Fungo

No.

Sincerely,

Union

Wrong astrobiologist here (just a lowly grad student), but I thought I'd weigh in on 1).

I honestly don't think panspermia is a particularly feasible idea. To the best of our current knowledge, Earth has the best conditions, and has generally had the best conditions throughout time, for supporting the growth and development of life. Saying that life was seeded is, in my view, far more problematic because we still have to explain how that life came to be in the first place. Earth is, in my opinion, a more likely point of origin due to the sheer abundance of surface water present, which is roughly constant over time. We know that life on Earth started in the presence of water, so I'd say that you're more likely to initiate the reactions that lead to the formation of life on Earth than elsewhere.

Two questions for you.

1) Potions seems like a really interestingly unique game idea. What was your inspiration for the gameplay style?

2) Horse-sized duck or duck-sized horses? You know the routine.

So, in math, physics, and astronomy, we use ArXiv.org as a way of making papers widely accessible and more available for peer comments and review. Obviously a lot of what get posted is garbage, but it's generally recognized as such. Some funny papers also get posted, which is great for the morale of us grad students! Now, ArXiv isn't peer reviewed, but papers are listed as to whether or not they have been accepted for publication in actual journals.

My question is this. Why do you think no such system exists for other science fields and what barriers are there to fields like biology adopting similar systems? I once had to do a project using biology papers and I hated it! I didn't have access to a damn thing besides the abstracts!

How about the radiation problem? Mars' magnetic field is basically non-existent and the atmosphere is thin, so it overall provides little protection from the kinds of cosmic rays that we don't get exposed to here on Earth. Obviously it's not something you want to intentionally expose people to here on Earth, but was there any part of the simulation that was designed in response to the likely problems Mars explorers would face from the solar wind?