Great News for a Mars Colony!

Earth & Venus may be more alike then we think:

www.sciencealert.com

An Unexpected Planetary Feature Has Just Been Found on Venus

Venus may be a toxic hell-planet, but new evidence suggests it might have more in common than Earth than we realized.
www.sciencealert.com www.sciencealert.com

Venus may be a toxic hell-planet, but new evidence suggests it might have more in common than Earth than we realized.

Scientists have just found evidence that Venus' crust could have tectonic blocks that rub together, not dissimilar to broken blocks of pack ice. It's not entirely like Earth's plate tectonics, but the discovery does suggest that the planet's crust isn't one globally continuous lithosphere, and that convective motion swirls below.
 
Water is the key to a permanent human colony on the moon:

spectrum.ieee.org

Rocket Mining System Could Blast Ice from Lunar Craters

A concept competing for a NASA award would use an enclosed rocket engine and vacuum system to harvest water ice from the lunar surface
spectrum.ieee.org spectrum.ieee.org

A mix of dust, rocks, and significant concentrations of water ice can be found inside permanently shaded lunar craters at the Moon’s south pole. If that water ice can be extracted, it can be turned into breathable oxygen, rocket fuel, or water for thirsty astronauts.
 
Did the odds just go up that we're on someones dinner menu?

www.sciencealert.com

Astronomers Identify The Star Systems That Could Be Watching Earth From Space

If there were alien civilizations in other star systems, would they be able to detect our presence here on Earth? This is a question that could lead us to new ways to search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, but not one that is necessarily easy to answer.
www.sciencealert.com www.sciencealert.com

Nevertheless, a team of astronomers has identified 2,034 star systems within 100 parsecs (326 light-years) of Earth that would have the right vantage point to detect Earth life signs as our home planet orbits the Sun.
 
There's gold (and a lot of other metals) in them thar asteroids!

aeon.co

Asteroid mining could pay for space exploration and adventure | Aeon Essays

Asteroids could pay for so much space exploration. We just need to mine those valuable resources – and duck a direct hit
aeon.co aeon.co

Every time we visit an asteroid, it surprises us. Bennu was found to be throwing rocks off its surface as it spun around its axis, and when OSIRIS-REx put down its outstretched arm to grab a sample off the surface, the arm sank half a metre into the asteroid; it stopped going deeper only when the retrorockets fired to stop it. That’s really not how rubble behaves on Earth!

The more we know about asteroids, the more confident we can be that we can deflect their path away from Earth. A NASA mission called DART will make a high-speed impact on the small moon of the asteroid Didymos in late 2022 to see if we can slow down a dangerous asteroid to stop it causing devastation on Earth. (Don’t worry: the target was chosen to be a safe one for us.) This will be the first time that humanity has deliberately changed the orbit of any celestial body. It isn’t likely to be the last.
 
lotr10 said:
A nice overview on the difficulties of terraforming Mars:

www.space.com

Could we really terraform Mars?

Don't hold your breath.
www.space.com www.space.com
Click to expand...
Food is commercially grown in-doors. For the limited population Mars will have, there's no need to terraform. The horse before the cart is there reason even to civilize the planet? Probably not. Relocating large numbers of population if we even get to that point, in-solar will more likely end up in man-made satellites. Materials refining more easily accomplished and transported from satellite belt. Scientific colonies and tourists seems all that Mars is good for.
 
eastisbest said:
Food is commercially grown in-doors. For the limited population Mars will have, there's no need to terraform. The horse before the cart is there reason even to civilize the planet? Probably not. Relocating large numbers of population if we even get to that point, in-solar will more likely end up in man-made satellites. Materials refining more easily accomplished and transported from satellite belt. Scientific colonies and tourists seems all that Mars is good for.
Click to expand...
I agree with most of this East. We don't need to terraform Mars in order to establish colonies on that planet. In fact I suspect we'll be able to maintain a large population on the planet.

With the lower gravity we should be able to construct large domes that could be used to recreate "Earth" like conditions within. Tourism could be huge and I wouldn't rule out a robust manufacturing sector for specialized materials.
 
Some stuff for a strange Sunday:

www.sciencealert.com

Is Consciousness Bound by Quantum Physics? We're Getting Closer to Finding Out

One of the most important open questions in science is how our consciousness is established.
www.sciencealert.com www.sciencealert.com

One of the most important open questions in science is how our consciousness is established. In the 1990s, long before winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his prediction of black holes, physicist Roger Penrose teamed up with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff to propose an ambitious answer.

