Habitable Planet Found!

Off Topic
61

I don’t like the exit strategy idea behind Prof.x’s post.

We have to be able to deal with earth’s problems before spreading ourselves in the vastness of space, if it is really possible at all.

That not a moralic imperative, rather one of pure reason.
The amount of work and trust we’ll have to invest in gigantic projects are probably not achievable Earth disorganized, filthy and chaotic.

If we aim for the starts, we have to overcome first:
organized (monotheistic) religion, energy problems and the grand problem of social organization (includes politics, education, work etc.)
Hopefully in that order.

62

The Earth is just fine. It’s not ruined and will be around for a very very long time.

63

[quote]Nards wrote:
The Earth is just fine. It’s not ruined and will be around for a very very long time.[/quote]

I was waiting for someone to write something like this.

The Earth will last until the sun explodes/implodes. That isn’t the point. We can fuck it up so it will NOT sustain US.

Unless you believe this can’t happen, your comment is pretty damn naive.

64

nards:lol.

Earth will be around, but humanity? That’s two completely seperate things.

There is a mass extinction going on right now, with humans as the cause. The oceans change rapidly as fish populations dwindle and pollution rises. Temperatures rise. etc

We are pretty good at destroying ecosystems which we don’t understand, especially at level of implications.

At this point in time, all bets are off.

Perhaps earth will be a manmade waste in a mere thousand years.
Or we’ll be able to live in balance with the ecosystems, even finetuning some of them.
Or something in between.

Note that by “waste” I simply mean that over 95% of all earth will be unhabitable and unusable by humans and most mammals. And that the big majority of all species will die out as new eco systems will slowly establish themselves over the next hundreds of thousands of years.

65

[quote]Nards wrote:
Has France surrendered to this planet yet?[/quote]

Shit, as long as they deny the fact we saved their asses in WWII, they won’t surrender to anything. They are FRENCH, after all!!!

66

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]Nards wrote:
The Earth is just fine. It’s not ruined and will be around for a very very long time.[/quote]

We can fuck it up so it will NOT sustain US.
[/quote]

I think this was his point.

67

In terms of survival over millions of years, living on a planet isn’t a very good idea.

Whether it’s asteroids, solar flares, your sun exploding, gamma ray bursts, pollution, or a volcanic eruption the size of an entire fucking continent (The Siberian Traps, considered by some to be the culprit for the biggest extinction ever) - Eventually something is going to kill you, or at the very least set back your technological progress by a few hundred (or thousand) years.

Along the lines of Prof X said, the movie Wall-E has a good idea of what might be in store for our future. If somehow our technology could evolve or progress sothat we could make massive spaceships (planetary size), then our chances for future surival would be strengthened a great deal - we could stay mobile and wouldn’t be sitting a planet with our fingers crossed that we don’t get annihilated.

It is very exciting that we found this planet though, it will give extra time needed to develop the tools necassery to become more advanced, if we can ever manage to populate it.

68

[quote]Grneyes wrote:

[quote]Nards wrote:
Has France surrendered to this planet yet?[/quote]

Shit, as long as they deny the fact we saved their asses in WWII, they won’t surrender to anything. They are FRENCH, after all!!!
[/quote]
They saved our asses too.

69

Goodfellow, living on a planet is a fantastic idea.

Life has everything it needs in abundance (food, energy, gravity, protection from various ray and meteor bombardment etc etc) and compared to a space station there is little chance of a cataclysmic catastrophe.

Eventually our civilization will learn more about potential life killers and make precautions.
However, the biggest risk is still…homo sapiens sapiens.

The big extinctions probably weren’t caused by short, spectacular events like the so often invoked dinosaur killing asteroid. These were dramatic changes occuring over the span of hundred thousands of years.
Changes that affected all living creatures.

And that’s where the space ships come in. As a means of getting to other (terraformed or prepared) planets.
Btw, it won’t be [quote]massive spaceships (planetary size) [/quote]. That is bad Sci Fi.
Although there can be colonies that are floating around planets. (eg in high altitude or using lagrange point orbits).

70

i always laugh when people bring up terraforming. shit, we can’t even terraform our own planet.

71

[quote]WormwoodTheory wrote:
i always laugh when people bring up terraforming. shit, we can’t even terraform our own planet.[/quote]

If by “terraform” you mean “find a place with even more resources so we can exploit them”, then yeah, we can pull that off. What is unrealistic is doing this in an environment that is completely hostile or incompatible. If a planet is just like Earth, there is little problem.

If the planet is like Mars, then yeah, we may be several hundred years away from having the technology to do that.

