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so it took us 70% of the time Earth is in the habitable zone to develop, would this be normal or could it be much faster? In other words, would all forms of life that started on a planet that originated at a 'similar' point in time like us, be equally far developed?

That is actually quite tricky to estimate rly. If for no other reason than the fact that all of the mass extinctions we had over the Earth's history basically reset the evolutionary clock. Assuming 2 Earths identical in every way but one did not have the dinosaur wipe-out impact, that would've given non-impact Earth 60million years to evolve a potential dinosaur intelligent super race.

The opposite might be true - or might not be ;-). Since usually the rate of evolution increases after major extinction events the chance is higher to produce 'intelligent' organisms if these events happen quite frequently. Usually the time of rapid evolution is only a few million years - so Earth is going quite slow. Certainly extinction events don't reset the evolutionary clock - if they would never have happened Earth gene pool would probably be quite primitive. By the way: dinosaurs were a quite diverse group and large dinosaurs might well have had cognitive abilities that come close to whales or primates - the difference to us might be that we have hands to manipulate our environment and vocal cords to communicate in very diverse ways. Modern dinosaur (descendents), i.e. birds, contain some very intelligent species - especially with respect to their body size and weight.

The novel part here is that it can be scaled down to the cubesat platform. I then wondered, could we place multiple of such Cubesats in a 'decaying orbit' around the Sun? Fractionated will give spatial and temporal information which, even with a simple langmuir probe setup, can give information on density, temperature, velocity, ion energy distribution, potential.. Of course they will be lost relatively quickly, but more could be ejected from a mother ship which is orbiting at a safer distance.

For example like the KickSat projec https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zacinaction/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space Although a pc-reboot due to a radiation event in the electronics has reset the deployment timeline to approximately 2 days after re-entry... http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/06/kicksat-satellites_n_5273821.html

Following a discussion with Kzrystof, where he came up with gravity anomaly reasons for why Dutch people are so tall. Funny to see this fact gathers scientific attention as well.

We solved this darwinian riddle years ago. They must be tall in order to find their partners above the fog and thus reproduce in the dutch weather.

"information experience" ... impressive

Nice!! I want that thing on my mobile which wakes you up in the morning with the weather and temperature....so cool

you will need to explain me what is nice in there ....

the new scientist article does not say much but maybe the paper could be of interest to our models - Nina and Friederike, please have a look at it - hope that you can get hold of it ...

policy statement regarding research on geoengineerin in the US (in force from July 2009-July 2012)

looking forward to your recommendations how we can get into it quickly :-)

Tobias discovery

for Tobi! nice analogy between the threat and the fast responding in human network

Yet another example of "because scientifically accurate title would sound sooo boring".

Some bacteria can influence the weather. Up high in the sky where clouds form, water droplets condense and ice crystal grow around tiny particles. Typically these particles are dust, pollen, or even soot from a wildfire. But recently scientists have begun to realize that some of these little particles are alive - they are bacteria evolved to create ice or water droplets around themselves. old but might be worth a discussion

Filaments of plasma created by a high-powered laser beam undergo a similar type of phase transition as liquid percolating through a porous material - that is the conclusion of physicists in Switzerland. The also describe the application of laser filamentation for directed lightening and encouraged rainfall - Isabelle should come back to take a closer look :p

Christophe? Isabelle?