No, not a moon. I am merely saying that when you only know its mass (or diameter) and or perhaps its orbital period, its a leap to go claiming something is a "planet".
Just FYI, the papers by Lineweaver's groups suggest that ~70% of the "Earths" in our galaxy are older than ours, some of them much much older. That leaves plenty of time for them to have developed the technology to disassemble and reassemble planetary sized masses (indeed if we develop robust nanotechnology in this century we will probably have such capabilities ourselves). A "reassembled" planet should not be called a planet -- it should be called a satellite.
In case you haven't checked the reports, the scientists have not *seen* the object. Nor have they *seen* any of the other objects they so quickly claim are exoplanets.
If all you know are its mass, or diameter, and perhaps its orbital period that is insufficient information to claim it is a "planet". It should be a very large artificial satellite.
The astronomers are operating off of an assumption that the universe is dead (and therefore natural). Ooopps, then we probably shouldn't be here... They need to go read the papers by Charlie Lineweaver's group which document how *most* of the advanced technological civilizations in our galaxy may be much, much older than our own.
This policy by Microsoft of "forcing" one to upgrade to newer products which are becoming ever more "controlled" by Microsoft (I'm waiting for the release where one cannot turn off automatic upgrades) is yet another reason to switch to Linux NOW.
The problem with this type of hypothesis is that it fails to recognize the difference that "real" molecular nanotechnology will create. I'm not talking about the "playtime" nanotechnology that the NIH started promoting several years ago. I'm talking the real thing that Drexler, Merkle, Freitas, etc. envision.
Educating any scientist with a five or ten year horizon without a clear perspective about how much things will shift when MNT arrives is pointless.
Scientists at IBM recently calculated the force of moving single atoms around. This is on top of their accomplishments a decade or more ago of actually moving the atoms around. Duh! We are slowly, arguably too slowly, moving down the road to MNT.
So unless we move at the pace of sub-snails, all future projection scenarios, particularly those involving decade or longer time frames have to include nanotechnology.
Re: "affirmative right and freedom to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution"
Gawd, what an awful attempt to run around reality! First one has "objectively present" -- anyone trying to work around evolution is unlikely to be "objective". Second "full range", don't get me started. This lets not only the creationists but the Raelians into the classroom (and the Raelians have a far more credible hypothesis than the creationists!). Third, "views regarding biological and chemical evolution". Chemistry does not "evolve". Chemistry is dictated by the laws of physics. So, this law would allow one to teach that the laws of physics do not exist??
While I will allow that the U.S. Constitution prohibits the "abridging the freedom of the speech" we have to allow the promotion of stupidity is probably a really bad idea.
A better point for the exploration of the solar system is *when* can we set up a complete solar system that involves an information discovery and transmission system system which exceeds that which humans can carry out!
The recent proposal to send humans to Mars is idiotic. I.e. we send take months and god knows how many $$ to send a few humans to Mars and then bring them back. What kind of an idiotic idea is that? One should be engaged (and I hope the folks at NASA are reading this) in a serious discussion of what is the information retrieval rate of a space probe (robotic explorer, etc.) vs.a human being?
And so the discussion should be when the light speed transmission of information across the solar system will exceed the mass transport of humans across the solar system?
Yes, I'm aware of that. I even wrote a paper discussing possible biological to non-biological paths for producing an assembler 6+ years ago. The pace of development is extremely slow given the fact that there are only a few labs working in these areas (e.g. alternative coding systems).
Most of the fuels in use today are ultimately biologically derived. They are not however derived in a sustainable fashion. The sustainable part is only achieved when we either switch to hydrogen which has significant transport problems or an approach which takes out of the atmosphere the carbon we put into the atmosphere. For that to work one needs cheap efficient solar energy which is something nanoassemblers could provide. Please don't throw photosynthesis back at me because the conversion efficiency of crops is below even really poor solar cells.
They missed the single critical factor -- "Design and construct a molecular nanoassembler." If one has one, then shortly thereafter one can have many. Then one can have nanorobots, then one can have indefinite longevity (limited by ones selected hazard function) and nanofactories (aka Star Trek type 'replicators'). The problem is that people don't recognize the design and assembly of something with 4 to 8 million atoms is a problem that can be solved (each/. reader could be responsible for a couple of dozen atoms). Given nanorobots and nanofactories most of the other "challenges" become fairly trivial.
