----- Original Message ----- From: "Chad Cooper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Killer Bs Discussion'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 4:56 PM Subject: RE: Picking apart the Matrix - spoilers
> > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: Erik Reuter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 1:19 PM > >To: Killer Bs Discussion > >Subject: Re: Picking apart the Matrix - spoilers > > > > > >On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 10:19:21AM -0700, Chad Cooper wrote: > > > >> An ounce of flesh has more energy than an ounce of solar material, I > >> think, by a magnitude. > > > >This is nonsense. > > I did get this wrong. What I should have correctly said is a cubic > centimeter of flesh contains more energy than a cubic centimeter of solar > gas. Dan's assumtion about mass was correct. A cubic centimeter of gas does > not weigh near what a cubic centimeter of flesh does. At 1 atmosphere pressure, certainly not. However, from http://www.solarviews.com/eng/sun.htm we see that the mean density of the sun is 1.41 g/cc. The mean density of humans is close to 1...and that includes bones. So, this is a false statement. > > As you said, it converts chemical energy to mechanical energy, and heat is a > by-product. OK, that's OK. > > I believe that the assuption made in the movie is that flesh was a renewable > resource, and could be feedstocked. There is no mention in the movie about > where the foodstock comes from. I presumed that in order to create food from > basic elements they would need a HeeChee style food factory (See Fredrick > Poul's 'Gateway' and 'Beyond the Blue Event Horizon"). Can anyone tell me > what the name of food factory was? It was the initials of the common > elements used in creating food. But, that would be much less efficient than directly burning the food stuff. > > Regardless of the temperture, we would burn up very quickly if is was not > for the enzyme catalysts used in releasing the free energy from the chemical > reactions. Generally, as the amount of free energy goes down, heat/entropy > go up. My point was that there can be ways to get greater amounts of heat > from flesh that what is currently produced, if one plays around with the > enzymes used in catabolic and anabolic reactions. Since the maximum temp for a living human body is far less than the maximum temperature for a fire, this heat must be far less efficient. > > Hey, I didn't write the screenplay - I am only specifying the premise in the > movie of why humans over something else. FWIW, I wrote a backstory to explain this and posted it several years ago. Out of curiosity, since you know that this list has a lot of scientists, why write things that turn out to be false as if they are well established? Personally, I try to be very careful when I write things that might be subject to straightforward falsification. Several of the things you have written are in direct contradiction with observations (i.e. the density of the sun.) I'm not upset or anything, but I don't see writing things like humans are denser than the sun, when that contradicts observations. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
