Topic: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.  (Read 11312 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Stormbringer

  • Global Moderator
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1984
  • Gender: Male
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #60 on: December 17, 2005, 11:36:07 am »
But that growth is not directed by an  genetic code integral to the "growing" object nor is the object itself doing the "metabolizing."  if you say that a manufactured nanobot is growing in a biological sense then you must say any manufactured object meets the living criteria.

Offline prometheus

  • Hot and Spicy
  • Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 3610
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #61 on: December 17, 2005, 11:44:26 am »
But that growth is not directed by an  genetic code integral to the "growing" object nor is the object itself doing the "metabolizing."  if you say that a manufactured nanobot is growing in a biological sense then you must say any manufactured object meets the living criteria.

No biologist has ever stated that all life in the Universe has to be DNA based...  That would be an absurd statement to make given that there is no data to confirm or deny it.

The probe, if it is converting and distributing energy in an organized, meaningful and self regulating way, is metabloising, and if the probe is capable of building on or repairing itself according to a pre determined plan, as a human does, it is growing.  Whether the code it is following is genetic or binary makes no fundamental difference...


To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the Universe!

Offline Stormbringer

  • Global Moderator
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1984
  • Gender: Male
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #62 on: December 17, 2005, 12:37:44 pm »
Not really. there must be an integral programming which includes the urge to reproduce and which governs the building process and repair process internally. these nanoprobes  were not discussed WRT self repair. they do not direct their own creation once stasrted. that process is completely controlled externally by nanobots that are already complete. as the components accrue those components do not control the process. there is no "cellular" life processes. 

Offline prometheus

  • Hot and Spicy
  • Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 3610
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #63 on: December 17, 2005, 07:20:39 pm »
Not really. there must be an integral programming which includes the urge to reproduce and which governs the building process and repair process internally. these nanoprobes  were not discussed WRT self repair. they do not direct their own creation once stasrted. that process is completely controlled externally by nanobots that are already complete. as the components accrue those components do not control the process. there is no "cellular" life processes. 

How can they reproduce if they don't have an inbuilt urge to do so?


To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the Universe!

Offline Stormbringer

  • Global Moderator
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1984
  • Gender: Male
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #64 on: December 17, 2005, 08:20:23 pm »
They do. but their reproductive means are external. they have no generative organs. they also do not divide in the manner of cells. the new bot to be does not self organize. the partially assembled device has no life drives. leave a partly assembled bot alone and it will not go on building itself. It cannot do it.

Conversely;  when gametes meet given a proper environment the resulting organism divides, metabolizes, comunicates chemically, follows it's own integral instructions and does display survival and other living behaviors. a fetus is programmed to live and will struggle and adapt in order to facilitate that.

Offline prometheus

  • Hot and Spicy
  • Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 3610
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #65 on: December 18, 2005, 01:52:36 am »
They do. but their reproductive means are external. they have no generative organs. they also do not divide in the manner of cells. the new bot to be does not self organize. the partially assembled device has no life drives. leave a partly assembled bot alone and it will not go on building itself. It cannot do it.

Conversely;  when gametes meet given a proper environment the resulting organism divides, metabolizes, comunicates chemically, follows it's own integral instructions and does display survival and other living behaviors. a fetus is programmed to live and will struggle and adapt in order to facilitate that.

True, but we're splitting hairs here...  A gamete has more chance of ending up on your girlfriends chest or flushed down the toilet in a tampon and winding up on the nearest beach than creating a new life form...  A newborn baby would be dead in a matter of days left to it's own devices, so the requisition of external influence does not disqualify something from being alive...

But to get back to what I was on about originally, if we can figure out how environmental variables lead to the creation of self motivating automata (ie ourselves), we stand a much better chance of (no pun intended) reproducing the process...


To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the Universe!

Offline Stormbringer

  • Global Moderator
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1984
  • Gender: Male
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #66 on: December 18, 2005, 01:56:00 pm »
Self assembling materials have been created in the laboratory. a micron sized device that has it's own motive means has been made and demonstrated. add enough complexity of parts increases the size a bit but these things arre still microscopic. admitedly a device that can follow a program has not yet been done but it is only a matter of time. the devices i envision do not need to be self assembling in the sense above but in the sense that they can build replicas from spare parts. those spare parts either being made by specialized miner forging bots or by earlier versions of themselves if they are generalized enough to handle mining, extracting forging and assembly themselves. each process adds to the size and complexity of each unit. at some point specialization makes more sense. but it seems doable to me.

Offline prometheus

  • Hot and Spicy
  • Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 3610
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #67 on: December 18, 2005, 03:10:56 pm »
Self assembling materials have been created in the laboratory. a micron sized device that has it's own motive means has been made and demonstrated. add enough complexity of parts increases the size a bit but these things arre still microscopic. admitedly a device that can follow a program has not yet been done but it is only a matter of time. the devices i envision do not need to be self assembling in the sense above but in the sense that they can build replicas from spare parts. those spare parts either being made by specialized miner forging bots or by earlier versions of themselves if they are generalized enough to handle mining, extracting forging and assembly themselves. each process adds to the size and complexity of each unit. at some point specialization makes more sense. but it seems doable to me.

Well, who knows...  It's not likely to be in my lifetime, so I guess I'll never find out...


To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the Universe!

