We're not alone?

[Golem]

personally think it's impossible to

think that there isn't life out there.

 

It doesn't have to be sentient.

`

 

+1 ! It could be geetar players ......

 

 

 

 

OOoooppzez ! ! !

 

I fergot this is a geetar forum.

 

Shoulda said "banjo players".

 

Almost said, "accordian players",

but "accordian" is a three-syllable

word, and this IS a geetar zone.

 

 

 

`

[Golem]

`

 

Well, we're already on their [the insects]

food chain, eventually, anyway. ;>)

 

CB

And they are on ours ... how efficient !

 

If you think only starving primitives eat

uglies from under rocks, think again ...

Check out the price of lobster !

 

 

 

 

`

[Golem]

`

 

With the "billions and billions" of stars, related galaxies, and (as yet) undiscovered

planets, it's ludicrous to think we are the only "intelligent" life forms. I'd say

we're more likely to be the equivalent, of an ameba, to those other life forms, whatever

and wherever they are. And, they're probably more like "Alien," than "ET," anyway. LOL

;>)

 

CB

`

Just like your comment, most comments about other life

dwell on the aspect of very different forms and possibly

different chemistry. Well that may be. But that would be

a minor difference, like between a chipmunk and a rat,

as compared to other possible [and IMNSHO most likey]

majorly humongous differences we should consider.

 

The biggest difference I can almost get my imagination

around would be TIME ! Imagine a lifeform whose typical

lifespan allowed it to experience the birth and death

of entire galactic systems the way we experience an

orbit or two around our sun [iOW a coupla yrs]. But it

doesn't mean THEY think they are long-lived, any more

than we do .... when there may be life forms somehow

coexisting with us whose time frame for a "normal full

life" fits a billion generations into what we'd call a

nano-second. But THEY too don't "think" of themselves

as being shortlived.

 

We could all be coexisiting and never aware of each

other if our time frames are so hugely different from

each other. The nano-time lifeforms, the near-eternals,

and us "middle timers" would never know if we'd ever

"met" ... cuz "meeting" is about place AND time ! The

difference would be unimaginable. Here in "our world"

we have insects and tortises who eyes can readily see

each other, and do see each other. Yet the insect may

live but a day and the tortise may live 150 yrs. The

insect can bite the tortice, the tortise can eat the

insect. IOW, they can experience each other. But in

vastly different time frames, we can all be "together"

and never have a clue of it. [No drumber jokes please].

 

I don't mean beings who live AT a different TIME so

much as you'd call it beings who exist at a different

SPEED. After all, there are events in our own "known"

universe so short that they endure only a fraction of

a nanosecond, and there are events that take "almost

an eternity" to progress just slightly .... and yet we've

experienced, or at least we can DETECT, that such

events are happening all over our "known" universe.

 

But thaz like the insect and tortise. What about the

events that are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[infinite number of "a"s go here] aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too

fast or slow for us to ever detect. If events can be

orcurring at those speeds [or rates of change] then

some of those events could fit the definition of life.

"Life", to science, is just a bunch of "matter" that

is involved in "events". Why should differences in

speed [aka rate-of-change] alter that idea ?

 

Life in the fast lane ! or the opposite. All the same.

 

Only Buckaroo Banzai can experience the whole thing.

 

 

 

 

`

[zigzag]

I wanna party with you, Golem!

[charlie brown]

I wanna party with you, Golem!

 

Yeah, he must have some great "treats!"

"Roooooooooooooooooooooooll another one..." ;>)

 

CB

[jaxson50]

My "moon" has vapors..sometimes my wife leaves the room because of it... Maybe I can sell it to NASA...

[Mr. Natural]

So reports of all the important space-age technologies that have come out of the space program are just shameless self-promotion? Hey, didn't we get Tang out of the Gemini program?

 

You know, it always bugged me that we furnished our astronauts with Tang on their space flights...

 

THEY'RE OUT IN SPACE RISKING THEIR LIVES. FOR GOD'S SAKE, LET'S GIVE THEM SOME REAL ORANGE JUICE!

