However our ideas about the nature of space-time have changed radically since Einstein's time. He just didn't have all the pieces to the puzzel. We still don't. Earlier this year a pair of sceintists observed a a beam of light going from point A to point B without going the physical distance between. Not only that but it reached point B before it left point A. This goes against our common sense ideas about the nature of things. Yet it happened.
this sounds interesting. any linkage?</strong><hr></blockquote>
the sciam link goes more into the entanglement concept, but prior to the quantum teleportation studies, the putative "einsteinian constant" of an always fixed light speed (relative to you but absolute to science) was called into question by the Nobel-quality work of dr. lene hau and the Rowland/Harvard team using a Bose Einstein Condensate to slow the speed of light such that you can now bike faster than light under the right conditions.
I don't necessarily that we're rushing towards destruction so much as it is rushing towards us. Even without wars, catastrophic events that could wipe out a large part of our species (unknown disease, asteroids, etc.) are not that far-fetched. According to many Astronomers and Geologists we're actually overdue for some kind of massive asteroid impact, given how long ago the last one occured and how crowded our stellar neighborhood is with these things. "Not if but when."
And of course there are other things that could impede the progress of endeavors such as the one we are discussing here. Disease, global dought, etc. Things that just happen through the natural course of history...
...so really my point is not that we're incapable, it's that I don't think we'll the amount of uninterupted time required to achieve something like this. Who knows, maybe if we start a colony on Mars or elsewhere in this solar system, it will be their descendants -- not ours -- who produce the technologies necessary for inter-galactic travel to happen.
<strong> According to many Astronomers and Geologists we're actually overdue for some kind of massive asteroid impact, given how long ago the last one occured and how crowded our stellar neighborhood is with these things. </strong><hr></blockquote>
isn't this like saying "i've flipped heads five times in a row, so a tail is due"
seems like falicious reasoning, but maybe there are factors i don't understand going into this
<strong>this is kind of related to the would you leave earth thread, but different enough i think.
it has always sort of been fabled that in the future humans will colonize other planets when we outgrow our own. does anyone actually see this happening? have any strides been made towards this certainly exhausting effort? overall, i think humans are just too dumb to do this...if we had a world full of einsteins & mathy-type intellectuals maybe...otherwise i think we're just stuck here until someone nukes the whole world.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes, I think that eventually we do if we don't kill ourselves first. However, I don't want to see us moving into space before we grow up and leave our petty religious, racial, and ethnic differences behind us.
<strong>I don't necessarily that we're rushing towards destruction so much as it is rushing towards us. Even without wars, catastrophic events that could wipe out a large part of our species (unknown disease, asteroids, etc.) are not that far-fetched. According to many Astronomers and Geologists we're actually overdue for some kind of massive asteroid impact, given how long ago the last one occured and how crowded our stellar neighborhood is with these things. "Not if but when."
And of course there are other things that could impede the progress of endeavors such as the one we are discussing here. Disease, global dought, etc. Things that just happen through the natural course of history...
...so really my point is not that we're incapable, it's that I don't think we'll the amount of uninterupted time required to achieve something like this. Who knows, maybe if we start a colony on Mars or elsewhere in this solar system, it will be their descendants -- not ours -- who produce the technologies necessary for inter-galactic travel to happen.
isn't this like saying "i've flipped heads five times in a row, so a tail is due" seems like falicious reasoning, but maybe there are factors i don't understand going into this</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, I don't believe so. I don't fully understand their statistical methods as such but I have read and heard a number of times (on shows like Nova or some Discovery Channel special) that we're long overdue for a major impact. Either way though these were well-known scientists making these statements, not Fox Mulder.
BR:
I'll look into it - meantime, any chance for an "executive summary"?
Traveling to other star systems? I'll leave the FTL travel to others, but I'm enamored with the idea of living and moving in the empty space between the stars themselves a la the Ousters in Dan Simmon's Hyperion books. Some genetic engineering, comet and asteroid clusters, artificial and self sustaining ecosystems, an entire civilization in motion... sounds cool.
[quote]BR: I'll look into it - meantime, any chance for an "executive summary"? [ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ][/QB]<hr></blockquote>
It's the third book in this particular timeline he created, however you don't really need to read the first two before this one. They all stand alone and actually I enjoyed reading it backwards.
