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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."'"
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
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?
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.
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.
That's like trying to preserve death. Why would you want too?
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??
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.
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."
I think the bigger worry would be what "sprung up" if we actually started turning that "cold dead" world into a green oasis. After all we have seen there are microorganisms that can live for who knows how long in a dessicated state, so how do we know that there aren't bugs that would make the black plague look like a summer cold buried in those rocks?
I think the first colonists better be prepared for a one way trip, as it would probably be too dangerous for someone who has lived on Martian soil and food grown there to interact with us Earthlings, at least without some serious isolation and a buttload of testing.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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"?
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).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
A year or so ago I came across an article about some protesters who opposed creating garbage dumps in Nevada. They said, "sure, there's nothing here, but how many places are there with nothing??" Apparently not enough.
Qxe4
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."
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
Wherever You Go, There You Are
You've obviously never been in a Hot Topic, have you?
I'd rather have someplace outside our solar system be a pristine monument. Maybe somewhere in the horsehead nebula.
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?
Yeah, and they should also halt all archaeological digs. Who knows what they'll find one day? Ancient Mesopotamian weapons of mass destruction!
Oh, wait, they've already been looking for those ;-)
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
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.
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
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.
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.
Dr Ian Malcolm approves!
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...
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.
Why would you want to create new life where there is none? That's just dooming countless lives to suffering and eventual death.
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.
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
Beta is bad enough to make me go edit settings like this sig that haven't been touched since I joined
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?
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).
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
If I remember correctly the group felt a strong connection to the planet, not unlike Earth First does for the Earth. In fact they might have been modeled on that organization.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
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.
"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.
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.
How can a tree or a "critter" disagree with me? Have you spoken to them?
... and then they built the supercollider.
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?
A year or so ago I came across an article about some protesters who opposed creating garbage dumps in Nevada. They said, "sure, there's nothing here, but how many places are there with nothing??" Apparently not enough.
By the way, garbage dump != nuclear waste (other states'). ...
Link to the article? I've never heard about Nevadans opposing garbage dumps or any new garbage dumps being considered
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 when it does concerns about preserving some lifeless hunk of rock floating in space are going to sound pretty short sighted.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Fair question. How do you know they're suffering? Have YOU spoken to them?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fair question. How do you know they're suffering? Have YOU spoken to them?
No, I haven't. But they are certainly doomed to death.
The "suffering" part was a bit of a trope. You know, life equals suffering. A pretty reasonable assumption, though. Nobody lives without death or suffering.
... and then they built the supercollider.
What's with the Darwinwasracist tag? What is that all about and how is it relevant to the story?
Well.. they will have computers, copies of Wikipedia, the complete collection of all literature ever, etc. And probably way more than 500 people. If a giant asteroid strikes the Earth, it's not the impact that kills us is it? I thought it was the nuclear-winter-like conditions from all the debris that is thrown up into the atmosphere. So with nuclear power and all that, we could last a year, plenty of time to send more shuttle loads of people to Mars. If not a bunch of people, then at least a bunch of information that hadn't yet been sent to Mars.
replying to self here - I found the passage I was thinking of:
While staying at this estate, I was very nearly being an eye-witness to one of those atrocious acts which can only take place in a slave country. Owing to a quarrel and a lawsuit, the owner was on the point of taking all the women and children from the male slaves, and selling them separately at the public auction at Rio. Interest, and not any feeling of compassion, prevented this act. Indeed, I do not believe the inhumanity of separating thirty families, who had lived together for many years, even occurred to the owner. Yet I will pledge myself, that in humanity and good feeling he was superior to the common run of men. It may be said there exists no limit to the blindness of interest and selfish habit. I may mention one very trifling anecdote, which at the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty. I was crossing a ferry with a negro, who was uncommonly stupid. In endeavouring to make him understand, I talked loud, and made signs, in doing which I passed my hand near his face. He, I suppose, thought I was in a passion, and was going to strike him; for instantly, with a frightened look and half-shut eyes, he dropped his hands. I shall never forget my feelings of surprise, disgust, and shame, at seeing a great powerful man afraid even to ward off a blow, directed, as he thought, at his face. This man had been trained to a degradation lower than the slavery of the most helpless animal.
hopefully the Ur-Quan dont arrive by then.
$ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
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?
why not invest in both?
the hard part of both problems involve sending equipment into deep space. having the technology to divert asteroids and comets would be an important part of terraforming mars. A lot of water in comets and a lof of minerals in asteroids... divert a few of them to mars before we have any people there, and look at that, we've got some water and building materials on the surface of Mars. And we have lots of experience in diverting asteroids and comets.
