New Roswell twist
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Jul 02, 2007 02:21 pm The part I could never get past was the military's official announcement of the recovery of a crashed disc, then doing the 180 degree "Oh, we were just kidding about that. Tinfoil balloon. No, really" story the next day. And everybody swallowed it, because back then, folks trusted our beloved government. WTF. I've always believed there's some weird stuff going on that we're not being told about.
Jul 02, 2007 02:36 pm Agreed, I have always been, and always will be fascinated with the subject of extra terrestrials and such things. To me, even beyond gov't lies and whatnot is the arrogance in the thought that we are the only intelligent (using the term loosely) life in this vast universe. To me, the simple law of averages would say the chances are very, very slight that we are the only ones...
I really hope the gov't comes clean within my lifetime, I want to die vindicated in my belief of the existence of alien life.
cooloFrisco's Most UnderratedMember
Since: Jan 28, 2003
Jul 02, 2007 02:39 pm Oh snap!
Jul 02, 2007 04:32 pm roswell (atleast the discs/balloons crashing) was a government cover story for microphones that were in the air listening for nuclear tests from russia....it's been declassified since the late 90's
i didn't read the story..will do now.
Jul 02, 2007 04:41 pm LMAO at FOXspews.com
the above link is from a UC Berkeley physics professor (i've got the podcast lecture) he's got government clearance for all kinds of stuff...and yeah the whole story was the government spoon-feeding the masses bull poo (what's new)....it's all cold war crap.
Jul 02, 2007 04:51 pm and it's related to sound!
Jul 02, 2007 04:55 pm Quote:
roswell (atleast the discs/balloons crashing) was a government cover story for microphones that were in the air listening for nuclear tests from russia....it's been declassified since the late 90's
Well no, the most recent "official explanation" from the Air Force involved crash test dummies. And it's quite amusing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air...ll_UFO_incident
Jul 02, 2007 04:58 pm i'll trust professor muller over wiki on this one
scroll down to the bottom of my article...it was declassified in 1994...the cat is out of the bag.
[quote]The government tells the truth. In 1994, at the request of a congressman, the U.S. government declassified the information they had on the Roswell incident, and prepared a report
Documents available for you to read are:
New York Times article published after the US Government report was released
Popular Science article published in June 1997, describing the Government report. html or pdf versions are available.
Popular Science follow-up article, September 1997. pdf version only.
Official US Government report (synopsis only) on Project Mogul
Official US Government report on the Roswell Incident
Of these articles, you should read at least the New York Times article. The Popular Science articles give interesting background. The Official US Government report gives details that some of you might find interesting.[/quote]
**** the links didn't work...here they are in order
muller.lbl.gov/teaching/P...TimesMogul.html
muller.lbl.gov/teaching/P...1997bPopSci.pdf
muller.lbl.gov/teaching/P...bPopSci%202.pdf
muller.lbl.gov/teaching/P...ogulReport.html
muller.lbl.gov/teaching/P...llIncident.html
stop the madness!
Jul 02, 2007 05:20 pm Sorry, but the government has changed its stories way too many times for me to believe them any more. If they had picked one and stuck with it, they may have had more credibilty. Unfortunately for them, their first story was the flying saucer one. An alien spaceship as a cover story for a spy mission? Seems rather irresponsible... More likely is a military press corps that leaked info before letting the generals discuss it first.
Jul 02, 2007 05:21 pm gosh you'd think fox would do a bit more research and EDITING ...check it.
Quote:
he saw a group of nine shiny metallic objects flying information.
Jul 02, 2007 05:25 pm as for them changing their story...yeah you have a good point...
but logic tells me,
A: which scenerio is more plausable? ailens? or the government spying for nukes in commie russia in the early days of the cold war?
B: which does the government have more to loose? if it's ailens then everyone would have gotten involved, not just the govt.
or russia didn't know about the soundchannel in the sky for nukes and the US govt. didn't want them to know we knew how to tell if they were testing them....cuz they could do the same to us.
come on man, i know you're a smart guy....this IS the truth.
Jul 02, 2007 05:35 pm Why yes, I am a smart guy. Thanks for noticing.
glnflwrsHead KnockerContributor
Since: May 20, 2007
Jul 03, 2007 01:51 am I always tend to go with the odds on these type stories, like dB. If we are here, why couldn't they be there? And much more advanced, with a totally different set of laws for physics that just supercede our limited view of the cosmos.
Hell, we always thought space was a vacuum. We never even considered there was something we couldn't see.
It IS a very egotistical, self promoting attitude that we have of being the only, uh, sentient organisms to develop. What if there are some really SMART dudes/dudettes out and about who travel at instantaneous intervals, not even acknowledging distance as a measurement? And what if they are Earthlings, and we don't even know?
