Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox

Ian Parker wrote:
On 6 Aug, 14:21, Einar wrote:
Matt Giwer wrote:
Ian Parker wrote:
On 4 Aug, 06:37, Matt Giwer wrote:
A joke because once you introduce intelligent intervention anything is
possible. But this might be the general answer. As there is no credible natural
answer for the paradox then it has to be intelligent intervention.

I would be thinking in terms of s simulation.

If a simulation is complete enough what separates a simulation from real?

Excellent dilemma which was explored in the Matrix trilogy.

If we are part of some sort of a computersimulation and God is about
to unplug the thing

ET in the form of UFO sightings is completely impossible. The sort of
ET spaceship we saw was in fact 1950's SF. real ET spaceships would be
very small and the exploration would be done by nanotech.

There we go with that impossible thing again.

He is extrapolating a bit to far with his idea that aliens would have
recorded themselves into some sort of a data-from. There is really no
way to know, but if recordings of a self are possible, it sounds
logical that aliens would. However that is by no means certain, it may
prove impossible or alternativelly the alien´s religion might have
banned such recordings of a self. For whatever it´s worth, an alien
generation ship would be entirelly possible. It could be, for all what
we know, be mascerading as an asteroid in the asteroid belt.

I think I should perhaps clarify what I said or rather meant to say.
Replying to so many people you can loose track! On the question of us
being an alien simulation, what I was meaning was that rather than
simply look at us to see whether we evolved the way they did, they
would have a simulaton.

This of course says nothing about the way ET would explore the Earth
or the solar system. As I keep on saying large spaceships are an
impossibility. I have spoken about dragonflies. What ET would want to
do (probably) is to get some idea of the chemistry of terrestriallife.
Small chemical probes would be ideal for this.

Yes ET could be on an asteroid. That is of course until all the
asteroids are explored!

I said, the spaceship might maskerate as an asteroyd. However, in
theory asteroyds could be made into spaceships. But, they would only
be capable of gentle accelerations hence travel time would be lengthy.
But if one has enough time long travel times might not be a
trouble...say like if the beings aboard are all frosen until arrival
time.

I don´t think you have ever actually stated it why you think large or
huge interstellar ships are impossible? Presuming FTL to be
impossible, voiages would be subluminal and hence time consuming, but
varyous strategies could compensate for that.

A) The ship could be truly enormous, basigly a self contained world
capable of existing for indefinite periods of time without exhausting
its resources, which would imply 100% or very near 100% resycling of
all waste.

B) The crew might be put into some form of stasis, which could be
maintainded for an indefinite time. The most simple form would be
freesing the crew, if reliable revival technologies have been
developed. That would require a still a large ship, but not as
enormous one as in A).

C) The crew could be frosen zygots, that have to be grown by
technological means into viable beings once on arrival. In this case
the ship would be a wholly automated one, might be quite small minus
the propulsion package, which would construct on arrival the means for
growing the crew.

D) The crew might be computerdata only, assuming personalities really
can be uploaded into a computer. On arrival the computer personalities
might download themselves into whatever convenient form for system
exploration. This is the smallest of my whatif-scenario-crafts.


However, in like manner as the hypotheses about God, the alien
hypotheses remains completelly untestable. That does not necessarilly
make it rubbish, as after all both could be true, even both at the
same time, but they really are completelly untestable.

God and ET are really completely different things. I think that ET
would need to have very strong religious beliefs NOT to colonize and
to stay invisible. There is one other point which I feel should also
be made here. It is this. Dyson civilisations have been postulated.
All the IR stars we have seen are cool supergiants. There is no hint
of anything artificial anywhere in space.

Dyson spheres is only an idea among many. Another idea is a fractal,
which actually would contain several times the internal volume of a
Dyson sphere. Still another idea is a ring, which would be far smaller
than a Dyson sphere, yet for that far more likelly. In addition it
wouldn´t radically alter the light output of the star it would be
orbiting, hence would be essentially invisible to our observance. That
same would be true about artificial constructs that are smaller than a
ring, like large hollow sphere hapitats that might only be the
equivalent size of a planetoid up to the size range of a small planet.
In addition, spacestations would also be invisible to our observance
capabilities.

