Alien life could be found within 40 years - really?

Cú Giobach

Mickeroo wrote: »

Yeah I've heard that quote before, I'm pretty sure its only meant to apply to laymen like myself not actual quantum physicists. I've only a basic understanding of the subject of course, i'm only going by what I've read or seen/heard physicists themselves say on the matter.

Well you are wrong, it was said by Richard Feynman one of the greatest physicists of all time who did much of the work on QM and he included not just himself but anyone, because he actually knows something about the subject. Not one physicist will ever say they understand QM.

Stating the obvious a bit there. I was just referring to how you used the gap in knowledge between the present and 1000 years ago to try give less credence to what we know now. Not to mention the sly dig that anyone disagreeing with you isn't well educated

I'll ask you again in what way am I trying to give less credence to what we know now.
You seem to be having difficulty in understanding the difference between dishing our present understanding and stating that our understanding can (and certainly will) change.
Only the uneducated would think we have reached some sort of pinnacle of knowledge and people in the future would lament not having much left to learn.

Using our "tiny" knowledge to suggest we know and understand nothing is pretty silly. Saying definitive statements based on what is considered scientific fact will be looked at as amusing and naive in the future only rings true if the facts of the present are proven to be erronous which nobody in existence has any way of knowing, just seems like a load of hot air to me. You could literally rationalise (for want of a better word) anything with that kind of thinking.

And what strongly held tenet of modern physics have I said is wrong?
It is not a scientific fact that it is impossible to get from one part of the universe to another faster than a beam of light, in fact it is theoretically possible, are you actually reading this thread or just taking the piss?

Reindeer

We're starting to get wrapped up in semantics. The fact is many physicists believe FTL is possible with a sufficiently advanced civilization with our current theories. Also, even at less than FTL, aliens can still visit us as there are plenty of planets within a couple hundred light years. This means an alien, especially one that can easily maintain several G's of acceleration comfortably, can reach us within a human generation their time. A human generation may mean nothing to them. Or, they may have stasis systems. Hell, they might naturally hibernate. They won't likely be human after all.

Any sufficiently advanced society will have been looking for life much longer than us. Whether for resources, visitation, curiosity, defence, offence, etc. But more importantly, they would be looking for a planet that could harbor their life. Even with the crude instruments we have today, we can find earth-like planets many light years away. In other words, not only would every other advanced life form out there be looking for such a planet, but they likely will be of a similar type of life form to us via the fact they are specifically looking at our planet. Most scientists agree that they will find our planet before they find our communications. However, if they were looking at our planet for curiosity or resources, the next step would be to investigate...

The question of 40 years, though. I dunno. I personally believe that a sufficiently advanced civilization would purposefully avoid us. They have nothing to gain from visiting, and there are likely plenty of other unoccupied planets out there they could harvest for materials if need be, assuming they were advanced enough to reach us.

antodeco

If there's aliens watching us through telescopes miles away they wouldn't actually be seeing us. They'd be looking at dinosaurs.

Roadtrippin

El Weirdo wrote: »

What do you think?

Sorry, meant to answer you earlier.
Not very realistic if you ask me but it also depends what you define as "alien". I think probably they will discover alien lifeforms in the sense of bacteria etc. but not sure I'll be alive when they come across actual alien "beings" if you like.

What's your take on this?

Duggys Housemate

Cú Giobach wrote: »

Well you are wrong, it was said by Richard Feynman one of the greatest physicists of all time who did much of the work on QM and he included not just himself but anyone, because he actually knows something about the subject. Not one physicist will ever say they understand QM.

This is about the only thing you got right. However physicists dont mean they understand the mathematics of QM, but that it is as weird to them as it is to us. In practice.

I'll ask you again in what way am I trying to give less credence to what we know now.
You seem to be having difficulty in understanding the difference between dishing our present understanding and stating that our understanding can (and certainly will) change.
Only the uneducated would think we have reached some sort of pinnacle of knowledge and people in the future would lament not having much left to learn.

The way you call your opponents "uneducated" is a bit of a joke. You are not very well educated, a little knowledge etc. Nobody is saying we have reached a pinnacle of knowledge but that there is no way past the speed of light. Mass tends to infinity under the mathematics of the Lorenz contraction, energy tends to infinity. We can theorize massless particles which are faster than the speed of light, but sometimes a mathematical theory is just, well, maths. In any case we have no known way of getting information faster than light.

C is essential to relativity. Causality cannot be preserved if information can travel faster than light. This is integral to the theory. C is also integral to quantum mechanics. Throwing the speed of light out the window throws relativity out the the window - despite what you say. It is an essential theory, if it is wrong, then all of the last century is wrong. We start back at 1904

And what strongly held tenet of modern physics have I said is wrong?
It is not a scientific fact that it is impossible to get from one part of the universe to another faster than a beam of light, in fact it is theoretically possible, are you actually reading this thread or just taking the piss?

Relativity, despite what you say. If you think that "only the uneducated" think we - or an advance alien species - wouldn't find a way past the speed of light in the future, which is what you are saying, you are jettisoning Special Relativity. You don't realise that you are because you don't know much about it.

The wormhole thing you are hiding behind is just a fig leaf hiding lack of knowledge or logic.

1) Wormholes are theoretical, and we would have a hard job finding them to begin with which doesn't square with your advanced aliens having easy access to faster than light information - which is how this started.
2) . The main thing is, though, that they are just shortcuts. Imagine there is a windy road, and on that windy road it takes 60 minutes to travel 60 miles from A-B at max speed in a car which cant - by design - go faster or slower than 60mph.

