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  Harbeas1 year, 2 months ago

  I am not sure what this person is trying to say. How can you compare liquid methane to water? They both react differently to the same stimuli and the temperatures are so different how can you make any kind of a comparison?

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  buckncindykill1 year, 2 months ago

  Wait a second.......I've been watching the mission very closely now for a couple of years, and the general pervasive attitude was that Titan is a glimpse of how the earth may have formed. Now the story line is, looking at Titan is "seeing" earth's future?

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  KSUmarksman1 year, 2 months ago

  I think the general idea is that when the sun matures like stars are believed to do it will become larger and hotter, the Earth's water will see a similar fate as Titan's methane (become mostly vapor).

  By the time that this happens to the sun, none of us will be around to see it and our descendants will colonize space...unless they destroy each other first.

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    sotiris-k1 year, 2 months ago

    Yes thats the idea. Sun changes over time (that time being in the range of bil years) and the energy balance on the surface of the planet changes too finding a new local equilibrium (more like a dynamic equilibrium that has very long characteristic change time so viewed as equilibrium) .In fact this is what most people ignoring global warming are missing. The fact that the atmosphere is an evolving system (clearly a diff. topic that can have a lot faster development time). It was very different in the past because the balance and the composition of ot were different . The analogy with water i suppose is that of a solvent. Clearly liquid methane and water are very different but they are both liquids and some physical properties will be similar when you consider solutions of other chemicals in them. One needs to study solutions of chemicals using methane vs those with water to see how different the reactions progress to see relations in fact differences better.

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      sotiris-k1 year, 2 months ago

      The article is highly speculative. I personally doubt its proper to say this is the future. The future can be anticipated with some degree of certainty only in the very short term or with significantly decent approx. in the absence of intelligent life if chaos theory allows strange attractor predictions. Mankind has exponential growth by the time 1 mil years has elapsed (and this claimed would take billions) we will control entirely the solar system's fate. In my mind we are clearly very close to a substantial technological sigularity some say 50 years maybe more but clearly no more than a few centuries from a point in time we dramatically enginner our brain and create superior intelligence that will further accelerate techological innovation. Within centuries we will not only control the energy flow in solar system but also fast travel ,colonization and ultimate control of the planet's climate future etc even that of the sun.

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        sotiris-k1 year, 2 months ago

        The last 10k years on this planet are a insane vertical explosion boom. An observer in orbit with enough lifespan would experience a totally unbelievable change in activity at surface which is probably the result of a mature phase of any intelligent life. Even if you observe things at scale of 400yrs its unbelievable how much we have learned. This thing is rapidly getting to unbelievable places. Visualize a world of plenty of energy, total biological control, fast transfer, very large scale tech., artifitial intelliegence everywhere etc. Its impossible to see where this is going but you can speculate it will invole a dramatic control over nature (although nature is also us). The transformation will be insane in only a few centuries. And this is why its extremelly important to get it together as planet in terms of peace, environment , social justice , education etc in order to allow us time to reach the singularity safely not to mess it all up just before it happens.

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  alvinwriter1 year, 1 month ago

  It doesn't really matter if Titan is a model for the Earth's future or past. What's really important is that Titan may have life. More on the search for life on Titan here: http://www.thenewsroom.com/details/474923/Science and Technology?c_id=wom-bc-ar

  - Alvin from The Sci-Tech Desk at TheNewsRoom.com

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