Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future...

[sciencesavvy89]

Like 40,000 years into the future. If you are unsure of what terraforming is, it is essentially transforming another planet as to resemble that of earth and making it habitable for human life. With that said a conservative estimates for a planet being terraformed is anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 years depending on the planet. Many scholars believe that if human life is to persist we are going to need to move to another planet given the rate of glacial transgression we are looking at about a sea level increase of around 200 ft and about 200 years AHHHHHHH

What are your thoughts on terraforming, do you think it can be done?...and in enough time.


If I have said something wrong please feel free to correct me.

 

[Chixie]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

To be honest, I think if we ever had the means to make another planet livable, why wouldn't we be able to keep Earth sustainable? I don't know too much about this so pardon me if I'm being stupid. It just seems like a waste.

 

[weirdbr]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

To be honest, I think if we ever had the means to make another planet livable, why wouldn't we be able to keep Earth sustainable? I don't know too much about this so pardon me if I'm being stupid. It just seems like a waste.

Indeed; if we had reached that technological level we could save Earth from almost anything... Except the certain destruction of the planet by the Sun expanding too much and burning out the atmosphere (and later the planet itself) to a crisp, at which point we would need another place to live.

To give you an idea of what would be required to terraform a planet:
- changing the planet's gravity (because without the right gravity levels, we can't have an oxygen+nitrogen atmosphere; plus, we dont know how our bodies will handle lower/higher gravities). This means messing around with the mass and radius of the planet (both hard)
- then creating the atmosphere (maybe by breaking down materials found on the planet or elsewhere to come up with the oxygen/nitrogen), which would use a ton of energy.

And that's just so we can live and breathe on the new planet. Now imagine also the biological changes required to ensure we can have food...

Just those two would require such an enormous amount of energy and mastery of space travel (because you very likely would have to bring in materials from asteroids/other planets/moons to change the mass/radius of the planet) that IMHO it will takes us hundreds to thousands of years to reach, unless we change our development speed considerably (maybe now with better computers and maybe soon AIs, we will speed this up).

 

[sciencesavvy89]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

Mars already has CO2 trapped inside of dry ice sheets which makes that the more viable options but you're right it would take so long, plus we would have to start out with bring bacteria to the surface and having them do their thing for a few thousand years!
Let's not forget that we would eventually run out of room to house everyone on earth though, we are at about 7 billion people and growing and we are already stretched for resources, with some of the major cities underwater we would be living in close quarters. With that said we literally have 70% of untapped "land" or should I say sea that we are neglecting. Aside from displacing some marine life (which we've done it to wild life already) we could spend our resources developing an undersea world to me it seems a lot easier and less time consuming than terraforming another planet.
And who doesn't want to be Ariel?


Chixie don't ever apologize for sounding stupid, I appreciate your input!

 

[Chixie]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

To be honest, I think if we ever had the means to make another planet livable, why wouldn't we be able to keep Earth sustainable? I don't know too much about this so pardon me if I'm being stupid. It just seems like a waste.

Indeed; if we had reached that technological level we could save Earth from almost anything... Except the certain destruction of the planet by the Sun expanding too much and burning out the atmosphere (and later the planet itself) to a crisp, at which point we would need another place to live.

z

Hmm, I didn't think about that. I do remember watching a documentary about solar flares back in high school and I remember them talking about how stars collapse and explode. That would certainly destroy Earth lol.

I guess it's hard for me to comprehend something so unfamiliar. I mean, I watched The 100, even that doesn't make too much sense to me. :lol:

 

[sciencesavvy89]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

To be honest, I think if we ever had the means to make another planet livable, why wouldn't we be able to keep Earth sustainable? I don't know too much about this so pardon me if I'm being stupid. It just seems like a waste.

Indeed; if we had reached that technological level we could save Earth from almost anything... Except the certain destruction of the planet by the Sun expanding too much and burning out the atmosphere (and later the planet itself) to a crisp, at which point we would need another place to live.

z

Hmm, I didn't think about that. I do remember watching a documentary about solar flares back in high school and I remember them talking about how stars collapse and explode. That would certainly destroy Earth lol.

I guess it's hard for me to comprehend something so unfamiliar. I mean, I watched The 100, even that doesn't make too much sense to me. :lol:

I'm pretty sure solar flares would be an issue everywhere. lol Not existing is a hard concept to wrap ones brain around

 

[JerryBoBerry]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

To be honest, I think if we ever had the means to make another planet livable, why wouldn't we be able to keep Earth sustainable? I don't know too much about this so pardon me if I'm being stupid. It just seems like a waste.

