Tricky
Briefly immortal
Way cool, Correa! I love spelunking and those are some fascinating looking caves. I'll definitely have to put Brazil on my places to travel.
Buzz lightyear and the JREF Challenge
buzz lightyear
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Have been chewing over your questions, Tricky, contemplating a reply.
Particularly, whether there would be any point in a reply.
I have also realised how much I don't know. See, I can say "don't know" too.
So, as to your questions:
How does it digest rocks?
From observations of the feeding sites, I have deduced that it mechanically breaks the rocks with its head or jaws. I believe there is some form of caustic saliva. I also find evidence of extreme heat.
Many years ago I worked on a blast furnace, and saw used refractory bricks that showed similar effects of heat, so it is pretty intense.
As to the actual digestion......... "don't know".
Why does it leave skin but no skeleton?
I don't know (there is those words again) if it has a skeleton. This is not a carbon based vertibrate, or in fact a life form that resembles anatomically anything "known".
The nature of the "skin"?
This is the actual outer casing of the creature.
The creature has a body based ,I believe, on the element silicon.
The skins are discarded in either a cleansing and/or growing process.
I have noticed differences in skins that appeared to be the result of differences in age. I also noticed that the creature appeared "relieved" to have discarded the old skin.
For the most part the "skin" comes off ,semi solid and intact. Although I have found the odd seperate scale.
It is sufficiently pliable, when discarded, to mould to the shape of the underlying material. It is probably the consistancy of soft putty.
Once discarded the silicon then solidifies into small crystals and creates the material referred to as sandstone.
Where is the fossil lineage?
No fossil lineage with this creature, Tricky. It did not "develop" on this planet, but passed through as part of a regular migration.
How does it fly?
I am a bit vague on this one. At a guess, it has something to do with magnetic fields. To get to this planet it had to soar on the solar winds,......... I think.
Well, I am not sure if those answers fit within the parameters of "what we know about the world", but I have been chopping out thistles all day, I'm tired and cranky, so that's the best I can do.
Chow.
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realpaladin
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Belz...
Fiend God
Buzz said:
Why ? All you have to do it make up the answer like the rest.
Tricky
Briefly immortal
Thank you for at least thinking about them.
If they were mechanically broken, what you would see are recent breaks and very uneven particle size. Compression fracturing leave an identifiable product.
Caustic saliva? Well if it is caustic enough to break down rocks (which are mostly silicates) then it would be caustic enough to break down your critter too. When I worked in a rock lab we used to use powerful acids, like hydrofluoric, to break down rocks. They had to be handled with extreme care.
Refractory bricks get hot, but they are used for refractory bricks precisely because they can get hot and not break down. If you melt sand, you get glass.
Exactly. It is completely unknown. You see, Buzz, that works strongly against your theory. It requires lots of things that are unknown in the natural world.
But if it is not a carbon-based vertebrate, then why does your description of it (sometimes) resemble known forms of life?
That would also be a first. While we have numerous creatures that have silicate skeletons or shells, they all have some kind of DNA, which is of course, carbon-based.
Each explanation you try to give reaches further and further into the realms of science fiction, especially trying to gauge the emotional state of this creature which you don’t know anything about.
What was the scale made of? As I mentioned before, serpents don’t have overlapping individual scales. Why indeed does this mythical creature need scales at all that resemble those of carbon-based creatures? Again, you are extrapolating the natural world into your supernatural fantasy.
That is nothing like sandstone forms. Sandstone is a clastic rock, meaning “formed from broken pieces”. You can tell by the rounding of the pieces whether they were transported a long or short distance. You can tell by the composition of the pieces whether they were near the source or distant and if they were deposited in an environment where they were constantly reworked (like a beach) or where they were dumped and covered (like a delta). You can tell by the size of the pieces whether it was a high-energy environment or low energy environment. You can tell by the sorting of the pieces whether it was relatively constant energy or if it came in bursts. You can tell by the polish of the pieces whether they were subaqueous or subareal.
Have you got any particle analysis on this sandstone? That could tell us a lot that your pictures don’t.
