Quantum Coherence Found Fueling Photosynthesis 135
A user writes "Ars Technica has posted an interesting article about new findings regarding quantum physics and photosynthesis. Their excerpt for the article: 'Physicists have found the strongest evidence yet of quantum effects fueling photosynthesis. Multiple experiments in recent years have suggested as much, but it has been hard to be sure. Quantum effects were clearly present in the light-harvesting antenna proteins of plant cells, but their precise role in processing incoming photons remained unclear.' Here's a little background info for those unaware of what coherence and quantum coherence are."
Those helpful links (Score:5, Insightful)
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"If you think you understand quantum physics, then clearly you don't."
-Paraphrased Richard Feynman quote
Re:Those helpful links (Score:4, Insightful)
"If you think you understand quantum physics, then clearly you don't." -Paraphrased Richard Feynman quote
I don't think I understand it, so does that mean I do?
As to TFA, it led me to think that this could lead to more powerful and cheaper solar cells. This is an exciting time to be alive. I can see a future without those damned ugly poles and wires in the alley behind my house, with a beautiful solar paneled roof and an even more beautiful lack of an electric bill. Who knows watt will come of investigation into quantum mechanics?
(yes, that "typo" was a deliberate pun)
Re:Those helpful links (Score:5, Funny)
Your solar panels will be green, and smell vaguely like broccoli, with little graphene wires. You may have to water them.
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Spoilers: It may be awhile.
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While I know enough to know that I don't really understand squat quantum physics, I'm pretty confident in saying that quantum teleportation is not actually an energy transport mechanism. It can't even teleport classical information.
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I never mentioned quantum teleportation. Just some process whereby using quantum mechanical science we might achieve energy transfer. I think I read a paper on the concept awhile ago... anyways.
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You did claim it would come through quantum entanglement (what some people call quantum teleportation). It is impossible to transmit even classical information through quantum entanglement, and that was proven for sure already.
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It is impossible to transmit even classical information through quantum entanglement, and that was proven for sure already.
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. -Arthur C. Clarke
Who would figure a few years ago that flash storage by quantum tunneling would be possible? We only just considered quantum mechanics a possibility in the last century. By current understanding yeah, but what if we find a whole new realm of science on the sub-quantum level?
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I'm not convinced it's a good idea to stake the future of humanity on what we might discover.
"What if we discover perpetual motion and warp drive?? Wouldn't that be great!!" Yep.
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This is an exciting time to be alive. I can see a future without those damned ugly poles and wires in the alley behind my house, with a beautiful solar paneled roof and an even more beautiful lack of an electric bill. Who knows watt will come of investigation into quantum mechanics?
This isn't a feasibility study on technology to roll out next year. I was quite facetious from the very beginning.
Why so serious? Just talking. Nobody's staking anything on anything...
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That phrase makes sense when talking about more general things, but not well defined concepts of a theory. Quantum entanglement is a mathematical construction, and it was already proved that it doesn't transmit information. If Nature doesn't work the way our theories say it works* and teleportation is possible, it will be due to another phenomenum that can't be modeled as quantum entanglement.
By the way, quantum tunneling doesn't lead to flash memory either. You should check how it is made, it is quite more
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By the way, quantum tunneling doesn't lead to flash memory either. You should check how it is made, it is quite more mundane than that.
From Flash Memory [wikipedia.org]
To erase a NOR flash cell (resetting it to the "1" state), a large voltage of the opposite polarity is applied between the CG and source, pulling the electrons off the FG through quantum tunneling. Modern NOR flash memory chips are divided into erase segments (often called blocks or sectors). The erase operation can only be performed on a block-wise basis; all the cells in an erase segment must be erased together. Programming of NOR cells, however, can generally be performed one byte or w
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I can see a future without those damned ugly poles and wires in the alley behind my house, with a beautiful solar paneled roof and an even more beautiful lack of an electric bill
Does more sunlight energy hit your roof than you consume?
Re:Those helpful links (Score:5, Insightful)
Feynman was talking about understanding the "why" sort of questions of quantum mechanics. It is possible to completely understand quantum mechanics as it currently exists. After all, humans created it. Feynman himself was responsible, along with a handful of others, for buttoning up QED into the most complete and perfect physical theory we have as of yet. When he said "nobody understands this stuff," he meant that nobody understands WHY the world is this way. We understand perfectly well how to use the rules to predict the answer.