Let's not forget the Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson. This too covers the colonization of Mars. A long three books, but it touches on all sorts of interesting topics regarding the human settlement of another planet - although I really don't agree with Robinson's answers.
So given that these book series are obviously fiction, I take it your stance is they are worth the read because they are technically / scientifically thorough in the way they describe "how we got there"?
I just tried the link for myself and it didn't work for some reason so go to Yahoo and type in : Eureka scientists break speed of light. That worked for me. Or you can read the link from Mozillaman it sounds like the same experiment.
" So given that these book series are obviously fiction, I take it your stance is they are worth the read because they are technically / scientifically thorough in the way they describe "how we got there"?
Greg Bear is recognized as one of the more technically educated on the subject hard science fiction writers of our time. Please don't get me started on where most new science ideas have come from in the last 50 years.
<strong>So given that these book series are obviously fiction, I take it your stance is they are worth the read because they are technically / scientifically thorough in the way they describe "how we got there"?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Moogs,
I was refering primarily to the philosophical debates about colonizing another planet. For example, is it ethical to settle another planet? To alter the environment, perhaps dramatically? If all we find are bacteria, are we free to wipe them out? What form of government will a colony have? What relationship will it have to Earth? Etc.
For an interesting read about how to get to Mars, see Bob Zubrin's "The Case for Mars." It outlines in great detail how to go about this, and the heart of the plan has since been adopted by NASA as their official plan on how to get to Mars. It's not easy (nothing is in space), but it's certainly doable.
[quote]Think, for example, if someone develops a way to make anti-matter easily from, oh lets say regular matter. <hr></blockquote>
Uh-oh. Antimatter explosions (more accurately, the energy released from matter/anitmatter annihiliation) are totally efficient (all mass converted to energy) and leave no fallout.
Comments
[QB]
However our ideas about the nature of space-time have changed radically since Einstein's time. He just didn't have all the pieces to the puzzel. We still don't. Earlier this year a pair of sceintists observed a a beam of light going from point A to point B without going the physical distance between. Not only that but it reached point B before it left point A. This goes against our common sense ideas about the nature of things. Yet it happened.
[QB]<hr></blockquote>
this sounds interesting. any linkage?
<a href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00014CBD-7633-1C76-9B81809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=4"; target="_blank">http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00014CBD-7633-1C76-9B81809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=4</a>;
This happened a while ago. Give me some time and I'll look around for it.
<strong>
this sounds interesting. any linkage?</strong><hr></blockquote>
the sciam link goes more into the entanglement concept, but prior to the quantum teleportation studies, the putative "einsteinian constant" of an always fixed light speed (relative to you but absolute to science) was called into question by the Nobel-quality work of dr. lene hau and the Rowland/Harvard team using a Bose Einstein Condensate to slow the speed of light such that you can now bike faster than light under the right conditions.
click image for link
<a href="http://www.rowland.org/atomcool/light.html"; target="_blank">
too cool (sorry... pun intended) not to post
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited to add link by: curiousuburb ]
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: curiousuburb ]</p>
And of course there are other things that could impede the progress of endeavors such as the one we are discussing here. Disease, global dought, etc. Things that just happen through the natural course of history...
...so really my point is not that we're incapable, it's that I don't think we'll the amount of uninterupted time required to achieve something like this. Who knows, maybe if we start a colony on Mars or elsewhere in this solar system, it will be their descendants -- not ours -- who produce the technologies necessary for inter-galactic travel to happen.
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]</p>
<strong> According to many Astronomers and Geologists we're actually overdue for some kind of massive asteroid impact, given how long ago the last one occured and how crowded our stellar neighborhood is with these things. </strong><hr></blockquote>
isn't this like saying "i've flipped heads five times in a row, so a tail is due"
seems like falicious reasoning, but maybe there are factors i don't understand going into this
<strong>this is kind of related to the would you leave earth thread, but different enough i think.
it has always sort of been fabled that in the future humans will colonize other planets when we outgrow our own. does anyone actually see this happening? have any strides been made towards this certainly exhausting effort? overall, i think humans are just too dumb to do this...if we had a world full of einsteins & mathy-type intellectuals maybe...otherwise i think we're just stuck here until someone nukes the whole world.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes, I think that eventually we do if we don't kill ourselves first. However, I don't want to see us moving into space before we grow up and leave our petty religious, racial, and ethnic differences behind us.
