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Charles Darwin's Best-Kept Secret
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."'"
I plant a tree on your first post, sirrah!
Of course everyone knows about his Darwin's biggie, but I am continually amazed with the little-known ideas that Darwin came up with. Going forward, I hope that we can follow his example in carefully and cleverly preserving Mother Earth for future generations.
let's spray the bugger with lichen, they seem to survive everywhere
http://library.thinkquest.org/26442/html/life/plant.html
Wherever You Go, There You Are
We can't even terraform Earth right. What makes anyone believe that an oxygen-less place like Mars is going to just suddenly sprout weeds? Unless you can turn rust into Miracle-Gro, you're pretty borked.
Thats not going to happen since mars climate can dip to -100 degrees C (-150 degrees F) late at night, even near the equator. That will kill about anything there is trying to grow.
The Royal Navy doesn't have any space ships.
but (semi) seriously, this guy thinks he found something like a lichen on mars
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6969396/
would terra-forming Mars potentially wipe out an indigenous species, and would Earthers that were desperate enough for another place to live even care?
Wherever You Go, There You Are
"cloud forest " something like "Cloud Computing" of the past??
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."
At the time of the voyage, he (without evidence) always implied in his writings that Africans were of the lowest levels of intelligence. I find this laughable because in the lowest levels of poverty in Europe we
all endured the Greek Gods like the Hindu and Norwegian Pantheon gods. Africa has it's Voodoo crafts that are no different in corruptive behaviour.
We need to study that shit for Earth, because we'll be needing it in the not too distant future.
They've been planting trees on the edge of the Taklamakan. I read about that years ago, here's a link.
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
1. Send some bacteria to Mars.
2. Wait 100 years.
3. ???
4. Mars Attacks!!
We are the people our parents warned us about.
How many boat loads in a fuckton?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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
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
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Isn't a whole butt load of rust covering the planet? Iron oxide? Iron and oxygen. What now?
Think about it.
Why would a martian microbe be specialized in feeding off Earth mammals? How would evolution end up there?
I don't know what you are trying to say. I guess you are positing poverty and religion as evidence of the inverse of intelligence? Now I don't know what I'm saying.
Their they're doing there hair.
Have you ever heard about Darwin?
If we ever plan to visit Mars, at all, then it is going to be contaminated sooner or later. What happens then is up to the natural forces to resolve and there is not much we can do about it. (Well, we could decide to stay away from Mars, forever.)
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
-- thinkyhead software and media
Umm Have they forgotton, Mars has no Magnetic Field!! practically useless for humans since any new atmosphere we create through greenhouse effect will be blown away by solar winds, plus we will be in more danger from Cosmic Rays and Solar flares without a Magnetic field
How they figure that? I didn't see a Wal*Mart in the pictures!
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
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.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
yeah, imagine all those nasty spacebugs!
Dr Ian Malcolm approves!
But I bet a months-long drift through hard vacuum and unimpeded solar & cosmic radiation might have done a fair job, for most of the ship anyway.
Something with a sealed-in living environment for humans has a much greater proportion of microbe etc. habitat, as well as being much bigger overall.
Darwin was also a genius in many other ways...
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.
And the first recorded modern practice of permaculture as a systematic method was by Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer in the 1960s.
PermacultureEssentially 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.
Waiting for the other shoe to...
Pair of rabbits, pair of foxes, pair of mongooses, some star thistle for good measure. It'll be a choked out hell instead of a barren hell.
At least not at a planatary scale. It's core is near frozen solid. Leaving it's magnetosphere too weak to protect the planet from solar wind. So, unless they plan to reignight it's core, better start looking at Venus as a new home.
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 which group you belong too? Baaah!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Looks more like a few dozen trees and some scrub to me.
I was thinking "Terraformed!" Like Jurassic Park style.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
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.
Not to be a troll, but by his own example doesn't Darwin show that a designer is needed in order to improve things when a system is present and interdependencies are real.
no comment
BBC News - Beer microbes live 553 days outside ISS
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11039206
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
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.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hey /.
Change the photo on this article!
Thankew.
It's been theorized that the Sahara used to be a lush verdant area. Perhaps this technique could reconvert it back to this once pristine state over the course of a few centuries of hard work?
I am all for terraforming Mars but there is this major gaping hole
-- Mars has NO MAGNETOSPHERE, none, nada zip... we on terra firma have this beautiful molten core of iron that gives our planet a magnetic shield against the solar wind, that Mars lacks.
