Life on Mars?

[PeeMarc]

Imperfectionist: if you like all that stuff, theres an amazing book I read a few years ago called "The Fabric of the Universe". It covers all the latest science stuff, including the latest deveopments in all sorts of areas... from Quantum physics to the different theories of the universe etc. But.... all in digestable language. Good reading.

[Mazzy]

I love it I used to be crazy about astronomy but then when I enter the med school I have to waste my neurons on Anatomy which is so boring ! well but it's amazing anyway ..... Hehe and I like to make crazy hypotheses about space you know ..... day dreaming !! but my friends always laugh at me anyway they think I'm crazy .. Am I?

(...)

Btw ... I wonder if we have ever lived on Venus and made the greenhouse effect there then moved here... and the sun was bigger so the weather became suitable for human again LOL .... I am better a crazy sci-fi writer not a scientist

If you are crazy, that makes me crazy too (not sure this is very reassuring for you ). BTW, science fiction writers are often very good at predicting the future. My father owns a collection of early XXth century, science fiction books. Reading them now it's amazing to see how many of the things they described actually came true. Science fictions writers are inventors in their own right, I remember a few years ago reading a paper by an aerospatial engineer who was explaining how sci-fi had influenced him in his daily work.

[PeeMarc]

Every week, when i was about 9yo, I would love to watch this guy....

[PeeMarc]

Every week, when i was about 9yo, I would love to watch this guy....

hehe where was I when you were nine ?

hehe ... so long that I don't remember anymore....hmmm but wait my dad was 13 ..... hmmm :? I'm kinda retarded where was I ?

yeah... but dont you think the professor is a classic nut? I think he's great, especially for kids. Brings back memories of blowing things up and being fascinated with making stuff and pulling things apart

[grezzzy_greer]

Yes, I used to love watching "Why Is It So?" - the world lost a wonderful teacher and a gifted man when Professor Julius Sumner-Miller passed away.

His teachings on the beauty of mathematics enthralled me, and his ways of explaining the interactions of Nature (yes Professor, I used a capital "N" as you always insisted) were fascinating and enlightening. There were gems in every sentence, and a boyish wonder at the world until the day he died.

I wish there were many more like him, to capture the imagination of my kids and kids around the world.

On the question of life on Mars? Absolutely...there either was or is life there for sure. Whatever it is or was, it may have evolved differently than life here on earth, and we are not necessarily speaking about advanced forms, but there is no reason to reject anything out of hand until we have made the checks and actually been there.

[zeusbheld]

Manned bases on other planets in our solar system will be a reality, but whether they will be in your lifetime or not, it's hard to say. How old are you? Do you smoke?

At some point in our future, assuming we haven't destroyed ourselves in the meantime, we will have to find somewhere else to live. The world won't last forever, thus if mankind is to survive, we will have to put aside our immature differences and put our resources into finding a way off this rock.

It's a way off of course, but if we dont realise that the only way to safeguard the future of our race is through exploration of space, then why bother with anything at all?

It should be our race's number one priority.

Totally disagree.

Maybe our main priority should be not to f*ck up our planet in the first place. No other planet in our solar system offers even a fraction of the habitability of ours. It's not like we take water, bread and marmelade and go for a picnic to Mars. Temperature, gravity, athmosphere pressure and composition (or lack of), poisonous materials, radiation, etc. The list goes on and on, even the best options (Mars, Venus) make the north pole look like a cozy place. Terraforming is so farfetched it's not a realistic option. And if we someday develop the technology to do that, we would be better of fixing the Earth.

We have lived on this planet for hundreds of thousand of years without any contamination. And now in a bit more than 200 years we've polluted air, water and earth. How long do you think would it take us to destroy another planet? It wouldn't even be worth the effort of getting there, let alone erecting the infrastructure needed to stay for a week.

The only way to safeguard the future of mankind (if we care about it at all, it's not like we will get a prize for lasting another 500 years) is unknown to me, but it's surely linked to us staying here.

additionally as i said before i seriously doubt we could successfully terraform mars if we can't manage our earthly environment. if it's just a question of population, then spaceward we go... but the real question is whether we can live on earth in a sustainable way. if we can't, good luck with terraforming.

bottom line: we'll need to understand our environment well enough to maintain it before we get can expect to terraform *other* planets.