http://content.usatoday.com/communi...rs-think-trillions-of-earths-may-exist/1


And, assuming they are correct, what are the odds another intelligent species, capable of space travel, does exist today?

Given that the universe is billions of years old, and that the life span of any biological species, (let alone one capable of engineering its own destruction) is infinitesimal in comparison.

EX: For what percentage of Earth's history has a mechanized society existed?

Even among trillions of habitable planets, I doubt there is another planet in the universe which holds an industrialized population at this time.

Don't tell Gus - we've already got too many "We're eating the planet" posts...

Gus could gather up a bunch of like minded individuals and take off for one of those other "Earth's".

They could start a whole new society based on ecological stewardship. Curious if the concept would outlive the progenitor?

Anything is possible when you are guessing.

Oh crap, if Gus starts worrying about other civilizations eating other earths we may not get another thread in edgewise!

I'd be a whole lot more surprised if there wasn't...


ETA; Thinking we are the be all-end all as far as an intelligent species goes, seems more than a little self righteous to me...ymmv

Well, Earth-LIKE doesn't mean a trillion Earths. There is no indication whatever that there are any other living planets, much less planets with intelligent life, much MUCH less with any that are space-faring.

While there very well may be such places, the chances of them and us meeting are absolutely zero.

I KINDA agree with that Rocky...BUT...we've only just TOUCHED the outside edges of technology as WE know it...we're but babes in the woods when it comes to "What will be" it would indeed be interesting to be able to come back in...oh...say ten thousand tears & see where we've gone...
Just 500 or so years ago you'd have been put to death for preaching the earth was round...how long have we had indoor plumbing? Electricity?...you get the idea...

Intelligent life???? On Earth???

Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here!

MM, people talk about the "odds" that there are other intelligent peoples out there, and they may be right. BUT, that same argument works in reverse. The chances of them ever finding us are the mirror image of them existing: one in a codswillion.

You can't base any assumption on a sample of one
Life might be common, or we might be the entire basket

Trillions of earths? Check out "Privileged Planet" on YouTube and get back me.

Right on.
Elk hunting with no limits, no fees, no wolves, and no other hunters, here I come!

I think there probably are, but the difficulties in interstellar travel are so daunting, or impossible, that they never will be overcome.


For example, us as a level 0 society would take 19,000 years to get to our nearest star, proxima centuri with our current technology.

If they have big mulies, I'm outa here.

Deer, elk, caribou, moose and antelope are considered varmints there. No limits. The problem is the cost of gas to get there and back.

Go back 200 short years... ...no phones...no electricity...no piped natural gas for heating or cooking...no air travel...hell most people were still setting off their rifles with flint...IMO nothing is so daunting or impossible that mankind will not find a way to overcome ANY perceived impossibility...

Think of all the oil and gas we can exploit! Gold and Copper too. And maybe some Elk hunting to boot.

Gus is here.

EARTH FIRST!





....Strip mine other planets later.

It is not that I believe we are the only intelligent species to evolve in the universe. But that given the time frames involved, those other species could have come and gone ten million (or billion) years ago, or those other planets may well be the home of slithering sea creatures, and anything having the ability to develop cognition might well be a million years in the future.

Heck, even if the SETI program were to discern intelligible signals from deep space, the species from which they originated might well be extinct for a million years before their signals reached us.

Be more fun if they still had velociraptors & TRex...as for minerals...how bout some "unobtainium"...

Right, and we'll pipeline the rest of the planets latter

I heard it best put that the one thought is life as we know it exists out there somewhere...

Or...we are alone in the universe...

Either concept is preposterous...

Is that a conundrum???

Prolly.....

Wait a minute...I just thought about my prior post...that didn't sound too much like Gus did it?

HBO's got a good bout coming up Amir Khan vs. Marcos Maidana....gotta go!!!

Reading his posts, I sometimes think we may be related...
The difference being that I sometimes stay at a Holiday Inn Express...

And sometimes I play a Doctor on TV...

Of course you're assuming that YOU are hunting the ELK. On another planet it just might be possible.....

