Origin of Life

Mott the Hoople said:
You don’t have a graduate degree in science and no minor in your science degree with your undergraduate degree? Lightweight. Just an FYI, with a major in human biology and a minor in chemistry I more than qualified for a BS but my advisors recommended graduating with a BA because I also took far more elective courses in the humanities and social sciences and that it would improve my odds of getting excepted into graduate school. They were right but if you had done the hard work to get into grad school maybe you would have known that.

So nice attempt at trolling.

It’s also pretty sad that in your engineering studies you didn’t learn such basic concepts of scientific theory like independent verification and the falsification principle. Sheesh, what a noob.
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Maggot Boy's "engineering degree" is actually a certificate from a vocational school.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
You don’t have a graduate degree in science and no minor in your science degree with your undergraduate degree? Lightweight. Just an FYI, with a major in human biology and a minor in chemistry I more than qualified for a BS but my advisors recommended graduating with a BA because I also took far more elective courses in the humanities and social sciences and that it would improve my odds of getting excepted into graduate school. They were right but if you had done the hard work to get into grad school maybe you would have known that.

So nice attempt at trolling.

It’s also pretty sad that in your engineering studies you didn’t learn such basic concepts of scientific theory like independent verification and the falsification principle. Sheesh, what a noob.
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I'm licensed in three states, and unlike you can write in coherent sentences. Trumps your limp BA all day.
 
Life is animated matter.

The inexplicable emergence of matter created the horrific, fatal stain on a perfect, infinite vacuum.

Given the status of the universe today, I'm pretty comfortable with that assessment of it.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Sure, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but anyone who claims that life exists elsewhere might as well be claiming the Big Bang was created by God. The same amount of evidence exists for both conclusions.
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True and few are arguing that. It doesn’t exclude the probability of life elsewhere though.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Cool I’d assume that means you’re a registered professional engineer? Have you ever done any environmental work?
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PE in three states. I went to grad school for environmental engineering; did all the courses except thesis so never got a degree. Couldn't see paying them for me to do that work. Practiced in UpState NY for ten years. Closed/ managed at least two dozen landfills. Basically wrote the book on environmental site investigations that ASTM later codified. Worked with many farmers on agricultural use of residuals. Engineer of record for Onondaga County's residual recycling program (N-Viro Soil). Modified their process using bunkers during the heat cycle so it would work with less quicklime in that climate. Did all the state permitting for the facility, lobbied the county legislators, designed the buildings and spec'd the processing equipment. Designed the odor control system. Did all the QA/QC, public liaison. Ran it for three years then went on my own. The facility ran for at least 20 more years before the County went Democrat and shut it down. Now they landfill their shit instead of benefiting the environment by growing crops.

When I left NY for NC my environmental work included site investigations, UST remediations, on-site wastewater treatment, erosion control and stormwater management. The market here for me then went towards geotechnical investigations, some residential development, some industrial building re-use both in NC and VA. For the past 20 years or so I've mainly done small building structural, and have become "the guy" with respect to evaluation and design of structural repairs. Have done many buildings dating well into the 1800's including several with historical recognition.

All of it, applying hard science.
 
MAGA MAN said:
PE in three states. I went to grad school for environmental engineering; did all the courses except thesis so never got a degree. Couldn't see paying them for me to do that work. Practiced in UpState NY for ten years. Closed/ managed at least two dozen landfills. Basically wrote the book on environmental site investigations that ASTM later codified. Worked with many farmers on agricultural use of residuals. Engineer of record for Onondaga County's residual recycling program (N-Viro Soil). Modified their process using bunkers during the heat cycle so it would work with less quicklime in that climate. Did all the state permitting for the facility, lobbied the county legislators, designed the buildings and spec'd the processing equipment. Designed the odor control system. Did all the QA/QC, public liaison. Ran it for three years then went on my own. The facility ran for at least 20 more years before the County went Democrat and shut it down. Now they landfill their shit instead of benefiting the environment by growing crops.

