Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Nemesis6 on November 13, 2010, 10:54:21 pm
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCB35lTiqT4
In 1977 NASA launched two Voyager spacecraft. The probes journeyed to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune before travelling out into interstellar space.
In the eventuality that intelligent Extraterrestrial or future Humans would find the probes and be curious as to their origin, NASA added two Golden Records to the spacecraft which contained images, sounds, music and greetings from Earth.
This video shows some of the images that were included and the greetings in fifty-five languages: Akkadian (akkadītum), Amoy (廈門話), Arabic (العربية), Aramaic (ܐܪܡܝܐ), Armenian (Հայերեն), Bengali (বাংলা), Burmese (한국어), Cantonese (粵語), Czech (čeština), Dutch (nederlands), French (Français), German (Deutsch), Greek (Ελληνικά), Gujarati (ગુજરાતી), Hebrew (עברית), Hindi (हिन्दी), Hittite (𒉈𒅆𒇷), Hungarian (magyar), Ila, Indonesian (Indonesia), Italian (Italiano), Japanese (日本語), Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), Kechua (Qhichwa simi), Korean (조선말), Latin (Latina), Luganda (Ganda), Mandarin (官話), Marathi (मराठी), Nepali (नेपाली), Nguni, Nyanja (Chicheŵa), Oriya (ଓଡ଼ିଆ), Persian (فارسی), Polish (polski), English, Portuguese (Português), Punjabi (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ), Rajasthani (राजस्थानी), Romanian (Română), Russian (Русский), Serbian (српски), Sinhalese (සිංහල), Sotho (Sesotho), Spanish (Español), Sumerian (eme-ĝir), Swedish (svenska), Telugu (తెలుగు), Thai (ไทย), Turkish (Türkçe), Ukrainian (українська), Urdu (اُردو), Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt), Welsh (Cymraeg), Wu (吴语), and a message from Kurt Waldheim in English.
The thought of someone, or something, somewhere, some day getting their hands, tentacles, or mind-rays on this and comprehending at least some of it, even if it's just the basic message -- that they're not alone --, well, that thought just amazes me to no end.
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Two decades later, a Lucifer shows up.
I'm curious as to the reasoning behind putting a ton of greetings in different languages in the same video. Isn't that extremely confusing? For starters, whoever finds it is likely to assume that it's one language, meant to convey something far more complex than "Sup, how you doin'?" based on its length.
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Remember ancient Egyptian was decoded because of the Rosetta Stone. Sending in more then one language makes it more likely that one will be able to be decoded.
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Except, the Rosetta Stone had Greek on it as a reference language.
While there wasn't really an alternative, I also think it kind of a stretch to put so much audio information on what are basically vinyls. I mean, if you've never seen anything like it before, how are you supposed to figure out that the grooves can be turned into sound?
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Clearly, this is the first test in determining if whoever finds the thing is smart enough to make contact with us.
:lol:
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Yes ancient Greek which had already been deciphered. This proves that while dozens of other languages have been translated without a the key we would still be wondering what the symbols meant.
Also it's always possible that the aliens introduced one or more of the languages. Far fetched maybe. Enough drawings of strange objects in the sky before language? Yep.
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Clearly, this is the first test in determining if whoever finds the thing is smart enough to make contact with us.
:lol:
You mean dumb enough to make contact with us. :P
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Two classic stories about this:
1: Voyaqer also recorded Earths position using relative positions to pulsars, their periods listed by the decay rate of a certain element.
2: It was suggested that some Beethoven was included on the Record, but Carl Sagan said it would just be showing off ;)
There was actually some pretty clever things left on board, pity really that the odds are we will overtake it before it leaves the Sun's gravity influence.
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I especially enjoy that "Johnny B. Goode" is one of the songs on the record. :D
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Except, the Rosetta Stone had Greek on it as a reference language.
While there wasn't really an alternative, I also think it kind of a stretch to put so much audio information on what are basically vinyls. I mean, if you've never seen anything like it before, how are you supposed to figure out that the grooves can be turned into sound?
there is no way in HELL a species that has achieved space flight and is capable of retrieving the probe hasn't already figured out that grooves can record sound.
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That statement aside, there are pretty pictographs on the thing showing how to operate the record. :p
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Except, the Rosetta Stone had Greek on it as a reference language.
While there wasn't really an alternative, I also think it kind of a stretch to put so much audio information on what are basically vinyls. I mean, if you've never seen anything like it before, how are you supposed to figure out that the grooves can be turned into sound?
there is no way in HELL a species that has achieved space flight and is capable of retrieving the probe hasn't already figured out that grooves can record sound.