These astronomers regard themselves as some of the most intelligent people on the planet, yet they give an estimation no better than a small child's.

Kinda hard when you deal with infinity...

that was a damn good fight i was pulling for the Argentine.frigging Joe cortiz had no business deducting that point.

I was neutral as far as to who...cause I don't like the dirty chit Maidana's constantly pullin & for no other reason, I don't like Kahn cause he's a muzzy...that said, it WAS a damn good fight.


ETA; I was really pissed that Ortiz was a draw...to my eyes, he whopped on some ass...

Yeah, I watched those- pretty good. Series of 12 takes about an hour to watch but worth it.

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

"Astronomers � think trillions of Earths may exist."


And if there's even one other planet like ours, what logical reason is there to assume that its denizens (if there are any there) are superior to us?

Not to mention that the image of those planets would take 100s of thousands of light years to get here. So there's no guarantee those planets even exist anymore.

If something is physically impossible than that is they way it is. Just that we don't know what is possible. In relation to what there is to know, we are no more than a baby that can only barely crawl.

Knowledge of us.

I'm in total agreement...

Yep, nuclear fission and fusion may be the relative level of rubbing two sticks together

� � what are the odds another intelligent species, ��

You are assuming that there is an intelligent species on earth; I don�t make that assumption.

Also, life forms may exist on other planets, such as microbes, bacteria, etc.

They've found creatures on this Earth that use arsenic instead of phosphorus, copper instead of iron, and dine on poisonous hydrogen sulfide in toxic, acidic, totally dark water.

There are probably creatures out there who's chemistry we can't as yet begin to comprehend.

Contemplate this: What if it were possible to travel physically at the speed of thought?

It is...just bend space time and haul A$$ as fast as you want!!!

Many of us would get there really late.

I believe someone in Congress wanted to abolish the Patent Office in the late 1800's because everything had been invented. With super computers we are on the thresh hold of technological accomplishments never dreamed possible. Within a hundred years we will travel to planets in our galaxy & have a colony on the moon to extract precious metals. I simply can't accept the naysayers that say we are alone in the infinite universe. There are so many planets with so many diverse intelligent life forms that in the future statements like we are alone in the universe will be laughed at like the 16th. century statement that the world was flat. There are intelligent life forms that have involved in atmospheres & temperatures we consider inhospitable. The ability for life forms to coexist with extremes exist right here on our planet. Look at the Eskimos & Africans. In my 44 years as an engineer & as a bit of a scientist I have seen technology leap forward in the electrical/electronics field. We are on the thresh hold of unthought of breakthroughs in the energy field. Smaller more efficent nuclear power reactors, solar, wind, geothermal, gasification of coal, & utilization of CO2 as a energy source. Breakthroughs in the field of cryogenics will result in ever smaller faster computers, smaller motors, more efficent power transformers, & smaller generating capacities to serve larger power loads than ever thought possible.

+10 to 100th power...I think this is not only a possibility but probability!! Our science is so infantile compared to the workings of the cosmos it's mighty vain to conclude we have all the answers!!!

If Gus were to go that fast, he'd have to get down on the ground and belly crawl..

Now that was very, very funny!

.....and rather clever.

It would be nice if we would stop weaponizing every dang thing. The fact is, burgeoning technology is often seen as a threat to those who are in power. Take oil for example, come up with a source that efficiently eliminates the need for oil and those in that industry are left in the dust of history. These old men and huge companies lack the ability to keep up so it is in there best interest to suppress the development of new technologies.

The key to the future is energy. Governments loose power when they loose the ability to limit the supply of energy. I wonder how many things that could be done and aren't because of energy demand and cost. To see how the loss of control effects government look at the internet. They lost much of their ability to control communications, free speech and people knowing what they are up to. That upsets many of them.

The future is built on young people. People who have not had there minds constrained to the box of conventional thought. People who would rather say "Lets find out" than blindly accept that something is impossible.

" Astronomers..... think trillions of Earths may exist"

I wonder if I'm rich on one of them?

