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

[Fyron]

Originally posted by dogscoff:

quote:

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You cant go at the speed of light - who said its impossible?

Einstein.

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Einstein was not right about everything. He refused to believe the findings of his pupil, Heisenburg (I hope I remember the right name...) that particles have wave-like properties. He only believed that waves have particle-like properties (which is true, solar sail anyone?). Of course, it was later proven that particles do have wave-like properties (atoms in molecules are a distance apart that is exactly equal to the sum of the lengths of the matter-waves of the electrons in them, for example).

[narf poit chez BOOM]

if it's smaller than an electron, i don't see how we can be sure it's there. least until we have something that can see smaller than an electron. yes, i know there's mathamatical models. but think about this:

cells - 1 remove. can be seen with a Version 1 light microscope. i think there's one that can be seen with just the naked eye.

molecules - 2 removed. not sure if you could prove, conclusivily, that those atoms are linked. could you even watch individual atoms? i mean 100%, not 99.5%

atoms - 3 removed. can only be seen and poorly, with an electron microscope. no idea how extensive that is...can you watch them move? but they can be proved to exist

quarks - theorized by mathematical model.

so, i can't accept quarks as more than a theory. yes, i know if i investigated the math i might agree. but, i have trouble picking through math models. it's not that i don't understand it, it's that i'm like a turtle with physics as math - steady, but slow. so, in order for me to accept this, i'd like some pretty picture and words. english words, to. and so would, probably, the general public.

[ July 17, 2003, 08:33: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[dogscoff]

Follow this link for an extensive treaty on the nitrogen cycle and how it is important to life on Earth.

Thanks. Most of that article goes over my head, but I get the basics and it has some pretty pictures ;-)

That is dangerously close to a lethal atmosphere. Your colonists would suffer greatly, and casualties would be high.
Drop that CO2 concentration by at least an order or two of magnitude.

OK... the exact proportions don't really matter, just as long as a breathable atmosphere could be produced from local materials. Next question: How much variation in these proportions of gasses could we withstand? a few percent? A few fractions of a percent?

If realy, why bother with mars? I've never understood it. Whats special about it? is it the closest planet to earth's conditions or what.

Here are some reasons to go to Mars:

1> The first is the distance from the sun, which has already been mentioned. It's close enough to gain trap some of the suns energy. Solar panels would be viable there, and plants could probably get enough sunlight to survive (if they were kept under glass)

2> Mars is interesting. I want to go there to check out the possibility of martian (ex-)life and the amazing terrain: Olympus Mons is the largest "mountain" in the solar system, making Everest look like a molehill. There are some other cool geographical features that ppl would like to see. We could also settle all that cydonia nonsense once and for all.

3> Although Mars doesn't have much of an atmosphere, it *does* have an atmosphere, which would offer at least some protection against meteor strikes and the sun's radiation.

4> As we've already discussed, Mars has some good raw materials to work with: A thin CO2 atmosphere, some ice (probably) lots of iron (that's why the landscape is all red), a couple of small moons that may come in handy one day and no doubt lots of other useful things.

5>Although Mars is much smaller and less dense than Earth, it's bigger and denser than the moon and the Jovian satellites. That means gravity there would be closer to that of Earth. The effects of living long-term in low gravity are as yet unknown. Some of them probably would be good- because the reduced gravity means less energy spent and less "wear and tear" on the body. however there are bound to be negative effects as well. All these effects are likely to be multiplied for children born and raised on low-grav worlds, so to start with it would be best to colonise the most Earth-like gravity available.

6>Mars has a 25-hour day, which would be easy for colonists to adjust to.

Of course, the other likely candidates for colonisation are the asteroids. Plenty of raw materials to work with, and maybe even export. They're further out than Mars, but still closer than Jupiter, and the low-gravity problem could probably be overcome by messing with an asteroid's rotation or something. (?) Mars' moons (Phobos and Deimos- Fear and Panic=-) are nothing more than asteroids, really, so they might be a good place to start.

Looks like Nitrogen is fifth behind Hydrogen...

I did find an interesting and relevant link.
(click on the quote to go to the source)

i cant name the source but i remember reading that Mars has some nitrogen - in frozen state however, i think on the poles.

Thanks.

Einstein was not right about everything.

I know, I was just being facetious. I don't really know enough about science to discuss it in more than vague terms. I was mostly right about all that atomic makeup stuff though, wasn't I?

[Suicide Junkie]

They would have to be immensely smaller than photons anyways, as we have never been able to detect or see the evidence of any such gravitons.

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.

if it's smaller than an electron, i don't see how we can be sure it's there. least until we have something that can see smaller than an electron.

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 ]

[PvK]

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

[Taera]

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 ]

[Fyron]

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