TransformerRobot

You guys sure I can't just use red food coloring I can get at the grocery store?

As a kid making bad super-8 war movies I used to use 50:50 (volume) whole milk and decarbonated coca-cola with red food coloring added as needed.

 

The whole milk gave it a nice thick texture and the cola added the dark color to the bright red food coloring.

 

I seem to remember that it looked quite realistic.

Then I'd like to see a picture of your recipe so we can compare it with a shot of real blood.

OK, you need a non-toxic recipe since it's going to be accessible to animals and such. Take 1 part water and mix it with 3 parts corn syrup in a non-porous bowl. Then start adding drops of red food coloring (don't get those crappy little 4-color packs from the grocery, go someplace that will sell you a good-size bottle of just red, Costco or Sam's Club maybe?). Add the coloring gradually, you can always add more but you can't remove any once you've overdone it. Add some chocolate syrup (again, a bit at a time) to give it more of a dark, opaque color, since real blood isn't going to maintain that bright red color out in the open. This will also help to thicken the blood to the right consistency, not too runny and not too thick. When the color looks right, let it sit for about fifteen minutes at room temperature (or a bit warmer).

 

You can use a bit of corn starch or regular flour if your mix is too transparent or runny. Add small amounts and mix thoroughly. Blue food coloring can be added sparingly to darken the blood instead of chocolate syrup, but avoid going purple.

 

Don't get any on your driveway, though, since it'll stain it. Same with clothing you want to keep, especially if it's white.

 

Clear plastic tubing is great for simulating spatter; just suck some up from your bowl into the tube and then blow it out for realistic droplet patterns. Apply the blood to bones or rawhide with a stick or a Q-tip, don't just dribble or blow it on, that's not realistic. Remember, less is more when it comes to the bones. If you want them to look chewed on, then too much blood on them will look fake. Most of the blood should be around the area, with a nice big pool directly underneath.

Would it be safe to put that mixture on grass? Or would it be toxic for the grass?

Interstellar space consists of roughly 2 hydrogen atoms per square cubic centimetre, and at near relativistic speeds, that is some real problem, because these atoms will hit the ship with enormous energies.

 

So realistic speeds limits for interstellar space ships are well below the speed of light.

Then how do we repel those energies? Energy can't be destroyed but it certainly can be transferred, like in an electric current.

It depends on your need. Is this for a trick that's going to last a few minutes, like pretending to sever an artery, or is it for a costume look that needs to look bloody for a few hours, like a zombie after a messy kill?

Well I found some deer bones up in the woods near my house after coyotes had eaten the deer, but they might not be there by now after decomposing. If they were there I was hoping to splatter fake blood all over them to make it look more gruesome.

If I can't do that, maybe I could put fake blood on my driveway or lawn, adding rawhide dog bones to make it look like someone was eaten by a monster.

Can anyone here tell me what ingredients and/or combinations I'll need to make fake blood? I wanna try making fake blood or slime like in movies and TV, but I only know how to do slime rather than blood.

TransformerRobot,

 

I read somewhere that the illegal arms trade sucks up a few hundred billion per year. I think human slavery and sex trafficking takes hundreds of billions as well. If humanity were cooler there would be less slavery, killing, and Snooki, and more science, space exploration, and humanitarianism. We're kinda lame still. (I say 'still' because I'm hopeful that we'll have super awesome descendants in the far future.)

Then we need to get rid of human slavery and sex trafficking. The illegal arms trade needs to be destroyed.

D H,

 

Thanks for taking the time to write up that post. Good stuff to think about. I still don't share your cynicism but I do share those concerns. I like that people are dreaming big and taking on the huge challenges. I hope they succeed. And I think the cost of MSL was ludicrous and way over budget, but it need not have been so. And perhaps these people are assuming Elon Musk's third generation space launch system (and relying on other concurrent and independent developments that are currently planned or in the works) when they say 6 billion. I'd like to read the details on Mars One as I've so far only seen the surface. Thanks again for the thoughts.

We could raise funds for such a project if we got rid of the tobacco industry.

Have you considered a bio suit that Shields from the effects of a faulty magnetic field for sun flares etc but the suit being part of their generic make up and grows with them or the gene splicing has overcome the magnetic field problem, if this is in the future then explaining the magnetic field being fixed by an advanced machine for example something like 2 giant electro magnets mimicking the north and south poles creating an artificial magnetic field?

