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This thread should be about any question you have about science at all. Ask any question and we will try to approach it from the scientific point of view. Also, feel free to ask about ask about science and what actual scientists do. If you want to ask about those deadly skeletal mainframes we somewhat more mad than usual scientists are designing to conquer the world, ask away.

My aim is to demystify science. The aim of science is to figure out how the world actually works. Too often science is presented as obtuse and arcane, when nothing could be further from the truth. Science is the province of everybody, and I would be happy to recruit as many people as possible.

Let me as up front as possible. I do not believe that science is in direct opposition to religion. Myself, I am as atheistic as an agnostic can be. But don't let that dissuade you from asking questions you care about. I'm more than willing to discuss topics such as evolution, and I'm willing to countenance your deeply held beliefs.

Question? Ask away!

Why is the sky blue ?

Is it something to do with the atmosphere, the way light refracts ?


 :question:

Yes, exactly.

The atmosphere acts as a prism or diffraction grating.  The angle of refraction depends on frequency (or, for purposes of the question, color) of the light.  Blue light is bent more than yellow light, so the yellow part of the sunlight comes at us 'straighter' and the blue light goes off at an angle.  The blue then reflects down, giving the effect of the whole 'sky' being blue.

Where do babies come from?

Vaginas.

(Too on-the-nose response?)

If you have to ask, you're doing it wrong...

That's a bush-league answer (so to speak).

Is Thomas Dobly right, can one be rendered seeing impaired by science?

They always required us to wear eye protection in chemistry lab, so I would assume so.

So what's the deal with homosexuality?  Biological, psychological, both?

Surely psychological.

Its just a natural instinct, I guess.
It was never a choice to be straight for me, it's not something I even thought of.
I just slowly thought: girls...yeah, I like 'em...

It must be the same with being gay.

That would actually suggest biological. That's a can-of-worms question to be sure. People will have their opinions on the matter no matter what science proves or fails to prove. Best to move on in my opinion.

I suppose EVERY personality trait from sexuality to favourite colour could be to do with whats going on in the brain.
Maybe psychological is biological on some level.

There's no right or wrong. We're all just people with unique minds.

I agree, Doggett, but to me that argues sexual disposition is biological, not psychological.  I have a natural biological reaction to the sight of boobies that's out of my control, no choice involved.  

Still, to my knowledge with all the studies that have been done no one has come up with a really good answer.  Part of the problem may be that the issue is politicized, like global warming.

EDIT TO ADD: I notice Flick posted some of the same ideas while I was writing this.

Still I find the question fascinating.  Homosexuality is obviously a pretty huge evolutionary disadvantage, yet it appears (to me) to occur at about the same rate through all cultures and all time periods.

Ah. Therein lies the rub. Western science, in all it's due glory, has also done a bad thing, separated the mind and body, that is, treated them as separate components. A more holistic approach to science treats them as part of the same organism, which they are. The question posed is: is sexual orientation more of a genetic predisposition than a psychological choice, or the other way around, or is it more balanced. As Rev said, it is so politicized that it doesn't really matter what science proves or fails to prove. The schism persists.

Ah...

But it's something in your mind thats telling you body to react to the sight of firm, pert, ample breasts...
But its not a concious decision.

If I showed you a lawn-mower, I'm sure you'd get no reation at all (unless, there ws something truely unique going on in your mind).

EDIT: Flicks right, we're all one organism so it really is an intresting topic.

I didn't say that!  It matters to me what the science says.  The politicization just makes it more difficult to get to the correct answer. 

Humans aren't the only creatures that can be gay. There's pleanty of reports of gay animals too. Heck, I live with two male dogs and the little one is always trying to hump the bigger one.

Anyway, I think the problems rise when people try to work out whats 'Right and Wrong' for a person to behave. But thats a whole different kettle of fish.

Sorry. The only thing I meant to attribute to you is that it is very politicized. That was badly worded.

