... if our planet was closer to the center of the galaxy?
(This post has a fair amount of stuff that probably isn't all that interesting if you don't have a bit of a science background)
That was a question posed on twitter last night that I missed until just now. I tweeted my responses, then looked into the responses that other people had sent. Mine were:
"... It's really hard to say. Depending on who you talk to, even the mutation rate/rate of error repair is tuned by evolution"
"so it's possible that even with more radiation the mutation rate would be the same or even lower."
"if life from Earth was moved closer to the center of the galaxy, then yes, probably faster evolution, but also a lot of death."
My responses assume that the cosmic radiation would actually be higher and that it's a significant enough amount to actually cause mutations. If not, the whole discussion's moot anyway. Some of the others were:
"Cosmic rays seldom reach the ground, which is where evolution usually occurs. I think fast food is a better accelerant."
"isn't that from starship troopers?" (I don't know... maybe it is? I need to see that movie)
"Perhaps, but not due to cosmic rays. It would be due to our player having played through the game three times already." (I kind of like the idea of us all being part of a big game for some reason... and that the player could be bored and boost mutation rate to just see what happens.)
and of course: "CROCODUCK!" (which... well... I have no idea what that's about, but just imagine a cross between a crocodile and a duck and it can be pretty funny).
Anyway, that's how twitter can be used, successfully or not, so start a discussion on something. There were a bunch of good responses from people who knew what they were talking about, but those tended to be multiple tweets long and... well... you can go do a twitter search for @dresdencodak if you want to read those. They're not really much fun unless you want to get a bit of a brain exercise. The general consensus is "no," in case you're wondering.
4 comments:
The last sentence is what I was
looking for the whole blog long.
Sorry for flipping your ear; hope it didn't go off as too much of a PDA or something :P I just thought it was an excellent wa to attract your attention to say Hi.
I feel obliged to point out that Starship Troopers is a book by Robert Heinlein; presumably that predates the movie (the book is sitting on my desk waiting for me; I haven't seen the movie).
And THAT doesn't sound pretentious at all. Hi!
Eh no biggie about the ear flicking. I've had friends who do it in the past, I just surprise a bit easily, especially when I'm spacing out standing in a line like that.
That's actually a really good point Maya... I tend to enjoy the books more than the movies. I just completely forgot about the book because the movie was what I've had brought up in context relatively recently.
...I still need to go to the library here and do some reading now that summer's here and I don't have classes.
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