Stephen Hawking (apparently) thinks we should make moves to save the human species by colonising either another planet or a distant star. He apparently believes the human species will be wiped out sooner rather than later and this is our best way forward.

Personally, I think the idea of being welcomed with open arms by other life forms is a tad arrogant. Most of us are fairly intolerant about economic migrants; surely we would be the same?

As for preserving the human culture, maybe another star or dimension might have a better one?

Typical of that atheist to suggest to move away from planet Earth. As is known by everybody you can only go to heaven if you die on earth.

Did he mention other life forms?

Although I love Science Fiction, the more I think about it, the more I realize that it is probably bullshit that we'll ever get to another planet and colonize it. However, we should at least try, as eventually we have to consider where we're going to be in 10 or 20 thousand years.

Assuming such an extraordinary enterprise will be possible and people will pack their worldly goods and dump everything in cramped quarters, who do you think will make it on the passenger list? I'm guessing it'll be a short list. One page.

The list will consist out of mostly fertile women and a few guys to donate sperm. As a backup because frozen sperm is taken along.

The less than 1 percent wealthiest will without a doubt have a vital say in this matter. They'll argue: viagra, clones, artificial semination. And in preparation for the event they would have already sent their sons and daughters to the finest schools (no longer affordable to the general public) for promising careers as doctors, engineers, architects, computer techs, etc.

Ah -- frozen sperm. Good one, Spurious.

Stephen Hawking (apparently) thinks we should make moves to save the human species by colonising either another planet or a distant star. He apparently believes the human species will be wiped out sooner rather than later and this is our best way forward.

Personally, I think the idea of being welcomed with open arms by other life forms is a tad arrogant. Most of us are fairly intolerant about economic migrants; surely we would be the same?

As for preserving the human culture, maybe another star or dimension might have a better one?

Which planet did have in mind? Mars? To colonize Mars would take another century or two. Travel to another star system would take centuries. I guess we better get started now before the Republications take over again.

Typical of that atheist to suggest to move away from planet Earth. As is known by everybody you can only go to heaven if you die on earth.

Not necessarily true.

There is also 'limbo'. Maybe having to spend time on a distant planet might be someone's limbo?

Did he mention other life forms?

Not in the article I read, but he might well have done.

Assuming such an extraordinary enterprise will be possible and people will pack their worldly goods and dump everything in cramped quarters, who do you think will make it on the passenger list? I'm guessing it'll be a short list. One page.

According to one article I read, unless they were put into 'cold storage' (cryo-something) any astronauts would be dead by the time they got to anywhere suitable for human habitation.

The suggestion was that DNA could be stored/sent and then built/rebuilt. However, whose DNA would be chosen was not mentioned!

Which planet did have in mind? Mars? To colonize Mars would take another century or two. Travel to another star system would take centuries. I guess we better get started now before the Republications take over again.

Mars was mentioned as being the 'easiest' to adapt to... but the view was that it would most likely be something out of our galaxy. Hence the distant planet or star...

Not necessarily true.

There is also 'limbo'. Maybe having to spend time on a distant planet might be someone's limbo?

I emailed the vatican about this because I was not quite sure myself. However, they replied that only those who live on Earth can go to heaven. For hell you can live anywhere apparently.

I think the basic idea has merit. Even if we don't destroy ourselves we will always be vulnerable to the vagaries of the universe. Our species and our civilization might very well barely survive an asteroid hit like the one which probably wiped out the dinosaurs. But there are bigger asteroids out there.

As the Baron would be glad to point out, I have an unreasoned affection for civilization and its artifacts. Considering that banks have backup sites for such prosaic things as our credit accounts, I think we should certainly have a backup site for something as important as all human culture. It's hardly arrogant to think that other civilizations in the universe, assuming there are any, would be interested in learning about ours and might even appreciate some of our literature and other art. I'm sure most of us would feel that way about theirs.

As for our "reception," I don't think that Stephen Hawking or any other responsible person is suggesting that we "colonize" a planet that already has intelligent life. It would certainly be wisest to pick one that has no life at all, so we don't repeat the catastrophes of the rabbits that ravage Australia and the House Sparrows that have taken over the entire Western Hemisphere--on a much larger scale.

Regardless of all other concerns, our sun will eventually burn out, taking Earth with it. It's not too early to start thinking about how to deal with that.