Either way, your mistake would be viewing this through the eyes of someone limited by our current technology.

Remember, your kids will think those 3g phones are as antique as we think about rotary phones.

72

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]Nards wrote:
The Earth is just fine. It’s not ruined and will be around for a very very long time.[/quote]

I was waiting for someone to write something like this.

The Earth will last until the sun explodes/implodes. That isn’t the point. We can fuck it up so it will NOT sustain US.

Unless you believe this can’t happen, your comment is pretty damn naive.[/quote]

Sustainability will never be reached… you can make your community(neighborhood) a sustainable community if everyone is willing… smaller scale is obviously much much easier. But sustainability on a global scale will never be reached.

And the only way our(US) country could ever possibly even reach that point is if the system completely collapsed and we rebuilt the country from the ground up with sustainability as our primary goal(amusing you can convince the masses.)

On a large scale its just not possible.

Over the years we will get slightly better but true or even near true sustainability will never be reached…

73

[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Goodfellow, living on a planet is a fantastic idea.

Life has everything it needs in abundance (food, energy, gravity, protection from various ray and meteor bombardment etc etc) and compared to a space station there is little chance of a cataclysmic catastrophe.[/quote]

Seriously. Our magnetic field and atmosphere are both very fantastic for life as we know it

[quote]WormwoodTheory wrote:
i always laugh when people bring up terraforming. shit, we can’t even terraform our own planet.[/quote]

There’s actually some intelligent discussion about it on the baut forum. I think the idea is more about needing to be able to do this (if we ever become space-farers), as opposed to simply agreeing that its a good idea

74

[quote]sardines12 wrote:

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]gregron wrote:
I dont understand why people are interested in planets with other life and more crazy is people who want to meet aliens… If aliens came to earth we would be screwed. They would fuck our shit all up. I mean looks whats already happened to Americas economy with all the illegal aliens we already have! (ZING!)

Ok another planet would be cool if it had some super hot alien babes who were just super crazy sex fiends who wanted to pleasure Earthlings non stop… or if they had some bad ass animals like dinosaurs or something… but fuck aliens coming to earth[/quote]

Ignorance is bliss.

It won’t happen in your life time…but eventually, China will burst at the seams as far as population growth and America will be much like China is now. We will eventually fuck this planet up. The average person can’t even control themselves when it comes to throwing trash out a window. We just fucked up tons of aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico…and none of that is the worst that can happen.

I know I’ve said it before, but I really think the movie Wall-E is a great representation of what is ahead for us…so yeah, finding that alternate planet may not save YOUR life or even affect the lives of your kids or theirs…but it likely will affect the kids those kids have.

Waiting until it is too late to even look around is fucking stupid.

The human race isn’t about one specific individual. In the grand scheme of things, our lives are nearly insignificant…therefore, the human race and its survival as whole matters most.

Think about it…if an asteroid the size of Texas hit Earth next week…the universe wouldn’t even know we existed or give a shit.

That is how much we matter right now.[/quote]

People have thought this for a long time. But with greater population comes more innovation and solutions to potential problems. Many population theorists thought like you, I’d look up people like Malthus and Durkheim, it really makes the fears we have over shit like this seem silly.[/quote]

How can they make it seem silly when we haven’t reached that point yet? How can a viable theory be made silly by another theory?

That would imply the belief that we will somehow “invent” a way to control the population. That doesn’t take an invention. It takes laws passed to limit pregnancies…which many would argue is a trampling of personal freedoms.

Also, our trash isn’t going anywhere, no matter how deep we bury it. We either start tossing shit into the sun, or we accept that we will eventually run out of space here.

75

[quote]WormwoodTheory wrote:
i always laugh when people bring up terraforming. shit, we can’t even terraform our own planet.[/quote]

I laugh at people who feel smart because they know stuff our ancestors didn’t.

But I especially laugh at people who think they know exactly what humanity is not capable of.

76

[quote]Professor X wrote:
[…]
That would imply the belief that we will somehow “invent” a way to control the population. That doesn’t take an invention. It takes laws passed to limit pregnancies…which many would argue is a trampling of personal freedoms.

Also, our trash isn’t going anywhere, no matter how deep we bury it. We either start tossing shit into the sun, or we accept that we will eventually run out of space here.[/quote]

Influencing population is a BIG topic that has to be resolved effectively but also harmoniously at one point.

Humanity absolutely cannot continue to multiply blindly.
That is, btw, one gigantic copout with most monotheistic religions, the “best” books often encourage believers to frolik on the bedsheets like rabbits.
We are already FAR, FAR too many for our current idea of adequate lifestyle.

