Charles Darwin's Best-Kept Secret 254
beschra writes "BBC writes of 'terra-forming' Ascension Island, one of the islands Charles Darwin visited. He and a friend encouraged the Royal Navy to import boatloads of trees and plants in an attempt to capture the little bit of water that fell on the island. They were quite successful. The island even has a cloud forest now. From the article: '[British ecologist] Wilkinson thinks that the principles that emerge from that experiment could be used to transform future colonies on Mars. In other words, rather than trying to improve an environment by force, the best approach might be to work with life to help it "find its own way."'"
ok... (Score:5, Interesting)
let's spray the bugger with lichen, they seem to survive everywhere
http://library.thinkquest.org/26442/html/life/plant.html [thinkquest.org]
Re:ok... (Score:5, Interesting)
You were modded funny, but it is not particularly hard to imagine a specially engineered lichen growing in the northern hemisphere of Mars. It could go dormant during the winter, and briefly grow during the summer when the sun begins to melt the (mostly CO2) icecap creating strong southward winds.
Scientists discover new extremophiles every year, the more we learn the more we discover the window that life can survive in is larger than we originally thought.
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You were modded funny, but it is not particularly hard to imagine a specially engineered lichen growing in the northern hemisphere of Mars. It could go dormant during the winter, and briefly grow during the summer when the sun begins to melt the (mostly CO2) icecap creating strong southward winds.
Scientists discover new extremophiles every year, the more we learn the more we discover the window that life can survive in is larger than we originally thought.
Oh lets just throw everything on it and see what sticks.
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Oh lets just throw everything on it and see what sticks.
And when we finally have a manned mission to lush green Mars we are greeted by the lines, "Feed Me!"
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You sound pretty sarcastic, but why not? It's a pretty good idea and it'd even be cheap. Just take some old cold-war era biological warfare ordinance, load it up with as many microbes as you can thing of, and cluster-bomb half of Mars with it. The only downside is you'd run the risk of wiping out whatever native life supposedly might be there already.*
* I find this to actually be even more of a reason to try it. The idea that earthen life, completely un-evolved for Martian life, would be more effective
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Oh lets just throw everything on it and see what sticks.
I don't know if you tried to be funny or not but I think that this is a pretty good idea.
I think that was the general idea of Darwin et al., as seen on Ascension island.
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Scientists discover new extremophiles every year
More like every day...and just by reading Slashdot.
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How about Guanacos too.
When I was in Chile, up high in the Andes crossing into Argentina, there were two living things up there; Lichen, and Guanacos. Even the drought tolerant and hardy cacti weren't alive at that altitude in such a barren area, nor was there grass or any such thing.
Lichen sure, but I still to this day have no idea how the fuck the Guanacos survived up there!
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I just Google'd it and apparently they do amongst other things, but as that's all there was at that altitude, presumably some groups of the species live purely off that, unless seeing them there was just part of a migratory route and they only live off Lichen for shorter periods whilst they're up there. To be able to live off lichen and nothing else for any period of time beyond a few days, let alone weeks, possibly months, is in itself absolutely incredible.
Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well for one thing, plants usually need CO2, not oxygen....
Suddenly sprout weeds? Of course not. With sufficient money and engineering eventually support plant growth? Why not?
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They need both. This gets overlooked a lot, but plant cells, at least in plants they showed us in high-school biology, needed oxygen too. In an ecosystem like we have, perhaps they use a lot of the oxygen they create, but they need some to start with. Perhaps it's best to start with even simpler life.
Where to get the big O? (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't a whole butt load of rust covering the planet? Iron oxide? Iron and oxygen. What now?
Re:Mars? (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Fill it with higher pressure martian atmosphere (say 10x pressurised)
3) Pump in a "bit" more oxygen
4) Plant sugar cane first thing in the morning thats been kept alive elsewhere before
5) Sugar cane is bottlenecked by CO2 content of air on earth, on mars probably not, but it should create enough oxygen over the day to sustain itself at night.
6) ?????
7) Profit!!!
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Let alone radiation galore because it has no magnetic field.
