| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/6/2008 8:28:04 PM | Further to SETI, I think it's important to quote Seth Shostak who pointed out that a dedicated and ongoing search of the sky has only been going on for a relatively short time. When compared to the life of the planet, the 50 or 60 years that we have been actively listening to the sky is a short time in the life cycle of a planet. There may be thousands or even millions of planets with life. They just haven't reached our level of technology to listen and send signals. Or, they aren't using that technology anymore.
Either way, the spaces between stars and galaxies and numbers of stars and planets in the universe are vast to the point of unimaginable. Anything anyone can say about probabilities at this point are highly speculative in the least. There may not be many close by, but every time I go out under the stars with my telescope and peer at a galaxy or just the sprawling expanse of the Milky Way, it's not hard to imagine at least a few...um...eyes? staring back. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/7/2008 1:37:32 AM | Once again Stargazer you are one that knows what you are talking about. I actually know very little about astronomy and have trouble finding the little dipper. I am just trying to come up with a way to explain some of these things to those that are scared off by the big equations and terminology. You may understand a lot of it but there aren't a lot of people around with your knowledge. I had a fellow that lives near me in the Fl panhandle ask me where Wash DC was when I told him I was going there. Not a stupid person, just never went to school. I still have a problem understanding the clock running slower or faster in a moving vessel. Can you explain it in a way that we can understand? I really can't and am not mocking anyone but I am here to get ideas. That is why I am here. I don't want to clutter my mind with all the other theories and doomsday predictions and all that because I it would affect my train of thought. I have now reputation to tarnish, so I have nothing to lose and money and fame do not interest me so why not have a little fun and maybe stumbling on something that looks credible. There are a lot of good posts so far. Another good relativity one is if you are in a car driving 60 miles an hour and a fly is in the car also, and flying towards the front of the car at 1 mph, then to you in the car the fly is going 1 mph. If someone standing on the road could see the fly in the passing car, the fly is going 61 mph. Now that is relativity in its simplest form. The speed of the fly is "relative" in plain English "looks like" it is going 61 mph. There are lots of people that do not understand what the word relative means besides being kinfolk and you have to realize this as how words are relative to your education or vocabulary. The real experts tend to leave the common man behind the eight ball and I sometimes think that they enjoy the feeling of superiority. I admire their capabilities but how about explaining it to me in my language. They might as well write the explanations in German like this: Ich habe Deutch fur drei jahre in der schule gelernt und nach der wandtafel auch habe gegangen. Versteh? To someone like yourself you take it for granted that everyone has your basic knowledge but I am looking for a way to explain it to someone who has a very limited vocabulary, let alone the ability to understand a mathematical formula. Dan | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/7/2008 6:34:04 AM | Look where we found Sapfaced Hussein the father of all thugs.
Because Blackwater and Haliburton needed milk money after we took him off our payroll. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/7/2008 8:34:28 AM | [Because Blackwater and Haliburton needed milk money after we took him off our payroll.]
You may possibly be right blue, but just like Noriega if you want to stay on our payroll you have to obey the rules and don't go pretending you are for real and start changing the rules. If this happens we have to come down hard on you and give you 20 lashes with a wet noodle.  | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/7/2008 4:22:30 PM | SETI (and the Drake Equation), is challenged by an idea called the Fermi Paradox.
The Fermi Paradox is the apparent contradiction between the high probability of ET's existence and the lack of contact with them. If they exist, where are they? Enrico Fermi assumed the existence of only one ET civilization capable of interstellar travel (at a speed lower than the speed of light). He assumed that this civilization would be interested in the conquest of the Galaxy and that it progressed by jumps, colonizing a planet during a few hundred or thousands years, then sending tens of vessels towards new conquests. Those new colonists wait another few hundred years, and send out their own dozen or so ships out to the next nearest systems to colonize. The problem is that after only a few million years, the whole of the Galaxy is colonized and under the influence of this extraterrestrial civilization (the low rate of travel being largely compensated by the exponential increase of the vessels number). Simulations of an expansion show that it is possible for one civilization to colonize the whole galaxy in about 10 million years, a short time compared to the age of the Galaxy (10-15 billion years old). If that's all it takes, it would be easy to do at least 500 times.