Neither was he referring to the various "strange" things that sometimes occur at quantum scales. There is nothing spooky in quantum mechanics, it's all sitting right there in the equations. Equations which were essentially guessed at by men with intuitions the size of Mount Everest, and these guesses were then proven to be correct at ever increasing levels of accuracy. So obviously people are "getting it" on some level. But the deeper sort of "why" questions Feynman relegated to philosophers, and he ridiculed those who wasted their time asking them.
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There is nothing spooky in quantum mechanics
Sure there is. Or there very well might be. Nobody understands the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics because it is ill-defined. If on the other hand, the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics is the Many Worlds/Everett Interpretation, then the entire universe is in an incredibly complex macroscopic superposition of states all the the time, amounting to a staggeringly large number parallel worlds. Most people will claim that this is "spooky". In
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Re:Those helpful links (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Those helpful links (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Those helpful links (Score:4, Funny)
That would be a sine his understanding was not in phase with the article.
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At that point, why not just let me google that for you [lmgtfy.com] ? Does this really need inclusion? Its almost insulting.
Seriously guys if somebody doesn't understand quantum physics reading the wiki page isn't going to do it.
Re:Those helpful links (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously guys if somebody doesn't understand quantum physics reading the wiki page isn't going to do it.
More than that, the first paragraph of the linked explanation is misleading, and the rest essentially requires an understanding of quite a bit of quantum mechanics to have a chance of following it. I have difficulty imagining somehow who actually understood the concepts involved linking such a poor explanation.
Quantum coherence has to do with multiple particles. If most of the particles are in roughly the same (quantum) state, the system is called coherent. Otherwise, it is not coherent. To give an (oversimplified) example, take a bunch of electrons. Through a clever experiment, we may measure an individual electron's "spin", and the result will either be "up" or "down"--an understanding of spin is immaterial here; feel free to replace "spin" with "mood" and "up"/"down" with "happy"/"sad" if it scares you. The unintuitive part of quantum mechanics is that even if we performed the experiment twice with two indistinguishable electrons, our experiment may well come out differently. The crucial thing, though, is that each outcome has a fixed probability of occurring. Suppose, then, that we've prepared 100 electrons in such a way that if we perform our spin experiment, 30% of the time the electron will have spin up, and 70% of the time it will have spin down. An electron's quantum state for this experiment is (sweeping wavefunctions under the rug...) given by the probability of each outcome. Each of our 100 electrons has the same quantum state as the others, so the system is called (perfectly) coherent. If, however, we prepared 50 of the electrons to come out with the above probabilities and the remaining 50 electrons to come out with 100% spin up, the system is not coherent.
(Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, but rather a mathematician with some interest in quantum physics. Please feel free to correct or supplement the above.)
Re:Those helpful links (Score:4, Informative)
No, quantum coherence is not about the electrons all having the same quantum state as one another; it's about the system as a whole having a single quantum state.
An example of a coherent system would be one in which the electrons all have the same spin; say a 50% chance that they are all up and a 50% chance that they are all down, but zero chance that some are up and some are down. Another example would be a 50% chance that the odd-numbered electrons are up and the even-numbered onees down, a 50% chance they're the other way around.
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Probably not without a better idea of your existing knowledge, but I'll have a go.
Consider a simple point particle in one dimension. The wavefunction for the system is psi(x) where x represents the one-dimensional position. If you have two point particles, and they are coherent, the wavefunction is psi(x,y) where x and y represent the positions of the two particles. (For simplicity I'm assuming the two particles are distinguishable.)
Any particular choice of wavefunction psi(x,y) is a possible quantum sta
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I re-read my original comment with fresh eyes and discovered, to my surprise, that I didn't communicate what I meant to at the end very well at all. I must have been sleepy when I wrote it. I meant to say that, if we performed the experiment on a single randomly chosen electron, there was a 50% chance we had prepared it the first way, and a 50% chance in the second way. The resulting "system" would be incoherent, since it would be composed of two states.
