DNA animation

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at 7:04:31 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 14/05/2019 04:50, John Larkin wrote:

The inventor critters could have evolved from inorganics in a more
reasonable incremental way than we are supposed to have. They might
have originated on a gas giant, or in superfluid helium, or something.

You really do have absolutely no physical intuition whatsoever.

JL's talents include designing analog electronics at the board level, drinking beer and eating burgers. He is largely ignorant of the greater world and chooses to remain that way. Are you really surprised at this point?

Do you think that human civilization will look the same in 1000, or
100,000 years?

It might still be recognisable in another 1000 years. But in 100k years
humans could very well be back to the pathetic hand to mouth existence
of the Easter Islanders after they had destroyed their very last tree.

Humans will not be different in any significant way in 1,000 years. Are we any different than we were 1,000 years ago? But it is a pointless question for this conversation. JL is suggesting that evolution will make major inroads into our existance while it was highly improbable that the current DNA replication process could have evolved in a billion years. Huh?

In other words, his mind is blown!

--

Rick C.

-+--+ Get a 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 14 May 2019 16:25:46 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2019 15:50, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at 7:04:31 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 14/05/2019 04:50, John Larkin wrote:

The inventor critters could have evolved from inorganics in a
more reasonable incremental way than we are supposed to have.
They might have originated on a gas giant, or in superfluid
helium, or something.

They would have had to invent a time machine as well then. The universe
has only fairly recently become cool enough for the microwave background
radiation to permit superfluid helium to condense naturally.

You really do have absolutely no physical intuition whatsoever.

JL's talents include designing analog electronics at the board level,
drinking beer and eating burgers. He is largely ignorant of the
greater world and chooses to remain that way. Are you really
surprised at this point?

He is still a decent engineer and obviously intelligent. I cannot
understand why he has such a preference for "just so" stories.

"There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible
things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.
"When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why,
sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before
breakfast."

Do you think that human civilization will look the same in 1000,
or 100,000 years?

It might still be recognisable in another 1000 years. But in 100k
years humans could very well be back to the pathetic hand to mouth
existence of the Easter Islanders after they had destroyed their
very last tree.

Humans will not be different in any significant way in 1,000 years.
Are we any different than we were 1,000 years ago? But it is a

Depends what you mean by significantly different. We are on average
about 4" taller than we were in the Victorian and Elizabethan era -
something I have to bear in mind when I visit older buildings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height#History_of_human_height

That is down to better nutrition rather than genetics. Although the
proportion of overweight obese people has also increased as well.

pointless question for this conversation. JL is suggesting that
evolution will make major inroads into our existance while it was
highly improbable that the current DNA replication process could have
evolved in a billion years. Huh?

We are on the cusp of being able to rewrite the genome and edit out
certain really horrible inherited diseases. How we use that new
knowledge could radically alter future evolution for good or ill.

In other words, his mind is blown!

I think he might well have a point iff ethics committees eventually
permit germ line editing for certain inherited conditions. Where it gets
very dodgy is when people start modifying to generate designer babies.

Dodgy! That's really funny.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 14 May 2019 11:46:52 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
<fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:
On 14/05/2019 15:00, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 14 May 2019 10:23:34 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Evolution is still going on. We are top dog for the moment but if we
screw it up and render the planet into a scorched nuclear wasteland
then insects will get their chance. Copper based blood is much more
resistant to radiation damage and an exoskeleton helps stop alpha
particles.

I think that the self-building DNA structure had to exist before it
could exist. That's kind of a paradox.

What you think about it is totally irrelevant.
It is what the laws of nature permit to happen that matters.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

The egg of course.

Naturally. It wasn't laid by a chicken.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 14 May 2019 16:27:30 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2019 15:00, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 14 May 2019 10:23:34 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Evolution is still going on. We are top dog for the moment but if we
screw it up and render the planet into a scorched nuclear wasteland then
insects will get their chance. Copper based blood is much more resistant
to radiation damage and an exoskeleton helps stop alpha particles.

I think that the self-building DNA structure had to exist before it
could exist. That's kind of a paradox.

What you think about it is totally irrelevant.
It is what the laws of nature permit to happen that matters.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

Since no biochemist has synthesized a self-replicating RNA molecule
that can reproduce and become DNA, they should work backwards. Just
take some simple organism, e coli or something, and start
removing/breaking things a step at a time to get simpler mechanisms
that still work. Reverse evolution. Find out which if any parts can be
removed and still have a functional reproducing cell.

