Scientific curiosities

[ayuri]

this form is being made for people who are scientifically smart/curious. so people can ask questions and someone else may be able to answer.
mine are:
1.could a virus be developed to destroy HIV before it becomes aids and is still dormant?
2.if certain chemical reactions did not happen in the body could that prevent or slow deterioration of the body (eternal youth)?
3.is it physically possible to make a machine that runs forever?
4.if my family was forced to walk on their tip toes for millions of years could they develop hooves?
Edit: remember you can post thoughts/questions too!

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

I can give a potential answer to number 4. No your family would not grow hooves. You would instead have a deformed skeletal structure within your feet.

 

[TeeBs]

Yes
Yes
Maybe
Yes, but through natural evolution, nothing to do with walking

 

[ayuri]

Yes
Yes
Maybe
Yes, but through natural evolution, nothing to do with walking

elephants developed their feet from walking on their toes.

 

[TeeBs]

Yes
Yes
Maybe
Yes, but through natural evolution, nothing to do with walking

elephants developed their feet from walking on their toes.

Because natural selection favor'd that.

 

[Luftwaffles]

this form is being made for people who are scientifically smart/curious. so people can ask questions and someone else may be able to answer.
mine are:
1.could a virus be developed to destroy HIV before it becomes aids and is still dormant?
2.if certain chemical reactions did not happen in the body could that prevent or slow deterioration of the body (eternal youth)?
3.is it physically possible to make a machine that runs forever?
4.if my family was forced to walk on their tip toes for millions of years could they develop hooves?

Perpetual motion machines is impossible. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed-1st law of thermodynamics.\
Eternal youth....maybe, but then again, free radicals are a byproduct of the reactions, and without the product that the reaction produces...you cant really function.

 

[Rakkana]

1. Possible.

2. Yes, in fact there's a scientist on that right now.

3. No. But going for a very long time would be possible, eventually all sources of energy would run out.

4. No. Evolution comes from random mutation not environmental effects. It's possible it could happen but it would have nothing to do with walking on your toes, just random luck. And in this day and age natural selections near non existent.

 

[Eumersian]

2. The problem with "eternal youth" is that when cells age, they lose a little bit of their telomere, which (very basically put) is like a little extra nonsense code that acts as like an "alarm clock". This mechanism was evolved to reduce the risk of mutant cells from growing. The more a cell ages, the more likely it is to become mutant. Each time the cell divides, it loses a bit of the telomere. When that gets to the end, the cell dies, on purpose.
-Slowing cell growth would be bad for the body, since we regularly need replacement cells just in case something bad happens.
-Those chemical reactions are required for life. If losing them slowed growth, they would impair the body's development.

Sorry for going a little off topic.

3. Sorry, I can't resist.

Spoiler: Now you're thinking with portals

 

[ayuri]

2. The problem with "eternal youth" is that when cells age, they lose a little bit of their telomere, which (very basically put) is like a little extra nonsense code that acts as like an "alarm clock". This mechanism was evolved to reduce the risk of mutant cells from growing. The more a cell ages, the more likely it is to become mutant. Each time the cell divides, it loses a bit of the telomere. When that gets to the end, the cell dies, on purpose.
-Slowing cell growth would be bad for the body, since we regularly need replacement cells just in case something bad happens.
-Those chemical reactions are required for life. If losing them slowed growth, they would impair the body's development.

Sorry for going a little off topic.

3. Sorry, I can't resist.

Spoiler: Now you're thinking with portals

that was actually really good I know there would be dangers you never directly said that it could not extend life just that it would be a bad lifetime.

 

[fletch_talon]

3.is it physically possible to make a machine that runs forever?
4.if my family was forced to walk on their tip toes for millions of years could they develop hooves?
Edit: remember you can post thoughts/questions too!

I'm hardly a big smart sciencey person but I have a few opinions on 3 and 4.

3. I don't think so. Mainly because there is nothing (to my knowledge) that is permanent. Eventually anything wood/plastic/metal will wear down and/or degrade, especially if it has moving parts and no method of maintaining itself (which would require more moving parts and an unlimited amount of resources to make/repair parts from.

