It might be possible that under the right conditions, DNA can last for quite awhile. DNA is a pretty rugged molecule. In the absence of metabolic processes and no other type external interactions, DNA could hang around for awhile.
At my place of employment, we have a several servers set up up in our lab. All see some pretty good loads. They all run Windows.
In the past three years, we've had to reboot them twice. Once was when we had a power outage. The second was after a full round of patches.
We also have a CVS server on Gentoo Linux that see's a decent amount of activity. Again, we had to reboot it twice. Once for the power outage, and once when something went haywire with the server (never figured out what caused the problem, but it's been fine ever since).
In short, they both seem pretty stable. But people are more comfortable with what they know. Someone who knows linux well will be able to set up a server and make it rock solid. The same goes for someone who knows Windows.
I admit I don't know linux well, and everytime I've tried it out on my home machine I get weird crashes, invisible hardware, or other such problems. I don't go around saying Linux sucks because of it though, as I'm not afraid to admit that it's my own ignorance (not configuring things correctly, botching a script, etc.).
At the same time, I've only had one BSOD with windows XP and that was due to a bad device driver. However, I'm very familiar with Windows OS's and I knew how to fix the problem immediately.
According to some quick calculations, Mars receives roughly 700 W/m^2 and Venus receives around 2400 W/m^2.
If Earth were in a Mars orbit, I find it hard to believe that it would just barely be liveable, especially during the Cretaceous period when CO2 concetrations were much much higher. Certainly, Earth wouldn't have had a global average of 98 F, but it would definately be a tolerable place to live.
Earth now in the Mars orbit would be chilly, but still hospitable to life. After all, we have microbes that feed off of methane ice on the sea floor. That's pretty damn cold.
Earth as it is now could be a hot but habitable planet in a Venus orbit (not necessarily for humans though). It all depends on how fast Earth dissipates heat (I'm not sure of the rate).
Which brings me to why Venus's spin does have something to do with how high temperatures formed on Venus.
Let's say Venus was a lot like Earth, with some large bodies of water. If the planet had a normal day (and the atmosphere wasn't choked with CO2), then there's a decent chance that it would be hospitable. Not to human life, as day time temps would average close to the century mark on average, but we've had life forms that lived quite comfortably in those circumstances.
But Venus has an incredibly long day. Any water or life on the day side would get baked, while on the night side everything would freeze. Any oceans on the day side would vaporize since they would have no downtime to radiate the heat back into space. When you start introducing water vapor (from boiled oceans) and higher concentrations of CO2, you get a really good greenhouse effect.
Instead of cold on one side and hot on the other, you have completely burnt all over.
Of course, this may have still happened if Venus had Earth days (depending on atmospheric content, reflectivity, etc.) but it probably would have taken a long time.
"Also, Earth's interior energy does not heat the surface. (Although it does allow for a magnetic field.) At least not noticably."
I never said it did so appreciably, but there is some heat there. As opposed to a planet like Mars where it is most likely that no heat comes from it's core.
I'm not well versed in astro-meteorology or the models they use, but this seems like common sense to me.
You're forgetting speeding up the rotation to be about an earth day.
Green house gases or not, any planet that has a 288 day long day at venus's orbit is going to be baked planet.
Get rid of the green house gases, speed up the days, and add an earthlike atmosphere and water and you basically get a warmer Earth. Temps at the equator would most likely be too warm for most people, but the more northern and southern latitudes would be quite liveable. And the extreme latitudes would probably be no different than the northern US.
Solar proximity is only one of the determining factors for hospitable planets.
For example, take Earth and put it in Mars orbit. You don't get a frozen barren planet. You get a cooler planet for sure, but one that would still harbor life quite comfortably.
Put Earth in Venus's orbit, and you get a waremer world for sure, but one that could still harbor life.
Earth isn't Earth just because of where it's located. Our gravity allows for our planet to maintain an atmosphere. We have enough water on our planet to maintain a regulatory climate. Our planets core is active enough to maintain a magnetic shield, as well as infuse the surface with an amount of heat.