If you want a nearly impossible problem, one might pick redesigning humans to withstand the radiation hazards of months to years of living or traveling in interplanetary space.
And before the trolls respond to this comment calling me crazy I would request that you answer the question, "Have you read the relevant literature?" I have.
The question "Will quantum computers let us transcend the human condition and become as powerful as gods?" is completely silly. Becoming "as gods" requires the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic level. It requires "real molecular nanotechnology" as promoted by Drexler, Merkle & Freitas. It requires actual general purpose molecular assemblers, nanorobots of various types (as described by extensive detail by Freitas in various papers and books) and general purpose macroscale nanofactories (Star Trek "replicators"). None of those things involve breaking any laws of physics or the type of computational capacity or teleportation communications that might be provided by pushing on the laws of physics through quantum mechanical waving of hands.
"Transcending the human condition" requires being able to manipulate real matter -- preferably, precisely at the atomic scale -- not being able to factor 1024 digit numbers.
When everyone is uploaded and expanded their intelligence by ~10^13 times their current level [1] -- *then* it may be time to worry about having to lean on quantum limits. And even then, the people left behind on the few planets, comets, etc. remaining may *still* have reason to consider the manipulation of molecules and atoms (energy, food, external hazards, etc.) as more important than the entanglement of particles at the quantum level. When you show me a quantum computer that can design *real* molecular machine parts (as Merkle & Drexler have done), then I'll be interested. Before then its sound and fury signifying nothing.
While exploring these areas may be of interest to a few theoretical physicists they are are little importance to millions around the world who lack clean water to drink or food to eat.
1. A Matrishoska Brain has ~10^24 times the computational capacity of the human brain. Matrioshka Brains are massive supercomputers operating within single solar system at a full Kardashev Type II civilization power consumption level. Assuming ~10^11 human minds, uploading (or linking) all of them allows each of them to expand their computational capacity 10^13 times (i.e. each individual has more thought capability than all of humanity currently has) [assuming of course the computational resources are distributed equally among current and near term future humans and run away absconding with the computational resources of the solar system by a runaway AI is prevented].
It *is* "remotely possible to stop using coal or oil" -- *if* we are willing to pay for it. I'd suggest you go do some math regarding the mass of solar cells that would be required to equal the energy supplied by all of our oil imports (for starters) and the mass of all of the oil refined every year or the mass of all of the ships, tanks, guns, etc. that were built in WWII.
Its not a technology problem. We know how to build the solar cells or wind turbines (which is a form of solar energy). We know how to build the electric cars. Its a will and leadership problem.
I'm not saying it is impossible to use CO2 from the atmosphere as an input. Plants do it. But they have a *lot* of surface area to harvest CO2 which is only present at hundreds of ppm levels. We have the same problem with harvesting CO2 from the atmosphere that we have with harvesting solar power from the sun -- one has to produce relatively complex molecular structures, which are hopefully lightweight, at high surface area to mass (cost) ratios.
If we solve those problems for solar cells, we may be on the path to solving it for carbon sequestration -- but I expect it will be at costs significantly higher than we currently pay for energy from ancient reduced carbon sources. (Carbon sequestration fees are essentially a tax on our semi-sustainable use of ancient solar energy. We *will* eventually use up all of the ancient solar energy resources.)
I don't think we will solve either the inexpensive solar energy or inexpensive carbon sequestration problems without a far amount of bionanotechnology or "hard" nanotechnology (diamondoid and robust molecular manufacturing) being applied and I'd guess we are 10+ years away from the first and 25+ years away from the second.
So long as any of the carbon in the cycle is coming from sources currently in the ground or oceans (e.g. coal, oil, natural gas, or methane clathrates). I.e. we are harvesting energy by oxidizing previously reduced carbon -- it is NOT RENEWABLE or SUSTAINABLE!
The only cycles which potentially work over the long term are: (a) solar; (b) fusion reactors; (c) breeder reactors; (d) thorium fuel cycle reactors. That is probably in decreasing order of length of time we could sustain our civilization off of those sources (your opinions may differ).
The coal power plant output conversion of CO2 to liquid fuels simply shifts the problem from an CO2 source one can easily sequester (coal plant smokestacks) to one which is much less easy to sequester (automobile exhausts). You have a fundamental problem here which is when are we going to incorporate the cost of "full sustainability" into our energy costs? That means any carbon you put into the atmosphere you pay to take back out of the atmosphere. Ideally you do more than that to reduce atomospheric CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels [1], i.e. you are taking more CO2 out of the atmosphere than you are putting into it. We are currently very far from being able to do that.
