Word Salad vs Gobbledegook
Is there anybody else here who made perfect sense of that conjecture and would believe it to be true and accurate?
Scientists have announced today that a stable organohalogen, a class of compounds normally produced by organisms on Earth, has been detected for the first time in space. But discovering the faint traces of the chemical known as Freon-40 or methyl chloride (CH3Cl) or chloromethane in places that predate life has dashed hopes of …
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"Please note ..... registering a thumbs down vote is moronic without an accompanying explanation as to the offence caused."Er... you're not used to that yet? I find that linking to scientific papers supporting my posts is a sure-fire way to get downvoted with no reason given.
"Er... you're not used to that yet? I find that linking to scientific papers supporting my posts is a sure-fire way to get downvoted with no reason given."
PG, your problem is you link to papers which are often either (a) not actually related to the matter in hand or (b) you have misinterpreted.
"Please note ..... registering a thumbs down vote is moronic without an accompanying explanation as to the offence caused."
If I can understand what you typed without having to hold my breath and stand on my head, then you are a FRAUD and are in no way related to the true amanfrommars. Your initial post was easily discerned as a shallow and casual attempt at confusion, not the deep, thoughtful gibberish that AMFM imparts upon us.
That's the explanation for at least one thumbs-down.
It means that Chloromethane can be synthesized by non-biogenic means (not news) and that this appears to occur more frequently in space than anticipated (news). Since there is plenty of UV light to drive the reaction and no shortage of Chlorine, that implies that there is plenty of Methanol/Methane around with no biological origin.
A boffin writes: I do and I'm only a mere stamp collecting biologist. But they make you do chemistry as a prerequisite for Physiology* so I last did it fairly recently, 1984 in fact.
So it all sounds tickety-boo to me and you can quote me on that.
As to the problem finding a shortlist of bio-signature molecules that really just confirms that the boundary between chemistry and life is not a boundary but a fairly seamless transition. It used to be thought that only life could make organic molecules then urea got synthesised and organic chemistry was born.
*technically they wanted either first year chemistry OR physics but most of us did both. I have used both and a modicum of maths, you cannot do physiology without algebra and calculus is fairly handy even if the computers do that these days.
Chokes!
Did I just see amanfromMars 1 complaining about the comprehensibility of someone else's writing style? A phrase involving black a pot, and a kettle is screaming its way through my mind at the moment.
I guess the shoe's on the other foot now. Assuming he doesn't have tentacles / pseudopodia...
Not complaining, Sorry that handle is already taken, just drawing attention to its more widespread use than in any recent past.
And here be a little something for all posting comment anywhere to consider .... https://youtu.be/aYItTxqTc38
To think one certain of anything in these times and spaces where everything is so very different from most everything gone before is surely a madness confirmed within oneself.
We’re trialing your primitive communications with added 00mph is what’s gong on, Sorry that handle is already taken.
Prepare yourself for fundamental changes being registered here, over there and elsewhere and around more than a few other spaces too.
"He's been known to make sense every once in a while. "
I agree with " Sorry that handle is already taken." That's not the original AMFM - he never once worked the acronyms AI or IT (in all caps, natch) into a regular word. Long ago I used to try to puzzle out AMFMs postings. Some, I think, did have a great deal of depth to them.
"Some, I think, did have a great deal of depth to them."John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett / Deep & Meaningless
@PirateDave, looking at the account numbers it would seem there was amanfromMars (Without the one) that last posted on 10 June 2009, then amanfromMars 1(with the one) that FIRST posted on 10 June 2009. So unless the account actually got transferred to someone else it would still be the same person.
Neither of them are idiots, the problem is neither of them are biologists and you should always beware of experts commenting outside of their fields. That is the problem with them. There's a similar problem with Penrose and consciousness and nobody should call him an idiot or stupid.
Another problem is with people like that you cannot tell them they are wrong and they become immune to rational criticism. Hoyle and Wrickramasinge postulated that seasonal flu (northern hemisphere only of course) was caused by meteorite showers just before the duck-pig-human transmission and mixing vessel reality got absolutely nailed down by the virologists. Yet they persisted.
Panspermia is nothing more than physicists trying to take over a branch of biology for themselves. The real problem with it is that it isn't an explanation because they cannot explain where or how life gets started in order to get spread about.
We have perfectly good ideas for how it happened on this biosphere, use a search engine of your choice to look up RNA World and inform yourself. BTW I have designed ribozymes, they are a biotechnology.
I don't see how those organohalogens could ever become part of Earth's primordial soup.
Didn't the Earth become molten during the Iron Catastrophe? I assume heat like that would dis-associate all present organic molecules. And it would have happened 500 million years after planetary formation, when all the inner-system volatiles had long been swept away or destroyed by strong solar UV.
By the time the crust finally solidified there would be practically no organics left anywhere in the inner system Only incoming comets could then supply those. And cometary impacts tend to be pretty energetic too, so I doubt any significant organics would remain following those events as well. Plenty of H2O tho...
At least we won't be misleading alien astronomers doing spectroscopy on our atmosphere an more with lots of it floating about. IF they can sniff the radionuclides from atmospheric bomb tests, Chernobyl etc that will be a bigger sign of fuckwit life.
Detecting those they will slap a 'Too Dangerous, Avoid and Quarantine' notice on us. I mean is the rise of smartphones behind the dearth of UFO sightings or have they shuffled off to leave us to our fate?
"But at least the Freon is up there out of harm's way, rather than in our atmosphere enabling ozone depletion."
It occurs to me that the Ozone depletion we see could be caused by the Earth sweeping
through this sea of Freon we once called the "vacuum of space", it's ozone fizzing away in an ablative reactive scream that no-one can hear (because, space, right?). Confronted with the gigaliters of Freon lounging about in the Earth's orbital path, the odd squirt from one's window air-conditioner seems trivial.
Scientists need to start addressing these conundrums:
a) Maybe the reason space has no ozone in it is due to all the Freon there.
2) Maybe that's why space is so cold.
CFC's are just a subclass of organohalogens. Most organohalogens are harmless to the ozone layer because they break down in the lower atmosphere. Many CFC's are so unreactive that they diffuse into the upper atmosphere where they break up due to solar ultraviolet radiation. The free chlorine atoms liberated there are responsible for the reactions that deplete ozone, or more exactly, destroy it faster than it can be created by solar UV.
So I take it the Chemours Company is now trading in outer space? Next an article about finding Perrier or Evian among the stars as H₂O and CO₂ are also out there.
With all the posts about CFCs I also take it that fluorine is no longer a requirement for a chlorofluorocarbon?