We should send robots first, to set up infrastructure

I would get 100% behind a plan to come up with robots able to semi-autonomously build up infrastructure. Let's try and get this done and working on plain ol'Earth first.

I seem to remember the thermal conductivity of an ideal gas is directly proportional to the molar density times molar heat capacity, so this sounds very counter-intuitive...

All I need a single public IP for, is for my VPN endpoint.

Keep in mind that polls are designed, and those internal to a political party doubly so.

Mars' atmosphere is about 1.5 % of Earth's atmospheric density. It's around 20 mBar, or eight times too thin for sustaining life even if it was pure dioxygen. For all practical purposes it's near-vacuum. And vacuum makes for a very good thermal insulator.

As I envision it, it will take the form of a gradual redshift down to absolute zero. Stars and galaxies' lives and deaths and rebirths will be coming to us in an indefinitely- slowing-to-a-crawl slow-motion display of unbearable length... and it'll never quite go 'black' as much as fade away asymptotically forever in slowness and cold. Much like an avatar of the universe's entropic death, converging in on us from everywhere at once.

Man, this *is* depressing.

The sky will slowly go black until it's as depicted in Greg Egan's "Quarantine" ? Well, except for our own galaxy being still visible and reachable... that's a consolation prize alright.

Doesn't that require the appearance of an event horizon between these objects ?

Yup. At "worst" in an accelerating universe the galaxies would be receding from us at speeds that would tend asymptotically to 'c', but never at 'c' nor above.