So long as we continue to live off of the reduced carbon sources (stored solar energy harvested by plants hundreds of millions of years ago) and don't fully pay for them we have a real problem.
Robert
1. Or humanity makes a decision to allow the glaciers and icecaps to melt, the sea levels rise a bit, some islands and low lying areas get flooded, weather patterns to change a bit *and* spends the money necessary to mitigate the negative effects of these processes.
"We don't talk to nematodes and they don't talk to us."
-- Robert J. Bradbury
Any advanced extraterrestrial civilization (those with sufficient spare energy resources and technology to communicate with non-local civilizations) will have the material and energy resources to build billions of lunar diameter telescopes which can be arranged in interferometric arrays to observe in great detail planets such as ours. They will understand at our current level of development we have nothing to offer them and so communication is a waste of time and energy.
Only when humans make the transition to a KT-II civilization might we become interesting from a communications standpoint and even that is open to significant debate. What does one talk about with civilizations millions or even billions of years younger than ones own?
Dedicate your CPU cycles to something which will clearly advance the state of our science as we know it (e.g. Folding@Home or one of the other biological distributed computing projects) -- not some wild goose chase based on 45+ year old concepts (classical SETI) which have not been properly reexamined.
While there may be a high probability that there are Extraterrestrial Civilizations, the probability that they are now at the state of the Earth's 21st century development is extremely low. It is much more likely that they are far behind us or far ahead of us. If they are far ahead of us then the development of nanotechnology will allow them to build telesopes 100, 1000, 10,000 m in diameter with mirrors accurate to the atomic scale. They will be able to launch (or build) arrays of these in space. They will be able to connect them as interferometers. They will be able to observe the Earth in great detail. The article cited is an extremely anthropocentric article focused on perhaps the next 10-20 years of our own development which fails to take into account what our capabilities will be in 50 years.
It is also not true that one needs a "protective atmosphere". One can easily engineer biochemical systems which are highly tolerant of UV radiation and have much better DNA repair capabilities than those which currently exist. The problem is to be able to evolve such systems. One might expect that the process of climbing out of the oceans would be a bit slower in such environments.
That is different. What you have there is incomplete separation of two legitimate separation of two complete twins. Twins do not normally "absorb" one another. You can have cases where you fail to have complete identical twin separation, one twin dies and the other twin ends up with the extra body parts. The recent case in India of a child with 4 arms and 4 legs is an example that required 3 days of surgery to correct is an example.
As pointed out by others, injecting embryonic stem cells into individuals is problematic due to the risks of teratoma. The process of development is a gradual process of differentiation into different cell types and most therapies work with partially differentiated stem cells. So one still has the problem of taking the stem cell lines and differentiating the cells into bone marrow (blood), nerve, liver, kidney, muscle, skin, etc. cells for specific applications.
I have just filed a provisional patent application on a process for isolating self-pristine partially differentiated stem cells which I believe can be brought within the realm of affordability. I don't know about others but I would be much more comfortable, particularly at the neuron level, being treated with my own stem cells rather than someone elses even if they are HLA matched. The only good reason in my mind to use foreign stem cells is to correct severe biochemical defects if no gene therapies are available.
While I am not a fan of many things Congress does, the banning of humans on Mars is one of the most sensible things I've seen in ages. Humans are not designed to travel or survive interplanetary voyages. The most sensible course until the human genome can be redesigned for such expeditions -- which could take decades -- is to ban any and all attempts to send humans there.
Give NASA goals, such as sending robotic missions where we would like to explore. Do not send machines, i.e. human bodies, to places they where they are poorly designed for the environment.
Actually, I did not post a question but more of a commentary discussing why understanding aging is potentially much more important that a physical TOE (in terms of potential lives saved). So here is an alternate TOE, how many lives does it directly impact in the near term future? So here is an alternate theory of aging? If it happens to be correct how many lives does it directly impact in the near term future?
Duh?
Yes, I understand that the theories descend down to the molecular biologies and thence the therapies. But where you and I seem to part company is in the fundamental recognition that we can make it happen if we simply choose to do so. We did it in WW I. We did it in WW II. We did it when we launched and landed men on the moon. We could do it again.
