Space: What's out there II

Gerrard Winstanley once talked to the King of England about the oppressive living conditions of the peasants while the monarchy spent money with wild abandon on warring with France and Spain. Winstanley said to the king that if living conditions for the peasants didn't improve that they would not object to occupation by a foreign military.

Could it be that the billionaire ruling class running things would not want their power and sense of supremacy usurping by strangers with a different point of view of things in general?  Are the creme de la creme afraid to admit to the fact that they are not really masters of the universe? Our supreme beings on earth are living pretty well as things stand now.

Catchfire wrote:

Stephen Hawking: There's probably alien life out there somewhere, but we probably don't want to meet them.

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In response to Hawking's comments, Greer told AOL News he found it "unfortunate that Stephen Hawking has added his voice to a growing chorus of xenophobia and fear regarding what he terms 'aliens.'" Greer went on to say:
As a scientist, he should know better: Any interstellar civilization would possess such technologies that the meager resources of Earth would be unneeded. If you can travel faster than the speed of light, you can manifest what is needed. Period. Moreover, if they were hostile, since ETs are already visiting Earth (see www.DisclosureProject.org) this would have been made crystal clear when we detonated the first atomic weapon in 1945. To date, no place on Earth has been invaded or attacked or colonized.

And if they can travel at the speed of light, why not the speed of thought, too? Freeman Dyson wrote that if the Kardashev scale of advanced civilizations based on increasing energy consumption is true, then we will become type I in a hundred years or so. After that type II is only 3200 years or so away given a modest growth rate of one percent a year. Type III civilizations would be out of this world and comparable to Star Trek sci-fi, or is it Star Wars level of technical capabilities? Kardashev estimated type III status might only represent 5800 years of technological advancement after that. Type IIIs have the technical capability to harness the energy of galaxy, as incredible as that sounds. According to Michio Kaku, evolution and technological advancement are only a matter of time.

I tend to agree with Stephen Greer. If they are that advanced, then they likely need nothing from us. Carl Sagan once described the difference between us and a theoretical civilization one million years more technologically advanced as how we perceive macaque monkeys. What do we have in common really? What can we learn from macaques other than to study them and their environment? Scientists suggest that the rest of us non-scientists simply follow the rule of live and let live. Do no harm.

Perhaps discovery [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y15NnGZIBuM]will happen something like this[/url] (YouTube)

Alright? So they come and take a few dna samples, figure out that we're not remotely related. Or maybe we are distantly related through some kind of panspermian exogenesis connection.  Theoretical ET of a type III or even IV technological advancement has not only solved the issue of travel at speed of light and energy requirements, perhaps they've also found the solution to their own longevity through genetic engineering. Our own scientists are saying it should be possible for us some day in the future. This period we are living in now will someday be referred to as pre-genetic engineering or Pre-GE, a kind of technological dark age compared with medical science of the future.

Hell, given enough time, Homo sapien screws up no matter what.

Hawking Warning About Bad Aliens Prompts Defense by Their Biggest Canadian Fan

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/hawking-warning-about-bad-...

"Former federal defence minister Paul Hellyer, 86, believes not only that aliens have visited Earth but also that they have contributed greatly to human advances.."

 

Stephen Hawking eh?  [url=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/looking-for-alien... for aliens in all the wrong places[/url] Are they among us? Have David Fairn and Paul Davies been assmililated already?

 It's one of the "things" that bothers me about our own evolution. We didn't start out at the top of the food chain. We had few natural characteristics that made us fiersome predators. No sharp talons, like many dinosaurs had. We had no razor sharp fangs for tearing flesh and crunching bones, like big cats or whatever it was that lived to eventually produce hyenas. We couldn't run very fast to chase down dinner or posesss strength enough to take down very many prey as big or bigger than ourselves. The odds that we would evolve to become leaders of the pack must have been somewhat remote. 

I wonder what other advanced and "highly successful" life forms might be like? Would some alien species be capable of taking over our governments without a power struggle? Would they thrive under increased atmospheric conditions of CO2 and GHGs closer to that of global warming ten or 20 years from now? And, I've always wondered where in the heck sci-fi writers get their material from? I've often thought that they must be on something.

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuopJYLBvrI]Cordyceps Fungus - The mind-control Killer-Fungi[/url] Youtube

 

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John Carpenter's, "The Thing" VO Narration- "[i]Who knows what has come from the galaxy? Who knows what lurks in the sky? Beyond God. Watch those around you. For who knows what today, tonight, or tomorrow will bring[/i]."

Intelligent Life in the Universe?

While Drake's equation is a good basis for systematic investigations of signals from extraterrestrial intelligences, I care little about the admittedly scarce possibility that we ever receive positive news from our SETI searches. I care more about the fact that, if we consider the whole universe instead than restricting to our small galaxy, and if we omit to require that other civilizations exist at present (whatever this means over billion-light-year distance scales), the probability becomes a certainty.Tommaso Dorigo

I was over at Tommaso Dorigo's Blog, Quantum Diaries Survivor" reading his take on Extraterrestrials: A Dime A Dozen and the opening with Stephen Hawkings Lecture. I cut out the section of my interest as well to see what Dr. Hawking was talking about, besides reading Tommaso's take.

