Starship Asterisk*

Hi Folks.

Saw a program on tv. Made me go searching.

Thought you guys may like to discus .

http://www.ufopicture.org/nasa_ufo_pictures.html

With 200 billion galaxies we must have an open mind.

mark swain wrote:http://www.ufopicture.org/nasa_ufo_pictures.html
With 200 billion galaxies we must have an open mind.

Most look like lens flare or other types of reflections off the optics or windows. The last one might be junk floating along outside the ISS or shuttle- that's pretty common and shows up in a number of images.

It doesn't really matter how many galaxies or stars there are, it's awfully hard to get around the speed of light problem. And if you assume that intelligent, technological life is fairly rare, or has a short window of existence, then the distances involved become really prohibitive. It's one thing to believe that intelligent life exists elsewhere; it's another thing altogether to think it's visiting us here.

Chris Peterson wrote:It doesn't really matter how many galaxies or stars there are, it's awfully hard to get around the speed of light problem.

The speed of light, is just part of the computer program. When we work out how to get into the inner workings there will be a few more pieces to the puzzle. If your big bang is real. Then the whole of the universe is there to be re-painted at will.

There could be civilizations, 5 billion years in front of us.

mark swain wrote:The speed of light, is just part of the computer program. When we work out how to get into the inner workings there will be a few more pieces to the puzzle. If your big bang is real. Then the whole of the universe is there to be re-painted at will.
There could be civilizations, 5 billion years in front of us.

I think that the speed of light limitation is real, and that no amount of science or technological advancement will ever get around it. I also think that technological civilizations are both rare and short lived, which is my reasoning for why we don't see the Universe overflowing with them. Given these two beliefs, it seems unlikely that we will ever be visited by extraterrestrials, or that we will ever make such visits ourselves.

By any chance, were you watching History channel? These tv shows are nothing but spin-offs of reality TV. They'll throw in tantalizing ideas and vague information, find some passionate crackpots, and throw on some exciting music to get you worked up and offer little or no actual intelligent insight into things. I can't believe anyone thinks something like "UFO Hunters" belongs on a channel called "History" but I guess they use it to boost viewership. I think it's rubbish. I don't even watch television anymore for the most part. But I have found a useful alternative... a website called fora.tv. It even has some very interesting astronomy videos.

You probably don't want to hear anything skeptical but it's not like we don't want to find aliens. We really do. Here's an interview with a guy who works with SETI. Yeah, he's trying to sell you his book but it's still interesting.
http://fora.tv/2009/03/31/Seth_Shostak_ ... ien_Hunter

Chris Peterson wrote:...it seems unlikely that we will ever be visited by extraterrestrials, or that we will ever make such visits ourselves.

can't help myself to stop thinking about mayas and incas who also thought europeans, if they exist, would never visit them.

makc wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:...it seems unlikely that we will ever be visited by extraterrestrials, or that we will ever make such visits ourselves.

can't help myself to stop thinking about mayas and incas who also thought europeans, if they exist, would never visit them.

That's not quite the same situation. Europeans, and as we're now finding out, Asians, had been wandering about near North America for many hundreds of years before any sort of invasion took place. The technology to get here was known, if it was a bit hit or miss in practice. But we know of no technology that would make it easy to visit distant star systems (all star systems are distant!). And physics as we understand it now indicates the universe has a speed limit.

I wouldn't be quite as final about it as Chris -- I would say that back and forth visits are not going to be easy or occur often.

Rob

of course the situatuion is not the same, the only thing same to interstellar travelling is interstellar travelling. but my point is that things unlikely to happen still happen. for example, I once dropped haircomb, and it landed on it's edge (~2mm, or 1% of comb length). basically, one can construct events with infinitely small probability that never the less absolutely have to happen. I realize that you can easily waive this as irrelevant experience, but I want to believe that finding a workaround to some law of physics as we know it is only unlikely.

makc wrote:of course the situatuion is not the same, the only thing same to interstellar travelling is interstellar travelling. but my point is that things unlikely to happen still happen.

And to be clear, I didn't say that extraterrestrial visitations were impossible... only, in my opinion, very unlikely. I believe this not only because physics makes such travel difficult, but because I don't believe that technological civilizations are likely to be stable, so at any given time in the galaxy I expect there aren't many of them.

Chris Peterson wrote:

makc wrote:of course the situatuion is not the same, the only thing same to interstellar travelling is interstellar travelling. but my point is that things unlikely to happen still happen.

