The hole in Mars: incredible close up!

Originally posted by joe beyser
So gravity on mars can hold onto CO2 but not water vapor? CO2 is heavier than water vapor and a lower pressure will cause water to vaporize at a lower temp, but still hard to believe it all left the planet. A comet has enough gravity to hold onto its vapors even though it trails out.

I don't think a comet holds vapors gravitationally, does it?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I don't think a comet holds vapors gravitationally, does it?

Well in my opinion, based on my work with cryogenics (I have a lot of experience with cryo pumps where the cold head gets down to 10 degrees Kelvin), I think the gasses on a comet are held cryogenically adsorbed to the surfaces. They would be molecules so cold when they hit a surface rock its like the roach motel, they check in but they don't check out because when said molecule hits the surface it has some heat but the rock is a LOT colder and it loses thermal energy to the rock and just sticks.

I think that is a reasonable explaination when gravity won't do it. It also makes sense because it loses stuff when it gets near the sun ( anywhere near the sun🙂

That's how a cryo pump works. It has a cold head that consists of activated carbon which means there is a huge internal surface area. So a molecule of say hydrogen hits the carbon which is around 10 degrees Kelvin so the H2 comes in, loses so much thermal energy just touching the carbon it sticks hard to whatever surface it ends up at after bouncing around inside the little microscopic cavity of the activated carbon. So the same kind of thing would happen on a comet.

Originally posted by Thequ1ck
Correction to previous post. Grooves in Earth's crust allow us to have land, not contain surface water.

No, land is created by the movement of tectonic plates and volcanic activity. If Mars had water it would also have land. It has massive mountains, plateaus etc.

When you add this on to the HUGE probabilities of distance from sun etc that allow
for life. The odds are...well....astronomical!
So now you think land is important for life? Didn't you know that life started in the oceans? Possibly even in the deep oceans around mid ocean ridges. Life can theoretically arise anywhere that has liquid water and enough of the building blocks for life.

With this in mind, it has to be pretty pointless looking for life similar to our own.
Why? If the odds are astronomical then surely that is countered by astronomy? ie there is an astronomical number of planets.

Originally posted by joe beyser
A comet has enough gravity to hold onto its vapors even though it trails out.

Comets spend most of their time far away from the sun and often contain a lot of ice or other frozen gasses. The tails we see are when the comet gets close enough to the sun that it starts evaporating and that is blasted away by the solar wind. Most of the material in the tail is lost to the comet.

Originally posted by twhitehead
No, land is created by the movement of tectonic plates and volcanic activity. If Mars had water it would also have land. It has massive mountains, plateaus etc.

[b]When you add this on to the HUGE probabilities of distance from sun etc that allow
for life. The odds are...well....astronomical!
So now you think land is important for life? Didn't yo ...[text shortened]... ical then surely that is countered by astronomy? ie there is an astronomical number of planets.[/b]

Originally posted by twhitehead

No, land is created by the movement of tectonic plates and volcanic activity. If Mars had water it would also have land. It has massive mountains, plateaus etc.

The Moon And Plate Tectonics: Why We Are Alone

The secret of plate tectonics is that the Earth has gaps between the continents, and so they can move around like a sliding block puzzle. But if we replace the missing crust, there are no longer any spaces to slide into. Although tectonic forces might tug and squeeze, all they can do is make a few wrinkles here an there. That's what happens on Venus, where the crust is planetwide and ~30km thick everywhere. On Venus nothing can rift, or spread, or subduct, or collide, because there's already something there blocking the way.

If we restored the Moon to the Earth, we would block up plate tectonics. The planet would have to find other ways of losing heat - like the profuse volcanism of Venus, or the massive stacked volcanoes of Mars. Plate tectonics would stop. (Or would have never started). The oceans would flood the land, and any mountain belts would be worn away in a few hundred million years. Soon, there would be nothing left but a ball of water, with just an occasional volcanic island poking through the spindrift.

The Earth is not unique because if its oceans. Any planet in the right part of the habitable zone will have those. What is unique about the Earth is that it has LAND. If the moon had not carried away most of the crust, there would be no ocean basins, no land, and no chance for life to evolve on land.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01x1.html

So now you think land is important for life? Didn't you know that life started in the oceans? Possibly even in the deep oceans around mid ocean ridges. Life can theoretically arise anywhere that has liquid water and enough of the building blocks for life.

