Why is NASA looking for habitable planets?
I saw on my Yahoo account how they discovered this habitable planet with the Keplar telescope, but it was too big so they're looking for more. What I don't get is why. Why are they looking for planets like ours, why the rush? The world isn't going to end anytime soon. (And if I get ANY 2012 comments, I'll block you.) What's the deal?
How often are new habitable islands formed?
Natural islands? They are nearly always volcanic, so they aren’t habitable for a long time after they emerge.Sometimes large sandbars form in rivers that eventually become island like.Of course the most new islands have been built by mankind.
Does anyone believe that the Auckland Islands are uninhabitable?
No, they're definitely habitable. There was an attempt to settle them in the 19th century, but it worked out uneconomic because of the long supply lines. You can farm them, just not productively enough to be worth the effort when you're that far from your markets.Campbell Island, which is even further South and even smaller than the Auckland islands, was successfully inhabited by humans in the 19th century. It was a useful place for a settlement when the main shipping routes around the world went round the Southern Ocean and ships often visited Campbell Island. After the Suez Canal and Panama Canal were built, the ships no longer went that way, and Campbell island was only useful as a place for weather forecasters to observe the weather systems coming towards New Zealand from Antarctica. With modern technology there isn't even a need to have weather forecasters posted there, so the island has been uninhabited since the 1990s.
Is three mile island....?
Three Mile Island is habitable, and while the area was temporarily evacuated during the meltdown, it is currently inhabited again and has been for quite some time. The effects of the extra radiation are still debated and it's not clear how much effect they have, but they aren't so high as to render the area uninhabitable for any serious period of time.
With global warming will Baffin Island likely become more habitable over the next century?
Baffin Island might become significantly warmer as a result of global warming, but it is difficult to imagine that it could become much warmer without utterly catastrophic global warming, what with there being no ocean currents nearby to warm Baffin Island as others do Iceland. More, even if Baffin Island suddenly had the climate of southern Ontario, the soils of the Canadian Arctic are thin and low in nutrients. Global warming might make Baffin Island less inhospitable, perhaps, but not much better.
Will the Australian outback ever be habitable?
I don’t know if this is an asnswer.The Chinese are ‘building islands’ in the South China Sea. That amount of ‘terraforming’ would require a huge amount of planning, logistics and determination. (They are in the process of militarising those islands - which just happen to be in International sea lanes - but that’s not my point.I believe you could use a lot of that ‘modular development’ to create new “connected and supplied” town squares (a bit like the old Sim City Games I used to play).It would take Federal (or overseas) money, determination and generational priorities to build islands of humanity in the desert. It ‘could’ be done.In a world of Island builders, Las Vegas, China Dam builders and Mars Colony settlements on earth I think you could.Thousand of years from now old deserts could become a bit more habitable, but then they wouldn’t be the outback. They’d just be new cities.That’s my opinion, and its my own.End Transmission.
When will the Bikini atoll become habitable again?
As of last year: "The potential to make the island habitable has substantially improved in recent years. The International Atomic Energy Agency found that cesium-137 levels are dropping considerably faster than anyone expected. Terry Hamilton, scientific director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Marshall Islands Dose Assessment and Radioecology Program, reported that “Conditions have really changed on Bikini. They are improving at an accelerated rate. By using the combined option of removing soil and adding potassium, we can get very close to the 15 millirem standard. That has been true for roughly the past 10 years. So now is the time when the Bikinians, if they desired, could go back.”[25][58]"Before that measurement they thought it would be much longer.
How do the Hawaiian islands move?
As a non-scientist, this is how I perceive that which is going on. Imagine a number of chimneys extending from the molten core of the earth to the surface. Below the surface of the ocean are a series of tectonic plates. The islands sit atop the techtonic plates that form a rim in the Pacific ocean. These plates move as they are floating on the top of the magma and at various times in the history of these islands the chimney vents allow magma to reach the surface of the land and form volcanic mountains. These mountains have formed the islands which make up Hawaii. Since the formation of the more northern islands the plates have moved so the mountains that form those islands are no longer being added to. Currently the vnets below the island of Hawaii are most active and magma periodically reaches the surface and forms land mass. The mountains of the big island as it is called are the most active volcanoes in the world. Kilauea has been spewing out lava continuously since 1983. Mauna Kea has erupted during my lifetime and I believe in 1983 it even threatened the city of Hilo. There is also one currently underground vent that is forming another mountain below the surface of the ocean. At sometime in the future that I learned will emerge from the sea and become either a part of the big Island or A smaller island by it's self. I am sure this is probably a somewhat simplistic explanation but it is pretty much the way I interpret what goes on. I am sure A scientist/vulcanologist could do a lot better explaining this.