[Goto]

Darkie, Ziggy is saying the same thing I said, which is that they almost certainly exist, but are far enough away we'll probably never know.

Speed-of-light transport is unlikely for anything, it's not just humans it kills. Space isn't quite empty, it has very small amounts of molecules floating around, mostly Hydrogen. Normally that doesn't mean a thing, but at the speed of light that's like being bombarded by millions of rays every second. It'll kill any life onboard, and pretty badly damage anything else. That's not mentioning the fact it would be very much impossible to dodge any small objects that got in the ships path, a meteorite the size of dust could tear a hole through the entire ship anyway. The highest practical speed would probably end up being about 1/5 of the speed of light, at which it would take somewhere in the vicinity of 50 years to reach the nearest star. Now that's just the nearest star, and that's assuming we had a good enough system of prepulsion, which at this stage we don't. Short of finding a way of bypassing the laws of physics themselves (such as the hyperdrives of science fiction, not all that likely to exist ever in the real world) we may be forever stuck within a few stars of Sol. And I pretty highly doubt we'd find any habitable planets there, never mind planets already containing life.

Jarik, I can see some problems with what you're saying too. While I'm not certain of the facts in that regard, I have a pretty strong feeling that life hasn't been evolving for 5 billion years, you seem to be mistaking that with the creation of the solar system. That was a pretty volatile time, things wouldn't have calmed down enough for life for a long time after that, we're talking billions of years later. Furthermore, with only our planet there for study we have no way of knowing HOW long other species might take to evolve into sentient life, if they did it all. Cockroaches have been around for over a hundred million years with no change whatsoever, once species find an evolutionary niche to fit into they tend to stay like that unless given a reason to evolve further. On the flip side maybe our planet took extraordinarily long and other planets evolved life much faster, possibly due to a higher concentration of radioactivity to form genetic faults and speed up the evolution process.

However the biggest flaw I can see assuming that other planets started sprouting life at the same time we did. Many stars have existed for far longer than our sun, plenty of stars quite similar to our sun have already existed for billions of years longer and burnt out, becoming white dwarves, it's even expected that there may be some that have progressed all the way to Black Dwarves. It could be the alien civilisations existed billions of years ago and have already died out, or that there are some on par with us (or more/less advanced). And even if the star was about the same age, life started evolving at about the same time, evolution took about the same time, it's only been in the last 50 years or so that we've managed to do much when it comes to space travel. We have no way of knowing how long it may take to progress further, but more importantly we have no way of knowing how quickly an alien civilisation might advance technologically, or even what direction their advancement would be in. There are theories that our relatively huge moon had a lot to do with the evolution of Humans into the dominant species of the planet and their fixation on the skies.

Basically there are far too many variables to be able to make any assumptions, and furthermore we'll probably never know anyway.

[CongressJon]

Hyper, I think you might have misunderstood. He was saying there was a 1 in 20k chance of there being a single planet sustaining life within our entire galaxy, not that 1 in 20k planets could sustain life. 

Same thing... I meant that, anyway.

[Spikeout]

other planets cud have different materials and substances that we dun no about that allow them to be more technologically advaced

or all they have is water and they swim in it jk

[Phorgot]

blergh all this evidence and junk.. they're REAL!

[skenasis]

im with phorgot but then its expected of me, isnt it, running this little corner of SeeD

[Kaezion]

I agree with Xalibur. Life doesn't necessarily have to be carbon-based, or oxygen-consuming - it doesn't have to be physically similar to what we view as life. Think about it; a gigantic gas cloud with an organized system inside its body that allows for its survival can be classified as life (this was from a Stargate episode I saw).

[skenasis]

I agree with Xalibur. Life doesn't necessarily have to be carbon-based, or oxygen-consuming - it doesn't have to be physically similar to what we view as life. Think about it; a gigantic gas cloud with an organized system inside its body that allows for its survival can be classified as life (this was from a Stargate episode I saw).

wasnt it stargate atlantis?