Re:Mars? (Score:4, Funny)
The solution is easy. Just bring a few thousand music CDs [wikipedia.org].
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Re:Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why of course! That explains all the severe weather there! Wait, that's not how weather works at all... Mars most certainly has an atmosphere, and it is quite active. It just doesn't have a particularly dense atmosphere.
Re:Mars? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)
The lack of a magnetosphere will always present an issue for human life, but it wouldn't prevent life in general from getting a foothold. You wouldn't want to terraform the entirety of Mars to human standards anyways, it'd take far too long. More realistically you'd get some sort of 'crop' going to over time convert the soil into something usable and in the meantime set up sealed colonies. Far easier to terraform a geodesic dome or a martian cave than an entire planet.
Re:Mars? (Score:4, Interesting)
The lack of a magnetosphere will always present an issue for human life
I could probably run the computation, but I don't feel like it right now, so, would it be possible to create a magnetosphere by laying down a (supraconducting) cable along the equator and running a current through it ? Or more simply two shorter cables circling the poles ?
Re:Mars? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes you could!
And the problem is not the electricity that has to flow to build up the magnetic field (building the magnetic field takes energy, but given enough time, it can be done.) The real problem is the solar wind itself. As it tries to strip away the atmosphere, it pushes against the magnetic field. This costs energy and therefore a minimum power output to the superconducting cables.
I didn't do any calculations for this effect, but prepare to build a few BIG nuclear power plants.
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But is that not the exact same problem that had with water on that island, that is the point of the plants.
not that it would work, I am not convinced that anything on earth has a chance to adapt that to mars quickly enough to survive, at least nothing that would have a chance to do any good.
not that life that would help could not exist.
Re:Mars? (Score:5, Interesting)
According to this article from 2007, that might not be the case:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070125_mars_atmosphere.html [space.com]
Combining two years of observations by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, researchers determined that Mars is currently losing only about 20 grams of air per second into space.
Extrapolating this measurement back over 3.5 billion years, they estimate that only a small fraction, 0.2 to 4 millibars, of carbon dioxide and a few centimeters of water could have been lost to solar winds during that timeframe. (A bar is a unit for measuring pressure; Earth's atmospheric pressure is about 1 bar.)
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Something closer to half a percent on average as I recall. ;)
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The point is more: given some technology or other, is the atmosphere replenish-able faster than the solar wind blows it away ? My guess is that yes, it is.
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Mars most certainly has an atmosphere, and it is quite active. It just doesn't have a particularly dense atmosphere.
That's understating things just a bit. The Martian "atmosphere" is practically a vacuum, with surface pressure averaging something like seven tenths of a percent the air pressure at sea level on Earth. The challenge with Mars would be heating it up enough to release all of the frozen gasses in its crust, giving it a dense enough atmosphere for life to work with.
funny (Score:4, Informative)
Here is the breakdown of the Martian atmosphere:
carbon dioxide 95.32%
nitrogen 2.7%
argon 1.6%
oxygen 0.13%
carbon monoxide 0.07%
water vapor 0.03%
neon, krypton, xenon, ozone, methane trace
The average surface pressure is only about 7 millibars (less than 1% of the Earth's)
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Marsatmos.html [daviddarling.info]
So, Mars does have an atmosphere, but is it usable to Earth life?
You would need s source of nitrogen, lotsa miracle gro would be handy
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Earth atmosphere is about 78% nitrogen, it would take a pretty aggressive nitrogen fixing strategy to grab about 1/3000's as much nitrogen as is available on Earth
Personally, I would not want to be standing around any 'being' that would be likely to strip all of the nitrogen from my protein laden body
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problem being that living things tend to evolve.
If a random mutation produces a strain that doesn't bother spending any of it's energy on fixing nitrogen unless it gains some big advantage from it the new strain will out-compete the old one.
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Well, you will not walk around Mars without a suit any time soon, but then, we knew that before. Especially as the solar winds do more than strip atmosphere; they play roulette with your genes, as well. Mars does not have a magnetic shield to speak of and we will have to live with that; pun intended.