Yes, I largely agree.The topic of this item generally pertained to the TOE strongly tied to physics. And my primary point was that while this may be interesting in theory, it may be less interesting in practice. And the discussion that might be more interesting is the practical applications of general physics TOE vs. causes and solutions of aging TOE. Or simply aging TOE in general. These are very different discussions.
And I'll admit that this may not be the forum in which to discuss this on/. The proper forum would be a robust topic under engineering extended human longevity and how the human genetic program needs to be altered to enable that.
Yes, I understand such concepts as "antagonistic pleiotropy" and would argue that your assertions that it may have been selected for are unproven. They are particularly unproven in a set of K-selected vs. R-selected species.
(It may be wise to ascertain whom you are speaking with on/. before responding.)
While I agree with assertion that there is little selection pressure for the "aged" and "wise" in natural species, we now have it within our power to change that -- so individuals do not age (though we will clearly have to reengineer the genome to achieve this) and knowledge and/or wisdom might accumulate over centuries rather than just decades.
You cannot confine the discussion to simply cosmology. The TOE debate involves much larger aspects of physics and physics research, including all astronomy observations, satellite observatories, earth based observatories, particle accelerators, efforts to develop fusion power, etc. All of these I would classify under efforts to develop a TOE.
I would agree, that if one did a robust accounting, it would be open to some discussion as to where physics falls with respect to biology. At least in the U.S. I would tend to argue both are in the tens of billions of dollars range.
But my point stands. Any TOE does *not* impact each and every one of us to the extent that aging and for most of us our eventual deaths does. So one can easily argue -- solve living first -- solve the other stuff later.
Your explanation is not far off of the mark (in terms of the true causes of aging). But you fail to wrestle with the variability question sufficiently. I have a picture or myself standing in front of a several thousand year old Sequoia tree. And yet the maximum any human has lived is 122 years. But Bowhead whales, tortoises and quahogs may live significantly longer.
I agree that there are tradeoffs involved and would argue that the time has come to take command of the situation and shift the equation from reproductivity towards longevity.
And there is a reasonable argument that could be made that the amount of money being spent on understanding the nature of the universe could be better spent on extending human lifespans.
One might be able to come up with a "TOE" in physics, But it should be recognized that this is highly limited. It does not for example explain why aging occurs, something which also effects each of us.
While it is highly interesting to understand how the universe works -- it would be equally interesting to understand precisely what kills each and every one of us -- so perhaps we could engineer solutions to it.
So here are two questions in life -- "How is the Universe constructed?" and "Why does aging occur (and how can I stop it)"? I believe the importance of answers to the second far far outweigh answers to the first.
The amount of energy and attention devoted to the first question seems to me to be far in excess of the amount of attention which should be devoted to the second.
If you are talking old, 1960's or 70's style SETI, involving radio searches for signals that they are sending to us then the answer is NO. Scientists of that era, which defined the basis for these searches failed to understand the capacities of a civilization advanced even a few decades beyond where we currently are. Freeman Dyson began to understand it in 1960 when he explored the requirement for the disassembly of Jupiter. But at that time, there were few serious concepts regarding nanotechnology, Feynman even in 1959 understood to some extent but not in detail. That had to await the publication of Drexler's Nanosystems PhD thesis in 1992. If one understands microbiology (and exponential growth) and one understands Nanosystems then the disassembly of planets becomes straightforward. The prediction of the probable evolution of intelligence is more problematic. But it seems clear that it happens fast and that they would have the same desire to speak with us that we have with speaking to insects.
You can however detect advanced civilizations if they take their star dark. So the question is "What is the rate at which stars are disappearing?" [1]. If our current records show it to be very low, then intelligent civilizations are very very hard.
1. You may not understand this statement unless you understand concepts like Dyson Shells, Jupiter Brains and Matrioshka Brains. Until you have done the research to comprehend these concepts I would encourage not commenting on this comment. I have spent several years reading the literature, and it is probable that I will take you to the cleaners in the event of a misstatement.
I would be inclined to agree. Spitzer isn't really equipped to study the really interesting (longer) IR wavelengths. Nor is SOFIA. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a strong interest in an IR survey telescope. Perhaps a telescope on the far side of the moon would be a good idea but it seems likely that will be a decade or more away.