Here's akind of a science question. I'm always reading that an ape the size of King Kong couldn't exist becasue it couldn't support its own weight. Yet there were dinosaurs that were much larger than the standard (non-versus Godzilla) Kong. So I put it to you ,scienceteers, could an ape as big as Kong ever exist?

(http://www.monsterlandtoys.com/video/KingKong-vol2.jpg)

I don't see why not.  Its muscles, tendons, and bones would all be in proportion to its size and should therefore be able to support its weight.  My question is who would clean up the huge poops?

Yes. Goggles, everybody.

As for homosexuality, Google "nature vs. nurture" and prepare yourself for years of study.

One, the human brain is built on biology, but it's pathways and convolution are enormously complicated. However, it seems that although each individual has their own idiosyncratic thinking style, those styles tend to conform to broad patterns such as language formation, face discrimination, and an eventual sexual "instinct," for lack of a better word.

Now here are several ideas:

1. Biology is necessity. You are hardwired when born to a certain sexual disposition. Most people will find themselves attracted to the opposite sex, but some will be "toggled" to be attracted to their own sex. This idea argues for normal sex drives in all people, just with different settings.

2. Polymorphous perversity. Like a baby that sticks everything in it's mouth to see if it's worth eating, you start off with no sexual wiring whatsoever (kind of true with the puberty thing, but we'll ignore that for now). As you grow towards puberty, social conditioning pares down your broadness of vision. Most people will choose to have sex with the opposite sex, but some will be intent on their own sex.

I would argue that it is a lot more complicated that either of those choices. I lean more towards an "imprinting" view of the whole thing, but humans have the unprecedented ability to change their minds, in all aspects of that phrase. For instance, you don't see a lot of other mammals choosing a life of celibacy.

As for evolutionary advantages, it may seem that hetero sex is the most advantageous, but it may just be that sex itself is enough. Let the pieces fall where they may and watch the whole thing take off. But even then you have to take into account social structure, child upbringing, mate pairing, family structure, etc. And we still haven't talked about people with more than two sex chromosomes; XXY, XYY, and so-on.

Anyway, every point I brought up has been, is, and will be argued about vehemently. From the science point of view, you will find many who will argue point one. You will also find many who think those people are morons and support point two. You will also find many who think both of those groups are deluded and are currently preparing data that supports a brand new idea. They'll all argue about it.

Your post, Mofo Rising, is excellent and very even-handed. I agree particularly with this last point, and in this way I am hoping the thread will veer back to it's original fun intent and not go the other way. Time will tell.

from storks of course! :wink:

Here's one.

I am fascinated by black holes. However, my brain only carried me so far when researching them and once the language starts getting overly scientific, I start to get lost. I would love a simple layman's explanation of black holes, what causes them, what makes them tick, etc.

A male is 11x more likely to be homosexual as an adult if he had no male figure in his life before and during the early stages of puberty. Those also have greater incidence of substance abuse and suicide.

Black holes have fascinated me for years.  Stephen Hawking has some good info on them but it definitely can get confusing for the layman.  Where does the matter that's sucked into a black hole go?  Is it destroyed?  Sucked into another dimension?

Okay, I'll frame my response in the form of a question rather than an "argument," since it's more something I've pondered than a definitive "conclusion."

How does a biological tendency to be homosexual get passed along to continue as a trait?

(1) Some people who are homosexual will still reproduce heterosexually.  If it's biological, we should thus see a (fairly strong) correlation between homosexual parents who have produced offspring and the sexual tendency in the offspring.  Has this correlation been observed, in cases where environmental influences were non-existent?  (Perhaps the study would include offspring with a homosexual parent that did not know the parent was homosexual, etc).  This would be a very difficult study to execute...has it been done?

(2) Homosexuality correlations in twins?  This is the classic type study in sociology when looking into 'nature vs nurture' trends.  Has this study been done?

(3) In the non-human animal world, where homosexual behavior is observed, are those specimens STRICTLY homosexual?  Or, do they engage in heterosexual activity for purposes of reproduction?  In other words, can we separate the reproductive behavior from other forms of sexual expression?