One day we discover that the topology of the landscape is such that a shortcut exists from A - B, and it now takes 20 minutes because it is 20 miles. What does that tell us about the maximum speed of the car? It tells us that it is still 60 mph.

Duggys Housemate

Reindeer wrote: »

We're starting to get wrapped up in semantics. The fact is many physicists believe FTL is possible with a sufficiently advanced civilization with our current theories.

No, they don't. Are there books out there peddling this nonsense?

Reindeer

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

No, they don't. Are there books out there peddling this nonsense?

I meant to post this in this thread a while ago, actually. If it is the case Michio Kaku's credentials do not compare to your own, I shall defer to you. Although, admittedly, assembling an atom smasher in your garage as a teenager is a bit of a feat to beat.

Kaku was born in San Jose, California to Japanese immigrant parents. His grandfather came to the United States to take part in the clean-up operation after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. His father was born in California but was educated in Japan and spoke little English. Both his parents were put in the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, where they met and where his two brothers were born.

At Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, Kaku assembled an atom smasher in his parents' garage for a science fair project. At the National Science Fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he attracted the attention of physicist Edward Teller, who took Kaku as a protégé, awarding him the Hertz Engineering Scholarship. Kaku graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1968 and was first in his physics class. He attended the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and received a Ph.D. in 1972, and in 1972 he held a lectureship at Princeton University.

During the Vietnam War, Kaku completed his U.S. Army basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and his advanced individual training at Fort Lewis, Washington.

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

Liquid water is all very well and likely one of the biggest if not the biggest requirements for life as we know it. However, one theory goes that at the very beginning some of the building block compounds for life required the presence of liquid water to form, whereas others needed to be dry. The theory goes that is was in the massive tidal zones of the early earth when the moon was much closer is where life kicked off. So biochemical compounds were alternately inundated by the ocean and baked in the sun twice daily. If this theory has legs then Europa may be seedable with life, but may never have gotten off the ground there in the first place.

Some solvent, ammonia might work too. Hydrocarbons might also work as long as there was trace amounts of water / ammonia / solvent cells could use.

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=699

It is not easy to estimate how far away from the Earth the Moon was when it formed, but simulations suggest is was about 3-5 times the radius of the Earth, or about 19-30 thousand km.

Tidal force is proportional to r cubed so very early tides could have been 1,000 times higher ? :eek:

Duggys Housemate

Reindeer wrote: »

I meant to post this in this thread a while ago, actually. If it is the case Michio Kaku's credentials do not compare to your own, I shall defer to you.

He is one physicist, and it is clear that he is fighting all the other scientists - he keeps complaining about other scientists being naive. Seems like a populist.

And plenty of what he is saying is rubbish.General relativity does not supercede Einstein, for one. Its his theory. And it doesn't have faster than light mechanisms, and as for unified theory - to speculate that a yet unknown theory will have faster than light travel is just that. Speculation.

As for credentialism, my degree is in mathematics. What matters here, unless Kaku pops in, is my credentialism vs yours, not his versus mine. And his vs everybody elses. If we are arguing to authority.

Capt'n Midnight

Meteorites from Mars have landed here, and presumably visa versa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite

it's possible for bacterial spores to survive an meteorite impact, as long as they are on the inside which stays cold - only the outer layers get burnt up on re-entry http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103500965436

so it's possible that a meteorite that hit this planet in the last four billion years not only ejectect viable bacterial spores but that celestical mechanics and encounters and sunlight pressure might have even caused some material to have left the solar system. In which case there was plenty of time to reach nearby stars and planets.

Reindeer

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

As for credentialism, my degree is in mathematics. What matters here, unless Kaku pops in, is my credentialism vs yours, not his versus mine. And his vs everybody elses. If we are arguing to authority.

I have a degree in Industrial design, with a minor in linguistics, concentration in German. I do have university level physics and mathematics/calculus as I had switched from Electrical Engineering to industrial design late in my college career. However, this is where my linguistics training trumps your maths:

We are not arguing credentials or numbers. We are discussing physics and aliens. If you wish to argue credentials, I think there's a thread for that in 4chan. If you wish to argue physics, I suggest you argue about physics. Michio Kaku is a world reknown and accomplished physicist. Arbitrarily dismissing the statements about physics from a man whose credentials shadow yours before he even graduated college his second time doesn't hide the fact he is far more accomplished than any of us in the conversations are in theoretical AND practical physics. You had no idea he had made such statements previously, which also means it is likely you have no idea who else in physics believes in FTL.

To quote Richard Feynman "...there is also an amplitude for light to go faster (or slower) than the conventional speed of light. You found out in the last lecture that light doesn't go only in straight lines; now, you find out that it doesn't go only at the speed of light! It may surprise you that there is an amplitude for a photon to go at speeds faster or slower than the conventional speed, c."

There are some that do not believe, and have some proof, that the speed of light is not a constant. Or are you also going to try and tell me I should quote myself and not Feynman?

Semantics...

Moving right along; Kaku made another statement that I felt was pertinent. Why would a species advanced enough to travel to visit us even bother? The likelihood of us being ants by comparison is high.

Strawberry Fields

Reindeer wrote: »

Moving right along; Kaku made another statement that I felt was pertinent. Why would a species advanced enough to travel to visit us even bother? The likelihood of us being ants by comparison is high.

They've been visiting for years so they could build the pyramids, test our nuclear capabilities in roswell you know like the yanks in Iran etc..

If we found alien life on a planet how long before curiousity demanded we get there? India, Russia, US in a race to do it.

Latchy

karma_ wrote: »

The universe is big, really big.