Slashdot Mirror
No, not a moon. I am merely saying that when you only know its mass (or diameter) and or perhaps its orbital period, its a leap to go claiming something is a "planet".
Just FYI, the papers by Lineweaver's groups suggest that ~70% of the "Earths" in our galaxy are older than ours, some of them much much older. That leaves plenty of time for them to have developed the technology to disassemble and reassemble planetary sized masses (indeed if we develop robust nanotechnology in this century we will probably have such capabilities ourselves). A "reassembled" planet should not be called a planet -- it should be called a satellite.
In case you haven't checked the reports, the scientists have not *seen* the object. Nor have they *seen* any of the other objects they so quickly claim are exoplanets.
If all you know are its mass, or diameter, and perhaps its orbital period that is insufficient information to claim it is a "planet". It should be a very large artificial satellite.
The astronomers are operating off of an assumption that the universe is dead (and therefore natural). Ooopps, then we probably shouldn't be here... They need to go read the papers by Charlie Lineweaver's group which document how *most* of the advanced technological civilizations in our galaxy may be much, much older than our own.
This policy by Microsoft of "forcing" one to upgrade to newer products which are becoming ever more "controlled" by Microsoft (I'm waiting for the release where one cannot turn off automatic upgrades) is yet another reason to switch to Linux NOW.
The problem with this type of hypothesis is that it fails to recognize the difference that "real" molecular nanotechnology will create. I'm not talking about the "playtime" nanotechnology that the NIH started promoting several years ago. I'm talking the real thing that Drexler, Merkle, Freitas, etc. envision.
Educating any scientist with a five or ten year horizon without a clear perspective about how much things will shift when MNT arrives is pointless.
Scientists at IBM recently calculated the force of moving single atoms around. This is on top of their accomplishments a decade or more ago of actually moving the atoms around. Duh! We are slowly, arguably too slowly, moving down the road to MNT.
So unless we move at the pace of sub-snails, all future projection scenarios, particularly those involving decade or longer time frames have to include nanotechnology.
Re:
"affirmative right and freedom to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution"
Gawd, what an awful attempt to run around reality! First one has "objectively present" -- anyone trying to work around evolution is unlikely to be "objective". Second "full range", don't get me started. This lets not only the creationists but the Raelians into the classroom (and the Raelians have a far more credible hypothesis than the creationists!). Third, "views regarding biological and chemical evolution". Chemistry does not "evolve". Chemistry is dictated by the laws of physics. So, this law would allow one to teach that the laws of physics do not exist??
While I will allow that the U.S. Constitution prohibits the "abridging the freedom of the speech" we have to allow the promotion of stupidity is probably a really bad idea.
A better point for the exploration of the solar system is *when* can we set up a complete solar system that involves an information discovery and transmission system system which exceeds that which humans can carry out!
The recent proposal to send humans to Mars is idiotic. I.e. we send take months and god knows how many $$ to send a few humans to Mars and then bring them back. What kind of an idiotic idea is that? One should be engaged (and I hope the folks at NASA are reading this) in a serious discussion of what is the information retrieval rate of a space probe (robotic explorer, etc.) vs.a human being?
And so the discussion should be when the light speed transmission of information across the solar system will exceed the mass transport of humans across the solar system?
Yes, I'm aware of that. I even wrote a paper discussing possible biological to non-biological paths for producing an assembler 6+ years ago. The pace of development is extremely slow given the fact that there are only a few labs working in these areas (e.g. alternative coding systems).
Most of the fuels in use today are ultimately biologically derived. They are not however derived in a sustainable fashion. The sustainable part is only achieved when we either switch to hydrogen which has significant transport problems or an approach which takes out of the atmosphere the carbon we put into the atmosphere. For that to work one needs cheap efficient solar energy which is something nanoassemblers could provide. Please don't throw photosynthesis back at me because the conversion efficiency of crops is below even really poor solar cells.
They missed the single critical factor -- "Design and construct a molecular nanoassembler." If one has one, then shortly thereafter one can have many. Then one can have nanorobots, then one can have indefinite longevity (limited by ones selected hazard function) and nanofactories (aka Star Trek type 'replicators'). The problem is that people don't recognize the design and assembly of something with 4 to 8 million atoms is a problem that can be solved (each /. reader could be responsible for a couple of dozen atoms). Given nanorobots and nanofactories most of the other "challenges" become fairly trivial.
