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On March 04 2013 09:57 a176 wrote:
I've always believed interstellar travel to be the biggest issue. Its one thing to go fast, its another to account for all the potential trillions objects of debris that you may crash into going from point A to B.
The faster you go the less an object getting in your way matters, your force increases with speed so it could be possible, with proper construction, to devise a system that measures large debri (bigger then small space rocks) and the rest would just simply blast away like waves to a boats hull.
But yeah, that would definitely be something to watch for hahaha and maybe I could be wrong, it may be a bigger problem or a non-existent problem.
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Its a crazy thought, but we have about 6 billion years or so until our sun burns out right? surely thats enough time to move to another planet, we created the iphone in our first, what, couple thousand centuries as humans?
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On March 04 2013 10:32 Aveng3r wrote:
Its a crazy thought, but we have about 6 billion years or so until our sun burns out right? surely thats enough time to move to another planet, we created the iphone in our first, what, couple thousand centuries as humans?
Michio Kaku has a cool presentation about the three levels of human advancement (control planet (us), solar system travel, galactic travel) and at each step there are different defining features (like being able to build our own suns etc).
Anyway, he said that humanity is basically racing against it's self-destructively small frontal lobes (paraphrased) and its technological advancements, one will defeat the other and as of now it's unknown as to which will win.
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On March 04 2013 10:32 Aveng3r wrote:
Its a crazy thought, but we have about 6 billion years or so until our sun burns out right? surely thats enough time to move to another planet, we created the iphone in our first, what, couple thousand centuries as humans?
We also created the nuke in our first couple thousand centuries as humans.
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On March 04 2013 10:30 Hitch-22 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2013 09:57 a176 wrote:
I've always believed interstellar travel to be the biggest issue. Its one thing to go fast, its another to account for all the potential trillions objects of debris that you may crash into going from point A to B. The faster you go the less an object getting in your way matters, your force increases with speed so it could be possible, with proper construction, to devise a system that measures large debri (bigger then small space rocks) and the rest would just simply blast away like waves to a boats hull. But yeah, that would definitely be something to watch for hahaha and maybe I could be wrong, it may be a bigger problem or a non-existent problem.
This is blatantly false.
The faster you go, the more does it matter when something gets in your way. If you look at the collision between two objects, the force of the impact is based on relative velocity. So if you are faster, stuff hits you harder. Which also makes it harder to deflect away from you without taking damage.
But people also underestimate just how empty space really is. If you look at SciFi movies or games, space is full of stuff. It is not. In fact, basically the most crowded area of space by some orders of magnitude at the moment is in earth orbit, because of all the shit we shoot up there and just leave lying around when it breaks.
Also, since our current probes and satellites appear to be able to deal with the problem at the speeds they are travelling at, i am confident that we will find ways to deal with it in case we ever reach speeds where the density of objects in space becomes a real problem
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Predicted by the Drake Equation (or at least the first half of it) rather nicely.
Current acceleration / kinetic-based forms of travel are a dead-end on reaching planets that are "only" 35 LY away. Before we think of colonizing other planets, we'll need an overhaul in our understanding of physics. Nevertheless I am excited about this discovery and the ongoing discoveries.
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Michio Kaku has a cool presentation about the three levels of human advancement (control planet (us), solar system travel, galactic travel) and at each step there are different defining features (like being able to build our own suns etc).
Does this mean we need an equivalent of a Dyson Sphere before we can harness the energy required for extra-solar travel??
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We need to build Mass Effect Relays.
But in all seriousness, traveling to far away planets is going to be a colossal technological issue that I don't think will be resolved any time soon. Our knowledge of physics is going to have to be turned upside-down by a huge discovery that would allow for very fast travel, like allowing traveling 35 LY in a couple days.
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I don't think we will get off this planet ever.
I would be surprised if humans were to survive even a couple of more thousand years with the way the planet is looking today.
There is just too much "shit" (if I were to even try making a list it would need a thread of its own) going on in this world.
To put it in political correct words.
I see the biggest problem of the human race is that it puts to much energy into believing in unverfiable things and then goes on fighting over which of the thousands of non verifiable objects is the best one to follow instead of putting effort into things that we can actually do something about, ie science.
Nonetheless, great read OP.
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Something ive always wondered about colonizing other planets, wouldnt you need a pretty big amount of people to do it? Cause chances are theres gonna be Disease we have NO immunity to, that would prolly wipe out alot of people pretty quickly wouldn't there?
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If there is a lot of life on a planets not too far away and not too hard to observe, we can find one within 20 years or so if we invest in the space telescopes needed. If not, 50 years. If our galaxy is overflowing with life, we will know within our lifetime.
