22 replies to this topic

[ebbinger_413]

i was browsing the web this weekend and i came accross an interesting topic of discussion....where do babies come from...unfortanatly i cant find the original thread but i will sum up what i read...

it stated that (as far as we know...on this planet) all living things are made up of carbon molecules...and also that matter is neither created nor destroyed but it went on about those two theories for a couple of paragraphs before finally getting to the point of where babies come from...it said that the mother consumes food (meant vegies w/e) and her body takes that food and breaks it down (gets the carbon and other molecules needed to make a baby) and rearranges these molecules to make dna (carbon based)...and that her body would continue consuming food and turning it into, esentially, the baby...so the whole topic basicly stayed on the matter that a baby doesnt come from the mother...it comes from the food she consumes (and the carbon that maks up that food)...

i am no science wizz or anything...(i actually hate science class, but this stuff is interesting)...but isnt it energy is neither created nor destroyed...which would mean that this whole topic that i found was...well...false

can someone help me here....


WHERE DO BABIES COME FROM !

Notice from vizskywalker:

changed topic title to better reflect the primary question

[vizskywalker]

Energy is neither created nor destroyed, but neither is mass. It's a duality thing because energy can be converted to mass and vice versa. Take fission, that converts mass into energy. So that ost was correct.

And please don't use all caps, it is considered shouting and rude.

~Viz

[Casanova]

wow its great to know about this..! But how can Food arrange everything in a fixed manner? its very tricky one.. well Very great info..! can i have the link please?

[vizskywalker]

When sperm meets egg, a zygote is created. This zygote contains the dna for the baby. The food the mother ingests is digested and broken down. Some of the broken down partw, like proteins and carbohydrates, are taken to the uterus where they are passed to the zygote. The ribosomes in the zygote look at the dna of the child and use the nucleic acids and amino acids to create new proteins that eventually develop into muscle tissue, skin, bones, organs, etc. So the food is broken down and reassembled by the zygote which comes from the reproductive cells of the parents.

~Viz

[ebbinger_413]

wow its great to know about this..! But how can Food arrange everything in a fixed manner? its very tricky one.. well Very great info..! can i have the link please?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i dont have a link...i can look on google again and see if i can find it...but it was this weekend that i got it...and on a different computer so i cant just look at the history to get it back...srry

When sperm meets egg, a zygote is created.  This zygote contains the dna for the baby.  The food the mother ingests is digested and broken down.  Some of the broken down partw, like proteins and carbohydrates, are taken to the uterus where they are passed to the zygote.  The ribosomes in the zygote look at the dna of the child and use the nucleic acids and amino acids to create new proteins that eventually develop into muscle tissue, skin, bones, organs, etc.  So the food is broken down and reassembled by the zygote which comes from the reproductive cells of the parents.

~Viz

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

so humans creat humans naturally...why cant we creat humans outside the body ? yes i know we already try or are doing this...but...esentially cant we make a baby...without taking sperm from someone and inserting it into the mother...then taking the egg out and letting it grow outside the mother (or however they do that) cant we just create a baby on our own outside the mother...with no help whatsoever...and they are doing that with skin right now right ? like growing new organs or something from stem cells or w/e...that is great...eventually we are going to live forever...no one will die...all the diseases will be cured...that would be nice...but not...i dont think id want to live forever

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG]

It is quite possible to create a baby outside - by artificially fertilizing the egg with the sperm - resulting in what we know as the test-tube baby. But even in this case - right after fertilization and initiation of the birth process, the foetus has to be returned to a mother's womb - coz that is the sole way, it can draw nutritions properly and develop in a normal human being. But during this phase the foetus needs the guarded environment of the womb to protect it from a wide variety of dangers (germs, particles etc.).

