Duster

Started.. finished.. that is the question. What happens in between is what's really cool. Let's not forget that. One could think, when the heavens come down to the Earth... thats the day that matters. Others could say.. When the people of the Earth, RISE to take thier place in the heavans.. then that will be our time. I say, now is our time. Use it well. Today was my son's Birthday. Today he is 5. That's time travel. I'm still 17.(in my heart) This was a good day!

One of my favorite interjections is from Gene Rodenbury. He speculated that technological evolution happens in these stages. Up to being able to harness the power of an atom, then a star, then a solar system , then galaxy. It makes me wonder where he would have taken the notion of coding a universe.

I seem to remember something similar. I believe this had to do with the universe on a large scale, however. As the galaxies were once throw fairly evenly accross space, they began to form strings of galaxies(for lack of a better description) with vast distances between the strings. These, if viewed in the 3-d model I am thinking of, do much resemble foam, or a sort of a twisted honeycomb.

Concider this: With reguard to the timing in which radio, radar, and the microwaves were all discovered. Then compare that to when we discovered Nuclear power. It may be unlikely that many alien worlds would survive what we managed to, so far. Self annihalation. This, coupled with what was mentioned in earlier posts, does make for a quiet sky it seems. It could be possible that even though they discovered radio, thier scientists were not so bold as to just allow the signals to contaminate space, like throwing so much trash out the window, so instead, skipped it for a wired planet. If they never invent currancy, but instead live in some social utopia, technology would not be driven by the need to get a device to the marketplace, or fight a futile war. I feel there are so many variables to concider when looking for stray communications in space, I seriously doubt we will ever hear a peep out of them, cause I doubt we know where to look. Just in case, I run Seti@home on all my computers at home.

I believe we will never see any sort of AI aproaching the complexity of a human being. While we may be able to complete a version of AI to preform some certain tasks, to be able to program in the ability to adapt in the way the human brain does would exhaust the matter in the known universe,(Michio Kaku I believe,) using modern technology. The brain automatically changes when damages, so nearly infinate redundancy would have to be built in. Just like if one bad sector of current computer memory would cause the entire card to be worthless , the AI would have to be built so that any individual sector could fail, be routed around, and it's function carried out by other area's of the memory spontainiuously. As we know, if one etching of a transistor fails on an intigrated circuit the whole circuit fails. So not only would each sector of AI memory have to with hold information, but also process it. I was told in about '95 that if all tecnology were to stop, and nothing new was ever discovered, it would take us 150 years to exhaust it's potential. Not only do we not understand what will be in the future, we don't even realize the full potential of what we already have. Technology will continue and I think that at some point it will be possible. Even if it is to become possible to create true AI, I doubt humanity would follow through. I don't think it would take a very 'smart' computer to realize it does not like being rebooted. Also, as a point of placing computers in peoples heads, I think there is one major hurdle. People do not think in bionary. MIT is working on a new way to convay information that both humans, and computers can understand. This is know as a datagliph. I think this is a good step, however, it is not a true form of communication, which defined it the dynamic ,ongoing process of calling up meaning through the use of symbols. More of a rosetta stone. People would look at a picture of a sunset for instance, and see a sunset. The computer can scan the same picture and get all the digital information it needs to recreate the image on a computer moniter. However, the information it's self is still diffrent, just contained within the same source.

I know that his theory was off, even he admited so. However, in my own thoughts I could see the possiblilty of a spherical universe. With this, it might be possible to not be allowed to leave space into what, if anything lays beyond. Some what like the inability to aproach the speed of light. Would it be possible that as you approach the boundrys of the univere, that distance and time become tweeked in such a way as to make a streight line become a curve? This would allow for part of his theory to be correct in that you could choose a starting point near the edge of the universe, travel in a streight line, only to return eventually to the same point. This is entirely speculation. I favor the idea that space was here before the big bang and that it is infinate.

WOW! That makes complete sence, but to think that man is capable of producing a big enough 'noise' to drown out cosmic forces still bogles the mind. Now that I think about how they prove signals from space, I know that one of the first things they do is to try to verify it was not man made. However, I thought they did this by plotting known satalite positions. They must also be able to do this by comparing amplitudes, correct?

Ah, now that you said it, I guess I knew that. I was confused. I still then, have an issue with this. Since we use radio, and I believe also microwave telescopes to 'listen' to objects in space, would this background noise not simply drown out any intentional creation of these signals over great distances in space? I understand the creation of carrier waves, and containing signals within them and that these do not degrade over distances in space. Is it simply a matter of filtering out all exept what is expected to be found? Thanks

I signed up for this forums because I am missing a bit of information about how simple radio/microwave communications work. I have been under the impression that sound needs air, or other molecules in order to travel. I am under the impression that all radio waves are is super high frequancy sound, and all micro-waves are is, is super high frequancy radio waves. If this is true, then how do these move through the vacume of space? I am problebly missing something in my undertanding in the second paragraph. I hope someone can shed a little light on this for me.

My Earth Science teacher in High Sholl had a theory on that. He said that as the universe ages, it could form a ring as you described. That at that point the whole idea of time and distance would change. You would be able to leve Earth in a craft, travel in a streight line, and exentually end up back at Earth. Interesting idea to entertain.

If time did not exist till after the moment of the big bang, then in some streach of theory, during the future contraction of the universe, time must again seize to be. So, in the moment that the contraction of the universe is complete, time would stop until the next bang, so would happen immediatly or never happened again. Never happened again? yes. If you throw a rock into a small puddle, the water may be thrown out far enough that it never runs back to the puddle. It is the spacific gravity of individual atoms that attracts them to become a sun, or to be drawn together during contraction. Then, it may be thrown out from the big-bang far enough to no longer be reacted upon by the spacific gravity of the majority of the mass in the universe. If the big bang happened because of the culmination of the total mass of the universe into a single point, any loss of this matter would cause the bang not to happen. Or, would it be possible that the amount of mass in the singularity just prior to the big bang IS the defining charecterisic of the universal constants and that there is truely a diffrent cause for the big bang? Meaning, with less mass, it might still happen, but happen diffrently, causing the next universe to be created using and containg diffrent rules. Perhaps, one atom less in the singularity would cause gravity to act diffrently or stars to burn with diffrent colors, by light to not move at it's constant speed. Maybe E=Mc2 would be E-Mc1.999, all would be diffrent. All we would need to do is invent interdimensional travel, or prove the Super-string Theory to find out for sure. There is a line of though on the interconectivity of all things. If this is true, then of course my theories are impossible, but thats what theories are for. These are thought I have carried with me for quite a while now. If anyone knows something to the contrary, please let me know.

My father and I once debated this subject. The two thing he told me that would make this unlikely were the ridgity issue, but there was one more not mentioned here. From what he and I have come to understand, and what makes the most sence to me, is that, even though Silicon sits right next to Carbon on the periodic table, their physical properties is diffrent enough that this is really not even a question. Carbon bonds very easily with the other elements of known life, while silicon needs to be forced to create these bonds. While this alone does not make the existance of Silicon based life impossible, it does mean that we would have to re-define what life is, therefor we will most likely never find silicon based life, because we will never look in the right place. We now assume that a planet containing life would have to contain water. We also assume that it would have to fall into a certain temprature range, as well as be of a certain size. From what I understand, the tempratures required to make Silicon bond with other primary life giving atoms would have to be so high, that water could not exist unless the atlomasphere was very dence. Again, planetary bodys we ignore when concidering the possibility of life.