(4) The percentage of the population that is homosexual (is this 'self identified' ??) is about 1%; can a trait that exhibits in only 1% of the population be considered one that helps the survival of the species (the evolutionary driver)?  Is there another example of this?

Sorry if this "overview" covers what you've already read...

Basically, a black hole is a huge, very, very deep "gravity well."  If one write the mathematical equations describing the 'shape' of space-time, there are certain places where the denominator = zero.

As you may recall, that's "not allowed" in math.  Well, that's only sorta not allowed.   Situations where the denominator ends up being zero are called "singularities," and they happen to occur rather frequently in 'theoretical' equations.  Note here that I am using the term "theoretical" in the true scientific sense (ie, a mathematical representation of something in the real world), not the layman's sense (something conjectured or guessed).

So, you have this singularity from the mathematics...what does it mean?

Consider the series 1/10, 1/1, 1/0.1, 1/0.01, 1/0.001, ... and on.  If you plug those into a calculator (or do the math in your head), you'll see that the answer is getting bigger and bigger as the denominator gets smaller and smaller.

What do you predict will happen to the answer of the division problem when the denominator is 0?

Yes, we cannot actually DO that (within our system of math, anyway), but we CAN use a calculus tool: the limit.  Now, limits are really cool in that they have some very abstract and subtle (and profound) properties, but the application of them is rather straightforward.  Simply, a limit tells us what an equation tends toward as one of the values in that equations tends toward a particular value.

So, in essence, we can say that the limit of the fraction 1/x as x goes to zero is infinity.  We cannot ever actually GET x=0, but we can make x as arbitrarily CLOSE to zero as we want, then make it a little closer and we find the second answer is BIGGER than the first.  Etc.

Okay, back the black holes...we end up with a zero in the denominator for an equation that describes the gravity, and essentially what we are saying is that the gravity is "infinite" at that spot.  That's theory.  In practice, just take the gravity there so be so immensely huge so as to create a region that is beyond what our 'ordinary' descriptions and understanding of matter.

The gravity is so large, that not even "light" can escape...hence the name "black hole."  As matter is pulled into the gravity well, the "hole" in space-time, even the atoms are ripped apart.  In "theory," the hole is infinitely deep...as it would be if it were a "true singularity."  In practice, there is a bottom there somewhere.   :teddyr:

Does that help AT ALL?  Or cover the same ground you've seen elsewhere?  Confuse the matter worse?

I know you were asking Mofo rather than me, but my tentative responses would be:

(1)  I don't know, but even if the cause is biological, there's no reason to suppose homosexuality would be a heritable trait and lots of reason to suppose it wouldn't be.  It could occur during development in the womb.  It could be a result of hormonal factors that are largely environmental/random. There could also be a relatively common "gay genotype" that only rarely develops into a "gay phenotype" and therefore is not subject to much pressure from natural selection.

That last option would be my guess; it just makes the most sense to explain the recurrence of this biologically paradoxical trait. 

(2)  Per wikipedia (insert disclaimers) twin studies suggest some genetic component to homosexuality.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation#Twin_studies.  "...the environment shared by twins (including familial and societal attitudes) explained 0–17% of the choice of sexual partner, genetic factors 18–39% and the unique environment 61–66%. The individual's unique environment includes, for example, circumstances during pregnancy and childbirth, physical and psychological trauma (e.g., accidents, violence, and disease), peer groups, and sexual experiences. [...] In men, genetic effects explained .34–.39 of the variance, the shared environment .00, and the individual-specific environment .61–.66 of the variance."

(3) Though animals sometimes engage in homosexual behavior when no specimens of the opposite sex are around, I don't think there are many exclusively homosexual animals.  I could be wrong.   

(4) 1% is the lowest figure anyone posits for the prevalence of homosexuality.  It seems to me that more than 1 out of every 100 people I've met are gay.  From my own experience I would estimate closer to 3-5%; it's certainly not as high as the 10% figure that used to be bandied about, but I doubt it's as low as 1%.  I don't see how exclusive homosexual attraction could ever be anything but detrimental to propagating the species.  I can see how a high prevalence of bisexual behavior might not have much effect at all, however.