This method is quite commonly used these days for women who are unable to conceive children naturally (maybe due to some defect in the placenta - coz placenta is the collection of tissue that the foetus gets attached to - and it is these placental cells which acutally "feed" and increase the foetus in size till it can be called a normal baby). Sometimes due to certain defects in the placenta (which in effect is the "carbon source" you were talking about) - the newborn feotus cannot get a good grip on it and as a result won't get attached properly resulting in loss of the foetus.

While humans have made it possible to emulate the fertilization process outside the body - why is it not possible for us to actually bind together carbon molecules and mysteriously create the baby out of thin air ? The answer lies in the human DNA. What actually gives rise to specific cell arrangements in different parts of the foetus - thus laying out the rudimentary stages for the formation of our vital organs ? Once again - it all depends on the DNA. Believe it or not - the whole blueprint of the human body is encrypted into those ultra-microscopic chains of amino acid & proteins.

Remember the old days when they used the Punched Cards to store data ? The process is somewhat similar. There's a protein fabrication system in our body which depends on a similar system. THe DNA (which we all know to exist in a double-hellical shape) actually separates out into thin strands and accompanied by RNA, they pass through this protein fabrication plant. Imagine a looooong strip of punched card passing through a reader - and the results giving rise to an image on the screen, pixel by pixel. That's what exactly happens - when these strands of DNA pass through the fabrication plant, it studies each tiny segment of the DNA (actually looks out for the base chemical Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine & Thymine) and depending on their arrangement, fabricates protein threads that matches some organ of our body or the other.. Some other parts of the DNA once again contains information on HOW to combine these threads and lay them out correctly to form a normal foetus. Hence the whole idea of congenital diseases or birth defects come from here. If the DNA of either of the parents is malformed - the results get reflected in the foetus through this fabrication process and hence we get babies with birth defects/diseases.

Pheww.. sorry.. biology was/is of my most favourite subjects and I tend to get carried away once I start Hope this will clarify the whole process a bit - if you want more information, I could write loads more detailed stuff about the actual fabrication process and who (DNA/RNA) does what..

Regards,
m^e

[ebbinger_413]

yes...my biology teacher, several years ago, had showed us several, quite good, animations and videos on how the whole dna and rna thing worked...it was quite amazing...i like the whole biology science thing, it fascinates me but...its not my favorite...

not to get too off topic...but physics is another one of those science catagories that just makes you wonder...


has any one seen that movie "what in the bleep do we know" ?

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG]

Physics is another one on my Top List Simply LOVE physics.. Has anyone read the book "Surely you're Joking Mr. Fenyman" ? - one of the most hilarious texts I've read about any physicist ever... (http://www.craigr.com/books/surely.htm)

BTW, Richard P. Feynman is considered one of the most brilliant physicists ever since Einstein. His first ever lecture in CalTech is considered the first and foremost reason to set of NanoTechnology into motion -- and towards reality.
You can find a transcript of this amazing lecture at: http://www.zyvex.com...ch/feynman.html

If you're to join an engineering degree back in India - you'd surely have to read through his texts (a series of 5 books - collective works of his lectures at various universities) known as Feynman's Lectures. Whether you're interested in physics or not - be sure to check out his funny biography - Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman

m^e

[qwijibow]

Seems you are confused ???

Mass and energy are the same thing... when you destroy mass, you get energy.
For example, a uranium attom is heavier than the total mass of all its components.
when you split a uranium attom, it gets lighter, mass is converted to energy.. thats how neuclear bombs work.

when 2 protons are accelerated to earch other, and collide, some energy is converted to mass, and new particles are created.

But humans dont run off neuclear ebnergy, just chemical energy,which involvs moving electrons around and breaking / making molecular bonds.

Everyone is made up of the chemicals we consume, and breathe.

The mother could never conume enough calcium in 9 months to grow a baby skeliton, her body gets much of the calcuim it needs by disolving the mothers bones.

a baby is made up of chemicals from the mother, the mother consumes chemicals.

