SpaceX begins hunt for Starship landing sites on Mars
In the August image release from the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) were five images whose title immediately caught my interest:
- 1. Candidate Landing Site for SpaceX Starship in Arcadia Region
- 2. Candidate Landing Site for SpaceX Starship in Arcadia Region
- 3. Candidate Landing Site for SpaceX Starship in Arcadia Region
- 4. Candidate Landing Site for SpaceX Starship in Arcadia Region
- 5. Candidate Landing Site for SpaceX Starship in Arcadia Region
The overview map on the right shows the location on Mars for these five photographs. The second and third images are of the same location, taken to produce a stereo pair.
To put it mildly, it is most intriguing to discover that SpaceX is beginning to research a place where it can land Starship on Mars. I immediately emailed Nathan Williams, the JPL scientist who requested these images from SpaceX, but he was bound by a non-disclosure agreement with SpaceX and could not comment. I have since tried to get some information directly from SpaceX but so far the company has not responded. A 2017 news story had indicated the company’s interest in this Mars’ location, but gave no details either.
Based on what we now know of Mars, however, it is possible to figure out why they favor this location, on the border between the two large northern lowland plains Arcadia and Amazonis Planitia.
Click for full image.
First and foremost, there is strong evidence that this location holds buried glaciers called lobate debris aprons. The hilly arc where site #1 is nestled, dubbed Erebus Montes, apparently is filled with these kinds of glaciers, according to this global Martian map of glacier locations (shown as the yellow arc near the left edge in the northern glacial band).
Site #1 appears to be this kind of glacier, though the feature is not very dramatic. To the right are images of a very nearby but more distinct lobate debris apron glacier, located just to the east of Site #1. The top image, reduced and cropped to post here, shows the southern half of this mound. The white box indicates the location of the full resolution close-up below, showing what appear to be glacial erosion features.
Compare this glacier with this buried Martian glacier image I posted last week. Though that earlier image was for a different type of Martian buried glacier, dubbed concentric crater fill because they are found inside craters, the erosion features look remarkably similar, both reminding me of the surface of a large ice block after you have sprayed it with warm water and it begins to melt away unevenly.
The evidence that SpaceX is looking for locations near buried glaciers is further reinforced by the fact that all the locations above are inside the northern 30-60 degree latitude band where Martian glaciers are thought to exist in abundance, either as lobate aprons or concentric crater glaciers.
These locations have other advantages. They are all at about 40 degrees latitude, meaning their climate will be relatively mild, for Mars. The terrain for site #5 is very flat, making for a very safe landing zone that is also very close to the debris aprons at the other sites.
There is also other evidence of buried ground ice at these sites. In fact, planetary scientists have already proposed this location [pdf] as a significant site for exploration, because the ground water here might be shallow. To quote from this presentation: “Easy access to subsurface ice means that it should be easy to sample.”
Based on the pace that SpaceX sets in anything it does, expect their research of this location to accelerate in the next year or so. Unlike NASA, SpaceX is building a vehicle that is designed to go and land anywhere in the solar system. Once Super Heavy and Starship are operational and proven in those first lunar flights there will be nothing to stop it from going to Mars, if only to demonstrate what the design is capable of.
And based on their pace, expect this possibility sometime in the next decade.
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Given Elon’s interest in terraforming, I’m a little surprised that he’s looking at real estate that would (hopefully) end up underwater.
I wonder, though, if he has anybody at Tesla working on designs for an RV-sized rover, powered either by panels+batteries or (even better) Kilopower. A couple of those (two is one, one is none) would provide more than enough range to keep multiple crews busy.
https://www.universetoday.com/93059/large-amounts-of-water-ice-found-underground-on-mars/amp/
This is the map which explains their interest in this area. Being right next to some hills might be useful from a resource standpoint too.
DougSpace: That map is only one piece of evidence, and in fact I would guess it is a very minor one, as the map’s resolution is very poor. What it does however is strengthen the belief, based on a lot of other data, that this location has water ice, and that these features are likely buried glaciers.
Also, that location is the high water ice area closest to the locations which passengers would want to travel to see (Olympus Mons, Tharsus, & more distant, Valles Marinares).