Mars is a frozen barren world because it doesn't have the gravity to maintain an atmosphere over the long haul, let alone retain much in the way of water vapor. It's planetary core is pretty much dormant. There's nothing to regulate climate or heat. So even though the equator can reach around 60 F during th days, it loses all that heat almost as soon as the sun goes down.
Venus is a sweltering oven because it spins on it's axis once every 288 days. There is no way the planet can dissipate all that thermal energy. Even if it had an earthlike make-up, the planet would soon die in a runaway greenhouse effect due to the fact that one side of the planet was being baked for so long.
And there's always a chance that thermogenic planets exist (planets that produce enough internal heat that the surface could support life regardless of where it is located).
Location is a major player, but so is makeup. Take our atmosphere and cut it by 50% and we'd be a bit colder at night.
That is a gross oversimplification of the reasons behind exploring other worlds.
"Mars is an inhospitable desert."
So is the moon. So are several areas on our own planet. That doesn't mean it's worthless to go there and explore. Or even live.
"We can't do much research there that wouldn't be better done here, except for investigating Mars itself."
Not true. Mars has about a 1/4 of Earth's gravity. That makes doing a bunch of sustained low g research extremely easy to do on Mars, while on Earth it is much harder to simulate for years at a time. Building observatories on Olympus Mons could yield very impressive results. The low g's would make it much easier to build giant telescopes, and the extremely thin atmosphere would allow very clear views. And that's just an appetizer.
"It's not profitable, and Earth is still inhabitable enough so that establishing colonies on Mars isn't necessary."
You're making a statement that you don't know for sure is true. Mars could indeed be very profitable if the right resources are there. But we won't know that until we get there.
Earth's inhabitability will quickly diminish if the population rate doesn't slow down soon. We'll see Earth hitting theoretical max capacity within our lifetimes. Whether we want to or not, at some point soon we'll need to expand off this rock.
That is unless you don't mind draconian laws regarding reproduction.
Every time I see "porn is bad", I automatically think "WTF?".
None of us would be here without porn. Period. At some point, two people got naked and erotic and 9 months later squirted you out.
You are here because two people got horny and fucked.
We are pre-programmed by nature to get turned on and fuck. That's what we do. That's what any creature on this Earth does if it wants to continue propagating the species.
The fact that most individuals get turned on by watching other people fucking is similar to watching someone eating really delicious food. If you're hungry, you get hungrier and want some of your own.
Some people go make their own food, others go and pay for it. In the end, you're still satisfying a need dictated by nature.
And just like food, some people won't eat certain kinds of food. Some will only eat spicy food. Some will only eat exotic foods. Some eat to little, some eat too much.
Porn/Sex is no different. People like all kinds of different things. Some like vibrators, some like whips and chains. Some get really turned on by a 6' tall red head stepping on eggs in high heels. And yes, lots of people like watching other people fuck, whether it's the neighbors or the latest DVD of Blondie and The Football Team.
You don't like anal, fine don't watch it. It's no different than you not liking mayo.
But a lot of people like it mayo, and a lot of people like porn (porn isn't a billion dollar industry for nothing).
Sometimes, I think half this country's problem is more people just need to get laid.
Mars is not outside the temperate zone, it's out of the temperate size.
Mars is not large enough to hold an atmosphere, which is essential for holding on to heat. During the summer near the equator, temperatures can reach 60 F even with the thin atmosphere. But at night, this plummets to around -120 F because all the heat radiates off into space.
With an atmospheric composition such as ours (and if it could hold onto it), Mars would be more like a cooler version of the Earth.
Another source of heat energy we have on Earth comes from our core. Our planet is still active, and as such we get heat energy from our planet as well. All current data shows Mars as being geologically dead.
So not only can it not retain heat absorbed from the sun, it also has no source of it's own heat.
A younger Mars may have had a thicker atmosphere and an active core (along with shallow oceans), so life could have developed early on. But over time, the planet lost it's atmosphere, water, and active core. In essence, it died. Though it probably took millions of years to do so.
It's unlikely planets move out of their orbits by that much without external forces. Read up on planetary motion and gravity.
