Conservatives explain why they think you're wrong. Liberals spit and call you a Nazi.
The Liberals would patiently explain to the conservatives, why they are Nazis, but if they had that sort of attention span then they wouldn't be Conservatives in the first place.
>> Please do not reply, this has not been a comment, merely my Sig, which somehow travels back in time....
It might even run with Parallel's software while OS X is running (but I don't have experience with that).
Make sure you get the ATI 1900 card for gaming goodness.
The Mac is a good value, even if you are looking for a top-end PC. It now is cheaper to buy a Mac then a Dell when you are looking at high-end systems, if you only wanted to run Windows. Of course, you could still kludge together your own PC from parts and do it cheaper -- but I've done that and the charm of repairing my computer has worn off.
Tell them next time that your Windows are working perfectly, as long as the curtains are open. If you frustrate them long enough, they always relent and give you the CD key.
200 Jupiter+ sized planets that is. Some of those produce radiation and are close to brown dwarf size.
So, it is quite likely that most star systems have planets. Scientists aren't able to say that definitively until they can resolve objects as faint as earth-sized planets.
I think it is likely that Most stars have 4 or more planets (depending upon the amount of older "star-stuff" necessary to create heavy elements). So 200 Billion stars means about 1 Trillion planets.
Negative, negative. You have inferior thought-processes.
Even a Danish monkey-being as primitive as he is, must have been uplifted by alien genetic therapy on monkey-monkey-beings to even achieve the detestible level of current almost-monkey-being-ness. The likelyhood of a non-uplifted-mokey-being even making the pathetic gruntings of the Danish monkey-being, are as improbable as a F'narthag slime-weasel evolving wings and taking flight while still in it's crystaline egg sack.
Please stop throwing your monkey-being analog of excrement against the internet appliance. That is all.
More instructions will be beemed into your mind-sack from the Big Giant Head at the appropriate time. Until then, you should remember that you are merely a slightly more uplifted equivalent from the monkey-beings based upon genetic data taken from one of our digestive tract parasites, and are not based upon the glorious and pure genetic makeup of your advanced creators. You are not designed for such thought, but are sufficient to delude yourself that you are thinking.
Stay with the original orders to deny global warming, so that we can eventually take over that cold ball of mud. It's like Siberia down there.
We can't know "alien psychology" but I can throw out some assumptions-- here goes;
In our culture, people have a hard time waiting 4 years for the next OS. As we advance, our cultural need for novelty increases. Either you support the expensive investigation of others stars or you don't. So, if you do, then the pressure to "find things" would be relatively quickly. You'd have many machines and perhaps duplicating machines (with some safeguards) or you wouldn't bother. So, it's either Fast Track, or not at all. Our current "slowness" in enthusiasm for science, is still at a breakneck pace when you consider that "The author" is talking about Millions of years. Sheesh.
If you assume 1 in 10,000 planets creates life. 1 in a 1,000 life-bearing planets might create intelligent life. And of those that would, you have only 1 in 10 that would be "ripe." I.e., don't blow themselves up first and all that. So, given all that ASSUMING, and the 200 Billion+ stars in our Galaxy, you have perhaps 2,000 planets with advanced, intelligent life. Spread them out however you want in this Galaxy, then create a sphere that propogates outward at the speed of light (for radio waves, or some detectible "life" radiation). In 100,000 years, the radiation from one of these planets will have reached the other end. But let's assume that you can only detect a direct signal for 10,000 light years. You still have too much opportunity for one of these groups to detect emissions from the other.
Spread out a shiny fabric, about 1/10th the circumpherence of the moon (doable in a 100 years) and you have a detector for these sorts of weak and distant signals.
So, without even leaving the solar system, it is likely that, starting from RIGHT NOW, in 10,000 to 20,000 years, our presence will be detected by one of the 2,000 other races. Even if there is one other advanced race in the whole galaxy, at most it would be 100,000 years from now. The author is assuming that someone has to visit your planet and basically trip over you.
In 100,000 years how advanced will we be if we are still around? I think it is most likely, that the reason why we don't meet space-faring civilizations is that by the time they have the technology to travel between stars, it must be a universal wisdom that they are so far advanced from us that they would either meddle, manipulate or disrupt our society.
More than likely, if there is other life out in the universe, it is as least relatively common (1 in 100,000 planets), and that if we have not had an advanced race stumble across us, we soon will (within a 1,000 years). Of course, if FTL drives are not possible -- it would take a long time to meet them. So, either SETI will detect some radio emissions, or we have God-like races that don't want to let the Neanderthals on earth get upset.
