It's actually possible with todays technology to make an antimatter engine. We can already make antimatter in a particle accelerator, it would just take a very long time at the current level to make enough to be useful in an engine
Yall should check out this book if you have not already done so.
Actually NASA's view on the matter was you use antimatter to sustain a fusion reaction, thus minimizing the amount of antimatter you need.
I think the problem right now is that it can only be made at great expense and one atom at a time, Forward proposed a giant accelerator on the moon (lots of room) to step up production
No we can make quite a good deal of it, it's just a lot less then even 1 gram. But they routinely do chemistry on it at CERN.
tell em to hurry up, I wants my billion miles per gallon car already.
ALocksly on
Yes,... yes, I agree. It's totally unfair that sober you gets into trouble for things that drunk you did.
I think between the informed opinion of one of the greatest thinkers of our generation, and some guy who says "meh, it'll work itself out" I'll go ahead and side with the genius
It's not a science question, it's a human nature problem. It's always easier to destroy than to create. If nuclear war is such a problem, and if this plan requires that our technology accelerate by leaps and bound, then why wouldn't we have simply destroyed ourselves long before we ever even made it off the planet?
This is sort of a tangent, but that reasoning is actually tied to a theory that explains why there cannot be a warmongering alien race out there like in movies.
The idea is that if they are an aggressive species and they are technologically advanced enough to travel vast distances in a short time, they would have destroyed themselves before they got off their planet.
So we cannot be aggressive and technologically advanced at the same time. In order for our species to survive, we either have to stay primitive, or we have to be benign, or both.
Besides which, the point he's trying to make is that the technology to start self-supporting colonies isn't far beyond our current level at all, and the chances of a planet wide disaster, man-made or otherwise, isn't something to be discounted.
If it's not that far off, then why not use it here?
Here's one example: Viable atmosphere. There is no known geological process that will create a breathable atmosphere on it's own. In order to do that, you need some sort of life. Even then, it took billions of years here on Earth. If the alternative planets have had life for the pastt several bilion years, then how will we adapt to a completely alien environment? If they don't have breathable atmosphere, then how would we be able to create it? Suppose you said, "Oh, we're create superpowerful photosynthetic bacteria that's designed to limit mutation, so it doesn't turn against us." Fine. But why not us that same technology here on Earth?
Viable atmosphere actually requires a very specific set of conditions. You can't simply implant oxygen-generating bacteria on a planet and eventually get an atmosphere that supports human life.
The reason is that a planet's gravity determines what atoms stay in its atmosphere and what atoms escape it. If the gravity is too low, lighter gas atoms will not stay in the atmosphere. If the gravity is too high, we won't be able to live there without getting our bodies crushed under their own weight.
The only way to realistically create colonies on, say, Mars, is to either build them underground and keep them sealed, or create giant domes that block out radiation and can withstand meteor impacts. The former is far more feasible... yet we should not forget the risk of waking up and unleashing alien predators upon the colony while digging tunnels in Mars.
In other words, "terraforming" is at the extreme even by science-fictional standards.
If they don't have breathable atmosphere, then how would we be able to create it? Suppose you said, "Oh, we're create superpowerful photosynthetic bacteria that's designed to limit mutation, so it doesn't turn against us." Fine. But why not us that same technology here on Earth?
First, I don't know about 'turning against us,' but it seems to me that if we could limit mutation - and I don't know how that would work - we should choose not to if genetically engineering something to exist in any environment not on Earth. It needs to be able to adapt to do well in any environment, and whatever we find would probably be quite different from almost any environment on Earth. And if we somehow had the know-how to know everything about the environment to genetically engineer the bacteria to be already perfectly adapted to the environment - which I actually see as less likely than getting to the alien planet in the first place - what would happen if there was some climactic change? The bacteria can't adapt, so if you're relying on them, both them and you are pretty much fucked.
I'm not sure what you mean about using that technology on Earth. Do you mean making something that makes a lot of oxygen, to counter pollution or something, maybe? Again, I might be misinterpreting what you meant, but if that is what you meant, it's not a good idea. If the atmosphere was a few percent oxygen points higher, it would probably ignite (not kidding or pulling this out of my ass). The level of oxygen we have in the atmospher right now is just right - thanks, world's ecosystems!
As for everyone talking about antimatter and stuff, if we somehow had access to all of the antimatter ever generated at CERN, and could annihilate it all with matter and get all the energy from that with perfect efficiency (impossible because of the creation of particles that are useless to us, such as neutrinos), we would have enough energy to power a light bulb. For a couple of seconds.
