5 ms·

Churchill's views on the possibility of life on other planets

57 points by sjcsjc 10y ago

Cyphase 10y ago
FTA: "Dr Livio told BBC News that there were no firm plans to publish the article because of issues surrounding the copyright." facepalm
sethbannon 10y ago
If you like far-sighted Churchill reading, I highly recommend reading his 1931 essay "Fifty Years Hence". He predicts cultured meat, cellphones, genetically modified food, among other things. http://rolandanderson.se/Winston_Churchill/Fifty_Years_Hence.php http://rolandanderson.se/Winston_Churchill/Fifty_Years_Hence...
5_minutes 10y ago
Let's also not forget that that Churchill had to beg the Americans for quite some time to come and help him out. And they didn't. He even attacked and sank a French naval fleet, just to proof he was serious, to them. And that in the meantime, the Nazis were very much into the occult business. I'm just saying that one shouldn't be surprised that Churchil was looking at all possible options out there. Here is the intro video, that gets you up to speed: https://youtube.com/watch?v=p_37IU4n834 https://youtube.com/watch?v=p_37IU4n834
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  You referring to when he had the French Vichy fleet sunk? Was that aimed at the US? Churchill's fun. Probably saved the West by rallying the Brits, foresaw the Cold War. On the other hand incredibly bumbling at Gallipoli and completely wrong about Gandhi. Back on the topic of aliens, Reagan has one of the more interesting references: I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag44dRO8LEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag44dRO8LEA http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/reagan-and-gorbachev-agreed-pause-cold-war-case-alien-invasion-180957402/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/reagan-and-gorbache...
  - 5_minutes 10y ago
    Yes that's correct. According to the documentary, "Secrets of the Dead: Churchill's Deadly Decision", as a last desperate attempt to get some support from the Americans. Who had been promising reinforcements for quite some time, but eventually did very little until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Churchill's fun. And Reagan is also just fun. Even for his quotes, which are called "Reaganisms".
    - dingaling 10y ago
      It wasn't quite as 'desperate' and unique an action against the Vichy as is often portrayed, bearing in mind that two years later British forces invaded Vichy-ruled Madagascar with no-holds-barred battles against the French forces there. https://www.combinedops.com/MADAGASCAR.htm https://www.combinedops.com/MADAGASCAR.htm There were also extensive operations by the British against the Vichy in Syria and Lebanon, and there again both sides were ruthless.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > completely wrong about Gandhi. Was he? I've always thought his worst error was in shipping the Cossacks back to Stalin's machine guns.
    - aaron-lebo 10y ago
      I feel like it. Didn't he have a patronizing view of Indians, being much more concerned with the glory of the Empire than the happiness of Asians? He at least disrespected Gandhi. I've always thought his worst error was in shipping the Cossacks back to Stalin's machine guns. I thought that was just a sub-plot of Goleneye. Guess some googling is in order...
      - edmccard 10y ago
        >I thought that was just a sub-plot of Goleneye. Guess some googling is in order... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Cossacks_after_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Cossacks_after...
23443463453 10y ago
Is it really a question as to whether "life" has or does exist in some fashion in some place of the whole universe and over the course of its whole existence? It seems mathematically astronomically less likely that "life" hasn't existed in some form, in some place, at some time has not existed outside of Earth.
atmosx 10y ago
Churchill is a figure that always puzzled me. The image I have of him was that of a non-intelectual politician who had very deep understanding of human nature and lack of charisma. Some of his quotes are incredibly catchy (e.g. "I will be sober tomorrow, but you'll still be ugly", " best argument against democracy is a 5-min conversation with your average citizen", etc.) ... He managed to win a war, sit at the same table with Stalin and Roosevelt at the end of WW2 and after all that he managed to lose 2 IIRC elections!!! How is this possible? I don't known. He is by far and large the most famous British figure of his era, but he came in power mostly because of the situation not because voters. I wonder how others see him...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- digi_owl 10y ago
  The guy was a throwback to Victorian Britain basically. He was still fighting for the empire when the public was tired of everything but friends and family. And frankly i am not sure how much "he" won it and how much he basically survived it.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. -- Churchill (1943)
  - flukus 10y ago
    > And frankly i am not sure how much "he" won it and how much he basically survived it. He was very active in creating a military build up long before the war started, Britain could have fallen had it not been for his planning.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Frankly they were on the brink of falling even with said buildup. Except that Hitler got vindictive and impatient, first he redirected the Luftwaffe to bomb cities, giving the RAF time to recover and reorganize, and then Barbarossa started.
wimagguc 10y ago
Can't help but wonder if we knew more about Roosevelt by now with another US president. (Referring here to the Clintons' openness to the subject: [1] Bill Clinton "Wouldn't Be Surprised" If Aliens Existed: http://time.com/48132/bill-clinton-wouldnt-be-surprised-if-aliens-existed/ http://time.com/48132/bill-clinton-wouldnt-be-surprised-if-a..., and [2] Hillary Clinton (jokingly) pledges UFO probe: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/04/politics/hillary-clinton-area-51-aliens/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/04/politics/hillary-clinton-a...
chubs 10y ago
Can't we simply extrapolate how many livable planets there are? There are 10^24 planets in the observable universe. Figure out the percentage chance of any one planet being livable and multiply it out. Eg how far you have to be from the sun, correct size for gravity, likelihood of any planet having water, and so on. I read once that it worked out to be 1 in 10^70 planets would be inhabitable after calculating all the known criteria for a livable planet though. If that's accurate, it begs the question, why are we here? A combination of the anthropic principle and multiverses and quantum probabilities? It's easy to go down a rabbithole on this one :)
- CharlesW 10y ago
  > Can't we simply extrapolate how many livable planets there are? Yes, and beyond that you can ultimately estimate how many civilizations there are Out There that might have the capacity to contact us, commonly referred to as the Drake equation.[1] As Wikipedia notes, YMMV based on assumptions. :^) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
  - chubs 10y ago
    That's fantastic! Thanks for the link. Learn something new every day.
    - antisthenes 10y ago
      To add to that, along with my comment in the thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
- antisthenes 10y ago
  One of the biggest unknowns is the time variable. Recall that it took approximately 3 billion years to go from single-cellular life to multi-cellular life, and another 600 million to get to our level of intelligence. We have no idea how long our civilization will last on a geologic time scale and no idea how long it could take another form of life to evolve in the same manner. Perhaps there was a planet where life existed, but intelligence did not evolve quickly enough before the fusion death of the star. Say it took 6-7 billion to go from single-cellular life to multi-cellular life. By then, the planet might have heated up just enough to become uninhabitable, or the star may have gone out entirely. A star only 30% more massive than the Sun will have ~50% of its longevity, so a 5 billion timeframe might be insufficient to develop life.
osullivj 10y ago
Churchill College, Cambridge University is Britain's monument to Churchill, and houses his archives. Churchill himself turned the first spade in the early 60s. 70% Churchill undergrads are science and maths. The man himself wanted it to be the UK's answer to MIT. Disclosure: I was a Churchill undergrad 86-89.

