Try Making A Habitable Planet
No, really, go ahead and try.
It’s not quite as easy as science-fiction would have you believe. Honest. Don’t believe me? Then head over to Extreme Planet Makeover and try for yourself.
The folks at NASA have brought us a pretty challenging, little game; make a planet habitable.
On the surface, that seems fairly straight-forward, but that’s only because we over-simplify just how miraculous it is that this happened on our own planet. There’s actually a pretty narrow margin by which life becomes possible and taking an existing planet and forcing it into that margin is way, way harder than fans of science-fiction, like me, generally want to believe it is.
Go ahead and try the game yourself. I think you’ll find it an eye-opening experience.
We live on a paradoxically robust and delicate world.
This place has existed for millions of years and “modern” humans have existed for just a few hundred thousand years. This magnificent ball of dirt and rock has seen more kinds of life come and go than we can even imagine. We tend to think of ourselves and the world as it is right now as “life”, but I firmly believe that life, in some form, will continue on even if we do the unthinkable and foul our own dwelling place to the point that we, as a species, can no longer inhabit it. The Earth will continue and, I think, life in some form will, as well.
Though, we may no longer be here to see it.
Well, in any case, take a minute and go play the “game” at their site. You may be surprised at just how big a miracle life on Earth is! Besides, it’s Friday, so what else are you going to do?