When I left NY for NC my environmental work included site investigations, UST remediations, on-site wastewater treatment, erosion control and stormwater management. The market here for me then went towards geotechnical investigations, some residential development, some industrial building re-use both in NC and VA. For the past 20 years or so I've mainly done small building structural, and have become "the guy" with respect to evaluation and design of structural repairs. Have done many buildings dating well into the 1800's including several with historical recognition.

All of it, applying hard science.
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Cool man. I’ve never met anyone on JPP yet that has worked in the Environmental Field other than myself and I’m one of JPP’s original members. We should have some interesting conversations. I’m a CHMM which granted is more like comparable to a CPA in difficulty but it’s not nearly as hard as a P.E. My Masters of Science (no thesis) is in HSE management. I’ve spent about half my career (33 years) in Hazardous Waste Recycling (all hard science) and the other half in environmental services work for a large chemical company corporate HQ as a regulatory guru. Mainly in managing solid and hazardous waste. In other words I’m a garbage man.

I look forward to hearing some of your old war stories from your remediation days. I bet you have some good ones.
 
#3 for me. I think life is all over the universe. There are huge zones in galaxies like ours where it really can't exist, but still a ton of stars & planetary systems where it can and often does (imo).

The origin of life, as well as the origin of the universe, will probably always be speculative in terms of what we think happened. Mathematics & science can prove things to a point, but both events were incomprehensibly long ago, and nothing can be repeated in a lab.

Endlessly fascinating, though. I've become a little obsessed w/ the concept of what came before the universe - which may have been nothing. And our minds can't really grasp that concept. When we think of nothing, we think of empty space. But that ain't it - nothing is really nothing. It completely blows my mind thinking about that.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Cool man. I’ve never met anyone on JPP yet that has worked in the Environmental Field other than myself and I’m one of JPP’s original members. We should have some interesting conversations. I’m a CHMM which granted is more like comparable to a CPA in difficulty but it’s not nearly as hard as a P.E. My Masters of Science (no thesis) is in HSE management. I’ve spent about half my career (33 years) in Hazardous Waste Recycling (all hard science) and the other half in environmental services work for a large chemical company corporate HQ as a regulatory guru. Mainly in managing solid and hazardous waste. In other words I’m a garbage man.

I look forward to hearing some of your old war stories from your remediation days. I bet you have some good ones.
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Back in my residuals recycling/ public liaison days I did about two dozen of so "town halls". "Heavy metals" was always a topic of discussion, and I got very good at addressing the issue. A Prof from Cornell really hard a hard-on for sage sludge recycling and had written dozens of articles against it, always citing old data. He showed up at one of these events one night and I quickly destroyed his argument. Afterwards I invited him for a beer and he refused. He never stopped writing articles.

Those events developed a certain cadance. There was always one or two people, usually in the back row, who hard a hard-on for the project and would glom onto the heavy metals issue as an excuse. One night, a rural town in southern Onondaga County, the meeting was held in the municipal garage around a snow plow truck, on a lift waiting for parts. At the very end of the meeting, after answering that guy's same question a third time, he said (I'll never forget his exact words) "I don't want that nigger shit near me." There was an loud gasp from the rest of the audience. I never thought of that angle before- a largely urban product being spread on redneck farmland.
 
MAGA MAN said:
Back in my residuals recycling/ public liaison days I did about two dozen of so "town halls". "Heavy metals" was always a topic of discussion, and I got very good at addressing the issue. A Prof from Cornell really hard a hard-on for sage sludge recycling and had written dozens of articles against it, always citing old data. He showed up at one of these events one night and I quickly destroyed his argument. Afterwards I invited him for a beer and he refused. He never stopped writing articles.