Now that I understand your objection, I imagine you're
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Coherence is a prerequisite for entanglement.
In my second example, the even-numbered and odd-numbered electrons are definitely coherent with each other, since otherwise the result of measuring an even-numbered electron could not affect the result of measuring an odd-numbered one.
You don't need coherence for the double-slit experiment, unless you're using different sources for the two slits. Each particle interferes only with itself, so no coherence is necessary.
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You're wrong. If you won't take my word for it (FWIW, I do have a PhD in quantum optics, although I am not employed as a physicist) go ask at physics.stackexchange.com or any other physics site.
In particular: "Any two electrons would trivially be coherent (in terms of spin) because they differ by a fixed phase angle," demonstrates a misunderstanding of the situation. You are assuming that the electrons share a pure quantum state, but if so, then the electrons are coherent (not just in terms of spin!) by d
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Oh, by the way, the problem with providing an example of quantum coherence without entanglement is that if you don't have entanglement, then while the system might still be coherent there is no measurement that will demonstrate the fact. Again, this is by definition: entanglement is just a word for quantum coherence that you can demonstrate experimentally.
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Yes, I agree. I can't help but feel like I've been outsmarted by a plant.
Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
If quantum effects are real (as they demonstrably are), should it be a surprise that evolution made use of them?
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anything emitting or absorbing light has to be modeled using quantum mechanics.
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Anything emitting or absorbing light has to be modeled using quantum mechanics.
Isn't it already? Photoelectric effect is result of quantization of light. Einstein got a Nobel for that ;)
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Can be modeled using quantum mechanics.
There are many models and they are overlaping, but there is no single theory that's absolutely true and explains everything. Even for just light.
Theory is just how we think it works, and what we have learned to predict. It can be true, but that doesn't exclude other truths.
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but with light there is fundamental known truth. It always is quantized, made of discrete chunks of energy. there is no alternative possible view to that. It is the first known quantum phenomenon. Anything involving light must have quantum (discrete) creation, transmission, absorption of energy.
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That just reduces to the trivial argument that everything uses quantum effects because everything* derives ultimately from QM. It's equivocating compared to what the article is saying.
Fire is a chemical effect that produces light. It's not a quantum effect, in that there's nothing to explain about fire using Quantum Mechanics that cannot be described using chemistry/thermodynamics (maybe a tiny bit of fluid dynamics). You do not need to include quantum mechanics in this mathematical model for the model t
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But you can't explain chemistry without quantum mechanics.
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Never mind, my mistake. I see what you mean now.
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fire is light and heat released by chemical reactions, which always involves changes in electron orbitals. Gravity might not be subject to quantization, neither might time. An experiment looking at phase relationships in photons from distant galaxy was made to look for quantization of time (Planck time unit), but none such was found (so inconclusive, maybe it's really small!)
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I did not invoke Planck's constant. A photon must be discrete, in the two slit experiment a photon can only interfere with itself, no two or more photons ever interfere.
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No, those are probability waveform functions interfering, not photons (same and only type of "interference" as two-slit experiment)
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Light, is a short of shade in the realm of electromagnetic frequencies, on which we all rest upon.
Possibly related from theoretical chemistry? (Score:3)
This *might* be related to my wife's PhD research from several years back. Proton Coupled Electron Transfer. She's in a seminar right now, but when she's back at her desk, I'll past this by her to see if it relates. I could be totally wrong, but I know physicists approach the same kinds of things using different terms and models than chemists. Either way, PCET is an interesting effect that also happens in photosynthesis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCET [wikipedia.org]
I see what you did there... (Score:1, Funny)
"hard to be sure"
Ha! Who would have guessed - uncertainty in quantum mechanics!
Photoelectric Effect (Score:5, Interesting)
What I believe this study is saying is that 'antennae' structures can act as a single quantum mechanical unit (the coherence) so that the incoming insolar radiation has more paths for electron conduction, since the transfer of energy/conduction of electrons is limited to the quantization by the work function, i.e., charge quantization limits the specific wavelengths/frequencies/energies of incoming photons that the plant can use to harvest energy, so in effect the evolution of these 'antennae' structures over time allows for a coherent systems that can act as single particles, with the different permutations of antennas allowing for vastly more permutations of allowed incoming wavelengths to satisfy the Schrodinger eqn (probably not dirac since these are most likely not relativistic interactions, at least the effects are negligible).
