didi

Right now it is estimated that we have between 3 and 30 millions animal species on earth. Let's cut the cake and say 3 million land beasts.

On average for each beast, let's postulate 3 square meters including food storage (32 square feet for the metric impaired). That's for 6 million animals as they all come in pairs.

Let's theorise 6 levels inside the ship, just to give a fair chance to Noah. More than that would have been impossible to build. All right, 6 is already too much but still, let's be fair.

Can you calculate the size of the ark, taking into account a length twice the size of the width to make it look like a ship?

And how many million trees would be needed to build it?

I read that article in the International Herald Tribune and suddenly wondered. What are your thoughts on the idea of recreating an extinct Human race? This is only as a hypothesis as the process to inject the corrective DNA sequences is still in the experiment stage, but the philosophical and ethical questions raised are fascinating.

Serious answers, please.

"The full genome of the Neanderthals, an ancient human species probably driven to extinction by the first modern humans that entered Europe some 45,000 years ago, is expected to be recovered shortly. If the mammoth can be resurrected, the same would be technically possible for Neanderthals.

But the process of genetically engineering a human genome into the Neanderthal version would probably raise many objections, as would several other aspects of such a project."

And to end on a nice note, what do you think of that? Would it make this project it better?

"Church (the scientist) said there might be an alternative approach that would "alarm a minimal number of people." The workaround would be to modify not a human genome but that of the chimpanzee, which is about 98 percent similar to that of people. The chimp's genome would be progressively modified until close enough to that of Neanderthals, and the embryo brought to term in a chimpanzee."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/19/healthscien...

I have heard that people have to swear on their religious books. What do they use for Atheists, the US constitution? Or is there a special procedure?

I started to discuss this with friends and we got really curious about it.

Scientists have discovered that Pinot noir grapes have more genes than humans. It has about 30,000 genes in its DNA. That's more than the human genome, which contains some 20,000 to 25,000 genes.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/ap_on_re_eu/fr...

So my question is, how would a grand designer spend more time with grapes than with humans?

Sorry, just couldn't resist this one.

Seen from Europe the war on R&S is surprising, the violence in some questions and posts staggering.

Is it something that exists as well in real life or is it just the anonymity of the site that allows it? Has there always been that antipathy in real life or has it grown over the years? And if the latter when did it start?

This is a serious question, please avoid the rants.