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Multiple levers, digging pits under it, earthen banks and ramps, A-frames, greased logs, leather and sinew, and lots of guys spreading the load at the same time...
Remember that wood has give, and compressability, which, when used correctly, means it won't break if you've set it all up right.
But if you really think it needs alien technology to move multi-ton stones... You'd be wrong. Here's one guy doing it with sticks and stones. He's not an alien.
But the speed of light is not a catch all limit to interstellar travel. Heck, we're only a couple centuries away from being able to build craft that can do significant percentages of c. Couple that with a race that has a naturally longer life and they could pretty easily start exploring the stars. I'm not saying they are anywhere near us, or interested in us if they do know we are here, but I don't think the speed of light is the ultimate "no" to expansion beyond a solar system.
There are practical reasons to not want to go on a craft that can travel that fast. It's not the 10 years or so it would take to travel to Alpha Centauri, but the thousands of years that would pass back on Earth that would prevent me from wanting to take the trip.
There are practical reasons to not want to go on a craft that can travel that fast. It's not the 10 years or so it would take to travel to Alpha Centauri, but the thousands of years that would pass back on Earth that would prevent me from wanting to take the trip.
At .1c a little over 40 years would pass on earth for you to reach Proxima Centauri at 4.2 light years distance. Time dilation on board ship at that speed would be negligible.
At .5c, 8 years would pass on earth while on board only about 7 years would pass.
I think you have some confusion as to how time dilation works.
The great wall of China, for starters. There are also some pretty impressive structures in Manilla that -- according to legend -- were built from stones quarried in Spain and then loaded onto ships and transported to the Philippines for assembly by indentured servants.
There are practical reasons to not want to go on a craft that can travel that fast. It's not the 10 years or so it would take to travel to Alpha Centauri, but the thousands of years that would pass back on Earth that would prevent me from wanting to take the trip.
At .1c a little over 40 years would pass on earth for you to reach Proxima Centauri at 4.2 light years distance. Time dilation on board ship at that speed would be negligible.
At .5c, 8 years would pass on earth while on board only about 7 years would pass.
I think you have some confusion as to how time dilation works.
I know how this is going to sound, but I've worked with the numbers often enough to hold the opinion that the relativistic time dilation thing is probably more of an illusion than an actual distortion of time; that is, if your kids on Earth were watching you with a telescope it would LOOK like time was slowing down on your ship relative to them, even though this would not actually be the case (so if you immediately turned around and flew back, your clocks would synch up again when you arrived).
Primarily this is because the equation holds true in both directions regardless of which one of them actually accelerates; both the traveler AND his point of origin will each observe the other's clock running faster relative to their own, so long as their relative velocity remains high. Meanwhile, it still takes you 40 years to get to Alpha Centauri no matter where you're measuring from.
Yeah, the point I was making is that it doesn't mystically make thousands of years pass on earth while you travel 4.2 lightyears to Proxima at .1c. Your relatives and friends (depending on age) would still be alive. Much older, but then so would you.
Yeah, the point I was making is that it doesn't mystically make thousands of years pass on earth while you travel 4.2 lightyears to Proxima at .1c. Your relatives and friends (depending on age) would still be alive. Much older, but then so would you.
Yeah, the point I was making is that it doesn't mystically make thousands of years pass on earth while you travel 4.2 lightyears to Proxima at .1c. Your relatives and friends (depending on age) would still be alive. Much older, but then so would you.
Why not? A ~20-year round-trip is not so long that people couldn't survive the return journey. Coming home to a big celebration would sure beat dying in an alien solar system (unless there are actual aliens there.)
As opposed to wasting the best of your life doing a meaningless job in a cubicle (if you're relatively lucky)?
Or in a tin can at sea?
Or going on vacation in a tin can at sea?
There would be a LOT of volunteers for such a journey.
But it does feels like an alien technologies, in a way that its alien to us. Its good that we had Pyramids to try to rediscover it. But i wonder how much else is out there hidden, forgotten, alien to us?
I think anyone who is a science-fiction fan wants to believe.
But for all these wonders where aliens were suppose to help humans with the construction, we've yet to come across any artifacts where the origin can even be questioned. Not a single alien hammer or rivet or even bubble gum wrapper. Yet we find human artifacts.
Could aliens have visited us in our past? Sure. Did they help build many of the wonders from the ancient world? I don't think so.
For me to believe in it, they're going to have to come up with more than "humans couldn't have done it".
It also doesn't help your credibility when this guy is in one of your best experts:
But it does feels like an alien technologies, in a way that its alien to us. Its good that we had Pyramids to try to rediscover it. But i wonder how much else is out there hidden, forgotten, alien to us?
As an sf fan I want to believe in a far more interesting universe than in "aliens" who travel interstellar distances simply to move stones around and shove probes up the locals' asses.
In fact the world I encounter outside my front door every morning is more marvelous, unexpected and inspiring than that.
But it does feels like an alien technologies, in a way that its alien to us. Its good that we had Pyramids to try to rediscover it. But i wonder how much else is out there hidden, forgotten, alien to us?
As an sf fan I want to believe in a far more interesting universe than in "aliens" who travel interstellar distances simply to move stones around and shove probes up the locals' asses.