Qualitatively, I have come to realize,  given the framework for consideration of such possibilities,  these equations mean an inductive/deductive self evident constraint  how are we ever to consider the possibility( You have to give yourself permission to entertain).

I mean can we ever know the framework of that Extraterrestrial Intelligence given the parameters for our own belief structures? We do not even know what is possible "not having the framework" to properly question how this can be so?

So what I found in Dr.Hawkings lecture was the generalities of consensus across the industry of science and no new ways in which to possibly perceive the" right questions concerning the framework for possible new intelligences" that we would perceive as Extraterrestrials.

***

NASA's 50th Anniversary Lecture By Professor Stephen Hawking

...........DR. HAWKING: What will we find when we go into space? Is there alien life out there, or are we alone in the universe?

We believe that life arose spontaneously on the Earth. So it must be possible for life to appear on othersuitable planets, of which there seem to be a large number in the galaxy.

But we don't know how life first appeared. The probability of something as complicated as a DNA molecule being formed by random collisions of atoms in ocean is incredibly small. However, there might have been some simpler macro molecule which can build up the DNA or some other macro molecule capable of reproducing itself. Still, even if the probability of life appearing on a suitable planet is very small, since the universe is infinite, life would have appeared somewhere. If the probability is very low, the distance between two independent occurrences of life would be very large.

However, there is a possibility known as panspermia that life could spread from planet to planet or from stellar system to stellar system carried on meteors. We know that Earth has been hit by meteors that came from Mars, and others may have come from further afield. We have no evidence that any meteors carried life, but it remains a possibility.

An important feature of life spread by panspermia is that it would have the same basis which would be DNA for life in the neighborhood of the Earth.On the other hand, an independent occurrence of life would be extremely unlikely to be DNA based. So watch out if you meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease against which you have no resistance.

One piece of observational evidence on the probability of life appearing is that we have fossils from 3.5 billion years ago. The Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago and was probably too hot for about the first half billion years. So life appeared on Earth within half-a-billion years of it being possible, which is short compared to the 10-billion-year lifetime of an Earth-like planet.

This would suggest either panspermia or that the probability of life appearing independently is reasonably high. If it was very low, one would have expected it to take most of the 10 billion years available. If it is panspermia, any life in the solar system or in nearby stellar systems will also be DNA based.

While there may be primitive life in another region of the galaxy, there don't seem to be any advanced intelligent beings. We don't appear to have been visited by aliens. I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos?

[Laughter.]

DR. HAWKING: If there is a government conspiracy to suppress the reports and keep for itself the scientific knowledge the aliens bring, it seems to have been a singularly ineffective policy so far.

Furthermore, despite an extensive search by the SETI project, we haven't heard any alien television quiz shows. This probably indicates that there are no alien civilizations at our stage of development within the radius of a few hundred lightyears. Issuing an insurance policy against abduction by aliens seems a pretty safe bet.

Why haven't we heard from anyone out there? One view is expressed in this Calvin cartoon. The caption reads: "Sometimes I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

More seriously, there could be three possible explanations of why we haven't heard from aliens. First, it may be that the probability of primitive life appearing on a suitable planet is very low.

Second, the probability of primitive life appearing may be reasonably high, but the probability of that life developing intelligence like ours may be very low. Just because evolution led to intelligence in our case, we shouldn't assume that intelligence is an inevitable consequence of Darwinian natural selection.

It is not clear that intelligence confers a long-term survival advantage. Bacteria and insects will survive quite happily even if our so-called intelligence leads us to destroy ourselves.

This is the third possibility. Life appears and in some cases develops into intelligent beings, but when it reaches a stage of sending radio signals, it will also have the technology to make nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. It will, therefore, be in danger of destroying itself before long.

Let's hope this is not the reason we have not heard from anyone. Personally, I favor the second possibility that primitive life is relatively common, but that intelligent life is very rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.

[Laughter.]

DR. HAWKING: Can we exist for a long time away from the Earth? Our experience with the ISS, the International Space Station, shows that it is possible for human beings to survive for many months away from Planet Earth. However, the zero gravity aboard it causes a number of undesirable physiological changes and weakening of the bones, as well as creating practical problems with liquids, et cetera.

One would, therefore, want any long-term base for human beings to be on a planet or moon. By digging into the surface, one would get thermal insulation and protection from meteors and cosmic rays. The planet or moon could also serve as a source of the raw materials that would be needed if the extraterrestrial community was to be self-sustaining independently of Earth.

 

What are the possible sites of a human colony in the solar system? The most obvious is the Moon. It is close by and relatively easy to reach. We have already landed on it and driven across it in a buggy.

On the other hand, the Moon is small and without atmosphere or a magnetic field to deflect the solar radiation particles, like on Earth. There is no liquid water, but there may be ice in the craters at the north and south poles. A colony on the Moon could use this as a source of oxygen with power provided by nuclear energy or solar panels. The Moon could be a base for travel to the rest of the solar system.

Mars is the obvious next target. It is half as far, again, as the Earth from the Sun and so receives half the warmth. It once had a magnetic field, but it decayed 4 billion years ago, leaving Mars without protection from solar radiation. It stripped Mars of most of its atmosphere, leaving it with only 1 percent of the pressure of the Earth's atmosphere.

However, the pressure must have been higher in the past because we see what appear to be runoff channels and dried-up lakes. Liquid water cannot exist on Mars now.

