JoeSchmuckatelli

I Googled this after your post to see what it was. Got halfway through the trailer and it says "From the Creators of Dark" That is all I need to know. Dark was fantastic. Added to the list!

You know... I did phrase my question as a pretense for weathering - as I was trying to figure out how a non-goldilocks planet might get the precursor of soil. But truth be told, wind and mechanical forces of freezing might do it... Having read what you have written and seeing a few other articles - it looks like the ability to free the minerals in a biologically available way is just as important. Water is quite good at this and is found in soil and the atmosphere on Earth as well as the rivers lakes and oceans. Methane seas don't look like a good place for this. "Methane is non Polar and interacts weakly with most materials." https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2697 Goldilocks is looking a lot more Just Right than I thought!

Although CO2 is usually considered too stable to react chemically with rock, it can bind tightly to the surface by physical adsorption. Eventually it dissolves in water, forming carbonic acid, which can react with aqueous metals to form carbonate minerals. CO2 mineralization in geologically common roc | EurekAlert! Looks like CO2 needs water to react with rock, but it can bind. This article doesn't go into what happens if the CO2 freezes - but that's not really an issue on Venus.

I'm reading about the chemical reactions of common rock with H2O and 02. Wondering if there is something unique in that reaction that makes life more common than 'simply having a wet planet'. Water-rock reaction may provide enough hydrogen ‘food’ to sustain life in cool parts of the ocean’s crust or on Mars | CU Boulder Today | University of Colorado Boulder I'm not versed enough in chemistry to know whether some of the other things like methane or CO2 might similarly react with the various types of metals and minerals to provide a nutrient base for some form of life... but I haven't seen anything suggesting that either.

If you think about the pre-colonization of Earth's landmasses in the Precambrian time, Earth's chemistry was doing a lot to 'prep' the land to accept life. Specifically solar energy, wind, and rain and oxygen were already starting to break up bare rock into much smaller particles. 'Soil' as we understand it, would not exist until life infested the rocks - but having sand and dust in great quantities, created by the action of Solar radiation, heating and cooling, wind and water (liquid and glacial) erosion and the chemistry of Oxygen reacting to almost everything - the nooks and crannies that life could find a foothold in were legion. While this topic quite often focuses on 'goldilocks zones' where water can be liquid - there are other planetary-like bodies with liquids on their surface. Titan for instance. Methane, not water. Given what we know... would chemistry in another place, like Venus or Titan that has Solar, liquid and wind energy present, could the chemistry similarly break up rocks to create the basic stuff for soils; or is 02/H20 reactions required for terrestrial rock chemistry to break down and create the conditions for local bacteria and other simple life to create a soil analog? (Assumes extraterrestrial rocks have similar chemistry to Earth rocks, based on the fact that Meteors have a recognizable chemistry not totally alien) meteorite | National Geographic Society

Cool - I've seen that, but never knew it had a name!

@Spacescifi This should go in 'The Lounge', brah!

Maybe: (From my link above) One may hope!

I know of 'Snowball Earth' - but did not think it happened more than once since the PreCambrian. Also, when the life was constrained to water and had not colonized land yet, I don't know how we'd call that barren terrain. 'Desert' seems inapt. Absent lichens &etc. the land was certainly without soil. If we're simply using 'desert' to mean a landform with a certain amount of annual rainfall, then yeah, parts could be described as 'desert' or 'tropical' without having any plant or animal life. Once life started colonizing land, however, all bets were off. I think the key is that 'desert' =/= 'lifeless'. It just requires hardier life than the easy, warm and wet places. Bacteria still colonize glaciers. There are plants in the Atacama that survive only on whisps of Marine Fog. Even glaciers have a microbiome — including unique bacteria (nature.com) Atacama Desert Plants - Gardenerdy The Earth's deep reservoir of life in its oceans is a huge bonus, as is the water that wafts about through the atmosphere. What strikes me, though, is how freaking early we think life colonized this rock. Literally almost as soon as it was cool enough to have rocks, we start finding bacteria. (perhaps a bit of exaggeration on my part... but): Precambrian - Wikipedia

Orange and salsa are losing distinction.

I think the reason behind those was to give the players access to things earlier than they could unlock them. Sadly I would always get something useless like testing an extra large decoupler while in flight at 80,000m while flying between 125 and 210 m/s when my biggest engine is the Swivel and all my tanks are small.

That is horrifying and fascinating at the same time. Fun fact: my 'go-to' for bad choices is "the person who buys gas-station vending machine sushi." Just... No.

The timing and pace of the progression is interesting. I tested negative Wednesday, after my wife tested positive. Thursday I was positive. Friday evening was when I felt like I was gently drowning and worried about O2 and Saturday I basically only had the energy to convalesce. Today (Sunday) I feel on the mend - but the nasal congestion is significant (sneezing and coughing - although, again the main 'treatment' is to minimize cough as we want to 'keep the lungs calm'.) and today is the day that I lost smell. That loss is progressing fairly quickly. Cannot smell banana. Smell is just like a potato or the wall. I do get different 'sense' from each (banana is cool and waxy, potato is just a something and wall is dry) but otherwise? They all smell like nothing. A jar of minced garlic has 'pungent' but not garlic - meaning those are different flavors in the spectrum of smells. Orange still exists as a smell. Honey has a tang. Peanut butter has a mustiness. Salsa an acidic sweetness. Parmesan cheese smells like it should. Note on the nasal congestion - unlike flu or a cold, I've never been clogged up. I can always breathe through my nose - but today and late yesterday is the first time I've needed a box of tissues nearby.

