Do We Live on a Teraformed Planet?

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Following the theme of my thread asking if we live in a simulated universe, this is another question I grapple with a lot. Do we live on a Teraformed Planet?

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You seem to be grappling with the question of Intelligent Design. Does the idea that order can come about by chance bother you?

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Life in the cosmos will spread much more quickly if life is seeded on planets rather than waiting billions of years for the right environmental circumstances to create a suitable environment.

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Given the statistical probabilities for it, life is likely to be ubiquitous wherever conditions for its existence are optimal. However, the movement of intelligent complex organisms from one planet to another presents adaptation problems that will be extremely difficult to overcome.

For example, an astronaut who weighs 200 pounds on earth would hit the scale at only 76 pounds on Mars. This doesn't sound like a problem until you consider that low gravity causes extreme health problems over time.

Both American and Russian manned space missions have shown that the long term effects of microgravity are loss of bone and muscle mass and a host of other health problems that could escalate to life endangerment over time.

Also, the size of Mars makes it an unlikely candidate for terraforming. Its gravity isn't strong enough to hold a thick atmosphere and it doesn't have a magnetic field that would protect organisms on its surface from the sun's harmful radiation, among other limitations.

At best, Mars will be a planet where humans visit and exploit any minerals or other resources that might be worth mining. As a permanent home it's severely lacking.

And despite all of this, they are, in fact, working on plans to transform the Martian atmosphere into one that will sustain humans.

I appreciate the post, but it still misses the point.

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Does the idea that order can come about by chance bother you?

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I think it all comes down to this.

The idea that someone/thing altered Earth to make it better suited for Human and other life is built around the basic idea that "Look how perfect our planet is! It must have been designed this way"...but if things were a little different, 20 degrees cooler for example, things would still be perfect , we just would have evolved to fit those conditions.

...and if things were REALLY different to the point of not being able to support Human or other life we obviously wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Some portion of the billions of planets in the Universe will be able to support life and Earth just happens to be one of them. Earth wasn't specially developed to support life, rather life developed specially to be able to thrive on Earth.

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question of Intelligent Design

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Well there is a theory existing alongside of Intelligent Design that does deserve some debate, particularly as regards Earth being a "terraformed" planet.

That is the theory of Incompetent Design. This theory is that the Earth was created for humanity, but the creator in question was extremely bad at their job.

The majority of the planet is covered with water that we can't even drink without substantial filtration. The land masses where we can live are subject to a great many environmental disasters that can adversely impact human beings. Even sunlight is capable of producing cancers in humanity.

Or, perhaps, the creator in question is merely sadistic, much like a Sims player who will wall off a Sim in a room and wait for them to pee themselves.

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That is the theory of Incompetent Design.

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I got the cosmic short straw as it were. White skinned, blonde hair, blue eyes.

I'm probably 1/4 alien.

Oh, I'd go so far as to say you're 3/4. That buzz you're rocking can be heard through the internet, man.

Sober as a priest currently.
Not for long though.

There is no evidence that Earth was ever terraformed. Terraforming would be unwise to attempt on a planet with Earth's plate tectonics as it would be unlikely to last long enough in geologic terms to make the investment worthwile.

There is some evidence that Earth hadoptimal climate for a period before the uplifting of the Central American plate around 65 MY ago. There were no polar ice caps fir instance. But then an asteroid struck the Earth and the climate has been unstable ever since.

What I mean was that it was unlikely that the planet was terraformed which would have removed the oceans. And that at some later time the oceans formed. There is no process by which that could have occurred, that would not have left tell tale traces.

Suppose you wanted to terraform a planet- or ultraform it for optimal conditions- you wouldn't want to waste all the space in the habisphere of a planet that is taken up by oceans. 99% of the ocean is completely devoid of life as the bulk of sea life lives in a zone that ends about 100 feet deep.

You would have lakes, rivers, and maybe seas to help regulate climate but oceans would be empty space. I doubt that anyone tried to terraform Earth because, before the last Ice Age over 75% of the planet's surface was underwater.

That movie was Prometheus BTW. And spilling your DNA on a lifeless world would not work. Think how long your DNA lasts without you around. The DNA- which is just a chemically based series of instructions- needs to be inserted in to a viable medium to work, just as in cloning.

If this was all it took to start life then horrible creatures would be crawling out of every river and lake on a daily basis.