The Park hypothesis states that intelligent alien civilizations do exist, but they have not colonized the galaxy because they don’t want to. It neatly resolves both the Drake Equation, which indicates that intelligent aliens are likely to exist, and the Fermi Paradox: no colonization means we don’t see them. Why wouldn't they want to? Robots would be good space slaves I think. Maybe they (ETs) lose interest real quick. It's possible that the discovery of a technology, or even a realisation, makes the whole star trek thing moot. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/7/2008 4:36:42 PM | | Sam-Spade you just explained a very good theory on how life could have traveled way way out at a very fast speed. They hitched a ride on planets in the expanding universe via the ships they sent out. Very good and yet not atheistic. I still like to think of us as the center of the universe. In fact if you really think about it, and if the universe has no end, the center of the universe is exactly where you are at any given time. Even if you were in the international space station or a ship on the way to Mars, you yourself would always be at the center of the universe. This could fit into the relativity theories. Also another point I just thought about to try to explain at least my thoughts on relativity. The car going 60 miles an hour seems to be going slow at first coming towards you from a distance and appears to be going fastest as it passes right in front of you and gradually appears to slow down as it gets more distant from your position. Nothing new, just another way to try to describe a part of what Hillers and then Einsteins special theory of relativity encompassed, but not in entirety or with a mathematical formula. I still don't understand the clock slowing down or speeding up thing. Stargazer, what say you? | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/7/2008 7:05:55 PM | Slow & Fast? It's all relative 
I think you're thinking of time dilation. Here's a great video about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHjpBjgIMVk
It's only a minute long but.... a picture is worth a thousand words. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/7/2008 11:10:51 PM | I usually don't like checking out links because I get distracted and loose my log on on this site but sam-spade has a winner to look at in the previous post. I knew this part but never saw it shown so simply and there are probably a lot more like it on youtube. I favorited it just for safe keeping. I still think that there is an error in comparing everything with the speed of light. Just as there is in absolute zero which is something like 459 degrees below zero or something. It is just a temperature where particle movement supposedly appears to subside I think. Don't ever quote me when I say I think because I am just shooting from the hip. If you have the actual meaning of something I am not above being corrected. I have no credentials to tarnish so I don't get all bent out of shape. If I truly feel I have something for sure I will state it and I will have something to say by years end. I have saved all my findings but am still searching. I do know that something else worse than the cyclone in Burma(new name is Myrmar or something) is going to take place soon. I was thinking on the line of a volcano and sirens, but this could also be a large explosion with fire trucks or even air raid sirens. No facts, just a feeling and I have been correct all to often as of late. I am not proposing to be a psychic but rather use the method that I cannot explain in terms understandable to others which I call COPE or Calculation of Probable Events. I did not find it reading anywhere and someone may have a mathematical formula written. I came up with it on my own and was correct about the problems in Georgia(Russia), the biggie problems with the Olympics in China and a warning I posted about keeping an eye on Putin. Look what he pulled off just today. China is a very big threat because of the fact that they are willing to strike first if they feel they may be attacked because being a weaker nuclear power they have no other option. Believe me there are the same thugs running that country as there were 40 years or more ago. Absolutely no value for human dignity unless you are one of the dignified. Off subject but not completely because I am trying to qualify my COPE method in things that I predicted that occurred or will occur shortly. I predicted an earthquake in Lake Erie near Cleveland Ohio several years ago. Don't ask me how. I hope they are not doing this in California soon.  My little sister and family live there. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/8/2008 4:05:45 AM | "A brief moment in time" is a good read for the non brainiac.
Here's something about relativity.
