The Fermi Paradox

@farmerman,

One problem with the Martian atmosphere is the high CO2 concentration. Waiting for plant life to deal with it could mean thousands of years--as many as ten thousand years. That's why i said we need to get nitrogen from Titan--we need more than just oxygen in the mix. However, any action which warms up the planet will release more CO2 from the southern polar cap, which is CO2. A good solution might be many (thousands) of small robotic factories separating CO2 into its constituent elements.

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@Setanta,

not really a problem to the "bucket chemistry brigade". Its about 90 k/cal/mole to do it chemically (large enough energy requirement to use solar reactors OR, greenhouses. I don't think wedbe trying to terraform the whole planet. Wed start with roofed enclaves like domed cities or giant greenhouse urban areas. Or even "Suburbs" and domed reactor sites.
Adding a heavy gas to keep the "mix" within living ranges would work but we wouldn't need to go offshore, we could "React CO2 with enough energy to create Ammonia . Hmm, (just did the rections and wed also create a lot of cyanide in the atmosphere. Could be a problem. Ill keep working on it.

Hmm, if we bring N from offshore, nd expose it to enough energy, itd transmute to Ozone,(O3).

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Titan is a moon of Saturn. It's atmosphere is more massive than the atmosphere of Earth, and atmospheric pressure at mean surface level (for as well as we can determine that) is almost one and a half bars (one bar, and roughly 450 millibars). We could steal a lot of Nitrogen from Titan, which is relatively close to Mars, and he wouldn't even know his pocket had been picked.

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By the way, it would be possible to partially terraform Mars by carefully controlling the atmospheric pressure. At between 300 and 400 millibars, it would be possible to have a breathable atmosphere, but leave the planet almost unchanged at altitudes more than 5000 meters above the datum. (Datum is a piss poor way to measure, though. Once you start screwing around with the atmospheric pressure, the datm changes.) At that kind of pressure, if there is enough oxygen, and not too much CO2, you'd have an environment like high alpine or high Andean conditions.

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The mean surface level of the northern hemisphere is about 10,000 feet below the mean surface level of the southern hemisphere. You could terraform the north and leave the south relatively untouched.

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

Quote:
we will expend the large amounts of capital as a species when we are endangered by the inevitability of Galactic Entropy or something more localized....

That's correct. Put in simpler language, the one reason there might really ever be for physical interstellar travel would be escape, i.e. your own system was about to get blown up or some such.

Again I believe there probably are better ways to get at information from other star systems than actually going there, which is the basic solution to the Fermi paradox.

Well, there is kind of a second reason. We are living on this one speck of dust in the midst of a nearly infinite universe. There are something like 10^23 stars, with probably more than half having planets. It's like arguing that there's no possible reason ever to leave your apartment and visit any of the other parts of your city, state, country, or the world because you're fine in your apartment.

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Sorry if this has already been answered and i missed it, but if there are infinite advanced civilisations out there, why haven't any of them visited us yet?
Or perhaps they've been and gone?

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@Romeo Fabulini,

Romeo Fabulini wrote:

Sorry if this has already been answered and i missed it, but if there are infinite advanced civilisations out there, why haven't any of them visited us yet?
Or perhaps they've been and gone?

I guess you missed it. That was the question asked by the opening post of the thread. That is the topic of the thread.

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Quote:

Frank Apisa said: it is entirely possible that there are aliens among us and they observe a form on the Prime Directive

You got it mate.. Smile

"Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels unawares" (Hebrews 13:2)

Incidentally the film "The Day the Earth Stood Still" starred Keanu Reeves as an alien in human form sent here to save the earth by wiping out the human race.
Here he meets with a fellow alien who's lived on earth for 70 years in the human form of a Chinaman to watch us and send back messages about us to his home planet.-

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/day-still.gif

Maybe watchers like the Chinaman are "angels" (the word "angel" can also mean 'messenger')

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@Romeo Fabulini,

Romeo Fabulini wrote:

Sorry if this has already been answered and i missed it, but if there are infinite advanced civilisations out there, why haven't any of them visited us yet?
Or perhaps they've been and gone?

Somehow I don't think you've been paying attention.