DougSpace: Actually, there are many more water ice areas that are much closer to Olympus Mons, Tharsus, and Valles Marineris. See the global glacier map at the top of my article, The glaciers of Mars.
What makes this location appealing I think is the combination of easily accessible water, a flat region that makes for a safe landing, and (most important) a region that is very far from all other previous or planned landing sites. See the map at this BtB post, Present and future landing sites on Mars.
Arcadia? Why not just land on Duran Duran? I hope they bring a large Power Station as well.
Nuts! They need to go big or go home. Land in Olympus Mons! ?
A. Nonymous wrote: “Given Elon’s interest in terraforming, I’m a little surprised that he’s looking at real estate that would (hopefully) end up underwater.”
I have long pondered the advantages to starting a colony in low-lying areas over the disadvantage of it becoming the Martian Atlantis by the time terraforming is complete. For instance, a colony in a lower area gives Starship a little more atmosphere for slowing down and landing. Should terraforming become a problem for the early colonies, then they can be abandoned in favor of later ones that are built on higher ground. Presumably the higher colonies would be more popular once terraforming begins, so the lower ones may not grow too large — sort of like a Martian equivalent of flooding a town in order to make a reservoir on Earth.
I suspect that SpaceX is looking at the short-term goal of getting to the surface in order to begin exploration, and intends to start long-term colonies in higher ground as the company learns to land in the thinner atmosphere. It may be more like Apollo 11’s landing site. It was not the most desirable for the scientists, but it was relatively safe and it got the job done. Later landings were more serious about the science.
MrSatyre,
Excellent suggestion. To paraphrase the song, if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere.
Regarding landing in the lower elevations, they may be under water after a century or two of Terraforming. But they may also reach the Armstrong Limit a century before the higher elevations. Think big, dicey comets from the asteroid belt burning up in the presently thin Martian atmosphere and a whole lot of greenhouse gas emissions from Martian power plants. Water vapor is a poor greenhouse gas but a lot of it will do part of the job.
Mars wouldn’t have to be warmed too much to get liquid water on the surface, eventually the oceans would melt, since there’s probably subsurface ice over much of the planet such a big melt would leave the stability of land everywhere (except perhaps in the equatorial belt). Obviously the solution is to float the colony on the earliest forming ocean. Don’t fear, Elon’s got it all planned.
This is a good-faith question about terraforming Mars.
It’s believed that Mars lost most of its atmosphere because it lacks a magnetic field to ward off the scouring effects of the solar wind.
If true, how would terraforming be possible, if convection and winds sent the human-added atmosphere upwards to be blown away? Seems like the process could never end, and if that’s true, where will the materials and energy come from to emit trillions of tons of gases and vapors into the Mars atmosphere?
I’ve read somewhere that people have claimed an artificial magnetic field could be created. Anyone know anything about that?
I’ve also seen articles pointing out the prevalence of perchlorates in Martian sands and soils, a chemical that would have to be removed in order for plants to grow. Whole lotta energy needed to do that as well.
Jay Elink asked: “If true, how would terraforming be possible, if convection and winds sent the human-added atmosphere upwards to be blown away?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars
The loss of the atmosphere is a slow process, relative to terraforming. Mars could remain relatively terraformed for millions of years. The materials would come from Mars itself, water from below the surface and from the poles, and the CO2 from the poles would add to the pressure of the atmosphere
We cannot make Mars Earth-like with the materials at Mars, and bringing more materials from asteroids would be expensive, and maybe we could keep up with the loss of atmosphere or add to it, if we find a way to keep what we have. The atmosphere would not become as thick as Earth’s and would not be breathable, but it could become thick enough to make a pressure suit unnecessary.
One way to terraform would be to put biological units (e.g. bacteria) on the surface to transform what is there into a better atmosphere and to make the soil better for plants. There are ideas of melting the poles using something like dust that captures the sun’s warmth and melts the polar caps.
It is a fascinating topic, and when we have terraformed a planet then we will know more about how to do it.
