Then ponder this.
I believe Light shapes our universe. Light curves at the edges of our Universe to make somewhat of a sphere.. If we were to leave one angle, wed probably come out somewhere else in our own Universe.
Light is affected by gravity, perhaps its ultimately artificial gravity that could bend light?
Scoobert wrote:
Just so you know, we can already clone the Wooly Mammoth, but its just a matter of being alowed to. If we haven't cloned woolly mammoths because we're not allowed to, then we don't know whether we can or can't do it. As far as I know, woolly mammoths have some of the best theoretical prospects for cloning extinct species at this point, but we won't know if we can until we've done it. | |
Well... we cant be sure, but if we can clone a sheep why not anything else. Truely cloning animal is almost just like cloning another.
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I suppose there's always going to be disputes about how to classify extinct animals... but I think the sabertooth cat can be said to be a cat. It's not a modern cat, and it's certainly no closer related to the tiger than to any other particular cat, which is why the old name has been discarded, but I don't think there's a better family for it than cats.
Most ancient cats either had enlarged stabbing teeth (sabertooth cat) or cutting teeth (like scimitar cat), and so would attack by biting repeatedly. Modern cats mostly throttle their prey: they bite once, latch onto the neck and try to break it. The notable exception is the cheetah, who does bite repeatedly, and who is a notable exception to many things that can be said about cats. If not all modern cats fight in the same way, then having a different method of attack shouldn't disqualify extinct species. | |
Scoobert wrote:
Well... we cant be sure, but if we can clone a sheep why not anything else. Truely cloning animal is almost just like cloning another. Not really, because the processes involved are rather arcane and get into the way cell biology works. It's very easy to clone a lot of lesser creatures, but sheep and mice are mammals which have proven difficult to clone until recently. And even now we're discovering that the cloning process used on those animals is fraught with difficulties like a low chance of success and a high chance of genetic errors. In theory, yes, if you could simply extract DNA perfectly from one cell and put it into an egg cell from a similar animal, then be sure that the egg would act like it was fertilized and get it to survive implantation in a womb and gestation, then cloning would be little different from one animal to another. However, the process of wielding and dealing with the DNA and the imprinted cells is the hard part. Most people who think cloning one thing is just like cloning any other have a very simplistic view of biology. Cell biology is extremely complex. Lummox JR | |
Experimenting with cloning, I don't really see how un-extincting species helps. Studying the animals is all well and good; obviously, having living, breathing specimens (or even specimens that were living and breathing in the recent past) would increase our understanding of evolution by leaps and bounds, and undoubtedly we'd pick up some pointers on genetics just by the process of bringing these animals back. But balancing the ecosystem? It was only relatively recently that scientists realized that just going out and tinkering with the ecosystem is a very very bad idea, and now they want to develop a whole new science just so they can go out and tinker with the ecosystem even more? Those wacky, wacky scientists--when will they ever learn?
Actually, I did recently read that Russian scientists are attempting to do that very thing in areas of Siberia. You see, large sections of Siberia used to be rich grassland instead of desolate wasteland, and the theory goes that we can get all the grass back by reintroducing herds of large grazers to eat all the grass. This theory reaffirms my belief that Cyrillic isn't really an alphabet, and the Russians are just writing crazy backwards letters completely at random.