If we found another living planet

ScumLord · 02-01-2014 6:59pm #1

Would we really terraform or even inhabit other planets with early earth like conditions that could support us?

I was just thinking, if we did find another planet would we really just set up shop on it? We would basically be contaminating that planet with biological life from earth which could be thousands of generations more advanced than what's currently on that planet and may completely devastate most indigenous life. Wouldn't it be a huge missed opportunity to contaminate a developing planet and much more beneficial to simply observe how it develops?

If we're not going to live on any of the other planets is there any point in making a big rush to get to them? I think populating our solar system is very doable, even without any fancy warp technologies but getting to other planets just to look at them may kill interstellar travel for a while.

Capt'n Midnight · 03-01-2014 9:39am

Energetically it's easier to live on asteroids then at the bottom of a gravity well. When our planet was molten anything heavier than Iron sank,anything volatile was turned to gas and lost to the solar wind.

supposedly almost all our water and gold is from asteroids during the late bombardment

Mars is small. If our population had a doubling time of 30 years then Mars would take centuries to terraform. Or we get the same surface area from one of the minor planetoids. Would be cool if we could put an asteroid in orbit around the moon

It works both ways. Foreign microbes might find us edible. Or they might have amino acids or DNA that were other handed. Or they might be increadabily toxic. Here on earth we have two main types of organisms. Anaerobes who have no problems with cyanide or carbon monoxide or hydrogen sulphide but find oxygen extremely toxic, and visa versa for stuff like us.

Or look at Azimov's story "Sukcer Bait" about small changes in the environment. Tiny amounts of selenium are needed for cattle to survive IIRC and stuff like that can limit the continents where some animals can live healthily. Lack of Iodine is a problem for us. Of course having too much of some micronutirents might be a problem. There is a lot of FUD about Fluoride, but at illegally high levels it does stain your teeth. And nobody wants heavy metals accumulating in the soil.

Kromdar · 03-01-2014 2:19pm

Two observations to make on this:

1. we should be able to terraform our local system first. asteroid mining, mars, all that good stuff. getting people to the edge of the solar system would be neat.

2. there's too much ethics involved, and realistically, if we were to aim at colonising a planet, you can bet there'll be a big lobby for leaving the planet alone, with cries of "what if someone did that to earth when we were a proto-planet" and, of course, "will somebody please think of the children!"

i mean, as far as we know, mars may have had water on it. it may have had life on it. we dont know yet. if they find any traces of either, you can bet that at least one astro-eco-activist will be shouting about how we should preserve the planet instead of colonise it. what about colonising the moon, even? all that talk about helium 3 mining and/or using it as a waystation for further space flights. why not start there?

technology requirements aside, i think it would be a good idea to at least colonize an earth-like planet. it would be a feat. and who knows, we might find something useful there. i mean, we found penicillin on mold, who knows what medical or scientific breakthroughs the other planet might hold?

Capt'n Midnight · 03-01-2014 7:30pm

Kromdar wrote: »

i mean, as far as we know, mars may have had water on it. it may have had life on it.

Mars had water.

Mars has ice.

Venus had oceans up to a mile deep, before the solar wind stripped off the hydrogen, magnetic fields are handy things to have.

organisms from the planets may have hitched a ride around the solar system
http://www.history.com/news/dinosaur-asteroid-may-have-sent-life-into-space

Kromdar · 03-01-2014 8:23pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Mars had water.

Mars has ice.

yeah i meant to correct that earlier, my bad.

the point is, should they confirm the discovery of fossils etc on mars will that then be marked as some sort of nature reserve or the like? suppose we find some sort of rare mineral there that we need? where do we draw the line at mining it vs preserving fossils etc.

Capt'n Midnight · 03-01-2014 9:45pm

Kromdar wrote: »

yeah i meant to correct that earlier, my bad.

the point is, should they confirm the discovery of fossils etc on mars will that then be marked as some sort of nature reserve or the like? suppose we find some sort of rare mineral there that we need? where do we draw the line at mining it vs preserving fossils etc.

No mining allowed in Antarctica and it's a lot easier to get to.