CERN also happens to take slightly more energy to power than a light bulb.
I think we would need a much more efficient way to get antimatter for it to be useful as an energy source. I think there was an idea of putting sort of "antimatter nets" in orbit around the Earth, that would use electromagnetism to trap antiprotons and repel protons, but I'm not sure how feasible that is or if it would really be worth it.
The idea is that if they are an aggressive species and they are technologically advanced enough to travel vast distances in a short time, they would have destroyed themselves before they got off their planet.
There is no reason for this to necessarily be true. We can compare the course of human technological development to the course of... what other technological development?
What about an intelligent species that behaved the same way as ants or bees? Not only would such a species be likely to destroy itself, it would probably not even perceive other species, such as humans, to be "people," and would merely destroy us if they considered us as competition for resources.
Then again, I think any sort of speculation about sentient alien life is silly.
Agem on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
edited December 2006
I swear, it just keep looking more and more like we're going to need some sort of Ozymandias style scheme to get anything done.
It's not just gravity that keeps our atmosphere in place. The magnetic field(the one that aligns your compass "north") acts as a wind breaker for Earth against nasty solar winds, which would otherwise blow away our atmosphere. Meanwhile on Mars, there is no magnetic field to speak of thanks to a suspected dead core. So you've got solar winds galore blowing away anything lighter than C02, including N2 and O2, the other main ingredients of breathable air.
As far as Hawkings goes, comments like this from him make me think less of the guy. It's not exactly an original idea. It has been a theme in Sci-Fi since before Sci-Fi was a genre. It just sounds like "guys, you know what I day dream about guys, guys? spaceships!". Instead of a well though out prediction of the future, it's wild imagination. To be fair, however, the man's strength is that he's not a skeptic and isn't going to rule anything out until he's proven it's improbable, whereas most scientists will scoff at an "out there" idea.
And why colonize a planet anyways? If it's just to ensure human life exists post-doomsday scenario, why don't we just make a self sustaining space station? It would make trade and transportation much cheaper than having to "blast off" from two planets and make two re-entries. And there ain't nothing on another planet that wouldn't be cheaper and easier to mine from earth, even if we have to travel to the center of the planet.
I'm not sure what you mean about using that technology on Earth. Do you mean making something that makes a lot of oxygen, to counter pollution or something, maybe? Again, I might be misinterpreting what you meant, but if that is what you meant, it's not a good idea. If the atmosphere was a few percent oxygen points higher, it would probably ignite (not kidding or pulling this out of my ass). The level of oxygen we have in the atmospher right now is just right - thanks, world's ecosystems!
Odd. I've been under the impression that the Oxygen concentration in the atmosphere used to be much higher, and that's why we've found fossils of giant insects. The only way for them to have gotten that large and still, you know, breathed would be to have a larger concentration of oxygen.
MalaysianShrew on
Never trust a big butt and a smile.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
edited December 2006
Furthermore, it's worth noting that humanity is still fucked if a disaster wipes out life on Earth unless:
1) The colony is self-sufficient
2) There are enough people on the colony to maintain a healthy population
3) The colony has the capability to reach out across the stars itself
It would, of course, be ironic if humanity wound up being extincted by an interplanetary war.
I'm not sure what you mean about using that technology on Earth. Do you mean making something that makes a lot of oxygen, to counter pollution or something, maybe? Again, I might be misinterpreting what you meant, but if that is what you meant, it's not a good idea. If the atmosphere was a few percent oxygen points higher, it would probably ignite (not kidding or pulling this out of my ass). The level of oxygen we have in the atmospher right now is just right - thanks, world's ecosystems!
Odd. I've been under the impression that the Oxygen concentration in the atmosphere used to be much higher, and that's why we've found fossils of giant insects. The only way for them to have gotten that large and still, you know, breathed would be to have a larger concentration of oxygen.
It's been a while since I read about this, but I believe the atmosphere is currently about 20% oxygen, while 15% or less would be unsuitable for current life, and while any more than a quarter would have explosive results.
Just a thought, but a Star Trek style warp engine would have to be the result of a Bose-Einstein Condensate interaction. In theory, the idea of zero-point energy engine fits well with BECs, provided you can generate the effect in a solid state device. (Hence the dilithium crystals.) Condensing solid matter down to a BEC would generate a localized point of 'pinned' spacetime.
The Bosenova effect observed in BEC experiments with gases has demonstrated that converting matter into a BEC can produce very interesting results. A bosenova, although poorly understood, could be a side effect of the condensed matter becoming unbonded with relative spacetime itself, meaning the universe continues to move past it at its own pace. In other words, the BEC would instantly accelerate to the speed of light.
