Would advanced alien tech surprise you?

[KJbushway]

Better than 3 billion.
But as a stated above better energy and green technology will make the Earth a bit better. People growing their own food is likely to happen to becuase of rising food prices.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24729307/ns/business-consumer_news/

 

[John O.]

Sorry John O. I would have warned you not to mention anything population wise if I had seen it in time. I have already tried that line and got shutdown by the same person. Population on Earth while large isn't going to get much bigger by 2050.
Link.
http://www.npg.org/facts/world_pop_year.htm

If you look at the chart you'll see that not only does population growth slow down, but it doesn't go back up.

In 39 years it will only go up 3.billion. I could do the exact math, but the charts right there.

If I could come up with a new car engine(eletrical) that can be adapted for truck and car, I would give it an American company, only I would write up a contract that makes it were its built by America for Americans. Help put jobs back on the market.

If I could come up with a working fusion generator, I would do the same thing.
But that possibility is out of this world.

I should have been clearer - I wasn't suggesting that we could offset growth with immigration. The bigger objective on my mind is habitat redundancy. We need to get enough people off this rock and onto a few others so that when TSHTF, our race doesn't end.

 

[infinix]

I should have been clearer - I wasn't suggesting that we could offset growth with immigration. The bigger objective on my mind is habitat redundancy. We need to get enough people off this rock and onto a few others so that when TSHTF, our race doesn't end.

This is my feeling as well. Even if we manage to tap into an unlimited energy source, attain true world peace, solve all hunger and diseases, all within the next 50 years, we are still doomed. As long as our species is confined to our planet, we will likely be wiped out by a huge natural disaster or our society will simply stagnate and die out slowly.

I believe exploring and expanding into the universe has as much tangible benefits as psychological benefits. Our species needs to know that there is something out there waiting to be explored. Without it, we could simply wither and die out as a species. It might take a few centuries, but it will happen.

 

[KJbushway]

^agreed

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Elon Musk is trying to get us into space TO MAKE MONEY.

Nope. Elon is on record with the motivation of getting to Mars. Money is just a means to that end.

Trouble is, he can't get to Mars--or anywhere NEAR it--until he can turn SpaceX into a billion dollar space launch empire powerful enough to rival NASA in terms of capability and reputation. Business before pleasure, basically.

Sorry John O. I would have warned you not to mention anything population wise if I had seen it in time. I have already tried that line and got shutdown by the same person. Population on Earth while large isn't going to get much bigger by 2050.
Link.
http://www.npg.org/facts/world_pop_year.htm

If you look at the chart you'll see that not only does population growth slow down, but it doesn't go back up.

In 39 years it will only go up 3.billion. I could do the exact math, but the charts right there.

If I could come up with a new car engine(eletrical) that can be adapted for truck and car, I would give it an American company, only I would write up a contract that makes it were its built by America for Americans. Help put jobs back on the market.

If I could come up with a working fusion generator, I would do the same thing.
But that possibility is out of this world.

I should have been clearer - I wasn't suggesting that we could offset growth with immigration. The bigger objective on my mind is habitat redundancy. We need to get enough people off this rock and onto a few others so that when TSHTF, our race doesn't end.

On the other hand, there are no predictable events in the foreseeable future that could potentially render Earth uninhabitable. Cataclysms on that scale occur only once every few million years and even then it is far from certain that our entire species would be wiped out. Our WAY OF LIFE certainly would, but relocating half the population off-world would have that same effect anyway.

Long term survival of the species makes sense in the context of procuring more resources so the rest of our species may continue to prosper. There isn't a whole lot that could happen to Earth at this point that would make the entire planet incapable of supporting life, but there are plenty of things in space we could find that would make life on Earth that much easier.

 

[sojourner]

^Totally off topic, but everytime I see your location, I mentally fill in the blanks with the word "smurf"

 

[infinix]

^ I always think "I'm in your kitchen, making your dinner." or "I'm in your bathroom, cleaning your toilet." or "I'm in your backyard, mowing your lawn." etc. etc.

 

[KJbushway]

Advance Alien Techbnology. I just hoped they don't use it against me. Thats all I can ask for myself. I'll fight back if Earth's invaded, but Advanced alien tech, no way to really fight back.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

So what would it take to surprise you?

If I was not surprised by their technology, I would be surprised by my lack of surprise.

Really, I would expect beings from a completely alien civilization to think differently from humans and come up with technology completely different from anything we might expect.

 

[John O.]

So what would it take to surprise you?

If I was not surprised by their technology, I would be surprised by my lack of surprise.

Really, I would expect beings from a completely alien civilization to think differently from humans and come up with technology completely different from anything we might expect.

To me this is one of the most fascinating aspects of, and compelling arguments for the further study of, subjects along the lines of evolutionary astrobiology / xenosociological anthropology / whatever you want to call the study of general technological development among intelligent species.

