GENERAL DORKING OUT ON OUTER SPACE THREAD (NRR)

edith head

i may or may not have been on something when i watched a bunch of stuff on the hubble space telescope that recently turned 20, (part of this curiosity sparked from the 'scale of the universe' thread), but i did not know until recently that the sun will eventually become so big that it will incinerate us and all the planets in our solar system. the dude from jurassic park says we have 7 billion years to skip town

edith head

other face melting stuff i just learned is

- the idea of Dark Energy that makes up most of the universe will eventually overpower the gravitational pull of planets, galaxies and everything that we know due to negative pressure and the universe expanding at an accelerated rate. we're all gonna die billions of years from now from being sucked into this 'dark energy'

- the hole in a black hole is actually the size of a pinhead but has the same gravitational pull as the star when it was 'regular sized'

- that these pillars in the eagle nebula are 4 light years tall and many solar systems can fit in one of those glowing specks within them:



the specks!

Reynaldo

the sun will eventually become so big that it will incinerate us and all the planets in our solar system.

You aren't much of an outer space dork if you didn't know that.

edith head

You aren't much of an outer space dork if you didn't know that.

haha i didn't claim to be an official outer space dork! the thread is general dorking out on outer space

i'm really excited about the telescope they are gonna put out there after the hubble. it's completely crazy

Burns

the sun will eventually become so big that it will incinerate us and all the planets in our solar system.

You aren't much of an outer space dork if you didn't know that.

record dorks use double negatives.

Reynaldo

Doesn't the universe itself have an expiration date? Entropy and the Big Crunch and whatnot. So even if mankind escaped the death of our solar system we still only have so long, save for travel into other universes.

edith head

also stephen hawking recently said that we shouldn't want to encounter aliens because they'll be hostile and want to colonize everything after exhausting their own resources

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece

edith head

Doesn't the universe itself have an expiration date? Entropy and the Big Crunch and whatnot.

yeah, they call it the Big Rip

willie_fugal

one of my favorite albums of the aughts

Grafwritah

also stephen hawking recently said that we shouldn't want to encounter aliens because they'll be hostile and want to colonize everything after exhausting their own resources

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece

Seems logical if you use humans as a reference point. Figure they'll probably be more advanced than us if they're able to travel here from another planet (etc.).

And how have humans treated animals with lower development than our own?

Built over their habitat, eaten them, hunted them for sport, polluted their land and water, taken them captive and used them for labor or food production (i.e. farming, milk/eggs), used them for clothing (or furniture), experimentation, entertainment, etc.

I think Hawking may have the right idea. People assume aliens will want to be all buddy buddy, but we haven't done the same. At all. Ever. Even with our own species.

street_muzik

Been watchin' this on demand. Being grown and knowing he enjoyed the herb makes it an fresh, new experience.

dollar_bin

I'm relieved that this thread isn't about the Hubble Gotchu Guy skit from the Kimmel show.

Jimster

7 billion years to skip town

I was at Jodrell Bank the other day and my OG UMIST Hommie there says it's much more urgent than that - Just the 5,000 Million years left on your real-estate investment.

Bearing in mind, with the glass half-full doe, that home-owe sappy uns have only been around for the 200,000 years. Plenty of time for us all to get into dem silver catsuits and beamships. At the moment, we are still very primitive. I would imagine when we have the skillz to boldly go, we will no longer roll as pillaging hordes and be all chilled in our outlook.

As would any visitors already possessing the technology to come here. The aliens are already running tings. If they wanted to kill us all, they'd have done it a long time ago.

I think when they agree we can handle the truth without flipping they will chuck us a few more bones. Free energy, fretless basses and things of that nature.

Yeah.

skel

7 billion years to skip town

I was at Jodrell Bank the other day and my OG UMIST Hommie there says it's much more urgent than that - Just the 5,000 Million years left on your real-estate investment.

Bearing in mind, with the glass half-full doe, that home-owe sappy uns have only been around for the 200,000 years. Plenty of time for us all to get into dem silver catsuits and beamships. At the moment, we are still very primitive. I would imagine when we have the skillz to boldly go, we will no longer roll as pillaging hordes and be all chilled in our outlook.