Although I love Science Fiction, the more I think about it, the more I realize that it is probably bullshit that we'll ever get to another planet and colonize it. However, we should at least try, as eventually we have to consider where we're going to be in 10 or 20 thousand years.
A book I mentioned to you earlier [minor spoiler alert: Pandora's Star] begins with the first manned mars landing interupted by a couple of guys who built a wormhole generator and were sitting there waiting for the astronauts!!!

The mars mission was abandoned, and the galaxy was soon opened for exploration and colonization. The point is, who knows what technological breakthrus might occur. FTL, Wormholes, whatever. If no such breakthru ever occurs, colonization of space will be a slow business.

My favorite story in this vein was a short story by Harry Turtledove. A fleet of ships is seen entering our solar system. They ignore all attempts at communication and land en mass in the US. Not knowing what to expect, the US military has the ships surrounded. The doors on the ships open, an army of aliens advances, raises their muskets, and fires. The US soldiers respond, utterly destroying the aliens. It turns out that FTL and antigravity are simple to achieve but that their discovery perverts the development of science. {that's why they didn't respond to our communications, they hadn't discovered radio!} Earth quickly figures out FTL, and goes on to conquor the galaxy with our ultra high tech electronics and weaponry.

I've read or heard of the second story. -Quite- a funny one, I must add.

our sun will eventually burn out,

All suns will burn out.

We're about to wipe ourselves out.
It'd be much cheaper to invest in fixing our problems than trying to flee. Flee to what? Barren rocks, incapable of supporting any life? Gee, that sounds like a great back up plan!

Going to Mars and then colonizing it in the next 50 to one hundred years will not change anything here on Earth. We would just be bringing our dirty clothes to another planet to contaminate. I think it's important to limit the number of colonists that want to live there and just use Mars as a scientific base to do study and research, just like in Anartica.

Mind exercize:

What would you need to take with you if you are going to colonize a planet in another star system.

Assume your resources are limited, that is, you only have a limited amount of space and weight allowance. Similarly you cannot take a million people. 1000 max.

Mind exercize:

What would you need to take with you if you are going to colonize a planet in another star system.

Assume your resources are limited, that is, you only have a limited amount of space and weight allowance. Similarly you cannot take a million people. 1000 max.

I don't thnk that interstellar colonisation will be feasible until you have at least a limited form of assembler technology. That is to say, you can't take everything with you, so you will need to make the equipment you need from material in the new system.

So the absolute minimum you would need to take would be a mini-forge, a range of specialised mechanochemical assemblers, and basic mining equipment so you can start extracting material from whatever asteroids you find in the system.

You will also need enough data storage space to keep the wide range of designs and plans you would need to buld the equipment you might find necessary; you could obtain new designs from Earth by radio message if you require them, but you would have to wait years while the mesage went home and returned.

As well as this you need a closed ecolgical life support system (CELSS) for the colonists you have with you; if you have a lot of colonists you will need a massive CELSS and this would take up a lot of your limted room. Better to take just a few colonists and a supply of frozen sperm and ova; if you take, or can manufacture, artificial wombs then the population could be increased somewhat faster. Even more useful would be artificial child care equipment (robot nannies); in fact robot workers of all sots might be useful if they can be made to function relatively autonomously. (if not, then robots will be consderably less useful).

You will need two types of spacecraft in a new system; asteroid miner/tugs and landing craft.

You will probably find that the resources of your new system will be distributed rather widely and far apart; the inner worlds and objects will have high levels of available solar (stellar) energy, and probably metals or other solid elements; while the volatiles would mostly be in the outer system, and the asteroid miner/tug craft would be used to try to gather some of these resources together to make a viable economy in space. Just like in our own solar system, different locations will have something to contribute to a colonisation effort, but these resources will need to be moved from location to location.

The asteroid miner ship (probably using a gravity-tug system) could also be useful in terraforming any suitable worlds. Robert Zubrin has produced a detailed scheme for terraforming Mars using diverted asteroids; this scheme may well work in other planetary systems too.

And a lander craft is obviously desirable; you would need to take enough equipment down to start the process of mining or material gathering, as a suitable planet could provde water, propellant and construction materials. You would probably expect to have to mine the planet for fuel or propellant to take off again. Just don't expect to be popping up and down from orbit to the surface constantly, at least not until the new colony is well established.

