Science and a trip to the video store

greg66_tri_v2.0

These are supposed to be different, right? That's what I remember being taught at O level, and they didn't even have video stores then.

Well, times they have achanged.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... rect=false

"Green" aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. "These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets," the authors write.

Odd that District 9 gets a credit, but not The Day The Earth Sttod Still. Or that rising sea levels might make a Battle: Los Angeles (I saw it on a plane, ok? There was nothing else to watch) even more likely.

Do these "scientists" think we're all completely stupid or sumfink?[/quote]

Headhuunter

That reminds me of that film in which aliens made contact with earth by reflecting the 1st live TV broadcast back at us from space, which happened to be Adolf Hitler addressing a rally, but it had been travelling into space since 1942 or whenever at erm, the speed of television and had finally hit another habited planet....

greg66_tri_v2.0

Headhuunter wrote:

That reminds me of that film in which aliens made contact with earth by reflecting the 1st live TV broadcast back at us from space, which happened to be Adolf Hitler addressing a rally, but it had been travelling into space since 1942 or whenever at erm, the speed of television and had finally hit another habited planet....

Contact.

They were good aliens.

sketchley

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/

cjcp

Greg66 wrote:

These are supposed to be different, right? That's what I remember being taught at O level, and they didn't even have video stores then.

Well, times they have achanged.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... rect=false

You're reading The Guardian? :shock:

First.Aspect

What was the average number of beards per author, on that paper?

Science came out of philosophy, things like this suggest parts of it are going back again.

Twostage

Headhuunter wrote:

That reminds me of that film in which aliens made contact with earth by reflecting the 1st live TV broadcast back at us from space, which happened to be Adolf Hitler addressing a rally, but it had been travelling into space since 1942 or whenever at erm, the speed of television and had finally hit another habited planet....

Speed of television = speed of light I believe. If you could remember when the film was made/set and could be @rsed it would be possible to work out how far away the aliens lived (don't forget to half it as the signal was bounced back). If earth had been part of a twinned planet system both transmitting the same signal simultaneously we could work out a circle in space somewhere along the circumference of which they would reside. If there had been three of us we could have worked out their actual location.
^^^ the benefit of science education ? Maybe but actually its because I saw a thing on the web about how gps works. Worth watching for those that wonder, I think it was on howitworks.com or some such. One interesting fact from the gps video is that when your gps device is locked on its time is as accurate as an atomic clock.

godders1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdnZ1l5TxJk

notsoblue

Er, this isn't science, its just (lazy) science fiction conjecture?

A highly advanced alien civilization capable of crossing vast interstellar distances would surely understand the stage we're at. Besides what would be the point in travelling all that distance just to wipe out the dominant life form.

godders1

It’s a dangerous game reading about scientific activity in a newspaper and then jumping to conclusions about what the work actually is and what the intended outcomes are (just ask Sarah Palin- http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/ ... uit-flies/).

I don’t know enough about the background to this to either support or dismiss it. That said it’s possible that we’re not alone in the universe and “contact” could potentially have a huge impact on humanity so it’s not that outrageous that we’d want to consider the possible scenarios and think about what we’d do if they arose.

Jay dubbleU

Godders1 wrote:

It’s a dangerous game reading about scientific activity in a newspaper and then jumping to conclusions about what the work actually is and what the intended outcomes are (just ask Sarah Palin- http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/ ... uit-flies/).

I don’t know enough about the background to this to either support or dismiss it. That said it’s possible that we’re not alone in the universe and “contact” could potentially have a huge impact on humanity so it’s not that outrageous that we’d want to consider the possible scenarios and think about what we’d do if they arose.

I think Sarah Palin is more dangerous to us than any aliens are likely to be

greg66_tri_v2.0

Godders1 wrote:

It’s a dangerous game reading about scientific activity in a newspaper and then jumping to conclusions about what the work actually is and what the intended outcomes are (just ask Sarah Palin- http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/ ... uit-flies/).

I don’t know enough about the background to this to either support or dismiss it. That said it’s possible that we’re not alone in the universe and “contact” could potentially have a huge impact on humanity so it’s not that outrageous that we’d want to consider the possible scenarios and think about what we’d do if they arose.

Read the paper. There's a link to it in the Grauniad article. It is nothing more than

notsoblue wrote:

(lazy) science fiction conjecture

that could be had in a pub by some scifi geeks after a marathon film watching session.

notsoblue wrote:

A highly advanced alien civilization capable of crossing vast interstellar distances would surely understand the stage we're at. Besides what would be the point in travelling all that distance just to wipe out the dominant life form.

[scifi geek in pub after etc:ON]
Human movement doesn't bode well for us. Each time we've moved to a new territory, we've appeared highly advanced compared to the indigenous people. We've travelled for resources, and once we have found them the locals haven't been allowed to stand in the way.

godders1

Greg66 wrote:

Read the paper. There's a link to it in the Grauniad article. It is nothing more than

notsoblue wrote:

(lazy) science fiction conjecture

that could be had in a pub by some scifi geeks after a marathon film watching session.

You talk about ETI heterogeneity and reference Michaud in your pub chats?

Yes, it pretty much is "science fiction conjecture" and it doesn't really pretend to be anything else. Not sure what’s “lazy” about it though.

Is the real issue here (and the reason for the scorn) that the guardian have used it in support of their climate change agenda?

desweller

DDD is writing for the Guardian now?

greg66_tri_v2.0

Godders1 wrote:

Greg66 wrote:

Read the paper. There's a link to it in the Grauniad article. It is nothing more than

notsoblue wrote:

(lazy) science fiction conjecture

that could be had in a pub by some scifi geeks after a marathon film watching session.

You talk about ETI heterogeneity and reference Michaud in your pub chats?

