TheMadCap

No work, have to replace my windshield for the THIRD time in two years... :I starred in Brokeback Mountain: :I starred in Brokeback Mountain:

I refuse to watch this farce any longer... :I starred in Brokeback Mountain:

Nice helmet to helmet there....

Priceless quote from the TV peanut gallery!

a nice non-call for clipping on that last PR...

Yuck, so we can hear about how fabulous Vick is again and again. No thanks CL, I'd rather have the Iggles lose to the Colts...

Interesting point. Much debate in scientific circles deals with the potential contamination of new worlds with terran life. Kind of like the observer, who by observing, changes the conditions of the experiment..

And while we are at it, shouldn't you be on the PPP page blowing holes in people's arguments there?????

Typo. That's what I get for trying to type out on a message board quickly while at work. Thank you for finding that oversight, change the 150 billion km in the first sentence to million. Sigh, those units will be our downfall, much like the Mars Climate orbiter. The distances I referenced are minimum distances...

Most of the atmosphere of Mars is Carbon Dioxide, there simply isn't enough methane there, or that we could produce, that would do anything that extreme...

Very true, this experiment has been performed on Earth with similar orange brown goo being produced using electricity (lightning) and the basic amino acids as found on Titan...

If anyone is interested in this type of discussion, on a vastly more educated scale, check out this forum page: http://www.newmars.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi There are folks there who know a great deal about rocketry and pysics who can explain things much better than I...

Expanding on the hydrolysis question, there is a proposed human mission to Mars offered by Robert Zubrin where an initial supply of hydrogen is taken to Mars and reacted with the natural carbon dioxide via the Sabateur reaction, producing methane and water. The water is then split using hydrolysis, regenerating the hydrogen and oxygen. The chemical equation is as follows: CO2 + 4H2 = CH4 + 2H2O The problem with the Mars Direct plan, as it is called, is that it is a bare bones mission, NASA would never approve a plan without several levels of backup. The idea is to produce all the fuel needed for a return to Earth flight for the astronauts on Mars itself, since most missions have to lug all that fuel with them, launching it from the Earth, increasing the weight and cost.

Evaporation is just change of pysical state of liquid water to gas, no chemical change is initiated. Magnesium combustion has been explored in microgravity using CO2, which contains oxygen. Hydrolysis is indeed one way to produce oxygen and hydrogen from water...

Not necessarily. There are psychrotrophic bacteria that thrive at cold temps, and can resist warmer temperatures. And oxygen is not needed for anaerobic lifeforms. Who says life, if it exists on Titan, or may one day exist, has to be like us?

Floyd's end is forshadowed nicely on the Live at Pompeii video. Even during the recording of Dark Side of the Moon, they were at each other's throats. There is a clip of Gilmour recording the solo for Eclipse and Roger is in the booth. He keeps stopping the track to yell at Dave for missing notes (sounded AWESOME to me) and basically being a pud. Such a waste....

Check out Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Some of you may find it interesting. There is an episode that talks alot about this question. Sagan talks about an equation that predicts the probablility of life elswhere. I looked it up and it states: The mathematical probability that extraterrestrial life exists and will attempt to communicate with Earth was expressed by Frank Drake: The probability = (the probability that a given star system has planets) x (the number of habitable planets among those planets) x (the probability that life evolved on those planets) x (the probability that intelligence developed among planets with life) x (the probability that an intelligent species will attempt interstellar communication within five billion years after the formation of its planet). The problem with the Drake equation, of course, is that many of the variables are unknown, so that, depending on the numbers you plug in, the results can vary widely. Check the ESA page out below, it gets much less traffic than the JPL site: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygen...BQO71Y3E_1.html Anyway, I remember the number of planets predicted by this equation was surprisingly small, around 4 or 5 IIRC. I'll look it up and get back to you.

Earth is approximately 150 billion kilometers from the sun. Jupiter is about 588 million km from us. Even a slight nudge in either direction, respective to radiation hitting the Earth, may cause large impacts in the average weather. It is possible that the type of life that thrived in these alternate conditions would be quite different that what we have today. Your first question is one that we will hopefully get a few hints about, in the next few days... http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/kid...e/distance.html

HAHAHA! A briquet indeed! In fact, this would not have been a binary system even if all the planets were combined, simply not enough mass.

OMG, now I remember that. Don't they realize that not only has it been done many times before, but it's not a bomb? Oh wait, they could crash it into Jupiter and the resulting atomic explosion could ignite it into a second star, erradicating all life on Earth. I think I read some such nonsense somewhere....

Not only that, but it may shed a bit more light on the origins of life on Earth. Scientists have long theorized that Titan is very similar to the early Earth, and there is evidence that there are complex amino acids in its atmosphere. There is no question that this mission is worth it...

Caught that one too, nice touch though, don't you think?

Nope. He had final say over the name thing.

Miami still offered him a scholarship....

Seems highly unlikely. There is no way the conditions of urine would be suitably to hatch beetle eggs....