I find it unlikely that the universe is empty. So we have had visitations by advanced aliens who chose not to upset us, or we soon will, but by civilizations that are just entering into using radio waves.
>> And that is assuming any government would inform us if we met aliens. From observing how our government continually lies to us about getting into war (not just this one -- it has always happened); I would assume that if we had contacted aliens, we would not be informed until the secret could no longer be kept. I don't really speculate about UFOs and stuff -- I just know that the government would respond to us exactly as they do now if it were true, and if it weren't true.
So this guy doesn't know beans. I should write a book as well; "I don't know beans, and here is the book to prove it."
One big assumption is that you have to use a propellant. Action and re-action. Even ion drives with anti-matter power are going to be "primitive" for a space-faring race.
We only know about expelling a mass to move another mass in the opposite direction -- the scientific equivalent of "squirting" your way around. If this were the only way to travel, you'd have to use up whole stars to make intergalactic travel feasible. Human culture would not put up with a thousand generations to reach a star system, to then pioneer and try and recreate the home planet. So in this "slow travel" scenario, you are basically talking about terraforming robots preceding pioneers.
Somehow, I could only imagine that in response to people escaping a society that had totally fallen into tyranny. It wouldn't be sustained long term. And if you could not keep the peace on a home planet, such that people would want to travel through space for generations -- you couldn't keep the peace on a space ship. Other than large-brained shellfish, who could stay sane on that voyage? Of course I am anthropomorphising, but really, wouldn't any advanced species share curiosity -- and doesn't that preclude spending all your time in one spot? So the pioneers would have to be frozen for long voyages.
And if all "slow-travel" colonies are frozen for transport, you remove some of the assumed limitations of speed.
If you had a monopole, or traversed using other properties of physics, it would make things more feasible. And I am pretty sure that FTL will one day be achieved -- because I don't think God would want us to be so bored as spending 1,000 years to visit the next planet.
So my point is, that I think it would either be faster than 1/10th C, or culturally, it could not be supported by an advanced race. By the time any colony could reach a useful planet and set up a base -- the home planet has progressed enough to turn them into a cultural back-water. Assuming curiosity, a need to diversify, and competition -- which is kind of a prerequisite for hurtling off into space in the first place.
Von Neumann machines are also problematic. A machine advanced enough to build more of itself is a potential threat to anything out there. How does it deal with the unknown? There was a really good sci-fi book I once read about the human race getting wiped out by some other races von-Neumann machines. We find out later that they are Universally out-lawed, and that other alien races have banded together to wipe out any race that uses them.
So, it could be likely that exploration is slower or faster than this model. There isn't any observed phenomena to work from.
And by simply assuming a continuing geometric growth rate of knowledge among humans -- even predicting what our abilities are in a thousand years is total speculation.
People have to be able to afford good treatment -- we devalue peace by trying to make it free. Just work with me, I'm trying to make sense of the Corporate American Christian.
>> IN other words, I totally agree with the two parent posts.
I think I might make that quote me new sig -- what do you think?
Yeah but "Photon-based" sounds way cooler than "electromagnetic spectrum analysis."
>>But seriously; I think it's very likely, that we will find some "tell" in the light spectrum, that shows life based systems are growing on a given planet. Certain bands of light will probably be absorbed by certain life processes.
I'm sure that we are very close to having a "life detector." Life has an impact on the environment, so that has to be detectable in some way.
Assuming that Aliens that travel between star systems are smarter than us is proably a good starting point.
So yeah, scouts that don't "decellerate" and find likely places. 1/2 Lights speed is not far fetched. Slower robots that investigate likely places. Actual living aliens that investigate interesting places. Maybe FTL drives or even punching through space/time in a way we don't know about yet.
And maybe they will have discovered Radio. We can't rule that out.
An alien race that required hunting food on planets many light years distant would probably become extinct well before they learned to travel.
You are safe, mainly because you are more expensive than truffles. But of course, if there were a very decadent advanced alien race that was really into the status of eating very expensive food items, you would be more likely to be eaten because you are more expensive than truffles.
So, let's just say, we should all hope that aliens are advanced Liberals, rather than decadent, Conservatives in decline. I'm just making this point as an empirical observation. That it is also a huge target for a flame war is merely a coincidence.
Which I don't say is impossible -- just that counting on ID in a classroom, where you have to teach science is pointless and merely to make Fundies happy.