Harnessing this effect could prove very difficult.
But if we could... and could use it for travel at the speed of light, using a BEC at the heart of our spacecraft, we'd be creating a new kind of reverse black hole... a white hole, that constantly emits human radiation in the form of radio waves and other information sources.
As we move away from Earth at the speed of light, relativistic effects would mean that once you reached your new home, you probably wouldn't have missed much of the TV show you were watching when you left. If human civilization proceeded outwards from Earth in an expanding sphere, the current civilization back on Earth would leave its own lasting imprint.
It would, of course, be ironic if humanity wound up being extincted by an interplanetary war.
If by ironic, you mean totally awesome, then I'd agree. Matamoto cannon FTW btw, yo.
I'd be more worried about whether people could actually manage to live in small, highly disciplined communities in colonies, considering how naturally insane everyone is.
If it's just to ensure human life exists post-doomsday scenario, why don't we just make a self sustaining space station?
If we could make sustainable enclosed habitats that don't rely on an influx of massive amounts of resources from... somewhere else... we wouldn't be having most of these problems.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
I want to believe you Hawking, I really do. When I was 5 years old I thought all this stuff would happen in my life time. We haven't even been to Mars yet! MARS! Another planet visible with the naked eye! Maybe when America gets its priorities straight and lands man on Mars, we can think more seriously about colonising the universe.
Interstellar war ftw, yes. If the mouse builds a space-faring mousetrap, the scientists will build a better nuke.
The way I see it the next big steps are:
- permanent colony on the moon (and planets and space stations)
- reusable spaceships
- widespread commercial transportation/research (or equivalent if we all become communists by then) which kinda depends on the two other steps
Near light speed is still way out in the scifi. Colonizing more habitable/self-sustainable planets in other solar systems is a pretty much given when that level of technology is reached.
And even if weaponry has advanced it'd be a lot harder to wipe out the whole human race "by accident" until you have ways of destroying other planets remotely.
Even Death Stars wouldn't work, I think. Not unless they're given to every idiot in the universe.
It's been a while since I read about this, but I believe the atmosphere is currently about 20% oxygen, while 15% or less would be unsuitable for current life, and while any more than a quarter would have explosive results.
Why do you think they'd pump it up any higher than 20% then? Unless it's a catastrophic accident, someone is specifically trying to wipe out the human race or they forgot to make an Off switch.
If this actually did happen, I wonder how many people would end up staying behind, and how many of them would do so voluntarily.
It'd also be funny to see different people colonize different planets, a sort of cosmic good-fucking-riddance.
It'd end up like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Really though, space colonization might provide some kind of natural selection. The groups of colonists would be very limited too, eh? Like the ultra rich and government sponsored, at least initially.
It's been a while since I read about this, but I believe the atmosphere is currently about 20% oxygen, while 15% or less would be unsuitable for current life, and while any more than a quarter would have explosive results.
Why do you think they'd pump it up any higher than 20% then? Unless it's a catastrophic accident, someone is specifically trying to wipe out the human race or they forgot to make an Off switch.
I was talking about using this sort of thing on Earth, but that raises another point.
It is difficult to find a way to just turn "off" an amount of bacteria large enough to have a significant impact on the atmosphere of a planet.
I think the best way might be to make it so that once oxygen levels are high enough it becomes poisonous enough to them to kill them. They'll still be alive in large numbers, but much larger numbers than they were before the atmosphere became poisonous to them.
If this actually did happen, I wonder how many people would end up staying behind, and how many of them would do so voluntarily.
It'd also be funny to see different people colonize different planets, a sort of cosmic good-fucking-riddance.
It'd end up like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Really though, space colonization might provide some kind of natural selection. The groups of colonists would be very limited too, eh? Like the ultra rich and government sponsored, at least initially.
I can't imagine that the rich would want to risk their lives for a lower standard of living. I could see a government sponsored group of lower middle class people being the main colonizers.
If this actually did happen, I wonder how many people would end up staying behind, and how many of them would do so voluntarily.
It'd also be funny to see different people colonize different planets, a sort of cosmic good-fucking-riddance.
It'd end up like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Really though, space colonization might provide some kind of natural selection. The groups of colonists would be very limited too, eh? Like the ultra rich and government sponsored, at least initially.
I can't imagine that the rich would want to risk their lives for a lower standard of living. I could see a government sponsored group of lower middle class people being the main colonizers.
Meh, since it all depends on the unforeseeable circumstances of decades from now, who knows whether risking your life to flee the world will be preferable to staying?