Venus is what happens when the greenhouse effect gets really really bad. The planet is covered by a toxic haze of water vapor, carbon monoxide, and various other compounds. Venus could have been another Earth, if it wasn't for it's rotational speed (1 rotation every 288 days). That leaves the planet facing the sun too long. And since it had a decent atmosphere (and the size to hold onto it), what liquid water was there boiled into the atmosphere. Water vapor traps heat, so the planet got warmer, and so on and so forth. The volcanoes didn't help either. Now, it has an atmospheric pressure 90 times that of Earth, and has a global temperature of around 900 F. Due to the atmosphere, there isn't much dynamic range.
If Venus had a 24 hour day, then there would be a good chance we would have a warmer sister planet Venus. If Mars was larger, we'd have a cooler sister planet Mars.
But that's not how it worked out. One died, one fried, and one stayed alive.
The game industry is lacking good programmers because the game industry lacks good working conditions.
I left the games industry for this very reason. Not only is it quite common to work 6-7 days a week for 12 hours or more a day, but job stability is equivalent to quicksand.
You can't raise a family like that, let alone have much of a life.
The really good programmers go work for places like Google, M$,etc. What you lose in notoriety, you gain in job stabiliy, benefits, and most of the time better pay. You also end up with more reasonable work hours.
It's a real shame though. I love working on games. But I love having a life more.
When I tell my co-workers and friends that I used to make games, they always respond with the envious "Man, that must be the best job!". I quickly inform them otherwise.
Movies aren't much different, according to some of my friends "in the industry".
"Nature, as a whole moves in very slow patterns and makes very slow changes."
Nature can act pretty damn fast when it wants to. Volcanic eruptions can wipe out entire species in single blast. Meteor impacts, methane bubbles, earthquakes all can irrevocably change the environment very quickly. Not to mention diseases.
The poles, once thought to take millions of years to flip, can change much faster than originally thought thanks to to study of lava flows.
And according to ice core samples (which go much further back than 100 or 200 years) indicate that climate change can happen very quickly and drastically.
Even tree rings tell us information going back a couple thousand years.
Point is, nature does whatever it wants to. It can take millions of years, or it can take a fraction of a second.
And doomsday science, as you call it, cannot be summarily ignored. Global warming isn't doomsday science, it's a warning. It would not eradicate life on our planet, or even human life. It will cause problems however. There is a chance that, if left unchecked, we might might might possibly enter a runway effect (look at Venus), but it's unlikley.
Superbugs are a real threat. When you can't treat bacterial infections with antibiotics, what do you do?
Overpopulation, lack of resources, burning through the ones we have, etc...
All of these are real threats that, sooner or later, will have to be dealt with. I prefer sooner.
And what makes you think we'll make it 250 more years? That's ego, arrogance, and/or ignonorance. We will run out of a good chunk of natural resources long before then, world population will far exceed capacity, and we'll have weapons that make nukes look like party poppers.
If we don't start figuring out ways to harmonize with nature and ourselves, we may find ourselves going the way of so many species before us.
Increasing life expentancy by 50% will also discover even more errors in our genetic code.
That's the main reason why we are discovering so many age related ailments. Our code was designed to help us survive to a certain point because that's how long most of us lived. Our lifespans have increased faster than our code could evolve, so after a certain point, we're running in untested conditions. Sometimes we can apply a patch to a problem, other times we can't.
Be that as it may, I think "curing" aging will be a problem for some time. All organisms on earth contain the genetic death code. It's what allowed life to continue on like it has. Reversing this could be difficult.
~X~
For starters, scientist have been proposing growing organs and tissue by coaxing stem cells and growing them on scaffolds. In doing so, and diseased organ be it cancer or otherwise, could simply be replaced or patched without fear of rejection from the patients body.
I would call that a worthy cause.
You have your issues, and that's fine. You're entitled. But others have their own ideas about what's appropriate and what's not.
In that regard, I applaud you with stating your views, and not ramming them down other people's throats.:)
A. Yes the sun's output does vary over time. Does it vary so much as to cause 20 degree temp changes worldwide? Does it happen in the span of a decade or two?
