One day, mankind will colonize Mars. If not, at least space itself. The time it takes for light to travel from Earth to Mars is about eight minutes. Eight entire minutes. If we are to colonize another planet, we will need a form of currency.
It could that America gets there first, making the Usd the currency of Mars. That is, until China gets there. Or, they could just make a unique currency. Either way, what they choose to do will end up being exchanged with currencies back on Earth. This is where the eight minutes comes in.
So, there's an eight minute lag between the markets. How do you incorporate the eight minute lag into price? One person on Earth trades the Usd for some Euro's, while at the same time, a person on Mars trades whatever currency for Usd at the same time. However, they will see each other's transactions eight minutes later.
Ah, weed. Don't worry about how we're going to get there, much less how we're going to stay there. Just worry about what's going to happen when we try to spend money whilst there.
My issue with space is how ESports will work. Like, the moon people can't practice with earth people (Lol, 1 minute delay), so the skill difference between the two will vary. Then whenever they compete, one will dominate the other. Will the ESports bubble burst after we start colonizing other worlds?
The answer is that you will have an exchange on Earth and an exchange on Mars, both owned by a common entity. Every 16 minutes, the exchanges will reset the price with each other. Each exchange will charge a spread to compensate for the risk that in the 8 minutes the price will have moved against its current position. The common entity will turn a profit when the movement is essentially a random walk, and will lose money with the rate moves strongly in one direction or the other and keeps moving in that direction.
On August 18 2012 07:54 Maxd11 wrote: Unless we find a way to go faster then light, (which we won't) we'll never colonize mars. Must be fun to be high though.
Why in the world would you need to have FTL to colonize mars?
On August 18 2012 07:17 DigiGnar wrote: One day, mankind will colonize Mars. If not, at least space itself. The time it takes for light to travel from Earth to Mars is about eight minutes. Eight entire minutes. If we are to colonize another planet, we will need a form of currency.
However, they will see each other's transactions eight minutes later.
My mind is full of fuck right now. So high.
Correct (on the full of fuck). 8 minutes is sun to Earth. Mars to Earth is way shorter, on average about 70 lightseconds.
Taking your post seriously for a moment, this has already happened. There are currency markets all over the world. I read somewhere that investment banks used automated methods and strategically placed servers between large trading cities to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities as fast as possible.
Some physicists suggested using neutrinos to shave off a few milliseconds from the communication time. Although neutrinos travel at the speed of light or slightly slower, unlike light they can pass through the Earth. Unfortunately they are also very difficult to detect so a reliable neutrino "router" would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and would need to be housed inside a mountain to shield the neutrino detector from atmospheric muons.
On August 18 2012 07:17 DigiGnar wrote: One day, mankind will colonize Mars. If not, at least space itself. The time it takes for light to travel from Earth to Mars is about eight minutes. Eight entire minutes. If we are to colonize another planet, we will need a form of currency.
However, they will see each other's transactions eight minutes later.
My mind is full of fuck right now. So high.
Correct (on the full of fuck). 8 minutes is sun to Earth. Mars to Earth is way shorter, on average about 70 lightseconds.
Depends on relative positions. Mars can be farther than the Sun. Actually it is, more often than not.
I don't think it would be likely that if we were to colonize other planets (which, if it would happen, might be hundreds of years later), that we would be using different currencies. I'm sure there would be a global currency by that time. Maybe the Euro or USD idk.
I wouldn't start worrying about this now. Start worrying 177 years later when Earth becomes uninhabitable from World War 7 when the nuclear hydro-colliders disintegrate the atmosphere and burn up the space slipstream surrounding the nucleo-encabulator. That's when you should start worrying.
On August 18 2012 09:17 sc4k wrote: I just can't wait 'til the Martians fight a war of independence against the US and the US becomes the new Britain xD.
Speaking on the distances between Earth-Mars and Earth-Sun, Earth-Sun average is 93m miles and light takes 8 minutes to travel that distance. Earth-Mars has many varying distances due to opposition and "conjunction" (astrology terms basically meaning farthest distance and closest distance between two objects, respectively). When Earth-Mars are closest, the distance can be something as little as 36m miles. When they are furthest, the distance is around 249m miles. The average is 140m miles (less than 142 because Mars' orbit is longer than Earth's). So you could say it takes an average of 12 minutes for light to travel between the two bodies. 70lightseconds is far off the mark.
What you really need to ask yourself is how we would exchange data with people in other galaxies. Now tune into your third eye for a month and let me know what you find!
You know what's the bigger question? If humanity spreads amongst many stars, how can we remain united when a back-and-forth exchange of data will take years, if not decades? Or is humanity doomed to fragment into planet-sized entities as soon as the first colony ships leave the Solar System?
On August 18 2012 10:43 Shady Sands wrote: You know what's the bigger question? If humanity spreads amongst many stars, how can we remain united when a back-and-forth exchange of data will take years, if not decades? Or is humanity doomed to fragment into planet-sized entities as soon as the first colony ships leave the Solar System?
The third eye takes care of this.
Edit: for your listening pleasure, sir of the original post creation:
On August 18 2012 10:43 Shady Sands wrote: You know what's the bigger question? If humanity spreads amongst many stars, how can we remain united when a back-and-forth exchange of data will take years, if not decades? Or is humanity doomed to fragment into planet-sized entities as soon as the first colony ships leave the Solar System?
Well, consider what that would mean. Would you really care about what someone who is literally decades away from ever doing anything to you thinks about you? Would they care about what you think about them? There wouldn't need to be a war of independence, because they would be independent by default. You can't effectively govern when communicating with the governed takes that long. You have to rely on local control and autonomy.
While humanity would be fragmented, I don't really see how this is "doom" so much as just fairly isolated. We'd still be able to share technological advances and such, but any more meaningful, human contact would be fairly negligable.
The point is to ensure the continued survival of the species.
EPT
that's pretty funny.
