Reaper

The proper question should be: "is anybody here willing to tolerate a person who doesn't follow his/her own rules?" One of the rights guaranteed to the public is freedom of speech, and the reason for that is so that it would be far easier to keep the government honest. A politician who breaks his own laws and then tries to keep that a secret is a big no no!

I understood that, but it seemed suspicious just simply because CO2 emissions have increased by over 100 ppm since the industrial revolution. The first 50 ppm came between the beginning of the industrial revolution and the 1970's. The other 50 ppm was poured into the atmosphere in just a little over 30 years. Also, solar activity was very high about 8000 years ago. Solar activity has been linked to the occurrence of ice ages. But it is also true that CO2 levels never went as high as it is today over 8000 years ago. And if you really want to go back into the past, say millions of years, the sun wasn't as bright as it was today. But it was much warmer in the past, especially during the Mesozoic, because of large concentrations of CO2, tectonic activity and sea levels during the era. Also, the continents were not as spread apart as they are today. For a long while there was one big super-continent. These all played a part in the climate of the era.

The hypothesis that the sun was responsible seemed very suspicious to begin with.

I understood what you said, but what I am wondering is why we haven't detected anything yet. Or more importantly, why Earth hasn't been visited given the age of our galaxy and the apparent likelihood of intelligent life. If some ET has sent a signal to our star and is moving from star to star, then we really have a small window of time to actually detect it. What is even worse is that it would only take up a very small fraction of our sky (think less than a degree). I like the article that Spyman has displayed, which suggest that it might be easier to detect signals comparable to that used by the military, some of which are listed here. Of course, there is a chance that ET might use different frequencies, but its a shot, given that signals with this purpose will probably be frequent enough to allow a good chance of detection.

What basis do you have for this belief? And in what kind of intelligence? If you are talking about being informed on global warming data, then that does not appear to be the case. Actually, you will find that computer models about weather and climate patterns are very accurate. Yes, it is true that the calculations involved are very complex (think millions of calculations and thousands of parameters), but its complexity does not mean that there will be more errors. Our computers are very sophisticated. A lot of the mathematical theories and equations used include Chaos Theory, if you ever read up on the subject. For example, basic weather patterns can be reliably predicted up to a week. Many of the equations used for basic weather patterns are also applied to climate. Also, the climate models that are used to predict global climate, particularly those used by NASA and the ICPP, are based on physics, not statistics as is commonly believed. Here is a basic info about how climate models work and how they are used: http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_arguments/models-dont-work.html Many of the predictions about global climate change made in the past were very accurate. You will find some examples of such in the link provided. Just beware, the title is misleading, but it does a good job smashing the claim that data from the computers are error prone. So, in conclusion, global computer models are accurate, in spite of your claims. If you want me to provide info and data on just how accurate, just ask me . I didn't include a lot of info because it can easily take up more than a page.

Well, the article didn't really go over the details of the experiment, given that it was geared toward the general audience. But the reason non-invasive systems are being pursued, despite errors, is because you don't have to crack open the head and deal with those associated risks involved in brain surgery as you and others pointed out. It just so happens that you really can't just rip open a persons head and poke around where ever you like. Brain surgery is very risky, and in many cases the patients have to be conscious throughout the operation. Regardless, brain-machine interface is a very exciting process, and within a few years we should see some very successful result just as soon as we fix the kinks in the system I'm not terribly surprised that 40% errors can result, given that we really don't know enough about the brain. BTW, can you provide to me the study you did on BAI? I would like to look at it. Oh, and one more thing, the "EGG" machine was a mistake on my part. But I'm sure you knew I meant "EEG".

I was just reading a blog on Scientific American website and it discussed how in even in modern times various people have chosen to trump political ideals over scientific ones. Of course, this is nothing new, this type of thing has been happening for millenia. But you'd think that in this day and age people would know better. As it turns out, that is not the case, and I find that quite disturbing. This was an article published very recently by the New York Times and placed on the Scientific American web blog. Apparently, the US government and the Bush Administration have been interfering with the publication of articles related to Stem Cell Research, Sex Education, mental health issues, national and global health issues, and even delayed a report for years about second hand smoke (The report stated that even brief exposure to second hand smoke was a health hazard and could cause immediate harm). The reasons for the interference was mostly because they went against the ideals of the politicians! Here are some quotes: :eek::eek::eek: (SOURCE: Harris, Gardiner. "Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised." New York Times 11 July 2007. 12 July 2007 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11surgeon.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin>) Of course, there are many more, but I think the point is made. These actions by the American government (for those of us who live in the US) are shocking to say the least. What this definitely shows is that the government is more willing to put their own political agendas ahead of science, and one wonders why we haven't joined the bandwagon on reducing global emissions, or why science and math have been declining in the US education boards for the last 20 years... This can be very problematic indeed. You would have thought that we knew better, but this article shows otherwise. Here is the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11surgeon.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&th&emc=th And this is the Scientific American web blog about the whole issue: http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=when_scientific_findings_are_politically&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 If important scientific articles and reports are deliberately being hidden from us, or screened out, then we are in more trouble than we thought......