[mitchellmckain]

Wow, what a loaded topic! Physics, chemistry, and biology.

isnt it energy is neither created nor destroyed...which would mean that this whole topic that i found was...well...false

Actually nothing is so simple, every rule has exceptions and works only under certain conditions.

Carbon atoms remain carbon atoms as long nuclear reactions do not come into play. 99.99999...% of the time (especially in creation of a baby) this hold true. But there is the occasional cossmic ray that will create or destroy a carbon atom, not to mention the rare carbon 14 which will occasionally decay into nitrogen.

The rare events described above also involve the change of a small amount of mass into energy or energy into mass. It is the meaning of the equation E=mc^2, that mass can be converted into an equivalent amount of energy and visa versa. Total conversion of mass into energy occurs when matter meets antimatter.

There is an interesting article in July issue of Scientific American, "The Mysteries of Mass" which talks about how mass is the product of something called a Higg's field or Higg's boson. In fact theories of cosmology say that all the mass in the universe is a small remnant left from the annihilation of the matter and antimatter first created by the Higgs field in the big bang.

So what about energy. Energy is never created or destroyed right? Well, mostly. That is over the long run yes. But in very short periods of time, no. In fact, the shorter the period of time in question, the greater the quantity of energy that may not be accounted for. In very short periods matter and antimatter may appear then annihilate in perfect vacuum which contains no energy at all. These are called virtual particles.

The work which made physicist Stephen Hawking famous, was a consequence of this. He discovered that black holes radiate energy. This is now called Hawking radiation. The idea is that the intense gravitational differential around a black hole will rip apart these matter-antimatter pairs of particles that constantly form in empty space so that one member of the pair goes into the black hole while the other escapes, preventing the pair from annihilating and disappearing back into nothingness. The black hole pays for this by losing the energy which escapes so in the long run no energy is created.

[ebbinger_413]

There is an interesting article in July issue of Scientific American, "The Mysteries of Mass" which talks about how mass is the product of something called a Higg's field or Higg's boson.  In fact theories of cosmology say that all the mass in the universe is a small remnant left from the annihilation of the matter and antimatter first created by the Higgs field in the big bang.

So what about energy.  Energy is never created or destroyed right?  Well, mostly.  That is over the long run yes.  But in very short periods of time, no.  In fact, the shorter the period of time in question, the greater the quantity of energy that may not be accounted for.  In very short periods matter and antimatter may appear then annihilate in perfect vacuum which contains no energy at all.  These are called virtual particles.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

spirits ? life after death ? can we really be turned into something else after we are dead ? ...

[mitchellmckain]

spirits ? life after death ? can we really be turned into something else after we are dead ? ...

Well, what I was talking about was physics and I don't believe that anything about spirits or life after death can be found in phenomena of physics. All physics really does is describe the mathematical relationship between measurable quantities. I don't think this comes close to describing the totality if existence as we experience it. So you might say that I believe there are physical phenomena that can be described, measured and often predicted by the methods of physics and there are non-physical phenomena that cannot.

Here is an analogy. The physical description of the world is like a tv display, which is a three dimensional array of dots (one dimension being time). And the non-physical phenomena exists in between these dots which the tv does not display, but which we experience in the way we connect the dots with meaning and purpose. Now many people argue that their is nothing between the dots and all the meaning and purpose we see is just in our heads. The tv screen will never prove otherwise. But to me this kind of thinking is a dead end which goes no where, to no purpose, and is without meaning.

But maybe what you are seeing (when you talk of spirits) in the physics, is exactly what I see and that is an endless sea of gaps between to dots, in which there is complete freedom to believe (or not) in the non-physical aspects of existence, however, we choose.

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG]

Following up on this, from a physics point of view - why can't there be spirits... or more likely, we often come across scenarios where people claim they remember things from their past life.

Now once our body+brain's dead - whichever way our bodies get destroyed - either cremation or by natural decomposition in a coffin, the atomic particles are assimilated into the atmosphere... Now what would prevent the same particles from getting transferred to a newborn foetus through some sort of carrier ?? Say through the soil - through the food the mom eats.. there can be 'n' number of ways this can happen..