Indeed; if we had reached that technological level we could save Earth from almost anything... Except the certain destruction of the planet by the Sun expanding too much and burning out the atmosphere (and later the planet itself) to a crisp, at which point we would need another place to live.

And many more things can happen that are way beyond our control.

In the past 500 million years there's been, i believe, 5 mass extinction events on earth. The Great Permian Extinction alone wiped out 70% of land species and around 95% of marine organisms. Many of the 'large animals' we see in museums were common as little as 11,000 years ago. But a slew of Pleistocene extinctions wiped them out rapidly. Wooly rhino's, cave bears, Irish elk, giant bison and more. All very large animals that survived many major glacial advances just gone. And scientists are still puzzled as to why they died off so quickly.

One of the biggest threats that has very good odds (geological time speaking here, not human time frame) of happening again is what wiped out the dinosaurs. Hurl a 6 mile wide rock at earth and we all die overnight. Here's some lovely bedtime reading on frequency and risk of impact events like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event#Frequency_and_risk

Then sciencesavvy89 mentioned sea level changes of 200 feet. But if you take human related global climate change out of the equation and just look at history. There's been almost NO TIME in the past when the ocean has been as low as it currently is. At one point it reached over 300 feet higher than our current level. Through the natural periods of warming and ice ages it's fluctuated greatly.
On this chart, the zero on the right is where we are today. If we stay on earth, humans will have to deal with that regardless.


Basically there are so many ways the human species can, and will, die if we stay on earth [over the long run] that this doesn't even begin to cover it. The reality is the only way to ensure we continue on is to move to other planets - as many as possible. That gives us the best odds some of us will continue on when the other planets kill those people off.

To put it in perspective. This chart [below] is made by looking at different species that have lived at various times in all of earths history. Each little color change from one block to the next means the most predominate species that lived through that time died off. Major color changes means more of them got killed off (think mass extinction mentioned above).

The current epoch we live, the Holocene, is that tiny little box in the upper left corner. We have about that much time before earth says it's time to change the color again.

We gonna die here, best be movin' on.

 

[Red7227]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

Has someone just seen Interstellar ?

Terraforming will only really be sensible within the solar system I think. If you have the means to move between stars then just finding a more suitable planet would be more practical. People are reasonably compact and things like generation ships become more plausible.

With somewhere like Mars it will be necessary to decide where to start. Carl Sagan thought plants adapted to the current atmosphere would be it. Make them dark so they absorb heat, raising the planet's temperature, which will release the CO2. More plants to convert that into oxygen and the composition of the atmosphere will change. This will result in all kinds of floods and earthquakes while the planet adjusts. Once it has reached a new more stable level then more directed planting to change the structure of the soil and bring together other aspects to aid habitability, and kill off the earlier generations of plants and bacteria. More fiddling and you might have a moderately liveable planet after a very long time.

 

[camstory]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

I took a telecourse on astronomy years ago, and one of the few things I remember with any clarity, was pretty funny. One of the astronomers had told about a public lecture he had given at a junior college on the history of earth in the cosmos, and what we were pretty sure the future of earth would be. He said that he had ended his lecture with the prediction that the earth would be eventually swallowed up by the sun when it shifted from it's current state, (main sequence) to become a red giant in approximately 5 billion years. He said a lady after the lecture came up to him seeming very distressed, and asked him if he had said the sun would swallow the earth in 5 million years or 5 billion years? He said when he told her that it was 5 billion years and not 5 million, she seemed to be greatly relieved :lol: I don't care who you are that's some funny shiznit...

 

[sciencesavvy89]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

Has someone just seen Interstellar ?

Terraforming will only really be sensible within the solar system I think. If you have the means to move between stars then just finding a more suitable planet would be more practical. People are reasonably compact and things like generation ships become more plausible.

With somewhere like Mars it will be necessary to decide where to start. Carl Sagan thought plants adapted to the current atmosphere would be it. Make them dark so they absorb heat, raising the planet's temperature, which will release the CO2. More plants to convert that into oxygen and the composition of the atmosphere will change. This will result in all kinds of floods and earthquakes while the planet adjusts. Once it has reached a new more stable level then more directed planting to change the structure of the soil and bring together other aspects to aid habitability, and kill off the earlier generations of plants and bacteria. More fiddling and you might have a moderately liveable planet after a very long time.

I actually have not seen interstellar, I heard there were a few scientific inaccuracies so I have not been rushing to the cinema to see it. I just think its genuinely an interesting topic being a geoscientist and all. I just think for to be an option it would take thousands of years and billions if not trillions of dollars of resources just the trip back and forth to mars would take month, I believe 6 to be exact.

