Moontanman

There are more than one school of thought on this, some think the sun will warm up faster than others and I thin the 1 billion mark is for all life, complex life will die out much sooner. Mars may or may not be a harder nut to crack, no way to know anyway you look at it but mars too will become uninhabitable at about the same time the earth does. I was just using 2 colony ships as an example, The Earth could produce thousands of them as could each colony. Or a colony could fail but i am not talking about colonizing planets, I am talking about orbiting colonies that exist independent of planets, possibly torus shaped rotating to produce artificial gravity with it's own ecosystem inside, miles across. I don't think its a fair comparison, the Polynesians did a very good job with very slow speeds and no way of knowing where they were going or what they would find when they got there. a self contained orbiting colony could traverse the distance between stars slowly in a few hundred years. make copies of it's self from asteroid like material and then go on. Each stop could produce hundreds of colonies, some would leave some would stay awhile. Some stops wouldn't produce anything and the ships would go on. Don't you think that Antarctica has little or no bearing on what we are talking about? Primitives didn't have the technology to survive there and we don't want to live in a place so bare and stark. A couple more data points and we'll know. I didn't say a 120,000 years I said a few hundred thousand years and if we colonized via artificial colony worlds the number could increase exponentially until the expanding front of human colonization was a wave encompassing hundreds of stars a day. Even if it took a million years it would still be in the blink of an eye geologically speaking. I gave an example of one colony sending out two self contained colonies and then each of those two sending out two to make four, take that out 500 hundred times and see how many colonies you would have. then think of each colony sending out hundreds of other colonies each time as well as each colony moving on after the easily obtained resources of a star system are used up. You get a wave front of colonization that is astounding to say the least. Since no planets are needed even stars with no planets or stars that are unsuitable for planets could be used. If during the travel of a colony they pass a world that is suitable for complex life but has no such life we could leave some there. this of course assumes complex life is rare. If complex life is common then we would probably avoid planetary systems with complex life to avoid competition with any possible intelligent natives.

I'd like to entertain more if you can think of them. Life on the Earth will indeed eventually become extinct no matter what we do. If nothing else the sun will brighten to the point that complex life will become impossible. this will probably happen in a couple hundred million years for sure, some say much sooner. Actually Terra forming even Mars will take as much time as colonizing the galaxy, a couple hundred thousand years anyway. Some studies have been done that show if you could send out a colony ship every few hundred years as you go to each star. Say two ships from the Earth to two near by stars then 500 years later two ships from each of these stars and so on it wouldn't be but a few hundred thousand years before we could be around every suitable star in the galaxy. I waver back and forth on this issue, some of the arguments for rare complex life are quite compelling but it assumes that complex life every where has to have the same conditions we do and you cannot draw a curve from one data point. We don't even know if what we think of as life is even the most common life in the universe, we might be a rare fluke and silicon life is everywhere else.

My premise is this, there are basically three ultimate destinies for humanity and complex life on the Earth. 1. We stay here and ride out the Earth and become extinct along with everything else when a natural disaster of some sort wipes out life on the Earth. 2. Humans colonize the solar system by Terra forming other planets and eventually go to the stars and do the same thing there. We would travel via very fast (near C)space craft to other stars with suitable planets, we might take some complex life with us. 3. We colonize the solar system through orbiting colonies and bypass planets altogether. Using these huge colony ships similar to O'Neil cylinders we can spread out slowly and occupy the Galaxy in a few hundred thousands years. again we would take much of Earth's complex life with us. Stars with large populations of asteroid like bodies would be preferred. Tau Ceti is an example of this type of star. If complex life is as rare as some think then we could be thought of as spreading complex life around the galaxy.

There are very few animals that are pure carnivores on the Earth. Most carnivores will eat some plant material, fruits are taken by many carnivores and some will even take some leaves and other material. Snakes are about the only pure carnivores I can think of off the top of my head but I am sure there are others. To some extent it's not that carnivores will not eat plant material, most of them simply cannot digest it efficiently. Humans are omnivores much like bears, canids will eat almost anything if they have too and will choose to eat fruits, nuts, and even roots. Even herbivores will take some animal material from time to time. Cows eat a significant number of insects but that is mostly by accident and it's unknown if they contribute anything the cow really needs. What carnivore are you thinking of teaching to eat plants?

I've often wanted to try my hand at designing jewelry and the idea of a ring made of one of the super strong magnet alloys. I also like the idea of a tungsten ring with maybe a coil of platinum around it. But the previous poster is correct get her what she wants not what you want, you'll be glad you did!