B. Unlikely by natural means. Perhaps if there were a surge of geothermal activity or something. And water vapor doesn't increase without some sort of energy influx (i.e warming). An increase in global water vapor would be a result of planetary warming, not the cause (though it ould contribute to it once it was there).
C. It could be just coincidence that CO2 levels are higher than they've been in the past 400,000 years. It could be just coincidence that this increase happens to coincide with industrialization. It could be just coincidence that all this is happening within the last 60 years or so. But somehow, I doubt it.
D. Have to call you on that one. Google Global Dimming.
E. Yes, natural emissions play a part. But I haven't read any scientific reports regarding any increases in these emissions (and as far as CO2 levels go, they've been within a certain range for thousands of years).
I have read some reports that the warming may end up causing more natural emissions (tundras melting and such).
At best, we are contributing to the problem. At worst, we are the problem.
Regardless, the point is there is a problem. The real questions is what are we going to do about it.
The last time I checked, the Falcon never blew up on launch or incinerated on re-entry.
The Falcon also didn't take 6 months between landings to get ready to fly again.
We have a long way to go.
Even a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away they could still make rusted out, broken down, shit-boxes that could fly circles around government-backed combat spacecraft.
Slashdot Mirror
It might be possible that under the right conditions, DNA can last for quite awhile. DNA is a pretty rugged molecule. In the absence of metabolic processes and no other type external interactions, DNA could hang around for awhile.
~X~
At my place of employment, we have a several servers set up up in our lab. All see some pretty good loads. They all run Windows.
In the past three years, we've had to reboot them twice. Once was when we had a power outage. The second was after a full round of patches.
We also have a CVS server on Gentoo Linux that see's a decent amount of activity. Again, we had to reboot it twice. Once for the power outage, and once when something went haywire with the server (never figured out what caused the problem, but it's been fine ever since).
In short, they both seem pretty stable. But people are more comfortable with what they know. Someone who knows linux well will be able to set up a server and make it rock solid. The same goes for someone who knows Windows.
I admit I don't know linux well, and everytime I've tried it out on my home machine I get weird crashes, invisible hardware, or other such problems. I don't go around saying Linux sucks because of it though, as I'm not afraid to admit that it's my own ignorance (not configuring things correctly, botching a script, etc.).
At the same time, I've only had one BSOD with windows XP and that was due to a bad device driver. However, I'm very familiar with Windows OS's and I knew how to fix the problem immediately.
My $.02
~X~
"Bah...the next thing you know, they'll want me to put comments in my code!"
Just wait till they tell you to use more than two characters for variable names and that you must use whitespace. What a waste of time.
~X~
But...but I thought choice was a good thing?
~X~
"Good thing i live in the US."
Yeah, where they can take your possesions, lock you up with no trial, no lawyer, and without telling you why.
But, you are a good citizen. Carry on.
~X~
There are always positives and negatives when dealing with charged issues.
~X~
According to some quick calculations, Mars receives roughly 700 W/m^2 and Venus receives around 2400 W/m^2.
If Earth were in a Mars orbit, I find it hard to believe that it would just barely be liveable, especially during the Cretaceous period when CO2 concetrations were much much higher. Certainly, Earth wouldn't have had a global average of 98 F, but it would definately be a tolerable place to live.
Earth now in the Mars orbit would be chilly, but still hospitable to life. After all, we have microbes that feed off of methane ice on the sea floor. That's pretty damn cold.
Earth as it is now could be a hot but habitable planet in a Venus orbit (not necessarily for humans though). It all depends on how fast Earth dissipates heat (I'm not sure of the rate).
Which brings me to why Venus's spin does have something to do with how high temperatures formed on Venus.
Let's say Venus was a lot like Earth, with some large bodies of water. If the planet had a normal day (and the atmosphere wasn't choked with CO2), then there's a decent chance that it would be hospitable. Not to human life, as day time temps would average close to the century mark on average, but we've had life forms that lived quite comfortably in those circumstances.