 

[sciencesavvy89]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

To be honest, I think if we ever had the means to make another planet livable, why wouldn't we be able to keep Earth sustainable? I don't know too much about this so pardon me if I'm being stupid. It just seems like a waste.

Indeed; if we had reached that technological level we could save Earth from almost anything... Except the certain destruction of the planet by the Sun expanding too much and burning out the atmosphere (and later the planet itself) to a crisp, at which point we would need another place to live.

And many more things can happen that are way beyond our control.

In the past 500 million years there's been, i believe, 5 mass extinction events on earth. The Great Permian Extinction alone wiped out 70% of land species and around 95% of marine organisms. Many of the 'large animals' we see in museums were common as little as 11,000 years ago. But a slew of Pleistocene extinctions wiped them out rapidly. Wooly rhino's, cave bears, Irish elk, giant bison and more. All very large animals that survived many major glacial advances just gone. And scientists are still puzzled as to why they died off so quickly.

One of the biggest threats that has very good odds (geological time speaking here, not human time frame) of happening again is what wiped out the dinosaurs. Hurl a 6 mile wide rock at earth and we all die overnight. Here's some lovely bedtime reading on frequency and risk of impact events like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event#Frequency_and_risk

Then sciencesavvy89 mentioned sea level changes of 200 feet. But if you take human related global climate change out of the equation and just look at history. There's been almost NO TIME in the past when the ocean has been as low as it currently is. At one point it reached over 300 feet higher than our current level. Through the natural periods of warming and ice ages it's fluctuated greatly.
On this chart, the zero on the right is where we are today. If we stay on earth, humans will have to deal with that regardless.


Basically there are so many ways the human species can, and will, die if we stay on earth [over the long run] that this doesn't even begin to cover it. The reality is the only way to ensure we continue on is to move to other planets - as many as possible. That gives us the best odds some of us will continue on when the other planets kill those people off.

To put it in perspective. This chart [below] is made by looking at different species that have lived at various times in all of earths history. Each little color change from one block to the next means the most predominate species that lived through that time died off. Major color changes means more of them got killed off (think mass extinction mentioned above).

The current epoch we live, the Holocene, is that tiny little box in the upper left corner. We have about that much time before earth says it's time to change the color again.

We gonna die here, best be movin' on.

I think with geologic history and the trend of the earth being that close to 99% of all fauna has died out over the course of our earths history we don't stand a fucking chance...anywhere we go.

 

[Red7227]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

I think with geologic history and the trend of the earth being that close to 99% of all fauna has died out over the course of our earths history we don't stand a fucking chance...anywhere we go.

The next Ice Age will kill 98% of the population - and that is going to be in the next few hundred or thousand years - so no need to worry about millions of years. We also look like the magnetic poles are about to reverse - which has happened many thousands of times before - that should destroy most of civilization and kill half the population in all the first world countries. And then there is global warming. . .

 

[HiGirlsRHot]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

Mars already has CO2 trapped inside of dry ice sheets which makes that the more viable options but you're right it would take so long, plus we would have to start out with bring bacteria to the surface and having them do their thing for a few thousand years!
Let's not forget that we would eventually run out of room to house everyone on earth though, we are at about 7 billion people and growing and we are already stretched for resources, with some of the major cities underwater we would be living in close quarters. With that said we literally have 70% of untapped "land" or should I say sea that we are neglecting. Aside from displacing some marine life (which we've done it to wild life already) we could spend our resources developing an undersea world to me it seems a lot easier and less time consuming than terraforming another planet.
And who doesn't want to be Ariel?


Chixie don't ever apologize for sounding stupid, I appreciate your input!

Elon Musk has spent a lot of time and fair amount of money thinking about how to colonize Mars. He has talked about it several forums. This is my one of my favorites http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/19/4...cex-video-rainn-wilson-metaphysical-milkshake. I am an unabashed fan boy of the guy and read and listen to pretty much anything he says. I am also one of the 98% of Tesla owners would definitely buy another Tesla.

Elon describes Mars as fixer upper and while you could use bacteria to release the CO2 and start the green house effect, there are faster ways. Example a hydrogen bombs to jump start the process. My understanding is he is talking about decades not thousands of years.

 

[sciencesavvy89]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

I think with geologic history and the trend of the earth being that close to 99% of all fauna has died out over the course of our earths history we don't stand a fucking chance...anywhere we go.

