h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a science question, but i didn't want to clutter up the lies thread which seems to be going off the point somewhat. Voila:
Where do cells fit in with atoms? Are cells made up of atoms?
Please answer if you can!
Jem

Yes, cells are made up of atoms. Pretty much everything is.

I'm assuming here you're talking about biological cells, e.g. skin cells, blood cells, whatever.

Rather than me try to explain it, let me give you an excellent educational link:

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/

It's a set of slides, each one a copy of the previous one, magnified by a factor of 10. It starts 10^23 metres out from the earth, about 100 million light years - so far away that our entire galaxy is a barely visible blob (and to be honest, I think that's being generous - the Andromeda galaxy is, I think, comparable in size to our own, and you need good eyes to see that at only a couple of million light years...)

Each subsequent slide is a factor of 10 closer.

The precise point on the earth which is being zoomed into happens to be a leaf on a tree in Florida, but notice how long it takes to get to that level of detail, and how quickly you pass through and out the other side to a place where everything looks the same in any case...

Note at 10^22 metres you can clearly see our galaxy's spiral structure.

Note that from being able to see the spiral galaxy, you have to zoom in six times - magnify a MILLION times - before our sun becomes a visible object. Again I think this is slightly off, because I'm pretty sure our sun would be a naked eye object at 10 light years. Not bright, but certainly visible.

Note that at 10^14 metres you can see our entire solar system, including the very eccentric and tilted orbit of Pluto, which overlaps the orbit of Neptune. What you can't see on that slide is the Oort cloud, the massive cloud of dust and gas and rocks and comets which surrounds our solar system and pretty much fills that slide.

At 10^9 metres you can see the earth and the whole of the Moon's orbit.

At 10^8 metres you're closer than an astronaut on the surface of the moon would be.

At 10^4 metres you can pick out recognisable details like the airport at the lower left of the slide.

A thousand metres up, and you can pick out individual buildings.

At 10^0 metres, one metre, you can see the "target" is an oak leaf.

From 10^-1 metres, you can see that oak leaves in Florida are quite a different shape from oak leaves in the UK...

At 10^-4 metres, you can see the individual cells on the leaves surface.

At 10^-6 metres - one micrometre - you can see the nucleus of a single cell.

You need to zoom in three more times - magnify by a factor of another thousand - before you can see the atomic structure of the chromatin in the leaf cell, and again, to bring you within 10^-10 metres (a unit known as an Angstrom), before your view is a single atom.

You can zoom in further, but I think this answers your question.

Like I say, one interesting observation here is that between the initial 10^23 and 10^8, it makes absolutely no difference which part of the earth you're zooming to - the universe looks the same, pretty much, at those levels of detail. And once you get down to 10^-9, EVERYTHING looks like that - atoms stuck together in different patterns. Zoom in further, and everything's pretty uniform, right down to 10^-16. Sure, different numbers of protons, but that's a minor detail. The essentials are identical.

So ALL the action - pretty much everything that's *different* and interesting - happens on a scale between 10,000,000 metres and 0.0000001 metres. Either side of that, it's all pretty boring.

Hope this helps...

H.

Wow! That link is really good! What are quarks?
Thanks, Jem.

Ah. A *difficult* question.

Quarks are what protons are made of.

I'm also pretty sure quarks are what neutrons are made of too...

Let me think...

H.

OK, I was right, sort of.

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/fundamental.html

Hope that helps.

H.

It's a good site, one i can understand cause it's colloquial. (Jemima hastily tries to show she learnt her english vocab list!)
'It is now known that protons and neutrons are made up quarks' so what are quarks made up of? hehehehe! No, i'm not trying to irritate you, i just have a genuine interest.
Thanks. Jem.
PS- no-one's replied to my lies posting. It's not that boring, but not quite as interesting as our earlier postings.

Hoo,
Both those sites are really interesting. I particularly like the zooming in one.

Jem,
I was wondering the same thing about quarks! Great minds...
It says on that site,
'All we know is that quarks and leptons are smaller than 10-19 meters in radius. As far as we can tell, they have no internal structure or even any size. It is possible that future evidence will, once again, show this understanding to be an illusion and demonstrate that there is substructure within the particles that we now view as fundamental.'

I think that might mean that quarks just *are*, they make up themselves, as far as people know at the moment.

Here's a question I've been wondering about, any help much appreciated:
Is a proton in a silver atom exactly the same as one in an iron atom? If so, and the same for neutrons and electrons, would it be possible, in theory, to make atoms of one element into atoms of another element of you had the right spare parts of e, p and n? I guess it would be actually impossible at the moment, but is there any reason that it wouldn't be possible given the right technology?

Clare

All protons are indeed identical, as are neutrons, electrons and other fundamental particles. And it is indeed possible for one element to be changed into another by the addition/subtraction of neutrons/protons/electrons given the right conditions. The processes are nuclear fusion, fission and radioactive decay.

For nuclear fusion the right conditions are extreme high temperature and pressure, and the best example is what goes on in the heart of a star. Hydrogen atoms are pushed together to form first helium, then lithium, then carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. up to (I think) iron.

In fact, every atom of which you are composed (apart from hydrogen) was created in this way, and was once part of a star that subsequently exploded. We are not only poetically stardust; we're literally stardust.