They could be solar powered using solar panels on the surrounding moons to power it,

A large comet maybe crashing into mars could fix the wobble

Well how large would the comet be? Not too large, I'm trying to terraform Mars not blow it to pieces.

It sounds like an intriguing storyline. As far as I can see, there's only a few points you might want to change:

 

That would work, but again keep in mind that speciation does not happen instantly. Evolution takes time, even for bacteria that divide in a time of minutes to hours. Whatever gene therapy was done, it would have to be drastic enough to plant the seeds for speciation but not make it happen then and there. Scientifically speaking, the changes would probably be more subtle, and so the initial children wouldn't be exactly like the alien girl. Most importantly, they would still be human, not this alien species.

Well I kept in mind that speciation doesn't happen instantly, but this is set in the distant future where scientists have discovered many amazing feats, such as somehow speeding up organic development for certain animals and plants. They actually would be aliens, only in the sense that they eventually settle down on another planet.

They would have to undergo extremely vigorous training, because keep in mind that Mars has a lower gravitational field than Earth, so what may seem superhuman strength on Mars might actually be around normal on Earth (maybe perhaps equal to a relatively strong human). The way the Superman films did it, Superman's people were actually from a world that had higher gravity than Earth, so he was born with naturally much denser muscles, making him superhuman.

In case you missed that I mentioned steroids being part of their developing super strength, and it might also have caused them to become kind of quick tempered.

Sounds good, but make sure you make the timeline realistic...ie. terraforming would probably have to begin decades beforehand (possibly more) to ensure that there was enough O2 to sustain a population.

How about starting at 2040?

A hundred years is a bit too soon for a population to become a new species altogether. This is where it gets a little blurry because there's not really an exact point in time when a population becomes a different species. However, keep in mind that 100 years is about 1-2 generations for humans and apparently <1 for your species.

Consider for instance that E. coli, which has a generational turnover time of ~17-44 mins, takes ~30000 generations for mutations that confer evolutionary benefit to be observed. However, enough time had not passed for a speciation event (likely because the environment change wasn't significant).

If calling them a new species altogether is too much, how about parahumans? They'd still be recognized as humans, just with more complex biology.

It's a bit tough to answer specifically what genetic changes could cause that. To genetically change a person drastically enough to cause speciation would be a feat, because one major definition of a species requires that the two populations 1. either cannot reproduce (or do not do so in real situations), or 2. if they do, their offspring cannot contribute to the gene pool (is sterile).

 

Examples of the first condition: dogs and wolves can and do reproduce in real life, and are classified as the same species (canus lupus); walruses and seals either cannot or do not reproduce in real life, and are different species. A great example of the second would be the mule (offpsring of a horse and a donkey), which is sterile. So your alien girl's species would be either mostly unable/unwilling to mate with humans, or the mating would not contribute much towards the gene pool. Either the alien-human couple could not have kids or those kids would be mostly sterile.

 

The best answer I can give is that the genetic alteration to Patient A did not directly cause the two species to diverge. Rather, the genetic alteration was coupled with a drastic change in environment. Patient A and the next two or three generations of his/her family went to live in an environment totally different from Earth's. The genetic alteration done to Patient A caused changes to his/her offspring's gene pool that were widened and exploited due to natural selection throughout later generations. Basically, the biggest thing is that there must be an environmental change. By itself, gene therapy cannot cause speciation, especially if it was only done to one person, as that person will then be a different species and will have no one to breed with. Your patient and/or immediate descendants must go to an environment drastically different from Earth's, and it must be a place where the qualities you describe either confer some evolutionary advantage or are a side effect of it (the explanation for superhuman strength used in the Superman films is that Krypton's gravity was far higher than earth's and Kryptonians were by necessity far denser/stronger than humans).

 

I'd also say that to make it more scientifically credible, perhaps have it so that your alien species is not just descended from one altered individual? Remember, if you have a drastic change of environment, there might be limited options for breeding. Instead, an initial group of several hundred or several thousand might make it easier for a population to grow quickly and a speciation event to occur. Hope this helps!

