Is Anyone Out There?

spendi is our own "Pompous Pilate"

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On a scale where 1 inch represents 100,000 miles (4 times around the earth) it takes 928 miles to represent 1 light year (5,880,000,000,000 miles).

Thank you fm for your erudite observation. Your exams must be easy to pass. One might have to consider the possibility that the future of America lies in the hands of the coloured and Hispanic races.

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The solar system does not really end with Pluto. Besides the planets, there is a thin haze of dust (some of it bunched into comets). Any of this dust that is nearer to the Sun than to any other star may be in the gravitational hold of the Sun and so counts as part of the solar system. So the outermost of such dust may be half way to the nearest star.

And someone said that a vehicle travelling at a speed necessary to even begin thinking about interstellar travel would, on encountering a grain of salt, go off like a H-bomb.

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spendius wrote:

The main disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is about 80,000 to 100,000 light-years in diameter, about 250,000 to 300,000 light-years in circumference.

That is the field of interstellar travel.

One light year is 186000x60x60x24x365 miles.

Exploring that seems to me to be impossible. We are puny.

I'm not talking about exploring every star in the Milky Way galaxy. I'm talking about exploring any stars at all. An alien super-civilization might only explore the stars within, for example, a 20 light year sphere around their home world. Even this is a forbidding technical problem that we are nowhere close to achieving, but the point is that the total size of the Milky Way galaxy is irrelevant when discussing exploring one's neighboring stars.

spendius wrote:

I have raised a very few logistical problems none of which have been remotely addressed. I don't see how anybody is to be educated on this subject with a few facile generalisations which rely on magical solutions and fatuous assertions.

If readers here can't see that then one hardly knows what to think about the American educational system.

Take this for example-

Quote:
1. I imagine the people launching the ship would stock the larder with some kind of food. Recycling of waste would probably be helpful.
2. No one is talking about intergalactic travel. We are talking about interstellar travel.
3. If your point is that the technical problem of collision with matter in the path of the ship cannot be solved, a look at the history of science and technology strongly suggests that you are wrong.

...

Those quotes constitute babbling in English higher education.

Anyone can engage in name calling. Explain. How are these statements babbling?

spendius wrote:

And I haven't even raised the idea of whether political stability will last long enough to even allow us to dip our toe into interstellar travel or whether voters will agree to provide the taxes for it when millions of Americans are on the bread line and many more millions elsewhere are starving.

Obviously, but the technical feasibility of interstellar travel can be discussed apart from the subject of the political feasibility. Anyway, this brings us into the realm of discussing communication with intelligent aliens, rather than the existence of intelligent aliens, which is the thread topic.

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If you need an explanation why this is babbling-

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1. I imagine the people launching the ship would stock the larder with some kind of food. Recycling of waste would probably be helpful.

I'm afraid I'm not the man to provide it.

Quote:

Anyway, this brings us into the realm of discussing communication with intelligent aliens, rather than the existence of intelligent aliens, which is the thread topic.

I understood from the first sentence on the thread that your boredom was the topic. Had you not been bored at work there presumably wouldn't be a thread at all.

I was merely trying to answer your cry for help to relieve your boredom.

Did I do anything for it?

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Brandon9000 wrote:

spendius wrote:
The main disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is about 80,000 to 100,000 light-years in diameter, about 250,000 to 300,000 light-years in circumference.

That is the field of interstellar travel.

One light year is 186000x60x60x24x365 miles.

Exploring that seems to me to be impossible. We are puny.

I'm not talking about exploring every star in the Milky Way galaxy. I'm talking about exploring any stars at all. An alien super-civilization might only explore the stars within, for example, a 20 light year sphere around their home world. Even this is a forbidding technical problem that we are nowhere close to achieving, but the point is that the total size of the Milky Way galaxy is irrelevant when discussing exploring one's neighboring stars.

spendius wrote:
And I haven't even raised the idea of whether political stability will last long enough to even allow us to dip our toe into interstellar travel or whether voters will agree to provide the taxes for it when millions of Americans are on the bread line and many more millions elsewhere are starving.

Obviously, but the technical feasibility of interstellar travel can be discussed apart from the subject of the political feasibility. Anyway, this brings us into the realm of discussing communication with intelligent aliens, rather than the existence of intelligent aliens, which is the thread topic.

You forgot to respond to these two. Your snappy answers are nothing more than a mask to hide your inability to support your statements.

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There is no question that given our current understanding of physics interstellar travel remains a near-impossibility. We haven't come up with a means of propulsion that will get us anywhere near the speed of light. In my previous post I simply suggested that there may be other ways of traveling the stars than we have dreamt of.

