Uh, no, it comes from thinking that photosynthesis works only with sunlight. Most people know that plants produce oxygen, but not everyone thinks that through far enough to realise it's not a 24 hour a day process. My comment was in response to daniel, who said 'oxygen is constantly being replaced by plants'. My point was this is not a constant process. How this was misconstrued badly enough to accuse a Canadian of being US-centric, I don't know, but it added insult to injury. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, or even if I'm right, but last time I thought about it, the sun shines on the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere at the same time, to varying degrees depending on the season. The dark/light thing affects east and west, not 'top' and 'bottom'. Time zones, set up to take advantage of daylight hours, are separated by lines of longitude, not latitude. I'm well aware there are urban forests where there used to be fields. I'm also aware of global warming, pollution, deforestation, urbanisation, and ocean 'dead zones'. All of these factors combine to yield 'less plants than there used to be'. The definition of 'plants' includes blue-green algae living in the surface waters of the oceans reached by sunlight, which is responsible for about 90% of oxygen production.
I misunderstood then, however....the day night cycle has been in existence forever....I thought you were making a point as to how it had changed.
Oxygen IS being constantly replenished. Sure, there is a day/night cycle. But the process goes on. My point was in answer to the assertion (disputed in a later post) that there was not enough oxygen to burn all the oil. But every day there is a bunch more oxygen being released into the atmosphere. Burn some oil and oxygen is bonded to carbon and to hydrogen to make CO2 and water respectively. These find their way to plants which take the CO2 and the water and make organic hydrocarbons and release oxygen into the atmosphere, so you can then burn more oil. The oxygen keeps coming around, even if the plants only work at it in summer daylight. But it takes eons for plant material to come back around as oil again.
if we didn't have enough oxygen to burn oil... i imagine we'd all have a short 'shelf life' with all of us breathing in all that air all the time...
Christmas Eve and New Years Eve are on the same day of the week every year, but Christmas and New Years are on different days of the week.
A light-year is 5,878,000,000,000 miles. The nearest star to us, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away. The light now reaching us from the quasar PC (!) 1158 + 4635 was emitted about 14 billion years ago. Our entire galaxy rotates on an axis, and the Sun takes 200 million years to complete one revolution. We are 28,000 light-years from the center. There are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy, stretching 100,000 light-years through space. The Andromeda galaxy has about 200 billion stars.
Einstein was right...time is relative. The older you get, the faster it goes. When you're ten years old, a year is 10% of your life. When you're 50 years old, a year is 2% of your life. No wonder they seem shorter!
Light from our own sun takes 8 minutes to arrive here. Could that be what you had in mind? Rand-McNally Atlas of the World , 1990
Earth rotates on its axis every 23 hours 56 min. Jupiter does it in 9 hr. 55 min. Venus takes 243 days. (Do they have an 80 day work period, followed by 70 days of sleep? Do political speeches last 10 days? Are movies 20 days long?) The density of the compressed gases in the sun's core is 12 times that of lead.
U.S beverage market: sales, 2004 carbonated soft drinks 27.9% bottled water 12.3% coffee 11.5% milk 11.2% beer 11.2% fruit drinks 7.6% tea 3.7% wine 1.1% other 13.5% fastest-growing segments: bottled water and wine losing ground: milk and tea
The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. The French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you. Vulched from Wine - Just the Facts travellady.com
Cancer has displaced heart disease as the leading killer of Americans under the age of 85, according to findings of the American Cancer Society (released Wednesday, January 19, 2005). For men, the leading cancer killers are, in order, lung cancer, prostate cancer and colorectal cancer. For women, lung cancer, breast cancer and colorectal cancer. The top three for both sexes hasn't changed since the late 1980s. An international team of scientists believes that it has found cancer's master switch; a gene they nicknamed "Pokemon" which is derived from it's scientific name 'POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic factor'. The gene is an oncogene which means that it is capable of causing cancer. Dozens of oncogenes have been discovered of the past 25 years, but, unlike the others, pokemon has a governing role. It is needed for other genes to function. It enhances the cancer cell's ability to resist aging and death. This is why cancerous tumors are so difficult to eliminate. Pharmaceutical companies are likely to invest in developing drugs for pokemon because it isn't a rare gene. It also affects multiple forms of cancer so there's a lot of hope that drugs to target pokemon are on the way but given the time it takes to come up with new drugs, we're not likely to see it for several years. Source: American Cancer Society
Glass is infinitely recycleable. recycling a single glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100 watt light blub for 4 hours
