Life Beyond Earth --New Possible Habitable Planets!

[Agent11]

A gama ray burst could wipe out most of the life on the planet almost instantly, with no warning.

A rogue planet could cause our orbit to change or collide with us, or it could just greatly disturb the Oort cloud and send millions of comets careening into the inner solar system.

There are lots of other things that could kill us all dead relatively quickly, these are two that would be impossible to prevent imo.

 

[Retro Rob]

A gama ray burst could wipe out most of the life on the planet almost instantly, with no warning.

A rogue planet could cause our orbit to change or collide with us, or it could just greatly disturb the Oort cloud and send millions of comets careening into the inner solar system.

There are lots of other things that could kill us all dead relatively quickly, these are two that would be impossible to prevent imo.

These things could happen to any planet, so moving won't magically protect us from extinction.

EDIT: Wasn't a "rouge planet" the primacy of the 2012 phenomenom? We'd easliy be able to detect something as large as a planet headed our way, but I agree... there would be nothing to stop it.

 

[Agent11]

Right. It just increases the odds of survival.

 

[Retro Rob]

Right. It just increases the odds of survival.

Yeah, and we'd have to pick our planet carefully, find one similar to earth...orbiting a star at a similar distance, etc.

Outside of Mars, any planet in this SS is probably out of the question, IMO.

 

[randomrogue]

Asteroids and a super nova are perfectly avoidable with interstellar travel.

 

[Agent11]

Well, Europa would be a possible site for a colony. We know there is water there. Vesta and Ceres would be good candidates for mining.

We could always try to alter Venus' orbit a little bit and try to send it into the goldylocks zone or attempt to teraform mars. I've speculated on building a giant railgun to play cosmic billiards with moons and planets. Ganymede has a lot of ice, so it would be a perfect projectile.

 

[Retro Rob]

Well, Europa would be a possible site for a colony. We know there is water there. Vesta and Ceres would be good candidates for mining.

Yeah, I think it could be a good site.

How far is it from the Sun? A billion miles? I understand it gets its heat from the gravitational beating of Saturn itself.

My bad, I meant Jupiter.. not Saturn.

 

[Agent11]

Jupiter

 

[Retro Rob]

I think this is a good read on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Europa

 

[Retro Rob]

Jupiter

Thanks... I thought I caught that in time...

 

[Agent11]

Although Saturn's moon Titan may be a good place for some sort of base as well. It has a pretty unique atmosphere that may be exploited in different ways.

 

[Retro Rob]

Although Saturn's moon Titan may be a good place for some sort of base as well. It has a pretty unique atmosphere that may be exploited in different ways.

Here on Earth, a good case-study would be how we treat Antartica (meaning, who gets what part of the new planet or moon) and if we can't come to any agreement on how Antartica is Governed/divided, then we will still carry the same dumb sovereignty issues over to the new world along with the constant bickering and fighting, possible war, etc.

I read a quote from Stephen Hawking suggesting that this needs to happen probably in the next 200 years to ensure that we can survive as a race to avoid getting wiped out. He also suggested that we'd need to find another suitable star seeing how it is unlikely we'd be able to move to the really only one suitable planet, namely, Mars.

A personal concern with me, outside of terraforming the planet/moon, is who would get to go first? Would this be like 2012 where only rich people and scientists are allowed shall disaster be imminent... or "people who can contribute"? What about "regular" folks who don't have money or aren't educated? There will always be poor folks among us.

While I agree that we'd probably have the technological means, I think social and political issues, or how we'd be able to co-exist in our new home, would determine whether or not this would work long-term. We have different countries with countless political and social set-ups that aren't likely to change anytime soon.

This is very interesting discourse, but I still think Antartica would be a good starting point. I don't quite know how the world is doing with this non-government having Continent, but if we can't agree on much regarding it, then it will be extremely tough doing this with another moon/planet, IMO.

 

[dank69]

All we need is a energy source capable of powering a constant 1g acceleration, and the means to shield the craft from doppler shifted cosmic background radiation.

The problem is that some radiation isn't capable of being diverted with magnetic fields...And it's the nasty stuff. So we would need to figure something else out.

If we had a good enough energy source that weight wasn't an issue maybe lots and lots of dense material would do the trick, like lead. It would get melted, but if we could hold a thick cloud of molten dense metal around the ship using a magnetic field that would maybe do the trick.

