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Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox
That pesky moon of ours is simply not made of Earth, and it hasn't
even been around for all that long. (only since the last ice age this planet is ever going to see) When exactly did Earth obtain its seasonal tilt? - Brad Guth |
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Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox
No matters how advanced, human like DNA is going to be somewhat
physically limited to 0.1c, and even at that velocity you can't hardly afford to alter course in order to avoid running yourself into whatever. Trekking through space at 0.1c doesn't exactly give us or whatever there is of more advanced forms of life any good odds of surviving such extended (100+ year) treks. That is unless using an icy proto- planet or icy proto-moon as their interstellar craft, whereas even if it's velocity is relatively **** poor, at least you'll get to survive, or on behalf of those created along the way might get a whole lot better chance of their surviving upon whatever final encounter accomplishes that initial migration goal of setting up camp around a better star that's not binary, going red giant or otherwise imploding. - Brad Guth |
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Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox
Joe Strout wrote: In article . com, Einar wrote: wrote: snipsnipsnip On the lack of observed alien civilization, we need to remember that the universe is still pretty young. Sure, 13 billion years sounds a real lot, but remember if we subtract 3 billion years that leaves 10 billion. The point is, it?s taken life here about that time to evolve intelligent life. While that might take shorter time ellsewhere, one has to remember that evolution of life from bacteria is not simple and unlikelly to take a short time. This is missing the point. The time from the beginning of the Universe, to the formation of a technological civilization, should take the form of a normal distribution (i.e. bell curve), as pretty much any other natural process does, due to the central limit theorem. If our civilization is average (i.e. by the Copernican principle), then the mean of this distribution is somewhere around the present. That means that about half of the civilizations that will ever arise, arose before us; and half will arise after us. Now, we don't know what the standard deviation of this distribution is, but we can make some guesses by looking at our history. How tightly constrained was the development of civilization just now, given our 4.5 GY history? The answer appears to be, not very. Some really pivotal moments in evolution, like the CretaceousTertiary extinction event, were the result of highly random processes (a major impact event in this case) which could have just as easily happened much sooner or later. So the standard deviation is probably hundreds of millions of years at least. But with a standard deviation that high, and given that there are over 200 billion stars in the galaxy, there would necessarily be some outliers to the population who happened to evolve very much earlier than the rest of the population -- even at 3 sigma (standard deviations) away from the mean, you'll find 0.37% of the population, which would be 540 million civilizations, half of which evolved earlier than the mean by three sigma. Even if most of those stars can never support life, the numbers (of both stars and years) is so large that it's very hard to avoid the conclusion that the first civilization must almost certainly arise a billion years or more before the mean. This, combined with the observation that it takes only a few hundred million years (after the development of space colonization) to settle the whole galaxy, presents Fermi's paradox. There are darn few parameters you can tweak in this analysis that make much difference. The only escape I see is to assume that planets where civilization can arise are very, VERY rare, so that the total population size is not in the billions but perhaps in the thousands. Of course, even with N=1000, there should be at least one civilization that develops at least three sigma before the mean. So we have to further assume that we are NOT an average observer, but are one of the first civilizations to arise, maybe even the very first. Otherwise, we would have arisen in an already-settled galaxy, and this does not appear to be the case. But of course, that makes a philosopher of science uncomfortable as well. The odds of us, as a civilization, happening to be the first are quite low. Moreover, if there are eventually going to be many orders of magnitude more people, spread throughout the galaxy and over millions or billions of years, why do you and I happen to be born into this time, when there are fewer than 10 billion of us, all cooped up on one planet, and within a few hundred thousand years of the birth of civilization? The odds against THAT boggle the mind. The most logical explanation is that all civilizations, including ours, destroy themselves (or are destroyed) before interstellar colonization begins. But, despite the logic of it, I find I can't accept that. So, I'm left befuddled, with no neat solution. I consider this one of the great mysteries of our time, right up there with the nature of consciousness. 