57 points by sjcsjc 10y ago

FTA: "Dr Livio told BBC News that there were no firm plans to publish the article because of issues surrounding the copyright." facepalm

sethbannon 10y ago

If you like far-sighted Churchill reading, I highly recommend reading his 1931 essay "Fifty Years Hence". He predicts cultured meat, cellphones, genetically modified food, among other things. http://rolandanderson.se/Winston_Churchill/Fifty_Years_Hence.php http://rolandanderson.se/Winston_Churchill/Fifty_Years_Hence...

5_minutes 10y ago

Let's also not forget that that Churchill had to beg the Americans for quite some time to come and help him out. And they didn't. He even attacked and sank a French naval fleet, just to proof he was serious, to them. And that in the meantime, the Nazis were very much into the occult business. I'm just saying that one shouldn't be surprised that Churchil was looking at all possible options out there. Here is the intro video, that gets you up to speed: https://youtube.com/watch?v=p_37IU4n834 https://youtube.com/watch?v=p_37IU4n834

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
aaron-lebo 10y ago
You referring to when he had the French Vichy fleet sunk? Was that aimed at the US? Churchill's fun. Probably saved the West by rallying the Brits, foresaw the Cold War. On the other hand incredibly bumbling at Gallipoli and completely wrong about Gandhi. Back on the topic of aliens, Reagan has one of the more interesting references: I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag44dRO8LEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag44dRO8LEA http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/reagan-and-gorbachev-agreed-pause-cold-war-case-alien-invasion-180957402/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/reagan-and-gorbache...
- 5_minutes 10y ago
  Yes that's correct. According to the documentary, "Secrets of the Dead: Churchill's Deadly Decision", as a last desperate attempt to get some support from the Americans. Who had been promising reinforcements for quite some time, but eventually did very little until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Churchill's fun. And Reagan is also just fun. Even for his quotes, which are called "Reaganisms".
  - dingaling 10y ago
    It wasn't quite as 'desperate' and unique an action against the Vichy as is often portrayed, bearing in mind that two years later British forces invaded Vichy-ruled Madagascar with no-holds-barred battles against the French forces there. https://www.combinedops.com/MADAGASCAR.htm https://www.combinedops.com/MADAGASCAR.htm There were also extensive operations by the British against the Vichy in Syria and Lebanon, and there again both sides were ruthless.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > completely wrong about Gandhi. Was he? I've always thought his worst error was in shipping the Cossacks back to Stalin's machine guns.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    I feel like it. Didn't he have a patronizing view of Indians, being much more concerned with the glory of the Empire than the happiness of Asians? He at least disrespected Gandhi. I've always thought his worst error was in shipping the Cossacks back to Stalin's machine guns. I thought that was just a sub-plot of Goleneye. Guess some googling is in order...
    - edmccard 10y ago
      >I thought that was just a sub-plot of Goleneye. Guess some googling is in order... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Cossacks_after_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Cossacks_after...