I was having a debate with a friend about whether a recent claim (supposed FBI memo) that the saucers over Roswell were brought down by radio interference caused by powerful experimental radar dishes interacting with extraterresterial navigation systems made any sense. At the core of the debate is the question of whether it is reasonable to assume that aliens who followed a completely unique and independent path of technological innovation might have gone through a period of development in which they utilized and relied upon similar radio or E&M communication, tracking and sensory technology as our own. The reason for the question being, if they had, it might be questionable as to whether such a primitive technology could have an adverse effect on their systems. Then you get into the whole "forgotten technology debate", which some disagree with - the idea that civilizations thousands of years ahead of us may have become so ignorant of technology as primitive as ours that they could be vulnerable to it, that sort of thing. I'm not saying I ascribe to it, but I think it's debatable. Going back to the question of unique technological evolution, if an alien race were to, for some reason, "skip" a particular technological phase that we did not, similar effects as the forgotten technology argument could result.

My hypothetical scenario arguing for at least the plausibility of a situation where an alien race manages to skip a technological phase we are in was the following: suppose an advanced alien culture develops on a planet with an atmosphere that's somewhere between air and water in density and viscosity - more of a gel or a soup than a gaseous medium. Let's not get hung up on thermodynamic semantics because the details are irrelevant to the point. As much as I hate to make a Voyager reference, imagine fluidic space. And supposing, which is a large supposition, that alien social evolution follows closely enough to that of our own, that you get nation states and militaries, etc etc; but where we developed RADAR specifically for the purpose of tracking and detecting aircraft, they might rely solely on a technology similar to SONAR, using ultrasonic pulses since the medium is dense enough to make it reliable. Since SONAR and RADAR are techniques based on fundamentally different physics (pressure/mechanical vs electromagnetic), "aircraft", if you can call them that, developed on such a world may very well have no shielding designed to stop radio waves (Faraday cage). Now, I'm completely leaving out that there are numerous other reasons why avionics are shielded from EM, since we use other wavelengths of EM for a million other applications that could otherwise affect avionics if they weren't shielded, but I think the point is conveyed.

 

[Bill Morris]

Another way a society might skip older technologies could be in the case of a large-scale natural disaster, where they might have been less than a century ahead of us but had only 25% of power-generating capacity from fusion but after the widespread distruction gone 100% fusion, eschewing fission, etc., and likewise opted for newer materials even though much of the devastated infrustructure had been built with older materials, and expertise in use of older tech could be all but lost.

But getting back to a previous point, if we were at some point in the next decade to detect an M-class planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, it might take years to develop and many more to reach the destination, but wouldn't we be inclined to send some kind of probe to check it out? If so, upon arrival it wouldn't be at such a high level of tech as we might expect of visiting aliens.

 

[sojourner]

^But that scenario when applied to an alien culture requires that
A) the alien world is close to ours.
B) they just happen to be at a similar technology level when they notice us.
and
C) they decide to send a probe at that time to investigate us.

Any one of those is unlikely. All 3 at the same time? not much chance at all.

 

[Deckerd]

I should have been clearer - I wasn't suggesting that we could offset growth with immigration. The bigger objective on my mind is habitat redundancy. We need to get enough people off this rock and onto a few others so that when TSHTF, our race doesn't end.

This is my feeling as well. Even if we manage to tap into an unlimited energy source, attain true world peace, solve all hunger and diseases, all within the next 50 years, we are still doomed. As long as our species is confined to our planet, we will likely be wiped out by a huge natural disaster or our society will simply stagnate and die out slowly.

I believe exploring and expanding into the universe has as much tangible benefits as psychological benefits. Our species needs to know that there is something out there waiting to be explored. Without it, we could simply wither and die out as a species. It might take a few centuries, but it will happen.

I believe the opposite. "Exploring the universe?" Are you serious? If that happens and it's a big if, it won't be happening for hundreds of years, proably thousands. I don't buy the cataclysmic event theory either. Just because it could happen doesn't mean it will and even if it did if there's one thing humans are good at, it's surviving. I don't believe humans "need" to know anything is out there. A few science fiction fans might need to know but everyone else just wants to live comfortably in peace. We're working towards that here, on the planet where we evolved, and that's a far better goal. If the worst came to the worst and Earth became unlivable, do you really think the vast majority of humans aren't going to die right here? If we have enough warning we could build off planet and colonise the other rocky planets but it would be a very, VERY poor second to what we have here. Science fiction writers understand this. Why do you think almost every film about colonised areas of our solar system, everyone is counting the days till they can get back here?

Edit: I realise I'm contradicting myself in the middle there. I'm good at that. Ask anyone.

 

[John O.]

^But that scenario when applied to an alien culture requires that
A) the alien world is close to ours.
B) they just happen to be at a similar technology level when they notice us.
and
C) they decide to send a probe at that time to investigate us.

Any one of those is unlikely. All 3 at the same time? not much chance at all.

I think he means that if we were to discover that AC has an M-class world, we could reasonably apply that whole "if we are a part of a pair of two neighboring systems both of which have habitable planets, then statistical probability holds that such an arrangement is probably not astronomically rare" argument that's used hand-wavingly so often to make loose suppositions about the commonality of various stellar phenomena and/or conditions based on what we observe in our own backyard (like the commonality of main sequence stars).

