q says: "ET visiting Earth ideas are contradicted by physics."

Spookz,

You are making less and less sense. This'll be my last post in this thread as it is going nowhere.

First you said
i prefer to work with statistical probabilities rather than this leap of faith nonsense
but then
statistical shit....secondly you assumed i included ftl as something that could be calculated to occur within a period of time. not so.
Your either working from faith or probability. You have acknowledged that you can not do it using probability.
booneville speedway, 2002 world finals, nolan white's chutes failed at 412mph. he now goes around the country fucking with cops and their radar guns
Now you are changing the subject. once again, if they have the car then they can demonstrate that a car goes 400mph. If they don't have the car or the person, no ticket. This is once again a mundane explaination though, and would only require evidence of the car being able to navigate standard roads at 400mph (which isn't possible on most roads).
there is most likely no forseeable end to our tech advancement barring of course a catostrophe. i do not see why ftl problem cannot have a workaround.
There are laws to the universe. We do not know if they bar FTL travel or make it impractical. Not everything is possible. Regardless of us knowing what they are, rules do exist in the universe. These rules currently appear to bar FTL travel.
you do understand that ftl doesnt have to be necessary cos et, if alive and kicking, could be right next door ja?
I find it hillarious that someone who claims to "prefer to work with statistical probabilities" said this.

Pathetic attempt.
 
Now you are changing the subject.

umm, we were talking about it and i made a comment about it as an aside? would you prefer if i quoted and made a separate post. why so rigid? you fucking think you are in a position to dictate how and what i write?

once again, if they have the car then they can demonstrate that a car goes 400mph. If they don't have the car or the person, no ticket. This is once again a mundane explaination though, and would only require evidence of the car being able to navigate standard roads at 400mph (which isn't possible on most roads).

you are an frikking humorless idiot. nolan white is dead. my hypo involved his ghost driving around. a clear joke but i guess you are too busy trying to score brownie points to notice

Your either working from faith or probability. You have acknowledged that you can not do it using probability.

yes i did. i also find it a reasonable assumption that progress in the sciences will continue. it is more logical to assume that than erect some artificial barrier to the extent of our knowledge. so far probably everything that was assumed impossible has been done.

There are laws to the universe. We do not know if they bar FTL travel or make it impractical. Not everything is possible. Regardless of us knowing what they are, rules do exist in the universe.

so? you wanna repeat yourself ad nauseum? you think i say any different? you just say you do not know whether it is possible or not. state the frikkin obvious

These rules currently appear to bar FTL travel.

again, you think i disagree?

I find it hillarious that someone who claims to "prefer to work with statistical probabilities" said this.

cackle away. you appear to have no idea of the reference. i suspect some subconcious idea of a biblical uniqueness.

Pathetic attempt.

screw you punk.
 
Originally posted by Persol
I disagree. Talk to anybody who has worked ina manufacturing plant. 'Unknown errors' are very common, and are often intermittent and non-reproducible.

so ahh, what magic is at work here? this alleged error is intermittent, it cannot be tested or reproduced. you ask me to rely on anecdotes as evidence of this phenomena. i am afraid this sounds like you are promoting some crackpottery. how can something that is alleged to be unknown be characterized in any real meaningful manner? is it not prudent to consider other possibilties? perhaps a collective hallucination? too much weed during break? a purple pink dinosaur?

i tell ya man! this forum is overun by kooks. the temple of science is under attack by heathens. stop the madness, i say! stop the madness!
 
If you can't beat 'em, troll 'em eh spookz?

Alienate them all spooky.

That's what trolls do ya know.

Haven't you seen shrek?

Oh, he was an ogre. Eh, close enough.

Shpeck.
 
what's there to beat?
i thought it was kinda funny. if you do not share the humor, too bad. i aint gonna lose any sleep over it
 
Now that this thread has quieted down somewhat, let me address
a couple of misconceptions here. Usually the objections to possible
interstellar travel stem from the time involved and the energy
required. First, the statement is usually made that without faster
that light travel, it would take "generations" to reach even some
of the closer stars in our galaxie. Not considering travel by the
more speculative science, such as wormholes, interdimensional
methods or the not quite as speculative travel by warping spacetime
involving gravity and repulsive-gravity, we are left with simple travel
by straight-line acceleration. Some argue that rules out reaching
a star a few tens of light years away "since you can't go faster than
light." There is a problem here. The Theory of Special Relativity has
as its main components the effects of time dilation and length
contraction. Those are the elements that state that IS possible
to reach a star say, 10 light years away, in less than a year of the
travelers time. The details of the theory are avaliable through a
simple google search. It has been around since 1905 and is usually
the first thing a physics student studies when intering into the
realm of theoretical physics. But you say the theory may be wrong?
I certainly won't argue that point, but there is something else to
consider. It is THE SAME theory that says faster than light travel
is impossible. Other theories, such as General Relativity, Quantum
field theories and the various string theories do not specfically
rule out FTL. So you say Special Relativity may be wrong, but
faster than light velocities are still impossible? There is a problem
with that statement also. Have you heard of the muon? It is one
of the very short-lived particles, and it does possess mass. They
are created routinely in particle accelerators, and lifetimes measured, which is in microseconds. They are also observed by
particle detectors placed on the surface of the earth. Muons are
created naturally when cosmic rays from interstellar space hit
the earth's atmosphere. Even travelling at speeds near light, they
don't have time to reach the earth's surface before winking out
of existance, if calculated by regular methods. But they do. This
means they are traveling at least seven times the speed of light,
or Special Relativity's time dilation and length contraction must
hold true, the Lorentz transformations. Relativists assign (true
speeds cannot be measured) a speed generally from .99c to .995c
to the muons and declair length contraction is proven to be true.
The muon "sees" the atmosphere as only 600 meters thick, instead
of 4000+ meters, allowing it to reach earth before winking out of
existence. Whether Special Relativity is correct or the muon is
actually traveling over seven times the speed of light I don't know,
but one has to be. Either way, it is shown that reaching a star in
less time than it takes light to travel must be possible, although
we don't have the technology to do it at present. By the way, SR
was based on the philosophy of Einstein that nothing with mass
could travel the speed of light (c) and that c in a vacuum was a
universal constant. All the maths were developed to make that
philosophy true within the framework of Special Relativity itself.
The "infinities" arise from the maths, which lead to a division by
"0", thus the infinity. They are mathmatics, not necessarily reflecting reality. The "infinite energy" part is what I was leading
up to. Assuming SR's infinite energy maths are correct, that still
does not rule out traveling relativistic speeds where the time dilation and length contraction effects are huge. The line on a
graph showing the amounts of energy needed for travel from
a moderate speed to the "infinite energy" requirement is NOT a
straight line going from moderate to infinite. The huge increases
in energy, going to infinite, is right at the speed of light. Relativistic
speeds are possible without huge amounts of energy, just accelerating at a constant, moderate rate will get you near the
speed of light. The biggest problem with, say, sending an unmanned probe to a nearby star at present is, the method of
acceleration. The particles comming out the rear of a chemical
rocket are too slow for relativistic speeds to be reached. The
limitations of interstellar travel is not based on "the laws of physics," but on the level of technology.
 