ScumLord · 06-01-2014 6:39pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

It works both ways. Foreign microbes might find us edible.

It's possible but I'd give the advantage to earths bacteria if we're talking about a planet that's a couple of million years behind. I'm guessing that amount of development would have given earths bacteria a decided advantage. We always like to think aliens will be better than us but life on earth is vicious, we could be the monsters.

Kromdar wrote: »

2. there's too much ethics involved, and realistically, if we were to aim at colonising a planet, you can bet there'll be a big lobby for leaving the planet alone, with cries of "what if someone did that to earth when we were a proto-planet" and, of course, "will somebody please think of the children!"

That's what I'm thinking. Once people see the fact they could be destroying a unique strain of life we may not want to step foot on any other planets for fear of killing off that life.

what about colonising the moon, even? all that talk about helium 3 mining and/or using it as a waystation for further space flights. why not start there?

I'm wondering what would be the long term benefit to it though. I'm guessing we could find helium 3 in other places and you'd have to wonder if it's worth the risk of affecting our tides by reducing the weight of the moon. Also, would it be seen as unsightly to look at the moon and see blotches of human development?

technology requirements aside, i think it would be a good idea to at least colonize an earth-like planet. it would be a feat. and who knows, we might find something useful there. i mean, we found penicillin on mold, who knows what medical or scientific breakthroughs the other planet might hold?

We could do that without colonising the surface though, biologically inert robots could collect samples. It would certainly be a feat but I think if we were able to live in space the surface of a planet could seem very hostile, what with it's weather patterns and tectonic activity. We might not like the idea of living on a planet.

Capt'n Midnight · 06-01-2014 9:50pm

ScumLord wrote: »

I'm wondering what would be the long term benefit to it though. I'm guessing we could find helium 3 in other places and you'd have to wonder if it's worth the risk of affecting our tides by reducing the weight of the moon. Also, would it be seen as unsightly to look at the moon and see blotches of human development?

Don't worry it'll be grand, sure we'll just do the mining on the dark side so ya won't see it and besides helium is lighter than air.

jamo2oo9 · 11-01-2014 8:28pm

ScumLord wrote: »

I'm wondering what would be the long term benefit to it though. I'm guessing we could find helium 3 in other places and you'd have to wonder if it's worth the risk of affecting our tides by reducing the weight of the moon. Also, would it be seen as unsightly to look at the moon and see blotches of human development?

IIRC, from the ISS, you can hardly see civilisation from there and it can't be any better from the moon. On the moon, the buildings on it would be much smaller so you couldn't see much unless you have a Hubble Telescope in your garden

Myrddin · 12-01-2014 12:39pm

We can't even preserve our own planet, deforestation on massive scales, hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants going into oceans every day, hundreds of thousands of tons of atmospheric pollutants going skyward every day. We've a long long way to go. The chances are, that any terraformation of another world would be one for harvesting the resources of that world, so essentially a commercial venture. Unfortunately, money always shouts louder than ethics...as we can see here on Earth in every day life.

ScumLord · 12-01-2014 8:04pm

Myrddin wrote: »

We can't even preserve our own planet, deforestation on massive scales, hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants going into oceans every day, hundreds of thousands of tons of atmospheric pollutants going skyward every day.

We kind of have little choice in that though, are most of us not going to take the car/bus to work? Maybe not buy a cheap fridge, buy the expensive item over the cheap one?

We've a long long way to go.

Which means we have to find a way of living in space on our our man made spaceships.

The chances are, that any terraformation of another world would be one for harvesting the resources of that world, so essentially a commercial venture. Unfortunately, money always shouts louder than ethics...as we can see here on Earth in every day life.

It's already been pointed out that it's much easier to take resources from the asteroid belt (which are probably common in every solar system) than it would be to try and pull them off a planet with huge gravity.

If we have large colonial space ships I don't see what attraction a planet would be other than for research. If we can make it to another planet, we don't need that planet to live.

Capt'n Midnight · 12-01-2014 9:03pm

ScumLord wrote: »

It's already been pointed out that it's much easier to take resources from the asteroid belt (which are probably common in every solar system) than it would be to try and pull them off a planet with huge gravity.

