msia should investment more on aerospace as while

@ an earlier statement, if the sun suddenly disappeared we wouldn't be able to adapt in time haha. We'd literally freeze to death in what...a second?
I don't think sending a baby couple to there will achieve much either. It's different from growing up in the wild and growing up in the city. It's not about growing more callused feet. That's just the thickening of skin, not really evolution. Evolution does not occur spontaneously within a single organism. It's a process, something like Doomsday from Superman. The difference is that the baby boy & girl will probably die very quickly, before being given the chance to mate. If we adjust the environment to allow them to grow up, there that's not really evolution is it?

But i guess they could slowly adapt over many generations by constant but not perpetual exposure to the raw environment but by the time they've finished adapting to the conditions on Mars, i don't think we can call them Homo sapiens anymore. My conclusion is that humans can live in outer space, but by adapting the environment to themselves and not by evolution.

Anyone know more good documentaries about this kind of stuff (preferably not too difficult to understand)? I read Carl Sagan's Cosmos and absolutely enjoyed it. Would love to find out more

thanks for remind me that.. makes me wonder... with presence of sun, we feel warmth.. but with absence of sun, itll feeze like pluto.. why??

which mean the universe is cold?? maybe minus few hundred C?

Heat is a form of energy. Cold is an absence of heat. So yes, its not just that the universe is cold, but its more of everything is cold. The temperature that we're all so used to is the result of heat and light from a particular source, which is the sun.

The temperature of the Universe is 2.726 Kelvin. That's 2.726 degrees above absolute zero. As comparison, liquid oxygen boils at 50K.
The temperature is a result of the remanence of the energy of the big bang, which happened about 13.7 billion years ago. Just to compare, the temperature of the universe when it was just 1/100s old was a hundred billion(100,000,000,000) Kelvins.
As time passed and the universe expanded, the temperatures cooled to a lowly 2.7Kelvin.

yes.. which mean that the universe is cold in nature?

watch this documentary few days back.. on discovery...

scientist are now digging in earth to find life in extraordinary habitate..

eg, no O2 presence, no light etc.. and suprisingly they found life there in earth

they found methane breathing microbs; microbs that use chemical reaction as energy source instead of sun....

somehow, makes me see that human evolution is still at its infant stage.. we still rely on sun and O2.. where microbs already evolved to escape this to suits their habitat

This post has been edited by Awakened_Angel: Oct 30 2009, 11:18 AM

Don't think of it as being cold in nature. Cold and hot are just terms that we used to describe temperatures above or below what we're comfortable with. Just think of it as the temperature where no energy is present.

thanks... but from what i read.. this is what i think....

energy existed everywhere.. even when there are no heat... say ice.. no heat does not mean no energy... the energy to bond the molecules to form solid still exist... and in gas, the energy is released by vibration

Au contraire, ice does have heat haha. Just enough for it to stay below its melting point. The theorized state of absolute zero is supposed to be when a particle has absolutely no heat at all. But what happens then? Without heat energy, does it lose kinetic energy too? I heard from a friend that there is a theory in quantum physics that if a particle reaches absolute zero, it can emit extreme amounts of energy. I myself have no idea about that...

emit or possess??

yes correct, of which is why 0 kelvin only exists in theory because it is possible only with the total absence of energy. the 0 degree Celsius that we know is at 273.15 kelvin. So that should give you an indication of how much light and heat energy the sun needs to give out to give us the 30 odd degree Celsius that we're used to @ the equator.

Urhmm, i'm not sure if emit or possess actually. I haven't heard of this before and it seems to make no sense as devoid of energy, how can energy be produced? But my friend talked about it as a possible mean to harness unlimited energy. Anyone knows more about this who can clarify?

first.. UNLIMITED energy does not exist.. to be precise... quantity of energy is for human to use.. and it`ll take billions of years before we start to worry on energy shortage....

how energy is produce is like asking the first cause... the conservation of energy equation say energy cannot be created nor destroyed...

so, the energy in this universe is "created" somehow... we`ll just abandon this....

and we human didnt actually create energy.. like fuel, electric etc... we never create them...

we just harvest energy in different form(coal, food, sun, wind etc) and transform its form....

Agreed haha. We're getting out of topic though. It would be awesome if we could populate mars. I told my bio teacher my theory of planting trees in an oxygenized dome on mars and after a long time, maybe there would be sufficient oxygen of habitation. Yeah i know it's a rough idea and the cost would be insane, but it's just a "What If?" My teacher smacked me and said i was wasting her time haha.

Adding to your explanation, because energy cannot be destroyed or created, it is impossible to achieve absolute zero, because then you're decoupling or disconnecting yourself from the rest of the universe, and that's never going to happen.


It certainly is possible in theory. Send large greenhouse gas-producing machineries and let them churn out gases for a couple thousand years until an atmosphere is formed.
With the presence of an atmosphere, plants or other primitive organisms can survive and produce the needed oxygen for humans. Sure, given a few thousand years I'm pretty sure this will inevitably happen.
We'll be forced to, anyways when the sun starts running out of fuel in about 5 billion years =P

bio teacher???

how old are you kid??

godo for you to think like that... but malaysia teacher just wont accept out of school topic to discuss.... I was slapped by my teacher once when I ask him what is PI.. 22/7

all he can say is 22/7 or 3.142 .....

when ask again why must this number he seemed to be frustrated....

but when in UK, things are totally different.... if i question things like this, I was compliment by the lecturer

guess the grass is greener on the otehr side after all

this is malaysia... when we are small, adults ask us to be creative and imaginative.. but when we grow up, creative and imaginative = naive

This post has been edited by Awakened_Angel: Oct 30 2009, 08:38 PM

Haha, i don't appreciate being called a kid I may be inexperienced and naive at times, but i attribute it to a lack of exposure and definitely not age. For that, i'd rather not reveal my age. It's like an ad hominem that can only fallaciously work against my favour in most cases.
I asked my physics teacher what caused gravity. He wouldn't give me an answer but i found the equation that correlates mass distance and gravity with a bit of research. However, i simply still do not understand how an object with mass has a gravitational pull. Is it the force of attraction emitted by the nuclei of the particles that form us or something?