God to some extent is based on the cosmic censorship principle. Some
scientists are trying to find out whether prayer really does have an
effect, or whether hidden objects can be seen in "out of the body"
experiences. Suppose you had led a selfish life and on the operating
table you started to feel unconfortably hot and could smell sulphur.
Nobody but a fool would fail to amend their life. No we must lead a
good life without.

Perhaps Christian apologetics should focus on the Christian way of
life and moral code and not on the miraculous. I think that if you
believe in God you probably have had certain experiences which
convince you but which you cannot share.

Belief in God cannot per se be criticised but on the other hand I feel
it is a mistake to "wear it on your shoulder". I don't think you do,
but me remarks are pretty general.

I think we can probably say that if ET exists in the way you suggest,
God must too. The simple reason is this. In the absense of a
compelling religious morality they would have taken us over yonks ago.


- Ian Parker

The existence of aliens does by no means preclute the existence of
god. As both the existence of God and existence of aliens are
untestable, we can only hypothyse about them.

We can only state that, aliens that behave similar to us are probably
unlikelly. However, we can´t preclute the existence of aliens who are
very radically different from us in behavior. Who simply don´t have
the comparable drives that are driving us.

Cheers, Einar

In article . com,
Ian Parker wrote:

Rand Simberg and Fred Mc Call simply refuse to think rationally.
Intersellar travel can be effected using a Von Neumann probe.

True, it probably could.

It cannot be done any other way.

This part is nonsense.

FTL is impossible.

This is probably true.

I know you're a big fan of VN probes, but they are certainly NOT
required for pretty much anything -- traditional manufacturing methods
can produce anything a VN probe can produce, and probably do it better.

It would seem inconceivable to me that an interstellar flight would
begin without such technology.

You need to stretch your ability to conceive, then. Imagine a solar
system full of trillions of people, living everywhere matter and energy
are to be found, including out in the Oort cloud, which has plenty of
hydrogen for fusion and probably all other elements that are needed too,
all in nice shallow gravity wells. Those Oort cloud inhabitants would
have fast, mobile colony ships (probably fusion drives), since while
there is a LOT of matter out there, the distance between chunks of it is
pretty great. Eventually, it gets harder and harder to find a chunk of
it that hasn't already been claimed -- but look, only a light year or so
away, are the unclaimed chunks of Alpha Centauri's Oort cloud. So
somebody decides to head out into the black, maybe spending 50 years or
more on the journey, but knowing that at the end is a whole new system
full of resources.

Or, suppose people have been uploaded, as seems quite likely by that
time. In that case, you send your advance probes unmanned and small, by
some very fast method such as a laser sail, with a pile of uninhabited
bodies. Once in orbit around the target star, they turn their receiving
antenna towards Sol, and we broadcast over the brain patterns of whoever
wants to go, at light speed. These are downloaded into the waiting
bodies, they wake up, and start building.

There is more than one way to empty a solar system. Even without
self-replicating machines.

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

In article ,
Matt Giwer wrote:

Fred J. McCall wrote:
Ian Parker wrote:
:
:Rand Simberg and Fred Mc Call simply refuse to think rationally.
:
This is quite funny, coming from the guy who insists that ONLY an AI
probe is possible.
...

I don't mean to rain on parades here but a lot of this is based upon the
most
American myth of a human impulse to explore the unknown. It is a wonderful
myth.
It inspires. But there is not a single example of it.

Matt, it has nothing to do with American myths. Expansion into new
niches is a universal law of living things. It's easy to see why:
living things reproduce, passing along traits but with some variation.
This variation leads to some with more tendency to expand, and some with
more tendency to stay put. When there are new niches available, the
ones with a tendency to expand will stumble upon them, and their
reproductive fitness will be very high, since they will have abundant
resources (and no predators, in a multi-species ecology, though that
wouldn't apply to the first spacefaring civilization). So the genes or
memes resulting a tendency to expand are strongly selected for,
resulting in an even greater tendency to expand. This trend stops only
when there are no more niches available for colonization.