If we have large colonial space ships I don't see what attraction a planet would be other than for research. If we can make it to another planet, we don't need that planet to live.

+1

Most of our water came from comets

And most of the Platinum Group Metals on earth are found in one place
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vredefort_crater

Vredefort crater is the largest verified impact crater on Earth, more than 300 km across
...
The nearby Bushveld Igneous Complex (BIC) and Witwatersrand Basin were created during this same period, leading to speculation that the Vredefort bolide's mass and kinetics were of sufficient magnitude to induce regional volcanism. The BIC is the location of most of the world's known reserves of platinum group metals, while the Witwatersrand basin holds most of the known reserves of gold.

If that region had been subducted or if it had been an ocean impact then we wouldn't have things like catalytic converters , those metals are very useful in as catalysts in industrial processes.

Typically half of them are more valuable than Gold. On a planet without an obvious source of them they would be worth vastly more than it. Or if we found an asteroid of similar composition it could cause the price of them to collapse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precious_metal#Rough_world_market_Price_.28.24.2Fkg.29

Myrddin · 12-01-2014 10:56pm

ScumLord wrote: »

We kind of have little choice in that though, are most of us not going to take the car/bus to work? Maybe not buy a cheap fridge, buy the expensive item over the cheap one?

Isn't that the point though? We're prepared to sacrifice the environment of our very own home, for life's conveniences...what regard do you think we'd show to another planet that we didn't even live on? Plus I wasn't really as much talking about domestic waste, more the sheer scale of daily industrial waste. When the question is "if we found another living planet", I'd wager this other planet would get a rough time of it, it might be an object of study for a while, but part of me reckons we wouldn't take too long before harvesting what it had to offer without worrying too much of the consequences.

Which means we have to find a way of living in space on our our man made spaceships.

Yeah agreed. It's great to see the likes of the ISS & other endeavors in space. But haven't doubts been raised about future funding for the ISS mid-term? When you consider how dwarfed by military spending the ISS actually is, will it be long before we're taking backward steps?

It's already been pointed out that it's much easier to take resources from the asteroid belt (which are probably common in every solar system) than it would be to try and pull them off a planet with huge gravity.

If we have large colonial space ships I don't see what attraction a planet would be other than for research. If we can make it to another planet, we don't need that planet to live.

That's true, & you're correct in that by the time we're capable of reaching other planets, even things like fossil fuels will likely have lost their appeal.

ScumLord · 13-01-2014 5:24pm

Myrddin wrote: »

Isn't that the point though? We're prepared to sacrifice the environment of our very own home, for life's conveniences...what regard do you think we'd show to another planet that we didn't even live on?

I was trying to say that on this planet we have to use it's resources, we have no choice, and the waste we produce is going to be stuck on this planet.

If there are more job opportunities in space I can see a lot of people moving there and maybe even the human population on earth going down taking all the pressure off the planets resources. When earth no longer has to support an increasing human population we'll probably be able to let it go wild in many areas. I could see a time when most humans have never seen earth with their own eyes and have to go through all sorts of hurdles (like trying to get into Australia) just to be allowed onto the planet.

I think most manufacturing would take place in space too, (we'll probably have advanced 3D printers) so the humans that leave earth will be completely independent, they won't need anything from earth bar biological material.

Yeah agreed. It's great to see the likes of the ISS & other endeavors in space. But haven't doubts been raised about future funding for the ISS mid-term? When you consider how dwarfed by military spending the ISS actually is, will it be long before we're taking backward steps?

Private companies are looking at space now though. The problem is there's a massive initial cost in setting up a space colony it will take decades to achieve.

tac foley · 28-04-2014 5:20pm

1. Find your planet.

2. Get to it........

After that it's all pretty easy.

Right now we can't even get to the moon.

tac

jamo2oo9 · 28-04-2014 6:45pm

tac foley wrote: »

1. Find your planet.

2. Get to it........

After that it's all pretty easy.