I was also pondering about similar problems.

Let's assume our robot technology isn't going to improve that much in the future then we need people for labour. Could we colonize another star system with current technology + 20 years (assuming we can build a starship).

How are we going to keep the people alive after arrival (keeping them alive on the trip is another question) and then let them thrive?

If you take 1000 people you have 1000 mouths to feed and 2000 hands to work. If you only take 100 you obviously have less mouths to feed, but you are also restricted in what you can do regarding workload.

Going down the surface immediately (if the planet even has a breathable sterile atmosphere) seems like a waste of resources but maybe we have to. It will probably be easier first to install a base in space. Possibly mine the resources in space. But these are all longterm projects, so maybe we will be forced down a planet.

But how to feed the people? Bring material for greenhouses which can be closed off from the external environment of the planet (wrong atmosphere, temperature, pathogens, contaminants).

Lifting food back into space will be very costly in the early years of colonization. Maybe we can't stay in space. Unless we come into possession of very efficient technology.

How many greenhouses do you need for 1000 people? A lot. How long will it take before they start producing food? Quite some time. So we need to bring rations for at least 6 months to a year.

Are we going to have meat? We need to bring livestock. But they will eat our 'greens'. Can we afford that?

Do we bring all tools?

Or do we bring the tools to make tools?

What about electricity? We bring a generator of some kind? What kind and how many.

What about maintaining order?

Do we bring guns? Police? Military? Politicians?

Who is going to decide who is doing what? And will they?

Medication. We can't bring supplies forever so we will have to produce new stuff pretty soon. But you can't really bring an entire pharmaceutical industry. Decisions have to be made. Bring back the lottery of life? Where a small wound can possibly be fatal due to infection!

Typical of that atheist to suggest to move away from planet Earth. As is known by everybody you can only go to heaven if you die on earth.

there is no heaven.

We will have much greater chance of survival if we spread across the universe and colonize Mars for ex.

Mars is not going to do us any good if our sun is going to expand.

Mars is not going to do us any good if our sun is going to expand.

humans do not live in star years...which is billion of years...humans live in years...by the time the sun has expanded humans need to utilize any resource they can to sustain themselves.

children usually do not need to shave.

When i was 18 i had a small patch of chesthair. Almost unnoticable. over the years it expanded its territory and lushness. Now I am a male god of raw sexiness.

Of course...the ass hair expanded too, and more recently something is colonizing my back.

jummie.

so you now see how important colonization is for humans.:D

You know the first colony ship we send out is going to be in for a shock. Imagine this:

The first colony ship is sent towards star system X. It is a 500-year trip, and even longer by Earth years due to time dilation. By the time the ship gets to planet X, with the 20th generation of ship occupants, they find that the planet has already been settled by the colonists that were sent out 200 years later with far superior spaceship technology.

Lewis and Clark just barely missed seeing an American ship on the West Coast. Not a great analogy, since ships had been there before... but you get the point.

The first colony ship is sent towards star system X. It is a 500-year trip, and even longer by Earth years due to time dilation. By the time the ship gets to planet X, with the 20th generation of ship occupants, they find that the planet has already been settled by the colonists that were sent out 200 years later with far superior spaceship technology.


As it happens, I have recently written a short sci-fi story including this very premise;

http://www.voicesoa.net/deceleration-phase/

What star system do you have in mind to colonize? And how do you know it has any planets worth colonizing?

The question that arises is why a colony ship would be sent in the first place, since no amount of marketing is going get around the fact that 10 or 20 generations will long be dead even before the new system is reached. In the past, all migrations have at heart, been motivated by economic, climate, or political considerations.

Logistically though, a potential course of action would first be to develop telescopic arrays sufficient to detect whatever features that are being sought in a distant system. Then, to systematically examine stars and come up with a list of potential candidates. After that, the next step might be to dispatch lightweight, small, very fast moving probes to conduct a close reconnaissance and report back. From there, a factory ship or fleet would be the next step. I, however, see no need whatever for a colony ship to include colonists – since they will be dead, actually sending them is beyond useless, it’s counterproductive and needlessly drains resources. Rather, the obvious solution would be to send the electronic blueprint necessary to build people from scratch, then have the factory ship at the other end create and raise a first generation of colonists. And if I had any say in the matter, chicks would outnumber dudes by about 5:1 and would be up for anything, if you know what I mean….

