Space is the place
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- Continuity0
'Scientists find gas linked to life in atmosphere of Venus'
- Scientist smelt a fart from venus....shapesalad
- A KIMCHI FART.Continuity
- Talking of which, my partner came in as I put our kid to bed and said "ooft, she needs changing again" to which I had to apologise. I'd eaten Kimchi earlier...Nairn
- This Venus story was supposed to be embargoed until tomorrow, so I'm hoping we'll see a lot more useful info and speculation then.Nairn
- Nairn1
re: Venutian life
I've read speculation about its origins, should it actually exist.
There are two camps - either it developed locally, or could have come from Earth, the result of some asteroid impact that sent life-laden material to Venus. Not unlikely, we've found Martian and Lunar meteorites on Earth.
The latter seems unlikely, not because Terran stuff couldn't get to Venus (actually, it would be easier than getting to Mars) - rather, even if it survived the entry and made impact, it would be entirely unsuited to that environment and would be sterilised instantly. Even as it went through the atmosphere, it seems likely to me that the process of burning up as it passes through would mean that nothing useful could settle and linger for enough time to establish itself.
So, I prefer the former option - it developed on Venus.
If so, finding another form of life that presumably isn't based on DNA but has similar or comparable reproductive capacity would be of extremely high scientific interest. Not just for the awesome majesty of it, but also if we can either work on it locally, or have some sent back to Earth (or, preferably, something on the Moon or in Orbit - I've seen enough movies to know that bringing Alien DNA onto planet Earth is a good idea for absolutely no one) we can have another data-set for bio-tech development.
If we can then edit that [life] to make use of the Venutian atmosphere for our own benefit, we can set about the beginnings of terra-forming, or at the very least making use of the huge amounts of atmopshere Venus has. There's an abundance of super-useful elements at altitudes Humans could conceivably live at, even if inside some sort of dirigible.
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A couple of hundred (thousand, etc) years of earnest atmosphere modification and perhaps we can make the surface a little more bearable.
Then it's just the very minor matter of spinning Venus up so that instead of it being one day for every 243 on Earth, it's something a little more useful...
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Also, I used to worry about the idea of finding life on Mars - not for any pulp Sci-Fi reasons, more that if there are two instances of different life evolved in one system, then that statistically implies that there is a huge abundance of life potentially in our galaxy. The further implication that given we've not seen any evidence of such, something 'BAD' happens to most if not all civilisations that prevents them evolving much beyond what we have.
Finding life on Venus is different to me. If it's something that could only have evolved at some specific atmospheric strata, its pathways to evolving beyond our level are limited.
Venus is a high energy environment - not much unlike our deep sea hydrothermal vents in many ways.
- I think I saw Grafician mention the Great Filter the other day, so I guess thanks for making me consider that in terms of life in Venus' atmosphere!Nairn
- Valiant ThorMaaku
- Nairn I personally think is easier to "terraform" Mars than Venus - easier to go from cold (Mars) to temperate (Earth) than very hot (Venus) to temperate again.grafician
- Oh, venus is a cunt - we'd need to spin the entire planet up to make it anything like 'Earth-like'. Still, it's, I think, a more interesting target.Nairn
- Nairn1
Maybe the Great Filter is: Every system that can have life ends up with a couple of options on different planets. It's a thermodynamic thing - shit pops up wherever it can.
One way or another, when they finally meet in any useful way, bad shit happens.
In our case: Venutian [life] + (SpaceX + AI + some automated sequencing & production process [a few decades off] + a lack of oversight somewhere) = something totally uncontrollable
Maybe the lessons of The Killing Star and The Dark Forest should be listened to at every level. All none Terran life should be obliterated ASAP.
NUKE VENUS.
- Dark Forest theory is really real. Of course life doesn't need to be destroyed until it develops interstellar travel (like the trisolarians)sarahfailin
- @sarah - If you liked that, you could do worse than reading this - https://m.media-amaz…Nairn
- I meant here more locally - the ultimate Just In Case. Obvs. better to investigate [life] but just keep that fucker quarantined off-planetNairn
- https://www.imdb.com…
NUKE VENUS NOW!grafician - Absolutely, I used to disable SETI@home on my roommates' computers back in the 2000's in order to defer possible alien contact.raf
- Shut down seti!thumb_screws
- Nairn1
Another Great Filter could be much more mundane: We're the only intelligent species that sees time as we do, ever moving forward with little consequence for the past, nor what is deemed as the uncontrollable future. This doesn't even need some sort of weird trans-temporal pseudo-science, it could just be linguistic, psychological or some sort of weird pan-species empathic quirk that results in cultures that aren't as aggressively expansionist and 'curious' as we appear to be. Perhaps that is a conceit. Of course it's a conceit.
But what if it weren't?
What if there is a panpoply of evolved societies out there, but we're the first to have some expansionist outlook? Heck, we have human cultures here on Earth that don't much give a shit about 'developing' along the lines expected by the ones sending rockets into space.
So, I figure, given that we've not seen any evidence of aliens yet: We're the very first - time hasn't allowed for other intelligent species to develop andf the galaxy is empty. Or, we're the first expansionist species.
If either of these are true, we'll end up being the Galactic Bastards.
Or perhaps I've watched Avatar too many times.
