Am generally optimistic about things in life, but multidisciplinary science (e.g., Astrobiology) unfortunately attracted a lot of mediocrities/misfits/mavericks to the field over the past 20yrs or so, and consequently a fair amount of junk science has ended up being published. Cross-disciplinary work is certainly exciting & intellectually stimulating, but one has to have a good team of complementary expertises who can get along with one another in order to be able to make solid progress.
Tru dat, hopefully more teams are on the trail.
Bodes, so a couple questions, is it Bodes, or Bodie. I’m preferable to Bodie, but that’s on account of the California town, with that road to hell to get there. 
It seems you might have a real scientific background, as opposed to me, who’s just a heavy duty science enthusiast. Fess up. 
Merely a mediocre chemist & an amateur multidisciplinarian, one with several crumpled bits of unframed parchment in his satchel, is your present correspondent. Mediocrity is measured in the number of years that it took (1986-2018) to satisfactorily solve one particularly intriguing chemical problem. Would be happy to help out on here as far as am able with anyone’s Chemistry questions. Either Bodie or Bodes is fine.
to satisfactorily solve one particularly intriguing chemical problem.You tease sir. ;- ) Was it worth the effort? Can the result and it's significance be explained to an non-chemist? This is a great place for telling stories. Unfortunately, of late, too many are of the one step beyond category, so I think it would be splendid to read some adventures in down to Earth reality.
Had never heard of Bodie, Calif., before, so am grateful to you for that link; it looks like a most interesting & thought-provoking destination to add onto one’s bucket-list of places one will hopefully get to visit & perhaps camp at one day. Meditative & hauntingly-beautiful places like that are indeed precious to know about.
As far as the Chemistry problem-solving bit’s concerned, the solution eventually arrived at, by two independent strokes of sheer good luck (the first in November 2001 in upstate NY, with the final ‘keystone’ piece not coming into view until the Spring of 2018 while in western Canada), wasn’t at all along the lines that one had originally expected that it might be successfully delineated on first embarking upon the problem’s consideration back in 1986, after having heard about it from the Departmental Chair (Chem.) at that time. Anyhow, am somewhat ashamed to admit to having rather selfishly ‘sat on’ the solution for almost 3yrs now, just in case something else that’ll later seem obvious might ‘fall out’ of it (i.e., realisation-wise), before proceeding to share the thing widely (& then feeling ‘dense’ if one had missed an obvious implication/aspect). But, as nothing such has so far occurred, & as one is ageing in the midst of a pandemic, am currently considering submitting it for publication in something like J.Chem.Ed., or to a journal in Biology, or perhaps even to a “freethinker” type of journal. But yes, the 32yrs of wondering (& wandering) was worth the solution intellectually, although it’s humbling to realise that someone of similarly mediocre abilities could actually have solved it this way in the Spring/Summer of 1953, 11yrs before your correspondent was even born.
Okay, be that way. Should you publish it, share a link, not that I’m a chemist or even close, I’m a freak’n high school grad, still the passion for learning through science never died, the science just needs to be predigested a little, but it’s still interesting stuff that my brain can do stuff with.
Bodie is definitely an amazing place, though my last visit was late 70s, I imagine the road in is still dirt road, pothole hell, simply to keep visitors down to the intrepid and dedicated. The place would get destroyed in a flash if it were an easy tourist destination. The official preservation policy was/is to keep it in state of “arrested decay” - sort of like me these days.
That’s okay. Having taught high school senior Chemistry & AP, am quite certain that it could be explained straightforwardly enough for even an average middle-schooler to be able to ‘get’ the gist of the thing. One’d simply need a big sheet of butcher’s paper & some colored pencils.
What are your own particular interests in Science (e.g., Astronomy/Physics/&c.)?
I just got lucky, my parent were, how you say, very eclectic. Learning was important, encyclopedias at home, 8 years older brother smart enough to enter Lane Technical High School in Chicago, set an impossible standard for me, but his popular science and popular mechanics, were a constant inspiration, Grandma, putting me on her lap, reading out of ancient encyclopedias at their house. Stories of dinosaurs and ice ages and the defeat of polio and one grand scientific mystery after another, with more questions than answers, wet my appetite at an early age, and I became invested in finding out the answers as much as anyone ever was. The plate tectonics revolution unfolded in front of my amazed young mind. The Miller–Urey experiment and discovery of DNA were fresh and still being absorbed, the atom was too small to be imaged, and the moon and planets and our own oceans were more mystery than fact. I dare not forget mom, dragging her brood of three duckling following behind (big bro was doing his thing, baby sis would arrive for many years), to every museum, and more, that '60s Chicago had to offer.
And, all of it fascinated the heck out of me. Other’s loved sports, Hollywood fictions, shopping, etc, me I loved learning about Earth and wanting answers to all the big questions. Happy to say at 65, I’m proud of my life long plodding efforts and all I’ve learned and puzzled together. Never reached beyond the layman level, but dare say it runs pretty deep for the skilled worker ant that I am.
Now if only I could develop a honey tipped pen, instead of being disgusted to puking at the pathetic reality we have collectively created for ourselves and the world, and all the lazy minds and greedy hearts who’ve enabled, and allowed, it to develop in such a pathetic self-destructive manner.
Just for the fun of it: https://confrontingsciencecontrarians.blogspot.com/2017/12/responding-to-malicious-slander.html
I’ve always wondered why it’s nearly a constant theme: “Must Have Water” for life
What is so special about water? Sure, it’s essential for most of the “life” we are aware of, but that’s as narrow minded as saying Well if they don’t speak English, it must not be intelligent.
