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We are not alone.... Maybe.


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AlphonseCapone
27 minutes ago, wentworth jambo said:

Agree 1 million light years is a huge distance in any terms, however, it feels huge due to current constraints i.e. never happening if we travel at 35k mph. If wormhole travel is perfected for example, in theory that huge distance / time, could be crossed in a far shorter period. We know at present that theory supports wormholes however don;t see it happening any time soon - but it absolutely could in the future. I'm with you though mate, it is mind boggling ! 

 

I'm with you mate. Not saying it'll ever be possible but I'd never rule it out as impossible. Drop an early homo sapien off in 2020 and it would utterly destroy their mind the things we take for granted, like me typing this on my phone communicating with you in a place I don't even know. 

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1 hour ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

There could well be countless planets in the Goldilocks zone, and those planets might be teeming with life.  But what kind of life could it be?

 

Our planet is 5 billion years old. For the first billion years there was no life.  For the next 3 billion years, life consisted only of single-cell organisms.  It then took a remarkable series of random events, including at least 5 mass extinctions of species, for an odd species of hairless apes called homo sapiens  to evolve. 

 

Even if there are many planets where life has evolved, the chances of there being a species similar to ourselves is vanishingly small ... with apologies to sci-fi lovers! 

 But who's to say the dinosaurs brains couldn't have developed like ours has?

 

That could have been 240 Million years of brain/tech development.

 

I doubt there will be anything like us.  Most species evolve based on their habitat.   I'm sure there are worlds like ours, but not quite the same.

 

Saying that, apparently crocodiles and sharks haven't evolved much for millions of years.  Staggering thought.  They are near perfect for their environment.

 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, AlphonseCapone said:

 

I'm with you mate. Not saying it'll ever be possible but I'd never rule it out as impossible. Drop an early homo sapien off in 2020 and it would utterly destroy their mind the things we take for granted, like me typing this on my phone communicating with you in a place I don't even know. 

 Think of some of the people still living in jungles now.

 

 

Edited by Lovecraft
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Seymour M Hersh
3 hours ago, AlphonseCapone said:

 

I'm with you mate. Not saying it'll ever be possible but I'd never rule it out as impossible. Drop an early homo sapien off in 2020 and it would utterly destroy their mind the things we take for granted, like me typing this on my phone communicating with you in a place I don't even know. 

 

When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.

Edited by Seymour M Hersh
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1 minute ago, Space Pirate said:

People talking about how far away other planets are... 

Aye, that's with our technology.

 

 

 

Even with light speed technology they are still far away

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1 minute ago, AlimOzturk said:

 

Even with light speed technology they are still far away

 

What if we don't know shit and we're all morons though? 

Anti gravity in all that. 

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When I was growing up there were an estimated 50 billion galaxies. The most recent estimate is two trillion galaxies and since the number has always grown as better telescopes come online I expect it to continue to grow.

 

The Milky Way, not a large galaxy by any standards, contains between 100 and 400 billion stars. It's difficult to judge the number accurately in part because we're trying to look at it from the inside.

 

But let's call it the median 200 billion and consider that a galactic average throughout the universe. So now we're looking at 2 trillion times 200 billion stars. And when you consider there are a lot more planets and moons than that the numbers are staggering. Incomprehensible.

It's suspected that life on Earth began relatively soon after the formation period when the planet had settled and cooled off. And in fact it's further suspected that it probably occurred more than once. It's thought that the first instances would have been wiped out during a heavy bombardment period as the solar system planets cleared their orbits of remaining proto-planetary debris.

 

This involved collisions in which some potential planets would have been destroyed. It's thought just such a collision between the Earth and a Mars sized object created our moon. And it's thought these collisions are also the reason that while most asteroids and meteorites are rocky some are largely iron based. These much rarer iron based meteorites are likely the debris of an iron core which formed at the centre of a planet sized object which was then destroyed by a massive collision. 

The bombardment/collision period involved some very large objects some of them hundreds of miles in diameter and even moon or planet sized. An impact from an object a few hundred miles in diameter would reset the planet. The entire surface down to a considerable depth would be molten in the aftermath which would effectively sterilise it.

If this suspicion that life began on multiple occasions is correct then since the ingredients of life are everywhere out there we would have to further suspect that it's probably relatively common on a suitable planet within the 'Goldilocks zone' of a suitable star. Not too far away to be frozen not too close to be fried.

My own suspicion is that given the numbers mentioned above it would be astonishing if there were no other life in the Milky Way far less the universe. And i'm talking about life on any scale such as even bacteria. Just has to be out there in my view.

