Home is Kepler 186f

[Walsingham]

We can't even get a man on the moon,

 

Please confirm you aren't serious.

[BruceVC]

 

We can't even get a man on the moon,

 

Please confirm you aren't serious.

 

 

I doubt he is joking

[Meshugger]

I've always been irrititated by the speed of light being the maximum speed anything can travel, well with a mass, that is. It's like an imagenary "nuh-uh!" constant.

 

That form of restriction is not like mortality, since we have children to take up where our parents left of.

[Walsingham]

I've always been irrititated by the speed of light being the maximum speed anything can travel, well with a mass, that is. It's like an imagenary "nuh-uh!" constant.

 

That form of restriction is not like mortality, since we have children to take up where our parents left of.

 

i deliberately haven't tried to understand the equations underpinning the speed of light as a constant, because it annoys me also.

[Guard Dog]

 

 

We can't even get a man on the moon,

 

Please confirm you aren't serious.

 

 

I doubt he is joking

 

I don't think Val is saying it has never been done, but it is not joke that the ability to do it right this minute does not currently exist. If there were a compelling reason to go it could be put together in a few years time with sufficient funding no doubt. The main reason Apollo was cancelled and no other programs created is that it is prohibitively expensive to stage manned moon missions with not a lot of benefit to justify the costs (aside from exploration for its own sake) 

[Zoraptor]

i deliberately haven't tried to understand the equations underpinning the speed of light as a constant, because it annoys me also.

 

 

What always confuses me about light speed is how the observable universe can be 46 billion light years across but only 14 billion light years old. Where does the extra 18 billion ly diameter of the universe come from if light speed cannot be passed?

[HoonDing]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_%28cosmology%29

Edited April 19, 2014 by Drudanae

[Zoraptor]

Yeah, and quantum mechanics has stuff with mass moving instantaneously/ faster than light as well.

 

That's one of the reasons I dislike physics, they have all these theoretically immutable laws but if you look closer they tend to be more advisories than actual laws. Stuff cannot travel faster than light (and neither can we), except, of course, when it does. 'Blah' is a constant, except when it isn't. 'X' doesn't fit our models, so we'll just make something up to fix it.

 

Physicists, truly the tarot readers and old gypsy ladies of science.

 

 

Don't get upset physicists, at least you're still the third best of the three sciences

 

[Valsuelm]

Yeah, and quantum mechanics has stuff with mass moving instantaneously/ faster than light as well.

 

That's one of the reasons I dislike physics, they have all these theoretically immutable laws but if you look closer they tend to be more advisories than actual laws. Stuff cannot travel faster than light (and neither can we), except, of course, when it does. 'Blah' is a constant, except when it isn't. 'X' doesn't fit our models, so we'll just make something up to fix it.

 

Physicists, truly the tarot readers and old gypsy ladies of science.

 

 

Don't get upset physicists, at least you're still the third best of the three sciences

 

 

I find astrophysics is extremely interesting, and most people are interested at some level or another (it's safe to say everyone reading this thread has at least a passing interest). The problem is when folks start accepting theory as fact. ie: Most people these days accept the Big Bang theory as fact. They shouldn't, it's a theory. Not only does accepting the Big Bang Theory as dogma quash imagination into theories other than the big bang (or whatever theory that's become dogma we're talking about) it creates in the minds of some conflict (as it's a theory with many holes the more one looks at it) to the point they just want to ignore or outright dismiss it altogether and just 'leave it to the physicists'. As in modern times, who are you to dare to question the Big Bang? Who are you indeed? (The bias in universities and our culture these days in regards to some theories that have become dogma is incredible, stifling, and overwhelming to the point that many will think you a kook if you question them). Who wants to be a considered a kook? Not many, so lots of people don't get involved or speak up who otherwise would. Not a good thing for science is this.

 

As for third best? It's arguable that maybe aside from mathematics (if we consider that a science in and of itself), physics is the first science, as all other sciences depend on it, at least in the physical world.

Edited April 20, 2014 by Valsuelm

[Meshugger]

If you want to question the Big Bang, you will have to up with exceptional evidence. Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Dirac and alike weren't welcomed with open arms like prophets when they started. I think it took 20 years for Einsteins theories to be verified and i do not think that people have yet fully understood Feynman's implication with his Quantum Field theories.

 

Best of luck! 

Edited April 20, 2014 by Meshugger

[Walsingham]

 

 

 

We can't even get a man on the moon,

 

Please confirm you aren't serious.

 

 

I doubt he is joking

 

I don't think Val is saying it has never been done, but it is not joke that the ability to do it right this minute does not currently exist. If there were a compelling reason to go it could be put together in a few years time with sufficient funding no doubt. The main reason Apollo was cancelled and no other programs created is that it is prohibitively expensive to stage manned moon missions with not a lot of benefit to justify the costs (aside from exploration for its own sake) 

 

 

This is precisely why we have to militarise space. The only way to motivate humans to organise for the long term. Savage self-interest.

 

I'm only 20% joking.

