Would Elon Musk be the most important person to have ever lived if he successfully colonized Mars with 1 million people?

If Elon Musk did colonize Mars with 1 million people, would he be the most important person to have ever lived?

I would then think of him like maybe Christopher Columbus, or the Pilgrims from England that started populating North America. Outside North America these people are not seen as important (or even known). Schools in other parts of the world don’t teach much about this.

Here in America, however, we have Columbus day to remember the crossing of the Atlantic in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, and Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts to remember the first landing of the Pilgrims who came from Plymouth, England. We have Thanksgiving to remember a mutual celebration between the Pilgrims and the local Native Americans after the Pilgrims had their first successful growing season.

So I would say that to the people of Earth Elon Musk would not be the most important person to have ever lived, but to the people of Mars he would be the most important person for the first few generations, but as time passed he would be seen from an historical point of view and remembered on future Martian calendars by the people of Mars.

Here on Earth he would be remembered in history books, too, but so many people have come and gone in the history of mankind. Many people in the past have been very transformative, but overall are not seen as the most important persons. People like Alexander the Great, Issac Newton, Albert Einstein, Walt Disney, George Washington, Queen Victoria, ad infinitum, have all been very important in the history of mankind, but none stand out over time as the most important person to have ever lived. So will it be with Elon Musk even if he did colonize 1 million people on Mars.

Do you think human beings will invent a way to travel through space fast enough to reach far away galaxies or they will invent an alternate way to travel through space and time?

Wouldn’t it be great to travel at Warp speed?

The answer to your question, surprisingly enough, is not necessarily “No, humans will never invent a way to travel through space fast enough to reach far away galaxies.”

Here’s the deal. The faster you go, the slower you age, so if you could go almost the speed of light, then it would still take you millions or billions of years to fly to other galaxies from Earth’s point of view, but not so for you who are traveling in the spacecraft. For you the time would be dilated.

Look at an example introduced by Albert Einstein. Consider two twins, named Biff and Cliff. On their 20th birthday, Biff decides to get in a spaceship and take off into outer space, traveling at nearly the speed of light.

He journeys around the cosmos at this speed for about 5 years, returning to the Earth when he is 25 years old.

Cliff, on the other hand, remains on the Earth. When Biff returns, it turns out that Cliff is 95 years old.

Similarly, Biff could travel to other stars and galaxies if he could somehow go fast enough, but meanwhile whole civilizations, humanity and even Earth itself would grow old and cease to exist. So when Biff gets there, Cliff will be long gone. Biff will have traveled forward in time as his spaceship zipped through the cosmos.

Traveling fast enough will slow time down for the astronaut.

Is Time Travel Even Real?

Although I wrote a time travel novel once (Time Gods), time travel has many problems that most sci-fi authors don’t take into consideration.

For example, consider that Earth spins at the equator at about a thousand miles per hour and the Earth orbits around the sun an average speed of 29.8km/s or 65,000 mph (105,000 kph).

The sun also orbits the galactic center at about 225 km per second (140 miles per second) or about 486,000 miles per hour.

The Milky Way galaxy is moving toward the Andromeda Galaxy at about 2.1 million kilometers per hour, or 1.305 million miles per hour.

Now, get in a time machine and go forward (or backwards) an hour or so. Will you find yourself in the same place on Earth only in a different time, or will you find yourself floating in space, Earth having moved hundreds of thousands of miles away in the short period of your time travel?

Now wouldn’t that make an interesting idea for a time travel novel!

Aside from that, and disregarding the impracticality of string theory, time travel in reverse isn’t possible, but time travel to the future certainly is possible under special circumstances.

Consider that you have an identical twin and both of you are in a space ship orbiting a black hole. On your birthday, your twin sibling decides he wants to get in a shuttle craft and take a closer look at the event horizon of the black hole. So he gets inside the craft and travels near the event horizon and then comes back 20 minutes later, only to find you are a very old person and that you have aged many, many years. What you see, as your twin gets closer to the event horizon, is that he slows down until he is practically motionless. Years go by and you grow old. Your twin, down there in that shuttle, still seems frozen in time, then eventually he slowly rises up to the space craft and comes back inside. Although you are now old, you are looking at a young twin!

Another example was introduced by Albert Einstein. Consider two twins, named Biff and Cliff. On their 20th birthday, Biff decides to get in a spaceship and take off into outer space, traveling at nearly the speed of light.

He journeys around the cosmos at this speed for about 5 years, returning to the Earth when he is 25 years old.

Cliff, on the other hand, remains on the Earth. When Biff returns, it turns out that Cliff is 95 years old.

So yes, under certain conditions forward time travel is possible, but not reverse time travel, and certainly if you had a “time machine” then Earth might move away from under you while you are going 30 minutes forward or backward.

How come if we flew to the Moon, nobody ever tried to fly underneath the Earth to see what’s really down there?

Hehehe….. Did someone actually tell you nobody has ever flown around the earth pole to pole?

That’s why you should check your facts before believing conspiracy theories! A good place to start is by going to Snopes.com to do your fact checking.

