RE: Will we, Can we, ever become martians?
February 18, 2019 at 12:50 am
(This post was last modified: February 18, 2019 at 12:55 am by Anomalocaris.)
One common misconception is if we find another planet, and somehow find a way to live on it for a while, we will eventually be able to locate most of the minerals. ores and other basic raw materials locally and thus be able to replicate the fundamentals of a technological civilizations in microcosm.
This is a subtle but fundamentally wrong assumption.
Modern mineralogy has identified about 5000 different minerals on earth. Detailed investigation of the the chemical properties of the minerals and the conditions under which they could have formed indicates over 80% of them requires non-stable chemical environment somewhere along their formation process that could only be sustained through life. Either because life creates an atmospheric composition that directly, or through atmospheric gases dissolved in water, facilitate their formation, or life creates a chemical condition in air or water that protects the minerals from being destroyed quickly after formation, or created conditions that would have prevented the formation of alternative minerals that would otherwise have been chemically much more favored to form out of the same material and thus robbed our mineral the chance to form. In other words, in the absence of influences of sizeable presence of life, only 400 or so of the 5000 minerals we have on earth can ever form. Such vital minerals as hematite and magnetite, upon human civilization relies on essentially all of its basic need for iron, can not form in the first place without life on earth sustaining a chemically highly unstable molecular oxygen rich atmospheric composition on our planet. In fact most of the economically important minerals on earth can not have formed on any earth that hosted no life prior to our arrival.
Since mars is such a hostile world, it will be many millennia before it can be terraformed enough for humans to survive on its surface without a massive technological infrastructure.
Mars would not be able to support any massive independent technological infrastructure because mineral ores upon which any technological civilization require for key raw materials such as semiconductors likely simply arn’t There.
So for millennia, human habitate on mars will require sustained contact with earth for vital raw material input.
So far millennia, humans on mars can not be isolated from earth and still live long.
This is a subtle but fundamentally wrong assumption.
Modern mineralogy has identified about 5000 different minerals on earth. Detailed investigation of the the chemical properties of the minerals and the conditions under which they could have formed indicates over 80% of them requires non-stable chemical environment somewhere along their formation process that could only be sustained through life. Either because life creates an atmospheric composition that directly, or through atmospheric gases dissolved in water, facilitate their formation, or life creates a chemical condition in air or water that protects the minerals from being destroyed quickly after formation, or created conditions that would have prevented the formation of alternative minerals that would otherwise have been chemically much more favored to form out of the same material and thus robbed our mineral the chance to form. In other words, in the absence of influences of sizeable presence of life, only 400 or so of the 5000 minerals we have on earth can ever form. Such vital minerals as hematite and magnetite, upon human civilization relies on essentially all of its basic need for iron, can not form in the first place without life on earth sustaining a chemically highly unstable molecular oxygen rich atmospheric composition on our planet. In fact most of the economically important minerals on earth can not have formed on any earth that hosted no life prior to our arrival.
Since mars is such a hostile world, it will be many millennia before it can be terraformed enough for humans to survive on its surface without a massive technological infrastructure.
Mars would not be able to support any massive independent technological infrastructure because mineral ores upon which any technological civilization require for key raw materials such as semiconductors likely simply arn’t There.
So for millennia, human habitate on mars will require sustained contact with earth for vital raw material input.
So far millennia, humans on mars can not be isolated from earth and still live long.