What does this mean? Well the upper atmosphere is stripped off at a faster pace than here on earth so you will never be able to get a continuous water cycle going on the planet because you will loose so much to space every year. And the other HUGE reason is that with no magnetosphere you are getting hit with a lot more radiation and while thats great for a tan it's just plain awful on the reproductive organs and life in general.
If we are on Mars we are going to either be under ground or in massive biodomes -- so do not fear we will never terraform Mars until we can give it a magnetosphere.
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.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Somebody tagged this "darwinwasracist" - he may well have been by our standards, pretty much everyone around at that time was raised to hold opinions that would be considered a bit...well, outdated...today, but for when he was, where he was, I think you'd be surprised. I would recommend reading the Voyage of the Beagle - basically Darwin's own description of his voyage (in particular his encounters with slavery in IIRC Brazil).
Also kind of neat to see him basically figure out plate tectonics along the way by trying to understand the how the atolls & volcanic islands he encounters were formed. His working out of the basic mechanism of evolution (*not* discovery BTW, evolution had been known about for a while, but he was the first to figure out how it works) was not just blind luck, he was clearly brilliant.
What's with the Darwinwasracist tag? What is that all about and how is it relevant to the story?
Happens in my fridge all the time
Table-ized A.I.
See Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=25839 Which also deals with just how wise would it really be to remake a world in our image. These are good books, which I highly recommend.
Steven
This makes me think of some of the subject matter of Freeman Dyson's "Disturbing the Universe." I'm thinking in particular of the section where Dyson compares what he calls "green" and "grey" technology. Currently we're using grey tech to go to space, where people live in cans and everything requires "unnatural" sources of energy to maintain its existence. Dyson talks about how genetic engineering, adaptation, and evolution could help us adapt to living in hostile environments (like Mars or the moon) in a way similar to how man has adapted to less harsh environments in the past--things like people in high altitude areas developing greater lung capacities.
He could be two things.
Beer.
You don't own it, you only rent it.
Until it takes over the universe.
I would expect that a year and a half in LEO, inside the Earth's Van Allen Belts is a lot less radiation than a 6 month jaunt to Mars.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Plants are sort of "just animals" with photosynthetic endoparasites.
For instance, rainforests are only net O2 producers, and net CO2 consumers, for some hours around noon. The rest of the daytime, and through the night, they are net O2 consumers and CO2 producers, just like animals.
So perhaps one starts with not just simpler life, but life which desperately avoids leaking O2, and which focuses on reproduction. Atmospheric O2 remains unchanged for a long time, but martian photosynthetic biomass increases. Eventually, the leakage becomes significant.
Or perhaps one uses life which can't now survive on Earth. Terraforming Mars is basically trying to give Mars its own "oxygen disaster". So perhaps its faster to use life or systems from before Earth's. Life which doesn't waste energy trying to hang on to, and cope with, high O2 concentrations. And thus is better adapted to the current martian environment, free of toxic O2.
...One of the plot points for a sci-fi book I was thinking of writing but haven't yet.
Thriving Mars colony already established at time of alien invasion of Earth. Mars was already given plans for a military operation to help reclaim the homeworld, to be put into motion when the shit hits the fan. :)
Operation Phoenix sounds like a cool name for that.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
some spores can survive for millions of years and the winds will spread them througout the planet.
But probably the number of places on the planet where life can start is small.
Anyone know if anyone has done a study of how likely it is the planet is already contaminated?
I'm most concerned about any martian life that may already exist on Mars. The more life we introduce the greater the chance we introduce a species that can out compete it.
As with not yet discovered species on Earth but more so, the Mars life may have unusual and interesting properties and could be lost before we even find it. Also the native life if it exists may be the best life to use as a basis to help terraform the planet.
So I think a very thorough exploration with remote controlled robot landers well sterilised needs to be done first.
Lots of other issues. E.g. do we really need Mars to be habitable now. If we try and because of our inexperience in terraforming it goes haywire, then will we be able to recover from it. May we our some other life form really really need it in the future? If not before may be needed when our sun goes Red Giant, Mars may then become habitable naturally without our interference, and may be just what is needed then.
They need to seed the island with cloned dinosaur eggs and turn it into a theme park.
Your points are all sound. I concur that the 'no max yield' call is outrageous abuse of language and scientific charlatanism. Akin to "continous improvement".
Positive feed back loops that lead to bio-accumulation(sic) are still cool though. (like the pacific island mentioned that is now collecting water and sun and birdshite much faster that 20 years ago....)
Waiting for the other shoe to...
The aliens came all ways to Earth, destroy/occupy it, but they ignore Mars?
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