NEWS: Many, Many Planets May Exist

John Ordover wrote:

We haven't even had to face the social upheavals
of "there *is* somebody out there".

Unless they show up here, there won't be any upheaval. The world will
shrug and go on.

Must agree. And even then, it depends on just what they actually
do...

Cardman wrote:
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 21:38:47 GMT, Joann Evans
wrote:

True enough. Digital and other encoding schemes, even with no intent
to encrypt, can look like noise.

It is not that bad, when data is always sent at a fixed data rate.

So if SETI did ever get an unknown signal (hopefully powerful) with
the data being spaced evenly apart, then they would know about it. And
of course any wise alien civilization would know to repeat this data.

None of this is needed - you can detect a narrow-band signal without
any of these conditions.

Cardman.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Joann Evans wrote:
John Ordover wrote:

We haven't even had to face the social upheavals
of "there *is* somebody out there".

Unless they show up here, there won't be any upheaval. The world will
shrug and go on.

Must agree. And even then, it depends on just what they actually
do...

There will be a upheaval - even if a small one - if they turn out
to have been around for more than 6000 years or so 8-)

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

cheap quick (quick being relative) is possible - at most you need
controlled fusion - and the key enabling technologies would come not
from space travel but robotics and biology.

Define cheap and quick. Unless you have FTL travel, you're not fast
enough to do anything economically supportable.



The higher level of civilisation can merely be defined by forgetting
petty issues like economics and doing it.

Economics isn't a petty issue. It's a short-hand term for resource
allocation. Can a society exist if it begins starving its people to
build hideously expensive spacecraft for no viable economic reason?
Would you cut medical care to build the ship? Would you starve other
investments to build the ship? Etc. etc. If the laws of physics are
such that any kind of space travel always takes huge resources and
brings nothing in the way of resources back, then even if a society
tried to focus on it exclusively, they'd collapse.


That's why space travel beyond LEO is, and always has been, and
without a breakthrough in physics always will be, a societal hobby at
best.

There will be a upheaval - even if a small one - if they turn out
to have been around for more than 6000 years or so 8-)

Not at all - those who believe that stongly that we were created 6K
years ago are already disbelieving very real evidence that's not so -
they'll just disbelive this too.

John Ordover wrote:
cheap quick (quick being relative) is possible - at most you need
controlled fusion - and the key enabling technologies would come not
from space travel but robotics and biology.

Define cheap and quick. Unless you have FTL travel, you're not fast
enough to do anything economically supportable.


Only if you expect inter-solar-system trade in material goods to
happen.


The higher level of civilisation can merely be defined by forgetting
petty issues like economics and doing it.

Economics isn't a petty issue. It's a short-hand term for resource
allocation. Can a society exist if it begins starving its people to
build hideously expensive spacecraft for no viable economic reason?

Can you provide a proof that allocating say 10% of resources to such
would not be sustainable?

Would you cut medical care to build the ship? Would you starve other
investments to build the ship? Etc. etc. If the laws of physics are
such that any kind of space travel always takes huge resources and
brings nothing in the way of resources back, then even if a society
tried to focus on it exclusively, they'd collapse.


The same applies to the lion share of defence budgets worldwide since
mid 1940s. No real collapse in sight.

That's why space travel beyond LEO is, and always has been, and
without a breakthrough in physics always will be, a societal hobby at
best.

So?

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Even without FTL travel, such a short hop would be
quite reasonable for something important -- as surely first contact with
an emerging civilization would be.

Define short? 40,000 years?

John Ordover wrote:

cheap quick (quick being relative) is possible - at most you need
controlled fusion - and the key enabling technologies would come not
from space travel but robotics and biology.

Define cheap and quick. Unless you have FTL travel, you're not fast
enough to do anything economically supportable.

The higher level of civilisation can merely be defined by forgetting
petty issues like economics and doing it.

Economics isn't a petty issue. It's a short-hand term for resource
allocation. Can a society exist if it begins starving its people to
build hideously expensive spacecraft for no viable economic reason?
Would you cut medical care to build the ship? Would you starve other
investments to build the ship?

Those are (currently) issues for *this* civilization. Not one that
may have reduced interstellar travel to that relative level of effort
that homebuilt aircraft/aircraft restoration is for us.

Etc. etc. If the laws of physics are
such that any kind of space travel always takes huge resources and
brings nothing in the way of resources back, then even if a society
tried to focus on it exclusively, they'd collapse.

That depends on the availability and cost of resources. The future is
likely to redefine that for us, it may already have done do elsewhere.

That's why space travel beyond LEO is, and always has been, and
without a breakthrough in physics always will be, a societal hobby at
best.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this....

Joann Evans wrote:

The length of time they've existed as a civilization still doesn't
tell us what they *would* do, it only increases the range of possible
things they *could* do, and decreases the ability of younger
civilizations to predict what those actions could be.....

Agreed. Though there will be some amounts of upheaval caused by just
them showing up. But upheaval is not necessarily a bad thing, most of
them have led to good results so far.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++