Note that it doesn't matter whether the things involved are bugs, or
civilized thinkers, or robots, or Tribbles, or whatever. It also
doesn't matter whether the basic unit of reproduction & variation is the
gene, or the meme, or the computer instruction, or some other
representation of information that we haven't thought of it. If it
reproduces with variations, then this universal law will apply.

Humans are at an odd point at the moment where many feel we have begun
to fill up the niches available to us. But some of us feel the urge to
expand, for whatever reason, and soon we'll have the technology to do
so. Those of us who do manage to exploit off-Earth resources will have
high reproductive (and economic) fitness, and that tendency to expand
will be strongly selected for. We'll expand out into the solar system
like an explosion. And then, in a century or two when the solar system
starts to feel crowded, we'll be having the same discussions again, only
this time about expanding to other stars. And the same result will
obtain.

Best,
- Joe

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

Joe Strout wrote:
In article . com,
Ian Parker wrote:

Rand Simberg and Fred Mc Call simply refuse to think rationally.
Intersellar travel can be effected using a Von Neumann probe.

True, it probably could.

It cannot be done any other way.

This part is nonsense.

FTL is impossible.

This is probably true.

I know you're a big fan of VN probes, but they are certainly NOT
required for pretty much anything -- traditional manufacturing methods
can produce anything a VN probe can produce, and probably do it better.

It would seem inconceivable to me that an interstellar flight would
begin without such technology.

You need to stretch your ability to conceive, then. Imagine a solar
system full of trillions of people, living everywhere matter and energy
are to be found, including out in the Oort cloud, which has plenty of
hydrogen for fusion and probably all other elements that are needed too,
all in nice shallow gravity wells. Those Oort cloud inhabitants would
have fast, mobile colony ships (probably fusion drives), since while
there is a LOT of matter out there, the distance between chunks of it is
pretty great. Eventually, it gets harder and harder to find a chunk of
it that hasn't already been claimed -- but look, only a light year or so
away, are the unclaimed chunks of Alpha Centauri's Oort cloud. So
somebody decides to head out into the black, maybe spending 50 years or
more on the journey, but knowing that at the end is a whole new system
full of resources.

Or, suppose people have been uploaded, as seems quite likely by that
time. In that case, you send your advance probes unmanned and small, by
some very fast method such as a laser sail, with a pile of uninhabited
bodies. Once in orbit around the target star, they turn their receiving
antenna towards Sol, and we broadcast over the brain patterns of whoever
wants to go, at light speed. These are downloaded into the waiting
bodies, they wake up, and start building.

There is more than one way to empty a solar system. Even without
self-replicating machines.

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

That mega-solar civilization would be some centuries into the future.
But I have read about ideas, f.e. from David Bring, about creating
habitats inside comets and then to begin to gently push them beyond
the gravity well of Sol.

A civilization living inside the cometary haloes of the stars inside
the Milky Way could continue spreading for tens of millions of years
without exhausting the living space available.


I once read the book "Dixtra´s war" about an encounter by humans by
preciselly such a civilization, which had been present in the cometary
haloes for hundreds of million of years. In that book it was presumed
that the aliens were not intelligent like us, rather they had
developed the minimally required technology somewhat in the hapsard
fashion animals develope. There were all kinds of logical
discontinuities in theyr tech. development, basigly brilliance beside
the relativelly obsolete, many obvious development ends to a logical
mind not being pursued.

Unfortunatelly a brief internet search does not reveal any information
about the book. It appears thoroughly forgotten. It still exists in my
bookshelfs.


Cheers, Einar

Joe Strout wrote:
In article . com,
Ian Parker wrote:

Rand Simberg and Fred Mc Call simply refuse to think rationally.
Intersellar travel can be effected using a Von Neumann probe.

True, it probably could.
It cannot be done any other way.

This part is nonsense.

FTL is impossible.

This is probably true.

I know you're a big fan of VN probes, but they are certainly NOT
required for pretty much anything -- traditional manufacturing methods
can produce anything a VN probe can produce, and probably do it better.

It would seem inconceivable to me that an interstellar flight would
begin without such technology.