23443463453 10y ago

Is it really a question as to whether "life" has or does exist in some fashion in some place of the whole universe and over the course of its whole existence? It seems mathematically astronomically less likely that "life" hasn't existed in some form, in some place, at some time has not existed outside of Earth.

atmosx 10y ago

Churchill is a figure that always puzzled me. The image I have of him was that of a non-intelectual politician who had very deep understanding of human nature and lack of charisma. Some of his quotes are incredibly catchy (e.g. "I will be sober tomorrow, but you'll still be ugly", " best argument against democracy is a 5-min conversation with your average citizen", etc.) ... He managed to win a war, sit at the same table with Stalin and Roosevelt at the end of WW2 and after all that he managed to lose 2 IIRC elections!!! How is this possible? I don't known. He is by far and large the most famous British figure of his era, but he came in power mostly because of the situation not because voters. I wonder how others see him...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
digi_owl 10y ago
The guy was a throwback to Victorian Britain basically. He was still fighting for the empire when the public was tired of everything but friends and family. And frankly i am not sure how much "he" won it and how much he basically survived it.
- icebraining 10y ago
  The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. -- Churchill (1943)
- flukus 10y ago
  > And frankly i am not sure how much "he" won it and how much he basically survived it. He was very active in creating a military build up long before the war started, Britain could have fallen had it not been for his planning.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Frankly they were on the brink of falling even with said buildup. Except that Hitler got vindictive and impatient, first he redirected the Luftwaffe to bomb cities, giving the RAF time to recover and reorganize, and then Barbarossa started.

wimagguc 10y ago

Can't help but wonder if we knew more about Roosevelt by now with another US president. (Referring here to the Clintons' openness to the subject: [1] Bill Clinton "Wouldn't Be Surprised" If Aliens Existed: http://time.com/48132/bill-clinton-wouldnt-be-surprised-if-aliens-existed/ http://time.com/48132/bill-clinton-wouldnt-be-surprised-if-a..., and [2] Hillary Clinton (jokingly) pledges UFO probe: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/04/politics/hillary-clinton-area-51-aliens/ http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/04/politics/hillary-clinton-a...

chubs 10y ago

Can't we simply extrapolate how many livable planets there are? There are 10^24 planets in the observable universe. Figure out the percentage chance of any one planet being livable and multiply it out. Eg how far you have to be from the sun, correct size for gravity, likelihood of any planet having water, and so on. I read once that it worked out to be 1 in 10^70 planets would be inhabitable after calculating all the known criteria for a livable planet though. If that's accurate, it begs the question, why are we here? A combination of the anthropic principle and multiverses and quantum probabilities? It's easy to go down a rabbithole on this one :)

CharlesW 10y ago
> Can't we simply extrapolate how many livable planets there are? Yes, and beyond that you can ultimately estimate how many civilizations there are Out There that might have the capacity to contact us, commonly referred to as the Drake equation.[1] As Wikipedia notes, YMMV based on assumptions. :^) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
- chubs 10y ago
  That's fantastic! Thanks for the link. Learn something new every day.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    To add to that, along with my comment in the thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
antisthenes 10y ago
One of the biggest unknowns is the time variable. Recall that it took approximately 3 billion years to go from single-cellular life to multi-cellular life, and another 600 million to get to our level of intelligence. We have no idea how long our civilization will last on a geologic time scale and no idea how long it could take another form of life to evolve in the same manner. Perhaps there was a planet where life existed, but intelligence did not evolve quickly enough before the fusion death of the star. Say it took 6-7 billion to go from single-cellular life to multi-cellular life. By then, the planet might have heated up just enough to become uninhabitable, or the star may have gone out entirely. A star only 30% more massive than the Sun will have ~50% of its longevity, so a 5 billion timeframe might be insufficient to develop life.

osullivj 10y ago

Churchill College, Cambridge University is Britain's monument to Churchill, and houses his archives. Churchill himself turned the first spade in the early 60s. 70% Churchill undergrads are science and maths. The man himself wanted it to be the UK's answer to MIT. Disclosure: I was a Churchill undergrad 86-89.