I wonder if anyone has done this.

So, my most-likely opinion is that our DNA-based life form could not
have been created by evolution, but was designed to evolve.

That should make everyone happy.

It still leaves you with the big problem of "who designed the designer".

Of course it's a big problem. Big problems need big ideas.

Does anyone here ever do anything with ideas but attack them?

Science progresses by experimentation, observing and understanding the
world around us. Conjecture is all very well but to be a scientific
theory it *has* to make testable predictions about reality.

The soup conjecture is untested but widely accepted. Other ideas are
untested but mocked.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, May 15, 2019 at 1:28:54 AM UTC+10, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

Rick C wrote:
[...]

Humans will not be different in any significant way in 1,000
years. Are we any different than we were 1,000 years ago? [...]

I wonder. If you see how much we changed some animals and
many plants, what might happen if we start applying those
methods to ourselves? And that doesn't even take direct
gene-editing into account. We don't know much about how
DNA composition translates into traits, but we'll learn.
I choose to believe we're on the eve of a revolution.

I know that our current ethical norms are against such
things, but those norms evolve, too. Is it ethical to
allow a serious hereditary disease to persist in a lineage
if we know how to fix it? There will be accidents, but on
the whole, those who embrace these methods are likely to
ultimately out-compete those who don't. If we manage to
avoid blowing ourselves up before, that is.

The kinds of psychiatric disorders that manifest themselves in a desire to blow up other people do seem to have a heritable component.

A willingness to edit them out may be necessary to our long term survival.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Martin Brown wrote:

On 14/05/2019 15:00, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 14 May 2019 10:23:34 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Evolution is still going on. We are top dog for the moment but if we
screw it up and render the planet into a scorched nuclear wasteland
then insects will get their chance. Copper based blood is much more
resistant to radiation damage and an exoskeleton helps stop alpha
particles.

I think that the self-building DNA structure had to exist before it
could exist. That's kind of a paradox.

What you think about it is totally irrelevant.
It is what the laws of nature permit to happen that matters.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

The egg of course.

Science progresses by experimentation, observing and understanding the
world around us. Conjecture is all very well but to be a scientific
theory it *has* to make testable predictions about reality.

That's why I don't understand why the "multiverse" stuff gets as much
attention as it does.

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Martin Brown wrote:

On 14/05/2019 16:26, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:

Poor Belousov was on the wrong side of the Iron curtain and was
unable to get his very counterintuitive reaction published.

It must have gone against dialectical materialism.

Poor fellow had a really hard time of it. No reputable journal would
publish it and reviewers panned his ideas because the orthodoxy could
not understand how it worked (and it was revolutionary).
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics was in its infancy back then. He was
ahead of his time.
It is very unusual only a few such systems are known. It's biggest
claim to fame is that it is robust - if you throw the ingredients
together in almost any proportion and avoid any chloride ions then it
works!
It leaked out to the West around the 1970's when it became everybody's
show reaction as a chemical clock that really goes tick-tock tick-tock
again and again! And it does even weirder things in a thin layer.

He should have taken pictures and smuggled them out. It's surprising
Doctor Zhivago got published but not this, as if maybe they were more
afraid of threats to the scientific basis for Socialism.

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at 11:46:57 AM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:
On 14/05/2019 15:00, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 14 May 2019 10:23:34 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Evolution is still going on. We are top dog for the moment but if we
screw it up and render the planet into a scorched nuclear wasteland
then insects will get their chance. Copper based blood is much more
resistant to radiation damage and an exoskeleton helps stop alpha
particles.

I think that the self-building DNA structure had to exist before it
could exist. That's kind of a paradox.

What you think about it is totally irrelevant.
It is what the laws of nature permit to happen that matters.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

The egg of course.


Science progresses by experimentation, observing and understanding the
world around us. Conjecture is all very well but to be a scientific
theory it *has* to make testable predictions about reality.

That's why I don't understand why the "multiverse" stuff gets as much
attention as it does.

I see it mentioned in comedy sometimes. It makes for some interesting sci-fi shows. I don't get the point otherwise. It's like the Seinfeld joke. "I wanted to talk to you about Dr. Whatley. I have a suspicion that he's converted to Judaism just for the jokes"

--

Rick C.

-++-- Get a 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Martin Brown]

On 14/05/2019 16:46, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:

Science progresses by experimentation, observing and understanding the
world around us. Conjecture is all very well but to be a scientific
theory it *has* to make testable predictions about reality.