If your in a space ship traveling close to the speed of light. Say someone who saw you blast off shines a powerful flashlight at you. You will not see the light pass you very slowly. Even though you're going even a tiny bit slower than the speed of light, you will NOT see the light pass you like a car on a freeway. According to you, it will zoom past you at the speed of light. Now this doesn't mean that the beam of light from the flashlight is going 2x the speed of light. The speed of light is relative to the observer. lol. NOW how much smarter do you think Einstein was. lol
Apparently, there are only a few people in the world who actually understand general relativity. And I'm not one. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/8/2008 5:57:27 AM | Hi Dan, I'll do my best to explain at least my understanding of Relativity. However, it is important to note that I am only an enthusiastic amateur. To say I "understand" relativity is to only say I comprehend some of the principles behind it. Why does travelling close to the speed of light cause time to slow down relative to a stationary observer? Well, that's how the universe works.
Basically, it boils down to the question of what would happen if you're in a spaceship travelling at 99.99 per cent of the speed of light and you turn on your headlights. That's the question that Einstein asked himself. Would you see an instantaneous beam extending out the front or would it slowly extend outward?
Well, you would see an instant beam extending beyond you. That's because, for you, in your frame of reference travelling at near the speed of light, time is going at a normal pace and the speed of light is constant. But, if you look behind you, the history of the universe is playing out at incredible speed. For your friends back home, if they could see you through a telescope, your motions would almost seem to have stopped. This is the effect known as time dilation. Time is not a constant for everyone in the universe but is dependent on your particular speed.
In addition to GPS units having to take this effect into account to be accurate, another example of Relativity in action is in the detection of secondary particles from cosmic ray interactions in the upper atmosphere. High energy cosmic rays interact with atoms in the upper atmosphere all the time and, when they do, they produce showers of secondary particles that are short-lived - much like what happens in an collider like CERN. In fact, they are so short-lived, they shouldn't even make it to the ground. But they do. The reason: time dilation. They are still travelling at the speed of light so are time dilated. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/8/2008 6:08:37 AM | With regards to the Drake Equation, the Fermi Paradox and the Park Hypothesis, each relies on a vast number of assumptions. I think you would find that each would say simply that either there are other technologically advanced species out there in the universe or there isn't.
However, considering that, as you look out into the universe, you see all the building blocks of life from simple carbon and oxygen to complex organic molecules including alcohol and glycol - not to mention the huge number of planets already discovered circling other stars - with enough time there will be billions throughout the universe. It simply becomes a numbers game.
I have no doubt that, as I've looked through my telescope at galaxies or a stars, I have seen more than a few that something with a mind to think calls home. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/8/2008 1:42:12 PM | | IMO, we are simply a unique aberration and are alone in the universe. It's ours to discover. However, I think we should iron out our differences and solve our problems before we venture out. Not doing so would invite interplanetary war with ourselves. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/9/2008 3:02:46 AM | | All good comments and it seems to me as if I almost understand it but I am struggling to find the words to say what I think because I have a limited vocabulary which is actually good for what I want to do(be able to at least attempt to expain it to anyone), but do you see how we all are so intrigued by what is probably so simple that Einstein(Onestone in Enlish) could not understand why no one could comprehend at first what he was trying to say. Oh by the way did anyone notice a teeny weeny volcano thing. I have proof positive that I knew nothing about when it was to happen or if it had just happened. If someone were to check my computer history and alerts and emails, they would see that what I posted about an imminent volcano or explosion with sirens would occur. I don't know how the sirens fit in but check out my previous post or maybe the one right before that. I don't need glory or praise but this is very unusual because it is happening a bit more than I care to admit. I don't sit around thinking it up. I may just type something for the heck of it in an email or on forum and maybe just a coincidence but some were no way a coincidence. I agree with sam spade once again we should put forth the effort to solve all the massive problems we are having here before looking for some other planet to destroy We must explore but give me a break. Now its 100,000 dead in what was Burma and no Myrmanrr or whatever it is. A stupid bunch of jerks called a military junta have all kinds of aid standing by while people are suffering so badly. Maybe something changed since this morning when I read yahoo news. Ever notice on these disasters it is only about 6 or 7 thousand people feared dead, then everytime you read the news it is higher and higher until it is 500,000 dead give or take a few. These things are what made me wonder if we are alone and are expected to explore space and look for a new horizon but it is like a test to see if we can handle this place first. Not too cool so far. Kudos to Stargazer for the info | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/9/2008 3:32:56 AM | According to Urantian thought, the newest and most convincing, to me at least, we are not alone.