Actually it's even much bigger than that again ...;)

A recent tv programe I watched on the universe suggests that of all the new planets and stars being discovered,it's only a question of 'when' and not 'if ' a planet similar to earth is discovered .

Wibbs

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

2) . The main thing is, though, that they are just shortcuts. Imagine there is a windy road, and on that windy road it takes 60 minutes to travel 60 miles from A-B at max speed in a car which cant - by design - go faster or slower than 60mph.

One day we discover that the topology of the landscape is such that a shortcut exists from A - B, and it now takes 20 minutes because it is 20 miles. What does that tell us about the maximum speed of the car? It tells us that it is still 60 mph.

+1. Loathe though I am to put any absolute down in pixels I can't see any species breaking the speed of light or even close to it, but I can see how in theory at least they could find the shortcut. The shortcut is (as much as we know)an engineering problem not something that breaks the laws of nature. Kinda like if you went back in time(don't go there DH ) and met Newton and asked him if theoretically a trip to the moon was possible, he'd likely say yes, even calculate the speeds and orbit trajectories required, but at the turn of the 16th century with the best will in the world the engineering would be impossible, even if you went back with the blueprints for a Saturn V.

Even going at half light or quarter light speed there are serious issues going on. A golfball sized rock hitting the earth at half light speed would make one helluva dent, so you'd need one helluva shield.

I think if we do encounter interstellar travelers they won't be biological(unless they warp wormholes by collapsing stars and such). They'll be the "machine" descendants of their biological creators. The problem with such huge distances is time. We simply don't live long enough. A machine intelligence would have no such constraints. Neither would biologically suitable habitats. Energy requirements would be very low too. They might even suck sustenance for the quantum foam/ether. They could seed their galaxy(or beyond) with relatively slow moving intelligences, small "neurons" in a vast spreading interstellar internet communicating at the speed of light that only boot up when the individual neurons reach a point of interest. In the deep cold of interstellar space only pretty basic anti entropy systems would be required for their long(to our minds) journeys. One could almost imagine that after the type I, II and III civilisations some have mooted, there is another, a type IIII, that turns an entire galaxy into an interconnected conscious "mind" hoovering up information, constantly evolving as it went. It would be the ultimate survivor of life(but not as we know it Jim) and vey resilient to extinction. If it/they continued to spread beyond their galaxy into others over the trillions of years that the future holds one might end up with a near universal intelligence. Maybe at that point of unimaginable knowledge and intelligence they/it could start to seed new universes at the quantum level and big bangs in other dimensions may be born. Maybe this has happened "before" and that's where this universe came from? At that point the Atheists may have to think again. Well... just a little anyway

Mickeroo

Wibbs wrote: »

+1. Loathe though I am to put any absolute down in pixels I can't see any species breaking the speed of light or even close to it, but I can see how in theory at least they could find the shortcut. The shortcut is (as much as we know)an engineering problem not something that breaks the laws of nature. Kinda like if you went back in time(don't go there DH ) and met Newton and asked him if theoretically a trip to the moon was possible, he'd likely say yes, even calculate the speeds and orbit trajectories required, but at the turn of the 16th century with the best will in the world the engineering would be impossible, even if you went back with the blueprints for a Saturn V.

Even going at half light or quarter light speed there are serious issues going on. A golfball sized rock hitting the earth at half light speed would make one helluva dent, so you'd need one helluva shield.

I think if we do encounter interstellar travelers they won't be biological(unless they warp wormholes by collapsing stars and such). They'll be the "machine" descendants of their biological creators. The problem with such huge distances is time. We simply don't live long enough. A machine intelligence would have no such constraints. Neither would biologically suitable habitats. Energy requirements would be very low too. They might even suck sustenance for the quantum foam/ether. They could seed their galaxy(or beyond) with relatively slow moving intelligences, small "neurons" in a vast spreading interstellar internet communicating at the speed of light that only boot up when the individual neurons reach a point of interest. In the deep cold of interstellar space only pretty basic anti entropy systems would be required for their long(to our minds) journeys. One could almost imagine that after the type I, II and III civilisations some have mooted, there is another, a type IIII, that turns an entire galaxy into an interconnected conscious "mind" hoovering up information, constantly evolving as it went. It would be the ultimate survivor of life(but not as we know it Jim) and vey resilient to extinction. If it/they continued to spread beyond their galaxy into others over the trillions of years that the future holds one might end up with a near universal intelligence. Maybe at that point of unimaginable knowledge and intelligence they/it could start to seed new universes at the quantum level and big bangs in other dimensions may be born. Maybe this has happened "before" and that's where this universe came from? At that point the Atheists may have to think again. Well... just a little anyway

Pretty sure you just described The Borg there Wibbs

Shryke

I would urge anyone to give a read of the following short story if they are interested in the kind of thought that Wibbs alludes to. Not for any major reason other than that it's very good.
It's called The Last Question and it's by Isaac Asimov. Nuff said really.

http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm

Duggys Housemate

Reindeer wrote: »

I have a degree in Industrial design, with a minor in linguistics, concentration in German. I do have university level physics and mathematics/calculus as I had switched from Electrical Engineering to industrial design late in my college career. However, this is where my linguistics training trumps your maths:

We are not arguing credentials or numbers. We are discussing physics and aliens. If you wish to argue credentials, I think there's a thread for that in 4chan. If you wish to argue physics, I suggest you argue about physics. Michio Kaku is a world reknown and accomplished physicist. Arbitrarily dismissing the statements about physics from a man whose credentials shadow yours before he even graduated college his second time doesn't hide the fact he is far more accomplished than any of us in the conversations are in theoretical AND practical physics. You had no idea he had made such statements previously, which also means it is likely you have no idea who else in physics believes in FTL.

