Question Aliens...Do you think they exist?

[Wishbone]

Aliens do not exist. Every super-squirrel from Mars knows that.

 

[PennyBlack]

Aliens do not exist.

I don't know about that Wishbone, most of the people that live around me including the majority of polititians don't seem to live on this planet.

 

[Suzy]

I do think aliens exist, but they are very far away, and most will be in the form of bacteria - worlds that support complex lifeforms will be rare. I don't believe the UFO or conspiracy theory nonsense, though! (My thoughts on alien life )

 

[Keatah]

UFO's and x-files and conspiracy theories are excellent for what they are: entertainment. The problem comes when you start taking the stuff seriously enough that you mold your lifestyle around it.

Referring back to the HUDF photos - these pics show there's hundreds of billions of galaxies in town. Do you really know how many that is? And how big "space" really is? And these pics are done with a paltry 2-meter telescope. What will we see with a 10-meter space telescope? Or an array of 25-meter scopes??

Instead of farting around with useless (whatever you deem unimportant) stuff, let's build these instruments and see what else is out there!


Now, regarding interstellar travel.. We are going to need something like a completely new invention. Something like when radio waves were invented, or the internal combustion engine, or semiconductors.

Playing with chemical rockets will forever keep us confined to Earth orbit activities, or perhaps solar-system activities. Hell, even nuclear powered rocketry has severe limitations. Totally useless for crossing interstellar distances. Fission? Fusion? Reaction-based propulsion? PFFAAGGgggghhhhhh! It's all a waste.

We will need a "new physics", working with completely different principles. Somehow. And we are no closer to developing any of this stuff as long as we are bogged-down.

What would be this "new physics" stardrive? Hell if I know?!?!! What do you think?

 

[Codz]

I do think aliens exist, but they are very far away, and most will be in the form of bacteria - worlds that support complex lifeforms will be rare. I don't believe the UFO or conspiracy theory nonsense, though! (My thoughts on alien life )

I agree with this. Although simple life may be found as close as Titan or Europa.

We will need a "new physics", working with completely different principles. Somehow. And we are no closer to developing any of this stuff as long as we are bogged-down.

What would be this "new physics" stardrive? Hell if I know?!?!! What do you think?

I suppose you intend to fart this out?:lol:

 

[Keatah]

I suppose you intend to fart this out?:lol:

Farting things out isn't good scientific practice. At the rate things are progressing, that's all that's happening. A lot of farting and gassing.

 

[T.Neo]

We will need a "new physics", working with completely different principles. Somehow. And we are no closer to developing any of this stuff as long as we are bogged-down.

So you propose: stop bothering with any other useful pursuit (like fusion power for interstellar travel, which is a theoretical reality) and wait for a Warp Drive to magically appear out of thin air?

Brilliant plan, I say. :shifty:

 

[Keatah]

We are just as far from fusion as we are the magic warp drive.

 

[Izack]

Now, regarding interstellar travel.. We are going to need something like a completely new invention. Something like when radio waves were invented, or the internal combustion engine, or semiconductors.

It's far bigger than that. A 'warp-drive' rails against the what this species understands as possible. Radio waves were not invented, they were discovered, and then harnessed. The man who first sent and received radio messages did not sit down one day and say "I'm going to revolutionise communication with this mysterious device I will now pull from my ass!" The man who discovered electromagnetic radiation did not sit down one day and say "For my next trick, I will snap my fingers and suddenly radio waves will enter this universe!!"

You can't create a discovery, no matter how much money and how many scientists you throw at an idea you pull out of your head. FTL travel may or may not be possible. We will not know until the discovery happens, and can't predict when that may be.

So if the sense of scale of outer space is lost on me, then the sense of scale of science and engineering is lost on you. :tiphat:

 

[jedidia]

We are just as far from fusion as we are the magic warp drive.

I assume you mean self-sustaining fusion. A fusion drive that needs additional energy input isn't really that unfeasible with our current technology.

However, even when it comes to self-sustaining fusion, I would differ. We have a good understanding of how self-sustaining fusion works, which we can't say about warp drives. As for a technical solution to the problem, we might or might not be closer, there's really no telling. It might turn out to be impossible to achieve it, in which case you would be correct. But we don't know that yet, there's still a (admittedly shrinking) possibility that some ingenious idea could make it work.

I agree, however, that even a self-sustaining fusion drive wouldn't bring us much closer to interstellar travel.

 

[Turbinator]

We are just as far from fusion as we are the magic warp drive.

That's nonsense. If you objectively look at the progress being made in nuclear chemistry and physics you can clearly identify progress in the field of fusion.

