What's your opinion on extraterrestrial life?

Post Reply New Topic

Which is why the literary genre is called speculative fiction, especially when the author's ideas about extraterrestrial life are involved.

Is there any currently-available technology that would allow humans to colonize Mars (assuming that money, politics, and religion were no object)?

Maybe if someone were to strap a booster to the ISS, and Escape From Terra, perhaps ...

If one considers the problem of terraforming Mars from the point of view of current technology, the scenario looks like this:

1. A century to settle Mars and create a substantial local industrial capability and population.

2. A half century producing fluorocarbon gases (like CF4) to warm the planet by ~10 C.

3. A half century for CO2 to outgas from the soil under the impetus of the fluorocarbon gases, thickening the atmosphere to 0.2 to 0.3 bar, and raising the planetary temperature a further 40 C. This will cause water to melt out of the permafrost, and rivers to flow and rain to fall. Radiation doses on the surface will also be greatly reduced.

Under these conditions, with active human help, first photosynthetic microbes and then ever more complex plants could be spread over the planet, as they would be able to grow in the open. Humans on Mars in this stage would no longer need pressure suits, just oxygen masks, and very large domed cities could be built, as the domes would no longer need to contain pressure greater than the outside environment.

4. Over a period of about a thousand years, human-disseminated and harvested plants would be able to put ~150 mbar (millibars) of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. Once this occurs, humans and other animals will be able to live on Mars in the open, and the world will become fully alive.

I can't help but wonder where This thing came from.....And what it actually was.

This

Intelligence will not be explained by or in terms of quarks. Itty bitty particles are not even conscious let alone intelligent.

ruveyn

I think intelligence is a fluke and a rare happening.

ruveyn

^It took a long time for a technological life form to evolve on Earth. I think most planets are capable of developing life, but the window during which that life may exist is relatively brief in most cases. The window for human-like intelligence even smaller

In MOST cases? What facts led you to that conclusion?

EVIDENCE, please?


.

It took more than 4 billion years for humans to evolve and we are the only intelligent life form on this planet (that we know about).