I did point out that he is a maverick. A bit more searching and I find him on a video with Deepak Chopra and out and out charlatan. I now see Kaku as a charlatan, as does this guy, quoting that interview. It was you who mentioned his credentialism. The fact is that his ideas are not mainstream, not accepted by anybody else in Physics because they are wrong. And I pointed out his flaws, General relativity moved past Einstein. My ass.

And why should I know charlatans? That video was a Discovery type channel, a reduction of the physics for the untrained. There are no books with actual mathematics which dispute Special Relativity. Posting one guy is like an Intelligent Designer posting his science guy on the Discovery channel.

To quote Richard Feynman "...there is also an amplitude for light to go faster (or slower) than the conventional speed of light. You found out in the last lecture that light doesn't go only in straight lines; now, you find out that it doesn't go only at the speed of light! It may surprise you that there is an amplitude for a photon to go at speeds faster or slower than the conventional speed, c."

This is just an artifcact of wave propagation. Same as shadows can go faster than light, it is meaningless to the general theory and cancels out after trivial distances. Feynman was not disputing special relativity.

As for general relativity I think that Kaku is being economical with the truth. The universe has probably expanded faster than light before, there is no restriction on the universe expansion, the speed of light is the restriction within the universe. Maybe that is what he means. Its meaningless as we are all growing with the universe, and within it bound by the laws of physics.

There are some that do not believe, and have some proof, that the speed of light is not a constant. Or are you also going to try and tell me I should quote myself and not Feynman?

You don't understand what Feynman is saying, that is what I am saying.

Semantics...

Semantics my arse. You cherry pick one Physicist who has gone to the dark side and dumbed down for a popular audience, and selectively quote another.

Cú Giobach

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

This is about the only thing you got right. However physicists dont mean they understand the mathematics of QM, but that it is as weird to them as it is to us. In practice.



The way you call your opponents "uneducated" is a bit of a joke. You are not very well educated, a little knowledge etc. Nobody is saying we have reached a pinnacle of knowledge but that there is no way past the speed of light. Mass tends to infinity under the mathematics of the Lorenz contraction, energy tends to infinity. We can theorize massless particles which are faster than the speed of light, but sometimes a mathematical theory is just, well, maths. In any case we have no known way of getting information faster than light.

C is essential to relativity. Causality cannot be preserved if information can travel faster than light. This is integral to the theory. C is also integral to quantum mechanics. Throwing the speed of light out the window throws relativity out the the window - despite what you say. It is an essential theory, if it is wrong, then all of the last century is wrong. We start back at 1904



Relativity, despite what you say. If you think that "only the uneducated" think we - or an advance alien species - wouldn't find a way past the speed of light in the future, which is what you are saying, you are jettisoning Special Relativity. You don't realise that you are because you don't know much about it.

The wormhole thing you are hiding behind is just a fig leaf hiding lack of knowledge or logic.

1) Wormholes are theoretical, and we would have a hard job finding them to begin with which doesn't square with your advanced aliens having easy access to faster than light information - which is how this started.
2) . The main thing is, though, that they are just shortcuts. Imagine there is a windy road, and on that windy road it takes 60 minutes to travel 60 miles from A-B at max speed in a car which cant - by design - go faster or slower than 60mph.

One day we discover that the topology of the landscape is such that a shortcut exists from A - B, and it now takes 20 minutes because it is 20 miles. What does that tell us about the maximum speed of the car? It tells us that it is still 60 mph.

Since you seem incapable of understanding basic English is there another language you would feel more comfortable conversing in?
Does your computer/phone block out where I say it is impossible to travel through space FTL and substitute the opposite, or is there another reason for the crap you have claimed above?

It would be great if you could please explain how me saying it is impossible to travel through space faster than light and that wormholes are theoretically possible is against relativity, I have said this numerous times but you keep ignoring it, if you refuse to acknowledge or ignore this this once more I will report you for trolling.

By the way if you do a quick look through my posting history I think you will find I know quite a bit about Special and General Relativity.

Duggys Housemate

Cú Giobach wrote: »

Since you seem incapable of understanding basic English is there another language you would feel more comfortable conversing in?
Does your computer/phone block out where I say it is impossible to travel through space FTL and substitute the opposite, or is there another reason for the crap you have claimed above?

It would be great if you could please explain how me saying it is impossible to travel through space faster than light and that wormholes are theoretically possible is against relativity, I have said this numerous times but you keep ignoring it, if you refuse to acknowledge or ignore this this once more I will report you for trolling.

By the way if you do a quick look through my posting history I think you will find I know quite a bit about Special and General Relativity.

Trolling? Lol, you are losing the argument. It's clear you are saying what I say you are saying. I have dismissed the idea that worm holes travel faster than light in my last 3 posts.

I can understand English. What you think you know about relativity seems to avoid the mathematics of it:

You said for instance. (Your quotes in italics.)

Getting around it [speed of light] however could indeed just be a matter of time and technology.


That was on it's own without reference to worm holes, which you brought up later when challenged. Not only - as I have pointed out 3 times already, which is 2 times too many, and 3 times after this explanation - are they just theoretical, and probably impossible to find, but worm holes don't say anything about going faster than the speed of light. I even gave a thought experiment about a car finding a short cut in 3D space, while stuck on a speed limit.

In general your main argument is however that we cant judge the technological powers of aliens thousands of years ahead of us, in reponsed to questions about their electomagnetic communications. You implied they would move on from electromagnetic spectrum and we couldnt possibly imagine the future, to think we were at the "pinnacle " now is a mistake, etc. This is to assume that relativity and c are stepping stones on the way to find out the rest of physics, they are essential to modern physics.

