New Terraforming Website

One big problem is if the Martian spiders turn out to be a life form. If they are I don't know how terraforming will go. They seem to display Fibonacci branching which is only found in life forms. They are never found in inorganic materials.

http://www.martianspiders.com/
From: Lucio de Souza Coelho
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 4:44 AM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: New Terraforming Website

On Monday 01 September 2003 05:10, G. Orme wrote:
(...)
> The point you make about hydrogen is technically correct but the time
> scales for this to occur are believed to be millions even billions of
> years. That's why it is believed to be irrelevant in terraforming. There is
> little hydrogen in the atmosphere there currently so the idea is moot. For
> this to be a problem the air would be much thicker and contain more water
> for this process to start up again, and it would take millions of years to
> occur. For you to assert otherwise you need to publish the equations that
> demonstrate this.
(...)

O'Neilian, I am kind of embarrassed to say that I'm a member of that list.
But, hell, I think that terraforming is a good thought-experiment, though I
hardly believe that it will ever be more than that. :-) The point is: his
definition of terraformed planet is a planet that, after terraformation
properly said, will naturally stay habitable for hundreds of millions of
years.

His motivation to stick to this definition is still unclear to me, but anyway
Mars worshipers and me generally think of terraformation as something to stay
stable during mere historical timeframes...

Lucio