New Mars Forums

Humans should spread Earth-Life to dead worlds.

The dead mass of the universe probably outweighs the living mass by a huge factor.

As for Mars, if there is microbes, and they are not related to Earth-microbes, I say preserve some, and then terraform the place. If they have not evolved in the last 4 billion years, I doubt they will evolve before the Sun dies, especially since their environment has been getting harsher and harsher.

Forest on Mars would be wonderful.

That would really depend on their environment they evolved in.

We do know, from observing Earth life, that certain forms are better suited for evolving intelligence.

Dinosaurs were on this Earth for over 100 million years, yet they did not evolve intelligence. I think, had they not become extinct, there were be intelligent dinosaurs on the Earth today (And no humans).

Humans have only been around for a million or so years, yet we have evolved intelligence relatively quickly. Why.

Several factors. For one thing, we have hands with fingers and a thumb. These allow us to work with tools. This helped early humans think.

Environment helps too. As humans spread across the globe, they encountered many environments. In the harsh environments, humans had to learn how to survive, or die. For example, early Europeans encountered a cold harsh climate. They had to learn how to build better shelters and make better cloths. They had to learn better hunting ways. They had to learn the seasons for planting. They had to learn much. Their cousins, in the warmer climates, didn’t have to have such shelter or clothing. Food plants grew all year, and animal life was abundant. It was the cold harsh climate of northern Europe that made Europeans evolve technology and science so quickly.

When dealing with aliens from Earth-like environments, we might find the humanoid form is common. At there very least, we might find we share similar features, like our hands.

Who knows what other forms intelligent life might take in our environment. What about water life?

And then there are alien environments. What about a cold world that has a methane cycle instead of a water cycle?

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/i … 5.jpg]Good picture of Dione

<a href="http://www.irobotmovie.com/">Here it the home page for the movie</a>.

I have read a lot of Isaac’s work, but I never read I.Robot. In his Foundation series he refers to the Robot code, which I believe he established in I,Robot.

Will is a great actor. I love his stuff. I usually hate Rap (I am very open minded about most music) but his Rap is okay.

Did you see this http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … 642]Thread I started.

Ganymede has similar surface gravity as Titan, but it is closer to the Sun, so any Titan like atmosphere would be heated up to escape velocity. If Titan was warmed up, it would loose its atmosphere after a few million years.

Maybe we can finally get the whole planet photographed.

I am glad to see this. I predict that, after humans are established in space, Mercury becomes an industry center.

On a side note, Mercury gives me the feel of a moon rather than a planet. Unlike Titan, which gives me the feel of a planet. Maybe it is the atmosphere factor.

I had to do a double take onhttp://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cgi?path=../multimedia/images/titan/images/PIA06407.jpg&type=image]this one. I thought is was Mars for a second.

So what is the deal with those white methane clouds. Are they over a methane ocean, sea or lake? It is snowing or raining methane under those clouds. Are there methane rivers near-bye?

I saws it on TV in the early 1990's, before the internet.

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/ma … .html]Here is the first experiment ever done on this.

http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/ar … lw795]More

http://www.scientificpsychic.com/graphics/]Speaking of Vision

I am not totally blind in my right eye. I have a large blind spot in the center of my vision, thanks to a kid throwing a rock at my eye when I was 12. That was 25 (Yikes!) years ago. I have long adjusted to it. I have very poor depth preception. Don't throw something at me, because I probably will not catch it.

As posted http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … html]above The blueberry’s appear to be mostly made of Hematite.

My two questions are;

What caused http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/o … m]Hematite to form a sphere?

They say the spheres are mostly hematite. What are the other elements involved?

http://www.mindat.org/min-5574.html]What about the sparkly material at Hanks Hollow? Could it be http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … pecularite?

<a href="http://saturn1.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/images/cassini_today4.jpg">Cassini’s is approaching Dione’s orbit.
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This is as of when this was posted. The picture on this website changes.

The way evolution works in the natural world, environmental changes or competition usually causes a species to evolve or become extinct. Sometimes a new niche will open up and several species will compete for it. (Some evolution results in freak genetic changes that turns out to be good. Like when a radiation particle mutates DNA.)

In an unchanging environment, a species, like the crocodile, will not evolve much. This is fine until the environment does change, or another species competes for that environment.

But when you throw intelligence in, does that change things? Certainly intelligence helps a species adapt to environmental changes and to defeat competition. And, in our case, it has allowed us to not only survive, but flourish in every niche on the Earth. It has even allowed us to survive in the environment of Space.

As we have mastered every natural niche on the Earth, we have solved our physical evolution. We are probably causing more change to ourselves than nature is.

I fear we are becoming stagnant. Now we could be like the crocodile, and survive for millions of years without needing to evolve further, but I have my doubts. We have much more of an effect on our environment than the crocodile. Over-Population causes a strain on the Earth resources. This causes more pollution. This also causes us to fight each other over the limited resources.

So how can we ensure our survival? We need to make sure the Earth can handle our population- not an easy thing to do. Education across the globe would help here. People need to stop having 6, 8, 12 or more kids. Two or 3 is enough. We need to keep recycling. We need to keep cleaning up our environment and finding cleaner energy.

So say we do all of this. We could last for millions of years, right. Maybe not. The dinosaurs were on this Earth 165 million years. They would probably be here today- there would probably be intelligent dinosaurs by now- had it not been for an impactor.

So how can we ensure our survival? Space.

Space will not solve our population problems on the Earth. Transporting billions of people off the Earth with rockets, or some other means would be a huge task..

So the Earth will always have to watch her population. Space does give us room to grow. It also gives us a place to move pollution causing industry.

But more importantly, space gives us a new environment to evolve into. The challenges of living and working in space will teach us so much. From moving and mining asteroids, to living on Mars, to terraforming Venus, space will change us.

If a sentiment species can get established into space, the chances of extension greatly decrease. And the more they establish themselves into space, the chances of becoming extinct keeps decreasing.