Moontanman

The premise of independence day was a non starter, the resources they were supposedly coming for are widely available in places like the asteroid belt or the kuiper belt, why fight another species for that which you could get free? The idea that aliens would want our planet IMHO is silly, we have evolved to fit our planet, the earth is not some special oasis that all alien life would gravitate toward. Alien life would evolve to fit their own planet, no reason to think all life bearing planets would be enough like earth for us to live there or for them to live here. A minor trace element like mercury would be enough to make a planet uninhabitable by humans. I have been reading where at least some scientists think the earth may be unique in having such a thin atmosphere, an earth sized planet should have a much more dense atmosphere. If this is true then aliens from a planet with a 10 bar atmosphere might have a rough time adapting, other trace elements like CO2 could render a planet useless. The variables are endless and each species would be adapted to a specific set of conditions unlikely to be repeated anywhere else.. I can show you a magnetic field, can you show me a spirit?

Non nuclear EMP is used by the military to knock out electronics. I am not sure if it has any effect on humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse

I would suggest visiting a doctor specializing in child behavior..

Good to hear Brontosaurus is back in the house!

No, the rate of mutation hasn't increased it's recessive genes being expressed due to inbreeding of small populations, also many deer hunters, especially if the own the land they are hunting on are less inclined to shoot odd colored deer. I've talked to several land owners who feel this way.

Best UFO footage ever! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8cnHktRYMA

Since coal was formed 300 million years ago I think the metaphor is somewhat strained... http://www.fe.doe.gov/education/energylessons/coal/gen_howformed.html

It depends a lot on how you mean this question, if you are wondering if there stars that have temps different than our own Sun then yes most definitely. Some stars are so hot they are blue 30,000k our own sun is much cooler, about 6,000k http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification Saturn's moon Titan might have an example of life not as we know it. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/02/life-not-we-know-it-possible-saturns-moon-titan

Sunshaker, you do realize a planet could lack dry land and still not be a "globule" of water.. right? If you add enough water to the earth all dry land would be covered and we would still have our planet under the water. I'm not sure i understand, coal and oil were both created long before there were dinosaurs. I see no way an underwater species, like an octopus, could acquire technology beyond the stone age, without fire I think it would be a no go situation... Metals like native gold or silver might occur and maybe even batteries made up of them but using electricity underwater would seem to be self defeating at best. Possibly there are other routes to technology I cannot think of but generating electricity might be the first step in that direction...

https://youtu.be/M60gmXoWIaw

Oops https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=803285256426705

Thanks Enthalpy, 4g was my mistake, again I did not state myself clearly, I was thinking of the planets so far found, as far as I can see none of them are thought to be 4g at the surface, I was thinking of twice the diameter and the same density as earth, for reason i had assumed it would be 4g but as it turns out it would be 2g, twice the diameter, 4 times the surface area, and 8 times the mass and or volume assuming the same density which may or may not be a valid assumption for a rocky world. Possibly some form of very energetic nuclear power would be necessary...

I get most of my rep in the humor section...

Ok I checked the figures it looks like such a planet would have a surface gravity of 19.66 Meters per sec, 22.38 Kps escape velocity, 4 times Earth's surface area, 8 times Earth's mass and volume... Considering the new numbers I obtained are your figures still accurate or would it be a bit harder?

Actually some metals do have an affinity to each other, many metals have an affinity to iron and were pulled down by the iron as it fell.

Some of the separation is chemical with certain elements being attracted to others some of it is as you said simple gravitational separation, while it is true that Earths core consists of Iron it is not pure iron, many other heavy metals are mixed with it, I have read that the Earth's core contains enough gold to coat the land surface of the earth quite deep, many orders of magnitude more than we see on the surface. Some of the separation is biological with various bacteria concentrating metals as part of their metabolism, in fact I think that in some places and elements the concentration is biological almost completely. http://discovermagazine.com/2006/sep/innerfortknox

It's a stegatortise!

I think I know how the idea of a pin hole camera came about, serendipity shouldn't ever be discounted!

I refuse to camp, I look at the available evidence and simply say we don't know or we do know or in some cases it's deeply puzzling but no way to be sure at this time... Most stuff from after photoshop is junk, I'd estimate more than 99% of sightings to be hoaxes or something conventional seen under unusual circumstances but there still are sightings that require some real thought and defy explanation even if the air force was determined to give us one, some almost as unbelievable as aliens, slow comets and slow meteors being a couple of examples..

Actually I was thinking of 4 times the surface gravity but I may have been reading it wrong, I know many of them have twice the diameter of the earth or more yet with similar density. A NASA podcast I saw a year or so ago indicated the current thought was a super earth could maintain earth like temps out to 3 or 4 AU via retaining a deep high pressure hydrogen atmosphere but still contain things like nitrogen and CO2 and be clear enough to sustain photosynthesis on the surface, possibly a sun powered Hydrogen cycle instead of Oxygen as suggested by Isaac Asimov. Or closer in have a high pressure conventional atmosphere and maintain Earth like temps at 2 or 3 AU, one of these super earths at one AU around a Sun like star would be more likely to be Venus on steroids than Earth. Ok I checked the figures it looks like such a planet would have a surface gravity of 19.66 Meters per sec, 22.38 Kps escape velocity, and 8 times Earth's mass and volume...

I'm not sure, I've seen so many of them, most have an agenda rather than any real research, they are either made by true believers or debunkers, almost never even neutral.

We don't need a completely sustainable isolated biosphere under these circumstances, fusion how ever is a missing piece, of course that is just 20 years away... It is also important to notice this is a falsifiable hypothesis, such colonies should be visible to sensitive IR telescopes, I had hoped the IR telescope that stopped working a while back might do the trick but I have since learned it was not sensitive enough to pick up small objects that far away. Even if true I don't think this would explain much more than the radar detected glowing lights in the sky type UFO, it seems doubtful that such aliens would risk manned craft or their own lives in gravity wells where biological contamination is possible. Drones set to observe and see how we react to that observation seem much more reasonable. Especially when people begin to describe humanoid aliens my horse feathers meter goes off scale...

I was reading about the fact that many of the planets so far discovered in the rocky planet category are know as super earths, some are estimated to have gravity 4X earths surface gravity or more. If we had been dealing with 4 g surface gravity how much harder would the apollo missions have been? Would it as been as straightforward as 4 X as big a rocket or is the difference more likely 8 X?