grydth
Senior Master
As messed up as this place is, if there is truly intelligent life 'out there', they won't want to contact us even via a collect call.
Former astronaut: Man not alone in universe
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jim777
Master Black Belt
Space isn't infinite, its only seemingly infinite. The idea that there is one and only one universe doesn't thrill me either. I find the multiverse theories much more entertaining, and there have been some excellent articles on them in Scientific American lately.
That said, I think everyone knows these recently found planets are extremely far away, and if any ship from some other world did actually show up one day, it would more than likely be a robot itself. We don't even send people to Mars because of the time involved in the travel required, I'm not sure why popular folklore is always filled with grey colored aliens who almost certainly would have had to travel tens of thousands of light years (and therefore years) to get here. Life as we know it isn't living 30 thousand years in a tin can ship just to drop in, shake some hands, and split with a few pizzas and the occasional zoo specimen. Life as we imagine very likely isn't living anywhere near 30 thousand years. Life breaks down, only machines can go on and on. But I do believe there is other life out there. I just imagine they have nearly as many issues as we do. If they don't.....they are either too smart or too dumb to be good company. :lol:
That said, I think everyone knows these recently found planets are extremely far away, and if any ship from some other world did actually show up one day, it would more than likely be a robot itself. We don't even send people to Mars because of the time involved in the travel required, I'm not sure why popular folklore is always filled with grey colored aliens who almost certainly would have had to travel tens of thousands of light years (and therefore years) to get here. Life as we know it isn't living 30 thousand years in a tin can ship just to drop in, shake some hands, and split with a few pizzas and the occasional zoo specimen. Life as we imagine very likely isn't living anywhere near 30 thousand years. Life breaks down, only machines can go on and on. But I do believe there is other life out there. I just imagine they have nearly as many issues as we do. If they don't.....they are either too smart or too dumb to be good company. :lol:
If it isn't infinite, what is on the other side?
jim777
Master Black Belt
Supposedly, it does not go on forever. The universe has a size, it is expanding, and what is beyond it is unknown. But it is finite.
If you go by Star Wars, Star Trek folklore then a light year. In an of itself would mean that if the distance between point a and b is 200 light years then the people starting out and their kids would be dead, etc. Plus, anything actually holding up and not being destroyed from pressure then well I don't think it is ever possible.
So if your family dies by 5 or so generations in travel alone then what would the point be.
So if your family dies by 5 or so generations in travel alone then what would the point be.
If it isn't infinite, what is on the other side?
Unknown. Possibly nothing.
I find that concept harder to grok than an infinite universe, actually.
But if the 'Big Bang' theory is correct, at one time the universe did not exist, and there was nothing - no 'there' there.
Then, there was a singularity. It contained all the mass, all the energy, and space-time, that has ever existed. It exploded. It is still expanding, with nothing to stop it. Past the boundary of the explosion, nothing is known.
I've personally stopped thinking about it. Other life forms from other places will visit us if and when they are capable if they are not doing so already ... as will we. We are almost assuredly not "here" ... "alone" ... even though Hawkins thinks we are. The lack of evidence that something exists doesn't mean it doesn't ... of course it doesn't mean it does, either. 
kaizasosei
Master Black Belt
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I have one old 19th century book, in which the author believed as did many of his contempories, that there were people living on the other planets in our solar system.
The book starts out by explaining the animal kingdom and plant life, it goes on to explain that just as plants are a lower lifeform than human beings, he proposes that stars are a higher lifeform still. Of course there is no way to prove this and as far as science goes, the sun is nothing more than a burning ball of energy. Furthermore, our sun that sustains all of the planets life as well as physically holding the planet through an almost magical trick of gravitation, is known in astronomy as a yellow star, a small one at that.
But i doubt many people have thought of this possibilty. Because if it is true that stars have conciousness, is our human conciousness related to that individual stars conciousness or is the same conciousness consistently the same throughout the galaxy or even universe??
Sometimes i believe that it could be possible just as basically everything we have comes from the sun, maybe our conciousness as well-
or is the sun just a machine and conciousness something that is intrinsically without and within??
The book starts out by explaining the animal kingdom and plant life, it goes on to explain that just as plants are a lower lifeform than human beings, he proposes that stars are a higher lifeform still. Of course there is no way to prove this and as far as science goes, the sun is nothing more than a burning ball of energy. Furthermore, our sun that sustains all of the planets life as well as physically holding the planet through an almost magical trick of gravitation, is known in astronomy as a yellow star, a small one at that.
