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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
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.
That's like trying to preserve death. Why would you want too?
The Royal Navy doesn't have any space ships.
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."
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
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
Think about it.
Why would a martian microbe be specialized in feeding off Earth mammals? How would evolution end up there?
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
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.
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.
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
This isn't true. Even some species of cacti, for example, those in Canada are hardy down to that temperature. Opuntia humifusa (syn. O. compressa), and Escobaria vivipara have proven hardy down to -120c in the lab. Whilst they wont do much at this temperature, they're examples of more complex plantlife being able to clearly survive it. Cactaceae are also hardly the most adapted to this sort of climate, I'm sure there is plantlife that is even far more adapted to survive such temperatures than these examples.
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
"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.
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
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.
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.
Cool overhead shot. It lead me to some even more illuminating ground photos.
This barren photo appears to represent the natural state of the island. If you go about one mile there's this photo from the edge of the green zone looking out over the barren island. A mere quarter mile further we find this photo at the heart of the green zone.
I'd say it's quite a striking transition from dry barren red rock to that wet greenery. I'd say it pretty well qualifies as "Terraformed! Like Jurassic Park style." It's all the more striking when you realize that you can walk from the barren desert on one side in to that third photo, and walk back out to barren desert on the other side, in probably less than two hours. I expect boundary is advancing at a decent rate each year, and the area of the biome increasing by the square of the radius.
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