Uhhh, OK. I'm feeling better now......
Jul 03, 2007 02:45 am oh yeah, i totally agree that there IS other life out there...but specifically the roswell thing was simply the government purposefully lying to it's people to cover their ***. like i said, nothin' new there!
Jul 03, 2007 05:31 am "the arrogance in the thought that we are the only intelligent (using the term loosely) life in this vast universe. To me, the simple law of averages would say the chances are very, very slight that we are the only ones..."
uh oh, here we go again :) this is one of the things i'm most interested in, something i read about constantly. while i respect the possibility that there's intelligent life out there besides us, it's actually not arrogant to believe that we might be one of a very few intelligent species in the whole universe. and i find that idea bizarre and exciting. check this out:
www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth...e/dp/0387987010
there's some fabulous science in this book. a very deep exploration of all the things that should be necessary for intelligent life to 'have a chance.' whatever your personal opinion might be, everyone should be aware of all the crazy things we never think of. it's much more than just the law of averages.
this book was written by a christian, and it's one of the best science-by-a-religious-person books i've yet seen. it's highly respected, too. fills a void in the literature. everyone's afraid to challenge the 'principle of mediocrity' (that's the name for the idea that our planet is just another place like any other in the universe, no place special) but it needs to be challenged. when franke drake came up with his famous drake equation (the 'law of averages' as applied to extrasolar planets, the formula which estimates the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe) he didn't exactly do it correctly. but we had just confirmed the existence of galaxies in the 1920s. the age of the universe, and its size, were 'new data' to us, and we were floored by it. i think we went a little bit overboard, and many scientists now think so as well. i can't blame carl sagan for pushing the drake equation, though. carl's a great man. he had the enthusiasm of a child and a great intellect to boot. unfortunately, he came of age as the human species were just leaving toddlerhood and becoming aware of the universe at large.
i kind of think we jumped the gun a bit. i believe life is likely to be everywhere out there, but that most of it is very simple. after reading this book and considering its excellent points, you might come away with two thoughts:
1. the radio silence and lack of other serious evidence means something. (the lack of ET signals, if ET should be everywhere out there, is known as the 'fermi paradox.')
2. it might take a space as big as the universe to produce intelligent life just once. and if it happened, it MUST be us, as we;d be the only beings capable of asking the question.
intelligent ET's might be out there. but in fact it's no longer considered arrogant to carefully suggest that they might not be.
Jul 03, 2007 05:33 am Deleted By fortymile
Jul 03, 2007 06:32 am as i bring this stuff up, i hope no one takes it as an attack on the idea of intelligent extraterrestrial life. obviously, i can't know if it's out there. i simply think these considerations are very, very important. i might get a few facts wrong. maybe someone'll catch them. i haven't read rare earth in about a year.
one more thing before the points: a lot of this assumes that there's one kind of life: carbon-based, requiring liquid water. i actually happen to think this might be true, and i'm not the only one. the reason has to do with the fact that the only other element that can form all the crazy bonds that carbon can (thus enabling the formation of crazy-big and varied molecules) is silicon. this is a fact of chemistry. carbon is alone in its level of promiscuity. it wants to hook up with other elements and it does so, in many different ways, ways which other elements cannot duplicate. silicon is also far less abundant, while carbon is everywhere in the universe. silicon compounds are also unstable and reactive. they also lack 'handedness,' that is: they don't have left and right hand forms. all life as we know it uses left handed amino acids and right handed sugars. in short, carbon is abundant and very special in a few ways. and these two elements are the only serious candidates for a foundation of life.
full treatment of the rare earth hypothesis here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
key points:
1. you need the right kind of star for life to get started and for intelligent life to emerge. the star must be rich in metals. 'metals' in astronomy means anything heavier than lithium, the third element. you need elements in the candidate star systems to build the planets and the life. so metal-poor stars likely can't form planets or life. if all you've got is hydrogen, you're out of luck, for obvious reasons. and for life to arise, the planet would also seem to need to be in the planet's habitable zone, where water is liquid. if a star is very dim, then the habitable zone is close to the star. so close that the planet will lock one face at the star (like our moon). one side permanent daylight, the other side permanent night. in many cases, this means that the atmosphere will freeze out as snow on the night side, never to rise again. 9 out of every ten stars in the universe are red dwarfs. exactly this kind of dim star. so you can remove those stars, probably, as candidates. (though i have found sources which suggest that life may still be possible around such stars, and i hope that it turns out to be true. this is a hot topic right now). another problem, though, with red dwarfs, is that they belch out radiation all the time. solar flares. these are unstable stars. they send out ionizing radiation capable of sterilizing worlds for billions of years before they mellow out. stars that are hotter than our own are also definitely no good for intelligent life, as they die out in only a few million years, burning through their fuel and then dying. so we're left with stable stars that are sort of like ours. we're now left with only 5 percent of all stars remaining.
