OFF: SETI, ETs

[Stephen Swann]

M Holmes writes:
>
> jean l delacour writes:
>
> >   First of all, there were numerous lectures by such UFO experts as Micheal
> >  Lindemann & Bud Hopkins.  They were very convincing and insightful.  They
> >  pointed out that it is COMMON KNOWLEDGE within the scientific community now
> >  that ETI's are infact out there.
>
> Who's this "scientific community"? It's commonly believed that it is
> *probable* that there are other intelligences but not a lot of people
> suppose that they visit little old us.

I take it you mean "probable", in the sense of non-zero probability?
I remember some really *really* heavily rounded off numbers being
thrown into a fairly off the cuff equation, which basically estimated
how many planets out there might exist that could support anything
remotely like earth-based life.

That of course tells us nothing really important, because what is the
"probability" that a planet which is "capable" of supporting life will
spawn it?  If you use Earth as your sample, then the probability is
1.0, and it's a crowded little universe out there.  ;-)

> >  Furthermore, the ufologists stated that
> >  it has been proven recently that we can infact travel at a warp speed and
> >  within this warp one can slow or speed up time factors.
>
> There's some math that suggest this isn't impossible. The sorts of
> technologies you;d need to do it are pretty mind boggling though. We
> definitely don't have the capacity to mess with black holes in the way
> you'd need to to do this. Nor do we have any kind of means of creating
> artificial gravity fields.

Well, this isn't exactly the same principle, but you can slow down
subjective time just by accelerating for long enough.  I forget the
formula, but the letter tau is used as a measure of how fractionally
removed from light speed you are.  As T approaches 0, you get closer
and closer to experiencing no progress of time - in other words, if
you travel your whole journey at .9999999 of lightspeed, then you
would subjectively appear to arrive instantaneously, even though
though an outside observer would note that it took... well... however
long light would take.  :-)

I highly recommend Paul Anderson's book Tau Zero for illustration of
this principle in literary terms.  It's about a "solar windjammer" that
loses its ability to brake, and so keeps on accelerating, right into
the heat death and collapse of the universe.  Brilliant.

ObBOC: when I saw Independence Day the other night, and they had that
scene at the SETI radio telescope site, I turned to my g/f and said,
"27 faces?".  :-)

obIndependenceDayReview: (courtesy of the teen sitting behind me,
following the city-destruction scene): "What *absolute bullshit*!
That was pretty great, though!"

Steve
swann at panix.com