Stargazer

The Kuiper Belt is a belt of cometary objects of various sizes, from small comets to Pluto or larger. As far as I can understand, the Kuiper Belt extends out to the Oort Cloud, which probably is spherical, unlike the Kuiper Belt which is mostly concentrated around the ecliptic plane.

I would label myself as a socialliberal.

Exactly, it's because of misunderstanding the theory. The theory itself, of course, does not say anything about how we should treat each other. Also, the validity of a theory has nothing to do with whether we personally like it or not. Only creationists would say such things.

Ok, then tell me why faith and religion would be respected the same way a scientific theory would? Where are the similarities? Also, why is it that people can never give a single reason why their particular faith or religion should be protected from other questioning it? What is so special about it, what makes them true, what is it that makes them possible to believe in? Surely it wouldn't all be baseless, would it? I will never regard religion and science at the same level and never will I consider them to be of equal value.

At many places. It seems to be wrong, though, and the universe is apparently flat as pointed out by others, and I've checked the WMAP homepage among others. It seems I haven't followed this very well lately.

Oh sure it was creation. After all, it's not a violation of Ockham's razor, and it's a product, obviously, of skepticism and reason, and well-supported by observational evidence. Therefor, I now declare that the universe was created by Professor Frink (who can now be seen in "Simpsons"). You can't disprove it! Also, to anyone who wishes to point out how ridiculous that is: you lack empathy! So there.

Exactly, that's my point, it wasn't science to begin with. It was baseless speculations and fantasies. (Funny, btw, how I'm not offending anyone by pointing this out, but when I point out other kinds of fantasies in another thread, I'm being told I lack empathy - whatever questioning has to do with that.) I do agree with you that some people simply do not listen. This goes for all pseudoscience and religion and other such things - I think it has to do with prestige, or to preserve their precious worldimage no matter how flawed.

Ok, you have plans to build an aeroplane with the goal to break the sound barrier. What problems do you predict? Perhaps how the structure of the aeroplane will be affected, perhaps if the pilot will lose control, etc. These are consequences that are not longshots at all. However, to introduce pararell dimensions into the mix makes no sense, simply because it doesn't follow. It would be like saying it is dangerous to go land on the moon because then you will become invisible. That doesn't follow at all. What reasonable fears might one have regarding being the first to land on the moon? Perhaps that one would sink, or that radiation levels will be much higher, or something.

What was their scientific reasoning to start with such fantasies? I suppose they had no basis for it at all. To build aeroplanes has to do with science, not what might happen in a badly written Star Trek episode. My point is that such speculations doesn't matter much since there is nothing that would justify them.

Who thought that travelling at certain speeds would cause them to enter other dimensions? And how many listened to such speculations?

I don't understand why the idea of travelling in Mach 1 has anything to do with supernaturalistic phenomena.

Well surely noone believed that cell phones would work through magic, or divine intervention? It's science. Technologically, it wasn't possible to build such phones, but the basic science was certainly there. It has nothing to do with mythologies, or fairytales or supernaturalism.

I'm surprised that so many can still believe in supernatural things or old myths.

Seriously though, isn't space thought to be infinite and closed around itself?

Plenty of car keys and odd socks?

A Mars colony is most certainly not a bad idea, it's an excellent idea. Complement it with a mining operation, industries and a space dock on and near Phobos, and we have a great platform to go even further out, to reach the asteroid belt to make use of the resources there, and to go further to the outer planets. A colony on Callisto would be great to see as well, but how it would be done is another question. That it can be done, I have no doubt, but how is another matter...

My guess is that the bubbles would move towards the nearest surface in the liquid.

There are several of the X-Prize teams that are still working on their vehicles, so I think we are somewhere around some sort of singularity, that is, the development is going faster and faster and the number of competing vehicles will further accelerate the development. Virgin Galactic is hopeful to begin suborbital hops of civilians within a few years, and Bigelow Aerospace will build a private spacestation/hotel in orbit, and needs a spacecraft capable of going to LEO with a few passangers. As soon as spacecrafts have somewhere to go except suborbital or LEO, then private spaceflight is here to stay. Moon and Mars comes next, but that will take a while. In the beginning of avionics, the aeroplanes were small and not terribly fast. This changed more and more, and to think that they 747 was built within 70 years of the Wright Brothers first plane, is fascinating. I believe there will be a similar revolution in spaceflight. Maybe not as quick, but it will happen, I am sure.

But then again, maybe they are similar to us in some respects and so they think it's great to see someone with a psychology as similar as theirs. Our species could very well survive itself as long as we don't decide to use all our nuclear weapons at the same time. But to get out of our current behaviour is necessary to maintain a stable technological civilization, I think. But to alter our genetic code might not be the answer. Maybe we are so complex that if we remove some instincts, the others will be affected as well. I think the problem is more complex. What we have on this planet is a species with higher intelligence than any other, still we have the primitive instincts as well. Sometimes there seems to be a conflict, sometimes it seems like we use technology to satisfy some of thise instincts and other things that makes us who we are. This species is divided up in different societies, cultures, belief systems, philosophies, customs, languages, etc., and combine that with instincts and advanced technology. Many clashes between two cultures have not ended well. With advanced technology this does not have to be the case. We don't have to fight for resources anymore. And to fight over imaginary friends is even more silly.