What if said species lives in a vacuum?
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Since an image speaks so well, here's Voyager's golden record.
(http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/7381/voyagerrecords.jpg)
(http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/2980/vgrcover.jpg)
What if said species lives in a vacuum?
Well... at least they can melt the gold down and make some space bling.
On another note, if the aliens use the map to find us, I wonder if they'll ask if we blew up the 9th planet. :lol:
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Regarding the Rosetta stone stuff, the rosetta stone has (or at least it's assumed to have) the same text in three different languages.
The voyager audio has 55 different languages saying 55 completely different things, everything from "Good day." to "Hello from the children of planet Earth." to "Peace and happiness to all."
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The chances of this being intercepted by an intelligent alien race in the next 1,000 or even 10,000 years are slim at best anyway :)
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Heh... The Sounds of Earth.
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Tried to put myself in the shoes of an alien being watching this (only aliens with feet, all others I fail to conceptualize mentally)... got dizzy.
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I think we would have been better off explaining our basic math system and perhaps then a basic language system. Show what the symbols we use mean and then use them--so that they can learn what we do (and how we do it). After explaining basic math, explain basic chemistry by symbolism and perhaps a periodic table of elements. Make and show patterns to help. In my attachment, I showed the numbers using internal angles as well as dots to count. Then toss in a demo about making larger numbers by showing increasing numbers and ways to manipulate numbers (P.E.M.D.A.S.). We could even give them a time-scale by representing the speed of light in seconds, minutes, hours, & days. If they have anything like modern math, then the entire thing should be easy to understand. Finally, a sample of matter (ie: Carbon-14) could work as a rough clock by showing decay & using that as a clock.
Mounting 7 of these plates each probe should hopefully also decrease the chance that part of all of it is illegible.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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you should also include 10-20 and 100
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you should also include 10-20 and 100
I just sketched that up. I didn't want to spend longer on higher numbers. :P I'd personally think that understanding the meaning is more important than being able to say it...
Then show...
5 + 5 = 10
::. + ::. = :::::
10 + 10 = 20
::::: + ::::: = ::::: :::::
5 + 10 + 20 = 35
::. + ::::: + ::::: ::::: = ::::: ::::: ::::: ::.
35 - 10 = 25
25 - 20 = 5
5 - 20 = -15
6 x 3 = 18
(6+6+6 v"or" 3+3+3+3+3+3)
10 x 10 = 100
18 x 20 x 35 = 630
10 x 100 = 1 000
20 x 100 = 2 000
...
10 000
100 000
1 000 000
...
1 ÷ 10 = 0.1
0.1 x 1 = 0.1
0.1 x 10 = 1
0.1 ÷ 100 = 0.001
0.001 + 25 = 25.001
...
00 = 1
01 = 0
02 = 0
10 = 1
11 = 1
12 = 1
20 = 1
31 = 3
-42 = 16
-53 = -125
64 = 1 296
75 = 16 807
-9990 = 1
...
H (+1) -1
C (+6) -2, -4
Ne (+10) -2, -8
Au (+79) -2, -18, -32, -18, -1
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the only think I wouldn't have done i put our adress on it. You never know wheter or not our neighbours are hippies or die-hard EVE-griefers.
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the only think I wouldn't have done i put our adress on it. You never know wheter or not our neighbours are hippies or die-hard EVE-griefers.
By the time they could get their grimy hands/tentacles/paws/whatever on it, I'm sure we'll either be long gone or long since detected.
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Two decades later, a Lucifer shows up
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans,"
~Stephen Hawking
I seem to agree with that.
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well, that depends on if we have something they want or not. there have been plenty of primitive cultures that have survived fairly well due to no one giving a **** about them.
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I doubt Earth has got anything in abundance that could not be gained in larger quantities elsewhere and without having to deal with any inhabitants. Chances are, unless there is a massive seperation in the War-making technologies involved, it'd be cheaper to go mine an uninhabited moon than overpower an indigenous population.
Edit: Oh, and there's any number of biological reasons why a nice, sterile moon would be prefereable, as War of the Worlds quite pointedly explained ;)
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I do wonder about the possible desire/need for acquiring water, and the fact that earth has lots of it. :P
Then again, hmm, Europa. *shrug*
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there is probably a massive separation in the War-making technologies between us and anyone capable of crossing interstellar space to get to us. and why settle for Europa when you can have earth too with little effort. it all boils down to how valuable water is to them, hopefully for our sake it's worthless.
