QuoteThat sums up Irelands current "search" for a manager.Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Of course there are aliens. Does nobody remember Alf? Not only that, while he managed to travel from another planet, he probably wasn't as intelligent as the humans he lived with.
Kind of blows all your theories out of the water, huh?
That sums up Irelands current "search" for a manager.
Quoting years at random since 1975
Well you can't make that last assumption anyway, since it's quite probable that they cannot practically cover those distances no matter how advanced they are, and by one of our best and most successful current theories it's an incontrovertible fact that this is the case.
more bass
Not in a short time, no. The Fermi paradox is about colonisation though, which just requires the ability to get a smallish population a few light years. We're unlikely to be more than a couple of centuries off being able to do that reliably ourselves. From there, any mathematical model with positive expansion fills the galaxy in a pretty short time by galactic standards.
You can't spell failure without FAI
Course, you have to bear in mind too the theory which says that any intelligent life is far more likely to blow itself up than master interstellar travel. I like that theory. Gives me hope for the future.
Yes that is a good theory and one that rings true every time you pick up a paper or turn on a news channel.Course, you have to bear in mind too the theory which says that any intelligent life is far more likely to blow itself up than master interstellar travel. I like that theory. Gives me hope for the future.
Just thinking - how true is this?
40 years ago, we could put a man on the moon. Today, we can...put a man on the moon. Progress - zero.
Why? Money. It simply isn't economical to fly men to the moon. Even back in the late 60s/early 70s, it was done purely to gain Cold War bragging rights. Space travel, by its very nature, simply isn't economical - there's no-one to trade with, no way of making money, no nothing. That's why, in the past 40 years -
..o The land speed record has gone up from 600mph to 750mph
..o Production car record up from 175 to 256mph (SSC Aero)
..o Train speed record up from 159 to 357mph
And I'm sure there's more. The journey from Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead, for example, now takes 99 minutes with the SeaCat, compared to three hours with its predecessor, which still does the route too. Flight times have dropped too.
By contrast, all I can find by way of a space speed record is the space shuttle, at 17500mph, from 1981 to present. We're just lumping the last 25 years in together.
The reason for this, obviously, is that faster cars, planes, boats, etc are economical - people will want them, can use them to trade more, to get places they want to go to quicker. There isn't the demand to go faster and faster in space.
This has obvious connotations for space travel. At 17500mph, it'll take 165000 years to reach the next star over, 4.3 light years away. I think the next star again is 10 light years away. So if we double the space speed record, we're still 80000 years away. The payback on that project isn't particulary good. If that project doesn't go ahead, how are we going to double the speed again, to bring us a mere 40000 years away?
It'd require massive, massive investment to cover this distance in a reasonable time (say, a human lifetime), and it'd have pretty much zero return (bar maybe a prize like the Ansari X prize). Conclusion - not going to happen in the next couple of centuries, like you suggest. There simply isn't any reason for it to.
NASA's budget is $16bn - pretty damn large, but only 60% of its time-adjusted peak - 40 years ago. There'd be political uproar if the budget started doubling to increase the space speed record while poverty, global warming, etc, etc were still issues - and rightly so. With a falling budget, we won't be making Mars anytime soon, let alone Alpha Centauri.
Let's now look at another intelligent life form on another planet around another star. Let's assume (as we obviously must) that this life form has evolved a system of money and economy - capitalism, socialism, dictatorship, planetary monarchy - doesn't really matter. Let's assume that it's more advanced than us, which means it must at one stage have passed through our current position. Why would it leave its planet to go to another one, many light years away? Why would it overcome the obvious budget constraints we've looked at to make the jump? Answer - it quite possibly wouldn't. Conclusion - where are the aliens? Probably the same place we are - looking out into space, wondering if there's anyone out there, realising that they possibly can never afford to travel such distances to find out, doing the best research they can by studying chemical compsitions in atmospheric wavelengths.
Last edited by pineapple stu; 11/12/2007 at 10:17 PM.
..or bothwhat have you been watching?!
or maybe smoking
There's the right way, the wrong way.... and the Max Power way!! :-D
Is anyone else picturing a medieval Pineapple Stu making a similar argument?
Except I think -
(a) horse speeds were always known to be higher than 5mph
(b) there was an economical incentive to breed faster horses in stages, building to a goal (i.e. getting quicker to the next village over, then the village, then the next country over, etc),
(c) Ireland to China isn't a valid comparison with Earth to Alpha centauri. It'd equate more to Earth to Mars. You want to run a horse from here to the moon to compare to interstellar travel and
(c) they didn't have pineapples in medieval Ireland.
Last edited by pineapple stu; 11/12/2007 at 10:59 PM.
Well 40 years ago we could put machines on the moon now we have them on mars . Progress ? We (i say we i had little little to do with it) have space crafts reaching out to the edge of our universe.
It is possible anothe rlife form has evolved to our stage hundreds of millions of years ago imagine how advanced they could be ! or there could be just microbes wiggling around its still life
We had machines on Mars 40 years ago too - Mariner 4 reached Mars in 1965, and the Soviets landed in '71. Venera 3 landed on Venus in '66 - the same year we first landed something on the moon.
What was that you were saying about progress?
its slow
Good news, the 'space speed record' has more than doubled in the last 5 minutes to 36,800 mph
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.htmlthe two Voyager spacecraft... having been launched in August (Voyager 2) and September (Voyager 1), 1977... As of July 2007, Voyager 1 was at a distance of 15.4 Billion Kilometers (103 AU) from the sun
At this rate of increase, we'll soon be able to make it to nearby stars in no time.
We're not arrogant, we're just better.
It is likely that civilisations develop at varied rates, agreed.
But it is just as likely, statistically, that the Earth be the most developed civilisation as any other civilisation.
The fact that nobody has reached us could indicate that Earth has the most developed civilisation just as validly as that Earth is the only civilisation.
Unless I've totally misunderstood the post, which is always likely on scientific matters.
Last edited by osarusan; 12/12/2007 at 4:36 PM.
You mean - Wikipedia LIED to me?!
Substitute in this new speed into my theory, and the answer ends up the same. Unless we can stumble on teleportation, I don't think we're "unlikely to be more than a couple of centuries off being able to do that reliably ourselves", as John said.
Not the point. If there are x civilisations in the universe, it's a 1 in x chance that we're the most developed. Which is either 1, or very small, depending on x. There's a one in three chance we're in the middle third of civilisations, for example (given our present knowledge of the subject, and assuming a sample greater than 2). This is far more likely than the 1/x above, and also carries with it a far higher chance that someone's miles ahead of us.
How they get to be miles ahead of us though, is my question.
If I understand you correctly (and I very well may not), you're saying there is a smaller chance of us being number 1 than there is of us being in the middle third? I'd agree, but you're comparing a section (the middle third) with one position (no 1) so obviously it is statistically more likely, unless the middle section comprises of only one unit.
Do you think it is equally likely that Earth is in the top third, middle third, and bottom third?
when dealing with infinity space and matter, any possibility has occurred somewhere in the dimension of space-time.
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Gavin
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"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
You sound a bit like that new poster Tony Montana, except your posts actually make sense.
Have you ever read "Slaughterhouse Five"?
I havent. *heads off to amazon*
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
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