Offline Stormbringer

  • Global Moderator
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1984
  • Gender: Male
Quadrillions of rocks beyond neptune
« Reply #68 on: August 15, 2006, 04:30:23 pm »
http://space.com/scienceastronomy/060814_tno_found.html

Discovery Hints at a Quadrillion Space Rocks Beyond Neptune

By Sara Goudarzi
Staff Writer
posted: 15 August 2006
06:13 am ET
 


Dozens of rocky bodies that are part of a sea of small rocky fragments never observed before have been spotted in the suburbs of our solar system beyond planet Neptune, thanks to a novel technique.


These newly detected chunks of dust and rock coined Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO) are smaller than 330 feet (100 meters) across. They are leftovers from the formation of planets.


Scientists had previously detected TNOs larger than 31 miles (50 kilometer) across such as the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO), a subset of TNOs. They suspected that there may be distant objects beyond Neptune since the 1940's, but it wasn't until 1992 that the first KBO was discovered. 


Since then, they've found so many large objects in the outskirts of the solar system that they had to come up with crazy names, like Plutinos, Centaurs, and Cubewanos, to keep them in order. And although researchers suspected the presence of smaller objects, they didn't have a way to detect the sea of debris.


"The searches for Kuiper Belt Objects usually look for reflected light from the Sun and the small motion relative to fixed background stars," said Asantha Cooray, assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.  The amount of reflected light from a small body, however, is so extremely dim that not even the largest telescopes, or much larger telescopes one could imagine building either on Earth or space, could see it.


But scientists didn't look for the reflected light this time. Examining data from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, they monitored the light from a background star, Scorpius X-1, as small objects moved in front of it in what are called occultations. They found obvious dips in the light.


Other than the Sun, Scorpius X-1 is the brightest X-ray source in the sky, said study leader Hsiang-Kuang Chang, Associate Professor of Physics & Institute of Astronomy at the National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan.


"We discussed various possibilities for causing these dips and concluded that occultation by small TNOs are the most likely one," he told SPACE.com in an email interview.


Alltogether, Chang and colleagues identified 58 definite dips. Their findings are detailed in the Aug. 10 issue of the journal Nature.


Observing occultations is a widely known method for studying foreground objects by monitoring the light of background stars. The rings of Uranus were first discovered during an occultation of a star by Uranus. But never have such small objects been detected this way.


"The interesting thing here is that instead of monitoring optical stars, these authors monitor light from an X-ray source since X-ray detectors can record light at small time intervals compared to optical detectors," Cooray told SPACE.com.  "A 100-meter body only occults a background source for about 10 milliseconds and optical detectors cannot record light continuously at such small time intervals."


Based on this finding, the researchers estimate that the number of TNOs reaches around a quadrillion, rather than the mere billions to a trillion as previously thought.


This shows an extremely dense disk of material at the outer edges of the solar system mostly populated by smaller bodies, Cooray said. "Since these are leftover material from the solar system formation process, it says that the original disk from which the planets formed was more massive at distances around Neptune than previously suggested and in strong conflict with some of the early models for the formation of Kuiper Belt Objects."


Offline Nemesis

  • Captain Kayn
  • Global Moderator
  • Commodore
  • *
  • Posts: 12906
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #69 on: July 06, 2007, 09:11:50 pm »
I don't know if you read any Sci Fi but I recently read the novel Building Harlequin's Moon (now available in paperback) which details the construction of a habitable moon in the Gliese 581 star system.  The novel is already obsolete because of the planet found in the habitable zone when the book says there isn't anything there.  But the planet building section is interesting, it takes the characters 60,000 years.
Do unto others as Frey has done unto you.
Seti Team    Free Software
I believe truth and principle do matter. If you have to sacrifice them to get the results you want, then the results aren't worth it.
 FoaS_XC : "Take great pains to distinguish a criticism vs. an attack. A person reading a post should never be able to confuse the two."

Offline Stormbringer

  • Global Moderator
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1984
  • Gender: Male
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #70 on: July 06, 2007, 10:41:37 pm »
cool

Offline Commander Maxillius

  • You did NOT just shoot that green sh-t at me?!?
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 2299
  • Gender: Female
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #71 on: July 20, 2007, 11:50:01 pm »
Why would you need to build a planet?  I would think a structure like a Dyson's Sphere would be more economical.  You need only build a shell and stick a radiant power source in the center.
I was never here, you were never here, this conversation never took place, and you most certainly did not see me.

Offline Nemesis

  • Captain Kayn
  • Global Moderator
  • Commodore
  • *
  • Posts: 12906
Re: Modest space project idea: Lets make a planet.
« Reply #72 on: July 21, 2007, 07:25:47 am »
The Dyson Sphere is a rather misunderstood concept.  Freeman Dyson who originated the concept had the idea that any technological civilization would eventually need the entire energy output of their sun and would construct a "shell" around it as an energy gathering device.  The shell as he envisioned it would not have been solid but would have been composed of objects in orbit that collectively at all times would be intercepting the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum.  It was never intended to be lived on.

With a solid Dyson Sphere you either need to rotate it for gravity in which case all the air will be in a narrow band around the equator or use gravity generators.  One generator failure and all your air is flowing into space.  Also no nights and no seasons.  Many plants and animal species would have to be genetically reengineered to survive in the environment over the long term.

The SciFi novel Second Genesis contains a good description of such a non continuous Dyson Sphere.

For living on Nivens concept of a Ringworld is much better though you do need to have something to keep the sun centered.
Do unto others as Frey has done unto you.
Seti Team    Free Software
I believe truth and principle do matter. If you have to sacrifice them to get the results you want, then the results aren't worth it.
 FoaS_XC : "Take great pains to distinguish a criticism vs. an attack. A person reading a post should never be able to confuse the two."