And if I had any say in the matter, chicks would outnumber dudes by about 5:1 and would be up for anything, if you know what I mean….

That is quite a good strategy for the first few centuries of a colony. Childbearing females could outnumber males by an arbitrary amount, and this would ensure that the population would increase more rapidly.

In fact you wouldn't need men at all in the first generation; just frozen sperm.
As for being 'up for' anything, if you mean 'prepared to work as hard as they can at building the colony' then yes, I agree. But perhaps you had something else in mind...

Oh no, your supposition is right on the mark :^).....

Eburacum45:

You forget the fact that a shipload of pregnant women would not be prime for survival. Not to mention they'd utterly lack the muscle needed to do the hard settlement work. Despite the fact that they are likely to have high technology, there will be a need for tremendous amounts of elbow grease.

The question that arises is why a colony ship would be sent in the first place, since no amount of marketing is going get around the fact that 10 or 20 generations will long be dead even before the new system is reached. In the past, all migrations have at heart, been motivated by economic, climate, or political considerations.


What abouth a prison ship. A 1000 prisoners are set on a ship with yust enof fuel to be captured by the X stars gravity field.

And abouth the pregnant females, they only loose some capabilities when they are over 5 of the 7 months pregnant, and even they could proberly cary a weight of over a 100 kg on a asteroid, and anything heavier would be to big to carry anyway (asteroids have low gravity).

Orcot:

You forget about mass. Mass is invariable. And it would be assumed that gravity would be made for human habitation, considering it is needed for humans to not suffer rapid tissue and muscle degeneration.

Stephen Hawking (apparently) thinks we should make moves to save the human species by colonising either another planet or a distant star. He apparently believes the human species will be wiped out sooner rather than later and this is our best way forward.

Personally, I think the idea of being welcomed with open arms by other life forms is a tad arrogant. Most of us are fairly intolerant about economic migrants; surely we would be the same?

As for preserving the human culture, maybe another star or dimension might have a better one?

I wouldn't try colonizing another star. Their surfaces are hot just like our sun. I would much rather look and see if there is an earthlike planet circling that star.

The question that arises is why a colony ship would be sent in the first place, since no amount of marketing is going get around the fact that 10 or 20 generations will long be dead even before the new system is reached. In the past, all migrations have at heart, been motivated by economic, climate, or political considerations.

Logistically though, a potential course of action would first be to develop telescopic arrays sufficient to detect whatever features that are being sought in a distant system. Then, to systematically examine stars and come up with a list of potential candidates. After that, the next step might be to dispatch lightweight, small, very fast moving probes to conduct a close reconnaissance and report back. From there, a factory ship or fleet would be the next step. I, however, see no need whatever for a colony ship to include colonists – since they will be dead, actually sending them is beyond useless, it’s counterproductive and needlessly drains resources. Rather, the obvious solution would be to send the electronic blueprint necessary to build people from scratch, then have the factory ship at the other end create and raise a first generation of colonists. And if I had any say in the matter, chicks would outnumber dudes by about 5:1 and would be up for anything, if you know what I mean….

It's been done in the stories.

What I see doing is sending a hollowed-out asteroid that can carry enough people to keep a technological society going. Several small towns of a few thousand people can form a nice little country and won't need any input from the rest of the Earth. It can conceivably be more advanced than any country on Earth. Even a rather small asteroid, say the size of Phobos, will have a thousand cubic miles to work with and that can become hundreds of square miles at the very least.

Here is a sci-fi page I made a while ago about the various options which might be available for interstellar colonisation one day...
http://www.orionsarm.com/ships/Colony_Ships.html

Send the 'all' of the current Republican administration in the White House on the first ship to colonize a nearby star. They did the same with Australia. Wait.....Hmmmmm. I guess Australia was originally a penal colony. Anyway, it would be the same thing I guess.

Send the 'all' of the current Republican administration in the White House on the first ship to colonize a nearby star.

:mad: STOP WASTING SPACESHIPS!

Great answers - in the main. But nothing much on whether another planet or star would already be colonised by a superior life form... which is what I think.

Of course, as I think someone pointed out, it would take such a phenomenally long time, that evolution could bring the human sentient into harmony with the resident sentient variety.