Life began in the oceans but the chemistry involved for the formation of life was heavily influenced and perhaps even dependent upon the moon

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/do-we-really-need-the-moon/

Why? If the odds are astronomical then surely that is countered by astronomy? ie there is an astronomical number of planets.

The universe is expanding and there is an event horizon where the rate of expansion is so great that light from distant parts of the universe will never actually reach the Earth. So we're not talking about the entire universe here, just the parts that it is possible to observe.

The diameter of the observable universe is estimated to be about 28 billion parsecs (93 billion light-years),[3] putting the edge of the observable universe at about 46–47 billion light-years away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

The universe itself is estimated to be some 10^23 times bigger than the observable universe. On this scale, it's fair to say there is definitely life but it is impossible for us to ever find it.

I believe one day soon we WILL find life in the universe but it won't be from cranking our necks to the sky.

It will be through the use of quantum computers able to do effectively infinite calculations.

On the scale of the entire universe and time, I think it fair to say that other beings
will encounter our existence using this or a similar method. Creepy thought eh?

I know very little about quantum mechanics so please excuse me if this is gibberish but if we could find a way to detect this calculation, it may even be possible to communicate with them.

Originally posted by Thequ1ck
I believe one day soon we WILL find life in the universe but it won't be from cranking our necks to the sky.

It will be through the use of quantum computers able to do effectively infinite calculations.

On the scale of the entire universe and time, I think it fair to say that other beings
will encounter our existence. Creepy thought eh?

I know ve ...[text shortened]... could find a way to detect this calculation, it may even be possible to communicate with them.

It will be through the use of quantum computers able to do effectively infinite calculations.

how would using quantum computers make us find life?

Originally posted by humy

It will be through the use of quantum computers able to do effectively infinite calculations.

how would using quantum computers make us find life?

If we had a computer sufficiently powerful enough we could set it about the task of gathering information on our observable universe. Just like playing a game of chess backwards, we could set it to the task of modelling the universe.

We could then use these models to predict chemical interactions that fit our criteria for 'life'. This would allow us to peer beyond the observable universe where there is definitely life.

Originally posted by Thequ1ck
If we had a computer sufficiently powerful enough we could set it about the task of gathering information on our observable universe. Just like playing a game of chess backwards, we could set it to the task of modelling the universe.

We could then use these models to predict chemical interactions that fit our criteria for 'life'. This would allow us to peer beyond the observable universe where there is definitely life.

No, or at least extremely unlikely.
Even if the universe is truly deterministic ( and so with no 'true' quantum randomness but only pseudo-randomness, a possibility I would certainly not rule out ) then a quantum computer still probably could not do this ( and if there IS 'true' quantum randomness then a quantum computer CERTAINLY could not do this! ) .
The reason is because we cannot measure ( indirectly by extrapolation ) the initial starting condition ( of the universe ) with infinite accuracy so that chaos theory and the butterfly effect will come into play. The only way around this is if it is somehow possible to deduce with infinite accuracy what the initial starting conductions were and, even then, not even a quantum computer the size of a planet may be able to calculate everything to sufficient number of decimal places to ensure what happens in the simulated universe doesn't deviate significant from that of what happened in the actual universe just nano-seconds into the big bang. It is almost certainly impossible.

One also must remember that a quantum computer is not suitable for computer simulating anything but, because of the limitations imposed by the way it works, is only suitable for doing a very limited range of tasks ( for example, your pocket calculator can do basic arithmetic much more quickly and efficiently than any quantum computer ) . Quantum computers are suitable for simulating pure quantum systems but I am not entirely sure if the universe can be completely described in purely quantum mechanical terms because that depends on the true nature of the universe and how to unify all the laws and, if it can't be completely described in purely quantum mechanical terms, then using a quantum computer to simulate it would probably be a non-starter.

Originally posted by humy
No, or at least extremely unlikely.
Even if the universe is truly deterministic ( and so with no 'true' quantum randomness but only pseudo-randomness, a possibility I would certainly not rule out ) then a quantum computer still probably could not do this ( and if there IS 'true' quantum randomness then a quantum computer CERTAINLY could not do this! ) ...[text shortened]... nical terms, then using a quantum computer to simulate it would probably be a non-starter.