Right now we can't even get to the moon.

tac

We can get to the moon. Just that NASA, ESA and Russia don't want to spend billions of dollars to just go to the moon. To get to the other earth like planet, the pricetag would probably be in trillions unless we have found a loophole that teleports us to that plannet, just outside our atmosphere..

Baked.noodle · 28-04-2014 7:05pm

Years ago I read the book Red Mars which is part of a trilogy about the colonisation and terraforming of Mars and the relationship the colonists have with Earth. Never got around to the other two books, but it is an interesting take on colonising Mars. The content of the second book Green Mars and the cover artwork for Red Mars were carried on-board a NASA lander called the Phoenix that landed on Mars in May 2008.

jamo2oo9 · 28-04-2014 9:13pm

Just out of interest, have we made any attempt at terraforming anything, not planet scale but something small like an acre of field or something?

ScumLord · 28-04-2014 9:41pm

jamo2oo9 wrote: »

Just out of interest, have we made any attempt at terraforming anything, not planet scale but something small like an acre of field or something?

There's no need to terraform a field, it already has all the properties that you'd want to get from terraforming.

jamo2oo9 · 28-04-2014 10:06pm

ScumLord wrote: »

There's no need to terraform a field, it already has all the properties that you'd want to get from terraforming.

Well what I mean is have we developed anything that we could use to terraform a planet apart from Greenhouse Gas

Labarbapostiza · 28-04-2014 10:19pm

jamo2oo9 wrote: »

Just out of interest, have we made any attempt at terraforming anything, not planet scale but something small like an acre of field or something?

Yes, we have. A large part of Holland is terraformed by taking land from the sea, draining it and creating top soil.

Neil Degrasse Tyson's argument for life on other planets is that the mix of elements is more or less the same throughout the universe. I think the "where is everyone" problem is simply because the amount of energy required to send out a "hello" signal, if you don't have a single target to focus on, is way too much. We've only had radio broadcasts for about a century, maybe a "hello" is going to come to us any day now.

When I was a child, I used to read a lot of science fiction. In some stories, aliens would attack earth, preparing to terraform it to their liking. They'd often send fungus spores, or some kind of microbe that would infect the human race, to turn them into mulch for their arrival. If we wanted to terraform a planet, we'd send the microbes first, if the planet was already dead.

There are things we don't even know about earth, that we should. The common hypothesis that earth's atmosphere was created by microbes, isn't all that plausible. I think it was solar radiation that cooked them into their current form. I don't know why comets are required to give us water. For it's size, earth's oceans and atmosphere are a very thin layer of the whole thing.

I think a very good chance for extra-terrestrial life could be inside liquid filled voids in drifting space rocks in deep space. Where there's a constant temperature from radioactive decay - and less chances of absolute extinction events. Inside the ruin of the Chernobyl power planet, there's fungus thriving on the walls using radioactive material as its' energy source. There could be aliens for who radioactive minerals are an essential part of their diet.

The Helium 3 deposits on the moon. I believe they're only in the first few feet of the moon's soil. We get a lot of Helium 3 from the sun, on earth, but it ends up floating around the atmosphere, or in the sea. I think the easiest way to get Helium 3 would be just to extract atmospheric Helium, then separate the isotopes. I've heard, in theory, one kilo could power a major city for a year.

Capt'n Midnight · 29-04-2014 12:12am

jamo2oo9 wrote: »

Just out of interest, have we made any attempt at terraforming anything, not planet scale but something small like an acre of field or something?

Biosphere II except the science and execution was half arsed, stuff like the concrete and carbon dioxide

moss bottle gardens work though

Labarbapostiza · 29-04-2014 2:18am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Biosphere II except the science and execution was half arsed, stuff like the concrete and carbon dioxide

Much more half arsed than that. The original soil they brought in hadn't been sterilised, and they really didn't have a clue as to what they were doing. If you want a sealed environment, why bring in microbes. Can you not bring in microbes in the first place. And plants need microbes to break down nutrients in the soil. (gardeners some times do sterilise the soil they're about to use.)

But they seemed to be clueless as regards to everything. Soil itself can belch out CO2, but you wouldn't notice it in open air.