I think that humans, in a few more decades, may very well want to "seed" nearby planets with modified earth DNA. The compulsion to do so will be hard to ignore. We could create food or useful organic crops on Mars and Venus -- or just experiment without ecological disaster on earth (or test ways to fix ecological disasters). There will be a lot of protest at first, but history shows that we ALWAYS do something that provides a profit -- whether or not it benefits people or any temporary form of ethics (worrying about Stem Cell, is just a ruse to get patents in the private domain, for instance).
So, I don't know any way we could disprove that Aliens have not visited earth or manipulated genes in some way. The debate against ID is more about good science -- not trying to disprove every possible explanation.
We also might be a creation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Who knows if that 90% "junk DNA" encodes for Meatball + a delicious sauce?
Did the scientist consider "electromagnetic radiation" in his calculations about "Probes seeking out only likely solar systems?" We have 50+ years of radio emissions streaming out at the speed of light from our Solar System. So that once a society reaches the industrial age, they would most likely be a lot more noticeable.
Maybe in a few decades, we will learn that we need to be more circumspect, and try and hide better from alien races.
Until then, a probe doesn't need to stumble upon us, it might be able to see patterns in radio transmissions. Who knows, if a race can figure out how to migrate through space, it might just know how to detect life from a distance (which I find highly likely).
They should mod this topic as "speculation."
>> And on Slashdot, I have the right NOT TO READ THE ARTICLE, before giving my valuable opinion.
You have to assume too many things to know how long it will take.
I can think of a few; How common is life, and from that point, how quickly do advanced alien races propagate? How do we know what the limits of space travel are, when we have only managed to get people to the moon? What does it matter what calculations you make, when you pull numbers out of your rear? Until "Danish astrophysicist Rasmus Bjoerk" actually meets some other advanced race besides the Swedish, how can he assume anything? According to him, we will need 1 Billion years (at least) for him to be proven right -- after that, the odds go up.
The nutty assertions that people are not exacerbating Global Warming, conveniently ignore that Human sources are as a result of human practices. For instance; I've heard many say that "it isn't people, it's cows that burp up more methane then all the cars." I agree. But does anyone know why we have so many cows around to burp up methane? Um, for hamburgers. We could reduce our use of fresh water, grasslands, and improve our collesterol levels by moving to another animal like Ostrich or even Eel. Hence, we do NOT need to have billions of cows burping up all this methane. The population of cows has increased to provide for a population of larger populations of people.
There is also a convenient "forgetting" that just releasing stored carbon dioxide is the only problem. When we destroy wetlands, or change the chemistry of the water, we reduce the ability of natural systems to re-absorb Carbon Dioxide. Hundres of miles of swamp have been destroyed in Louisiana for developments, and this has reduced the storm protection and the conversion of wastes. So the Gulf area absorbs less Carbon Dioxide and produces more organic run-off for the oceans on top of whatever effects humanity has added.
In short; 6 Billion+ people on the earth are having an impact, and to try and pretend there is no way that many people using so many resources and who change the landscape with thousands of square miles of black asphalt is incredibly abtuse. Global Warming is debateable (you will lose, of course), but human impact on the environment is not, and we ignore that at our peril.
Time to grow up as a people, and realize we can't just do what we want, and that we have a responsibility to our environment and other people. We cannot continue the corporate greed policy of pissing in the punch bowl. We are now all "down stream" of our effluent.
A great example of how the AMA prevents improvements.
"Following" AMA guidelines, does not provide ANY guarantee to patients.
There are a lot of great therapies that can't get to patienct.
So "becoming qualified" and choosing to practice differently -- seems to me to be fine with doctors, but not so good with Engineers. I think the weather forecaster should just stay out of the whole opinion field all together. It doesn't effect tomorrows traffic, so they are using their "authority" for no benefit to the customer.
So the analogy would be; A doctor decides to remove your appendix with faith healing, when you come in complaining of a head cold. While I think "learned dissent" is necessary -- it needs to be in an appropriate manner. Giving the wrong service, without peer review, and in contravention with the consensus is wrong on many levels. But an outright ban is probably going to create more controversy with Global Warming then it would prevent -- so what would be the point?
I have a hard time with this discussion -- because there are three basic and fundamental issues here;
1) Whether right or not -- does it benefit Science to disallow discussion? No.
