Who thinks there are UFO's out there?

[PRR]

I just want to go to Mars. And not spend a year in a can.

Considering power/weight needed to make this trip in a week, it is about 1,000 times the best P/W of our best engines.

Can we do better? Have we got better? Yes, P/W improves about 10X every *century*. If this trend persists, it will be 300 years before I can go to Mars in a week. (I should wait 330 years if I want to come back also.)

At that point the Solar System is open, if there is any reason to go to Uranus in a month. Like when sailors got past half-way across an ocean, we had circumnavigation in another century.

But going outside our solar system to another, inside a lifespan, is a BIG jump. Without doing math, I'll speculate another 3 centuries of technical progress. And the nearest systems may be dull and lifeless. I concede there are probably other civilizations "out there" but not many and probably not near. It's a big universe.

And, if ordinary people have 1,000-1,000,000 times as much energy to use, could they make a life on earth so good they would never leave? With a million horsepower I could have great fresh food delivered daily, re-compound my sewage into fine wine, or smite everybody around and rule my peninsula. (Enough of that, the demand for better power/person vanishes and progress collapses.)

And if a non-Earther did rise to interstellar travel, why oh why would they visit Earth? Tourism? I'm in the slum-town next to a major tourist Destination. NOBODY stops here, they zoom the 30MPH road at 55 in a hurry to see the National Park and the Quaint Shops.

OK, if their navigation system is as good as our tourists, we will have some UFOs "lost", sitting in driveways or flight-ways trying to read the navigation screen and wondering how to get back to the route to The Sights. And if they are "male", the last thing they would do is contact a local and ask for directions.

 

[boji]

PRR has bothered to muse on UFO's.  My week is complete.

Nobody protects the story of a weather balloon the way the govt has protected the Roswell incident.

Good point.

 

[shabtek]

ha, my week us complete too


infinity of time and space is easy. consider infinite realities where all possibilities are; by definition there is room for that too

 

[iomegaman]

PRR succinctly sums up my point about the LOGISTICS of space travel...but thats the "standard" deviation approach...

If we track the development of human culture and mobility using the standard deviation yes it is indeed many more centuries before we have the P/W to escape gravity here at a rate that can matter in one human lifetime...(which introduces numerous other problems not yet considered)...

But if instead of the standard deviation we are to track human mobility against the "age of______" approach we can see that the "silicone age" is a development cycle on a logarithmic scale of development in human development...

Every age is marked by its tools...the current age (which is rather embryonic on the scale of human development) is already producing incredibly accurate tools at an alarming rate...and not just accurate but diverse as well as reproducible...

The very first compass or atlas probably did not reach market saturation for centuries...current technologies reach market saturation (on a much LARGER market share) in months...

When I was a kid I loved the Dick Tracy cartoon in the Sunday Comics...the wrist watch video device he had was so outlandish as to be Jules Verne level speculation...I own a device now that can track my blood pressure and communicates freely with my contacts, video is really just a matter of price point vs market share at this point...our wild speculations and science fictions are becoming realities faster than we imagined...

The issue of P/W will probably be side-stepped when we discover a model that allows us to manipulate gravity itself...at the speed of light mass becomes infinite...unless we can find a way to change that we aren't going anywhere beyond our own neighborhood.

Any civilisation that has already discovered that trick will probably not be in anything remotely close to a weather balloon or moving lights that outpace our current technology...

 

[bluebird]

our wild speculations and science fictions are becoming realities faster than we imagined...

yes but on the other side of that coin, I'm a little disappointed that the teleporter and warp drive promised in Star Trek is not a reality. Anti gravity, dilithium crystals, THE BIG STUFF, just hasn't happened. I mean things are pretty much the same quality of life wise since I was about 7 years old. Yes the internet and the microwave oven were pretty big things, but I thought I'd have a pair of anti-gravity boots by now...

Back to UFO's... I like the idea of these crafts being  probes. I bet they use quantum entanglement to communicate with the probes.

