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Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

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Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#61

Post by api »

spurgu wrote: post #45
mrfusion wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could always have done a lot with wood and steam engines or even making wood gas or ethanol.

A lot yes, but anything near what we've done now? Over the course of a couple of [thousands|million|billion] years sure. And if at a slower pace that would definitely (or should have) resulted in quicker reaction skills/abilities than we have now with a 50-100 year timespan within where our established way of being will have collapsed.

We eventually would have discovered fission, and without fossil fuel alternatives it would have taken off on a much larger scale.

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#63

Post by api »

duxup wrote: post #9
jMyles wrote: post #4

Mars, shortly before sunset, a few billion years from now. Martian: "Are you saying seriously believe that people used to live on Earth? And that the only thing they managed to send here from their civilization are spores to grow these mushrooms?"

Or maybe someone's asked that about Mars before we did? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis That one kinda blows my mind.

Such Lovecraft vibes from that one... I love it.

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#64

Post by airstrike »

duxup wrote: post #9
jMyles wrote: post #4

Mars, shortly before sunset, a few billion years from now. Martian: "Are you saying seriously believe that people used to live on Earth? And that the only thing they managed to send here from their civilization are spores to grow these mushrooms?"

Or maybe someone's asked that about Mars before we did? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis That one kinda blows my mind.

Color me mind blown too... That's worth a submission on its own

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#65

Post by chii »

rtx wrote: post #58
01100011 wrote: post #55

And it could be again... I wish we would plan ahead and try a solar shield at L1. If we cooled the planet sufficiently, the CO2 would solidify and we could get to work processing it. Venus is far more interesting than the dusty little rock we keep probing. Sure, it may take a millenium, but the sooner we start, the sooner we finish.

Or send some microbes which convert it into oxygen. You are right Mars doesn't have enough resources to support anything.

that's an interesting proposition. If terraforming is really about engineering the right microbes to slowly (over several millenia even?) the atmosphere to habitable for humans, do we currently have the technology to actually accomplish it? Or is it still too advanced form of engineering?

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#66

Post by sintaxi »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #37
xwdv wrote: post #2

That’s enough time for a civilization to have been born, lived, and died. Unfortunately there’s probably no way to find evidence of their existence by now it seems? Some day they may say Earth could have been habitable for billions of years.

Exactly what I thought. Maybe there was a civilization and they totally messed up their planet like we do now. Only half joking by the way.

I must be the only person on the planet who thinks humans are doing a phenomenal job taking care of Earth. Within a couple hundred years we went from struggling to survive to thriving with significant pollution, to rapid iteration on the energy sector with environment being a top priority. That all happened very quickly.

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#67

Post by irrational »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #53
chrisco255 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the way it's presented. We still have a sort of Newtonian "clockwork" view in primary education of astronomy.

The "clockwork" view is objectively incorrect due to being the wrong scale. (Some) Accurate scale models of the solar system get played out across city blocks. If it's a tinkertoy style model or a drawing within a book, it's made up BS. There are no books large enough to actually show it to scale. Edit: For the pedants of the world, I have added "(Some)" to my sentence. "Not all accurate scale models" of course. Some…

City blocks? Sweden has a scale model of the solar system that stretches across the entire country - north to south. And even then it isn’t actually big/long enough for the entire solar system.

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#68

Post by cookiengineer »

duxup wrote: post #7

Growing up I absorbed all the space stuff I could find. But it wasn't until recently that I realized that the solar system didn't just form into some static natural state where it largely didn't change until say the sun was finished with it's lifespan. Rather it evolves, changes, planets are habitable, then not, moons are formed and break up, even frozen planets are geologically active and are changing, Saturn's ring…

What's mindblowing is the search for planet 9...once you start to realize that we are surrounded by thousands of dead solar systems (brown dwarfs that very likely were red dwarfs before) in our immediate neighborhood.

Imagine what we could accomplish by mining their resources!

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#69

Post by minitoar »

irrational wrote: post #67
DoreenMichele wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "clockwork" view is objectively incorrect due to being the wrong scale. (Some) Accurate scale models of the solar system get played out across city blocks. If it's a tinkertoy style model or a drawing within a book, it's made up BS. There are no books large enough to actually show it to scale. Edit: For the pedants of the world, I have added "(Some)" to my sentence. "Not all accurate scale models" of course. Some…

City blocks? Sweden has a scale model of the solar system that stretches across the entire country - north to south. And even then it isn’t actually big/long enough for the entire solar system.

Depends how small you’re willing to make the bodies. In Sweden the Sun is a huge spherical building.

Re: Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)

#70

Post by chairmanwow1 »

cookiengineer wrote: post #68
duxup wrote: post #7

Growing up I absorbed all the space stuff I could find. But it wasn't until recently that I realized that the solar system didn't just form into some static natural state where it largely didn't change until say the sun was finished with it's lifespan. Rather it evolves, changes, planets are habitable, then not, moons are formed and break up, even frozen planets are geologically active and are changing, Saturn's ring…

What's mindblowing is the search for planet 9...once you start to realize that we are surrounded by thousands of dead solar systems (brown dwarfs that very likely were red dwarfs before) in our immediate neighborhood. Imagine what we could accomplish by mining their resources!

What does this mean? Surrounded by thousands of dead solar systems? Like nearby (dark) stars?
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