What might be in the future? Weaponized small pox used by terrorists, energy crisi, global warming, plague, famine, epidemics, draught, something worse than postmodernism. . .
Deathmonger on
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DynagripBreak me a million heartsHoustonRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I want to believe you Hawking, I really do. When I was 5 years old I thought all this stuff would happen in my life time. We haven't even been to Mars yet! MARS! Another planet visible with the naked eye! Maybe when America gets its priorities straight and lands man on Mars, we can think more seriously about colonising the universe.
Space exploration is sadly mainly only a priority for middle to upper class white dudes.
Hawking isn't immune to sentimentality... and the learned have a long history of spikes of stupid amidst their genius.
He might WANT it to happen... but that doesn't mean it's going to.
I figured that Hawking wasn't proposing this (Colonising another planet) as a feasible or practical solution any time soon. I think he was just trying to use his influence to give the space program and general interest in it a "kick in the ass", so to speak. Progress in the area (With the exception of the private millionaire ventures) has really stagnated recently, and even if we don't make it to another solar system within the next hundred years, additional support and funding would go a long way.
His Corkiness on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
Hawking isn't immune to sentimentality... and the learned have a long history of spikes of stupid amidst their genius.
He might WANT it to happen... but that doesn't mean it's going to.
I figured that Hawking wasn't proposing this (Colonising another planet) as a feasible or practical solution any time soon. I think he was just trying to use his influence to give the space program and general interest in it a "kick in the ass", so to speak. Progress in the area (With the exception of the private millionaire ventures) has really stagnated recently, and even if we don't make it to another solar system within the next hundred years, additional support and funding would go a long way.
Hawking isn't immune to sentimentality... and the learned have a long history of spikes of stupid amidst their genius.
He might WANT it to happen... but that doesn't mean it's going to.
I figured that Hawking wasn't proposing this (Colonising another planet) as a feasible or practical solution any time soon. I think he was just trying to use his influence to give the space program and general interest in it a "kick in the ass", so to speak. Progress in the area (With the exception of the private millionaire ventures) has really stagnated recently, and even if we don't make it to another solar system within the next hundred years, additional support and funding would go a long way.
He ought to be pushing for power armor instead.
Power armor won't save you from tungsten-sheathed depleted uranium slugs fired from low orbit.
Hawking isn't immune to sentimentality... and the learned have a long history of spikes of stupid amidst their genius.
He might WANT it to happen... but that doesn't mean it's going to.
I figured that Hawking wasn't proposing this (Colonising another planet) as a feasible or practical solution any time soon. I think he was just trying to use his influence to give the space program and general interest in it a "kick in the ass", so to speak. Progress in the area (With the exception of the private millionaire ventures) has really stagnated recently, and even if we don't make it to another solar system within the next hundred years, additional support and funding would go a long way.
He ought to be pushing for power armor instead.
If Hawking was ever in a combat situation, I think he'd need some sort of laser-equipped wheelchair of doom before armor would really help him.
Hawking isn't immune to sentimentality... and the learned have a long history of spikes of stupid amidst their genius.
He might WANT it to happen... but that doesn't mean it's going to.
I figured that Hawking wasn't proposing this (Colonising another planet) as a feasible or practical solution any time soon. I think he was just trying to use his influence to give the space program and general interest in it a "kick in the ass", so to speak. Progress in the area (With the exception of the private millionaire ventures) has really stagnated recently, and even if we don't make it to another solar system within the next hundred years, additional support and funding would go a long way.
I think we should try and find the shattered remains of the starship that brought us to earth originally. Finding a hyperspace generator inside as well as a galatic map, we construct a massive starship to find our true place in the stars.
But then the taidani come and burn earth to cinders, forcing the remains of humanity to flee across the galaxy. That would rock.
When I was ten or twelve or something, I read this little book. It was a kid's book and it was in the kid's fiction section and it was just this thin little paperback. The point of the book was that it was a fake travel guide from the future. The entire thing was like a little guide for someone who is going to take a vacation on the moon and needs some advice on the situation. It covered subjects like what to pack, how to handle the journey up, and what to do once you were there. The whole thing was totally deadpan and, while it was written like a kid's fantasy book, it was clearly all written as simple extrapolations of technology that existed when the book was written. The book itself was from like the sixties or seventies.
We could have had this by now if we'd tried, dammit.
I think the best way might be to make it so that once oxygen levels are high enough it becomes poisonous enough to them to kill them. They'll still be alive in large numbers, but much larger numbers than they were before the atmosphere became poisonous to them.