The most fantastical idea espoused here is your belief that we have practically reached some pinnacle of understanding regarding the nature of the universe. Relativity allows for circumventing the light speed problem, an "Einstein-Rosen Bridge"...

Despite your claim that these wormholes allow us to travel "faster than light" they don't, they are - once again - shortcuts in 4D space, no more mysterious than shortcuts in 3D space. You don't go faster, you travel less.

But back to the claim of "misreading": original response to my claim that we would never beat the speed of light is


Wow, you really are stuck in "the present". I can imagine you having a conversation 500 years ago. "But man will never be able to travel faster than a galloping horse, do you think we could put a saddle on a cheetah or something, stop talking nonsense"

which is in response to me saying

Please dont speculate about aliens using faster than light technology for communication. That can't happen.


This is clearly someone who has no clue about the restrictions of relativity on communication, communication cant go faster than c as it violates causality,.

So I can clearly read English, you however, either cant write it very well, or dont understand the limitiations of relativity on communications, or both.

Micky Dolenz

Mod

Come on lads, keep it civil.


I've watched every episode of Star Trek and Star Trek the next generation. I'm a bit of an expert.

Cú Giobach

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

Trolling? Lol, you are losing the argument. It's clear you are saying what I say you are saying. I have dismissed the idea that worm holes travel faster than light in my last 3 posts.

I can understand English. What you think you know about relativity seems to avoid the mathematics of it:

You said for instance. (Your quotes in italics.)

Getting around it [speed of light] however could indeed just be a matter of time and technology.
That was on it's own without reference to worm holes, which you brought up later when challenged.

No, I brought it up earlier, stop lying just to make your argument appear to have some validity. "*Difference between going around something and going through it" ie using a wormhole.
I love your "cherry picking" by the way, the only way you can continue arguing (which is quite sad), how about reading the rest of the post you "quote", here.

Not only - as I have pointed out 3 times already, which is 2 times too many, and 3 times after this explanation - are they just theoretical, and probably impossible to find, but worm holes don't say anything about going faster than the speed of light. I even gave a thought experiment about a car finding a short cut in 3D space, while stuck on a speed limit.

If something is "probably impossible" then you cannot (scientifically) say it can never happen. As for this "just theoretical" business, what was Special Relativity in 1905? A comment like that when discussing Theoretical Physics would make anyone question how much you actually know on the subject.
And yes you do keep repeating yourself, because you can't understand when someone distinguishes between moving through space FTL and traveling from one place to another FTL.

In general your main argument is however that we cant judge the technological powers of aliens thousands of years ahead of us, in reponsed to questions about their electomagnetic communications. You implied they would move on from electromagnetic spectrum and we couldnt possibly imagine the future, to think we were at the "pinnacle " now is a mistake, etc. This is to assume that relativity and c are stepping stones on the way to find out the rest of physics, they are essential to modern physics.
The most fantastical idea espoused here is your belief that we have practically reached some pinnacle of understanding regarding the nature of the universe. Relativity allows for circumventing the light speed problem, an "Einstein-Rosen Bridge"...
Despite your claim that these wormholes allow us to travel "faster than light" they don't, they are - once again - shortcuts in 4D space, no more mysterious than shortcuts in 3D space. You don't go faster, you travel less.

If you read my posts properly you would understand I distinguish between "traveling FTL" and "Getting from one part of the universe to another FTL", a quite obvious distinction that seem to go right over your head. Woosh!!!!

But back to the claim of "misreading": original response to my claim that we would never beat the speed of light is
Wow, you really are stuck in "the present". I can imagine you having a conversation 500 years ago. "But man will never be able to travel faster than a galloping horse, do you think we could put a saddle on a cheetah or something, stop talking nonsense"
which is in response to me saying
Please dont speculate about aliens using faster than light technology for communication. That can't happen.
This is clearly someone who has no clue about the restrictions of relativity on communication, communication cant go faster than c as it violates causality,.

You made a definitive statement which is unscientific because (as you yourself said) wormholes are theoretically possible.

So I can clearly read English, you however, either cant write it very well, or dont understand the limitiations of relativity on communications, or both.

Obviously as I have shown above you are having a little difficulty here.

Andy!!

El Weirdo wrote: »

What do you think?

You seem to be insulted by the concept of someone asking you for your opinion without them offering theirs first, I've noticed this in several threads... what's your hang-up about?

Micky Dolenz

Andy!! wrote: »

You seem to be insulted by the concept of someone asking you for your opinion without them offering theirs first, I've noticed this in several threads... what's your hang-up about?

Mod

Read the charter regarding thread starting.

Cú Giobach

Thanks Duggys Housemate for finally giving me the kick to do something I have been considering for a while, and that is genuine not sarcasm. Bye folks.

blatherskite

http://www.scalesolarsystem.66ghz.com/

This is why aliens have never found us. The earth is simply too small and insignificant in space to be found, and what's more they'd have to just happen to land here in the exact same short period of the earth's history in which we inhabit it.

blatherskite

Wibbs wrote: »

+1. Loathe though I am to put any absolute down in pixels I can't see any species breaking the speed of light or even close to it, but I can see how in theory at least they could find the shortcut. The shortcut is (as much as we know)an engineering problem not something that breaks the laws of nature. Kinda like if you went back in time(don't go there DH ) and met Newton and asked him if theoretically a trip to the moon was possible, he'd likely say yes, even calculate the speeds and orbit trajectories required, but at the turn of the 16th century with the best will in the world the engineering would be impossible, even if you went back with the blueprints for a Saturn V.