Then there's intelligent life which is a whole other matter. The Earth is estimated to be around 4.5 billion years old and while it's thought life began relatively quickly it took almost all of that time for intelligent life capable of human level technology to appear.

Humans are pretty much brand new on a geological time scale and weren't guaranteed to make it even after the advent of high intelligence.

 

There's an idea called the Toba catastrophe theory suggesting that a bottleneck of  human population occurred around 70,000 years ago proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps as little as 10,000 individuals. That's verging close to extinction but luckily we made it. 

 

The bottleneck has been linked to the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia which erupted triggering an environmental catastrophe that could have been the end of us.

So with all that in mind my suspicion is that life may be relatively common but high intelligence much rarer. But then again with the staggering numbers involved I don't think for a moment that humans are unique in that respect. Even if it were a billion to one chance we could still be looking at potentially hundreds of intelligent civilisations in the Milky way alone.

But as for the question of alien visitations to the Earth I don't believe for a  moment that has ever happened. A further problem with the proposition of intelligent life is that there's every chance intelligent civilisations have come and gone many times in the lifetime of the Milky Way which is estimated to be one of the older galaxies at around 13 billion years.

I feel that chances of two intelligent cvilisations existing in the Milky Way at the same time and actually finding each other have to be extremely remote. Even if it happened that two such civilisations did occur at the same time and somehow found each other any contact would be infinitely more likely to be by some form of radio communication.

 

The distances involved make it highly unlikely that any civilisation would waste resources on a journey that would consume the lifetimes of thousands of generations. Entire colonies would have to dispatched in enormous ships containing thousands of beings most of whom would never live to see the journeys end. 


There are no aliens visiting the Earth and there are unlikely to ever be any. I think it's telling that since the world became smothered in cameras on phones UFO reports have actually declined not increased.

 

Something like 'miracles' no less. When there was no way to record it miracles were happening all the time. Now that there is a way to record it we have zero evidence of miracles. UFO's and visiting aliens are likely in the same category. Wishful thinking.

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AlphonseCapone
45 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

When I was growing up there were an estimated 50 billion galaxies. The most recent estimate is two trillion galaxies and since the number has always grown as better telescopes come online I expect it to continue to grow.

 

The Milky Way, not a large galaxy by any standards, contains between 100 and 400 billion stars. It's difficult to judge the number accurately in part because we're trying to look at it from the inside.

 

But let's call it the median 200 billion and consider that a galactic average throughout the universe. So now we're looking at 2 trillion times 200 billion stars. And when you consider there are a lot more planets and moons than that the numbers are staggering. Incomprehensible.

It's suspected that life on Earth began relatively soon after the formation period when the planet had settled and cooled off. And in fact it's further suspected that it probably occurred more than once. It's thought that the first instances would have been wiped out during a heavy bombardment period as the solar system planets cleared their orbits of remaining proto-planetary debris.

 

This involved collisions in which some potential planets would have been destroyed. It's thought just such a collision between the Earth and a Mars sized object created our moon. And it's thought these collisions are also the reason that while most asteroids and meteorites are rocky some are largely iron based. These much rarer iron based meteorites are likely the debris of an iron core which formed at the centre of a planet sized object which was then destroyed by a massive collision. 

The bombardment/collision period involved some very large objects some of them hundreds of miles in diameter and even moon or planet sized. An impact from an object a few hundred miles in diameter would reset the planet. The entire surface down to a considerable depth would be molten in the aftermath which would effectively sterilise it.

If this suspicion that life began on multiple occasions is correct then since the ingredients of life are everywhere out there we would have to further suspect that it's probably relatively common on a suitable planet within the 'Goldilocks zone' of a suitable star. Not too far away to be frozen not too close to be fried.

My own suspicion is that given the numbers mentioned above it would be astonishing if there were no other life in the Milky Way far less the universe. And i'm talking about life on any scale such as even bacteria. Just has to be out there in my view.

Then there's intelligent life which is a whole other matter. The Earth is estimated to be around 4.5 billion years old and while it's thought life began relatively quickly it took almost all of that time for intelligent life capable of human level technology to appear.

Humans are pretty much brand new on a geological time scale and weren't guaranteed to make it even after the advent of high intelligence.

 

There's an idea called the Toba catastrophe theory suggesting that a bottleneck of  human population occurred around 70,000 years ago proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps as little as 10,000 individuals. That's verging close to extinction but luckily we made it. 

