[falconeye]

if *you* were the UFO pilot.... Wouldn't you? Just maybe... A leeetle? )

Oh yeah, definitely. Since otherwise, the daily media scan to write up the executive summary report (or whatever it is called in alien language) would just be too boring

[Ratmagiclady]

Touché! Now THIS is real world and much more tangible then trying to sort through all this physics stuff!

Yep, I can see doing that...scare the hell out of the little Earthlings. Think your little planes are fast?? Get a load of this! Bet you can't do a 500G turn like this! Oh yeah.

And since we are now thinking about reality and not science, I can say for certain that the mission commander would have my head and my wings...especially for jeapardizing that type of mission. It wouldn't happen again....and probably wouldn't happen to begin with...that professionalism thing and all.

...but boy would there be stories to tell! That just might win out!

Maybe I've read too much Sagan, but I do think the only reason anyone capable of such feats would *bother* to make the trip would in fact be because they're fallible social creatures, however alien and possibly-incomprehensible.


But social. If they could relate to *each other,* they could probably 'relate' to *us,* even if they had some completely-wrong idea, they could imagine we are something like them. Even if they really had the wrong idea.

One doesn't imagine social creatures are uniform and always act in that perfect uniformity. Not saying that means anything about visitors, however well-intentioned or policied. But. Flying. Bet that's pretty basic. Social creatures would probably have some impulse to 'share.'

[Luciferase]

You can actually make libraries of random peptides or RNA oligomers and reproducibly isolate some that not only reliably assume certain folds, but also display specific biochemical functions.

That is true, but they were built around existing templates. Could we categories this to a designer molecule? My knowledge is limited, is there any molecules made to work without templates?

Folding is an intrinsic property of polypeptide chains, and if there is one thing that evolution can explain well is the ability of proteins to reliably fold, because they are continuously selected to do precisely that.

I agree to that to an extent but not entirely. Mutation is when proteins fold better or miss-fold to generate stronger or more selective off-springs.

There really is a huge literature on both the physical chemistry of protein folding and the evolution thereof. It's really no big mystery.

To my understanding, protein folding is still an unsolved scientific problem. There are only two existing methods to “photography”/ calculates accurate 3D structure. Everything else (in silico) are predictions.

Luciferase, I apologize for having offended you. What I certainly did.

No, I didn’t think you offended me. As I see from your earlier post, you’re intellect and kind. I admire your knowledge and experience. Just sometimes, “Letters are men’s most addictive drug, and the source of misunderstanding.” Quote taken from somewhere.

I was involved in the early phase of development of a formalism which is now called "Energy Landscape" Energy landscape - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. In my PhD thesis I used this formalism to better understand the emergence of complex structures in solid state physics.

I sincerely respect and thank you for all that you have done and will do to contribute to our knowledge.

Although I do not have a physical chemistry background, but I will read about energy landscape until I can grasp your point. Thank you for your input.

[falconeye]

I will read about energy landscape until I can grasp your point. Thank you for your input.

You're welcome.
I am not active in this field of research anymore. From a short inspection of literature available for non members of scientific libraries, I found the following to be useful:
http://guara.ucsd.edu/leslou/PolymerReview.pdf
It describes the state of the art of 2003, is an overview artice and free of mathematical formulas. It may be hard to read still, as it is written by physicists. If you need a simple explaination of the concept, drop me a PM.

[Hey Elwood]

To each his own.. All I'm saying is that I worked on aircraft for 4 years and I know what I saw. The only jets that could stop in mid air and takeoff again was the Harrier and it can't move like the object I saw. It looked about half the size of the moon when I first saw it, I couldn't hear anything at all, I was guessing on the distance so It must have been closer.
I didn't know the other guard personaly so I never talked to him again. As Falconeye stated it's a very large base.
I didn't hang out on base much I was either at the beach on my days off of working at a topless bar at night. No Not as a stripper! as a Bouncer.

I think they just stopped by to grab a quick bite to eat (maybe a cow), take a short bathroom break and drop off barak obama.

Just so you know I'm not dissing what you saw...just making a funny.