A super power source and a dense material we could manipulate with a magnetic field that would not be vaporized by insane heat but that would block gamma rays from frying us... Thats all we need for interstellar travel.

Wouldn't it be more practical to warp space into wormholes?

 

[Agent11]

I don't think so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole

 

[smackababy]

Here on Earth, a good case-study would be how we treat Antartica (meaning, who gets what part of the new planet or moon) and if we can't come to any agreement on how Antartica is Governed/divided, then we will still carry the same dumb sovereignty issues over to the new world along with the constant bickering and fighting, possible war, etc.

I read a quote from Stephen Hawking suggesting that this needs to happen probably in the next 200 years to ensure that we can survive as a race to avoid getting wiped out. He also suggested that we'd need to find another suitable star seeing how it is unlikely we'd be able to move to the really only one suitable planet, namely, Mars.

A personal concern with me, outside of terraforming the planet/moon, is who would get to go first? Would this be like 2012 where only rich people and scientists are allowed shall disaster be imminent... or "people who can contribute"? What about "regular" folks who don't have money or aren't educated? There will always be poor folks among us.

While I agree that we'd probably have the technological means, I think social and political issues, or how we'd be able to co-exist in our new home, would determine whether or not this would work long-term. We have different countries with countless political and social set-ups that aren't likely to change anytime soon.

This is very interesting discourse, but I still think Antartica would be a good starting point. I don't quite know how the world is doing with this non-government having Continent, but if we can't agree on much regarding it, then it will be extremely tough doing this with another moon/planet, IMO.

What would be the point of allowing people who can't contribute? Once it is properly colonized, we are going to need people to run McDonalds on other planets. So, even the lowly can contribute, if they want to.

 

[JTsyo]

If humanity is still around to see it happen I hope we can model how the super massive black holes at the center of the two galaxies will behave during such an event.
That's what I would be concerned about.

If they had more matter falling into them then they could begin to quasar, 2 quasars going off at the same time as they orbit each other wouldn't be something I would want to be anywhere near...Even in a cosmic sense.

Sim of the the galaxies merging:
Youtube

Most of the galaxies are empty space so collisions of stars is unlikely. There might be some unfortunate stars that are ejected from the resultant galaxy. Too bad we won't be a lovely spiral galaxy afterward. The actual merging would happen over a long time period as seen in the sim.

 

[Retro Rob]

What would be the point of allowing people who can't contribute? Once it is properly colonized, we are going to need people to run McDonalds on other planets. So, even the lowly can contribute, if they want to.

Not everyone can make significant scientific and financial contributions... some are not in a position to offer any at all, so we just should abandon them? This is what's meant by "contribute".

And why would you want to carry the same problem causing infrastructures that are alive and well here on earth? What, are we going to bring worker ants to cultivate and harvest the ground, while the elites underpay them, creating "classes" of people again?

We need to come up with a whole new system void of this "clergy/laity" rich-poor mess.

 

[smackababy]

Not everyone can make significant scientific and financial contributions... some are not in a position to offer any at all, so we just should abandon them? This is what's meant by "contribute".

And why would you want to carry the same problem causing infrastructures that are alive and well here on earth? What, are we going to bring worker ants to cultivate and harvest the ground, while the elites underpay them, creating "classes" of people again?

We need to come up with a whole new system void of this "clergy/laity" rich-poor mess.

But there will always be classes of people. Scientists and people not intelligent enough to contribute. Either we weed out one (and hope the smart ones win) or we have a system that allows for ways of contribution without intelligence. If your job is in danger of being replaced by a robot, you only contribute as much as science allows you to.

 

[Retro Rob]

But there will always be classes of people. Scientists and people not intelligent enough to contribute. Either we weed out one (and hope the smart ones win) or we have a system that allows for ways of contribution without intelligence. If your job is in danger of being replaced by a robot, you only contribute as much as science allows you to.

There doesn't have to be classes of people is what I am saying. We can eliminate that by simply holding classes and educating those, for free, about how to build, manufacture, engineer, etc. This is the best way to get rid of the uneducated "worker ant" class of folk. What, are we going to charge for our knowlegde on a new hostile world? How will the uneducated make their money, or whatever currency being exchanged, to pay for it? A vicious cycle of struggling to make ends meet and pay for education will resurface with people being priced-out of school and giving up.

