Archaea
(or Arcs, as described in Black Silent), are single celled
bacteria and do not age because their DNA is made up of single chromosome
strings without telomeres. Dump your telomeres and live almost forever?
On second thought if you have to live on this earth run by politicians
and lawyers, cared for by doctors, all the while having to buy medical
insurance, and hoping for social security, perhaps heaven is a better
option.
A calorie-restricted
diet has been shown to slow aging and increase longevity in yeast,
fruit flies, mice and monkeys. In utopia you may find yourself on
weight watchers plus with your food locked in a cage. Maybe you
don’t want to live a few hundred years after all.
Aging
of cells is primarily caused by the limited number of telomeres
(pieces of specialized DNA) on the ends of our chromosomes; and
because of oxidation when our cells burn energy. After you dump
the telomeres you need to find a way to stop yourself from rusting
to death. Blue berries are one of the best natural anti-rusting
agents known. How would you like blueberries for breakfast, lunch
and dinner? What an exciting way to live.
Every
time a cell divides and reproduces, telomeres are lost and when
they are exhausted the cell dies. When enough cells die the organism
dies. That would be you pardner—unless you are an arc.
Free Radicals
are produced when cells convert energy and oxygen atoms escape from
the little energy engines called mitochondria. These oxygen atoms
bouncing around our cells are missing an electron, which would normally
stabilize the oxygen atom. Losing electron-deprived oxygen molecules
from your mitochondria into your cells will lead to losing your
marbles.
Free Radicals
can be counteracted by antioxidants in food or vitamins because
the antioxidants provide the extra electrons missing from the free
radicals and when the antioxidants give up an electron they maintain
their stability. We’re back to the blueberries again. Breakfast,
lunch and dinner.
Archaea (Arcs):
Archaea
were first discovered in 1977 and are single celled organisms whose
DNA is distributed throughout the cell and not contained within
a nucleus as it is in all other cells. They’re weird. However,
you’d be weird too if you lived in the mud, had a life span
of millions of years, and could live for a year on one slice of
pizza.
Many Archaea
are found in extreme environments of pressure and temperature and
do not burn oxygen. Can you imagine living under ten thousand feet
of salt water and one thousand feet of ocean bottom mud? It’s
deep, really deep.
Archaea
produce methane as waste from the processing of energy. The trick
is they have produced enough to burp us to death if things go awry.
If you happen to be standing by the ocean and observe a giant bubble
thousands of feet high you’ll know you’re in for a bad
air day.
Archaea
DNA consists of a single chromosome formed into a circular shape
with no beginning or end. The DNA of all other living things is
made up of strings of chromosomes capped at the ends by telomeres
and contained within the nucleus of a cell. If you can’t have
round DNA then what’s a person to do? Well there is (1) die
after a short time on this earth like everybody else or (2) Figure
out how Ben Anderson kept his subjects genetic shoelaces from getting
shorter by giving them telomerase. The trick is that using Ben’s
methods his subjects didn’t get cancer whereas if you tried
it you’d blow up like a balloon with tumors. So skip the telomerase
in your next martini until we get this worked out.
Methane:
Methane
is basically a natural gas (like bubbles in the bathtub on chili
night) and is a viable source of energy if it can be successfully
mined. So take a shovel and a wheel barrow, dive down about ten
thousand feet in the ocean and when you get to the bottom put the
hydrates in the wheel barrow and walk briskly up the continental
shelf to dry land. It works every time.
Methane
is relatively clean burning and does not contribute significantly
to greenhouse gases when burned. Methane released directly into
the atmosphere has the potential to impact the levels of greenhouse
gases causing significant climatic change. If you want to make Alaska
feel like Florida warm a good portion of the worlds oceans about
4 or 5 degrees at the bottom and you’ll be there. You may
also be surfing at the foot of the Rockies.
Scientists
estimate that there is enough methane at the bottom of the ocean
to equal three times the energy from all of the earth’s known
gas, oil, and coal reserves. It would burn your green camping stove
for a while.
Some investigators
believe that ship disappearances, such as those rumored to have
taken place in the Bermuda Triangle and “The Witches Hole",
could have resulted from large “methane burps” that
caused the ships to lose flotation and fall quickly to the sea bottom.
Moral: When rowing watch out for big ass bubbles.
There has
been a great deal of speculation about methane burps causing planes
to crash in the ocean. These speculations have surrounded plane
disappearances such as the five Navy fighter-bombers over the Bermuda
Triangle in 1945. However the author rather doubts that airplanes
are burped out of the sky by giant methane gushes. In fact it only
happened once and it got Jimmy Hoffa.
Fishermen
often pull up an ice like substance in their net. What they find
is Methane Hydrate, which is made up of cages of ice crystals surrounding
bubbles of methane. This stuff won’t cool your drinks for
very long because it dissipates when it hits the air but it makes
for a great party trick. You can hold a lump of the ice in your
hand and light it. Doing so will prove once and for all that you
are a moron. As the ice burns in your hand you will be reminded
of G Gordon Liddy. If you’re young you will be reminded of
Madonna kissing Brittany Spears–a spectacle with no heat.
Seriously it won’t burn your hand if before you do it you
have carefully rubbed cocoa butter on your ass. So you know now
why all those oceanographers pictured with burning hydrates in their
hand are always standing up.
