Do not mock our theory ("It Begins ... Planet Under Attack," down there somewhere.) that the E.T.s have started species cleansing. It's just that they aren't such great shots, or
haven't quite gotten the range. Yet.
It may not have been as spectacular as the space rock that streaked across the skies above Russia late Thursday, but the Bay Area's close encounter with a meteor Friday night was drawing its own attention on social networks.
Comments on Twitter indicated the object that flashed across the horizon around 7:45 p.m. was blue in color and visible throughout the Bay Area and large areas of the West Coast, with at least one reported sighting in Washington state.
Amateur video footage broadcast on KTVU-2 showed a bright streak lasting approximately five seconds that appeared to head downward. Some viewers described it as a firework in the night sky.
Quiver in fear, puny humanoids. Your time is done.
More Meteor
From the Guardian:
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, long-term leader of Russia's far right parliamentary bloc, claimed the meteor was not a cosmic event but something more sinister, my colleague Mark Rice-Oxley reports.
Zhirinovsky said:
It is not meteors falling, it's the Americans testing a new weapon. [Secretary of state John] Kerry warned [foreign minister Sergei] Lavrov on Monday ... that there would be such a provocation and that it might affect Russia.
Apparently Russia's Wayne LaPierre-anoid.
16 comments:
Yeah, because what could possibly make more sense than testing a prototype strategic weapon in Russian airspace? I mean, c'mon, what could possibly go wrong.
Also, too, once again I have to remind those fanciful souls that there are NO ETs - the entire concept of travel over stellar distances is precluded by a little thing called Relativity.
Perhaps, here and there in the Universe, there are multiple intelligent species that have evolved on different systems in highly compact star clusters. In which case they almost certainly went to war and wiped each other out, but beyond that exception, no matter how many intelligent, spacefaring civilizations there might be at any point in time, NONE of them are coming to earth...
Oh, if only.
While I disagree with mikey's basic premise (long exposition on which upon request) I have two basic hypothesis concerning ETI:
The first was stated in the original The Day the Earth Stood Still:
You can fuck with your planet all you want but if you vicious apes fuck with us you'll be cooking on hot rocks for the next ten thousand years (I may be paraphrasing somewhat).
The second is (sort of) the story from The Sirens of Titan:
Six thousands years ago a group of aliens crash landed here and ever since they've been trying their damnedest to get out of here, thus leading to the rise of 'civilization'.
Or, there really might not be anybody out there.
That's ok. Lots of people "disagree with my premise". They love them some star trek or star wars or science fiction and can't stand the idea that people aren't running around between the stars.
But the thing is, in any argument I'll take the side of Albert Einstein and proven physics. At c, mass becomes infinite. You cannot move an infinite mass. Your spaceship stops.
And please don't wave around hyperspace and warp drives and wormholes until you can provide a hypothesis that is 1. Falsifiable and 2. Makes verifiable predictions...
orb
Space Editor:
Sheesh mikey, don't be such a fiction-pooper, let us suspend disbelief for a while. Could be methane monsters from one of Jupiter's or Saturn's moons.
Is employment already making you as cranky as we are? (Should've seen us when we had a job.)
You don't need to go faster than light.
To send probes to the nearby stars requires an engine capable of 1/20th G acceleration that can be maintained for twenty years or so (with another ten years to receive information back).
The engine exists.
The means of powering it for 20 years doesn't. Yet. But it will (given the survival of western civilization for the next 50 years*).
As far as species traveling between stars, they would need to be long lived. But again, not impossible. Maybe even within the possibility of human advancement (now there's a scary thought).
And to be clear I have no strong belief or evidence there is ETI anywhere that cares one hoot about the going on's of this stupid planet. But I really do hope we are not the only 'intelligent'** species in the galaxy.
The statistics say there are plenty of planets that would support life that we might even recognize as life. And so just the odds say there is a good chance advanced life is out there somewhere.
Now whether they would vaporize us on sight or not? That's a whole 'nother post.
*By no means certain.
**Yeah, I know. I use the term loosely.
100 light years. 1/20th c.
2000 years.
20,000 light years. 1/20th c.
Almost half a million years.
Do the same numbers at .5 c.
Same results.
Am I kind of dickish about this? Yep, I am. I think of it as a kind of "tough love".
People really, REALLY want to believe in interstellar travel. They LOVE them some just so stories.
Except it just doesn't work. Under any scenario....
OK, 100 light years may be a little far for the foreseeable future, but I believe you may not understand the concept of constant acceleration.
If you have an engine that accelerates constantly for a year, even at very low rates*, you will reach 98+% of the speed of light - fast enough to get to Alpha Centauri in 7-8 years and Tau Ceti in less than twenty.
So again, not imposable.
And again, just because something could happen doesn't mean it has or will happen.
*Don't make me do the math but I believe 1/20th G will give more than 99%C after a year.
Uhh, impossible.
And don't you have something better to do on a Saturday night than harass an old burnt out hippie?
Well I do.
What anne said.
~
For what it's worth, 1/20g x 1 year = 1.546×10^7 m/s, or 0.05157c.
I'm always willing to do the math...
You are correct. 1/20g won't get you to light speed after a year. I was calculating it wrong (acceleration calculator provided by the Great Gazoogal).
BUT if you had 1g acceleration for a year (admittedly not possible on this planet now, and probably not for many hundreds of years) you would reach near light speed.
Further discussion here including some formulas about dealing with the increase in mass, time dilation, other factors that would make things difficult, and a comment about how much energy it would actually take (which looks like that would be the real limiting factor).
So bottom line, no we are not going to even the near stars anytime soon. But that does not mean there isn't someone who has figured it out.
Besides, I like MB's methane monsters from Jupiter.
And also, what anne said. Too.
So 250 light years at 0.5c would be a thousand year round trip. What civilization/society would ever function on that timeline? A thousand years ago, Sweyn Forkbeard was declared King of England forcing Æthelred the Unready to flee to Normandy. Meanwhile, Holy Roman Emperor Henry II began his second Italian Campaign. Seems like we're a little disconnected from events of a thousand years ago...
Anne brings the funny with just one word...
Agreed. We should probably talk about zombies, because interstellar travel is just absurd...
Mikey, you need to get your imaginator adjusted, seems to be not working right at all.
Yeah, faster-than-light is impossible due to y'know, physics. But you throw "impossible" around pretty damn easily after that. Lots of shit that is now commonplace used to be "impossible" too. Why stop imagining?
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