Planet colonisation question

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Just been wondering about the possible future colonisation of an exoplanet and it occured to me that it might be a really dangerous place if there are bad germs there, like in WOTW where the baddies got killed by our germs. So, what would be required to sterilise a planet without making it radioactive for millenia? Neutron bombs or the like?

I realise that there is a slight moral issue concerning this planet washing, but somebody is going to have to consider it when the sun starts swelling up.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[Jonileth]

Just a thought on this, but would humans not have the technology to rapidly respond to an outbreak of an unknown disease? after all the technology needed to colonise a planet is beyond our abilities at the moment

Jonileth

[Starflyer]

Good question Kaptain.

I can see the logic in Jonileth's answer, maybe by then we'd have an intelligent nano-tech immune / cellular-level repair system.

I've often wondered how humans would be able to endure the travel time without going stir crazy.

Ian

[thing]

But we're talking billions of years here. We probably won't need spaceships by then. We'll probably think ourselves there or something equally bizzarre.

[Bufferz]

Think we would have to practice somewhere first, like colonising Mars, as its not like there would be help arriving quickly from Earth if a problem did occur......But I guess before we arrived, the exoplanet would have been searched for bugs thru robots, etc and maybe some sort of biological agent could be released to destroy any germs that were detected

[GazOC]

Nuke the planets from orbit and then return a few centuries later....

[S2]

It would be pretty difficult to completely sterilise a planet, at least if life on Earth is anything to go by.

On Earth, we have environments ranging from the superheated waters of submarine volcanic vents to the ultra-dry bitter cold of the Antarctic Dry Valleys. We find organisms living in caves dripping with sulfuric acid and others thriving in intensely alkaline solutions. We find creatures happily existing in saturated salt solutions, enduring megadoses of ionizing radiation, or deriving their food and energy sources from unpromising inorganic materials like manganese, iron, and sulfur compounds.

The Search for Extremophiles on Earth and Beyond, from Ad Astra magazine.

Life has even been found 1.6 Km below the sea floor, at 100°C and under huge pressures (New Scientist article).

I imagine that it would be easier to genetically modify ourselves to suit the conditions on a new planet instead.

[GazOC]

This is a decent book on ET life and extremophiles.

http://tinyurl.com/5oce2j

[Vega]

I think there will be plenty of other massive obstacles to get around before the sun decides to put some weight on. I might be wrong here but isn't it more likely that we have an asteroid impact big enough to threaten life on the planet way before the sun becomes any kind of threat.

-Tunguska size impact (once a century but avoidable if detected?)

-Continent killer impact (avoidable if detected early)

-Global killer (?)

Anyone know the stats for how often we get continent killers or global killers ? I'm sure well get some within the next 5 Billion years.

We may not exist as a species anyway by the time our sun decides to put some weight on. :shock:

Matt

[Viking]

What about the ice ages. They must reduce the global population and last for thousands of years. It seems that survival is the prime function, not continually expanding our technology base for millions/billions of years. In the last ice age, my/our ancestors were consigned to Ukraine/North Asia, while others were in North Africa etc. Others taking generations to migrate across the Atlantic to the Americas. :scratch: :scratch: :scratch:

I think that when our descendants came out of an ice age they would set off on the same journey to disaster again - a big merry-go-round. How many times has this happened in the past million or so years? :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

John

[Bufferz]

What about the ice ages. They must reduce the global population and last for thousands of years. It seems that survival is the prime function, not continually expanding our technology base for millions/billions of years. In the last ice age, my/our ancestors were consigned to Ukraine/North Asia, while others were in North Africa etc. Others taking generations to migrate across the Atlantic to the Americas. :scratch: :scratch: :scratch:

I think that when our descendants came out of an ice age they would set off on the same journey to disaster again - a big merry-go-round. How many times has this happened in the past million or so years? :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

John

Another plus for global warming then??

[Talitha]

But we're talking billions of years here. We probably won't need spaceships by then. We'll probably think ourselves there or something equally bizzarre.

That's a very interesting thought!

We went from Kitty Hawk to the Moon in only 66 years... just imagine what we'll be capable of in another 20,000.

[Sam]

But we're talking billions of years here. We probably won't need spaceships by then. We'll probably think ourselves there or something equally bizzarre.

That's a very interesting thought!

We went from Kitty Hawk to the Moon in only 66 years... just imagine what we'll be capable of in another 20,000.

We'll still be arguing about how to get to Mars and there'll be door to door collections to keep the ISS up.