2) When looked at in terms of "professional certification" I would have to say that going against a 99.9% consensus in a field would be "un-professional." It may be proven that Climate change is not occuring (not likely) but that is not the point. The meteoroligist is merely a "down line" consumer of the science. It would be like your Architect, presuming to change from 12" on center support to an 18" spacing merely because they think that the supports are strong enough. What "they think" is not the policy, and they need to address it within their professional community, and not just ad hoc, make changes to the "consensus."
So this would pretty much be like a doctor practicing Faith Healing. Only -- that is legal. And when we compare the overall success against cancer (1-2%) over all cancer's -- the faith healers may actually come out on top.
So given the "results" of weather prediction, that is where we can argue the "professional ethics."
On this point, it's a toss up. I would say that Weather forecasters don't have the liability of Engineers -- but it is very strange that Doctors have almost none, they don't even give rebates.
3) Global warming is an imperitive issue, that has consequences that could be catastrophic and immediate. Alarmist or not -- being anti-Global warming right now might be equivalent to saying to people in a burning building; "Stay put, we should be able to put this fire out." By urging to remain with the "do nothing" corporate-sponsored apologists, a Weather forecaster who is actively dismissing Global Warming may be engaging in Propaganda. Discouraging people from their own self interest.
I don't think we have time to play around with Global Warming. If we are wrong, we will sponsor a few green technologies, and import less oil. If we are right -- then we could still be in danger no matter what we do, but the consequences will be diminished. Ignoring global warming is seriously a high risk endeavor with no benefits. The extreme predictions of scientists, cannot account for the unknown. There are many trigger events that could accelerate changes. Things like ice fields breaking off, and allowing glaciers to move into the ocean circumvent the "melting" models and raise the ocean level just as if those glaciers in Antarctica had melted. The thawing of peramfrost in Siberia, is percolating out more Methane -- and turning pete moss fields black so they absorb more heat.
But this is the following is the biggest "alarm bell" I've heard of, and if true, would mean drastic changes in a few years, rather than a few decades; (from http://waynemadsenreport.com/ ); January 18, 2007 -- WMR received a number of e-mails as a result of our Jan. 8 piece on methane bubbling up from the ocean floors. The ocean floor methane is turning into gaseous from methane hydrate ice form because the deep ocean is warming as a result of global warming from greenhouse gas emissions. A reader in Minnesota sent us this important amplifying information:
"Methane bubbling up from the ocean floor is a clear and present danger to shipping and even aviation. By the way, there is something like 10,000 billion tons of methane under the sea in methane hydrate deposits. Furthermore, a theory called the "Clathrate gun hypothesis" or the "Hydrate hypothesis," posits that melting methane hydrate has cause severe episodes of runaway global warming in the past. We are sitting on a bomb. Mankind's emission are the fuse, melting permafrost is the detonator, and melting oceanic methane hydrate is the bomb. Since mankind's emissions is a much larger trigger than past severe episodes, the current unfolding episode of runaway global warming will occur much more rapidly, and therefore be much, much more severe."
Maybe I'm just slow to embrace change, after all, I have the same complaint about the new Doctor Who seasons (Eccleston vs. Tennant)
>> That's the whole charm of the Dr. Who franchise... you get to complain that the current actor is a pale imitation of the previous actor. Personally, I like the guy with the big scarf -- the rest are just poor imitations.
I know, they could re-visit that time loop episode, because, theoretically, if an event loops once -- it loops forever at least in alternate dimensions. So the loop has to be "cut out" becuase it is taking up a lot of cycles amongst the different universes. Everything starts slowing down, so they must risk the device that speeds everyone up.
In fact, they could bring clips from every episode into the movie, because they "time loop" was creating a rare, time loop black hole, because the weight of the redundancy was drawing time into itself -- wasting time everywhere. As this time-suckage/wasting intensifies, and the flash-back sequences get shorter and faster, O'Neil or the new guy will say some gallows humor that is moderately funny, and they will rescue a team member in a harrowing and ill conceived plan.
The bonus is, they could keep doing this over and over (it's a time loop) and re-solve the same plot just by changing catch phrases and the costumes of bad guys.
Maybe throw in something where those invisible people are being attacked by simple yet efficient machines that construct dangerous weapons and take over their ships -- and only the primitive brute force of machine guns can damage them, requiring them to contact SG1 to save their race.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, Gates is waiting to license Apple's Fairplay as well.
Conservatives explain why they think you're wrong. Liberals spit and call you a Nazi.
The Liberals would patiently explain to the conservatives, why they are Nazis, but if they had that sort of attention span then they wouldn't be Conservatives in the first place.