While I agree that the value of "humanity" is unclear, earth protection and colonization are hardly opposed to one another. It's the same shortsightedness and indifference to others that leads us to forget about space exploration and only halfheartedly plan for asteroids and other natural disasters.
(Whether Mars can be made habitable is unclear, but humanity could certainly multiply fast enough to fill it, and most of modern culture can be transmitted on a flash drive--almost all of our history is already long forgotten.)
That's one of the big problems I had with the end of Battlestar Galactica. After all the effort of saving humanity and escaping the cylons - they destroy all the culture and become cavemen on a place where there were already cavemen.
It's not the species that's so important, it's all the knowledge and culture that's been created by it that's worth preserving.
Happens in my fridge all the time
Table-ized A.I.
On the first part of the journey
...
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound
I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La, la
Horse with No Name - America
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
And suffering begets strength. Strength begets accomplishment. Accomplishment begets peace of mind. Thus, life begets peace of mind.
;)
We can play these trite-theory games all day long.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
That's like trying to preserve death. Why would you want to?
"Life -- hate it or loathe it, you can't ignore it."
Maybe they're clinically depressed robots with brains the size of planets?
Free Martian Whores!
Ugh. The Grand Canyon has a large number of endemic species including plants AND animals. This mean there are species that evolved within the canyon that do not occur anywhere else on the planet, and there are more widely dispersed species which also occur there. It is not an empty barren wasteland, but, I can understand why people might think that way about it compared to a redwood forest.
<snark>No, you're the one not paying attention.</snark>
Sorry, I couldn't resist, but that's not actually fair, his sentence is indeed ambiguous. Where you inferred "which is without...", I inferred "but without...".
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.
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.
It's been too long for me to find that specific article, but here is web page of Nevadans against garbage. Really, you should have been able to find it with a few seconds of Google.
Qxe4
By the way, garbage dump != nuclear waste
Actually it does, when DHS installed the radiation detectors at our boarder crossing, they had to turn back every trash truck for 3 days due to radioactivity, and that's 350 trucks a day. Finally the Canadians had all of the trash truck steam cleaned which got the radiation down enough to get across the boarder, they still have to steam clean a couple times a month. Household refuse is a disgusting toxic stew with everything imaginable in it.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
There's not "nothing" in Nevada.
There's hundreds of holes made by nuclear weapons tests.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Nevada_Test_Site_craters.jpg
The Yucca Flats/Yucca Mountain area is actually the perfect place to put nuclear waste, because it is nuclear waste.
Beer.
You don't own it, you only rent it.
Until it takes over the universe.
Mars is a rusty rock.
Jupiter, on the other hand, is fucking gorgeous.
http://library.thinkquest.org/18652/jupiter_io.jpg
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
That makes sense if you reject the possibility that humanity has the potential to destroy itself. What happens when some crazy guy weaponizes an Influenza strain that releases blue ring octopus toxin? Or breeds a hybrid of influenza and small pox?
Having a remote location that you can seal off is worth it.
There certainly is.... Marvin, The Paranoid Android – Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, (1978 – 2006) (http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/166933/top_25_screen_robots.html)
No I agree, but my point was that adding life to it even if native life doesn't exist there wont necessarily detract from the beauty of it. Effectively there's no reason it's beauty can't be preserved but also become a home to life as well.
...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.
Slashdot post begets slashdot post. Slashdot becomes self-aware...
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.
When some of the main characters met at the top of Olympus Mons you could really feel their disgust and pain at the loss of pristine wilderness caused by the apparent invasion of the moss or lichens even in that remote and relatively airless place. They didn't just change Mars, it wasn't even the same planet anymore. Granted, IMO it was all for the better, by that point in the story IIRC you could walk on the surface naked.
Hell, they removed two moons. One impacted into the planet, the other slung away at high speed, they belted the planet with the space elevator cable, they introduced whales and big cats... It's an excellent vision of the future.
It sounds like DOOM, only in reverse. We could call it... MOOD!
It's easier to survive under the sea or on land on Earth than mount an exhibition to Mars, and would have better chance of surviving an asteroid impact - no need to build spacecraft and travel back to Earth as you are already there.
Evem the biggest impacts in the past were survivable e.g. at bottom of ocean and with the resources a Mars settlement would have, unless unlucky enough to be at the impact site.
To deal with that make sure you have say 3 undersea hideouts, each staffed with say a dozen researchers at any time. Would be popuplar bases for undersea exploration and study so no problem keeping them inhabited at any time, and make sure you have supplies, equipment etc. enough to make them self-sustaining for several years - again no problem, a submarine can be self sustaining under sea for several months.
For that matter any of our nuclear subs would survive an asteroid impact if far enough away and could continue under the sea for months, eventually surface when all the fires etc. have died away.
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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