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/ I remember a short story written by Asimov "The Gentle Vultures (Dec 1957)" aliens have been observing us from a secret base on the Moon. They have been vaiting for us to commit a nuclear harakiry, as all competitive species they have observed do. In Asimovīs story though they are getting baffled, as nuclear war appears not to be happening despite the precense of nuclear arms and an obvious ongoing pace of weapons building. They decide to abduct a human in one of theyr flying saucers, well they ought not to A wonderfully witty story. Now, the numbers are indeed bafflling. Stars may be as many as 400.000 million. In addition, brown dvarfes have only recently been proven to exchist, and if it holds for them as well that smaller stars appear to be more numerous than big, then theyīll be quite numerous indeed, and at the very least some of them will have orbiting planets. We can quite comfortably assume that numbers of planets exceed the numbers of stars in the Milky way. Yeah, the odds indeed do boggle the mind It appears though we can cut down the likelly numbers of planets considerably. Whole areas of the Milky Way appear to be too hostile for life due to frequency of dangerous stellar events. Older stars appear also to contain to litle amount of heavy materials making rocky planets propably rare around them. Only certain types of stars appear to be suitable. Majority of planets appear to be gasgigants. It may have required a chance event, i.e. nearby supernova blast, at the right time, i.e when the major planets were already around and Jubiter had not drifted far enough invards to eject all the rocky planets orbiting inside of it, to blast away the rotating disc of matter around the Sun. Such fortunate circumstances may be rare, thus systems that resemble ours, i.e. with a big gasgigants orbiting far enough to give orbiting space for a rocky planet at the right distance from its stars. We may though still be talking about thousands of candidate planets. I think we have to assume that we are among the first civilizations in the Milky Way. It indeed appears that development path for life has been relativelly easy. There is also the effect of the Moon to consider, and what an unlikelly thing it appears to be, but itīs reasonable to assume that itīs precense has speed up the development of dry-land-life as the tidal areas offer convenient grounds for life to gradually adapt to the ravages of operating on dry land. So yeah, we indeed may be among the earliest. There is also one other thing, but one fact is that animals with an internal skeleton have only happened once on this world. There are a number of other basic types which came to be around the Cambrian period but only one of the did lead to us. Now, while one needs to be cauthious to extrapolate from a single example, i.e. Earth, this still might mean that internal skeleton was a chancy event. Now, one knows not what impact it would have had on life if animals with internal skeleton would never have happened. But maybe the development path for animals with an internal skeleton towards intelligence is relativelly an easy one. Another thing which has only happened once, is that many civilizations of Man have risen and fallen, but only once has development lead to an industrial and scientific revolution. I think therefore it may be rash to assume that to be a natural development. Itīs quite possible to imagine, say for every 10 species that happen in the Galaxy at least 9 linger indefinitelly at a preindustrial state of development. Who, knows in the future we may find many examples where alien civilizations for one reason or another, never became starfaring and simply went extinct in the fullness of time...perhaps a more appealing alternative to the idea that they all destroy themselves. Cheers, Einar |
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Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox
Jochem Huhmann wrote: Joe Strout writes: The most logical explanation is that all civilizations, including ours, destroy themselves (or are destroyed) before interstellar colonization begins. But, despite the logic of it, I find I can't accept that. So, I'm left befuddled, with no neat solution. I consider this one of the great mysteries of our time, right up there with the nature of consciousness. I think the most logical explanation is that "interstellar colonization" has a pretty low priority for most or even all civilizations. It just doesn't happen. They struggle to colonize their own planet, have a short boom period, run out of natural resources and then either go extinct or struggle on to organize long-term modest surviving and do away with "colonization". Jochem -- "A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery I donīt think that is really a whole lot more satisfying an idea. Unless theyr system outside theyr planet was very poor in useful materials, they would have at least been able to create spacecolonies within theyr system, making use of those additional resources to maintain theyr level of civilization for quite a wile. Cheers, Einar |
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Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox
In article .com,