>> Please do not reply, this has not been a comment, merely my Sig, which somehow travels back in time....
Yes.
It might even run with Parallel's software while OS X is running (but I don't have experience with that).
Make sure you get the ATI 1900 card for gaming goodness.
The Mac is a good value, even if you are looking for a top-end PC. It now is cheaper to buy a Mac then a Dell when you are looking at high-end systems, if you only wanted to run Windows. Of course, you could still kludge together your own PC from parts and do it cheaper -- but I've done that and the charm of repairing my computer has worn off.
Splurrp!
(The sound of milk shooting through my nose).
Tell them next time that your Windows are working perfectly, as long as the curtains are open. If you frustrate them long enough, they always relent and give you the CD key.
200 Jupiter+ sized planets that is. Some of those produce radiation and are close to brown dwarf size.
So, it is quite likely that most star systems have planets. Scientists aren't able to say that definitively until they can resolve objects as faint as earth-sized planets.
I think it is likely that Most stars have 4 or more planets (depending upon the amount of older "star-stuff" necessary to create heavy elements). So 200 Billion stars means about 1 Trillion planets.
I'm guessing history will prove me right.
Also, the idea of connecting the internet with pipes is also impossible.
Thus a plumber would conclude that nobody could create an internet.
Negative, negative. You have inferior thought-processes.
Even a Danish monkey-being as primitive as he is, must have been uplifted by alien genetic therapy on monkey-monkey-beings to even achieve the detestible level of current almost-monkey-being-ness. The likelyhood of a non-uplifted-mokey-being even making the pathetic gruntings of the Danish monkey-being, are as improbable as a F'narthag slime-weasel evolving wings and taking flight while still in it's crystaline egg sack.
Please stop throwing your monkey-being analog of excrement against the internet appliance. That is all.
More instructions will be beemed into your mind-sack from the Big Giant Head at the appropriate time. Until then, you should remember that you are merely a slightly more uplifted equivalent from the monkey-beings based upon genetic data taken from one of our digestive tract parasites, and are not based upon the glorious and pure genetic makeup of your advanced creators. You are not designed for such thought, but are sufficient to delude yourself that you are thinking.
Stay with the original orders to deny global warming, so that we can eventually take over that cold ball of mud. It's like Siberia down there.
We can't know "alien psychology" but I can throw out some assumptions-- here goes;
In our culture, people have a hard time waiting 4 years for the next OS. As we advance, our cultural need for novelty increases. Either you support the expensive investigation of others stars or you don't. So, if you do, then the pressure to "find things" would be relatively quickly. You'd have many machines and perhaps duplicating machines (with some safeguards) or you wouldn't bother. So, it's either Fast Track, or not at all. Our current "slowness" in enthusiasm for science, is still at a breakneck pace when you consider that "The author" is talking about Millions of years. Sheesh.
If you assume 1 in 10,000 planets creates life.
1 in a 1,000 life-bearing planets might create intelligent life.
And of those that would, you have only 1 in 10 that would be "ripe." I.e., don't blow themselves up first and all that.
So, given all that ASSUMING, and the 200 Billion+ stars in our Galaxy, you have perhaps 2,000 planets with advanced, intelligent life.
Spread them out however you want in this Galaxy, then create a sphere that propogates outward at the speed of light (for radio waves, or some detectible "life" radiation). In 100,000 years, the radiation from one of these planets will have reached the other end. But let's assume that you can only detect a direct signal for 10,000 light years. You still have too much opportunity for one of these groups to detect emissions from the other.
Spread out a shiny fabric, about 1/10th the circumpherence of the moon (doable in a 100 years) and you have a detector for these sorts of weak and distant signals.
So, without even leaving the solar system, it is likely that, starting from RIGHT NOW, in 10,000 to 20,000 years, our presence will be detected by one of the 2,000 other races. Even if there is one other advanced race in the whole galaxy, at most it would be 100,000 years from now. The author is assuming that someone has to visit your planet and basically trip over you.
In 100,000 years how advanced will we be if we are still around? I think it is most likely, that the reason why we don't meet space-faring civilizations is that by the time they have the technology to travel between stars, it must be a universal wisdom that they are so far advanced from us that they would either meddle, manipulate or disrupt our society.
More than likely, if there is other life out in the universe, it is as least relatively common (1 in 100,000 planets), and that if we have not had an advanced race stumble across us, we soon will (within a 1,000 years). Of course, if FTL drives are not possible -- it would take a long time to meet them. So, either SETI will detect some radio emissions, or we have God-like races that don't want to let the Neanderthals on earth get upset.
