Anything about extraterrestrial life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA3HV_gfq80

This is the Boyd Bushman interview, very interesting. If you havn't seen it check it out.

On the original subject of life in our universe, I do believe its out there somewhere. But space is really, really big, and the speed limit of the universe as we know it is very slow in comparison. So it may be that we never find another intelligent race out there, unless we or another race find a shortcut like warp drive or artificial wormholes. I also think hearing radio from another race out there is unlikely, as over those great distances any artificial radio transmissions would be so thinly spread out as to be indistinguishable from the cosmic microwave background.

I also remember reading, that there could be life and technology in plain sight, but is so vastly advanced to us we simply can't see it. Much like comparing an ant to a human, an ant only knows and understands its own world, and cannot comprehend our world. And like a human and an ant, we're so advanced that we cannot communicated to any meaningful degree with the ant. The ant is simply not capable of understanding us.

On a more optimistic side, we've still got a lot of places to look in our own solar system. We've yet to see whats under the ice of Europa, and Titan might be home to some new, exotic forms of life with its liquid hydrocarbon environment. We still haven't even ruled out microbial life hiding under the soil of Mars. Though its a line from Jurassic Park, life does seem to find a way, and I would love for us to find life in the unlikely places in our solar system.

On the more recent topic of getting things into space, I do agree with the feeling that chemical rockets are stagnating. Yes they work well, but they're expensive, volatile, and limited. It takes us decades to build relatively small space stations because the feasible payload of a chemical rocket can only go so high. I've read about various types of nuclear rockets, and I think theres potential in a type that uses nuclear materials to super heat a working fluid into a dense plasma as a means of thrust. Apparently it would weigh a third of a chemical rocket and double or triple the payload. The downside was the massive complexity, and with the ban on nuclear testing the project got shelved. I think our best bet for getting stuff into space in the next century is with the advent of mass production of carbon nano tubes, we may be able to construct space elevators and use them to lift massive payloads and get more people into space. Space elevators could also lower the cost barrier for asteroid mining, and would be a good platform for launching vessels and bringing mined material to the surface.

There is hope for interstellar travel not through space, but by causing space to move with a craft riding the wave. That could make the universe a far smaller place very quickly.

Warp drive is possible fundamentally, but we're missing a lot of the puzzle pieces, and its quite possible those pieces may never be found, or simply not exist.

For warp to work, there needs to be a way to create a negative energy state in space-time. We don't even know if that itself is physically possible, and even if it is requires exotic forms of matter that may also not exist.

I remeber reading that dark matter could potentially cause this effect, but to the best of our knowledge dark matter doesnt interact with matter, so harnessesing it may be impossible.

And even with exotic matter that can negatively warp space-time, the estimates for the energy it would take to warp space-time have ranged from the energy-mass of a small asteroid to the energy-mass of an entire solar system. So we would likely have to harness matter-antimatter reactions to achieve the energy density required, though this would be a small hurdle compared to warping space-time.

Not trying to be pessimistic, just realistic. If we ever achieve warp, its likely a long way away. Though remember, experts once said it would take us a million years to achieve atmospheric flight, and then a few months later the first airplane flew. And 60 years after that, man set foot on the moon. Perhaps our ingenuity will continue to defy expectations.

Interesting thread. I personally believe it is illogical to think that we are alone. But what is interesting though is that there is far more to the universe than we know. Quantum mechanics is sure teaching us a few things. ET's powerful enough to be known, could be in higher planes of existence in comparison to our 4D species. Hence not being present to us. If there are other 4D civilisations on our level, then they will have the same technological limitations. Also some may be wise enough not to spread there whereabouts and draw attention to themselves.

As for the warp drive, I see no reason why in the future like Blarg said, we wouldn't be able to obtain this technology. But the more we learn, the more we might realise that there are better alternatives. We simply don't know yet.

Harnessing matter-antimatter reactions is becoming a realisable reality quicker than expected. Look into pair production within QED. The problem is though, that this technology is more likely to be used for antimatter bombs, before space propulsion is considered. Our budgets are highly biased on military, so it is only to be expected.

