Posted on 03/14/2003 6:19:01 AM PST by vannrox
"If time travel into the past were possible we would be over-run with tourists from the future." I think Hawking said it, or possibly someone earlier.
Time travel into the future is manifestly possible; we are all doing it at a rate of one second per second. Seems dubious that the rate can be accelerated.
--Boris
I prefer the formulation: "Boris does not suffer fools gladly."
--Boris
I admire the man (died 1977) but some had a different take:
Tom Lehrer:
And what is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? And what is it that will make it possible to spend 20 billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American know-how, that's what. As provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun.
Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown.
"Ha, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.
Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.
You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun.
Interesting question.
I'd say about 1%.
But the question isn't really relevant to the current discussion.
We would certainly notice if intelligent ETs were crusing the neighborhood; more to the point, they would notice us.
I used to buy Sagans "billions and billions" in concert with the Drake equation, but reading Rare Earth by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee caused me to reconsider my position.
I now believe we may be the only intelligent creatures in our galaxy--if not the universe.
Or perhaps N (where N is the number of intelligent species) is on the order of 10 per galaxy, which makes it very unlikely that we will meet them.
Being Alone imbues everything we do with a horrible portent. Even, say, using the toilet.
Also, it is depressing to think that we are the best the Universe can come up with.
--Boris
Now you've done it; every bowel movement from now until the End of Time will deemed a Cosmic event.
I'm not sure the world is ready for that....
;-)
For some of us, each such activity has always been a cosmic event.
As for being the best that the universe has to offer, there are two observations: One, it's far better than discovering that the galaxy has been occupied by brighter species for millions of years, and we're beneath the level of their notice. Two, we're well on the way to deliberately improving ourselves. We may be the best now, but we'll get better. So smile.
Any round trip taken at speeds close to the speed of light will accelerate your travel into the future, without violating any known physical laws, and without requiring infinite energy.
In your prior post, you said, "Hence, he repeated, either we are alone or none of these schemes is feasible." You seemed to take that quote as you own posiion. In a condition of incomplete knowledge, I'd think "either/or" can't be valid, not to mention when we're 99% ignorant.
Being Alone imbues everything we do with a horrible portent. Even, say, using the toilet.
Alone as a individual human beings in respect to other human beings is awful as far as I'm concerned, but being alone as a intelligent lifeform doesn't bother me in the least. I'm right satisfied with the company of my own type of creature. If there are other lifeforms, fine; if there are none, fine.
I don't think we can't make assumptions to the extent that we automatically react to a notion.
One not need be aware of Newton's Laws or Kip Thorne's theory of gravity to notice that people who jump over cliffs without parachutes are usually injured. One need not be aware of Newton's Laws to notice that speeding vehicles without brakes usually lead to some sort of disaster.
As in the case of Sherlock Holmes' "dog who did not bark in the night" our failure to observe macroscopic effects of interstellar travel imparts information: either intelligence is exceedingly rare OR none of the schemes advanced by us--or ETs--is feasible.
As Sagan pointed out, intelligent ETs will have cultures 10,000 or a million years in advance of ourselves. This would give them nearly god-like technologies...yet we fail to observe even a single proven instance of alien visitation or even alien travel.
The rest follows by simple logic.
--Boris
I have seen this with my own eyes. On top of a Triga-A bathtub reactor at the Uinversity Of Ill.
Blast from the past.
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