Parking under the clouds by arsia mons might be a good idea. Could send up tethered balloon to condense the frosty clouds for water. Rather than from frozen mud. Less filtering needed. Clouds might add just a little extra protection from radiation. If there’s clouds there now. In the future if humans make a go of it. Would imagine it would be one of the first places it would rain there. Entry through the atmosphere might be more ideal through the clouds, than not going through clouds. Slightly more drag.
Mat: Have some fun: Do a search on Behind the Black for “Arsia Mons.” You will have a lot of cool stuff to read.
Even as the diehard optimist I am, any talk of terraforming is beyond premature, for the record. I’m mostly just surprised they’re already so confident Starship will work that they’re scouting out possible landing sites already.
What might have been overlooked so far, especially with the new pictures is the most obvious fact: all sites are roughly in one line meaning that geologists will be able to interpolate a transect as well as isopach maps for ice deposits and the like based on estimates derived from the analysis of the individual pictures. I would not be surprised if a perpendicular transect is later added.
Geologist: Stay tuned. I will have an update on these SpaceX Starship landing images, probably next week.
Musk’s potential misconception
Elon Musk argues that his plans for colonizing Mars are necessary in order to increase the chance that human consciousness, which he assumes as unique and which has emerged from physical world in his theory, will not pass away with the feared demise of humans on Earth, because it is preserved on Mars.
But maybe Elon is wrong on this point several times. It is not only very unlikely that conscious beings have emerged only once in the entire Universe and on the other hand – more important – it is just as possible that consciousness is not created in or by human brain, but it is in sharp contrast it existed already before brain’s creation, because it manifest the basic substance (or basic reality) of all what exists (or of Cosmos). That what appears to us as material is only secondary and derived from consciousness.
I added below some links, in which Dr. Don Hoffman presents this unique theory that consciousness is the fundamental reality, which he tries to prove also scientifically by help of mathematical models. I assume that he is on the right track.
Musk’s problem would vanish, and the need of Mars’ colonization, if Dr. Hoffman is right, because consciousness would not go out of existence with the disappearance of man, because in his theory man represents only a small local, temporary special form from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6-Q6seVViU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HFFr0-ybg0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv25EcaUQBo
Questioner,
One would have thought that SETI’s (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Allen Telescope Array (radio telescopes) would have found some sign of a signal that could not have been naturally created.
Where are all the aliens?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaIghx4QRN4 (13 minutes)
If Earth is the only place that life has formed, then SETI is futile.
If Earth is the only place that intelligence has formed, then SETI is futile.
If intelligence has formed elsewhere but has a non-interference directive, Star Trek style, then SETI is futile.
If intelligence has formed elsewhere but does not use radio for communication, then SETI is futile.
If intelligence has formed elsewhere but is hiding, purposefully or not, then SETI is futile.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a big fan of SETI. They still have a chance of finding something that we didn’t expect.
Edward:
I cannot solve Fermi’s paradox here, but if you ask me for my personal opinion on the subject, then I believe, considering the results of exploring extrasolar planets so far, that such intelligent life form as it exists on Earth is perhaps very rare in a whole galaxy. Maybe just a handful of it at one moment of time, or maybe we are currently alone in the Milky Way, or at least within a radius where SETI can search (several thousands of light years?).
However, we know about the existence of hundreds of billions of galaxies, so that it seems probably then intelligent life in total exists in large numbers, even if we never be able to discover it, or to communicate with it or even fly to it.
By the way, what do you think of Dr. Hoffman’s revolutionary theory?
Edward:
I would like to add something to my last comment in context with an alternative explanation of your SETI problem. It might be the case that alien creatures do not experience space and time as we do, if at all then very different. This option could make communication with them very difficult or even not possible. Dr. Hoffman says something to this idea in the linked video (it starts about at 1 h: 25 min).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqD-HBDqCC4&t=897s
Questioner/Edward–
interesting back-n-forth.