77

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]sardines12 wrote:

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]gregron wrote:
I dont understand why people are interested in planets with other life and more crazy is people who want to meet aliens… If aliens came to earth we would be screwed. They would fuck our shit all up. I mean looks whats already happened to Americas economy with all the illegal aliens we already have! (ZING!)

Ok another planet would be cool if it had some super hot alien babes who were just super crazy sex fiends who wanted to pleasure Earthlings non stop… or if they had some bad ass animals like dinosaurs or something… but fuck aliens coming to earth[/quote]

Ignorance is bliss.

It won’t happen in your life time…but eventually, China will burst at the seams as far as population growth and America will be much like China is now. We will eventually fuck this planet up. The average person can’t even control themselves when it comes to throwing trash out a window. We just fucked up tons of aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico…and none of that is the worst that can happen.

I know I’ve said it before, but I really think the movie Wall-E is a great representation of what is ahead for us…so yeah, finding that alternate planet may not save YOUR life or even affect the lives of your kids or theirs…but it likely will affect the kids those kids have.

Waiting until it is too late to even look around is fucking stupid.

The human race isn’t about one specific individual. In the grand scheme of things, our lives are nearly insignificant…therefore, the human race and its survival as whole matters most.

Think about it…if an asteroid the size of Texas hit Earth next week…the universe wouldn’t even know we existed or give a shit.

That is how much we matter right now.[/quote]

People have thought this for a long time. But with greater population comes more innovation and solutions to potential problems. Many population theorists thought like you, I’d look up people like Malthus and Durkheim, it really makes the fears we have over shit like this seem silly.[/quote]

How can they make it seem silly when we haven’t reached that point yet? How can a viable theory be made silly by another theory?

That would imply the belief that we will somehow “invent” a way to control the population. That doesn’t take an invention. It takes laws passed to limit pregnancies…which many would argue is a trampling of personal freedoms.

Also, our trash isn’t going anywhere, no matter how deep we bury it. We either start tossing shit into the sun, or we accept that we will eventually run out of space here.[/quote]
It’s silly because people have had similar fears that never came into fruition.

78

[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:

Eventually our civilization will learn more about potential life killers and make precautions.
However, the biggest risk is still…homos.

[/quote]

Oh man!! You are mean!!

Sorry, stupid off-topic.

79

[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
Goodfellow, living on a planet is a fantastic idea.

Life has everything it needs in abundance (food, energy, gravity, protection from various ray and meteor bombardment etc etc) and compared to a space station there is little chance of a cataclysmic catastrophe.

And that’s where the space ships come in. As a means of getting to other (terraformed or prepared) planets.
Btw, it won’t be [quote]massive spaceships (planetary size) [/quote]. That is bad Sci Fi.
Although there can be colonies that are floating around planets. (eg in high altitude or using lagrange point orbits).
[/quote]

I’m thinking further forward into the future than this. If technology is advanced enough you could create anything a planet could provide (apart from resources which you could harvest instead).

I am of course putting no limits on technological advancement, but still =P

80

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]WormwoodTheory wrote:
i always laugh when people bring up terraforming. shit, we can’t even terraform our own planet.[/quote]

If by “terraform” you mean “find a place with even more resources so we can exploit them”, then yeah, we can pull that off. What is unrealistic is doing this in an environment that is completely hostile or incompatible. If a planet is just like Earth, there is little problem.

If the planet is like Mars, then yeah, we may be several hundred years away from having the technology to do that.

Either way, your mistake would be viewing this through the eyes of someone limited by our current technology.

Remember, your kids will think those 3g phones are as antique as we think about rotary phones.[/quote]

It seems the response to finding a planet outside of that Goldilocks zone is, “Well we could still terraform it.” Regardless of whether or not we have the technology, it’s still an endeavor that would take hundreds of years to come to fruition.

We’d have to get the life supporting materials from somewhere, and that “somewhere” would probably be from high h2o content asteroids or other solar bodies. Unless we invent teleportation between now and then, we’re going to have to tugboat these mothers to said planet to drop them into the atmosphere. Then, wait for the fallout to settle.

Mars is probably the best candidate for terraforming, and it’s practically hopeless. Low mass coupled with a crappy magnetosphere pretty much ruin the odds of it ever retaining a thick enough atmosphere for the stuff we need. Turning other planets into “earth-like” places is pointless when there are other earths in the galaxy.

given the choice between FTL travel funding and terraforming funding, i’d have to go with the former.