<strong>I don't necessarily that we're rushing towards destruction so much as it is rushing towards us. Even without wars, catastrophic events that could wipe out a large part of our species (unknown disease, asteroids, etc.) are not that far-fetched. According to many Astronomers and Geologists we're actually overdue for some kind of massive asteroid impact, given how long ago the last one occured and how crowded our stellar neighborhood is with these things. "Not if but when."
And of course there are other things that could impede the progress of endeavors such as the one we are discussing here. Disease, global dought, etc. Things that just happen through the natural course of history...
...so really my point is not that we're incapable, it's that I don't think we'll the amount of uninterupted time required to achieve something like this. Who knows, maybe if we start a colony on Mars or elsewhere in this solar system, it will be their descendants -- not ours -- who produce the technologies necessary for inter-galactic travel to happen.
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
Read the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812524802/qid=1026332789/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-8154079-0482344"; target="_blank">Moving Mars</a> by Greg Bear.
<strong>
isn't this like saying "i've flipped heads five times in a row, so a tail is due" seems like falicious reasoning, but maybe there are factors i don't understand going into this</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, I don't believe so. I don't fully understand their statistical methods as such but I have read and heard a number of times (on shows like Nova or some Discovery Channel special) that we're long overdue for a major impact. Either way though these were well-known scientists making these statements, not Fox Mulder.
BR:
I'll look into it - meantime, any chance for an "executive summary"?
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]</p>
It's the third book in this particular timeline he created, however you don't really need to read the first two before this one. They all stand alone and actually I enjoyed reading it backwards.
There is no way I can do it justice so I'll just provide this link. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0812524802/reader/1/ref=lib_dp_TFCV/104-8154079-0482344#reader-link"; target="_blank">Read the first 20 some odd pages</a>. It won the nebula award in 1995.
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: BR ]</p>
Are we sure we have our <a href="http://starfinders.cvnet.net/articles/scale.htm"; target="_blank">proportions</a> down?
Speaking of the speed of light (and time travel) here's an interesting article in Nature:
<a href="http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v406/n6793/abs/406277a0_fs.html"; target="_blank">Superluminal Light Propagation</a>.
If I get the jist of the article, they got the beam of light to emit just *before* they pressed the buton to activate the beam.
Weeeeeeird. <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
Here's the address to the article. It happened a little bit longer ago than I remembered <a href="http://maxmet.com/bbs/messages/46.html."; target="_blank">http://maxmet.com/bbs/messages/46.html.</a>;
There are many references to faster than light travel on the web. Just try doing a search from Yahoo.
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: jimmac ]</p>
I agree Moving Mars is a great book.
" So given that these book series are obviously fiction, I take it your stance is they are worth the read because they are technically / scientifically thorough in the way they describe "how we got there"?
Greg Bear is recognized as one of the more technically educated on the subject hard science fiction writers of our time. Please don't get me started on where most new science ideas have come from in the last 50 years.
[ 07-11-2002: Message edited by: jimmac ]</p>
<strong>So given that these book series are obviously fiction, I take it your stance is they are worth the read because they are technically / scientifically thorough in the way they describe "how we got there"?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Moogs,
I was refering primarily to the philosophical debates about colonizing another planet. For example, is it ethical to settle another planet? To alter the environment, perhaps dramatically? If all we find are bacteria, are we free to wipe them out? What form of government will a colony have? What relationship will it have to Earth? Etc.
For an interesting read about how to get to Mars, see Bob Zubrin's "The Case for Mars." It outlines in great detail how to go about this, and the heart of the plan has since been adopted by NASA as their official plan on how to get to Mars. It's not easy (nothing is in space), but it's certainly doable.
Uh-oh. Antimatter explosions (more accurately, the energy released from matter/anitmatter annihiliation) are totally efficient (all mass converted to energy) and leave no fallout.