Alan

Part of a lecture from a Historic Geology class will give you an idea. If the history of the earth were compressed into a 24 hour period;
the first life wouldn't appear until about 6:00 PM
the dinosaurs died out at about 11:40 PM
the human race has been here for the last 3 seconds before midnight.

Since mechinization is very recent in human history it would be a small portion of the last second before midnight.

Alan, yes. On one of them, you are the richest man alive.

On another, you are a eunuch.

If I were you, I'd stay here.

Look at it from a different perspective; in the infinitesimally small amount of time man has been on this world, he has gone from making tools out of stone to space travel.

In that context, mans achievements are pretty impressive.

Impressive? YES. But probably quite fleeting.

When will the next extinction event occur? How long before the Yellowstone caldera blows and covers North America in five feet of ash? Or an asteroid the size of a small state impacts the earth and wipes out all traces of our civilization?

10,000 years, 100,000 years?

Just a moment in time geologically speaking!

It would be quite a coincidence if those moments occurred simultaneously in two solar systems.

In Space Time Travel magazine in in 1998 there was an article by an archeologist Manuel de Anda who has examined a capsule found in the Spanish Pyrenees near Pico de Aneto in 1932.

He mentioned that two generations of linguists now have exposed enough of the cipher to build the scenario. Apparently, this item was jettisoned from the last warring combatants on a planet named 57AI of the Serious solar system.

The war had started in the distant pass and apparently ended in our time about 2500 BC considering the distance the capsule had to travel and the time it lay undiscovered in the mountains. It seemed it started with an argument over the 30-06 vs. the 270. on some electromagnetic media and escalated into full blown war. A colonel Ivilkilu was honest enough to to add in the inscription they were a wholly unpleasant race to begin with.

The last surviving members and the senders of the capsule carried 30-06s. Yea, the 30-06 won.

So that's where it came from!

That is why it is called Science "Fiction".

Uhhh, no.
The 270 is far superior, sheesh!
Even the aliens should know that.

Total nonsense. The 30-06 name is unique to backwards earth men. Any knowledgeable alien would have used the metric designation 7.62mm x 63.

This is a revelation.

I thought the war was between the champions of the plasma rifle in the 40 watt range vs. the proponents of the Gyrojet.

FWIW, I'm a plasma rifle guy.

In other news, some of you actual physicists can help me remember which principle this is, but in quantum physics it is postulated that given an infinite amount of time every event that can happen will happen.

So in some universe, somewhere, there is a traitorous bastard me who favors the Gyrojet.

Hard to imagine...

You better watch it, friend.
That war is by no means over.
You'll be targeted for elimination!

Resistance is futile...

And a backwards alien can mess it up.

It's 7.62x63mm.

7.62mm x 63 MUST be the right way. I couldn't remember the 63 so I googled it. The web page I got said 7.62mm x 63. It's on the web, therefore it must be correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield

That web page is controlled by the .270 aliens.

Local fella shot a 6x6 plus eye guards down in America in the last month. Does that qualify?

"I believe someone in Congress wanted to abolish the Patent Office in the late 1800's because everything had been invented."

IIRC (and I may not), it was 1910, and the HEAD of the Patent Office who thought it should be dissolved.

Clearly the battle between the .270 aliens and the 30-06 aliens was long in coming. The .270 aliens realized that while they had the same length, they had less bore size. First they started a campaign that said that bore size didn't matter. Then it was thinner and faster was better. All while they knew deep inside that bore size would always rule the day. That bore size had always satisfied and would continue to do so.

The war started, and the 30-06 aliens with their bore size won in the end.


This was the sad outcome of simple caliber envy gone too far.

Why don't we just build this and go looking?

But then someone wouldn't get rich patenting playing with a cat and a laser pointer:

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5443036
A method for inducing cats to exercise consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus onto the floor or wall or other opaque surface in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way...


Or a child's swing:
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6368227
A method of swing on a swing is disclosed, in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other.

I Have Both a 30-06 and a 270 and I Just Don�t Know What to Do!

