Daymare17

I just asked for some proof some to back up your allegation that Jamail is a "left-wing spin doctor". Is that too much to ask? Throwing around baseless allegations is not only bad form but also makes you look stupid. It's known as a smear. You make it sound like he's Dr. Evil or something. What agenda? Your opinion is a factual statement. I proceed from the assumption that assertions must be backed up with facts. If they cannot be proved then we can assume them to be untrue. This is a science forum after all, not a creationist forum. If someone made the assertion in your presence that God created the Earth 6000 years ago, wouldn't you ask him to back it up? In any case you just effectively validated the creationist position and method. Again I ask you, why is Jamail a spin doctor? Douglas: No matter how much i look at your argument I can't find the least bit of sense in it. Can you rephrase it?

Anyone know much about this? 1) Does it exist? 2) How would/does it work? 3) How close are we to achieving it at a reasonable (mass produceable) cost? 4) Give me some resources (preferably on the net, but also in print)? Wikipedia has nothing and the first two pages of Google have only a little.

Heh, "perspective"... with nothing whatsoever to back it up. "Left-wing spin doctor" is a pretty serious allegation. It's more convincing if you have a shred of proof about it.

Most have probably realized that the US media isn't reporting 1/100th of what's going really on in Iraq. Well, this guy has been there for 8 months and is one of the few journalists that weren't "embedded" (in bed with) the army. He has been in touch with Iraqi civilians (not just Americans and state officials). He has had to work undercover, for fear of terrorists but mostly for fear of the US army, which killed more reporters in the first year of Iraq than in all the years of Vietnam. This is a very interesting video where he sums up his experiences. http://dahrjamailiraq.com/multi_media/Dahr_Jamail_Sonoma_State_Project_Censored_4_10_2005.html You can check out his reports at http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog

How would you power a future fusion engine? What's it's fuel? In one article it said helium-3. But are there other kinds of possible fuel? It seems so from the wiki article but I sadly don't understand much of that article. Where would you get helium-3? I know of Luna and Uranus, how about Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune? I also read that with only the helium-3 on Uranus you could send a fusion-driven ship to every star in the galaxy, is this true?

1 is pretty much impossible, sorry. For 2 and 3 I suppose you can do what they are planning for Mars, build greenhouse gas factories on the surface. This creates atmospheric pressure amd traps sunlight to heat the moon up. Once the ice has melted you can drop bacteria and algae to create oxygen. Look in the "terraforming Mars" thread for details.

I doubt it would work on Venus since its day is 243 earth-days long (longer than its year) so there i think wouldn't be that much centrifuge to speak of. Then again, if you had a million space elevators and a hundred thousand years... but then again with that technology there would probably be an easier way. A hollow space elevator seems to have interesting properties. Could such an elevator be used as a de-facto perpetuum mobile? Letting the centrifuge, from planetary rotation, combined with the low pressure from the motion of the mass itself, move mass that powers a generator, and then letting the mass fall to the ground through another pipe, again utilizing its motion to produce energy. Not a very high output, but still, producing power with no constant input? A sort of "gas tank hose" power plant concept. What would be the catch?

