Moontanman

So far, and I know this is arguable, I see nothing that could be gained by invasion that simple industrial processes couldn't make cheaper and less costly in their own solar system or in any uninhabited solar system. I think the idea of colonization would have to be much rarer than actual visitation due to the idea that life has adapted to the Earth not the other way around and life that had adapted to another planet wouldn't necessarily be able to thrive on the Earth. The slave idea is tempting but robots can do almost anything a human can do and they don't require any special treatment and do not revolt (everyone knows humans are revolting all the time ) Trading technologies seems a much more likely idea but that implies a relatively equal footing for both sides... Sadly religion might be the most likely scenario... Then again maybe we taste like their version of chicken...

Ctenophores, it would now seem, are the most basal of all living animals according to genetic analysis. Sponges have long been considered the most basal or closest living representative of the base of the animal tree. Sponges which lack a nervous system or muscles would appear to have descended from animals that had those traits instead of being animals that never had them. ​Ctenophores are predators that eat plankton and swim with cilia, have smooth muscles and a nervous system would appear to be more advanced than sponges but apparently this is not true. Details here... http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/38619/title/A-New-Basal-Animal/

The land whales are extinct but ask and ye shall receive... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans

hey, could be the next Darwin's day award winner, lol

I think it's simply being made too complex because we think it has to be. unicellular creatures display behaviors, abet simple ones, but scaling up from those simple behaviors at some point you have a mind and the humans mind is neither the biggest or most complex.

I think that's a rat hole that has no end, you have to go back before chickens to find the origin of the egg and so to to find the origin of the mind...

While i tend to agree that amphibians probably evolved in freshwater others do disagree but just because no current amphibians live in salt water doesn't mean none ever did or that they didn't originate there. There are modern amphibians that lay their eggs on land and modern reptiles that give birth to live young, it not always a good idea to extrapolate backwards into time to make assumptions...

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying, knowledge is demonstrable, that pretty much defines reality...

Popcorn are you suggesting that an observer has to be a mind? From what i understand of it, which may be small, things like radioactive decay pretty much do the same thing.

Build tornado resistant buildings or live under ground seem to be the only reasonable solutions but few want to live in a reinforced concrete dome or under ground...

I am going to side with Tridimity on this, while it could have been done a bit less abrasively the subject is real in the USA where one of the most popular books actually advocates what can only be termed child abuse and it is religious and religion is being used to justify it. I think we could have had a productive discussion around it...

Most religious people I've talked to about this "delima" either don't care or refuse to accept anything that might lead to critical thinking, very sad...

This article seems to give a reasonable explanation... http://www.ibtimes.com/t-rex-soft-tissue-controversy-explained-how-iron-preserved-68-million-year-old-dinosaur-tissue

I can't read the paper but if it is similar to the Nuclear light bulb rocket the wall is quartz cooled by liquid hydrogen and the americium plasma would stay confined in the "light bulb" ... there are of course problems to be solved... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_lightbulb IMHO the real key to this would be the ability to create a magnetic field sufficiently strong enough to contain the plasma...

The only reasonable course of action is go to a doctor, you'll probably end up spending more money if you go it your way...

Can time be traced back to infinity? The rainbow gravity theory suggests time had no beginning and there was no singularity and that different wave lengths of light are affected differently than others. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-gravity-universe-beginning&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20131211

Now for some real music! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU De-evolution is the real answer!

I produced chlorine this way in high school but that was 40 years ago, evacuated the class and destroyed the apparatus...

Ummm bad stereo speakers that do hard math?

Well i am very far from expert on this and I am sure someone will point that out soon but I see no reason why an EMP couldn't be directed, the US military does some interesting stuff with EMP already...

I watched a video last night, about an hour and a half long that asserted that the USA and other world powers had done some speculative war games based on an alien invasion. The video was well produced and had some good graphics but the reasons for an alien invasion were weak to say the least. I gave it some thought and I couldn't really come up with a reason good enough to travel light years for a planet, the video finally came up with an invading robots scenario wanting to harvest earths forests for reaction mass for propulsion. Considering how unlikely a planet enough like Earth exists, for us to travel there to do war with the inhabitants seems like a loosing proposition unless they are cave men or something. The question, is there a realistic reason to invade an already inhabited planet if planets are as plentiful as current projections indicate? There is also the question of just how Earth like a planet would have to be for us to thrive there? The movie Avatar would be a reasonable example, a planet full of life but not really habitable, is it likely we will find planets close enough to "Earth like" to be colonized and would it be reasonable to expect a limited military force to conquer a civilization as advanced as ours? I am not suggesting FTL and neither did the video, it just seems unlikely for so many different reasons with FTL much less with out it... This also calls into question the idea of "if there are aliens where are they" is it likely another inhabited world would be much more than a curiosity? Most science fiction assumes something like they want to take us over or colonize or steal our water but with literally an infinite number of variables would alien invasion really be a likely hood even given close by aliens?

Completely surrounding in a conductive material should should do it... btw a faraday cage directs the pulse around the object being protected, it doesn't absorb it...

Special pleading is their only answer...

That's kinda beyond the whole "boyscout" project isn't it?

If you can't show it then you don't know it, you simply asserting it and saying I would have to believe it before I can see it, nothing real requires belief, nothing unreal exists...