My ought six is an early left hand Savage.
My 270 is a left hand Remington with some of the best looking wood for a factory stock.
Both shoot better than I can.

I like to carry the Savage as it is lighter.
I like to carry the Remington and look at the wood.

Woe is me-what to do?

not a left-hand gun in the cabinet, but there should be?
blue steel and black walnut in combination are a good answer.

there was the need for a two=line explanation after the first one-liner, and before the three-liner, in order to offer consistency. but, i digress.

Qualify as big?
Uhhh, yeah, Mike, I think it does!

Send them on a trip through time & space to my house!

Plus you should know that touching your keyboard completes an ion circuit to your cerebellum (thus you are not aware of the input) and upward to your cerebrum and is controlled by the Alpha Centurion moon being, the only living, known ally of the "270" plasm beings.

So far it is known by only those folk from Iowa that they are immune from this treachery; it is intuitive then, that all folk from other "outlying areas" are unknowingly affected and thus shoot .270s.

The horror!

Them aliens better stay clear of my 338 or I'll show 'em a universe of hurt.

The 270 is a fine caliber . Just needs to be put in a weatherby case .

All interesting questions. Consider, however, that even in the ideal conditions for life (pre-oxygen atmosphere, because oxygen is actually a toxic waste product of life which higher species had to adapt to), for the vast vast majority of the period in which life existed here, it was exclusively of the single cell variety, and remained fairly stable in type throughout the vast vast majority of the Precambrian epoch. Chances are, therefore, that the vast majority of such earth-like planets (if life exists there at all) are inhabited exclusively by single cell organism, and in the extremely rare cases where life made the gigantic leap to multicellular forms, it most likely consists only of microorganisms, since that's all that was on earth for the vast vast majority of the history of multicellular life here.

I finally saw the pics Saturday night. Awesome comes close.

Potentially, astronomers opining re biological possiblities are about as likely to make about as much sense as biologists conjecturing about what's possible in far-distant space.

Barber shops and taxi cabs are full of comparable "expertise."

Such is the nature of theory. The thing is, we will likely be long dead before these theories can be tested. In fact, the nature of theory is as such that it remains so until it is proven. Disproving would require it to be found false everywhere in the universe under all conditions.

There are essentially two world views: all creation which includes human life was caused by an uncaused cause, a transcendent Being--God; and, all of life, us included, are the product of time, chance, and material.

I will only say that, aside from writing volumes, which has been done, the arguments for the first case, contrary to popular sentiment, are very strong and rational (from archeology, philosophy, the sciences-the anthropomorphic principle, etc.) while the latter case sits on pillars of sand, crumbling away as you read this. It's--the Godless origin of things--the best case of circular reasoning: you decide what you reject as truth and then begin a construct of a belief system that you want to believe/adapt one that allows you to live a self-centered life.

It has been shown statistically that the human organism could not have developed by chance from primordial slime--that is, in regard to the estimated age of the earth; in fact there could not have been enough past, ever, for it to happen This argument alone is a book or two (see Darwins Black Box). To expect then for it to have
happened again let alone multiple times out in the blackness somewhere is a hopeless hope for a hope that is not there.

If the uncaused God of the Bible is the great cause of all, it stands to reason that by The Word of His power He could have done it twice, three times, or more according to His Word..but He didn't tell us so.

He told us only what we need to know including His plan of redemption through His Son Jesus Christ. I'd be glad to share that with any who would PM me.

Simply profound!








Yahoo

�Desiderata� has always worked for me as words to live that we find here and there.
And I have posted all or part of it here on the �Fire.

As to the size and meaning of the universe-these lines have always haunted me:

�You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.�

Now some far-lefters are rattling cymbals in a push to get the courts to find basis for laws giving animals and plants equal rights with humans.

I'm not kidding!

And I don't think that they are, either!

Probably want them to vote, too.

Bruce

My black lab would be a better voter than many humans.

I do not deny the existance of something just because I have never seen it. I do not assume something exists just because it could.