Next, let us take into consideration - the concept of DNAs - if an ultramicroscopic chain of atoms can retain information (lets name it 'memory' in this case) and blueprint of the human body - the same way a group of atoms that got dispersed from the dead human might retain part of his memory too - either through some sort of grouping giving rise to a specific magnetic orientation.. or.. through some unknown principle that we haven't figured out yet...

Maybe I wasn't able to explain this very clearly, but if you read through this - you'll surely see some faint vestiges of logic that can explain the whole concept of reincarnation and past-life's memory..

What do you guys say ?

[infamousflame]

Mass is makeable and destroyable I think, take childbirth and the death of a person. That would add and remove mass. Remember, mass is the amount of "stuff" inside someone and is technically measured in grams and weight in Newtons.

Energy can never be created or destroyed, it can only have it's form changed.

[MajesticTreeFrog]

Mass is makeable and destroyable I think, take childbirth and the death of a person. That would add and remove mass. Remember, mass is the amount of "stuff" inside someone and is technically measured in grams and weight in Newtons.

Energy can never be created or destroyed, it can only have it's form changed.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

WTH are you talking about? Birth and death don't do anything to mass. They don't add or remove anything. The only question is whether the mass in question is part of a functioning living being.

AS for whether matter can be created or destroyed: yes, it can. But not usually. Usually it just changes for. Matter is created/destroyed only in certain nuclear reactions, AFAIK.

[amrit_i]

Seems to me that the confusion is dual and everyone is solving only one. Yes neither mass nor energy can be created or destroyed. Mass of a baby does come from all the biological stuff that has been mentioned and i am not knowledgeable about. But what about the energy? Apart from a physical and biological question, this issue is also psychological or even metaphysical. The energy of a baby can also be equated to its consciousness. The glucose, sucrose etc does give it the ability to move and walk etc, but why does it move and walk? that in itself is also an energy but since energy cannot be created, where does that come from.

Many might not appreciate that im including religion into this but the truth is that the principle of reincarnation is far seperate from just a religion. Almost every psychic in the world today claims that reincarnation is true and most of the Eastern religions do the same. A baby's energy is not created but is derived from its soul which has in the past inhabited many bodies and is a storehouse of information and experience. This philosophy ofcourse creates so much more questions but that perhaps deserves a thread of its own. Suffice to say that yes, energy is not created, a baby has it because the REAL baby is within the physical body and has "always been there". To explain this concept of "always been there" take the example of 2 creatures on of which lives for 1 second and the other for 100 years. To the former the latter does in fact live infinitely and the former does not possess the ability to fathom a period of 100 years, hence terms it infinity. The baby derives its energy from its infinite and eternal existence.

[lorenzo]

I'm not the smartest person out there so you guys feel free to correct me if i'm wrong on this one. Im gonna answer your question (where do babies come from) as simple as it gets. When a woman is ovulating and the sperm meets the eggs, and it gets fertilized. You've mentioned that babies come from what pregnant women consumes. We grow from food energy, (that includes every human being, not just unborn babies), not come from it.

[illini319]

Did everyone forget the question? Where do babies come from? simple, from baby with a 'teensy' amount of help from mother. The mother of a child dissassembles and assembles countless molecules through an orchestration of metabolic processes so conserved a single bacterium possesses much of the same machinery. All of these molecules would normally be destined to be for her own maintenance and growth. So where is the baby in this picture? Where does baby get the building blocks of life? Well, most certainly from mom... But they do not come directly from the hamburger with peanut butter spread (trust me... pregnant women get the strangest cravings...) that she ate earlier in the day. Nope, she broke that winning food combination down and apportioned all of it for herself. The fetus will establish a placenta to be able to obtain all the nutrients from mom it needs to do its own disassembly and assembly of organic compounds. The fetus will grab the building blocks of proteins and DNA, oxygen... oh and some sugar for energy. In return, the fetus will give mommy waste products such as urea and carbon dioxide. In many remarkable ways the two organisms, mom and baby, are quite separate. Lots of trading is going on, to be sure. But since you asked, while mom is certainly helping in the process of the baby, the baby is doing much of the work. The baby is ultimately the one breaking down what mom gives and then rebuilding it into the parts that it needs to make itself.

