Re: Sinosauropteryx filament melanosomes challenged

[Dr Ronald Orenstein <ron.orenstein@rogers.com>]

Perhaps -- just perhaps, though we will be extraordinarily lucky to last long 
enough to develop the level of technology required (should this even be 
possible) before driving our civilization to the point of collapse. However, if 
the "space seed" hypotheses are correct, some extremely simple organisms may 
have "solved" the space travel problem billenia before we got here!

Ronald Orenstein 
1825 Shady Creek Court
Mississauga, ON
Canada L5L 3W2

On 2010-12-08, at 9:07 AM, Erik Boehm <erikboehm07@yahoo.com> wrote:

>> eliminating the opportunity for a future industrialized civilization to
>> arise.  If our civilization collapses, where will the next one get its
>> oil, its metals?"
> 
> Metals are generally not consumed, they are dispersed though, and made harder 
> to recover. I assume geologic processes will continue to concentrate them, as 
> long as plate tectonics keeps functioning, the question of course being how 
> long that will take, or if scrap heaps of this civilization will provide 
> enough salvage/raw material for the next.
> 
> Future civilization would have to settle for "Steampunk" for a while, then 
> make the jump to Fusion, perhaps with water mills/hydro dams, windmills/wind 
> generators, and solar collectors in between.
> 
> Civilization can and did exist before petrol and coal based power.
> 
> "Early" industrial society could be exist at about the level of coal power, 
> using charcoal as a substitute for actual coal.
> 
> For a while coppices were managed to provide sustainable charcoal supplies:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppice
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal#History
> 
> And of course, you could make ethanol and other liquid hyrdocarbons, but 
> simple scarcity of resources suggests that it vehicles that burn it such as 
> aircraft and autos would be used far less frequently.
> 
> The energy intense fertilizer production methods wouldn't be viable, and 
> presumably population would have to be much lower.
> 
> 
> If we make it to viable fusion power though, everything changes, and the 
> Galaxy may be ours to inherit.
> 
> Using Fusion, a space ship with a mass ratio of less than 10 (ie ratio of 
> weight loaded with propellent, vs empty) could theoretically easily achieve 
> delta-Vs of 0.2C, and cross the galaxy in less than a million years.
> 
> Even accounting for stopping for a hundred years or so to found and develop a 
> colony before the next ship is sent, it seems that if a species were to 
> develop viable fusion power, within 5 million years it *should* be ubiquitous 
> throughout the galaxy.
> We've had life on earth for about 3,800 million years, and our star isn't 
> arise in this galaxy, none of them made it past their own Sun, fission power 
> and petrol as their energy source.
> Or there is the very low probability that in the tens of thousands of 
> millions of years in the history of the stars and planets in this galaxy, we 
> are living in the 5 million year window of colonization for an alien 
> civilization.
> 
> Just as humans spread across the globe in the blink of an eye, and the 
> geologic timescale is too low resolution to resolve migration patterns of a 
> species (ie, its nowhere, then the next thing you know, its everywhere), the 
> same likely holds true with galaxies and space faring civilization.
> 
> Space faring civilization is certainly possible, and travel at 0.1c seems 
> within the realm of human achievement (within the next millennia)
> No bacteria is going to be able to match that based on taking a ride on a 
> rock ejected after a collision.
> 
> Human level intelligence opens up the possibility of leaving our star system 
> completely, and achieving significantly faster dispersal rates.
> 
> Based on my knowledge of what is physically possible, and rough 
> approximations, this galaxy is ours for the taking if we don't kill each 
> other (or create superior life that disposes of us) before we get off this 
> rock.
> 
> Tell me that any other lineage on Earth has similar chances at such, other 
> than as a life form that we humans take with us.
> 
> --- On Wed, 12/8/10, David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:
> 
>> From: David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
>> Subject: Re: Sinosauropteryx filament melanosomes challenged
>> To: "DML" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
>> Date: Wednesday, December 8, 2010, 3:41 AM
>> Rescued from truncation:
>> 
>> =================
>> 
>> Actually I do not think we are in any position to say that
>> high intelligence or
>> a technological civilization are adaptive triumphs for more
>> than a very brief
>> span of time - we seem well on the way to exceeding the
>> carrying capacity of our
>> environment and, perhaps, may be a very short-lived
>> evolutionary experiment as
>> things go.  We have been an
> 
>> for only about 200 years,
>> and already seem well on the path to not only destroying
>> our own resource base
>> but eliminating the opportunity for a future industrialized
>> civilization to
>> arise.  If our civilization collapses, where will the
>> next one get its oil, its
>> metals?  I'm almost 64 years old and I hope our
>> civilization will last out my
>> lifetime, much less the rest of earth's history!  My
>> money is on the bacteria.
>> 
>> Ronald Orenstein
>> 1825 Shady Creek Court
>> Mississauga, ON L5L 3W2
>> Canada
>> 
> 
> 
>