If one passes through a wormhole (assuming it's even safe to do so), would one not end up in another space and time?

On the issue of homosexuality, leaving my religious views aside, I think it is probably a combination of nurture and nature.  A large number of male homosexuals share certain common background factors (lack of a strong relationship with a father figure during early childhood being one of them).  I think female sexual identity is less strong, but many who choose a purely lesbian lifestyle will also have common background factors.  But there are common genetic factors as well.  The question I have not found an answer to is how often those genetic factors are found in the heterosexual community?

I do have a different science related question, though.  Does the hard data conclusively prove that the current trend towards global warming is manmade?  Is it not possible that what we are experiencing is a purely natural fluctuation in global temperature?  I saw that Al Gore's environmental horror film was banned from classrooms in Great Britain on grounds of scientific inaccuracy.  Was this purely political, or did he overstate the case?

If you are trapped in a singularity, and if Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks you, do you achieve escape velocity and exit the singularity?  (we shall for the purposes of this assume that you are wearing an unbreakable space suit, or perhaps that you are surrounded by a Slaver stasis field.)

Itwasn't actually banned.
Just a small, insignifcant political party wanted it too (UKIP).
Political parties always say stupid things just so they can get noticed.

There was also a judge who pointed out some inconsistancies in it. I liked the film and agreed that Global Warming is speeding up by man. We certainly didn't start it (it's a natural process, otherwise we'd still be in an ice age) but we're sure speeding it up too fast for the globe to catch up.

I'm not entirly convinced by the Judges conclusions myself. But its always important to hear the othersides point of view (Is't it, Newt  :wink:).

Ah, another can of worms!   :teddyr:

A couple of answers:

First, the data absolutely do NOT conclusively show that any trend in the global climate is manmade.  There has been a body of work that contradicts the anthropogenic causes and this cannot be disputed to the degree that it's "known" one way or another.

As a physical scientist who has spent my professional career and adult life seeking the carrot-on-a-stick of scientific objectivity, I can earnestly say that the ENTIRE 'anthropogenic global warming' drama has been a lesson in how not to conduct science and how not to communicate science to the 'public.'  It has now been so politicized that pretty much no one in either camp will objectively look at any of the data and seek "the truth" that that data has to tell.

What we are "experiencing" can well be part of natural cycle, and I've posted about this in detail before.  To get at something resembling 'fundamental truth' in this issue, you have to step back a little bit and examine some science history.

A big part of the case for anthropogenic climate effects rests on the following syllogism:

Premise 1: "Natural" geological change is slow...takes a long time.
Premise 2: We are observing rapid changes in a number of global parameters.

Conclusion: Therefore, man is causing the changes.

Now, this is a logically valid argument, but it is not sound.  Valid means the conclusion follows from the premises, whereas sound means the premises are true.

A valid argument, logically:

All cows are purple
Bill is a cow
Therefore, Bill is purple.

Valid, but not sound.

The problem with the AGW syllogism is Premise 1, though Premise 2 is certainly debatable.  Premise 2 gets all the press, and that's because Premise 1 is accepted as "conventional wisdom," especially by those making the argument as if it were, indeed, logically sound.

Let's put Premise 2 aside.  I'll even accept for the moment, for the sake of argument, that it is true.  Do we now have a sound argument?

No.  Premise 1 is false.  And this is very easy is to show.  The problem, however, is the number of people that wrongly accept Premise 1 as true.  Even in the face of a tremendous body of evidence to the contrary, this notion of 'natural geological change is slow' persists.

In the 1990's, Spencer Weart (if I recall correctly) published an article in Physics Today, the 'trade rag' of the American Physical Society.  In the article, he outlined some of that body of evidence, which included things such as forest regions completely switching from evergreen to deciduous in a span of decades, ocean currents completely reversing in less than a century and very large scale temperature fluctuations on very small time scales.  All of these were pre-Industrial Revolution or indeed, pre-human civilization completely.