Whelp... There it goes. 4 days after testing positive... Smell is going. If I tear the skin of an orange and stick my nose right there... I get a hint of orange. Stick my nose in the coffee and there is a sensation but it doesn't say 'coffee'. * It's really interesting. I'm getting a something that is more than just the feel of air moving past the membranes - kind of like a buzz that acts like a placeholder - 'information should be here'. And I know what should be there (my nose is in the pickle jar) but instead of 'brine' the signal only says 'wet'. This was one of the most pernicious aspects of my past run... The only question is how long and will I be plagued with phantom smells again? *it's fascinating - coffee does not smell like coffee, but I can tell a difference between the regular and the decaf. Again it is not like a smell so much as an 'air feel'. Chocolate - not quite gone, but there is a very positive reaction to it. Like I stick my nose in there and instead of 'chocolate' my brain just goes straight to 'good!'

Isn't something slightly less minuscule than something else bigger than the something else?

Four player game. Competitive space race. They're all trying to get a ISRU set up on Mun. Everyone is happily playing along and because they are equally skilled players they all launch within the same day on Kerbin (separated only by the time it takes for their personal KSC to be in the optimal launch portion of the planet's rotation. They all circularize, and start the burns to leave Kerbin and get the encounter with Mun. The first guy to do so is called away. Situation is serious enough that he can't return to the game for 2 weeks. What happens? What if instead of competition they were cooperating and the lead guy has a key component of the desired build. The other players likely want to continue with the game. They all want to warp - but in their game is a ship heading to Mun that needs a burn to capture... And the player is AFK. Ghost ship in stasis, greyed out on the screens, waiting for the player to log back in and complete the original mission (he gets a freeby) - or too bad, so sad say goodbye to that craft when the players warp past the encounter? Does it make sense to let them revert to launch? What if instead of Mun the destination was some other planet?

I had a private theory that people who had been vaccinated would escape some of the pernicious aspects of having Covid. Like losing smell and taste. A reminder that vaccine does not prevent a person from being infected with a virus - rather it prepares the body to be able to fight the virus more effectively. In other words, it makes severe disease less likely. My presumption was that the effective immune response might prevent the virus from shearing nasal cilia - once a leading theory for why folks lost their smell and taste. That people exposed after effective immunization would not have to experience what I did. Apparently - that hope was blind. My wife and daughter have both lost smell and taste. Perhaps not as thoroughly as I did, but it's early in the progression. Interestingly - there is research showing that Covid interference with the function of the olfactory cells may be behind the lingering problem of Long Covid. https://nyulangone.org/news/mechanism-revealed-behind-loss-smell-covid-19#:~:text=Published online February 1 in,the molecules associated with odors. *In most cases, the smell loss lasts only a few weeks, but for more than 12 percent of people with COVID-19, olfactory dysfunction persists in the form of ongoing reduction in the ability to smell (hyposmia) or changes in how a person perceives the same smell (parosmia). ... experiments confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 infection, and the immune reaction to it, decreases the ability of DNA chains in chromosomes that influence the formation of olfactory receptor building to be open and active, and to loop around to activate gene expression. ... suggests that olfactory neurons are wired into sensitive brain regions, and that ongoing immune cell reactions in the nasal cavity could influence emotions, and the ability to think clearly (cognition), consistent with long COVID. "

It is considerably smaller. Clearly the devs know that satellite planets / major moons don't have to enjoy hydrostatic equilibrium.

Isn't this just another hype thread? We've got one of those

Everything was kinda humming right along - just a humdrum flu - until I started feeling like I was gently drowning. O2 levels were a tad low (below normal, above hypoxia) and it felt like a thin fluid was leaching into my lungs. Basically the 'at home' treatment for this is asthma medicine. I've got two inhalers and some cough syrup (trying to 'keep the lungs calm' to use the medical term). I now have major sympathy for asthmatics. That sensation SUUUUUCKS! I'm entertaining myself by seeing what I can still smell and wondering if I could tell a difference in the sensation. It's not often one considers how well they know (and can trust) their own nervous system. It's a relationship we take for granted. Imagine that one day you were rolling a pencil around in your fingertips and instead of 'pencil' your hand told your brain 'penny'. You look at it. It's a pencil. Your fingers insist 'penny'. It looks long and thin and hexoganal - it feels like a flat, embossed disk. Which impulses do you trust?

I understand that hesitancy - but I think calling our planet a single date point is incorrect. This wet rock is more akin to a system of systems - and touring the system we find subsystems that are mutually hostile to one another, each hosting life. (e.g. Sonora Desert and Atlantean volcanic vents) The one constant is water. So on balance, I find arguments suggesting that the next rock we find with life on it must be wet far weightier than those like 'who knows maybe there are silica based life forms with radically different chemistry and they don't need water". Both could be correct - but the scale is tipped in a particular direction.

...at 1080p. Yes. If you are running 4k, 3070 (which I have) is good for old games, and entry-level for newer titles. (What I consider entry level, given my minimum framerate preferences) Once you step up to 4k 144, you really do need the newer cards.

With cats, nothing is ever easy

I don't have the sources - but I've heard we were very dependent upon the people: resident knowledge is powerful. There are TONS of little 'tricks of the trade' that never get written down. That said - when you know that something is possible, or you have a very good spy network you can figure stuff out or steal the know-how. There is a present-day analog you might use to guide you.

Life on Mars: Scientists confirm that Mars Jezero Crater was full of organic materials (interestingengineering.com)