Exponentional technology and the future.

[Mr Mystery]

Morning all. Not sleeping today for some reason, so sat up watching some films, and I'm onto The Fifth Element.

And it got me thinking from a single line, where the President mentions his 20,000,000,000 citizens. Which is a lot, way more than we can currently sustain on this planet. Of course, being a sci fi films its pretty clear Earth has colonies.

To me, colonising new planets is the only way we can continue to progress as a species. And the best bit? The theory is pretty much there from what I gather. Cryogenics has the freezing bit down (which is of course the easy part) and it seems just a matter of time until we can defrost that which we have frozen. That done, and with a perpetual energy source of some kind, we can realistically (if incredibly slowly) leach our birth planet and go on our grandest adventure yet!

Question of course is how soon is this going to happen? I'm not especially up on my technology news, so forgive my ignorance if I'm missing out on groovy new developments. I don't think I will live to see it, but I reckon going on our current rate of advancement (from first flight to landing stuff on Mars successfully in little more than a century) I think we could see this in the next couple of hundred years.

And I love that! We're a migratory species by nature, and our unqiue ability to adapt our environment has given us an unmatched evolutionary edge, and what better expression of our odd little drive than hurling ourselves into the void and hoping for the best?

Imagine what we as a species could achieve with even a single inhabitable planet. Like all good evolution, we've achieve a lot through good old trial and error. To be able to take that recorded wisdom, and apply it to a new planet excites me. Perhaps I'm brig overly optimistic, but it seems safe to assume any fuel source capable of getting us somewhere new is going to be less damaging than the ones we've buggered our planet with to date. We'd be starting afresh which has got to be worth the effort.

Now, managing to avoid extinction aside (because if anything can kick our arse, it's most likely to be us) where do you see humanity in the next 100 years?

[Wolfshade]

Think mad max but without Tina Turner.

[Nabterayl]

Perhaps I'm brig overly optimistic, but it seems safe to assume any fuel source capable of getting us somewhere new is going to be less damaging than the ones we've buggered our planet with to date. We'd be starting afresh which has got to be worth the effort.
Depends on the source, I think. It wouldn't necessarily be a new source of power/propulsion. Pulse drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion) is not going to screw your planet, but its applications to planetside power generation are indirect and have so far led to a fair amount of controversy.

[Psychosplodge]

Think mad max but without Tina Turner.

Borderlands?

[jgebi]

necromida I think is how we will go, and with how close they are to cybernetics I'll be upgrading myself as I get older (money permitting). But our real proplem more then drives ect is terra-forming as we can't do it and with out it we can't do anything so once we get terra-forming you'll see compound technological leaps through living and conservation. Saying we don't nuke ourselves first.

[Mr Mystery]

Depends on the source, I think. It wouldn't necessarily be a new source of power/propulsion. Pulse drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion) is not going to screw your planet, but its applications to planetside power generation are indirect and have so far led to a fair amount of controversy.

True. But then pack on board truly green methods. Such as wind turbines and you're good to go. Infinite clean energy to kickstart a colony.

As for terraforming, not entirely necessary. We have the theory to build enclosed environments, so that's a start. Terraforming itself I understand to be an intentional greenhouse effect?

[jgebi]

well sort of and terra-forming is cheaper and easier when you get the whole cost down as it makes all the dirt/soil use able

[Wolfshade]

Indeed from the Mars website (via Nasa)


Transforming Mars will be a long and complicated process. But this is exactly the type of subject that interests space researchers like Christopher McKay of NASA Ames Research Center. First, greenhouse gases, like chlorofluorocarbons that contribute to the growing ozone layer on Earth, will be released into the atmosphere. This traps the heat from the Sun and raises the surface temperature by an average of 4 degrees Celsius. In order to achieve this, factories would manufacture chlorofluorocarbons derived from the air and soil. A single factory would require the power equivalent of a large nuclear power plant.

The increasing temperature would vaporize some of the carbon dioxide in the south polar cap. Introducing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would produce additional warming, melting more of the polar cap until it has been vaporized completely. This would produce an average temperature rise of 70 degrees Celsius.

With the temperature this high, ice will start melting, providing the water needed to sustain life. This water would raise the atmospheric pressure to the equivalent of some mountaintops. While this would be a survivable level, it may still require the use of an oxygen mask. The next step, which may take up to several centuries, would be to plant trees that thrive on carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.


Alternative approach to kickstarting this greenhouse process is to find asteroids with the correct chemical compositions, and then detonate nuclear devices to launch them at Mars to seed the atmosphere. This would have the bonus that the asteroidal impact would heat the planet causing CO2 to be released from the soil and polar caps.

Also this http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2012/EGU2012-2113.pdf

But I think there is danger of derailing this to a terraforming thread if it continues too far...

[Mr Mystery]

Fascinating!

I reckon we'll see attempts at that by the end of the century. Again, theory is all there, we just need to give it a try. I can almost see Mars terra formers being employed like Oil Rig workers. X years on, X years off. Reckon I'd be tempted :)

But let's assume we find and reach an already habitable world ( I believe we have a couple of candidates already) what would happen regarding bacteria? Would not having evolved on that planet be a help or a hindrance to our resistance? If it's never interacted with a species like us(Mammal for instance) would we be affected by it?

[Wolfshade]

If it were completely alien, so say silicon based rather than carbon based (though there are some examples of that on earth), we would have no immunity against them, other than good old T cells.
If carbon based life is the optimal strategy then it may be that they are sufficiently similiar to known types that we might already have a natural resistance to them, or that they could be readily over come.

On this planet completely unknown species have a 80% dna similiarity or other known species (species not jsut different breeds) given the similicity of bacterium the question is whether or not they would be that dissimiliar to our own.

Think of the effect of large isolated groups interacting, like the Spanish meeting the Aztecs

[Mr Mystery]

I get you. But what about if there is no mammalian life? Just say cold blooded lizards. Again totally ignorant about these things (hence why I love these threads) but can I catch something unpleasant from a lizard, or are our biologies sufficiently different to prevent that sort of thing?

[Psychosplodge]

You can get salmonella from a terrestrial lizard or bird if they're carrying it...

[Wolfshade]

If our biologies were close enough then certainly, in the same way that cows allegdly get TB from badgers.

It all comes down to our biology, the biology of the host creature and the biology of the organism/parasite in question. Altering any of those can rapidly change anything. So you can go from where the parasite is benign on the host creature yet totally fatal to us, to the exact opposite, to where the organism can't survive on us but thrives on the host.