Yes adding water is adding something, water allows chemical reactions to take place. with out water they take place too slowly if at all. Water is simply the substance that both dissolves the chemicals necessary for life and allows them to interact with each other. This is well known but the is no single mysterious property of water that isn't shared with other liquids. Liquid ammonia isn't as good as water in some ways, in others it is better. Hot Concentrated Sulfuric Acid is different but not inferior as well. Liquids that might substitute for water consist of H2O2 HF NH3 CH4 various other hydrocarbons N2 O2 Ar H2 HCSA I am sure there are others but the point is that all of these have both good and bad points. H2O has bad points as well, expanding on freezing is very bad for life, cells burst. a solvent that simply freezes might be much better. I really don't see how you can say water is so great when we have only one data point. For all we know life might be almost always based in a hydrocarbon of some sort. Water life might be a rare fluke. We are biased for water because it is our drink of necessity. It may be that water is rarely used by life, until we get a few more data points there is just no way to know. I've become rather good at nailing jello to a wall on these forums. Arguing evolution with creationists has taught me a lot.

Ok, I'm not quite sure what you are saying. Do you mean that water is so unique life cannot exist without water? Or that our type of life has to have water because it has adapted to the properties of water?

First a baby conceived by a white and a black person would be neither, it would be of mixed race. Race is not dominant recessive characteristic like eye color. Second labels of race exist to marginalize humans into us and them groups with the them being somewhat less than us. I am of mixed race, for me it's really never been a problem due to being mixed of several races and no one really noticing it. I have medium complexion that tans very easily and Grey eyes and very thick course white hair (used to be brown and kinky) Not many would guess i am of mixed race, Native American, European, and African, maybe even some Asian. I have been in the front row of the audience of racism and I have seen and heard everyone talk junk about anyone they thought was less than "white" so don't think for a minute that worrying about the race of a baby of white and black parents is anything other than race. The assumption the baby would have to be one or the other reveals a racist attitude.

Actually Boron does form complex molecules in the same vein as Carbon. At somewhat different pressures and temperatures Boron can imitate carbon in several areas. The point is that while Silicon has been thought a viable alternative to Carbon in very cold temps like the surface of Titan or as Silicone at temps like the surface of Venus Boron can also form complex chains of molecules but Silicon cannot form Bucky balls, Carbon can and Boron can. http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/B/boron-based_life.html

Why does everyone assume that a human/chimp hybrid would be a dumb human? Hybrid vigor could very well produce a being better than either of it's parents. When you breed a donkey and a horse you don't get a dumb horse. Mules are very smart and spirited animals, often they are smarter and stronger than either parent. It's an old wives tale that mules are stupid, I've worked with both mules and horses. Mules can be very smart even superior to the best horses. Mules are also not always sterile, it's rare but since most if not all male mules are neutered breeding seldom takes place.

The only thing I know of that pots increases my love of is good music, Doritos, and chocolate! It's been many years but "I still recall the juke box hall where the music played"

If this ever happens please ask more pertinent questions, those are either irrelevant or not likely to be known by aliens. Getting back on topic, three sexes might allow greater diversity but make it harder to find a mate. Two sexes might be a better trade off between diversity and mate finding. John Varley invented Three sexes for his trilogy Titan, Wizard, and Demon. His aliens were basically centaurs and each individual had three sex organs but only two individual sexes. Each individual was either male or female but each had either two penises or two vaginae but both had at least one penis and one vagina. there were twenty nine different ways (or some number close to that) for them to mate including an individual being able to effectively clone herself. They could mate the first time frontally to produce a viable egg and then implant the egg in a rear vagina and mate again to produce offspring. It made for a wild story but it's difficult to see how this could evolve naturally, the aliens were the result of ID.

In recent years the discovery of the Bucky ball, C60 molecule, was touted as proof of the versatile nature of the Carbon bond and an example of why it was so good at being the scaffolding of life. But another element can make Bucky ball type molecules, Boron. The B80 molecule is stable and shows that Boron is also a very versatile atom, does this point to the possibility that Boron might in some environments make a suitable scaffolding for life as well?

I've grown several species of trees and several herbaceous plants with the bare roots dangling down in the aquarium water. Aeration is usually the key to this but some will grow with out extra aeration.

What race would a child of a Caucasian mom and a negroid Dad be????? Try the Human race, I can't believe some one would think that it would be one other other of the so called races. Sad really this sort of thing is still speculated about.

I still cannot watch videos due to connection speed but Humans are not the only game in town by a long shot, crows are so intuitive it's scary, but for the lack of thumbs no telling what they could do!

Not hard to comment on at all, I take the opposite stance, I think life has adapted to water not the other way around. If we lived on a planet with seas of Hot Concentrated Sulfuric Acid we would think the same thing about HCSA. Our life would be preternaturally adapted to HCSA and we see water as just another chemical with some attributes that might make it work in a limited way under unusual conditions as a life solvent.