Einar wrote: I think we have to assume that we are among the first civilizations in the Milky Way. It indeed appears that development path for life has been relativelly easy. There is also the effect of the Moon to consider, and what an unlikelly thing it appears to be, but it?s reasonable to assume that it?s precense has speed up the development of dry-land-life as the tidal areas offer convenient grounds for life to gradually adapt to the ravages of operating on dry land. So yeah, we indeed may be among the earliest. I tend to agree. I think when we finally get out there and start exploring other star systems (first with remote observation, of course), we're going to find most of them completely lifeless, and a small number of worlds with life that never got past the single-cell stage. If we are the first, then (because of the standard distribution) we must be WAY ahead of the mean -- probably way ahead of even the runner-up, by perhaps a hundred million years or more. The alternative is that we aren't the first, but are in some sort of nature preserve. But this is a little like saying that God created the Earth 10,000 years ago, but left around (literally) mountains of geological evidence to fool us into thinking that it's 4.5 GY old. It's just not parsimonious. There is also one other thing, but one fact is that animals with an internal skeleton have only happened once on this world. There are a number of other basic types which came to be around the Cambrian period but only one of the did lead to us. Now, while one needs to be cauthious to extrapolate from a single example, i.e. Earth, this still might mean that internal skeleton was a chancy event. Now, one knows not what impact it would have had on life if animals with internal skeleton would never have happened. But maybe the development path for animals with an internal skeleton towards intelligence is relativelly an easy one. Maybe, though that seems a little far-fetch to me. Cephalopods are quite smart, and good manipulators; I could imagine them developing culture and civilization as well as some furry rodent-like critter. Though maybe we'll find that ocean creatures just never make the technological leap. Unfortunately, answering this may take a near-complete galactic survey -- a very long-term project! Another thing which has only happened once, is that many civilizations of Man have risen and fallen, but only once has development lead to an industrial and scientific revolution. No, I don't think that's accurate. Human cultural evolution has proceeded in fits and starts, and in different rates at different places, but has pretty much always been forward. The "falls" you refer to are mere blips on a strong and continuous exponential trend, and were usually only falls for one of the cultures involved -- for the conquerers, it was a step up. It?s quite possible to imagine, say for every 10 species that happen in the Galaxy at least 9 linger indefinitelly at a preindustrial state of development. Maybe, but I really doubt it. Once you have cultural evolution outstripping genetic evolution, I think things are going to proceed rapidly and inevitably pretty much as they have for us. Memes evolve just like genes, only much faster. The scientific method is a powerful one because it works (it produces useful results), which is why it has caught on pretty much universally here (right-wing nut jobs aside), and it would do the same in any alien culture too. That will ultimately lead to labor-saving devices, more intensive energy use, etc. The idea of an "industrial revolution" is again an oversimplification of history. In reality, it was much more continuous like that, a long stream of ideas and inventions feeding upon one another, each step enabling the next steps. It's been an exponential curve, pretty much any way you measure it, which produces the illusion of little progress when you're living through it, but extremely rapid progress when you look back (or forward) on it. Who, knows in the future we may find many examples where alien civilizations for one reason or another, never became starfaring and simply went extinct in the fullness of time...perhaps a more appealing alternative to the idea that they all destroy themselves. Seems equivalent to me. You colonize space, or you die. Long term, a failure to colonize space is no different from blowing yourself up. 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/ |
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Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox
On Jul 30, 8:53 pm, Joe Strout wrote:
The alternative is that we aren't the first, but are in some sort of nature preserve. But this is a little like saying that God created the Earth 10,000 years ago, but left around (literally) mountains of geological evidence to fool us into thinking that it's 4.5 GY old. It's just not parsimonious. So, you don't believe that any of Earth's humanity will ever reach another viable planet or moon. How entirely odd to think that our ongoing form of intelligent design is not even remotely possible of ever capable of contributing to or otherwise affecting the realm of another world. Why is it always all or absolutely nothing with you silly folks? - Brad Guth |
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Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox
On Jul 30, 3:53 pm, Einar wrote:
Who, knows in the future we may find many examples where alien civilizations for one reason or another, never became starfaring and simply went extinct in the fullness of time...perhaps a more appealing alternative to the idea that they all destroy themselves. I tend to agree, that most other worlds hosting truly intelligent life need not be into going places other than within their own terrestrial realm. Never fear, as soon as possible we'll teach those passive aliens to fight to their death over fossil and yellowcake fuels, if need be we'll even teach them how to lie each of their little butts off, about all those other Muslim aliens hiding WMD that they plan to utilize just as soon as we're not looking. Besides, why should Earth be the one and only faith-based screwed up planet in the universe, that's also stuck with the likes of ENRON, Exxon and that of our very own resident LLPOF warlord(GW Bush), as being the best ever born-again Jewish puppet in town, that which also needed Botox injections in order to get rid of his silly facial smirk. - Brad Guth |
#18