[retrosurfer1959]

Science for just the sake of science is good for America and the globe - there's a lot of budgets we should slash before NASA goes anywhere let's face it the governments of the world have wasting money down to a art form so NASA doesn't bother me at all.

 

As for the Mayan calendar ending and everyone guessing what it means will never know, it could be something astronomical and vital or maybe they were just tired of the whole skulls and Mayan god thing and the next calendar was gonna be something different like puppies or kittens before the culture was killed off.

 

The only thing I feel pretty strongly about here is if the world wants to swap poles or do anything else there's not really much we can do about it who knows maybe the Lost dutchman trail in the Superstition mountains of Arizona will be a big ski destination...

[Andy R]

They found Eddie's "Brown Sound" floating out there so we can all stop looking for it!

[Mr. Natural]

Science for just the sake of science is good for America and the globe....

 

Plus 1 that, bud. Often, what seems like only pure "science for just the sake of science" does, eventually, reap real-world, practical benefits. Sometimes it takes technology a long time to catch up with science.

[Gilliangirl]

NASA will say anything to keep their funding. Their whole MO these days is to dangle the possibility of extraterrestrial life out there because that's what the avarage citizen is interested in. NASA is an incredible waste of resources. It's an egghead makework program. Nobody's going to the stupid moon or Mars. O.K.?

 

After 50 years of NASA and 30 years of being a practicing professional engineer, I have realized that NASA isn't saving any lives, they're not helping anybody get fed or stay healthy, and they're surely not making any substantial contribution to real life science or engineering.

 

As an engineer, I saw a series of tragic management decisions and catastrophic engineering failures at a rate that wouldn't be acceptable in any of the other fields of engineering.

 

It's all elitists - the engineers, the astronauts, the managers. Elitists for the sake of elitism. And doing a fair job at best.

 

How much did it cost to go to the moon and how many hungry kids could have been fed with that money? How many water or wastewater treatment plants could have been built with that cash? How about roads and bridges for real people? AIDS research. Lead paint removal. Water purification tablets. Teachers & schools.

 

 

Meanwhile, there's some guys in a space station somewhere shooting rubber bands at each other and calling it science. Sheesh.

 

Rantage over.

I couldn't agree more. The amount of money NASA gets and for what? Nothing basically. That money could be MUCH better spent on THIS planet.

[ChanMan]

I couldn't agree more. The amount of money NASA gets and for what? Nothing basically. That money could be MUCH better spent on THIS planet.

 

/chuckle

 

Apparently didn't read the entire thread.

 

:D

[Tman]

You know, it always bugged me that we furnished our astronauts with Tang on their space flights...

 

THEY'RE OUT IN SPACE RISKING THEIR LIVES. FOR GOD'S SAKE, LET'S GIVE THEM SOME REAL ORANGE JUICE!

 

Speaking of, remember spacesticks? Awful.

[rocketman]

Also, yeah, the pole-swap. Is that a result of the 26,000 year wobble?

 

This is attributed to the fact that the Earth's outer core is not solid, i.e., it's a dynamo that causes our magnetic field to vary over very long periods. I saw a presentation from a physicist at the Max Planck Institute who did a huge finite element simulation of the core and propagated it over many years. The field did in fact flip and at one time the quadrapole was dominate. Very cool stuff.

[ChanMan]

This is attributed to the fact that the Earth's outer core is not solid, i.e., it's a dynamo that causes our magnetic field to vary over very long periods. I saw a presentation from a physicist at the Max Planck Institute who did a huge finite element simulation of the core and propagated it over many years. The field did in fact flip and at one time the quadrapole was dominate. Very cool stuff.

 

 

So is this a cyclic event, and could it be due in 2012?

[rocketman]

Well I'm a former NASA engineer turned professor so my opinions may be biased. First off, here's a chart showing the breakdown of the federal budget:

 

 

You have to look VERY hard, but NASA only takes up 0.53% of the federal budget. It's budget is 18.7 billion dollars.

 

Here are some quick things off the top of my head.

 

Someone needs to keep track of solar activity to protect our communications satellites. Guess who does that?