The next Ice Age will kill 98% of the population - and that is going to be in the next few hundred or thousand years - so no need to worry about millions of years. We also look like the magnetic poles are about to reverse - which has happened many thousands of times before - that should destroy most of civilization and kill half the population in all the first world countries. And then there is global warming. . .

I love how optimistic you are. I think global warming will get us first.

 

[sciencesavvy89]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

Mars already has CO2 trapped inside of dry ice sheets which makes that the more viable options but you're right it would take so long, plus we would have to start out with bring bacteria to the surface and having them do their thing for a few thousand years!
Let's not forget that we would eventually run out of room to house everyone on earth though, we are at about 7 billion people and growing and we are already stretched for resources, with some of the major cities underwater we would be living in close quarters. With that said we literally have 70% of untapped "land" or should I say sea that we are neglecting. Aside from displacing some marine life (which we've done it to wild life already) we could spend our resources developing an undersea world to me it seems a lot easier and less time consuming than terraforming another planet.
And who doesn't want to be Ariel?


Chixie don't ever apologize for sounding stupid, I appreciate your input!

Elon Musk has spent a lot of time and fair amount of money thinking about how to colonize Mars. He has talked about it several forums. This is my one of my favorites http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/19/4...cex-video-rainn-wilson-metaphysical-milkshake. I am an unabashed fan boy of the guy and read and listen to pretty much anything he says. I am also one of the 98% of Tesla owners would definitely buy another Tesla.

Elon describes Mars as fixer upper and while you could use bacteria to release the CO2 and start the green house effect, there are faster ways. Example a hydrogen bombs to jump start the process. My understanding is he is talking about decades not thousands of years.

So thanks for sending me a link to something that is going to eat away at my social life!
I cant wait to check this out!

 

[Ambers Troll]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

I actually believe human existence/ intelligence was created to terraform earth.
As most biologists know, plants (the only organisms capable of autotrophic production), truly control this planet. They have given us the option to control their destiny, we should not choose slime world, or iceberg earth in either case we don't exist.
I should explain further that we are like pollinators for flowers, releasing carbon stored by plants over millions of years. How we do this is up to us.

As for terraforming, why not try it. Considering the failure of biodome, I don't like our chances of success, at least not success as we would plan for it (I am Australian, so we know the failure of biological experiements).
Even Mars will one day be destroyed, and after the whole solar system... in my opinion immortality comes though culture, and sending it to other worlds if there are any other worlds.

 

[Red7227]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

I think with geologic history and the trend of the earth being that close to 99% of all fauna has died out over the course of our earths history we don't stand a fucking chance...anywhere we go.

The next Ice Age will kill 98% of the population - and that is going to be in the next few hundred or thousand years - so no need to worry about millions of years. We also look like the magnetic poles are about to reverse - which has happened many thousands of times before - that should destroy most of civilization and kill half the population in all the first world countries. And then there is global warming. . .

I love how optimistic you are. I think global warming will get us first.

Nah, global warming is mostly bunk. Pollution and the change in the reflectivity of the earth due to urbanisation and the changes in the landscape like deforestation are making a difference, but the worst of it was corrected with the ban on Chlorofluorocarbons. CO2 actually has nothing to do with it, and no one has actually managed to demonstrate a link. If you look at CO2 levels and temperature levels over the last few hundred thousand years. Current levels are high but not unusually so, and yes there is a a spike in the rate of change over the last 40 years, but its gone from 340 parts per million to about 400 parts per million, which really does mean very little in the greater scheme of things. Temperatures plateaued about 10 years ago and CO2 levels are still rising. We might see a rise of some fraction of a metre, which will seriously fuck things up, but it won't be the end of life.

In the next ice age, the sea level will drop by 50ish metres, there will be practically no standing fresh water, wind speeds will reach 300 km per hour, it won't won't rain for 100 years at a stretch, average temperatures will drop by about 6 degrees and 98% of everything will die. Its actually possible that global warming is delaying the onset of the next Ice Age.

Magnetic pole reversal - and the volcanic activity that will create - might well kick the earth over into the temperature decline towards the next Ice Age, and that is possible within 50 years.

 

[JerryBoBerry]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

Magnetic pole reversal - and the volcanic activity that will create - might well kick the earth over into the temperature decline towards the next Ice Age, and that is possible within 50 years.

I'm not so convinced of the connection between pole reversal and volcanic activity or any other catastrophic event.

Yes there's research tying one pole reversal to timing of great volcanic activity forty some thousand years ago. But then again there's also been pole reversals happening all the time without anything happening.