- _niko0
Ok this little problem has been stirring in my tiny brain for a while.
sometime in the future, we build a telescope powerful enough to see distant planets in detail, so powerful in fact that we are able to see things like dates on a quarter in detail.
we find a planet exactly a light-year away. We observe the planet and see that it is a thoroughly advanced civilization, more so than ours.
what we see through the telescope happened exactly 1 year ago even though it looks like we're seeing it live.
We observe that they have built a space ship and intend to travel to earth. The space ship is so advanced that it travels at the speed of light.
We watch it blast off and escape the planet and head towards earth at light speed.
Then instantly the spaceship arrives on earth, because the events we observe through the telescope happened a year ago, and it took the ship 1 year to get here.
Is this correct? what about the journey of the ship? if we watch the blast off does the 1-year journey get condensed to an instant occurrence from our observable viewpoint? Are we viewing a speed-up of time? is that what time-dilation is?
Thanks.
- so if the ship was slower than the speed of light and the journey took 10 years, and we fixed the telsescope on the ship, we would see the whole 10 year journey_niko
- same with a 5 year journey or a 2 year journey, we would see it zooming out of its own solar system going through interstellar space, then zooming past our_niko
- planets before finally reaching earth. We would see the journey. But in this case we wouldnt see the year long journey because it's going at the speed of light_niko
- Yes, I think that's mostly correct. The part in question would be whether it's possible to observe matter moving at light speeds. It would be moving as...MondoMorphic
- ...quickly as the observable light reflecting off it, meaning I don't think we would see the ship until a year later, at the moment it arrived on Earth.MondoMorphic
- Which is basically what you were saying. And yes, for the sub-light example we'd see the (very rapid) trip. Time dilation refers to the ages of the people...MondoMorphic
- ...on the ship and on earth; the rate at which both age. The person on the ship would not have aged while the person on Earth is 1 yr older.MondoMorphic
- Pretty sure FTL is possible, we just didn't solved the Math involved yet.grafician
- It’s similar to what is detailed in the arrow of time articles - a mindfuck for sure and hard to conceptualizeStatic_Line
- Thanks guys, yeah interesting observations, more food for thought especially the question of are we able to observe things moving at the speed of light._niko
- so now say there is a third planet, also advanced and also has a kick-ass space telescope. Both the earth's solar system and the rocket ship solar system_niko
- ...are in their night sky. They zoom in on the rocket ship blasting off from planet x at the speed of light heading towards earth. The earth is a light year awa_niko
- they should be able to track that ship for a year as it travels towards earth at the speed of light no? or does something weird happen while they're observing?_niko
- That would depend largely on if the trajectory of the ship heading to Earth was also 1ly away. If any part of the trajectory is closer to or further away fromContinuity
- ... the observer, that would have an effect on the length of time it takes for the light from the ship to reach the observer.Continuity
- 'Rocket ship', though? This isn't the 1950s, mister!Continuity
- And I might be out of my depth here, but even if the trajectory was perfectly perpendicular to the observer's line of sight, I don't think it would beContinuity
- ... possible to visually track an object travelling at 1c.Continuity
- You are correct Continuity. There is no way of observing. Btw light from our Sol reaches Earth in about 8 minutes! So if Sol would disappear in an instant, itgrafician
- it would still take us about 8 minutes to notice it's missing from the sky lol then everything would go dark - forevergrafician
- oh and btw it's only "c" in notations, not 1c or anything elsegrafician
- Continuity1
Yeah, so now the Russians have decided Venus belongs to them. What the fuck is up with this year? It just keeps getting more fucking absurd. Is this a job for Trump's fucking Space Force, or what?
'Venus is a Russian planet -- say the Russians'
- (without clicking link) Isn't that expressely forbidden by whatever space treaties everyone relevant has signed up to?Nairn
- https://i.ytimg.com/…_niko
- Americans Are From Mars
Russians Are From Venusutopian - If we're starting to claim planets already...oh boygrafician
- @utopian I think you've switched them, Mars is colder so Russian, Venus is hotter just like California now so US lolgrafician
- lolmoldero
- Sweet, let’s space fight about itscarabin
- grafician0
"NASA Shared Gorgeous New Images of Jupiter & Europa From the Hubble Telescope
The image shows a moon and three big storms."
- Nairn2
I mentioned the other week that I could foresee their being privately-funded Venutian missions - well, it looks like it'll happen even sooner than I imagined.
https://www.theregister.com/2020…
For now these are just wee probes, but if they turn up anything interesting, I can totally see some MegaCorp booking a Falcon Heavy or a Starship for a sampling mission in a short-few years.
- 'their'? nngh.Nairn
- +1 for 'wee probes'kingsteven
- hehe, well it is quite yellow down there..Nairn
- Bluejam0
- A solar system-sucking black hole.
Reminds me of the Planet Killer in that Trek episode 'The Doomsday Machine'.Continuity
- A solar system-sucking black hole.
- Bluejam1
- Not trying to be the 'SEEN IT ALREADY' guy, but didn't this come out a fair while back? It's been doing the rounds recently I've seen.Nairn
- ^
https://media.tenor.…
:-PBluejam
- Nairn1
"Physically accurate black hole with volumetric accretion disk, made using @UnrealEngine"
https://twitter.com/overdrawxyz/…
uunnngh
- Amazing. To think we went from simple, fun CtF matches some 20 years ago, to this rendering.
Wow.Continuity
- Amazing. To think we went from simple, fun CtF matches some 20 years ago, to this rendering.
