[Ghostavo]

When you say that the shivans are "modified" "real" shivans (wow) the "modified" shivans are kind of being used as puppets since they don't have the needs of the "real" shivans and I assume nor free will.

Unless I'm mistaken or misled of course

[Flaser]

Energy beings are possible.

Sheesh I've read so STUPID theories.

Trashman - you're right energy won't change and mutilate as flesh - but neither do atoms work like that!

Your body and life is just a huge chemical reaction.

It's too simplistic and novel to thing of energy beings as bodies or actual shapes filled with light or whaterev - leaves those for the space operas.

Energy beings would be made of looping stuctures or electromagnetic waves that converge on themselves, preventing the photons from going off in all direction.

Of course such a secluded creature wouldn't work, so he would constantly loose some of his matter - thereby it would constantly have to capture "ligt or any radiation to exist".

This is the complete equvivalent of you - you just take energy in a raw form and free it through chemical reactions.

Don't think of the actual energy as being alive - it's just as dead as the cabon atoms in your molecules.

What's alive in an energy being is the structure.

The brain in just a huge web of condensators, never the less it works - if you create rings and other self envoloping shapes from energy the self-interference will actually preserve it somewhat (IIRC that's also an explanation for the existance of electron patheses in an atom) - you have the building blocks of the brain.

These stuctures of energy similar to the various structures the electrons take on around the atome core could interact in a variety of ways, so there is a more than average chance for change and development - even wihtout mutating factors like background radiation - which could literally shred the body of these beings apart, who could either reassemble themselves or vanish...

Please note - this creatures could be huge taking on proportions similar to an entire solar systems with "life" going very slowly inside them or they could be smaller than a celll for all we know.

You probably also wouldn't be able to see them ,  and the energy levels that surround us may be leathel for them....or it could be the other way arround, they contain such huge gigantic ammounts of energy that a careless slip of their "finger" would incinerate the Earth.

We don't know if electromagnetic waves can't form complex structures, but neither do we know if they can.

'til then this remains just speculation, but just outright BLOWING into each other face that:

"ENERGY CAN't BE ALIVE!"
"YES IT CAN!"
- that won't solve anything.

For some reason I don't believe they could live anywhere in a solar system, deep space seems much better for that kind of life - but I doubt the Shivans would be energy beings.....they would be way too alien - and wouldn't use ships to begin with.
If they had the power to stay alive and do us any harm - they could just collapse the entire cluster where the GTVA resides.

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Ghostavo
When you say that the shivans are "modified" "real" shivans (wow) the "modified" shivans are kind of being used as puppets since they don't have the needs of the "real" shivans and I assume nor free will.

Unless I'm mistaken or misled of course

You're miataken

Imagine humans would have 100% control of their genetic materials. If they were to settle on too hostile planets they would alter their bodies to fit the environment. We obiously still would have a free will.

Thanks for backing me up Flaser
The reason shivans are using ships and they don't seem so 'alien' is that they cannot.

Shivans have no way to exist outside subspace, they would simply die if they ever left it. The only way to get straight to us for them is to create physical bodies, half robotic and half organic (much like a space suit, only even more extreme). Thats also the reason why they build ships. Yet where they can they remain using energy: - they prefer lasers - they have beam cannons (first) - they have some kind of plasma claws as weapons.
Can also be seen in their transport, all those sparkling thingies. This also explains the red pulsating stuff on their ships.

--- kinda off topic now, but some additions to my theory:

Shivans seem to have a liking towards nebula regions, that's where they come from, in most cases. That's perfectly explainable. While watching the 'Bosch in the Nebula' monologue again, I realised that a nebula is indeed the remnants of a super nova -- just like capella will be. Thus the point in space where the subspace barrier will be most stable, is around nebula regions. And who knows? Maybe Gamma Draconis, was the downfall of the Ancients. ('Have the shivans been waiting for us..... all these years?') - Bosch realizes that this very old nebula (maybe millions of years old) might indeed be caused by the shivans, just like they will later on blow up capella. That's probably for the first time that he notices HOW old the shivans indeed are. That's also the reason why he does feel so insecure and uneasy. The shivans are millions of years old -- and probably nobody had succeeded in achieving what he had planned.