But Venus has an incredibly long day. Any water or life on the day side would get baked, while on the night side everything would freeze. Any oceans on the day side would vaporize since they would have no downtime to radiate the heat back into space. When you start introducing water vapor (from boiled oceans) and higher concentrations of CO2, you get a really good greenhouse effect.
Instead of cold on one side and hot on the other, you have completely burnt all over.
Of course, this may have still happened if Venus had Earth days (depending on atmospheric content, reflectivity, etc.) but it probably would have taken a long time.
"Also, Earth's interior energy does not heat the surface. (Although it does allow for a magnetic field.) At least not noticably."
I never said it did so appreciably, but there is some heat there. As opposed to a planet like Mars where it is most likely that no heat comes from it's core.
I'm not well versed in astro-meteorology or the models they use, but this seems like common sense to me.
~X~
You're forgetting speeding up the rotation to be about an earth day.
Green house gases or not, any planet that has a 288 day long day at venus's orbit is going to be baked planet.
Get rid of the green house gases, speed up the days, and add an earthlike atmosphere and water and you basically get a warmer Earth. Temps at the equator would most likely be too warm for most people, but the more northern and southern latitudes would be quite liveable. And the extreme latitudes would probably be no different than the northern US.
~X~
"This is a fallacy. There is no inherent trend towards complexity."
Obviously, you have never dealt with christmas lights.
~X~
The article is inaccurate.
Solar proximity is only one of the determining factors for hospitable planets.
For example, take Earth and put it in Mars orbit. You don't get a frozen barren planet. You get a cooler planet for sure, but one that would still harbor life quite comfortably.
Put Earth in Venus's orbit, and you get a waremer world for sure, but one that could still harbor life.
Earth isn't Earth just because of where it's located. Our gravity allows for our planet to maintain an atmosphere. We have enough water on our planet to maintain a regulatory climate. Our planets core is active enough to maintain a magnetic shield, as well as infuse the surface with an amount of heat.
Mars is a frozen barren world because it doesn't have the gravity to maintain an atmosphere over the long haul, let alone retain much in the way of water vapor. It's planetary core is pretty much dormant. There's nothing to regulate climate or heat. So even though the equator can reach around 60 F during th days, it loses all that heat almost as soon as the sun goes down.
Venus is a sweltering oven because it spins on it's axis once every 288 days. There is no way the planet can dissipate all that thermal energy. Even if it had an earthlike make-up, the planet would soon die in a runaway greenhouse effect due to the fact that one side of the planet was being baked for so long.
And there's always a chance that thermogenic planets exist (planets that produce enough internal heat that the surface could support life regardless of where it is located).
Location is a major player, but so is makeup. Take our atmosphere and cut it by 50% and we'd be a bit colder at night.
~X~
"We want to say that people have reached Mars."
That is a gross oversimplification of the reasons behind exploring other worlds.
"Mars is an inhospitable desert."
So is the moon. So are several areas on our own planet. That doesn't mean it's worthless to go there and explore. Or even live.
"We can't do much research there that wouldn't be better done here, except for investigating Mars itself."
Not true. Mars has about a 1/4 of Earth's gravity. That makes doing a bunch of sustained low g research extremely easy to do on Mars, while on Earth it is much harder to simulate for years at a time. Building observatories on Olympus Mons could yield very impressive results. The low g's would make it much easier to build giant telescopes, and the extremely thin atmosphere would allow very clear views. And that's just an appetizer.
"It's not profitable, and Earth is still inhabitable enough so that establishing colonies on Mars isn't necessary."
You're making a statement that you don't know for sure is true. Mars could indeed be very profitable if the right resources are there. But we won't know that until we get there.
Earth's inhabitability will quickly diminish if the population rate doesn't slow down soon. We'll see Earth hitting theoretical max capacity within our lifetimes. Whether we want to or not, at some point soon we'll need to expand off this rock.
That is unless you don't mind draconian laws regarding reproduction.
~X~
Slashdot redesigining....intelligent first posts?
What next, no more dupes?
We're all living on borrowed time my friends. And Satan has frostbite on his nipples.
~X~
Slashdot's updating?
*looks around*
Well, that explains all these monkeys flying outta my butt.
