New Mars Forums

bobunf,

Lets go with the 10 civilizations in this galaxy, the closest being 22,000 LY away from Us.
7 already chat with each other and have very little interest in primitive cultures.
The remaining 3 civilizations are somewhat similar to us.
1 is perfect for distance and development for us to contact.
1 is quite a bit more technically advanced.
1 has just discovered the other land on the other side of its planet.
Another 25 planets exist in the primate sort of stage exist.

In the next 25 years we look at that 1 perfect civilization and discover it's about 22 thousand years away from having radio telescopes and 22 thousand LY away from us.
How we go about looking at the development of the civilization 22 thousand LY away I'm not sure, but lets say we can 25 years from now.

So we set up a really big dish and start sending a very powerful signal towards them.

Unfortunately at 20 thousand years the civilization we are sending to already have radio telescopes, they were just a bit faster than us in development.

In the next couple hundred years that civilization discover an entire new way much more efficient than radio and stops using it at all.

We also start using things more efficient than radio almost 20 thousand years ago ourselves so we shut down the ancient technical equipment when we realize they wont receive our ancient radio signal.

They send of a few random radio signals like we have done while they use radio, but noting really aimed at earth so we gain no information from them.
They discover us before they stop using radio and take a guess at what we will be doing 22 thousand years in the future and attempt to send that sort of signal to us. (the signal they now use whatever that is)

We could be playing this sort of game back and forth for a very long time even knowing each other exists.
When the signal they send gets to us, we will probably be using something else being 22 thousand years further technically developed than them.

This is probably a best case scenario that we actually discover a civilization at the perfect stage of technical development and being at the closest average distance to us.

The simple fact that radio unless its directed at something with a big dish and powerful signal doesn't endure the star to star distances, and the fact that radio communications probably only are used a few hundred years for each tech civilization is probably why it's radio quiet.
How few directed powerful signals have we sent?

Radio signals in my opinion are useless for communications with other intelligent species.
If ET's do exist and do chat with each other they are the most patient beings imaginable or chat with a means that doesn't take 1000s of years.

Louis,

The most powerful radio message ever sent was directed at the Magellanic cloud about 100,000 LY away from us and was expected to be receivable with our technology.

bobunf,

What if we are still very primitive.?
We might be 5 years, 5 thousand  or 50 thousand years before we discover how to chat.

Maybe like all primitive cultures on Earth meeting more advanced civilization even from Earth the outcome is bad.

They are sure to be curious like us, but would we be more that just interested in 1 tribe of monkeys over another?
Or would we just give it a passing curious look.?
If the monkeys spoke back to us while looking then sure we would be more than interested.

If we consider that we are low on the totem pole of intelligence and civilization time spans in the universe, then yes most of them will have no reason to contact us other than a passing look.
Planet 12873456b locally called Earth has primitive hostile intelligent life called humans. Note.. check back in 25 thousand years for development and each 25 thousand years.

Expecting civilizations that have been around for many hundreds of thousand to billions of years will think anything like us is simply a human perspective, and probably wrong.

Think about what humanity would be like 100 thousand years from now and we would not be interested in the now us.

bobunf,

Good point about the detection of earthlike worlds with technical civilizations.
Just check for pollution on that earthlike world and presto you have the indication you need.

We are not quite at that point of seeing earth like worlds then detecting the chemical makeup of those worlds.
We are close though.

Now if we found them with less technology than us in the next few decades as our technology allows us to see the signs of them.
How do we ever talk to them or listen to them?
They wont have a huge dish pointed at us or any indication we exist.

Maybe lots of civilizations know we are here already and are just waiting for us to tune into the right place.
Even with vastly advanced technology star to star travel might be quite difficult, so civilizations just wait until each technical civilization is ready to chat.

Actually the TV signals that escape to space don't endure for very long before they become background noise.

If intelligent life existed on the next closest start to us and had been beaming TV signals like we do, we couldn't detect them as more than background noise.

