Novia’s Reviews > Wonders of Life: Exploring the Most Extraordinary Phenomenon in the Universe > Status Update
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Given there are over half a trillion galaxies in the observable Universe, the idea that there are no other planets out there with webs of life at least as complex as our own seems to me to be an absurd proposition.
— Mar 26, 2014 10:01AM
Novia
is 56% done
the paramecium has no nervous system or brain, and yet it has a rudimentary sense of touch; when it bumps into something, it changes its behaviour. The biochemical mechanism underlying the paramecium’s touch response is known as an action potential.
— Mar 15, 2014 04:35PM
Novia
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Sequenced in 2011, the orangutan became the third species of hominid after humans and chimpanzees to have its genome completely sequenced.
— Mar 11, 2014 03:50PM
Novia
is 34% done
The second law of thermodynamics can be expressed as ‘No process is possible in which the sole result is the absorption of heat from a reservoir and its complete conversion into work.’ This means that it is impossible to build solar panels that are 100 per cent efficient.
— Mar 09, 2014 11:00AM
Novia
is 27% done
In a sense, this is all there is to the Universe! If no energy is ‘flowing’ – a colloquialism by which we mean ‘being transformed from one form to another’ – then nothing is happening at all. Here is the first step on the road to answering Schrödinger’s question – What is Life? Whatever it is, it is a process by which energy is transformed from one form to another
— Mar 08, 2014 07:11AM

