[extropy-chat] Singularity heat waste

[BillK]

On 7/17/06, Robert Bradbury wrote:
<snip>
>
> Its an interesting hypothesis.  As Eugen points out one has to strike a
> balance between higher operating temperatures and energy resources.  Maybe
> as we unravel the genomes of various organisms and the protein structures
> further we will gain some insights into what temperature dependent aspects
> are incorporated into the various machines.
>

An earlier comment from Eugen tweaked my 'interesting' sensors.
Just exactly *why* do humans have a working temperature of around 37C?

Obviously millennia of evolution have been adjusting up and down to
find the best compromise for humans. Slower metabolism v faster
metabolism survival characteristics.

After some searching I found the new field of (still controversial)
Metabolic ecology.
<http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020440>

Ecology's Big, Hot Idea
John Whitfield
Published: December 14, 2004

By correcting for mass and temperature, Brown, Gillooly, and their
colleagues believe they have revealed underlying similarities in all
the rates of life. The hatching times for egg-laying animals,
including birds, fish, amphibians, insects, and plankton, turn out to
follow the same relationship—if a fish egg were the same size and
temperature as a bird egg, it would take equally long to hatch (Figure
3). The same goes for growth: a tree and a mammal of equal size and
temperature would gain mass at the same speed. And size and
temperature even explain much of the variation in mortality rates
between species—which one might have thought to be strongly dependent
on external factors such as predators—perhaps through metabolism's
influence on aging processes, such as free-radical damage to the
genome.

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At first sight it sounds like they might be on to something
significant, but there is still much scientific disputation going on.
 :)

BillK