1b. size of planet. too small and it won't hang onto an atmosphere. too big and there are other problems.
2. galactic habitable zone. dead zones. near the center of galaxies, supernovae and other radiation (gamma rays, stuff from quasars)is intense. if a supernova went off within 100 light years of earth, we'd be in trouble. an exintction event in the distant past (60 percent of ocean life dead) on this planet is hypothesizezd to have been the result of a nearby supernova. in the center of the galaxy, where stars are more densely packed and where supernova occur with some regularity, this is a problem. and as you move outward from the center of the galaxy, the available metals decrease, since these heavier elements are themselves constructed by supernova explosions (all the elements heavier than iron on our planet were born in a supernova at some point). so there's a sweet spot. this cuts the candidate stars down once again.
3. plate tectonics. i'd never even thought of this, but it's one of the most creative ideas in the book. without plate tectonics, there'd be no cycling of carbon and other elements on this planet, and everything would get locked up and stowed away in short order. plate tectonics also gives us our magnetic field, which protects life from solar radiation. useful in a red dwarf system, no doubt, but plate tectonics might be rare. there';s no great reason why a planet should have tectonics. you need to have a molten core full of heavy metal, some radioactive decay. we're the only planet in our system with plate tectonics. it has been theorized that the impact event which formed the moon enabled this process to start (by breaking the crust, which would otherwise probably cover the whole world, a situation that i think might be happening on jupiter's moon IO, a moon that could conceivably have tectonics, but doesnt) and contributed material to the earth's core. the gravity of the moon itself helps keep the process going by pulling on magma and keeping things moving. it all seems very fortunate. (the moon has another possible role in the larger theory too: our large moon gives earth its steady weather. without it, we'd wobble all around. the poles would sometimes face the sun. we have the largest moon compared to the parent planet's size, in the solar system, an unusual thing). both plate tectonics and the large moon regulate the planet's temperature, for complicated reasons outlined in the book.
4. the universe is 14.5 billion years old. earth is 4.5 billion years old. it took half a billion years before the first life appeared here. multicellular organisms did not appear for 3 billion years--it took most of the total age of the earth to arrive. everything we see around us emerged in the past billion years, and the point is that it was apparently not easy for life to get started here. once it did, it took off. but you can see how hot stars with short lifespans might have a little problem. also, keep in mind that for life to appear anywhere, you need the 'metals,' the elements that are heavier than lithium. and where did those elements come from? from dying stars, which then dispersed the material, which later became incorporated into stars and planets like our own. so now you end up with a situation where, apparently, the universe has been engaged in 'getting started' for most of its existence. the first round of stars were needed to form the stuff that life would later need. 10 billion years for starstuff to coalesce into our system and give rise to us. another three billion for multicellular life to get started here.
and there's no reason to assume that this circumstance is not the norm.
personally i find all of this very exciting. it could mean that the fermi paradox (radio silence, no good evidence of aliens yet) is because life is something like a 'phase change' in the universe. like water freezing. something that may only be happening now, and late. maybe, if there are ETs out there, they're at about our level of development. the other exciting idea is the mind-blowing notion that intelligence is so rare that it takes an entire universe to give rise to it once (the book will provide lots of other head scratchers, things that just make the odds look very bad). an entire universe just to roll the dice and come up with sevens one time. and, beyond that, you can start looking at the strange fact that the constants of nature seem 'set up' to allow life to emerge (check out the book 'just six numbers' by the very famous martin rees)and you can start to dwell on a scientific hersey called the 'anthropic principle,' which suggests that the universe 'knew' life was coming, or is here 'for it.' combine this idea with the idea about needing a huge universe to give rise to intelligence just once, and we're back to square one. back to being important and 'special' again.
and then you start to see god. or something unnamable and deeply mysterious which you might as well tremble before. i throw that in for the religious people. you can find those feelings in science. you just have to dig for years and become familiar with lots of separate fields, and then you walk around in awe all the time. but for the record, i'm not into the rare earth idea because it makes humans out to be 'special' again. i just think the science is really good, and i believe it explains certain things. like why we're not visited by ETs. why we've not been colonized. why we don't hear anything.
anyway, the numbered points above are just some of the strictures of the rare earth theory. i think are between 11 and 16 of them or something. the book covers them all, and it's highly respected. in fact, this perspective is becoming the norm. it may be a fad, only time will tell. but based on what we know now (and didnt know when drake came up with his formula) it now looks this way to many people.
microbes may rule the universe. but there are people out there (ray kurzweil comes to mind) who believe that the destiny of the universe is to become intelligent, and that we and whatever we turn into may turn out to the new blowing spore. intelligence as the new, dispersing starstuff in the next phase of cosmic evolution.
i just have to throw that in for completeness. as to what i believe, i will say that for the time being i'm down with the rare earth hypothesis as it's an example of really clear, lucid thinking, with evidence behind it. all the rest, the more 'out there' stuff in this post is just speculation.