A rather bleak outlook, but in other words, we may not get that far.

I see the technological impossibilities as temporary, that we will find solutions, in time.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C Clarke

This couldn't be truer. The technology that we can only dream about may sometimes seem impossible, but only because we don't understand it yet.

Well, if every mortal must comment, then I'm next in line.

For those of us of Christian inclination, I am under the belief that God created all things, not just an Earth and Heavens, but an entire cosmic ecosystem that sustains itself. Evolution, formation, destruction, reconstitution, are all forms of natural processes created in the beginning. Therefore, I cannot say that Earth is the only place life evolved. The same elements are everywhere and I have no reason to believe that Earth is singularly unique.

I am also under the firm belief that life elsewhere is smart enough to only watch... and not give away their position or existence.

As far as viable technologies to get us up there, I am in favor of space tethers. Elevators are on the fringe of impossible, and I really wouldn't want that kind of thing falling if something went wrong. Tethers, on the other hand, pretty much stay in space and can be built today with available tech. As with everything else, when tragedy strikes it burns up in the atmosphere.

For the unfamiliar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tether

Another technology that may hold real progress is the SABRE engine. If this thing truly does what Reaction Engines says it should, then it may just fit the bill to replace the space shuttle. This would curb costs of launch, at least for the small- to medium-sized payloads. Is it feasible? Ask someone else. I don't know.

More reading: https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/sabre/

Beyond the above, remember: We can only directly observe 4% of matter in the universe. That's a lot of energy and matter leftover that we don't know about, and cannot apply yet technologically.

Jhop said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA3HV_gfq80

This is the Boyd Bushman interview, very interesting. If you havn't seen it check it out.

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Pretty sure I saw a post where he was proven to be a fraud. I think you can buy his alien at wal-mart. I suppose the big box store doll could have been made after to make it seem dis-info.

Secret Alien documents and photographs !, page 1

I was to assure you that I am all for finding the truth. I just don't believe this one.

Alaskan said:

There is hope for interstellar travel not through space, but by causing space to move with a craft riding the wave. That could make the universe a far smaller place very quickly.

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Why do we even have to "warp" space or travel through it. Based on the other threads about our universe being a virtual reality we should focus more on transmitting ourselves from one pixel location to another instantly.

Blarg King said:

...Though remember, experts once said it would take us a million years to achieve atmospheric flight, and then a few months later the first airplane flew. And 60 years after that, man set foot on the moon. Perhaps our ingenuity will continue to defy expectations.

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Here is some perspective though... It's been 47 years since we landed on the moon.
http://www.howlongagogo.com/date/1969/july/20

The rule set doesn't allow us to know how to transfer from one pixel to another, so we have to come up with figuring out a way to travel faster than the speed of light by moving space, instead of traveling through it... if we can find the energy source needed to do that, which is the big challenge. Maybe if we can tap into the zero space energy we could do that, in the space taken up by a single hydrogen atom, there is theorized to be more energy than all of the energy required to produce all of the matter within the observable universe... so, the energy is there, if we could just find a way to tap into it.

Blarg King said:

On the original subject of life in our universe, I do believe its out there somewhere. But space is really, really big, and the speed limit of the universe as we know it is very slow in comparison.

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That is the key thing to me as well. I would be -very- surprised if earth was the only planet in the universe that has intelligent life, and if so, very ineterested in why this would be the case.

The universe is vast, and we don't really know the limitation of what conditions can support life. But even if it is only those on earth specifically over the last few millenia, statistics dictacte that there must be numerous planets out there that support life.

That said, we can only look at how common life actually is, and what our chances of detecting alien life (or them detecting us) would be. Earth is going radiosilent very rapidly right now. We use RF technology all the time, but it's mostly short range and encrypted (like how or smartphones connect to towers and such).

