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[Gromit801]

On top of that, I'll add devoting the resources of the government to finding a cheap and efficient way to produce hydrogen that doesn't rely on natural gas or petroleum. Funny what this country can do when it's applies itself, WWII, Moon shot, etc.

[Meffy]

Originally Posted by Gromit801

Funny what this country can do when it's applies itself, WWII, Moon shot, etc.

The Transatlantic Tunnel... wait, which country were we talking about?

[Gromit801]

Originally Posted by Meffy

The Transatlantic Tunnel... wait, which country were we talking about?

Narnia

[Meffy]

Oh, then it would be a Transatlantic Tumnus.

[Rachel B]

score: Gromit 4, Meffy 6
Meffy wins by 2, congrats

[Gromit801]

Transdimentional Terran Worm Hole

[Meffy]

Originally Posted by Rachel B

score: Gromit 4, Meffy 6
Meffy wins by 2, congrats

I reckon it's a cooperative effort -- kind of like ensemble casts on telly. :-} We're ALL special and unique snowflakes. Okay, I'm flakier than most, but that's the luck of the draw.

[Bob]

Tick: Arthur, you have no historical perspective. Science in those days worked in broad strokes. They got right to the point. Nowadays, it's all just molecule, molecule, molecule. Nothing ever happens big.

Speaking of...

I was listening to a story this weekend about a newly emerging field: quantum biology.

It's very interesting. For many decades, the linking of certain quantum effects like frequency specific absorption (photosynthesis, eyes), magnetoreception, brownian motors to living systems has been researched and fairly understood-- but only recently there's been some experiments that suggest we might soon be adding quantum coherence and entanglement to the list. Effects that were considered far too exotic to be played with outside the extremely cold, vacuumed environments of atom smashers, etc.

The study I heard of involved (as so many do) fruitflies. Specifically, their sense of smell. Smell reception is a difficult one to explain only with chemistry. The shape of the molecules of the 'scent' and the receptors were supposed to be some kind of 3D lock and key thing, but when they worked out the real shapes, that didn't make sense.

Then someone took a rather daring guess and wondered in quantum entanglement might possibly be involved. Specifically, if every scent molecule has a certain quantum (not chemical) fingerprint, could the receptors have evolved to 'resonate' at a quantum level when the molecule gets very close, and an electron gets entangled (quantumly) which means it's more than one place at the same time -- meaning, it's a very quick way to 'unlock' the receptor?

What they did was find a simple organic molecule that the flies would reliably respond to in a measurable way and duplicate it chemically -- but not quantumly. Instead of hydrogen they substituted deutrium -- heavy hydrogen (nucleus with an additonal neutron) and tested the flies response. Which was significantly reduced. Leading to support the concept of quantum recognition. Another way that was used to describe the quantum reaction was 'quantum chord'. I like that one.

What all this is suggesting is that while we have been engineering and reaping the benefits of quantum-based devices for decades now, we've never given any real consideration that maybe nature has already been messing around with this stuff, in its designs, for billions of years.

As the scientist explained on the radio show, we are just now working to develop nanotechnology to design microscopic machines, but life has been doing so with unbelievable efficiency and finesse for so much longer. And if in the evolution of these molecular machines, a small, but significant advantage is gained by utilizing a quantum effect--that advantage will evolve to deliver macro results.

One of the areas that new q-biology will be looking at is how bird compasses work. There's been a lot of study, but nothing definitive.

I find myself comforted to know that nature still has so many design lessons to teach us... even at scales so small, we can scarcely imagine them.

[KitchWitch]

I think this about sums it up:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19813...y-be-used.html

[BadKharma]

Originally Posted by KitchWitch

I think this about sums it up:

That is incredibly funny...