Astronomer: We will discover alien life in 20 years...

[deadrats]

...as long as you give us a huge chunk of cash, of course:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/23/seti_astronomer_we_will_discover_extraterrestr...e_in_20_years/

ROTFLMAO.

[drjtech]

As long as they get enough money to fund a 20 year grant, Mission Accomplished!

[El Heggunte]

SETI has always been pseudoscience cräp, period.

NO species capable of interstellar travel would use rockets or similar primitive technology.

NO species capable of interstellar travel would use electromagnetic waves for remote communication

[bendixG15]

...............discover alien life in twenty years............. I can't wait

[TreeTops]

Just saw another Area 51 documentary. They had a guy that was supposed to be a worker there that smuggled out a video of an alien being interviewed. Very dark, poor quality vid, just showed the alien's head. The worker said that reason for darkness was that light was 'harmful to the alien's eyes'. Yes they were big eyes just like in the aliens shown in movies. The interrogation with the alien did not go well. Seems like neither interviewer or alien could understand what each was saying. I really could not hear anything from the alien, only some garbled questions from the interviewer. The documentary announcer did not ask the worker the right questions. Like, where was that alien found? What did it eat? When or how was it discovered? All important questions not asked.

I believe this was just another fake alien documentary video but who knows?

[vhelp]

lets face it, these documentaries are as fake as the moon landings we supposively made back in the sixties.

[deadrats]

NO species capable of interstellar travel would use electromagnetic waves for remote communication

and what would you propose they use for communication? quantum entanglement? LOL!

[deadrats]

lets face it, these documentaries are as fake as the moon landings we supposively made back in the sixties.

wait, are you saying that you think the moon landings of the 60's and 70's were faked? you can't possibly believe that, do you?

[deadrats]

NO species capable of interstellar travel would use rockets or similar primitive technology.

btw, interstellar travel using rocket technology could relatively easily be accomplished so long as you had sufficient fuel.

as for the vast distances they are only a factor if said alien life had life spans comparable to ours, if they had lifespans comparable to say something like a tree, that can live for 1000 years, then a trip that last 100 years or so is not really t hat big an issue, it would be similar to the trips that people back in the 1500's that wanted to travel to the other side of the world had to endure.

[yoda313]

Didn't Carl Sagan's bunch propose some sort of nuclear rocket booster system to go between solar systems?

I think the idea was to have the giant releases of energy with each stage of the ship.

Theoretically whose to say you couldn't string dozens or hundreds of stages together for a colony ship to handle the long transit time?

Actually even now with real science they are working on afterburner technology of sorts for the ion engines they are already using on space probes. Travel is supposed to be reduced dramatically with the supercharger. Edit whose to say some other advanced race wouldn't have a similar or more advanced engine and could make the trip?????

I watched that universe show a lot when it was on the history channel channel. Awesome show.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[TreeTops]

Times to travel to Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System using ION propulsion is 81,000 years. Afterburner speeds is still unknown.
Using Gravitational assists, 19,000 years. Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, 85 years (But that is theory and untested.)

Source: http://www.universetoday.com/15403/how-long-would-it-take-to-travel-to-the-nearest-star/

[yoda313]

Nuclear pulse propulsion, that's what I was looking for, thanks treetops.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[deadrats]

absolutely, i was thinking of some kind of nuclear powered rocket; the reality is that Newtonian physics says that "an object in motion tends to stay in motion, an object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by a net external force". all that has to be done is point a rocket in a particular direction, ignite a massive nuclear reaction behind it and action/reaction will move it at a tremendous rate of speed.

and, there is no need for rocket stages in space, there is no atmosphere and thus no drag, nor are you trying to achieve escape velocity because you are no longer within the primary diameter of influence of a celestial body.

what would be needed is smaller engines for course correction, but there is no need for an engine to be running for the duration of the trip.

lastly, there is always this possibility, that we will encounter alien intelligence but not alien life, perhaps much like we send out probes perhaps they too will send out probes, maybe with advanced robots, as an exploration tools. i think the likeliest possibility is that eventually one of the probes we sent out, assuming it doesn't get destroyed somehow, may be discovered by an advanced civilization and they may be able to figure out the path it took to reach them and they may be able to send out a probe of their own.

of course, there's always the possibility that we are the most advanced civilization within the nearby universe, in which case it's unlikely we will ever meet another intelligent life form.

