Green Baron

Actually, i may not sound like i would, but naturally i do hope so !

@Diche Bach, you are absolutely right with your doubts. The ITS was a presentation of last year (or so). It is cancelled and will never be built. Then Musk came up with the BFR, a downsized version of it. It is in the state of being thought over, nothing of it really exists, not even an engine (a small sized version). A journeay to mars might take 3-4 months if phase angles are right, but you need to wait there (idk; a year ?) before being able to return. So all in all 2 years are a reasonable estimation of the timeframe people would have to be kept alive in micro-gravity, radiation and on a planet without any known resources to keep them alive. ISRU is a dream, no refinery for rocket engine digestible fuel exists that fits in 1000 BFRs, and even the presence and exploitability of resources are unclear. So, Mars for people like Musk remains a dream for at least 20 more years, maybe a group of specially trained astronauts makes it earlier bit i doubt it. Remember: FH should have flown 2013. It' scheduled for the 29th of december now. I hope they make it until then, but it is not sure, there are still incalculables as Musk himself admitted.

The early universe lacked the necessary elements and Panspermia doesn't explain how life really formed, only how it might have been proliferated. But i think it has little scientific significance (Right ?) Temperature is a subjective thing as well as the median energy of the molecules in a gas, their "speed", and that is quite high.

Afaik for example Mercury's magnetic field isn't by far strong enough to stand against the solar wind. Also a magnetic field does shield against charged particles and but how much does it shield from radiation like x-ray or uv ? Would you for such a shielding to be effective need special atmospheric configurations (like in earth ;-)) ? Skin cancer in Australia 'cause higher uv levels ;-/

Hi, i doubt any one of your questions can be answered with a clear figure. These are all model calculations based on a few real life observations and a lot of added and mixed assumptions, aka guessing. We don't even know Proxima b's exact orbital parameters, nor its exact radius or mass or even if it has an atmosphere. We don't know the sun's magnetosphere, only its mass and surface temperature and that it has a high metallicity. Moar data :-) Let's wait for GMT, E-ELT and TMT and until then have a T and speculate. Edit: to (3) and the reference to geology: on earth a partly molten iron core did help, together with temperature differences in the inner core and some sort of convection, transformed into sort of a helical movement by Coriolis forces from the rotation of the whole thing. Would it suffice elsewhere ? What if it is tidally locked ? Would that block or lessen a magnetic field ? *shrug*

You might just have written the plot for the next Bond or so ...

I know about the basic brain and ganglion nodes, my question was more about our (hominids) much bigger-than-necessary brain, if there is something new, mayhaps from genetics, you seem to have an ear on it :-) Sorry for not being clear.

Not palaeolithic ;-) There are a few other cases ... might be interesting to look at what happened to human subsistence at that time.

Actually organisms often try to "rationalize" complexity away, simplifying traits. Example bones in the skulls of amphibians are combined to form a new bone, which can be derived from sutures that can be seen in young specimen or a development over a long row of speciation. Or the hoof of horses, reduced to one single finger and stiffened by ligaments. Cetaceans simplified a lot of their land living ancestor's features away (extremities, intestines), others grew more complex (number of fingers). It depends where the pressure is pushing to ... My understanding is that this is by now the most accepted version of early life. Also, i have no problem with abiogenesis. Given the right circumstances and energy it seems to me almost a "must" that the chemistry starts to find a stable state in self replication. As you said, linking and bondage in nucleic acids occurs under absorption of energy. Data of the early ocean and atmosphere is missing. So that question will probably not be solvable in the near future. That's why Nasa tried to avoid contamination, to be able to answer that question somewhen in the future. I had hoped for new inside on the brain thing :-) One day ...

@KerikBalm, well spoken imo. Only i wouldn't sign #6 so easily. Edit: To your question concerning #4: for example greenhouse gases were taken out of the atmosphere, volcanism and its gases receded, a lot of C and O got bound by organisms in sediments, otoh plate tectonics play a role in releasing a part of those elements so helping the earth out of cold phases e.g. when continents at the poles were covered with ice. There were several circles, long and medium term at work to equalize the temperature. Another planet should copy that ;-) But if you could provide me with a link or a hint if there is new insight on the brain evolution i'd appreciate that :-)

Google says, my linux pc will be safer if i installed a rootkit called "chrome sandbox". How silly do they think i am ?

Ahoy, even if that is really true, that is not sailing and that is not a yacht. Google redefines many things, including intelligence, but that's another threat(d). Very complex high performance rigs (especially rigid wing rigs) can sail faster than the wind an a broad reach course (100-130° apparent wind angle), like the 2013 AC yachts, but only in calm conditions and on a flat sea. A little ripple and a bow gets stuck in the water, a weak gust and the rig flies apart. Even that was not considered "sailing" any more among many sailors. Sailing directly downwind faster than the wind is like sailing directly upwind against the wind. Unrelated: a mid range consumer level graphics card can easily render 20.000.000 vertices at 60 fps.