And to be clear, I didn't say that extraterrestrial visitations were impossible... only, in my opinion, very unlikely. I believe this not only because physics makes such travel difficult, but because I don't believe that technological civilizations are likely to be stable, so at any given time in the galaxy I expect there aren't many of them.

One of the difficult things to visualize is that it is very likely societies come and go roughly as fast, in cosmic terms, as individuals do. A hundred years or a few thousand years...either are a drop in the bucket in terms of cosmic timescales. So even if there are millions of intelligent species out there in the universe, there might be two in the Milkyway and we've missed each other by millions or even tens of thousands of years (or any number of such close-but-no-cigar situations). This is a difficult concept for most of us to accept; from our perspective we tend to believe that though our lives are short, civilization - in some form or another - continues long after we're gone.

Orca wrote:One of the difficult things to visualize is that it is very likely societies come and go roughly as fast, in cosmic terms, as individuals do. A hundred years or a few thousand years...either are a drop in the bucket in terms of cosmic timescales. So even if there are millions of intelligent species out there in the universe, there might be two in the Milkyway and we've missed each other by millions or even tens of thousands of years (or any number of such close-but-no-cigar situations). This is a difficult concept for most of us to accept; from our perspective we tend to believe that though our lives are short, civilization - in some form or another - continues long after we're gone.

Exactly. Of course, with only a single example of a technological civilization to examine, any extrapolation to others is highly speculative. Still, I look at our civilization and realize that there's a very good chance it will slip backwards into a less technological state over the next few centuries. We're severely damaging our environment and we have developed technology that makes it relatively easy for a single individual to cause mass damage to societies. It is difficult to see how we could become a psychologically mature species before some self-caused catastrophe knocks us back down. I'm not talking about going extinct- like cockroaches and rats, humans are going to survive. But it doesn't take much to keep us from developing interstellar travel, even if we remain fairly technological.

From an evolutionary standpoint, our success at science and technology seems to stem from our innate competiveness, not merely our intelligence. It isn't unreasonable to assume that would be the case for intelligent species elsewhere, as well. If so, I'd expect them to face the same sort of difficulties as us, and be just as unstable. Even societies that are stable for a few tens of thousands of years (far longer than any human society) are highly unlikely to coexist in any fairly local area of the galaxy.

Chris Peterson wrote:Exactly. Of course, with only a single example of a technological civilization to examine, any extrapolation to others is highly speculative. Still, I look at our civilization and realize that there's a very good chance it will slip backwards into a less technological state over the next few centuries. We're severely damaging our environment and we have developed technology that makes it relatively easy for a single individual to cause mass damage to societies. It is difficult to see how we could become a psychologically mature species before some self-caused catastrophe knocks us back down. I'm not talking about going extinct- like cockroaches and rats, humans are going to survive. But it doesn't take much to keep us from developing interstellar travel, even if we remain fairly technological.

10 thousand years from moving Rocks to >>>>Quantum Entanglement.<<<

The here and Now. Its not 1 Civilization It was many. Standing on the shoulders of giants (Not the Book)

A planet four times bigger than earth, Civilizations kept apart longer. There are many different aspects.

The second world war, drove us harder to solve the problems. Atom Bomb. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

''I'm not talking about going extinct- like cockroaches and rats'' <<<< These will be here, when we've long gone.

Chris Peterson wrote:From an evolutionary standpoint, our success at science and technology seems to stem from our innate competiveness, not merely our intelligence. It isn't unreasonable to assume that would be the case for intelligent species elsewhere, as well.

We got lucky.

Who said, ''The speed of light'' Is the maximum speed limit? When it has been proven >>instant<< speed limit is a lot faster.

How many more years from Quantum Entanglement To (................................................) and beyond?

mark swain wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:Exactly. Of course, with only a single example of a technological civilization to examine, any extrapolation to others is highly speculative. Still, I look at our civilization and realize that there's a very good chance it will slip backwards into a less technological state over the next few centuries. We're severely damaging our environment and we have developed technology that makes it relatively easy for a single individual to cause mass damage to societies. It is difficult to see how we could become a psychologically mature species before some self-caused catastrophe knocks us back down. I'm not talking about going extinct- like cockroaches and rats, humans are going to survive. But it doesn't take much to keep us from developing interstellar travel, even if we remain fairly technological.

10 thousand years from moving Rocks to >>>>Quantum Entanglement.<<<

The here and Now. Its not 1 Civilization It was many. Standing on the shoulders of giants (Not the Book)

A planet four times bigger than earth, Civilizations kept apart longer. There are many different aspects.