It would vaporize in the near-vacuum. This suggests that Mars had a warm wet period during which life might have appeared either spontaneously or through panspermia. There is no sign of life on Mars now, but if we found evidence that life

once existed, it would indicate that the probability of life developing on a suitable planet was fairly high.

NASA has sent a large number of spacecraft to Mars, starting with Mariner 4 in 1964. It has surveyed the planet with a number of orbiters, the latest being the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These orbiters have revealed deep gullies and the highest mountains in the solar system.

NASA has also landed a number of probes on the surface of Mars, most recently the two Mars Rovers. These have sent back pictures of a dry desert landscape. However, there is a large quantity of water in the form of ice in the polar regions. A colony on Mars could use this as a source of oxygen.

There has been volcanic activity on Mars. This would have brought minerals and metals to the surface which a colony could use.

The Moon and Mars are the most suitable sites for space colonies in the solar system. Mercury and Venus are too hot, while Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants with no solid surface.

The moons of Mars are very small and have no advantages over Mars itself.

Some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn might be possible. In particular, Titan, a moon of Saturn, is larger and more massive than other moons and has a dense atmosphere.

The Cassini-Huygens Mission of NASA and ESA has landed a probe on Titan which has sent back pictures of the surface. However, it is very cold, being so far from the sun, and I wouldn't fancy living next to a lake of liquid methane.

What about beyond the solar system? Our observations indicate that a significant fraction of stars have planets around them. So far, we can detect only giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, but it is reasonable to assume that they will be accompanied by smaller Earth-like planets. Some of these will lay in the [inaudible] zone where the distance from the stars is the right range for liquid water to exist on their surface.

There are around a thousand stars within 30 lightyears of Earth. If 1 percent of each had Earth-size planets in the [inaudible] zone, we would have 10 candidate new worlds. We can revisit it with current technology, but we should make interstellar a long-term aim. By long term, I mean over the next 200 to 500 years. The human race has existed as a separate species for about 2 million years.

Civilization began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing.

If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.

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[i]The net result is that the meager N=2.1 becomes over 20 trillions! This means that there are presently 20 trillion civilizations around. 20 trillions. Okay, we might have dropped or added one factor of a hundred too many here or there, but the number is still enormous, no escape!

Is that not a sobering thought ? To me, that is both awesome and saddening. As far as awe is concerned, of course there is no need to explain it. But there is sadness too: for imagine the incredible, unfathomable number of things that we will never be able to know, constrained in our tiny planet, during our insignificant lives. Masterpieces, inventions, acts of bravery, adventures. But also wars, atrocities, catastrophes. The history of the universe will never be written - but it would be quite a read, I am sure.[/i][b]Tommaso Dorigo[/b]

Hi Fidel, My point, given the parameters of any way in which to engage such a discussion may not be relevant to what we can conclude having meet a Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Tommaso used the Drake Equation and expanded the probability by "increasing the parameters?"

Also given the parameters of what we know how can we even formulate the right question about it's existence. Any attempt to do so is "a guess by best estimates" so if one wanted to add their take, it is just as easily feasible to think about their statements? What do you think?

I mean we want to be responsible citizens about the context of the question, then how in such responsibility can this question be framed? I believe Drake thought of it in this way.

So I will give you a fictional scenario to contemplate. A different take on Cleopatra?

 

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A Correlation in Perception

James Cameron's AVATAR

This post will indeed seem quite odd. But as I told Phil I wanted to explain a principal behind all the language I used here as if it would appear to another if we assume another perspective.

James Cameron's AVATAR

 

Now we know how some of us who go the the extreme in science  like to think the basis of what we explain as a fictional story is correlative in the context of what we relay,  knows there is science that is factually represented to unfold.

 

Temple of Hathor,Dendera

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Hathor , (Hwt Hr Egyptian for Horus's enclosure)[1], was an Ancient Egyptian goddess who personified the principles of love, motherhood and joy.[2] She was one of the most important and popular deities throughout the history of Ancient Egypt. Hathor was worshiped by Royalty and common people alike in whose tombs she is depicted as “Mistress of the West” welcoming the dead into the next life.[3]. In other roles she was a goddess of music, dance, foreign lands and fertility who helped women in childbirth.[3]

So I have to present something in story like form as was presented in the latest movie Avatar. This is to spark a historical look back in our own history, so as to know that we existed in cohabitation with beings that hold the basis of a thought pattern,  that is the basis of this blog. See how quickly one can move?

Temple of Hathor, Dendera
(click on image and take note of columns)

 

You have to look very carefully now throughout these artifacts in architectural design as to understand something quite unique about the the times and what some of these statue faces actually represented. See how these images are denoted amongst the Gods and Goddesses to understand that images reveal something unique about what the Sun and Moon mean in relation to each other and who was the Mother of them.

.....................

I highlighted a statement about the basis of the blog I write.

Typing in "sound" in search feature might help one to get an idea on how it is I see science in concert with.  The way in which taking such a basis, as to see in another analogistic way. Gives one a way in which to see,  given a different parameter.

It may help one see the cosmos in the way we do our science. Questions about how we can see gravity.  Enclosing a parameter about which, the whole process we are involved is exemplified in such a way as to think about the very question of our articulations.  The topic of Intelligent extraterrestrial can mean in that context?