–I’ll bring up something to consider;
Earth (collectively so to speak) started radiating radio-waves on a large scale in the 1920’s, followed by large scale television broadcasting after WW-2. We’ve basically announced our presence by emanating non-natural EM radiation, out to a spherical range of, what…say 50 light years certain. (the aliens can’t watch I Love Lucy, but they could detect the carrier signals)
Currently however, the number of radio & television stations that broadcast on high-power (recall, we used to have 500,000 watt AM Stations) is rapidly diminishing. From an “out-there” perspective, it may very well be that we will soon appear to have stopped-broadcasting and “disappeared” from the landscape after a relatively brief period of time.
On a more general note– the density of stars in our own galaxy equates to roughly 1 star-system every 4-5 light-years. If we’re taking a Vote–I’d go with concentrating only on star-systems in our immediate neighborhood.
pivoting—
interesting talk by Dr. Drake reflecting on his equation.
Estimating the Chances of Life Out There
Dr. Frank Drake
Silicon Valley Astronomy lecture
February 2013
https://youtu.be/mucWk4zjSBU
1:14:32
(tangentially– the Silicon Valley Astronomy folks have some excellent public lectures, and their new season starts fairly soon. All the past lectures are archived and gems for the most part.)
Questioner,
You asked: “By the way, what do you think of Dr. Hoffman’s revolutionary theory?”
I think that I do not fully understand his theory. Consciousness and perception are how we each deal with the reality around us, but the actual reality is still the same for all. Just because you are not conscious of the existence of my friend Leslie does not mean that she does not exist. She does not exist in the world you perceive, but she exists in the world I perceive. She will continue to exist in my world even after her demise, until someone informs me of her unfortunate loss. Just because she still lives in my mind does not change the fact that she stopped living in the real world.
If we should be looking outside of space and time for extraterrestrial intelligence, then we probably do not understand intelligence.
In the last (fourth) video, he suggested, at one point, that artificial intelligence (a conscious non-living thing, not the curve-fitting machines that we have today) could be the extraterrestrial intelligence that we seek. If we create an artificial intelligence, then it is not particularly extraterrestrial; it will only have been created in a different manner than the living intelligences that are terrestrial — the intelligences that we already know.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is not the search for extraterrestrial life. We could find that within our own solar system (still extraterrestrial), but it would most likely be single cells or viruses that can self replicate (imagine that!).
From what I understand of Dr. Hoffman’s theory, we are not looking for anything like what he describes, but we are looking for other life forms that evolved (or were seeded) in a way similar to ourselves. Whether that is common or rare is still a good question. It could be that we do not find ET because of a limited imagination that intelligence will use radio frequency communication rather than some better phenomenon still unknown to us.
Edward:
Here is my understanding and summary. You missed some major and most important issues of this theory. It is not about that only the content of consciousness is the ultimate or objective reality.
[Remark: As a beginner in this field, I am just beginning to gain insight into his unusual approach. Please, review Dr. Hoffman’ videos in depth, step into it and correct me if you like or add your interpretation of his new theory.]
Our (subjective) reality is the content of our consciousness. That is all what we have. Our mind creates actively this content (as a result of our biological evolution) from sensorial inputs as a kind of artificial reality. As said this artificial created world exists only in our consciousness. It was not created by evolution to represent truth (or the objective reality), but to ensure fitness, survival and procreation of species by means of an artificial reality, which does not equal to the ultimate reality. That was already proven by Dr. Hoffman by scientific methods. He goes even further and says: Space and time (and all other physical entities within) exist only in our conscious perception and only there. Physical world (including space and time) is therefore not the ultimate reality.
There is another deeper layer according to his theory from which physical world is produced in our consciousness. This ultimate reality is a vast social network (data structure?) of conscious agents, which are interacting with each other.
My interpretation of the SETI problem based on Dr. Hoffman’s theory:
Different biological creatures produce different representations (“artificial realities”) of this objective reality (=network of consciousness agents), which may differ very much from our own as man. They are more similar to ours if that creatures are more biological similar to us. Real alien creatures from other worlds (including intelligent/technological ones) may have – based on their own very different evolution – built up a very different artificial reality or physical world, which may even not contain our perception of space and time, which could make interaction or communication with them very difficult.