But if we manage to get to a similar CO_2 -> C + O_2 conversion rate as on Earth (in the looong) term, we are looking at 0.01 bar of oxygen as compared to 0.21 over here. Sucking in that much air (21
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We can ship all our shit there! (literally)
yea ok... sure. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Well it would have to be an extremophile.
"Lichens aren’t only frugal and robust, they jug out because of their very low sensibility against frost. Some lichens, in an experiment, survived a bath in liquid nitrogen at minus 195 degrees." (http://library.thinkquest.org/26442/html/life/plant.html)
Re:yea ok... sure. (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't true. Even some species of cacti, for example, those in Canada are hardy down to that temperature. Opuntia humifusa (syn. O. compressa), and Escobaria vivipara have proven hardy down to -120c in the lab. Whilst they wont do much at this temperature, they're examples of more complex plantlife being able to clearly survive it. Cactaceae are also hardly the most adapted to this sort of climate, I'm sure there is plantlife that is even far more adapted to survive such temperatures than these examples.
Nice idea but it won't work (Score:4, Funny)
The Royal Navy doesn't have any space ships.
"cloud forest " (Score:2)
"cloud forest " something like "Cloud Computing" of the past??
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No, it's where Lando Calrissian goes camping.
Duh!
Humans also made it barren, first (Score:5, Informative)
According to this AscensionIsland government press release :
http://www.ascension-island.gov.ac/files/Anogramma%20press%20release_%20With%20images_%20Kew%20changes%2009%20June%202010.pdf
"Goats were released onto Ascension by Portuguese explorers in the 1500s, and ate their way voraciously
through the island’s greenery for 350 years before the flora was even described to science. By this stage, there wasn’t much left, and the introduction of rabbits, sheep, rats and donkeys, together with over 200 species of invasive plants, further squeezed out the island’s original plant inhabitants. With the rediscovery of Anogramma ascensionis the island’s surviving six endemic plant species are now boosted to a magnificent seven."
Not a secret (Score:2)
They've been planting trees on the edge of the Taklamakan. I read about that years ago, here's a link [wordpress.com].
As others have pointed out, prior humans may have created the problem, so we are really just repairing the damage.
I don't see how this ties in with terraforming very much, which is taking something that never had life in the first place and establishing it.
Because the volcanic island never had life (Score:3, Informative)
The entire point is that with extremely primitive means, they turned a volcanic (read liveless) island into a lush paradise. It proves that the creation of an eco system is something that CAN be managed without waiting for nature to do it very very slowly.
It shows we CAN reverse de-forestation and it shows that man CAN have a large impact.
Of course you need to be able to get your head past "but it is not 100% the same so it must be fail" that capability is what seperates the leaders from the sheep. Guess
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To be fair, the general circumstances on Earth seem to better than on Mars. That being said, while I do not expect anything to really happen on Mars while I live, it will be do-able at some point, somehow. Unless we mess up and destroy civilization, that is :)
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Units (Score:5, Funny)
How many boat loads in a fuckton?
Re:Units (Score:5, Funny)
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Create a Rain Forest in 20 Years (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a video about how a rainforest was created in only 20 years, altering weather and creating a habitat for abundant life. This could be done all over the world to mediate the effects of Human activity.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html [ted.com]
"They were quite successful."???? (Score:2)
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Well, you answered it yourself:
That's clearly success!
Darwin also... (Score:3, Interesting)
Many years before the fossil and DNA discoveries that might have helped him, he conjectured that human life evolved on the continent of Africa and spread outward.
This is not new, it's called 'Permaculture' (Score:2, Interesting)
Permaculture [wikipedia.org]Essentially one designs systems that run using existing natural ecologies using paths of least resistance and capturing energy/matter.
Interestingly enough natural agriculture systems designed using these principle have no theoretical maximum yield.
Mars can't be terraformed. (Score:2, Informative)
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It _can_ be terraformed to better facilitate supporting human life in sealed enclosures. It can _not_ be terraformed to be a second Earth.
Lush tropical cloud forest? (Score:3, Interesting)
I was thinking "Terraformed!" Like Jurassic Park style.