He went on to describe how all of this was known around the turn of the 20th century, but for some reason, several key scientists of that time denied the evidence available and "bulldozed" through the notion that geological change MUST be slow.  He who writes the textbooks controls the beliefs of the next generation, and once that idea was accepted as "truth," it stuck.  Now, 5 generations later, it is indeed, taken as 'established fact.'

Again, this 'truth' was in direct denial of the testable, measurable evidence available even at the time it was posited.

There have been a LOT written on this topic over the past few years.  A number of geological 'events' that you and I were taught took "millions of years" to happen, now have bodies of evidence suggesting that those timescales were overestimated by several factors of ten...enough to lead to very different 'modes of thought' on the nature of geological change.

Indeed, ask the Japanese just how long "island shaping" geological change must take.

So, the truth of Premise 1 is certainly in question.

Is that alone enough to falsify AGW?

No.  Man could be a driver on top of natural events.  Or, those natural events could be in a period of quiet.  Indeed this seems to be the case, at least with temperatures.

Part of the problem with historical global temperature 'data' is that it is ALL what is called proxy data...the temperatures are not measured directly but some "proxy" is used for temperature.  Whether the proxy is trapped CO2 in ice cores, tree rings, sea levels, etc. there MUST be some mathematical manipulation that leads to "temperature" from the measured proxy.

A few years back, McIntyre and McKittrick, vile and hated as they are, published an incredible piece of work.  They used the 'global climate model(s)' that was used to 'reproduce' Mann's Hockey Stick, but used a random driver rather than any real proxy data.  In other words, they fed the mathematical model a random stream of numbers, and REPRODUCED THE HOCKEY STICK.

This shows that the math used to model the hockey stick data is pure, unadulterated crap.

But again, this alone does not falsify man-made causes of climate change.  But it does call into question ANY conclusion based on those particular models.

One fact that cannot be denied is that the mathematical modeling of temperature proxies show HUGE temperature fluctuations in the historical record, and these fluctuations occur on VERY SHORT time scales.

Finally, I note that another idea in the global warming debate that is pure bunk is the notion of "consensus."  There never was consensus, and there certainly is not now.  Two key biases have caused the 'appearance' of consensus in the eyes of SOME people:

publication bias - it's much harder to get a paper published that challenges the cause du jour, and

funding bias - you don't get federal money for a proposal that essentially says "I want to falsify man made causes of climate change.'

It's an interesting phenomenon.  But one thing is definitely clear, and can be shown: since this 'debate' has started, there have been scientists that refused to step onto the bandwagon and sing "the party line;" often, they were dismissed as crackpots for this fact alone, when no flaw could be found with their science.  Ad hominem is the tactic of a politicized debate, not one of true science.

I hope that's a reasonable overview.  I am not trying to answer the question of whether not the conclusion of anthropogenic causes are real, but merely to outline the 'debate' as it exists from a scientist's perspective.

Impressive and eloquent, thank you.
Someone care to argue the opposite point? 

I really am curious to learn here.

Can anyone ID these berries?

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39971&id=100000649166219 (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39971&id=100000649166219)

The ones with the yellow 'jacket' that splits to show a dark orange berry inside are called "Bittersweet".   Purely decorative: people used to pick and dry branches of it and put bunches of them in vases as fall decor.  Are all the pictures of the same plants/berries?  I am not sure what the smooth yellow ones are, if they are different.

Not sure if they're the same or not.  They were growing in the same area, but I can't remember if they were all from the same tree or not (I think there were a couple different berried trees there so it might be different types of berries (or do "Bittersweets" come in red as well as yellow?)

Actually, the humping is more about dominance with dogs. Female dogs will even do it to show a rival who's boss.  It's not unlike homosexuality in prison as a means to assert dominance, although there's also an element of necessity there, what with the reduced options.

