Homework Assignment 14

Question 1)

Part A)

The Leonid shower tonight, or some other planet, moon, or other astronomical phenomenon

I found an interesting article on ALH84001. It is a meteor that scientists believe originated from Mars. This meteor might hold the crucial evidence we need to find out one of life's greatest mysteries. So after reading this article, I believe we should " check out" Mars. It is very close by(relative to how enormous space is). We need to do more then just send rovers there. I would like to see a manned mission to Mars. This will be the ultimate test to whether or not this planet holds life. The most compelling information about this excerpt is that many signs of life come just from a few millimeters of space rock. The signs of life that one might see from a meteor is not staggering unless you take into account of how probable the signs might show life to be. When these clues are very close in proximity it is encouraging for people who want to answer that big question. I personally believe that life finds a way to exist even in harsh environments. For example, the tube worms that live near the Ocean vents. They can withstand very high temperatures that scientist would not think is normally conducive to promoting life. Thus I believe simple microbial life exists in many places in the Universe.

"In 1996, a meteor was found in Allan Hills, Antarctica. Upon examination, it was discovered that this meteor, which is 4.5 billion years old, fell to the earth 13,000 years ago, and possibly contained evidence of life on Mars. Inside the meteor, along tiny cracks, scientists found evidence of what many believe to be ancient bacteria.There are four main clues which bring some scientists to this conclusion. One is that the meteorite is definitely of Martian origin and that it contains carbonate globules. The second is the presence of polycyclic aromatic compounds, which are complex organic molecules. The third piece of evidence is the presence of iron and other compounds which appear to be like those made by bacteria. The last, and perhaps most intriguing , is the pictures of the possible fossilized bacteria themselves. When taken separately, these pieces of evidence probably wouldn't amount to much. But what is compelling is that all of these pieces of evidence occur within millimeters of each other.
However, skeptics still remain. Some simply aren't sure, while others are certain that this meteorite contains no evidence of former life.. However, all agree that convincing evidence would contain proof that the fossils had cell walls, that the cells had been divided, and that chemicals more closely related to living organisms as we know them be found. And so, the debates continue. While these debates over ALH84001 occur, the science community continues its pursuit in finding signs of life, extant or extinct, on Mars."

provided from:
http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/search.html


Part B)

There are a few possibilities I could think of considering make a "new Earth" for humans to dwell on. The most probably and my favorite possibility is settling on the moon. Here we could harvest what scientists believe is an abundant source of Helium 3. Helium 3 or H3 is very uncommon Helium isotope on Earth. Scientists have synthetically made H3 and used it for cold fusion. With cold fusion H3 leaves very little by product and is almost 100% efficient. It has been postulated that there is enough H3 on the moon to power the Earth for 1000 years. If we had an energy source that abundant we could live on the moon for quite sometime. Energy is one of the biggest necessities for humans. If we had that much power just for the Moon we could perhaps create a thicker atmosphere for the moon. We could do this by pumping large amounts of certain chemicals in the moon's atmosphere in order to slowly make it similar to Earth. Once this is done we could transport water from Earth and start to grow plants. Another pro from using the Moon as a "new Earth" is the close promixity to Earth itself. One con is that the moon itself is not that big. We could not sustain as many people on the moon.

Question 2


I discussed the presentation with Dr. Berleant. I did not have time to create a class presentation due to the my extremely busy workload with Senior Design 2. I will be sending him a video of my presentation. I have decided to further my semester topic by further talking about present scientific and technological breakthroughs that are leading us towards trans-humanism. This will be place under the section of the
"Possible applications for trans-humanism..." . I will emphasize the point that transhumanism is already occurring on a small scale.

Wikipedia states that transhumanism is, "Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities. It can be argued that this mental and physical improvement already occurs. People use pace makers to regulate their heart beat. The pacemaker is a machine that we have integrated with the human body in order to promote physical health. This is just one example. We can also look at prosthetics. Many people who have lost limbs use prosthetics to aid them in walking. I recently read an article that stated some new prosthetics actually make some people run more efficiently then normal humans with no prosthetics. This article was written in relation to the debate about whether or not "disabled" humans can compete in "non-disabled" humans competitions, e.g. races. People also use blue ray headsets to talk to people. This can be seen as an early version of a phone that we will be able to be implanted into the ear. People are already getting hearing aids made for them and this progression will lead to hearing aids better then the most able human can hear. Many people also use contacts,. Perhaps one day contacts will be "machined". We could then look at things in night vision and perhaps zoom in on far away objects. Scientists have been recently doing studies with using brain waves to control video games. Perhaps these brain waves can be projected so that humans could wear a headset and control many electronic devices around them without even touching them.

In conclusion I will state that the earliest form of transhumanism is already here. In the future we will see a more full extent of transhumanism that will lead us to the new version of man known as homo evolutis. I believe stating this will show that tranhumanism is not a theory but a fact that will become more apparent with the more technology we use to aid our mental and physical capacities.