I deal more with relativity and QED/QCD, but that's my interpretation of the article.
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IF (Relativity == True && QED-QCD == True) THEN { TheoriesMergedWithoutIssue = True;}
Must of been my subconscious hoping for the yet to be completed reconciliation of the two
Here's a paper back in '07 about it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in '07, this article was published...
http://www.physics.gla.ac.uk/~dtngo/Article/Nature_446_782_2007.pdf [gla.ac.uk]
As I understand this, in the classical photosynthesis model, energy transfer is sort of modeled like the incoming sunlight excites a population of light absorbing "antennea" pigments which transfer the energy to reaction centers where long term energy storage is initiated (e.g., the CO2->sugar conversion). If the energy transfer was "classically" photoelectric, you'd see a system where light excites a population of antenna of different pigments, which then re-emit the energy at a wavelength compatible with the photosynthesis.
If this was true, you could potentially measure electric field and look for frequency of absorbtion and re-emission (they would look like 2 frequency peaks). However, if there were some sort of state coupling, you'd also see beat frequencies corresponding to the difference in energies between various pigments and the re-emission. That in itself is not that interesting, but the fact that when they sent in pulses, these frequencies corresponding to beat frequencies seems to persist longer than the expected coherence time which apparently suggests that coherence lasts long enough to transit all the way from the antenna/pigments to the location of energy conversion (in this case 660 femtoseconds).
The next step is to hypothesize that you can use QM and treat the full system as essentially coherently absorbing light at with the exactly correct antenna/pigment and re-emitting it essentially lossless to the conversion point, rather than it absorbing a collection/population of antenna over a period of time (some of them efficiently, some of them less efficienty), and re-emitting the energy (the classical model). Of course this is a pretty big step and is not a constructive argument, but it is in line with observations about photosynthetic efficiency and there is now more measurements to back up the potential (QM/coherence) pathway which might be able to explain that efficiency..
So this means... (Score:3)
The plants REALLY do have a chance against the Zombies. They can use their quantum energy blasters!!!!
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Obviously. Evolution uses everything! (Score:5, Interesting)
Any evolved system will use all possible inputs to its fitness function, simply because there isn't any mechanism of focusing. Unlike human design, which is all about making known mechanisms work and all but those mechanism are ignored, and even actively avoided. When early researchers used solid-state electronics to make genetic algorithms, often the "solution" only worked on the specific hardware circuit it was learnt on (not supposedly identical copies), because it relied on otherwise-undefined race conditions in the silicon.
So don't be surprised if quantum effects are also used by your brain cells ... and by your anal sphincter.
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Wheels are not inputs. The input is the roughness of the surface to be traveled over (and the lack of a naturally occurring road network is perhaps why animals don't use wheels).
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Evolution uses everything? I've heard it said evolution never discovered the wheel.
I have heard that ATP Synthase is actually implemented as a rotor... a micromotor spun by proton-motive force.
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If you think: (Score:2)
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What's really impressive is that plants started using quantum effects before there were any cats.
Wouldn't it be great if Einstein's's ... (Score:2)
spooky action at a distance " (at the heart of quantum coherence) had never been further than his salad bowl...
"Decoherence" (Score:5, Interesting)
The way people often describe quantum decoherence is that an "observation" occurs that "collapses the wave function" and causes a superposition to converge to a single classical state. But I really think that's a misleading explanation. For one thing, surely the same phenomena occurred long before there were any intelligent observers, and secondly, scientists have observed things in states of quantum superposition WITHOUT causing decoherence.
The way think of it (as a total amateur in the area) is that rather than the wave function representing probabilities of states, it represents the degrees to which something is in all of those states. An "observation" is just like many other interactions with the environment that change those probabilities (or degrees of state).
Then there's the question of why subatomic particles (and some larger things) can be in states of quantum superposition, while larger things cannot. Penrose had a suggestion here. It's gravity. The more massive you are, the less your superimposed states can diverge from one another. Even a planet is in a state of superposition, but all of those states overlap so much relative to the dimensions of the object that you cannot distinguish them.