Okay, so what if there were several hundred pregnant women afflicted with an illness that would cause their unborn children to be without proper bones or skin, and they each had the same gene therapy done to them to save the babies, causing their children to be born just like the alien girl? Then doctors would have to bring the children with them to a domed city on Mars, because they needed a planet with lower gravity so they had a safer environment to develop their bones and muscles. The illness was almost completely destroyed in humans as a result.

In order for the children to eventually return to Earth, they were put through rigorous training to become physically fit, so that on Earth they wouldn't be negatively affected by higher gravity. Eventually, as the children grew into adults, they became so strong that on average they could lift 2 times their own weight or more. It was risky, but the creatures were injected with steroids once a month to help build muscle mass. Around this time, Mars was undergoing the process of terraforming. The planet was made warm enough so that frozen CO2 returned to the atmosphere, causing a greenhouse effect that melted the Martian icecaps and create oceans. Trees and other planets were then planted, which created oxygen.

The creatures were amazed that the world outside the dome had become so full of life in just a few decades. The scientists taught the creatures the basic morals and ethics to live by, and how trees and plants were what gave Mars it's now Earth-like atmosphere. Realizing that hurting trees and plants would also harm their ecology, the creatures grew to care for their environment with ever fiber of their being. Unfortunately, this made them somewhat ecologically extreme by human standards. One day a visitor from Earth accidentally felled a tree. The creatures were so furious at him that they killed him for it.

After the incident the scientists fled back to Earth, feeling that it was best to stay away from the creatures. However, the humans gave their word to the creatures that there would be no hostilities between the 2 planets. The domed city was evacuated and it's power supply deactivated too. With the planet to themselves, the creatures vowed to never again let another tree be taken down, as the trees served as a primary food source for them. Fifty years later, the creatures had figured out how to make their own technology for transportation use, salvaging the domed city for materials. They had been taught by the scientists long ago how to build human machines so it wasn't too difficult to create them.

By now the creatures' had reproduced overtime, their population increasing from 500 to 1050, and their offspring were later expecting children of their own. Through the use of history and anthropology books left behind by the humans, they developed their own culture based on iron age tribes. Females became the dominant sex because pregnant women were the very reason for the creatures' existence. Animals that the humans left behind after the terraforming served as the creatures' meat source, and sometimes as pets.

Present day (2130s which is when my show is set) their population had now reached 500,000. Due to logging being punishable by death, plants and trees had grown so much on Mars that most of the planet's land was covered in thick jungles, with a more North American environment on the underside of the planet. To preserve trees, the creatures used bamboo and sugar canes to make their homes, using the trees as building foundations.

This is a little embarrassing, but here's something that recaps what we discussed earlier.

With what he said in mind, nuclear power plants could be a way to melt the CO2 on Mars to help it's atmosphere, but sending materials to build the plant via spaceship? It sounds rather dangerous, so what precautions would we have to take so that the ship doesn't explode and release radiation into our atmosphere? Lead shielding I think would only keep radiation from making people sick, and it might not be enough to simply keep the fuel line from leaking.

Then I was thinking of this idea for part of the story in my show: the alien girl's species originated from the side effects of a gene therapy patient in the 2030s.

Now can anyone here help me figure out how something like that could happen? Remember, she has green skin, green hair, yellow eyes, very flexible, superhuman strength, has to shed her skin to renew it, and can live to be 150 years old.

Possibly, though what you're referring to generally falls under the area of gene therapy rather than genetic engineering. Basically, you use targeted segments of DNA as KO pieces or replacements for a nonfunctioning/improperly functioning gene. Also, it depends on what the disorder actually was, what genes were affected, etc.

Would cancer or diabetes be valid examples? No kid would want to be born with either of those ailments.

Well probably end up with a globular galaxy, instead of the spiral we now have.

You mean it will be a massive sphere?

I think dimreepr meant that the ability to genetically engineer people could lead to stuff like eugenics.

 

As far as I know, genetic engineering of people is still a while away, at least to the level that we're talking about here. Part of the issue is locating the particular genetic segments that code for each of the particular phenotypes, then identify the genotypic changes that would be required to create that phenotype, etc, etc. A lot of the research going on right now is curing disease, etc through insertion of DNA fragments using vectors. The problem is that this method produces a lot of other unwanted gene products, and even if you purify out the stuff you want, the physiological effects in vivo may not always be what you expect. For instance, there was a trial underway to treat SCID (Severe Combined Immunodeficiency) through gene therapy that was stopped because the researchers realized that whatever they had done had the side effect of triggering an oncogene, causing cancer in some patients.