The belief that a radio bubble exists for 50+ years away from Earth is a myth.

At around 1ly TV signals become just background noise.
Unless some intelligent civilization has a very big radio dish and sends a very powerful signal right at us we would never detect them.
We would also have to be listening at that star with a very big dish when they send.

The galaxy might be a very noisy place with TV and Radio, but the distances from star to star far enough to make it just background noise.

bobunf,

I think on earthlike places orbiting a star they will need a moon to be stable places for life to evolve beyond simple life.
Even small tilts and wobbles on earth would be very bad for complex organisms, even for complex plants.

Natural wobbles will be at a frequency fast enough to keep resetting the life clock on those worlds without a big moon.
Life might exist on those worlds but my guess would be very basic life.

I'm in 100% agreement that Earthlike moons will be much better candidates for intelligent life or any life.

I think we will find that Earthlike_world/large_moon  systems are very rare, but Earthlike worlds orbiting gas worlds are numerous.

Will an earthlike world orbiting a gas world be a safe place though?
Gas worlds get many more impacts and most produce much more radiation, both are limiting factors in location of that world and time life can evolve after impacts settle down.

jumpboy11j,

All of the above all at once
Then maybe a healthy dose of super greenhouse gas to keep it that way, or warm it even more, or at least keep the snow away long enough for us to finish the process.

We might get only a 1 to 2 year window before it stars to snow in quantity, so that is all the time we would have at the triple point of water and the formation of clouds.
With so much fine dust in the Martian atmosphere it will snow as soon as the clouds can form.
Even very local conditions early on in a terraform above 0c with an atmosphere thick enough that can form clouds will cause snow.

I have a feeling no matter what we do it will snow first on all areas and most of Mars as we warm the planet enough to have clouds, we will have to be quick at that point before we loose the gains we have made.

I also see a second problem later on for Mars terraformers, after the initial rains on Mars clear most of the fine dust particles it will be difficult for Mars to rain.
No good natural mechanism exists to return fine particles back to the clouds on a warmer wetter Mars for rain to form once the fine dust is gone.
As a wet planet most of Mars would be wet or covered in water, so natural fine dust will not return in quantity to the cloud level as it does now on the freeze dried Mars.

We will really need to pick up the man made pollution levels on Mars to have rain.
Or figure a way to induce a few volcanos on mars.
Or Mars might be a very cloudy place with little rain, cloudy enough to impact surface temperatures.

Terraformer,

I remember an odds calculation about starting very basic life from amino acids as a random event.
The odds being more than the number of atoms in the universe to 1 against it per earthlike world.
That would be much less complex life than the first form of life on earth.
The random odds were something as unlikely as a fully functional car being created from amino acids with no plan and no intermediate steps, a pretty rare event i bet.

If that is the case then life on earth is probably a one of a kind event, or life has found a way to spread early on before most of the galaxy formed.

If life started early on as a very basic life, then spread as more complex dormant forms to just appear very complex as the first form of life on earth, it would explain the quantum jump life seems to take.

A very early big star with a ring of material going super nova could spread dormant life around the galaxy, as long as it was very early in the galaxy formation before most of the stars fire up.
That big early star would need a planet that could host basic life, then have another planet collide and smash it to rubble before the star goes super nova.

This is a pretty likely event early on as most of the stars would be giant blue short lived stars, so a second generation star could have all the elements it needs for life after only a few hundred million years.

We still need to get from very basic life to quite complex life that we see appear on earth as our first life, but the chaos in the early galaxy i think would ensure that, and the spread of that more complex life in its dormant form.

Life of basic forms might be pretty common in our galaxy but pretty rare or absent in most of the galaxies.