Food doesn't seem like that big of an issue. Water and sunlight is all it takes to grow stuff. With the proper engineering, I bet you could grow stuff that takes care of all nutritional needs.

Bet it would taste like shit, though.

Food doesn't seem like that big of an issue. Water and sunlight is all it takes to grow stuff. With the proper engineering, I bet you could grow stuff that takes care of all nutritional needs.

Bet it would taste like shit, though.

Where are you going to grow that food?

Where are you going to grow that food?

On the planets surface.

On the planets surface.

Don't you need soil to grow plants?

Don't you need soil to grow plants?

no. jello for instance.

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/tisscult/tc

Error page.

You will have to bring the ingredients for jello. You will have to bring fertilizer or a fertilizer plant. You will have to bring green houses if the atmosphere is wrong, or there is native life.

etc

Error page.

You will have to bring the ingredients for jello. You will have to bring fertilizer or a fertilizer plant. You will have to bring green houses if the atmosphere is wrong, or there is native life.

etc

huh no genetic modification mentioned?

You are going to take a research lab with you and wait a year till the scientists have made a suitable modification? Then wait till they multiplied the seed enough to use it?

Don't you need soil to grow plants?

You ever grow weed in your closet?

You ever grow weed in your closet?

"...All we need now sergeant is to trace back Roman's ip address to the city in UK he is located and than his address and launch an assault on the drug user."

"thats how many years?"

"As long as it takes...as long as it takes"

You ever grow weed in your closet?

No.

For your information a human being cannot sustain life on weed alone, although some people have tried.

Growing of weed inside actually requires a huge amount of energy. Home-growers can often be traced by the electricity bill.

You would need to set up green houses. How many? Are you going to haul all that equipment with you? How many seeds? Enough for the first harvest and hope the first harvest will turn out ok in terra icognito? Bring enough seeds for 2 or more harvests? bring rations to sustain yourself for 1 or more harvests?

It will be a logistic nightmare.

You will have to plan for the unknown.

Send sufficiently advanced nano-tech robots instead of humans. Once they've terraformed the planet, they can build some humans to live there. Even better, they can adjust the humans they build to suit local gravity, atmospheric pressure, etc.

We don't have nano-bots.

Let's presume we are going to send colonists tomorrow.

Let's presume we are going to send colonists tomorrow.
Ok ... since we're hopelessly unprepared and the mission is doomed to fail, I suggest we send the scum of the earth while the rest of us build a Utopia here.

What if we use what humans are good at: improvisation.

We give them the stuff they can use for improvisation. Toolkits. Modular designed equipment that can be rebuild for other purposes. A small lab with general stuff. Some means of producing a few antibiotics. And a toolkit to make changes to this production.

small stuff. Flexible stuff.

However food will be critical for survival. There will need to be some kind of plan to sustain a certain amount of people for a certain period under any circumstance.

No.

For your information a human being cannot sustain life on weed alone, although some people have tried.

Growing of weed inside actually requires a huge amount of energy. Home-growers can often be traced by the electricity bill.

You would need to set up green houses. How many? Are you going to haul all that equipment with you? How many seeds? Enough for the first harvest and hope the first harvest will turn out ok in terra icognito? Bring enough seeds for 2 or more harvests? bring rations to sustain yourself for 1 or more harvests?

It will be a logistic nightmare.

You will have to plan for the unknown.

Of course it's a logistic nightmare. YOU'VE JUST MOVED 1000 PEOPLE TO ANOTHER PLANET!!

Is energy really going to be a problem when you've mastered space flight? Set up a fusion reactor and you got all the energy you need. Or, if the atmosphere is thin to none, have the massive solar array in orbit beam the energy down in microwave form.

Or just use good ol nukular power.

It'd take several years to set up a colony, no doubt. The first few probes sent to the planet would then be followed by dummy ships that deposit rations and materials to the building site. Maybe you have robots set everything up before people arrive, and you've got a thriving hydroponic system running before the people ever step foot on the planet.

Nutrients could be shipped in whatever form is densest. Probably as raw elements, then you'd have the colony's chemist mix em up once you got their. Turn nitrogen into ammonia, etc.