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I've got a much simpler, amateur explanation for Quantum Observation;
Let's say the Photon is the size of a person, or an Electron the size of a Pig. "Observation" is like launching a Cow at that Human or Pig with a catapult, and then being totally surprised that you ruined the planned stroll of that person/pig.
Before I take the alleged "Law of Quantum Physics" concerning observation seriously, we've got to find a way to OBSERVE with things that have less mass and energy than the particle or wave in question
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The way people often describe quantum decoherence is that an "observation" occurs that "collapses the wave function" and causes a superposition to converge to a single classical state. But I really think that's a misleading explanation. For one thing, surely the same phenomena occurred long before there were any intelligent observers [...]
I can't say if it's misleading or not (it might mislead someone...), but it doesn't sound misleading to me. But an important point is that most people nowadays accept that "observation" doesn't require (and has nothing to do with) an intelligent observer. A photon can "observe" a system just as well as a person.
Also, there are many interpretations of quantum mechanics where the collapse of the wavefunction is not as fundamental as in Copenhagen. For example, here's an account of an extension of the Schr
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It looks like there's some high-schooler who like to go around posting flames as an anonymous coward. Funny how such people are so cowardly that they can't put ANY name to such harsh words. Too bad we can't find these people and give them a good paddling.
Anyhow, this says nothing at all about whether I'm right or wrong, although some if what I said is consistent with the wikipedia article on quantum decoherence.
The key idea with regard to decoherence is, "Decoherence occurs when a system interacts with it
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For one thing, surely the same phenomena occurred long before there were any intelligent observers.
Nope.
Right, and the laws of thermodynamic changed the moment intelligence evolved. Sheesh.
Then there's the question of why subatomic particles (and some larger things) can be in states of quantum superposition, while larger things cannot.
This is a common misconception. "Larger" things can be in a superposition as well; there is nothing about quantum mechanics that keeps it from working on a macroscopic scale.
I think that's what I said.
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"Observation" is probably the most epically bad choice of words ever in the history of physics.
It's spawned the entire New Age religion -- as if the particles were noticing "eyes on them" and started to behave.
Any interaction with other particles/waves causes decoherence. So hopefully, this will help quell all the romantic notions that particles have consciousness -- it really isn't necessary.
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There's no reason why you should consider the state to have de-cohered in the absence of your conscious perception of it. None whatsoever!
Except in everyone's definition of "decoherence". For example, Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] says:
Decoherence occurs when a system interacts with its environment in a thermodynamically irreversible way.
"Thermodynamically irreversible" means that it's practically impossible to make the environment go back to the exact state it was when it interacted with the system, much like it's practically impossible to unscramble an egg. This means that the system is hopelessly entangled with the environment and can never go back to the way it was before, when the branches of its wavefunction could interfere with each other. This has a real p
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You're right in saying that the system is hopelessly entangled with the environment, but there is no way of telling how it is entangled without observing either the system or the environment.
We have to thread carefully, here. There's no way for person X to tell if it's entangled before person X observes the system, but that has nothing to do with quantum mechanics: it's true in classical mechanics, so I don't think that's what you mean. I assume, then, that you mean that the physics of the system itself doesn't change at all when it becomes entangled with the environment (but before anyone observes it). That's not true. The change is exactly that, after becoming entangled with the environment,
Re:But wait (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason Space Nutters keep saying we need to get off this rock is not because there is nothing left to explore, but mainly for two other reasons.
A) The "what if" scenarios that have the Earth being destroyed, if we aren't off the Earth by then humankind is done.
B) We will run out of room, and life extension is only going to make us run out of room quicker. We run out of room and WW1 and WW2 are going to look like small scuffles in comparison.
Re:But wait (Score:5, Informative)
A) The "what if" scenarios that have the Earth being destroyed, if we aren't off the Earth by then humankind is done.
The problem is that even if we have off-Earth colonies, humankind will still be in just as much danger as if we didn't. Consider the most likely scenarios:
1. Asteroid impact. Extensive damage to population and biosphere, but nothing that would render Earth less habitable than Mars. If we had the ability to colonise Mars, we'd certainly have the ability to build shelters on Earth. Result: no need to colonise Mars, just build greenhouses on Earth.