I would say a new world means a new set of rules, new forms of government, and everyone on the same level -- no class distictions that causes divisions among people. Religion is probably the best example of distictions causing fragmentations among its adherents.

I was talking to my wife about this, and I told her I was willing to bet the "elite" would build and inhabit the "goldilocks" zones of a new planet and leave the others to the radiation-infested areas. Nice way to start a new civilization with uncivilized practices.

 

[Murloc]

We can eliminate that by simply holding classes and educating those, for free, about how to build, manufacture, engineer, etc. This is the best way to get rid of the uneducated "worker ant" class of folk.

There are people who are genetically unable to do that, and I'm not talking about handicapped people.
People also inherit the mentality of their parents, and their class too. This is difficult to avoid too because they might simply be unwilling to study seriously even if it's free.

 

[smackababy]

How exactly are we going to hold these classes for free? Someone has to pay the teachers and for the facilities. And learning is not something everyone does equally. Plus you have the fact that people must overcome laziness.

Unless we genetically alter people to have what is considered now above average intelligence (ability to learn and solve complex problems), there will always be a class system. Even if we do raise it, at what point would we stop? If the average IQ was increased to 160 (genius), everyone with below average is still of lesser intelligence. And just possessing that metal capability does not mean they will use it effectively.

 

[Retro Rob]

There are people who are genetically unable to do that, and I'm not talking about handicapped people.
People also inherit the mentality of their parents, and their class too. This is difficult to avoid too because they might simply be unwilling to study seriously even if it's free.

Well, honestly, this is just a chance we'd have to be willing to take if we wish to inhabit a new world and bring regular people over as well, while trying to leave the earthly problems back here. I just see no real point if things are going to continue exactly the way they are now. Shucks, I don't want to move to a new place where the same ol' dumb problems are coming with us. True, people carry these issues, but they *can* be overcome if something a bit better is offered to them. If I know that I am going to a place where the elite control all the money from the sweat of my brow, for instance, then I won't be encouraged or motivated to do anything different than what I am doing now.

I understand your point, though, and thanks for making it. I think that at least giving people the free opportunity may encourage learning. We're so used to having to work 70 hours/wk for education and life's normal expenses -- a change would probably be welcomed and refreshing. Not now, no, but maybe then it could be different. I am not so optimistic about this, but I am just stating all this because it's part of moving to a new place.

 

[smackababy]

Well, honestly, this is just a chance we'd have to be willing to take if we wish to inhabit a new world and bring regular people over as well, while trying to leave the earthly problems back here. I just see no real point if things are going to continue exactly the way they are now. Shucks, I don't want to move to a new place where the same ol' dumb problems are coming with us. True, people carry these issues, but they *can* be overcome if something a bit better is offered to them. If I know that I am going to a place where the elite control all the money from the sweat of my brow, for instance, then I won't be encouraged or motivated to do anything different than what I am doing now.

I understand your point, though, and thanks for making it. I think that at least giving people the free opportunity may encourage learning. We're so used to having to work 70 hours/wk for education and life's normal expenses -- a change would probably be welcomed and refreshing. Not now, no, but maybe then it could be different. I am not so optimistic about this, but I am just stating all this because it's part of moving to a new place.

The kind of society where a farmer is as valued as a doctor arrives at the problems of anyone with half a brain can be a farmer. All it takes is a strong worth ethic and a strong back. Being a doctor requires vast amounts of knowledge, dedication to study, and the willingness to help. Our society has progressed far enough we have eliminated the need for everyone to be a producer of some sort. This becomes even more of a problem as technology takes out even more jobs. Factory workers being replaced by machines. In Japan there is a place that a machine makes your ramen based on recipes from different areas. Before long, the only people who will be employable will be people who can program machines. (luckily I am in that sector >_> )

 

[Agent11]

I doubt that society will change drastically, as for people being unable to perform a function for their community I doubt it.

The situation individuals will be exposed to from birth will place demands on them that will mold who they are and what they are capable of.

 

[shira]

I already linked the math. Scroll up.

Or to put it in simple terms - time dilation and the contraction of space in the direction of motion.