Putting Things in Perspective...


	Putting Things in Perspective...

CulturalEngineer

10-31-2009 1:09 AM

3465 views

tags:

science

CulturalEngineer says:

Keep expanding your frames of reference!

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/af0e2210-b3e4-4f62-aaf5-9589d02139a2/CA7BEBBD-0185-466C-A3C0-7B0684C7927D/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how_habitable_is_the_earth.html" href="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how_habitable_is_the_earth.html" style="font-size: 11px;">www.antipope.org</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how_habitable_is_the_earth.html"><H3>How habitable is the Earth?</H3></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how_habitable_is_the_earth.html">We are fine-tuned for survival on the Earth of this time frame. However, the Earth is a lot more than 200 kiloyears (Ky) old; the surface formed roughly  4.6 Gy ago (gigayears — 1Gy = 1,000,000,000 years).</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how_habitable_is_the_earth.html"><P>The upshot is, we may well be most of the way through the Earth's inhabitable epoch. In which case, of the 4 Gy remaining, we may have 0.3 — 1 Gy to go with an oxygen-dominated atmosphere and water close to its <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_point">triple point</A> — the minimum necessary critera for human survival on a planetary surface.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how_habitable_is_the_earth.html">The point is this: <EM>we are finely tuned survival machines that have evolved to survive in a niche on one particular planet in one particular epoch</EM>. Even our <EM>own</EM> planet is unimaginably hostile to our kind of life for most of its history. And while survival outside that niche is possible with the assistance of a horrendously complex toolkit we call "civilization", we've yet to try it somewhere where we can't count on the basics (free oxygen and triple point water). </blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/CA7BEBBD-0185-466C-A3C0-7B0684C7927D/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content7.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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