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If they want water Europa would be easier to get it from.
Doesn't even matter if the difference in war-making technologies is astronomical, there's still nothing to be made war against on Europa.
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ok, lets say you are walking along and you see a buck fifty laying on the ground, $1 bill and 50 cents, but the 50 is sitting halfway in a ant hill. if you grab the 50 cent the ants might be able to bite your finger for the few seconds they are touching their hill, causing some minor pain, maybe enough to notice that an ant is present on your finger, but it would likely not hurt enough for you to not grab the two quarters.
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Depends on what kind of ant it is. Have you ever been bitten by a fire ant? **** that, I'd leave the 50 cents in a heartbeat.
EDIT: Fixed punctuation.
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If what they want is to convert us to their bizarre space religion, they're going to head right for the population.
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Or they could just use a mask of religion to get us to willingly give them whatever resources they want.
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If, however, that 50cents was sticking out of a pile of Anthrax, which is pretty much what any ecosystem would effectively be to an outsider, would you be so inclined to go get it then? Also, I should state, it's not actually required that a space-borne technology has incredibly advanced weapons, certainly, our own Space program was created from our weapons programs, but it's possible to have faster than light travel and only, say hand-held projectile weapons not unlike guns.
The thing is about Space is that there is so much of it, theres even a planet that is rumoured to have a solid diamond core, the level of protection required against hard vacuum is the same wherever you are, but you'd have to adapt to the ecosystem of any inhabited planet you found, which would be a new challenge every time, on top of dealing with the costs of War making, it would simply be cheaper and safer to go to uninhabited planets. To be honest, resources like water are some of the most abundant in the Universe, as long as you know how to melt ice, so going to the trouble of an invasion is more the realm of 'V' than anything else ;)
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The idea that an advanced alien civilization would invade us for resources is pretty ridiculous, and clearly the result of years of bad sci fi.
First of all, strictly speaking about raw elements here, we got nothing you can't find a lot more of elsewhere - and without having to resort to mass genocide of a sentient race to get it. All elements originate from star's fusion ovens - spread across the universe by them going nova. Doubt we got anything really special or unique to just this planet.
You lot were mentioning water - hell just in this system there's other places you can go where you can easily get as much as you like. Saturn's rings are largely composed of ice asteroids. We're talking metric tons per piece here. In addition, there's Europa, Mars, and who knows how many small planetoids/KBOs that might have it. Pretty sure you can get whatever you need, in large quantities, elsewhere. Invading a one in a million (billion?) small planet that happens to be home to a sentient race you need to wipe out first just to get small amounts of resources you can get elsewhere wouldn't be practical.
And the very idea such a race advanced enough to even reach us is short on water or has to resort to interstellar wars to get their resources is ridiculous, anyone seriously considering this is failing to grasp just how big our little corner of the galaxy is, let alone the whole galaxy/universe.
Besides, a race that advanced may just be able to reorganize matter into whatever forms they need. At any rate, take bad sci fi for what it is - good passing entertainment. It has no place in any serious discussion on what relations with a real alien race would be like.
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hence me dobting they will want anything we have. I was just saying if we did we'd be ****ed, otherwise we won't be bothered.
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What if they're similar to us biologically, they need a colony here, and Earth is just perfect?
Or what if they're some interstellar rednecks and they just declared open season in Sol?
There's plenty of more or less absurd reason why to invade a planet, and due to the fact there will be more or less absurd species living out there, some might want to find an exotic vacation place in an unpolluted world, or perhaps have a far away base for doing some dangerous experiments, keeping prisoners, or having a continent as a trade hub or repair bay...
We definitely can't assume there's no reason for invading Earth.
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Or what if they're some interstellar rednecks and they just declared open season in Sol?
We'd just sic our own rednecks on 'em. Tell them the alien critters are the ones who abducted Elvis. :p
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We definitely can't assume there's no reason for invading Earth.
Yes, we can. Why? Because it makes absolutely no difference what we assume in the long run. If there is an alien race that a) knows about us, b) wants our planet, and c) has the tech to reach us, there's really not much we can do. See, the dumbest thing they could do is actually invade with ground troops because that does give us a fighting chance. You can kill a soldier armed with state of the art weapons with a bow and arrow, if you get a chance. Up there, in space, they have the advantage. As Mr. Plinkett would say, I very much doubt the ISS would put up much of a fight. They can control the orbit any time they choose to. And from there they can.. *drums, fanfares..* bomb us to oblivion, throw a big enough rock on us, release some sort of nano-engineered plague.. possibilities are endless.