Some other related links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oadgHhdgRkI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUWaEwbLkzQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0HuGVZOvQ
Edward:
Here is my understanding and summary. You missed some major and most important issues and misinterpreted this or his theory. It is not about that only the content of consciousness is the ultimate or objective reality or that only your consciousness exists and nothing else. Dr. Hoffman is realist, because he believes that an ultimate, objective reality exists.
[Remark: As a beginner in this field, I am just beginning to gain insight into his unusual approach. Please, review Dr.
Hoffman’ videos in depth, step into it and correct me if you like or add your interpretation of his new theory.]
Our (subjective) reality is the content of our consciousness. That is all what we have. Our mind creates actively this content (as a result of our biological evolution) from sensorial inputs as a kind of artificial reality. As said this virtual created world exists only in our consciousness. It was not created by evolution to represent truth (or the objective reality), but to ensure fitness, survival and procreation of species by means of an artificial reality, which does not equal to the ultimate reality. That was already proven by Dr. Hoffman by scientific methods. He goes even further and says: Space and time (and all other physical entities within) exist only in our conscious perception and only there. Physical world (including space and time) is therefore not the ultimate reality.
There is another deeper layer according to his theory from which physical world is produced in our consciousness. This ultimate reality is a vast social network of conscious agents, which are interacting with each other and which are outside of space and time, which is created in our consciousness.
My interpretation of the SETI problem based on Dr. Hoffman’s theory:
Different biological creatures produce different representations (“virtual realities”) of this objective reality (=network of consciousness agents), which may differ very much from our own as man. They are more similar to ours if that creatures are more biological similar to us. Real alien creatures from other worlds (including intelligent/technological ones) may have – based on their own very different evolution – built up a very different virtual reality or physical world, which may even not contain our perception of space and time, which could make interaction or communication with them very difficult.
“Some Other Time” (animation)
Alan Parsons Project 1977
https://youtu.be/ECUfp0I0XLs
4:05
Questioner: Please do not double post if your comment does not appear immediately. If you include more than one link, the comment must be manually approved by me, and I will eventually get to it. Just have some patience.
Westworld –
“God, Devil and Man walks into a bar…”
https://youtu.be/3qD_La2F6bk
4:55
Edward:
Dr. Hoffman’s theory of a network of conscious agents, which establish ultimate reality, reminds me (as conception of reality) to universal genius Gottfried W. Leibniz’s monadology and to Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy. Ingenious A. N. Whitehead was influenced by Leibniz monadology philosophy. In both philosophies, basic or last elements of ultimate reality own properties of mind or consciousness (Leibniz’ s monads or Whitehead’s actual entities).
However, Dr. Hoffman goes beyond philosophical ideas, because he tries to establish a scientific, provable mathematical model for his theory, which have to include all major theories of the physical world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadology
https://www.iep.utm.edu/processp/
Wayne: Than you for video clips, which fits to the topic.
Questioner–
Again, great back-n-forth with Edward.
Great topic. I’m content to just listen to you guys and not weigh in for-or-against any specific thing.
>>Leibniz and Monads, wow-za!
Haven’t gone that deep & esoteric since Grad school– had an excellent class on the philosophical history of psychology. (although if I recall correctly—brief mention in a The Big Bang Theory episode.)
[I’m originally a Skinnerian behaviorist by training & personal bent, with an increasing bit of cognitive bent over the years. And concurrently anxiously hoping Dr. Roger Penrose will illuminate the biological substrates of consciousness via quantum processes.]
I’ll toss in an excellent Jordan Peterson clip, –has great animation– concentrate on his comments ref: the logos.
I Act As if God Exists
ft. Jordan Peterson/ JBPWAVE
https://youtu.be/SG7mKcIVvQQ
6:44
Sir Roger Penrose –
How can Consciousness Arise Within the Laws of Physics?
2017
https://youtu.be/h_VeDKVG7e0
42:34
Back to Mars…..
Watched a nice NASA film recently over the Summer–archival period piece on how the landing site for Apollo 11 was chosen. (given the state of knowledge and hardware at the time)
It would very interesting to compare & contrast that process with what SpaceX is doing in the here and now.
Musical interlude—
(just for fun)
Alan Watts –
It Takes Two⚡️?