This is actually what happened to form the Earth's (present) atmosphere. The original anaerobic organisms which exhaled oxygen were killed when the atmosphere became too enriched with the stuff, which was poisonous to them.
We could have had this by now if we'd tried, dammit.
Yeah, you'd think that at the very least we'd have some sort of manned station either on the moon or in orbit of it by now. But here we are in 2006, and we can barely maintain a manned station in orbit of Earth.
Just a thought, but a Star Trek style warp engine would have to be the result of a Bose-Einstein Condensate interaction. In theory, the idea of zero-point energy engine fits well with BECs, provided you can generate the effect in a solid state device.
Does it?
How so?
(Hence the dilithium crystals.)
According to wikipedia, dilithium is a nonexistent substance invented for Star Trek, and it's used to convert matter-antimatter reactions into usable power in the form of "plasma". How does "plasma" help us transport things faster than light?
Condensing solid matter down to a BEC would generate a localized point of 'pinned' spacetime.
How would it do this? Isn't BEC just an unusual state of matter?
The Bosenova effect observed in BEC experiments with gases has demonstrated that converting matter into a BEC can produce very interesting results.
Sweet, awesome. Now we just need to invent spaceships that are powered by interestingness
As we move away from Earth at the speed of light, relativistic effects would mean that once you reached your new home, you probably wouldn't have missed much of the TV show you were watching when you left.
I'm pretty sure it works the other way around, as the OP article observes.
It's been a while since I read about this, but I believe the atmosphere is currently about 20% oxygen, while 15% or less would be unsuitable for current life, and while any more than a quarter would have explosive results.
Why do you think they'd pump it up any higher than 20% then? Unless it's a catastrophic accident, someone is specifically trying to wipe out the human race or they forgot to make an Off switch.
I was talking about using this sort of thing on Earth, but that raises another point.
It is difficult to find a way to just turn "off" an amount of bacteria large enough to have a significant impact on the atmosphere of a planet.
I think the best way might be to make it so that once oxygen levels are high enough it becomes poisonous enough to them to kill them. They'll still be alive in large numbers, but much larger numbers than they were before the atmosphere became poisonous to them.
Ooh, right. It is an off-switch problem if the bacteria is released into the wild, yea. I suppose they could maybe also create a specific way to poison them that doesn't require specific oxygen level but is rather manually triggered.
Or if the bacteria is effective enough it can be used in a more containable area. Like... a desert or something... and then have the bacteria die without water or some shit like that. Hell, make them dependent on some obscure enough chemical compound.
It's been a while since I read about this, but I believe the atmosphere is currently about 20% oxygen, while 15% or less would be unsuitable for current life, and while any more than a quarter would have explosive results.
Why do you think they'd pump it up any higher than 20% then? Unless it's a catastrophic accident, someone is specifically trying to wipe out the human race or they forgot to make an Off switch.
I was talking about using this sort of thing on Earth, but that raises another point.
It is difficult to find a way to just turn "off" an amount of bacteria large enough to have a significant impact on the atmosphere of a planet.
I think the best way might be to make it so that once oxygen levels are high enough it becomes poisonous enough to them to kill them. They'll still be alive in large numbers, but much larger numbers than they were before the atmosphere became poisonous to them.
Ooh, right. It is an off-switch problem if the bacteria is released into the wild, yea. I suppose they could maybe also create a specific way to poison them that doesn't require specific oxygen level but is rather manually triggered.
Or if the bacteria is effective enough it can be used in a more containable area. Like... a desert or something... and then have the bacteria die without water or some shit like that. Hell, make them dependent on some obscure enough chemical compound.
The problem is that any of these kill switch issues-- engineer them to not be able to survive once the atmosphere reaches the "appropriate" point, contain them in an area, make them dependent on some obscure chemical, insert a "kill switch"-- assumes that evolution stops working and none of your bacteria manage to develop an immunity or workaround to your kill switch/chemical/boundary. The problem is that you've got an entire planet/country/whatever worth of these bacteria, and only one of them has to survive your bacteria holocaust and that will be enough to grow the engineered bacteria anywhere and everywhere back up to the point it was at before you holocausted it, only now every one of the bacteria that exists lacks the kill condition.
It's been a while since I read about this, but I believe the atmosphere is currently about 20% oxygen, while 15% or less would be unsuitable for current life, and while any more than a quarter would have explosive results.
Why do you think they'd pump it up any higher than 20% then? Unless it's a catastrophic accident, someone is specifically trying to wipe out the human race or they forgot to make an Off switch.
I was talking about using this sort of thing on Earth, but that raises another point.