Hi Fidel,

 

Fidel wrote:

[i]If weirdos include Apollo astronauts, airline pilots, RCMP officers, and US presidents, then we're in trouble for sure.[/i]

I was taken back by that statement too when you pointed this out in reference to Stephen's comments. Knowing the matter of fact of and all that was supplied as to the reasoning, was information, that had been around for a while and really had nothing new to offer except the same ole argumentative debates about credibility. Not that we dispense with it , but that we take seriously the efforts in order to question the existence of.

I mean let's say that if that extraterrestrial intelligence did not want you to identify the encounter, how would they mask it? In our everyday psychological make up, maybe, to have it appear that we were dreaming, and they supplied the "facets of imagery" to mask the experience? The face of the extraterrestrial while it's eyes may appear yellow may refer the experience to have an image of a bird(an owl let's say) superimposed over that experience to have the physical interaction falsified.

The extraterrestrials would have to know the general consensus of experience can be clouded by fact and not unsupportable facts of existence?

Quote:

Snowy Owl

This bird

• has disks of stiff feathers around its eyes that reflect sound waves to its ear openings
• must capture the equivalent of 7 to 12 mice a day to meet its food requirements
• is active during the day as well as at night, unlike most owls
• moves to sit on patches of snow or ice as the ground becomes bare with the approach of spring

  

SEE:Hinterland Who's Who

So you see, this is one way in which to approach the question, that may not have been looked at before.

Avatars, are a subject within themself. Raises question about the "inhabitant of the body we now exist in" and how such occupants can converse given that they are from different locations of the universe? You see? Let's say the extraterrestrials wanted to make a hybrid human form  from the alien form that could pass scrutiny and do their work as "busy worker bees?"

A lot of genetic engineering and false starts that take a long time to perfect. They have this offspring culture their building because of all the mistakes and have to form a new colony of the rejects?:) Maybe they have an extermination project to those that do not meet the human standard?

IN no way have I supplied an answer to the question about the existence of , only that given the understanding that such parameters of thinking had are limited in our discussion , and referred back to some scientific understanding, how could we really know , if you did not push the boundaries of thinking?

Quote:

"[i]I’m a Platonist — a follower of Plato — who believes that one didn’t invent these sorts of things, that one discovers them. In a sense, all these mathematical facts are right there waiting to be discovered.[/i]"[b]Harold Scott Macdonald (H. S. M.) Coxeter[/b]

Quote:

[i]Geometry is a branch of mathematics that deals with points, lines, angles, surfaces and solids. One of Coxeter’s major contributions to geometry was in the area of dimensional analogy, the process of stretching geometrical shapes into higher dimensions. He is also famous for “Coxeter groups,” the inversive distance between two disjoint circles (or spheres).[/i]

 

Quote:

[i] "...underwriting the form languages of ever more domains of mathematics is a set of deep patterns which not only offer access to a kind of ideality that Plato claimed to see the universe as created with in the Timaeus; more than this, the realm of Platonic forms is itself subsumed in this new set of design elements-- and their most general instances are not the regular solids, but crystallographic reflection groups. You know, those things the non-professionals call . . . kaleidoscopes! * (In the next exciting episode, we'll see how Derrida claims mathematics is the key to freeing us from 'logocentrism'-- then ask him why, then, he jettisoned the deepest structures of mathematical patterning just to make his name...)

* H. S. M. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes (New York: Dover, 1973) is the great classic text by a great creative force in this beautiful area of geometry (A polytope is an n-dimensional analog of a polygon or polyhedron. Chapter V of this book is entitled 'The Kaleidoscope'....)" [/i]

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[url=http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/ISR/ISR.html]THOMAS BANCHOFF[/url] has been a professor of mathematics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, since 1967. He has written two books and fifty articles on geometric topics, frequently incorporating interactive computer graphics techniques in the study of phenomena in the fourth and higher dimensions

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[i]Long before the advent of the World-Wide Web, Tom Banchoff was experimenting with ways of using electronic media to enhance mathematical research and aid in mathematical education. Banchoff helped install one of the first mathematics computer labs in the country, and continues to lead the development of innovative geometric software and curricula for undergraduate mathematics courses. He uses computer graphics as an integral part of his own research, and has used mathematical videos for the last 30 years as a means of disseminating his results.[/i] [b]See[/b][url=http://www.math.brown.edu/~banchoff/abbott/]The life of Edwin Abbott Abbott[/url]

So if ET does exist near other star systems, say, zeta reticula 1 and 2, and governments here are aware of them, then why would the feds want to keep it a secret? Because we've been told by skeptics that it is impossible for governments to keep secrets, and therefore, UFOs must not be real. At least, this is the line of reasoning they use, And they can typically be very clever and educated people who say these things.

Why would religious fanatics like Falwell and Robertson declare that UFOs are the work of satan? As far as I can tell, our governments and the people who influence them want us to believe that UFOs are either a hoax or the work of the devil. Someone's lying.