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Oh there's is Nick. You are so right. Sometimes you don't even need to get out of bed.

Proust pioneered the Olympian heights. On method I mean. Not substance.

How long an essay could you write about turning over in bed?

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Spendius, I was merely offering an opinion which you obviously don't sppreciate. When you have solved the dilemma of interstellar travel then please feel free to criticize me. As it stands your "intellectual" arguments offer no moe substance than mine.

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Well Nick-

Your use of "near-impossibility" shows a wavering in your mind.

I feel certain that "impossibilty" is more appropriate. I can't see "beam me up Scottie" being anything other than a literary conceit and even with that it's 4 + years to get to the nearest star "cluster" and I can't take half-hour train journeys. They are like what I imagine Limbo to be like.

Imagine 4 + years as an electromagnetic radiation, being reconstituted, finding a parched rock and it taking 4 + years to get back.

I could alter the scenario obviously. A glade in a forest clearing with naked nymphs etc. See The Adventures of Ulysses.

Anything you fancy particularly?

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spendi, your real name wouldn't be Ned Ludd, would it?

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spendius wrote:

Well Nick-

Your use of "near-impossibility" shows a wavering in your mind.

I feel certain that "impossibilty" is more appropriate. I can't see "beam me up Scottie" being anything other than a literary conceit and even with that it's 4 + years to get to the nearest star "cluster" and I can't take half-hour train journeys. They are like what I imagine Limbo to be like.

Imagine 4 + years as an electromagnetic radiation, being reconstituted, finding a parched rock and it taking 4 + years to get back.

I could alter the scenario obviously. A glade in a forest clearing with naked nymphs etc. See The Adventures of Ulysses.

Anything you fancy particularly?

As for interstellar travel, presumably you have disproved the existence of relativistic time dilation.

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Hi Eorl-

Quote:

They said Ned Ludd was an idiot boy

That all he could do was wreck and destroy, and

He turned to his workmates and said: Death to Machines

They tread on our future and they stamp on our dreams.

I think we do have different dreams than in those days.

Have you ever seen a chocolate box gift assembly line?

Is your real name Marie Antoinette?

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Brandon wrote-

Quote:

As for interstellar travel, presumably you have disproved the existence of relativistic time dilation.

Do you mean like in Dr Who?

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spendius wrote:

Brandon wrote-

Quote:
As for interstellar travel, presumably you have disproved the existence of relativistic time dilation.

Do you mean like in Dr Who?

I mean like in the Special Theory of Relativity, known since 1905 and verified by literally thousands of experiments, conducted by generations of physicists.

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We are all able to ignore the troll.

FM: I don't claim to be an expert on the subject of the quipus, however, i think there is a point to be made that it did not constitute literacy beyond administrative use--it was not used for cosmology or cosmogeny. In ancient Sumer, the clay tablets were used far and away for administrative purposes: to record harvests and warehousing, as warrants for traveling priests to get food and lodging at friendly temples in nearby cities, to record levies of laborers or soldiers. But it was also used to record the religious canon of a god's cult, and to record cosmological and comogenic stories--in effect, it was used for literary ends. Although your Sweetiepie Girl may have evidence that the quipus was used for such a purpose, it would be the first i had heard of it.

At all events, my point with discussing the Chinese empire and the empire of the Incas was simply to point out that the Fermi thesis assumes, to use Mr. Landis' terms, in a universal and rigid manner, that any highly developed civilization can be assumed to develop to a degree of sophistication permitting space travel, and will thereafter assiduously expand ever outward, without reference to motive.

I have only been wishing to make a point about motive. The assumptions of the Fermi paradox assume, universally and rigidly, that any sentient species which attains to sophisticated civilization will continue until it reaches the sophistication at which space travel is possible, and that it will thereafter spread outward ceaselessly. I have no good reason to assume that this would be the case, and i consider it an unreasonable assumption to make.

So, once again, this thesis makes unwarranted assumptions which are not examined for their plausibility. To ignore motive makes the thesis as weak as it is alleged objections to the thesis are. For the thesis to be plausible, i think it needs to examine motive. Otherwise, it appears to me to assume an almost mechanical devotion to constant expansion.

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Setanta wrote-

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We are all able to ignore the troll.

Who is this "we". Speaking for everyone again are you as if all minds think like your's.

You were last on this thread on Dec 22, many pages back, when you posted 4 interminable posts which I would challenge anyone on the thread to be able to score more than 0 out of 10 in a comprehension test on if they didn't go back to review them for the purpose of the test.

You qualify as a troll for jumping into to a discussion with a pile of stuff about the quipus which is irrelevant to the debate and serves you merely to have a gob off about something you have had a Google swot-up on.