In the end, discussing the hows and whys of an invasion on the part of some imaginary alien threat is pretty pointless.
I still stand by my earlier arguments that this would be pretty pointless on their part. So I'm going to keep assuming that even if they exist they got no reason to invade us if it's all the same to you - it really makes no difference to the security of this planet :)
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You folks are totally missing the real threat with Voyager.
(http://images.wikia.com/memoryalpha/en/images/a/a7/Vger_cloud.jpg)
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We definitely can't assume there's no reason for invading Earth.
Yes, we can. Why? Because it makes absolutely no difference what we assume in the long run. If there is an alien race that a) knows about us, b) wants our planet, and c) has the tech to reach us, there's really not much we can do. See, the dumbest thing they could do is actually invade with ground troops because that does give us a fighting chance. You can kill a soldier armed with state of the art weapons with a bow and arrow, if you get a chance. Up there, in space, they have the advantage. As Mr. Plinkett would say, I very much doubt the ISS would put up much of a fight. They can control the orbit any time they choose to. And from there they can.. *drums, fanfares..* bomb us to oblivion, throw a big enough rock on us, release some sort of nano-engineered plague.. possibilities are endless.
In the end, discussing the hows and whys of an invasion on the part of some imaginary alien threat is pretty pointless.
I still stand by my earlier arguments that this would be pretty pointless on their part. So I'm going to keep assuming that even if they exist they got no reason to invade us if it's all the same to you - it really makes no difference to the security of this planet :)
Matter is abundant in the universe. If they have the resources to extract our water, they have the resources to find other, easier, and perhaps more abundant sources. The unique portion of this planet is life. So long as we don't inhabit 10n of planets and claim them as our exclusive domain, then we don't even begin to make an impact on the available resources. I'll say right now that we're probably the only intelligent & advanced life in at least 20 lightyears. Considering that the galaxy is 100,000 ly wide by 10,000 ly thick, our little 20ly bubble containing 133+ stars (http://"http://www.solstation.com/stars/s20ly.htm") is nothing.
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I am suddenly reminded of The Screwfly Solution (http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution").
There are too many ways invading aliens could **** us over without even setting foot on our planet.
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They forgot to add "All your base are belong to us" on the disks.
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we should have put a message on there demanding they surrender to the might of the terran empire
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we should have put a message on there demanding they surrender to the might of the terran empire
By the time you find this device, it's already too late
:lol:
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Matter is abundant in the universe. If they have the resources to extract our water, they have the resources to find other, easier, and perhaps more abundant sources. The unique portion of this planet is life. So long as we don't inhabit 10n of planets and claim them as our exclusive domain, then we don't even begin to make an impact on the available resources. I'll say right now that we're probably the only intelligent & advanced life in at least 20 lightyears. Considering that the galaxy is 100,000 ly wide by 10,000 ly thick, our little 20ly bubble containing 133+ stars (http://"http://www.solstation.com/stars/s20ly.htm") is nothing.
If you take a bit better look at the thread you're posting in, you might actually notice that's exactly what I was saying in a previous post.
BengalTiger still thought we can't assume we won't ever become a target of an alien invasion, and I simply listed a few reasons why that line of thinking is utterly irrelevant in the long run. I still think invading us for any sort of resources would be totally ridiculous and that the whole idea of aliens wanting to invade us is totally implausible. My argument was, plausibility of an invasion aside, even if they did want to invade us, just the fact they can reach us more than likely means the technological advantage on their part would make us unable to do anything about it, making the whole point moot.
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There is the possibility that any aliens would be as xenophobic as we are.
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In which case, it's a really, really, really big universe.
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What if they're similar to us biologically, they need a colony here, and Earth is just perfect?
Or what if they're some interstellar rednecks and they just declared open season in Sol?
There's plenty of more or less absurd reason why to invade a planet, and due to the fact there will be more or less absurd species living out there, some might want to find an exotic vacation place in an unpolluted world, or perhaps have a far away base for doing some dangerous experiments, keeping prisoners, or having a continent as a trade hub or repair bay...
We definitely can't assume there's no reason for invading Earth.
Biological similarity would increase the risk, not decrease it, because no matter how similar they are, all our virii and little diseases will be new to them, it would actually make them more susceptible, not less. Influenza kills millions of humans a year and we've grown up with it, imagine the impact on a society that is compatible but has had no time to develop immunities.
