Number of pepole on earth.

[Apollo 0]

Quote[/b] ]The human genome has not finished yet... They have sequenced the majority of the genome (about 90%) in very small pieces of genetic information. It will take another 10 years to assemble those contigs in a complete map. Essentially they only have the pieces of the puzzle, not the big picture.

Huh ,AFAIK the human genome project was completed somewhere around 2003.

And yes ,thats what's Wikipedia is claiming to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome_project

Quote[/b] ]On April 14, 2003, a joint press release announced that the project had been completed successfully, with 99% of the genome sequenced with 99.99% accuracy.

...

Although the working draft was announced in June 2000, it was not until February 2001 that Celera and the HGP scientists published actual details of their drafts. Special issues of Nature (which published the publicly-funded project's scientific paper) and Science (which published Celera's paper) contained descriptions of the methods used to produce the draft sequence, as well as analysis of said sequence. These drafts are hoped to provide a 'scaffold' of about 90% of the genome upon which gaps can be closed.

Quote[/b] ]You watch too much star wars movies

Star wars i like (well mostly the older ones ,classics afcourse) ,star trek .... yuk.

But under normal circumstances such technological evolutions will probably be only a matter of time ,if not in a 100 years then in a 1000 years or even 10.000 years ,if you see how much humankind has progressed just in the last 1000 years ,and how this evolution speed is cummulative and lead's to even bigger evolutions in increasingly shorter time (we may have progressed more technologicly in the last 100 years than in the 900 years before it) then it would be actually be rather ignorant tio claim that such technoligical evolutions will not happen.

Science Fiction existed to 100 years back ,much of the thing's Jules vernes predicted for ex. are a reality for a long time now.

Space colonization is symbolicly comparable to the age of explorations that started with early portugese Explorers supported By King Hendrik the seafarer.Once a vessel was developed that could undertake such long voyage's (carveel) the vastnesses lay open for the Europeans.

Pity we are investing relativly so few resources into space exploration and technological development ,humans spend more on weapons really. Hopefully we might once find some strange resource in space that can supply us with an way exponantially more energy than any material known on earth ,then Space colonization will really also be economicly interresting and get hughe investments.

Oh and a quasi immortality might be really not that far away no more ,the next century will see hughe evolutions on the field of genetic's and robotic's/informatics (these are 2 fields where hughe investments are made these days) ,scientists already have a broad view of what chemical processes makes a human actually age ,now it's only a matter of searching a cure or a brake to the aging process.

In addition it's also known that a certain age humankind stop's making new cell's ,if this process could be changed however so that Human would indeffinatly produce new cells then we might be forever young to. (granted that we are not hit by a bus/boeing 747/Godzilla/other common non-natural reasons of death)

Who knows ,in the far future they might even be able to raise the dead and make them alive again (BRAIN... ,delicious BRAAAAAIN....) ,though i figure they won't raise ordinary smoe's like you and me ,better make ourselfs famous.

(OK i agree that last bit is probaly very farfetched ,i stand more by the previous thought's)

[llauma 0]

Here's some statistics.. By the way the total mass of the termites in the world is far bigger than the mass of the humans so which species rules the earth?

I would claim that humans do, on the grounds that we could plausibly (?) destroy every termite on the planet with an engineered virus or somesuch if we had to. The termites couldn't organize themselves to destroy us.

Or could they

Even if we couldn't now, human technology advances all the time while termites stay the same. They'll get what's coming to them one day...

Propably because they have reached a level of evolution which means that they are perfect for their enviroment. Just look at the structures they build.. We can't get even close to that relative to our size.

When everything has reached it's end it wont be the humans who are the last to die.

[Gollum1 0]

Propably because they have reached a level of evolution which means that they are perfect for their enviroment. Just look at the structures they build.. We can't get even close to that relative to our size.

When everything has reached it's end it wont be the humans who are the last to die.

Yes, they have evolved to be perfect for one environment, this means they are not adaptable like us. Humans can survive in extremely hot and cold environments with their technology, and when everything reaches its end...us humans can leave for another planet.

[bonko the sane 2]

without termites we would be dead...they are the ones who keep the soil aerated by digging holes and tunnels, LOTS of them, theres other animals\plants who do that, but termites\ants are the main task force.

Funny how we are on top of the food chain but if that chain breaks we will be the ones who will go extinct  

[iNeo 0]

Funny how we are on top of the food chain but if that chain breaks we will be the ones who will go extinct

How is that funny? It'd be funny if the creatures in the bottom would be extinct since they aren't dependant on anyone else.

[Leveler 0]

Quote[/b] ]The human genome has not finished yet...         They have sequenced the majority of the genome (about 90%) in very small pieces of genetic information. It will take another 10 years to assemble those contigs in a complete map. Essentially they only have the pieces of the puzzle, not the big picture.  

Huh ,AFAIK the human genome project was completed somewhere around 2003.

And yes ,thats what's Wikipedia is claiming to:

To sequence something as humognous as the human genome you first have to break it into hundrets of thousands of pieces and incorporate it into yeast genetic material. Then you can sequence each of the pieces but since the breaking is not entirely accurate and you dont know which pieces you have, you need very powerful computers which will compare the ends of all those pieces and match them in the correct order. The first part is as you said complete. The second part has still a very long way to go and what has been done up to now is based on the genomes of the nematode worms and other eukaryotes, which have been completed for some time. The full completion will take another 10 years, at least that is the common knowledge amongst the professionals here in the university.