Re:Lush tropical cloud forest? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cool overhead shot. It lead me to some even more illuminating ground photos.
This barren photo [panoramio.com] appears to represent the natural state of the island. If you go about one mile there's this photo from the edge of the green zone looking out over the barren island. [panoramio.com] A mere quarter mile further we find this photo at the heart of the green zone. [panoramio.com]
I'd say it's quite a striking transition from dry barren red rock to that wet greenery. I'd say it pretty well qualifies as "Terraformed! Like Jurassic Park style." It's all the more striking when you realize that you can walk from the barren desert on one side in to that third photo, and walk back out to barren desert on the other side, in probably less than two hours. I expect boundary is advancing at a decent rate each year, and the area of the biome increasing by the square of the radius.
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ridge != volcanoes (Score:2, Informative)
From the BBC article:
"Its existence depends entirely on what geologists call the mid-Atlantic ridge. This is a chain of underwater volcanoes formed as the ocean is wrenched apart."
I beg to differ. mid-Atlantic ridge forms above the spreading zone, and is by no means a chain of volcanoes.
A case for Intelligent Design (Score:2)
Complete and utter bullshit (Score:2)
There was no design, they simply took existing organisms and relocated them. Who tells you nature might not have achieved the same in a thousand years? Who tells you natives did not cut down all wood for boats before Darwin came along (I seem to remember some research in that area)?
And above all: What metrics are you using when you speak of "improve"? Improve for human life? Sure, but then every garden, every park and every agricultural area is proof for Intelligent Design.
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Einstein photo on a Darwin article? (Score:2, Insightful)
Reclaiming deserts (Score:2)
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Turning a desert island into a cloud forest is hardly preserving anything...
I am not terribly bothered by the idea of 'improving' Mother Earth, will anybody have a problem with 'improving' Mars?
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Turning a desert island into a cloud forest is hardly preserving anything...
I am not terribly bothered by the idea of 'improving' Mother Earth, will anybody have a problem with 'improving' Mars?
I don't know if you have ever read Red Mars, and the other books in this series, but it gets in to this question (among MANY others) rather seriously. An entire splinter group of people dedicated to preserving Mars in its cold lifeless state. It's a great set of books that deals with many psychological, and logistical terraforming questions.
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That's like trying to preserve death. Why would you want too?
Re:Interesting tool (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a hard time relating to that group in the book also. But I think it came down to how you see beauty. Something like the grand canyon, without any plant or animal life at all, is worthy of being preserved. The geography of Mars dwarfed anything seen in the Grand Canyon many times over, at a planetary scale. The splinter group felt that it was it's duty to preserve that geography so that people could better understand the solar system as a whole. At least that's the what I got from it. Red Mars really is a great series of books, it's worth the read.
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If you think that the Grand Canyon, or any desert region really, is without any plant or animal life at all, you're not paying attention
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Re:Interesting tool (Score:5, Informative)
"Something like the grand canyon, without any plant or animal life at all, is worthy of being preserved."
Well it depends, for those lazy people who just pay for a helicopter tour over the top maybe, but as someone whose walked down it, some of the greatest memories I have are not simply the canyon itself, but witnessing life managing to thrive there. For example, having to stop for a family of deer to cross our path as the stag stood guarding the path, catching a magnificent picture of a Raven perched on a rock mid-squawk with a good shot of the canyon in the background, seeing the beautiful purple hue on some Opuntia species and their blooms, turning around on the way back up to see sheep with the biggest horns I've ever seen staring at me from the cliff side.
Sure the likes of the Grand Canyon may look impressive without life, but it's far better with.
Re:Interesting tool (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why would you want to create new life where there is none? That's just dooming countless lives to suffering and eventual death.
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How can a tree or a "critter" disagree with me? Have you spoken to them?
Re:Interesting tool (Score:4, Funny)
Fair question. How do you know they're suffering? Have YOU spoken to them?
don't foget the Ganymede rock lobster (Score:2)
but (semi) seriously, this guy thinks he found something like a lichen on mars
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6969396/ [msn.com]
would terra-forming Mars potentially wipe out an indigenous species, and would Earthers that were desperate enough for another place to live even care?