Urantia (aka Earth) in a nutshell:
- There are hundreds of thousands of populated worlds.
- All planets are aware of, and can communicate with each other (except earth)
- There are 12 races in the universe. Planets are populated with one race.
- Earth is a test case where all races are present.
- The whole universe is watching us develop.
- The earth was ISOLATED on purpose so we cannot be influenced by external forces.
- They do explain space travel, but for great distances, it's only the consciousness that does (for physical beings. i.e Jesus coming to earth the first time, then later, a second and final time.)
At the very least, it's an interesting but hard read. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/9/2008 3:46:01 PM |
Carl Sagan who I loved to watch on his Cosmos series I think on discovery channel who kept saying "billions and billions of galaxies" said the probability of life as we know it on another planet were a big ZERO. I am not quoting him exactly, but I do remember him saying it.
Carl Sagan Never said billions and billions during the Cosmos series - that originate with Johnny Carson doing an impression of Carl Sagan.
Also, this is quote taken from the final paragraph of Carl Sagan's book "Broca's Brain" publish about the same time as Cosmo was filmed, "And out there in the depths of space, it seems very likely that, sooner or later, we will find other intelligent beings. Some of them less advanced than we; some, probably most will be more." | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/9/2008 9:30:25 PM | arl Sagan Never said billions and billions during the Cosmos series - that originate with Johnny Carson doing an impression of Carl Sagan.
I am not real smart. I can't figure out how to put a quote I want to comment on without just copy and pasting it. But one thing I do have is a very very good memory and I can still see Carl Sagans deep eyes and black but graying hair and saying" billions and billions". It may have been planets or stars or galaxies. You need to find fault in my quotes because you have nothing of importance to add. I am right quietcowboy and you are wrong. I watched Carl Sagan speak many times. I will not waste my time trying to prove something that I already know is true to make you feel you have exposed me as a story teller. When I comment I am not perfect and have no college degree nor am I anywhere even close to Stargazers knowledge of the cosmos. I am a late bloomer and I am only making this comment for you to read for youself. You don't have to believe any of my comment and I don't believe any of yours and actually haven't found any substance in any of them that could help me with my original statement. So this must now take place:
From all my friends to you with love, Daniel | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/10/2008 12:04:50 AM | "IMO, we are simply a unique aberration and are alone in the universe. It's ours to discover. However, I think we should iron out our differences and solve our problems before we venture out. Not doing so would invite interplanetary war with ourselves."
I fundamentally disagree. Truth is we will never be able to iron out our violent nature as a species. You have to realize theres a duality in our nature. It's not good or evil. Just that in order to create you need to also be able to destroy and vice versa.
If anything I think this is a likely scenario. When we finally do start travelling in space we will have the tech to live longer and heal our own bodies. We will also be able to modify our bodies.
If anything we will live longer and have less of a sense of mortality. Our need to compete for suvival will increase as well. Our maturity that comes with age will slow down according to our extended life. Since we would have less to humble us so we will grow arrogant or stay arrogant a lot longer. The price for space travel, better medical technology and what not will be more fierce competition and more wars.
If anything though all the colonizers will become their own unique species over time. Each group of humans will have to adapt to things like different gravity, air, food etc.
In that sense we may naturally evolve into different kinds of humans. That and we will probably alter ourselves with technology. Alter our genes, grow new organs etc.
If anything I doubt that in 200 hundred years that human will be the same thing that being human is now. Medical technology will just advance too quickly in that time. We will start modifying what we are probably to survive harsher enviroments. Which I think will just become natural. We already do it with cars, planes and helicopters.