The geological chart I posted earlier. Look at the horizontal black lines in the purple boxes I highlighted. It's happened tons of times with no effect tied to it from most of them. I could probably tie a pole reversal to a T-Rex farting in what is now Texas there's so many of them. I think it's just coincidence more than anything. And scientists wanting to make a splashy paper for name recognition. Personally that's the least thing I'd be worried about.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...field-flip-could-happen-sooner-than-expected/

Still, there is no evidence that a weakened magnetic field would result in a doomsday for Earth. During past polarity flips there were no mass extinctions or evidence of radiation damage. Researchers think power grids and communication systems would be most at risk.

 

[sciencesavvy89]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

I think with geologic history and the trend of the earth being that close to 99% of all fauna has died out over the course of our earths history we don't stand a fucking chance...anywhere we go.

The next Ice Age will kill 98% of the population - and that is going to be in the next few hundred or thousand years - so no need to worry about millions of years. We also look like the magnetic poles are about to reverse - which has happened many thousands of times before - that should destroy most of civilization and kill half the population in all the first world countries. And then there is global warming. . .

I love how optimistic you are. I think global warming will get us first.

Nah, global warming is mostly bunk. Pollution and the change in the reflectivity of the earth due to urbanisation and the changes in the landscape like deforestation are making a difference, but the worst of it was corrected with the ban on Chlorofluorocarbons. CO2 actually has nothing to do with it, and no one has actually managed to demonstrate a link. If you look at CO2 levels and temperature levels over the last few hundred thousand years. Current levels are high but not unusually so, and yes there is a a spike in the rate of change over the last 40 years, but its gone from 340 parts per million to about 400 parts per million, which really does mean very little in the greater scheme of things. Temperatures plateaued about 10 years ago and CO2 levels are still rising. We might see a rise of some fraction of a metre, which will seriously fuck things up, but it won't be the end of life.

In the next ice age, the sea level will drop by 50ish metres, there will be practically no standing fresh water, wind speeds will reach 300 km per hour, it won't won't rain for 100 years at a stretch, average temperatures will drop by about 6 degrees and 98% of everything will die. Its actually possible that global warming is delaying the onset of the next Ice Age.

Magnetic pole reversal - and the volcanic activity that will create - might well kick the earth over into the temperature decline towards the next Ice Age, and that is possible within 50 years.

I don't agree that Global warming is bunk (I want to elaborate more but Im about to go on a date) but I do agree that it is probably staving off the next ice age which statistically we are due for.

But when you have greenhouse gasses it has the potential to heat up earths surface and heat up the seas cause sulfide gasses to be released (sulfide gasses are very deadly) This is believe to be the reason of the Permian extinction but it is a hypothesis still in the making (something I and other geoscientist are working on)
When you mine older rocks you release CO2 that was trapped in the for millions of years.

 

[Ambers Troll]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

In the next ice age, the sea level will drop by 50ish metres, there will be practically no standing fresh water, wind speeds will reach 300 km per hour, it won't won't rain for 100 years at a stretch, average temperatures will drop by about 6 degrees and 98% of everything will die. Its actually possible that global warming is delaying the onset of the next Ice Age.

That is minus 6 degrees (and in thousands of years). Now do plus 6, that is the current prediction, in around 100 years, and so far it is on track. It is much the same change, are we ready and willing for this?

 

[Red7227]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

In the next ice age, the sea level will drop by 50ish metres, there will be practically no standing fresh water, wind speeds will reach 300 km per hour, it won't won't rain for 100 years at a stretch, average temperatures will drop by about 6 degrees and 98% of everything will die. Its actually possible that global warming is delaying the onset of the next Ice Age.

That is minus 6 degrees (and in thousands of years). Now do plus 6, that is the current prediction, in around 100 years, and so far it is on track. It is much the same change, are we ready and willing for this?

Really? I've not looked lately but the rate of change had dropped to nothing more recently.

 

[Red7227]

Re: Terraforming, ideas for the future...the distant future.

Magnetic pole reversal - and the volcanic activity that will create - might well kick the earth over into the temperature decline towards the next Ice Age, and that is possible within 50 years.

I'm not so convinced of the connection between pole reversal and volcanic activity or any other catastrophic event.

Yes there's research tying one pole reversal to timing of great volcanic activity forty some thousand years ago. But then again there's also been pole reversals happening all the time without anything happening.

Interesting. I suspect our society is unusually vulnerable to the effects, but without the geological changes claimed in the last paper I read then we should survive this. Its hard to imagine what the effect will be. A moving magnetic field might generate a current in electrical equipment, but as the current planetary magnetic field has no effect, so the adverse effect should be about the same.