It is difficult to find a way to just turn "off" an amount of bacteria large enough to have a significant impact on the atmosphere of a planet.
I think the best way might be to make it so that once oxygen levels are high enough it becomes poisonous enough to them to kill them. They'll still be alive in large numbers, but much larger numbers than they were before the atmosphere became poisonous to them.
Ooh, right. It is an off-switch problem if the bacteria is released into the wild, yea. I suppose they could maybe also create a specific way to poison them that doesn't require specific oxygen level but is rather manually triggered.
Or if the bacteria is effective enough it can be used in a more containable area. Like... a desert or something... and then have the bacteria die without water or some shit like that. Hell, make them dependent on some obscure enough chemical compound.
The problem is that any of these kill switch issues-- engineer them to not be able to survive once the atmosphere reaches the "appropriate" point, contain them in an area, make them dependent on some obscure chemical, insert a "kill switch"-- assumes that evolution stops working and none of your bacteria manage to develop an immunity or workaround to your kill switch/chemical/boundary. The problem is that you've got an entire planet/country/whatever worth of these bacteria, and only one of them has to survive your bacteria holocaust and that will be enough to grow the engineered bacteria anywhere and everywhere back up to the point it was at before you holocausted it, only now every one of the bacteria that exists lacks the kill condition.
But you also have to keep in mind that when you're dealing with biological elements, there's nothing necessarily wrong with them running amok, it's just a point that they're certainly not a one-shot thing, they should be considered an ongoing investment. On the scale of planetary terraforming I think we can cope with this sort of responsibility.
He sounds kind of silly and romantic, but using the threat of global catastrophe could be one excuse to reignite the space program. Theoretically, policy makers who are into national security or ecology could find a shared agenda here. Not to mention how much we have to gain from the research and development that would come from a muscular space program.
The only problem is, most people are not afraid of giant meteors and probably never will be.
TroubledTom on
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If introducing them permanently into the environment and never ever being rid of them is something we do on purpose, then that could maybe make some sense if done super duper carefully and with a slightly better understanding of weather and ecological systems than we have right now today.
As long as we don't do something silly like attempt a plan that relies on being able to control or rein in a fricking bacteria once it's been released into the wild.
Well I wouldn't do it on Earth. But planets which don't have a pre-existing eco-system we care about preserving I would do it to. They'll ultimately end up looking pretty alien anyway, but if we can live their reasonably comfortably then mission accomplished.
Well I wouldn't do it on Earth. But planets which don't have a pre-existing eco-system we care about preserving I would do it to. They'll ultimately end up looking pretty alien anyway, but if we can live their reasonably comfortably then mission accomplished.
Oh, okay, not on earth, sure.
Sometimes I wonder when the first accidental terran bacteria contamination of a foreign body is going to be. Like whether we'll go back to the moon and discover that bacteria that hitched along on the first moon landing worked out to somehow work out to survive there. That's incredibly unlikely, I guess, but Mars has atmospheric water vapor and it might be slightly more possible there. Plus there was some thing I read awhile back where like... so these people did a simulation, where they simulated some of the big comet/meteor impacts in earth's history, and calculated how much earth rock would have been ejected into space by those impacts and what would have happened to those rocks. The whole thing was just a simulation, but the simulations did have a few tens of earth boulders smashing into each of the jovian moons with water, and on one of the two the impact would have been relatively soft enough due to atmospheric drag that some extremophile organisms living in or on the rock could have survived.
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tell em to hurry up, I wants my billion miles per gallon car already.
This is sort of a tangent, but that reasoning is actually tied to a theory that explains why there cannot be a warmongering alien race out there like in movies.
The idea is that if they are an aggressive species and they are technologically advanced enough to travel vast distances in a short time, they would have destroyed themselves before they got off their planet.
So we cannot be aggressive and technologically advanced at the same time. In order for our species to survive, we either have to stay primitive, or we have to be benign, or both.
Viable atmosphere actually requires a very specific set of conditions. You can't simply implant oxygen-generating bacteria on a planet and eventually get an atmosphere that supports human life.
The reason is that a planet's gravity determines what atoms stay in its atmosphere and what atoms escape it. If the gravity is too low, lighter gas atoms will not stay in the atmosphere. If the gravity is too high, we won't be able to live there without getting our bodies crushed under their own weight.
The only way to realistically create colonies on, say, Mars, is to either build them underground and keep them sealed, or create giant domes that block out radiation and can withstand meteor impacts. The former is far more feasible... yet we should not forget the risk of waking up and unleashing alien predators upon the colony while digging tunnels in Mars.