Even going at half light or quarter light speed there are serious issues going on. A golfball sized rock hitting the earth at half light speed would make one helluva dent, so you'd need one helluva shield.

I think if we do encounter interstellar travelers they won't be biological(unless they warp wormholes by collapsing stars and such). They'll be the "machine" descendants of their biological creators. The problem with such huge distances is time. We simply don't live long enough. A machine intelligence would have no such constraints. Neither would biologically suitable habitats. Energy requirements would be very low too. They might even suck sustenance for the quantum foam/ether. They could seed their galaxy(or beyond) with relatively slow moving intelligences, small "neurons" in a vast spreading interstellar internet communicating at the speed of light that only boot up when the individual neurons reach a point of interest. In the deep cold of interstellar space only pretty basic anti entropy systems would be required for their long(to our minds) journeys. One could almost imagine that after the type I, II and III civilisations some have mooted, there is another, a type IIII, that turns an entire galaxy into an interconnected conscious "mind" hoovering up information, constantly evolving as it went. It would be the ultimate survivor of life(but not as we know it Jim) and vey resilient to extinction. If it/they continued to spread beyond their galaxy into others over the trillions of years that the future holds one might end up with a near universal intelligence. Maybe at that point of unimaginable knowledge and intelligence they/it could start to seed new universes at the quantum level and big bangs in other dimensions may be born. Maybe this has happened "before" and that's where this universe came from? At that point the Atheists may have to think again. Well... just a little anyway

mind = blown!

Mickeroo

blatherskite wrote: »

http://www.scalesolarsystem.66ghz.com/

This is why aliens have never found us. The earth is simply too small and insignificant in space to be found, and what's more they'd have to just happen to land here in the exact same short period of the earth's history in which we inhabit it.

I don't think finding the planet would be the hard part, it's finding our solar system in the first place that would be the problem.

swimming in a sea

well considering if the earth stayed tilted one way it would make one of the hemispheres uninhabitable it shows how finally balanced life on earth is. So is there another place like this in the universe, well i suppose if the universe is infinite then the odds say yes.

But then should we assume they need a planet like earth? oh its all very confusing, aliens! maybe

Snake Pliisken

Here's an explanation for why we haven't seen any galactic civilizations knocking about our part of the universe, it's called the Transcension Hypothesis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQOyJUDTKdM

Mr Benevolent

Cú Giobach wrote: »

Thanks Duggys Housemate for finally giving me the kick to do something I have been considering for a while, and that is genuine not sarcasm. Bye folks.

Meh. They always come back.

crazy cabbage

Im not sure about this and dont know any of the maths behind relativity but will throw it out there anyway and see if it is possible in theory. correct me if i am wrong.

It is impossible for anything to travel at speed of light becouse as speed apporaches speed of light, mass approches infinaty. Correct?

But we now know that the higsbosson partical is a partical that causes other particals to have mass (from what i understand). Is it (in theory) possible to control/use/manipulate these higbosson particals?

If it is (or will be in the furture) then i can see no reason why we cant essently make an object we want to travel at very high speeds massless. Would this allow objects to travel at near the speed of light or possilbe faster?
I think it would becouse i believe photons have mass becouse otherwise light wouldn't be sucked into blackholes which it is. So if photons have mass and can travel at the 'speed of light', then it is logical to say that if something with less mass (or no mass) could travel faster.

I know this sounds mad and i dont know much physics so feel free to correct me in my reasoning. Am interested in the concept though.

Mickeroo

crazy cabbage wrote: »

Im not sure about this and dont know any of the maths behind relativity but will throw it out there anyway and see if it is possible in theory. correct me if i am wrong.

It is impossible for anything to travel at speed of light becouse as speed apporaches speed of light, mass approches infinaty. Correct?

But we now know that the higsbosson partical is a partical that causes other particals to have mass (from what i understand). Is it (in theory) possible to control/use/manipulate these higbosson particals?

If it is (or will be in the furture) then i can see no reason why we cant essently make an object we want to travel at very high speeds massless. Would this allow objects to travel at near the speed of light or possilbe faster?
I think it would becouse i believe photons have mass becouse otherwise light wouldn't be sucked into blackholes which it is. So if photons have mass and can travel at the 'speed of light', then it is logical to say that if something with less mass (or no mass) could travel faster.

I know this sounds mad and i dont know much physics so feel free to correct me in my reasoning. Am interested in the concept though.

I'm no expert either but I don't think the Higgs changes anything. If i'm wrong I'm sure someone will correct me but it was always my understanding that modern physics models all rely on the higgs actually existing so finding it doesn't change anything it only further confirms what they already know.

Speaking of which, I read yesterday the discovery has gone to peer review, so its that little bit closer to becoming confirmed!

AlmightyCushion

crazy cabbage wrote: »

Im not sure about this and dont know any of the maths behind relativity but will throw it out there anyway and see if it is possible in theory. correct me if i am wrong.

It is impossible for anything to travel at speed of light becouse as speed apporaches speed of light, mass approches infinaty. Correct?

But we now know that the higsbosson partical is a partical that causes other particals to have mass (from what i understand). Is it (in theory) possible to control/use/manipulate these higbosson particals?

If it is (or will be in the furture) then i can see no reason why we cant essently make an object we want to travel at very high speeds massless. Would this allow objects to travel at near the speed of light or possilbe faster?
I think it would becouse i believe photons have mass becouse otherwise light wouldn't be sucked into blackholes which it is. So if photons have mass and can travel at the 'speed of light', then it is logical to say that if something with less mass (or no mass) could travel faster.