ScumLord · 29-04-2014 5:44pm

jamo2oo9 wrote: »

Well what I mean is have we developed anything that we could use to terraform a planet apart from Greenhouse Gas

Terraforming includes changing the atmosphere, so we haven't really done that, we just know the theory. Although, I suppose we are terraforming earth, just not in a good way.

Terraforming mars would probably have to include liquefying the planet's core so it would have a magnetic field again. Any planet we hope to terraform would need to have some sort of protection against the suns radiation, otherwise nothing can live. Mars is a dead planet because it's core cooled and solidified, stopping it's magnetic field from protecting the surface from radiation. The other problem for people on mars would be the reduced gravity which would mess with any life from earth.

If we went to another solar system we could find a planet with an existing magnetic field but if it has one it may well have it's own version of life and us going down to terraform that planet could mean the destruction of any life on the planet which I'm pretty sure no scientist would be thrilled about doing.

A spaceship colony would be a much more economical option, it would be a completely unrestricted society, it could move to resources or locations of interest providing everything the people inside need making terraforming redundant or at the very least too costly to seriously consider.

Maximus Alexander · 30-04-2014 3:57pm

ScumLord wrote: »

Also, would it be seen as unsightly to look at the moon and see blotches of human development?

I actually think it would be awesome to look up at the night sky and see something like this:

rosetta-osiris-wide-angle-camera-wac-night-northern-hemisphere-eo-bg.jpg

rosetta-osiris-wide-angle-camera-wac-night-northern-hemisphere-eo-bg.jpg

riffmongous · 03-05-2014 1:10am

Geo-engineering is starting to be looked at as a serious way to deal with Anthropogenic Climate Change (or even plain old climate change) here on earth, there was a debate on it at this years EGU which I missed unfortunately

I could only imagine it's use here on earth to be an absolute disaster, considering how much is still unknown about our current atmosphere, especially feedback mechanisms. On other planets where the atmosphere could be not so complicated (which is perhaps unlikely) it might be possible. While the spaceship colony might seem like a better idea I think it's always going to be human nature to want to go to places and colonise them physically

Capt'n Midnight · 03-05-2014 10:12am

riffmongous wrote: »

I could only imagine it's use here on earth to be an absolute disaster, considering how much is still unknown about our current atmosphere, especially feedback mechanisms. On other planets where the atmosphere could be not so complicated (which is perhaps unlikely) it might be possible. While the spaceship colony might seem like a better idea I think it's always going to be human nature to want to go to places and colonise them physically

We could warm up Mars by pumping out loads of Sulphur hexa Fluoride. There's enough water there to create an atmosphere with enough oxygen to breath , maybe.

Labarbapostiza · 03-05-2014 4:00pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

We could warm up Mars by pumping out loads of Sulphur hexa Fluoride. .

I don't think you can, but could you explain the principle behind this?

There's enough water there to create an atmosphere with enough oxygen to breath , maybe.

There is an interesting question: where did the water go? Is everything you see on the icecaps all there is, or is there small oceans worth of the stuff in aquivers.

riffmongous · 03-05-2014 5:06pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

We could warm up Mars by pumping out loads of Sulphur hexa Fluoride. There's enough water there to create an atmosphere with enough oxygen to breath , maybe.

But I wonder how good the climate models that are used for the simulations that are the basis of the terraforming ideas are. With one incorrectly modeled feedback and you can get a runaway effect on the temperature.

But I think the ideas and research are fascinating, and it's definitely an area I'd like to get into in a few years.

Labarbapostiza · 03-05-2014 7:39pm

riffmongous wrote: »

But I wonder how good the climate models that are used for the simulations that are the basis of the terraforming ideas are.

I didn't know there already was a Martian terraforming project in motion. It's possible it hasn't got further than the internet bulletin board.

With one incorrectly modeled feedback and you can get a runaway effect on the temperature.

Let's not let things get messy and just stick to Mars, but that "runaway temperature effect", may have no real basis in science, and just be a figment of panicked apocalyptic thinking.