CPL.Luke: on transporting water to mars, you have to view it as an investment for humanity. We invest an infinitesimal part of Earth's resources and gain - a second Earth. A pretty far-fetched idea that I thought up just now would be to have a giant space station orbiting Earth and connected to the Pacific ocean, with a hollow space elevator that continuously carts the water up to the station. From there you can fling it to Mars using rail guns combined with rockets. I remember reading about some kooky scientist who said that you could turn Mars into a water-world by mounting thousands of fusion drives on one side of Europa and physically pushing it into Mars. I seriously doubt that any of this will happen, at least not in a positive way, under capitalism however. Capitalists can't organise Earth, how could they organise other planets? Earth would have to be organized under some form of democratic planned economy for this to be possible. Hell I'm sure we could terraform Mars just for the cost of the world's total military budget (=manufactured scrap metal). Just imagine if all the funds that go to the US Army and the CIA were redirected to NASA. Anyway, there's no point in turning 70% of Mars into ocean, after all humans do not live in water and we can easily irrigate the parts of the planet that are farthest from the oceans. All that's necessary for life to thrive is a temperature of 0-100 degrees C, the existence water and an Earth-like atmospheric pressure. BigMoosie: Mars is definitely the most terraformable place in Sol system. Venus's atmosphere is so thick, 92 times Earth's, so it's 470 degrees plus there. So far there's been no serious suggestions for terraforming Venus. ibiblio.org comments: "Of course, science fiction has risen to the challenge. Authors such as Kim Stanley Robinson postulate that a huge solar 'parasol' could be placed in between Venus and the Sun, cutting all light off from the planet. Over hundreds of years, the temperature would plummet and the mainly carbon dioxide atmosphere would cool down, then rain and freeze on the surface. Once that was done, the carbon dioxide ice now on the surface could be processed by robots into carbon and oxygen. Finally (and most unbelievably) either the parasol would be opened slightly so that the temperature could be raised so the planet would be habitable and mirrors would be placed in orbit, or the planet would be spun up using magnetic induction so that it would have a shorter 'day'." (http://www.ibiblio.org/astrobiology/index.php?page=terraform01) The galilean moons and Titan are a possibility far in the future, but they are so far from the Sun that you would need the energy of a thousand million fusion bombs to heat them up enough, I suppose the "greenhouse" method is a possibility there as well, I haven't really looked into it but it would be much, much harder than colonising Mars.

The problem is that there's no liquid water. So it won't work unless you know of a plant that eats ice

I read about the "asteroid/comet/nuke approach" and I must say I'm more inclined towards the greenhouse approach of Dr. Chris McKay. Mars' atmosphere is 0.01 times as thick as Earth's. This means that the solar heat doesn't stick around, which makes our neighbor planet cold, arid and generally unpleasant. To counter that, we can build greenhouse-factories on Mars, to spew out greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping the sunlight and heating up the planet. Once temperature reaches -20 degrees C, the CO2 at the poles will melt, further accelerating global warming. I read a BBC article about how the scientists have already mapped out such a plan, where they will basically build factories on the surface to release a special compound of carbon, chlorine and fluorine that is a many dozen times more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Everything seems locked and loaded. After all, it's not like humans are inexperienced in this matter . Once the surface has been warmed up to above 0 degrees centigrade, oceans will form automatically, not so much from the melting poles (which have less than 1% as much ice as Earth's poles) as from the huge blocks of ice that scientists believe exist right under the rocky surface (when the ice comes up to the surface, it begins to sublimate into steam since the current temperature/pressure combo makes it impossible for liquid water to exist). When this happens Mars will become a blue planet. Then we can put genetically engineered bacteria into the water to produce oxygen, and after 25 years or so introduce the first plants. Dr. McKay sets the minimum time necessary for warming up the planet as well as introducing bacteria and plants and createing a breathable atmosphere, to be 100 years. Within 100-200 years, humans would be able to walk on the surface of Mars with no equipment (except from atop Mount Olympus). I don't see why so many consider this wildly optimistic. After all, we are not talking about the automatic, planless processes of Mother Nature which created our own biosphere, but of concerted effort by the genius of mankind. What facts can you show to overturn this scheme? One question: What does Earth need nitrogen for, other than keeping everything from going up in flames? What would be different if our atmosphere was 25% oxygen and 75% carbon dioxide, seeing as this appears to be the easiest outcome if we begin terraforming Mars? From what I can gather the scientists aren't sure whether there is nitrous soil.