 

The bottleneck has been linked to the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia which erupted triggering an environmental catastrophe that could have been the end of us.

So with all that in mind my suspicion is that life may be relatively common but high intelligence much rarer. But then again with the staggering numbers involved I don't think for a moment that humans are unique in that respect. Even if it were a billion to one chance we could still be looking at potentially hundreds of intelligent civilisations in the Milky way alone.

But as for the question of alien visitations to the Earth I don't believe for a  moment that has ever happened. A further problem with the proposition of intelligent life is that there's every chance intelligent civilisations have come and gone many times in the lifetime of the Milky Way which is estimated to be one of the older galaxies at around 13 billion years.

I feel that chances of two intelligent cvilisations existing in the Milky Way at the same time and actually finding each other have to be extremely remote. Even if it happened that two such civilisations did occur at the same time and somehow found each other any contact would be infinitely more likely to be by some form of radio communication.

 

The distances involved make it highly unlikely that any civilisation would waste resources on a journey that would consume the lifetimes of thousands of generations. Entire colonies would have to dispatched in enormous ships containing thousands of beings most of whom would never live to see the journeys end. 


There are no aliens visiting the Earth and there are unlikely to ever be any. I think it's telling that since the world became smothered in cameras on phones UFO reports have actually declined not increased.

 

Something like 'miracles' no less. When there was no way to record it miracles were happening all the time. Now that there is a way to record it we have zero evidence of miracles. UFO's and visiting aliens are likely in the same category. Wishful thinking.

 

Enjoyed this post. 

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26 minutes ago, AlphonseCapone said:

 

Enjoyed this post. 

 

Thanks, I enjoyed pondering the issue. Speaking of meteorites as I did reminded me of a time when I was around 10 years old or so and actually saw one come down on some grass maybe maybe 30 yards or so away from me. Usually they don't make it all the way to the ground but this did.

I ran over but it was night time and dark and I could find nothing plus the chances are anything that survived the journey was little more than a dust grain sized object. As I mentioned in the post most are rocky while iron based meteorites are much rarer.

The only way these iron meteorites can have been formed is that they were the iron core of a planet sized object. When planets form there is a molten period during which differentiation takes place. The heavier elements such as iron sink to the centre to form the core while the lighter silicate elements float on the surface to form the rocky outer material.

So these iron meteorites are fragments of what was a planetary core. A planet that was completely obliterated during a collision to the extent that the outer rocky material was completely shattered and blown away and even the very core was exposed. What a crash.

This is a picture of the largest iron meteorite ever discovered on Earth. Called the Hoba meteorite and weighs around 60 tons. It's mind boggling to me that this was once part of a planetary core which ended up here on Earth.

800px-Hoba_meteorite_(15682150765).jpg

 

Quote

The Hoba meteorite impact is thought to have occurred more recently than 80,000 years ago. It is inferred that the Earth's atmosphere slowed the object to the point that it impacted the surface at terminal velocity, thereby remaining intact and causing little excavation.

Assuming a drag coefficient of about 1.3, the meteor would have been slowed to about 720 miles per hour (0.32 km/s) from its speed on entering the Earth's atmosphere, typically in excess of 10 km/s for similar objects. The meteorite is unusual in that it is flat on both major surfaces.

 

The Hoba meteorite left no preserved crater and its discovery was a chance event. In 1920, the owner of the land, Jacobus Hermanus Brits, encountered the object while ploughing one of his fields with an ox. During this task, he heard a loud metallic scratching sound and the plough came to an abrupt halt.

The obstruction was excavated, identified as a meteorite and described by Mr. Brits, whose report was published in 1920 and can be viewed at the Grootfontein Museum in Namibia.

 

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jack D and coke
3 hours ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Thanks, I enjoyed pondering the issue. Speaking of meteorites as I did reminded me of a time when I was around 10 years old or so and actually saw one come down on some grass maybe maybe 30 yards or so away from me. Usually they don't make it all the way to the ground but this did.

I ran over but it was night time and dark and I could find nothing plus the chances are anything that survived the journey was little more than a dust grain sized object. As I mentioned in the post most are rocky while iron based meteorites are much rarer.

The only way these iron meteorites can have been formed is that they were the iron core of a planet sized object. When planets form there is a molten period during which differentiation takes place. The heavier elements such as iron sink to the centre to form the core while the lighter silicate elements float on the surface to form the rocky outer material.