Jul 03, 2007 06:43 am Quote:
it's actually not arrogant to believe that we might be one of a very few intelligent species in the whole universe.
I said it was arrogant to believe were are the ONLY...BIG difference.
Jul 03, 2007 06:47 am "I said it was arrogant to believe were are the ONLY...BIG difference."
ah, well even i wouldn't go so far as to say we're the ONLY intelligent life. but i have to admit it's a possibility, given these new facts, and a fascinating one.
Jul 03, 2007 06:55 am Sure, anything is a possiblity, but given the vastness of space, the endless number of stars, I would suggest they is a far greater chance of other life than not.
I also take issue with any "what it takes for life" type statements, because it's all bias, based on what it takes for life in our view of it. Our ecosystem has created creatures that live within it, why couldn't another ecosystem create creatures adapted to it that have differing needs for survival?
I do understand a science driven person like yourself has a harder time thinking outside the box than somebody who does know the box...
Jul 03, 2007 09:02 am Maybe the ultimate arrogance is when humans start to believe they're so damn smart that they're capable of figuring out a lot of this stuff :-)
Wonderment is fun. Some of my fondest memories as a kid were the times when my dad and I would sit out under the stars and talk about the universe. I miss that old fart.
Jul 03, 2007 09:09 am Quote:
Maybe the ultimate arrogance is when humans start to believe they're so damn smart that they're capable of figuring out a lot of this stuff :-)
touche'
Jul 03, 2007 09:16 am Wasn't referring to anyone specifically there, dB. More like mankind in general. :-)
glnflwrsHead KnockerContributor
Since: May 20, 2007
Jul 03, 2007 02:22 pm Right now, hiding behind the moon, is a small sphere of pure energy housing just two consciences, and one says to the other, "There can't be any life on that blue rock, too much oxygen there."
Evolution isn't a survival of the fittest situation either. Evolution is survival of what works.
97% of the total weight of our solar system is comprised of hydrogen. 94% of the hydrogen in our solar system is in the sun.
All elemental molecules have their origin in hydrogen/helium fission. Dying stars generate all other molecules from these two.
A GRB, or gamma ray burst, is the most powerful energy display in the known universe and sends deadly gamma particles at lightspeed plus outward for trillions of light years. A GRB source in this end of the universe would wipe out all carbon based life in a million galaxies. The source of GRBs is not known, but is theorized to be the death of a super mega blackhole.
Hubble has received light waves whose red shift shows they are coming from beyond the oldest, farthest area of no light sources. Meaning, the end of the universe has a hole in it letting light through from the other side.
All of humanity, when viewed from a distance of 2000 miles from Earth, appears to be an irredescent mold on the surface of Earth.
The book "Rare Earth" sounds really intriguing.
Jul 03, 2007 02:43 pm i just watched the first mini-series of Battlestar Galactica and man was i impressed....i can't wait to rent the seasons. i love discovering good shows when they've been out for a few years, then you can just get seasons at a time....none of that waiting stuff...well unless you count the years. heh.
TallChapAnswer:On a good day, lipstick.Member
Since: Jun 24, 2004
Jul 03, 2007 04:13 pm We are stardust
er...
Man.
On another tack, why not aliens?
If they exist, and visit us, why have they been so reluctant to formally meet with us?
Probably because in our history we've spent an incredible amount of time and effort in the process of killing each other. Outsiders might think they have no chance....
We can't have peace between ourselves, why should we be all smiles with them?
If I were them, and had studied the human race at all I'd be really skittish.
Jul 03, 2007 04:15 pm "Maybe the ultimate arrogance is when humans start to believe they're so damn smart that they're capable of figuring out a lot of this stuff :-)
Wonderment is fun. Some of my fondest memories as a kid were the times when my dad and I would sit out under the stars and talk about the universe."
jeez, you guys are impossible. herb, that's exactly what i'm doing. THIS is talking about the universe. to say 'oh, there's life out there, end of story' is to shut down the conversation. you go inside and you watch tv and you forget about it. to take in every fact available and to sit there and weight them all against each other, feeling yourself vacillate between the two possibilities and not exactly knowing for sure--that's the root feeling of excitement you probably first had as a kid the first time you contemplated aliens. books like this can bring that feeling back to you.and in fact, we have figured out a heck of a lot of stuff about the universe--your computer is living proof. don't knock the human brain. the universe itself produced it. it's not even 'yours.'