You also qualify as a troll on your record on many threads of spouting inflammatory remarks such as the one above intending to provoke a response. You reduced at least one lady to tears to my knowledge. You even refused to address her by her chosen user-name and invented, as Goebells taught, a slimy variation on it by which you not only insulted her but all those you thought it might have an effect upon. You do that with me but I don't give a phewk. She did. And you mock people's gods.

There have been 7 or 8 posters on this thread since Dec22 and the idea of ignoring each other has, on the evidence, never arisen. Speaking for myself I do not think, on the evidence, that I have been ignored and I don't recall ignoring anyone else apart from those 4 posts which I would bet on most of the others having ignored as well.

My intentions on the thread have been placed on its record and I have partaken in the discussion in a friendly, if somewhat strict, manner ever since I first became aware of it as have most others who I have exchanged views with.

The only troll I can see is you Setanta and as for anyone being ignored you are talking through a hole which your refined intelligence doesn't control.

You have in your last post, which is actually unreadable, made no reference to the recent turn the debate has taken towards examining in our amateurish way the practical feasiblity of communication with extra-terrestrial life forms or of ever determining whether such forms exist and the use of funds to pursue those aims which might, or might not, be put to better use. Instead you have thought fit today to regale us with a pile of abstractions on the matter which simply restate positions you have already expressed. ( An attempted derailment in my view.)

But your vulgarity in including in that "we" the posters I have been in discussion with and claiming someone is being ignored (both being falsehoods on the evidence) lead me to think you are not the sort of person who I would seek to pass one moment of my time with.

And if your opening 8 word paragraph is pure bullshit what's the point of reading on.

And your last paragraph makes no sense. It simply seeks to create an impression (how erudite you are) without actually stating anything definite.

If they ever do fly off I don't expect them to "think" things, or "assume" things or bother about what "appears" to be.

I think they might well assume that it appears that they will never return to earth.

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Brandon wrote-

Quote:

I mean like in the Special Theory of Relativity, known since 1905 and verified by literally thousands of experiments, conducted by generations of physicists.

I must admit to having only a very superficial knowledge of Einstein's Relativity Theories. I have read a couple of biogs about the guy and it struck me that he derived his idea from trying to imagine what sexual intercourse was like and what it meant from the female point of view.

I probably only know what most reasonably well educated people know about the theory but from that small amount I can't see how it would affect the debate we are having about the logistics of these enterprises we are talking about.

I think we are chasing our tails on the issue but would be perfectly content to be persuaded to the contrary. I see general social consequences to be the prime mover rather than those of a sectional nature.

When one lives on a planet as beautiful as the earth it seems foolish to tell anyone about it even if the possibility existed. I read that Iceland was so named by its first settlers in order to put others off from joining them. Think what America could have been had it institutionalised a similar strategy rather than advertising its attractions in glorious technicolour to the whole world.

Like Bob Dylan said-

"It sure was a good idea till greed got in the way".

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spendius wrote:

Brandon wrote-

Quote:
I mean like in the Special Theory of Relativity, known since 1905 and verified by literally thousands of experiments, conducted by generations of physicists.

I must admit to having only a very superficial knowledge of Einstein's Relativity Theories. I have read a couple of biogs about the guy and it struck me that he derived his idea from trying to imagine what sexual intercourse was like and what it meant from the female point of view.

I probably only know what most reasonably well educated people know about the theory but from that small amount I can't see how it would affect the debate we are having about the logistics of these enterprises we are talking about....

I was specifically responding to your apparent suggestion that the long travel times for interstellar travel make it impractical. If one were able to achieve speeds close enough to that of light, because of the phenomenon of time dilation, one could make the travel time as low as desired from one's own point of view, although it would still take years from the points of view of planet bound observers.

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Brandon-

I could see a point to attempting the fantastic scientific exercise that would entail were the sun's demise within a timescale we have the intellectual power to appreciate. I gather it is 4,000 million years off.

Having said that I still don't think it is possible to do what you say for the reasons I have given. I think that when Einstein concieved his famous formula he used C squared as a convenient conceit to express a number too large for the mind to get a hold on and one that could not be refuted by scientific experiments but which some could flatter themselves they understood.

Someone once claimed that a pilot of a jet plane at 700 mph returned to base a millisecond younger and a micro milligram lighter. Perhaps at high fractions of the speed of light a man might return to the pre embryo stage and become bodiless. He might even return to earth after it has ceased to exist and not just when his brothers were old and grey.

I think Einstein himself said that his photocell stuff was much more important that his grand theory.

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