Yeah, I would have to agree with the above post. I would imagine that most people going into science have shown some interest in Science Fiction at some point in their lives.

That's great, but not really the point of this thread. The point is that we haven't found anything, and I'm wondering why. And secondly, humans did not initially make a radio so that they could contact ET. We are only doing that very recently, and even then its pointed at stars that may not have ET listening to our part of the Universe.

After reading a whole bunch of literature regarding extraterrestrial civilizations and the Fermi Paradox, it has me wondering about a lot of things. Well, the first reaction is, what the hell?! For one, it is reasonable to believe that there should be a huge number of advanced civilizations out there even if the Rare Earth hypothesis is true just simply because of the sheer size of the Universe. But on the other hand, we have not have any success in making contact, or even detecting a single one, and there is no reliable evidence that some form of extraterrestrial intelligence has ever visited Earth. It should be no surprise that SETI hasn't detected anything via radio and microwave frequencies because I read somewhere a while ago that our own civilization would not be detectable even from the Oort Cloud just simply because our sun would outshine it. The energy of our radio frequencies are just too low to be noticeable over large distances, and they would spread out. It's been proposed that interstellar communications would probably be through lasers because they won't spread out as much over huge distances, but unless one hits Earth, they won't be detected. The one thing that really irritates me about it is the lack of adequate explanations for the Fermi paradox. Every hypothesis I've seen just doesn't seem to cut it. For one, astronomers have tried to make an equation for the probability of advanced civilizations, but I think that falls more under numerology than as an actual representation, simply because we have only one sample (us). And then other explanations ranging from self-destruction, culture, technology, etc. either contradict known laws of physics or just seem plain ludicrous. I say that they seem plain ludicrous, especially the self-destruction theory, because the sheer size of our own galaxy and even the number of possible solar systems (thanks to recent discoveries) seems to indicate that there should be enough civilizations out there that don't self destruct, even if the probability of such an event is high. My personal take on it is that its a combination of technological issues, our lack of understanding of the Universe, and the vast distances that they are probably spread out over is the reason why we haven't detected anything. For one, if we do indeed go out into the galaxy, given that it is impossible to travel faster than light, I would imagine that there would be major issues with communication, so eventually they would be completely cut off from their parent solar system. And then of course it's up to chance and evolution within their new home. Even if our species does spread out over the galaxy, a civilization such as portrayed in Star Wars and even Star Trek is probably impossible, and this would leave the possibility that there would be large areas within a given galaxy that are uninhabited by an intelligent civilization. Also, there is the possibility that we may spread out into space, but probably evolve so that we live off of the material around, something akin to a sort of hunter-gatherer society, moving between star systems as opposed to making permanent settlements. Or, since machine intelligence is evolving, ultimately the galaxy is inhabited by self-replicating machines. Such machines would not necessarily need planets to survive nor need to establish any kind of civilization. This is just my take on it. I would be interested in hearing your ideas.

Yeah, terraforming Venus would pose a much more difficult challenge than terraforming Mars. The surface temperature of Venus is higher than the melting point of Lead, and there probably isn't any water on there to allow any kind of life to thrive in, unlike Mars. Well, not exactly. Earth's atmosphere was radically different when life first began, and over a period of 2 billion years life forms, mostly photosynthetic ones (such as cyanobacteria), changed the atmosphere by adding more oxygen into it. About 4-5 hundred million years ago, there was enough oxygen in the atmosphere to allow aerobic organisms and more diversity and complexity of life. Here is a link http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/samson/evolution_atm/. While the organisms would (and have to) adapt to the Martian environment, it should be alright as long as their by-products change the atmosphere to become more hospitable for us. In terms of generating power for societies, yes it is a very good source. But it probably wouldn't help us terraform Mars. Since you are trying to change the chemical composition of the Martian atmosphere, chemical processes are preferred. Not exactly. Solar power would work too. Nuclear and fusion power would be preferred if you are building a colony beyond Jupiter. If only it was that easy *sigh*

Thanks for the video Blike. I liked it. It makes you wonder just how far we really are from the animals, given this monkey was smart enough to realize that he (she?) could control the machine with its own thoughts.