2inquistive - nice post.

How is a muon created when it hits the atmosphere and what does its mass consist of? Where does it go when it "winks" out of existance? Is it a virtual particle that merely acts as if it has mass or does it actually exist in "solid" real form? Forgive my terminology if its incorrect and sorry for going off topic...
 
When high energy cosmic rays hit the nuclei of a gas molecule, pions
are produced, which rapidly decay into a muon and two neutrinos.
Muons are real particles, not virtual, a charged particle kind of like
an electron, except about 200 times as massive. They have a mean-life of about 2 microseconds. They are members of the lepton
family, fundamental matter particles. Saying they wink out of existence was inaccurate on my part, as they do decay into an
electron and two neutrinos, but they no longer exist as mouns.
I believe the cosmic rays that produce the pion to muon sequence
are high energy protons. By the way, I am not pretending to be
a particle physicist, I just do a lot of reading of scientific topics.
 
Originally posted by spookz
what's there to beat?
i thought it was kinda funny. if you do not share the humor, too bad. i aint gonna lose any sleep over it

It was kind of funny. You don't think it's fair to troll the troller? Hell I have a hard time doing it but you're hella inspiration.
 
wes

that the spirit wes. but yet......

poor inky, the only one here that is posting anything of real substance and yet is roundly ignored by the trolls. they rather focus on a layman so they can bamboozle with their...their...whatever you wanna call it!

step up to the plate mr wes "opinionated" morris. you professed a desire for a discussion. here is your chance. engage inky

but seriously....can we give inky a chance? i really cannot thank him enough for his patience and tolerance.

bottom line is ftl speeds are uneccessary for all interstellar travel. do you agree?

edit:Hell I have a hard time

hint: find a silly point and blow it out of proportion. allude that it is the only argument. negate one and all are. then, like you have already shown an aptitude for, question sanity;)
 
"bottom line is ftl speeds are uneccessary for all interstellar travel. do you agree?"

Yes, though it is pretty impractical without it. I'd say given roughly 15000 planets within 100 light years though, the likihood of intelligent life is probably low - but that's total conjecture.

The reality of the situation has been stated already but I'm too lazy to look it up.

There is nothign to keep us from all kinds of fun conjecture. I'm all about it, but when you want to do a serious investigation, you have to base it on stuff you can basically take for granted. Until there is hard evidence to support your fun conjecture, it will remain fun conjecture. I think the confusion stems from a tendency to mix the two.

Know what I mean? I'm saying that we can be all kinds of rational about our conjecture on guessing this and that about ET and brother I'm pretty much down with all that... however, mixing it with trying to investigate real incidents and explaining them with this conjecture is somewhat fun, it seems blatantly unwise to do so seriously.
 
a hypothesis is exactly what it implies

however, mixing it with trying to investigate real incidents and explaining them with this conjecture is somewhat fun, it seems blatantly unwise to do so seriously.

again you and i differ at this point. what you probably hold to be conjecture seems include everything imaginable (which is why you say...."unwise to do so seriously". what i hold conjecture to be must be rooted in... likelihood/stats/probability. if there are significant numbers that support the "conjecture," it can be retained as a hypo. i will work this out in another thread.

now stop fooling around. show inky the same degree of resistance you showed towards me.;)
 
2inquisitive: Up until now I'd understood that Cherenkov radiation was the most immediately available proof for FTL/no FTL.

http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/balloon/cerenkov_radiation.html

Going from air to water results in a change in c (because c is medium dependent) and the change creates a shock wave somewhat like that of the sonic boom... optic boom... very strange.

Whether or not this description of Cherenkov radiation is accurate is not something I am qualified to judge.
 
Well, I've gone through this entire thread, Gustav, and have no idea who or what you're talking about. You'll need to point out the exact post numbers.
 
this probably has been resolved but if not let me provide link thru pm (yuck)
you know the poster

apologies for wasting your time
 
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