Fidel wrote:

[url=http://www.examiner.com/x-2363-UFO-Examiner~y2010m5d19-UFO-Traffic-Repor... Traffic Report:[/url] May 19, 2010

I think the newzies should carry regular ufo traffic reports along with tempsn'precip., local cloud cover, air quality alerts, US-style color-coded terrier alerts etc. Just sayin'

[url=http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/comments/aliens20100505/]Are aliens a threat?[/url] Kaku, Shostak and Aykroyd - a Larry King Live video part 1/3

 

I finally broke and got a credit card. The other day I was looking at the MUFON website and almost became a member. There, that is my terrible admission for the month.

 

And Fidel, I agree with you 100%. Local news should carry UFO reports and blurry videos all the time! I have been crushed by the lack of great paranormal things on the market lately. No more good tabloids at the super market...without them I have no idea who the Loch Ness monster is dating (is it Ogopogo or the Shagharbor thing?). Local news should pick up the slack and give me the ultimate in poor journalism. Sensationalist fluff pieces about UFOs and Big Foot sightings in the GTA area with blurry videos and horridly great interviews with MUFON field reporters, UFOlogists and the like.

 

As for the alien threat? I for one welcome our robot overlords.

Fidel wrote:

....Five years ago, we knew of no planets outside our solar system....

 

Just to nitpick: I believe the first exosolar planets were confirmed in 1992, and we had a fairly good idea that they were since the latter part of the nineteenth century.

 

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v355/n6356/abs/355145a0.html

Spectrum wrote:

I mean we want to be responsible citizens about the context of the question, then how in such responsibility can this question be framed? I believe Drake thought of it in this way.

I was reading something on Canadian physicist Stanton Friedman's website. Friedman went to school with Carl Sagan and was friends with him. Friedman says of the Drake equation that the parameters should take into consideration the number of stars created per year. There are no parameters for possible explorations and colonizations by any number of advancing civilizations over time.

And there is no factoring for lifetime of a civilization. We are but one example among 100 billion stars in this galaxy alone. It's not a very accurate sample because: one, we have no idea how long our own civilization will survive, and two, we don't know how long it's possible for other civilizations to have survived thus far.

Zeta reticula 1&2, according to Friedman, are "just down the road" relatively speaking at 39 light years. And they are one-billion years older than our sun. Very interesting star system. And Friedman sounds a lot like Dr Kaku when it comes to naysayers suggesting that communicating and even travelling from there to here is wrought with physical impossibilities. Why would they even try to contact us - why aim a signal in our direction? Would they say, Here we are. What can we do for you, earthlings? It doesn't make sense. And receiving a message back 500 years later would make even less sense.

Friedman suggests, as Kaku does, that advanced space travel technology is only a matter of time. Today we are able to fly from east to west coast in a matter  of hours. Before passenger planes, people would have thought that intercontinental travel in a matter of hours was an absurd idea. And as Friedman says, there is work being down outside of academia all the time. Friedman himself did work on advanced space propulsion systems and nuclear technologies that just weren't discussed in academic circles for many years until now.

Interplanetary Transport Network

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This stylized depiction of the ITN is designed to show its (often convoluted) path through the solar system. The green ribbon represents one path from among the many that are mathematically possible along the surface of the darker green bounding tube. Locations where the ribbon changes direction abruptly represent trajectory changes at Lagrange points, while constricted areas represent locations where objects linger in temporary orbit around a point before continuing on

This book describes a revolutionary new approach to determining low energy routes for spacecraft and comets by exploiting regions in space where motion is very sensitive (or chaotic). It also represents an ideal introductory text to celestial mechanics, dynamical systems, and dynamical astronomy. Bringing together wide-ranging research by others with his own original work, much of it new or previously unpublished, Edward Belbruno argues that regions supporting chaotic motions, termed weak stability boundaries, can be estimated. Although controversial until quite recently, this method was in fact first applied in 1991, when Belbruno used a new route developed from this theory to get a stray Japanese satellite back on course to the moon. This application provided a major verification of his theory, representing the first application of chaos to space travel.

Since that time, the theory has been used in other space missions, and NASA is implementing new applications under Belbruno's direction. The use of invariant manifolds to find low energy orbits is another method here addressed. Recent work on estimating weak stability boundaries and related regions has also given mathematical insight into chaotic motion in the three-body problem. Belbruno further considers different capture and escape mechanisms, and resonance transitions.

Providing a rigorous theoretical framework that incorporates both recent developments such as Aubrey-Mather theory and established fundamentals like Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theory, this book represents an indispensable resource for graduate students and researchers in the disciplines concerned as well as practitioners in fields such as aerospace engineering.

See:Interplanetary Superhighway Makes Space Travel Simpler

I had some conversation with Paul Karl Hoiland according to the dates and time as his interest was how one may have used scenarios to accomplish some method of application to space travel.