That's why I don't understand why the "multiverse" stuff gets as much
attention as it does.

Multiverse theory has a certain mathematical appeal to theoreticians and
it does amazingly make some testable predictions.

I don't see it being that much different to the rules that allow a full
quantum mechanical treatment of light propagation along the path of
least time to be approximated by much simpler geometric optics.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/89/The_Multiverse_Conundrum

It should come as no great surprise that we find ourselves inside a
universe that allows complex objects like us to exist. In a truly
infinite universe all possible parameters can be explored.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 14/05/2019 16:26, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:

Incidentally several very striking non-equilibrium self organising
chemical reactions are known which date back as far as Turing although
the most curious is probably the Belousov-Zabotinsky reaction.

https://www.faidherbe.org/site/cours/dupuis/oscil.htm

and

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Belousov-Zhabotinsky_reaction

Take a look at the pictures even if you don't understand the maths.

Poor Belousov was on the wrong side of the Iron curtain and was unable
to get his very counterintuitive reaction published.

It must have gone against dialectical materialism.

Poor fellow had a really hard time of it. No reputable journal would
publish it and reviewers panned his ideas because the orthodoxy could
not understand how it worked (and it was revolutionary). Non-equilibrium
thermodynamics was in its infancy back then. He was ahead of his time.

It is very unusual only a few such systems are known. It's biggest claim
to fame is that it is robust - if you throw the ingredients together in
almost any proportion and avoid any chloride ions then it works!

It leaked out to the West around the 1970's when it became everybody's
show reaction as a chemical clock that really goes tick-tock tick-tock
again and again! And it does even weirder things in a thin layer.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 14/05/2019 17:00, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 14 May 2019 16:27:30 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2019 15:00, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 14 May 2019 10:23:34 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Evolution is still going on. We are top dog for the moment but if we
screw it up and render the planet into a scorched nuclear wasteland then
insects will get their chance. Copper based blood is much more resistant
to radiation damage and an exoskeleton helps stop alpha particles.

I think that the self-building DNA structure had to exist before it
could exist. That's kind of a paradox.

What you think about it is totally irrelevant.
It is what the laws of nature permit to happen that matters.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

Since no biochemist has synthesized a self-replicating RNA molecule
that can reproduce and become DNA, they should work backwards. Just
take some simple organism, e coli or something, and start
removing/breaking things a step at a time to get simpler mechanisms
that still work. Reverse evolution. Find out which if any parts can be
removed and still have a functional reproducing cell.

It is still work in progress but here is their website:

http://www.minibacillus.org/

ISTR there is another group doing this sort of thing too.

I wonder if anyone has done this.

Of course they have.

So, my most-likely opinion is that our DNA-based life form could not
have been created by evolution, but was designed to evolve.

That should make everyone happy.

It still leaves you with the big problem of "who designed the designer".

Of course it's a big problem. Big problems need big ideas.

Does anyone here ever do anything with ideas but attack them?

But your "idea" doesn't lead anywhere. Who designed the designer?

Science progresses by experimentation, observing and understanding the
world around us. Conjecture is all very well but to be a scientific
theory it *has* to make testable predictions about reality.

The soup conjecture is untested but widely accepted. Other ideas are
untested but mocked.

The soup conjecture has been quite widely tested and they have made
partial progress. You get a fair proportion of the right ingredients
from the Miller Urey experiment in a reducing atmosphere.

https://www.sciencefacts.net/miller-urey-experiment.html

I expect eventually they will be able to solve it by working from what
we see now and sequencing the various oldest simple life forms around.

Abiogenesis has to happen somewhere along the line or else you are
forced to invoke a deity and a "Just so" story. That we do not yet have
all the details doesn't mean that it cannot happen. You are making an
argument that is exactly analogous to the vitalism theory of old.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 14/05/2019 18:24, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:
On 14/05/2019 16:26, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:

Poor Belousov was on the wrong side of the Iron curtain and was
unable to get his very counterintuitive reaction published.

It must have gone against dialectical materialism.

Poor fellow had a really hard time of it. No reputable journal would
publish it and reviewers panned his ideas because the orthodoxy could
not understand how it worked (and it was revolutionary).
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics was in its infancy back then. He was
ahead of his time.
It is very unusual only a few such systems are known. It's biggest
claim to fame is that it is robust - if you throw the ingredients
together in almost any proportion and avoid any chloride ions then it
works!
It leaked out to the West around the 1970's when it became everybody's
show reaction as a chemical clock that really goes tick-tock tick-tock
again and again! And it does even weirder things in a thin layer.