Either way just by leaving this world we will evolve into something else. The conditions of a different enviroment will require new adaptations.
I mean with how different each world is I can't see how we won't change.
If anything the most silly concept is when everyone thinks aliens will all be humanoids. They probably would be very far away from humanoid. If anything the evolved offshoots from humanity will be humanoid but thats because they originated from us.
I always hated how Star trek had different humanoids as aliens. It would have been better if they said that all the humanoids were humans that colonized different worlds. The Klignons should have been humans that evolved or genetically modified themselves to survive on a different world. If the world has harsher conditions that could explain their more war like nature.
Also lastly we have to remmeber what everyone does what they do out of love. Sometimes war is done out of love. Or desire of survival, when people fight out of hate it's usually desire for retribution or justice. So in the end we all fight for a perceived justice. Every dictator for example, sees himself the hero a rebel fighting for his own cause. The difference I think is that the more developed countrys where theres less poverty and need for infighting. Are much more fair to one another even if they can be dubious to one another. In poorer less developed countries theres more need of violence for survival. Imagine growing up somewhere where tribal groups are natural and those tribal groups always competed and killed with one another. We North Americians are privileged to live in a society where we don't need to kill to eat or be forced to join a group of military rebels. We do have our own kinds of tribes but their more subtle, diplomatic. Their still insidious in some ways we can lie and cheat one another though we tend to like to hide that aspect but at least we don't shoot one another. Yet that means we have better wealth and flow of resources. Those that kill are usually the ones naturally socialized to do so or are desperate. We just aren't that desperate. It dosen't mean we are evil, were just all fighting to live. I do beleive that the fairer ways are always best but they can't always be the way things go. The world is too chaotic for that. Conflict is as natural as breathing air.
Anyways the point is we don't fight because we are all sick and maligned. It's because we all wan't survival. We all have different perceptions on who the badguy is and who deserves punishment. That said there are some guys out there that really are just despicable in every sense of the word. In the sense that I would consider them an enemy to all men and themselves sort of way.
These kind of men and women are everywhere though. Their the ones that either learned that everyone else is their enemy because of experiences that were too terrible to let them develop healthy ways of relating to other people as being like them.
The ones that are just too emotionally cold to feel the pain others feel and cannot understand that others are real people like them.
Or their people that think they are the hero and rationalize that they are fighting for the greater justice. Im not speaking of most of the soldiers that go to protect their country but the leaders of terrorist groups or other nations. Who usually might beleive their really fighting against an injustice. Or they feel repressed by the world and want to know what it's like to feel power. Their sick of the power the ruling body has and desire it or they think their fighting for their own people.
I learned this kind of through watching cartoons or reading about Hitler. Most of the time the psychological profile of the main villain was that he really beleived he was doing the greater good. Just that he was dangerous to himself and others because he justified viloence as a means to an end. People like Hitler saw everyone that wasn't part of their group as an enemy. To him it would be us who were the bad guys. No matter what we did. Yes he did lie to his people but he probably thought he was guiding them to the right destination through lies. He must have thought he had been doing the greater good.
Of course we have people that are just greedy. I think them and the emotionless people are the worst. Since theres no sense of loyalty to anyone and their willing to crush people. Or put entire groups at each others throats for profit. They make the people who fight into chess pawns. It's really sad. Since even those that don't wan't war and are pushed into it get stuck being their fools. With no choice in the matter.
Yet anyways I think it's always one of these types that tend to cause a lot of the wars.
Everyone else just fights because of survival or to protect what they beleive in or stop others from hurting those they see as closest to them. The sad thing is were all the same but we still can't really change this. Since someone will always feel alien and different to everyone else and will go up against others. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/10/2008 12:26:54 AM | Oh and KaptDan, don't worry vocabulary is something that gets improved primarily through voracious reading. That said if your focused enough you can still choose what level you would like to write at.
Most of the scientists write in the scientific manner out of habit. Thats how their expected to write professionally and then it comes out in their everyday talk.
It's like imagine you had to talk in science papers all day. Eventually those words woul be as natural as the more average language.