The second world war, drove us harder to solve the problems. Atom Bomb. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

''I'm not talking about going extinct- like cockroaches and rats'' <<<< These will be here, when we've long gone.

Chris Peterson wrote:From an evolutionary standpoint, our success at science and technology seems to stem from our innate competiveness, not merely our intelligence. It isn't unreasonable to assume that would be the case for intelligent species elsewhere, as well.

We got lucky.

Who said, ''The speed of light'' Is the maximum speed limit? When it has been proven >>instant<< speed limit is a lot faster.

How many more years from Quantum Entanglement To (................................................) and beyond?

Another way to look at this is 10,000 years from moving rocks to being fully capable of destroying ourselves in 48 hours. Another possible factor on the ever popular equasion N = Number of stars in the Universe, % developing planets, % developing life, % developing intelligent life, % developing societal life, % developing technologies capable of transmission of Radio waves, etc... N must also equal the number of technological societies that develop the capability to destroy themselves /N equaling the percentage of societies thet wind up doing just that. As we have been poised to do since bombing Japan in 1945.

BMAONE23 wrote:... the number of technological societies that develop the capability to destroy themselves /N equaling the percentage of societies thet wind up doing just that. As we have been poised to do since bombing Japan in 1945.

No, we weren't capable of doing that in 1945, nor even in the early 50s. It wasn't until sometime in the late 50s that we became capable of creating a nuclear winter scenario, and thereby bombing ourselves back to the stone age.

This sort of discussion always comes down to Fermi's Paradox. But there is no way to fill in the blanks when you try to estimate how many alien civilizations there might be in our galaxy, let alone how many might be close enough to us to -- with considerable difficulty -- drop in for a cup of tea. There might be two in the Milky Way right now, or there might be 200,000, but the stars are still too far apart for face to face visits.

As for Mark's (probably rhetorical) question: "Who said, ''The speed of light'' Is the maximum speed limit?" Me.

Rob

BMAONE23 wrote:Another way to look at this is 10,000 years from moving rocks to being fully capable of destroying ourselves in 48 hours.

I assume 10,000 years ago there was few hundreds of people who were quite able to kill each other with rocks in 48 hours, so nothing has changed from this perspective.

makc wrote:

BMAONE23 wrote:Another way to look at this is 10,000 years from moving rocks to being fully capable of destroying ourselves in 48 hours.

I assume 10,000 years ago there was few hundreds of people who were quite able to kill each other with rocks in 48 hours, so nothing has changed from this perspective.

No, even then humans had a wide geographical distribution. We reproduced faster than people could move around from one place to another and kill each other.

BTW, although we technically have the ability to kill everyone, it would be very difficult and, I think, very unlikely. The only way we're going to engage in interstellar travel is with a massive political will that would depend on very high social stability. Essentially, most of our social ills will need to have been fixed. It doesn't take anything so extreme as killing everybody to break a system and prevent it heading in that direction. A handful of terrorists killed 3000 people and set back social progress by decades; can you imagine what would happen if a few major cities were nuked, or a nasty plague set loose that killed a few million people? Nobody would be worrying about exploring even our own system, let alone traveling to stars.

Another difficult possibility we must face is that we are, and always will be, a local life form. Even if we are able to send a human expedition to another world they themselves will become isolated, one way or another.

The way I see it, short of some dreamy discoveries of, say, practical methods for folding space-time (spice anyone?) there are only a few options for humans spreading beyond our star.

One method would be some kind of generational ship. That way, the tens of thousands of years it would take to reach the nearest stars at speeds we can attain now would be off-set by a branch of humanity that would eventually lose contact with the homeworld altogether, but would be related none the less. I wonder how many generations it would take before folks started to wonder why the hell they were on a disk flying through space rather than back home where they came from. After all you'd have a city-state in space...and all the problems of maintaining such a social structure besides the fact that, oh yeah, you're in space! No difficulties there, right? But hey, with a population kicking away in the lab all day, perhaps new technologies will be discovered to expedite the process (better propulsion, maybe something decent on TV for a change, ect).

Sleeper ships might be possible, if we could find a way to keep humans dormant for very long periods of time and get them working again once the ship has reached its destination. The generational ship would have to be a city in space with power production, water reclamation, population control...it sounds pretty messy on paper. However, if the folks were dormant they'd need almost no food or water or air...or entertainment or psychiatric examination...and you wouldn't face the possibility of social breakdowns. Trouble is, the movies make hibernation look easy. Oh, and of course, from the perspective of those back home, we may as well have sent a robot probe because we'd probably never hear from them again. After all, for how many hundreds of generations would we remember them?