You need to stretch your ability to conceive, then. Imagine a solar
system full of trillions of people, living everywhere matter and energy
are to be found, including out in the Oort cloud, which has plenty of
hydrogen for fusion and probably all other elements that are needed too,
all in nice shallow gravity wells. Those Oort cloud inhabitants would
have fast, mobile colony ships (probably fusion drives), since while
there is a LOT of matter out there, the distance between chunks of it is
pretty great. Eventually, it gets harder and harder to find a chunk of
it that hasn't already been claimed -- but look, only a light year or so
away, are the unclaimed chunks of Alpha Centauri's Oort cloud. So
somebody decides to head out into the black, maybe spending 50 years or
more on the journey, but knowing that at the end is a whole new system
full of resources.

Or, suppose people have been uploaded, as seems quite likely by that
time. In that case, you send your advance probes unmanned and small, by
some very fast method such as a laser sail, with a pile of uninhabited
bodies. Once in orbit around the target star, they turn their receiving
antenna towards Sol, and we broadcast over the brain patterns of whoever
wants to go, at light speed. These are downloaded into the waiting
bodies, they wake up, and start building.

There is more than one way to empty a solar system. Even without
self-replicating machines.

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

That mega-solar civilization would be some centuries into the future.
But I have read about ideas, f.e. from David Brin, about creating
habitats inside comets and then to begin to gently push them beyond
the gravity well of Sol.

A civilization living inside the cometary haloes of the stars inside
the Milky Way could continue spreading for tens of millions of years,
even hundreds of millions of years, without exhausting the living
space available.

I once read the book "Dixtra´s war" about an encounter by humans by
preciselly such a civilization, which had been present in the cometary
haloes for hundreds of million of years. In that book it was presumed
that the aliens were not intelligent like us, rather they had
developed the minimally required technology somewhat in the hapsard
fashion animals develope. There were all kinds of logical
discontinuities in theyr tech. development, basigly brilliance beside
the relativelly obsolete, many obvious development ends to a logical
mind not being pursued.

Unfortunatelly a brief internet search does not reveal any information
about the book. It appears thoroughly forgotten. It still exists in my
bookshelfs.

Cheers, Einar

On 6 Aug, 16:26, Einar wrote:
Yes ET could be on an asteroid. That is of course until all the
asteroids are explored!

I said, the spaceship might maskerate as an asteroyd. However, in
theory asteroyds could be made into spaceships. But, they would only
be capable of gentle accelerations hence travel time would be lengthy.
But if one has enough time long travel times might not be a
trouble...say like if the beings aboard are all frosen until arrival
time.

I don´t think you have ever actually stated it why you think large or
huge interstellar ships are impossible? Presuming FTL to be
impossible, voiages would be subluminal and hence time consuming, but
varyous strategies could compensate for that.

Yes. The fundamental reason is that ET would travel first of all on a
VN probe and then upload. ET would have establihed some sort of base
within the solar system where this would take plce.

What would the objective of ET be? It would either be colonization or
exploration. Colonization can be ruled out as we do not oberve an ET
colony. Exploration would NOT be done in Area 51 style spaceships. You
explore the Earth and its chemistry by having a large number of small
VN type probes. That is why I said a dragonfly could be ET.

Our basic chemistry is of course DNA and we have found that it is
possible to get DNA information and perform DNA replication with
apparatus which is incredibly small. ET would want (and probably have)
a molecular chemistry set, that is cto say pieces of DNA which would
analyse for specific chemicals.

A) The ship could be truly enormous, basigly a self contained world
capable of existing for indefinite periods of time without exhausting
its resources, which would imply 100% or very near 100% resycling of
all waste.

That would only be for colonization. For exploration you need a gram
or less.

B) The crew might be put into some form of stasis, which could be
maintainded for an indefinite time. The most simple form would be
freesing the crew, if reliable revival technologies have been
developed. That would require a still a large ship, but not as
enormous one as in A).

C) The crew could be frosen zygots, that have to be grown by
technological means into viable beings once on arrival. In this case
the ship would be a wholly automated one, might be quite small minus
the propulsion package, which would construct on arrival the means for
growing the crew.

A,B and C are all colonial scenarios. Manifestly false.

D) The crew might be computerdata only, assuming personalities really
can be uploaded into a computer. On arrival the computer personalities
might download themselves into whatever convenient form for system
exploration. This is the smallest of my whatif-scenario-crafts.

