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Rubin Farr

By Rubin Farr
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Rubin Farr
Rubin Farr

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 

Rubin Farr
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decibal cooper
decibal cooper

New pics of Jupiter from NASA's Juno mission:

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auxien Grand Master

auxien

Posted
Posted

i wouldn't rule out a lander on an ocean moon "in our lifetime." actually i think it's somewhat likely that, by 2050, there will be a lander on europa, enceladus or titan. even more likely by 2080, assuming there's no catastrophic set-back in civilization caused by shit-head political elements or an asteroid.

 

Perhaps, and I honestly hope I'm just being a tad more pessimistic than realistic, but I don't think so. Not saying it's not possible in our lifetimes, just not something I'm betting to happen in 30 years, ya know? Maybe, would be great, but also very possible it won't happen by then. 

 

The thing is that with the inevitable push towards private enterprises and burgeoning space programs from many growing nations, I see things going down one of two (very) basic paths:

  • 99% commercialization-focused (tourism, comet mining, lower-risk stuff to the moon, maybe Mars?) and pure-science pursuits (search for life, telescopes for research, etc.) just getting the leftover budget and advancements. Private companies win and other pursuits are stuck at the relatively slow pace they've been at since the 70's or 80's.
  • with private companies innovating, NASA/others (govts) could purchase piggyback rides (literally and figuratively with second hand tech at low cost-to-develop) to really open up the pure science side of things. Everyone wins, basically.

I just think with the hope of cash out there (and being able to be a leader towards the truly infinite potential of monetizing off-Earth resources over the next 100 years) that things will skew towards profit and privatization. That's really where things have been heading already, and I doubt it'll always benefit actual science. There's some benefits, of course, and ultimately I may be just pessimistic and the second route from above becomes truly great and revolutionary for scientific research and exploration, but I just doubt it. 

 

Very general blabber there, I know. There's probably not life elsewhere in the solar system anyway. If there is, then holy fuck that changes a lot of things, but given what we know now, the most conservative estimates of the chances of life pretty much guarantee that humans will probably go for hundreds of thousands (or millions) of years before encountering any alien life forms (of any type), ever. 

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ambermonk Grand Master

ambermonk

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I have a feeling that searching for life beyond Earth won't be as high of a priority as preservation of our own species in the coming decades for when overpopulation and resource scarcity eventually become real issues. By then we will have to start moving people off planet.

Mars is the most obvious choice of next planet for colonization, but we have to contend with lower temperatures, lack of oxygen, lack of magnetosphere to protect against solar and cosmic radiation, and lower gravity, which may damage our spines. I don't know if any kind of small-scale terraforming experiment has been tried IRL yet, but self-sustaining facilities for non-Earth environments that are equipped with amenities like solar panels and greenhouses are worth looking into.

There's Venus too, which is almost as big as Earth and has almost as much gravity, and is our closest planetary neighbor. But obviously the only part we'd remotely have a chance of inhabiting is the upper atmosphere. So we could probably construct floating sky cities, but to hell with going outside.

As for exoplanets like Kepler-452b, it would be a guaranteed one-way ticket. If we're going to send a space ship further than 1K light years, then our best chance would probably be to stow human inhabitants in cryo at the embryonic or even zygotic stage. So the active crew would have to be entirely autonomous robots with a level of AI beyond anything we have today, and could theoretically host artificial wombs for the early-stage human colonists once they arrive. But the trip itself would practically take an eon...meaning Earth may not even have any human life left by then.


This probably all sounds far-fetched now, but then again so was electricity 200 years ago.

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may be rude Grand Master

may be rude

Posted
Posted (edited)

 

i wouldn't rule out a lander on an ocean moon "in our lifetime." actually i think it's somewhat likely that, by 2050, there will be a lander on europa, enceladus or titan. even more likely by 2080, assuming there's no catastrophic set-back in civilization caused by shit-head political elements or an asteroid.

 

Perhaps, and I honestly hope I'm just being a tad more pessimistic than realistic, but I don't think so. Not saying it's not possible in our lifetimes, just not something I'm betting to happen in 30 years, ya know? Maybe, would be great, but also very possible it won't happen by then. 

