Moontanman

Let's do a mind experiment, if life exists on Titan, and some people think there is some indication it might, it's unlikely to be anything more than microbes... BUT! What if complex life evolved there and an intelligence arose, how advanced is it likely they could become? I'll start by pointing out that metals we are familiar with would be unlikely to exist on Titan, no copper, no gold, no silver, no iron and no uranium! Would the lack of metals as we know them prohibit or at least limit a high tech civilization on Titan or are there ways around this? Some metals at least that cannot be useful in their elemental form on Earth would probably be impurities in the ice surface where frozen water rakes the place of silicates. Can we speculate with at least some confidence on technology under the conditions on Titan?

I do fire cupping, I use alcohol...

Thomas Gold suggested a similar abiogenic origin for fossils fuels in his book "The Deep Hot Biosphere"

Do not let a abscessed tooth go for long, I ended up with osteomyelitis, 4 operations and a metal plate replacing my lower jaw...

Very true but do they do it with certain knowledge? It's one thing to say a volcano might one day erupt and level your town it quite different to know for sure...

I was thinking the disaster would be unavoidable, "insert random end of world scenarios," would you still be willing to colonize that planet now knowing that within a specified time, thousands of years at least, the planet was going to be destroyed?

This link may help you find a starting point, as i understand it Earth had a silicate atmosphere for several decades after the Moon formed , http://forces.si.edu/atmosphere/02_02_00.html Oxygen also has a strange history. http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfjps/1400/atmos_origin.html Evidently there is more than one viable hypothesis. http://www.astrobio.net/topic/solar-system/earth/geology/earths-early-atmosphere/

My basic question boils down how far ahead of a death of a planet must be to be morally correct in colonization. For instance if you had a perfect earth like planet but you know that one million years from now the star will go nova or an other wise disastrous cataclysm a certain period of time how far away would the disaster have to be before you would live there or recommend living there to another person? Let's say in 50,000 years a super volcano will erupt and wipe out complex life on the planet, do you go there to live have children, build cities, knowing they are going definitely going to be destroyed 50,000 years from now?

We would be about as likely to hybridize with aliens as we would with a pine tree, in fact we share 3.8 billion years of evolution with pine trees but we share no evolution at all with aliens...

I have long wondered if humanity is Gaea's way of reproducing, that would make us genitals! Of course you have to subscribe to the whole Gaea hypothesis that asserts the Earths ecosystem is alive and sentient...

I am a time traveler, John Titor's time travel was unauthorized he had to be dealt with by extreme prejudice....

Everything asserted by the bible which can be tested can be shown to be wrong, god explains nothing and halts all progress to that goal...

I'm not sure why being attracted to each other by gravity would make them detectable, by the way both branes contain matter.

I thought about this for a while... now I can't unthink it....

I am reading "The Many Colored Land of the Golden Torc" by Julian May...

We currently have a thread that is really about creationism but the OP keeps ignoring answers and continues trying to overwhelm with walls of text. Some strict rules will have to be inforced, I for one will not participate in a gish gallop discussion...

Gish Gallop much?

Wolverine and badger hybrids... writing a horror story?

Horses and donkey's have wildly different chromosomes and they have young....

While I agree that such a cross is very unlikely I'm not sure what the links you provided are meant to show....

If we all agreed about everything it would be a bland world for sure...

Turkey has shot down a Russian war plane that violated it's territory airspace. Turkey has called for an emergency meeting of NATO over this issue and Russia is of course screaming innocence and reportedly Putin is somewhat less than happy. Any thoughts on how this is going to play out ? Personally I think the situation is quite dangerous and could prompt armed conflict with NATO and of course the US as well. Thoughts?

Soap boxing is already against the rules so why would that be a problem? I am of a mind that prohibiting creationism posts across the board makes us look bad, it actually plays into the hand of creationists who, IMHO, often come here hoping to be censored so they can go back to their peers and report, it's almost a badge of honor for these people. I think we should make them follow the rules like anyone else and let them post their "questions" if for no other reason so that non participants can see that creationism has no basis in reality. Thinking that a visitor would search for creationist threads of the past assumes they are looking for such threads, I would guess that many people visit us and go no further than current threads but seeing a thread on a particular subject that interests them could lead to new members and fresh idea and questions...