The odds for life in our galaxy with this method still don't leave many places for intelligent life, when we think that 90% of the stars in our galaxy are bad places, the remaining 10% maybe only 10% are lucky enough to have dormant life make it to them and endure the planet forming process, and nearly all of them don't have earthlike planets at the right location or do have earthlike planets and have rouge planets in odd orbits causing chaos or just a nearby star go nova sterilize the system.
Of the few stars that do have earthlike places in the right spot that are lucky enough to be seeded with life and have a stable solar system with a long term stable star, how many will be just perfectly right for intelligent life.
We could easily be alone.

cIclops,

I'm of the same opinion that life starts pretty much anywhere it can.
I think life is a numbers game, a time game and a location game, if you have all three then you probably have life on that world.

To have intelligent life i think we need the world to be just right with land and water and a host of other needs, with some freak events that allow simple life to evolve, then more freak events that allow that evolved life to be reworked a few times and lots of time for life to get the land ready for life on it.

If life starting as a normal process on most worlds that could support it isn't the case, and life is a freakish event then the universe might be a very very quiet place.

Needing an earthlike place then needing a freak event for life on it would make for very small odds for earthlike places to have life.
Then expecting the star it orbits to be as stable as ours for 4 billion years before intelligent life appears really makes the odds bad.

It all comes down to the how odd or normal is life in the universe before we can make an educated guess on the earthlike places with life.

Intelligent life i think at best will be a freakish event for most of those Earthlike worlds as ours was.
Over 4 billion years of planetary near disasters were needed for us to arrive for the short time we have been here.

Any solar system with asteroids much less frequent or more frequent than ours will probably not have intelligent life either.
Any solar system with a big planet not in circular orbit will cause constant disasters so we can exclude them.
Double star or multi star systems i think will be very poor places for Earthlike worlds, to much material moving around in them, and very odd heating and cooling of a planet in those systems.
All stars under 2 billion years of age, all stars that formed without a nearby super nova and all short lived large stars are all poor places.
Most of the center bulge of the galaxy is a poor place, to much radiation and to many other stars causing problems.

The list of must have items for intelligent life is much longer than the drake equation takes into account.

When we crunch the numbers of the places intelligent life won't be it only leaves maybe 5%- 10%  of stars in a galaxy as possible places.
Maybe 1 in 100 of them has a long term friendly stable star with no near supernova stars.
Maybe 1 in 100 of them has formed with enough elements to form earthlike worlds collected from just the right nearby super nova.
Maybe 1 in 100 of them has an earthlike world in the right place.
Maybe 1 in 100 of them have a big moon.
Maybe 1 in 100 of them have all circular orbiting planets in the system.
Maybe 1 in 100 of them have life.
Maybe 1 in 100 of them have the correct land gas water etc etc mix to have land life evolve.
Maybe 1 in 100 of them have a few needed freak events that reworks life a few times without destroying life.
Maybe 1 in 100 of them have intelligent life.
Maybe 1 in 10 of them is a technical civilization asking the same question.

We could easily be alone with just those guesses that only just scratch the surface of the needs and odds of Earth2 with intelligent life.

Or we could be just 1 example of life in a countless number of examples around the universe more diverse than we could possibly imagine on strange worlds we could only imagine.

Life i think will be everywhere it can be, unless life is an odd freak event.
Intelligent life very very rare in either case.
If life is an odd freak event then we might be alone in the universe as the only inteligent species.

idiom,

I personally belive life here started here or somewhere in our solar system then migrated to Earth after the planetary creation process was nearly done.
Any life that was or is on Mars for sure would give some serious answers on the how life came about.
Finding no trace of any life that existed on Mars would also give us a good answer on how life started.

Migrating life material from star to star just seems such a remote possibility to me.
Way to many 1 in a billion X 1 in a billion events for it to be likely.
The odds are a little different if it happened early on though.

The life creation process might be quite common in the universe, Earth like places might not even be needed for intelligent life.
We might be just very regional in our thinking and many places in the universe very different from Earth might host intelligent life.

Even on Earth life grows in some pretty hostile environments so we should expect life in all those places in the universe that are just as hostile.
Given enough time some of them will develop intelligence.

Earth might be an unusual oddity for intelligent life in the universe with most of intelligent life in places something like Titan or worlds far different from our thinking.