All we need is to find a planet that has oxygen in the atmosphere and then get a spectrum measurement of that atmosphere showing indeed oxygen is there.
Our world is always improving? Is that so? In the western world our generation will probably be less rich than the generation of our parents. And it's not like the same thing hasn't happened in history before. Look at the Romans. It took a long long time fr the world to improve back to their level of civilization.
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On March 04 2013 18:34 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2013 10:30 Hitch-22 wrote:On March 04 2013 09:57 a176 wrote:
I've always believed interstellar travel to be the biggest issue. Its one thing to go fast, its another to account for all the potential trillions objects of debris that you may crash into going from point A to B. The faster you go the less an object getting in your way matters, your force increases with speed so it could be possible, with proper construction, to devise a system that measures large debri (bigger then small space rocks) and the rest would just simply blast away like waves to a boats hull. But yeah, that would definitely be something to watch for hahaha and maybe I could be wrong, it may be a bigger problem or a non-existent problem. This is blatantly false. The faster you go, the more does it matter when something gets in your way. If you look at the collision between two objects, the force of the impact is based on relative velocity. So if you are faster, stuff hits you harder. Which also makes it harder to deflect away from you without taking damage. But people also underestimate just how empty space really is. If you look at SciFi movies or games, space is full of stuff. It is not. In fact, basically the most crowded area of space by some orders of magnitude at the moment is in earth orbit, because of all the shit we shoot up there and just leave lying around when it breaks. Also, since our current probes and satellites appear to be able to deal with the problem at the speeds they are travelling at, i am confident that we will find ways to deal with it in case we ever reach speeds where the density of objects in space becomes a real problem
we have had the benefit of, well, billions of years of solar system and planetary formation to help clear our neighborhood of most debris. outside the influence of the sun its a turkey shoot.
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Now we just gotta figure out how to colonize it.
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On March 04 2013 10:30 Hitch-22 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2013 09:57 a176 wrote:
I've always believed interstellar travel to be the biggest issue. Its one thing to go fast, its another to account for all the potential trillions objects of debris that you may crash into going from point A to B. The faster you go the less an object getting in your way matters, your force increases with speed so it could be possible, with proper construction, to devise a system that measures large debri (bigger then small space rocks) and the rest would just simply blast away like waves to a boats hull. But yeah, that would definitely be something to watch for hahaha and maybe I could be wrong, it may be a bigger problem or a non-existent problem.
I'm sad that you are wrong in this case mate 
You are right about the fact a bigger speed makes objects crash and stuff, but that doesnt work how you hope it would haha.
Fact is, the smaller the particle is you crash into, the bigger the potential damage. Weh nyou fly with (in the future who knows) lightning speed into something like a piece of dirt, the pressure that piece of dirt puts on your ships hull is calculated like: Speed difference between the objects (your ship and the object you collide into) and its size. Aka if its REALLY small, the pressure on your hull is REAAAAAAALLLYYY big. chances are it cuts through all your ship without too much effort. Imagine a space sandstorm and you are pretty much screwed im afraid. ;p
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On March 04 2013 21:09 HooiFork wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2013 10:30 Hitch-22 wrote:On March 04 2013 09:57 a176 wrote:
I've always believed interstellar travel to be the biggest issue. Its one thing to go fast, its another to account for all the potential trillions objects of debris that you may crash into going from point A to B. The faster you go the less an object getting in your way matters, your force increases with speed so it could be possible, with proper construction, to devise a system that measures large debri (bigger then small space rocks) and the rest would just simply blast away like waves to a boats hull. But yeah, that would definitely be something to watch for hahaha and maybe I could be wrong, it may be a bigger problem or a non-existent problem. I'm sad that you are wrong in this case mate You are right about the fact a bigger speed makes objects crash and stuff, but that doesnt work how you hope it would haha. Fact is, the smaller the particle is you crash into, the bigger the potential damage. Weh nyou fly with (in the future who knows) lightning speed into something like a piece of dirt, the pressure that piece of dirt puts on your ships hull is calculated like: Speed difference between the objects (your ship and the object you collide into) and its size. Aka if its REALLY small, the pressure on your hull is REAAAAAAALLLYYY big. chances are it cuts through all your ship without too much effort. Imagine a space sandstorm and you are pretty much screwed im afraid. ;p
You forgot the mass in there. Smaller pieces are less dangerous then large ones because, while the surface area hitting you scales quadratic with radius, the mass scales cubic. Meaning a larger pieces will put more pressure/area onto your ship then a smaller piece.
Pressure is Force/Area, and the force is proportional to the impacting mass.
