Lets Talk About Things Science Cannot Explain

The chances that ET arrives during, say, our lifetime of 100ish years.., is microscopic. They've been around forever, or not at all. Thus, if not visible to us, we hafta ask the hard question - Good ET/bad ET ? Or both. The idea of NO ET is the least likely. All those planets, and Earth is the only place with intelligibility? I want a refund.
 
Everyone is too far away to notice, except in a few years time for spectroscopic analysis.
Unless less some sort of SF like "Jump Drive" etc is possible, then every civilisation is in quarantine for ever. Even should our galaxy have 100,000 worlds with life, I think statistically one being within 100 light years in a 150,000 light year diameter galaxy is slim, about 1 in 500,000 (due to volume) or less
 
J Riff said:
The chances that ET arrives during, say, our lifetime of 100ish years.., is microscopic. They've been around forever, or not at all. Thus, if not visible to us, we hafta ask the hard question - Good ET/bad ET ? Or both. The idea of NO ET is the least likely. All those planets, and Earth is the only place with intelligibility? I want a refund.
Click to expand...

Does Earth have "intelligibility"? I find it (except sometimes on Chrons...) largely unintelligible...
 
Ray McCarthy said:
Everyone is too far away to notice, except in a few years time for spectroscopic analysis.
Unless less some sort of SF like "Jump Drive" etc is possible, then every civilisation is in quarantine for ever. Even should our galaxy have 100,000 worlds with life, I think statistically one being within 100 light years in a 150,000 light year diameter galaxy is slim, about 1 in 500,000 (due to volume) or less
Click to expand...

And I cannot decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing...
 
Cathbad said:
"Forever" is a very long time. Things we cannot even conceive of now, will come into being.
Click to expand...

From a statistical point of view (something I both hate and am not good at), anything that is possible, however remotely so, will happen, given enough time...and infinity is enough time.
Dave
 
The problem with all the arguments against ET is that they're all based on current science. Sure, speed of light limitations make it unlikely that a sublight ship will visit us. And yes, our current science says you can't bypass that limit. But if there is some form of FTL, then everything changes. And if that scientific breakthrough includes some form of FTL communications, then obviously we're not "detecting" other civilizations because we don't have the equipment.
So, do I believe in flying saucers? Nope. Insufficient supporting evidence. And the old "there's no other explanation" saw just doesn't cut it.

My stance is that I hope there is intelligent life out there, and I'm prepared to be convinced that they're visiting us, but until I see evidence, I see no reason to come down hard on one side or the other.
 
Zoo hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One issue in that article not considered is HOW would aliens communicate anyway? Beamed Radio is only feasible up to maybe 100 LY, and leakage of regular broadcast radio would be hard to detect from noise at even 5 LY, our industrial pollution my be detectable at 1000 LY easily, but that's only a "we are here signal" and has only reached about 100 LY distance, obviously.

If no kind of space folding / jump drive is possible, then all you can do is catalogue the stars that have planets with Industrialisation, via spectroscopic analysis. Actual communication will be impossible.
 
You should have a qualifier there. "Currently impossible". We cannot predict what will be discovered/invented beyond the next century.
 
Cathbad said:
"Currently impossible". We cannot predict what will be discovered/invented beyond the next century.
Click to expand...
I'm speaking of light and radio communications, and the fundamental physical limits vs solar noise and cosmic noise.
There are things that are reasonable to assume are inherently impossible, paradoxical etc, such free energy, perpetual motion etc.
 
Can you explain, then, why a group of scientists are trying to prove faster than light speeds are possible? (Don't recall source, but not long ago, they thought they had succeeded, before reviewing the data - which they then backtracked on).
 
I think FTL is a nut that's going to be impossible to crack until we can at least harness fusion power or some other means of generating tremendous amounts of energy in a stable environment. But even then, and this is the point I was getting at earlier, there's this major problem with FTL: it amounts to time travel.

In Star Trek, the Federation uses "subspace communication" as a means of bypassing the light barrier so they can talk to their ships and outposts all over the galaxy. Trouble is, by sending messages faster than light, the messages are arriving before they were sent. Then, when the Enterprise responds, their response is received before it's sent. The show ignores this because it's soft sci fi, but any civilization working with FTL is going to have the same problem.

Then, let's say the Enterprise crew wants to take a nice vacation to Risa, which let's say is 100 light years from where they've just vaporized a Borg cube. It'll take them 10 minutes to go that far at warp 9 (or whatever the calculation is). They'll arrive at Risa 100 years minus 10 minutes before they left. How do you make hotel reservations on that basis? How do you have a civilization where everyone is arriving everywhere before they left?

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -Slartibartfast

Relativity asserts that light = time, and that's really why we can't go faster than light - because we can't go beyond the light cone of an event. FTL breaks that rule, so we end up arriving somewhere before the light cone of our departure event has even left where we started from. I don't know how the hell we get around that problem. And without a solution, we're not going to see any little green men on Earth anytime soon.
 
I think I may be wrong about all this, actually, after doing some more reading on it. This article is confusing but illuminating, for example.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
T This NASA Tool Lets You Track Asteroids And Comets In Real Time Science & Nature 0
O Advanced Toilets SFF Lounge 20
S (Found) Condensation droplets change scientists' physical characteristics Book Search 6
Vertigo Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds Reviews & Interviews 0
CTRandall Green bullets Science & Nature 0

Similar threads


Back
Top