A Quote by Cyril Ponnamperuma
We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that's the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.
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Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life-the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids-is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air.
When I was a grad student at MIT, I had a chance to become friends with the Viking Mission's chief scientist, Dr. Gerald Soffen. Viking was the first Mars lander looking for signs of life on Mars.
If food was no longer obliged to make intercontinental journeys, but stayed part of a system in which it can be consumed over short distances, we would save a lot of energy and carbon dioxide emissions. And just think of what we would save in ecological terms without long-distance transportation, refrigeration, and packaging--which ends up on the garbage dump anyway--and storage, which steals time, space, and vast portions of nature and beauty.
...by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it's too late to break out of the box. We can only live in terms of the definition, like the prisoner in the cage in which he cannot lie or stand or sit, hung up in justice to be viewed by the populace. Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selfness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?
I don't think we should have to do a Mars mission on the basis of hysteria. I think we should do a Mars mission on the basis of a deliberate judgment that what we want to do is open up a new planet for humanity... that we are continuing to be a nation of pioneers.
I naively thought that we could have a molecular definition for life, come up with a set of genes that would minimally define life. Nature just refuses to be so easily quantified.
Carbon-carbon bond formation reactions employing organoboron compounds and organic electrophiles have recently been recognized as powerful tools for the construction of new organic compounds.
The biggest gains, in terms of decreasing the country's energy bill, the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, and our dependency on foreign oil, will come from energy efficiency and conservation in the next 20 years. Make no doubt about it. That's where everybody who has really thought about the problem thinks the biggest gains can be and should be.
When you're working in front of the camera, there are always things that occur to you after the director has said 'Cut.' I could probably, if I sat down and thought about it, come up with instances where I wished I had made this particular choice or that particular choice.
We have been developing an ever closer relationship with China on climate change for many years which has led to collaboration on carbon trading, offshore wind development, on low-carbon buildings, on nuclear energy, and on carbon capture and storage - to name just some of the ways in which we're working together.
We do have a big kind of history in literate tradition of Vikings and we have a lot of Viking blood in Scotland, I mean especially up north wherever you go you see a plastic Viking sitting outside a shop and Viking calendars and - because they - you know they came down and stole all our chicks and then some of them didn't quite get back and ended up settling down here. So there's a lot of Viking blood in Scotland.
Everything in life is made up...You make up that you are happy. You make up that you are sad. You make up that you are in love. If you don't make up your own life, who's going to make it up for you? It's bad enough when you die and everybody can make up their own stories about you. —Mr. Hooft
The animal world seizes its food in masses little and big, and often gorges itself with it, but the vegetable, through the agency of the solvent power of water, absorbs its nourishment molecule by molecule.
It used to be that your bloodlines dictated who you were. But the U.S. became the land of the self-made man, in which not only did you make a fortune but you could make up everything else about yourself as well. You move into a new town with a spurious pedigreed background and you just make yourself up.
...is the carbon molecule lined with thought?
Burning carbon-based substances like oil, gas, and especially coal, produces billions of tons of extra carbon dioxide each year. Methane gas from cows and pigs and other animals on our large farms ends up in the atmosphere as well, trapping more of the sun's energy as heat.