So these iron meteorites are fragments of what was a planetary core. A planet that was completely obliterated during a collision to the extent that the outer rocky material was completely shattered and blown away and even the very core was exposed. What a crash.

This is a picture of the largest iron meteorite ever discovered on Earth. Called the Hoba meteorite and weighs around 60 tons. It's mind boggling to me that this was once part of a planetary core which ended up here on Earth.

800px-Hoba_meteorite_(15682150765).jpg

 

 

10km per second :lol: space is absolutely mental. 
As Alphonse says, cracking posts👍🏼

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4 hours ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Thanks, I enjoyed pondering the issue. Speaking of meteorites as I did reminded me of a time when I was around 10 years old or so and actually saw one come down on some grass maybe maybe 30 yards or so away from me. Usually they don't make it all the way to the ground but this did.

I ran over but it was night time and dark and I could find nothing plus the chances are anything that survived the journey was little more than a dust grain sized object. As I mentioned in the post most are rocky while iron based meteorites are much rarer.

The only way these iron meteorites can have been formed is that they were the iron core of a planet sized object. When planets form there is a molten period during which differentiation takes place. The heavier elements such as iron sink to the centre to form the core while the lighter silicate elements float on the surface to form the rocky outer material.

So these iron meteorites are fragments of what was a planetary core. A planet that was completely obliterated during a collision to the extent that the outer rocky material was completely shattered and blown away and even the very core was exposed. What a crash.

This is a picture of the largest iron meteorite ever discovered on Earth. Called the Hoba meteorite and weighs around 60 tons. It's mind boggling to me that this was once part of a planetary core which ended up here on Earth.

800px-Hoba_meteorite_(15682150765).jpg

 

 

Indeed, was once part of a stellar core that blew up in a supernova - just like every atom around and in us that’s not hydrogen.

 

I wonder about the unknown unknowns.  Things we can’t even conceive of.  
Imagine you wanted to send a copy of a picture from Edinburgh to London as fast as possible 300 years ago.  You could divide it up into little squares, say 250 x 250 to get reasonable resolution, then with semaphore send signals black, black, white, black etc 62,500 times, taking what - hours? days? but it could be done.  People might imagine the picture being transmitted (almost) instantly, 24 times a second to give a moving picture but how that might happen was utterly beyond their ken because we hadn’t captured electricity or developed electro-magnetic wave theory etc.

Similarly we can imagine travelling faster than light but can’t begin to imagine how it might be done.

 

Edited by FWJ
Arithmetic!
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5 hours ago, JFK-1 said:

When I was growing up there were an estimated 50 billion galaxies. The most recent estimate is two trillion galaxies and since the number has always grown as better telescopes come online I expect it to continue to grow.

 

The Milky Way, not a large galaxy by any standards, contains between 100 and 400 billion stars. It's difficult to judge the number accurately in part because we're trying to look at it from the inside.

 

But let's call it the median 200 billion and consider that a galactic average throughout the universe. So now we're looking at 2 trillion times 200 billion stars. And when you consider there are a lot more planets and moons than that the numbers are staggering. Incomprehensible.

It's suspected that life on Earth began relatively soon after the formation period when the planet had settled and cooled off. And in fact it's further suspected that it probably occurred more than once. It's thought that the first instances would have been wiped out during a heavy bombardment period as the solar system planets cleared their orbits of remaining proto-planetary debris.

 

This involved collisions in which some potential planets would have been destroyed. It's thought just such a collision between the Earth and a Mars sized object created our moon. And it's thought these collisions are also the reason that while most asteroids and meteorites are rocky some are largely iron based. These much rarer iron based meteorites are likely the debris of an iron core which formed at the centre of a planet sized object which was then destroyed by a massive collision. 

The bombardment/collision period involved some very large objects some of them hundreds of miles in diameter and even moon or planet sized. An impact from an object a few hundred miles in diameter would reset the planet. The entire surface down to a considerable depth would be molten in the aftermath which would effectively sterilise it.

If this suspicion that life began on multiple occasions is correct then since the ingredients of life are everywhere out there we would have to further suspect that it's probably relatively common on a suitable planet within the 'Goldilocks zone' of a suitable star. Not too far away to be frozen not too close to be fried.

My own suspicion is that given the numbers mentioned above it would be astonishing if there were no other life in the Milky Way far less the universe. And i'm talking about life on any scale such as even bacteria. Just has to be out there in my view.

Then there's intelligent life which is a whole other matter. The Earth is estimated to be around 4.5 billion years old and while it's thought life began relatively quickly it took almost all of that time for intelligent life capable of human level technology to appear.

