Ancient Aliens

[The Green Mushroom]

cooleddie74 wrote:

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Yeah, there's another season but it seems to air exclusively on H2, the History spinoff a lot of people don't get in their cable packages. Based on the ads I've seen on History the H2 episodes seem to be very Giorgio Tsoukalos heavy with him doing a lot of remote shooting at archaeological sites.

I have been watching it and while most of it has been in the "It's So Bad, It's Good" territory, the scientific hooey they are spewing is seriously making the show tread to a level of "It is So Bad, It's Gone from Good Back to Bad" that I never knew existed.

Among the gems from the last batch of episodes:

• Aliens invented the afterlife and all ancient tombs EVERYWHERE in the world were attempts to FedEx the dead back to the alien homeworld.
• The Great Pyramid is a giant microwave oven powered by water sloshing around in the basement that beams electricity to France and Mexico
• Albert Einstein and some other famous thinking guys were mouthpieces for ideas that aliens beamed into their heads.
• Mercury had no use whatsoever to ancient civilizations and the river of mercury that the Chinese said was in the tomb of the First Emperor isn't really a river of mercury, it is the circuit board for a really big computer
• The Egyptians were afraid of the Apis Bulls and buried them in alien built tombs to either: save themselves from Zombie Apis Bulls or send the bulls back to the aliens

[Silvercrest]

I'm good with that last one. The more they acknowledge that they're talking "bull", the better.

[cooleddie74]

It wasn't Aliens. It never was.

It was....



PONIES.

[The Green Mushroom]

cooleddie74 wrote:

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It wasn't Aliens. It never was.

It was....



PONIES.

I think that was the last episode.


I'm not kidding...Hair Man decided that a picture of a running horse in some ancient temple was really the picture of an alien rocket ship that people assumed was a flying horse.

[Chemahkuu]

Oh good, now they think Pegasi made the pyramids instead, that's...slightly better?

[RAMA]

DarthTom wrote:

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You make Star Trek fan boys cry when you say that interstellar travel is technologically unfeasible.

Actually it's totally feasible, just not the way we see in Star Trek, that might be possible in SOME way, but it's also probably the least likely way. What's more likely is the aforementioned Von Neuman machines; machines that bring copies of us to their destination at a fraction of light speed; or copies of us that are beamed within lasers as information that are created from the blueprint of DNA or are recreated from a foglet-like cloud.

[Crazy Eddie]

Von Neuman machines are even less likely considering they would still have to remain fully functional over a truly geologic timescale in order to be in any way functional. If you had technology that robust, it wouldn't need to be self-replicating because it would basically last forever. It's a Crazy Eddie concept that otherwise serves no practical purpose.

It's mundanely obvious that interstellar travel is perfectly feasible for an unmanned probe that can expect to be discovered intact after a billion years or so by an alien race that didn't exist when it was launched. Travel or transport LIVING BEINGS just isn't going to happen, though, without a space fold or something similar. Or -- as Gary mentioned -- if a civilization evolved near the galactic core or in a dense cluster of stars, in which case interstellar travel only takes slightly longer than interplanetary travel.

[DarthTom]

newtype_alpha wrote:

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It's mundanely obvious that interstellar travel is perfectly feasible for an unmanned probe that can expect to be discovered intact after a billion years or so by an alien race that didn't exist when it was launched. Travel or transport LIVING BEINGS just isn't going to happen, though, without a space fold or something similar. Or -- as Gary mentioned -- if a civilization evolved near the galactic core or in a dense cluster of stars, in which case interstellar travel only takes slightly longer than interplanetary travel.

What about creating an artificial wormhole like they depicted in the film Lost in Space?

[Robert Maxwell]

DarthTom wrote:

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What about creating an artificial wormhole like they depicted in the film Lost in Space?

Given that we've never actually observed a natural wormhole, it's still speculation at this point to think they even exist, or are possible.

[RAMA]

newtype_alpha wrote:

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Von Neuman machines are even less likely considering they would still have to remain fully functional over a truly geologic timescale in order to be in any way functional. If you had technology that robust, it wouldn't need to be self-replicating because it would basically last forever. It's a Crazy Eddie concept that otherwise serves no practical purpose.

It's mundanely obvious that interstellar travel is perfectly feasible for an unmanned probe that can expect to be discovered intact after a billion years or so by an alien race that didn't exist when it was launched. Travel or transport LIVING BEINGS just isn't going to happen, though, without a space fold or something similar. Or -- as Gary mentioned -- if a civilization evolved near the galactic core or in a dense cluster of stars, in which case interstellar travel only takes slightly longer than interplanetary travel.