As would any visitors already possessing the technology to come here. The aliens are already running tings. If they wanted to kill us all, they'd have done it a long time ago.

I think when they agree we can handle the truth without flipping they will chuck us a few more bones. Free energy, fretless basses and things of that nature.

Yeah.

Good post, Jim.

Just for now, could any aliens reading this board please give us the techy vitals to enable instantaneous teleportation of the fruits of ebay digging. Oh, and if you really want to perform those experiments, HarveyC is available.

mylatency

Okem

I feel so small..

Okem

Another popular space knowledge nugget is the Drake Equation.






A formula devised by the Canadian rapper Drake, intended to provide a way of estimating the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Galaxy which currently have the ability to engage in interstellar communication.


N Present number of extraterrestrial races capable of interstellar communication
R* Mean rate of star formation, averaged over the lifetime of the Galaxy
fp Fraction of stars that have planets
ne Average number of planets in a planetary system suitable for life
fl Fraction of suitable planets on which life actually develops
fi Fraction of life-bearing planets on which intelligent life develops
fc Fraction of intelligence-bearing planets on which the capacity for interstellar communication develops
L Average lifetime of a technological civilization


Unfortunately, of the seven factors that appear on the right side of the Drake Equation, only one (R*) can be estimated at present with any degree of confidence. Current and near-future research on extrasolar planets will gradually reduce the uncertainties in three other factors, fp, ne, and fl. However, the values of the remaining three factors, which relate to the evolution of extraterrestrial intelligence and technology, are likely to remain a matter of pure speculation for a very long time, unless contact is made with a more advanced civilization which could convey this knowledge immediately. So it's kind of a nonsense.

day

also stephen hawking recently said that we shouldn't want to encounter aliens because they'll be hostile and want to colonize everything after exhausting their own resources

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece

Seems logical if you use humans as a reference point. Figure they'll probably be more advanced than us if they're able to travel here from another planet (etc.).

And how have humans treated animals with lower development than our own?

Built over their habitat, eaten them, hunted them for sport, polluted their land and water, taken them captive and used them for labor or food production (i.e. farming, milk/eggs), used them for clothing (or furniture), experimentation, entertainment, etc.

I think Hawking may have the right idea. People assume aliens will want to be all buddy buddy, but we haven't done the same. At all. Ever. Even with our own species.

I've been bugging on all of this for the last few days. Who's to say there's not more than one species of ET? Judging from the 1000's of UFO accounts in the last millennium they've had every opportunity to attack us and yet they haven't. I don't doubt that the possibility exists, but why haven't they already?

For those who still think UFO's don't exist, I highly recommend reading what credible scientists have to say.

J. Allen Hynek: US Air Force http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek

Francis Crick (discovered DNA): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia#Directed_panspermia

etc etc...


Find more videos like this on Project Nsearch


Yes, I want to believe.

day

Even if 1% out of 1000 sightings are true, that dispels all doubt that life exists beyond our own.

How credible of a witness do you need? Military, police, scientist, astronomer, politician, president? All have claimed to see something that cannot be explained by conventional means. Do the knowledge. In every study there is a percentage that has no terrestrial answer.

Okem

The Fermi paradox deals with some of your questions Day.

The Fermi paradox is a conflict between an argument of scale and probability and a lack of evidence. A more complete definition could be stated thus:

The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist.

However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.

The first aspect of the paradox, "the argument by scale", is a function of the raw numbers involved: there are an estimated 200-400 billion[4] (2-4 ? 1011) stars in the Milky Way and 70 sextillion (7 x 1022) in the visible universe.[5] Even if intelligent life occurs on only a minuscule percentage of planets around these stars, there should still be a great number of civilizations extant in the Milky Way galaxy alone. This argument also assumes the mediocrity principle, which states that Earth is not special, but merely a typical planet, subject to the same laws, effects, and likely outcomes as any other world.
The second cornerstone of the Fermi paradox is a rejoinder to the argument by scale: given intelligent life's ability to overcome scarcity, and its tendency to colonize new habitats, it seems likely that any advanced civilization would seek out new resources and colonize first their own star system, and then the surrounding star systems. Since there is no conclusive or certifiable evidence on Earth or elsewhere in the known universe of other intelligent life after 13.7 billion years of the universe's history, it may be assumed that intelligent life is rare or that our assumptions about the general behavior of intelligent species are flawed.