4. No. The only way to evolve (which is what you are proposing) is through genetic mutation. Even if hundreds of consecutive generations of your family had their ears pierced your descendants would never be born with holes in their ears (barring the aforementioned genetic mutation).
This question often gets raised because people incorrectly present the giraffe's neck as an example of how evolution works. It had nothing to do with them stretching their necks, its just that the longer neck proved more beneficial to the giraffe's survival, meaning the long necked ones outlived and outbred the short necked ones.

EDIT: Not to mention I would imagine you would develop cat like paws or something similar before hooves. You'll notice a cats paw is kinda like our feet (from my POV) except when they walk, they do so on the very end (ball) of their feet. Its only when they sit down that you'll notice the whole foot touching the ground.

 

[Megalodon]

Second 2 no, perpetual motion doesn't exist. Getting hooves would be so much easier (by which i mean possible) with some crazy gene splicing, say combining your genome with elements of horse DNA.
"Eternal Youth" would be quite simple in theory. All that would be required was the exprssion of the telomerase enzyme, which repairs telomere degradation, in all cells instead of only germ and stem cells. The problem with this is that if it was done wrong, your entire body might become one big cancer... Also this wouldn't solve the gradual build up and mutation that we all aquire during our lives that lead to some of the health problems of later life (like high cholesterol), so this process would lengthen life, but probably not make you actually immortal.

The first question, as far as i am aware, virus particles do not attack other virus particles, so a viral HIV therapy would not be viable. Using bacteriophage to combat bacterial disease (like MRSA), however, would be effective if you could engineer the right phage.

 

[Pachacuti]

I would like to know if the concept of Tessering is a real theory.

Where I heard this term was the book "A Wrinkle In Time." It's a good book, go read it.
The concept of tessering was to bend the first to fifth dimensions,maybe just fourth and fifth, to manipulate space and time to go anywere, anytime. Forgive me if I got the number of dimensions wrong.

 

[Anarchemitis]

3.is it physically possible to make a machine that runs forever?

A machine which could run forever would need a few things:
-A source of energy which could provide forever
-Construction and materials that either automatically regenerate, automatically are replaced upon damage, or flat-out never wear or deteriorate.

If it provides its own energy, it would have to be more than 100% efficient in order to provide the required energy for its normal rate of consumption (100%) plus whatever internal inefficiencies it has in the course of running (vibrations, friction, sound, heat, exterior system interference etc.).

Even if the device was phenomenally simple and efficient to operate, those parts would wear away, bit by bit. [If a wheel turns on an axel, with the assistance of bearings and grease, the axel, bearings and wheel itself would grind away and reduce efficiency and increase drag, and the lubricant would lose its operational use. You think "It takes a long time for a carl to have parts replaced if it's well built and reliable and you treat it right." - Forever is a long time. Think about an axel and wheel turning away, for years, decades, centuries, millenia, at a time.]

UNLESS, this device has means to replace parts that are damaged. If it can grow its own new parts, it starts to fade from the realm of machine and starts to be an organic thing of some kind. However, if it has means to fabricate and replace its own parts, that would require a high level of autonomy of its own individual components, and would also demand more energy of itself.

In my mind the closest thing I could consider to be a "Machine" that could "run" forever would be a race of sentient robots that could operate, maintain and propagate itself in a similar fashion to a species. However, a race or group or even two robot buddies hanging out together is not a single machine, it's two or more machines synergizing towards a goal.

 

[Iron Lightning]

1. Not a virus, a bacterium perhaps, but not a virus. Viruses need to use the ribosomes inside more advanced cells to replicate. A virus that only attacks other viruses would not be able to reproduce. I would also recommend against using disease to fight disease. Harmful microorganisms have persisted because of their high rate of mutation, which makes them very difficult to safely use as part of a cure.

2. Yep, although it is currently unknown to science what particular sum of processes cause aging.

3. I'm actually trying to make one of those. Obviously, I can't go into details, but I can tell you that my theory is that permanent magnets could be used for energy generation. However, making a machine that runs forever is impossible because the machine in question would inevitably decay without maintenance. Since it's probable that the universe will not run for ever, I highly doubt that any machine could run forever.

4. Yes, they could develop hooves, but it would have little to do with how they walked. Evolution happens through random genetic mutations, a small percentage of which, are beneficial. If your family found that hooves increased their reproductive success, then they would likely keep their hooves. Perhaps, because of your family's multimillion-year-tradition, they would be more likely to find hooves beneficial then other families, and might be the only family to develop hooves. Assuming, that other families didn't find hooves to be beneficial in their particular niche.