Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not sure how much you can say about the 3D "size" of the force particles besides wavelength.
An imporant note is that Gravitons would be much more weakly interacting with matter, though.
About 8x10^37 times weaker. (Weak, as opposed to rarely interacting like neutrinos)
Building a detector sensitive enough is a challenge.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Electrons are point particles to the limit of current instruments.
Protons are known to be composed of multiple subparticles (3).

To see this:
Take the above particles, Zing them towards each other at higher and higher speeds and watch what happens.
Electron/electron, proton/proton, proton/positron.

They will bounce off each other due to the electromagnetic repulsion, and you'll see the basic 1/r^2 force.
But at high energy, the details of the other particle becomes important.

Think of it like two streams of sand and a hole in your sandbox...
From a distance, its a normal hill of sand, but when you get close, you see the two up-bumps and a down-bump.
If you roll a tiny ball (positron) up the hill (proton), it will start moving in odd dirctions due to the different slopes near the peaks.
Analyse the tracks with your computer to figure out what's going on.

[ July 17, 2003, 13:23: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

I haven't been paying a lot of attention to new physics for over ten years, but Last I heard, practically all of our ability to observe all phenomena was fundamentally electro-magnetic. Therefore, it's quite difficult to prove the existence, not to mention the non-existence, of phenomena which have zero or near-zero electro-magnetic effects.

There could be entire classes of phenomena which we simply haven't observed, because we haven't noticed any interactions with our senses or equipment.

PvK

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

exactly my point. well, part of it, because i did not know about the EM detection.

[ July 18, 2003, 00:45: Message edited by: Taera ]

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

Yes, but that would not be any form of matter suitable for life.

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

how do you know? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">In principle, all of that could be true. In principle, it could be true that there is a Santa Claus who has magical powers to avoid detection. In principle, it could be true that there's an invisible, pink unicorn looking over my shoulder as I write this.

The only thing that separates things that could be true in principle and things that we do know to be true is evidence. And the weight of evidence so far doesn't favor your propositions.

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

Just to point this discussion into another topic;
What about Europa?

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I am certainly not an expert on physics in any of its forms (e.g. high-energy, particle, etc.) nor do I understand the complicated mathmatics that physicists use to explain our universe. That aside, I'm not quite so certain that we know what all the sub-atomic particles are. I suspect if we did, then the grand unification theory would be complete and we'd have a far better understanding of the universe than we do. Various pundits down through time have proclaimed such things as "man will never fly", "man will never travel faster than a certain speed", "it's impossible to travel to another celestial body", and so forth. All of these have since been proven wrong. But at the time the statements were made they seemed true because sience hadn't yet delved deep enough to prove them false. Yes, it's possible we have seen all the particles and sub-particles. It seems equally likely that we have not and that when we discover a few more of them we'll be positioned to explain such things as gravity, to use one example.

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

thanks lord chane

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

From the context of my post, it was clear that I was talking about the first level of sub-atomic particles, those things like protons, neutrons, electrons, positrons, etc. Not the smaller things, such as quarks, neutrinos, photons, etc.

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

small correction - Last i heard, photon's where 2000 times the size of an electron.

i saw quarks and basically started blabering. or should that be 'firmly speaking my mind without taking a good look around first?'. but, since i don't seemed to have annoyed anyone and was at least partly on topic, i'll leave it there.

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

Then you heard wrong. Photons are much much smaller than electrons. In fact, they are what electrons use for gaining and losing energy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

The effective "size" of a photon is proportional to its wavelength.

Microwaves, for example, have wavelengths of from 10th of a millimeter to 10 centimeters... hence the size of the view holes in your microwave door.

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

Well, I was more referencing the particle nature of photons than the wave nature... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

And as you know, electrons have a wave nature too, so they are technically much bigger (in wave form) than their particle nature would indicate. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ July 18, 2003, 02:27: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

Some related question:

But it would be plausible for life, even if they breathe oxygen, to evolve in an atmosphere that is toxic or unbreathable four us, perhaps combined with different G, pressure, temperature, ect...
For example the 70% N2, ~26% O2, ~4% CO2 atmosphere Dogscoff had suggested would not be healthy for humans, but perhaps perfectly fine for an alien species.
That would have similar effects in a sci-fi story without the need of unrealistic chemistry.

What about silicon based lifeforms? Are they possible? Would they have different requirements and tolerances than carbon based life?

In the Star Wars universe there are a few cyanide-breathing aliens, whose atmosphere is as deadly for us as our oxygen-rich atmosphere is deadly for them. Is there any hint of realism here?

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

I think without question that is possible Andres. It's entirely plausible to imagine a lifeform that follows the same basic rules but living on a world that is too hostile for us to survive. There are many lifeforms on earth that thrive in areas humans are unable to.

I wonder though if a person that breaths oxygen and is immune to the effects of cyanide for example because of their home environment would simply tolerate the cyanide, or develp some actual need for it. That would be the determining factor in whether they would need special aparatus to visit earth like worlds.

Geoschmo

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

There are organisms that can live in very human-toxic environments on earth, so that is possible. But, most of them are very simplistic monerans, so it gets iffy whether more complex organisms can form in them (esp. in conditions that are extremely harmful to life in general). They can survive partially because of their simplicity; there is not much to go wrong, so not much protection had to evolve. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

There actually are some silicon based lifeforms on earth. They are monerans (bacteria), so nothing too complex. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif But, I am not sure if silicon can perform as efficiently as carbon for more complex organisms. It might be possible though. Of course, that is the only other element that complex natural (ie: non-robotic) life could be based on, as it is the only other element capable of forming hugely complex molecules (100s to 1000s of atoms) as carbon can (though it does not do it as well). Such complex molecules are necessary for natural lifeforms.

[ July 18, 2003, 19:06: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

This reminds me of something I once read about atmosphereic formation on earth. Seems like a different atmosphere on a planet could be a function of its age, or if it has life or not. IIRC, earth's atomsphere was a highly toxic combination of volcanic gases and such before early single celled life "terraformed" earth into the oxygen-enriched enviroment we have today.

Re: OT: Carbon Dioxide races -> known vs unknown -> terraforming mars -> is or is not
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Are you sure of this?

I would be most pleased to see a link to information on this. It would be really fascinating.