Yes, it pretty much is "science fiction conjecture" and it doesn't really pretend to be anything else. Not sure what’s “lazy” about it though.

Is the real issue here (and the reason for the scorn) that the guardian have used it in support of their climate change agenda?

It's partly that that particular "idea" is a straight lift of the implausible plot of the recent remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. It's partly that the authors, rather cynically, seem to have decided that that bandwagon was a good way to increase the likelihood of their pseudo-science being reported. The Guardian happens to have been the first little fishy to get caught on the hook.

MaxwellBygraves

So. Say today scientists announced that we had made contact, that we are not alone, would this be the be the single most important moment in the history of the world?

I reckon we'd then have to adopt some sort of pre-contact/post-contact terminology like BC/AD.

godders1

Greg66 wrote:

It's partly that that particular "idea" is a straight lift of the implausible plot of the recent remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still.

It would be pretty difficult to write a scenario analysis paper on contact with intelligent extraterrestrials whilst avoiding all of the ideas raised in the vast number of science fiction books/films.

Greg66 wrote:

It's partly that the authors, rather cynically, seem to have decided that that bandwagon was a good way to increase the likelihood of their pseudo-science being reported. The Guardian happens to have been the first little fishy to get caught on the hook.

This isn't science it's a planning document. Maybe the environmental references are a bit cynical but then if you regard something as being true then it stands to reason that it would be one of your planning assumptions.

notsoblue

Greg66 wrote:

[scifi geek in pub after etc:ON]
Human movement doesn't bode well for us. Each time we've moved to a new territory, we've appeared highly advanced compared to the indigenous people. We've travelled for resources, and once we have found them the locals haven't been allowed to stand in the way.

Hmmm, I don't know. I don't buy that. I think space exploration is different. I think its a watershed event. Once a community has gotten over the barrier of getting into space, of being able to sustain themselves there for long periods of time, and finally of being able to travel fast enough to travel interstellar distances to get somewhere worth arriving at, normal earthbound scarcity rules won't apply. Specifically I mean by this what would be the point of rival ship dwelling communities fighting each other? Surely the risk of their fragile bubbles of habitable environment being damaged and destroyed in a conflict would outweigh possibly gaining control of a resource. It would be like rival expeditions having a knife fight on Everest. I can't think of a resource in space that would be a) scarce enough to be worth the risk of fighting over or b) of value to a community that can travel far out enough to access it.

I don't think future space travel will bring us utopia, but I also don't think you can extrapolate from earth "guns germs and steel" history to the space age.

[scifi geek in pub after etc:OFF]

notsoblue

Godders1 wrote:

Greg66 wrote:

It's partly that that particular "idea" is a straight lift of the implausible plot of the recent remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still.

It would be pretty difficult to write a scenario analysis paper on contact with intelligent extraterrestrials whilst avoiding all of the ideas raised in the vast number of science fiction books/films.

I think its lazy because its simply copy and pasting human drives and motivations onto aliens. I reckon it would be impossible for a species to be capable of routine interstellar travel and to still have those same drives and motivations.

Jay dubbleU

Humans are motivated by the same evolutionary drives as the rest of the animal kingdom, however we may dress it up. It seems therefore logical that aliens would have similar drives, ie survival and reproduction whatever their background. How these drives manifest themselves varies according to circumstances

godders1

notsoblue wrote:

I think its lazy because its simply copy and pasting human drives and motivations onto aliens. I reckon it would be impossible for a species to be capable of routine interstellar travel and to still have those same drives and motivations.

Perhaps but if you read the paper it does openly acknowledges these limitations. I have to admit I was left thinking why did they even bother given how many unknowns there are.

I like Jared Diamond btw. The rise and fall of the 3rd chimpanzee is one of my favourite books.

notsoblue

Jay dubbleU wrote:

Humans are motivated by the same evolutionary drives as the rest of the animal kingdom, however we may dress it up. It seems therefore logical that aliens would have similar drives, ie survival and reproduction whatever their background. How these drives manifest themselves varies according to circumstances

I agree with this, but not to the extent that I think it would be plausible for aliens to travel ridiculous distances just to get to our planet and act like douchebags. What would be the point? Unless they need something we have to survive, or we're sitting on a pile of unobtainium, what would be the point in trying to wipe us out? It would be like travelling to the middle of the goby desert just to sh1t in a well.

Jay dubbleU

Idle speculation - or as its known to managers 'blue sky thinking' - of course aliens may see us as a threat to other species on the planet and treat us like Hebridean hedgehogs

notsoblue

Jay dubbleU wrote:

Idle speculation - or as its known to managers 'blue sky thinking' - of course aliens may see us as a threat to other species on the planet and treat us like Hebridean hedgehogs

If an alien species is as advanced (technologically) to us as we are to hedgehogs, theres nothing we can do about it anyway :P

Jay dubbleU

Not just advanced technically but different - how would for example a slicon based lifeform regard carbon based life ? What would happen if we encountered a species that only sees in infra-red ? I can't remember who said this offhand but the quote was 'Life on other worlds is not only different to what we imagine - it is different to what we can imagine'

notsoblue

Jay dubbleU wrote:

Not just advanced technically but different - how would for example a slicon based lifeform regard carbon based life ? What would happen if we encountered a species that only sees in infra-red ? I can't remember who said this offhand but the quote was 'Life on other worlds is not only different to what we imagine - it is different to what we can imagine'

I would have thought there would be some convergence for highly developed societies though? Technologically at least. Physics, maths and chemistry are the same anywhere in the universe, and I would imagine concepts like evolution through natural selection would be too and thats a pretty big idea that has had a huge impact on our collective culture since it was widely acknowledged.