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Post by Killraven on Feb 8, 2005 21:33:57 GMT
Ok. So lets assume that WOTW didn't end the way Wells wrote it...the bacteria didn't succeed in toppling the invaders as they were well stocked with paracetamol ... Do you think the martians would have adapted our atmosphere to suit theirs, using terraforming machinery? After all, our atmosphere is much denser and oxygen rich than the red planet's. As well as being more conducive to the martians' health, it no doubt would also have benefited the spread of the red weed and other varieties (in fact, maybe the less successful martian vegetation died out earlier due to the effects of the terran air?). Discuss
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Post by Topaz on Feb 8, 2005 22:37:36 GMT
Interesting thought. I think we need to start with a couple of assumptoins, though:
1) The REAL Martian atmosphere wouldn't support the creatures Wells describes, at least exposed on the surface. So, I've always been inclined to assume that either the Martians have lived below ground in artificial environments for thousands/hundreds of thousands of years or we're talking 'alternate universe' here where Mars has a denser atmosphere than 'ours' does.
2) They intended to continue to use humans for food. Why ship all your cattle when perfectly tasty meat can be had for the taking in your new home?
Given those, I'd guess they'd just 'stick it out' and eventually adapt to the new environment. Any atmosphere that would've supported them on Mars would have been closer (accent on the '-er') to ours than the 'real' one, and so it's not as much of a stretch to let your body adapt. Keeping the planet largely as it is means your food supply will thrive under proper management.
Seems to me that the Red Weed and the Red Creeper were doing quite well against terrestrial forms, until the 'cankering disease' took them. I suppose you could call replacing the Earth flora with your own a form of terraforming. I wonder what effect that would have on the environment?
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Post by quaderni on Feb 8, 2005 22:53:29 GMT
Given those, I'd guess they'd just 'stick it out' and eventually adapt to the new environment. Any atmosphere that would've supported them on Mars would have been closer (accent on the '-er') to ours than the 'real' one, and so it's not as much of a stretch to let your body adapt. Keeping the planet largely as it is means your food supply will thrive under proper management. Wells mentions Martian 'sanitary science' as a possibility - so, conceivably, they could have muddled their way through Earth's environment. Wells's Narrator concluded that the Martians lost their shot with an earth landing/conquest - so they picked on the poor Venus folks instead, so all perhaps was moot.... There are, apparently, serious projects in the works for terraforming Mars into an habitable environmenet for humans. There are serious, and quite respectable, plans for doing this, and there is a sense that this could become a reality within a century or so. See esp. Nikos Prantzos, _Our Cosmic Future: Humanitu's Fate in the Universe_, Cambridge University Press, 2000, esp. pp. 75-80 for a 'Mars landing'.
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Post by malfunkshun on Feb 9, 2005 2:26:26 GMT
if you really want a good yarn about terraforming mars, read Kim Stanley Robinsons Mars trilogy
red mars green mars blue mars
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Post by HTT on Feb 9, 2005 10:41:12 GMT
I got the impression that Wells has the idea the Mars was the same as Earth, but had been around a lot longer. If the ending was different, and the bacteria didn't kill 'em off, then they would have simply get their buddies to move in once humans had been enslaved.
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Post by Killraven on Feb 9, 2005 13:30:27 GMT
if you really want a good yarn about terraforming mars, read Kim Stanley Robinsons Mars trilogy red mars green mars blue mars Also, check out the article in my "Scientists suggest" thread in "Off Topic"
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Post by the Donal on Feb 9, 2005 18:47:49 GMT
It's what we call a 'shake'n'bake colony' ;D
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Post by quaderni on Feb 12, 2005 21:16:51 GMT
For those interested in terraforming Mars, there's a short but interesting discussion in today's Guardian: www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,14493,1407176,00.html Cheers, Quaderni
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Post by McTodd on Feb 15, 2005 14:01:27 GMT
That's all well and good, but let's see if we can stop ourselves from fecking up this planet first, eh?