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[i]An idea for achieving faster-than-light travel suggested by the Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.1 It starts from the notion, implicit in Einstein's general theory of relativity, that matter causes the surface of spacetime around it to curve. Alcubierre was interested in the possibility of whether Star Trek's fictional "warp drive" could ever be realized. This led him to search for a valid mathematical description of the gravitational field that would allow a kind of spacetime warp to serve as a means of superluminal propulsion...[/i]

My Picture in Jest with some of the Journal Group

Quote:

[i]The ESAA group was founded with the ever present human nature of exploration in mind. The ultimate goal of the group is to physically explore the outer most human reaches, with an emphasis on intellectual exploration to achieve such goals. ESAA was founded by Fernando Loup, Edward Halerewicz, and David Waite to begin investigations into plausible methods to probe the outer reaches of known science. Fernado Loup a mathematician by trade was interested in exploring mathematical possibilities which may allow for superluminal travel. Edward Halerewicz a beginning physics student was primarily interested in popularizing advanced physical theories to encourage "outside the box thinking." David Waite a seasoned physics student was also interested in exploring the limits of known science and kept radical proposals grounded in real world physics. These three thinkers came together and discussed a recent theory within general relativity which would allow for serious superluiminal discussions.[/i]

 

Quote:

Background on ESAA-Now Stardrive

Paul Karl Hoiland - Feb 10, 2004 7:20 am

In 1994 a Mexican mathematician, Miguel Alcubierre, discovered solutions to Einstein's equations which allow warps in the space-time metric to travel faster than the speed of light. But the proposal Dr. Alcubierre made was unrealistic on three basic grounds:

1.) It required a huge amount of negative energy. 2.) It displayed no casual connection of the ship with the field itself. 3.) The exotic energy states involved violated certain quantum energy conditions like the AWEC.

The ESAA group was founded with the ever present human nature of exploration in mind. The ultimate goal of the group is to physically explore the outer most human reaches, with an emphasis on intellectual exploration to achieve such goals.

ESAA was founded by Fernando Loup, Edward Halerewicz, and David Waite to begin investigations into plausible methods to probe the outer reaches of known science. Fernado Loup a mathematician by trade was interested in exploring mathematical possibilities which may allow for superluminal travel. Edward Halerewicz a beginning physics student was primarily interested in popularizing advanced physical theories to encourage "outside the box thinking." David Waite a seasoned physics student was also interested in exploring the limits of known science and kept radical proposals grounded in real world physics. These three thinkers came together and discussed a recent theory within general relativity which would allow for serious superluiminal discussions.

These discussions were opened in December 2000 to all that were interested within a yahoo discussion forum called the "Alcubierre Warp Drive" Club, named for the proposed superluimnal theory. The active members of the yahoo club then christened a name for themselves which became ESAA. The name ESAA was created by a club supporter named Simon Jenks, which is a Greek acronym for E Somino Ad Astra, or "From a Dream to the Stars." ESAA is an open and diverse group of individuals who are interested in seeking out nature's secrets to make some of mankind's most profound dreams come true.

The ESAA group consist of physicists, mathematicians, engineers, students, and layman whose members are spread throughout the globe. All members have an equal say on group developments and collectedly the group has worked on three separate modifications to "Warp Drive" theories alone. In more recent times Dr. Paul Hoiland has become a valuable member of the ESAA group. Bringing much needed experience and wisdom to the group as well as creating the Journal of Advanced Theoretical Propulsion, based on the ESAA philosophy.

ESAA History on the Warp Drive

The online discussion forum the Alcubierre Warp Drive, began as a novel experiment, where members would answer questions that interested parties had for the new science. The early discussions within the Alcubierre Warp Drive began with philosophical debates, random brain storming, and slowly evolved to include mathematical discussions. It was during this new phase where Waite joined the club discussion, and we carefully began discussing the ramifications of his proposed warp drive. Unfortunately as soon as the mathematics became the bulk of the discussion, most of the philosophical debates were lost, but at this point Fernando Loup and Edward Halerewicz began to describe the possible consequences of Waite's space-time. During the discussion of Waite's idea the club was very grateful to receive advice and guidance from the very busy but gracious Dr. Alcubierre. And it was at this point that simply entertaining the idea of a new warp drive became a much more formal process, and a new theory of its own right began to form.

The three early founders put together a paper which tried to levitate some of the problems with the "Alcubierre Warp Drive," (gr-qc/0009013) specifically reducing the amount of negative energy required within the theory. The paper was posted at the LANL ArXiv and was entitled "Reduced Total Energy Requirements for a Modified Alcubierre Warp Drive Space-time" (gr-qc/0107097). The paper also was not accepted for publication in established journals do to the inexperience of the authors in writing for academia. Also the paper was later found to have a few problems, e.g. the lapse function used to lower the energy requirements distorted time within the "warp bubble."

Since the energy problem was dealt in more creative ways such as varying the warp bubbles parameters as suggested by Chris Van Den Broeck (gr-qc/9905084), the ESAA group decided to attack another problem. One of the problems raised with the Alcubierre Warp Drive was that its superluminal nature would be impossible to control. If this were the case then using Warp Drives for superluminal travel would be out of the question, new members joined the ESAA group and decided to construct another paper.

The group wanted to know how superluminal motion would affect null geodesics and how this might be used as a clue to have control with a superluminal warp drive. The second paper put fourth by ESAA was entitled "A Causally Connected Superluminal Warp Drive Space-time (gr-qc/0202021), which proposed varying null geodesics to counter the superluminal problem. With this work several esteemed physicists gave there opinion on the paper, they largely argued against it because horizons will always form with superluminal motion. However ESAA argued against this reasoning as the horizons are still present they are simply moved by a dual light cone interpretation for space-time, the horizons just occur at another place. Expert opinion on this matter was that even if that held up, we couldn't show that a dual light cone interpretation is possible.

From this point ESAA has had some heated arguments, which gained some enemies and made a few friends. It was however mutually agreed that such a paper would never be accepted in an existing journal and so no additional publication was pursed on this paper.