Edit : Now, it could be argued that an advanced race could create innoculations etc, but with each assumption we make about this hypothetical race, advanced weapons tech, biological compatability, medical and biological tech at an almost magical level etc, we are moving the bandwidth of possible threats into a smaller and smaller bracket, the odds of such a race is not impossible, but every time we add a characteristic, we reduce the chances of it existing and, indeed, the reasons to bother to invade us in the first place.
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more likely the virus would find them as suitable hosts as glass. bacteria might be a problem if they are very (talking unrealistically here) similar biochemically, but there is no way a earth virus would have any idea what to do with an alien cell. virii are extremely niche evolved for their hosts, requiring specific mitochondrial structures to be built in particular ways (ect). it would be like trying to run a modern 64bit win32 application on a Setun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun).
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True, but virii also adapt very quickly, the more similar biologically, the more chance of a species jump. Incompatability would be better, though there would obviously be other aspects that would apply, like our corrosive atmosphere etc, but that incompatability would also vastly reduce the benefits of invading.
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even in the astronomically unlikely event that aliens have biomolecules identifiable as sugars and amino acids, I can pretty much guaranty their equivalent to DNA will have absolutely nothing in common with ours. a virus can adapt very quickly, but I have not seen any attempts by them them to adapt to infect feldspar. if there is absolutely nothing for it to start with it will not 'try' to adapt. for instance virus do jump species periodically, but this would be things like jumping from humans to dogs, at most you will get mammals to birds, when was the last time you heard of a virus jumping from jellyfish to reptile, or from fish to person, in these situations the animals in question have about 60% of their DNA the same, an alien will most likely not even use DNA, how the hell is a virus supposed to adapt to that? that is a bigger jump than not needing a host at all.
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Probably a lot more than 60% the same.
At the same time...I'm not completely ready to write off cross-species pathology. Convergent evolution may produce biochemical congruities, and any pathogen that works on a congruent locus may be able to cross.
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except viruses work by inserting themselves into a DNA strand and having the host machinery do the work of replicating them, if the host machinery doesn't even use DNA how is a virus supposed to deal with that?
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Sorry if I was unclear.
At the same time...I'm not completely ready to write off cross-species pathology. Convergent evolution may produce biochemical congruities, and any pathogen that works on a congruent locus may be able to cross.
DNA is extraordinarily effective as an information store and a computational medium. I meant to imply that convergent evolution may produce it or a storage molecule that shares at least some processes.
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I'm not saying it isn't but I think its unrealistic to assume that it is the only good solution possible, and starting from scratch it would be the only one to arise.
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On the one hand, I intuitively agree with you. On the other hand, with amino acids similar to those that form the building blocks of life on Earth popping up in comets and distant nebulae, it may be that the fundamental ingredients are universal and that the structures we see are the optimum result.
I'm just trying to consider all possibilities here.
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It depends if we are talking about similar or dissimilar creatures, one could hardly describe Feldspar as something that could catch a disease, this is true, but we are dealing with two dissimilar situations here, situation A is similar life forms that can exist in our environment without modification or with very limited protection, the other is an entire different form of life that requires extensive adaptation to exist in an Earth-like environment.
With similarity there are a number of questions that simply cannot be answered, such as 'how similar?', can they injest our food? Can they metabolise water? If the answer is yes, then I would have thought there would be a strong possibility they would be just as susceptible as humans to the piggy-back bacteria involved in those activities.
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the only thing the 'similar' about the creatures you describe there is they have a tolerance for oxygen and have a water based biochemistry. if they can eat our food then it would imply the reverse would be possible, so they would have to worry about bacteria, but my main contention was viruses.
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On the one hand, I intuitively agree with you. On the other hand, with amino acids similar to those that form the building blocks of life on Earth popping up in comets and distant nebulae, it may be that the fundamental ingredients are universal and that the structures we see are the optimum result.
Very, very doubtful. There's no particular reason that DNA has to be based on that particular set of nucleotides and sugars. Given the number of similar chemicals it's probably simple chance that we've ended up with this particular set rather than any other equally good set. And that's making the assumption that something like RNA is needed as a precursory replicator. If it isn't then it becomes even more doubtful.
Then you have to consider how the **** they're getting to the alien's DNA in the first place. This isn't a matter as simple as just ambling through the cell wall you know. :p Virii have spent millions of years getting very good at passing through cell walls. With an alien all that adaptation would be useless.
Bacteria are a completely different issue cause they can survive and reproduce quite well outside of the body but virii are parasites. I have a hard time believing that they could infect an alien species. They'd have to be far too similar.