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Peo
New Member
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Post by Peo on Feb 15, 2005 17:13:23 GMT
I always thought the red weed was an attempt to terraform. That some how the red weed would replace the earths vegitation and transform the Earths aptnesphere to one similar to well's theoretical Mars one.
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Post by quaderni on Feb 16, 2005 2:18:38 GMT
I always thought the red weed was an attempt to terraform. That some how the red weed would replace the earths vegitation and transform the Earths aptnesphere to one similar to well's theoretical Mars one. Wells says that no one is sure: the Martians deliberately or accidentally brought it with them. But I'd hazard the latter, simply because so much of the book hinges upon 'freak' biological exchanges - such as the martian death at the end by 'putrefactive' bacteria.
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alabaster
Full Member
Watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's...
Posts: 112
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Post by alabaster on Feb 16, 2005 2:29:36 GMT
Wells was aware that Mars's atmosphere was "far more attenuated" than Earth's; indeed he makes play of the fact that the Martians' ears probably couldn't hear as efficiently in Earth's denser air.
It's quite clear near the climax of the book that the red weed is being used by the Martians as part of their construction and "landscaping" project. The narrator comments that the alien habitat around Horsell Common probably appeared to him the way a roadworks would appear to a rabbit, suggesting the red weed was being used artificially.
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Post by malfunkshun on Feb 16, 2005 2:31:57 GMT
thats one thing i never really understood, why the martians would have a harder time hearing in our atmosphere. sound travels better and farther through solid dense matter... and since earths air is denser, it should travel better than through the thin air of mars. seems to me that everything the martians hear would sound a lot louder and more clear to them on earth
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Post by quaderni on Feb 16, 2005 2:43:47 GMT
It's quite clear near the climax of the book that the red weed is being used by the Martians as part of their construction and "landscaping" project. The narrator comments that the alien habitat around Horsell Common probably appeared to him the way a roadworks would appear to a rabbit, suggesting the red weed was being used artificially. I'll have to find the passage where Wells's Narrator expressed uncertainty. But I'm getting old and so I might just be imagining the reference...
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Post by malfunkshun on Feb 16, 2005 2:47:41 GMT
i always imagined the red weed as being an accidental thing, that the martians didn't intend to set it loose, but some spores probably just got loose in the earths air and next thing you know, the stuff is covering everything.
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Post by Topaz on Feb 16, 2005 6:17:56 GMT
That's pretty much the impression I got too, Malf.
Seems like the Martians pretty much ignored the stuff. Wells makes no reference to them cultivating it, and he describes the growth around the 'ruined house' pit in some detail.
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Post by Killraven on Feb 17, 2005 19:28:27 GMT
Like I said before... martian leylandii!! ;D
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Post by Lensman on Feb 25, 2005 5:28:57 GMT
The Martians were moving to Earth because Mars was dying and was no longer a place where life could thrive. Why would the Martians come to Earth and then sabotage their own efforts to survive by making it more Mars-like? As has already been pointed out, "Mars-forming" the Earth would kill off the native Earth life, which was one of the reasons they looked towards Earth "with envious eyes."
And even if they did want to make the atmosphere thinner, how would they do so? The Martian technology may have been very advanced by 1898 standards, but other than that heat-ray thing they're not advanced by ours. Do we have the capacity today to thin Earth's atmosphere? No, and there's no indication the Martians did either.
If they did have the technology to "Mars-form" Earth, they should also have been able to make Mars more habitable, and with Earth's much stronger gravity that surely would have been a more attractive prospect to them.
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Post by quaderni on Mar 5, 2005 23:08:55 GMT
The red weed is a mystery - it might have been accidental or deliberate.
From the text:
'At any rate, the seeds which the Martians (intentionally or accidentally) brought with them gave rise in all cases to red-coloured growths' (bk. II, ch. 2).
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