The last VSB-TV, AM and FM broadcast transmitters are shutting down as we speak, and probably very few if any will remain operational in 20 years. This means we have been visible in the RF spectrum for about 100 years. It also means we would be completely invisible to a society only 100 lightyears away if they were lagging our technological progress by only a century, a minute amount of time compared to how long humans have been around.

If we detect it? Where did that silently hovering orb that flew low over my head and silently zip away at what must have been supersonic speeds come from?

Benm said:

That is the key thing to me as well. I would be -very- surprised if earth was the only planet in the universe that has intelligent life, and if so, very ineterested in why this would be the case.

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It could just be how much Sci-Fi stuff I watch, but I sometimes consider the possibility of Earth being the only planet in the universe with life on it, and it always gives me chills from the potential implications.

Scenario 1 is usually along the lines of, if theres no life anywhere else, what could possibly have happened around this plain old 3rd generation star to cause life? There is theoretically a limitless amount of stars and planets with an infinite number of configurations that could form. What is it about life that in 14 or so billion years and trillions of solar systems it only happened once, here?

I don't believe in any deities, but those odds are probably impossible to figure out.

The 2nd scenario is, that there was more life spread throughout the universe at one point, but it was wiped out. Which itself would raise a number of questions. What could wipe out every living thing from the universe? (except us). Why are we alive if all life elsewhere was destroyed? We're we around when it happened, and something allowed us to survive? Or was life wiped clean long before our planet even formed, in which case, why are we the only life to return?

Bah. Its not something I can put my finger on, but the idea of use truly being alone in this massive universe is haunting somehow.

Benm said:

The last VSB-TV, AM and FM broadcast transmitters are shutting down as we speak, and probably very few if any will remain operational in 20 years. This means we have been visible in the RF spectrum for about 100 years. It also means we would be completely invisible to a society only 100 lightyears away if they were lagging our technological progress by only a century, a minute amount of time compared to how long humans have been around.

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While its true out radiosphere extends out around 100 light years or so, you have to also take into consideration that at that distance any of our broadcasts would likely have been drowned out by the cosmic microwave background. Remember, with sources like radio the energy density drops exponentially with distance. So take 1 KW of radio energy, and stretch it into a sphere 100 light years across, and you can imagine how thinly that radio energy is spread.

I cant recall the source, but I remember reading somewhere that the manner most of our radio is transmitted and because of the exponential drop off, you would be lucky to hear any Earth transmissions beyond a light year from Earth, with the exception of communications directed towards probes and such, since those communications are broadcast into space with a much tighter "beam" and thus the energy density would remain higher, though you would have to be in the path of the transmission to receive it.

LOL, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, seeing is proof to me, but not for anyone else.

I just got done visiting the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico! Used for finding aliens at times!



-Alex

It's not that I don't believe in Alien civilizations, but I tend to think they're stuck in the same boat we are. They're simply unable to cross the vastness of space in a practical fashion. Unless wormholes/warp tech work by some miracle, it's really REALLY REALLY hard to even get to our nearest star. I've read it would take something like 80,000 years with our current fastest probe (new horizons).

It might be possible to use alternate propulsion systems and maybe get up to a fraction of light-speed, but then other problems arise. What happens if your space ark traveling at 1/4 light speed hits a little pebble or something out in interstellar space? At such speeds, even a pebble would cause an incredibly destructive impact. This problem mandates the development of some kind of shielding for the space ship. Sci-fi style force fields may or may not be possible, and the only proven-real option would be to simply put incredibly thick physical shields out in front of the ship to soak up any collisions.

Meaningful interstellar travel would require the development of new technologies which have yet to be proven real. The best we can do with current tech and the laws of physics would be to send enormous ark-ships which would take thousands of years to reach the destination. Hopefully the crew and passengers won't start going a little crazy after dozens of generations aboard the ship.

The only encouraging thing about all this is the fact that we still don't know everything about the laws of our universe. While conventional known physics suggest it's incredibly hard to do these things, there are still things that we know very little about. Dark matter/Dark energy come to mind. Perhaps there might be some way to harvest and utilize dark energy to travel through space.