That would be a problem if the computer was implanted, but in this particular experiment it isn't. The guy has electrodes all over his head, so if a circuit blows, it shouldn't be too much of a problem, provided that his head isn't wet. That's one of the goals of transhumanism. I don't think it is so much that consciousness will expand anywhere, but rather that information would be much more easily obtained, learned, or manipulated.

All that we perceive as "light" is in reality electromagnetic forces. The human eye can only see between 400 nm to ~700 nm wavelengths. So therefore anything outside of that range would be "darkness" to us. I don't think any of us here are really understanding what you mean by "darkness" because the term can be applied to more than just lack of light.

Well, technically there is already a practical application for the weak force, one of which is carbon dating. But we don't have any control over that. As Severian pointed out, the particles require an enormous amount of energy and only work over extremely small distances, 10^-18 m for the weak force and 10^-15 m for the strong force respectively. For comparison, an atom is about 10^-11 m.

Well, no, according to General Relativity spacetime is actually being distorted and curved by the presence of a mass. It is physically happening, and spacetime is curved. The geometry of spacetime is distorted. The bowling ball on trampoline is just an analogy we use to help us visualize the concept. Note that I am using the term spacetime because you cannot have space without involving time as well.

Logistically, I don't even think us Americans can afford the resources to invade Iran in any case because all the American troops are tied up in Iraq and in Afghanistan. This is why Iran is willing to take more chances with us, for example remember the British Sailors that were detained without any hesitation. And this is why we are more interesting in talking with Iran, rather than bombing them. Plus, invading Iran will only make the terrorism a lot worse because that government is already anti-American. Bush also doesn't tolerate a nuclear armed North Korea and yet there really isn't being much done about it. They already have tested short range ICBM's (The issue of whether or not they are nuclear is a matter of debate, but they have already developed the means of delivering those payloads). And, obviously there are political issues with attacking Iran, but we really don't have the necessary resources or man power. The reason the Muslim world doesn't really differentiate between Israel and USA is mainly because the USA openly supports Israel by giving them arms and helps them suppress the Palestinians, the majority of which are Muslims. Also, keep in mind that they supported Israel during its conflict with Lebanon, even though they were targeting civilian areas. This is of course no big secret to them, and adds fuel to the fire in the Middle East. Yup. One could argue though that it was already on the way there since we started to really get involved in affairs over there. Pretty much, if we withdraw, we will screw up the Middle East even more and they will probably blame us for problems anyway. But if we stay, the result is the same. It is a very tough choice, and quite a hole that we Americans have dug ourselves in .

I read an article by ScienceDaily which goes over the possibility of controlling robots and machines by thought alone. Of course, controlling computers via brain-computer interface is nothing new. But in this particular case, these people are exploring controlling a robot, whether it be an arm, or a humanoid one, UAV, etc. Also, invasive brain surgery would not be needed because an EGG would translate the brain signals into digital commands. This article deals mostly with control over a humanoid ones. Here are some of the details: "Objects available to be picked up are seen by the robot's camera and conveyed to the user's computer screen. Each object lights up randomly. When the person looks at the object that he or she wants to pick up and sees it suddenly brighten, the brain registers surprise. The computer detects this characteristic surprised pattern of brain activity and conveys the choice back to the robot, which then proceeds to pick up the selected object. A similar procedure is used to determine the user's choice of a destination once the object has been picked up." (SOURCE: "Researchers Demonstrate Direct Brain Control of Humanoid Robot." Science Daily. 15 Dec. 2006. University of Washington. 10 July 2007 <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061215122519.htm>.'>http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061215122519.htm>.) The practical implications of this are huge. For one, a robot of this kind would be far more adaptive since a human is controlling it directly. Also, it would be possible to operate it in any location in the world via internet, and can be used in a variety of applications such as precision surgery. Here is the article for more details: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061215122519.htm What are your thoughts on this?

That's what I was thinking. You wouldn't need to put them deep under the ground because they would probably not need that much protection from the environment. They would have to be bio-engineered though, even if they were extremophlites. Also, there is a lot of sulfur on the Martian ground (confirmed by the recent Martian probes) to provide some form of nutrients, for Archean and Bacterial life forms, as there are some in the desert and underground that make use of Sulfur. This process would take a couple hundred thousand of years, so the time scale isn't too bad. Additionally, I heard of using reflective panels made of ultra-light mirrors to help warm up the Martian atmosphere. Another idea I read was releasing a lot of the CO2 and water into the atmosphere as they would act as greenhouse gases and make the atmosphere somewhat thicker.