Not only do some satellites pass “underneath the Earth” to see what’s really down there, so have many airplanes. Furthermore, people live down there, past that “wall of ice” at the South Pole.

Here’s a picture of what it looks like for real.

Scientists say we can never reach exoplanets, but is it possible to send probes to nearby stars?

Is it possible to send probes to nearby stars?

Yes, and no. We can send probes out of our solar system as we did with Voyager I and II, and theoretically we can direct future probes toward specific exoplanets, but alas.

The distances are so great, even for the nearest exoplanets, that we will all be long dead before they ever reach there.

How’s that I say? I mean, Proxima Centauri is only 4.2 light years away! That’s very close astronomically speaking, isn’t it?

Voyager I is the fastest of the two Voyagers. It travels about 3.6 AU per year, one AU being the distance from Earth to Sun. Proxima Centauri, also known as Alpha Centauri C, is about 268,770 AU. That would take a craft traveling the speed of Voyager I about 74,658 years to reach Proxima Centauri.

So theoretically we could send a probe out there, and when it arrives it could send a signal back to Earth. That signal would take 4.2 years to reach Earth, but would be more than 74 thousand years from now. Who knows if humanity will even still be here by then or if anyone will be listening?

That’s just the nearest exoplanets. Others are much more distant than that.

Why is the Moon not being pulled into the Earth from gravitational forces? Is the Moons mass stopping gravity from pulling it any further?

The Moon is being pulled toward the Earth, but it’s forward momentum causes it to miss Earth each time it goes around by a wide margin. This is called an orbit.

However, let it be known that because the oceans slosh around on Earth as it rotates about it’s axis (these are called ocean tides), the speed of Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down. Billions of years ago a day on Earth was only about 8 hours, and now it continues to slow down. We compensate this twice a year by adding leap-seconds as needed.

This slowing of the earth’s rotation causes the moon to drift further away from us every year by about 1.5 inches, so eventually the Moon will escape Earth altogether and drift away.

It will never crash into Earth.

Are Aliens Simply an Advanced Version of Us?

If we were ever to discover aliens (we haven’t yet), they would most likely not be more advanced than humans. In fact, the majority of aliens we are likely to discover will be microbes. The term (extraterrestrial) “aliens” does not imply a race of advanced beings.

If, however, we were to come across aliens more advanced than microbes, they might be something like this guy below.

Are there aliens among us?

The only aliens on Earth are the ones from other countries on Earth.

Other than that, we haven’t even found a fossil of a microbe of an alien from another world and at present have no proof that life exists anywhere else in the universe other than here (though we suspect there is life out there somewhere).

Hole in the Fence

My dogs, the picket fence, the cold weather and the flu. That’s what I’m dealing with today.

My picket fence is rotting and needs to be replaced but I don’t have the funds to do that right at this instant. So my dogs tore a hole through some of the pickets and escaped. One of them is still missing and the other one came back.

I don’t know if I have the flu or just a real bad chest cold but my chest is really tight and my throat is very sore and the weather is kind of cold. Meanwhile, I’m running all around town buying pieces of wood and screws – components to repair part of the fence without replacing the whole thing.

The little dog, Skipper. He grabs any trash or anything at all that he can find and drags it out into the backyard through the doggie door. He’s trashed the back yard. He is an affectionate dog and likes to cuddle but otherwise a total nuisance. Now, Skipper and Brandi, our big dog, ran out through the hole of the fence yesterday. Brandi always comes back when she gets out but Skipper is attractive to kids and gets caught by neighbors.

So this time he got out without a collar on. I’m sure he’s in somebody’s house. We’ll miss him but I’m not sure we’re going to actively look for him. If he winds up in the pound then he has a chip and they’ll contact us. But if he doesn’t wind up in the pound all the best for us and whoever finds him! Brandi the big dog will miss him. So really will we.

In the meantime, we have a cold, there’s cold weather and a hole in the fence. I’ll be busy repairing the hole in the fence.

Later – now the fence is repaired. I’m pretty sure it’s animal proof. Skipper is still missing, however.

Later Still – In the end Skipper was found. It was the chip that did him in. We got a phone call from a local animal rescue place. I went to pick him up and there was a very nice mother and 10 year old daughter. The daughter was crying. She was so sad to see Skipper go. I should have given him to them, but that would seem weird, so I didn’t. Now we have the little monster back home.

Turn Signal

The turn signal or the blinker is just a good idea. I don’t know why people don’t use them. It’s for your own safety and the safety of other drivers. Using your turn signal can just be considerate sometimes.

Consider this scenario. You’re sitting at an intersection wanting to turn left, but there’s an oncoming car from the left heading towards you. If you knew that car was going to make a right turn then you could go ahead and move forward and make your left turn. However, if the other car doesn’t put on their turn signal then all you can do is wait and wait and wait until they make their turn. Then you can mutter some obscenities and go on.

I recommend to get in the habit of using your turn signal even if no one is around. Sometimes people are around but you don’t even realize it.

What’s the harm of putting on your turn signal every time you plan to make a turn?

Unless however, you ran out of blinker fluid. This video explains much more.