31–40 of 77 posts
"The knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth - the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars- the high mass ones among them- went unstable in their later years- they collapsed and then exploded- scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy- guts made of carbon, ni…
Where does the world come from? And what is beyond the universe?
Why does the world / kosmos (κόσμος) continue to exist? Is it necessary or contingent?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possibly not the same particles, though. Baryonic matter condenses and undergoes nuclear transformations in the stars. But if our feelings and memories are electrical phenomenon then they were not formed in stars.
I think electrical activity in the brain is misunderstood. These electrical signals are not electrons moving along a wire, they are waves of depolarisation between the inside and inside of the cell membrane travelling along the axon or dendrites. The depolarisation is due to the activity of a bunch of ion pumps and channels that let ions pass between the inside and outside of the cell. Some of these ion channels are…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Half" isn't accurate or significant, but... A tree is a slow-motion explosion, one which can only occur at the boundary (interface) between air and earth. A human is a slow-motion explosion, one which can only occur at the boundary (interface) between fluid and uterine wall. We're not so different, because physics doesn't change. Both systems need resources from both sides in order to grow, so an interface is really…
What’s your definition of explosion?
So if plants are roughly half carbon half water, and the carbon comes from the air while the water comes from the ground, it makes sense that plants spread roughly symmetrically both below the ground and above the ground. Well, a bit more above the ground because they also need photons.
There is a tendency to draw the silhouette of a tree with roots the same size as the canopy but this image is wrong. The root system of most plants run much shallower than people assume because there is no oxygen in deep soil to sustain the roots. A 300 feet giant Sequoia would only reach 12 to 15 feet into the ground.
I was shocked by the shallowness of a sequoia root system (though have never thought of any roots being as deep as their tree is tall!). It feels like the centre of mass would be too high for stability.
The trick is the width of the root system, especially plate roots, which can be over 40X the width of the trunk, and can interlock with neighbouring trees forming a stablising matrix.
There are almost fully underground trees which allows them to survive fire (they just lose the photosynthesising top) and also survive where grasslands have driven out forest cover. I know these trees exist in Africa, but don’t know if they live elsewhere.
I would think of these as “bushes” but really there’s no difference between a shrub and a tree except in the eye of the beholder.