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The Poet with the Soul of a Scientist

Science changes the world, mostly for the better of most.  The ancient masters are interesting, but they couldn't know what we know now.  How do we integrate useful knowledge with essential thought?

The use of metaphor has helped me grasp some complex concepts. I hope this pod will become a meme-swap, a grok-opolis, a gnostitorium. I'd like...(more)
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Here I've 'fertilized' the pods with the more important ideas I like to think about.  These are the essentials needed to talk about what I think.  If you don't want to discuss what I think, discuss what you think.
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  Etceterist : Beige Knight

Periodic Table of Elements

Etceterist said Jun 22, 2006, 8:57 PM:
 

The PToE is the greatest concentrations of information I know of.  Hanging in classrooms or filling the inside cover of a textbook, what else describes so much of the Anyverse in so few characters?  Mendeleev (one of the more differently-spelled names in history) had the brilliance to recognize the incomplete nature of his list and leave holes for the unknowns.  

 Technetium (element 43, which also means it has 43 protons) hadn't existed in our solar system for billions of years (or ever, if Earth created more recently) until humanity made it (officially in 1937).  We knew what its physical properties would be before it existed, because of the patterns inherent within the PToE, as we know the other twenty-odd element we've knocked together in some lab or reactor.

Many people disagree with this playing around with radioactive elements and I don't blame them.  However, I think we must continue to explore the high-count elements, at least up to element 118 (called ununoctium until someone satisfies the right people that it did manifest, however briefly).

Until anyone more knowledgeable in physical chemistry (or chemical physics) can persuade me otherwise, I'm sticking with my hunch that 118 is the upper limit for the PToE.  There are four quantum constants at work here, the particulars of which define an electron's charge, spin, velocity and location. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal indicates the values for all four constants cannot be simultaneously known. To surpass 118 (which is an inert gas like neon, argon, kryton, xenon and radon ) means calling into existence a new way for an electron to contort.  

Another hunch indicates that for a species to transcend, it must fill all the holes of the PToE, then make an element above 118, which I have called panangelium (based on pandemonium, or pan-demon-ium, or the room with all the demons in it.  A decent amount of the element, say, enough to make a needle or something similar, could define the ancient question:  how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
  Etceterist : Beige Knight

Re: Periodic Table of Elements

Etceterist said Jun 30, 2006, 8:11 PM:
 

Embedded in the PToE are the building blocks of life (I'd call them TinkerToys if the name weren't trademarked).  

  1. Hydrogen
  2. Oxygen
  3. Nitrogen
  4. Carbon
  5. Phosphorus
 As elements, they are interesting only in quantity.  As molecules, each provides a different type of structure.
 
Hydrogen (usually) can only make one bond in a molecule.  A hydrogen molecule is the simplest example.
 
Oxygen is a special case of elements that like two bonds, such as sodium and chlorine.  Salt is a nice cubic crystal.  Toss oxygen, that bend in space, into the molecule and all of a sudden, ice floats on water.
 
Nitrogen likes three bonds.  Smallest is ammonia (one nitrogen with three hydrogens capping the bonds) but many plants need nitrates (or is it nitrites, I can never remember) and amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) need nitrogen.
 
Carbon.  Don't get me started on carbon.  Okay, maybe some day I'll manifest an ode to this incredible element.  For now, the graphite in pencils and industrial diamonds have done nothing in comparison to what buckytubes are going to do for us all.  Carbon is the distinguishing feature between organic chemistry and inorganic chemistry.  Short, volatile molecules and long, replicable ones.  Just freaking marvelous. 
 
Phosphorus, when missing an electron, has five bonds.  The essential cellular energy (as mentioned in the mitochondrial vine here in my pod) is adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.  Without ATP, there is no chance of multiple cells in one organism (as far as we know, ATP was the best molecule on Earth for this purpose when it became an issue).
 
Because these molecules are the way they are, and they were that way more than 4.5 billion years ago (Earth's probable age), life works.  The PToE leads me to believe that any way of stacking protons so they stick together in ever greater increments, regardless of universal constants, will provide molecules that are best-suited to become self-organizing. 
  Etceterist : Beige Knight

HONC if You're Alive

Etceterist said Jul 31, 2006, 8:55 PM:
 

Some more on phosphorus. 

This element is called life's bottleneck.  This means that for any biome, of all the elements needed for life, phosphorus is the one that runs out first.  Hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon (some call them the CHON elements, but I like calling them the HONC elements) are all plentiful on Earth (and must be plentiful for life as we know it to happen). 

Lack of phosphorus, until recently, stopped growth within the biome.  This, mind you, was essential for the biome to evolve.  If there is no free phosphorus, you have to take it from where it's bound:  in another lifeform.  That lifeform will be not only be reluctant to give up its phosphorus but is also interested in obtaining your phosphorus for its offspring.

Lack of phosphorus would still stop growth with the biome, but we are now capable of mining it and converting it into fertilizer and laundry detergent and washing it into our oceans.

So there is more phosphorus in the global biome than ever before, so growth is easier for everything that exists.  This means evolution is slower now than in the pre-Industrial world.