If there are aliens, what will they look like?

[bcp]

UFO's helping Ukraine.

Bruce

 

[Bill Guenthner]

That seems a bit over-limiting. You seem to be saying that if it doesn't parallel mankind's development, they wouldn't have a chance of doing the things that we can imagine. That may be true, but I would also propose that there are probably ways of getting things done that we are incapable of even imagining.

Maybe, but probably not. The physics and chemistry of the universe is pretty well understood by human science at this point. Basic stuff like you can’t make steel under water or without iron and oxygen and carbon (and yes, you will need steel to develop the tech for space flight, and yes, you’re stuck with the periodic table of elements, we didn’t miss any). If your planet is much smaller than earth (like Mars) it doesn’t have enough gravity to hold it’s atmosphere. If your planet is much bigger than earth you can’t reach orbital velocity to get off of it. There’s a ton of limiting factors that would constrain space faring species to a similar (not identical certainly) but similar development path.

 

[Jstpssng]

UFO's helping Ukraine.

Bruce

That's gotta give those poor Russians a complex! Not only is most of the world against them, but so are other planets.

 

[CalG]

Maybe, but probably not. The physics and chemistry of the universe is pretty well understood by human science at this point. Basic stuff like you can’t make steel under water or without iron and oxygen and carbon (and yes, you will need steel to develop the tech for space flight, and yes, you’re stuck with the periodic table of elements, we didn’t miss any). If your planet is much smaller than earth (like Mars) it doesn’t have enough gravity to hold it’s atmosphere. If your planet is much bigger than earth you can’t reach orbital velocity to get off of it. There’s a ton of limiting factors that would constrain space faring species to a similar (not identical certainly) but similar development path.

Your own limitations are guiding your vision of what is possible.

Taking all the fun from this thread.....

 

[the old grind]

Earth had dinosaurs for hundreds of millions of years. We came along after they were gone for 60-some million. Who's to say that habitable conditions always produce such as we humans just automatically? Why should life on another planet have to evolve as we did?

 

[bcp]

I can always tell when movies use fake dinosaurs.

Maybe in 20 million years, moviemakers will have to use fake humans.

Bruce

 

[/pine]

I can always tell when movies use fake dinosaurs.

Maybe in 20 million years, moviemakers will have to use fake humans.

Bruce

[encore]
I think we should bury dinosaur skeletons with cave men skeletons riding on their backs like they were riding them into battle...just to mess with future anthropologists etc...!

[/encore]

 

[otlski]

I will post your #273 below


For readers who may feel intimidated by your big words I will define them below:

Accelerometer - instrument for measuring acceleration, typically that of an automobile, ship, aircraft, or spacecraft, or that involved in the vibration of a machine, building, or other structure.
Centripetal acceleration, the acceleration of a body traversing a circular path. Because velocity is a vector quantity (that is, it has both a magnitude, the speed, and a direction), when a body travels on a circular path, its direction constantly changes and thus its velocity changes, producing an acceleration. The acceleration is directed radially toward the center of the circle.

In physics we learned that acceleration is the change in velocity (Δv) over the change in time (Δt), represented by the equation a = Δv/Δt. This allows you to measure how fast velocity changes in meters per second squared (m/s^2).

This is what you are measuring and works perfectly on a non-moving, non-rotating earth. Gravity is a complete nonsensical idea that even Neil De Grasse can't explain.

If water doesn't fly off a rotating earth why can't you repeat this in an experiment? The idea of the global earth universe where the earth, a perfect sphere, constant rotates with no external forces and no idea of what caused it should be left in the stories of fantasies. It is certainly a realm of a religion where absolute faith is required to believe in fantastic distances and motions with no proof whatsoever.

I did not think my words were too big; it is a pretty smart group here who understand them or know how to Google (as you just did). Also note that they are my own words, not cut and pasted. Please follow this if you will. I have personally done the below many times.

I hold a three axis acceleration in my hand. The three axes are orthogonal. As I hold it, the x-axis is aligned to respond to front to back acceleration. The y-axis is aligned to respond to left to right acceleration. And, the Z-axis is aligned to respond to up to down acceleration. I move the accelerometer in all direction and it responds indicating the all axes are functional.

If I place the accelerometer on a bench and not move it. The x and y axes read 0 m/sec^2, and the z-axis reads 9.8 m/sec^2.

If I flip the accelerometer 90 degrees so that say the x-axis is now aligned to respond to up to down motion, and again place it stationary on the bench. The z and y axes will read 0 m/sec^2, and the x-axis will read 9.8 m/sec^2.

If I flip the accelerometer completely over (again placed stationary) so that this x-axis is still aligned with the up to down acceleration, but changed polarity, the x-axis will read -9.8 m/sec^2. Note the sign change. The accelerometer "knew" it had been flipped over.

Please explain how this simple tool, the accelerometer, in the hands of someone who can make simple observations, can yield the results described above. How is this consistent with your differential density claim?

 

[JasperFrank]

Computer graphics have gotten so good, and the younger than I generations indulge in animation so much, that maybe the market will favor CGI over real actors. In the sense that what we now know are real movie stars, will license their likenesses in total CGI created movies. They can continue to sell, for their estates far beyond their actual demise. Aliens might do the same, so an encounter may well be with an AI based reproduction of an original, that is long dead. I always thought the transporters of Star Trek to be Horror Shows. The original is basically killed, and something very near the original is created. Yet, all systems of information have information loss. Even if the loss was very small, if we think in terms of millions of years, of leap frogging out into the galaxy, what we might get, after a robotic transporter device arrived to us, might just be a pile of organic goo.

 

[Cougsfan]

I can always tell when movies use fake dinosaurs.

By your statement I infer that you can also always tell when movies use real dinosaurs. Wow! I really wanna see those movies!