In other words, "terraforming" is at the extreme even by science-fictional standards.
Great movie, ending aside.
I'm not sure what you mean about using that technology on Earth. Do you mean making something that makes a lot of oxygen, to counter pollution or something, maybe? Again, I might be misinterpreting what you meant, but if that is what you meant, it's not a good idea. If the atmosphere was a few percent oxygen points higher, it would probably ignite (not kidding or pulling this out of my ass). The level of oxygen we have in the atmospher right now is just right - thanks, world's ecosystems!
As for everyone talking about antimatter and stuff, if we somehow had access to all of the antimatter ever generated at CERN, and could annihilate it all with matter and get all the energy from that with perfect efficiency (impossible because of the creation of particles that are useless to us, such as neutrinos), we would have enough energy to power a light bulb. For a couple of seconds.
CERN also happens to take slightly more energy to power than a light bulb.
I think we would need a much more efficient way to get antimatter for it to be useful as an energy source. I think there was an idea of putting sort of "antimatter nets" in orbit around the Earth, that would use electromagnetism to trap antiprotons and repel protons, but I'm not sure how feasible that is or if it would really be worth it.
There is no reason for this to necessarily be true. We can compare the course of human technological development to the course of... what other technological development?
What about an intelligent species that behaved the same way as ants or bees? Not only would such a species be likely to destroy itself, it would probably not even perceive other species, such as humans, to be "people," and would merely destroy us if they considered us as competition for resources.
Then again, I think any sort of speculation about sentient alien life is silly.
As far as Hawkings goes, comments like this from him make me think less of the guy. It's not exactly an original idea. It has been a theme in Sci-Fi since before Sci-Fi was a genre. It just sounds like "guys, you know what I day dream about guys, guys? spaceships!". Instead of a well though out prediction of the future, it's wild imagination. To be fair, however, the man's strength is that he's not a skeptic and isn't going to rule anything out until he's proven it's improbable, whereas most scientists will scoff at an "out there" idea.
And why colonize a planet anyways? If it's just to ensure human life exists post-doomsday scenario, why don't we just make a self sustaining space station? It would make trade and transportation much cheaper than having to "blast off" from two planets and make two re-entries. And there ain't nothing on another planet that wouldn't be cheaper and easier to mine from earth, even if we have to travel to the center of the planet.
Odd. I've been under the impression that the Oxygen concentration in the atmosphere used to be much higher, and that's why we've found fossils of giant insects. The only way for them to have gotten that large and still, you know, breathed would be to have a larger concentration of oxygen.
1) The colony is self-sufficient
2) There are enough people on the colony to maintain a healthy population
3) The colony has the capability to reach out across the stars itself
It would, of course, be ironic if humanity wound up being extincted by an interplanetary war.
The Bosenova effect observed in BEC experiments with gases has demonstrated that converting matter into a BEC can produce very interesting results. A bosenova, although poorly understood, could be a side effect of the condensed matter becoming unbonded with relative spacetime itself, meaning the universe continues to move past it at its own pace. In other words, the BEC would instantly accelerate to the speed of light.
Harnessing this effect could prove very difficult.
But if we could... and could use it for travel at the speed of light, using a BEC at the heart of our spacecraft, we'd be creating a new kind of reverse black hole... a white hole, that constantly emits human radiation in the form of radio waves and other information sources.
As we move away from Earth at the speed of light, relativistic effects would mean that once you reached your new home, you probably wouldn't have missed much of the TV show you were watching when you left. If human civilization proceeded outwards from Earth in an expanding sphere, the current civilization back on Earth would leave its own lasting imprint.
If by ironic, you mean totally awesome, then I'd agree. Matamoto cannon FTW btw, yo.
I'd be more worried about whether people could actually manage to live in small, highly disciplined communities in colonies, considering how naturally insane everyone is.
If we could make sustainable enclosed habitats that don't rely on an influx of massive amounts of resources from... somewhere else... we wouldn't be having most of these problems.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
OK, the writing's on the wall. Let's get started on the giant mutant alien.
At least there's no blue guy piss off.
It'd also be funny to see different people colonize different planets, a sort of cosmic good-fucking-riddance.
I imagine that being in the first wave out would be near-suicidal.
A gasket somewhere in your colony would break and then you'd all be fucked.
I want to believe you Hawking, I really do. When I was 5 years old I thought all this stuff would happen in my life time. We haven't even been to Mars yet! MARS! Another planet visible with the naked eye! Maybe when America gets its priorities straight and lands man on Mars, we can think more seriously about colonising the universe.
