Titan's "Tropical Lake" Excites Scientists
- Thread starter Hevva
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Soawesomesoawesomesoawesome.
Oh please let their be life... even the mere possibilities for new and complex lifeforms to evolve...
Mainly so we can fly over there and totally fuck with them when they become advanced by leaving just stuff around.
Oh please let their be life... even the mere possibilities for new and complex lifeforms to evolve...
Mainly so we can fly over there and totally fuck with them when they become advanced by leaving just stuff around.
I think you're missing the point of finding life in space. It isn't about finding aliens that fly about in space craft and shoot ray-guns, it's about confirming that Earth isn't the only planet able to host life. Once we have that settled then we can focus on intelligent life.antipunt said:
Doesn't matter. The biggest thing is, if life independently arose in two different places in our one solar system, in very different environments, then it must be EVERYWHERE in the universe. We don't really know how common life is, because you can't calculate odds if you have a sample size of one; if there is or was life anywhere else in the solar system, though, then that would mean there would have to be billions of living planets in our galaxy.antipunt said:
It would also be a bonanza for biologists and for science in general, of course.
Of the several things that was interesting about this article, one was a bit personal for me; a few hours ago, I read that Coleridge poem for the first time in over five years... Love coincidences that for a few microseconds make me wonder if they're coincidences...
More to the point: I really do hope I live to see the discovery of life elsewhere, no matter its complexity.
More to the point: I really do hope I live to see the discovery of life elsewhere, no matter its complexity.
Lol.CosmicCommander said:
Space travel is prohibitively expensive now because we use combustion to do it and it takes a tremendous amount of fuel to get out of the earth's gravitational pull. It would never be cost effective to build a tanker that can get to Titan that uses combustion to propel itself. The larger the tanker, the more fuel you have to use to get there and back.
Not to mention the fact that it would take an incredibly long time and would be incredibly dangerous. It would have to be automated because space is just too unhealthy for humans due to the radiation and the effects of weightlessness. There would also be a significant delay in communicating with it due to the speed of light, so it would have to be more or less completely autonomous, which would require one BEAST of an AI.
The only thing that would make it cost effective would be if we came up with some sort of new type of propulsion. But if we did that then we would probably no longer be using combustion, and the value of the methane would go way down and hence would not be worth collecting.
Oh, and methane is a gas, not oil.
Well, if we find a way to block the massive amounts of cosmic radiation that bombard these places. Earth is lucky because it has a spinning iron core that produces a strong electromagnetic field. Though I guess you might be alright if you stayed deep enough under the water in Europa.Quaxar said:
This is not correct, at least not on Titan. Methane is a gas at room temperature (25C). Cool it down to -180C and it becomes a liquid. Just like water can be in gaseous, liquid, or solid forms, depending on its temperature and pressure, so to can other gasses. In fact, at that temperature, not much is going to be a gas, virtually everything will either be liquid or solid.ReiverCorrupter said:
This is true. Of course by that line of reasoning we shouldn't really call anything a 'gas' or a 'solid' unless its atomic/molecular structure is such that it can only exist in a certain form. Otherwise 'solidity' or 'liquidity' are merely states of the substance that are contingent upon its environment, and not an intrinsic property. (Although the potentiality to undergo these different states at certain temperatures could be said to be an intrinsic property, that would probably reduce to an explanation of its atomic structure that doesn't implicitly involve notions of states such as liquidity.)RonHiler said:
However, putting all that aside, my point was more about the monetary value of methane, i.e. it is less valuable than the crude oil that we refine into gasoline.
I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens.
In all seriousness I'm pretty stoked to see if this turns out to be life forms.
In all seriousness I'm pretty stoked to see if this turns out to be life forms.
I'm pretty sure that was an episode of Enterprise not Voyager, but I'll let it slide. I try not to Trekkie Nerdrage as much as I used to. =PGrenaid said:
OT: I'm somewhat apprehensive about finding life on other planes. I'm not all that afraid of it. (Who knows what methane based microorganisms could do to the human body, though.) I'm more worried what WE would do to THEM. We humans don't have a very good track record with such things. ESPECIALLY when there are potential fuel sources involved.
So, did anybody else read this and think of the plot to Shogo: Mobile Armor Division[footnote]It's okay if nobody did, I'd be surprised if more than two other people out of everyone who reads this thread have even heard of it, it was heavily overshadowed by Unreal and Half Life when it was new.[/footnote]? Specifically the way the fuel that was needed for the game's FTL drives was actually an intelligent species? The basic idea was also used in either Star Control 2 or Starflight, I forget which.
Anyway, this is a slightly different form of science fiction potentially becoming science fact than what we normally see. I know any life out there is astronomically unlikely to be intelligent, but even if it's microbes, it's still life in a potential fuel source.
Anyway, this is a slightly different form of science fiction potentially becoming science fact than what we normally see. I know any life out there is astronomically unlikely to be intelligent, but even if it's microbes, it's still life in a potential fuel source.