This is the most interesting first suggested by Joe Strout. I felt
when I first read it that it was interesting, but on thinking about it
a bit more I have come to the conclusion that computerdata would be
sent by laser after the VN probe had established itself. Of course I
could have a personality and live (say) on the Mooon and superintend
an army of dragionflies.


God and ET are really completely different things. I think that ET
would need to have very strong religious beliefs NOT to colonize and
to stay invisible. There is one other point which I feel should also
be made here. It is this. Dyson civilisations have been postulated.
All the IR stars we have seen are cool supergiants. There is no hint
of anything artificial anywhere in space.

Dyson spheres is only an idea among many. Another idea is a fractal,
which actually would contain several times the internal volume of a
Dyson sphere. Still another idea is a ring, which would be far smaller
than a Dyson sphere, yet for that far more likelly. In addition it
wouldn´t radically alter the light output of the star it would be
orbiting, hence would be essentially invisible to our observance. That
same would be true about artificial constructs that are smaller than a
ring, like large hollow sphere hapitats that might only be the
equivalent size of a planetoid up to the size range of a small planet.
In addition, spacestations would also be invisible to our observance
capabilities.

No, not quite. An infra red telescope would see them. There are stars
with rocky rings. This is however planetary formation. There is no
evidence of anything artificial.


God to some extent is based on the cosmic censorship principle. Some
scientists are trying to find out whether prayer really does have an
effect, or whether hidden objects can be seen in "out of the body"
experiences. Suppose you had led a selfish life and on the operating
table you started to feel unconfortably hot and could smell sulphur.
Nobody but a fool would fail to amend their life. No we must lead a
good life without.

Perhaps Christian apologetics should focus on the Christian way of
life and moral code and not on the miraculous. I think that if you
believe in God you probably have had certain experiences which
convince you but which you cannot share.

Belief in God cannot per se be criticised but on the other hand I feel
it is a mistake to "wear it on your shoulder". I don't think you do,
but me remarks are pretty general.

I think we can probably say that if ET exists in the way you suggest,
God must too. The simple reason is this. In the absense of a
compelling religious morality they would have taken us over yonks ago.

- Ian Parker

The existence of aliens does by no means preclute the existence of
god. As both the existence of God and existence of aliens are
untestable, we can only hypothyse about them.

We can only state that, aliens that behave similar to us are probably
unlikelly. However, we can´t preclute the existence of aliens who are
very radically different from us in behavior. Who simply don´t have
the comparable drives that are driving us.

I think if you believe in Evolution you will have drives that are not
altogether dissimilar. Let us take this at a very simple level. If you
were an ET of any sort would you allow Terrans with their known
impulses the ability to develop VN probes themselves?


- Ian Parker

On 6 Aug, 16:45, Joe Strout wrote:

I know you're a big fan of VN probes, but they are certainly NOT
required for pretty much anything -- traditional manufacturing methods
can produce anything a VN probe can produce, and probably do it better.

I think we should be quite clear about this. I believe that using a VN
machine to construct a Forward accelerator would be a considerable
advantage, but that is not quite what I mean. What I mean is this. The
requirement is to send a gram or so to another star. An active gram
that can reproduce and construct another Forward accelerator if need
be.

This is a VN probe.

It would seem inconceivable to me that an interstellar flight would
begin without such technology.

You need to stretch your ability to conceive, then. Imagine a solar
system full of trillions of people, living everywhere matter and energy
are to be found, including out in the Oort cloud, which has plenty of
hydrogen for fusion and probably all other elements that are needed too,
all in nice shallow gravity wells. Those Oort cloud inhabitants would
have fast, mobile colony ships (probably fusion drives), since while
there is a LOT of matter out there, the distance between chunks of it is
pretty great. Eventually, it gets harder and harder to find a chunk of
it that hasn't already been claimed -- but look, only a light year or so
away, are the unclaimed chunks of Alpha Centauri's Oort cloud. So
somebody decides to head out into the black, maybe spending 50 years or
more on the journey, but knowing that at the end is a whole new system
full of resources.

