I see no possible way there isn't other intelligent life in the universe. I have my doubts they have the ability to reach us. And if they can, we're fucked.
Agreed. Thoughts on the different disclosure movements from various government officials around the world? And, a personal favorite piece of so-called "evidence," the Buzz Aldrin interview?
http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Teeming-Aliens-WHERE-EVERYBODY/dp/0387955011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429719241&sr=8-1&keywords=the fermi paradox Interesting deal on the fermi paradox, so sort of related. Can rent for free for like a week with prime.
If I were to believe aliens reached Earth, I think the time of the Roswell incident makes sense given the explosion in technological innovation after 1947.
To play devil's advocate, that wasn't the beginning of the explosion in technological innovation. It was a continuation. I mean, shit, the airplane and car had only been invented like 40 years prior and they already had jet engines and the atomic bomb in 1947.
Agreed. What has brought me to ask about it in this thread is that I've been reading a book written by Ben Rich, the former head of Lockheed's Skunk Works (advanced technology) division, and although he doesn't mention anything related to ET life in the book he is attributed with a few interesting quotations about it. All of them occurring late in his life and right before his death. An example being: "We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects, and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity. Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do."
I was mainly fixated on computer advancements over a fairly short period of time and the development of greater communication systems throughout the world. Though in the field of flight we went from "flying" 150 feet in 1904 to landing on the moon just 65 years later. Given I believe it could take years or even decades to reverse engineer alien technology I just can't overlook how rapidly it exploded.
Time travel is the one I just can't believe unless we only can go forward. (Though perhaps it could explain how so few people control so much wealth)
Right. Agreed. I'm just saying I think 1947 is too late. I mean, there were men on horseback still used in WW1 and there were jet engines (not used really yet but still existed) and the atomic bomb by the end of WW2. Widely available electricity, the camera, radio, and telephone were all in the latter half of the 1800s or the early 1900s. Basically every modern convenience people still use today started getting invented in the last 130-150 years. Considering the history of the human race, it's a pretty astounding deal.
Rich had another quotation attributed to him about how the method to achieve such travel is based in the same concept as ESP in that everything is connected. The thing about these quotations is that despite a bunch of people claiming to be at the conference and to have heard him say them there is no video or audio proof.
On the issue of time travel, this picture fascinates me....... The "explanations" don't necessarily add up to me.
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html Explanation group 1 is definitely how I feel when it comes to ET and interstellar travel. Spoiler for length Spoiler Explanation Group 1: There are no signs of higher (Type II and III) civilizations because there are no higher civilizations in existence. Those who subscribe to Group 1 explanations point to something called the non-exclusivity problem, which rebuffs any theory that says, “There are higher civilizations, but none of them have made any kind of contact with us because they all _____.” Group 1 people look at the math, which says there should be so many thousands (or millions) of higher civilizations, that at least one of them would be an exception to the rule. Even if a theory held for 99.99% of higher civilizations, the other .01% would behave differently and we’d become aware of their existence. Therefore, say Group 1 explanations, it must be that there are no super-advanced civilizations. And since the math suggests that there are thousands of them just in our own galaxy, something else must be going on. This something else is called The Great Filter. The Great Filter theory says that at some point from pre-life to Type III intelligence, there’s a wall that all or nearly all attempts at life hit. There’s some stage in that long evolutionary process that is extremely unlikely or impossible for life to get beyond. That stage is The Great Filter. If this theory is true, the big question is, Where in the timeline does the Great Filter occur? It turns out that when it comes to the fate of humankind, this question is very important. Depending on where The Great Filter occurs, we’re left with three possible realities: We’re rare, we’re first, or we’re fucked. 