2. War, social unrest, mass insanity. Possible huge damage to Earth's population, depending on how crazy things get. However, space structures will be launched by nation-states and large commercial combines with ties to Earth and will therefore surely be part of the wider Sol system social fabric and will take part in the war. Possibly they'll be the first to be destroyed. For example, World War II began in the core European nations but quickly swept up all European colonies, and some of them such as North Africa and the Pacific became key battlegrounds. Also, the technologies which launched human spaceflight were the flip-side of Earth's worst weapons of mass destruction - the ICBM program. Result: little shelter from a war by extending human culture into space, and a lot of actual danger created by doing so.
3. Plague (including aliens and zombies). A fast spreading virus could conceivably take out most of the human population on-planet, but is unlikely to take out the biosphere or even all of the human population. Earth's survivors will still vastly outnumber any reasonably expected number of space colonists, and will still inherit a much more robust ecosystem than anything on Mars. Worse, any space colonisation program will involve constant resupply and then travel and trade between Earth and the colonies, which will be vectors for transmission of disease. Space colonies themselves will be tightly-packed and fragile, vastly more dangerous places in terms of plague. Result: no survival advantage in space colonies, in fact the colonies will probably die first.
4. Environmental collapse. We're certainly degrading Earth's environment, but space won't help us - all other planets are far worse environmentally than we could conceivably ever make Earth. All space colonies will need either constant resupply from Earth, or the environmental skills to be completely self-sustaining. And if we had those skills, we could just build greenhouses on Earth. Terraform Mars? Well, if we could terraform anywhere reliably, we could start doing it on Earth and fix all our environmental problems in one hit. Result: no environmental disadvantage to going into space, but no advantage either.
5. Ore depletion. Okay, so let's assume we fix the biosphere, but we're still running out of metals to make iPods. We can mine those in space, right? Well, yes and no. If we mine vast quantities of metal and introduce that into Earth's biosphere, that might mess up the biosphere (see 4). Moving asteroid-sized rocks around the system introduces huge military problems (see 2) as they'll be more dangerous than nukes. Space mining is also likely to be be more expensive than just recycling landfill, so where's the commercial advantage? Result: a commercial non-starter and a major military threat, best avoided really.
6. Supernova, red giant. The big one, a complete solar-system destroying event with no chance of sheltering in place. This is the only scenario where conceivably we could improve our chances by going into (interstellar) space. Problem is, to get out of range of Sol going boom we'd need to have either a generation ship going for several hundred years and having already solved the closed life support problem (see 1, 4), so this will be a long-term rather than short-term capability. Best estimates for Sol going boom are millions to billions of years, so again, this is not a pressing human need. Result: maybe worth look
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Addendum.
5a. Yes, okay, bringing asteroid-sized quantities of ore down-well to Earth is pointless, BUT we could use all that metal to build ships / O'Neill colonies in space! Forget planets, space is where it's at! No gravity, Okay, nice argument, but that assumes you have a reason for people to be IN those colonies to start with. Why are they there? To build more colonies of course! Well, why are the other colonies there? Um.... Unless it's more attractive to live in space than on Earth, people won't live
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I do think of space colonization of taking place at least 200 years in the future and you bring up some really good points.
On the disaster side though, if we prepare for a disaster we can weather it, if we are not prepared then we could be fucked. If a major disaster happens it won't matter that living on Earth is easier than living on Mars if how we currently live on Earth is sensitive to disasters. It could happen that an asteroid hits Yellowstone or something else comically unlikely that would kill a v
Humans, now, aren't adapted to space (Score:2)
You're quite right. I think the best route to having off-Earth colonies is to engineer people so that they can deal with zero-G, high radiation, low temperatures, and live off sunlight.
It's not us, but our solid-state descendants who will inherit the galaxy.
--PM
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It's not us, but our solid-state descendants who will inherit the galaxy.
Wow, a galaxy run by pocket calculators.. How very awe inspiring.
Re:But wait (Score:4, Interesting)
Addendum Two.