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Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox
Joe Strout wrote: In article .com, Einar wrote: I think we have to assume that we are among the first civilizations in the Milky Way. It indeed appears that development path for life has been relativelly easy. There is also the effect of the Moon to consider, and what an unlikelly thing it appears to be, but it?s reasonable to assume that it?s precense has speed up the development of dry-land-life as the tidal areas offer convenient grounds for life to gradually adapt to the ravages of operating on dry land. So yeah, we indeed may be among the earliest. I tend to agree. I think when we finally get out there and start exploring other star systems (first with remote observation, of course), we're going to find most of them completely lifeless, and a small number of worlds with life that never got past the single-cell stage. If we are the first, then (because of the standard distribution) we must be WAY ahead of the mean -- probably way ahead of even the runner-up, by perhaps a hundred million years or more. The alternative is that we aren't the first, but are in some sort of nature preserve. But this is a little like saying that God created the Earth 10,000 years ago, but left around (literally) mountains of geological evidence to fool us into thinking that it's 4.5 GY old. It's just not parsimonious. There is also one other thing, but one fact is that animals with an internal skeleton have only happened once on this world. There are a number of other basic types which came to be around the Cambrian period but only one of the did lead to us. Now, while one needs to be cauthious to extrapolate from a single example, i.e. Earth, this still might mean that internal skeleton was a chancy event. Now, one knows not what impact it would have had on life if animals with internal skeleton would never have happened. But maybe the development path for animals with an internal skeleton towards intelligence is relativelly an easy one. Maybe, though that seems a little far-fetch to me. Cephalopods are quite smart, and good manipulators; I could imagine them developing culture and civilization as well as some furry rodent-like critter. Though maybe we'll find that ocean creatures just never make the technological leap. Unfortunately, answering this may take a near-complete galactic survey -- a very long-term project! We the surface devellers do have one advantage the ability to observe the stars with our own eyes. Another thing which has only happened once, is that many civilizations of Man have risen and fallen, but only once has development lead to an industrial and scientific revolution. No, I don't think that's accurate. Human cultural evolution has proceeded in fits and starts, and in different rates at different places, but has pretty much always been forward. The "falls" you refer to are mere blips on a strong and continuous exponential trend, and were usually only falls for one of the cultures involved -- for the conquerers, it was a step up. In the history of the Mediterranean civilization that was indeed the case, But the combination of the fall of the Roman empire, as well as a very destructive invation by the Huns, appears to have resulted in a the steepest fall in history. About China and India, both had achiewed substantially the level of civilization they achiewed before the fall of the Roman empire. It?s quite possible to imagine, say for every 10 species that happen in the Galaxy at least 9 linger indefinitelly at a preindustrial state of development. Maybe, but I really doubt it. Once you have cultural evolution outstripping genetic evolution, I think things are going to proceed rapidly and inevitably pretty much as they have for us. Memes evolve just like genes, only much faster. The scientific method is a powerful one because it works (it produces useful results), which is why it has caught on pretty much universally here (right-wing nut jobs aside), and it would do the same in any alien culture too. That will ultimately lead to labor-saving devices, more intensive energy use, etc. The idea of an "industrial revolution" is again an oversimplification of history. In reality, it was much more continuous like that, a long stream of ideas and inventions feeding upon one another, each step enabling the next steps. It's been an exponential curve, pretty much any way you measure it, which produces the illusion of little progress when you're living through it, but extremely rapid progress when you look back (or forward) on it. I think it was very important the idea that christianity invented that of the separation of the realms, i.e. that there were activities that were nonreligious. The ancient world lacked this distinction, hence religious activities and ideas permeated all types of activity. In the hierarchy of gods there was a god for every realm of activity. This appears to be the single largest difference between christianity and islam, in islam all activities belong to god. While the church may have been selfishly reserving religious activities for itself solelly, in order to maximize its own power, this created more opportunities for thought, speculation about things, free of religious thinking. This is why I think itīs no coincidence that scientific thought was gradually able to develope within the christian countries. However, that does not yet necessarilly give an explanation for the industrial revolution. The ancient Greegs knew about steampower, yet did not develope it. Same about the Chinese, not enough is known about wether that was the case in India. The Roman civilization inherited all the knowledge og the Greegs, and was