If you want a nearly impossible problem, one might pick redesigning humans to withstand the radiation hazards of months to years of living or traveling in interplanetary space.
And before the trolls respond to this comment calling me crazy I would request that you answer the question, "Have you read the relevant literature?" I have.
The question "Will quantum computers let us transcend the human condition and become as powerful as gods?" is completely silly. Becoming "as gods" requires the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic level. It requires "real molecular nanotechnology" as promoted by Drexler, Merkle & Freitas. It requires actual general purpose molecular assemblers, nanorobots of various types (as described by extensive detail by Freitas in various papers and books) and general purpose macroscale nanofactories (Star Trek "replicators"). None of those things involve breaking any laws of physics or the type of computational capacity or teleportation communications that might be provided by pushing on the laws of physics through quantum mechanical waving of hands.
"Transcending the human condition" requires being able to manipulate real matter -- preferably, precisely at the atomic scale -- not being able to factor 1024 digit numbers.
When everyone is uploaded and expanded their intelligence by ~10^13 times their current level [1] -- *then* it may be time to worry about having to lean on quantum limits. And even then, the people left behind on the few planets, comets, etc. remaining may *still* have reason to consider the manipulation of molecules and atoms (energy, food, external hazards, etc.) as more important than the entanglement of particles at the quantum level. When you show me a quantum computer that can design *real* molecular machine parts (as Merkle & Drexler have done), then I'll be interested. Before then its sound and fury signifying nothing.
While exploring these areas may be of interest to a few theoretical physicists they are are little importance to millions around the world who lack clean water to drink or food to eat.
1. A Matrishoska Brain has ~10^24 times the computational capacity of the human brain. Matrioshka Brains are massive supercomputers operating within single solar system at a full Kardashev Type II civilization power consumption level. Assuming ~10^11 human minds, uploading (or linking) all of them allows each of them to expand their computational capacity 10^13 times (i.e. each individual has more thought capability than all of humanity currently has) [assuming of course the computational resources are distributed equally among current and near term future humans and run away absconding with the computational resources of the solar system by a runaway AI is prevented].
It *is* "remotely possible to stop using coal or oil" -- *if* we are willing to pay for it. I'd suggest you go do some math regarding the mass of solar cells that would be required to equal the energy supplied by all of our oil imports (for starters) and the mass of all of the oil refined every year or the mass of all of the ships, tanks, guns, etc. that were built in WWII.
Its not a technology problem. We know how to build the solar cells or wind turbines (which is a form of solar energy). We know how to build the electric cars. Its a will and leadership problem.
Robert
I'm not saying it is impossible to use CO2 from the atmosphere as an input. Plants do it. But they have a *lot* of surface area to harvest CO2 which is only present at hundreds of ppm levels. We have the same problem with harvesting CO2 from the atmosphere that we have with harvesting solar power from the sun -- one has to produce relatively complex molecular structures, which are hopefully lightweight, at high surface area to mass (cost) ratios.
If we solve those problems for solar cells, we may be on the path to solving it for carbon sequestration -- but I expect it will be at costs significantly higher than we currently pay for energy from ancient reduced carbon sources. (Carbon sequestration fees are essentially a tax on our semi-sustainable use of ancient solar energy. We *will* eventually use up all of the ancient solar energy resources.)
I don't think we will solve either the inexpensive solar energy or inexpensive carbon sequestration problems without a far amount of bionanotechnology or "hard" nanotechnology (diamondoid and robust molecular manufacturing) being applied and I'd guess we are 10+ years away from the first and 25+ years away from the second.
Robert
So long as any of the carbon in the cycle is coming from sources currently in the ground or oceans (e.g. coal, oil, natural gas, or methane clathrates). I.e. we are harvesting energy by oxidizing previously reduced carbon -- it is NOT RENEWABLE or SUSTAINABLE!
The only cycles which potentially work over the long term are: (a) solar; (b) fusion reactors; (c) breeder reactors; (d) thorium fuel cycle reactors. That is probably in decreasing order of length of time we could sustain our civilization off of those sources (your opinions may differ).
The coal power plant output conversion of CO2 to liquid fuels simply shifts the problem from an CO2 source one can easily sequester (coal plant smokestacks) to one which is much less easy to sequester (automobile exhausts). You have a fundamental problem here which is when are we going to incorporate the cost of "full sustainability" into our energy costs? That means any carbon you put into the atmosphere you pay to take back out of the atmosphere. Ideally you do more than that to reduce atomospheric CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels [1], i.e. you are taking more CO2 out of the atmosphere than you are putting into it. We are currently very far from being able to do that.