Or, suppose people have been uploaded, as seems quite likely by that
time. In that case, you send your advance probes unmanned and small, by
some very fast method such as a laser sail, with a pile of uninhabited
bodies. Once in orbit around the target star, they turn their receiving
antenna towards Sol, and we broadcast over the brain patterns of whoever
wants to go, at light speed. These are downloaded into the waiting
bodies, they wake up, and start building.

There is more than one way to empty a solar system. Even without
self-replicating machines.

You upload after you have delivered your gram.


- Ian Parker

Ian Parker wrote:
On 6 Aug, 16:26, Einar wrote:
Yes ET could be on an asteroid. That is of course until all the
asteroids are explored!

I said, the spaceship might maskerate as an asteroyd. However, in
theory asteroyds could be made into spaceships. But, they would only
be capable of gentle accelerations hence travel time would be lengthy.
But if one has enough time long travel times might not be a
trouble...say like if the beings aboard are all frosen until arrival
time.

I don´t think you have ever actually stated it why you think large or
huge interstellar ships are impossible? Presuming FTL to be
impossible, voiages would be subluminal and hence time consuming, but
varyous strategies could compensate for that.

Yes. The fundamental reason is that ET would travel first of all on a
VN probe and then upload. ET would have establihed some sort of base
within the solar system where this would take plce.

What would the objective of ET be? It would either be colonization or
exploration. Colonization can be ruled out as we do not oberve an ET
colony. Exploration would NOT be done in Area 51 style spaceships. You
explore the Earth and its chemistry by having a large number of small
VN type probes. That is why I said a dragonfly could be ET.

Our basic chemistry is of course DNA and we have found that it is
possible to get DNA information and perform DNA replication with
apparatus which is incredibly small. ET would want (and probably have)
a molecular chemistry set, that is cto say pieces of DNA which would
analyse for specific chemicals.

A) The ship could be truly enormous, basigly a self contained world
capable of existing for indefinite periods of time without exhausting
its resources, which would imply 100% or very near 100% resycling of
all waste.

That would only be for colonization. For exploration you need a gram
or less.

The spaceship will still be large, thousands of tons at the very
least. The memory may veigh grams, but the propulsion package will
still be quite large, it will also have to carry enough particulate
shielding to prevent the destruction of that memory bank, in addition
there is the fuel.

B) The crew might be put into some form of stasis, which could be
maintainded for an indefinite time. The most simple form would be
freesing the crew, if reliable revival technologies have been
developed. That would require a still a large ship, but not as
enormous one as in A).

C) The crew could be frosen zygots, that have to be grown by
technological means into viable beings once on arrival. In this case
the ship would be a wholly automated one, might be quite small minus
the propulsion package, which would construct on arrival the means for
growing the crew.

A,B and C are all colonial scenarios. Manifestly false.

LOL, only if your assumptions are correct.

On the contrary, they could be for exploration. To supply theyr needs
indefinitelly all that would be required would be the construction of
a spacestation in some solar or planetary orbit. Naturally if they
would prefer to remain out of sight, they could disguise theyr
spacestation as an asteroid, they could have hollowed out an asteroid
- say Ceres, they could be underground on the Moon, even on our own
planet.

Impossible is such a strong word. Unlikelly is far more reasonable.

D) The crew might be computerdata only, assuming personalities really
can be uploaded into a computer. On arrival the computer personalities
might download themselves into whatever convenient form for system
exploration. This is the smallest of my whatif-scenario-crafts.

This is the most interesting first suggested by Joe Strout. I felt
when I first read it that it was interesting, but on thinking about it
a bit more I have come to the conclusion that computerdata would be
sent by laser after the VN probe had established itself. Of course I
could have a personality and live (say) on the Mooon and superintend
an army of dragionflies.

To risky to beam yourself, i.e. the beam will spread and therefore
only have a limited effective range, in addition particles in space
will swallow up parts of it, so errors will inevitably occur. Far less
risky to make a digital copy and put it aboard right away befor the
beginning of the voyage, after all once on digital form copies could
be dime and a dosen.

God and ET are really completely different things. I think that ET
would need to have very strong religious beliefs NOT to colonize and
to stay invisible. There is one other point which I feel should also
be made here. It is this. Dyson civilisations have been postulated.
All the IR stars we have seen are cool supergiants. There is no hint
of anything artificial anywhere in space.