The next paper proposed by the ESAA group was a paper to explore how Warp Drive space-time affect the geodesics of photons. From Alcubierre's original paper it is not to difficult to realize how the geodesics of photons become affected as was shown by Clarke, et. al (gr-qc/9907019). However a Portuguese researcher named Jose Natario showed that energy of the photons distorted by a warp drive would be lethal if traveling near the speed of light (gr-qc/0110086). This proved to be troubling as the popular press picked up on it as being the "Warp Drives are impossible," so ESAA decided to show how Warp Drives could still be possible with these "lethal" photons. It was found that a properly chosen dynamic space-time in several layers could act to slow the dynamic nature of the photons.

This solution ESAA proposed was entitled "On the Problems of Hazardous Matter and Radiation at Faster than Light Speeds in the Warp Drive Space-time" (gr-qc/0207109). However some of the excited authors mistook the slowing dynamics for velocity, when in reality it is the energy that is reduced, so the photons are non lethal.

Further inspection by ESAA and others have shown the lethal photons are fictitious as they exist with a Cauchy Surface, the photons energy doesn't change in the "warp bubble." There's just a frequency shift caused by the Cauchy region, since there is little interest in Warp Drives do the "toy" Alcubierre model ESAA has been slow in correcting this error. For these reasons this paper has not been considered for further publication, but again have shown that warp drives are mathematically feasible. However the ESAA solution dubbed a "shield" from its science fiction counter part does indicate the possibility of a dual light cone region as suggested by the second work which might warrant further investigation.[/i]

Doctor Paul Karl Hoiland - Jan 27, 2004 4:26 pm

Fernando's general idea was to use certain effects to escape off the brane. But while his proposed testing of such with high energy particles could open the door to testing out aspect of the RS model in general, he basically discovered that it does not allow matter to escape the brane. I'm not sure who exactly pointed this out to him since he tended to exit our group again. During his time in our group I had discovered what he was looking at was a brane lensing effect. In studying such I discovered it modifies gravity and the path of particles on and off the brane.

In the case of the extra dimension the length or volume is determined by the bulk cosmological constant(1) on both a local and global level. Gravity becomes higher dimensional at scales where

1/r �¨ 1/r^1+N.

But little has ever been mentioned of its modification of the on the brane Minkowski metric as well as the AdS one. Generally, what Fernando had noticed is that if you adjust the local Israel condition you can change the "warp factor" and that regular positive matter can adjust this. Its almost a pity he withdrew that third paper from GRG. With a bit of modification he had a perfect way to alter gravity in any local region which would have been a great test bed for certain Brane Models in general even if it did not support his hyperdrive idea.

I think after looking at this idea one could achieve what to a remote observer was faster travel times even though you never exceed C in the local frame. It literally was the original ST style warp drive. You could travel through a Universe that is smaller with no violations of the laws of physics in either the local or remote region.

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The bad news is that the bulk of scientific knowledge that we have accumulated to date concludes that faster than light travel is impossible. This is an artifact of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity

I believe Einstein was a realist when it came to quantum mechanics, as was Planck et al - they rejected the indeterministic world view of Heisenberg, Bohr, Born etc. And even some of them were realists, like Schrodinger, who developed wave mechanics. But then in 1957, physicist John Stewart Bell demonstrated that some forces must travel faster than speed of light in order to account for observable quantum states. And since this is at odds with Einstein's Theory of Relativity, many physicists today reject the realist position.

There are currently a few experiments that simulate faster than light capabilities given "a medium through which this effect travels." ICECUBE and Pierre Auger experiments all simulate cosmic particle collisions, as does Muon detection experimentation in the LHC Gran Sasso experiment.

Tscan

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[i]Tscan ("Trivial Scanner") is an event display, traditionally called a scanner, which I developed. It is a program that shows events graphically on the computer screen.

It was designed to be simple ("trivial") internally, and to have a simple user interface. A lot of importance was given to giving the user a large choice of options to display events in many different ways.

Tscan proved to be a very useful tool for the development of fitters. A particularly useful feature is the ability to show custom data for every photpmultiplier tube (PMT). Instead of the usual time and charge, it can show expected charge, scattered light, likelihood, chi-squared difference, patches, and any other data that can be prepared in a text format. [/i]

See:Trivial Scanner

Credit: Super-Kamiokande/Tomasz Barszczak Three (or more?) Cerenkov rings

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[i]Multiple rings of Cerenkov light brighten up this display of an event found in the Super-Kamiokande - neutrino detector in Japan. The pattern of rings - produced when electrically charged particles travel faster through the water in the detector than light does - is similar to the result if a proton had decayed into a positron and a neutral pion. The pion would decay immediately to two gamma-ray photons that would produce fuzzy rings, while the positron would shoot off in the opposite direction to produce a clearer ring. Such kinds of decay have been predicted by "grand unified theories" that link three of nature's fundamental forces - the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces. However, there is so far no evidence for such decays; this event, for example, did not stand up to closer scrutiny.[/i]

See:Picture of the Week

Bold added for emphasis.

