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Homosexuality in Star Trek - where is it?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Peregrinus: [QB] Why "unlikely" carbon reactions? When biophysicists can put hydrocarbons and water in a pressure vessel, hit it with ultraviolet light, bombard it with electricity, and within a week get primitive amino acids that can make crude copies of themselves, I'd call that pretty "likely". There are people who point to us and the Earth as proof of the obviousness of a creator, as our planet is just the right distance from its star for these "unlikely" carbon reactions to occur. I think that reasoning is exactly 180� off. I think that the vagaries of planetary accretion resulted in the star Sol having one (and almost three) planets within its habitable zone, as determined by its radiation output -- the habitable zone being the range where these carbon reactions have enough respite from the cosmic dark to happen, but not so much that they get fried. There are clouds of these carbon compounds hanging out there in space in the dark between stars. They are easily made -- the ash of previous generations of stars. Water -- at least in solid form -- is about as abundant. I'd say those two classes of molecule are right up there in abundancy below Hydrogen and Helium in a typical galaxy with a few stellar generations under its belt. As for the unliklihood of evolution some argue, I just feel sorry for them that they can't wrap their heads around the timescales involved -- and not [i]know[/i] they can't wrap their heads around the timescales involved. If the precursors to life form as easily on a planet like this one as laboratory experiments suggest, then what we would call "life" (primitive DNA) probably arose shortly after the Earth stopped getting pummelled by planetisimals and its crust could cool. But for another billion years or so, that life progressed no further than blue-green algae. I've always loved the "cosmic calendar" model, as it puts everything in modern cosmology into perspective. With the Big Bang (or whatever) occurring in the first second of January 1st, the Milky Way didn't develop until about May. Our sun and its planets didn't coalesce until mid-September. The first humans appeared around 10:30pm on December 31st. The domestication of plants and animals happened around 11:59:20pm. All of recorded human history occupies only the last ten seconds of the last minute of the last day. Kind of humbling... --Jonah [/QB][/QUOTE]
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