One thing sandstones are not is “solidified into small crystals” in place. I’ll try to explain crystallization to you later if you’re interested.
This is the part that makes people (like Realpaladin) drop their jaw in amazement. You are proposing an alien life form, in spite of the fact that none have ever been discovered. Surely you can see that a “theory” which requires such an agent is totally unsupportable by evidence. Go write a Sci-Fi book, Buzz. You have some great stuff. Don’t even try to pass it off as real though. You haven’t got a leg to stand on.
I’ll bet you’re vague. Both of these methods are classic sci-fi extrapolation. But this just illustrates the problems with your “theory”. When pieces of data don’t fit, you don’t adjust your theory. You just ignore them.
No, they are contrary to a great number of things that we have learned about the world. Your “theory” requires the complete rewriting of natural history, a history that has proved very useful in finding reliable, verifiable, repeatable answers to the questions about our world and our universe. You must understand that in order for us to discard those many centuries of learning you had better have some pretty good evidence. “I saw it while taking hallucinogens” is hardly the kind of evidence we’re looking for.
Hope you’re recovered from thistle-chopping.
Ciao.
Correa Neto
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Spock or Data can provide you answers on how your space creature soars through space. They found other space dwelling life forms before, after all. Here are some examples of space biodiversity:
If you consider TAS as cannon, maybe the answer is quite simple: Warp drive.
Kukulkan (AKA Quetzalcoatl) visited Earth several times in the past, influencing the development of Mayan, Aztec and Chinese civilizations. His starship generates a (holographic?) force field in the shape of a feathered serpent.
Here's his ship with the force field.
And here with the field disengaged:
What? We're not talking about a Trekkie RPG or fan fic?
If you consider TAS as cannon, maybe the answer is quite simple: Warp drive.
Kukulkan (AKA Quetzalcoatl) visited Earth several times in the past, influencing the development of Mayan, Aztec and Chinese civilizations. His starship generates a (holographic?) force field in the shape of a feathered serpent.
Here's his ship with the force field.
And here with the field disengaged:
What? We're not talking about a Trekkie RPG or fan fic?
buzz lightyear
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Well Tricky, looks like the old "question and answer" routine works in improving your " understanding".
To answer this quesrion I will use an extract from Michael Harner's book "The way of the Shaman"
Quote
First they showed me the planet Earth as it was eons ago, before there was any life on it. I saw an ocean, barren land, and a bright blue sky. Then black specks dropped from the sky by the hundreds and landed in front of me on the barren landscape. I could see that the "specks" were actually large, shiny, black creatures with stubby pterodactyl-like wings and huge whale-like bodies. Their heads were not visible to me. They flopped down, utterly exhausted from their trip, resting for eons. They explained to me in a kind of thought language that they were fleeing from something out in space. They had come to the planet Earth to escape their enemy. The creatures then showed me how they had created life on the planet in order to hide within the multitudinous forms and thus disguise their presence. Before me, the magnificence of plant and animal creation and speciation-hundreds of millions of years of activity-took place on a scale and with a vividness impossible to describe. I learned that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside of all forms of life, including man.() They were the true masters of humanity and the entire planet, they told me. We humans were but the receptacles and servants of these creatures. For this reason they could speak to me from within myself.
End quote
Cool huh!
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realpaladin
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Argh! Even Michael Harner admits that that book is a 'NOVEL'. Just to provide a 'mythical context' for neo-shamanism....
And besides that, the 'savages' you hinted at... well most of the indigenous people think neo-shamanism is a cover-up for fraudsters anyway.
And besides that, the 'savages' you hinted at... well most of the indigenous people think neo-shamanism is a cover-up for fraudsters anyway.
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Belz...
Fiend God
Yeah, way cooler than reality.
Why go around doing real, hard science when you can just get stoned and imagine the world as you see fit ?
Correa Neto
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I preffer Lovecraft's Great Old Ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Old_Ones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Polyp
http://members.shaw.ca/csstrowbridge/Tulzscha/Information.htm
Way cooler than alien whales with wings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Old_Ones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Polyp
http://members.shaw.ca/csstrowbridge/Tulzscha/Information.htm
Way cooler than alien whales with wings.