Oh, ok. I see what you mean. He suggested living underground or in a cavern for increased radiation protection. I still don't see why he would want to do that, because such a facility is more trouble than its worth. Agreed. For some reason, I think it would be a bad idea to bombard the planet to hell with comets and asteroids. You would make the planet more uninhabitable than it already is, since you would be throwing dust up there which would block sunlight and make it colder, and there would be even less atmosphere then there already is. And there wouldn't much of a planet left if you do it enough times. It would be quite a formidable challenge to change the atmosphere, because that if we were able to raise the temperature, it would be impossible to plant anything there because the partial pressure of CO2 is far too dense, given that the atmosphere is 95% CO2. As it turns out, you can't just put plants where there is CO2, the partial pressure also matters. For most plants, they cannot survive if the partial pressure is greater than 0.2 kPa. Martian atmosphere has an average pressure of .6 kPa, and 95% of that is CO2, which gives a partial pressure of .57 kPa for CO2 at present. :doh: (source: Rogers, A.c., comp. Mars Advanced Greenhouse Intergrated Complex. 2003. University of Texas. 10 July 2007 <http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lpi/HEDS-UP/utsa.pdf>.) No plants = No oxygen = No habitability for most Earth life. An then of course there are other issues of atmospheric pressure regarding humans and plants themselves, given that the pressure is way to thin for both at present. Terraforming Mars is a challenge indeed. Any ideas for changing the atmosphere?

Does this sort of thing happen to you once in a while??? Earlier today I took a nap, of which I always do when I wake up early, for about 1.5 hrs. And then, I woke up, well sort of. I say sort of because I don't know if I was awake. Like, I know it wasn't dreaming, since I was aware of my surroundings, but I couldn't get up or move that much, even though I wanted to. My head and body felt too heavy to move. Of course, my sight was a bit distorted, and eyelids were barely open, but I knew I was not hallucinating and could actually see. I could feel some part of my body moving like my fingers, but I felt like I did not have much control over it, more like "yeah, I can move them, but not really". I couldn't really make much noises either, with great effort I could manage a faint whisper. Its kinda like getting knocked right out. It took me a little while to become fully awake and actually move off of my bed. It just suddenly came to me to, meaning that I was in this state and then suddenly I had the ability to move and got up straight away. I don't know, is this some sort of psychological state, like you are in some sub-conscious state? Or is this some sleep problem that I may have. I put it in psychology section because a lot of it deals with perceptual issues. I don't know how to describe it, its like, your awake but you're not, at the same time. I guess this is an issue of your brain being awake, but your body isn't, is such a thing even possible????

And hence it would not be very practical to constantly ship supplies to Mars.

Why the need for that? We could just build a greenhouse on the surface. There is more than enough energy hitting Mars from the sun to allow for photosynthesis. And while there is still the question of whether liquid water exists on Mars, there is a lot of ice water which could be melted, especially around the poles. And we can easily build materials that block out most of the UV radiation (one such example is para-aminobenzoic acid which is used in sunscreen). There would be no need for a nuclear reactor. In Arizona they are experimenting with the possibility of a self-sustained biodome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 I don't doubt that we will one day be able to build underground parks (Or do many other technological wonders), but that probably won't happen until humans are well established there. We could do that, but there are questions of practicality. I don't think it would be cheap to constantly send food to Mars all the time, given Earth's escape velocity and fuel needed. It would be easier if there were biodomes on the Moon though. It would probably be easier to grow food on Earth, but distribution would not be. I don't know about safer. It has to survive a 6 month trip through outer space, where it would be exposed to radiation. But on the plus side the food could be easily kept sterile. And then there are the associated dangers of space craft launch, but that could be fixed with automated systems. It would be more convenient but it goes back to the practicality issue. It would be much better to build a bio-dome. This way, the only material you would initially need to carry with you are nutrients, soil, etc and then just let Darwin and biological life processes take over from there.

I remember reading something on this quite a while ago, and they talked about having humans settle near the polar regions. Humans up there would not be in the worst of the dust storms should they occur, and it is possible to set up greenhouses that can filter out the worst radiation and most UV's (its gonna be a bit of a challenge to block out those nasty gamma rays though). I also remember reading about bringing in extremophlites that would feed off of the sulfur in the Martian rocks and release some form of greenhouse gases such as methane. I think while it may be possible to build underground, you need to consider the ability to maintain crops (which need the sun), or otherwise we are dependent on Earth until terra-forming is complete.