't be slowed with petty details in sci-fi, so we have to invent machines to seque us smoothly from place to place, star to star, and galaxy to galaxy. I love it!