He should have taken pictures and smuggled them out. It's surprising
Doctor Zhivago got published but not this, as if maybe they were more
afraid of threats to the scientific basis for Socialism.

It was refused by several Western chemistry and science journals as well
with scathing criticism. I think someone in the USSR did take pity on
him and it was published in an obscure Russian conference proceedings
radio-chemistry. You have encouraged me to look into the history and I
found this old article in the Wayback machine. It is a very sad story.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110720151540/http://campus.usal.es/~licesio/Biofisica/Winfree_JCE1984.pdf

He was awarded a posthumous Lenin medal for it in 1980 about thirty
years after his research was refuse for publication. He was right but so
far ahead of his time and unable to explain it that he wasn't believed.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[whit3rd]

On Monday, May 13, 2019 at 8:53:04 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 13 May 2019 15:31:25 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

DNA can be used to store books and videos, by building it without
'cellular machinery', i.e. in a laboratory.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134672-harvard-cracks-dna-storage-crams-700-terabytes-of-data-into-a-single-gram

That's Intelligent Design.

By that, do you mean the theory that life on Earth (human life included)
derives from an intelligence, like the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

While a research group at Harvard would accept the 'intelligent' part,
their transcription of books and such into chemical strands is in
no way responsible for life. And that group also would insist that
this is RECENT work, their reference lists don't include any publications
from the dawn-of-life era.

And again, the chicken-and-egg problem arises, because the existence of
that laboratory is evidence of life that pre-existed the novel use of DNA
outside of replicating cells.

Face it, lots of circuits oscillate; it's just an easy thing to arrange (or fall into by accident).

Fractals are a purely mathematical way to make both cycles, and variations; we DO
know that there are simple rules that give rise to such things.

Similarly, some chemical reactions cycle. The chemical reactions that we call 'life'
just happen to cycle through the egg-embryo-fetus-kitten-cat phases rather
than through phases measured in radians. Like DNA replication, there are
cat images available on the Internet, for your further amusement.

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Martin Brown wrote:

On 14/05/2019 18:24, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:
On 14/05/2019 16:26, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:

Poor Belousov was on the wrong side of the Iron curtain and was
unable to get his very counterintuitive reaction published.

It must have gone against dialectical materialism.

Poor fellow had a really hard time of it. No reputable journal would
publish it and reviewers panned his ideas because the orthodoxy
could not understand how it worked (and it was revolutionary).
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics was in its infancy back then. He was
ahead of his time.
It is very unusual only a few such systems are known. It's biggest
claim to fame is that it is robust - if you throw the ingredients
together in almost any proportion and avoid any chloride ions then
it works!
It leaked out to the West around the 1970's when it became
everybody's show reaction as a chemical clock that really goes
tick-tock tick-tock again and again! And it does even weirder
things in a thin layer.

He should have taken pictures and smuggled them out. It's surprising
Doctor Zhivago got published but not this, as if maybe they were more
afraid of threats to the scientific basis for Socialism.

It was refused by several Western chemistry and science journals as
well with scathing criticism. I think someone in the USSR did take
pity on him and it was published in an obscure Russian conference
proceedings radio-chemistry. You have encouraged me to look into the
history and I found this old article in the Wayback machine. It is a
very sad story.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110720151540/http://campus.usal.es/~licesio/Biofisica/Winfree_JCE1984.pdf

He was awarded a posthumous Lenin medal for it in 1980 about thirty
years after his research was refuse for publication. He was right but
so far ahead of his time and unable to explain it that he wasn't
believed.

When you said he wasn't published because he "was on the wrong side of
the Iron Curtain" I thought dialectical materialism must be the reason,
but it was because of scientific dogma and not scientific socialism
dogma.

They made two movies about it, and as of 1984 they were supposed to be
"soon available in the West" but probably not on Netflix any time soon.

It sounds a lot simpler to repeat than some discoveries but nobody at
the journals bothered. The article only mentions two rejections and
implies they were both in the USSR. He gave up the idea of publishing
before trying foreign journals.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 14/05/19 16:25, Martin Brown wrote:

On 14/05/2019 15:50, Rick C wrote:
JL's talents include designing analog electronics at the board level,
drinking beer and eating burgers.  He is largely ignorant of the
greater world and chooses to remain that way.  Are you really
surprised at this point?

He is still a decent engineer and obviously intelligent. I cannot understand why
he has such a preference for "just so" stories.