The Fermi paradox can be asked in two ways. The first is, "Why are no aliens or their artifacts physically here?" If interstellar travel is possible, even the "slow" kind nearly within the reach of Earth technology, then it would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy.[6] This is a relatively small amount of time on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one. Since there are many stars older than the sun, or since intelligent life might have evolved earlier elsewhere, the question then becomes why the galaxy has not been colonized already. Even if colonization is impractical or undesirable to all alien civilizations, large-scale exploration of the galaxy is still possible; the means of exploration and theoretical probes involved are discussed extensively below. However, no signs of either colonization or exploration have been generally acknowledged.
The argument above may not hold for the universe as a whole, since travel times may well explain the lack of physical presence on Earth of alien inhabitants of far away galaxies. However, the question then becomes "Why do we see no signs of intelligent life?" since a sufficiently advanced civilization[7] could potentially be observable over a significant fraction of the size of the observable universe.[8] Even if such civilizations are rare, the scale argument indicates they should exist somewhere at some point during the history of the universe, and since they could be detected from far away over a considerable period of time, many more potential sites for their origin are within range of our observation. However, no incontrovertible signs of such civilizations have been detected.
It is unclear which version of the paradox is stronger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Ham

we need proof

Jimster

"Why are no aliens or their artifacts physically here?"

Do you think cockroaches know we are here? Amoebas? Ever tried explaining yourselves to either?

Maybe (by design?) they roll on a completely different scale than we do. The spectrums our senses operate on just can't tune in to them.

Maybe the earth is like, in one of their school science project jars.

Okem

It's weird, I'm much more inclined to believe in multiple parallel universes, than I am extraterrestrial civilizations.

Junior

So, sleepover question time, if you had the chance to board a ship that would take you to the outer reaches of space on a one way trip, would you take it?

Personally I can't even really get my head round Earth never mind alternate realities/"being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's" style scenarios.

Okem

Are we talking a Wall-E spaceship? Or a 2001 spaceship?

Maybe on the first. Hell no, on the second.

Junior

It's the lido deck that's swinging it isn't it.

I'm afraid I was definitely thinking more of a one man/woman sent to furthest space to explore the unknown than a cruise ship type scenario.

Think Dark Star.

BigSpliff

It's weird, I'm much more inclined to believe in multiple parallel universes, than I am extraterrestrial civilizations.

More places for them to hide then right?

[Costanza]I quite like the idea of becoming a theoretical physicist[/Costanza] Seems like you just have to wear linen jackets with rolled up sleeves and talk in really general terms about what may or may not be the consensus view of the day. Then make a TV show with bad animations of you walking round the edge of a black hole.

Jimster

I don't think that's how it works (crossing deep space a mile at a time). I read up on the work Bob Lazar did for the US Navy / Area 51 (documented) and the ships channel gravity to a point where they want to go, and they kinda zap there.

Short glide to the surface and collect a trillion airmiles.

The energy channeller needs a super-heavy element that we don't have in our neck of the woods. It may sound tin-hat space-cake to the casual reader but the theory is all there. Bearing in mind just 100 years ago the Wright Brothers were marginally bettering the work of Prometheus, and yet now we have a space station and routinely use devices that would have got us burnt at the stake previously.

I would ask them to fix the oil leak on my Saab first doe. See what kind of "Real" engineers they are.

Junior

Um, it's my sleepover, these are my rules.

Ok, would you be up for it then if you could zap anywhere you want? Personally I think I'm a bit too disillusioned and disinterested in the human race to be a good ambassador.

Okem

Zapping anywhere you want would be the coolest.

[super nerd]If I could ask for a super power it would be that. I mean it could be used for invisibility and to fly as well. [/super nerd]

Junior

I think I'd go for omnipresence. Then I'd never have to even leave my bed.