[meteorite-list] Strangest link between life on earth and mars yet!

From: Gerald Flaherty <grf2_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:59:38 -0500
Message-ID: <020201c73428$b1ddae60$6402a8c0_at_Dell>

absolutely and fun too esp ben's little TIP.
Jerry Flaherty
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Gerald Flaherty" <grf2 at verizon.net>
Cc: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 11:47 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Strangest link between life on earth and mars
yet!


> Hi, Gerry,
>
>> How "big" is nano again, one billionth of a ---?
>
> One billionth of a meter, or one millionth of a millimeter,
> so if you had "nanobacteria" that were 100 nm long, it would
> take 10,000 of them, head to tail (assuming they had heads or
> tails), to span one millimeter. A wavelength of visible light
> would be 400 nm to 770 nm (depending on its color), so a
> 100 nm nanobacteria would be about 1/6 the width of one
> wavelength of yellow light. (Do you suppose they surf?)
> There is a smaller unit, the angstrom, which is one
> ten-billionth of a meter, or ten times smaller. We're talking
> SMALL here -- individual atoms range from five angstroms
> (hydrogen) up to about 15 angstroms in size (lead). Figure
> atoms at one nm +/- half an nm. So a 100 nm "critter" is
> at most only 200 atoms wide and could only contain about
> 8 million small atoms if it were a sphere.
> A simple organic molecule, like cooking oil, is about
> 20 angstroms across; that's 2 nm. We can measure that
> molecular size in our backyards, by the way, by placing
> a tiny drop of oil of known volume on the surface of a big
> calm pool of water and waiting for it to spread out as far
> as it can go, then divide the known volume by the area
> of the oil-slick, which is only one molecule thick.
> Neat trick, eh? Who thought of that?
> Benjamin Franklin...
> Most viruses are 10 nm to 100 nm, but the record-holder
> is 400 nm, or bigger than some bacteria.
> Most bacteria range from 200 nm (the very tiniest) up
> to big nasty ones at 2000 nm.
> Helpful little animals like yeast cells (there are 600+
> species of yeast) are 2000 nm, no bigger than a bacterium,
> up to 15,000 nm.
> Cells of protozoa like amoeba are 20,000 to 30,000 nm
> across, but every once in a while an ameoba may grow
> to 4,000,000 nm across --- that's 4 mm and almost big
> enough to have a sit-down talk with! (If they had anything
> to say...)
> Protozoa like paramecium are very complicated creatures.
> Even though they are only one cell, they have specialized
> cellular structures that function as gullets, stomachs, excretory
> "organs," and "legs." They have an interesting sex life and
> probably have more to say than that amoeba... The many
> paramecium species range from less than 100,000 nm up
> to as much as 500,000 nm, or big enough to see with the
> naked eye (well, your eyes, maybe; mine are not quite
> that good).
> One of your own 100,000 billion human body cells is
> on average, about 10,000 nm across and weighs, on average,
> about one nanogram, less if you're skinny.
> And, me, I'm about 1,775,000,000 nm tall.
>
> Does that put things in perspective?
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gerald Flaherty" <grf2 at verizon.net>
> To: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
> Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 7:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Strangest link between life on earth and
> mars yet!
>
>
>> The relatively recent acceptence of "germs" required a revolution in the
>> medical community ushering in the modern norm where cleanliness became
>> the imperative. So it seems plausible that self-replicating nano things
>> might make modern "science" balk.
>>
>> How "big" is nano again, one billionth of a---?
>>
>> Jerry Flaherty
>
>
Received on Tue 09 Jan 2007 02:59:38 PM PST