Airbrush

Lights in the sky? Maybe ETs like to show off with lights on the outside of their space craft. But IF ETs are using stealth, as they obviously are, then why lights on the outside of their space craft? Seems like they would be trying to attract attention, which is inconsistent with stealth operations.

In the LONG term (millions or billions of years), survival of humanity, and perhaps a number of important plant and animal species, will mean thriving somewhere else besides Earth. In the short term, it will be very interesting to see IF humans can live indefinitely in a space colony. Your "abandonment psychology" theory is absurd. Living in a space colony is far riskier than living on Earth. Few people would be willing to risk their lives that way. However, if it can be shown that it is perfectly safe, comfortable, and maybe even fun, then people may get in line to try it out.

The goal of humanity is to develop rotating space colonies with artificial gravity and shielding from cosmic rays, that are self-sustaining (grow plants and raise animals for food), and recycle everything. A space colony should be able to repair itself using materials fabricated from asteroid metals. A convenient place to build such colonies is among the asteroids, so ice and metals from the asteroids can be used to build more space colonies and enlarge existing ones. In a sense it would be healthier to live on a rotating space colony with one full g gravity, than on Mars with such low gravity that your body would be weakened.

Nuclear bomb brief? You mean like a nuke going off in outer space, which would be VERY brief. No boiling, rising mushroom cloud in an atmosphere. I think an asteroid, like the one 65 million years ago, crashing into a neutron star, would be a very brief gamma ray and EM burst, but NOT a directional one like from an exploding massive star. What do you think it would appear as?

On second thought, you are correct. The gamma rays and other electromagnetic radiation would escape the neutron star as a blinding flash. How long would the flash last? Maybe very brief?

EVERYTHING in our neighborhood of the galaxy is moving at about the same speed. How did you get the idea that meteors can "lurk between spiral arms" orbiting the center of our galaxy at only 1,000 mph? PG: "...The fact that these meteorites keep escaping detection..." The fact you don't know the meaning of "meteorite" makes me think you are guessing.

Yes this is all assumptions and speculations. I am not a string theory expert, but as I recall their argument was something to do with higher, as yet unknown, dimensions making contact that set off the big bang. Maybe a string theory expert can chime in here and help us out.

"The reason I am asking is my wondering if there is any way to determine if photons and other energetic particles slowly loose energy to the dark matter." How could dark matter have any influence if it is so etherial that it is not even detectible directly? Seems like the only influence dark matter can have on anything is gravity. How can you even make assumptions about "higher dimensions"? They are beyond our physics. They are pre-big-bang conditions and events. All they did was CAUSE the big bang. After that, all bets are off about what the laws of physics will be.

The title of your post is absurd, as is the reasoning of your leading question. The Big Bang makes "any sense" CERTAINLY, since most experts in the field rely on the big bang as the leading theory. Are you an expert and have studied the theory in depth and still wonder how it makes "any sense"? Of course nobody knows, these are theories, but the experts are somewhat satisfied with them, for now. Why can't you trust the experts? "Haw can this alleged start of time occur when there wasn't any time before time in which it would start?" Nobody knows, not even the experts. "Is there like fifth dimensional hypertime or something?" According to string theory, the big bang originated from a collision of higher dimensions. That seems reasonable to me. Imagine sheets hanging parallel on a clothes line, when the wind blows they make contact, but not at a single point, a large region makes contact. Such a collision could occur within a region of ANY size at all. That's why I question it when the experts say the entire observable universe was contained within a region smaller than a proton. The big bang could have originated in a huge region, even infinite in size.

Think about an asteroid impacting a neutron star. Yes it will be accelerated to great speed and will hit the neutron star's surface with great energy, but the energy will get sucked up like a vacuum cleaner sucking up dust (very much like a black hole). The effects will be hardly noticeable, even if you somehow could install a camera on the surface of the neutron star. The explosion would be so brief that it would look like the asteroid just vanished into thin air.

"The scientists have proposed that these life-bearing planets originated in the early Universe within a few million years of the Big Bang, and that they make up most of the so-called "missing mass" of galaxies." Link courtesy of Moontanman: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120510100217.htm How much of this missing mass is considered dark matter?

Sorry I didn't notice you posted the link already. I usually don't go to links unless the person who posted it gives an interesting passage FROM the link. Thanks.

"Now, what I'm wondering is how to detect them. Reflected light is not an option, so I am wondering if internal heat would be detectable at interstellar distances for planets like Earth or Mercury or even Jupiter." That is an interesting question. Here is what I found on Wiki under "Rogue Planets". "When a planetary-sized object passes in front of a background star, its gravitational field causes a momentary increase in the visible brightness of the background star. This is known as microlensing. Astrophysicist Takahiro Sumi of Osaka University in Japan and colleagues, who form the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) collaborations, carried out a study of microlensing which they published in 2011. They observed 50 million stars in our galaxy using the 1.8 meter MOA-II telescope at New Zealand's Mount John Observatory and the 1.3 meter University of Warsaw telescope at Chile's Las Campanas Observatory. They found 474 incidents of microlensing, ten of which were brief enough to be planets of around Jupiter's size with no associated star in the immediate vicinity. The researchers estimated from their observations that there are nearly two free-floaters for every star in our galaxy.[7][8][9] Other estimations suggest a much larger number, up to 100,000 times more free-floating planets than stars in our Milky Way.[10]" It is calculated that for an Earth-sized object at a kilobar hydrogen atmospheric pressures in which a convective gas adiabat has formed, geothermal energy from residual core radioisotope decay will be sufficient to heat the surface to temperatures above the melting point of water.[11] Thus, it is proposed that interstellar planetary bodies with extensive liquid-water oceans may exist. It is further suggested that these planets are likely to remain geologically active for long periods, providing a geodynamo-created protective magnetosphere and possible sea floor volcanism which could provide an energy source for life.[11] The author admits these bodies would be difficult to detect due to the intrinsically weak thermal microwave radiation emissions emanating from the lower reaches of the atmosphere, although later research suggests[13] that reflected solar radiation and far-IR thermal emissions may be detectable if one were to pass within 1000 AU of Earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet

"Are you aware of examples of a single system in which a star orbits a non-star (not counting black holes)?" No

Yes, near the end of its' life the sun will lose much mass and the outer planets will continue at the same speed which may cause them to spiral away from the sun. They could fly off into interstallar space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#After_core_hydrogen_exhaustion "When the helium is exhausted, the Sun will repeat the expansion it followed when the hydrogen in the core was exhausted, except that this time it all happens faster, and the Sun becomes larger and more luminous. This is the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase, and the Sun is alternately burning hydrogen in a shell or helium in a deeper shell. After about 20 million years on the early AGB, the Sun becomes increasingly unstable, with rapid mass loss and thermal pulses that increase the size and luminosity for a few hundred years every 100,000 years or so. The thermal pulses become larger each time, with the later pulses pushing the luminosity to as much as 5,000 times the current level and the radius to over 1 AU.[109] Models vary depending on the rate and timing of mass loss. Models that have higher mass loss on the RGB produce smaller, less luminous stars at the tip of the AGB, perhaps only 2,000 times the luminosity and less than 200 times the radius.[108] For the Sun, four thermal pulses are predicted before it completely loses its outer envelope and starts to make a planetary nebula. By the end of that phase - lasting approximately 500,000 years - the Sun will only have about half of its current mass."

I think it is a little like a camera focusing on "infinity". It is just far enough away.

Thanks Spyman, that's the answer, mostly because Jupiter is closest to the INNER solar system and it's greater mass results in it having a much more active role in perturbing asteroids in our vicinity. But some argue that it also acts like a magnet pulling asteroids or comets in towards us. Why would the asteroid belt not help block such possible impactors? That is even closer to us than Jupiter.

On Earth's surface, EVERYTHING is moving at the same speed of rotation, about 1,000 miles per hour. Since everything is moving that speed, even the atmosphere, we don't feel it.

The spacecraft gains a LOT of energy from the planet's immense gravity on approach, but only from the exactly correct angle, and the planet loses a TINY negligible bit of energy slowing its' orbit. But the spacecraft does not lose energy on the way out, just like in a sling shot the stone does not lose any energy on the way out. Or something like that.

I've heard this several times before, but what about Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and the Asteroid Belt? It seems to me that we get protection from ALL those. Any comet coming from outside our solar system, that is moving on the plane of our solar system, must pass all those obstacles before hitting Earth. Especially the asteroid belt, since there are so many objects there that can hinder a comet with our name on it. I left out Mars, since it is so small compared to the others I mentioned above. But even Mars and the Moon could possibly take a hit for us.

Anyone know what we are looking at in the first picture of Mars above? It looks like stuff growing. After a little research I found this caption for the picture: "....What actually causes these patterns are sections of dry ice that cover the Martian Polar dunes – giving a pinkish colour. The light blue regions come from a gentle coating of light frost. The “trees” are in fact streaks of melting carbon dioxide ice."

David: ".....If you want to be part of the science community, you must show your faith in this new god. One bad word on this lovely god and you will get a red ticket!!!" No, all you need to do is ask questions about it, then find something wrong with the answers you get, or tell us WHY the Big Bang is wrong. So far you haven't. Fred Hoyle's theory is not good enough explanation, nor has any better theory been suggested. From your Wiki article about Fred Hoyle: "....In the end, mounting observational evidence convinced most cosmologists that the steady state model was incorrect and that the Big Bang was the theory that agreed best with observations, although Hoyle continued to support and develop his theory. In 1993, in an attempt to explain some of the evidence against the steady state theory, he presented a modified version called "quasi-steady state cosmology" (QSS), but the theory is not widely accepted. The evidence that resulted in the Big Bang's victory over the steady state model, at least in the minds of most cosmologists, included the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in the 1960s, the distribution of "young galaxies" and quasars throughout the Universe in the 1980s, a more consistent age estimate of the universe and most recently the observations of the COBE satellite in the 1990s and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe launched in 2001, which showed unevenness in the microwave background in the early universe, which corresponds to currently observed distributions of galaxies. Hoyle died in 2001 never accepting the expanding universe theory." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle

Thanks for posting that EdEarl. That is new to me. I suppose by terriforming our own planet, by making deserts productive, would also increase the food and water supply and allow for larger populations. Also, who knows what other benefits and hazards there are to productive deserts. The climate could change radically. Could you please explain how recovering salt marshes works? Is there a way to get ocean plants to help remove CO2 from the atmosphere?

Already humans in developed nations are having less children. It will take a few Billion more people on Earth and some news attention to how bad things are getting with overpopulation before nations put on the breaks and make too many kids illegal, like China did. But we should not cut back too much or there won't be enough young people around to pay for, and take care of, us oldies.

Not all life evolves to become intelligent and technological as humans are. Even on Earth, only humans evolved that way. For example sharks and cockroaches have been around for hundreds of millions of years and have STILL not evolved intelligence and technology. There could be life on Mars, but only if we terriform it so life could survive there.