I find it unlikely that the universe is empty. So we have had visitations by advanced aliens who chose not to upset us, or we soon will, but by civilizations that are just entering into using radio waves.
Yes, well that makes a pretty big VOLUME.
>> And that is assuming any government would inform us if we met aliens. From observing how our government continually lies to us about getting into war (not just this one -- it has always happened); I would assume that if we had contacted aliens, we would not be informed until the secret could no longer be kept. I don't really speculate about UFOs and stuff -- I just know that the government would respond to us exactly as they do now if it were true, and if it weren't true.
So this guy doesn't know beans. I should write a book as well; "I don't know beans, and here is the book to prove it."
One big assumption is that you have to use a propellant. Action and re-action. Even ion drives with anti-matter power are going to be "primitive" for a space-faring race.
We only know about expelling a mass to move another mass in the opposite direction -- the scientific equivalent of "squirting" your way around. If this were the only way to travel, you'd have to use up whole stars to make intergalactic travel feasible. Human culture would not put up with a thousand generations to reach a star system, to then pioneer and try and recreate the home planet. So in this "slow travel" scenario, you are basically talking about terraforming robots preceding pioneers.
Somehow, I could only imagine that in response to people escaping a society that had totally fallen into tyranny. It wouldn't be sustained long term. And if you could not keep the peace on a home planet, such that people would want to travel through space for generations -- you couldn't keep the peace on a space ship. Other than large-brained shellfish, who could stay sane on that voyage? Of course I am anthropomorphising, but really, wouldn't any advanced species share curiosity -- and doesn't that preclude spending all your time in one spot? So the pioneers would have to be frozen for long voyages.
And if all "slow-travel" colonies are frozen for transport, you remove some of the assumed limitations of speed.
If you had a monopole, or traversed using other properties of physics, it would make things more feasible. And I am pretty sure that FTL will one day be achieved -- because I don't think God would want us to be so bored as spending 1,000 years to visit the next planet.
So my point is, that I think it would either be faster than 1/10th C, or culturally, it could not be supported by an advanced race. By the time any colony could reach a useful planet and set up a base -- the home planet has progressed enough to turn them into a cultural back-water. Assuming curiosity, a need to diversify, and competition -- which is kind of a prerequisite for hurtling off into space in the first place.
Von Neumann machines are also problematic. A machine advanced enough to build more of itself is a potential threat to anything out there. How does it deal with the unknown? There was a really good sci-fi book I once read about the human race getting wiped out by some other races von-Neumann machines. We find out later that they are Universally out-lawed, and that other alien races have banded together to wipe out any race that uses them.
So, it could be likely that exploration is slower or faster than this model. There isn't any observed phenomena to work from.
And by simply assuming a continuing geometric growth rate of knowledge among humans -- even predicting what our abilities are in a thousand years is total speculation.
Yeah, us Hippies and our Moral Relativism.
People have to be able to afford good treatment -- we devalue peace by trying to make it free. Just work with me, I'm trying to make sense of the Corporate American Christian.
>> IN other words, I totally agree with the two parent posts.
I think I might make that quote me new sig -- what do you think?
Yeah but "Photon-based" sounds way cooler than "electromagnetic spectrum analysis."
>>But seriously;
I think it's very likely, that we will find some "tell" in the light spectrum, that shows life based systems are growing on a given planet. Certain bands of light will probably be absorbed by certain life processes.
I'm sure that we are very close to having a "life detector." Life has an impact on the environment, so that has to be detectable in some way.
Assuming that Aliens that travel between star systems are smarter than us is proably a good starting point.
So yeah, scouts that don't "decellerate" and find likely places. 1/2 Lights speed is not far fetched.
Slower robots that investigate likely places.
Actual living aliens that investigate interesting places.
Maybe FTL drives or even punching through space/time in a way we don't know about yet.
And maybe they will have discovered Radio. We can't rule that out.
An alien race that required hunting food on planets many light years distant would probably become extinct well before they learned to travel.
You are safe, mainly because you are more expensive than truffles. But of course, if there were a very decadent advanced alien race that was really into the status of eating very expensive food items, you would be more likely to be eaten because you are more expensive than truffles.
So, let's just say, we should all hope that aliens are advanced Liberals, rather than decadent, Conservatives in decline. I'm just making this point as an empirical observation. That it is also a huge target for a flame war is merely a coincidence.
Sounds like a version of Intelligent design.
