Sayonara

No, the mutations are already "out there". What we see in the population is the phenotypic expression (or not) of the resulting genotypes.

Since we opened we have had a mere handful of geological topics discussed... the geology threads are fine in the General Sciences forum for now. Maybe if a load of geologists arrive we will make a forum for it, and we might even get to find out why it rocks.

An inorganic reclamationist.

Well yes, but there is still plenty of ground for scientifically determining which evolutionary pathways are more likely, and for identifying stacks of bad assumptions. You have the bridge! Not so. This is a bit like the "national lottery" problem of probability - although the odds are millions to one, someone always wins. Problem is it's never you! In our case there may have been thousands of intelligent races that arose, lived and died before ours, all with the capability and will to spread throughout the galaxy, who for whatever reason never made it to 100% dominance. The successful race could have started its mission of conquest fifty million years ago, before we were even here, and just not have made it to our neck of the woods yet. Alternatively Earth may have been colonised or used as an outpost a dozen times already, but for any number of reasons (and some good ones have been given) we simply haven't detected the evidence. It's possible Earth is so toxic to non-Terran life we have been consistently ignored by colonists for the past billion years. There is just no way of knowing (at the moment), and the ideas that it 'only takes one species to dominate the galaxy' and 'enough time should have passed for that to occur already' still do not mean that every planet in the galaxy would or could be jammed full of easily-spotted artifacts. I used hotel because you were implying that they were not a permanent dwelling (at least for some inhabitants). City pretty much does the job though. And let's not forget that just because Alpha C is 4.3 light years away, it does not mean we can get there in 43 years at 0.1c. Safe acceleration and deceleration, and avoiding intervening matter and energy - both of those will likely double the time. Ships travelling interstellar distances are also likely to encounter lethal phenomena that cannot be detected by the onboard equipment. I have already probed this highly likely possibility several times, but it keeps being ignored in lieu of interstellar colonialism.

I know this is off-topic, but why would anyone expect a cryptozoologist to be able to identify a real animal?

I don't see that it makes any difference. If one was the shooter, that might be a different story.

Then they will just have to stand.

I made no claim that it was an argument, and I have already stated my logic throughout the thread, to which (until now, in the below) you have made few specific responses. As to habitat being "more than a just a term of ecology", this is quite so. However your particular use of the word is introducing a slight ambiguity to the thread. Can we call them space hotels, or something? These statements do contradict your assertion that an expansionist spacefaring civilisation would colonise planets. A race capable of creating a stable biome within an artificial structure that can withstand multi-generational voyages, and replenish its supplies by mining as needed, would have little use for dirty and immobile planets. It would be far easier and more efficient for them to keep building space hotels, and when population becomes an issue, to build Dyson Spheres, which I mentioned some several posts ago. A single Dyson Sphere is equivalent to thousands of Earth-like planets, and as such represents a massive exploratory saving in distance travelled alone. Also it does not incur the same risk of failure as exploration. As you said to me, "present your logic or your evidence, or else it is just a statement to be taken on faith". I have absolutely no issue with this. What I do take issue with is the fact that you are disregarding all the possible brakes that could be applied to the reproductive rate of any given pan-galactic species. It doesn't even need to be that complex. Assume the galaxy was over-run with these creatures: it might just be that the space hotel sent here blew up before it arrived, and central command doesn't know about it. Not when there are safer, more energy- and time-efficient options available to a species with the level of technology you are ascribing to them. We don't have any information on galactic ecology, only spurious theoretics, so I am classing that as speculation. The ecological models we have don't necessarily scale up. However I will say that it does not mean the numbers of intelligent species are small. Instead it suggests that the number of intelligent species that arose and avoided extinction several million years before us - with the will and capacity for galactic domination - was small. I thought that was what we were arguing about? You know - the time factor And please don't get me wrong - I am not trying to thrash your logic into the dust. I am just trying to point out areas you obviously haven't thought of, because you look like you consider this speculation to be more logically valid than you should. For all we know, travelling at 0.1c might liquefy organic material regardless of technological countermeasures. Or there could be some non-duplicatable energetic quality inherent to all star systems without which native life cannot exist. Either of those, or similar unpredictables, would render this whole conversation moot. Anyway, having gone back and read post 1, I think we are a little off-topic. The question as asked is answered by "yes, an intelligent race as smart or smarter than us could have existed before we did, and could still exist."