"but given the vastness of space, the endless number of stars, I would suggest they is a far greater chance of other life than not."
--so you will just deny the contrary evidence i just provided without a specific criticism of the points? even the idea that most of those stars are unsuitable for the very important 'lack of elemental building blocks' argument?
"I also take issue with any "what it takes for life" type statements, because it's all bias[ed], based on what it takes for life in our view of it."
--i tend to as well, or did. i was very attached to the idea of aliens, a big carl sagan fan. however, as with most things in science, it's easy to dismiss until you look into it...
"Our ecosystem has created creatures that live within it, why couldn't another ecosystem create creatures adapted to it that have differing needs for survival?"
--why isn't there a form of silicon life on this planet, alongside the carbon life? we've got everything it would need, but we don't see it. people who would argue that fundamentally different kinds of life are possible haven't looked at how special carbon really is. it's easy to question the idea that 'carbon is it' until you really understand why every other element is completely unsuitable. if you can't form complicated bonds, youu can't form complicated molecules. do you know how big a dna molecule is? huge. there's no other element that can encode all that information. all the amino acids that life uses depend on this talent that carbon has.
i will agree with you, though, that there might be a way for life to take off around red dwarf stars, and if so that's good news, because they make up 90 percent of all stars in the universe. i have a sci fi story that proposes life has found a way in red dwarf system. my photosynthesizing plants on that world are colored black to make use of the weak light, and i was thrilled to find this last week: www.sciencedaily.com/rele...70619125653.htm
black plants! so i'm not closed-minded. i just welcome this new idea because it's solid and well-thought out. really good stuff to think about. and for me, a universe that has given rise to intelligence just once or a few times is exactly as a universe that has done it a million times.
"I do understand a science driven person like yourself has a harder time thinking outside the box than somebody who does know the box"
--this IS thinking outside the box. the box is that intelligent life is everywhere.
Jul 03, 2007 04:25 pm Forty, I never said it was foolish to think and dream, just that it may be silly to think we're capable of really understanding what's going on.
Although one time in the dentist's chair, under a heavy dose of nitrous, I... well, 'nother story.
Jul 03, 2007 04:37 pm we've been capable of understanding a lot.
the weird thing about facts is that once you've got enough of them, certain facts start to limit and define other facts. the more facts you have about something, the more they interact. one fact about one thing has something to say about another fact, because for everything to stay self-consistent, fact 1 has to accept the input of fact 2 and fact 3 and a certain 'set' of possibilities emerges. it's hard to explain, but hopefully someone knows what i'm saying about that. we are certainly in the dark about many things, and 'rare earth' makes a few unprovable assumptions (to its credit, it always admits to what they are, as it strives to be taken seriously. its tone is sober and measured and neutral). but it makes a lot of assumptions which MUST be true, too. i would say that about 1/4 of the ideas in the book are actually definitely true because there's no way for them not to be. for the vague reason i mentioned above and which is impossible for me to get across. but it's sort of like this: before anyone was certain that the world was round, there was still the *chance* that the sun could rise in the west. and on a prehistoric forum, someone could have said (and have been safe in saying) "you can't prove that it can't, so stop pretending that you can." once the specific nature of the planet and its orbit were known, though, a person could no longer get away with saying that, and if they tried to, any would-be rebutters would find themselves in a hair-pulling situation.
facts interacting lead to metafacts which are true by virtue of the smaller facts being true.
Jul 03, 2007 05:01 pm I have a neighbor who works for a sewer service. He will attest to the existence of methane-based life forms...
Jul 03, 2007 05:43 pm Quote:
facts interacting lead to metafacts which are true by virtue of the smaller facts being true.
that's a neat statement and i'm pretty sure i've got my head wrapped your point (makes me wanna read that book to understand more specifics)...
but that quote seems to imply absolute truth...and if ya throw general relativity into that statement, then it kinda falls apart pretty quickly. like, what IS a fact? like 2 million years ago, if you dislocated your shoulder, it was a fact you would die much earlier than if you hadn't. but now that fact has changed or 'evolved'....and i'm starting to think (and this is free form thought, i havn't really verbalized this before) that just about any 'fact' can be argued against, given our lack of 'total' understanding and knowing (read perceiving) of all the universe and all of time.
the further down the meta the fact, the more possible arguments against it.
i donno what the hell i'm talkin' about, but would love to hear if this is just stupid stoner babble, or actual thinking gooin' on (on my part)......
i'm gonna re-read this thread.