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On the one hand, I intuitively agree with you. On the other hand, with amino acids similar to those that form the building blocks of life on Earth popping up in comets and distant nebulae, it may be that the fundamental ingredients are universal and that the structures we see are the optimum result.
Very, very doubtful. There's no particular reason that DNA has to be based on that particular set of nucleotides and sugars. Given the number of similar chemicals it's probably simple chance that we've ended up with this particular set rather than any other equally good set. And that's making the assumption that something like RNA is needed as a precursory replicator. If it isn't then it becomes even more doubtful.
Then you have to consider how the **** they're getting to the alien's DNA in the first place. This isn't a matter as simple as just ambling through the cell wall you know. :p Virii have spent millions of years getting very good at passing through cell walls. With an alien all that adaptation would be useless.
Thanks, but I'm fluent in the biological sciences and I think the fundamental point, that congruent loci could conceivably produce congruent vulnerabilities, may stand. This isn't a strong stand for the position, just an acknowledgment that it might occur, particularly if the hazy bits of your argument (probably; uncited 'no particular reason'; chances are) don't go the way we both think is more probable.
All life on Earth is derived from common stock and the level of genetic similarity is staggering, with humans in particular being quite homologous. Obviously something derived from a different root might differ enormously. But the possibility of strong convergence exists.
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not at the genetic level.
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not at the genetic level.
Cite this comment to make it less wrong. In general saying 'the possibility does not exist' in a flat open universe is an extremely poor idea as all non-zero probability events will recur an infinite number of times across the Hubble volumes.
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"strong convergence"
that was the phrase you used and the phrase against which I made that post, Strong Convergence. you did not say random chance that it could stumble upon it, but rather you said that there might be strong convergence, implying that given the right conditions things could go the same way and that it would come out the same way. no, the amount of time for a second earth in a second solar system around a second sun all molecularly identical to our own to arise would take longer than the universe will exist and the window of time upon which the concentration of elements exists to allow it may have already passed even given an identical starting point the mere randomness of quantum interactions would still lead the possibilities of what could happen on such a world to be vast to the point of unfathomably unlikely to happen in any one arrangement. the possibility of alien life being genetically compatible in any sense of the word with life on earth is about as likely as a room temperature block of plaster suddenly having all of the heat in it concentrated on the top of it and exploding, now, yes this is possible, but the frequency of it happening would make the combined life expectancy of every proton, neutron and electron in the universe summed up seem infantilecly short. so in any practical sense of the word, no, it's not possible.
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"strong convergence"
that was the phrase you used and the phrase against which I made that post, Strong Convergence. you did not say random chance that it could stumble upon it, but rather you said that there might be strong convergence, implying that given the right conditions things could go the same way and that it would come out the same way. no, the amount of time for a second earth in a second solar system around a second sun all molecularly identical to our own to arise would take longer than the universe will exist
While these conditions are unnecessary and a misinterpretation of the term strong convergence, your objection is also hilariously wrong; if current cosmological data suggesting a flat, open, infinite universe is correct, an infinite number of precisely identical parallel earths in identical skies exist at this very moment, right down to us having this exact conversation.
and the window of time upon which the concentration of elements exists to allow it may have already passed even given an identical starting point the mere randomness of quantum interactions would still lead the possibilities of what could happen on such a world to be vast to the point of unfathomably unlikely to happen in any one arrangement. the possibility of alien life being genetically compatible in any sense of the word with life on earth is about as likely as a room temperature block of plaster suddenly having all of the heat in it concentrated on the top of it and exploding
Cite. Based on unfounded assumptions. Improbable, I've already agreed many times, but we don't yet know how improbable, especially because current discoveries suggest life is often carried between worlds (to the point where hypothesized life on Mars may be closely related to life on Earth, and said life may in turn originate from compounds that arrived on comets.)
Your response seems kneejerk and ill-founded in current scientific thought, both in terms of your misunderstanding of the enormously parallel scope of the universe across Hubble volumes and in terms of current thought re: shared ancestry biogenesis across worlds and maybe even stars.
And again I've said more than once now that I consider it very unlikely. Why you would possibly want to spend time arguing 'very unlikely' into 'even more very unlikely' escapes me.
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because your response had an air of contrariety, if you agree don't argue.
also as far as I am aware, a literally spacial infinite universe is not consistent with current scientific theories of the universe and it's development.
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also as far as I am aware, a literally spacial infinite universe is not consistent with current scientific theories of the universe and it's development.
Your awareness is incorrect. There are three possible topologies for the universe, flat, closed, and saddle-shaped. Current data points to the flat open infinite model.