I'll have you know my gay plumbers, electricians, roofers, and carpenters agency is the finest in this hemisphere.

How many times is this thread going to be posted?

We don't know that that is how it works. We can't apply causal logic to a problem where causality can be bypassed. Same to Stumblebum.

That makes no sense. Information or no information, he could still mess up their lives, and therefore his own.

I am sure we will do this sooner or later (and the rest of it). However it doesn't mean that in a billion years time every planet in the galaxy will be covered with fossilised Coca Cola bottles and such. Errr... isn't this contradicting your earlier posts a bit? Not so sure about that. We separate ourselves from our environment because it makes us moderately more comfortable to do so, and it is not a true separation in that all we have to do is walk outside to end it. All we have done is created shelter that is more effective than a cave. Given the choice, I think most humans would prefer to live separately from the rain, wind, biting things etc, but still have the ability to walk outside, rather than remain entombed in a metal pod that shields them from the endless gulf of hard vacuum and lethal radiation. Probably, yes. Ironically the things that make this difficult to achieve and maintain are biological, and not technological. I thought habitats were an alternative to planetary colonisation? All I am trying to get through to you is that if they did, we might not necessarily know it. It is foolish and arrogant to take the absence of recognisable evidence for alien visits to Earth in the distant past as evidence against intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy. And there is no getting around that. Earth COULD HAVE BEEN colonised. As I said before, it is hardly in a prime location, and just because an expansionist race spreads throughout the galaxy it does not necessitate colonisation of every planet there is. Especially when building these "habitats" (I wish you would not give ecological terms your own meanings in a biology forum) would be a lot simpler and cheaper than terraforming an entire world. That's not the only explanation you can see, it's the one you prefer.

However: a) For any number of reasons, not every planet in the galaxy will be visited, b) Expansionism does not guarantee survival for long enough to make (a) false. That we have found, or recognised as such. Aliens "not getting here in the first place" is not the same as "no other intelligent civilisation existed before ours". I would have thought that a much more likely explanation is that no matter how advanced the civilisation, no matter how much intelligence evolutionary progress will allow, interstellar travel is simply not practicable, even at 0.1c. And then there is always the fact that Earth is a pretty boring planet, in a pretty boring part of the galaxy. Seriously, we are right in the Local Fluff of the Orion Arm... not the most enticing place for explorers or colonists. It's an "end of the list" neighbourhood.

Not the best example. You might not understand what happens inside the magic box, but since you have to plug it in to a power outlet you at least know where the energy used to cook the food is coming from. It seems to me that they are saying "The Journal of Applied Physics have stopped returning our calls."

This poll suffers from a common problem. People may identify themselves with the term "environmentalist", but they may have a meaning for it that is different to the one that Dr Dalek subscribes to. To me it can mean anything from someone who conscientiously recycles, to the loonies who try to sink oil tankers; from the people who work for the red squirrel conservation project, to those chumps who are camping out near Drax power station at the end of the month to raise awareness about global warming ("hello guuuuuuys, that was news in 1994").

Yes, I agree - that kind of highly specific statement really ought to be referenced.

