D&ST - Science - BF2S Forums

2013-02-18 13:46:40

#1651

unnamednewbie13: Moderator; +2,053|6782|PNW

Was I arguing about that? News to me.

Also, fantasy-schmantasy. Who said anything about natural evolution? It occurs to me that it would be possible for sufficiently-advanced science to re-engineer humanity into as many different configurations as it wants. That is, if we survive that long.

2013-02-18 14:07:44

#1652

Winston_Churchill: Bazinga!; +521|6749|Toronto | Canada

Basically everything that is living is carbon based. There are unique properties to carbon that make it the perfect element for basing life off of, I really dont see us 'evolving' out of that, especially since it would serve no purpose. And we would need to be completely reworked and rewritten on a molecular level we wouldnt even remotely resemble 'human' anymore.

2013-02-18 14:19:59

#1653

Jay: Bork! Bork! Bork!; +2,006|5369|London, England

Winston_Churchill wrote:
Basically everything that is living is carbon based. There are unique properties to carbon that make it the perfect element for basing life off of, I really dont see us 'evolving' out of that, especially since it would serve no purpose. And we would need to be completely reworked and rewritten on a molecular level we wouldnt even remotely resemble 'human' anymore.

Unnamed is talking about humans becoming cyborgs

"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat

2013-02-18 14:21:36

#1654

globefish23: sophisticated slacker; +334|6334|Graz, Austria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars
Colonizing extraterrestrial planets in the habitable zone is not gonna happen anytime soon, unless we come up with a faster means of travel that we can survive.

We'd have a better chance colonizing planets and moons in our own solar system, digging in there.
Terraforming barren rocks like Mars or Ganymed is also fantasy.
No magnetic field - no atmosphere.

2013-02-18 14:51:35

#1655

Winston_Churchill: Bazinga!; +521|6749|Toronto | Canada

Mars had liquid water and an atmosphere at one point. And we do have the ability to terraform it today, its more a question of why instead of how. The cost of attempting to do something like that has been estimated to be around $10^15, which is pointless since the optimal conditions we could turn that planet into would be something like living in the Arctic Circle. It would also take at least 100,000 years before it could come moderately livable. There's really no point to doing this other than "hey, that'd be a pretty cool idea".

I'm writing a paper on the terraforming process of Mars right now

2013-02-18 15:04:05

#1656

Macbeth: Banned; +2,444|5596

Keep us updated

2013-02-18 15:21:26

#1657

AussieReaper: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°); +5,761|6163|what

Quade, start the reactor.

2013-02-18 16:43:48

#1658

unnamednewbie13: Moderator; +2,053|6782|PNW

Jay wrote:
Winston_Churchill wrote:
Basically everything that is living is carbon based. There are unique properties to carbon that make it the perfect element for basing life off of, I really dont see us 'evolving' out of that, especially since it would serve no purpose. And we would need to be completely reworked and rewritten on a molecular level we wouldnt even remotely resemble 'human' anymore.
Unnamed is talking about humans becoming cyborgs

There's also been speculation about non-carbon-based life.

2013-02-18 19:25:41

#1659

Spark: liquid fluoride thorium reactor; +874|6685|Canberra, AUS

globefish23 wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars
Colonizing extraterrestrial planets in the habitable zone is not gonna happen anytime soon, unless we come up with a faster means of travel that we can survive.

We'd have a better chance colonizing planets and moons in our own solar system, digging in there.
Terraforming barren rocks like Mars or Ganymed is also fantasy.
No magnetic field - no atmosphere.

alcubierre drive, cryogenic freezing etc - honestly, i don't think the technological barriers will be the major ones long (long long) term.

There's also been speculation about non-carbon-based life.

src? i mean i've read some stuff along these lines but i'd like to know what you're referring to here

The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling what reality ought to be.
^{~ Richard Feynman}

2013-02-18 19:28:56

#1660

13urnzz: Banned; +5,830|6508

too bad alcohol is carbon based. i'm afraid i couldn't relate to a lifeform that wasn't carbon based.

2013-02-18 23:03:17

#1661

unnamednewbie13: Moderator; +2,053|6782|PNW

Spark wrote:
There's also been speculation about non-carbon-based life.
src? i mean i've read some stuff along these lines but i'd like to know what you're referring to here

Yes. Carl Sagan even called the assumption that all life has to be carbon-based "carbon chauvinism."

2013-02-18 23:05:09

#1662

Superior Mind: (not macbeth); +1,755|6703

Even material form is a bias we must overcome in our search for non human intelligence.

x

2013-02-18 23:10:22

#1663

Macbeth: Banned; +2,444|5596

Mentioning Carl Sagan in a science thread unironically. -2 points, newbie.

2013-02-18 23:13:53

#1664

Superior Mind: (not macbeth); +1,755|6703

Why, because he had a popular television series? Does that diminish his credibility as a scientist?

x

2013-02-18 23:19:51

#1665

Macbeth: Banned; +2,444|5596

Internet has a SCIENCE and Sagan fetish. Sagan, though interesting, I guess, has become as cliched as mentioning Nietzsche whenever someone brings up Atheism.

2013-02-18 23:45:11

#1666

unnamednewbie13: Moderator; +2,053|6782|PNW

You must be a part of the internet fad that digs ripping on Sagan...because he's referenced a lot on the internet.

?

2013-02-18 23:46:33

#1667

Superior Mind: (not macbeth); +1,755|6703

I learned about Carl Sagan in school, when the teacher showed us some of Cosmos: A Personal Journey in class. Not on the internet.

x

2013-02-19 00:11:41

#1668

AussieReaper: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°); +5,761|6163|what

I'd be surprised if the teacher showed you Sagan through the internet, mate.