I believe the real reason the myth of the space colony still hangs around is that secretly (or not so secretly), otherwise intelligent people believe that the real problem with Earth isn't that we face resource shortages or biosphere degradation, but that those social and environmental problems are all really the fault of the ignorant swarming masses. And if we could only somehow get rid of the lower 99% of the Earth's population, we'd be fine.
The attraction of the space colony is that it's believed to be an elite, gated community which by virtue of its extreme expense and difficulty, would attract only a "high class of colonist" along the lines of the first generation of US astronauts: university PhD educated, military trained, logical scientific thinkers, in the peak of physical fitness. Given such a genetic pool of "the right stuff", the space myth goes, these super-demigods couldn't help but create a new Utopia of scientific wonders, even given the huge resource disadvantage they started from.
It's really an updated Atlas Shrugged idea: a Galt's Gulch in space populated only by Earth's Finest, who would sadly watch the dull, evil swarming masses back on Earth collapse into inevitable resource war and chaos, while the smart people up on the colony would of course just get on with making life better for everyone. As a political philosophy, it's basically Space Libertarianism, shading towards good old 1800s aristicratic racism: just putting "a better class of people" into a locked room, and keeping everyone else out, would create instant utopia. It's slightly less genocidal than out-and-out Fascism, since it just leaves Earth's masses to rot rather than actively killing them, but it harbours the same intense distrust and hatred of the untermensch as the worst excesses of WW2.
The problem is, utopias simply don't work like that. There've been many attempts at creating closed, self-selected communities, and they always go bad. Not even thinking about cults, have you ever seen a university, political activist movement, or high-tech company in action? Have you seen the kind of petty squabbles that occur in our elite institutions? Do you really think things will be different in space?
No. They won't be. And that's why the virtuous, pioneering Space Colony that can magic a healed biosphere and super-energy sources by sheer force of logic out of a desert of vacuum and hard radiation - just so long as they're not pestered by those ignorant savages down on Earth - is just that, a myth, and a fairly nasty one. We really need to put it behind us before it screws up our thinking even more than it has.
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The attraction of the space colony is that it's believed to be an elite, gated community which by virtue of its extreme expense and difficulty, would attract only a "high class of colonist" along the lines of the first generation of US astronauts: university PhD educated, military trained, logical scientific thinkers, in the peak of physical fitness. Given such a genetic pool of "the right stuff", the space myth goes, these super-demigods couldn't help but create a new Utopia of scientific wonders, even given the huge resource disadvantage they started from.
Except the first colonies will more resemble an off-shore oil rig than a gated community. They will be more along the lines of places where work gets done as opposed to where decisions are made.
The problem is, utopias simply don't work like that. There've been many attempts at creating closed, self-selected communities, and they always go bad. Not even thinking about cults, have you ever seen a university, political activist movement, or high-tech company in action? Have you seen the kind of petty squabbles that occur in our elite institutions? Do you really think things will be different in space?
Yes, I have lived in a commune, or as they are more commonly called nowdays an organic community. You nailed it.
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the greatness of America is that it captures the high points of European culture while attempting to cast off it's low points. Once achieved, the new culture then transmits the better social order back home, uplifting all.
You will have to excuse us non-Americans not quite following your argument.
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As a political philosophy, it's basically Space Libertarianism
Space Nutter + Insane Libertarianism = Space Libertarianism.
Don't forget that a lot of people here seem to think Ayn Rand is some sort of prophet without honour, not a vicious, rabidly fascist loony.
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Fascist is quite the stretch, given the key Objectivist principles that directly conflict with they key principles of fascism.
Loony I can buy.
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Bottom line: manned space colonisation doesn't offer any short-term survival advantage, but it does increase the number of immediate threats we face. In the very long term it might be worth investigating.
A short-term survival advantage would be making a game-changing discovery like extraterrestrial life or some form of cheap energy (H3 maybe?). It's presumptuous to assume there is nothing out there that can't help us right now this very instant. Earth is but a tiny sample of the what the Universe has to offer us. Who knows what is out there that could solve our current problems and radically change the world. The short expeditions we've taken into our solar system haven't even scratch the surface. It's onl
Re:But wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong question. We have no rights in this regard.
