Andy, one thing that occurred to me last night: if you restart the tobacco seed experiment again, you should probably try pre-soaking some of the seeds at 4C in the dark, in case there's a substantial time delay for hydrogen/deuterium exchange.
Bill Hooker
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Andy Maloney
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I've been jonesing for more data on this question!
- Bill Hooker
Me too! Andy has overhauled the data acquisition system with like 8 web cams now. It's a very cool system, but because it kept crashing, we had to abandon the idea of real-time data to the web. I think he started a new experiment yesterday and it will be fun to see what happens. For what it's worth, though, my bet is still that we will not have enough precision to discern a difference between regular water and deuterium-depleted water, relative to what I expect will be large uncertainty. My gut still tells me that life would have evolved a use for deuterium, so there should be _some_ effect. I just don't think we'll be able to discern it yet. But even just replicating Lewis's 1933/1934 experiments is fun!
- Steve Koch
Well, I didn't soak anything so we shall see what happens.
- Andy Maloney
It may be fine, just depends on how much H is stored in seeds and how quickly it exchanges.
- Steve Koch