Tricky
Briefly immortal
Even if that weren't, as RealPaladin pointed out, written as fiction, it still does not answer a single one of the problems with your "theory" that I noted. It doesn't explain how the creatures digest rocks. And of course, your quote poses all sorts of other questions like, "If the dragon-like creatures are inside of all forms of life, why haven't we ever found them or any evidence of them?"
Sorry, Buzz. You've left the deep end and headed for the abyssal plain.
Correa Neto
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No problem...
He'll find plenty of (alien) company there...
He'll find plenty of (alien) company there...
Belz...
Fiend God
Seriously, seeing as how delusional lots of the folks in the Conspiracy Theories subforum are, and how delusional Buzz is, I'm having problems understanding how they can function properly in society. Hell, I wonder how they can use a keyboard.
buzz lightyear
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Have dug the last of the thistles out of my fingers Tricky, so can type with more digits again.
So, not so hip to Mr Harner's story, well at least it explains where this critter fits in the scheme of things.
Personally I find the neo sharmanic thing a little droll, but if those good old boys want to get naked and do the tribal thing, then OK, if it makes them happy.
Anyway ; The scale.
It is the same material as the rest of the polygons, white, fine grained sandstone.
This is a pic of it.
I believe that its need for scales is the same as that of a carbon based creature. It is a tough, flexible ,disposable outer covering.
Havn't had a particle analysis done on this sandstone, but if you are offering, give me an address and I will send you a chunk.
And Correa Neto;
Thanks for the great pics and links, fu*kin awesome.
Tricky
Briefly immortal
Glad to hear it. No more misspellings then?
It is almost unheard of for replacement-type fossils to be made of sandstone. Most sandstone fossils are molds, so they look like the reverse of whatever was fossilized inside them. Also, sandstones are high-energy depositional environments, so body parts would probably be ripped to shreds and scattered everywhere.
Imbricate scales are rarely shed as skins. A fish will occasionally lose a scale or two, but never a whole skinfull. Snakes and lizards do not have imbricate scales, and such scales would be terrible for protection against the vacuum of space. They leak a lot.
And that thing in your hand looks like no scale I've ever seen. Scales are generally flattened and somewhat symmetrical. That piece of rock is neither.
No matter how much you wish for this to be a giant, flying, rock-eating, legless, space-traveling, silicon-based, skeletonless, never-before-seen creature, I'm afraid your wishes are not going to be granted.
No offense, but I don't give my address to people I've only met on the internet.
buzz lightyear
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Not a fossil ,Tricky, it's a piece of the actual "skin". I use the term "sandstone", as that is what it has been referred to.
And I wouldn't give my address to someone I met on the internet either, so no offence taken. But I could send it to somewhere like the JREF and they could forward it to you.
buzz lightyear
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I have found evidence of them, Tricky, that is what my 323 posts have been all about.
Doublewrong, troll.
Tricky
Briefly immortal
What characteristics does it share with actual skin? Cells? Hair? Anything? It shares a lot of things in common with sandstone, in that it is, from all information so far, made of cemented sand grains. Have you ever heard of Occam's Razor?
LOL. For you, evidence most often means something of sheer fantasy that you saw in a hallucinogenic dream or cobbled together from fiction you have read. I've seen 300+ of your posts, and yet not a single shred of verifiable, objective, repeatable evidence. It would be sheer fantasy on my part to expect you to have any evidence of life-inhabiting dragons.
But since I'm always interested in people's beliefs, go ahead and tell us about your "evidence". I'm truly curious. Unlike GzuzKryst though, I don't think you are a troll. Trolls are just messing with people. I think you really do believe your fantasies are real. You are deluded, mistaken, off the deep end, illogical, and probably some other things I needn't mention. But you're not a troll. Trolls are acting foolish on purpose.
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Belz...
Fiend God
There's a good reason why it's called a "stone".
Incidently, have you handled one of them ? Or did you just look at pictures and went "Jeebus! Dragon scales!" ?