Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari!murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au!basser!pete
From: pete@basser.oz (Peter Merel)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Fusion Powered Dragons
Summary: TANSTAAFL
Keywords: fusion
Message-ID: <2069@basser.oz>
Date: 11 May 89 07:13:00 GMT
References: <2060@basser.oz> <1856@csadfa.oz>
Organization: Dept of Comp Sci, Uni of Sydney, Australia
Lines: 36

In article <1856@csadfa.oz> rim@csadfa.oz (Bob McKay) writes:
>It [PFH fusion] would require two independent developments
>.The ability to concentrate and deposit pure palladium
>.The ability to concentrate deuterium
>Neither of these is biologically impossible; but each is energetically 
>expensive, so would be strongly selected against.

No. If these processes enable fusion, then they will produce more energy than
they require. Remember, evolution is not hill-climbing - it doesn't get
stuck on little hitches if it has a long enough period to operate over
a large enough population. Jumping off cliffs is strongly selected against,
but wings evolved anyway.

Now if, as Jones asserts in his paper, cold fusion processes are commonly
involved in energy production within the Earth, then evolution has had over 
four billion years to whip up some sort of fusion powered beasties. They might
have begun as a kind of 'fusion parasite', just seeking out areas that are 
made warm by fusion processes. Evolution would then select for the parasites
that did not destroy the 'host', or even better, prolonged and/or proliferated
the 'host'. Fusion bees, I guess. Call them freebees. Eventually the freebees
encapsulate fusion within themselves, and whacko the chook.

But from this stage, I miss my guesses. If cold fusion is common, then there 
is no need for fusion based life to predate on anything, so I'm not sure what
constitutes evolutionary pressure on the freebees. I can't see them
interacting in a meaningful way with developing 'vanilla' life - I should
think they'd be mutually poisonous. So maybe freebees exist, but remain in so
primitive a form that we don't recognise them as such.

Perhaps, for complex life to evolve, there can't be any such thing as a 
free lunch. But that wouldn't stop us re-engineering existing life forms to
suit. Do we have the technology?
-- 
That is beyond your compression - Galaxy Being, Outer Limits.  pete@basser.oz.AU
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