Length of time doesn't count as an argument and life does not need intelligence. Monocellulars can exist for billions of years without much of a change. Conditions need to be "right", for whatever that means. We do not know what lead to our big brains, it is not an obvious selective pressure because a much smaller brain would suffice (at least for me :-)). Otoh it needs a lot of energy, so we could as well say in times of need the pressure is against a big brain, just enough to come around. And it not sexual selction as well, body features are by far more sexy than a big skull. It could well have been a side effect of some other adaptations in genome ... That is just my radicalism :-)

Simple answer: no. (Edit: or you're cheating with the engine) Downwind only the wind resistance counts and how much cloth you can hang into it. Downwind is for a sloop a difficult course as the sails always want to swing from one side to the other. In the case of the main this can lead to serious damage of the rig if the mains swings over violently. This is called a bad gybe. On the other side, if you're a good helmsman and the sea is calm, a butterfly is nice to sail, but takes up concentration continuously. Better stay away from that course if you're not really good at it (and if its your boat ;-)). For a tallship with a square rig downwind makes no sense at all because only one mast is directly exposed to the wind.

They apparently do. I've heard of Löwenzahn, never watched it. Too old experienced

Something similar to Schoolhouse Rock was broadcast in Germany in the 70s called "Sendung mit der Maus" with a very catchy jingle. Today i have Mike Batt & Friends, Imbecile in my mind. It came over me in the shower :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjNUPhIrt24

Indeed, @adsii1970, we've discussed that in the Fermi-thread (though i abhor the term "creation" :-)) as a possible solution to the eponymous paradox. We might be early on a universe scale, given that the universe needed some time to cool down, conditions get calmer from the first generations of huge suns. Heavy elements needed time to be bred in supernovae, to form planetary disks and new suns, burn out again and so on. Even with an abundant supply of elements it took ~3.8Gy from first self replicating chemistry to people like us. I doubt this could have happened in a universe in its wild years. And all the time earth was a safe place with what i would call very favourable conditions, concerning energy supply, surface temperature and radiation shielding. It might well be that later ones will not have the chance to see many other galaxies as the universe gets darker as it expands and more and more other galaxies drift out of view. But it is a hypothesis or speculation as good as any other. And i said i didn't want to speculate. Silly me :-)

And i'm two generation behind and a mod will soon remind us that idle talk is unwanted since we are in a serious subforum .

Since this thread is about belief in opposition to science, i can actually imagine that we manage to make this place pretty uncomfortable soon, during the course of this century but before its end. Due to environmental changes, climate, mass extinction, overpopulation, resource depletion and a totally debt financed economy it might well be that people in 2 or 3 decades will have other problems than dreaming of life(tm) elsewhere. I am old and pessimistic and not always completely serious :-)

I want to add that assuming life (in whatever form) in the first place as an explanation for astronomical observations is a no-go for a natural scientist. It keeps from searching for natural causes. As any form of belief it limits our ability to find out what really happens around us. Those [unrefined descriptive expression] that speculated openly about "Megastructures" didn't do astronomy a favour and actually stirred up a few concerns in journals like Science and Nature. Fortunately in the meantime we have several reasonable proposals for what happens at KIC-longinteger and the class of dimming stars and these do not come from the kite flyers. Here's the link to the Fermi-thread where a few very different views on the thing, from creationist to physicist, are expressed: p.s.: the deepest of my heart belongs to me !

No. I do not believe that there is life out there because this is not a question of belief. I keep my mind open to findings, very skeptical towards the huge pile of noise at the fringes of science that roams around. We will probably never find out because it doesn't shout out loud (meaning it is "only" microbial) or it is too far away to be detected. I see a slight probability for the first and a very high probability for the latter to happen, so speculations will never stop. @juvilado , we have been through this many times, scan for example the "fermi paradox"-thread to resolve your doubts that we players would not care. We're just a little exhausted ;-)

There is no clear sign of intraspecies violence among humans before the end of the palaeolithic. (The few unclear ones can easily be explained with taphonomy, accidents, ritual buryings or simply misinterpretations)

Neither nor. It's not an observation but a model calculation based on the assumption that this WISE J072003.20-084651.2 numerical monster passed our system close (1ly) some 70.000y ago. It might help explaining the orbit of the hypothetical planet 9 should it be discovered one day. Was that correct, i only had 2min to check ? Edit: took a little more time: not the orbit of planet 9, but the orbits if Sedna and the likes as an alternative to planet 9 being the perturber. But they conclude that the couple Wise & Wise passed too far away to have a lasting influence in Sedna and the likes. If it had passed 0.25ly or closer .... So planet 9 is still in the game as a perturber of the piece among Sedna (and the likes).

Isn't that rather gameplay than science & spaceflight ? Have you tried mods like KW or SpaceY ? Pretty easy with those if remember right ...

Take it. License is wtfpl ;-)