 

Did you know that NASA Langley engineers invented a wind sheer detection system which is now at every major airport. Since this system was put in place we have not lost a single plane to wind sheer (remember that next time you are landing during a rough storm; hug a NASA engineer afterwards). I've heard the argument that other engineers can do this type of research. Sure, but who? Do you want to trust the airline industry to do this right?

 

What about a comet strike? Had the Shoemaker-Levy comet hit us instead of Jupiter we would have been toast. Movies like Deep Impact are just plain stupid and unfortunately people think we need to nuke them. Well we don't. All we need to do is attach a solar sail on them to slightly deflect their orbit. Nobody knows more about solar sails than NASA.

 

NASA engineers are paid a lot LESS than most engineers in industry. They are hard working and produce incredible amounts of useful results that affect our daily lives.

 

Look at how much we spend in education (ten times what we spend at NASA; this is just at the federal level and doesn't include local taxes). Our country's education system is well behind other countries now. I'm a professor now and I can tell you that NASA has inspired more engineers than any teacher could ever do. I alone think that is 18.7 billion dollars well spent. We'd be even further behind without NASA.

[rocketman]

So is this a cyclic event, and could it be due in 2012?

 

Well nobody really knows the cycle well, because it's unpredictable. The magnetic field model is updated every 5 years. The two main ones used for applications are the World Magnetic Model and the International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF). NASA Goddard, where I worked, had the leading magnetic field expert in the world, Dr. Robert Langel, who was on the IGRF team. He lead the MAGSAT mission in the early 80's that accurately mapped the magnetic field. Without that field the cosmic radiation increase could "knock out power grids, scramble the communications systems on spacecraft, temporarily widen atmospheric ozone holes, and generate more aurora activity". So I think it's important to study. Again, who's going to this if NASA doesn't?

[ChanMan]

Well yeah.

 

I'm a much more simplistic kinda guy... the sun will go Red Giant one day. If we don't find another inhabitable rock, the species will cease to exist.

 

Let me catch everyone up to speed on where we are with that.

 

We have nothing.

 

 

There, now you are up to speed.

[rocketman]

Well yeah.

 

I'm a much more simplistic kinda guy... the sun will go Red Giant one day. If we don't find another inhabitable rock, the species will cease to exist.

 

Let me catch everyone up to speed on where we are with that.

 

We have nothing.

 

 

There, now you are up to speed.

 

 

I actually wrote a paragraph about this but I decided to delete it. It's nice that we think alike. Yes, if we're still around then, we will eventually need to leave our solar system.

[vourot]

Its so easy to take things for granted. People landed on the moon 41 years ago. Think about that. Its sad to think that the apollo program may be the pinnacle of human achievment. We should be a lot farther ahead than we are now. The Earth is approx 4.5 billion years old, on that scale , all of human existance is confined to the blink of an eye. Then in the last tenth of a percent of the lifetime of our species we noticed that we were not the center and purpose of the universe. We just can't give up because we think the money would be better spent elsewhere. I'm sure the NASA budget is microscopic compared to the annual US defense budget. There is no argument to give up on NASA.

 

" To what purpose should I trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or slavery continually before my eyes? "

 

- A question put to Pythagoras by Anaximenes ( c. 600 B.C. )

 

P.S.

 

I paraphased some of this from Carl Sagan's book " Cosmos ".

All of his books are worth reading, some people on this forum would defintly benefit.

[badbluesplayer]

[ChanMan]

 

 

All that puffery and this is what backs it up?

 

/chuckle

[badbluesplayer]

All that puffery and this is what backs it up?

 

/chuckle

 

Chew on part 4 of this a little

 

Like I tell people, "If you don't believe me, hire your own engineer".

[ChanMan]

Chew on part 4 of this a little

 

Like I tell people, "If you don't believe me, hire your own engineer".

 

 

I've been an engineer.

My Dad is a Chem E.

My cousin developed one of those guidance systems for NASA (that you say NASA didn't build)

Why would I hire one?

 

 

So, a local ordinance for signage in Tennessee is your proof that NASA is a waste of money??

 

 

As I said, puffery.

[RobinTheHood]