The set of rules needed to have another earthlike place is going to be long indeed.
So many things are needed for earth that another world similar to earth i think will be 1 in a trillion or worse.
A moon,  magnetic field, perfect mix of water/gas, perfect distance from host star, stable circular planetary mix, perfect mix of land/water, etc etc.

That number is 1 in a trillion of the long term stable stars so maybe 1 planet very similar to earth in every 5 or 10 galaxies.

A few 100 Earth like places might exist in all the universe, but in a few billion year history needed for life to become intelligent.
Of them how many get hit by 100 km asteroids or have a nearby star go super nova or have the host sun fry the world with a active day or giant solar flare.
Or a minor event like a small 10km asteroid strikes every 100 million years to reset the life clock.
Or nothing happens on the world and dinosaur like creatures rule them till the end of time on that planet, like nearly happened to our world.

It's not a giant stretch of the imagination that we are alone in the universe or at best the next door intelligent neighbor is so far away in some very distant galaxy we will never discover them.

Our closest neighbors will be algae and mould on some punished semi earth world.
We will find lots of those worlds.

I think the large moons in orbit around gas giants at the right location to the star are an overlooked place for intelligent life.
The odds are much better for life on them than an earthlike place having a big moon and other mix of necessities.

Mesmer,

If we were to keep the final Mars atmosphere bar pressure at no higher than 150 mb we might just be able to scavenge enough nitrogen from Mars itself to be the 40% of that total.
30 mb of N2 is very probable existing on Mars, 60mb N2 possible but a high limit for sure.

150 mb with 5% C02 55% 02 and 40% N2 will work for plants.
Insects and some animal life should be able to adapt to that, but large animals i think would have long term trouble with pressure that low.

Anything beyond 150mb and i think we are stuck with buffer gas import.
Without lots of super greenhouse gas 150mb Mars with life friendly gas totals won't stay warm.

I personally think about 500 mb total would be ideal for Mars.
Everything would adapt to that, even us humans.
The Nitrogen import penalty is pretty high and long term but Mars has the time and Titan isn't going anywhere.

Your idea of importing ammonia and methane from asteroids works well to get another buffer gas that is also a greenhouse gas, you also get an import of water as a bonus.
Time scales again are a problem for asteroid import, but on a warm Mars i don't think time scales would be a big issue.
The bigger trouble with asteroid import is that the first one arrives long after the colony has started to grow, then it becomes an issue of dumping them into the atmosphere above the colonists.

Titan is an ideal place to get both methane, nitrogen and even the fuel to power it all.
Low escape velocities, abundance of gas and liquids needed for Mars make it a good semi close place .
We could even set up robot factories on Titan to automate the process of moving what we need to Mars.
Adding just gas and liquid to Mars avoids the giant thumps asteroids would make so it could be a long term safe import.

If i was going to alter Mars this is what i would do.

1. Send settlers to Mars and let them expand a city and population as they see fit.
2. Warm Mars with super greenhouse gasses made on Mars.
3. Seed the ponds and Lakes with water based life on the now warmer but still toxic to land life Mars.
4. Imports of Nitrogen and methane sent from Titans robot factories sent weekly until Mars is up to whatever total we choose.
5. Convert water to Oxygen allowed to escape into the atmosphere and hydrogen used as fuel.
6. Fiddle with the balance for the next 50,000 years with small asteroids more imports and mining.

Commodore,

My feelings for Mars exactly.
Mars is close enough to Earthlike for us to setup shop, once we do it will expand more like an expanding city than pioneer style of settlement.

Once Mars has a big city on it with everything needed, will a roof over the head matter as long as it has everything?
Putting up a giant dome with a park in it verses waiting 1000s or 10,000s of years to attempt the same thing outdoors seems like a no brainer.

That pattern i think will happen on any place we set up shop.
Although i don't see any other location we can setup shop that people will be happy to live on.

Venus might be the only place we attempt to terra form since we can't setup shop on it until its terra formed.