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[RAM]

On your cellphone? 1.0 will be far more sophisticated than what we have now, what do you think will cause the first crash of internet 2.0? someone turned off immigration limiting and set the dwarves to speed 0 and suddenly the quantum super-computer just couldn't handle the conflicting neural nets from all those dwarves...

[SmileyMan]

Just popping in to this thread (long time lurker) to recommend Bruce Hood's SuperSense.  I won't do it the disservice of a precis, but if you're interested in belief, faith and the human mind it's a great book.

[Idiom]

While we're mentioning books:
A Canticle for Liebowitz. Even just the first third of the book, (Fiat Homo?), is brilliant and relevant to faith and humans.

[alway]

I wouldn't be able to understand how you think you're alone in the universe. Everything is so perfect, there's a reason for everything and there are so many "coincidences", how's that? How did everything start?
I understand religion has been transformed in a non-sense thing these days, with people making religions to earn money or to have fun.
In my opinion religion should be the way to find the truth about all those questions. In this point of view, an atheist would be religious too.

The irony is, I would guess at least 50% of atheists do NOT think we are alone. Knowing that life occurs via naturally occuring phenomena rather than through magical phenomena means the probability of other intelligent life existing is close to 1. Even with conservative estimates, there should be multiple intelligent lifeforms in the Milky Way alone. Space is big... So big we do not, and cannot understand how incredibly big. Here is a video which shows a test of a game engine which generates a realistically scaled and realistically populated galaxy which is essentially a copy of the Milky Way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0-lsyo28SU Watch it in HD, and remember... Each little tiny square represents a star system. It will help in the understanding of the sheer massiveness of space. And that is just one galaxy. There are estimated to be more galaxies than there are stars in that simulation.

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. It may be good for us, but for lifeforms which evolved elsewhere, not so much.

As far as coincidences go, I think SciAm did a great article on it a few months ago, let me see if I can find it... Ah, here it is. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-our-brains-do-not-intuitively-grasp-probabilities

I think the main reason Chrstianity is on a decline currently is because the way it is gone about is completely anti-intellectual. It is currently all about 'feeling' the presence of god, 'experiencing' his might, ect. Anyone who asks "why" ends up with no answers, since that is not what the church is focusing on. It is not only the church, however. For the past few decades culture has been in the anti-intellectual swing of the ever repeating metronome (pretty much ever since we threatened to destroy the world with science during the cold war via nuclear). I am no expert on the matter, but it would appear we are beginning to see the start of a shift back to intellectualism. More and more churches are accepting evolution and other (relatively basic) scientific principles as fact, rather than trying to oppose science. I would expect to see less anti-religion sentiment from atheists when this occurs on a more widespread basis. We really do not care whether or not anyone thinks a god/godess/gods guided evolution or guided the Big Bang into occuring. It is when the religious try to teach false information (creationism mostly) in schools, thus denying children a quality education, that we really have problems with them.

Well, thats my 2 cents worth on the original post... Haven't had the time to read through the whole topic yet.

[MrWiggles]

I don't see the irony in atheist believing in alien life.

Thanks to the law of large numbers, life however rare, is eventual. Now, aliens aren't visiting us. And chances are, we'll never visit them.

I think will eventually find a planet with methane or oxygen, and we'll know for sure.

[alway]

I don't see the irony in atheist believing in alien life.

Thanks to the law of large numbers, life however rare, is eventual. Now, aliens aren't visiting us. And chances are, we'll never visit them.

I think will eventually find a planet with methane or oxygen, and we'll know for sure.

Its more a sense of irony in the wording of question itself... In that alone meaning no god, and yet there being no god itself implies we are not alone.

