Posted on 12/18/2003 8:37:33 AM PST by KevinDavis
When Star Trek's U.S.S. Enterprise hit the television screen in 1966, the science fiction series had trouble finding its own space and time slot.
Decades later, a similar visionary zeal to seek new worlds and new civilizations is a factual enterprise for a new generation of galactic explorers. They are taking on spacetime and hoping to boldly go where no spacecraft has gone before -- out to far-flung stars and the planets that circle them.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
I don't completely agree here. I did not like his politics at all, however, he did a fabulous job in presenting science to the general public. I am very glad I was on both a TLC and a Discovery channel program that also featured him.
And many with not such a "juvenile" intellect. I KNOW he was respected by a lot of people/scientists at JPL.
However, I am reasonably convinced that he was one of those most directly responsible for the current shoddy understanding of the scientific method prevalent in the general population.
I disagree, look to our shoddy school system.
Which knack outweighs the other, in your opinion?
Irrelevant.
I'm not sure that is right. The dinosaurs had 300 million years of evolution as top life form on earth and they never developed any technology that we know of.
Human evolution may never have started if the asteroid had not come.
If we study math, science, and engineering real hard, it ought to be possible. Even Venus. If it isn't possible, then we are miserable creatures after all.
Tunneling seems to be instantaneous and FTL. The reality is that the particle's wave function indicated that the particle exists across the gap and before the gap simutaneously. Human intervention causes the solutions to the wave equation to disappear before the gap and only exist across the gap. It is not really FTL because the particle was already across the gap although it looks like FTL.
It is going to be difficult to explain quantum mechanics in one post. A lot of people do not understand it after taking years and years of the stuff. I took years and years of the stuff and I am a little uncertain about it all.
I will say that I think FTL can be achieved within the bounds of the uncertainty priciple. That is the distances covered are small , the time of violation is small ,and the particles involved are small.
Basically, the uncertainty principle says (I think), you can't measure position and velocity exactly. The result is that for small time periods, with small particles, over small distances, we can not measure the velocity so we don't know if you can go FTL under these conditions. But the uncertainty principle allows FTL if we can not measure or observe the FTL.
It is the uncertainty principle that is behind the ability of small particles to seem to exist in 2 places at the same time, because for small particles, over small distances, over small time scales, we can not measure position and velocity exactly. The limits of measurement means that a particle can seem to be in two places at the same time which is the basis for the apparent (or maybe real) ftl of quantum tunneling.
I suspect the author is wrong. I suspect, a girl who looks like anna kornikova will always have value.
All Fermi did was ask, "Where are they?" The rest is understood.
The argument I listed for "irv" is essentially Tipler's, (see #88) and remains unrefuted.
--Boris
Mars is a genuine possibility.
Nobody can terraform a gas giant--I assert--so Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune are out. Some of their moons, perhaps.
Mercury might be worth a scientific outpost.
Venus, I concur, is probably impossible.
So we are left with Mars, and assorted moons.
A second thought. IF we achieve advanced nanotechnology we might...with time...terraform one or more gas giants. But note: the "surface" gravity of Jupiter is (my memory) about 2.84 g, so a 100-lb human would "weigh" 284 pounds on Jupiter.
As Dyson, Niven and others have suggested, a truely advanced civilization might "tear apart" all the planets in their solar system and construct a "Ringworld" or hollow sphere for living on. Both artificial types are unstable and would require constant, fail-proof active control to keep them centered on the Sun.
--Boris
I used to hang out on sci.nanotechnology. Someone asked, "What is the darkest (most evil) use of nanotechnology you can imagine?"
Thinking the moderator would filter it out, I responded:
"I plan to release a nanobot which will convert everyone in the world--except me--into duplicates of Kathy Ireland [back when she was a hottie]. This may sound distasteful to you now, but you will come to appreciate it."
The mod let the thing be posted, and there was this long shocked silence on the list...
--Boris
It's time to revisit the reason we want FTL. Do we actually need it for something? We can inhabit the entire Milky Way in 1 million years with what we have now. What would be the point of FTL?
Elaborate. I suppose you are thinking of sending frozen sperm and ova via slowboat and making humans in vitro at the other end...or generation ships...?
What modality gets us all over the Milky Way in 1 million years, given human lifetimes << 300 years maximum per human?
--Boris
That settles it. Now we HAVE to go to Europa.
If we are alone, we are indeed the summit of evolution and--in a sense--the Universe's reason for being. If we are alone, it gives everything each of us does a horrible portent. Going to the bathroom, even. And if we are alone, and the best the Universe can come up with after 13 billion years of trying, it's a pretty miserable Universe!
--Boris
All we need to do is establish a self-supporting basis off earth. Let the children and their progeny do what they think best starting with that. They will anyway.
This one gets us right down to ourselves, doesn't it. If it's really up to us and there aren't any friends or even enemies out there, then what. We're not doing well so far. But we slackers have infinite potential. What should we do as a race: choose the contemplative life or the active life. Admire the dumb, blind stars, or get our lazy butts out there and build something.
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