Using our planet as the prototype is perhaps not going to represent a
good example of how best to terraform. However, Darwin proved that
you can selectively terraform a relatively barren and isolated island
that’s geologically newish and considered by most as nearly worthless,
such as Ascension Island with hardly any topsoil and essentially
offering little or no truly original biodiversity, by systematically
transforming parts of it into a tropical Eden, accommodating more
biodiversity per given area than most anywhere on Earth.
Perhaps terraforming should be renamed: darwinforming
Therefore, once we’ve perfected our interplanetary space travels, or
at least for that of robotically transferring a few pods of complex
spores of life as we know it, whereas there’s a pretty darn good
chance that at least 0.1% of that effort is going to pay off by way of
those few microbes and larger forms of life from Earth having managed
to adapt and survive all on their own, whereas the purely random-
happenstance of any natural process creating truly original life is
most highly unlikely unless intelligent design gets involved. With
any luck and via direct intervention by those of the necessary
astrobiology expertise, seems that a 90% success rate of introduced
biodiversity making a go of it could be achieved with selective
microbes, insects, plants and animals capable of thriving in their new
biodiversity environment.
Even microbial saturated sea-foams of phytoplankton consisting of
bacteria and/or fungi spores could be expected to adapt along with an
assortment of diatoms that’ll mutate and replicate quickly in order to
survive. Because without these little guys there’s not much sense in
going with anything of a larger physiological impact, unless
considering their demise as contributing to the microbial assortment
of what darwinforming of any scale is eventually going to require.
Of course this method of directed panspermia and/or via direct
intervention represents an alternative as to how Earth could have been
seeded and thus terraformed by others, as God’s or simply intelligent
design performing what some would only accept as a purely natural
random happenstance process, or simply instead as having been
accomplished by those of similar capability to our space travel
expertise. However, due to the ongoing expansion of space and
otherwise the proper motion of stars passing nearby and moving on,
could easily represent a practical limitation as to why our planet is
ever getting a return visit by those responsible for having at least
supplied some of the complex biodiversity that subsequently evolved,
that’s both good and bad for us as being stuck here.
We also know from direct trial and error, that often our best
intentions of biodiversity interventions are deficient and/or
dysfunctional, because we had not taken enough into account, whereas
the transfer and introduction of different kinds of life intended to
rebalance an environment have at times done more damage than good.
Therefore, doing this as terraforming another planet or one of its
moons is going to be at least a thousand fold more complex unless a
sufficient astrobiology staff or team of expertise can stay on
location in order to refine and work out the bugs, and of course this
means we have to develop our interplanetary expertise to a much higher
lever than what we currently have (short of allowing one-way missions
that could be remotely sustained until EOL, but never brought back
home).
This isn’t a replacement creation thing, so much as offering a
perfectly logical can-do or trial-and-error method of intelligent
design simply expanding the survivable horizons for those of us or ET
Goldilocks to try out, or fall back on should their world turn out as
badly overpopulated and resource depleted as Earth, as simply worth
doing if only one out of ten selected planets manages to sustain any
imported life. At least we know that an open and positive/
constructive mindset like Darwin could manage to pull this off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island
http://www.globalwhisperer.com/2010/09/ascension-island-darwins-best-kept-secret/
“It’s a terrible waste that no-one is studying it” says Dr Wilkinson.
Therefore, the greatest Terra-Forming experiment the world has ever
known remains largely a mystery, as remote as Ascension Island itself.
No doubt the usual media police gauntlet of topic/author stalking and
trashing via perpetual naysayers and FUD-masters will always have to
strongly object to any notions of our terraforming or darwinforming
anything, except possibly a mostly frozen to death and freeze dried
out Mars, because the very last thing they want any of us considering
is exploiting the interior of our moon or god forbid Venus.
Is there any terrain on any other planet or moon that’s as unusual or
as geometric utility looking, as what this one small area of Venus has
to offer?
Be my guest and apply your very own photographic enlargement software,
as to viewing this one small but rather interesting area of Venus,
using your independent expertise as to enlarge or magnify this
mountainous area of Venus that I’ve focused upon shouldn’t be asking
too much. Most of modern PhotoZoom and other photographic software
variations tend to accomplish this automatically, although some extra
filtering and dynamic range compensations can further improve on the
end result (no direct pixel modifications necessary).
“GuthVenus” 1:1, plus 10x resample/enlargement of the area in
question:
https://picasaweb.google.com/102736204560337818634/BradGuth#slideshow/5630418595926178146
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/hires/mgn_c115s095_1.gif
https://picasaweb.google.com/102736204560337818634/BradGuth#
http://translate.google.com/#
Brad Guth,Brad_Guth,Brad.Guth,BradGuth,BG,Guth Usenet/”Guth
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