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Open Letter to NASA/Library of Congress Symposium on Astrophysics

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did you know that david ickes actually an alien with a business plan and a sense of humour?
 
And I'd say some of us have failed.

Once you're done shooting down straw men, can you provide an honest justification for all the names Avon refuted upthread?

From all appearances, you aren't interested in discussing facts. Nothing more substantial than "I want to believe, therefore everything else is a straw man."

Countin' the minutes before thread closure....
 
given that basic googling discredits just about everything in the OP, can we assume you're using the old tactic of throwing out lots of things to distract everyone, like nuclear weapons and that video link, because you've got no leg to stand on?
 
Silvercrest said:
And I'd say some of us have failed.

Once you're done shooting down straw men, can you provide an honest justification for all the names Avon refuted upthread?

From all appearances, you aren't interested in discussing facts. Nothing more substantial than "I want to believe, therefore everything else is a straw man."

Countin' the minutes before thread closure....
Click to expand...

Let's keep it non-confrontational... maybe we can avoid your cynical wish?
 
Avon said:
given that basic googling discredits just about everything in the OP, can we assume you're using the old tactic of throwing out lots of things to distract everyone, like nuclear weapons and that video link, because you've got no leg to stand on?
Click to expand...

...sounds like what YOU are doing :rolleyes:

What did your "basic googling discredit"? and how so?
 
I amnot Herbert said:
USS Triumphant said:
I Want To Believe just as much as you do, I amnot Herbert, but completely aside from any Earthbound conspiracy theories, you have to consider odds.

Humanity has been around for a few hundred thousand years, give or take. In that time, so far, we've had about 150 years - being generous - where we could be detected by our radio emissions elsewhere in space. Odds are high that we will either destroy ourselves (or, knock ourselves way back down the tech chain) sometimes within the next 200 years, or we will turn inward due to something like The Singularity. Let's be generous though and go ahead and say we're detectable and also looking out in space for a full 10,000 years. If that fits the general pattern of any intelligent life that might be out there, that means that in order to make contact:

1. Our 10,000 year windows would have to overlap, which is pretty improbably already due to variance in the age of stars, planets, and rates of development of life on planets.

And 2. They would have to be within 10,000 light years for us to detect them before they've wiped themselves out or turned inward.

And then, even IF we could make contact against the odds of those factors, there is nothing *with a basis in solid science* that I've seen that lends itself to the notion that we can build anything made of matter or that could carry people that would not be converted to energy (and KILLED) at any practical speed necessary to reach any but our nearest stellar neighbors.

I'd love to be wrong - tomorrow we successfully develop warp drive or some such - but I just don't see evidence that I am.

My two hopes:

1. The most realistic hope, I think, would be that sometime soon we figure out some sort of equivalent of CB radio using tech developed out of our studies of quantum entanglement, which provides instantaneous communication anywhere. And then we discover that many other civilizations - including those much further than 10,000 light years because that wouldn't matter - have developed it, too, and we end up on an intergalactic version of the Internet. We still wouldn't be able to really visit, but maybe we could through telepresence - which would be really cool, because there would be no new wars between species because of it due to the host having complete control to kill the connection at any time.

2. The hope that has worse odds than buying lottery tickets, but could still happen, is that we get really really lucky and there IS an intelligent civilization with an overlap with us at one of the stars on this list. If we can build ships that can do even a quarter c without killing crew, that's "only" about 19 - 47 years to get there. I think that's doable, even if just barely, and we could trade stuff and *maybe* even have a few manned missions just "because it's there" before we give that up as wasteful.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your thoughtful comments :bolian:

but you're using 20th century thinking... look how far WE have come in only ONE century...

Consider the possibilities inherent in civilizations that have existed for eons... don't you think their technology would seem "magical" to us?

Advanced technology overcomes the limitations of Newtonian physics (acceleration, etc...)
Click to expand...
So basically you are arguing "My fairy dust trumps your science"?

Personally, I am hoping these super-intelligent beings are following TEH PRIME DIRECTIVE, since we are not advanced enough to defeat them. :mallory:

I, too, hope there is intelligent life out there. I also realize we may never see them. Both, because of the distances involved AND our propensity to destroy ourselves... making it unlikely we will survive to meet aliens. I do like the "galactic internet" idea, though.

-->Grabs tin foil hat and waits in basement for our alien overlords to come save us. :devil:
 
Sector 7 said:
So basically you are arguing "My fairy dust trumps your science"?

Personally, I am hoping these super-intelligent beings are following TEH PRIME DIRECTIVE, since we are not advanced enough to defeat them. :mallory:

I, too, hope there is intelligent life out there. I also realize we may never see them. Both, because of the distances involved AND our propensity to destroy ourselves... making it unlikely we will survive to meet aliens. I do like the "galactic internet" idea, though.

-->Grabs tin foil hat and waits in basement for our alien overlords to come save us. :devil:
Click to expand...

...let me lay some physics on you:

The Reciprocal System of Physical Theory
 
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