[Kaezion]

nah one of the old stargate episodes
atlantis is a bit too flashy for me. i dont watch stargate anymore though

Speed-of-light transport is unlikely for anything, it's not just humans it kills. Space isn't quite empty, it has very small amounts of molecules floating around, mostly Hydrogen. Normally that doesn't mean a thing, but at the speed of light that's like being bombarded by millions of rays every second. It'll kill any life onboard, and pretty badly damage anything else. That's not mentioning the fact it would be very much impossible to dodge any small objects that got in the ships path, a meteorite the size of dust could tear a hole through the entire ship anyway. The highest practical speed would probably end up being about 1/5 of the speed of light, at which it would take somewhere in the vicinity of 50 years to reach the nearest star. Now that's just the nearest star, and that's assuming we had a good enough system of prepulsion, which at this stage we don't. Short of finding a way of bypassing the laws of physics themselves (such as the hyperdrives of science fiction, not all that likely to exist ever in the real world) we may be forever stuck within a few stars of Sol. And I pretty highly doubt we'd find any habitable planets there, never mind planets already containing life.

you don't even have to go that far. as an object approaches the speed of light, its inertia increases. this means that as something goes faster and faster, it gets harder and harder to accelerate it further. as it turns out, an infinite amount of energy is required to accelerate an object of nonzero mass to light speed. that is why nothing can go faster than light in our universe, which brings us to the idea of traveling via OTHER universes. no other universes have been detected, and it is unlikely that this idea will be furthered. however, we do know that the universe is curved (like a "U"). so, what some people say is that, if there was a wormhole bridging the two sides of the U, then we wouldnt have to make the whole trip around the bend, therefore considerably shortening the distance we have to travel. that so far is the most plausible way of breaking the light speed barrier, except for the fact that wormholes are still largely disputed, although black holes are believed to cause them at their center; they are so dense that they rip the fabric of spacetime - no one knows what's on the other end, and no one wants to find out.

This post has been edited by Kaezion: 20 April 2005 - 09:15 PM

[skenasis]

you don't even have to go that far. as an object approaches the speed of light, its inertia increases. this means that as something goes faster and faster, it gets harder and harder to accelerate it further. as it turns out, an infinite amount of energy is required to accelerate an object of nonzero mass to light speed. that is why nothing can go faster than light in our universe, which brings us to the idea of traveling via OTHER universes. no other universes have been detected, and it is unlikely that this idea will be furthered. however, we do know that the universe is curved (like a "U"). so, what some people say is that, if there was a wormhole bridging the two sides of the U, then we wouldnt have to make the whole trip around the bend, therefore considerably shortening the distance we have to travel. that so far is the most plausible way of breaking the light speed barrier, except for the fact that wormholes are still largely disputed, although black holes are believed to cause them at their center; they are so dense that they rip the fabric of spacetime - no one knows what's on the other end, and no one wants to find out.

since when do black holes even have ends? arent they supposed to be limitless holes? and it wouldnt surprise me if they did cause wormholes, ripping holes in space, which is mostly just...well....space. (how does that work, anyway?)

travelling at the speed of light does seem pretty far off, but thats not to say it isnt possible. yes, theres always the problem of the acceleration, but you never know, there may be some form of technology that could kill that problem (oh uh, now IM sounding like a stargate episode ).

wow, this topics getting further and further off aliens, isnt it?

[Kaezion]

since when do black holes even have ends? arent they supposed to be limitless holes? and it wouldnt surprise me if they did cause wormholes, ripping holes in space, which is mostly just...well....space. (how does that work, anyway?)

travelling at the speed of light does seem pretty far off, but thats not to say it isnt possible. yes, theres always the problem of the acceleration, but you never know, there may be some form of technology that could kill that problem (oh uh, now IM sounding like a stargate episode ).

if you're interested in this sort of stuff, i recommend The Elegant Universe by author Brian Greene. it's a book about theoretical physics, dealing with some very interesting stuff, and it's explained very well, in terms easy to understand.
let me attempt to briefly explain black holes. a black hole is a very dense clump of matter; it has a mass (not volume) of at least three of our Suns (not sure exactly, but pretty sure it's somewhere along that line) crunched up into an infinitely small point (think of it this way: imagine the smallest point you can imagine - smaller than the tiniest pencil dot you can make - then imagine that point containing the mass of three Suns). that produces IMMENSE gravity - to the point where not even light can escape. This imaginary boundary is called the event horizon: it's the point of no return, where if you're in it, you're not coming back out, ever, even if you moved at the speed of light. anyways, this is why its called a BLACK hole - no light comes from it, and therefore it is theoretically invisible. however, the particles the black hole "sucks" in, like gas or dust particles, accelerate very fast, and give off x-rays and such, which allow us to detect the presense of black holes (there are other clues to their presence). the reason why people think that a black hole should cause a rip in the fabric of spacetime, is because all mass causes a curve in the fabric. this is why gravity exists. gravity is the warping of spacetime. at a black hole, the center is SO dense (because density is mass per volume; and there is SO much mass in an INFINITELY tiny volume) that it doesnt curve spacetime, it pierces it (or so we believe). think of a sheet made out of rubber. imagine a ball weighing about a pound sits on it: it will curve slightly. now imagine a speck of dust weighing about 5 trillion tons sitting on it: it will not be "sitting" for long. it's not a perfect analogy, but you get my point. so anyways, black holes warp spacetime so severely, it's said that time actually stops at its center (with time progressively slowing as you go toward the center). this means that if i could somehow reside at the surface of a black hole, what would seem like a normal 24 hour day to me could be 10000 years for anyone on earth. black holes are not simply "holes"; they're very very very very tiny points of very very very very dense matter, warping the fabric of spacetime to the point that it rips.