1. We’re Rare (The Great Filter is Behind Us) One hope we have is that The Great Filter is behind us—we managed to surpass it, which would mean it’s extremely rare for life to make it to our level of intelligence. The diagram below shows only two species making it past, and we’re one of them. This scenario would explain why there are no Type III Civilizations…but it would also mean that we could be one of the few exceptions now that we’ve made it this far. It would mean we have hope. On the surface, this sounds a bit like people 500 years ago suggesting that the Earth is the center of the universe—it implies that we’respecial. However, something scientists call “observation selection effect” suggests that anyone who is pondering their own rarity is inherently part of an intelligent life “success story”—and whether they’re actually rare or quite common, the thoughts they ponder and conclusions they draw will be identical. This forces us to admit that being special is at least a possibility. And if we are special, when exactly did we become special—i.e. which step did we surpass that almost everyone else gets stuck on? One possibility: The Great Filter could be at the very beginning—it might be incredibly unusual for life to begin at all. This is a candidate because it took about a billion years of Earth’s existence to finally happen, and because we have tried extensively to replicate that event in labs and have never been able to do it. If this is indeed The Great Filter, it would mean that not only is there no intelligent life out there, there may be no other life at all. Another possibility: The Great Filter could be the jump from the simple prokaryote cell to the complex eukaryote cell. After prokaryotes came into being, they remained that way for almost two billion years before making the evolutionary jump to being complex and having a nucleus. If this is The Great Filter, it would mean the universe is teeming with simple prokaryote cells and almost nothing beyond that. There are a number of other possibilities—some even think the most recent leap we’ve made to our current intelligence is a Great Filter candidate. While the leap from semi-intelligent life (chimps) to intelligent life (humans) doesn’t at first seem like a miraculous step, Steven Pinker rejects the idea of an inevitable “climb upward” of evolution: “Since evolution does not strive for a goal but just happens, it uses the adaptation most useful for a given ecological niche, and the fact that, on Earth, this led to technological intelligence only once so far may suggest that this outcome of natural selection is rare and hence by no means a certain development of the evolution of a tree of life.” Most leaps do not qualify as Great Filter candidates. Any possible Great Filter must be one-in-a-billion type thing where one or more total freak occurrences need to happen to provide a crazy exception—for that reason, something like the jump from single-cell to multi-cellular life is ruled out, because it has occurred as many as 46 times, in isolated incidents, just on this planet alone. For the same reason, if we were to find a fossilized eukaryote cell on Mars, it would rule the above “simple-to-complex cell” leap out as a possible Great Filter (as well as anything before that point on the evolutionary chain)—because if it happened on both Earth and Mars, it’s almost definitely not a one-in-a-billion freak occurrence. If we are indeed rare, it could be because of a fluky biological event, but it also could be attributed to what is called the Rare Earth Hypothesis, which suggests that though there may be many Earth-like planets, the particular conditions on Earth—whether related to the specifics of this solar system, its relationship with the moon (a moon that large is unusual for such a small planet and contributes to our particular weather and ocean conditions), or something about the planet itself—are exceptionally friendly to life. 2. We’re the First For Group 1 Thinkers, if the Great Filter is not behind us, the one hope we have is that conditions in the universe are just recently, for the first time since the Big Bang, reaching a place that would allow intelligent life to develop. In that case, we and many other species may be on our way to super-intelligence, and it simply hasn’t happened yet. We happen to be here at the right time to become one of the first super-intelligent civilizations. One example of a phenomenon that could make this realistic is the prevalence of gamma-ray bursts, insanely huge explosions that we’ve observed in distant galaxies. In the same way that it took the early Earth a few hundred million years before the asteroids and volcanoes died down and life became possible, it could be that the first chunk of the universe’s existence was full of cataclysmic events like gamma-ray bursts that would incinerate everything nearby from time to time and prevent any life from developing past a certain stage. Now, perhaps, we’re in the midst of anastrobiological phase transition and this is the first time any life has been able to evolve for this long, uninterrupted. 3. We’re Fucked (The Great Filter is Ahead of Us) If we’re neither rare nor early, Group 1 thinkers conclude that The Great Filter mustbe in our future. This would suggest that life regularly evolves to where we are, but that something prevents life from going much further and reaching high intelligence in almost all cases—and we’re unlikely to be an exception. One possible future Great Filter is a regularly-occurring cataclysmic natural event, like the above-mentioned gamma-ray bursts, except they’re unfortunately not done yet and it’s just a matter of time before all life on Earth is suddenly wiped out by one. Another candidate is the possible inevitability that nearly all intelligent civilizations end up destroying themselves once a certain level of technology is reached. This is why Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom says that “no news is good news.” The discovery of even simple life on Mars would be devastating, because it would cut out a number of potential Great Filters behind us. And if we were to find fossilized complex life on Mars, Bostrom says “it would be by far the worst news ever printed on a newspaper cover,” because it would mean The Great Filter is almost definitely ahead of us—ultimately dooming the species. Bostrom believes that when it comes to The Fermi Paradox, “the silence of the night sky is golden.”