I'm finding homosexuality is not as clear a thing to define as I once thought. Most of us have pretty much seen sexual orientation as a three-way choice. You're either this, that or both. I've come to see it more the way Kinsey figured it out, as a scale of 0 to 6, with zero being straight, six being gay and three being equally bi. That still leaves two degrees of mostly straight and two degrees of mostly gay.

And then you have to consider what makes someone male or female. Thanks to medical science, it's not as simple as it used to be. If you like shemales, for example, what does that make you? They have the male equipment, but all the secondary sexual characteristics are female. The convincing ones really are hard to think of as anything but beautiful women. As I understand it, the attraction for men is that all of the feminine beauty is there, while the male parts allow for a degree of empathy. Guys have a very close relationship with their own naughty bits, and they know all of the sensations. They can relate. For their fans, a shemale is a woman who is not a mystery sexually. She has the same equipment, feels the same sensations, and thinks more like a man, but she provides nearly all the visual cues of a woman that men respond to. It's kind of a weird trick of crossed signals that shemales appeal to some otherwise straight guys.

On the other hand, there are the less common female to male transsexuals. If you just go by sexual anatomy, liking them would not make you gay. However, in terms of adult entertainment, that is who they appeal to. They might have all the female plumbing, but there's nothing else female about them. They look like men. Straight guys aren't going to be attracted to a transman regardless of what kind of plumbing he has. And where on the scale do you put a woman who likes a man with a hole instead of a pole? Is she gay? Straight? Both? Neither?

It's as though science and maybe a more openminded view of things have rendered the old labels very inadequate.

Here's a good one... okay, you have two substances that are poisonous to humans: sodium and cloride.  Put them together though, you get Sodium-Chloride, salt, which we use on a bunch of things.

Are there any other examples of two poisonous substances that can be combined into something not poisonous?  

Hydrogen: Highly flammable.
Oxygen: Supports combustion
Water: Comprised of the two, and is the most basic fire extinguisher.

Is there a scientific explanation for why my nostrils are SO DARN SEXY???? :bouncegiggle:

I'd like to know why mine are so hairy.

Its tweezer time for Doggett...

 :bluesad:

is there an answer?

About Global Warming: I read an article about how the temperature of the earth was directly related to the sun's changing output.

I believe ulthar was posting his response for the board, not just me in particular, especially since they are open-ended questions.

I wouldn't say that saying homosexuality is biological is directly synonymous with saying it is genetically determined. It seems unlikely that a gay genotype will be found, one that predicts sexual orientation through the genetic code. The pathway through puberty is turbulently complex, and the formation of the brain through which psychology operates is not very well understood.

But I use the word biological to contrast with the idea that sexuality is purely a choice. You never hear anybody ask, "When did you choose to be straight?" By many self reports, many homosexuals found themselves attracted to their own sex throughout their developing years. It would seem unlikely that this was a purely psychological phenomenon, especially in cultures which are very strongly anti-homosexual. Not that anybody can't choose to be anything, but you should know the difference of who you're sexually attracted to versus who you aren't.

That brings us right back to the false dichotomy of psychology and biology, both of which are also built on genetics, and all of which is subject to social pressures. I don't know the answers, of course, but I very much doubt it will all be one thing or the other.

There might be some genetic factor that makes one more inclined toward abnormal sexual desires. Maybe abnormal isn't the right word. Let's just say desires outside the factory default settings. I've always considered homosexuality to operate similarly to a fetish. The groundwork for a fetish is laid down long before puberty makes it sexual.

Of course, homosexuality is no longer officially considered a fetish, but I wonder if that doesn't also reflect kind of an old-fashioned view. I mean, I don't think a fetish is necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, nor do I think it's unnatural or uncommon. I think fetishes just vary so much in degree and in their specifics, that people don't recognize them as the same phenomenon. I've always said that everybody has a fetish, even if it might not be strong or unusual enough to be identified as such.

Could it be that everybody has the potential for homosexuality, given the right set of biological and developmental circumstances? For that matter, if one views sexual orientation as a scale, rather than an either-or proposition, how many people are 100% straight or 100% gay?

