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[Tormy]

What I find interesting is that people mostly imagine aliens to be more intelligent than us and their civilizations more refined than the ones we've got. What if it wasn't so? What if the human race was the most intelligent thing in the whole universe? Wouldn't that be a huge disappointment?

Well, we are just guessing...basically just like everyone else. However, considering that theres life on billions of planets probably...yeah lot of alien entities must be much more intelligent than us, Humans.

[Electronic Phantom]

What I find interesting is that people mostly imagine aliens to be more intelligent than us and their civilizations more refined than the ones we've got. What if it wasn't so? What if the human race was the most intelligent thing in the whole universe? Wouldn't that be a huge disappointment?

Well, we are hoping...basically just like everyone else. However, considering that theres life on billions of planets probably...yeah lot of alien entities might be much more intelligent than us, Humans.

Fixed for ya.

-(e)EP

[JoshuaFH]

HEY! We have a newcomer to the forums! How ya doin Electronic Phantom!

*checks profile*

Hey! Waitaminute! you've been register for almost a year, and you only got 26 posts! how come you don't hang out with us more?

We really need more people.

[Yanlin]

Oh shit. He's the guy staring over my shoulder!

[Aqizzar]

We really need more people.

I finally went up and read some threads in the Dwarf Mode and Gameplay Question areas, and found myself thinking, "Who are all you people?  I've never seen you in our semi-trolling tardathons."

[Tormy]

We really need more people.

I finally went up and read some threads in the Dwarf Mode and Gameplay Question areas, and found myself thinking, "Who are all you people?  I've never seen you in our semi-trolling tardathons."

Ahah, yeah..we have lot of new users actually, most of them ain't posting at all however...weird.
Anyway, interesting stuff again [sorta off-topic, but ah well]:

Life-supporting planet a new Earth?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581_c

Gliese 581 c  is an unconfirmed "super-earth", a large terrestrial extrasolar planet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581. Assuming that the planet's mass is close to the lower limit determined by radial velocity measurements (the true mass is unknown), it would be the smallest known extrasolar planet around a main sequence star to date. Gliese 581 c generated interest because it was initially reported to be the first potentially Earth-like planet in the habitable zone of its star, with a temperature right for liquid water on its surface, and by extension, potentially capable of supporting Earth-like life. However, further research on the potential effects of the planetary atmosphere casts doubt upon the habitability of Gliese 581 c and indicates that the third planet in the system, Gliese 581 d, is a better candidate for habitability. In astronomical terms, the Gliese 581 system is relatively close to Earth, at 20.3 light years (192 trillion km or 119 trillion miles) in the direction of the constellation of Libra. This distance, along with the declination and right ascension coordinates, give its exact location in our galaxy. It is identified as Gliese 581 by its number in the Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars; it is the 87th closest known star system to the Sun.

[Il Palazzo]

(...)It's all nice and well, but empirical data shows that planets are quite common out there, with more being discovered every year. e.g.There are at leats two earth-like planets close to the habitable zone(sort of like Venus and Mars respectively) around Gliese 581 = just 20ly away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extrasolar_planets

I knew it. Nobody reads my posts anymore. Damnit.

Anyway, since these planets seem to be just about outside the "habitable zone", they might be life supporting just in the same fashion as Venus and Mars are.
Not the best targets for colonization fleet either, as life in 2+ g would be rather more troublesome than e.g. life in space stations.

[Granite26]

Not sure I agree with that... got any science?

[Il Palazzo]

sorry, for which part?

edit: for the habitabilty part, it's mostly based on the wikipedia article, which of course might be a complete bullcrap, and I wouldn't know the difference.
Here's one of the pictures from said article(link in Tormy's post)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

for the 2g gravity's bad influence on human bodies, it's based on my perception only. Look at how easily veins in human body become damaged(varicosities) and how increased blood pressure leads to heart problems. Now think of your heart and veins having to deal with twice(or more) as high blood pressure as it usually is on Earth(higher g=higher hydrostatic pressure).
On a space station, on the other hand, you can set any gravity you want by simply making it spin fast(or slow) enough.
And I do believe that it'd be easier to build some space station-habitats than send a colony ship, carrying the same amount of people, on a journey that'd likely take 40+ years.

[Granite26]

I meant the 2g bit, especially since we STILL don't use rotational gravity simulation

Edit: Not to be argumentative, I was just curious if it was personal prejudice or whether there was science.  I don't have any the other way

[Tormy]

Sorta off-topic, but ah well:

Elusive Binary Black Hole System Identified

Astronomers from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson have found what looks like two massive black holes orbiting each other in the center of one galaxy. It has been postulated that twin black holes might exist, but it took an innovative, systematic search to find such a rare pair.




More informations can be found here:
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr09/pr0901.html

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

I don't know about you people, but I really am excited for the prospect of space colonization.

If sci-fi about early colonisation is true, then I want the seat where I get to be an immortal frozen human computer.
That means I can have a god complex and no-one will mind.

[Tormy]

The NGC 7049 galaxy
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090408.html

Awesome image about the galaxy [spoilered -> 1766x1948 resolution!]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Explanation: How was this unusual looking galaxy created? No one is sure, especially since spiral galaxy NGC 7049 looks so strange. NGC 7049's striking appearance is primarily due to an unusually prominent dust ring seen mostly in silhouette. The opaque ring is much darker than the din of millions of bright stars glowing behind it. Besides the dark dust, NGC 7049 appears similar to a smooth elliptical galaxy, although featuring surprisingly few globular star clusters. NGC 7049 is pictured above as imaged recently by the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright star near the top of NGC 7049 is an unrelated foreground star in our own Galaxy. Not visible here is an unusual central polar ring of gas circling out of the plane near the galaxy's center. Since NGC 7049 is the brightest galaxy in its cluster of galaxies, its formation might be fostered by several prominent and recent galaxy collisions. NGC 7049 spans about 150 thousand light years and lies about 100 million light years away toward the constellation of Indus.

[PTTG??]

Considering the age of the universe compared to the age of Earth, and even the age of the Human race as it is, I think it's mathematically impossible for us to be the first and greatest intelligent life in the universe.

it is not impossible. it is just unlikely to happen.

It might not even be unlikely. Perhaps the galaxy is a little more dangerous to life than we expect, and earth was just lucky to only get a few Mass Extinction Events and no sterilizing; or perhaps the last "generation" of intelligent life knocked it's self back into the stone age in a war.

One way or annother, there's two conflicting pieces of evidence: the Drake Equation and the Radio Silence. There are a few possible solutions to this problem:

- We are in a zoo or otherwise protected.
- All intelligence life before us never thought of using Radio.
- Intelligence is not evolutionary advantageous.
- We are god's chosen species.
- We are first.

And there are certainly others.
The Zoo hypothesis has a certain charm; if only because it makes for the possibility that one or two times in a decade, the game warden lets some hecklers in.

[Il Palazzo]

Radio silence can be explained if you assume that technology is not equal to inteligence, or that it's but a step on the evolutionary ladder of inteligent life. In that second case, every inteligent lifeform would enter the "window" of technological advancement, during which it would probably produce radio noise, until evolving into something no longer dependent on technology as we know it, thus, no longer giving away that "noise" we're so frantically looking for(or used to be, I think it's sort of a passing fad now).