I know this sounds mad and i dont know much physics so feel free to correct me in my reasoning. Am interested in the concept though.

Photons don't have mass. Also, I don't think we could use the higgs boson like you describe.

Mickeroo

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Photons don't have mass. Also, I don't think we could use the higgs boson like you describe.

Oh yeah? then how to they make torpedoes out of them then?

MJ23

40 years? Sure Marty Morrissey is already here

BOF666

The warp drive will be invented in 2063 anyway, surely first contact shouldn't be too long after that...

maninasia

I'm going to put to bed the oft quoted speed of light makes interstellar travel ponderously slow.

It does not, as long as you have enough mass and energy at your command you can warp space. Warping space is real and observable.

Warping space to put two originally distant points close together could be achieved through wormholes. Warping space in front and behind a spaceship could also allow it to travel faster than light. Spacetime is not static, it is malleable. It is also relative to the observer in that different realities exist according to the observers situation. These realities are all real and true to the observer.

I like to compare this to the idea of road travel versus air travel. You will never get much faster than 1000 km/hr on a road due to the physics involved with friction and lift and downdraft. But it doesn't matter because we can hop on a spaceplane (in the future) and travel at 1000kms/hr instead. The maximum speed the car can achieve is now irrelevant. Irrelevant I tell you!

It's our artificial focus on the maximum speed of light that causes us to miss the big picture that is already in front of our eyes with current knowledge, let alone the physics that we don't understand yet, such as multiverses.

Finally let's not forget about what speed is. Distance/Time. Well distance can be solved by the above methods. Time can be solved somewhat by having eternal life.

3ndahalfof6

BOF666 wrote: »

The warp drive will be invented in 2063 anyway, surely first contact shouldn't be too long after that...

A warped drive would be useless.

maninasia

Wibbs wrote: »

Not quite. It had cooled down for many millions of years before we see any evidence of life.

I'd agree on that one. Of all the novel adaptations evolution came up with, there's only one example of intelligence as an adaptation and even then the kind we exhibit today only happened to the degree it did with our Homo Sapiens species.

Yet there is a lot of varied intelligence on Earth, something human beings forget, higher level intelligence has been around some 100 million years or so. It did take a long-time to reach space faring capability but 100 million years has shown relatively quick progress once intelligence got started, if you put it against the backdrop of billions of years of lower intelligent or non intelligent life. A take home lesson, intelligence is robust, and once intelligence comes out of the magic lantern it would be very difficult to put back in. It survives and it prospers.

If you rolled the dice again it could have turned out very differently and you could have ended up with Neandertals and not us. Given apex predators like us tend to be small in number in the landscape*, chances are good we might have died out. We very nearly did. Modern humans at one point got down to only a few thousand individuals because of natural disaster(Volcano 60,000Yrs ago IIRC?).

Yes it seems we have lived a rather charmed existence. There are now proven to have been at least two more modern species of humans in existence, Flores man and the Denisovans. It may have been that we outcompeted the others, or that homo sapiens finally unlocked a few key gene changes that gave us the leg up over the competition, evolution working the keys through the lock so to speak under the pressure of natural selection and intelligent competition.

Until we find an example of life outside earth we simply can't know if it's out there, nor can we begin to guess at the likely numbers out there. Yes the universe is vast, but in a near infinite universe of near infinite possibilities within the laws of nature "one offs" occur. Unique single events unrepeated elsewhere. Life, certainly intelligent life could well be one of those, or could be ridiculously rare, like one per galaxy. Plus given the huge time factor, you could well live at a point where there's only one every ten galaxies.

If we think of intelligence of occupying a normal distribution curve, then it is more likely to be very common than rare. It goes back to a good ole scientific principle..you usually ain't so special as you think you are! That's been a good maxim through the years if we look at how our view of our place in the universe has progressed. How many things in nature are truly unique? How many exist as a set of one? If we saw a given rock or a given plant or animal would we think that this is probably the only one in existence? Thinking we are somehow special intelligence wise is probably just the next step of hubris to knock down.

Actually if we can find an example of different life here on Earth that would up the odds. So far we haven't. All life today and so far discovered is related and is of the same "type". You, me, a fungus, an amoeba and a giant redwood are all the same type of life. So this suggests either that's the only kind of life possible on a planet of our kind and/or that it's an incredibly rare event.

Yes this is absolutely true, we are all close relatives, even to plants. This can be argued in terms of existing life stopping new life popping up, that life is hard to get started, that life was seeded from elsewhere from a rare event early on, that our type of life is the common type of life in the universe, or that we have not fully examined the diversity of microbial life yet. The vast majority of microbes cannot be grown in a lab, they are only identifiable from their ribosomal RNA. The question then is, if we cannot grow them and there are microbes that do not use DNA/RNA such as all the life we know of so far, how are we going to know if they are there? I'd say the jury is still somewhat out on this one.

Then look at the history of our planet and how we ended up here. It was a long list of ingredients required. Right distance from star(unlike Venus), right size to hang onto an atmosphere(unlike Mars), presence of the right sized moon(a biggie), right collection of elements. Big cosmic Hoover in the shape of Jupiter to mop up flying rocks that would otherwise hit us. Even so for the vast majority of the history of life on earth it was unicellular slime and such. It seems we then needed the whole planet to freeze(snowball earth) to really kick off complex life. If that hadn't happened... Then we had various mass extinctions to reset the mechanism and force new adaptations. That's just scratching the surface. You could have a near identical "earth" where the big freeze never happened and complex life remained very rare.