Would be nice to hear from the folks on the board with first-hand experience in this regard. I can't say I've known many gay people (that I'm aware of) and none well enough to discuss their sexuality. That and I haven't always been as tolerant as I am today.

Perhaps population control? I've heard claims that animals that experience overpopulation have a higher incidence of homosexuality. I dunno.

Well, let's see. Global Warming/Climate Change and the nature vs. nurture argument about sexual orientation. Two highly politicized topics. As such, the science also becomes politicized and therefore shabby and unreliable. I treat with extra skepticism ANY science that deals with those two topics.

Heritable traits do not have to be beneficial in order to survive (stay present) in a population.  Traits can be selected 'for' (if beneficial), 'against' (if detrimental) and simply present.  And there are varying degrees of both.  If a trait is not significantly detrimental, it is possible it will not be selected against and it may persist in the population in low numbers.  There is evolutionary advantage in keeping a variety of genes/traits 'available' - some of those genes could end up being useful in adapting to future situations.  One of the great concerns about our food sources these days is how limited the gene pools are getting: it limits adaptability and makes the organisms potentially much more vulnerable to any new disease or circumstance that comes along.

Traits also may be affected indirectly if they are associated with other traits that are either beneficial or detrimental to a population.  So a given trait that is more or less 'neutral' in its effect may be spread more than it would on its own merits or held back from becoming more common simply by being connected to other traits that are subject to selective pressures either for or against.

It is not often a simple straight-line cause and effect scenario when you are dealing with genetics; then you add in other factors and it gets all that much more complicated!

All very true.  I might asterisk "There is evolutionary advantage in keeping a variety of genes/traits 'available' - some of those genes could end up being useful in adapting to future situations," though.  While it's doubtlessly true, natural selection can't think ahead like that---it simply weeds out traits that are immediately undesirable, despite the fact that those traits could be useful in other contexts.  (Of course many traits, famously the sickle cell trait, have both advantages and disadvantages).

Certain traits may lie dormant until they're needed.  The various traits which make certain animals domesticatable, like docility and lack of fear of humans, would be disadvantageous to creatures in the wild.   But these "cute and friendly" genes are enormously useful to dogs and cats when they become domesticated.  Becoming cute and friendly is a successful evolutionary "strategy" that helps pets breed and spread their genes quite effectively.

This is getting too heavy for me.  I feel much safer with my "where do babies come from" question.

The navel.

Has science ever been able to answer the question of the ages:

What are the actual lyrics to "Louie Louie"??

I don't know. Try it with a "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."

Of course; natural selection does not 'think'.  The advantage in retention of 'extra' genes or traits would be more along the line of being a condition that is not selected against.  Those organisms with a capacity for or tolerance of a wider variety of genes might tend to have a greater life span as an organism: they would not be as likely to die off (become extinct) as easily or as soon.

okay, Burgo, the answer to where babies come from- 42: It's the friggen answer to everything! BUT, the password will always be Swordfish.and, on standardized test, it's C

It's like this: When a guy has a really cool car, and a girl's parents don't pay enough attention to her, the result is a baby can be born. Now, this often depends on if the guy has a fake ID or an older brother to buy him booze, or if he has the right connection to get really good concert tickets. Once he has taken her to the concert and the booze is drank, the result can be a severe session of kissing, groping, crying, and sexual experimentation. This often happens after a ritual known as the "Uh-oh, we're out of gas" scenario. Now, in the unlikely even that penetration happens BEFORE ejaculation spontaneously occurs (I know, doesn't seem possible), and the 'member' is either not covered with a condom, or the condom is entirely too large (aren't they always), the baby crawls out of the ding-dong and into the girl, where it stays for a while. Hope that helps.

All of these questions about what leads to homosexuality is why I went into chemistry. You don't ever hear about people getting into fist-fights over what occurs to an electron as it seemingly passes through the atomic nucleous at the center of a P-orbital (which is a good unanswered science question; as my quantum chem. professor was describing this back in school our physics professor snuck in and wrote "She's making this all up" on the board. This actually reflects a fairly popular view within chemistry that quantum is mostly make believe as it relies almost entirely on math instead of experimentation.)