Akira/Meaningwave
https://youtu.be/HVcSXKCXoHo
6:37
“The Buddhists in Japan call it jiji muge (事事无碍). Ji ji mu ge: “Between event and event, there is no block.” And they represent this, imagistically, as a network.
If a given star that we observe didn’t exist, you would be different from what you are now. I don’t say you wouldn’t exist, but you would exist differently. But you might say the connection is very faint, is something you don’t ordinarily have to think about, it’s not important. But basically, it is important, only you say, “I don’t have to think about it, because it’s there all the time.”
See, for example, the floor is underneath you all the time. Some sort of floor, some sort of earth, and you really don’t have to think about it—it’s just always there; it’s always around. If you become insensitive you stop thinking about it. But there it is. And so, in the same way, our subtle interdependence with—mind you, it’s not just our plain existence, it’s the kind of existence we have—is dependent upon all these things. Also our plain existence, but that gets way down. But the fundamental thing is: existence is relationship.”
{If one is into this sorta thing.}
(It could be turtles all the way down, so to speak. But that doesn’t get us anywhere does it?)
Wayne:
God exists. He is the mind (Logos) who has caused and is sustaining the Cosmos and our existence. I learned that God has a place in Leibniz’s and Whitehead’s philosophy. However, in contrast to Leibniz, Whitehead’s God does not equal to the Christian God. For example, his God is not almighty, but he establishes the future of the Cosmos. Process theology was derived from Whitehead’s process philosophy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uy30q3N8mA
Questioner,
You wrote: “You missed some major and most important issues of this theory.”
Probably not. I was recently asked to keep my writings short, and brevity causes a loss in translation.
I have long ago pondered reality and how it is different between each person and each species. Are we just figments of some being’s dreams? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we never hear anyone ask, “why is there nothing instead of something?” Actually, I had a cat that would look at his empty food dish and give me a look that asked that very question. Maybe cat’s are smarter than I give them credit for; after all, they invented the internet just to post videos about themselves.
Why are we more advanced than other species? Some say it is because we have an opposable thumb. I heard that it is because cooking our food releases nutrients that added to our brains, allowing for more comprehension of the world around us. Philosophy was not my strength, so the last time I really pondered something philosophical was while waiting for a flight, back in 1997: how much else of what we do is just waiting?
Waiting for a flight leads to waiting for the flight to end so that we can wait for the taxi ride to end so that we can wait in line at the hotel to check in and get our room so that we can wait for next day when we can start working the job that we flew across the country to do. Are we only reading and commenting on Behind the Black because we are waiting for dinner?
I gave it all up, because it really does not matter. How we perceive the world makes sense to each of us, and if that means that I live on the back of a tortoise and farm my land and that it is tortoises all the way down, or if I live on a disk that rests on the backs of four elephants, then that is OK for me. I live my life in ignorant bliss until I want to fly to the Moon or Aristotle changes how we see things. Then Aristotle’s view or the Church’s view works just fine until Galileo comes along and changes the nature of science as well as showing that Jupiter is the center of something, too. And it is fine that Newton creates Newtonian physics and fluxions (or was that Leibniz — and does it matter to the price of tea in China?). Since I view the world in spherical coordinates, why is it that I always map it out in Cartesian coordinates? Except when plotting a course to the Moon, where I start with a two-line element set.
Then we get Einstein and his general relativity so that instead of throwing a ball that travels in a curve, the ball travels in a straight line that is curved. (Wait — what?) Then there is quantum mechanics, which dredges up all kinds of other stuff that does not apply in the world we perceive, because does it really matter if the universe is stringy or loopy? By the way, don’t confuse Schrödinger’s equation with his cat. Every time we open the box, the equation is still alive; for the cat, we can’t be sure until we open the box.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oerZnryFxX0 (Schrödinger’s cat explained and an example used, in 3 minutes)
So, if you are a brilliant physicist, Schrödinger’s cat can answer simple questions. If you are a simple farm girl from Nebraska who regularly outsmarts that brilliant physicist, you can get answers without such complications in your life — so don’t ask the brilliant physicist.