If I walk around a finance company building, wiping out entire departments with toxic spray, I am not turning it into a shipping company. I am making it incapable of proper functioning. As well as racking up the years in solitary. Of course some parts might continue to function for a while, because I might not get around to, say, the mail room or the canteen, but eventually the meals are going to start piling up, and the mail sorters will have nothing to work with. The term "destruction" in this sense does not mean total erradication (although that is where it can lead, and in the case of the Aral Sea it is probably inevitable by now). It means the irreversible disturbance of the trophic network. Stating that the "balance point" gets moved is a massive assumption that cannot be unilaterally applied. It's also academically useless as it does not tell us what is actually happening within the community in any ecological sense whatsoever. Terms like the "balance of nature" should be either avoided entirely or replaced with the applicable and universally utilised academic term. Ecological balance does not deal in morals or desire. Had the pond not been polluted in the first place, it would not be a retreat for the bell frogs. Their presence is just as much a symptom of human interference as the pollutants, and the fact that they can avoid a fungus that is lethal to them neither validates a decision to leave the pond in a damaged state, nor does it mean that the pond a "desirable" environment. It is of more benefit to the frogs, to be sure, but not to the ecosystem that inhabited it before human intervention. Pawning off an entire community on the basis of one outside species benefitting when we have facilitated that species' intrusion is bad enough, but to attach human sentiments to a trophic network problem serves no useful purpose. Nor is it an ecologically-grounded view.

Not actually that improbable, "unlikely" is closer to the mark. Given particular building materials (and there aren't many you can use as the primary components of systems we would call "living") there are only so many efficient ways to solve adaptive problems. That's one reason why evolutionary convergence occurs. If there is intelligent life, there may be traces. However actually finding those traces is a whole different matter to "knowing they are there". We have been around (as an intelligent race) for some 30,000 years (give or take), yet consider how far the radio signals our entire civilisation has produced must have travelled. Now imagine yourself on another planet at the leading edge of that EM expansion, trying to work out if you are listening to the signals of an alien world, or that pulsar just over to the right a bit. That's a nice safe bet. I'd put it at 300. And that's for colonising, not "visiting". Interstellar travel for any reason other than spreading the species is pretty much idiotic. Ask any space-faring race and they will confirm that. Yes, but you asked "where are the traces?". If they exist, we will probably eventually come across signs that they are (or were) there. But we are hardly likely to stumble across anything before we get out there, are we? I think 10 million years is a tad optimistic (think volumetrically, not just radial planes) but I am willing to accept your figures for the sake of argument. However, in the context of the thread title, there has been plenty of time for hundreds of civilisations spanning millions of years to have existed, with a good couple of million years between each one for all signs of their existences to fade into the darkness. In this thread in particular it is important to remember the time factor - especially the time where nothing is happening, as opposed to "something". What you have failed to consider (apart from the fact that we would need to take a major detour around the galactic core) is that travelling from here to the far edge of the galaxy will expose us to some infinitesimally small percentage of star systems. That is making major assumptions about the requirements of such a species matching conditions on Earth. Also, we have to consider the fact that an expansionist empire that spans a galaxy will be reaching the point where it needs to start building Dyson Spheres (or similar), rather than colonising planets. Which incidentally makes them reallllllly hard to detect. That's not true at all. Selection operates due to intraspecific pressures as well as interspecific pressures, and in a population as numerous and widespread as ours competition is rife. Where we see a change is that the responses to this pressure move away from biological adaptation, and towards social adaptation. Our species may have conquered the Earth, but in order to survive and thrive it does need to make decisions about where the next hundred billion babies are going to grow up (because it sure as hell won't be here). Those decisions are basically going to be adaptations to pressure. "Well there are so many planets, and we only built fifty probes".

The title of this thread most positively promises a "new theory". Where is it? Except you don't know that that's how it works.

I think really he is asking why they are not considered the same thing.

Consider the Aral Sea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea

My housemate's dog (Bassett Hound) keeps eating plants in the garden. Plants! I am assuming this is due to some kind of dietary deficiency at the moment... anyone had any experience with this?

A political decision does not need to be made on the basis of logic.

I think your irony detector might need new batteries Dak.