 

The thing is that with the inevitable push towards private enterprises and burgeoning space programs from many growing nations, I see things going down one of two (very) basic paths:

  • 99% commercialization-focused (tourism, comet mining, lower-risk stuff to the moon, maybe Mars?) and pure-science pursuits (search for life, telescopes for research, etc.) just getting the leftover budget and advancements. Private companies win and other pursuits are stuck at the relatively slow pace they've been at since the 70's or 80's.
  • with private companies innovating, NASA/others (govts) could purchase piggyback rides (literally and figuratively with second hand tech at low cost-to-develop) to really open up the pure science side of things. Everyone wins, basically.

I just think with the hope of cash out there (and being able to be a leader towards the truly infinite potential of monetizing off-Earth resources over the next 100 years) that things will skew towards profit and privatization. That's really where things have been heading already, and I doubt it'll always benefit actual science. There's some benefits, of course, and ultimately I may be just pessimistic and the second route from above becomes truly great and revolutionary for scientific research and exploration, but I just doubt it. 

 

Very general blabber there, I know. There's probably not life elsewhere in the solar system anyway. If there is, then holy fuck that changes a lot of things, but given what we know now, the most conservative estimates of the chances of life pretty much guarantee that humans will probably go for hundreds of thousands (or millions) of years before encountering any alien life forms (of any type), ever. 

 

 

i think we agree. by 2050 i don't consider it more likely than not, but possible. in 2050, if musk has been shuttling people to mars for 20 years, the spirit of exploration will have moved on to ocean moons. tech skills will be such that the challenge won't seem too daunting. funding will be there. so by 2080 seems more likely

 

regarding life outside earth, i think it's to be expected. we just have to confirm it. look at this timeline of earth's history:

 

post-10516-0-32203900-1528251507_thumb.png

 

basically as soon as earth existed it had life. transpermia seems likely. a planet gets smashed in a collision and asteroids carry bacteria or whatever through space. plenty of forms of life can survive dormant in space.

Edited by very honest
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caze Grand Master

caze

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regarding life outside earth, i think it's to be expected.

 

We should have been able to detect it by now if so, so either it's not as common as we thought (which is hopefully the case), or it is really common, but so is the fact that something always happens to snuff it out (war, ecological collapse, asteroid, paperclip armageddon, etc.) or lead it to live a hermetic existence.

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YangYing Grand Master

YangYing

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Posted

 

regarding life outside earth, i think it's to be expected.

 

We should have been able to detect it by now if so, so either it's not as common as we thought (which is hopefully the case), or it is really common, but so is the fact that something always happens to snuff it out (war, ecological collapse, asteroid, paperclip armageddon, etc.) or lead it to live a hermetic existence.

 

ye I think I posted this vid b4, but we really don't want to find life..

 

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auxien Grand Master

auxien

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Posted (edited)

i think we agree. by 2050 i don't consider it more likely than not, but possible. in 2050, if musk has been shuttling people to mars for 20 years, the spirit of exploration will have moved on to ocean moons. tech skills will be such that the challenge won't seem too daunting. funding will be there. so by 2080 seems more likely

 

regarding life outside earth, i think it's to be expected. we just have to confirm it. look at this timeline of earth's history:

 

attachicon.giflife.PNG

 

basically as soon as earth existed it had life. transpermia seems likely. a planet gets smashed in a collision and asteroids carry bacteria or whatever through space. plenty of forms of life can survive dormant in space.

 

You're correct, I think we do agree. Speculation is fun though :) I just tend to fall on the side of later rather than sooner given the pace I've seen of exploration and 'big advancements' in my lifetime...and if 2080 is when it happens I'll be nearly 100 years old so hopefully dead by then lol so that's part of what my 'in our lifetimes' comes from

 

And I do love that chart. I may sound a bit silly here but I'm going to also be very honest ( :emotawesomepm9:), it's something that's on my mind a lot: ever since sorta getting into the heavier sides of science/spaceyshit/evolution when I was a teenager, I try and keep in mind the sheer vastness of time those scales all work on...and the thing is that Earth (and likely our entire solar system) is incredibly lucky. I think we're luckier than we're likely to really grasp for a long time. I'm sure there's lots of planets out there where life has arisen in its basic forms (likely thousands if not millions just in our galaxy alone), but for those further steps? For intelligence? For lasting and growing intelligence and society (whatever forms it may take)….those things I think are far more rare than many might imagine. Especially given how rare stasis and ideal conditions that we enjoy here likely is for ANY planet. Life probably pops up in single cell-like forms nearly any chance it gets (it's just a natural process based on the right components being there of course, like anything else) but planets get half destroyed, orbits get fucked up, suns go nova, a million other factors...life's been nearly wiped out a few times and we're in (as far as we know) as ideal of a situation as we can imagine being realistic. 