Here's my model for a stable atmosphere.

Total energy in the atmosphere Te = Ke + Pe, The Ke is the kinetic energy of the gases whizzing around. This is what we measure as temperature. And the Pe is potential energy due to gas particles and gravity.

Rin = Rout. Radiation absorbed by the atmosphere must equal radiation emitted (reflected radiation is not included as it is never absorbed by the atmosphere - Rout does not include reflected light). This is a simple straightforward thermal equilibrium. It also means that when Rin = Rout, Te will be static (not absolutely, but I'll get to that in a second). Take a barren planet with no atmosphere, and throw a massive block of ice at it, then switch on a sun (with a constant emission), it will heat up to a point its' Te is constant.

For a stable atmosphere you also need a stable volume of gas. Essentially gas that cannot escape the planet's gravity. For this Ke-max, the maximum kinetic energy of a gas particle, must be smaller than Pe-escape, the energy required to escape the planet's gravity. In reality there will always be some particles that can escape, but it decreases exponentially, until the volume is close to stable. You throw your block of ice at the dry atmosphereless planet, switch on your sun, gas will boil off until Ke-max <= Pe-escape, because the gas particles will not be able reach escape velocity.

Rin, is not constant, as an atmosphere will have clouds that reflect light into space. This will make the Te fluctuate. Since the stirring effect is local, the weather will be changeable, but the atmosphere will be stable. I haven't worked this out, but Te might be completely stable if the cloud formation is noisy enough.

So the total model for a stable atmosphere is

Te = Ke-temperature + Pe-gravity
Rin = Rout
Ke-max < Pe-escape

It would be wrong to assume that there would be only one stable climate for a planet, the equation probably has more than one solution. It might cycle between two or more states. There may even be an instance where the volume changes, like a pendulum running out of energy.

Here's my idea of what may happened to the Martian oceans. An ice-age is not caused by atmospheric cooling, it's caused by ocean warming. There is a cycle to it. The oceans warm, more precipitation, snow builds up at the poles, it happens at a rate that it cannot all melt from season to season. Gradually atmosphere's water is transferred to the poles, this causes atmospheric thinning, which leads to less absorption of radiation in, which leads to atmospheric cooling, and the oceans cool too. When the oceans are cooler, there is less precipitation, which leads to less seasonal snow fall, which allows the pole ice to melt. This cycle can then repeat, over a very long time of course, but I have thought of an instance where the atmosphere could change radically in the process.

Hydrogen is the lightest element, it's also an essential component of water, H20. In an atmosphere, there are free ions; hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc, from molecules being zapped with sunlight. If hydrogen bonds with oxygen, it will form a heavier molecule of water, and precipitate, it will be hard to reach escape velocity. because it's heavier. If the carbon and oxygen molecules bond, they will also precipitate. BUT, if the free hydrogen has less opportunity to bond with oxygen, (the oxygen bonding with the CO2), it has a greater chance of reaching escape velocity.

So the difference between earth and mars may be, that it eventually lost all it's hydrogen, because there was no organic life to sequester the carbon.

To terraform mars, what I would do first is send some lichen (it might not need modifying), that thrives on CO2, but doesn't need much water. This will increase the atmospheric oxygen, then find a big asteroid of hydrogen and throw it into mar's atmosphere. And then maybe the red planet will turn green and become warmer.

riffmongous · 03-05-2014 8:41pm

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

I didn't know there already was a Martian terraforming project in motion. It's possible it hasn't got further than the internet bulletin board.

This seems to be the original paper Capt was referring to link

snip

But this is what I mean, your model is far too simplistic and to start a project without fully understanding the system is dangerous. For instance in your ice-age example there is no mention of the effects of increased ocean evaporation and clouds on albedo, and will those clouds increase the albedo or decrease it? More water vapour in the atmosphere will increase the surface temperature, increasing the humidity meaning you can have even more water vapour in the atmosphere, increasing the temp and so on, at what point does it increase so much that your snow will just melt every season, reducing the albedo further and leading to more radiation absorbed? No mention of the martian magnetic field?

If we found another living planet

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