RadioFreeLiberal.com

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Why do republicans support the KGB? Yeah, I know it is called something else now, but it is the KGB. PUTIN'S KGB...WHY?

Yeah, it was a big announcement.

Essentially, they have found organic compounds on Mars that are the building blocks of life.

So: here's the rub. It's possible they could have been created through an inorganic process, or that they indicate a past presence of life (at least microscopic life).

They don't know enough to know for sure it's the latter. Plus, that life could have existed millions of years ago, and may not have been all that complex (macroscopic), Marvin the Martian is nowhere to be found.

Still, yeah, this might mean in the future we will at least know one thing that might make some people uncomfortable (or excited), that life could originate on other worlds besides our own.

Our rovers need to keep roving. At least we know what to look for more of.

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-- Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
Malaclypse the Younger

Where do you stand on the inevitability intelligent life, likely far more advanced than us HAS to exist somewhere but the odds of them finding us are so absurdly impossible that we will never meet, but they are out there?

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Why do republicans support the KGB? Yeah, I know it is called something else now, but it is the KGB. PUTIN'S KGB...WHY?

Carl Sagan talks about the Drake equation in one of the great episodes of Cosmos.

Dunno. You can study it. It's based on assumptions. That's the ultimate rub, are all of Frank Drake's assumptions valid?

Bottom line is only a small fraction of worlds out there might eventually produce intelligent life. Thing is, as Carl often said, there may be billions of stars out there ... part of the equation is how many will have planets ... how many will have planets in a habitable zone near their star to produce life ... etc, etc. But if Drake was right - and Carl was right about how much is out there in the universe ... we can't be alone.

Two more questions we don't know.

1. What will it look like? I'm not going to comment on most UFO reports other than to notice that what people say they run into are "humanoids" that look bipedal like us. When Arthur C. Clarke wrote Rendezvous with Rama, a great story by the way, he pretty much suggested, no, intelligent life might not look like us at all. It could be difficult to recognize.
2. Can it get here? This is a problem in physics. If the speed of light is the ultimate speed limit for the universe ... well, if they live 3000 light years away, it will take them 3000 years to get here, and 3000 years to get back to their homeworld. That's assuming they've figured out a way to GO the speed of light ... humans so far are only clearing about 1/20,000th of that velocity.

and ... not a question, but a thought.

3. Serious thought: if there are intelligent alien beings regularly coming back and forth to Earth, it probably might mean they've moved somewhere relatively nearby, including perhaps underwater (did you see The Abyss?) or maybe another planet in the solar system.

Is there a solution to that problem of 2.? Warp drive? Wormholes? Han Solo lending out the Millennium Falcon hyperdrive? 5th dimensional beings? Bending space-time?

We haven't found it yet.

My guess is the first thing we will find is a radio signal from intelligent life on another world. Hence, SETI. I can only hope it happens in my lifetime. That story will change the world.

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-- Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
Malaclypse the Younger

I hear a loud truck at 2 am go by my house and I hope it is gonna be a UFO.

But then if it was I would probably pee my pants.

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Why do republicans support the KGB? Yeah, I know it is called something else now, but it is the KGB. PUTIN'S KGB...WHY?

It's a god awful small affair. To the girl with the mousy hair.

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“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness”. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Carl's right. The observed universe is immense, requiring scientific notation to keep most of the numbers short enough to print. Now, perhaps our observation is wrong, but that would require something like Descartes' Evil Demon, and then we're into to epistemology etc.

Either we have the origin of life all wrong, or observation and data analysis allow for an awful lot of places where the earth scenario could happen. After that, do we really know that's the only scenario that produces beings that post to message boards about life, the universe, and everything?

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"Words are the new bullets, satellites the new artillery"
--"Winning CNN Wars," Army War College

"One bomb was shown on TV, and the American people bought that war. War is show business."
--"Wag the Dog"

The "Rama" series was interesting especially in that almost everything revolved around the number 3. Just for fun, when I was deployed to Zagreb, Croatia during Balkan Crisis in 1995 one of my buddies and I found an English bookstore in the city called "Rama."


But who is to say an alien civilization isn't so advanced that they have already solved the light speed problem.


Were the "aliens" in "The Abyss" aliens or locals we hadn't contacted before.


But that's what dreams are made of in the world of science fiction.


We may receive a signal from another intelligent life for but by the time we reply to them and get a response back we'll be long gone.

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IMPEACH NOW, REPLACE LATER!

The aliens were tripedal, not bipedal, like we are. That's why.





So, the thing is some barriers are not actually physical. There never was a physical barrier to the speed of sound. It was just a technological problem - one we eventually solved with jets that go faster than Mach 1.

Einstein said nothing in the universe can go faster than light. But. We know the physics of what we know, and I agree, maybe a civilization a billion years older has realized something maybe we and Einstein didn't ... that law is actually not as insurmountable as we think.

In Contact, Carl Sagan concluded ... as have most sci fi authors ... the solution is wormholes. Now, BTW, they may naturally occur in the universe. We don't yet know how to MAKE them. Again, with technology far in advance of ours ... ?



It's never directly answered, but it seems to be implied they were aquatic beings from another planet, and being aquatic in nature, they settled in at the bottom of our oceans.

That they've been observing us for a while, and not sure whether we were a threat to them ... well, that was the plot of the film.



Unless, as in Contact, the signal provides the specs for a device to reach them.

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-- Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
Malaclypse the Younger

My reference was to how everything on Rama was in triplicate. At the end of the first book, one of the astronauts was lamenting about how so little time they had to explore Rama before it left our solar system and another astronaut tells him to wait until the next one comes because everything the Ramans did was in threes so the could expect two more ships to pass through.

BTW, as a guy I'm tripedal. It's just that my middle leg is much shorter than the other two.



So, the thing is some barriers are not actually physical. There never was a physical barrier to the speed of sound. It was just a technological problem - one we eventually solved with jets that go faster than Mach 1.

Einstein said nothing in the universe can go faster than light. But. We know the physics of what we know, and I agree, maybe a civilization a billion years older has realized something maybe we and Einstein didn't ... that law is actually not as insurmountable as we think.

In Contact, Carl Sagan concluded ... as have most sci fi authors ... the solution is wormholes. Now, BTW, they may naturally occur in the universe. We don't yet know how to MAKE them. Again, with technology far in advance of ours ... ? [/quote]
The problem is, as pointed out in Contact, is we need to think like Vegans (aliens). We see space travel problem the way humans see then and not as aliens see them.

It's never directly answered, but it seems to be implied they were aquatic beings from another planet, and being aquatic in nature, they settled in at the bottom of our oceans.

That they've been observing us for a while, and not sure whether we were a threat to them ... well, that was the plot of the film. [/quote]
My take was they have always been here but keeping their distance from humans until it came to the point humans were on the verge of destroying the Earth. If they were aliens, they hadn't intervened in human affairs before so if humans were going to destroy the world the aliens could have just flow away and leave us to our madness.



Unless, as in Contact, the signal provides the specs for a device to reach them. [/quote]
We now know to think in three-dimensions rather than two dimensions.

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IMPEACH NOW, REPLACE LATER!

> tripedal aliens

Damn, that guy sure has a hell of a middle leg.

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"Words are the new bullets, satellites the new artillery"
--"Winning CNN Wars," Army War College

"One bomb was shown on TV, and the American people bought that war. War is show business."
--"Wag the Dog"