We May Have Accidentally Stumbled Across Warp Fields Spoiler While it has yet to be confirmed, NASA engineers studying the controversial EmDrive may have discovered it generates Star Trek-styled warp fields. Right now there are a lot of people wanting to go to space. And I'm not talking about the Mars colony folks or future asteroid miners - I mean the people who want starships that can visit other solar systems. Now if a group of NASA engineers talking shop online are to be believed, there's a pretty strong chance science stumbled across a warp drive by accident. At this point, it's necessary to throw up a very important disclaimer: None of the information here has been verified, peer-reviewed, or is considered academically sound. By tomorrow, someone could realize they made a mathematical error, or conducted measurements in metric and the whole thing will fall apart. But right now, very smart people are considering this to be a legitimate possibility that needs further study. Disclaimer ends. So here's the necessary backstory. Way back in 2000 Roger J. Shawyer developed the EmDrive, a proposed spacecraft propulsion system that doesn't need fuel as a propellent. By 2006, the concept faced heavy criticism for violating the law of conservation of momentum - not to mention a distinct lack of peer review to his research. Eventually teams in China and the US, including a group at NASA that investigates fringe proposals, constructed their own versions for testing. These devices promptly surprised everyone by workingeven when nobody quite understood how. It wasn't enough to get us to space, but was interesting enough to warrant future research. Skip ahead to this month, where we have a propulsion device that somehow produces microwaves to generate thrust. According to posts on NASASpaceFlight.com, someone at NASA wondered where the thrust came from and used a tool to measure variances in light's path-time. What this tool recorded is that when lasers are fired through the EmDrive's resonance chamber, some of the beams start moving faster than the speed of light. If everyone checks out - and on the surface the math does - it means the EmDrive is producing some kind of warp field. Once again, this is not a confirmed warp drive we have on our hands. Critics will point out the effect could just as easily be caused by atmospheric heating, which means the test has to be recreated in a vacuum. But if that test produces the same results, a lot of very intelligent people around the planet will absolutely lose their minds with excitement. Of course, getting a warp field large enough to propel a spaceship creates its own problems, but it could be a very small, very significant step all the same. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...Have-Accidentally-Stumbled-Across-Warp-Fields
Vox interview with NDT. The c/p didn't work too well so I'm just posting the link. The first statement he makes is a more intelligent and well composed response than I have ever or will ever make in my lifetime. http://www.vox.com/2015/4/28/8489725/neil-degrasse-tyson
Probably worth it's own thread, but here's the NASA thread about it if you know your shit (I don't): http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36313.1860 And here's the REDDIT thread about it (more my speed): http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/...e_that_everyone_got_excited_about_a/?sort=old
I post on a forum about football/sports with lots of dick jokes and these guys post on a forum with posts like this.
I agree with the first part, but have my doubts that we are fucked. I can honestly see them looking at us like I look at an ant. I don't really give a shit about said ant until it does something that is a burden in some way to me.
Let's hypothetically say NASA really developed a warp drive and we could start inter galaxy exploration, I personally feel we'd do so with an eye towards colonization, or essentially invading a new world. But that could just be our nature.
If aliens reached earth in 1947, then they come here all the time. Think about the tiny tiny tiny amount of time that humans have been on earth. Then think of the current limits that we face with space travel. Then think about the vastness of the galaxy, let alone the universe. Needle in the haystack doesn't even begin to describe it. The chances of them coming to earth ONE TIME and it happened to be within the .005% time frame that humans have existed on earth is unfathomably small. The only way a spaceship has come to earth is if it's through a wormhole/some other form of teleportation and they've got to know we're here and they've just chosen not to communicate with us for whatever reason.
I mean, yeah but what are chances that it happened at the exact time humans were kinda developing technologically and it happened to be in the U.S. and more specifically the one state that harbors our most secure military base? You add it all up and there's no way that just kinda happened. If it happened they knew what they were doing and have been here many times before and since.