Which I don't say is impossible -- just that counting on ID in a classroom, where you have to teach science is pointless and merely to make Fundies happy.
I think that humans, in a few more decades, may very well want to "seed" nearby planets with modified earth DNA. The compulsion to do so will be hard to ignore. We could create food or useful organic crops on Mars and Venus -- or just experiment without ecological disaster on earth (or test ways to fix ecological disasters). There will be a lot of protest at first, but history shows that we ALWAYS do something that provides a profit -- whether or not it benefits people or any temporary form of ethics (worrying about Stem Cell, is just a ruse to get patents in the private domain, for instance).
So, I don't know any way we could disprove that Aliens have not visited earth or manipulated genes in some way. The debate against ID is more about good science -- not trying to disprove every possible explanation.
We also might be a creation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Who knows if that 90% "junk DNA" encodes for Meatball + a delicious sauce?
Did the scientist consider "electromagnetic radiation" in his calculations about "Probes seeking out only likely solar systems?" We have 50+ years of radio emissions streaming out at the speed of light from our Solar System. So that once a society reaches the industrial age, they would most likely be a lot more noticeable.
Maybe in a few decades, we will learn that we need to be more circumspect, and try and hide better from alien races.
Until then, a probe doesn't need to stumble upon us, it might be able to see patterns in radio transmissions. Who knows, if a race can figure out how to migrate through space, it might just know how to detect life from a distance (which I find highly likely).
They should mod this topic as "speculation."
>> And on Slashdot, I have the right NOT TO READ THE ARTICLE, before giving my valuable opinion.
You have to assume too many things to know how long it will take.
I can think of a few;
How common is life, and from that point, how quickly do advanced alien races propagate?
How do we know what the limits of space travel are, when we have only managed to get people to the moon?
What does it matter what calculations you make, when you pull numbers out of your rear?
Until "Danish astrophysicist Rasmus Bjoerk" actually meets some other advanced race besides the Swedish, how can he assume anything? According to him, we will need 1 Billion years (at least) for him to be proven right -- after that, the odds go up.
The nutty assertions that people are not exacerbating Global Warming, conveniently ignore that Human sources are as a result of human practices. For instance; I've heard many say that "it isn't people, it's cows that burp up more methane then all the cars." I agree. But does anyone know why we have so many cows around to burp up methane? Um, for hamburgers. We could reduce our use of fresh water, grasslands, and improve our collesterol levels by moving to another animal like Ostrich or even Eel. Hence, we do NOT need to have billions of cows burping up all this methane. The population of cows has increased to provide for a population of larger populations of people.
There is also a convenient "forgetting" that just releasing stored carbon dioxide is the only problem. When we destroy wetlands, or change the chemistry of the water, we reduce the ability of natural systems to re-absorb Carbon Dioxide. Hundres of miles of swamp have been destroyed in Louisiana for developments, and this has reduced the storm protection and the conversion of wastes. So the Gulf area absorbs less Carbon Dioxide and produces more organic run-off for the oceans on top of whatever effects humanity has added.
In short; 6 Billion+ people on the earth are having an impact, and to try and pretend there is no way that many people using so many resources and who change the landscape with thousands of square miles of black asphalt is incredibly abtuse. Global Warming is debateable (you will lose, of course), but human impact on the environment is not, and we ignore that at our peril.
Time to grow up as a people, and realize we can't just do what we want, and that we have a responsibility to our environment and other people. We cannot continue the corporate greed policy of pissing in the punch bowl. We are now all "down stream" of our effluent.
A great example of how the AMA prevents improvements.
"Following" AMA guidelines, does not provide ANY guarantee to patients.
There are a lot of great therapies that can't get to patienct.
So "becoming qualified" and choosing to practice differently -- seems to me to be fine with doctors, but not so good with Engineers. I think the weather forecaster should just stay out of the whole opinion field all together. It doesn't effect tomorrows traffic, so they are using their "authority" for no benefit to the customer.
So the analogy would be; A doctor decides to remove your appendix with faith healing, when you come in complaining of a head cold. While I think "learned dissent" is necessary -- it needs to be in an appropriate manner. Giving the wrong service, without peer review, and in contravention with the consensus is wrong on many levels. But an outright ban is probably going to create more controversy with Global Warming then it would prevent -- so what would be the point?
I have a hard time with this discussion -- because there are three basic and fundamental issues here;
1) Whether right or not -- does it benefit Science to disallow discussion?
No.
