As a part of ongoing expansion of this channel I would like to introduce a weekly discussion, whose intent is to ‘converse’ a particular topic. The topics themselves may be many and varied, but the intention is to lean towards the scintillating where possible, and at very least the downright interesting, we may occasionally dabbleinthedaft, or speak in hushedwhispers about aliens and reptiles.
Where ever the journey takes us we shall endeavour to bring you a weekly break-down roughly fitting the ideology framed above, the context would usually be set by this channel, and the ‘main responders’ will respond to the context provided in a discussion held over 4 days.
Each response is of course open for further discussion and voting by the community, and may even sway the opinions of the responders, regardless, the responders will do their best to stay true to their ‘determined stance’.
Please be advised that there is some planning that goes into the topics, and that specific points used in responses may attempt to encapsulate a range of views, there may too of course be ‘comic jabs/satire’ from time to time. Though we may occasionally offend, our intention is primarily intellectual, with a sprinkle of humour, and quite likely our fair share of inaccuracies on stances, experiences, and perceptions.
Our intention is never to cause hurt or harm.
We start off this week with a rather mild topic, in general the intention would be to initially release the topic on a Sunday evening. though I'm sure there may be some ‘fashoinably late’ posts on occasion.
Without further ado today’s context:
The Mariana Trench, that frontier, so much closer than the final frontier, and yet to some extent less explored; well, it used to be.
In case you missed it ‘we’ have now been mostly to the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean.
There has been a fair amount of exploration of the Trench, which lies some 200 miles off the coast of Guam. The specific area in question is called Challenger Deep, which is a rift some 11km deep.
One of the most recent (and deepest) visits has been a series of Challenger subs funded by National Geographic and Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron.
Some regard James Cameron as highly privileged or utterly mad to have wanted to do this, and yes he went alone in a tiny sub into this place which has been out of humanities reach for the 10 000 years of our ’somewhat modern’ evolution.
Naturally the sub was armed to the teeth with lights and cameras, and fortunately there was indeed some action to capture. The footage was shot in full 3D which is really awesome, however that footage is currently very much under lock and key due to National Geographic naturally wanting to keep that footage to themselves while they cut a feature length documentary. (no doubt with some ‘directorship’ in tow thanks to Mr. Cameron)
So we know some stuff, but not all of it currently, however, it would appear firstly that Cameron did not come eye to eye with Kthulu’s beast, as he reportedly returned ‘mostly sane’, so no mega giga monster down there then.
All in all exploration took place over around 3 hours with a touch down depth of 10 808 m, I do think that during that time something interesting must have been seen, so I’m sure with that kind of speculation that the documentary will do just fine on release.
There are some quite interesting findings that we do know of already though. For instance soil samples were unexpectedly rich with life, primarily ‘soft shelled’ single celled bacteria.
Oh and a now named 'snailfish', he's quite a cute guy once you get to know him. Perfectly adapted for the deeps, he presumably feeds on invertebrates 'raining down' the rolling sides of the trench. He is recorded to have been seen at a depth of over 8000m.
Cameron described the experience akin to ‘walking on another world’ and in a way it really is, not least due to sheer inaccessibility and utter alien conditions.
As exciting as the prospect of viewing the footage is, I’d like to nudge the line of questioning down a particular line.
Please discuss what are the implications if any from these findings. Of particular interest to me is whether this in anyway expands our understandings of ‘life itself'?
First Up will be Nomad: @your-nomad-soul , there after @DigitalPnut shall reply.
On the weekend a short podcast will be released featuring a discussion on this topic.
All steemians may feel generally free to rustle their SBD in our general direction, without having to actually give any of it away! We hope you shall support us, and more importantly, enjoy the journey and the content.
For me, I would have to start my response to this here discovery of fishies in the Deep Dark Deep by stating that the Universe gives not the tiniest consideration to how we think it works. Which is why we're always surprised by it.
Over the last few orbits around ol' Sunny Sun Sun out there in the Big Dark Bigness called Space, we've come to realize that our cocky assertions that "Life" requires so many special circumstances that Fermi must be right in his paradox, was (too put it mildly) a bit on the silly side.
First, we keep finding living organisms in places that we're sure there will be none. And so we have to keep going back to those "special" circumstances and make them less special. For my part, I think it would be simplest to say that all "life" needs is enough atoms close enough together that they start dancing with each other. Or, put another way - mass and charge in particular molecular structures give rise to behaviours that us monkeys-in-shoes have decided to call "life". Except viruses - those fuckers are the undead.
Second, if we do find life on other planets and moons (Mars and Europa and those other Sci-Fi darlings are where we're hoping to say "take me to your apex predator, so we can cut it up for answers") it is most likely to be the squishy, slimy sort... Instead of green Zoe Saldanas.
Thirdly, goddamn Tardigrades dude.... Those little bastards will outlive the cockroaches and the death of our Sunny Sun Sun if we give them a chance (we won't, because we're humans and we like to wipe shit out. 'Coz reasons).
Basically, extremophilic organisms are so crazy good at being exactly where we think they shouldn't be, that most of the time, it just makes the smart apes look stupid.
But we're still the only ones on this planet with nukes, so I guess we still make the rules that we keep arguing over.
Ahh yes, nice concept here. New Years have concepts too, how's fortnightly sounding? :'D ;-)
Okay. Just here to try this out so wish us luck ;)
I find the above topic interesting because it speaks to the extremes at which life can exist. In doing a brief search for 'highest living life-forms' (atmospherically high... please); I was not surprised to see information pertaining to the possibility of upper atmosphere microbes, and ultimately not too surprised at sulphur cave bacteria, or volcanic vent bacteria.
Essentially, I've made peace with the what seems to be an 'inexplicably potent tendancy' for life to want to exist, here. By here I mean earth.
Yet a very small distance away from 'here', about the smallest possible 'astronomical pebbles' nudge' away, there is a 'space' deemed near utterly devoid of life.
And then the question of life's locally observed 'virility' applying to a place 'not so local'?
Could a resistant silicone based life form not exist around its same cloistered undersea vent. For context I'm assuming a planet and atmosphere energetic enough to have a rock 'precipitation cycle' the reason for this being that its context is so utterly different to ours that we instinctively know very little from 'this local emergence of life' could survive there.
But beneath ashen clouds, bolts of mile wide red lightning, rock literally raining from the loudest of heavens into a molten (rock) sea, beneath all that, could not a simple silicone based lifeform begin to be born around the lip of a vent....
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