So long as we continue to live off of the reduced carbon sources (stored solar energy harvested by plants hundreds of millions of years ago) and don't fully pay for them we have a real problem.
Robert
1. Or humanity makes a decision to allow the glaciers and icecaps to melt, the sea levels rise a bit, some islands and low lying areas get flooded, weather patterns to change a bit *and* spends the money necessary to mitigate the negative effects of these processes.
"We don't talk to nematodes and they don't talk to us."
-- Robert J. Bradbury
Any advanced extraterrestrial civilization (those with sufficient spare energy resources and technology to communicate with non-local civilizations) will have the material and energy resources to build billions of lunar diameter telescopes which can be arranged in interferometric arrays to observe in great detail planets such as ours. They will understand at our current level of development we have nothing to offer them and so communication is a waste of time and energy.
Only when humans make the transition to a KT-II civilization might we become interesting from a communications standpoint and even that is open to significant debate. What does one talk about with civilizations millions or even billions of years younger than ones own?
Dedicate your CPU cycles to something which will clearly advance the state of our science as we know it (e.g. Folding@Home or one of the other biological distributed computing projects) -- not some wild goose chase based on 45+ year old concepts (classical SETI) which have not been properly reexamined.
While there may be a high probability that there are Extraterrestrial Civilizations, the probability that they are now at the state of the Earth's 21st century development is extremely low. It is much more likely that they are far behind us or far ahead of us. If they are far ahead of us then the development of nanotechnology will allow them to build telesopes 100, 1000, 10,000 m in diameter with mirrors accurate to the atomic scale. They will be able to launch (or build) arrays of these in space. They will be able to connect them as interferometers. They will be able to observe the Earth in great detail. The article cited is an extremely anthropocentric article focused on perhaps the next 10-20 years of our own development which fails to take into account what our capabilities will be in 50 years.
It is also not true that one needs a "protective atmosphere". One can easily engineer biochemical systems which are highly tolerant of UV radiation and have much better DNA repair capabilities than those which currently exist. The problem is to be able to evolve such systems. One might expect that the process of climbing out of the oceans would be a bit slower in such environments.
That is different. What you have there is incomplete separation of two legitimate separation of two complete twins. Twins do not normally "absorb" one another. You can have cases where you fail to have complete identical twin separation, one twin dies and the other twin ends up with the extra body parts. The recent case in India of a child with 4 arms and 4 legs is an example that required 3 days of surgery to correct is an example.
As pointed out by others, injecting embryonic stem cells into individuals is problematic due to the risks of teratoma. The process of development is a gradual process of differentiation into different cell types and most therapies work with partially differentiated stem cells. So one still has the problem of taking the stem cell lines and differentiating the cells into bone marrow (blood), nerve, liver, kidney, muscle, skin, etc. cells for specific applications.
I have just filed a provisional patent application on a process for isolating self-pristine partially differentiated stem cells which I believe can be brought within the realm of affordability. I don't know about others but I would be much more comfortable, particularly at the neuron level, being treated with my own stem cells rather than someone elses even if they are HLA matched. The only good reason in my mind to use foreign stem cells is to correct severe biochemical defects if no gene therapies are available.
While I am not a fan of many things Congress does, the banning of humans on Mars is one of the most sensible things I've seen in ages. Humans are not designed to travel or survive interplanetary voyages. The most sensible course until the human genome can be redesigned for such expeditions -- which could take decades -- is to ban any and all attempts to send humans there.
Give NASA goals, such as sending robotic missions where we would like to explore. Do not send machines, i.e. human bodies, to places they where they are poorly designed for the environment.
Actually, I did not post a question but more of a commentary discussing why understanding aging is potentially much more important that a physical TOE (in terms of potential lives saved). So here is an alternate TOE, how many lives does it directly impact in the near term future? So here is an alternate theory of aging? If it happens to be correct how many lives does it directly impact in the near term future?
Duh?
Yes, I understand that the theories descend down to the molecular biologies and thence the therapies. But where you and I seem to part company is in the fundamental recognition that we can make it happen if we simply choose to do so. We did it in WW I. We did it in WW II. We did it when we launched and landed men on the moon. We could do it again.