Humans are pretty much brand new on a geological time scale and weren't guaranteed to make it even after the advent of high intelligence.

 

There's an idea called the Toba catastrophe theory suggesting that a bottleneck of  human population occurred around 70,000 years ago proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps as little as 10,000 individuals. That's verging close to extinction but luckily we made it. 

 

The bottleneck has been linked to the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia which erupted triggering an environmental catastrophe that could have been the end of us.

So with all that in mind my suspicion is that life may be relatively common but high intelligence much rarer. But then again with the staggering numbers involved I don't think for a moment that humans are unique in that respect. Even if it were a billion to one chance we could still be looking at potentially hundreds of intelligent civilisations in the Milky way alone.

But as for the question of alien visitations to the Earth I don't believe for a  moment that has ever happened. A further problem with the proposition of intelligent life is that there's every chance intelligent civilisations have come and gone many times in the lifetime of the Milky Way which is estimated to be one of the older galaxies at around 13 billion years.

I feel that chances of two intelligent cvilisations existing in the Milky Way at the same time and actually finding each other have to be extremely remote. Even if it happened that two such civilisations did occur at the same time and somehow found each other any contact would be infinitely more likely to be by some form of radio communication.

 

The distances involved make it highly unlikely that any civilisation would waste resources on a journey that would consume the lifetimes of thousands of generations. Entire colonies would have to dispatched in enormous ships containing thousands of beings most of whom would never live to see the journeys end. 


There are no aliens visiting the Earth and there are unlikely to ever be any. I think it's telling that since the world became smothered in cameras on phones UFO reports have actually declined not increased.

 

Something like 'miracles' no less. When there was no way to record it miracles were happening all the time. Now that there is a way to record it we have zero evidence of miracles. UFO's and visiting aliens are likely in the same category. Wishful thinking.


Is that you Frank Drake?

 

Good post. 

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On 10/02/2020 at 21:25, Space Pirate said:

I watched this a while ago and i've just watched it again. 

I find it hard to believe

but i also find it hard to believe that all these guys are lying. 

Take a look for yourself, Netflix. 

 

 

p14059673_v_v8_ab.jpg

 

Watched that last night with the Mrs and fair enjoyed it, had to tell the Mrs to STFU and just listen a few times but she enjoyed it all the same.

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1 hour ago, FWJ said:

Indeed, was once part of a stellar core that blew up in a supernova - just like every atom around and in us that’s not hydrogen.

 

Yes that takes it a step further back, a somewhat more difficult concept to visualize since we're now talking about very small particles, perhaps essentially on an atomic scale which will eventually congregate.

What blows my mind is that chunk of iron which I can see with my own eyes was once at the centre of a planet pretty much as we see it in the picture.

 

And obviously a planetary core is much larger than that chunk. Imagine the energies involved in first exposing the core then breaking that chunk off from the whole. A bad day for any life that may have been around thinking of little more than what's for breakfast. 

meteorite_origins_ed2_smallfile.jpg

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We could be being bombarded with alien communication right now but not be able to detect it.  Imagine a native American using smoke signals trying to hear what Walkie talkies are saying.. or someone with a radio from the 1920s trying to watch Netflix on a 5G network. Who knows what intelligent civilisations would use to communicate across space. 

 

Einstein stated that the speed of light was the limit, therefore Information can't travel faster than that.  So if the sun exploded, we wouldn't know about it untill 8 and a half minutes later. That's how long it takes the light to reach us. 

 

So if there are civilisations out there communicating with each other, they must be doing it outside of our 3 dimensional plane and removing the 'distance' from the equation, perhaps tiny worm holes which ignore the constraints of relativity?

 

However, it was said in an excellent post above. This is not about how far away the other civilisations are, it's about how long ago they lived.  I'm sure there are species out there, or were out there. Just possibly not at this exact moment in time. 

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I can't even remember who first said it, but I've always loved the quote which goes along the lines of:

 

The sure-fire proof that there is intelligent life out there is that they've decided not to contact us.

 

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1 hour ago, Bigsmak said:

However, it was said in an excellent post above. This is not about how far away the other civilisations are, it's about how long ago they lived.  I'm sure there are species out there, or were out there. Just possibly not at this exact moment in time. 

 

And to muddy the issue yet more there are further complicating factors to be taken into consideration. It's a fact that over 99% of all life which has ever existed on Earth has already come and gone. Extinct and the chances are we will in time follow suit.