Being American, he may not understand what is meant
by a "just so" stories.

Depends what you mean by significantly different. We are on average about 4"
taller than we were in the Victorian and Elizabethan era - something I have to
bear in mind when I visit older buildings.

I once viewed a house for sale where I had to duck going
between some rooms. I'm 5'3"/1.6m tall

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 14/05/19 17:00, John Larkin wrote:
> Of course it's a big problem. Big problems need big ideas.

Big /solutions/ need falsifiable hypotheses and tests.

(So do small solutions)

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 15/5/19 1:28 am, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

Rick C wrote:
[...]

Humans will not be different in any significant way in 1,000
years.  Are we any different than we were 1,000 years ago? [...]

I wonder. If you see how much we changed some animals and
many plants, what might happen if we start applying those
methods to ourselves? And that doesn't even take direct
gene-editing into account.

A much more likely source of big change is the modified selection
pressure from the environment we have changed.

I choose to believe we're on the eve of a revolution.

I know that our current ethical norms are against such
things, but those norms evolve, too.

I completely agree. I've progressed far enough in my thinking that I
believe we have a *moral imperative* to diversify our own germ line,
creating many sub-species of specialists and hybridising with animal
genetics. Yes, that's much more than just "a step too far" for most
folk, rather it transplants the dialog onto another planet. I've been
brewing up a novel about it for well over a decade now.

Clifford Heath.

 

On Tue, 14 May 2019 21:45:36 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/19 17:00, John Larkin wrote:
Of course it's a big problem. Big problems need big ideas.

Big /solutions/ need falsifiable hypotheses and tests.

Exactly what problem are you trying to solve, with the origin of life?

>(So do small solutions)

We do a lot of small stuff every day.

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 14 May 2019 16:25:46 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2019 15:50, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at 7:04:31 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 14/05/2019 04:50, John Larkin wrote:

The inventor critters could have evolved from inorganics in a
more reasonable incremental way than we are supposed to have.
They might have originated on a gas giant, or in superfluid
helium, or something.

They would have had to invent a time machine as well then. The universe
has only fairly recently become cool enough for the microwave background
radiation to permit superfluid helium to condense naturally.

You really do have absolutely no physical intuition whatsoever.

JL's talents include designing analog electronics at the board level,
drinking beer and eating burgers. He is largely ignorant of the
greater world and chooses to remain that way. Are you really
surprised at this point?

He is still a decent engineer and obviously intelligent. I cannot
understand why he has such a preference for "just so" stories.

Because science keeps being blindsided by astounding discoveries.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 14 May 2019 12:04:26 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2019 04:50, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 13 May 2019 23:56:35 +0200, Piotr Wyderski
peter.pan@neverland.mil> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

Why would life arrive here as spores? Why not robotic spaceships with
chem labs, to cook up something appropriate on the spot?

Great. Created by whom?

Critters that were advanced a billion years after the Big Bang. Maybe
11 billion years ago. That's some head start.

That is far too soon after the Big Bang. The early universe was a more
violent place with a lot of rapid star formation and supernovae
sterilising chunks of space. Intelligent life took about 4bn years to
evolve on Earth even with allegedly some help from these wizards.

The first time around it is very very unlikely that they will achieve
our level of complexity inside 5bn years. We still do not have anything
that is realistically capable of interstellar travel either.

Build a few billion AI robotic chem labs?

Out of thin air?

Build robots that mine planets to build robots. It's less absurd than
DNA building itself.

Fermi probes. The problem is that if they existed they should be fairly
common so why haven't we seen any?

The inventor critters could have evolved from inorganics in a more
reasonable incremental way than we are supposed to have. They might
have originated on a gas giant, or in superfluid helium, or something.

You really do have absolutely no physical intuition whatsoever.

That's a dumb thing to say. I've made significant contributions to DUV
and EUV lithography, tomographic atom probing, jet engine development,
laser fusion, ICCD cameras, all sorts of non-electronic stuff.

I think that the theory and tools and tricks that we use to design
electronic systems is excellent training to think about other,
non-electronic dynamic systems. I don't know of any other discipline
that might be better.

Signals and systems, control theory, general circuit tricks... all
educational.

Everything is electronic these days.

Do you think that human civilization will look the same in 1000, or
100,000 years?

It might still be recognisable in another 1000 years. But in 100k years
humans could very well be back to the pathetic hand to mouth existence
of the Easter Islanders after they had destroyed their very last tree.

Or we may be inventing other life forms for fun.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com