EDIT - source: http://books.google.com/books?id=KhTJZG-U3ssC&pg=PA161
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Uh, no.
Surprisingly (I guess), because the Big Bang produced elements that only interact in very specific ways with each other, certain organic structures are make-or-break for life to exist. For one, if it's not carbon based, it won't work. Silicon theoretically could, but it's not abundant enough, and its size is all wrong for it to work that nicely with the other life elements. I think it's less likely that we don't share at least a couple homologous structures or pathways (on a molecular level, of course. Who knows what happens when we get multi-cellular). It's either life doesn't exist anywhere else, or it does and has a pretty high chance that its biochemistry will resemble what we see on Earth.
On a slightly related topic, I think Mass Effect had an interesting take on this, using dextro-DNA turians as part of its lore. It was pretty much a coin flip for life on earth that our molecules are D or L conformation, so it's plausible that there are "mirror image" life forms out there that would be mutually lethal with us.
And Battuta, infinite universe doesn't actually imply infinite Earths. It could be infinite expanses of everything but Earths, or infinite expanses of nothing. It's pure sci-fi to suggest that there's another Earth with a Batutta, Bobboau, and Kolgena duking it out in a GD thread in an alternate HLP. (That aside, your source is almost a decade old. Since we're talking about astrophysics here, I'm not sure if that's reliable anymore)
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And Battuta, infinite universe doesn't actually imply infinite Earths. It could be infinite expanses of everything but Earths, or infinite expanses of nothing. It's pure sci-fi to suggest that there's another Earth with a Batutta, Bobboau, and Kolgena duking it out in a GD thread in an alternate HLP.
Not so. It is not science fiction at all; it is in fact a mathematical inevitability. Multiply the probability of any non-zero-probability event by infinity and what comes out is an infinite frequency. The probability of the exact configuration of matter that is our entire Hubble volume coming into being is non-zero, because it happened; ergo it must happen an infinite number of times in infinite space assuming homology and isotropy of physical law and matter/energy distribution (neither of which condition we have any reason to believe is violated quite yet.) You will in fact end up with a mathematically predictable average distance between identical Earths, which can be calculated but which is larger than the radius of our Hubble volume.
Max Tegmark, an expert on this type of parallel universe, was a TA for one of my partner Rian's classes at MIT.
(That aside, your source is almost a decade old. Since we're talking about astrophysics here, I'm not sure if that's reliable anymore)
Possible, but it matches up with every other source I have read and I stay current. Obviously no total agreement exists yet, but I've been careful to point to trends in current data, not a total conclusion.
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1) If the universe is infinite, it doesn't mean that there's infinite stuff in it. Space can be infinite, but the energy in the universe is definitely finite. Therefore, you don't have enough matter/energy to multiply all your probabilities by infinity.
2) Yeah, I'm not well read in modern physics at all, so I was just pointing out that your source is old. I actually have no idea what the current consensus (or lack thereof) is.
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1) If the universe is infinite, it doesn't mean that there's infinite stuff in it. Space can be infinite, but the energy in the universe is definitely finite. Therefore, you don't have enough matter/energy to multiply all your probabilities by infinity.
I am 80% certain this is incorrect and based on a misconception. What is finite, and what matters to the topology of the universe, is the density of mass-energy. In an infinite isotropic homologous universe the total amount of mass-energy is infinite but it is divided smoothly.
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Apparently Mr. Tegmark (see above for my intimate relationship with this talented and handsome cosmologist) has calculated the average distance to an identical Hubble volume as 10^10^115 meters.
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I dunno. I'm having a hard time believing that moments after the big bang, when physics was beginning to materialize/stabilize, that there was a very big (but finite) blob of stuff containing infinite energy density and infinite energy. That **** was supposed to be the singularity.
Then again, there's the 0 energy theory which is nice and elegant, but gives no answer as to the finite/infinite nature of total energy.
Yep, several orders of OHGODMYBRAIN larger than a googleplex is pretty much infinite XD
Hm.. I just had some fun thinking about the aleph orders of infinity that would come into play here when we're talking about plugging in infinities into every term of every equation.
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I dunno. I'm having a hard time believing that moments after the big bang, when physics was beginning to materialize/stabilize
Physics was already present and stable; it was just well past unification energy. What hadn't happened yet was symmetry breaking.
that there was a very big (but finite) blob of stuff containing infinite energy density and infinite energy. That **** was supposed to be the singularity.
No, there was an infinite blob of stuff containing infinite matter and energy at finite density. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that the universe was once finite and then became infinite; it was infinite the moment t > 0.