How about a little warning next time, eh CmdrTaco? That's a hard one to explain during a team meeting.
~X~
"Who cares what it looks like. Is it fun?"
Thus speaketh every man after a few beers on a lonely Saturday night.
~X~
Every time I see "porn is bad", I automatically think "WTF?".
None of us would be here without porn. Period. At some point, two people got naked and erotic and 9 months later squirted you out.
You are here because two people got horny and fucked.
We are pre-programmed by nature to get turned on and fuck. That's what we do. That's what any creature on this Earth does if it wants to continue propagating the species.
The fact that most individuals get turned on by watching other people fucking is similar to watching someone eating really delicious food. If you're hungry, you get hungrier and want some of your own.
Some people go make their own food, others go and pay for it. In the end, you're still satisfying a need dictated by nature.
And just like food, some people won't eat certain kinds of food. Some will only eat spicy food. Some will only eat exotic foods. Some eat to little, some eat too much.
Porn/Sex is no different. People like all kinds of different things. Some like vibrators, some like whips and chains. Some get really turned on by a 6' tall red head stepping on eggs in high heels. And yes, lots of people like watching other people fuck, whether it's the neighbors or the latest DVD of Blondie and The Football Team.
You don't like anal, fine don't watch it. It's no different than you not liking mayo.
But a lot of people like it mayo, and a lot of people like porn (porn isn't a billion dollar industry for nothing).
Sometimes, I think half this country's problem is more people just need to get laid.
~X~
Mars is not outside the temperate zone, it's out of the temperate size.
Mars is not large enough to hold an atmosphere, which is essential for holding on to heat. During the summer near the equator, temperatures can reach 60 F even with the thin atmosphere. But at night, this plummets to around -120 F because all the heat radiates off into space.
With an atmospheric composition such as ours (and if it could hold onto it), Mars would be more like a cooler version of the Earth.
Another source of heat energy we have on Earth comes from our core. Our planet is still active, and as such we get heat energy from our planet as well. All current data shows Mars as being geologically dead.
So not only can it not retain heat absorbed from the sun, it also has no source of it's own heat.
A younger Mars may have had a thicker atmosphere and an active core (along with shallow oceans), so life could have developed early on. But over time, the planet lost it's atmosphere, water, and active core. In essence, it died. Though it probably took millions of years to do so.
It's unlikely planets move out of their orbits by that much without external forces. Read up on planetary motion and gravity.
Venus is what happens when the greenhouse effect gets really really bad. The planet is covered by a toxic haze of water vapor, carbon monoxide, and various other compounds. Venus could have been another Earth, if it wasn't for it's rotational speed (1 rotation every 288 days). That leaves the planet facing the sun too long. And since it had a decent atmosphere (and the size to hold onto it), what liquid water was there boiled into the atmosphere. Water vapor traps heat, so the planet got warmer, and so on and so forth. The volcanoes didn't help either. Now, it has an atmospheric pressure 90 times that of Earth, and has a global temperature of around 900 F. Due to the atmosphere, there isn't much dynamic range.
If Venus had a 24 hour day, then there would be a good chance we would have a warmer sister planet Venus. If Mars was larger, we'd have a cooler sister planet Mars.
But that's not how it worked out. One died, one fried, and one stayed alive.
~X~
The game industry is lacking good programmers because the game industry lacks good working conditions.
I left the games industry for this very reason. Not only is it quite common to work 6-7 days a week for 12 hours or more a day, but job stability is equivalent to quicksand.
You can't raise a family like that, let alone have much of a life.
The really good programmers go work for places like Google, M$,etc. What you lose in notoriety, you gain in job stabiliy, benefits, and most of the time better pay. You also end up with more reasonable work hours.
It's a real shame though. I love working on games. But I love having a life more.
When I tell my co-workers and friends that I used to make games, they always respond with the envious "Man, that must be the best job!". I quickly inform them otherwise.
Movies aren't much different, according to some of my friends "in the industry".
~X~
"Nature, as a whole moves in very slow patterns and makes very slow changes."
