If the Earth were 100 pixels wide • Hacker News Board

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#211

Post by KerrickStaley » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 1:36 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #210

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It has water, mineral resources, a CO2 atmosphere plentiful enough to consider using it as an industrial feedstock, soil that we know you can grow plants in, a 24 hour day/night cycle, and enough sunlight to support crops. Mars' atmosphere has only 20 times more CO2 than Earth's does, CO2 is not a rare chemical. We don't know enough about Martian soils to be sure that we can grow crops there. >Mars will be analogous…

> CO2 is not a rare chemical. Never said it was. The point is, that you can just pull it out of the Martian air in industrial quantities. > We don't know enough about Martian soils to be sure that we can grow crops there. Many experts would disagree. > All successful settlements of Europeans in the new world had some economic purpose for existing. Yes, there would be a considerable initial economic barrier. But given…

What I had in mind when writing the original post is that there are many places on Earth that are far more accommodating which we will probably end up settling first (e.g. Antarctica, Siberia, the surface of the ocean, and all the interstices between where people are already living)

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#212

Post by stcredzero » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 2:24 AM UTC

KerrickStaley wrote: post #211

stcredzero wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CO2 is not a rare chemical. Never said it was. The point is, that you can just pull it out of the Martian air in industrial quantities. > We don't know enough about Martian soils to be sure that we can grow crops there. Many experts would disagree. > All successful settlements of Europeans in the new world had some economic purpose for existing. Yes, there would be a considerable initial economic barrier. But given…

What I had in mind when writing the original post is that there are many places on Earth that are far more accommodating which we will probably end up settling first (e.g. Antarctica, Siberia, the surface of the ocean, and all the interstices between where people are already living)

> What I had in mind when writing the original post is that there are many places on Earth that are far more accommodating which we will probably end up settling first

It's not a matter of "how accommodating." It's a matter of how accessible. It's the space equivalent of geography. There are vast energy and material resources in the solar system off-Earth. A Mars-centric civilization will have much better access to those than an Earth-centric one.

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#213

Post by MrBra » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 2:43 AM UTC

marshray wrote: post #205

MrBra wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if we could stretch a stick as long as the distance from earth to mars and use it to tap on mars ground something like a morse code to communicate, would that message be faster than a wifi message traveling at the speed of light?

No. As in air, the speed of sound in stick is still slower than the speed of light.

no i think you did not understand my example.

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#214

Post by marshray » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 7:46 PM UTC

MrBra wrote: post #213

marshray wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. As in air, the speed of sound in stick is still slower than the speed of light.

no i think you did not understand my example.

You're talking about using a mechanical compressive wave in a medium to transmit information. Whether the medium is 'air' or 'stick', the rate at which such waves travel is generally called 'the speed of sound in [medium]'.

Wifi signals to Mars travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. This is faster than any mechanical wave because the changing forces of compression between the atoms in the medium must still obey the speed of light.

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#215

Post by MrBra » Mon, Apr 08, 2013, 10:05 AM UTC

marshray wrote: post #214

MrBra wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no i think you did not understand my example.

You're talking about using a mechanical compressive wave in a medium to transmit information. Whether the medium is 'air' or 'stick', the rate at which such waves travel is generally called 'the speed of sound in [medium]'. Wifi signals to Mars travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. This is faster than any mechanical wave because the changing forces of compression between the atoms in the medium must still obey th…

mechanical compressive wave ,traveling at the speed of sound? Why do u introduce these? What has sound to do with my example? Imagine the stick not tapping on ground but just getting close. to it. Not an audio, but a visual way for the receiver to tell the 2 different singnal states. Then he'd grab his end of the stick and do the same. I am sure what you say is correct by itself but.. it feels there is just something from it that doesn't fit with my example.. Edit: reading again your comment and trying to understand what you say.. if i get it right then it's totally misleading to call it "speed of sound": it should be called speed of mechanical compressive waves

Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide

#216

Post by dennisgorelik » Tue, Apr 09, 2013, 8:36 AM UTC

captainbenises wrote: post #158

yen223 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's almost definitely aliens out there. The question is, will we ever get to meet them?

Of course we will, just will it be in the next 100 years, the next 1,000 or the next 10,000?

It could be more than 10+ million years from now. By that time civilization on Earth would be indistinguishable from aliens from our 21st century perspective.