And I wouldn't be so certain about never visiting them. Worst case scenario, there is no way to pass the speed of light. Due to relativity, if we were able to accelerate a craft fast enough time dilation would mean the original crew would still be alive , even if in the outside universe eons had passed. 1000 LY journey? No problem! Just speed up to close to the speed of light so time dilation kicks in, and you complete the journey in what (to the occupants) appears to be one year. It would be a monumental task, no doubt, but doable with sufficient engines. This effect is shown in an episode of Stargate Atlantis, when they are building the gate bridge between the galaxies. A ship crewed by ancients lost their hyperdrives, and so continued on with sub-lights at near the speed of light, and had been traveling for 10,000 years; the time which had passed for those onboard was minimal.
And that is of course assuming we do not figure out FTL travel. The very fact that we can imagine the possibility of FTL travel, and have devised semi-plausible devices in Sci-Fi to me says it will be accomplished given a few hundred years.

Methane and oxygen may not even be required for some as of yet undiscovered forms which life can take.

Edit:
And now that I think about it... An interesting possibility has presented itself. What if people use this time dilation to elongate their lifespan? By that I mean staying aboard a ship which travels at near the speed of light for the purpose of benefitting from technological advances which without the time dilation would occur years after their deaths. Sort of a semi-stasis chamber in space. Anyway, getting a bit off topic here.

[Ampersand]

Wouldn't really work out that well. There's the whole problem of ramming into specks of dust at 99 percent of the speed of light being equivalent to smashing the front of your ship with wrecking ball.

The real problem with traveling that fast isn't merely that it takes a lot of energy, but that it's extremely dangerous as any passing particle of anything will utterly destroy you. There are however possibilities much closer to home, on the moons of Jupiter, and Saturn.

[MrWiggles]

FTL isn't impossible Einstein equation goes both ways.

The light barrier can't be surpassed on either end. STL will always be STL and FTL will always be FTL.

And traveling STL makes intergalitc travel impractical. Yes, with time dilation a ship crew can get to a distant location within their own life time. But they would be their own agents, having no known way of talking with home planet in a meaningful matter or even being the same place culturally or politicly when they come back.

And increasing speed requires exponential energy requirement. As you get closer to LS your mass is increasing. Then there also the need for equal time for acceleration and deceleration.

Its a mess. 

And its not likly these hardships will go away. 

[alway]

Well, there is that... But if we are capable of moving that quickly, I would expect some sort of shielding to be available. And for the most part, the particles would have to be relatively large, since otherwise it would be more like a heavy cosmic ray bombardment. But if you run smack into an asteroid... Ya, you're finished without really good sheilding.

[Humaan]

Well, here was ,at one point in the universe, life on Mars. Heck, mars could have been Earth-like before its current state.

I, for one, still hope that we can take advantage of wormholes (though, at the moment, are small, if not smaller, than atoms) to travel around the universe.

Ah, but I degress...

[Ampersand]

Yeah. You have to think of the boundary of the Speed of light as the dividing point between things with mass and things without mass. Massless photons cannot travel slower than the speed of light, while all particles with mass cannot surpass it.

[MrWiggles]

Shielding is possible with pulse EM field, however it would need enough force equal to your ship and equal to the force of the incoming particle. That just to take away its force, it'll still be in the way.

As for the size. Size doesn't matter kinetic is crazy like that.



That is solid steel, with a solid steel ball, done at orbital speeds.

Then we can look at small asteroids moving slowing have done to the earth in the past. With just kinetic force.

[Humaan]

Yeah. You have to think of the boundary of the Speed of light as the dividing point between things with mass and things without mass. Massless photons cannot travel slower than the speed of light, while all particles with mass cannot surpass it.

Because if light moves slower than the speed of light, it has negitive mass!

Isn't physics fun?

[Kanil]

MrWiggles, that is one damn impressive image.

[LegoLord]

Just on the topic of space-travel and all that, have y'all heard that we might have warp travel like in Star Trek within the next 100 years?  There was recently something done with super-cooled rings, and something.  Did some weird stuff.  I'd have to look it up.  It would take massive amounts of energy, but conveniently, the fields of fusion reactors and antimatter production are expanding quickly, which may provide this energy.