This is more of a looking backward 'just-so' argument. Of course all the events that occurred in history were suitable for development of life as we know it, otherwise we wouldn't be here. That doesn't mean if things went differently that other types of life wouldn't have existed. Who is to say that if history was different our type of life could have developed billions of years earlier and we are already distributed throughout the galaxy?
The multiverse theory is a good way to examine these concepts also.

BattleCorp

admiralofthefleet wrote: »

i think its a load of bollox. if they were there we would have found them by now

How do you reckon we would have found them by now? We can see or have looked in about 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of 0.00000000000000000000000000000001% of the known universe. We'd want to be pretty lucky to find them at that rate.

YFlyer

What does the 2nd decimal point do to the percentage?

Noopti

http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_shostak_et_is_probably_out_there_get_ready.html

BattleCorp

YFlyer wrote: »

What does the 2nd decimal point do to the percentage?

I think the technical term is that it makes it "a fcukin whole lot smaller". :D

kingtiger

admiralofthefleet wrote: »

i think its a load of bollox. if they were there we would have found them by now

okay, did you ever see any Hubble Deep Field images?

here is a pic followed by some facts

Hubble pic

this pic covers an area 2.5 arcminutes across, about one 24-millionth of the whole sky, almost all of the 3,000 objects in the image are galaxies

The whole sky contains 12.7 million times more area than the Ultra Deep Field. To observe the entire sky would take almost 1 million years of uninterrupted observing.

The Ultra Deep Field's patch of sky is so tiny it would fit inside the largest impact basin that makes up the face on the Moon. Astronomers would need about 50 Ultra Deep Fields to cover the entire Moon

so I guess you are the person talking bollox

Roadtrippin

Lollers wrote: »

Forgive me if I'm interrupting this thread, but it's about future theory, and I've heard some great replies so far. What does anyone think about time travel, is it a paradox too far ?.

Short answer, Yes. Me thinks. At the moment I dont think we'll be seeing anyone going Back to the Future anytime soon...
No 'beam me up, scottie!' in my lifetime either, I reckon :pac:

blatherskite

I was looking at orders of magnitude for length on wikipedia and, being bored, I came up with some scales to visualise how large the universe is (it gives an idea of how unlikely it seems that there could only be life on earth):

The milky way galaxy is about 6.6 billion times wider than the distance between earth and the sun, which is deemed 1 astronomical unit.

So if the milky way had a diameter of 66 km, 1 centimetre would represent 1,000 times the distance between the earth and the sun. So 10 micrometres would represent the distance between earth and sun. This is the size of a typical white blood cell.

The sun itself has a diameter 1/107th of this distance, so about 90 nanometers, or the size of the HIV virus (remember, all of this is against the background of a galaxy with diameter 66 km). The diameter of earth is about 1/109th of the diameter of the sun, or about 0.8 nanometers, or about the size of a glucose molecule.

Now, if the milky way itself was a circle of just 1 millimetre diameter in the centre of the observable universe, the observable universe would have a diameter of about 920 metres. There would be billions of other specks of galaxies all over this hypothetical circle

And finally, the unobservable universe is conjectured to be at least 21 times larger, if it isn't infinite.

And what's more, we've only been reasonably intelligent for about 1/1000th of 1% of the earth's history, or about 45,000 years, never mind that we've only been civilised for about 10% of that again. So if aliens were to find us, they would have to happen across such a tiny speck in the universe as is earth, coincidentally within the minuscule slice of time within which we have existed as intelligent beings.

Capt'n Midnight

blatherskite wrote: »

So if aliens were to find us, they would have to happen across such a tiny speck in the universe as is earth, coincidentally within the minuscule slice of time within which we have existed as intelligent beings.

Unless the aliens were in the business of colonising as they went, in which case any in this galaxy would likely be near us by now

maninasia

People need to read a bit of science fiction it's all been done in stories decades ago.
Space Odyssey 2001 anybody? Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein?

The aliens could leave probes. They could have the whole universe wired up in real-time for all we know, the global internet could exist. The aliens could even exist all around us and we are just not able to detect them yet.

In addition, the solar system is not simply sitting in the same place. It's moving around the plane of the Milky Way! So are many other bodies in space.

As for Time Travel being a paradox, that doesn't mean it can't happen.
For instance light is both a particle and a wave at the same time.

Finally who says the aliens are particularly interested in humans?
The Earth is about a lot more than us.

blatherskite

So adding to what I worked out above; finding the earth in the milky way is similar to finding an individual glucose molecule in a disk-shaped cloud with a diameter stretching from about dundalk to dublin airport as the crow flies, and with an average thickness of about 660 metres high. And for aliens to find this in one particular century of the last 4.54 billion years, is equivalent to finding the above glucose molecule at a particular 2 milliseconds in a 24-hour day. Obviously this is all "back-of the envelope" type calculations but I find it fairly bewildering!

And this is just one galaxy. I'd say there's some mad stuff going on in other galaxies. My guess is that the big bang is the result of something an advanced civilisation did, before this universe, and I think that before this universe, and probably regressing forever into the past, there was always "something", and questions about what was before that etc. just don't make sense. To me, the universe seems a bit too "young" in the grand scheme of things, seeing as it is expected to go on for trillions of years and we just *happen* to be living at the birth of it, relatively speaking... and I'm not falling for the anthropic principle here, I know humans aren't the centre of the universe, but it still strikes me as noteworthy that the big bang didn't happen that long ago.

ScumLord

Over the next 50 years we'll merge with technology which will make us infinitely smarter. Aliens are probably waiting for that to happen before they bother talking to us. If they've been out there for thousands of years they're probably fully aware we're here but are letting us get to a stage where we'll be on a more even level.