In fact the world I encounter outside my front door every morning is more marvelous, unexpected and inspiring than that.
The most likely solution to the Fermi paradox is either that abiogenesis is very hard/rare (which is heavily supported by the staggering complexity of the simplest molecule that can reliably self-replicate) or that technological intelligence is very hard to evolve.
Or terraforming is a hell of a difficult task and these civilizations didn't manage.
Or they colonised our galaxy, but our biosphere was toxic to them so they skipped it because sterilizing a planet was immensely more difficult than terraforming one.
Or our biosphere was toxic to them and they died.
Or they sterilised every place they found, so only those who didn't encounter them survived.
Or they had ethical concerns regarding coming here.
Or they prefer red dwarves because of their longer life.
Or they prefer O'Neill colonies around rogue gas giants where they harvest fuel for fusion.
Or they calculated a more efficient way for survival.
Or the time scales for galactic colonisation are largely exaggerated.
Or the development always needs a few billion years at least, and we are one of the first.
Or their planets became uninhabitable before they reached space.
Or Congress never got to approving the funds for an interstellar mission.
Or they waited too long and their civilizations went into a decline.
Or they actually have a subsurface civilization on Mercury and Enceladus right now.
Or all of the above.
I fail to see how can something be a paradox when it relies on too many assumptions in the first place.
The Fermi paradox:
If only one species masters interstellar flight (NOT FTL, but BELOW LIGHTSPEED flight), then this species will easily colonise the entire galaxy within 100 million years. Also - after it spreads to ~10 solar systems, this species is all but indestructible - no catastrophe can extinguish it any longer.
Well, our galaxy is ~13,6 billion years old - but only since ~6 BILLION years there were enough heavy elements for life to be able to form.
In ~6 BILLION years, if ET advocates are to be believed, many, many intelligent species have arisen. But these advocates always have trouble explaining why none of them managed to send the first few interstellar ships - a feat humanity is close to accomplish (a few hundred/thousand years is a mere blink of cosmic time).
EVERY SINGLE ONE of these species - all the factions with different agendas and actions each species was composed of - always conveniently went extinct or 'insert another solution to the Fermi paradox that badly breaks Occam's razor'.
The most likely solution to the Fermi paradox is either that abiogenesis is very hard/rare (which is heavily supported by the staggering complexity of the simplest molecule that can reliably self-replicate) or that technological intelligence is very hard to evolve.
Or terraforming is a hell of a difficult task and these civilizations didn't manage.
Or they colonised our galaxy, but our biosphere was toxic to them so they skipped it because sterilizing a planet was immensely more difficult than terraforming one.
Or our biosphere was toxic to them and they died.
Or they sterilised every place they found, so only those who didn't encounter them survived.
Or they had ethical concerns regarding coming here.
Or they prefer red dwarves because of their longer life.
Or they prefer O'Neill colonies around rogue gas giants where they harvest fuel for fusion.
Or they calculated a more efficient way for survival.
Or the time scales for galactic colonisation are largely exaggerated.
Or the development always needs a few billion years at least, and we are one of the first.
Or their planets became uninhabitable before they reached space.
Or Congress never got to approving the funds for an interstellar mission.
Or they waited too long and their civilizations went into a decline.
Or they actually have a subsurface civilization on Mercury and Enceladus right now.
Or all of the above.
I fail to see how can something be a paradox when it relies on too many assumptions in the first place.
Your alternative to "they just don't exist" badly fails Occam's razor. Your assumptions are both far more improbable and far more numerous. That's why the Fermi paradox is a paradox:
Which congress didn't approve interstellar missions? All the congresses belonging to all the hundreds/thousands of civilizations that a single species will create during its history?
All the leadership apparatuses that lead every single species which existed? Talk about uniformly minded aliens - aren't they supposed to be phychologically and physiologically very different?
All these very different species, evolved with different psychologies, different cultures didn't have the curiosity/waited too long/went into decline? Talk about improbable.
Why terraform? Build O'Neill colonies or Banks' orbitals.
Of course, if you want to terraform due to a quirk of yours, you can - we KNOW it can be done; it only takes a lot of time.
If they colonized entire solar systems, we should be able to see the reflective surfaces/megascale constructions/etc/in nearby systems, even relatively small scale alterations - for some time now.
If only one of these many species colonized the entire galaxy - aka they had the capability and time to do it - we should definitely see them, their other achievements.
But the galaxy, we observe, is virgin, untouched by intelligence in all its details we see.
Unless all these species, much like unicorns and fairies, are always hiding - all having the same imperative at not being seen (building subsurface civilizations on wherever). Yet again, improbable.
100 million years is MORE than enough time to colonize the galaxy with ships only able of 0,1 lightspeed - 100 times more, to be exact. Life could have formed in the galaxy since 6 BILLION years ago.
Enough time to colonize the galaxy many, many times over - by many, many species. And none of these species can just disappear - there's no disaster that can do that, short of another galactic species - which will remain in the galaxy.
Not nearly as many "assumptions" as you made in that post trying to refute it, however.
The simplest and most likely reason for the complete lack of evidence of other civilizations as we understand the term is that they're not there. Anything else is speculative and, yes, assumes things that are not in evidence.