In an enclosed space, everything would have to be recycled. Setting up a functioning ecosystem would be hardest. All organic material would have to be put back into the plants, water and CO2 would have to filtered out somehow. Ideally, plants would do all this. The air, water and waste filtration systems could just be huge algal mats. The algae could then be harvested and either turned into food, or decomposed and used as fertilizer.

As for more complex proteins, you could just synthesize them. Protein vats. Energy and amino acids go in, meat comes out.

As for more complex proteins, you could just synthesize them. Protein vats. Energy and amino acids go in, meat comes out.

I was thinking about bringing rats. Let them escape on the ship and colony and then hunt them.

Then again, rats will probably find a way to kill us all and become the master species of the new planet.

This is a short extract from a page about 'artificial meat products' which I haven't had time to put on the OA site yet; it describes 'printed meat', which might be available in the relatively near future.

To achieve the goal of meat production, muscle and other flesh cells
are grown on a specially constructed biopolymer scaffold, which
replicates the natural extracellular matrix found in living animals.
This scaffold is generally printed using a rapid 3d printer device,
although several other related techniques such as foaming and self-
assembly are also used. Cultured cells are then implanted into the
scaffolding, and these cells are induced to bind together into
muscle-like or vascular tissue. Once the meat block, known as `slab',
is established, the tissue is supplied with nutrients and allowed to
grow by as much as 400% by volume before harvesting. To ensure the
slab has a healthy texture it is stimulated into regular
contractions, simulating exercise; the slab is attached at each end
to strain gauges to measure the force of contraction.

As well as beef, pork, chicken and lamb slab, many other meats are
grown including llama, kangaroo, horse, elephant, whale and
pheasant. Reptile, amphibian and fish slabs are popular, as are
various invertebrate tissue cultures. These cold-blooded meats use
less overall energy input to produce in many cases.

More exotic meats such as geneered sea-dragon, pterodactyl and
selected xenofauna are well-established speciality products, and
premarinated flesh is becoming increasingly popular. Cloned human
flesh is sometimes available, particularly personalised meat for
autophagists and the well known range of Klown Klone products which
allow the consumer to eat the celebrity of their choice.

Urk

I believe that the current status of artificial meat is that, though it has been done, it is extremly expensive per bite. As in the order of thousands of dollars. The sheer expense in creating it far outweigh the benefits it can have likely in the next century.

I would be shocked if it is ever found that it is more effective to make meat than harvest it from animals.

I would be shocked if it is ever found that it is more effective to make meat than harvest it from animals.

On Earth we have large regions of pastoral land and even marginal upland which can be used to raise meat animals. If and when we attempt to colonise another planet or moon we will not have that luxury (or at least, not at first).

So artificial meat substitute (perhaps not grown in the way I have described, but more likely cobbled together from vat-grown vegetable or yeast proteins) will be more efficient.
Not exactly cordon bleu.

You forget, however, that animals also provide other materials that are useful for colonists. Milk, eggs, feathers, leather, fat, et cetera.

So I'd imagine they'd want to really get animals quickly. All that can be supremely useful.

I'd also imagine protein in non-animal fat form would be ultimately more efficient than processing meat.

Would be better if we self destruct here than tospread the current plague which is the human race around the galaxy/universe. We need to evolve spiritually into peaceful beings.
Peace

On Earth we have large regions of pastoral land and even marginal upland which can be used to raise meat animals. If and when we attempt to colonise another planet or moon we will not have that luxury (or at least, not at first).

So artificial meat substitute (perhaps not grown in the way I have described, but more likely cobbled together from vat-grown vegetable or yeast proteins) will be more efficient.
Not exactly cordon bleu.

If you look at all the rigmarole involved, it sounds easier to just cart along some smaller meat animals and fish. Fish are good because they are already adapted to essentially weightless environments. There is also nutria, a rodent that is about the size of a poodle, has a lot of meat on it, and is too large to hide very well.

Fish are a good idea; I saw a scheme where a colony on the Moon was protected by large water tanks in the roof and walls, which absorbed most of the incoming radiation. These water tanks doubled as fishponds for food.

Other low maintenance animals might include chickens, and guinea pigs (there is an interesting picture of Jesus eating a guinea pig here (http://www.geocities.com/mart_eden/lastsupper.jpg) from a South American church, by the way; totally irrelevant but rather curious, I think).

What do the fish eat?

What do the fish eat?

Depends on the fish species.

What do the fish eat?

plankton?