Still. greater numbers means two things: You still have more machines out there after falling prey to attrition through disaster, wear and tear, etc. Also more machines means covering the distance at sub-light more quickly, spreading like a virus.

Yes you can expect organic beings to make it across interstellar distances, but more realistically by the methods i named. Its perfectly feasible to recreate humans once we meet up with our robotic explorers.

[Robert Maxwell]

RAMA wrote:

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Still. greater numbers means two things: You still have more machines out there after falling prey to attrition through disaster, wear and tear, etc. Also more machines means covering the distance at sub-light more quickly, spreading like a virus,

But what good does this do us? Okay, so our legacy is an ever-growing set of self-replicating machines, spreading throughout the universe. Cool. What is the practical value, if it's going to take millions of years to amount to anything useful to living humans?

[RAMA]

DarthTom wrote:

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What about creating an artificial wormhole like they depicted in the film Lost in Space?

One of the more likely scenerios for non-linear space travel, but still, the energy to form a wormhole is problematic. I am betting against this simply because of the Fermi Paradox...I think there ARE aliens out there slogging through space one sector at a time using sublight means and equipment that is small and difficult to track with our technological level.

[RAMA]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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But what good does this do us? Okay, so our legacy is an ever-growing set of self-replicating machines, spreading throughout the universe. Cool. What is the practical value, if it's going to take millions of years to amount to anything useful to living humans?

There comes a time when you have to bow to physics...we cant get there fast from here, so it means doing it at sublight, methodically and efficiently. The universe works on cosmic timescales, geological ones, we don't.

Practical value? Well several-fold if you think going into space has ANY practical value. Firstly, it means spreading the human race, if we have any value, then our survival is important to US. Secondly: knowledge, we can gain knowledge through relays, and the network of machines. Thirdly, resources...the machines that are closer to us can provide us with resources as we advance at home and other waves of exploration move outward.

I can look at it in other terms too, if we assume exponential AI...and if that AI has human elements to it, then of course I submit that AI is human and our representative. Its as close to us as any potential alien might get! I--like man scientists and sf writers these days--feel that electronic/digital/machine life is probably going to be our successor, whether you believe in a singularity or not.

If these AI are sufficiently advanced, and if Singulatarians are correct, then we can infuse all matter with intelligence, and this computronium will be our legacy, through the galaxy and beyond. With sublight it just takes longer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_matter

[Crazy Eddie]

RAMA wrote:

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Still. greater numbers means two things: You still have more machines out there after falling prey to attrition through disaster, wear and tear, etc. Also more machines means covering the distance at sub-light more quickly, spreading like a virus.

First of all, they wouldn't spread more quickly at all. They would spread more EVENLY, but still take millions of years to do it.

Second of all, even a virus requires a viable host to reproduce itself, as to Von Neuman machines require a source of plentiful and accessible resources to use for self-replication. Interstellar space has no such resources, and even if it did, they are hardly in a form that self-replicating machines would find easily accessible.

Lastly, the concept of the Von Nueman machine is one that is only theoretically viable on a relatively small scale -- say, mining a moon or an asteroid or something. Using them to spread your influence across an entire galaxy is a bit like trying to build a suspension bridge out of legos and superglue: an amusing hobby, but hardly practical.

Yes you can expect organic beings to make it across interstellar distances, but more realistically by the methods i named. Its perfectly feasible to recreate humans once we meet up with our robotic explorers.

You can say that if and when we have discovered a way to keep frozen embryos viable over a span of half a million years.

[Crazy Eddie]

RAMA wrote:

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There comes a time when you have to bow to physics...

Way before that point, we have to bow to pragmatism. There is a certain (relatively high) cost associated with carrying out such a project. There is, at the same time, zero tangible benefit if the project succeeds.

Ergo, there is no reason to "bow to physics" at all. Just concede to ourselves that interstellar travel by living beings simply isn't feasible without a major universe-opening propulsion breakthrough.

Basically: instead of examining the feasibility of building a giant stairway tall enough to reach the moon, you're probably better off waiting for someone to invent rockets.

Practical value? Well several-fold if you think going into space has ANY practical value. Firstly, it means spreading the human race

Accomplished by colonizing the moon and/or Mars, which is easier than interstellar travel.

Secondly: knowledge, we can gain knowledge through relays, and the network of machines.

Accomplished through probes, which are cheaper.

Thirdly, resources...

There are none in interstellar space. There are plenty in our own solar system that are cheaper to access.

Oh for three. Without some form of FTL travel, interstellar exploration is simply a dead-end. It's not worth the investment unless/until someone invents such a system and proves it to be functional.