much richer to boot. But while it appears that development of industry would have been possible, it didnīt happen. People have been exploring it why this happened in Britain in the end. What was so special about Britain that impetus eventually developed to create a practical steam engine? In the ancient cases of models of steam powered experiments, there was clearly allways lacking reliable and efficient means of transforming the energy in the steam into logomotive power. It was the invention of the moving piston which was the big break. That took decates to be developed. In Britain uses were found for the extremelly inefficient early tipes of piston arrangement, i.e. to pump water from coalmines. By that time Britain no longer had enough forests to fuel those engines, so only in the very immediate viscinity of coal mines were they at all practical. Over time the engines were improved, and around the beginning of the 19th. century the steam engine became practical for other applications. Britain also was by that time a world power, able to import and export to allmost everywhere. So circumstances appear in many respects to have been very advantagous in Britain, more so than anywhere ellse and also more so than at any time before. Sounds bit chancy to me. Who, knows in the future we may find many examples where alien civilizations for one reason or another, never became starfaring and simply went extinct in the fullness of time...perhaps a more appealing alternative to the idea that they all destroy themselves. Seems equivalent to me. You colonize space, or you die. Long term, a failure to colonize space is no different from blowing yourself up. 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/ I guess you are right, that if you donīt colonize you go extinct so it amounts to the same thing. Cheers, Einar |
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Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox
On 30 Jul, 18:42, Joe Strout wrote:
You are indeed correct, but how do you know the distribution is Copernican. Why not a race? A race to me seems eminanly logical but so far nobody has commented on it. It's implied in what I've written; somebody (or a very small number of somebodies) is going to evolve a technological civilization first, and by hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years before the average civilization. They will then proceed to colonize the galaxy, with the result that the vast majority of civilizations will arise to find themselves in an already-settled galaxy. Call this a race if you like, but it's an extremely unfair one, since most likely it will be over before the #2 civilization even appears. If a race is indeed true there are consequences in terms of how we should act. Like what? We're talking about things on the timescale of hundreds of millions of years. What we do in the next century or two isn't going to make any difference. Statistically the most likely time for another civilization to appear is now. Geological time indeed counts in billions. When I say statistcally now, what I am saying is this. You habe a box a billion years wide. You place a civilization in it. Now is as likely as any other time. In fact if evolution is indeed as insensitive to special conditions as you are claiming. I will say might be so, might not then 2 hr 6 min will ensure the galaxy. 2hr 7 min will mean we are also rans. 1) We need to know how close to us other civilizations are. We are running 42km and we need to look back and see where the other competitors are. A 1km telescope - figure admittedly pluced out of the air. This seems rather pointless. All indications are that there is NOBODY else out there. So, either we're in some sort of nature preserve and the ancients are intentionally hiding from us, or for some weird reason, we happen to be the first, and the galaxy is ours. All the indications are that there is none more advanced than we are. SETI has indeed not seen Radio Reloj. So nobody is at the same level as us. It is possible that there are civilizations (allowing for speed of light) that are 20-300 years ahead of us or 100+ yars behind. SETI/ Radio Reloj sets these limits. 200 years is the limit for VN probes. W3e can see none have set out since we would see the laser signitures. In fact the 300 figure assumes a Forward type probe with a clear laser signiture. 2) We do need to build interstellar VN probes. This to an extent represents the tape. I'm no fan of VN probes. But we'll be out there ourselves soon enough, if indeed the galaxy isn't settled already (as appears to be the case). This is to some extent of the nature of a BTW. Genetic markers on mammalian species show that the main mammal types evolved in the early to middle Cretaceous. Fossils BTW are quite rare because fossilization is a rare process. Genetic markers are in fact better in showing when Evolution took place. Thus the Cretacious/Teriary extinction was less relevant than has been supposed up to now. Still quite relevant, though. Whenever there is a mass extinction, it's followed by an explosion of new species. All evidence I know of supports the rough approximation that life in the Cretacious had gotten stuck into a bit of a rut (a local maximum, in optimization terms), and the impact event certainly knocked it out of that. The mammals were still evolving and dinosaurs were in fact getting more intelligent. But I will agree, on our analogy the extiction was probably worth a kilometer or two. But of course, that makes a philosopher of science uncomfortable as well. The odds of us, as a civilization, happening to be the first are quite low. In a race situation the odds are high. If we were not the first we