Karen Chaffee

Why do we need to describe the universe as living (according do some arbitrary man-made definition of such)  to find it connected, beyond our current understanding and to find the Earth worthy of our stewardship? A single bacteria in a Petri dish is living.  A previous forum delineated  the really neat attributes of bacteria ; still, I believe a…[Read more]

Thank you Jennifer for making this Forum available, and thank you Duane for posting such an interesting forum topic!

I may as well say, that when reading Duane’s four criteria, another idea from my salon jumped into my head, but it doesn’t involve metabolism.  It touches on the last criterion, adaption.   Since all the weirdnesses of the electron conspire to create the hugely unstable hydrogen atom (i.e., a repository of potential energy)  and because this ha…[Read more]

Hi, Duane. ”Were it not for the survival of human civilization (and the survival of roughly a quarter to half of all plant and animal species), I could easily let our many differences slide by as merely an academic concern.’ I don’t think we have any differences between us at all!  I think, yes, we can explore whether the universe is living, as…[Read more]

Hi, Duane.   ”Were it not for the survival of human civilization (and the survival of roughly a quarter to half of all plant and animal species), I could easily let our many differences slide by as merely an academic concern.’   I don’t think we have any differences between us at all!  I think, yes, we can explore whether the universe is li…[Read more]

Hi, Duane. ”Were it not for the survival of human civilization (and the survival of roughly a quarter to half of all plant and animal species), I could easily let our many differences slide by as merely an academic concern.’ I don’t think we have any differences between us at all!  I think, yes, we can explore whether the universe is living, as…[Read more]

Hi, I am very happy to add my viewpoint to the conversation.  Thank you Duane, for enlightening me about these interesting topics.  Jennifer asked me to read the entire discussion–I have done that, but I have not had time to read the supporting material. But I think I can make a post now, and then another post after I have time to study.  So he…[Read more]

The Salon’s theme is the atom, and the structure that allows complex molecules to form, and the properties of the electron and nucleus that bring that about. In this meeting, we explored how the particles and their properties emerged in the first stages of the Big Bang. The participants agreed that this salon went the best—that’s interesting becau…[Read more]

Thanks, Jennifer. I will watch those. It will have to wait until after my salon on Friday, though! James, do you have any reading to suggest?

Okay, let me see if I can wrap my mind around this–I didn’t actually do any reading so I’ll just respond off the cuff!
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Germs may control our thoughts. Germs-R-Us. I won’t dispute this –we are our bodies and the microbes are part of our bodies. I’m aware that many bacteria are beneficial, and so don’t simply think of them as bad things.…[Read more]

Salon Two was ‘quantum weirdness”.
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In a way, we went off topic from our theme ‘the carbon atom’, but people wanted to do it and I was interested to learn about the topic.
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First, we reviewed some concepts from our first salon. To emphasize that the protons and neutrons form the nucleus, we played a game to learn about the STRONG NUCLEAR…[Read more]

Thanks for the info! I do know that people with good health often have better bacteria in their intestinal tract than others.

I want to digest all of this, do some reading. Hopefully I will reply again if I can sort it out; I have a certain way of viewing certain things, I want to explain it to you.

I had some thoughts along this line when once some time ago I was discussing an unrelated topic–whether it is important to have privacy as a right in our country or any country.
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My argument (not very popular!!) was that once humans came up with extremely destructive weapons, we needed to relinquish privacy as a species. Why?
A nuclear…[Read more]

Thank you for opening my eyes to some things I didn’t know much about! Since so much of this is outside my experience, I read a little bit.

I read an interesting article about Dewy education at linehttps://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/works/1960/x03.htm (this seems to be a socialist site, but it is the easiest-to read article): ‘The…[Read more]

Hi, Jonathan. I read your thought-provoking article. I want to state upfront I don’t know as much as I should about theology, but I found this statement powerful and fascinating, and it makes me wish I knew more about what these men experienced, and if I have the opportunity, I will try to find out:
‘It is the same person, Jesus of Nazareth,…[Read more]

If it is permissible to do so, I’ll paraphrase Krauss’s explanation of microwave background radiation here.

I read the article word by word. It will take some time before I can, in my incomplete way, understand it.
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An explanation of gravity waves is found in “The End of Physics’ by David Lindley. As pretty much an amateur, I have to read carefully to understand.
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Lindley gives a nice image of gravity waves. If gravity is a heavy sphere on a the…[Read more]

Lastly, I am reading quite a few books to help me.

Here are a few

The most helpful is:
Particle or Wave:
The Evolution of the Concept of Matter in Modern Physics
Charis Anastopoulos
Princeton University Press.
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This author explains exactly what I want to, and does so very well
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To help me understand the math:
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In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17…[Read more]

Counting at a rate of one atom per second, for 48 hours per week, it would take the entire population of the world 10 million years in order to reach Avogadro’s number (5).

In order to obtain Avogadro’s number of grains of sand, it would be necessary to dig the entire surface of the Sahara desert (whose area of 8 X 106 km2 is slightly less than…[Read more]