Jul 03, 2007 06:02 pm ok the tectonics part was really interesting to me...what if the metals that are hot in our core, are THE comet that hit us and formed the moon (is the moon made of the same stuff in our core? or any layer for that matter?)
this would indeed crack the snot out of a solid quasi-uniform rocky crust...and such an impact would cause a lot of heat....the bigger chunks drifted off to the asteroid belt smaller ones fell back or went further outward...and the moon was just the right size to get stuck in geosynchronous orbit....no THAT is rare! lol
Quote:
if there are ETs out there, they're at about our level of development.
i'm gonna hafta to disagree with this....what's to say such a cycle couldn't happen elsewhere before ours?
this is fun!
Jul 03, 2007 06:06 pm I'm still working on "Does the light in my car's trunk REALLY go out when I close the lid?"
Jul 03, 2007 06:08 pm it does...and it's scary...
Jul 03, 2007 06:12 pm lol
Jul 03, 2007 08:08 pm "I have a neighbor who works for a sewer service. He will attest to the existence of methane-based life forms..."
herb, come on. you're kidding, right? there are organisms which EMIT methane, but all life on earth is carbon-based. in fact, methane contains carbon. it's one of those compounds which only forms because of carbon's penchant for element sex.
Jul 03, 2007 08:10 pm I emit methane on a regular basis...
Jul 03, 2007 08:18 pm "but that quote [facts interacting lead to metafacts which are true by virtue of the smaller facts being true] seems to imply absolute truth...and if ya throw general relativity into that statement, then it kinda falls apart pretty quickly. like, what IS a fact? like 2 million years ago, if you dislocated your shoulder, it was a fact you would die much earlier than if you hadn't. but now that fact has changed or 'evolved'....and i'm starting to think (and this is free form thought, i havn't really verbalized this before) that just about any 'fact' can be argued against, given our lack of 'total' understanding and knowing (read perceiving) of all the universe and all of time. the further down the meta the fact, the more possible arguments against it"
--relativity is a perfect way to prove what i'm talking about. before einstein came along, we had newton's laws of motion. people thought newton had discovered facts. einstein came along and said 'these are facts, but they're only true within the frame of reference in which newton was examining reality.' einstein then pulled the rabbit out of his hat and said 'now look at this.' he unveiled relativity, which is a more complete understanding of the laws of motion and of gravity. but INTERESTINGLY, it didn't make newton wrong. newton's laws still work and are still true within the frame of reference they explained. and because of that, we use newton's laws to calculate how to launch interplanetary probes, where to aim them, etc. his laws are not just still true, we use them every day. it's just that there's a deeper level behind them. another layer. einstein and relativity did not overthrow newton. he just stepped back one more step and saw the newtonian 'bubble' of knowledge from the outside. so no facts changed here.
there are times, in science, when an asssumption is wrong in the first place, and sometimes it takes a while to see which assumptions are wrong. but there are certain classes of facts which are mutually supported from many angles (evolution is another one: there are about five independent lines of evidence that all converge on this single idea, and the evidence is compartmentalized and separate from all the other bits: it all says the same thing, in different languages). newton was one, and einstein knew that. physics and chemistry provide certain immutable facts which are closed, shut, and done, and you simply have to know which ones those are in order to know where the holes are, where you can work in your fingers and try to pry out an incorrect assumption.
but the steady facts are usually pretty obvious.
Jul 03, 2007 08:31 pm "ok the tectonics part was really interesting to me...what if the metals that are hot in our core, are THE comet that hit us and formed the moon (is the moon made of the same stuff in our core? or any layer for that matter?)"
-- it is supposed that a rocky body--a planet that was about the size of mars--collided with us and formed the moon. this has not been conclusively proven, but everything seems to point to it. that impactor would have formed in a dangerous orbit (from our point of view) when the solar system was young. close to us, and woulda been prone to being jerked around by gravity in the inner system, until...bam. the composition of moon rock shows that it most likely formed out of our planet, in part. and yes, people do think that our planet's core is partly made of that impactor. this is a whole area of study--there's tons of info on the moon's origin.
"'if there are ETs out there, they're at about our level of development.' i'm gonna hafta to disagree with this....what's to say such a cycle couldn't happen elsewhere before ours?"
