Moontanman

This is exactly where I was going with this, we often talk about intelligent life on other planets but we seldom give much thought to what it really means. first intelligent life predisposes large active animals or complex life. We seldom give much thought to plants, plants are complex life as well and plants require an energetic respiration just like complex animals do. Put a plant, a weed, a tree or any other complex plant, in an enclosed space, provide it with water, light and CO2 but take away the oxygen faster than it can make it and the plant will die. In the dark plants use oxygen just like animals do. Just like complex animals complex plants did not evolve until oxygen was available on the earth. In our atmosphere plants use sunlight to make carbohydrates and give off oxygen but they also use oxygen to get energy back from the carbohydrates they make. just like animals when they eat plants or each other complex life needs oxygen but oxygen represents stored solar energy just like carbohydrates. In a reducing atmosphere it would make sense for plants to store energy as oxidizers because they couldn't recoup energy from carbohydrates any more than animals could get energy from plant or animal tissue with out oxygen. so it would make sense for complex life to store energy as oxidizers if they lived in a reducing atmosphere. on a super terrestrial world hydrogen would be so all encompassing that oxygen would never accumulate the way it did on earth. so for plants to use stored energy oxidizers make more sense than carbohydrates. Plants would take sunlight and use methane and water to make oxidizers and release hydrogen. animals would eat oxidizing plant tissue and breath in hydrogen and exhale methane and water vapor. it would be the opposite of what happens on the earth but with the same results. so the argument that fire would not be possible in a hydrogen atmosphere is would not be true if complex life evolved on that planet. since complex life is based on solar energy and the ability to store that every for later use complex life would probably make fire possible by the simple need to store energy. Possibly on that planet instead of large deposits of hydrocarbons they would have large deposits of oxidizers. percolates or peroxides. So the presence of complex life would indicates the possibility of fire and civilization even if free oxygen wasn't available? the main problem i see with this is that a hydrogen atmosphere would already be in place before life, I'm not sure what effect this might have but it might allow complex life to evolve faster than it did on the earth.

Sorry my bad

The link wouldn't work for me but you have to wonder how freezing temps would kill off all dinosaurs since they were warm blooded like mammals, and like mammals many had insulation. Many mammals use fur, many dinosaurs used feathers.

Try searching for the workings of metal halide lamps, they use the halogens to make light. http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4964922_metal-halide-lights-work.html

No, Mt. Everest is not the tallest mountain, Olympus Mons is the tallest known mountain

And exactly what would be your theory?

So you are assuming bio-matter in a reducing atmosphere would be an oxidizer? Why? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged This is true, but on the Earth what we did would seem to be heavily dependent on having lots of fuel and oxidizer, can you really imagine modern technology with fire being a rare almost unknown thing?

Not to mention how fast helium difuses through a rubber balloon. Ever put propane in a balloon?

That's one way to look at it, you can also say life on the Earth is evolved to fit the conditions and if the moon hadn't formed life would have evolved to fit other conditions.

This is good one but I've posted it before. http://www.nuclearspace.com/Liberty_ship_menupg.aspx

The sad thing is that as long as no one is being heard but the extreme left and the extreme right the majority of the people are left with no voice and slowly everyone is being expected to take sides or remain silent.

Azolla is one of the fastest growing small plants I know of. I grow it in large quantities to help purify water in ponds and aquariums. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla This plant has huge potential in absorbing CO2 and may have been responsible for reversing a planet wide greenhouse effect 49 million years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event

How do you smelt metals with a windmill? How do you generate or even use electricity with no metals?

No, I think it's pretty obvious they are only against mis- interpretation of the Constitution if it disagrees with their righteous family Conservative religious values

Yes but where do you get the oxidizer? I have given quite a bit of thought to the possibility of technology with out fire but i have to agree with Greippi, no fire no technology. But! Huge word, lol, what if plants on the hypothetical planet made food as oxidizer instead of hydrocarbons as on earth? Is this possible? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI think that an oxygen atmosphere and with it fire are the bottleneck that determines technology on any planet. No oxygen no fire, no fire no technology more advanced that flaking stone tools or maybe beating out soft ceremonial knives from native copper or gold or some other very soft metal at most.

Still i have to ask, could useful numbers of things like i-beams be made by hammering? Most of modern technology is based on using fuel and oxygen to make energy to make other things. Would a reducing atmosphere allow this? Solar energy stored in plants is exploited by animals by oxidization, so to does our technology.

I know things like "native iron" would be possible but the smelting of iron requires fire, or at least a very high heat. Solar heat is a good idea but how would you generate it if you didn't have heat to begin with to make pure lenses or mirrors? I honestly can't see under water going past stone age at most. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI should say making iron into useful objects requires heat, native iron would be great but how do you make i-beams and other steel objects with out fire?

I think can technology progress underwater has been asked before but what about advanced technology of higher than stone age or more advanced coming about in a non oxidizing atmosphere? If you can't have fire can you have anything more than stone age technology? An example would if you had a super terrestrial planet with an hydrogen atmosphere could any life advance past the stone age since fire would not be possible in a reducing atmosphere.

Sisyphus, your avatar is from Futurama?

Yes, increase or decrease the ambient pressure the balloon will respond by getting larger or smaller, decrease the ambient pressure enough and the balloon will explode.

I used to have an avatar that had a message in it or with it about me (it was a bit of a brag really) but no one ever got it so i changed it to this one. i have an avatar that is a pic of me i used on some forums where I know many of the people personally in real life but even they often call me Moon. BTW, I think it's very much related to the old "CB handle" that was popular when i was in my late teens to early twenties. Everyone had a "handle" that in some way described them or was a in some way significant to it's owner. BTW, my current avatar reveals quite a bit about me to anyone who is on the same wave length as me, lol BTW Michel, I think far too much is assumed when you see someone face or appearance. When you talk to someone in a coffee shop or where ever in real life you make automatic assumptions about nearly everything about them, using a avatar prevents people from making those automatic assumptions allows you get to know the real person not the cover.

Absolutely awesome photo by the way.

No, the pressure inside an inflated balloon is greater than the surrounding atmospheric pressure, when you make a hole all the air rushes to go out to the lower pressure outside through hole.

I have my doubts about colonizing Mars to begin with, Antarctica would be much easier but no one seems to be lobbying to live there. In the future gravity wells will be avoided, any colonies will be artificial habitats. Resources in space such as asteroids and comets are far to rich and easy to waste time on planets and gravity wells. We'll construct artificial ecosystems inside huge rotating torus's and ignore planets as we spread across the galaxy. Even at far less than light speed we could could colonize the entire galaxy in a few million years.

Michael is my name but i've been called moontanman for a very long time, from way before my computer. many of my friends shorten it to moon but I don't like Mike!