But i doubt many people have thought of this possibilty. Because if it is true that stars have conciousness, is our human conciousness related to that individual stars conciousness or is the same conciousness consistently the same throughout the galaxy or even universe??
Sometimes i believe that it could be possible just as basically everything we have comes from the sun, maybe our conciousness as well-
or is the sun just a machine and conciousness something that is intrinsically without and within??
jim777
Master Black Belt
I don't think this is correct. My readings on the theory tend to describe the universe as to how it existed at the moment of the expansion, no that there was a point at which 'nothing at all' suddenly became 'everything there is'. Maybe you are thinking of a point before pure energy became energy, matter, and various other particles and such? Pure energy would still be something.
Anyway, I know you're interested in this, so here's a cool link as to yet another possible explanation of what existed pre-Big Bang
The distance variable is just a matter of technology.
Thanks for the link, it is fascinating. I have some doubts about a ping-pong model of the creation and recreation of space-time, matter, and energy; but what do I know?
What I was referring to was the singularity. It existed outside space-time, because it contained all matter, energy, and space-time within itself. It exploded, at which time 'time' itself started moving. One cannot properly refer to the moment before the bang, because there was no 'moment' so to speak. But if you'll permit me a slight logical fallacy for the purpose of illustration, one could say that there was a singularity, and prior to that, there was no singularity. It is this non-universe to which I refer. Before there was a universe, there was the singularity. Before that, nothing.
That is, unless the theory you linked to is true. In which case there was a universe prior to the current universe, and so on, and so on, and so on. Makes one quite dizzy.
However, referring to time since it exploded into being, the 'universe' had and has a boundary, ever-expanding though it is. One could theoretically go to the edge of it, but one could not even theoretically go beyond that edge - there is nothing - no time, no space, no matter, no energy, beyond the expanding boundary. Imagine a piece of paper with only one side. You can see one side - flip it over and there is nothing.
Empty Hands
Senior Master
That's just handwaving. We have no reasonable scientific expectation that "warp" drives or other technology are possible. To the extent of our knowledge, the speed of light constant is the limit to our ability to travel. Even that is unlikely, since actually getting close to c would cause massive problems for actual large constructions of matter (us) like what happens when you run into dust particles at relativistic speeds or that our relativistic mass would massively increase as we approached light speed. There's a reason that photons are massless, or nearly so. The energy required to accelerate a starship within a few percent of c boggles my mind. It's probably not technologically even possible, absent the other problems. That's ignoring what would happen to an actual human being as their relativistic mass starts rapidly increasing. I'm not even sure what would happen.
Anyway, the point is you can't just wave your hands and say "technology". Even if we somehow could accelerate ourselves to light speed, we are still talking 100,000 years from the Earth frame of reference just to cross our galaxy, which is in our neighborhood. Although the travelers themselves would experience only a fraction of that time, depending on how close they got to c.
Also, many of the conclusions of general and special relativity have been empirically supported. The theory isn't going away anytime soon, which makes it unlikely in the extreme that our understanding is so flawed that these objections don't matter.
I understand what you are saying and, to a point, I agree. However, there are all sorts of things about this universe that we don't understand and that we are just coming to better understand. Below are a couple of examples pertinent to this discussion.
Quantum Tunneling
Quantum Teleportation
Particle Entanglement
Who knows how some of these concepts could be put to use in the future?
When you consider that a civilization out there could have possibly existed for a billion years, we simply have no comprehension of what could be possible on that scale.
So yeah, we have a lot figured out, but there's a long way to go.
Empty Hands
Senior Master
In general of course, I agree. Our understanding is always open to change and refinement as more information is uncovered. General and special relativity however are very well supported and it will take a lot of startling new information to change the problems those theories have with FTL travel.
As for quantum entanglement, there are several interpretations or explanations that do not violate classical quantum theory. One could be, basically, that each particle in the pair has it's spin already set when they entangle, and once you separate and measure the particles, you are simply uncovering already set states that do not require information transfer. Even in the true "teleportation" sense however the only thing being transmitted is information - and even to accomplish say, sending information to Mars instantaneously, you would first have to take one half of a particle pair to Mars by normal methods. Meaning you have to travel somewhere first before you can teleport there - assuming that is even possible, when it probably isn't.