Nature can act pretty damn fast when it wants to. Volcanic eruptions can wipe out entire species in single blast. Meteor impacts, methane bubbles, earthquakes all can irrevocably change the environment very quickly. Not to mention diseases.
The poles, once thought to take millions of years to flip, can change much faster than originally thought thanks to to study of lava flows.
And according to ice core samples (which go much further back than 100 or 200 years) indicate that climate change can happen very quickly and drastically.
Even tree rings tell us information going back a couple thousand years.
Point is, nature does whatever it wants to. It can take millions of years, or it can take a fraction of a second.
And doomsday science, as you call it, cannot be summarily ignored. Global warming isn't doomsday science, it's a warning. It would not eradicate life on our planet, or even human life. It will cause problems however. There is a chance that, if left unchecked, we might might might possibly enter a runway effect (look at Venus), but it's unlikley.
Superbugs are a real threat. When you can't treat bacterial infections with antibiotics, what do you do?
Overpopulation, lack of resources, burning through the ones we have, etc...
All of these are real threats that, sooner or later, will have to be dealt with. I prefer sooner.
And what makes you think we'll make it 250 more years? That's ego, arrogance, and/or ignonorance. We will run out of a good chunk of natural resources long before then, world population will far exceed capacity, and we'll have weapons that make nukes look like party poppers.
If we don't start figuring out ways to harmonize with nature and ourselves, we may find ourselves going the way of so many species before us.
~X~
Increasing life expentancy by 50% will also discover even more errors in our genetic code. That's the main reason why we are discovering so many age related ailments. Our code was designed to help us survive to a certain point because that's how long most of us lived. Our lifespans have increased faster than our code could evolve, so after a certain point, we're running in untested conditions. Sometimes we can apply a patch to a problem, other times we can't. Be that as it may, I think "curing" aging will be a problem for some time. All organisms on earth contain the genetic death code. It's what allowed life to continue on like it has. Reversing this could be difficult. ~X~
For starters, scientist have been proposing growing organs and tissue by coaxing stem cells and growing them on scaffolds. In doing so, and diseased organ be it cancer or otherwise, could simply be replaced or patched without fear of rejection from the patients body.
:)
I would call that a worthy cause.
You have your issues, and that's fine. You're entitled. But others have their own ideas about what's appropriate and what's not.
In that regard, I applaud you with stating your views, and not ramming them down other people's throats.
~X~
Say that again, and I'll kick your ass.
~X~
*Yes, I'm joking.*
A. Yes the sun's output does vary over time. Does it vary so much as to cause 20 degree temp changes worldwide? Does it happen in the span of a decade or two?
B. Unlikely by natural means. Perhaps if there were a surge of geothermal activity or something. And water vapor doesn't increase without some sort of energy influx (i.e warming). An increase in global water vapor would be a result of planetary warming, not the cause (though it ould contribute to it once it was there).
C. It could be just coincidence that CO2 levels are higher than they've been in the past 400,000 years. It could be just coincidence that this increase happens to coincide with industrialization. It could be just coincidence that all this is happening within the last 60 years or so. But somehow, I doubt it.
D. Have to call you on that one. Google Global Dimming.
E. Yes, natural emissions play a part. But I haven't read any scientific reports regarding any increases in these emissions (and as far as CO2 levels go, they've been within a certain range for thousands of years).
I have read some reports that the warming may end up causing more natural emissions (tundras melting and such).
At best, we are contributing to the problem. At worst, we are the problem.
Regardless, the point is there is a problem. The real questions is what are we going to do about it.
~X~
The last time I checked, the Falcon never blew up on launch or incinerated on re-entry.
The Falcon also didn't take 6 months between landings to get ready to fly again.
We have a long way to go.
Even a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away they could still make rusted out, broken down, shit-boxes that could fly circles around government-backed combat spacecraft.
Maybe we're starting on the right course finally?
~X~
I agree.
Just think of yourself as being wrapped in a suffocating layer of warm slowly aging meat.
Now compare that to a titanium laced super body with chrome nipples and a platinum reproductive data transfer module.
My inner nanobots are dancing just thinking about it.
~X~
This is what some scientists believe happened on Venus.
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