 

Basically the only point I want to make in regards to that chart (and it touches on what caze said here too...)

 

 

regarding life outside earth, i think it's to be expected.

 

We should have been able to detect it by now if so, so either it's not as common as we thought (which is hopefully the case), or it is really common, but so is the fact that something always happens to snuff it out (war, ecological collapse, asteroid, paperclip armageddon, etc.) or lead it to live a hermetic existence.

...is that it's not simple. I don't think any of us talking about it think it is simple, but my god is it SO FUCKING FAR from that. Life perhaps is common, but if over the next million years we land on a thousand different viable planets and find life on every single one, chances are still that zero of the life will still be there, will have evolved past single/simple multicellular, or MAYBE a dozen planets with plants and fishies or something. Maybe we'll run across a one or two monuments of past intelligence? Just the timing of it all is pretty difficult. We'll likely never make it out of our galaxy as well, which is a whole issue in and of itself. Even if intelligent life has arisen (or will arise) a few million times throughout the universe, there's no known way of ever reaching or communicating with them because they'll likely be in other galaxies...not to mention again they maybe they don't get going for a billion years from now, who knows what 'humans' will be by then, if we'll be at all?

 

Contacting alien life is going to be super fucking difficult is what I'm saying. It's very very very important to continue to try, however.

Edited by auxien
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BobDobalina Grand Master

BobDobalina

Posted
Posted (edited)

^ I enjoyed that the first time you posted it! (edit - @ mixl)

 

I also enjoyed your post too aux, great points I concur with but didnt get to read b4 posting

 

Based on my own weighing of the information (YMMV), I'm pretty convinced at this point that civilizations are the great final filter; i.e., they (we) flicker and burn out on timescales that are but a hairline on the timeline v honest posted.  Also, interstellar and intergalactic distances are huuuuge, so the chances of any two civilization blips lining up at the same time to communicate with each other are infinitesimal.  Also, even if we happened to receive a message from halfway across our galaxy that message would have been transmitted tens of thousands of years ago, and by the time we reply they will have been long gone.  Humans only harnessed radio waves, gotten into space, etc. within the last 150 years.

Edited by Bob Dobalina
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may be rude Grand Master

may be rude

Posted
Posted (edited)

we're only just emerging into technological advancement. the fact that we don't "see" intelligent civilizations is kind of a faulty premise, because we don't know what to look for, because we're babies. we have no idea what humanity will be like in 1,000 years, or 10,000 years, any advanced civilizations that's watching would know what's in store, and that we are a germ of the species that would be fit to converse with them. 

 

i don't buy for a split second that "civilizations all destroy themselves." it's happenstance that humanity is a little aggressive and reckless. many humans have no destructive impulses and are careful and thoughtful. if the past were a little different then a different set of genes would be kicking around. 

 

seeking out life may be foolish, and i'm not even talking SETI beacons attracting maniacal AI, i mean letting a privately-funded mission do round trips to mars may contaminate earth with a nightmare bacteria. 

 

we have a lot of species here. and we're not even nice to them.

Edited by very honest
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Braintree Grand Master

Braintree

Posted
Posted

Just gonna keep posting cool shit in here no matter if anyone cares:

 

https://gizmodo.com/every-tiny-speck-of-light-in-this-image-is-a-galaxy-1827623861

 

Mind boggling.

 

 

Neat article, but this bothered me:

 

 

 

Most of the galaxies in this image produced their signatures well before our Solar System came into existence, but we’re only seeing them now, tens of billions of years later.

 

The universe is only 13.8 billion years old. This implies it took more than 20 billion years.

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Nebraska Grand Master

Nebraska

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Posted

im578x383-385066971.jpg

 

An Italian team of scientists says it has strong evidence of a subsurface lake of liquid water on Mars. It's a discovery that adds to the speculation that there could once have been life on Mars — and raises the possibility that it might be there still today, since liquid water is an essential ingredient for life.

 

The evidence comes from an instrument called MARSIS aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft in orbit around the Red Planet. MARSIS is a special kind of radar called ground-penetrating radar. "Ground-penetrating radars use radio signals that are capable of penetrating into the ground and then get reflections from the material under the surface," says Roberto Orosei, principal investigator on MARSIS and a planetary scientist at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.

 

Such radars are useful when searching for liquid water, "because water is a very strong radar reflector," he says.

 

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/25/632222129/underground-lake-found-on-mars-beneath-a-mile-of-ice

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