Re: Night Sky : Thu Mar 21, 2013 1:48 pm  

JerryChicken wrote:

...
Somewhere, sometime, on a planet far, far away some alien lifeform is listening to that very faint signal and trying to work out what the looped tape of Lionel Richie's "Hello" song all means.

This is where I make you all gain an inkling of how utterly insignificant we are (except to ourselves) and why some alien lifeform is not (yet) listening.

The Solar Syatem is, in space terms, NOTHING.

And the only aliens who could hear us would be any within our "communications bubble"; that is, how far our earliest broadcasts have travelled, at the speed of light, since radio communication was invented.

And that, if you look at a picture of our galaxy, is again, NOWHERE AT ALL. The overwhelming majority of even our own poxy little galaxy could not possibly have any inkling at all that we are here.

Here you go, sit yer throats: that tiny, insignificant blue dot is in fact The Bubble. That's how far our signals have got.

Re: Night Sky : Thu Mar 21, 2013 11:26 pm  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eur ... id=wp_ipad

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eur ... id=wp_ipad

Re: Night Sky : Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:43 am  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

And the only aliens who could hear us would be any within our "communications bubble"; that is, how far our earliest broadcasts have travelled, at the speed of light, since radio communication was invented.

How do you know this?

All you can measure is how far we have transmitted our broadcasts.

You have absolutely no way of knowing whether a superior intelligence has devised a means of "collecting" broadcasts from a further distance than that which they have been transmitted.

In other words: just because we can't reach them doesn't mean that they can't reach us.

Re: Night Sky : Fri Mar 22, 2013 11:13 am  

I don't know how you managed to post. You were banned – and, after 1) consulation with the rest of the mods and admins and 2) your changing your sig to claim that you were being censored and I was some sort of demon to be exorcised, that ban is permanent. Mintball

Re: Night Sky : Fri Mar 22, 2013 12:19 pm  

LeedsBornWelshRoots wrote:

How do you know this?

I don't. I'm kind of working on the basis that the laws of physics apply.

LeedsBornWelshRoots wrote:

All you can measure is how far we have transmitted our broadcasts.

You have absolutely no way of knowing whether a superior intelligence has devised a means of "collecting" broadcasts from a further distance than that which they have been transmitted.

Well, there is always that to consider, but they'd have to be pretty fookin clever to collect broadcasts which pre-collection by definition they didn't have any reason to believe existed.

Mind you I also have absolutely no way of knowing whether the universe is ruled by the Flying Spaghetti Monster and I accept this limitation and give it the due weight it deserves, as I do to your proposition.

Re: Night Sky : Fri Mar 22, 2013 1:32 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

... they'd have to be pretty fookin clever to collect broadcasts which pre-collection by definition they didn't have any reason to believe existed ...

So , by your logic, we should have never discovered that dinosaurs existed because until we discovered that they existed we had no reason to believe that they existed.

You are placing artificial barriers on what may or may not exist by only considering any possibility that lies within the limitations of your (i.e. our) current understanding.

As for the laws of physics applying: surely you must have seen that viral Personal Statement in which a prospective student unequivocally stated that they don't apply to him. And Sheldon Lee Cooper posits that there might be an infinite number of universes in which case there will almost certainly be one governed by a flying spaghetti monster.

Re: Night Sky : Fri Mar 22, 2013 1:44 pm  

LeedsBornWelshRoots wrote:

So , by your logic, we should have never discovered that dinosaurs existed because until we discovered that they existed we had no reason to believe that they existed.

That is to logic what Toulouse Lautrec was to pole vaulting.

LeedsBornWelshRoots wrote:

You are placing artificial barriers on what may or may not exist by only considering any possibility that lies within the limitations of your (i.e. our) current understanding.

No I'm not, it is just that the chances of your proposition being correct are so vanishingly small that there is no reason to treat it as a serious contender for fact. More precisely, there is no reason to suppose on the known laws of physics that any such feat could be achieved.

LeedsBornWelshRoots wrote:

... there might be an infinite number of universes in which case there will almost certainly be one governed by a flying spaghetti monster.

Sadly, though, the one I serendipitously inhabit isn't.

Re: Night Sky : Fri Mar 22, 2013 2:10 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

... there is no reason to suppose on the known laws of physics that any such feat could be achieved.

I ask you to reflect on the importance of the word that I have emboldened and to consider a teensy-weensy adjustment to your mindset. Just enough to acknowledge that there are things which we don't yet know and that the construction of barriers which merely serve to accommodate our current state of ignorance is self-defeating.

Re: Night Sky : Fri Mar 22, 2013 3:54 pm  

LeedsBornWelshRoots wrote:

I ask you to reflect on the importance of the word that I have emboldened and to consider a teensy-weensy adjustment to your mindset. Just enough to acknowledge that there are things which we don't yet know and that the construction of barriers which merely serve to accommodate our current state of ignorance is self-defeating.

Wow. A teensy-weensy bit pompous, not to mention presumptuous. Don'y you need to lighten up and stop being such an ass?

And how ludicrous to infer I think "we know everything". I would be the last person to throw such an accusation at. Are you on the ale or something?

Sticking politely to the point, I have not constructed any barrier to anything, it is just that you are suggesting distant aliens could collect broadcasts before they are received. In other words you suggest it is possible that the communications could - whether pushed or pulled - considerably exceed light speed. I believe that the electromagnetic transmissions will propagate at light speed and before they get to Planet X, there isn't the slightest reason to suppose anyone on Planet X can receive them. This is NOT the same thing as 100% excluding any possibility that the entire laws of physics are wrong, or that there might be discovered some weird and wonderful way to defeat them or get round them to achieve this, but that I believe that the odds of this having been done are vanishingly small.

Given such aliens would not have known of our existence prior to receiving the transmissions, why would they be using their faster-than-light collection device to look this way? Or do I have to allow for aliens whose kit is so powerful that it isn't directional, but has already collected every transmission that there has ever been from any given point in the entire universe?

And if I assume that they do have this Whole Universe 100% Transmission Receiver and have somehow pulled our transmissions in - why haven't they replied in the space of 200 years? Or do they just go to all the trouble of constantly monitoring a quadrilliterabillimegazilligoogolgigabyte of transmissions per second just for amusement?

I suppose they may. And they may use the Flying Spaghetti Monster to do it. But I don't believe they do.

Re: Night Sky : Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:30 pm  

Oops. Sorry. I didn't realise that your ego was so fragile that it would require you to over-react in quite such a volatile manner simply because someone might dare to suggest that you might not be omnipotent. My bad.

BTW: you ended a sentence with a preposition.