My question is: Do you really think humans should live in outer space, given that they are capable? What would our life be without our home planet? For what are we living when we have outlived our own planet or caused its destruction? I have a feeling that we as a species will never make it out of our solar system. Nonetheless, like any decent person i will keep an open mind

ahaha.. nevermind then.. one thing.. don ask your physic teacher too much.. msot teachers are degree or diploma holder.. ask them what you need to know to score.. else, ask a lecturer....

want to know how gravity works?? give you this link...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_well

or you can just google "gravitational well" in order how gravity works.. in graphic.. else if you ask ur teacher, he`ll just reply you F=mg

again... the word "should" is ethical quesstion that has moral perspective....

we human are still has very very primitive technology.... sad to say even with IPhone....

else we`ll be like star wars.... I think this is what the scientist are doing now... looking for earth like planet... building faster ships to travel, how human can survice in space etc.....

so for your question, the word should is irrelevant as it is only survivalof species

The Mars Underground
History Channel's The Universe Series
PBS Nova The Elegant Universe

If the sun suddenly disappeared, it would take roughly 8 minutes before the sky goes dark, a few seconds later Earth will loose it's orbit and start hurtling into the universe.

Eventually most of us will die of extreme cold and hunger. There will be a new eternal ice age. Power plants will continue to work for a while, until the water that feeds them freezes up, then those too will die. Diesel power plants may work for a while longer than the rest, until we run out of diesel or the diesel too freezes up.

But there will be fights and desperate attempts by people to get heat. Cities will burn.

In time we'll be pelted from the skies by asteroids that are now free from it's own orbit. Jupiter can't suck in all of them, most will roam free and many will hit us.

Finally, humans will be extinct (unless we had already invented Warp drives lol).

Can't really say that we're in an infant stage. If those microbes were as intelligent as us, they will be thinking that they're in an infant stage because they need Methane to breathe...

It's just that we evolved in a different environment, so we need this kind of environment everywhere we go.

Actually I think it is possible to achieve absolute zero. If we take atoms, the "temperature" of the atom is determined by how much kinetic energy the atom has. So if you can slow down the atom, the temperature drops. And if you can hold the atom fixed with no movement at all, then you get absolute zero.

There's a technique called Laser Cooling where they trap atoms using multiple lasers. The multiple lasers create a sort of cavity where the beams meet, and they can slowly bring the atom to a stationary (or almost) state.

Gravity is a form of force. As for the question of what exactly causes the force, there's no real explanation if I'm not mistaken. There's a theorised particle called the Graviton that causes gravity (it's pure theory). Wikipedia has a good explanation on the Graviton.

Also I suggest this documentary if you'd like to know more: PBS Nova The Elegant Universe
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/

As for the question of "should we live out there"? My personal answer would be yes, definitely. Living on another planet is more or less like migrating from Malaysia to Australia with a few extra challenges. You still give up your citizenship and you become the resident of a new place. After that, you life will still go on even if Malaysia were to suddenly sink into the ocean. Your life is not tied to the geographical location of your origin.

All of us, regardless of race originated in south eastern Africa, yet today most of us outside Africa are not really attached to nor concern about Africa. It will be the same case as we spread through the universe, future generations born in distant worlds wouldn't be that concerned about Earth.

For me, the purpose of our existence is not merely to exist. If it were like that, it's a horrible waste. I think that whatever the "real" purpose may be, for us our purpose should be to pursue understanding of everything around us. I would like to see us in a Star Trek-esque future or a Battlestar Galactica-esqu future where our civilisation spans multiple worlds and where we as a civilisation are actively aware of our goals (the pursuit of understanding) and we actively engage in attaining those goals.

Right now, the state of most peoples lives is such that they study until they're about 25 years old, then they work for another 30 years so that they can sustain their lives and the lives of their offspring during that 30 years and for another 30 years after.

The majority of the human race doesn't go much beyond that and it's incredibly sad. If I were an alien and I observed this, I would conclude that humanity is just a very highly evolved animal.

Eventually I hope, things would change. Perhaps when we're all far more educated and when we have machines to do for us everything we need, we may then be able to dedicate our lives wholly to the pursuit of understanding the universe.

This post has been edited by DeniseLau: Oct 30 2009, 10:45 PM

The truth is physicists have no idea what causes gravity. One hypothesis is the Graviton. Think of it as electrons in a analogous electrical circuit. In an electrical circuit electrons moving around causes electrical current. Physicists have theorized that this may be the same for gravity as well.
And the reason why gravitons havent been discovered yet is because gravity is such a weak force. As a comparison, out of the four fundamental forces in the Universe, electromagnetic force is 10^25 times stronger than gravity. Being such a weak force, gravitons therefore hardly interact with matter, therefore making detection extremely hard.

And about space colonization, I think humans are very capable of adapting and are more than likely to be able to survive in a foreign planet given that they have the capability.