 

[PRR]

> things are pretty much the same quality of life wise since I was about 7 years old.

While very approximate, I like my estimate of 10X better/bigger every century.

Prior to 1700 few folks had even the 1/4 horsepower of a human body. The few who had horses/oxen had horsepower, but neither a human not an animal can be worked to these powers for more than few hours.

Watt's steam engines, late 1700s, seem to be about 1 ton per horsepower. Yes, they didn't walk around and brickwork was appropriate and cheap.

Later Stevenson engines got down to 100 pounds per horse. Marine Diesels got to this range.

By 1900 a very light gas engine would be 10 pounds per horse. Motor vehicles did some better, though with shorter life. Airplanes are hurting for P/W so got to 2lb/HP at the end of WWI and the start of WWII (with better life). Car engines have gone from 5 to <2lb/HP (my Honda's 250lb mill is rated 148hP; new models have higher ratings but only for bursts).

Turbines do some below 1lb/HP but maybe not 0.1 except in quick-burnout military boosters.

The Saturn V rocket seems to be better than 0.1lb/HP and this is more notable in that the other examples have "something to push against" (mine water, tracks/roads, oceans, air) and the Saturn can only push against its own waste. While it has high peak HP it has much lower total output than the others because of poor push and because it has to carry both halves of its fuel. And these problems extend to all outer-space travel.

Uranium reactors are very heavy for power. Even "cargo" (missile) submarine engines appear to be 100lb/HP, although this also includes fuel for years of cruising or days of fast evasion.

Fusion gets more from the fuel but containment scales very badly at human sizes. (Size of a Sun, containment is free.) Fusion power does not solve the lack of traction. A Dean Drive would work, if it worked. The EmDrive is the same idea with added Relativity to confound analysis; experimental EMs use large power to make thrust at the level of experimental error. If not bogus, it may improve; it has a long way to go.

We are star-scum. Complex scum probably only develops on the surface of large masses (not proven). How does scum rise above its surface? Insects, birds, and bats fly in air. No air-breather can fly high in air. Rockets can but require vast fuel for tiny payloads. I find it interesting that we can just-barely fly to another large mass (moon or Mars), but returning is about at the limit of the largest governments, and returning from Mars seems impractical with rocket technology. (With many stages and caches along the way something bigger than a Saturn could launch a probe to send back a roll of film.) What other ways could scum leave their surface? Large volcanoes and meteor-impacts may sometimes eject rocks out of the gravity-well; scheduling and survival are problematic.

I have doubts anybody can "manipulate gravity" with any less energy than gravity exerts (TANSTAAFL) but it is fun to think about.

 

[boji]

Fair to say if the universe is sparse in its creation of life complex scum, that makes a case for tourism. Unlocking photosynthesis may solve the energy crisis, and that's just a leaf. We've explored what, 3% of the oceans? Maybe we're walking on bio-diamonds and don't know it. Or, if multiverses are a thing, interplanetary colleges have foreign exchange programs for undergrads.  ;D

 

[Tubetec]

I think thats quite a perceptive conclusion , we've evolved from pond scum , and imagine at one point we had trouble dealing with the fact were closely related to the great apes  ;D

 

[JohnRoberts]

Fair to say if the universe is sparse in its creation of life complex scum, that makes a case for tourism. Unlocking photosynthesis may solve the energy crisis, and that's just a leaf. We've explored what, 3% of the oceans? Maybe we're walking on bio-diamonds and don't know it. Or, if multiverses are a thing, interplanetary colleges have foreign exchange programs for undergrads.  ;D

While not exactly on topic I recently saw an article about how feeding cattle seaweed reduces their methane emissions.  8)

JR

 

[alexc]

I spend some time 'watching the skees' on nice nights (few) out here in rural town.

The stars can be incredible at times, no doubt, but so far I haven't seen anything apart from shooting stars, and I fancy but not sure, some 'blinking red' slow moving tiny light - a satellite of some kind I guess.  [no planes down here at night!]