The only way to avoid this would be to get off this planet and spread out to other planets/moons because putting all your eggs in one basket namely the Earth is certain extinction along the way.

 

There have always been catastrophic events such as large impacts from space and super volcano events right here on Earth. These events haven't stopped simply because we're here, they will happen again and it could be pretty much anytime.

So the only way to dodge extinction is to spread out to as many locations as possible and currently that's beyond us. We could scarcely survive indefinitely on our close neighbour Mars far less anything further out.

And to complicate it even further let's say there had been an intelligent civilisation which managed to survive even just a million years beyond our current state of technology. A million years is the blink of an eye in geological terms and even less in cosmic terms.

But when you compare our technology to that of just a hundred years ago the mind boggles to think what could be possible if another million years of a progress were feasible. The creation of highly advanced artificial intelligence would be certain. Even now I would expect we could create terminator level AI in a hundred or couple of hundred years from now at most far less a million years.

Now i'm not suggesting that AI would destroy us terminator style. What i'm saying is that it would be far more adaptable and capable of surviving even the harshest of environmental catastrophes. It would persist long after we are gone.

I feel there's every bit as much chance of there being AI out there somewhere as there is of biological intelligence and perhaps even more so. Somewhere along the way some intelligent civilizations must have created an advanced AI that outlived them.

And all it would need to spend thousands of years exploring around the galaxy would be an energy source which would presumably be a small detail for such advanced technology.

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AlphonseCapone
16 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

And to muddy the issue yet more there are further complicating factors to be taken into consideration. It's a fact that over 99% of all life which has ever existed on Earth has already come and gone. Extinct and the chances are we will in time follow suit.

The only way to avoid this would be to get off this planet and spread out to other planets/moons because putting all your eggs in one basket namely the Earth is certain extinction along the way.

 

There have always been catastrophic events such as large impacts from space and super volcano events right here on Earth. These events haven't stopped simply because we're here, they will happen again and it could be pretty much anytime.

So the only way to dodge extinction is to spread out to as many locations as possible and currently that's beyond us. We could scarcely survive indefinitely on our close neighbour Mars far less anything further out.

And to complicate it even further let's say there had been an intelligent civilisation which managed to survive even just a million years beyond our current state of technology. A million years is the blink of an eye in geological terms and even less in cosmic terms.

But when you compare our technology to that of just a hundred years ago the mind boggles to think what could be possible if another million years of a progress were feasible. The creation of highly advanced artificial intelligence would be certain. Even now I would expect we could create terminator level AI in a hundred or couple of hundred years from now at most far less a million years.

Now i'm not suggesting that AI would destroy us terminator style. What i'm saying is that it would be far more adaptable and capable of surviving even the harshest of environmental catastrophes. It would persist long after we are gone.

I feel there's every bit as much chance of there being AI out there somewhere as there is of biological intelligence and perhaps even more so. Somewhere along the way some intelligent civilizations must have created an advanced AI that outlived them.

And all it would need to spend thousands of years exploring around the galaxy would be an energy source which would presumably be a small detail for such advanced technology.

 

Mate, are you a physicist or just really into this stuff?

 

I could listen to you talk about stuff like this all day. I'd have the worst case of existential crisis after but then that's the case after a Saturday session anyway. 

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jack D and coke
15 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

And to muddy the issue yet more there are further complicating factors to be taken into consideration. It's a fact that over 99% of all life which has ever existed on Earth has already come and gone. Extinct and the chances are we will in time follow suit.

The only way to avoid this would be to get off this planet and spread out to other planets/moons because putting all your eggs in one basket namely the Earth is certain extinction along the way.

 

There have always been catastrophic events such as large impacts from space and super volcano events right here on Earth. These events haven't stopped simply because we're here, they will happen again and it could be pretty much anytime.

So the only way to dodge extinction is to spread out to as many locations as possible and currently that's beyond us. We could scarcely survive indefinitely on our close neighbour Mars far less anything further out.

And to complicate it even further let's say there had been an intelligent civilisation which managed to survive even just a million years beyond our current state of technology. A million years is the blink of an eye in geological terms and even less in cosmic terms.

But when you compare our technology to that of just a hundred years ago the mind boggles to think what could be possible if another million years of a progress were feasible. The creation of highly advanced artificial intelligence would be certain. Even now I would expect we could create terminator level AI in a hundred or couple of hundred years from now at most far less a million years.