Also, i am pretty sure that the object density inside a solar system is WAY higher than in interstellar space. Gravity fields tend to catch objects, and according to the theory of the history of the universe, there was a much higher chance of objects to form where stars form anyways, since those stars formed exactly due to that higher object density accumulating interstellar matter through gravity. So, while space in our solar system is already very empty, outside of it it is even more empty.
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On February 27 2013 07:32 Hitch-22 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 27 2013 06:49 MrRicewife wrote:
Speak for yourself. Intelligence is random. There is just as much chance of life being unintelligent as there is to being intelligent. For eons this earth was occupied by unintelligent life. To be certain of anything involving intelligent life on other planets is asinine. I appreciate theories and good discussion but come on ... You act divine.
Or you successfully just trolled me. You don't really understand how randomness works, it's as much about probability as it is 'random' occurring events. With that in mind. It would be an astronomically small chance, you'd have a better chance winning the lottery every day of the week for the next 10 years then the universe not having anymore intelligent life... There are an estimated 10 trillion planets just in our galaxy alone... It's estimated there are 200 billion galaxies (probably more)... It is estimates at 10^24 planets in the universe (rough obviously). It's no longer about 'random', it's simply statistics, it's what we call a negligible probability to think this very very unimportant planet (with respect to others of similar note) is the only planet that 'lucked' out. You also have to take into account that when we look into space, thousands of light years literally means thousands of years in the past, so any planet that is similar to ours would be living in Roman times (if they grew similar to us) and our telescopes would have no ability to detect life, nor would it have the ability to see if that civilization is a prospering giant traveling through space (similar to them looking at us). This is all assertion, it could be the case that that planet had not evolved as quickly due to other occurences (sun size, orbit etc) but the fact remains, it's a much bolder and improbable statement to think 'maybe intelligent life is so random it only happened once' then to assume it is very VERY common.
I wouldn't be so quick to question the other poster if your own understanding of probability is skewed.
We have a sample size of 1 for intelligent life existing in the universe - us, humanity (and by extension, all those with the same shared primate ancestry). We do not have a clear understanding on the exact mechanic's of the formation of intelligent life, or life in general. Thus it is utterly impossible to infer any probability on the existence of additional intelligent life. It may be relatively common (at least on the galactic scale) or it may be outrageously uncommon. The fact of the matter is that the observable universe is actually not nearly as large to account for huge probability problems as astrophysicist's sometimes like to imply. Relatively simple probability problems can sometimes yield numbers of vastly more orders of magnitude than 10^24 planets can account for. For further reading see Graham's Number.
If it does turn out that intelligent life is outrageously rare, orders of magnitude greater than the cosmos, You may find yourself bewildered by the hand fate as dealt you and asking the philosophical question, much like the patient dying of the rare 1 in a billion disease, "why us?". In which case I direct you to the Anthropic Principle , it's a cop out but it will do.
For me personally I am endeared by the concept of other intelligent life existing and believe it's a worthy goal to try to find out but it's just that, a belief, it's not actually based in anything scientific per se, more the emotional feat of human exploration.
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I cringed while reading this thread because of all this ignorance, if you have limited scientific knowledge you should atleast look it up before posting blatantly wrong information.
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The truth is not halve as exciting as our fantasys unfortunatly.
Asymetric above is right .
That famous calculation showing there could be thousends of civilisations has big flaws.
We estimate a change we have no idea of,(well several changes infact, not only the change for live to evolve but also for the live to then evolve into intelligent live) and we have indeed only 1 sample of intelligent live.
We should consider ourselves unique till we find evidence we are not.
"I cringed while reading this thread because of all this ignorance, if you have limited scientific knowledge you should atleast look it up before posting blatantly wrong information."
Well you right kinda but instead of just commenting on how bad everyones contribution is, you could also be helpfull and point out the glaring errors made.
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On March 04 2013 21:59 Rassy wrote:
The truth is not halve as exciting as our fantasys unfortunatly.
Asymetric above is right .
That famous calculation showing there could be thousends of civilisations has big flaws.
We estimate a change we have no idea of,(well several changes infact, not only the change for live to evolve but also for the live to then evolve into intelligent live) and we have indeed only 1 sample of intelligent live.
We should consider ourselves unique till we find evidence we are not.
"I cringed while reading this thread because of all this ignorance, if you have limited scientific knowledge you should atleast look it up before posting blatantly wrong information."
Well you right kinda but instead of just commenting on how bad everyones contribution is, you could also be helpfull and point out the glaring errors made.
i would need to point out every single one and that would take far too much time, during exam-time i favor just skimming through some threads while having a break.
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EPT