 

Within the IceCube collaboration the Univ. of Uppsala and the Univ. of Berkeley have joined the DESY initiative. The DESY team is also in close contact to the groups in Europe, the USA and Asia which are working on acoustic detectors for Neutrino-Telescopes installed in water. Details on the different projects have been presented on the First Workshop on Acoustic Cosmic Ray and Neutrino Detection held at Stanford in September 2003.

The muon will travel faster than light in the ice (but of course still slower than the speed of light in vacuum), thereby producing a shock wave of light, called Cerenkov radiation. This light is detected by the photomultipliers, and the trace of the neutrinos can be reconstructed with an accuracy of a couple of degrees. Thus the direction of the incoming neutrino and hence the location of the neutrino source can be pinpointed. A simulation of a muon travelling through AMANDA is shown here (1.5 MB).

 

Spooky action at a distance, if I'm not wrong, has actually been observed, so it's not theoretical.  So Ursula K. Leguin's "Ansible" from "Left Hand of Darkness" is less fantasticle. 

 

Theoretical physics has been driving things since Einstein, and if anything I've learned as engineering physicists catch up and find ways to test some pretty wacked out ideas like spooky action at a distance it's not to dismiss their ideas no matter how conter intuitive they might be. 

Particularly to a guy who likes to live in a Newtonian universe.

 

That all being said, imagining faster than light travel, or other fantastic ways which would bring a Stark Trek type universe we may want in line with a possible reality doesn't really further debate for me in any satisfying way.

 

I don't think, based on what we know, that Hawking has anything to worry about.   Anything that we earthlings might have can certainly be found closer to our alien overlords.   We wouldn't even be of any value as physical slaves. 

Love slaves perhaps.   I still hold out hope for a race of Betty Page aliens on the planet Latexia.

Hey. With all those planets out there, there's surely to be at least one such planet.

 

Our knowledge is so limited, and so confined to our experience that we don't even know if we are looking in the right places with the Ceti program.  

We keep looking at "earth like stars", based on, well, that we live on earth.    And we keep listening on radio.  A format that most of us here regard as something of an anachronism.   

My thinking is that the only thing another alien species might want from us or give to us is information, because that's about all that can be sent at the speed of light or faster economically, meaning in terms of energy expenditure.

So, maybe we should be looking for some signal from some galactic "library of Alexandria" that's orbiting a stable and long lived brown dwarf or similar star.

The fact that I'm as likely to be correct as any scientist should give us all pause for thought, and illuminate just where we stand on these questions at the moment.

"Former federal defence minister Paul Hellyer, 86, believes not only that aliens have visited Earth but also that they have contributed greatly to human advances.."

Canny aliens, they manage to give us these advances right when other discoveries put us on the very cusp of discovering them ourselves, so as to not tip us off to their existance.

 

 

[url=http://www.physorg.com/news194788240.html]Scientists create artificial mini 'black hole'[/url]

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Scientists from China have built a device that can trap and absorb microwaves coming from all directions with a 99% absorption rate - a property that makes the device simulate, to some extent, an astrophysical black hole.

[url=http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news-DS-Universe-Dark-Side-Debated-06... Dark Side Debated[/url]

What if the universe is not expanding as fast as astronomers believe that it is? What if dark matter and mysterious dark energy do not exist? Scientists say that if true, it would be shocking. The standard model might be wrong.

[url=http://wemustknow.net/2010/08/extraterrestrial-hypothesis-is-now-public-... French aerospace report endorses reality of UFOs[/url]

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In France, on May 31, 2010, The Progress Report of the Sigma/3AF Commission, a semi-official report, adopted the extraterrestrial hypothesis for specific UFO sightings. According to researcher Antonio Huneeus “A new French report released on May 31, 2010 concluded that UFOs are definitely real and possibly of extraterrestrial origin. The Progress Report of the Sigma/3AF Commission comes from a highly credible source, the Aeronautical & Astronomical Association of France, known as the 3AF, which established a Commission on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena back in May 2008.

"Mr. Mulder, they have been here for a long, long time."

 

The CHASE detector. The end of the magnet (orange) can be seen on the right.

Exploring our dark universe is often the domain of extreme physics. Traces of dark matter particles are searched for by huge neutrino telescopes located underwater or under Antarctic ice, by scientists at powerful particle colliders, and deep underground.  Clues to mysterious dark energy will be investigated using big telescopes on Earth and experiments that will be launched into space.
But an experiment doesn’t have to be exotic to explore the unexplained. At the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which ended today in Paris, scientists unveiled the first results from the GammeV-CHASE experiment, which used 30 hours’ worth of data from a 10-meter-long experiment to place the world’s best limits on the existence of dark energy particles.

CHASE, which stands for Chameleon Afterglow Search, was constructed at Fermilab to search for hypothetical particles called chameleons. Physicists theorize that these particles may be responsible for the dark energy that is causing the accelerating expansion of our universe.

“One of the reasons I felt strongly about doing this experiment is that it was a good example of a laboratory experiment to test dark energy models,” says CHASE scientist Jason Steffen, who presented the results at ICHEP. “Astronomical surveys are important as well, but they’re not going to tell us everything.” CHASE was a successor to Fermilab’s GammeV experiment, which searched for chameleon particles and another hypothetical particle called the axion.

See: Lighting up the dark universe by Katie Yurkewicz Posted in ICHEP 2010

I know, I know the answer. Waht's in space? Well daaa, space...;)