Moontanman

Let's see how that holds up after 500,000,000 years of humans designing things before we get carried away making comparisons..

Matrioshka Brains are our future, it's the logical end game of all biological/technological life... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain

She is a known purveyor of woo, she is so steeped in magical thinking it's stunning. She is IMHO instrumental in many of the problems facing our country, that being said, I'd vote for her before I'd vote for the HCIC...

The triangle one is more of a dream really, I would have to have both money and skills I do not have. It would be an intersting tank to build .

Knowing me as well as I do and being under the influence of cold medicine that is quite possible, can you explain what I misunderstood?

Wood screws and water proof glue, very effective water poof paint allows for the making of really large aquariums with cut out in the from for a glass pain. I currently have two panes of 1/2" plate glass I am considering using to make a 1000 gal aquarium.

Well most of my woodworking involves aquariums, hoods, lights, stands, filters. If you ever decide to go that route let me know!

I would say you need a better understanding of the science around the expansion of the universe. No astrophysicist or cosmologist worth his salt would say the universe came from nothing or that a being was involved or that it could not have outside help. Nor would anyone who studies these things assert that the big bang was cunningly designed to give an illusion of anything. Your words are loaded with the insinuation of the conclusion you want. Your entire question is a logical fallacy called begging the question. The chemistry that gave rise to life is not random, chemical reactions are not random. Chemical elements can only react in certain ways under certain conditions, this is not random. If you must insist on giving this process odds then the odds are 1/1. We know of it happening once in one place. Until we more data point odds are meaningless... You might want to start your search here... https://www.wired.com/story/controversial-new-theory-suggests-life-wasnt-a-fluke-of-biologyit-was-physics/

http://newsthump.com/2017/11/17/elephants-legalise-the-squishing-of-wealthy-thrill-killing-arseholes/

A planet larger than Earth could have a denser atmosphere and could maintain the conditions for liquid water further from its host star. A stronger magnetic field would be expected from a larger planet as well... A denser atmosphere could maintain liquid water further from its sun and give better protection from cosmic rays and other sources of radiation. I would appear that the jury is still out on that but some consider the Earth to be just big enough for plate tectonics and bigger planets would be more active. Surface water is theorised to have the effect of allowing crustal movement as well. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/725/1/L43/meta Another super habitability quality would be to orbit a K type star, our sun will leave the main sequence in another 5 billion years but the slow expansion we currently observe in our sun will make the Earth uninhabitable far sooner. A K type start could stay on themai sequence 15 to 30 billion years compared to our sun's 5 billion years.

That is about a 5 hour drive for me but there is a place that makes furniture where I live. I've done a bit of dumpster diving there.

I used to pick up rough sawn red oak lumber a saw mill. The guy ran the saw mill knew me and would save the best cuts for me... I don't have a shop, I used skill saws, routers, anything that is hand held. Makes the whole harder but I enjoy the feeling of running the wood working tools in my hands..

Super habitable would mean a larger planet around smaller stars that the sun, vast oceans with huge shallow seas and land surface contained in large archipelagos, islands, and chains of islands. The atmosphere would be denser and possibly contain significantly larger amounts of Hydrogen Sulfide, Ammonia, CO2, CO, Methane and others due to larger numbers of life forms that produce them and volcanoes that also produce them. The planet Pandora orbiting the gas giant Polyphemus would be an example of this in fiction. Stronger gravity would pose a problem, I have a planet in mind for a story I am preparing to write. The Planet is 20,000 miles in diameter with gravity of 2X earth Normal. A 10 bar atmosphere, lots of volcanism and a more active plate tectonics. Orbiting two K type stars would give the system a wider habitable zone and a much longer life. It would have to have large amounts of silicates and a core small in comparison to earth's but largeish in it's own right. We think that gases like CO, H2S, NH3, CH4 are poisonous but certain organisms both metabolize and produce these gasses and could be important to alien life forms but deadly to us. Such a planet could also hang on to hydrogen better and in our solar system Titan has something that consumes Hydrogen and has been postulated to be life forms doing this. Yet another option would be a planet with a hydrogen atmosphere, a rocky surface and water ocean. Plants could consume methane and water vapor and produce hydrogen. Instead of storing energy via carbohydrates they could store energy in solid oxidizers. This would allow them to have fire. So many possibilities and so little data...

Woodworking and other hobbies that involve building things is how I manage to keep what little sanity I have left. I'm not really good at most of them but it's the effort that gives me release. The idea of conceiving an idea then drawing it and finally building it gives me a lot of pleasure..