Noggin

Noggin,
That's *so cool*! I hoped that that was how it worked . That makes me think about our whole attitude to having 'stuff'. Imagine being able to *make* things literally out of thin air! Or for third world aid! Changing CO2 into water in places where there was drought, or into the hydrocarbons in oil to replenish all the non-renewable energy sources! It could get awfully confusing though, if you were able to change elements into other elements at the drop of a hat, like if somebody felt like turning the metal of your bike into mercury or bromine ir some other element patently unsuited for velocipedary (sp?). Probably a good thing we can't do this (yet....)

Unfortunately it's not that simple. Stuff can't be created out of thin air, and there are definite rules about what goes in and what comes out of a reaction.

Have a look at http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/isotopes

Transmutation takes much too much energy to be done industrially now for masss production. Anyway, the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics forbid turning waste products back into fuel without using more energy trhan was produced.

Transmutatin has been used to produce about 30 artificial elements, including americanium, which is used in some smoke detectors.

Some helium (about 20% of atoms formed in Big bang) and lithium were also made in the big bang, not stars. And heavy hydrogen is made in stars, I think.

Good explanation.

I meant transmutation by fusion/injection(when a light particle is fired into a heavy nucleus) in the above posting.

Transmutation byy fission is cheaper, at least when dealing with elements heavier that Iron-56, but the results are usually radioactive.

A large amount of lead, and all radioactive elements naytural on earth except Uranium and Thorium have formede by natural radioactivve transmutation. This is to slow for industrial use and only works with radioactive starting points.

Hello R. Daneel Olivaw. Do you have a shorter name?!
I'm a little star! Awww! Or a big bang thingy gummy. But don't get me started on the big bang! (see lies, damned lies and science lessons)
Hello noggin. Everyone seems to have joined this thread. Just as well cause i've discovered some really interesting stuff. But now Hoo and i don't have a nice hidy hole for talking with each other! I dont mind though.
JEm

I generally call him RDO

It's typically hootoo that the two threads are now the wrong way round, with the science lessons taking place here, and the personal chitchat carrying on on the science lessons thread

Noggin

Too true. I've joined the Freedom from Faith Foundation to get some interesting chitchat! I see you're in it as well. It's really interesting isn't it?
Jem

" That makes me think about our whole attitude to having 'stuff'. Imagine being able to *make* things literally out of thin air! Or for third world aid! Changing CO2 into water in places where there was drought, or into the hydrocarbons in oil to replenish all the non-renewable energy sources! It could get awfully confusing though, if you were able to change elements into other elements at the drop of a hat"

I can recommend a mindblowing book - "Engines of Creation" by K. Eric Drexler. It's about nanotechnology.

Quick explanation: you CAN'T change elements into other elements at the drop of a hat. You CAN change elements into other elements, but it's extremely difficult, mainly because the differences between elements are to do with the differences in numbers of protons and neutrons in the nucleus, and changing that requires a LOT of energy, or produces radioactivity.

But why bother? There's plenty of most elements just lying about the place. It's only their *arrangement* which is inconvenient.

Consider: in front of you right now is a complex arrangement of atoms which you refer to as a "computer". But what atoms? Carbon, silicon, copper, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, some silver maybe, gallium, arsenic (for doping the semiconductors, but only a little), and not much else. Now look at the thin air around you. Mostly nitrogen and oxygen, some carbon dioxide. If you're in a centrally heated house there's probably enough copper to replicate your computer in six inches of central heating piping. There's enough silicon in a handful of sand off the beach, and the amounts of gallium and arsenic are probably so small you couldn't see them with the naked eye.

All it takes is to arrange those atoms in the right combination. (ALL it takes, he says ).

Seriously - there is no reason, in principle, why you couldn't build a machine which could disassemble a lump of coal the size of your head and reassemble it as a flawless diamond. No physical law prevents this, only the current level of technology.

There are some seriously wacky implications of this.

Consider again: what is a steak? Or pasta? Complex arrangements of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, magnesium, a whole buncha elements.

But: what is compost? What is dirt? A complex but different arrangement of almost the same atoms. No physical law prevents us from disassembling a pile of horse manure and reassembling it as a filet mignon, foie gras, or veal cutlets. And the best thing is, they'd be absolutely identical to "real" ones, and the animal rights people wouldn't be able to complain!

There are many, many other ramifications of the ability to shift atoms around into specific patterns. Try to guess a few.

H.

The FFFF is one of those neverending conversations that goes through phases of being interesting and busy, and phases of being pretty quiet, but it's worth keeping an eye on, and it's quite friendly.

Hoo's not a member. For whatever reasons.

Noggin

'Carbon, silicon, copper, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, some silver maybe, gallium, arsenic (for doping the semiconductors, but only a little), and not much else. Now look at the thin air around you. Mostly nitrogen and oxygen, some carbon dioxide. If you're in a centrally heated house there's probably enough copper to replicate your computer in six inches of central heating piping. There's enough silicon in a handful of sand off the beach, and the amounts of gallium and arsenic are probably so small you couldn't see them with the naked eye.' Now I think I know how Roquentin felt, there's just so much of everything! I'll look out for that book.

I love the idea of being able to make foie gras and things without killing animals, we could give up eating real meat altogether (I already have, but it would be good for all those carnivores).Sounds seriously cool.

Freedom From Faith Foundation? Sounds interesting. I'll look out for that. Be careful you don't get mixed up with the Forward in Faith Foundation (though they're probably not on hootoo), who are my Grandpapa and his cronies campaining against women priests

So how do you change an element? Is it radiation ?(Jemima tries to be clever and falls short of the mark) You said it's hard but exactly how do you do it? Do you need a lot of heat? Please explain in words of one syllable for the people who got 58% in their physics exam!!
Jem