if we had to leave this planet and colonize elsewhere...

In sci.space.policy Wayne Throop wrote:
: (meat n potatoes)
: okay, say our planet becomes inhabitable and we gotta leave.
: people remaining will all die.

Sort of like gasoline becoming inflamable so that cars don't work anymore.
I think there was a discussion about an upcoming book like that.


ROFLMAO


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

In sci.space.policy Alcarecco wrote:
(Jim Cambias) wrote in
:

In article ,
(meat n potatoes) wrote:

snip

4. suppose the indigenous animals are no smarter than animals. should
we hunt them and eat them?

It's highly unlikely that eating them would do anything but lead to
vomiting. This is an alien biosphere we're talking about.

The idea that we couldn't eat anything from an alien biosphere seems to
be a generally accepted SF convention, but if they used the same sorts
of amino acids, etc that we do (which might not be that unlikely since,
IIRC, at least some of these seem to be reasonably common in space)perhaps
we could eat them. Does anyone know if there has been theoretical work done
on this or are we just guessing?

Consider the many thousands of chemicals in your average organism.
Only one needs to be toxic.
The problem is hard to guess about, you really need hard data.
Unfortunately that hard data is nonexistant.
It's not utterly impossible to hypothesise a relatively simple "food converter"
that filters out one or two useful chemicals from alien biomass.
Maybe sugar/...
On the other hand, sugar has some problems.

"meat n potatoes" wrote in message
om...
okay, say our planet becomes inhabitable and we gotta leave. people
remaining will all die.

the people who do leave for another planet.... no guarantee that it'll
be found but let's say they come upon a planet that may be
inhabitable.

1. suppose the planet already has inhabitants. what if they don't
allow us to stay? should we wage war like the israelites in the land
of canaan and carve out a little territory?
should we respect their wishes and drift in space til we inevitably
run out of fuel and die?

2. suppose the natives of the planet invite us but only as second
class citizens. would this be cool?

3. suppose the natives have the IQ of something like 70 and we have
the intellectual and technological power to rule them. should we?

If we live on for the rest of the life of our Sun, we can expect
to be around for another few billion years. On average, any other
race we meet would be about 1.2 billion years more advanced than
us (if I remember correctly an analysis someone did a year or so
ago). Think how your questions and concerns would appear to them.

4. suppose the indigenous animals are no smarter than animals. should
we hunt them and eat them?

Our only guide is the Earth. It was occupied by single-celled
life for several billion years so that is all we can expect
for the majority of habitable planets. After that, the dinosaurs
ruled for millions of years without developing intelligence.
Given that the earth was without an 'intelligent' (technologically
capable) species for millions of years, the conditions to trigger
that development may be extremely rare. You might guess several
million habitable planets with half having only slime, and
anything from none to dozens of intelligent races, but remember
in a billion years a single race could fully populate the galaxy,
even at a small fraction of the speed of light. To them, we would
be as interesting as pond scum, a subject for study as an example
of how they themselves might once have evolved.

5. could there be a planet that is inhabitable but has developed no
life? for example, can a planet have plentiful oxygen in the air
without plant life?

Impossible to answer seriously, but the rapidity with which
Earth developed life suggests this is perhaps very unlikely.

6. if we don't find a planet to settle on, can we survive on the
spaceship indefinitely by taking fuel and material from gaseous
planets like jupiter? could we perhaps download our consciousness into
computers so that we won't need food and to take a ****?

The real problems would be psychological and social, not technical.
Roaming the galaxy studying (we) pond scum might be the most
interesting thing imaginable.

7. suppose on a planet there is a battle between two native groups,
something like ET version of nazis vs the soviets. should we side with
one group and help them and share in the spoils? should we remain
neutral?

See answer to 3.

8. what will the human colonizers and their descendants think of the
planet that was the home of their ancestors? will it totally be
forgotten or considered just some silly myth?

They will snicker at the old "videos".

George

Ian Stirling wrote:

In sci.space.policy Alcarecco wrote:

(Jim Cambias) wrote in
:


In article ,
(meat n potatoes) wrote:

snip

4. suppose the indigenous animals are no smarter than animals. should
we hunt them and eat them?


It's highly unlikely that eating them would do anything but lead to
vomiting. This is an alien biosphere we're talking about.

The idea that we couldn't eat anything from an alien biosphere seems to
be a generally accepted SF convention, but if they used the same sorts
of amino acids, etc that we do (which might not be that unlikely since,
IIRC, at least some of these seem to be reasonably common in space)perhaps
we could eat them. Does anyone know if there has been theoretical work done
on this or are we just guessing?


Consider the many thousands of chemicals in your average organism.
Only one needs to be toxic.
The problem is hard to guess about, you really need hard data.
Unfortunately that hard data is nonexistant.
It's not utterly impossible to hypothesise a relatively simple "food converter"
that filters out one or two useful chemicals from alien biomass.
Maybe sugar/...
On the other hand, sugar has some problems.


Well, it seems like cooking might help eliminate some of those problems,
but then again not if it was a metal accumulation or such.

