It'd be a lot easier and quicker to sterilize a planet with life then to terraform one where life is presently impossible. That's why.
With regards to your last point, water has some very unique properties. Look up the difference between HF and H20, or CH4 and H20. Water is a solvent that freezes from the top down.
It's also a superb solvent, letting a huge range of things go into solution.
This two points are very important for life. Think up an alternative solvent that exists in large amounts on other planets that has these two properties. Hint: you won't be able to. It's water or nothing.
Only possible route for interstellar travel
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Humans are incredibly fragile (both physically and psychologically), live short lives, and space is immense and utterly hostile.
Years ago I worked through a lot of numbers for fusion ramjets, antimatter, laser-powered sails et al.
The only interstellar travel I can see us ever doing is as frozen embryos.
Generation ships would be bloated tombs. There would be a serious shortage of funding and volunteers. People won't consign themselves to die without reaching a destination, after years spent inhaling each other's BO.
Self-reproducing intelligent robots, OTOH, could crawl along between the stars at 1% c happily. 1,000 years of travel is nothing to something that can turn itself off and then back on.We could travel with them, in the aformentioned frozen embryo form, to be gestated in artifical wombs on arrival.
Interstellar ships will never be built by humans. No return on investment and no glory in a lifetime = no deal. Self-reproducing robots are the way to go.
Eg something like "Don't start reading this. Oh, you already have. Now you must post this under every video you see or your intestines will boil and your eyes will melt, just like what happened to some chick years ago.
And then it duly gets posted all over the place, by idiots.
Whereas those things looked like a marketing gimmick.
Anyone who parks a car in Boston should be forced to resign from whatever job they have, and then have their genitalia pointed at by an unattractive woman whilst being water-boarded while a continuous loop of the Barney song plays in the background.
A company plans to include a very useful encryption tool with it's next OS.
This is good news in terms of security and privacy, and therefore/. readers will welcome it.
Oh wait, no they won't, because the company is Microsoft. Microsoft is baaad, therefore everything they do is sinister and evil. You people always manage to find the dark lining to their every silver cloud.
Under my system (patent pending), individual threads of replies would appear with the oldest first, and the newest at the bottom (by default).
However, each direct "reply" to the actual story (the initiators of these threads) would appear with the newest first, and the oldest at the bottom (also by default).
This would be a big improvement, and I can't believe I got modded down to a zero for suggesting it. For shame, Mr/. mods, for shame.
Imagine a book that anyone can contribute to, if they feel like it.
The person who writes the first thing that comes into their head writes the first few pages, and therefore the first thing that anyone sees when opening the book. The cleverer, more thought-out comments are scattered somewhere toward the back.
The newest comments should by default be the first thing you see, with the oldest aka 1st post at the bottom of the page.
This would stop the inane "first post" dash thingie, and allow people to dwell upon the story at hand, in a leisurely manner.
The idiotic wank-fest nature of slashdot will be somewhat reduced if you implement this measure, thereby making the World a slightly better place to live for us, and for our children, and for our children's children.
And verily, our children are our future, are they not?
You're welcome.
This whole thing is hubristic and silly, and has overtones of big-brother style snooping.
Perhaps if America had a national health service, like the rest of the civilized World, companies wouldn't need to embark upon such ridiculusness in an attempt to lessen health insurance bureaucracy.
Slashdot Mirror
The Coast Guard. Duh.
It'd be a lot easier and quicker to sterilize a planet with life then to terraform one where life is presently impossible. That's why.
With regards to your last point, water has some very unique properties. Look up the difference between HF and H20, or CH4 and H20. Water is a solvent that freezes from the top down.
It's also a superb solvent, letting a huge range of things go into solution.
This two points are very important for life. Think up an alternative solvent that exists in large amounts on other planets that has these two properties. Hint: you won't be able to. It's water or nothing.
Humans are incredibly fragile (both physically and psychologically), live short lives, and space is immense and utterly hostile.
Years ago I worked through a lot of numbers for fusion ramjets, antimatter, laser-powered sails et al.
The only interstellar travel I can see us ever doing is as frozen embryos.
Generation ships would be bloated tombs. There would be a serious shortage of funding and volunteers. People won't consign themselves to die without reaching a destination, after years spent inhaling each other's BO.
Self-reproducing intelligent robots, OTOH, could crawl along between the stars at 1% c happily. 1,000 years of travel is nothing to something that can turn itself off and then back on.We could travel with them, in the aformentioned frozen embryo form, to be gestated in artifical wombs on arrival.
Interstellar ships will never be built by humans. No return on investment and no glory in a lifetime = no deal. Self-reproducing robots are the way to go.
The worst thing are those chain posts.
Eg something like "Don't start reading this. Oh, you already have. Now you must post this under every video you see or your intestines will boil and your eyes will melt, just like what happened to some chick years ago.
And then it duly gets posted all over the place, by idiots.
Whereas those things looked like a marketing gimmick.
Anyone who parks a car in Boston should be forced to resign from whatever job they have, and then have their genitalia pointed at by an unattractive woman whilst being water-boarded while a continuous loop of the Barney song plays in the background.
If by "great" you mean wooden dialogue, scientific inaccuracies and insipid plot, then yeah.
Years ago when I used dial-up, I had to pay per minute, because local calls aren't free in my country.
It never did me any harm. It just added to the excitement of downloading 100MB porno mpegs.
A company plans to include a very useful encryption tool with it's next OS.
This is good news in terms of security and privacy, and therefore /. readers will welcome it.
Oh wait, no they won't, because the company is Microsoft. Microsoft is baaad, therefore everything they do is sinister and evil. You people always manage to find the dark lining to their every silver cloud.
It's the herd-mentality at work, folks.
Yawn.
Under my system (patent pending), individual threads of replies would appear with the oldest first, and the newest at the bottom (by default).
However, each direct "reply" to the actual story (the initiators of these threads) would appear with the newest first, and the oldest at the bottom (also by default).
This would be a big improvement, and I can't believe I got modded down to a zero for suggesting it. For shame, Mr /. mods, for shame.
Imagine a book that anyone can contribute to, if they feel like it.
The person who writes the first thing that comes into their head writes the first few pages, and therefore the first thing that anyone sees when opening the book. The cleverer, more thought-out comments are scattered somewhere toward the back.
Would you read that book?
The newest comments should by default be the first thing you see, with the oldest aka 1st post at the bottom of the page. This would stop the inane "first post" dash thingie, and allow people to dwell upon the story at hand, in a leisurely manner. The idiotic wank-fest nature of slashdot will be somewhat reduced if you implement this measure, thereby making the World a slightly better place to live for us, and for our children, and for our children's children. And verily, our children are our future, are they not? You're welcome.
This whole thing is hubristic and silly, and has overtones of big-brother style snooping. Perhaps if America had a national health service, like the rest of the civilized World, companies wouldn't need to embark upon such ridiculusness in an attempt to lessen health insurance bureaucracy.