Re: AlpineR's comments.
/. The proper forum would be a robust topic under engineering extended human longevity and how the human genetic program needs to be altered to enable that.
Yes, I largely agree.The topic of this item generally pertained to the TOE strongly tied to physics. And my primary point was that while this may be interesting in theory, it may be less interesting in practice. And the discussion that might be more interesting is the practical applications of general physics TOE vs. causes and solutions of aging TOE. Or simply aging TOE in general. These are very different discussions.
And I'll admit that this may not be the forum in which to discuss this on
Yes, I understand such concepts as "antagonistic pleiotropy" and would argue that your assertions that it may have been selected for are unproven. They are particularly unproven in a set of K-selected vs. R-selected species.
/. before responding.)
(It may be wise to ascertain whom you are speaking with on
While I agree with assertion that there is little selection pressure for the "aged" and "wise" in natural species, we now have it within our power to change that -- so individuals do not age (though we will clearly have to reengineer the genome to achieve this) and knowledge and/or wisdom might accumulate over centuries rather than just decades.
You cannot confine the discussion to simply cosmology. The TOE debate involves much larger aspects of physics and physics research, including all astronomy observations, satellite observatories, earth based observatories, particle accelerators, efforts to develop fusion power, etc. All of these I would classify under efforts to develop a TOE.
I would agree, that if one did a robust accounting, it would be open to some discussion as to where physics falls with respect to biology. At least in the U.S. I would tend to argue both are in the tens of billions of dollars range.
But my point stands. Any TOE does *not* impact each and every one of us to the extent that aging and for most of us our eventual deaths does. So one can easily argue -- solve living first -- solve the other stuff later.
Your explanation is not far off of the mark (in terms of the true causes of aging). But you fail to wrestle with the variability question sufficiently. I have a picture or myself standing in front of a several thousand year old Sequoia tree. And yet the maximum any human has lived is 122 years. But Bowhead whales, tortoises and quahogs may live significantly longer.
I agree that there are tradeoffs involved and would argue that the time has come to take command of the situation and shift the equation from reproductivity towards longevity.
And there is a reasonable argument that could be made that the amount of money being spent on understanding the nature of the universe could be better spent on extending human lifespans.
One might be able to come up with a "TOE" in physics, But it should be recognized that this is highly limited. It does not for example explain why aging occurs, something which also effects each of us.
While it is highly interesting to understand how the universe works -- it would be equally interesting to understand precisely what kills each and every one of us -- so perhaps we could engineer solutions to it.
So here are two questions in life -- "How is the Universe constructed?" and "Why does aging occur (and how can I stop it)"? I believe the importance of answers to the second far far outweigh answers to the first.
The amount of energy and attention devoted to the first question seems to me to be far in excess of the amount of attention which should be devoted to the second.
Robert
If you are talking old, 1960's or 70's style SETI, involving radio searches for signals that they are sending to us then the answer is NO. Scientists of that era, which defined the basis for these searches failed to understand the capacities of a civilization advanced even a few decades beyond where we currently are. Freeman Dyson began to understand it in 1960 when he explored the requirement for the disassembly of Jupiter. But at that time, there were few serious concepts regarding nanotechnology, Feynman even in 1959 understood to some extent but not in detail. That had to await the publication of Drexler's Nanosystems PhD thesis in 1992. If one understands microbiology (and exponential growth) and one understands Nanosystems then the disassembly of planets becomes straightforward. The prediction of the probable evolution of intelligence is more problematic. But it seems clear that it happens fast and that they would have the same desire to speak with us that we have with speaking to insects. You can however detect advanced civilizations if they take their star dark. So the question is "What is the rate at which stars are disappearing?" [1]. If our current records show it to be very low, then intelligent civilizations are very very hard. 1. You may not understand this statement unless you understand concepts like Dyson Shells, Jupiter Brains and Matrioshka Brains. Until you have done the research to comprehend these concepts I would encourage not commenting on this comment. I have spent several years reading the literature, and it is probable that I will take you to the cleaners in the event of a misstatement.
I would be inclined to agree. Spitzer isn't really equipped to study the really interesting (longer) IR wavelengths. Nor is SOFIA. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a strong interest in an IR survey telescope. Perhaps a telescope on the far side of the moon would be a good idea but it seems likely that will be a decade or more away.