praty

Satellites are small and light-weight. As for the mirrors, to cover greater areas, they would have to have greater areas which implies more mass. Space mirrors would be an instant failure. Why? Solar winds. Mirrors will, after-all act as huge sails for these winds and get accelerated out of position almost immediately. If they sustain the wind, solar storms would definitely spell an end to the mirrors.

Marat, You are right about poverty breeding poverty but in most cases men and (more often) women don't know they can educate themselves and their children to get out. I think both genders need to be aware but the reason I vibrate more towards women is because they are oppressed more. Well, so can you say empowerment of women won't work?

The only effective way to irradiate poverty, IMO, is empowerment of women. Give them a control over their birth cycle so they can stop reproducing at a rate similar to rest of the animal kingdom. And the empowerment would generally uplift the whole locality/village/town. So, provide them with education, make them aware and most importantly provide them a means of birth control. While mirrors might be a good idea, they might ruin the local ecology and moreover the physical maintenance and repairs of the mirrors could and would cost a fortune. Also, if it does solve the problem it will be temporary as the mirrors won't change the lifestyle (will just make the the money factor go away, not the backward thinking) so population explosion will continue on, which will require more mirrors as the people spread across wider area.

This thought fascinates me. Would intelligence like ours(or advanced) always exist in the chain of evolution by natural selection? If life arises somewhere else in the cosmos, which I'm very sure would move forward through similar variations of Darwinian evolution(needs discussion, I know), is it necessary that the life forms there develop consciousness like humans? If it is hard to arrive at intelligence from single self replicating cell, then isn't it by sheer chance that we are here with our brains having capabilities it has?

Huh?? You saying it is possible, right? Or are you agnostic about the chances?

Moving the thought forward, if universe did begin with quantum fluctuations, can our science someday posses the knowledge and technology to do the same

yoda, Yep, I got that thought chain after watching Prof. Krauss. It makes both the threads similar. I'm new here and it looks like you guys have already covered everything! My question though would be how does this knowledge affect our community in general.

Can the universe arise out of nothing? Quantum 'nothing' is now a boiling bubbling brew of matter popping in and out of existence, which accounts for the majority of the mass an atom has. What are the implications of this theory?