And considering AC is not "FTL is absolutely necessary" distance from our system, I agree with his claim that it would not require a super-advanced FTL-capable race to make the trip from Earth to AC. It's more of a Bajor-to-Cardassia sort of thing. So I think that what he's saying is, in other similar circumstances, alien races could encounter one another if they were from neighboring systems, say, under 10 light years apart. Plus, there's sort of the presumption about biological time scales. Supposing we, for whatever social or biological reason, at this stage in our technological development, actually had lifespans on the order of 500 years. In that case, the envelope for feasible travel distances gets reasonably wider, and those distances that you can consider traversing as a race without developing FTL, becomes further. So we have to keep in mind that just because we think by default that transit times of 20 years or so even for unmanned probes, are about the limit of reasonable, that may not be a universal truth for a race at our stage of development. There are a number of ways in which our biological/genetic engineering technology could have proceeded faster relative to other aspects of our technology; and thus it is so for alien cultures.

A high sublight probe could make it. In order to make it in, say, 20 years, you'd have to manage about .2c. Astronomically fast but... build an anti-matter rocket, ultra high efficiency VASIMIR engines, nice big slingshot around Jupiter or the Sun out of the solar plane... maybe. I'm sure the numbers are astronomically discouraging so I'm not gonna run them. But... if our priorities changed, I bet we could do it in 50 years. Launch in 50 years, I mean, another 20 for transit.

 

[sojourner]

No, I think he was using what we would do as an example of how we might end up with a visit from aliens with similar tech levels.

 

[Bill Morris]

No, I think he was using what we would do as an example of how we might end up with a visit from aliens with similar tech levels.

Right. That's the point I was making, and yes, when you factor the low odds of those three points together, it becomes highly unlikely, but it's quite common for some newsworthy event be the result of a combination of unlikely prerequisites. The ongoing nuclear situation in my neighborhood is an example, and max. tide at the time of the 9.0 quake was one of those odds-decreasing factors.

But I do think its likely that there are a few life-bearing worlds other than Earth within 100 light-years and even a reasonable chance that Mars had some life in the past.

Here's a list of NASA's top-10 nearby "star" suspects:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Planet_Finder#Top_10_target_stars

 

[Myasishchev]

Tau Ceti sucks.

 

[Wanderlust]

Tau Ceti sucks.

I smite you.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Another way a society might skip older technologies could be in the case of a large-scale natural disaster, where they might have been less than a century ahead of us but had only 25% of power-generating capacity from fusion but after the widespread distruction gone 100% fusion, eschewing fission, etc., and likewise opted for newer materials even though much of the devastated infrustructure had been built with older materials, and expertise in use of older tech could be all but lost.

But getting back to a previous point, if we were at some point in the next decade to detect an M-class planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, it might take years to develop and many more to reach the destination, but wouldn't we be inclined to send some kind of probe to check it out? If so, upon arrival it wouldn't be at such a high level of tech as we might expect of visiting aliens.

The basic assumption here is that technology progresses in linear phases, which isn't exactly justifiable based on our own history. There are branch points in our own technological development that take arbitrary turns one way or the other, determined by social trends or cultural dominance. The development of gunpowder, for example, is considered a major step in the development of weapons technology, but isn't a NECESSARY step, especially for a race that manages to combine conventional archery with sophisticated chemical weaponry. Such a race might completely overlook the entire concept of chemical explosives and devote its sciences to more advanced and exotic mechanical delivery systems for nerve agents and poisons. The discovery of electricity would be interpreted as a revolutionary new means of generating mechanical action for delivering those weapons: motorized slings and catapults, and eventually electromagnetic systems like solenoids and railguns. By extension they would bypass the need for chemical fuels and enter a "jet age" of sorts using MHD propulsion, with space craft being operated the same way.

A space craft designed by such a race would have little or mo protection against explosive weapons, nor would it possess any explosive compounds or propellants. It might, for instance, be built with a flexible outer shell designed to specifically block such penetrators without allowing them to breach the inner hull, but that layer might be easily stripped away by explosive reactions from, say, bombs or missiles or ordinary grenades.

In such a case, it makes no sense to describe them as being "years" ahead of us since they undoubtedly skipped entire classes of technological innovations that we passed ages ago. They could be considered more advanced in terms of some absolute basis. Like, say, portable storage energy density: even a race that never ever develops space travel or even the airplane could be said to be more advanced than us if they've developed a way to store a ten thousand kilowatt hours into a AA battery.

 

[Bill Morris]

Agreed. I often fret about areas of innovation that get neglected for lack of funding, aced out by those with greater short-term economic potential. But other factors could be timing of discoveries, wars (hot or cold), amount of water, and availability of certain natural resources. Another habitable planet may not have the fossil fuels we have or might have more of certain elements, like lutetium, which might not be as rare on some other M-class worlds. Maybe the early references on Trek to lithium and later dilithium were originally meant to be lutetium and a mistake turned into canon. Probably not. Just a random thought.