Some of the ideas behind Rare Earth such as our Moon being both necessary and extremely unlikely are now thought to be discounted. The idea the moon was rare was based on the idea that planetary collisions were unlikely. Now it is thought that planetary mashups like the one that formed the moon happened to all the inner and maybe even the outer planets. This would indicate that large moons are not as unlikely as once thought. Mercury is now thought to be in it's current state due to a massive collision that blew most of the planet away but was too hard to allow the shrapnel to form a moon. The current condition of Venus can also be explained by a giant impact and even Mars is thought to have been the result of large impacts. More importantly the idea that having a large moon is necessary for life is questionable as well. other problems are discussed in this wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis Other critiques are offered in this wiki article as well. More importantly is the fact that we only have one data point, trying to draw a curve from one data point is not possible. There one idea that I don't think Ward And Brownlee mentioned in their book is why Earth is not a Mini Neptune. The collision that formed Luna might be the reason we are not a water planet with no land but again we have one data point. The Fermi paradox can be explained many ways but until we get more data points it's just speculation. A planet strikingly different from Earth might harbor life and even be friendlier to complex life than the Earth. This discussion is a bit OT, we can discuss this further if someone wants to start another thread or we can go to my thread which is similar "super habitable planets"

Yes, you are correct, I was thinking of the life that currently inhabits the surface, complex life.

Since it's half life is that short I would imagine if you had a kilo of Francium the least of your worries would be trying to react it with fluorine...

I see where you are coming from, the conditions to allow life to form are far and away from the conditions on Earth today. The Earth today looks as though it is perfect for life but in fact life has both evolved to fit Earth and been instrumental in making the Earth more suitable for life. Maybe someday, hopefully while I still around, we will find life outside the Earth. My point in all of this is that a planet doesn't have be much like Earth for life to exist there.

I am not sure what that has to do with the Rare Earth hypothesis?

Makes you think, if we can do that what could aliens do if they were a few thousand years ahead of us! I envy the young people today, they will get to see things we only dreamed of!

Thinking that the Earth might just be at the lower limit for complex life is mind expanding. In some ways it's like the planet Pandora from the movie avatar...

The Rare Earth hypothesis deals with complex life as we know it but that doesn't mean humans could live on it. I honestly think that being fit for humans is another thing entirely from just complex life. I agree, I would be amazed if there isn't life on a body in our solar system other than Earth. Most scientists in that field think life is inevitable given the correct conditions. In fact in " Rare Earth" by Ward and Brownlee they think life is widespread, single celled, but the Rare part is complex life. Other planets more suitable for complex life is the idea, we have evolved to fit the Earth, that might limit a planet's usefulness to humans. On the other hand planets more suitable for complex life than the Earth can be argued easily... The Earth is not a perfect fit for life, life has evolved to fit Earth. Other planets could be rendered uninhabitable simply by varying amounts of trace gases or metals in the planet. Something as simple as too much mercury could be a deal breaker. I look to Titan, if a second genesis of life completely different than Earth life has arisen in our solar system it would have a profound impact on the question of life in the universe.

Actually I started a thread about Planets that are friendlier to life than Earth. It has to do with estimates of things like life of plate tectonics, magnetic fields, thicker atmospheres, longer lived stars, that sort of thing... You are correct that we have one data point, drawing a curve from that one data point is premature at the very least... If we find life inside our solar system beyond the Earth then we have reason to think life is common. If we find life on Saturn's moon Titan using methane instead of water then we will be on pretty solid ground that life is common. It is frustrating to try and speculate at this point but still fun...

Rare Earth? You mean the Hypothesis of the book "Rare Earth"? While many if not most of the assertions in that book have been discounted we really don't know enough really make a call on that one way or another. The idea that a planet would be just like the Earth is more of a science fiction dream than reality. The Earth could be habitable somewhat closer to the sun and quite a bit further away from the sun but the planet would not necessarily be habitable by humans. Life on Earth is part of a positive feedback loop that determines much of what we think of as the reasons earth is perfect for life. If the Earth were as far away as Mars it could still be habitable by life but not the life as currently known on Earth. The feedback loop of life and planet would have to result in an atmosphere thicker and higher in CO2 than what we currently experience. "We" are currently not adapted to those conditions and little of Earth's complex life is either. Looking at from that perspective I would be surprised if we find any planet suitable for Earth life. If you mean suitable for complex life then then there may very well be bodies in our own solar system that qualify. A recent discovery on Mars might be evidence of complex life. https://www.space.com/39294-mars-rover-curiosity-weird-tube-structures.html Ice moons of Jupiter like Europa are now thought to be possible abodes of complex life, mostly due to oxygen being created transferred to the oceans via radiation and subduction of the Ice. What it boils down to is that Earth sized doesn't mean earth life any more than being in the goldilocks zone means Earth like. So many variables for Earth life are quite arbitrary and even slight variations could mean that humans couldn't live there without breathing masks at the very least. I would be willing to assert that an actual planet we could land on and step out on the surface unprotected is quite unlikely but that doesn't mean the planet could be as covered in complex life as our own planet. In fact there are some slight hints that the Earth, far from being the perfect planet may very well be very much less ideal for life than other planets.