But we do have a duty towards self-preservation.
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You seem to be thinking of this in terms of next week. This is something that might not happen for another 200 years and I accept that.
By the time that we are moving significant amount of people into space we will have already colonized the easy parts of the ocean and made life in deserts sustainable. We will have to have had the technology to make it possible for us to live anywhere on the planet for us to even start to think about actual colonization of space.
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A) The "what if" scenarios that have the Earth being destroyed, if we aren't off the Earth by then humankind is done.
So what? I mean if I have a chance to escape it then great by why does the long term survival of humanity really matter?
B) We will run out of room, and life extension is only going to make us run out of room quicker. We run out of room and WW1 and WW2 are going to look like small scuffles in comparison.
This is a more reasonable driver as it will cause great amounts of suffering that might be avoided and it is in our very nature to avoid suffering but still in the cosmic level scheme of things...so what?.
You will die someday so you might as well commit suicide.
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"You will die someday "
should be:
"In Theory,you will die someday "
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"In Theory, you will die someday"
should be:
"According to our current understanding of the laws of physics, you will die someday."
--Joe
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Don't wait! (Score:2)
Oh look, a 43 year old Anonymous Coward with delusions of living somewhere other than mom's basement. Get an education, social skills, a job, a girlfriend (need I go on?), you fool.
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I am annoyed at how often these obvious "Space Nutter" troll posts keep popping up in even the most least relevant stories.
I am just as much shocked at how effective they are at getting so many people to bite.
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I am annoyed at how often these obvious "Space Nutter" troll posts keep popping up in even the most least relevant stories.
I am just as much shocked at how effective they are at getting so many people to bite.
Just because you disagree with something doesn't make it a troll.
A lot of the pro-space flight or pro space- colonisation/ mining posts you get on slashdot are totally unrealistic and naive. When we can't even agree on whether there is anything we can do about climate change, how likely is it that we will build at enormous cost with non-existing technology fleets of starships to make thousand year journeys on the off chance we might find a habitable planet out there?
Sorry, but "Space Nutter" is not al
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Wrong thread 'mate
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/12/07/1939237/ge-to-turn-worlds-biggest-civilian-plutonium-stockpile-into-electricity [slashdot.org]
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And while in bad fashion, I thought I'd keep the 'spam' contained within my post here.
A peep inside while the BBC was filming there this past Monday. [imgur.com]
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Oh, I'm sorry, did you want this grass? [imgur.com]
Gonna have to wait another decade, I wager.
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That's awesome! I had written you off based on the combination of LED and gro in the domain, but I might go poke around a bit. I walked into the local hydroponics shop and asked what bulbs would be best for growing lettuce in my closet and they looked at me like I had a second head when I insisted that no, I really meant lettuce.
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See, I prefer legitimate crops.
Too bad most hydro shops haven't heard of me, but that's okay. They can keep reselling cheap rebadged Chinese stuff while my stuff is used in professional production systems and proven to work across multiple crop types! I'm much happier in the corporate-scale.
You won't find much on my site. Two panels for home stuff. Everything else is call-to-order. Maybe I'll have more products available once I get some more money to develop them.
My parent company is http://h2ofarm.co.uk/ [h2ofarm.co.uk] i
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Oh, and to answer your question, if you are doing hydroponics, LED is hands down the way to go for lettuce and other low herbs.
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I have moderator points, but there's no entry for 'slashvertisement' or 'paid shill'. It's possible that your post is completely accurate and insightful, but it sounds like you're flogging one fringe opinion. "One need only fully understand...", "Gerald Pollack's investigation into the mistakes in [the establishment] are revolutionary...".
I'm not buying the cool aid.
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Um, no. Seriously, did you read his crap at all?
We know how things work at the level, we can watch them. IT's like saying fast gnomes are the cause of gravity.
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Let me guess: you think God Did It is a better explanation?.
Tip: if you can't imagine something, that's a failing of yours, not of the thing you can't imagine.
I just finished reading Thomas Paine's Age of Reason. Only in his time was there any excuse to use the God Did It argument - a time before the discovery of DNA, Evolution, or even galaxies. Today, only an atheist can appreciate the poignancy of Paine's religious beliefs.