Re:don't foget the Ganymede rock lobster (Score:4, Insightful)
In that case, it's probably already contaminated. I doubt that Russian tech of the seventies, or US tech of the nineties for that matter, could render a huge object 100% sterile.
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BBC News - Beer microbes live 553 days outside ISS
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11039206 [bbc.co.uk]
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Disease doesn't work that way. (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about it.
Why would a martian microbe be specialized in feeding off Earth mammals? How would evolution end up there?
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What if it shared DNA with Earth critters, for whatever reason?
What if it was an unspecialized parasite? What if all it needed was a carbon or nitrogen source?
I think it's all unlikely in the extreme, but still not something we should entirely ignore.
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No one, actually, but it's reasonable to assume there's some such controlling structure in any organism that reproduces itself, and the generic term "DNA" or "genetic material" is close enough as a descriptor.
Also, something capable of invading the human organism probably shares at the least some biochemistry basics; otherwise it's going to be like a Windows virus attempting to install on a UNIX box: "WTF? who put all these weird molecules in my way?? How the heck am I supposed to make the unobtainium I nee
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An AC responds,
"Well, spontaneous vaporization and a million other possible things are also unlikely in the extreme. I think that we should ignore it completly. If we only focus on possible problems instead of actual problems we will get nowhere.
I think it is safe to postpone such worries until we are in a position to bring stuff here from Mars or when we have got to a position where we actually intend to send people to Mars."
That's basically what I'm saying. The possibility exists, but is so remote that th
disease doesn't work that way (Score:5, Insightful)
i think you've been watching "resident evil" "alien" or "andromeda strain" too much and don't really have much epidemiology or biochemistry under your belt. those are pleasant fictional entertainments, but they ignore the economics of basic evolution and biology
a plague or a predator or a parasite is something a long time in the making, exquisitely crafted by evolution to its intended host. it is not something floating out there on mars or anywhere else that suddenly is able to take advantage of any plant or animal life on earth with sudden and voracious ability. out in space, life is trying its damnedest to survive things like radiation and starvation. things it wouldn't have to worry about on earth, but earth is not something it would be adapted to
life in space would be hermits, long hibernators, very tough and resilient and specializing in slow growth and long dormancy. life in space would be poor, weak, and asocial. it wouldn't know what to do with other sudden bountiful sources of life around it like on earth, because it would be in isolation for millions of years. it is entirely possible, like andromeda strain, that alien life has been raining down on us, forever. but it is quickly outcompeted by life right here, because life right here knows how to live here and compete against other life. alien space life meanwhile, would be poorly suited to such tasks, and quickly be killed. predators and disease and parasites are forms of life evolved in the raucous promiscuous environment of many different kinds of life around it for millions of years: the opposite environment of space
life in space has no time nor inclination to be a plague, nor preserve any such ability to do that, even if it somehow could, out there eking by in the cold and the empty. fish in caves quickly lose the ability to see through evolution, because evolution favors losing abilities that are expensive and provide no survival advantage. many times in natural history, birds have found isolated islands and promptly lost the ability to fly, becoming fat slow ground things that a predator from a large continent could easily and quickly dispatch. working wings are very expensive biologically, and only are useful in a high competition environment. likewise in space, where the most pressing issue might be radiation, cold, and starvation, the complex ability to be a plague or a predator or a parasite, is just too dang expensive to keep around, when there is no one else around. an ability to consume or infect other life would quickly degenerate and atrophy
on earth, for millions of years, life has been pitted against life and has been trying to be that plague you fear to the best of its ability. in other words, the best training ground for a plague is right here, all around you, not out in the cold of space or on some desiccated planet. out there, any form of life has no time nor ability to evolve to be able to do anything with something as exotic as us or anything else on earth. but exposed to us for millions of years? yes, then it is a threat. and that's exactly what you already have here on earth all around you
fear not mars. fear dhaka. fear taipei. fear moscow. a plague IS possible. it is breeding right now, maybe in your city, maybe in you. in terms of mother nature, our technological and agricultural advances have rendered humanity as a huge sudden recent population boom that, to the eyes of the rest of life on earth, is just a giant food source, winning a lottery ticket. all someone has to do is take advantage of us, and someone will take advantage of us, someday, somehow: influenza, SARS, bed bugs... its a relentless march of close calls, until there are no more close calls, but a direct hit instead. to the parasites and diseases, we are untapped riches. they've been working very hard via evolution to crack the code that will decimate us, and will continue to try hard to make us their food
but... then they will evolve into something less virulent. because to disease, it doesn't pay to kill your hosts so fast as
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There's a billion planets in our galaxy alone.
