Gathering material for the Green Collar Comedy Tour. Coming soon to an ansible near you.
Ancient Aliens
- Thread starter BillJ
- Start date
Gathering material for the Green Collar Comedy Tour. Coming soon to an ansible near you.
I don't think even you believe that. As far as we know Earth is the richest and most diverse life-based resource in the galaxy. Any scientist worth their salt (or whatever equivalent compounds) would realise they'd hit the mother lode.
If you can travel through space and time, you could probably determine every possible chemical combination. Honestly that's the future of pharmacology, hit a receptor or binding site with random chemicals until something "fits".
Plus you are assuming that scientist are running the show. What if it's drunken frat boys.
Ymindale
You may think the ants from the nearby anthill unimportant.
But there are a LOT of scientists that find them extremely interesting and studied them extensively. The same can be said about every bit of the natural world.
Plus, it's worth noting that life is the most information rich phenomenon known to man; stars and black holes may have astronomical energies, but informationally, they're simplistic by comparison to a mere rat. Intelligent life and civilization is a further step above that.
And any species capable of interstellar travel must have a significant rational component (including curiosity/discovery, etc); 'drunken frat boys' - or their equivalent - just don't have the level of competency for such feats.
PS - We're already able to determine "every possible chemical combination".
That doesn't do us any good - the combinations are practically unlimited in number and only a vanishingly small number of them actually 'do something'; the rest is useless randomness.
You may think the ants from the nearby anthill unimportant.
But there are a LOT of scientists that find them extremely interesting and studied them extensively. The same can be said about every bit of the natural world.
Plus, it's worth noting that life is the most information rich phenomenon known to man; stars and black holes may have astronomical energies, but informationally, they're simplistic by comparison to a mere rat. Intelligent life and civilization is a further step above that.
And any species capable of interstellar travel must have a significant rational component (including curiosity/discovery, etc); 'drunken frat boys' - or their equivalent - just don't have the level of competency for such feats.
PS - We're already able to determine "every possible chemical combination".
That doesn't do us any good - the combinations are practically unlimited in number and only a vanishingly small number of them actually 'do something'; the rest is useless randomness.
Last edited:
The point you clearly missed is that even if the universe was teeming with SPACEFARING civilizations, we would be extremely unlikely to know about it even after ten centuries of searching the sky with our telescopes. We've only in the last 20 years even confirmed the existence of extrasolar planets, and most of those only by their gravitational effects on their parent star; even at FTL velocities, something as small a a spacecraft would be WELL below our detection threshhold unless it was relatively close to Earth orbit.
In other words, they would have to go out of their way to visit us before we ever knew they were there. That in turn implies they would have to have a REASON to visit us, which -- if they don't know about us -- they would not.
Except for the fact that Von Neuman devices are impractical for interstellar exploration, that would be true.
Which is true. If FTL flight is impossible, then EVERY solar system could be inhabited by intelligent spacefaring life and we would probably never know about it.
Which construction are you referring to? Not all of it was done through slave labor. The Pyramids were not, for example.
Um, that's literally what most pharma does right now.. it's called high throughput screening. Throw a library of randomly synthesized junk against your target protein, see what sticks.
I've pretty much randomly jumped into this thread, so this is totally out of context. But using terms like "receptors" or "binding sites" makes it sound like you're reasonably well versed in structure based drug design, so it seems odd that you'd think high throughput screening is the "future" of pharmacology, rather than a throw back to inefficient R&D. Rational design of novel synthetically accessible ligands is a far better way to go, not to mention novel protein based drugs are quite promising as well.
Don't worry, we all go off on tangents. Mine: The Green Collar Comedy Tour! (see earlier post)
And you might be an Earthling if.... ?
And you might be an Earthling if.... ?
The laws of mathematics and statistics say there must be much alien life out there.
And the laws of physics say they pretty much can damn well stay out there.
While the laws of common sense say they'd have no reason to come here when they don't know there's a here to come to...
This single inconvenient truth causes more anguish to science fiction fans and alien watchers than anything else.
I think the real reason we haven't seen any proof of aliens is going to be much more interesting than either of those statements.
Um, I doubt it. Really, I doubt it. Space is just *so* damn big, you see, that that damn lightspeed limit buggers everything up...
Mind you, I've always said that if we ever do find proof of intelligent aliens, it'll be in the form of signal spam actually just passing by us on the way somewhere else. And possibly actual spam: "I am Emperor GHajhkhsfs of the Kuhiuiuhiuh system. My late father was killed when our sun went nova, and I need your help to unlock the 50 gajillion credits in his Galactibank account..."
Yep.
Yep. This isn't rocket science, Starbrow, and we know it to have been fully within the capabilities of ancient peoples in many places around the world - which is why the dimwits on TV insisting that it constitutes evidence of high technology reveal themselves to be idiots or charlatans.
Are you referring to a specific monument in question?
Similar threads