They claimed that the brain's neuronal system forms an intricate network and that the consciousness this produces should obey the rules of quantum mechanics – the theory that determines how tiny particles like electrons move around. This, they argue, could explain the mysterious complexity of human consciousness.

Penrose and Hameroff were met with incredulity. Quantum mechanical laws are usually only found to apply at very low temperatures. Quantum computers, for example, currently operate at around -272°C. At higher temperatures, classical mechanics takes over.

Since our body works at room temperature, you would expect it to be governed by the classical laws of physics. For this reason, the quantum consciousness theory has been dismissed outright by many scientists – though others are persuaded supporters.
 
lotr10 said:
Some stuff for a strange Sunday:

www.sciencealert.com

Is Consciousness Bound by Quantum Physics? We're Getting Closer to Finding Out

One of the most important open questions in science is how our consciousness is established.
www.sciencealert.com www.sciencealert.com

One of the most important open questions in science is how our consciousness is established. In the 1990s, long before winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his prediction of black holes, physicist Roger Penrose teamed up with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff to propose an ambitious answer.

They claimed that the brain's neuronal system forms an intricate network and that the consciousness this produces should obey the rules of quantum mechanics – the theory that determines how tiny particles like electrons move around. This, they argue, could explain the mysterious complexity of human consciousness.

Penrose and Hameroff were met with incredulity. Quantum mechanical laws are usually only found to apply at very low temperatures. Quantum computers, for example, currently operate at around -272°C. At higher temperatures, classical mechanics takes over.

Since our body works at room temperature, you would expect it to be governed by the classical laws of physics. For this reason, the quantum consciousness theory has been dismissed outright by many scientists – though others are persuaded supporters.
Click to expand...

They're looking for evidence the existence of fractional consciousness?

Visit the DB
 
Damn that's a lot of water:

spectrum.ieee.org

No Antenna Could Survive Europa’s Brutal, Radioactive Environment—Until Now

To explore Jupiter’s moon for signs of life, JPL developed a brand new, all-metal design
spectrum.ieee.org spectrum.ieee.org

Europa, one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, has twice as much liquid water as Earth’s oceans, if not more. An ocean estimated to be anywhere from 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers) deep spans the entire moon, locked beneath an icy surface over a dozen kilometers thick. The only direct evidence for this ocean is the plumes of water that occasionally erupt through cracks in the ice, jetting as high as 200 km above the surface.

The endless, sunless, roiling ocean of Europa might sound astoundingly bleak. Yet it’s one of the most promising candidates for finding extraterrestrial life. Designing a robotic lander that can survive such harsh conditions will require rethinking all of its systems to some extent, including arguably its most important: communications. After all, even if the rest of the lander works flawlessly, if the radio or antenna breaks, the lander is lost forever.
 
lotr10 said:
Damn that's a lot of water:

spectrum.ieee.org

No Antenna Could Survive Europa’s Brutal, Radioactive Environment—Until Now

To explore Jupiter’s moon for signs of life, JPL developed a brand new, all-metal design
spectrum.ieee.org spectrum.ieee.org

Europa, one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, has twice as much liquid water as Earth’s oceans, if not more. An ocean estimated to be anywhere from 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers) deep spans the entire moon, locked beneath an icy surface over a dozen kilometers thick. The only direct evidence for this ocean is the plumes of water that occasionally erupt through cracks in the ice, jetting as high as 200 km above the surface.

The endless, sunless, roiling ocean of Europa might sound astoundingly bleak. Yet it’s one of the most promising candidates for finding extraterrestrial life. Designing a robotic lander that can survive such harsh conditions will require rethinking all of its systems to some extent, including arguably its most important: communications. After all, even if the rest of the lander works flawlessly, if the radio or antenna breaks, the lander is lost forever.
Click to expand...

See, what do we have to worry about aliens coming for our water when they can get it on ice without competition? There is nothing this planet has that can't be gotten for a lot less trouble elsewhere, except for slave labor. ruh roh.
 
Damn this is impressive:

www.space.com

9 years on Mars! Curiosity rover marks another anniversary

And the car-size robot isn't done yet.
www.space.com www.space.com

During its nine years on Mars, Curiosity has traveled a total of 16.14 miles (25.98 km). And its odometer could keep ticking over for a while to come. The rover is in good health despite its relatively advanced age, mission team members have said, and its nuclear power system is designed to operate for a minimum of 14 years. (All discussion of years in this story refers to Earth years. Mars years are longer, each one lasting about 687 Earth days.)
 
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