and concerning the speed of light; it is not possible, at least not in our universe. the laws of our universe make it impossible for ANY object of nonzero mass (that's you, and basically every other thing in the universe except for photons and some other particles) to travel at the speed of light. as you approach the speed of light, more and more energy is required to accelerate you. basically, to travel at the speed of light, you need an infinite amount of energy, which obviously is not possible. the concept behind beyond-light-speed travel is shortening the distance between the two points you want to travel between via a wormhole or another universe, not increasing your speed.

[Nuu™™]

Okay, lets just say that aliens COULD come to Earth, lets say they have the technology to travel faster than the speed of light, or use balck holes (there is a theory that says black holes link up with white holes, so you can go in a black hole and come out a white one) to get to Earth. Why would they want to? Like, we have nothing to teach them, if they had good enough technology to move through space-time efficiently, they would class humans as unintelligent life.

But what exactly is life? Doesn't it mean it is living, it is born, it feeds, it creates waste products, reproduces, and dies? I will get to the point:

Stars. Stars are 'born' from nebulae, they 'feed' on hydrogen and helium, they 'create' waste products i.e other elements, they die in supernovae and red giants, and they then become new stars/nebulae. So, wouldn't stars be life? I know it is a bit far-fetched...

[Pendragon205]

of course they exist. how couldn't they? how do you think we discovered space travel? from the rumors of aliens! so they have to exist!

[Kaezion]

nuu, i would be inclined to disagree with you simply because it is such a far-fetched idea, but i have to admit, an episode of Stargate opened my mind to that possibility. in that episode, there was a large gas cloud in space - a sort of mini-nebula? anyways, what Carter (a character in that show) discovered was that, the cloud was actually a living being - it reacted to her ship's presence, and attacked it as if it were an invader (using the corrosive properties of the gas). so a gas cloud as life... yes, it's definitely far-fetched, but definitely possible. stars? you could think of them as life too, i guess. i know it sounds cliche, but it depends on what you define as life.

[Nuu™™]

nuu, i would be inclined to disagree with you simply because it is such a far-fetched idea, but i have to admit, an episode of Stargate opened my mind to that possibility. in that episode, there was a large gas cloud in space - a sort of mini-nebula? anyways, what Carter (a character in that show) discovered was that, the cloud was actually a living being - it reacted to her ship's presence, and attacked it as if it were an invader (using the corrosive properties of the gas). so a gas cloud as life... yes, it's definitely far-fetched, but definitely possible. stars? you could think of them as life too, i guess. i know it sounds cliche, but it depends on what you define as life.

Stars I would say are more so (technically they are superheated and condensed gas clouds anyway) because they are energetic, like life. Anyway, here is the wikipedia definition of life:

In biology, a lifeform has traditionally been considered to be a member of a population whose members can exhibit all the following phenomena at least once during their existence:

  1. Growth
  2. Metabolism, consuming, transforming and storing energy/mass; growing by absorbing and reorganizing mass; excreting waste
  3. Motion, either moving itself, or having internal motion
  4. Reproduction, the ability to create entities that are similar to, yet seperate from, itself
  5. Response to stimuli - the ability to measure properties of its surrounding environment, and act upon certain conditions.

Hmm, lets mark the Star Theory:

1. Possibly (red giants? Black holes? etc.)
2. Yes (nuclear fusion)
3. Possibly (orbit? nuclear fusion?)
4. Yes (nebulae)
5. No (well, not that we know of)

So that is 2-4/5. Okay, I suppose.

Also,

Have I said something about the Gaia Theory? Well anyway, it is named after the Greek god of the Earth (my theory would be called the Helios Theory) and it is in favour of the Earth being living. I am going to do the WikiLife test on it too (because I can):

1. No
2. Possibly( numerous processes e.g atmosphere, lifeforms, volcanoes)
3. Yes (volcanoes, orbit even?)
4. No
5. Yes (global warming)

2-3/5 (woohoo! Helios beat Gaia!) Well, what do you think? Do you think 5/5 qualifies? Or 4/5?

[Zziggywolf5]

You know, if aliens did come to Earth and contacted us directly, people would shoot them with the strongest thing we could.