I don't disagree, just stating a possibility. I personally believe there was an alien spaceship crash that lead to many technological advancements. I find the Battle of Los Angeles to be fascinating, especially since the government would rather us believe trained fighter pilots couldn't shoot down a "weather balloon".
It would have to be. Not doing so as soon as we realistically could is like playing Russian roulette with extinction. Many scientists like Carl Sagan say that should be our main goal with space exploration and travel is colonization just as a means of humanity's survival.
holy shit @NASANewHorizons detects Pluto surface features, including possible polar cap: http://go.nasa.gov/1zqp7kO click the link, see a video gif, be amazed
I'm of the opinion that making contact with extraterrestrials is akin to giving said ant a strobe light. A scientific-minded ET would study and research that ant to figure out what's going on with it. However, if we attract the attention of a 3-yr-old-minded-equivalent ET, our whole anthill is squish. That's quite a gamble, and it's kept me up every now and then.
I think it depends. If it's a vastly superior species that has a long history of discovering intelligence throughout the universe (and they have no interest in visiting/communicating) then they might pass us by. But if they have their version of biologists, there are going to be members of their species that will want to study us. Or if we're the very first intelligent species they've encountered other than their own, then they'd absolutely want to at least take a closer look. Using your example, it would be like stumbling upon an ant after living your life without seeing any other form of life up to that point.
You've got me wondering now how sex would work in space. Lack of gravity would make it very difficult, you'd be banging while banging around the spaceship. There would be stanky sweat and fluids floating everywhere. You'd never be able to rid the ship of that sex stank. Although when you slap that ass it would shake for days.
This is awesome. The largest picture ever developed. 3:00 on are particularly cool showing the sheer size of the galaxy then pans back to how tiny it looks to us from earth.
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2015/0...-finally-find-life-in-the-outer-solar-system/ The relevant text from here is as follows: Ocean Worlds Exploration Program.—The recommendation pro- vides $226,000,000 for Outer Planets, of which not less than $140,000,000 is for the Jupiter Europa Clipper, or comparable mission, to support the process of finalizing the mission design concept that meets the scientific objectives described in the most recent Planetary Science decadal survey. To support sustained momentum in this program, NASA shall ensure that future funding requests are consistent with achieving a launch no later than 2022, with the goal of launching on a Space Launch System platform as discussed elsewhere in this report. Many of NASA’s most exciting discoveries in recent years have been made during the robotic exploration of the outer planets. The Cassini mission has discovered vast oceans of liquid hydrocarbons on Saturn’s moon Titan and a submerged salt water sea on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The Committee directs NASA to create an Ocean World Exploration Program whose primary goal is to discover extant life on another world using a mix of Discovery, New Frontiers and flagship class missions consistent with the recommendations of current and future Planetary Decadal surveys.
Watched The Dark Universe narrated by Mr. Tyson himself at the Museum of Natural History this weekend. Makes you feel fucking tiny. Observable matter, everything we can see in the entire universe, only makes up 5% of the universe. The other 95% is dark matter and dark energy that we don't even really know what it is. Also the super cluster that includes our galaxy along with thousands of others, only makes up 1% of the observable universe. Add in to that that any other galaxy is going to see a different observable universe than ours (parts that we can't see, and we see parts that they can't). :mindblown:
Read the title of the thread as "Space Balls never fails to blow my mind." am now disappoint but also hopeful of what is to come
I can't even imagine what type of pictures we'll have after the James Webb Space Telescope gets put in orbit
It's wild man. We can't even fully explore our solar system, which is a tiny, tiny part of the milky way, which is 1 of thousands of galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster, which only makes up 1% of the observable universe. Scale like that makes me think that there has to be intelligent life out there, and at the same time, the chance we ever run into each other is damn near zero.
Speaking of the scale of the universe. Anyone have a good desktop picture or a good space one in general?
That's pretty awesome. I'd like to find one that shows just how big the universe is, but that is cool as hell.
http://m.imgur.com/a/NtERY Download the folder, select all, set to switch every whenever you want duration and enjoy