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Reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Jurassic Park: "Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosi
by rogercosseboom 18y ago
Reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Jurassic Park:
"Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself."
- Silentio 18y agoThat book is so incredibly good. When my kids are the right age I am going to give them that book to read so they will get hooked on science. It should be required reading in high school biology classes. Think about a class centered around that book where students do little experiments related to passages like this one. That would be amazing.
- rogercosseboom 18y agoWhen I was in the 8th grade and I wrote my first program in BASIC I came home from school and told my mother "I want to be a programmer- like the guy in Jurassic Park, but not fat." I'd say I was about 75% successful
- Daniel_Newby 18y agoIndeed. It's not widely known, but oxygen is still rather poisonous to humans. If you breath pure oxygen for over about half a day, your lungs start taking damage. There's a reason that oxygen and perchlorate are used as rocket oxidizers.