Silence in the sky—but why?

PhysOrg ^ | 8/25/13

[SgtHooper]

Gold plated latinum, should do it!

[Nowhere Man]

A lot of hard archaeological evidence has been found that supports that hypothesis, but most of it has been shut away in the basements and back rooms of dusty museums by politically correct scientists and researchers.

Can't upset the accepted order, ya know.

I had an online friend who took archeology in college as his major and we talked about this quite a bit. He seems to think, like we, that we had a technical civilization here once or twice prior to ours. Unfortunately, he passed in 2006 from lymphoma. My grandmothers were interested in this stuff too, until she passed in 2010, my paternal grandmother had books on all of that stuff that she read since the 1920's. She was also a member of the Edgar Cayce Society. BTW, this topic has been known to be called "forbidden archeology." I know and wonder if there will be someone, somewhere that will unearth their equivalent of a radio or TV set or even part of a car, but still, as you put it, there are some evidence that can point to that. What's really weird that if that is the case, history can repeat itself since there are rumors that 11,000 years ago, Pakistan and India (or whatever they called themselves back then) fought with atomic weapons, it is kind of ironic they are in the same position today.

[SgtHooper]

42

[Ransomed]

What do you think about METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), the ‘proactive SETI?’

David Brinn doesn’t like it, I take it there were a lot of scientists that quit their SETI connections when their arguments against it were ignored. I guess they have formed a SET dissidents group over it.

http://www.davidbrin.com/shouldsetitransmit.html

Freegards

[The_Reader_David]

“Come let Us make Man in Our image and likeness...”

[The_Reader_David]

And where do you propose to get enough negative mass to build one?

[Nowhere Man]

I think the light barrier can be broken. How? I don't know, I have a few ideas maybe on what I have read but so far, we can't quite put our finger on it. I look at it this way:

Man in 1900: We will never have heavier than air flight.
Man in 1910: We have planes that go 75 MPH and carry one man.
Man in 1920: We have a plane that can cross the Atlantic but we will never have spaceflight to go to the Moon.
Man in 1930: We have airplanes that can go 150 MPH.
Man in 1940: We have airplanes that can go 300 MPH and cross oceans but we will never break the sound barrier.
Man in 1950: We have bigger planes that can go close to 400 MPH and cross oceans but jets are on the way.
Man in 1960: We have jets that can cross oceans at 600 MPH and manned space travel is just around the corner.
Man in 1970: Same plus we landed on the Moon.

I daresay we have reached a plateau in some ways and need a way to get off of this rock, but I think it is doable if we have the will to do it.

[Windflier]

"forbidden archeology."

Yes, I'm familiar with the term, and have read quite a bit on the subject. Michael Cremo wrote a (now) famous book on the topic.

Over the last hundred years or so, thousands of artifacts have been discovered which don't fit the accepted paradigm of human history.

[Windflier]

From your link:

"Daedalus was to be a two stage spacecraft, with stage one carrying 46,000 tonnes of fuel and stage two carrying 4000 tonnes. After a total boost phase of nearly four years, it would be traveling at its top speed of 12.2 percent the speed of light, and would reach its target (Barnard's Star, located about six light years away) in 50 years."

The problem with such a project, is that within twenty years of launch, the folks back home will have already figured out how to build a craft that far exceeds the speed of the one that's en route.

If they perfect the design, then send it on its way, it would probably overtake the first craft, and maybe even be home before it arrived at its destination.

I think that timescales of half a century will discourage developers and visionaries from embarking on such projects. They well know the pace of discovery, and will probably keep working until they've got a propulsion system that can get a spacecraft to Barnard's Star a whole lot quicker.

[Vince Ferrer]

Our own civilization does not really produce detectable evidence of its existence that penetrates further than about 0.6c-yr into space. The nearest possible civilization is 7 times further than that; even in a galaxy teaming with planets, the actual nearest civilization could be hundreds of times that far away and still be quite close in interstellar terms. The Fermi paradox isn't really a paradox -- just a question -- for now. It will become a serious issue once we're able to detect signals on the order of 150 c-yr away, provided we continue to see nothing.

The Fermi paradox doesn't depend just upon signals. Many claim an advanced other civilization, if it exists in our galaxy, would have had the time to build a self replicating ship which could visit another star, do some investigation, and build a few copies of itself from raw materials at the new system, which would then go investigate new stars.

This would lead to a geometric increase of stars visited, and the civilization would have had enough time to have visited every star in the galaxy by now.

[Vince Ferrer]

I can’t say for certain but I am convinced that civilization might have risen once or twice prior to our and then they collapsed.

Various civilizations have already collapsed. It is just that the collapse didn't wipe out our species. Mayans, Romans, Egyptians, Chinese, Japanese, and Indians have all collapsed, mostly from internal, not external forces. I am convinced we are undergoing another one presently.

[onedoug]

I’m referring to “Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origins” by Robert Hazen (2005). Good read.

[Vote 4 Nixon]

Thanks! That was a very good little sci- fi short story. Allow me to return the favor. I remember reading this in a readers digest many years ago while sitting in a doctors office. Enjoy
http://manybooks.net/_scripts/download-ebook.php

[cripplecreek]

What’s the title? You link gives me suggestions but nothing solid.

[Boogieman]

You can’t go back in time even if you could find a way to travel faster than the speed of light. Time dilation doesn’t work that way, because you can’t dilate something less than zero.

[WhiskeyX]

“The moon and Mars perhaps[....]”

You’ve got it all wrong. You are thinking in the pattern of trying to copy Earth, which cannot be done in this Solar System, and its a bad choice for the same reason staying on Earth is a bad choice. The Earth’s gravitational field is a magnet for inviting destructive impacts, and it also make surface to orbit transport prohibitively expensive in energy and financial costs.

Mars has some similar and some even greater problems. The Martian atmosphere is too thin for atmospheric braking of deorbiting spacecraft. The Martian atmosphere is too thin. Increasing the size of the Martian atmosphere is hampered by the advanced losses of atmosphere due to insufficient gravity and lack of a strong magnetic field. The lack of the magnetic field presents problems on the surface with incident radiation from the Sun and outer space. Then there are a plethora of other problems.

The future of most of humanity is among the asteroids. Mining out multiple galleries and levels of the interior of the larger asteroids yields more arable land and freshwater lakes than are found on the Earth in just one large asteroid. There are many of the large asteroids and dwarf planets out there and within reach, and there are countless thousands more of them of smaller sizes. There is enough water out there to fill a multitude of Earth oceans, and this water can be used to crreate vast lakes and seas INSIDE of these asteroids.

Once humans have learned to turn asteroids into habitats, asteroids can be used to transport human communities throughout the galaxy at sub-light speeds. They can spread new colonies along the paths of their journeys.

[DManA]

With your examples, the more we understood science the more likely it was to accomplish them.

With interstellar travel, the more we understand the science the LESS LIKELY it seems possible.

[Moonman62]

Life is rare. By objective measures it’s rare on Earth, and even rarer in other parts of the Solar System, and most likely non-existent. And this is in a Universe that is “fine tuned” just right to allow life.

[Vote 4 Nixon]

Sorry. Its Arena by Fredric Brown.

[cripplecreek]

Thanks.