[TrashMan]

If I really wanted I could write 20 pages of reaseons why energy can't be alive (and it isn't), but it won't do any good.
And I have disscussed this with chemistry, physics and biology professors and they all agree...

Belive whatever you want...I know the truth...

[Lightspeed]

Your belief in all-knowing mankind is... astonishing

[TrashMan]

Ther are SOME things we know for sure....laws of the universe and physics and all...

But if you want a bit more of an explenation.

Energy is a flow of electrons. Chatoic in nature, uncontolable on small scale.
It has cretain laws that it follows (like we all know how lightning works - that it will allways search the path to ground where there are ositivly charged ions..)
Energy isn't tought. Energy cannot think. It cannot re-produce. It doesn't feel. It doesn't have senses.

Hell, I would like for such beeing to exist!
That would increase our chances that we are not alone in the universe, and such creatures are an interesting concept.

But between beliving ain everything and beliving in nothing, there must be balance. I belive the things that are plausable.
Sadly, energy beeings are not...

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by TrashMan
Energy is a flow of electrons. Chatoic in nature, uncontolable on small scale.
It has cretain laws that it follows (like we all know how lightning works - that it will allways search the path to ground where there are ositivly charged ions..)
Energy isn't tought. Energy cannot think. It cannot re-produce. It doesn't feel. It doesn't have senses.

energy isn't thought. I never said that.

But look at it this way:

chemical compounds arent thought. They cannot think. They cannot reproduce. We can put up certain laws they follow blindly. They do not feel. They do not have senses. Yet, oh-what-miracle you believe yourself to be alive?

energy does not have to be electrons.
Energy comes in many forms, for example matter, light, gravity, kinetic energy, temperature, radiation or sound.

You can transform all these energies without a problem (yet we're not really good at it yet)

The main point is, WHAT are thoughts? We do not know. It's really a thing science doesn't have an explanation for. We know a bit about what happens in our brain, but actual thoughts remain a mystery.

[Flaser]

Trashman you completely missed my point - BTW Lightspeed thanks, but my aim was to shed some light on a realistic possibility, not primarly support your theory or their existance.

Your arguement about energy not being alive or can't be is fundamentally flawed, because you compare inert, basic elements to a vastely complex and pretty much not understood structure that is living tissue or a living cell for that matter.

We never said that a photon or electron will evolve, mutate or have children.

We speak of bodies, organism made of electromagnetic parts. If you can create electromagnetic fields that have a metabolism - so they can sustain themselves, you already end up with a primitive lifeform.

Before you argue, that energy can't be contained or can't exist in this manner let me remidn you that light is nothing but an electro-magnetic wave where an electric field constantly induces a magnetic one that induces an electric and so on....

The key to such structure would be the interaction of fields that would create a cohesion - the human mind can't even cope with the geometry of an electron path - you expect it to find all the possibilities how you can arrange particlex by million numbers and state that it's not possible to create a self-sustaining one?

Professors don't like sci-fi and theories without a solid base for they have to teach applyable things not ramblings about what could be out there. If you ask them like that they will support your view of non-existing energy beings for the sake of simplicity.
Right now our understading of the universe makes such a being very improbable since energy in all the spectrum surrounds us, and an energy being would be like a human thriving in bullet rain from a million machine guns.

If the said lightform comes into greater interaction with the world he may develop a nervouse system and eventually gain sentience, I once again have to stress that for all we know these beings may not exist, or it could be that they can only live in empty deep space taking up space of entire star clusters, or the opposite is possible as well.

I'm afraid that even if your belief is good enough, your reasons are not.

[Ghostavo]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
Energy comes in many forms, for example matter

Originally posted by Ghostavo
By your definition of energy, we are all energy beings, and since you don't believe that (or else you would have mentioned it before) I suggest you revise its definition.

Now for a question, don't electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light? How could they move at free will (or for any matter, how could they change where they are heading?)
My doubt is that how can energy control itself?
Matter can be organized to form cells, etc...
I can't see the same happening to energy.

I believe energy beings are possible only if linked to a physical body (matter), now if they aren't...

Flaser is right about the teacher thing... they don't like to answer to question that are too open to debate or too complicated.
But whatever you do, don't ask that question to a philosofy teacher, he will say everything is possible, blah, blah, blah...

[Flaser]

Energy won't form cells, actually a living energy being could be a lot simpler and primitive one than cellular being.