--this is my own thinking. i can't prove it and i throw it in just for speculative purposes. there's some reason for believing this might be true, though. or generally true. or true with exceptions. it's definitely true that the first few billion years of the universe were off limits as far as life-formation goes. the universe had to cool, condense its energy into the first matter (hydrogen), build the first stars (hydrogen collapsing under gravity). and then those stars had to create heavier elements and explode, sending that stuff out there for new stars (and planetary systems) to use, to form 'out of.' that took time, so life wouldn't have been around way back there.
and then you look at how long it took on this planet for multicellular life to evolve in the first place: 3 billion years! and suddenly you're running out of time...the universe is only 14.5 billion years old.
so to me it's a neat idea. it actually keeps the idea of aliens alive. perhaps we haven't conclusively found any yet because there perhaps hasn't been time for them to get 'up and running' yet. we've only been 'aware' of the outside universe for a few hundred years, after all! only been sending out radio waves for less than a hundred years! we're just becoming apparent, ourselves, to any would-be observers, since it takes light and radio waves time to travel outwards from our planet. (we can be 'seen' for a distance of about 70 light years, i think. if anyone were to look for us. beyond that distance, earth would appear radio-dark, because the signals do not yet extend that far.)
this idea also makes the universe seem like a natural object which is itself evolving. from energy to the first simple atoms to the first complex atoms, to the first unicellular life, to the first multicellular life, to humans, to computers...etc. it's easy to imagine (but not to prove!) that, because of all the things that needed to happen in the universe at large before the building blocks were in place for complex life to evolve, intelligence might be a phase change in the universe, the 'next step' in the sequence. like water freezing suddenly and all over. the universe becoming suddenly hospitable to life and prepared for intelligence.
it's just an idea i like. there very well could be a civilization out there that has been 'intelligent' for a billion years. i just don't hear from them or see them, you know? the fermi paradox directly addresses that 'problem'
glnflwrsHead KnockerContributor
Since: May 20, 2007
Jul 03, 2007 08:52 pm The first rule to critical thinking is exactly what WYD proposed out of his own thoughts. To be provable as true, it also has to be provable as false.
Read, "A Field Guide to Critical Thinking"
mysite.verizon.net/res7zx...al_thinking.doc
Word or Wordpad required.
I agree with about 96% of it.
Jul 03, 2007 08:58 pm "The first rule to critical thinking is exactly what WYD proposed out of his own thoughts. To be provable as true, it also has to be provable as false."
--not sure what you're getting at with that.
Jul 03, 2007 09:09 pm Reminds me of a card I saw swinging from the ceiling in a novelty store once. On one side it read "The statement on the other side of this card is true", and on the reverse - "The statement on the other side of this card is false."
I'm melllltinggggg....
WaltChief Cook and Bottle WasherMember
Since: May 10, 2002
Jul 03, 2007 10:17 pm Fact is simply how we precieve our world today. I stumbled across an interesting quantum physics experiment that suggests that the form which light exists in can be changed simply by observation. Extrapolating on that possibility time would be a bydirectional continumiom. This would mean that Einstien was only scratching the surface in noticing that the constant was not time. Really not that surprising, but non the less interesting.
As far as our government goes, they have enough trouble with God, Allah, good common sense, etc. getting in the way of what they want to do. I doubt they want any other 'higher power' to deal with.
WaltChief Cook and Bottle WasherMember
Since: May 10, 2002
Jul 03, 2007 10:20 pm Hey Forty, good find! I love the official comment. Pretty savvy. 'In a very literal sense". That's good.
Jul 03, 2007 10:21 pm Quote:
anyone see this last week? mile long UFO.
Are you kidding? I was the pilot!
These sightings happen frequently. The majority go unreported. Airline pilots, because of the stigma attached to UFOs, are especially hesitant to report them for fear of endangering their careers.
Jul 03, 2007 11:03 pm "Fact is simply how we precieve our world today."
--that's just not true. there are times when that happens, but there are certain facts which can never change. for some reason people find this hard to believe but it's absolutely true. it can be hard to know which ones might change, but it's not hard to know which ones won't.
quantum physics is a hell of a thing to go into at this juncture. i'm talking really basic stuff here! nobody really understands quantum physics, but it also has nothing to do with the possibility for life around other stars. peeps seem to want to turn this into a philosophy discussion. in that context, some of these statements i'm hearing work dandily. i was just trying to have a really basic conversation about science and fact, not philosophy.
WaltChief Cook and Bottle WasherMember
Since: May 10, 2002
Jul 03, 2007 11:09 pm Oh my! Please continue!
Jul 03, 2007 11:34 pm here is an example of a fact that has changed: sinead o'connor, at the young age of 41, is no longer hot.
but boy, i just watched the nothing compares 2 u video. the eyes she used to have...
Jul 04, 2007 12:54 am Quote:
yes, people do think that our planet's core is partly made of that impactor. this is a whole area of study--there's tons of info on the moon's origin.
SCHWEEET! i'm-a-gonna definitely read up on this....any good lectures to be had on the net?
Quote:
we can be 'seen' for a distance of about 70 light years, i think. if anyone were to look for us
**** yeah! that definitely increases the chances of 'intelligent life on par with us' because 70 years ain't ****! they are viewing us from x-light-years and seein' us as our primitive planet.
that, to me, given the age of the universe, that alone makes the odds go WAY THE **** UP.