Those events developed a certain cadance. There was always one or two people, usually in the back row, who hard a hard-on for the project and would glom onto the heavy metals issue as an excuse. One night, a rural town in southern Onondaga County, the meeting was held in the municipal garage around a snow plow truck, on a lift waiting for parts. At the very end of the meeting, after answering that guy's same question a third time, he said (I'll never forget his exact words) "I don't want that nigger shit near me." There was an loud gasp from the rest of the audience. I never thought of that angle before- a largely urban product being spread on redneck farmland.
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Recycling heavy metals is something I’m a genuine expert at. In the past I spent a lot of time on recycling F006 and K061 listed wastes. I have been to a number of public statement forums on siting and permitting hazardous waste facilities, both TSDF and recycling facilities. Dear lord do the loonies show up in mass. I have seen and heard some of the most inane questions from folks. You have to take those questions seriously though as the political backlash can get you shut down real fast.
 
MAGA MAN said:
Back in my residuals recycling/ public liaison days I did about two dozen of so "town halls". "Heavy metals" was always a topic of discussion, and I got very good at addressing the issue. A Prof from Cornell really hard a hard-on for sage sludge recycling and had written dozens of articles against it, always citing old data. He showed up at one of these events one night and I quickly destroyed his argument. Afterwards I invited him for a beer and he refused. He never stopped writing articles.

Those events developed a certain cadance. There was always one or two people, usually in the back row, who hard a hard-on for the project and would glom onto the heavy metals issue as an excuse. One night, a rural town in southern Onondaga County, the meeting was held in the municipal garage around a snow plow truck, on a lift waiting for parts. At the very end of the meeting, after answering that guy's same question a third time, he said (I'll never forget his exact words) "I don't want that nigger shit near me." There was an loud gasp from the rest of the audience. I never thought of that angle before- a largely urban product being spread on redneck farmland.
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Sage sludge and heavy metals? That Prof must have been stuck in the 50’s. Hell all you need to do is mix it with some lime and pozzilan or Portland cement and those metals aren’t going no where. And hell I don’t ever recall running into a sage sludge where any of the RCRA 8 metals were above regulatory limits. Granted the do have trace quantities but to low to be an environmental hazard. I do know you have to be careful about how often and how much you use in application to a field if you’re using it for fertilizer but that’s true of all fertilizers. That’s crazy shit man.

I dabbled in sage sludge about 20 years ago and abandoned it quickly not because it was unsafe but because I just didn’t think the return on investment was there. In fact I thought it was pretty darned easy. There just wasn’t much in the way of profit in it for a private company. For a municipality it might. To big an uphill battle on public perception too.

On one project I recycled an F006 by mixing it with sand, cullet, soda ash and some clay and melting the batch into a glass ceramic composite. The resulting product contained about 20% tri-chrome but it was covalently bonded to the silica/ceramic matrix and was thus chemically inert, i.e. non toxic. I had a regulator try to tell me that because it contained 20% tri-chrome it absolutely had to be toxic. I shot him down by asking him if he liked to drink wine? He commented that he didn’t see the relevance of my question but yes he drank wine. I asked if he used crystal glassware when he drank wine to which he said yes. I said “You do know that crystal glassware is 24% lead oxide by weight don’t you? Aren’t you worried about lead poisoning?”. That shut him up.

Another time, with the same product, a Prof rejected my claim that my recycled F006 product was non-toxic based on it passing numerous TCLP analysis. So just to show him how inert the product was I did another TCLP only I replaced the standard leaching solution with 70% reagent grade nitric acid (boy I played hell developing a method to analyze the leachate on a graphite furnace AA without destroying the instrument. lol). The only thing I got a hit on was, not surprisingly, was chromium but that was in the pbb range. In other words passed in flying colors.

That wasn’t good enough for him and he insisted on doing a fish bioassay. Being a smart ass instead of doing that I bought a fish tank, lined the bottom about 4” deep with recycled F006 product, filled it with water and a bunch of flat head minnows. After a month all but two were alive and well. He didn’t appreciate my sense of humor for some reason. LOL
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Life is animated matter.

The inexplicable emergence of matter created the horrific, fatal stain on a perfect, infinite vacuum.

Given the status of the universe today, I'm pretty comfortable with that assessment of it.
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Spiritual life predates the physical universe.
A spiritual events equal and opposite reaction was
The Big Bang.
 
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