Posted on 02/08/2013 8:37:47 AM PST by PJ-Comix
Most people seem to assume that the universe is chock full of intelligent life. But what if we ARE alone in the Universe? So far all SETI searches have shown no evidence of other civilizations out there. If you have devoted your life to searching for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, you are probably wasting your time.
The more I study about the formation of the earth, the more convinced I am that the earth is pretty much a freak occurrence whose conditions for life or intelligent life exits nowhere else. So what are the theological implications of this? I would be most interested in reading your input.
Careful. That isn't precisely true. Gravity waves, perhaps, propagate at lightspeed, but we haven't found any.
“So what are the theological implications of this?”
I think you answered your own rhetorical question. Theology. God.
BTW, don’t bother sending a space probe to Washington - there is no intelligence there.
Oh, I dunno. How does a formerly only child deal with a newborn brother or sister? He or she is no longer the center of the universe. Granted, some deal with it better than others, but I think most muddle by.
It is not falsifiable to say life exists elsewhere in the universe, it is also not falsifiable to say it doesn’t exist anywhere else.
If you say it doesn’t, we can’t prove that proposition until every we’ve searched every place in the universe.
If you say it does, the same thing applies.
Our only chance to prove it would be if it exists close to us. If it exits on the other side of our own galaxy we’ll likely never know about it, much less other galaxies.
Even if we discover microbes on Mars, that still doesn’t prove that intelligent, sentient life exists elsewhere.
From a practical standpoint, there will never be any theological implications we’ll ever have to confront unless sentient life is found close to us.
Some postulate, what if they could travel at the speed of light. What we do know is that atoms behave very differently when approaching the speed of light, and the ability of a craft, or life form surviving such speeds is zero.
There is no evidence of biological life forms from other solar systems or galaxies.
No "we" won't. You never took physics did you?
Thank you for your refreshing comment.
The simple fact that is faux-analogized into obscurity is (if you’ll forgive the analogy) “life” is a “turtle on a fence post.”
We know more than enough about the nature of both fence posts and turtles to conclusively determine when we find a turtle resting on top of a fence post, another agency was required to put it there.
Theorizing an as-of-yet undiscovered naturalistic process to blindly accomplish the feat is just plain intellectual vanity.
Not true except in science fiction. Just how do you think this is possible?
Not precisely true.
In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul proposes the argument that by observing "that which is made," the extrapolation to a divine creator is so simple and obvious that all men at all times are accountable to that creator for not making it.
For instance, you're aware of the ants in your driveway, but you don't sit down and try to talk with them.
I wouldn't call it a freak occurrence. But all the known evidence points to intelligent life being rare. As far as theology goes, our rarity would make us special rather than freakish. The existence of anything, especially consciousness is astounding all by itself.
VASIMIR engines could do it but they cost big bucks to make them large enough for effective manned deep space travel.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/travelinginspace/future_propulsion.html
Yes we will. I did take physics, enough to know that Einstein said exactly how we could cheat the speed of light, and I pay enough attention to know that NASA has a theoretical model to make that work. It requires a little unobtanium but the physics is all there.
Just because you add Einstein, you don't get rid of Newton. The energy required to accelerate a mass M to a velocity V is 1/2 MV2. The total energy in matter is E = MC2. To accelerate a mass to close to the speed of light would require 100% efficient conversion of 1/2 of the mass of the object into some form of propulsion. Can't be done.
I suspect Cripplecreek is referring to nuclear-pulse propulsion drives. Some of the more optimistic calculations seem to indicate a craft propelled by such an engine could make a noticeable percentage of the speed of light. And its one of the only proposed engines that is at least theoretically capable of being constructed with modern technology. Emphasis on “theoretically” - I think that a lot of the proposals for NPP spacecraft are extraordinarily optimistic.
Not even close. See post #95 about energy requirements. I'll save you the math: it would take 0.5% of the objects total mass coverted with 100% efficiency into propulsive power to get to 10% of the speed of light
Actually he said you couldn't. He considered the speed of light the universal and ultimate speed limit. At relativistic speed we get into the concept of relativistic mass where γ m appears, where the gamma factor γ = (1–v2/c2)–1/2 What this boils down to is that any increase in propulsive energy doesn't increase speed but simply increases the realtivistic mass.
NASA has a theoretical model to make that work.
Not likely.
No matter what, the energy requirement set my newton don't go away See post #95 All of that is just science ficion. It boils down to "You can't get there from here."
He said an object couldn’t break the speed of light. But he also said you could use gravity to condense the space the object is traveling through to create a functional travel speed higher than the speed of light without breaking it.
You can say not likely, but I’m going to believe Einstein and NASA.
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