Construction work is under way at ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) in France for a November 2019 start date, and 2026 for the start of deuterium-tritium operation. The ITER fusion reactor itself has been designed to produce 500 megawatts of output power for 50 megawatts of input power, or ten times the amount of energy put in. The machine is expected to demonstrate the principle of getting more energy out of the fusion process than is used to initiate it, something that has not been achieved with previous fusion reactors.

If that is not progress, than I don't know what progress is.



A 120 years ago people believed that nothing heavier than a bird could fly, today we fly in these:



Fusion is a fact of life, if you ever doubt it look up at the sun.
Warp drive is only a theory in our heads, sustained by the fusion of the sun that keeps us alive.

 

[Kaito]

Do I think Aliens exist? Yes. Both in bacterial and intelligent "forms."

Now, how would they get here, or us get there? I have no clue. We can all agree that chemical rockets are out of the question for interstellar travel. It's entirely possible that we have not discovered some sort of physical property of the universe that would allow us to travel these distances (much like someone discovered radio waves). Since I do not have a physics degree, or am a theoretical physicist, or a degree in Math, I cannot provide any equations or proof of this. I'll leave the rest of you to figure it out

 

[jedidia]

Construction work is under way at ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) in France for a November 2019 start date, and 2026 for the start of deuterium-tritium operation.

ITER is an experiment, though, not a construction project. There's no guarantee that it'll actually work.

 

[T.Neo]

We are just as far from fusion as we are the magic warp drive.

Wrong!!!

You can actually do fusion on your kitchen countertop, though you obviously won't get anywhere near break-even.

But we're getting close to that too. We know how the physics works, and we're busy working out how to harness it.

A 'warp-drive' rails against the entirety of all knowledge and understanding this species knows of the natural universe.

Also wrong... a '[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive"]warp drive[/ame]' could be possible assuming certain things, but its properties likely rule it out as a method of FTL travel.

I agree, however, that even a self-sustaining fusion drive wouldn't bring us much closer to interstellar travel.

I disagree, though that depends on the definition of "much closer"...

 

[Izack]

Also wrong... a 'warp drive' could be possible assuming certain things, but its properties likely rule it out as a method of FTL travel.

Oops. Was not aware that that had any validity. Crawling back under a rock now... :embarrassed: Still, there's an enormous distance between "this might be possible" "I might know how to implement this."

 

[Turbinator]

ITER will be an experimental fusion reactor in order to facilitate the testing of materials, construction methods, and operational guidelines for future commercial fusion reactors. It will not be an experiment in creating surplus energy, they already know how to do that. What they don't know is how to do, is to build a surplus energy fusion reactor for under €16 billion euros (that is $22 billion USD). So the purpose here is to develop sufficient knowledge to be able to commercialise fusion.

And it is very mutch so a construction project as well:

---------- Post added at 05:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:36 PM ----------

The point here is that if you want something to happen you go out and make it happen.

No amount of sitting and praying and wishing and wallowing in regret is going to make something happen unless you get up and go do something about it.

 

[Cras]

Being bold is what it is about. Fusion is going to be a hard nut to crack, but that shouldn't stop us from trying.

FTL travel, would love for us to find it. Our current understanding of the universe prohibits objects that are at lower than light speeds to accelerate to and above light speed. But yet again, our current understanding of the universe has tremendous trouble explaining quantum mechanics and some of the ludicrous things it proclaims as reality.

We are far from done learning things, and it is the hard questions that are the most fun to answer.

No amount of sitting and praying and wishing and wallowing in regret is going to make something happen unless you get up and go do something about it.

Great line


assuming one is not referring to death, in which case this quote is just nonsense jargon

 

[Urwumpe]

Still - We can't do, what nature does not do.

Simply out of one reason, that nature has resources at her fingertips, that we can only dream of. the LHC is nothing compared to the energies of a Neutron star.

So, if nature doesn't have significant FTL travel (more than the possible Neutrinos measured lately), how can we do this? Nature doesn't build jet engines and nuclear bombs, that is true - but the core technologies of these technologies had to exist in nature.

There is no natural FTL travel. None that we know of. Also no wormholes that we can observe.

 

[PennyBlack]

There is no natural FTL travel. None that we know of. Also no wormholes that we can observe.

Nature I think only does what it needs to.
Perhaps nature hasn't thought that far ahead.
But nature did create a species even thought it's limited by ability and yet that species created tools to give them special abilties, ie to Drive faster than they can run, to fly without feathers, to dive to depths that would normally squash them.

So nature cannot do it... so maybe nature creates a species that may deliver what it cannot.

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, you know how nature works: if you have googols of particles at nearly infinite energy levels near some celestial phenomenas (one proton with the total kinetic energy of a baseball at 100 mph is really fast), you can be sure that enough particles will get into the right conditions for any possible phenomena.