Evil Dead
Enemy of the Gospel
I haven't posted in this thread in a year and a half........I attempted to re-read it but got bored after 16 pages so I haven't read the last nine.
I respect Omega....as she's one of the only if not the only real physicists here. I look for her imput on all my scientific posts. I do wonder where she gets her numbers concerning the Drake equation.....
Last speculation does not point to 200 billion stars in the Milky Way.......closer to 400 billion. I believe I remembered that (as this general area of study interests me)....so I googled it and yup, around 400 billion.
The last video I saw with Drake in it.......the man who invented the Drake equation.........he arrived at 50,000 intelligent civilizations in our milky way.....far from the 200 or 400 Omega was posting. He arrived at this number using moderate assessments. We have nine planets.....with a total of near one hundred celestial bodies in our solar system. Drake used an average of two planets.......two celestial bodies per solar system (an extremely generous number given the near hundred in our own). From this figure of 800 billion planets.....he began whittling them away. The big cut down came at the "how long does civilization last after gaining technology, does it blow itself up" figure. He went moderate with 10% of civilizations surving technology.......when it could infact be 100% being that no technological civilization that we know of has ever made itself extinct. This entire portion of the formula would be completely moot on planets where one uniform intelligent life evolved....with no need for weaponry of any kind, much less war.
just wanted to point that out...... whatever Omega has been using as reference material is completely off.....
as for other inaccurate information I've read......
sorry Gregory, interstellar travel is not in opposition to our known physics at this time. In 2001 or 2002 (can't recall)....the exact equations were worked out for a working "warp drive".......a system of compressing space in front of a craft while expanding it behind. In another hundred years......NASA may be using this drive. If even one of those 50,000 civilizations in our own galaxy were to be more advanced than our own by even one hundred years, they could already be using it......much less if they were more advanced by 1,000 years...or 100,000 years.
Someone stated that the ufo phenomena is a 21 century phenomena. Incorrect. There have been documented tales of strange things in the sky for thousands of years in different cultures. While that doesn't make them true.......they were reported.....just as UFO sightings today are which also may not be true. Some are vague descriptions that could be any number of normal atmospherical phenomena........while others actually explicitly say "flying machines".......centuries before we had ever created a flying machine.
Another person stated that if dinosaurs had not gone extinct, intelligent life much less civilization would not exist on this planet. Hogwash. Civilization comes about by a species removing itself from the food chain.....by learning to sew plants and raise livestock, creating it's own food. The time that was once used for hunting and gathering can now be used to just sit around...observing nature...observing random actions of other members of the species and learning from it. We have already seen this occur on a small scale by other animals with an abundant food source such as chimps...learning to create and use tools aswell as developing language.
The only real requisites are that the animal be the dominant species on the planet as to not be inhibited by the more intelligent.....and time for knowledge to be built on top of knowledge. The dinosaur comment was silly as dinosaurs weren't an animal....they were many varying species of animal, none clearly more dominant than the rest. I have no doubt that if there had only been one species of dinosaur.....not hundreds to keep each in check.....it would have evolved into an intelligent species over the millions of years it would have had reign over the earth.
This goes to point on the rest of my long winded thread here. All planets are in space.....exposed to meteors. The two global catastrophes here on earth which led to the dinosaur extinctions are almost certainly to exist on every world......leaving the more adept species of the planet to survive just as it did here......leaving the more adept species to develop a heiarcy just as it did here......leaving one species more intelligent than the rest just as it did here.......allowing that species time to build knowledge just as it did here. If the meteor impacts on earth had led to the extinction of every species of dinosaur except tyranosauras......we wouldn't be here today......tyranosaraus' would be going to the moon and probably far beyond given their several million year head start over what we had.
I used to be completely skeptical about this subject....but was interested. I always figured there was alien life out there somewhere, but we'd never see it. Now I believe we will if we haven't already. I believe 99.99% of ufos are typical atmospheric phenomena or terrestrial aircraft, unidentified only due to lack of knowledge on the observers part. That doesn't mean that .01% could not be an alien. Do I believe people are abducted? no......I believe people crave attention. The whole "cattle probing" comments made in jest earlier are moot to this thread as it was shown conclusively that "cattle mutilations" were naturally caused by the process of decay some 20 years ago......how this myth lives on is beyond me.