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@rosborne979,

I have this painting by "Holmes". Ho much do you think its worth? Very Happy

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Jesus said "I'm not of this world", so technically that makes him an alien.
Beats me why some people seem too afraid to open-mindedly entertain the possibility.. Wink

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@farmerman,

If it's THE Holmes, then at least a dollar two-ninety-eight . . .

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@Setanta,

Ya know, n rgument that's been forwarded by Stephen Gould and Ernst Mayr back in the 90' s, stresses the "complete good luck occurrence " for the rise of a sentient being that could develop such techy tools as radio. They said that this lifetrack that develops beings leaving their home planet has been an "almost statistical impossibility" to reproduce in other worlds, even were life to appear and evolve there.
Gould and Mayr were "scientifically certain that, if Pikia did not survive the Cmbriqn extinction chordates (and Hominims) would not come to exist on this planet.
NEW evidence has, instead of backing up Mayr and Gould, shown us that "evolution can repeat itself" despite Dollo's "Law of non repeatability of species".
It appears that Hemichordates and cephalochordates and other forms of chordates have evolved not once but several times in totally different unrelated locations during the Cambrian, beginning at the very earliest times (with species that apparently went extinct and then appeared as chordate in other unrelated species ).
Fossils from China and Australia , US and Canada show totqlly different and unrelated appearances of this important body feature that gave rise to all species with backbones.
SO, is evolution of sentient beings inevitable with first appearances of life? Should we keep tuning into the skies?

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Gould and Mayr were "scientifically certain that, if Pikia did not survive the Cmbriqn extinction chordates (and Hominims) would not come to exist on this planet.

It's also important to remember that being a chordate is not necessarily a requirement for developing technology. Tool making/using behavior exists in many other species. Technology might be almost unavoidable, we just don't know.

It's also possible that biological life is simply a stepping stone on the path to mechanical life/intelligence and that we have yet to even see the most profound form of intelligence that the Universe can whip up.

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@rosborne979,

What I find so fascinating is that scientists have found ways to store information on memory chips that continues to shrink while expanding its memory capacity.

Compared to several decades ago and today, the technological knowledge expanded at an amazing rate. It's awe inspiring!

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

What I find so fascinating is that scientists have found ways to store information on memory chips that continues to shrink while expanding its memory capacity.

How can anyone who would compose a sentence as poorly constructed as that one, ci, possibly claim to be above average in English grammar?

And once again...a number agreement mistake. Once in a while it happens even to the best...but you do it regularly!

You really cannot master that area at all, can you?

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Well, i had a nice long response to FM, which i thought i had posted. They're out to get me, i tell ya, they're all out to get me ! ! !

Anyway, the idea that a system would evolve more than once is right in line with the human experience in invention and engineering. Devices for measuring latitude, based on the same principles as the astrolabe, were invented in ancient China, in the Akkadian empire (think Babylon--these were used by astronomers, not by mariners), by the ancient Greeks, and then re-invented in the middle ages by Italians and Portuguese--both groups believing they worked in secret. Some ideas and some systems are just so "right," that i would be surprised if a successful adaptation were not repeated in evolution.

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

It's also important to remember that being a chordate is not necessarily a requirement for developing technology

There are several "positions" we occupy in the food chain. Most importantly is that of "TOP GUN".
Even though other species adopt "tools" for specialized uses, we FASHION them. Once we became a slave to the nutritional needs of a "big brain" we kind of outpaced anything in second. ALL the top 10 big brains are held by chordates. Squids and octopuses have often been ascribed with the big brain potential but, theyd need to develop longer life span to accomplish anything techy

IF we were to suddenly disappear, in the position you propose, would another "top gun" arise and be a slave to its brain nutritional needs (or else would it stay non self aware).?
Elephants are self aware but don't have the body build for grsping or manipulating stuff so its a species that, while it may ultimately evolve and rival simians in mental acuity, unless it develops graspinga nd manipulating its trunk (as opposed to being merely prehensile) , it would need to go through a complete species change (ala whales) to manipulate and control its environment (or play the piano) .

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@Setanta,

same thing with smelting or "blooming"

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The Fermi Paradox

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