TBerk

In the Year of the Monkey, the Great and Powerful meat n potatoes
declared:

Please, folks, Tony Gaza is a well known identity morphing troll
from rec.arts.movies.current-films. Please do not feed him.

--
Sean O'Hara | http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com
The law of gravity is racist.
-Marion Barry

In sci.space.policy T wrote:
Ian Stirling wrote:

In sci.space.policy Alcarecco wrote:

(Jim Cambias) wrote in
:


In article ,
(meat n potatoes) wrote:

snip

4. suppose the indigenous animals are no smarter than animals. should
we hunt them and eat them?


It's highly unlikely that eating them would do anything but lead to
vomiting. This is an alien biosphere we're talking about.

The idea that we couldn't eat anything from an alien biosphere seems to
be a generally accepted SF convention, but if they used the same sorts
of amino acids, etc that we do (which might not be that unlikely since,
IIRC, at least some of these seem to be reasonably common in space)perhaps
we could eat them. Does anyone know if there has been theoretical work done
on this or are we just guessing?


Consider the many thousands of chemicals in your average organism.
Only one needs to be toxic.
The problem is hard to guess about, you really need hard data.
Unfortunately that hard data is nonexistant.
It's not utterly impossible to hypothesise a relatively simple "food converter"
that filters out one or two useful chemicals from alien biomass.
Maybe sugar/...
On the other hand, sugar has some problems.


Well, it seems like cooking might help eliminate some of those problems,
but then again not if it was a metal accumulation or such.

You'r probably overgeneralising.
Yes, we can eat the vast majority of earths species without harm, if they
are cooked properly. (we may not get much nutrition from some)
This is because all earth organisms are pretty similar, and all work the
same way.
They all use DNA, and metabolise energy in pretty much the same way (the
source differs of course)
The differences between plant and animal cells are small details, the
fundamentals all got fixed way back in time, when tiny organisms came
together to make cells vastly more efficiant than they were alone.

There are many ways to make cell membranes, many ways to use external
energy to to run a cell, ...

In sci.space.policy Ian Stirling wrote:

Consider the many thousands of chemicals in your average organism.
Only one needs to be toxic.

Even more - consider prions. What are the chances that something in the
complex biochemical mix of myriad types of acids, sugars, fats,
nucleotides, etc. doesn't do something that screws up higher animals?
You just need one which is common in the biosphere to do something bad
to the organisms of higher animals from Earth.

Consider for example LSD - its made by a fungus that lives on grain down
here on earth. Its not particularily hard to imagine a biosystem in which
some of the main unicellural symbiotes - possibly even something similar to
mitochondria - may well produce alkaloids. Would give you pretty much
inherently poisonous biosphere.

The problem is hard to guess about, you really need hard data.
Unfortunately that hard data is nonexistant.
It's not utterly impossible to hypothesise a relatively simple "food converter"
that filters out one or two useful chemicals from alien biomass.
Maybe sugar/...
On the other hand, sugar has some problems.

At some level you should be able to break down the input, feed it to
fermenting bacteria and use the results for further stages of the
foodchain. Possibly not the most effective way but you should be able
to process near-anything this way, esp if you can GM the bacteria
and have time for experimentation.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

In sci.space.policy Ian Stirling wrote:

You'r probably overgeneralising.

Vastly overgenralising.

Yes, we can eat the vast majority of earths species without harm, if they
are cooked properly. (we may not get much nutrition from some)
This is because all earth organisms are pretty similar, and all work the
same way.

But a lot of them contain compounds that are not destroyed by boiling and
that are very poisonous to humans. The thesis that you can just boil it
and safely eat for example grossly fails with mushrooms (OTOH a number
of deli mushrooms are edible only after boiling due to bitterness / slight
posionouness otherwise). A lot of berries from a wide variety of plants
are posionous to humans (but not say birds) and I doubt boiling will help
you much.

They all use DNA, and metabolise energy in pretty much the same way (the
source differs of course)
The differences between plant and animal cells are small details, the
fundamentals all got fixed way back in time, when tiny organisms came
together to make cells vastly more efficiant than they were alone.

True - the vast majority of *biomass* is not in itself posionous to humans
and would be digestable - even more so if we introduced bacteria into the
human gut that could handle cellulose (this is at least hypotheticly not
impossible - i believe successful re-implantation of such from yakks to
cows has been done) we could digest the large majority of it. But probably
simple boiling is not sufficent to de-toxify a lot of teh species sufficently.


There are many ways to make cell membranes, many ways to use external
energy to to run a cell, ...


And many of teh result need not be @edible@ in any sense

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

[.. question of whether an alien ecosystem could support humans,
or alternatively be toxic ..]

SfXref: Eric Flint's "Mother of Demons"


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

In article ,
"George Dishman" wrote:
Snip
Our only guide is the Earth. It was occupied by single-celled
life for several billion years so that is all we can expect
for the majority of habitable planets. After that, the dinosaurs
ruled for millions of years without developing intelligence.

Snip

Actually the did, it was the iradium enriched fusion reactors going off,
the first explosion setting off the others that did them in.