Dyson spheres is only an idea among many. Another idea is a fractal,
which actually would contain several times the internal volume of a
Dyson sphere. Still another idea is a ring, which would be far smaller
than a Dyson sphere, yet for that far more likelly. In addition it
wouldn´t radically alter the light output of the star it would be
orbiting, hence would be essentially invisible to our observance. That
same would be true about artificial constructs that are smaller than a
ring, like large hollow sphere hapitats that might only be the
equivalent size of a planetoid up to the size range of a small planet.
In addition, spacestations would also be invisible to our observance
capabilities.

No, not quite. An infra red telescope would see them. There are stars
with rocky rings. This is however planetary formation. There is no
evidence of anything artificial.

OK, infrared will at the very least struggle to observe alien
constructs that are smaller than a ring.

God to some extent is based on the cosmic censorship principle. Some
scientists are trying to find out whether prayer really does have an
effect, or whether hidden objects can be seen in "out of the body"
experiences. Suppose you had led a selfish life and on the operating
table you started to feel unconfortably hot and could smell sulphur.
Nobody but a fool would fail to amend their life. No we must lead a
good life without.

Perhaps Christian apologetics should focus on the Christian way of
life and moral code and not on the miraculous. I think that if you
believe in God you probably have had certain experiences which
convince you but which you cannot share.

Belief in God cannot per se be criticised but on the other hand I feel
it is a mistake to "wear it on your shoulder". I don't think you do,
but me remarks are pretty general.

I think we can probably say that if ET exists in the way you suggest,
God must too. The simple reason is this. In the absense of a
compelling religious morality they would have taken us over yonks ago.

- Ian Parker

The existence of aliens does by no means preclute the existence of
god. As both the existence of God and existence of aliens are
untestable, we can only hypothyse about them.

We can only state that, aliens that behave similar to us are probably
unlikelly. However, we can´t preclute the existence of aliens who are
very radically different from us in behavior. Who simply don´t have
the comparable drives that are driving us.

I think if you believe in Evolution you will have drives that are not
altogether dissimilar. Let us take this at a very simple level. If you
were an ET of any sort would you allow Terrans with their known
impulses the ability to develop VN probes themselves?


- Ian Parker

There is no way to know or guess what kind of ideology they may have,
or even if they have got an ideology in the first plase.

Cheers, Einar

In article . com,
Ian Parker wrote:

I think we should be quite clear about this. I believe that using a VN
machine to construct a Forward accelerator would be a considerable
advantage, but that is not quite what I mean. What I mean is this. The
requirement is to send a gram or so to another star. An active gram
that can reproduce and construct another Forward accelerator if need
be.

This is a VN probe.

Not only that, it's a *nanotech* VN probe. Now you're assuming two
pretty advanced technologies. And yes, that would probably work and be
a sensible way to do interstellar colonization. My point is just that
it's not the ONLY way. Even if nanotech and VN machines never happen,
we could still colonize the galaxy.

Best,
- Joe

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

Joe Strout wrote:
In article . com,
Ian Parker wrote:

I think we should be quite clear about this. I believe that using a VN
machine to construct a Forward accelerator would be a considerable
advantage, but that is not quite what I mean. What I mean is this. The
requirement is to send a gram or so to another star. An active gram
that can reproduce and construct another Forward accelerator if need
be.

This is a VN probe.

Not only that, it's a *nanotech* VN probe. Now you're assuming two
pretty advanced technologies. And yes, that would probably work and be
a sensible way to do interstellar colonization. My point is just that
it's not the ONLY way. Even if nanotech and VN machines never happen,
we could still colonize the galaxy.

Best,
- Joe

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

In my personal liking, I have for years like the idea of a seedship.
Basigly a large ship, containing only frosen zygots of varyous Earth
kind of life, as well as sufficient numbers of robotic crafts capable
of exporing the system, discover any raw materials precent in space,
and then to build the first spacestation in order so that the first
gengeration of colonists could grow up.

In this way perhaps exploration and colonation could be combined in an
one package. If the first system is unsuitable, the robotic craft
might only stay long enough to affect a refuelling, to go somewhere
ellse.

Cheers, Einar