Now i'm not suggesting that AI would destroy us terminator style. What i'm saying is that it would be far more adaptable and capable of surviving even the harshest of environmental catastrophes. It would persist long after we are gone.

I feel there's every bit as much chance of there being AI out there somewhere as there is of biological intelligence and perhaps even more so. Somewhere along the way some intelligent civilizations must have created an advanced AI that outlived them.

And all it would need to spend thousands of years exploring around the galaxy would be an energy source which would presumably be a small detail for such advanced technology.

Oooft you’re twisting my melon man :lol: 

I love these conversations though. 
Sure I read that one of the hardest things to adapt to on even Mars was the length of a day. I can’t remember how much longer it is compared to here but within a month or two our whole body clock would be screwed as we’d be days behind here. I do think we have to try get off this planet though and establish something somewhere or we’re almost certainly doomed as a species. We’ve raggied, raped, dumped and abused this place almost to death and are showing zero signs of stopping either in the pursuit or growth in our economies. 
An alien AI though....wow. 

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6 minutes ago, Bigsmak said:

If you like this kind of chat - 10000% read this book 

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0141030909/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_s1-qEb570M3R9

 

Physics of the Impossible -  Its such an easy read and talks about Class 1 2 and 3 civilisations.. Basically - looks at the Sci-Fi side of things and says - can this happen? 

 

That book is actually in the public domain and is available on youtube in audio format.
 

 

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1 hour ago, AlphonseCapone said:

 

Mate, are you a physicist or just really into this stuff?

 

I could listen to you talk about stuff like this all day. I'd have the worst case of existential crisis after but then that's the case after a Saturday session anyway. 

 

I'm not a physicist though I have physicist friends whom I question from time to time. But in general their interests in topics such as this one don't really coincide with mine and they don't have a great interest in discussing such topics. Much of the stuff they would like to discuss is beyond me and can only be discussed with other physicists.

Any knowledge I have comes from a lifetime of reading and simply thinking about such subjects. My father has an interest in general science and always had a variety of science based books around when I was growing up.

 

One of my earliest memories of being fascinated by the sky was watching a meteor shower while my father explained exactly what it was and touched on the origin of the material I was watching burn up.

He pointed out that they often burned in different colours depending on the specific metallic content of the object. The shower we were watching largely burned green.

 

It was during this meteor shower I first discovered that metals and pretty much everything aside from hydrogen and helium was cooked up inside stars. A mind blowing concept for a child. He said we were watching stardust raining down.

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17 hours ago, AlimOzturk said:

 

Even with light speed technology they are still far away

I read that if you travelled in a ship for 5 years at the speed of light 35 years would pass on earth. It's this sort of stuff that starts to fry the brain.

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jack D and coke
16 minutes ago, Ominous said:

I read that if you travelled in a ship for 5 years at the speed of light 35 years would pass on earth. It's this sort of stuff that starts to fry the brain.

Hmm dont think that’s completely right but on the right roads. Time travels at the speed of light so if we ever manage to travel at amazing speeds then time will then slow down, i remember watching a QED or something about that years ago so my memory might be hazy. However if we can ever go faster than the speed of light then theoretically we go back in time. 
I think lol. 

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14 minutes ago, Ominous said:

I read that if you travelled in a ship for 5 years at the speed of light 35 years would pass on earth. It's this sort of stuff that starts to fry the brain.

 

Unless we discover entirely new physics light speed travel is likely impossible and even fractions of it are a challenge.

 

Einsteins theory of relativity demonstrated that the greater the speed of an object the heavier it becomes. Thus the faster you go the greater the energy required to go even faster. Approaching light speed your ship would have an infinite mass which would require infinite energy to propel it. An impossibility.

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1 minute ago, jack D and coke said:

Hmm dont think that’s completely right but on the right roads. Time travels at the speed of light so if we ever manage to travel at amazing speeds then time will then slow down, i remember watching a QED or something about that years ago so my memory might be hazy. However if we can ever go faster than the speed of light then theoretically we go back in time. 
I think lol. 

 

Not sure about the time travel element of it but consider this. Presume you're on an alien planet ten squillion miles away  the surface of which can be magically viewed from Earth by a super duper telescope.

You leave the planet and head to Earth faster than the speed of light. Once arriving since you arrived faster than the light from that planet will you could theoretically use the super duper telescope to view yourself standing on the alien planet before leaving. 

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jack D and coke
12 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

There are many similar videos, but this one is enlightening and is only 10 minutes long.

