Does Life Exist

[oleg]

Originally posted by parabolize:
....
2. We dont see them and the optics to see them will need a very wide base line.
....
and with mars there just is not a reason to do it until we have micro machines that can turn rust and CO2 into steel and O2

quite soon - in 25 years probably, we should have an operational interferometer telescope in space capable to see Earth like planets around nearby stars.

Converting C02 to O2 is no problem - plants have been doing it for many million years A little genetical engeneering and we will have algae capable to live on Mars providing there is enough water underground.

[JurijD]

Hey Arkcon... yeah 11 days in the mediteranian sun relaxes you more then u can imagine I´m glad PBW knew when to stop working

I understand your point Ruatha... I know that in the 30-ies old Adolf couldn´t exactly tune to Alpha Centauri between his looong screaming monolouges It just that I read somewhere that the voyager probe (if put far away from Earth) would be able to record (again) the first Elvis song broadcasted on radio... I just concluded that with a big enough radio antenna one could pick up the first transmissions from our system... and vice versa.

P.S.: and of course my argument only included intelligent species that have the same tech level and are similarily developed as we are... use teh same tech (radio freq. that we use are such because they are most appropriate and they would prolly use the same ones) ther of course could be a hugely developed culture living on alpha centaury that has ships that reach warp 9.86 but communicates by telephaty and has no need for radio and such primitive junk

[ August 08, 2003, 12:44: Message edited by: JurijD ]

[Ruatha]

Why would aliens attack us, what would they want? Information is one thing that would be valuable.
If the whole population on earth could be killed off without destroying the structires, computers, libraries etc, it would be a wealth of information.
New ideas and viewpoints, different ways to do the same thing, could be profitable but would require a huge investment, propably to big to be worthwhile, but what do I know of alien psychlogy?
Perhaps we would be considered devils, an abomination against their god and that we must be destroyed. Or a potential future threat if left alone?

Still, I for one belive that any possible alines would not be hostile, but I'll most likely ever know as there isn't even a slim chance that such a contact will be established in my lifetime, if there is intelligent life out there.

So what about the future?
I belive that one day there will be many different species out there, widely different in abilities and look, but all derived from human stock, geneticly altered by either man or nature to fit into different conditions, perhaps small alterations at first, better oxygnetaing blood platelets? But eventually accelerating, good or bad? For me it seems like a bad idea but then I'm not living in that time am I?

[JurijD]

Yeah of course, they could be after info... one could prolly even think of better reasons. I just wanted to say that we are (now) prolly insignificant to anyone out there. Take this example: what could we learn by watching how a cat chases a mouse or by killing all the snails in the world and examining their shells to see what they have hiding in there Or killing all the monkeys on Earth for fear of the evolving into something higher... Think of the developments we made in the Last 100 years... (try!) to extrapolate to the next 1.000.000 years of development... thats how developed they will be when (and if) we meet them. I don´t think they´ll even bother to stop here...

[ August 08, 2003, 12:51: Message edited by: JurijD ]

[parabolize]

yes millions of years
and thats how long it took to put O2 in the air millions of years...
yes 25 years from now we will see planets a few light years out, but as i said there isnt going to be that many good planets to see.

[oleg]

Originally posted by parabolize:
yes millions of years
and thats how long it took to put O2 in the air millions of years...
yes 25 years from now we will see planets a few light years out, but as i said there isnt going to be that many good planets to see.

And how do you know ?
May be there is a shiny blue planet orbiting Alpha Centauri !

[JurijD]

Originally posted by Cirvol:
jurijd, communism didn't fail because of enemies 'abroad and within'...

it failed because it absolutely relies on the 100% trustworthiness of people running the system to not take advantage of it...

since humans are animals, this will not happen

in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice... in practice however, its HUGE

I stated 3 reasons why communism failed. Please read them before you post a reply confirming one of my reasons and saying I´m wrong when you really agree with me

1. human flaws (the reason you put up instead of my other two...)
2. enemies abroad (the western world who was afraid that their greedy capitalist ways would end..)
3. enemies within (stupid leaders who also got greedy)

You could put that up on a sign in the middle of Red square in Moscow and people would shake your hand...

[Taera]

yeah, with fungi lifeforms on it...

[JurijD]

THE SPINNING SHIP PROBLEM:

The 3 problems I saw mentioned here about using rotational inertia to replace gravity were:

1. movements of astronauts *inside* would "distabilize" the ship and cause it to stop rotating properly
2. as humans aren´t a point object as high school physics would like us to believe a thing called the Corelious force develops when you rotate them on the inside of a wheel like structure of a radious not big enough compared to the size of the person inside.
3. even though inertia gives us 1 g and minimum corelious force we still experience muscle atrophy and "back stress"

My thoughts on these:
1. If we look closely at Newtons laws of motion we see that every action as a reaction... so what could be the "worst" disturbance an astronaut could cause to a rotating wheel? The absolute worst would be for him to run in the same direction the wheel is spinning... that way his legs would push the wheel in the opposite direction on the spinning motion and tend to slow it down... but the funny thing is that the moment this astronaut stopped running the wheel would start spinning at the same speed as it did in the beginning because there is a little thing called rotational inertia conservation which states that in any inclosed system (a spaceship and its occupats) the rotational inertia of the whole system cannot be changed by internal forces of the system... you can bounce all you want inside but you won´t change anything.

2. The obvious solution to this issue is to build a wheel that has a radious more than 100x the normal height of a person (heeh... big, yes... very big) althugh this might be impractical and almost impossible to do now it might be in the future... but sadly its the only solution physics offers us for now...

3. I´m pretty sure this is the result of insufficient inertia and persisting differential (Corelious) forces in a wheel not big enough or not spinning fast enough. Because if we had a big wheel with almost no differential forces and a g inertial acceleration at the ouer rim... we would´t be able to set it apart from normal gravity. (it´s not only simulated... it´s exactly the same as normal gravity in all it´s affects... you just have to have a wheel big enough to eliminate the differential forces)

[narf poit chez BOOM]

theologically, i've heard that their are microbes in volcanos. so if god put life there, he probably put it on other planets.

250,000,000,000 planets in our galaxy and something like 300,000 galaxies seems like a great waste of space to me otherwise. i mean 75,000,000,000,000,000 stars, since ours is a medium galaxy...it's not if, it's where.

[ August 09, 2003, 09:32: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]