In the meantime, society has further lost its collective mind and allows us to be whatever we identify as. For me, that is an agnostic major deity. This may seem a contradiction, but it merely means that I don’t have confidence in myself, and it explains why I have been able to perform miracles at work.
Since I would like for us to get to the Moon, I have had to give up on the tortoises all the way down and the elephants holding up the disk, so now I am just waiting for a company to start selling tickets to the Moon. Or waiting for dinner, whichever comes first.
There is no reality. We are actually amoebas (amoebae?) in a jar, being fed sensory input. Some deity’s middle-school science project.
Works as well as any :)
Rick and Morty –
Teenyverse (excerpt)
https://youtu.be/JtgQskSb4QY
2:35
[adult content]
2010: The Year We Make Contact: All These Worlds
“Lock confirmed on beacon-Tera-one, message commencing…”
https://youtu.be/0zKqAbfxFsQ
4:26
For all who still do not want to believe it, space-time is done or doomed, it’s not fundamental:
The End of Spacetime – Arkani-Hamed (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-C5RubqtRA
The Doom of Space Time: Why It Must Dissolve Into More Fundamental Structures|Arkani-Hamed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx98PUW6lE&t=879s
Space-Time Versus the Quantum
Dr. Joseph Polchinski
UC Santa Barbara 2014
https://youtu.be/ZawiZrYVWr4
59:23
Wayne:
Here is another famous scientist who supports the view that consciousness (and not matter or physical world) is the ultimate basic reality.
My Comment: We need a next scientific revolution that incorporates consciousness into our scientific systems and theories. Nothing else is Dr. Hoffman’s goal, which develops a mathematical model for describing consciousness. Incidentally, this does not mean that he knows the inner nature of consciousness, even he succeeds finally. He knows its inner nature as little as a physicist knows what energy or momentum are in themselves (intrinsic nature, “Ding an sich”).
Menas Kafatos – Does Consciousness Cause the Cosmos?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ2BBVyn4nk
Andi wrote: “There is no reality. We are actually amoebas (amoebae?) in a jar, being fed sensory input. Some deity’s middle-school science project. Works as well as any :)”
I prefer to think of the universe as a larger version of Sim City. We are all just Sims, until the “program” ends (perhaps that happens when we learn the nine billion names for God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God ).
But then again, we all perceive the world in different ways. Please excuse me a moment while I create another interstellar object and throw it at the solar system for those Earthlings to discover. They are so easily amused by them.
Questioner Noted: “Menas Kafatos – Does Consciousness Cause the Cosmos?”
From the video: “You can’t have a mind without a body; you can’t have a body without a mind.” Later, he compares a universe without a consciousness as a dead universe, so by similarity, if you have a body without a mind then it is a dead body. Therefore irrelevant.
Can there be consciousness without a cosmos for it to exist within? Kafatos said yes. If we take away the universe, consciousness still remains. This sounds very much like life after death (heaven, hell, or purgatory), except that Kafatos thinks of consciousness as being more than just personal self awareness but consciousness in general (perhaps God?).
Or as Aristotle phrased it: “I think, therefore the universe is.”
My takeaway from this discussion: if we don’t colonize Mars, can we explore the rest of the galaxy? If we don’t explore and colonize the rest of the galaxy (or socialize with its existing or future consciousnesses), can we explore the rest of the universe? If we don’t explore the rest of the universe, how do we find out about the role of consciousness in or around the universe?
These site considerations seem based on narrow high-latitude scans for ice. Since this was written, additional large ice formations have been found in the south of Amaoznis Planitia, which should expand the set of considered landing sites.
Scientific publication: https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL105490
Science news article: https://www.space.com/mars-water-ice-equator-frozen-ocean
Anthony Barker: I reported the results you cite in January 2024. However, the detection remains uncertain, but more important is the location of this ice. As I noted then:
On Mars, near-surface ice above 30 degrees latitude is found everywhere, and would be much easier for earlier explorers to access. See this two earlier posts for maps of the global distribution:
From 2019: A new map of the water ice on Mars
From 2023: A new global map of the near-surface ice on Mars
If it was up to me where to send Starship, I would do exactly what it appears SpaceX plans, go to the region in Acadia Planitia.