We are swiftly closing in on Exa-flop computers, 1000 petaflops per second, a hundred times more powerful than the best out there now. That is only with plain vanilla silicon.
In ten or twenty years, spintronics and other technologies will come to the fro and we may have computers thousands of times more powerful on the CPU level, where theoretically we can have the same computing power pound for pound but with 100,000X less energy per CPU. So it looks like we can expand that exaflop a few more decades in power. Zettabyte and Yottobyte maybe.

That coupled with a powerful quantum computer, getting the best of both worlds, maybe we can brute force calculate what matter interactions would lead to life forms, at least simple stuff like viruses and so forth.

That would be a triumph for computational biology, for sure! Put all that creationism crap to bed forever.

Originally posted by humy
No, or at least extremely unlikely.
Even if the universe is truly deterministic ( and so with no 'true' quantum randomness but only pseudo-randomness, a possibility I would certainly not rule out ) then a quantum computer still probably could not do this ( and if there IS 'true' quantum randomness then a quantum computer CERTAINLY could not do this! ) nical terms, then using a quantum computer to simulate it would probably be a non-starter.

Just had another thought on that; there is yet another reason why you could not simulate the whole universe like that:

If my understanding of how quantum computing works is correct, a quantum computer that has x number of entangled particles, per computation, cannot simulate the interactions of more than x number of particles.
Thus, for a quantum computer to computer simulate the whole universe with quantum accuracy ( i.e simulate every particle in the universe ) , it would need to entangle as many particles as there are in the universe which would mean it would have to be as big as the universe because it would have to include all the particles of the universe!
So a quantum computer couldn't simulate the whole universe with quantum accuracy. And, if not even a quantum computer can simulate the whole universe with quantum accuracy, then, bearing in mind that the computation power of a single quantum computer can be made to dwarf ALL other computers put together, no computer can nor even any combination of computers can.

Originally posted by sonhouse
We are swiftly closing in on Exa-flop computers, 1000 petaflops per second, a hundred times more powerful than the best out there now. That is only with plain vanilla silicon.
In ten or twenty years, spintronics and other technologies will come to the fro and we may have computers thousands of times more powerful on the CPU level, where theoretically we ca ...[text shortened]... be a triumph for computational biology, for sure! Put all that creationism crap to bed forever.

Put all that creationism crap to bed forever.

I am afraid I don't think so; they would just dismiss the good evidence just like they do so now. No amount of evidence disproving their absurd religious beliefs is ever enough for them; that fact has already been made clear in these forums which is why I have stopped debating with them months ago.

Originally posted by Thequ1ck
The Earth is not unique because if its oceans. Any planet in the right part of the habitable zone will have those. What is unique about the Earth is that it has LAND. If the moon had not carried away most of the crust, there would be no ocean basins, no land, and no chance for life to evolve on land.

Yet every planet or moon we look at has mountains and valleys. I realise that most of them do not have oceans and that that may cause faster erosion and flatter surfaces, but I would like to see more evidence of that than you have presented.

I also don't know why life on land is so important to you. Who cares? Life evolved in the oceans and it still remains the case that most life is in the oceans. Land is not a prerequisite for life or even for intelligent life.

Originally posted by Thequ1ck
The universe itself is estimated to be some 10^23 times bigger than the observable universe. On this scale, it's fair to say there is definitely life but it is impossible for us to ever find it.

I disagree. I think it unlikely that we could find life outside our own galaxy, but I do not believe your have any actual figures in the first place so I don't believe you can rule out our own galaxy. We don't yet know how many planets there are but one estimate I have seen is about 1 trillion in the milky way of which about 100 billion should be in the liquid water belt.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I disagree. I think it unlikely that we could find life outside our own galaxy, but I do not believe your have any actual figures in the first place so I don't believe you can rule out our own galaxy. We don't yet know how many planets there are but one estimate I have seen is about 1 trillion in the milky way of which about 100 billion should be in the liquid water belt.

I think it unlikely that we could find life outside our own galaxy,

You made me think about this and I would go further and say we can deduce ( sort of ) that it is improbable of us finding intelligent alien life ( but cannot deduce the probability of unintelligent alien life being found ) within the next, say, ~one billion years.


I decided to start a new thread to explain how: see my “why we will probably not find intelligent aliens within the next one billion years” thread.