Do we Understand Water?

[AussieSky (Greg)]

Water? Hah! Dont talk to me about water... When *I* were a lad, we had to bash our own Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules together......

*GHF*

[avandonk]

Originally Posted by marki

Bert I have always been in awe of the greatest chemists on Earth....
Mark

Without their past blind random experiments in chemistry for about three billion years leading to self organization, mettalloenzymes etc and their still current existence we would not survive let alone exist!

By the way 30% of your dry weight is foreign bacteria etc that allow you to function. So where do "you" start and end? "You" are inextricably linked to every interaction back to the dawn of time. "You" are just a tiny knot or node on the vast tapestry of existence.
The fact that we can contemplate it, is a bonus!

Our chemical industries rely on temperatures and pressures and solvents that are not attainable by life.

When we get as smart as the Prokaryotic cells we may stop polluting and destroying SpaceShip Earth.

Bert

[marki]

Agree totally Bert. I was always facinated by mitochondria and the idea that in the distance past they built a symbiotic relationship with other cells to produce eukaryotic cells. The ability to self replicate whilst retaining their coding integrity and cytochrome a + a3 with its copper ion core at the end of the electron transport chain were of particular interest. The change in 3D structure as well as shifts in the sigma and pi bonds needed to oxidise oxygen used to get the old brain ticking for sure and I used to spend hours drawing molecular orbital diagrams trying to work out what was happening. That it all took place in a fluid and dynamic environment was also food for thought. But to stay with the threads original intention the biochemists used to make us calculate the number of free protons inside the mitochondria based on pH. I always used to get 8 but had lots of trouble imagining the device they used to determine the pH .

Mark