100 Future Martians

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Magical Realist, Feb 19, 2015.

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  1. cosmictraveler

    cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Why not then build a simulated Mars outpost here on Earth and make everyone believe that it is actually on Mars. Many people have always thought the moon landings were fake so why not build a Martian set with paid actors? It would be cheaper and easier to construct today and with all of the special effects they could really have people believing that it is real.
     
    cosmictraveler, Feb 20, 2015
    #21

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  3. Billy T

    Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Sadly you are probably correct. That is why the Bible is too when stating:
    "The meek will inherit the Earth."
    Tiny mice are "the meek." They have a high surface to volume ratio and during days live under ground where the temperature is the diurnal average. They will probably survive the global warming, but not larger, warm-blooded creatures that perspire to cool their metabolic heating.

    Man needs to dump ~100W into the environment when just sitting in a chair. Dogs can only perspire via their tongues. - They will go extinct even before man does.
     
    Billy T, Feb 20, 2015
    #22

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  5. billvon

    billvon Valued Senior Member

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    They'll just move North.
     
    billvon, Feb 20, 2015
    #23

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  7. cosmictraveler

    cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    (Phys.org) —A small team of researchers with the University of California has found a way break apart carbon dioxide molecules and get carbon atoms and oxygen molecules instead of carbon monoxide and an oxygen atom. In their paper published in the journalScience, the team describes how they did it, and the implications of their findings. Arthur Suits and David Parker offer a perspective piece in the same journal issue that describes in more depth, minimum energy path (MEP) where reactants don't always follow the easiest path during chemical reactions and how it pertains to the work done by this group.


    Over the years, scientists have developed a theory about the development of life on planet Earth that's known as the "Great Oxidation Event," where plants developed and began taking in carbon dioxide and pumping out oxygen. In this new effort, the researchers believe they have found a way to achieve the same feat using a non-biological approach. They've used the shortest wavelength of ultraviolet light, aka, vacuum ultraviolet light (VUV) to break apart carbon dioxide molecules.

    The VUV was provided in the form of a laser shooting a beam at carbon dioxide molecules to break them apart. Another laser was used to ionize the pieces from the broken molecule so that they could be measured by a mass spectrometer. The process resulted in just 5 percent of the carbon dioxide molecules splitting into oxygen moleculesand carbon atoms (the rest went to carbon monoxide and oxygen atoms) but that was more than enough to show that the process can be used to get molecular oxygen from carbon dioxide—and that might have a far reaching impact.

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...vShgcK13SLCXEfvaA&sig2=FKKLf3xqzNBhFvoBMFv5Rg
     
    cosmictraveler, Feb 20, 2015
    #24
  8. billvon

    billvon Valued Senior Member

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    I can see a lot of applications for that process if it can be scaled up. Martian fuel/oxygen production is just one of them.
     
    billvon, Feb 20, 2015
    #25
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  9. Billy T

    Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    So will many humans (at least those with money) but eating will be a problem for those near pole dwellers.
     
    Billy T, Feb 20, 2015
    #26
  10. Billy T

    Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I did not realize it was so hard. Plants, even green algae, do it in a four step process and no step requires any photons but visible ones. Sure sounds like huge negative net energy factor compared to energy released when C rejoins O2 making CO2. If it is O2 one wants, is not electrolysis of H2O much more energy economical?
     
    Billy T, Feb 20, 2015
    #27
  11. billvon

    billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Well, keep in mind that it will be warmer farther North.
     
    billvon, Feb 20, 2015
    #28
  12. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The birth rate has been falling steadily since the early 1980s. It will drop to replacement level early in the 22nd century... and continue to drop.

    It turns out that prosperity is the best contraceptive. The places where the birth rate is still high are precisely the places where the people are the poorest and most hopeless--primarily sub-Saharan Africa. Wags have suggested (probably with a certain amount of truth) that when people have enough money to go out and have some fun at night, they don't spend so much time having sex.
    We could fix that if our governments were a little more responsible. The main source of pollution (air, water and everywhere else) is energy production. The best way to generate clean energy is to build gigantic solar collectors in high orbit, which convert the solar energy to lower-frequency microwaves and beam it to collectors on earth.

    This requires no new science or technology; I first read about it in a British magazine 50 years ago. The "only" problem is that this would be the largest project that humans ever attempted. It would require the cooperation of all the major nations, and it would still take more than a century to complete.

    Given today's politics, this, unfortunately, does not seem very likely.

    So... we're stuck with nuclear power as soon as we use up all the fossil fuels. There will never be more fossil fuels because mushrooms--a relatively newly evolved organism--have the enzyme to digest lignin. They consume the dead trees that used to lie around on the forest floor for millions of years, turning into peat, then coal, then petroleum, then natural gas.

    And of course the problem with nuclear power is waste disposal. We can probably futz around with it for a few centuries, but if we don't come up with a safer, cleaner power source, there will be nuclear waste dumps all over the planet. Even if an earthquake, a volcano or a comet doesn't shake up the Earth, in a few hundred thousand years who's going to be able to read all those "Danger" signs in ancient languages?
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Feb 20, 2015
    #29
  13. billvon

    billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Doesn't really matter. In 300,000 years, the waste won't be any more dangerous than the ore it was mined from.

    And in any case, the healthiest ecosystem in the Ukraine is the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. (Which doesn't mean that nuclear waste is safe, of course, but does point out that humans are a far greater threat to our ecosystem than nuclear waste is.)
     
    billvon, Feb 21, 2015
    #30
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