I can slightly help on the global warming question. Not so much in terms of making you feel good or bad about yourself depending on the size/fuel efficiency of vehicle you drive but give some basics in terms of the physical laws that apply.

1. conservation of mass: there is "X" amount of carbon on the planet earth. Excluding the negligible effects of meteorites generally the amount of carbon does not change but the form of carbon does. The earth has fluctuated WIDELY both in temp and structure(and I mean widely as in jungles conditions once existed in the arctic poles, Kansas was the bottom of an ocean, and so forth) over the past couple of forevers or so. When carbon has been sequestered (e.g. taken out of the cycle by either formation of oil/conversion to some kind of mineral format) generally there is reduction in temperature and typically vice versa but it would be theoritically impossible for us to heat the earth much past where it was back in the day (by which I mean when dinosaurs ruled the earth).

2. The net impact of humans for all minerals and all elements has generally been "desequesterization" we dig stuff up that had been buried (including aluminum, Iron, .... everything) build something out of it and then chuck it out into the environment. This is simultaneously a bad thing and a good thing. Just that's what our overall impact is on the planet.

And where would this popular view be held?  Quantum mechanics is widely considered one of the most successful mathematical theories EVER developed precisely because of the HUGE range of agreements with experimental data.

It "relies" on math because it *IS* math...it's a mathematical description of the physics of small stuff....and accurately predicts so many kinds of observables that it really is quite mind boggling.

As for your p orbital electrons ...I'm not sure what what you are saying is an unanswered science question ... the wave function for a single electron in a p orbital has zero probability at the nucleus, so it does not seemingly pass through it.  It's NEVER there.  What's the problem?   :wink:

(Oh, and nice to have another chemist on the board...)

Now we've opened the p-orbital can of worms.. and Flick was worried about homosexuality and global warming being controversial! 

Please behave yourselves gentlemen!

It could also be that the gene responsible for a trait with no apparent survival value is also associated with some other trait that is valuable.

I don't recall any study showing that homosexuality runs in families. Hypothetically speaking, if it does have a purely physical cause, I think homosexuality is a more or less random phenomenon, or at least not hereditary.

Whether the cause is physical or environmental, I don't think abnormal (for lack of a better word) sexual desires really function all that differently. They're healthy, strong sexual urges that, due to whatever factors, just get pointed in a different direction or in a highly specific direction. Which would be why natural selection wouldn't weed out the tendency - it doesn't differ enough from sexuality that is desirable from a reproductive point of view.

Now that's a layman's description.

 :bouncegiggle: :thumbup: :cheers:

@Ulthar - Nice to bump into another chemist too. I can tell by your post that you too have suffered through the agony of actually learning quantum mechanics.   :buggedout:

This post has a zero probability of existing here -->      <---but starts again here? Really, how did that happen? It must be a quantum tunnel!

Your question is valid and here is where you hit a huge split in chemistry. By "popular view" in chemistry I'm narrowing this down to the organic chemists, biochemists, and others who don't get to dealing with things quite as small. I myself am a polymer chemist which is like an organic chemist but even lazier with math as we do alot of averaging but then at the end of the work we have a nice physically existing object (a polymer). I got to admit one of my issues with quantum is I can see the entire subject being completely redone in a decade or so when we get actual experimental data on some of these things.

My head hurts...   :wink:

Not only suffered through it...but taught it.  My Ph.D. is in P.Chem.   :cheers:

ahhh. now I see you are the dispenser of pain  :buggedout: Just kidding, it is good to run into a fellow nerd  :cheers:
So saw something in the news that made me think of you. Allegedly some leaked documents from CERN indicate that they may have found the particle attributable to "mass" in matter. (http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/04/26/Higgs-particle-speculation-said-premature/UPI-26231303869004/)
 I figured I would ask the smartest p-chemist I know about this. So Ulthar, what's your thoughts on this? You think they have something here?