Anyways good ways to improve vocabulary are everywhere. I learned a lot of words just by reading comics. Heck writing on line improved my writing skills by leaps and bounds. People undermine them as being not as intellectual it isn't true. Your usually bombarded with quite a few words and theres associating the image with the words. Which takes a mental process all it's own. It makes it good for you to associate things toghether. Like Einsteins examples of relativity.
When people yell at you for not using punctuation you start to learn. Heh. Not that I really have put the work to improve but im a lot better than I used to be. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/10/2008 5:46:11 AM |
But one thing I do have is a very very good memory and I can still see Carl Sagans deep eyes and black but graying hair and saying" billions and billions".
In his final book, "Billions and Billions" written by Carl Sagan while dying of cancer one of the first things he writes about is that he never said "billions and billions", thus the title of the book.
http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxbillio.html | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/10/2008 10:12:15 AM | | My own theory on life in the universe is that it may be just like a lottery, odds are very long against it(to date we have not come close to producing a from scratch group of molecules that self-reproduce fueled by chemical/electrical energy), but some days you have one winner and other days you might have a hand full. The odds of there being a winner don't change, the day does. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/10/2008 11:22:19 AM | Oh and KaptDan, don't worry vocabulary is something that gets improved primarily through voracious reading. That said if your focused enough you can still choose what level you would like to write at.
I appreciate the comment but I cannot stay focused. I do not know why. I always leave one job done because I get bored or something unless it is something that seems like fun. I can't change this and when I do focus on something like I did when I studies 12 books to try to get promoted from Lieutenant to Captain in the Cleveland Fire Department I came in first out of about 65 smart Lieutenants. I left 45 minutes before anyone else. It was so so easy for me. I might be bragging and if I am everyone likes to be good at something. It is human nature. Even a dog likes to get petted when he finds your lost shoe. I don't like to stay focused because it is not fun to me. Staying unfocused gave me a reputation second to none and most of the lives I saved were those of my comrades under my command at very very big fires in Cleveland. I would make decisions without focusing on not how we could put out the fire, but how we could do it without anyone getting hurt. If the building was vacant and most likely arson for insurance money, let the stupid piece of s---t burn. Not to preach but I am trying to explain how being unfocused does have some advantages and I can't change the way I am unless I let some shrink dope me up and turn me into a zombie like they like to do because they are jealous that you are smarter than they are, so there   | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/10/2008 11:29:53 AM | I did not mean to come down hard on you quiet cow boy for this:
In his final book, "Billions and Billions" written by Carl Sagan while dying of cancer one of the first things he writes about is that he never said "billions and billions", thus the title of the book.
But if you are dying of cancer you are usually doped up with large doses of morphine or whatever they use and your memory may be failing in your final days. I may still be wrong but I can't even for say if it was in the Cosmos series that I saw him say it or not, but he did say it. I remember his face and his words, and I apologize if I offended you but I like to joke around with no ill intent. Dan  | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/10/2008 4:45:14 PM |
I read "Billions and Billions", but his stuff about Johnny Carson wasn't what was member able to me. He knew he was dying and talk about death, something that he said rang so true to me. Not a quote, but he said he didn't know if heaven, hell or a dreamless sleep await him. He was jewish, still kept the faith, and that is what he said. I was raised Christian, pretty much an agnostic, and that is what I will probably say when I die if asked. | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/10/2008 7:33:26 PM | | Well I always looked at it like the earth was just one grain of sand on the beach ,and it just does not make sense to me that life would be on that one grain of sand and not any of the billionand billions and billions of other grains | |
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| We are all alone in space and time.
Posted: 5/11/2008 12:37:20 AM | I thought I read that he didn't really believe in God which would collaborate quitcowboys statement. I am not sure what agnostic means without looking it up but if it is what I think it is you may want to read another one of my posts but I am not sure what forum it was on. Happy Mothers day to all your wifes and to the gals on this forum who are moms or who have moms or want to be a mom.  | |
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