Does anyone have a good guide to what it would take to terraform Mars? I'm thinking of writing something about it. I've already looked into http://www.ibiblio.org/astrobiology/index.php?page=mars04, and am thinking of looking into the Red/Green/Blue Mars novels, I hear the science in them is very plausible. Can you also just give me your thoughts on what terraforming Mars would take? Thanks

Just for living space, I'd stick with ringworlds rather than spheres ... using just the Earth's mass you can get 1500 ringworlds with 1 AU diameter, each of which has a larger interior surface area than the total surface of the Earth. In addition to the aforementioned problems of creating gravity on the inside of a sphere, which wouldn't be an issue since you would have thousands of spinning ringworlds each with their own artificial gravity created by the centrifugal force. Perhaps ringworlds could be a transitional stage to a Dyson sphere ... once we have built several tens and hundreds of thousands of ringworlds enclosing the sun, then we would, in effect, gather up all of the Sun's energy. Ah, speculation ...

I see you haven't replied. Am I to interpret this as your allegations being unsubstantiated? I hope not. There must be some scientific proof on the Net.

Well? I've been looking into a few of his works. Do you think I should read more?

Posting here as an amateur willing to learn more, so bear with me. Time Dilation = the theory that acceleration slows time. This has been proved by putting Cesium clocks in airplanes, and accelerating them, if I'm not mistaken. The Cesium clocks slowed down. How can you say this is proof acceleration slows time?. All it proves is that acceleration slows down a process, namely the process of nuclear radiation in the Cesium clock. If you put your arm in water and wave it, you will find that it moves much slower than in air. Does this prove that water slows down time? Unless there are other, different experiments that I haven't heard of.

Hmm, true. I could replace it with "emotional unhappiness", though. Well, I'm pretty quick to generalize But, do you have any other reasons for unhappiness, except for physiological pain, that arent simply manifestations of my general law (or rather, theory)? Are you sure? I'm extremely skeptical to that claim. The doctors of the USA are practically like zombies from corporate infilitration. This theory sounds almost like it's calculated to maximise antidepressant sales. That's one reason why I'm skeptical. Another is the simple fact that it sounds like a too quick generalization. I'm sure those with depression have some level of chemical inbalance. But everyone is also not getting what they want. So how can you say that chemical inbalance is the only factor, and not a tip of the iceberg, or a catalyst, that comes on top of their life being ****ed up? To be honest this theory reminds me of the days of Hippocrates, when human moods were caused by the correlation of the "four humors". Do you have any proof for it? I'm interested to read.

Well, what I really wanted to know was whether this has already been "discovered" (or refuted) by some scientist or whether it's my own idea.

The source of all human unhappiness is the disproportion between intents and results. This thought just sort of popped into my mind. To me it seems like an accurate law. However I'm not educated in psychology, nor do I have the necessary empirical evidence at hand to prove it/disprove it. That's why I'm posting it here for you guys to consider it. Perhaps we can have a good discussion on it too. Thanks, Rune

The two fundamental attributes of the universe are matter and motion. Matter = mass, substance. Energy = motion.

Was she a unionist? Managements usually use incidents like this to get rid of "undesirables".

One interpretation of the idea that "time is the fourth dimension" is that time can go backwards. If this is the implication, then what's the proof of this? It goes against the arrow of time. If there is no proof then it's just happy science fiction.

If time is dependent upon the observer, then how did humans evolve. Since before the first human, there was no time. The same argument goes against the idea that time is just a figment of our imagination. We can't touch or see time. It's abstract. But nevertheless it explains real relationships in the world. There are many things we can't see. These things are abstractions. But nevertheless they describe things that really exist, and are indispensable for understanding the universe. This insistence upon the "observer" is the consequence of the stupid philosophy of Ernst Mach, which is that which has been most influential in 20th century science. One of Mach's followers actually tried to write a periodic table of the elements without using the atomic hypothesis! Since we can't see the atom, how can it exist? Keep in mind that our immediate senses tell us that the sun orbits the Earth, which is flat. Whoever said that philosophy and science should stay separated is entirely wrong, because everyone has a philosophy, and if you don't think consciously through your philosophy then you will invariably accept a wrong one. Like Machism. If all scientists accepted a consistent materialist philosophy then we would make much quicker progress.