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My son (11, in 6th grade) and I were having one of those open-ended dinner conversation and he asked me whether there is a living organism that didn't require water. I simply didn't know. My rudimentary understanding is that water was indispensable. |
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As far as we know, all life on Earth requires not just H2O, but liquid water. Sometimes the quantities are very small, for example in algae that live below the surface of rocks in the Antarctic Dry Valleys, or microbes that survives in frozen Arctic sea ice. It is also true that most Earth life has ... Click here for more.
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I just saw the excellent film Cosmic Collisions at the Rose Center in NYC with my 14 year old. The film does a wonderful job of explaining how the moon formed from the earth. But it raised this question I couldn't answer: Why do we think the Moon didn't form an atmosphere and some form of life but Earth did given that the Moon was cosmically next door to the Earth? |
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There are two requirements for a planet to have an atmosphere: it must acquire the gas and it must keep it in. The Moon is
just not large enough to hold on to an atmosphere (less than 2 percent
the mass of the Earth). The Moon and Earth lost most of the gas that
was present at the time of the ... Click here for more.
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Hello Im one of those kids who is obsesed with zombies and the whole virus called solanum and reanimation of the body. But is it possiable to shock something so hard that it actually brings it back to life but only with a primative instinct? |
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No. There is no such thing as a zombie or reanimation of a body. It sounds to me as if you have taken seriously the fictional book "Zombie Survival Guide" published in 2003. This sort of fantasy may be fun to think about, but please don't confuse it with reality.
David Morrison
NAI Senior... Click here for more.
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What role did stromatolites play in the evolution of life on earth - was it used as food for new life? What new life could have used stromatolites for their nutrient needs? How did this effect the changing environment on land and in the seas? |
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Stromatolites are large, often dome shaped, colonies of micro-organisms. They exist today in only a few locations (the best known being Shark Bay, Australia), but prior to 1 billion years ago they were widespread on our planet. They can be fossilized because they include substantial amounts of silic... Click here for more.
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If we started simple biological communities on Mars (ones that require very little to survive), would they start to evolve? Earth has the sun and other properties that have caused it to evolve. Did it evolve because it needed to for life? Maybe by adding life to Mars it will cause some polarity to other properties (needed for life) that would start an evolution on Mars. |
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Your question mixes two different senses of the word "evolve". As applied to a planet, evolution means a wide range of geological and geochemical processes, including cooling of the interior, volcanism, plate tectonics and changes in the composition of air and oceans. In biology, however, evolution ... Click here for more.
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Are there any practical examples of extreamophiles being used in industrial applications (e.g. bubbling power station gasses through vats of heat/sulphur loving bacteria, to reduce pollution)? |
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Yes, and the most important so far is the thermophile bacteria Thermus aquaticus. As described in Wikipedia, T. aquaticus is the source of the heat-resistant enzyme Taq DNA Polymerase, one of the most important enzymes in molecular biology because of its use in the polymerase chain reaction. In 1969... Click here for more.
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What is the current working hypothesis concerning the origin of water on Earth? Outgassing seems out of favor and Linear comet seemed to be a confirmation of extra-terrestrial sources but the article I read was from 1999. Also, if the comet hypothesis is pulling ahead does that infer that organic compounds for life came along for the ride then too? |
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There is no scientific consensus on the origin of water (and atmosphere) on Earth, and many researchers favor multiple sources. It is useful to consider the water and atmospheric gases together, permitting us to use data on the isotopic composition of atmospheric gas to constrain theories of how the... Click here for more.
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What has the sea level elevation of the Pacific Ocean been at varied periods in the last 4.5 billion years. |
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This is not a meaningful question, since the Pacific Ocean has existed for only about the most recent 10 percent of that time. Further, measuring the elevation of an ocean needs to have a reference point; the apparent elevation can change as much or more by rising and falling land masses as by incre... Click here for more.
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How can we convert CO2 into food for human consumption? |
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By using plants, the natural factories for converting carbon dioxide to food. If you want to join in this enterprise, plant a garden and let the plants do the work.
David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
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What's a biology teacher to do? I have not been able to find a clear version/explanation of the 6 Biological Kingdoms (5?) for my students. The lists are either dated or disagree with each other. Particularly puzzling is why the Archabacteia were only recently put in their own Kingdom...can you help? |
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I'll try to help. Much of the confusion is due to the recent introduction of the system of domains, which is a higher-level classification of life than kingdoms. There are three domains, described as follows in Wikipedia: "The three-domain system is a biological classification introduced by Carl Woe... Click here for more.
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