Send your name to Mars

[Karlos]

PMC wrote:
Actually, given that (IIRC - apologies for inaccuracy but I can't be arsed to google for exact timescales) the Pioneer & Voyager probes are expected to have a journey time of 50,000 years before they encounter another solar system, I think it's appropriate that they carry a message from the builders of the probes to the stars.  

In an optimistic future, manned FTL exploration would get there long before the probe got anywhere. Perhaps even recovered and put into a pre-starflight museum :-D

Also, 50,000 years in hard vacuum? I bet there'll be hardly anything left of them due to vacuum ablation by then...

[Karlos]

@odin

All substances have a vapour pressure. Put any material into a hard vacuum and some of it will 'evaporate', even at the sorts of extremely low temperatures these probes will be at. Metals are a lot more prone to this than covalently bonded macromolecular materials which are held together by strong, directional bonds.

The ablation proportion is tiny, but given there's no confining volume for it to reach equilibrium in, a sample of unprotected metal will slowly evaporate into the hard vacuum of interstellar space, thinning and weakening. Indeed, very slowly. But then again 50K years is a long time.

[Karlos]

X-ray wrote:
I should add that if they don't find life on Mars, they just need to leave his sock there for a few years and that peoblem will be fixed  :-P

I'd be quite surprised if there was no life on Mars. Given that we find chunks of Mars on Earth from ancient impacts and their subsequent ejecta, it's reasonable to assume that there would at least a few rare chunks of Earth on Mars.

We are finding life in the most inhospitable places on Earth, tough little microorganisms that can take all the heat, cold, acid, alkali, oxygen, lack of oxygen, radiation etc the environment can throw at them and yet they still adapt and thrive. I've no doubt that some deep depressions on Mars (think hellas planitia here, almost 4km below the mean surface) could harbour places where water might exist, even if it's only surface bound to silicates etc.

Also bear in mind that early human made probes sent there are unlikely in hindsight to have been fully sterilized given what we now know of some of earths biota.

[Karlos]

X-ray wrote:
I should add that if they don't find life on Mars, they just need to leave his sock there for a few years and that peoblem will be fixed  :-P

Imagine what it could evolve into though :shudder:

[Karlos]

PMC wrote:
The resulting Blob/Bloodline seminal stocking hybrid would be far too dangerous to unleash...  Imagine the calamity if it eascaped/evolved?

 :nervous:

Not calamity. Just clammy...

[Karlos]

It's mah feckin' red planet, ye hearin' me right in this thin air, pal? Whit, ye want me tae make it reet plain for ye, eh?

Nay, I dinnae care how far ye travelled tae git here! Git yer arse back on ye' tinpot space probe an feck off back tae Earth where ye belong. It's mah planet, ye no welcome!

An tek ye feckin' beagle back home wi' ya, would ye? It's shat all over mah favourite crater.

[Karlos]

PMC wrote:
The resulting Blob/Bloodline seminal stocking hybrid would be far too dangerous to unleash...  Imagine the calamity if it eascaped/evolved?

 :nervous:

BTW, I might just be a sick and evil man, but was the use of the word "blob" an intentional double entendre here or what? :lol:

[Karlos]

One tries :lol: