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This article is full of misconceptions. Let's address a few of the most egregious ones. >there are billions of stars and planets in our galaxy and billions of

by zeteo 14y ago

This article is full of misconceptions. Let's address a few of the most egregious ones. >there are billions of stars and planets in our galaxy and billions of galaxies. Humans are rather bad at fully understanding such large numbers. There's no obstacle to working with large numbers once you understand powers and logarithms (i.e. pre-calc). Very smart people have looked at the Drake equation and it yields a very wide range of values [1]. >Christopher Columbus first landing on North America (not a good event for native Americans) The main reason Europeans were able to take over America was disease. The Aztec effort to kick out the Spanish was hampered by smallpox [2], and colonization of North America had to wait for over a century before the native population was sufficiently depleted by disease to stop offering resistance. [3] Needless to say, disease worked unintentionally and because both sides were the same species. > So, screw it, all movie alien races invented artificial gravity. Or, you know, maybe they built ships with rotating crew habitats that simulate gravity by centrifugal force. (I belive 2001 does a pretty good job of showing the concept.) > If getting humans to another star system is a 100 on some "technology ability scale", we're a 2 which is not comparatively far ahead of say, poodles - who are probably at a 1. First off, poodles are at a zero. Second, if 10% of world GDP was dedicated to building an interstellar, multi-generation ark, we pretty much have the technology to do it right now. The technological problem is to reduce the cost to the point where the political will to do it can be summoned (probably around 0.01% of GDP). >Maybe they want to trade with us. Well, yeah, right. If you've gotten this far it's obvious we have no tech that would interest them. [4] >How many years before we have a brain interface to Google? You'd know everything. We already have Google in our pockets. But instantly finding any quote by Darwin doesn't mean I understand the theory of evolution. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#Range_of_values http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#Range_of_values [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuitl%C3%A1huac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuitl%C3%A1huac [3] See timeline in http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366998666&sr=8-1&keywords=1491 http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Colum... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

krapp 14y ago
You left out the misconception where FTL travel is even possible. That's probably most likely why we'll never meet aliens... the low likelihood of them being able to harness that level of energy reduced even further by the likelihood of a ship happening to stumble across this particular rock.... and then, further still by them even caring if they find us. Heck, there might be cloud-squid in Jupiter we're not even aware of who make better conversationalists than us. The aliens might even show up after a thousand year trip and ignore the Earth entirely.
- CapitalistCartr 14y ago
  We don't need FTL. Our current age limit is becoming more obviously arbitrary every year. Sooner rather than later we'll be able to extend our age limit to several centuries. We could spread out to all the nearby stars in less than one lifetime at even .1c. We could with generation ships anyway, but that's far less desirable. We could populate most of the Galaxy in a million years with no FTL whatsoever, and if FTL never plays out, we probably will. If we meet aliens along the way, then we do.
  - chc 14y ago
    Your assertion that "our current age limit is becoming more obviously arbitrary every year" is lacking in evidence — it's been somewhere between 120 and 130 years for as long as we can tell, and we have not managed to surpass that even once. That's not arbitrary; it's a scientific fact. But let's forget that. Let's grant that in the future we'll be able to quadruple the human lifespan to 480 years. For the sake of argument, I'll even grant that manned interstellar flight at 0.1c is achievable. At this rate, it will still take most of our very long lifespans to reach the three nearest systems that are candidates for habitable exoplants. You'll still need a generation ship unless you want a colony of geriatrics. (Also, once you do get there, you're very likely to find that the potentially habitable exoplanets turn out not live up to that potential in much the same way the potentially habitable Venus turned out not to, so you'll spend the rest of your extended lifespan moving on to the next system.)
- danielweber 14y ago

by zeteo 14y ago

krapp 14y ago

You left out the misconception where FTL travel is even possible. That's probably most likely why we'll never meet aliens... the low likelihood of them being able to harness that level of energy reduced even further by the likelihood of a ship happening to stumble across this particular rock.... and then, further still by them even caring if they find us. Heck, there might be cloud-squid in Jupiter we're not even aware of who make better conversationalists than us. The aliens might even show up after a thousand year trip and ignore the Earth entirely.

CapitalistCartr 14y ago
We don't need FTL. Our current age limit is becoming more obviously arbitrary every year. Sooner rather than later we'll be able to extend our age limit to several centuries. We could spread out to all the nearby stars in less than one lifetime at even .1c. We could with generation ships anyway, but that's far less desirable. We could populate most of the Galaxy in a million years with no FTL whatsoever, and if FTL never plays out, we probably will. If we meet aliens along the way, then we do.
- chc 14y ago
  Your assertion that "our current age limit is becoming more obviously arbitrary every year" is lacking in evidence — it's been somewhere between 120 and 130 years for as long as we can tell, and we have not managed to surpass that even once. That's not arbitrary; it's a scientific fact. But let's forget that. Let's grant that in the future we'll be able to quadruple the human lifespan to 480 years. For the sake of argument, I'll even grant that manned interstellar flight at 0.1c is achievable. At this rate, it will still take most of our very long lifespans to reach the three nearest systems that are candidates for habitable exoplants. You'll still need a generation ship unless you want a colony of geriatrics. (Also, once you do get there, you're very likely to find that the potentially habitable exoplanets turn out not live up to that potential in much the same way the potentially habitable Venus turned out not to, so you'll spend the rest of your extended lifespan moving on to the next system.)
danielweber 14y ago