Aren’t there other substances that could provide the same functionality…Substances we aren’t even aware of, that exist under “extreme” (to us) conditions where H2O may not be possible in liquid form?
Speaking of which, did you see where they suspect a lot of H2O on the moon, but it is so distributed that it can’t / doesn’t form pools or ice as we’re familiar with.
There’s actually nothing carved-in-stone anywhere in Science which dictates that all forms of life throughout the Cosmos absolutely “must have Water.” H2O is the ‘universal solvent’ to undergrad students, it’s also a sufficiently robust & ubiquitous molecule (esp. rocks/meteorites/comets/hydrosphere), and it nicely (conveniently/familiarly for an undergrad) hosts Acid-Base chemical reactions, as well as Redox teactions, & Photochemical reactions; but a chemist could certainly conceive of other solvents/reagents that might fit-the-bill elsewhere, such as NH3.
What is so special about water? Sure, it’s essential for most of the “life” we are aware of, but that’s as narrow minded as saying Well if they don’t speak English, it must not be intelligent.Elements and life are a fair bit more complex than words and languages.
Sometimes there’s a good reason for conventional wisdom. If there were all sorts of avenues for life, we should expect to see other signs of it out there. I myself imagine very simple metabolic life probably occurs relatively easily, but complex life, eukaryotic cells, and complex creatures, that’s much, much, much, much more challenging because of all the conditions and timing that must align just right.
Hope you don’t mind me sharing this little primer on importance of water to life.
Biological Roles of Water: Why is water necessary for life?
SEPTEMBER 26, 2019, by Molly Sargen
The Molecular Make-up of Water
Many of water’s roles in supporting life are due to its molecular structure and a few special properties. …Water is the “Universal Solvent”
This is because of the phenomenon wherein opposite charges attract one another: because each individual water molecule has both a negative portion and a positive portion, each side is attracted to molecules of the opposite charge. This attraction allows water to form relatively strong connections, called bonds, with other polar molecules around it, including other water molecules. … Importantly, this bonding makes water molecules stick together in a property called cohesion.Furthermore, since most biological molecules have some electrical asymmetry, they too are polar and water molecules can form bonds with and surround both their positive and negative regions. …
Water Supports Cellular Structure
Water also has an important structural role in biology. …Water also contributes to the formation of membranes surrounding cells. …
In addition to influencing the overall shape of cells, water also impacts some fundamental components of every cell: DNA and proteins. … Water drives the folding of amino acid chains as different types of amino acids seek and avoid interacting with water. …
Chemical Reactions of Water
Water is directly involved in many chemical reactions to build and break down important components of the cell. …Additionally, water buffers cells from the dangerous effects of acids and bases. …
In conclusion, water is vital for all life. Its versatility and adaptability help perform important chemical reactions. Its simple molecular structure helps maintain important shapes for cells’ inner components and outer membrane. No other molecule matches water when it comes to unique propertiesthat support life. Excitingly, researchers continue to establish new properties of water such as additional effects of its asymmetrical structure. Scientists have yet to determine the physiological impacts of these properties. It’s amazing how a simple molecule is universally important for organisms with diverse needs.
By Molly Sargen is a first-year PhD Student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program at Harvard Medical School.
There’s actually nothing carved-in-stone anywhere in Science which dictates that all forms of life throughout the Cosmos absolutely “must have Water.” H2O is the ‘universal solvent’ to undergrad students, it’s also a sufficiently robust & ubiquitous molecule (esp. rocks/meteorites/comets/hydrosphere), and it nicely (conveniently/familiarly for an undergrad) hosts Acid-Base chemical reactions, as well as Redox teactions, & Photochemical reactions; but a chemist could certainly conceive of other solvents/reagents that might fit-the-bill elsewhere, such as NH3.Thank you!
That’s pretty much what I was looking for. Although some may call water a “universal solvent”, there could be other options. Most of what I see is always harping about water. “Pluto’s liquid-water/slush!” and such.
And considering the bizarre extremes we are detecting on other worlds, another substance could be just as plentiful and neutral to be a good solvent.
I kind of have the notion that “life” would require some kind of “transport” mechanism, so to speak - a medium for the transmission of change/energy. For “life as we know it” that would be Water.
I do know that NH3, ammonia, has long been a candidate, but the devil is in the details.
ammonia-based lifeIn 1954, J. B. S. Haldane, speaking at the Symposium on the Origin of Life, suggested that an alternative biochemistry could be conceived in which water was replaced as a solvent by liquid ammonia.1Part of his reasoning was based on the observation that water has a number of ammonia analogues. …
… On the down side, there are problems with the notion of ammonia as a basis for life. These center principally upon the fact that the heat of vaporization of ammonia is only half that of water and its surface tension only one third as much. Consequently, the hydrogen bonds that exist between ammonia molecule are much weaker than those in water so that ammonia would be less able to concentrate non-polar molecules through a hydrophobic effect. Lacking this ability, questions hang over how well ammonia could hold prebiotic molecules together sufficiently well to allow the formation of a self-reproducing system.
There’s another article I found that does a nice job of explaining the details.
Science Fiction Or Science Fact: Ammonia-Based Alien LifeBy Tom Caldwell
https: //treknews . net/2011/09/18/science-fiction-or-science-fact-ammonia-based-alien-life/
(delete the spaces)
Hope you don’t mind me sharing this little primer on importance of water to life.And Thank You!
It would be fun to play a well crafted game of “5 Whys” on that!
With these two replies, I think we have come to the need of an operational definition of life, which is a whole other thread.
OK, Now I’m in a full-on flashback to a mix of HS and College science courses … 