 

The other part of it is obviously legal and ethical, which is what i think dimreepr was getting at; the ability to sort of "pre-select" your child (even if it is years from fruition) could take us into some really dangerous ethical territory. One of the biggest things to consider is that if genetic engineering at that level were to take place, it would be at the embryonic stage. The kid would have to live with the effects of the modification, and more importantly, whatever side-effects it may have.

But what if an ultrasound showed something horribly wrong with the embryo while it was still untouched? Could genetic engineering be used to save the embryo and thusly the baby?

Eugenics was never a good idea; seriously, it's the thin end of the wedge.

What does that have to do with anything? I wasn't suggesting we make eugnics.

I find it incredible, yet mind boggling, that there's a possibility to alter the genes in an unborn human being so that they're born with different skin, hair, eyes, etc.

I haven't seen any examples of people who have been genetically modified in any way, so I came here to discuss with more experienced minds like you, can you genetically modify a human being, and is it a good idea to do so?

...it's not that it will end, precisely. Anyways, in 4 billion years the Solar System will be unrecognizable as the Sun will start engulfing the inner planets as it expands into a red giant.

 

In galactic "collision," stars/planets almost never collide. There is simply too much empty space. What does happen, however, is that the gravitation will get all wibbly-wobbly as these stars come into "close" contact with each other, and the general shape of the Milky Way will change.

 

Here's a good picture of some galactic collisions/interactions.

 

So we're not hopelessly doomed to destruction of our galaxy?

I don't know about a planet three times larger, there would be a limit how big a planet could be for human genetics to continue to function properly. But a larger planet in general, if we were eventually able to function, would seemingly produce bigger muscles. Could we live longer (rhetorical)? We probably would live for a shorter period of time with increased gravity. Could we live longer on a planet with a little less gravity than Earth (rhetorical)? Maybe some people would

Then would there be a way for inhabitants of a planet with higher gravity to live longer? Maybe give them stronger bone systems?

So if someone was born on a planet three times as big as Earth, they would grow up to develop stronger muscles?

No, only the plants and animals I think would need modification. I would expect some day there would be a difference in the physical characteristics between native born Martians and Earthlings. Earthlings, for one thing, would probably be stronger because of its gravity, resulting in native born Martians not doing as well physically on Earth.

So if we would be stronger or faster physically if we were somewhere with weaker gravity?

Mars is one of the primary transforming possibilities within maybe a thousand years minimum. But I think the moon would be easier. The moon is the right distance from the sun and could be "spun up" as part of the terraforming process. Even though it probably has underground water, we probably would need to import much more from the outer moons or the asteroid belt. We probably could import an atmosphere of nitrogen, oxygen, and Co2 in the form of ices with sun shades needed as such ices are imported, also probably from the asteroid belt. My expectation would be that once there is an atmosphere, and a moon-spin fast enough, a magnetic field would almost immediately develop to shield from UV and other deleterious solar radiation. Without direct solar wind, I believe this atmosphere might last maybe thousands of years before needing to be replenished. Manufacturing processing could also produce a regular replenishment of these same molecular gasses.

 

As far as genetic alterations, I would expect that we would engineer both plant and animal life primarily for food purposes to start with, to be better adapted to live in a foreign environment. I would also expect Mars to immediately develop a magnetic field also once it has a substantial atmosphere.

 

Here's a couple of links that might give a clue concerning the possibility that our present model of Earth and Planetary magnetism may be wrong.

 

http://www.nature.co...ll/485319a.html

 

http://www.scienceda...20531102443.htm

 

Venus, I believe, will also eventually be terraformed but I think not in the foreseeable future. I think vast asteroid, space (solar system) colonies, and other planetary moon colonies will come first because they would be easier, cheaper, and more profitable in the foreseeable future.

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Yes, perhaps the moon would be easier than Mars or Venus.

Also, are you saying that even if people were planning to live on a terraformed Mars, they would have to be genetically altered to better suit it's atmosphere and climate?