The final option would be to develop technology that can get close to the speed of light. At first this sounds like the best option by far...after all, you'd have a trip to Alpha Centauri in a matter of decades rather than a hundred and twenty thousand years or so (that's what I recon - with a few back-of-envelope calculations - it would take Voyager traveling at 40,000 mph to make the trip). The trouble is: due to Relativity, though a decade has gone by for our brave astronauts, vast amounts of time have gone by back home. Soon after waving goodbye the transmissions from the colony ship would get so low in frequency we could no longer understand them. Generations would go by and the colonists would be forgotten.



But hey, on the upside, Mars is starting to look pretty easy!

Chris Peterson wrote:

makc wrote:

BMAONE23 wrote:Another way to look at this is 10,000 years from moving rocks to being fully capable of destroying ourselves in 48 hours.

I assume 10,000 years ago there was few hundreds of people who were quite able to kill each other with rocks in 48 hours, so nothing has changed from this perspective.

No, even then humans had a wide geographical distribution. We reproduced faster than people could move around from one place to another and kill each other.

I don't understand why does this matter? You know the saying, if everyone would kill only 1 human being, there would be noone left. Whatever the distribution is, people can still kill each other. Now when I think about that, it could all be done in seconds, if only we could somehow ensure simultaneity. And get to hiking people just in time.

Hmmm, everyone would have to be affected by the same mass delusion at the same. In that case, we could simply have each human commit suicide rather than complicating it with one murder per person.

Heh, I've actually wished people would realize if the human population were simply reduced, we'd have a lot less problems. And I don't mean anything like government forced killings of "unfit" people or giant guilt trips that lead people to suicide. It would be as simple as voluntarily having one child. Even if some people had two children, as long as there was still a large proportion of the population having only one child, the population would slowly go down. Of course, then we'd have many generations of spoiled single children and a lot of empty towns to clean up and consolidate or otherwise leave abandoned and let nature do its job with them... and I don't know what the economy would do but there must be some reason why economists always want more and bigger production and the only way that can happen is if there are more people. And then again some people have a ridiculous drive to have as many kids as possible and they are unstoppable. Oh man, how did we get into this?

makc wrote:I don't understand why does this matter? You know the saying, if everyone would kill only 1 human being, there would be noone left. Whatever the distribution is, people can still kill each other. Now when I think about that, it could all be done in seconds, if only we could somehow ensure simultaneity. And get to hiking people just in time.

The point is, people don't all kill each other. It is only fairly recently that we've achieved the technology necessary for just one person, or a small group, to kill enough people to seriously disrupt the entire social structure of mankind. That introduces a serious element of uncertainty into the question of whether our civilization is stable enough to survive as a space-faring one for any significant length of time (and by extension, whether other civilizations could be stable).

geckzilla wrote:Heh, I've actually wished people would realize if the human population were simply reduced, we'd have a lot less problems.

So true; overpopulation is really the root of all our problems. As fast as we find ways to lower our environmental footprint, for instance, we produce more people. There are simply too many of us to be sustainable.

Many European countries are currently experiencing negative population growth, and it does have a negative impact on their economies. But there is no evidence that the strain can't be weathered. It's tricky, because modern economies are strongly based on consumption and on growth, a model that demands ever more producers and ever more consumers. It's a bad model, IMO. Viewed biologically, there's a name for that pattern: cancer.

Oh, cancer? I thought of it more like a bacterial colony in a petri dish. They're nice and happy for a good long time but how long can the agar last? Or how long can they withstand living in their own waste and dead cells even if they manage to eat some? Cancer is more like... I don't know, the corrupt politicians maybe.

geckzilla wrote:Oh, cancer? I thought of it more like a bacterial colony in a petri dish. They're nice and happy for a good long time but how long can the agar last?

Most bacterial cultures self-regulate. They grow until they reach a balance with their available resources, and then they stop growing. It is cancer cells that continue to grow beyond what the resources can support.

Our world isn't like the petri dish environment you propose, because the resources aren't static.

Most animals self-regulate their populations as well. I guess my bacteria have to be a hypothetical super bacteria that is capable of reproducing endlessly and extending its own lifespan well beyond what it should be. Earth isn't exactly like an animal's body, itself. Oh well, I guess there isn't a perfect analogy. Maybe cancer is the better one. I'd rather have a less emotionally-charged analogy for it, though. We're all witness to what throwing emotions and hyperbole in the mix did for AGW.

They could be closer than we could imagine.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/ ... g-for-pla/