All you need are loops of electro-magnetic fields that can exist infinititly wihtout outsife intervention - if such structures are possible then you have a model of an energy being.

Of course there's always outside interference, so that will only be the state toward the structure strives - and this process will be the motor of the beings lifeforce, as the chemical tendency for lower power levels is the motor behind your life.

BTW it wouuld be a complex arrangement of magnetic and electrostatic fields that keep each other bound, they would have some kind of structure that could assimilate or capture the energy of particles so the being could "feed" - and of course it will also loose some of its energy just by sustaining itself.

Light - or electro-magnetic waves can't move of their free will - there is no such thing in case of a light wave.
This processes will happen of their own accord as your cellular metabolism works.

What I spoke of is a primitive like a mono-cell microba.

Of course the said stuctures could form a more complex being where the said units form a nervouse system and certain complexes will have the ability to emmit the said fields influencing the whole body.....of course that's over simplification.

All I say is that there is a more than impossible chance for an organism to form if the building blocks - spotanouse metabolism and self cohesion, and a dozen other things - are avilible.

[TrashMan]

So..you all know more about that matter that professors that spent their whole life expanding their knowledge in the field of science.

What would you say if I told you I e-mailed Stephen Hawking and asked him if Energy beeings are possible?

What would you say if his response was that the probability of such a life form is beyond astronomical. And a intelligent energy lifeforem is even more unprobable?

[Stryke 9]

I'd say that if you're on speaking terms with Hawking than it's entirely possible to have a sentient being that exists entirely on happy thoughts.

Retard.

And you think that a quasi-religious appeal to some scientific shaman on something that everybody not an ignorant tit admits to knowing nothing solid about is conclusive in any way. In an argument about fictional alien races.

On second thought, "retard" is too kind.

[TrashMan]

You're the tard here...

I honestly think That Stephen isn't as big a scientist as people think. Too much media exposure - they're trying to make a new Einstein out of him (which he isn't). I disagree with some of his ideas coause I simply think they're wrong (like when he said that all humanity should imbrace implants and stuff..yeah right... why don't I go replace my arm with a metal claw right away?).

And I'm not a beliver in science, if that's what you mean.
I'm a hardened Christian and a firm beliver in God's magnificence.

I allways base my decisions (well...most of the time anyway) on the grounds that they have to be logical, moral, and christianic(read: good)

[Odyssey]

[color=cc9900]Congratulations, you just contradicted yourself. You don't trust Stephen, but you do on this one matter. Useful, eh?[/color]

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
And I'm not a beliver in science, if that's what you mean.
I'm a hardened Christian and a firm beliver in God's magnificence.

So couldn't God create an energy being if he wanted to then?

[Ghostavo]

And in more ways than you think...

Originally posted by TrashMan
And I'm not a beliver in science, if that's what you mean.
I'm a hardened Christian and a firm beliver in God's magnificence.

God is dead?

[Joey_21]

Hmm... interesting ideas, but I thought I would point out that energy beings aren't mathematically sound and therefore do not make sense.

Take electricity, for example. Electrical pressure (voltage) applied across a wire obtaining electrical resistance (or impedence, "ohmage") causes electrical current (amperage). Electrical current is measured in coulombs per second and the amount of coulombs per second multiplied by the electrical pressure returns the amount of electrical energy used (aka watts, or joules per second). Energy is a measurement of the amount of work that is required to get something done and doesn't have properties of a living being.

Any indication that one is trying to say that energy can live is a mathematical flaw since energy is a measurement of work force. If it is mathematically flawed then you can pretty much know that the assumption is incorrect.

[Ghostavo]

Although I don't believe in "pure" energy beings, I must say that your arguments are... flawed like you say...

You are only thinking of electrical current (flux of electrons) and simple physical definitions of energy (having to do with moving objects, etc...).

Think of photons for example...

:thepimp:

[silverwolf]

back to theories of shivans. you heard it before and though it was dumb but i'm going to post anyways. What if the shivans we see arn't the shivans. what if the ships are the shivans and the shivans we think are shivans are an immunesystem

[Genryu]

Originally posted by TrashMan
christianic(read: good)

Two words : Crusade (christian answer to the islamic jihad), Inquisition (or how to torture and kill people in ten esay lessons).
As you can guess by that, I'm something of an atheist