This whole issue of the Level I Hubble Volume parallels leads to one of my favorite scientific conclusions ever - all fictional settings that are physically possible have actually occurred. This in turn leads to conclusive proof that Batman is cooler than Superman: Batman exists out there, Superman does not.
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At the same time, a useless, alcoholic, detained-in-asylum Batman exists as well, in infinite quantity, which is infinitely worse than an idealized but fictional Superman.
That's if I buy this "everything exists RIGHT NOW in INFINITE FREQUENCY" argument at all :P
Edit: Oh ****. There are infinite 4chans in the universe.
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But there are also infinite HLPs! (not sure if that's much better...)
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It's physically possible that an alternate civilization on some planet somewhere decided it was a good idea to create automated and self-preserving donut factories which ship the donuts to airports where they are then dropped from high altitude out of airplanes so that on their planet it would be constantly raining donuts. Therefore, in an infinite universe, there are an infinite number of planets where it is constantly raining donuts right now.
**** YEAH.
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On the one hand, I intuitively agree with you. On the other hand, with amino acids similar to those that form the building blocks of life on Earth popping up in comets and distant nebulae, it may be that the fundamental ingredients are universal and that the structures we see are the optimum result.
Very, very doubtful. There's no particular reason that DNA has to be based on that particular set of nucleotides and sugars. Given the number of similar chemicals it's probably simple chance that we've ended up with this particular set rather than any other equally good set. And that's making the assumption that something like RNA is needed as a precursory replicator. If it isn't then it becomes even more doubtful.
Then you have to consider how the **** they're getting to the alien's DNA in the first place. This isn't a matter as simple as just ambling through the cell wall you know. :p Virii have spent millions of years getting very good at passing through cell walls. With an alien all that adaptation would be useless.
Bacteria are a completely different issue cause they can survive and reproduce quite well outside of the body but virii are parasites. I have a hard time believing that they could infect an alien species. They'd have to be far too similar.
That's my point, no-ones really answered how similar these aliens are going to be, everyone has this set of 'values' inside their head and if someone else's opinion doesn't match those values they must, therefore be wrong. As I pointed out earlier, considering this is a hypothetical conversation, it's not really a question of 'do my aliens match your aliens', the discussion was whether Earth would be worth invading for anything much, to which I still maintain the answer as being 'very, very unlikely'. A decent Space Suit can give you access to a vast number of planetary environments, there's little to be gained from all the effort of dealing with an alien Ecosystem with sentient life, whether those risks are biological, military, chemical etc, they are still a set of risks that simply don't exist if you go to a moon somewhere and mine.
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it is not beyond reason that some alien race might have some sort of manifest destiny type ideology, a religion of conquest where it is there duty to subjugate all lesser life forms. that would give them a reason to invade, it doesn't have to be logical, it's religion after all.
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It's possible I suppose, but I do have a few problems with the concept that a race which was so violently intent towards its religion would ever successfully unite enough to develop space travel to that level. One of the main motors for development has been conflict, whether that conflict be over politics, land or religion, races that embrace fundamentalism to that level tend to end up being retarded in their development because change is frightening to them, I suspect an advanced race with that level of aggreesiveness would wipe itself out in internal arguments over details of that religion before they got to Space, indeed, even on Earth, fundamentalist countries that launch satellites etc rely heavily on technology developed by other, less fundamentalistic countries to give them a 'leg up', I'm not certain they could have got there by themselves. The most vocal skeptics of these kinds of religion, at least in our own society, tend to be the very people who develop the technologies needed for that kind of endevour.
This is, of course, applying a human viewpoint to alien thinking, and may be completely wrong, since this exact situation is a real threat to our own future, but unless the alien phsychology towards that religion is significantly different to our own (a possibility, as I said) I think the likelyhood of 'Star Crudaders' as it were, to be limited.
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I could see it as very easy for a species to develop with a belief system that they are the ultimate creation of the universe and all others are made to serve them and this not result in internal conflict if on their home world, before they make contact with another intelligent race, this manifests in the form of domestication of animals, and when they go out into the stars everything they find they view the same as animals.
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What if said alien was actually virus-free?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101117141428.htm
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What if said alien was actually virus-free?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101117141428.htm
What if said alien was actually a virus?
Andromeda Strain anyone? :nervous:
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The Klingons will blow up Voyagers 1 and 2 like they did Pioneer 10.
:p
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Actually, the Klingons are more likely to annihilate themselves way before they ever develop space flight :P