2) When looked at in terms of "professional certification" I would have to say that going against a 99.9% consensus in a field would be "un-professional." It may be proven that Climate change is not occuring (not likely) but that is not the point. The meteoroligist is merely a "down line" consumer of the science. It would be like your Architect, presuming to change from 12" on center support to an 18" spacing merely because they think that the supports are strong enough. What "they think" is not the policy, and they need to address it within their professional community, and not just ad hoc, make changes to the "consensus."
So this would pretty much be like a doctor practicing Faith Healing. Only -- that is legal. And when we compare the overall success against cancer (1-2%) over all cancer's -- the faith healers may actually come out on top.
So given the "results" of weather prediction, that is where we can argue the "professional ethics."
On this point, it's a toss up. I would say that Weather forecasters don't have the liability of Engineers -- but it is very strange that Doctors have almost none, they don't even give rebates.
3) Global warming is an imperitive issue, that has consequences that could be catastrophic and immediate.
Alarmist or not -- being anti-Global warming right now might be equivalent to saying to people in a burning building; "Stay put, we should be able to put this fire out." By urging to remain with the "do nothing" corporate-sponsored apologists, a Weather forecaster who is actively dismissing Global Warming may be engaging in Propaganda. Discouraging people from their own self interest.
I don't think we have time to play around with Global Warming.
If we are wrong, we will sponsor a few green technologies, and import less oil. If we are right -- then we could still be in danger no matter what we do, but the consequences will be diminished. Ignoring global warming is seriously a high risk endeavor with no benefits. The extreme predictions of scientists, cannot account for the unknown. There are many trigger events that could accelerate changes. Things like ice fields breaking off, and allowing glaciers to move into the ocean circumvent the "melting" models and raise the ocean level just as if those glaciers in Antarctica had melted. The thawing of peramfrost in Siberia, is percolating out more Methane -- and turning pete moss fields black so they absorb more heat.
But this is the following is the biggest "alarm bell" I've heard of, and if true, would mean drastic changes in a few years, rather than a few decades;
(from http://waynemadsenreport.com/ );
January 18, 2007 -- WMR received a number of e-mails as a result of our Jan. 8 piece on methane bubbling up from the ocean floors. The ocean floor methane is turning into gaseous from methane hydrate ice form because the deep ocean is warming as a result of global warming from greenhouse gas emissions. A reader in Minnesota sent us this important amplifying information:
"Methane bubbling up from the ocean floor is a clear and present danger to shipping and even aviation. By the way, there is something like 10,000 billion tons of methane under the sea in methane hydrate deposits. Furthermore, a theory called the "Clathrate gun hypothesis" or the "Hydrate hypothesis," posits that melting methane hydrate has cause severe episodes of runaway global warming in the past. We are sitting on a bomb. Mankind's emission are the fuse, melting permafrost is the detonator, and melting oceanic methane hydrate is the bomb. Since mankind's emissions is a much larger trigger than past severe episodes, the current unfolding episode of runaway global warming will occur much more rapidly, and therefore be much, much more severe."
Spoken like a person who hasn't seen Serenity.
Maybe I'm just slow to embrace change, after all, I have the same complaint about the new Doctor Who seasons (Eccleston vs. Tennant)
>> That's the whole charm of the Dr. Who franchise... you get to complain that the current actor is a pale imitation of the previous actor.
Personally, I like the guy with the big scarf -- the rest are just poor imitations.
Yes, and even more depressing is, that this bright genius will get paid many times more than you and I put together.
I know, they could re-visit that time loop episode, because, theoretically, if an event loops once -- it loops forever at least in alternate dimensions. So the loop has to be "cut out" becuase it is taking up a lot of cycles amongst the different universes. Everything starts slowing down, so they must risk the device that speeds everyone up.
In fact, they could bring clips from every episode into the movie, because they "time loop" was creating a rare, time loop black hole, because the weight of the redundancy was drawing time into itself -- wasting time everywhere. As this time-suckage/wasting intensifies, and the flash-back sequences get shorter and faster, O'Neil or the new guy will say some gallows humor that is moderately funny, and they will rescue a team member in a harrowing and ill conceived plan.
The bonus is, they could keep doing this over and over (it's a time loop) and re-solve the same plot just by changing catch phrases and the costumes of bad guys.
Maybe throw in something where those invisible people are being attacked by simple yet efficient machines that construct dangerous weapons and take over their ships -- and only the primitive brute force of machine guns can damage them, requiring them to contact SG1 to save their race.
>> I think I've watched too much Stargate.