by neufer » Thu Oct 24, 2019 4:09 pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tholin wrote:
<<The term "
tholin" was coined by astronomer Carl Sagan and his colleague Bishun Khare to describe the difficult-to-characterize substances they obtained in his Miller-Urey-type experiments on the methane-containing gas mixtures such as those found in Titan's atmosphere:
- For the past decade we have been producing in our laboratory a variety of complex organic solids from mixtures of the cosmically abundant gases CH4, C2H6, NH3, H2O, HCHO, and H2S. The product, synthesized by ultraviolet (UV) light or spark discharge, is a brown, sometimes sticky, residue, which has been called, because of its resistance to conventional analytical chemistry, "intractable polymer". We propose, as a model-free descriptive term, ‘tholins’ (Gk ϴὸλος, muddy; but also ϴoλòς, vault or dome), although we were tempted by the phrase ‘star-tar’.
Tholins do not form naturally on modern-day Earth, but they are found in great abundance on the surfaces of icy bodies in the outer Solar System, and as reddish aerosols in the atmosphere of outer Solar System planets and moons.
In the presence of water, tholins can be raw materials for prebiotic chemistry, i.e. the non-living chemistry that forms the basic chemicals which form life.>>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well wrote:
<<Muddying the waters (or poisoning the well) is a type of informal fallacy where irrelevant adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say. It can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem:
- 1. Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented by another.
(e.g. "Before you listen to my opponent, may I remind you that he has been in jail")
2. Therefore, the claims made by person A will be false.>>
[quote=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tholin]
[float=right][img3=Close-up view of Sputnik Planitia on Pluto as viewed by the New Horizons spacecraft, showing nitrogen ice glaciers and reddish-colored tholins.]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Pluto%E2%80%99s_Heart_-_Like_a_Cosmic_Lava_Lamp.jpg/800px-Pluto%E2%80%99s_Heart_-_Like_a_Cosmic_Lava_Lamp.jpg[/img3][/float]
<<The term "[b][i][color=#FF4000]tholin[/color][/i][/b]" was coined by astronomer Carl Sagan and his colleague Bishun Khare to describe the difficult-to-characterize substances they obtained in his Miller-Urey-type experiments on the methane-containing gas mixtures such as those found in Titan's atmosphere:
[list][b][i][color=#FF4000] For the past decade we have been producing in our laboratory a variety of complex organic solids from mixtures of the cosmically abundant gases CH[sub]4[/sub], C[sub]2[/sub]H[sub]6[/sub], NH[sub]3[/sub], H[sub]2[/sub]O, HCHO, and H[sub]2[/sub]S. The product, synthesized by ultraviolet (UV) light or spark discharge, is a brown, sometimes sticky, residue, which has been called, because of its resistance to conventional analytical chemistry, "intractable polymer". We propose, as a model-free descriptive term, ‘tholins’ (Gk ϴὸλος, muddy; but also ϴoλòς, vault or dome), although we were tempted by the phrase ‘star-tar’.[/color][/i][/b][/list]
Tholins do not form naturally on modern-day Earth, but they are found in great abundance on the surfaces of icy bodies in the outer Solar System, and as reddish aerosols in the atmosphere of outer Solar System planets and moons.
[b][color=#0000FF]In the presence of water, tholins can be raw materials for prebiotic chemistry, i.e. the non-living chemistry that forms the basic chemicals which form life.[/color][/b]>>[/quote][quote=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well]
<<Muddying the waters (or poisoning the well) is a type of informal fallacy where irrelevant adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say. It can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem:
[list] 1. Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented by another.
(e.g. "Before you listen to my opponent, may I remind you that he has been in jail")
2. Therefore, the claims made by person A will be false.>>[/list][/quote]