 

 

Wow. Just wow. :lol: 

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jack D and coke
9 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Not sure about the time travel element of it but consider this. Presume you're on an alien planet ten squillion miles away  the surface of which can be magically viewed from Earth by a super duper telescope.

You leave the planet and head to Earth faster than the speed of light. Once arriving since you arrived faster than the light from that planet will you could theoretically use the super duper telescope to view yourself standing on the alien planet before leaving. 

:rofl:

Mental. 

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28 minutes ago, jack D and coke said:

Hmm dont think that’s completely right but on the right roads. Time travels at the speed of light so if we ever manage to travel at amazing speeds then time will then slow down, i remember watching a QED or something about that years ago so my memory might be hazy. However if we can ever go faster than the speed of light then theoretically we go back in time. 
I think lol. 

Yeah I love watching they type of programmes. I know a wee bit about planets and stars but the quantum physics stuff is a wee bit too complicated for me haha.

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3 hours ago, jack D and coke said:

Oooft you’re twisting my melon man :lol: 

I love these conversations though. 
Sure I read that one of the hardest things to adapt to on even Mars was the length of a day. I can’t remember how much longer it is compared to here but within a month or two our whole body clock would be screwed as we’d be days behind here. I do think we have to try get off this planet though and establish something somewhere or we’re almost certainly doomed as a species. We’ve raggied, raped, dumped and abused this place almost to death and are showing zero signs of stopping either in the pursuit or growth in our economies. 
An alien AI though....wow. 

 

You may be interested in reading the science fiction novel Titan by Stephen Baxter. Your "I do think" will turn into a "Bloody hell, let's colonise somewhere else, quickly!" by the end of it.

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39 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Unless we discover entirely new physics light speed travel is likely impossible and even fractions of it are a challenge.

 

Einsteins theory of relativity demonstrated that the greater the speed of an object the heavier it becomes. Thus the faster you go the greater the energy required to go even faster. Approaching light speed your ship would have an infinite mass which would require infinite energy to propel it. An impossibility.

Interesting info mate👍

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34 minutes ago, jack D and coke said:

:rofl:

Mental. 

 

It was in part simple little thought experiments like that which led Einstein to relativity. He wasn't a great mathematician so such thought experiments had to be his main source of inspiration. He tried to imagine what he would see if he were standing on a beam of light travelling with it.


And it's such thought experiments which fed my own fascination with these things from a very young age. I remember being maybe around 7 years old or so and was playing with two mirrors which I faced towards each other.

I looked into them and could see the refection of each mirror in the other. Then within that reflection another reflection of the mirror and within that yet another on and on. I wondered how far it would go if I could shrink myself down and step inside the reflection to follow them as far as they could go. How small would it get before it was impossible to be any smaller I wondered.

And since a 7 year old child thought of that I have no doubt the ancients such as the Greeks thought of it too. The beginning of thoughts on physics. How small can anything be.

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A very good video for anyone who may be interested demonstrating in an understandable manner Einsteins theory of gravity. Which says that a massive object such as a star or planet warps the space around it creating a type of depression in the fabric of space/time.

 

 

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I'm 85% confident that there's extra terrestrial life in our solar system. Probably on Enceladus. With a bit of luck, we might even find it in my lifetime. Unlikely, but most probably within my kids. 

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I think the new james Webb telescope could get some interesting results when it gets launched, it will be able to see what different gases are in planets atmospheres and tell which could have organic life present.

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19 hours ago, Space Pirate said:

People talking about how far away other planets are... 

Aye, that's with our technology.

 

 

 

 

There's thought to be 40,000,000,000 inhabitable planets in the Milky way, our galaxy. There's thought to be 2,000,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe. That's a 1 in 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance that out of all those planets, someone has decided to visit us. 

 

But still, let's assume some civilization has cracked it. That they can, in just 1 single second, scan an entire planet and find out everything about it, then, in an instant, teleport to another planet and do the same again. That's some pretty generous assumptions we're making for them, even with advanced technology but let's go with it. 

 

So even with all that going for them, in a universe that is a grand old age of 13,772,000,000 years old, it would still take them a staggering 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to get through all the planets in the universe. 

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5 hours ago, Bigsmak said:

 

Einstein stated that the speed of light was the limit, therefore Information can't travel faster than that.  

I thought quantum entanglement might be able to overcome that but apparently not. 

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J.T.F.Robertson
2 hours ago, Maple Leaf said:

There are many similar videos, but this one is enlightening and is only 10 minutes long.

 

 

 

Thanks Ron, my brain just had it's own big bang. 

 

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