[austiniskoge]

So, there you go. Here's a mini- study guide just in case you weren't paying attention at school. By the looks of it, the dude who started this thread was either asleep or "chemically impaired" while sitting in on an important lesson.

Ah, high school.

[mitchellmckain]

[tab][/tab]Following up on this, from a physics point of view - why can't there be spirits... or more likely, we often come across scenarios where people claim they remember things from their past life.

From a physics point of view? Physics is based on objective observation and measurable quantites. What is their about spirits which are objectively observable or measurable? Nothing. There for physics cannot say a single thing about them. The question is whether anything exists which is not objectively observable. Well do you believe that love exists? And I am not talking about some attempt to explain it away with psychological/biological gobbledigook. To believe in love requires faith, and there is nothing objectively observable about love of this sort. Is this a proof? Of course not. It is faith.

[tab][/tab]Now once our body+brain's dead - whichever way our bodies get destroyed - either cremation or by natural decomposition in a coffin, the atomic particles are assimilated into the atmosphere... Now what would prevent the same particles from getting transferred to a newborn foetus through some sort of carrier ?? Say through the soil - through the food the mom eats.. there can be 'n' number of ways this can happen..

Particles are very simple forms of energy described by mathematical equations in which there is no room for any memory of where they have been. In fact according to quantum mechanics, since these particles are interchangeable, they do probabilisically interchange. In other words, trying to identify particles which came from a particular source is meaningless because in short order it is shared out among all other particles in percentages.

[tab][/tab]Next, let us take into consideration - the concept of DNAs - if an ultramicroscopic chain of atoms can retain information (lets name it 'memory' in this case) and blueprint of the human body - the same way a group of atoms that got dispersed from the dead human might retain part of his memory too - either through some sort of grouping giving rise to a specific magnetic orientation.. or.. through some unknown principle that we haven't figured out yet...

The information stored in DNA includes nothing of what is learned by individual creatures - none of the experiences which are the content of our memories. The information stored in DNA is gathered in a time scale whose moments are generations and the only information it stores are the genetic variations that have managed to survive long enough to reproduce.

[tab][/tab]Maybe I wasn't able to explain this very clearly, but if you read through this - you'll surely see some faint vestiges of logic that can explain the whole concept of reincarnation and past-life's memory..

So to justify such beliefs as you are talking about, you must as I said before, believe in the existence of things which are not objectively observable or measurable (as I do). To believe that memories are passed on, means that you must believe in something which contains these memories that continues to exist after the death of the body and mind - that which is commonly refered to as the spirit. But where do spirits come from? Are they objects created elsewhere or are they created by the process of life itself. If they are created elsewhere then are they lying in wait to posess infants which are born (pretty creepy if you ask me) or are the stuffed into the infants like inanimate objects by some higher being?

If they are created elsewhere then is there an infinite supply or is there a danger of running out, or they manufactured as needed to meet the needs of a growing population? Since this idea of being created elsewhere generates more questions than it answers then the idea that they are created by the process of life itself seems much more reasonable (and less creepy) to me, and any "phenomenon of reincarnation" is simply the transfer or sharing of past memories between spirits of those departed and those still alive.

Well I guess it is a matter of taste I suppose. Perhaps some people prefer to believe that their child is an old soul simply rediscovering the things of life, trying once more to do it right, while others like myself prefer to believe that their child is something absolutely new in the world with a completely unexplored range of infinite possibilities.