Quote:
like water freezing suddenly and all over.
our primitive butts can do this
Quote:
Read, "A Field Guide to Critical Thinking"
downloadin' it right now....will read tommorrow before dark....thanks man!
[quote]"Fact is simply how we precieve our world today."
--that's just not true. there are times when that happens, but there are certain facts which can never change. for some reason people find this hard to believe but it's absolutely true. it can be hard to know which ones might change, but it's not hard to know which ones won't.[/quote]
i'm tempted to propose an argument against any of these said "facts that can never change"...
i just think we're simply too young and dumb to observe every physical (quantum, meta, and otherwise) aspect of our surroundings....we just learned about waves in the frequency spectrum from red and lower, and from violet and higher in the past 100 years.....100 YEARS! again in the perspective of all the universe and all of time, that ain't S%^T!
Jul 04, 2007 01:35 am "i'm tempted to propose an argument against any of these said "facts that can never change".."
please do...
Jul 04, 2007 01:38 am well...gimme a fact.
Jul 04, 2007 01:50 am heat is molecular motion
Jul 04, 2007 01:55 am i'll add two fun facts just because i'm bored. these are two things people seem to never consider.
there is no such thing as color, except in your mind. 'red' is not a property of the universe. it's something your brain creates. there's no 'red' out there in the external universe. just wavelengths of light, which have no objective quality called 'color.'
there is no such thing as 'sweet.' we don't like things because they are sweet. things are sweet because we like them. brains evolved to give us that sensation so that we would go toward high-energy food sources.
i'm not mentioning these to be disproven, but because i'm bored. someone could say 'yeah but evolution isn't proven.' that's not my point at all. i just actually wanted to point out that sweetness doesn't exist anywhere except in your mind.
Jul 04, 2007 02:02 am i'm gonna work my way backwards here...
Quote:
here is no such thing as color, except in your mind. 'red' is not a property of the universe. it's something your brain creates. there's no 'red' out there in the external universe. just wavelengths of light, which have no objective quality called 'color.'
if that were true, then the same can be said by sound, eyes 'hear' light frequency's (i'm sure you already know this)...
our eyes are simply receptors of those frequency's, our ears are for much lower frequency's...now the question is, how accurate are our receptors for these sensations? again, relativity play's a part, one man's salty is another's bland.
it's my view that we are simi-limited by our own senses...they ARE how we 'see' our surroundings'
everyone knows dogs got us beat on hearing and smelling, but we have equipment to "translate" to make up for it....but who's to say, our equipment is 'seeing' everything?
Jul 04, 2007 02:06 am [quote]
heat is molecular motion[/quote]
ok, do you mean it is ONLY molecular motion? first off molecules are made of atoms, and atoms are in motion, so yes you can sat that.....BUT is there a possibility of heat (infrared light) being generated without molecules moving *relative to each other*?
i don't know, but maybe it is possible? again, i'm thinking out loud and fubar at the moment....
i'm really liking where this thread is gooin'
thanks fourty!
Jul 04, 2007 02:07 am answer the one about heat--that one's my real challenge. i just find these other facts interesting.
sound doesn't exist either, yes. air vibrations do. you need ears and brains to hear sound. but keep in mind that sound is a differnet kind of frequency than is light. sound is the sensations brains tag onto moving waves of air pressure while light is an electromagnetic wave.
anyway, your question about how accurate our receptors are has nothing to do with the basic fact that 'red' does not exist out there. that shouldn't piss anyone off; you should see it as very cool!
Jul 04, 2007 02:10 am
heat is molecular motion: ok, do you mean it is ONLY molecular motion? first off molecules are made of atoms, and atoms are in motion, so yes you can sat that.....BUT is there a possibility of heat (infrared light) being generated without molecules moving *relative to each other*?
heat is only molecular motion, yes. a gamma ray in space has no heat, just energy. when the ray hits something, the molecules/atoms vibrate, and the energy is transformed into heat energy. heaet does not exist unless something is rubbing against something else. see the miconception about infrared energy here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_infrared
under the heat subheading
Jul 04, 2007 02:14 am Quote:
keep in mind that sound is a different kind of frequency than is light
i disagree...sound is a wave is a relatively low frequency when compared to light...BUT they are both waves of a kind....if you could generate a 'sound' of the same frequency of say yellow...your 'speaker' would generate light at the frequency of yellow because it would be moving that fast.
....still reading....
Jul 04, 2007 02:18 am yes, you could generate a sound of the same frequency as yellow. but you'd be using an entirely different medium. while both phenomena are wave-oriented, they're still fundamentally different. EM radiation is its own thing.
Jul 04, 2007 12:07 pm word
Posted on Jul 02, 2007 02:03 pm