2013-02-19 00:38:34

#1669

globefish23: sophisticated slacker; +334|6334|Graz, Austria

Winston_Churchill wrote:
Mars had liquid water and an atmosphere at one point. And we do have the ability to terraform it today, its more a question of why instead of how. The cost of attempting to do something like that has been estimated to be around $10^15, which is pointless since the optimal conditions we could turn that planet into would be something like living in the Arctic Circle. It would also take at least 100,000 years before it could come moderately livable. There's really no point to doing this other than "hey, that'd be a pretty cool idea".

I'm writing a paper on the terraforming process of Mars right now

Hmm...
I read somewhere, that without a magnetic field like Earth, you couldn't nearly get an atmosphere like here, since solar winds would blow away most of it.

2013-02-19 00:54:02

#1670

Superior Mind: (not macbeth); +1,755|6703

Yeah, the reason Mars is a dead world is because it's core cooled and solidified, which terminated its electromagnetic field, which allowed for solar radiation to blow its atmosphere into space. I don't see how we could possibly revive Mars. We may be able to create isolated colonies with self contained atmospheres which are generated from extracting natural resources from the planet.

Some of the Galilean moons may be habitable because they are geologically active due to the tug of Jupiter's gravity. They are more promising for extant extra terrestrial life. And taking advantage of volcanism as an energy resource may be more effective than relying simply on rock and ice.

But it's kind of ridiculous to me that people bother worrying about how humanity could colonize other worlds when we haven't figured out how to live sensibly and sustainably on this one. We can't just rely on the hope that future generations will continue figuring out how to colonize farther and farther into space. Eventually we will hit a limit and exhaust our resources and go extinct. Unless we embrace a more legitimate relationship to our home world.

x

2013-02-19 01:53:16

#1671

globefish23: sophisticated slacker; +334|6334|Graz, Austria

Superior Mind wrote:
Some of the Galilean moons may be habitable because they are geologically active due to the tug of Jupiter's gravity. They are more promising for extant extra terrestrial life. And taking advantage of volcanism as an energy resource may be more effective than relying simply on rock and ice.

The prime reason for settling there would be TMA-2 at the Lagrange point between Io and Jupiter, of course.

2013-02-19 02:34:48

#1672

Uzique The Lesser: Banned; +382|4265

unnamednewbie13 wrote:
You must be a part of the internet fad that digs ripping on Sagan...because he's referenced a lot on the internet.

?

post a pic of that black dude, quick! i thought you actually had a point as well. instead you're quoting some weed-tokin' "carbon chauvinism" line and actually thinking it makes you witty. the human species are going to be wiped out before we figure a way to completely rewrite ourselves, from basic molecules upwards. and stop reading fantasy, like i said. bio-tech and cyborg fetishes are not the same thing as rewriting the entire human life-form.

2013-02-19 04:41:22

#1673

unnamednewbie13: Moderator; +2,053|6782|PNW

^Yeah, I could think of a number of ways to reword what I'm trying to get at, but I'm not going to get sucked into a drawn out argument about speculative biochemistry and far-future genetic engineering with you. You can keep trying to pull at that chain, but it's severed.

Superior Mind wrote:
But it's kind of ridiculous to me that people bother worrying about how humanity could colonize other worlds when we haven't figured out how to live sensibly and sustainably on this one.

Working on either problem will help out the other.

2013-02-19 06:59:13

#1674

Superior Mind: (not macbeth); +1,755|6703

That may be so, but we have all the information on Earth that we need to live properly. Nature as a living system already provides a perfect model of sustainable existence. But the dominant global human culture views nature as an object to fight over and pillage, rather than we being a potential integral part of that living system. The way in which we do everything in the civilized world is crude and inefficient compared to the autonomous cycles of vegetable life. If we master our knowledge of DNA and nano tech we could start growing all of our "stuff," everything material could be replaced with self replicating organic bodies.

The cultures which have survived longest on Earth are the small hunter gather societies, particularly the hallucinogen using ones. Civilizations come and go, but there are peoples in the Amazon and in Sub-Saharan Africa who have existed in harmony with their environments for millennia. There is no reason we can't expand on their models of existence.

Last edited by Superior Mind (2013-02-19 07:01:09)

x

2013-02-19 07:37:19

#1675

Jay: Bork! Bork! Bork!; +2,006|5369|London, England

Superior Mind wrote:
That may be so, but we have all the information on Earth that we need to live properly. Nature as a living system already provides a perfect model of sustainable existence. But the dominant global human culture views nature as an object to fight over and pillage, rather than we being a potential integral part of that living system. The way in which we do everything in the civilized world is crude and inefficient compared to the autonomous cycles of vegetable life. If we master our knowledge of DNA and nano tech we could start growing all of our "stuff," everything material could be replaced with self replicating organic bodies.

The cultures which have survived longest on Earth are the small hunter gather societies, particularly the hallucinogen using ones. Civilizations come and go, but there are peoples in the Amazon and in Sub-Saharan Africa who have existed in harmony with their environments for millennia. There is no reason we can't expand on their models of existence.

Then why are you living in a densely packed concrete jungle that is wholly dependent on fossil fuels for survival and sustainability?

"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat

BF2S Forums D&ST - Science

Winston_Churchill wrote:

Jay wrote:

Winston_Churchill wrote:

globefish23 wrote:

Spark wrote:

Winston_Churchill wrote:

Superior Mind wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Superior Mind wrote:

Superior Mind wrote:

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