the funny thing is that it's not necessarily the laws of physics that is the limiting factor but the laws of engineering. it may be that one day physicists discover that relativity is simply a special case of a more encompassing principle, much like classical mechanics is a special case of relativity, and perhaps they will discover that invariant mass can be accelerated to the speed of light and beyond, but that doesn't mean we will be able to apply it anytime soon.

of course, there is this possibility, we are not meant to ever meet anyone from another planet, regardless of whatever theory of our origin you subscribe to, it's impossible not to realize that the known universe is for all practical purposes infinitely large and that there seems to be a set of rules in place that effectively limits us from exploring it in any meaningful way.

[_Al_]

rockets mean nothing, even if you manage to go really fast, what if your shield meets some tiny matter, ... not a pretty picture, ... speeds we would need to talk about are just too much ... one needs to shorten those distances or to change concept of time , space , if not , you are dead in the water ... we perhaps need to start to think of building or colonizing other Worlds rather than riding to them first ... if we survive overpopulation

try to talk to a spider in some dark basement that there is a life above him in the first floor ...
try to talk about concept of time to a day-fly
picture eagle having conversation about a distance with a bug ...
we appear intelligent to ourselves but let that another life form be judge of that, we might be all above to them, spider, bug or a day-fly ...

as for that fake moon landing, because this is video forum, listen to this , if not believing they landed it there, completely different point of view is sometimes needed, if you look for some safe anchor to hold onto, having not trusting anything ....

[deadrats]

we perhaps need to start to think of building or colonizing other Worlds rather than riding to them first

have you considered laying off the crack? if not, something to consider.

how would you propose that we build or colonize "other wolds" before we actually "ride to them first"?

rockets mean nothing, even if you manage to go really fast, what if your shield meets some tiny matter, ... not a pretty picture, ... speeds we would need to talk about are just too much

there is "tiny matter" permeating all of space, the sun bombards the solar system with practically infinite numbers of particles. as you pointed out the space craft we send out it shielded, the reality is that tiny particle don't impart any significant amount of kinetic energy or force on a large object, much like how a sand storm doesn't do any real damage to a person, primarily due to the difference in potential energy.

[El Heggunte]

NO species capable of interstellar travel would use electromagnetic waves for remote communication

and what would you propose they use for communication?

You yourself has already given PART of the answer you were looking for:

......

the funny thing is that it's not necessarily the laws of physics that is the limiting factor but the laws of engineering. it may be that one day physicists discover that relativity is simply a special case of a more encompassing principle, much like classical mechanics is a special case of relativity, and perhaps they will discover that invariant mass can be accelerated to the speed of light and beyond, but that doesn't mean we will be able to apply it anytime soon.

So in theory at least, yes it would be possible to transmit energy faster than the speed of light. The question is, can electromagnetic energy move faster than itself? But of course not.

As a matter of fact, it's not very difficult to determine a type of special relativity under which there is NO upper limit of velocity. The difficult part is convince the materialist "scientists" (<- quotes denoting irony) that there (may) exist VARIOUS physical spaces (no, nothing to do with the multiverse bûllshît), and that an object could be placed (and moved) in two (or more?) of them at the same time.

This idea is similar to the type of "hyperspace" shown in Babylon 5.
Evidently, "warp drives" and "tachyons" have always been and will always be *pure drivel*

[_Al_]

how would you propose that we build or colonize "other wolds" before we actually "ride to them first"?

Rockets are good for our Solar system, not much practical to reach another star systems, I was talking about riding to another Star systems to supposedly reach another Worlds.

In near future with technology there is and political situations not much you can do, just to try to settle on Mars, maybe Moon, but gravity is a problem, because if you are born there and stay there , you are no 100% human anymore, body would be changed. To find another planet with right gravity for us and environment using some sort of "rocket" outside of Solar system to us is perhaps insane. Artificial gravity is a must, but it is nowhere on the radar. I can imagine something rotating attached to some sort of "Death Star" though , artificially build structure in space ....... lots of structures like that, close to some planet or moons , with resources , or something like that parked by asteroid, juice it up and move to another, just to eliminate human extinction if something happens with Earth
this sort of things would bring lots of deaths and misfortunes, space is a deadly place for us, outside of Earth cocoon, fighting for resources, but that is what humans do anyway, right now ...