would all be Centurians. Alpha Centurians would have terraformed the solar system, and we would be in a park on Earth ... if that. Clearly, the park (if we're in one) extends beyond the Earth; we see no signs of life anywhere in the solar system. Perhaps our whole local cluster of stars is part of the park, or maybe it extends only to the edge of our solar system. However, I think the Copernican objection applies regardless. Why do we happen to be humans, and not Centurians or whatever? If the galaxy has been settled for hundreds of millions of years -- as would be the case if we're not the first -- then any random observer would very likely be one of that ancient race, not some simian on some backwater world that still thinks digital watches are a pretty neat idea. Why is Los Angeles called Los Angeles and not Fu Ming or some Chinese name? The Spanish won the race, or rather they won a sprint finish. In 1421 the Spanish were not leading the field. - Ian Parker |
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Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox
On 31 Jul, 13:37, Einar wrote:
It?s quite possible to imagine, say for every 10 species that happen in the Galaxy at least 9 linger indefinitelly at a preindustrial state of development. Maybe, but I really doubt it. Once you have cultural evolution outstripping genetic evolution, I think things are going to proceed rapidly and inevitably pretty much as they have for us. Memes evolve just like genes, only much faster. The scientific method is a powerful one because it works (it produces useful results), which is why it has caught on pretty much universally here (right-wing nut jobs aside), and it would do the same in any alien culture too. That will ultimately lead to labor-saving devices, more intensive energy use, etc. The idea of an "industrial revolution" is again an oversimplification of history. In reality, it was much more continuous like that, a long stream of ideas and inventions feeding upon one another, each step enabling the next steps. It's been an exponential curve, pretty much any way you measure it, which produces the illusion of little progress when you're living through it, but extremely rapid progress when you look back (or forward) on it. I think it was very important the idea that christianity invented that of the separation of the realms, i.e. that there were activities that were nonreligious. The ancient world lacked this distinction, hence religious activities and ideas permeated all types of activity. In the hierarchy of gods there was a god for every realm of activity. This appears to be the single largest difference between christianity and islam, in islam all activities belong to god. While the church may have been selfishly reserving religious activities for itself solelly, in order to maximize its own power, this created more opportunities for thought, speculation about things, free of religious thinking. This is why I think itīs no coincidence that scientific thought was gradually able to develope within the christian countries. However, that does not yet necessarilly give an explanation for the industrial revolution. The ancient Greegs knew about steampower, yet did not develope it. Same about the Chinese, not enough is known about wether that was the case in India. The Roman civilization inherited all the knowledge og the Greegs, and was much richer to boot. But while it appears that development of industry would have been possible, it didnīt happen. There has been a great deal of discussion about why the industrial revolution took place. I think that theoretical knowledge had more effect than people suppose. James Watt was at Glasgow university and he had to get a Newcoman engine working. He found that the engine was very inefficient. What happenned was that when water was poured onto the cylinders the water boiled at a lower lemperature because of the change in pressure. He went to see Joseph Black at Edinbourgh who told him about this. Watt then designed an egnine with valves where the steam pressure, and hence water temperature was kept up. So knowledge of thermodynamics may have been more inportant than is generally realized. Christian civilization did indeed have this spirit of enquiry and managed to acquire considerable theoretical knowledge. I think you are probably right there. Britain was successfuul because she had a mercantile economy. Other countries went in much more for state control, particularly overseas. People have been exploring it why this happened in Britain in the end. What was so special about Britain that impetus eventually developed to create a practical steam engine? In the ancient cases of models of steam powered experiments, there was clearly allways lacking reliable and efficient means of transforming the energy in the steam into logomotive power. It was the invention of the moving piston which was the big break. That took decates to be developed. In Britain uses were found for the extremelly inefficient early tipes of piston arrangement, i.e. to pump water from coalmines. By that time Britain no longer had enough forests to fuel those engines, so only in the very immediate viscinity of coal mines were they at all practical. Over time the engines were improved, and around the beginning of the 19th. century the steam engine became practical for other applications. Britain also was by that time a world power, able to import and export to allmost everywhere. So circumstances appear in many respects to have been very advantagous in Britain, more so than anywhere ellse and also more so than at any time before. Sounds bit chancy to me. - Ian Parker |
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