The way I see it the next big steps are:
- permanent colony on the moon (and planets and space stations)
- reusable spaceships
- widespread commercial transportation/research (or equivalent if we all become communists by then) which kinda depends on the two other steps
Near light speed is still way out in the scifi. Colonizing more habitable/self-sustainable planets in other solar systems is a pretty much given when that level of technology is reached.
And even if weaponry has advanced it'd be a lot harder to wipe out the whole human race "by accident" until you have ways of destroying other planets remotely.
Even Death Stars wouldn't work, I think. Not unless they're given to every idiot in the universe.
Why do you think they'd pump it up any higher than 20% then? Unless it's a catastrophic accident, someone is specifically trying to wipe out the human race or they forgot to make an Off switch.
It'd end up like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Really though, space colonization might provide some kind of natural selection. The groups of colonists would be very limited too, eh? Like the ultra rich and government sponsored, at least initially.
He might WANT it to happen... but that doesn't mean it's going to.
It is difficult to find a way to just turn "off" an amount of bacteria large enough to have a significant impact on the atmosphere of a planet.
I think the best way might be to make it so that once oxygen levels are high enough it becomes poisonous enough to them to kill them. They'll still be alive in large numbers, but much larger numbers than they were before the atmosphere became poisonous to them.
Meh, since it all depends on the unforeseeable circumstances of decades from now, who knows whether risking your life to flee the world will be preferable to staying?
What might be in the future? Weaponized small pox used by terrorists, energy crisi, global warming, plague, famine, epidemics, draught, something worse than postmodernism. . .
He ought to be pushing for power armor instead.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39133
I think we should try and find the shattered remains of the starship that brought us to earth originally. Finding a hyperspace generator inside as well as a galatic map, we construct a massive starship to find our true place in the stars.
But then the taidani come and burn earth to cinders, forcing the remains of humanity to flee across the galaxy. That would rock.
We could have had this by now if we'd tried, dammit.
This is actually what happened to form the Earth's (present) atmosphere. The original anaerobic organisms which exhaled oxygen were killed when the atmosphere became too enriched with the stuff, which was poisonous to them.
How so?
According to wikipedia, dilithium is a nonexistent substance invented for Star Trek, and it's used to convert matter-antimatter reactions into usable power in the form of "plasma". How does "plasma" help us transport things faster than light?
How would it do this? Isn't BEC just an unusual state of matter?
Sweet, awesome. Now we just need to invent spaceships that are powered by interestingness
I'm pretty sure it works the other way around, as the OP article observes.
Ooh, right. It is an off-switch problem if the bacteria is released into the wild, yea. I suppose they could maybe also create a specific way to poison them that doesn't require specific oxygen level but is rather manually triggered.
Or if the bacteria is effective enough it can be used in a more containable area. Like... a desert or something... and then have the bacteria die without water or some shit like that. Hell, make them dependent on some obscure enough chemical compound.
The problem is that any of these kill switch issues-- engineer them to not be able to survive once the atmosphere reaches the "appropriate" point, contain them in an area, make them dependent on some obscure chemical, insert a "kill switch"-- assumes that evolution stops working and none of your bacteria manage to develop an immunity or workaround to your kill switch/chemical/boundary. The problem is that you've got an entire planet/country/whatever worth of these bacteria, and only one of them has to survive your bacteria holocaust and that will be enough to grow the engineered bacteria anywhere and everywhere back up to the point it was at before you holocausted it, only now every one of the bacteria that exists lacks the kill condition.
The only problem is, most people are not afraid of giant meteors and probably never will be.
Mario Kart DS: 3320 6595 7026 5000
As long as we don't do something silly like attempt a plan that relies on being able to control or rein in a fricking bacteria once it's been released into the wild.
Sometimes I wonder when the first accidental terran bacteria contamination of a foreign body is going to be. Like whether we'll go back to the moon and discover that bacteria that hitched along on the first moon landing worked out to somehow work out to survive there. That's incredibly unlikely, I guess, but Mars has atmospheric water vapor and it might be slightly more possible there. Plus there was some thing I read awhile back where like... so these people did a simulation, where they simulated some of the big comet/meteor impacts in earth's history, and calculated how much earth rock would have been ejected into space by those impacts and what would have happened to those rocks. The whole thing was just a simulation, but the simulations did have a few tens of earth boulders smashing into each of the jovian moons with water, and on one of the two the impact would have been relatively soft enough due to atmospheric drag that some extremophile organisms living in or on the rock could have survived.
THE FIRST ASTRONAUT WAS AN ARCHAEA?!?