Only one besides earth is conveniently close and possibly capable of supporting human life.
You and almost everyone else on the planet will stop pretending to care when overpopulation threatens to starve you to death.
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Ohh I totally agree with terraforming Mars. I was just trying to explain the mindset of a group of people described in the book Red Mars. They actually came off a bit crazy and extremist to me also, but I think that was part of the author's point.
Re:Interesting tool (Score:5, Insightful)
If there were 10 livable planets in our reach, i would support keeping Mars intact.
But we have only one Earth, and a half-assed Mars, that, with some adjustments could be made somewhat livable.
A single 100km asteroid can destroy earth, but it is unlikely to destroy both Mars and Earth.
So, i think it is humanity's best interest to colonise Mars as soon as possible (within 100 years).
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Let's assume for the sake of argument that we had the technology to stop a life-ending asteroid in its tracks, there would still be a strong argument for colonizing Mars (and other bodies): resources. As times goes on, we continue to consume the metals and energy we need for technology to function on this planet. Eventually, we're going to have to start mining the other bodies in the solar system, just to keep our technology moving forward. It might not be for 100 years or more, but that day will come, and
Re:Interesting tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you value humanity instead of humans? BOOM the asteroid strikes, 9 billion earthlings are now dead, but luckily for humanity, there are 500 humans left on mars! Sure, they're alone, cut of from their home planet, from millions of years of history and culture... many tribes in less developed country won't be represented among those few hundred, and will be lost forever. Depending on the state of terraforming (if any), our martians may be permanently stuck in domes, now that over 99.99999% percent of the humans are dead, science is unlikely to advance very fast so they're going to be stuck like this for a very long time.
What is left? A few primates on a hostile planet, alone.
What have we lost? Everything else.
But at least *humanity* survives!
Screw the colonization of Mars, let's invest in Earth-destroying-asteroid detection and prevention.
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Someone should write a book about a small Mars colony that toughs it out for 500 years, and then recolonizes the Earth after a super asteroid. Who knows what they would find?
Zombies. You've just written the next big first-person shooter.
Re:Interesting tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Having Mars as a pristine monument to the universe's beauty would be nice.
Ultimately, though, it may easily mean giving up many trillions of dollars' worth of economic activity annually - trillions of dollars of the things people need or value - for tens of thousands of years on end, and that's a pretty steep price to pay for a monument. We have a 30,000 light-year monument to the universe's beauty called the "Milky Way" of which humans have affected approximately 0.000%. What makes Mars special? Is it that people can enjoy it more? Trillions of dollars' worth of enjoyment and moral satisfaction at its unblemished state every year? That's a hell of a trade-off.
(Unless you're pushing a sort of conscientious asceticism spirituality agenda or what-not, which is all well and good, but I don't think you get to speak for the rest of Humanity to make that decision, even if they are a bunch of vapid hedonists).
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You must be talking about the eastern hemisphere, the Wongs own the western hemisphere, it's the best one.
Only trillions?
Sure, there may be a substantial fortune to earn on Mars. but you have to reach an extremely high 'activation' energy, through extreme overcrowding, etc... to get enough humans off of their lardy asses to put out the effort to get there first
martianforming people (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather than terraform earth, we should martianform people. Or adapt ourselves more generally to life on the average desolate locale. I have no ethical objection to modifying whole planets, but I have no ethical objections to modifying a single species either. The latter seems far easier than genetically engineering or otherwise adapting hundreds of species to drag a frozen rock without much gravity into the narrow window of conditions our current physical form can tolerate.