[ManifestedISO]

Thousands of millions of years in isolation on this magical rock ... what are the odds we find others similarly stranded. I've heard of the Drake equation, but speculation pales in comparison to the actual event. Imagine! First contact ... I hope I'm alive to see it.    

[BruceVC]

Thousands of millions of years in isolation on this magical rock ... what are the odds we find others similarly stranded. I've heard of the Drake equation, but speculation pales in comparison to the actual event. Imagine! First contact ... I hope I'm alive to see it.    

 

And even if in your lifetime you don't meet another type of life outside earth at least you  know you have met me, so its a win win for you

[Valsuelm]

 

 

 

 

We can't even get a man on the moon,

 

Please confirm you aren't serious.

 

 

I doubt he is joking

 

I don't think Val is saying it has never been done, but it is not joke that the ability to do it right this minute does not currently exist. If there were a compelling reason to go it could be put together in a few years time with sufficient funding no doubt. The main reason Apollo was cancelled and no other programs created is that it is prohibitively expensive to stage manned moon missions with not a lot of benefit to justify the costs (aside from exploration for its own sake) 

 

 

This is precisely why we have to militarise space. The only way to motivate humans to organise for the long term. Savage self-interest.

 

I'm only 20% joking.

 

 

Militarizing space, will likely guarantee humans won't ever see Kepler 186f up close and personal, or even the far reaches of our own solar system, or ever come close to having to worry about the Sun theoretically eating us up in a few billion years.

[Walsingham]

All this bollocks about any space exploration benefiting all mankind is what's going to stop us.

 

Why should any one nation put significant effort in when all the moochers benefit?

[Woldan]

Mining rare minerals in space (asteroids, moon) needs to become lucrative, then we would get so much space exploration and new space technology that all sci-fi fans would die from drowning in tears of joy. 

[Walsingham]

Mining rare minerals in space (asteroids, moon) needs to become lucrative, then we would get so much space exploration and new space technology that all sci-fi fans would die from drowning in tears of joy. 

 

But the thing is that we can almost certainly get more benefit in purely domestic terms by applying the same engineering research effort to just making simpler products down here.

 

The example I always come back to is LED lighting. Change in tech, saves billions in energy use.

[HoonDing]

Space travel will happen when the gods return in their chariots or some mad scientist receives alpha beams from the Lyra constellation and kickstarts a paradigm shift.

 

[Meshugger]

Ah, Däniken.

 

Anyone who says that they didn't read his books in their teens is a liar.

[ManifestedISO]

So there's this ... http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/04/habitable-exoplanets-are-bad-news-for-humanity/

 

My small capacity to reason cannot make sense of the Great Filter or why it's good to be alone in the universe ...

 

 

If Kepler-186f is teeming with intelligent life, then that would be really bad news for humanity because it would push back the Great Filter’s position further into the technological stages of a civilization’s development. This would imply that catastrophe awaits both us and our extraterrestrial companions.

 

[Zoraptor]

It's just a theory, in that case literally just a theory, it's a hypothesis to fit a base observation. There are any number of other explanations for why we haven't been contacted by (or detected) Greys- eg we've only been broadcasting detectably for a century or so, plus the more planets we find the less interest anyone else would have in ours and in making contact with us (Terra_Sol_3 registering on the equivalent of intergalactic twitter has little impact if there are 5 million other users who've all upgraded past the gauche noobness of using EM waves, and are heartily sick of each any every new user thinking they're super special, and nobody will tramp light years across the galaxy to grab our planet if there are plenty of easy access alternatives nearby).

 

Funny though, I always rather suspected someone from Bioware was familiar with it as The Reapers from Mass Effect were a Great Filter, just one placed after the event of interstellar travel.

[kgambit]

 

i deliberately haven't tried to understand the equations underpinning the speed of light as a constant, because it annoys me also.

 

 

What always confuses me about light speed is how the observable universe can be 46 billion light years across but only 14 billion light years old. Where does the extra 18 billion ly diameter of the universe come from if light speed cannot be passed?

 

 

Have you never heard about cosmological expansion, Hyperinflation, commoving distances or the Planck Epoch?  Try reading up on them sometime. 

 

You're confusing the sizes of the universe and the observable universe   The size of the observable universe is measured from the earth (or any other point of reference you choose). The observable universe (to us) only has a radius of 13.7 billion light years because light that originated farther away than that is not viewable by us*.  The total size of the universe CAN (and probably is) larger than that. 

 

*What complicates the mathematics is that universe is expanding and the rate of expansion isn't constant.  So light emitted from a star that has moved beyond the 13.7 ly distance can be observable by us if the light was emitted before the star crossed that threshold. 

 

The following video which has a  pretty good explanation (although his math is bit fuzzy, the basic concepts are pretty clear):

 

http://www.khanacademy.org/science/cosmology-and-astronomy/universe-scale-topic/big-bang-expansion-topic/v/radius-of-observable-universe

 

You also might try reading some of Alan Guth's work on the issue of the HyperInflation of the Universe (at greater than the speed of light) after the Big Bang. 

 

http://edge.org/conversation/the-inflationary-universe-alan-guth