Enough to make my pulse quicken and watch for a while but usually some clouds get in the way etc.

Oh well - keep watching here and there; one never knows really ?

 

[alexc]

And on the seaweed topic JR, it makes excellent  organic plant food.

I get a local product here, which is basically concentrated brewed and fermented seaweed  ;D  like teriaki for plants - they go ape for it.

And slightly also related is a local product which is made from river carp [fish]  of which there are endless quantities in aust. rivers.
Both living and not so.

Fan-tastic and certainly an eco-friendly  thing to do with excess carp.

 

[boji]

Story Musgrave

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4dE6MQmEgo&t=1371s

 

[alexc]

' ...  we are star scum ..'    Very interesting read PRR ..  thanks

 

[Tubetec]

All kinds of uses for seaweed , here in ireland there are several licensed harvesters of it , Ive tried soap products based from it and they really are very nice, no need for the usual list of chemical crap  you find in most soap based products.

Newer research now suggests seaweed is responsible for a huge amount of carbon capture and storage , there are suggestion kelp forests could be seeded and figured into the energy/climate equation . For generations here in areas of the coast ,if you had rocky and  unfertile land you picked stones and boulders out of the ground and used these to build dry stone walls at the edge of your property , you then gathered seaweed which as already noted makes the best fertiliser you can get , the land literally had to be tamed by manual labour.  What ever ways we end up using this amazing resource we better not screw it up like we have almost everything else we touch 

My night sky isnt what it used be due to light polution , but I regularly spot not only meteroites , asteroids , planets and satelites as well and ISS with the naked eye , there is one or two ISS mapping software which can show you realtime where thing is , if you have a clear bright night and your getting the proper data from the app you should be able to spot it easily enough with the naked eye , generally speaking it will only be visible for around 60-80 seconds maybe less and its moving at a high rate of speed ,it orbits the earth I think every 45 minutes or so. Not 100% sure how visible it will be from Tassie Alec, find one of the better ISS trackers .

http://www.isstracker.com/

thats one of them , I cant vouch for its accuracy though .  its just passing over southern Aus right now .

 

[living sounds]

Do aliens exist? In a universe that big it's very likely. Have they visited us recently? Don't think so. With all the cameras and other measuring equipment out there and availible to the general puplic there's still no credible UFO evidence availible at all.

I personally think the Dark Forest Theory, a game theoretical approach to alien life has some unfortunate plausibility.

https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/the-dark-forest-theory-a-terrifying-explanation-of-why-we-havent-heard-from-aliens-yet

Right now I'm much more excited for the possibility of a possible fifth force, if the X17 particle can be proven to actually exist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X17_particle

 

[cyrano]

I happen to know a lot of biologists. And pilots, but that's not as relevant. Some biologists suspect aliens already are among us. We hardly ever see them, except on TV, or occasionally on our plate.

Octopuses seem to defy a lot of rules in biology. They are far too intelligent for the size of their brain, fi. We've only noticed that in the last decade or so. Sure, there are other weird species. But none fits into evolution and natural history as badly as octopuses. And one even looks like the killer-ghost from the old Pacman game...

 

[PRR]

> fits into evolution and natural history as badly as octopuses.

We can eat them. So they must be family.

 

[Seeker]

> fits into evolution and natural history as badly as octopuses.

We can eat them. So they must be family.

If we buy into the idea of pan spermia we may have an awful lot of family out there, intelligent or otherwise...

 

[Tubetec]

When we can land(not crashland) a probe on an intergalactic snowball and test for dna we might get a step closer to the answer .
That stories of aliens get facillitated for use as a smoke screen by government agencies  that are up to no good seems very plausible to me. 

 

[cyrano]

> fits into evolution and natural history as badly as octopuses.

We can eat them. So they must be family.

LOL. Hehe.

It seems a scientist has observed signs of life on Mars. Sorry, immediately forgot all about it after reading. Too vague to process...