Does Life Exist

[Katchoo]

Originally posted by Loser:
ummm... Could you explain that one a little more? Or maybe drop a link. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.

I think what he's referring to is the proposed use of a "rotating section" on a spaceship to generate an artifical gravity, much like you see in Babylon 5 and 2001: A Space Oddessy.

I guess muscle loss/atrophy (sp?) still occurs in this simulated enviroment, although I would expect it to occur more slowly than in a non-simulated gravity enviroment.

Then again I may be completely off my rocker.

[oleg]

Originally posted by parabolize:
....
2. We dont see them and the optics to see them will need a very wide base line.
....
and with mars there just is not a reason to do it until we have micro machines that can turn rust and CO2 into steel and O2

quite soon - in 25 years probably, we should have an operational interferometer telescope in space capable to see Earth like planets around nearby stars.

Converting C02 to O2 is no problem - plants have been doing it for many million years A little genetical engeneering and we will have algae capable to live on Mars providing there is enough water underground.

[parabolize]

yes millions of years
and thats how long it took to put O2 in the air millions of years...
yes 25 years from now we will see planets a few light years out, but as i said there isnt going to be that many good planets to see.

[oleg]

Originally posted by parabolize:
yes millions of years
and thats how long it took to put O2 in the air millions of years...
yes 25 years from now we will see planets a few light years out, but as i said there isnt going to be that many good planets to see.

And how do you know ?
May be there is a shiny blue planet orbiting Alpha Centauri !

[JurijD]

Originally posted by Cirvol:
jurijd, communism didn't fail because of enemies 'abroad and within'...

it failed because it absolutely relies on the 100% trustworthiness of people running the system to not take advantage of it...

since humans are animals, this will not happen

in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice... in practice however, its HUGE

I stated 3 reasons why communism failed. Please read them before you post a reply confirming one of my reasons and saying I´m wrong when you really agree with me

1. human flaws (the reason you put up instead of my other two...)
2. enemies abroad (the western world who was afraid that their greedy capitalist ways would end..)
3. enemies within (stupid leaders who also got greedy)

You could put that up on a sign in the middle of Red square in Moscow and people would shake your hand...

[Taera]

yeah, with fungi lifeforms on it...

[JurijD]

THE SPINNING SHIP PROBLEM:

The 3 problems I saw mentioned here about using rotational inertia to replace gravity were:

1. movements of astronauts *inside* would "distabilize" the ship and cause it to stop rotating properly
2. as humans aren´t a point object as high school physics would like us to believe a thing called the Corelious force develops when you rotate them on the inside of a wheel like structure of a radious not big enough compared to the size of the person inside.
3. even though inertia gives us 1 g and minimum corelious force we still experience muscle atrophy and "back stress"

My thoughts on these:
1. If we look closely at Newtons laws of motion we see that every action as a reaction... so what could be the "worst" disturbance an astronaut could cause to a rotating wheel? The absolute worst would be for him to run in the same direction the wheel is spinning... that way his legs would push the wheel in the opposite direction on the spinning motion and tend to slow it down... but the funny thing is that the moment this astronaut stopped running the wheel would start spinning at the same speed as it did in the beginning because there is a little thing called rotational inertia conservation which states that in any inclosed system (a spaceship and its occupats) the rotational inertia of the whole system cannot be changed by internal forces of the system... you can bounce all you want inside but you won´t change anything.

2. The obvious solution to this issue is to build a wheel that has a radious more than 100x the normal height of a person (heeh... big, yes... very big) althugh this might be impractical and almost impossible to do now it might be in the future... but sadly its the only solution physics offers us for now...

3. I´m pretty sure this is the result of insufficient inertia and persisting differential (Corelious) forces in a wheel not big enough or not spinning fast enough. Because if we had a big wheel with almost no differential forces and a g inertial acceleration at the ouer rim... we would´t be able to set it apart from normal gravity. (it´s not only simulated... it´s exactly the same as normal gravity in all it´s affects... you just have to have a wheel big enough to eliminate the differential forces)