h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Good point, E-S-M19A. It reminds me of a very important phrase when looking for ET life. You don't only have to look at the right place but also at the right TIME.
It may interest some of you if you haven't read Contact by Carl Sagan to know that once a third of the sky had been measured, they wanted to turn the Argus Array over to astronomy. Saying, if you've measured a third of the sky and found nothing, then you're not likly to. However I can remember thinking when I read that, that once you've covered the entire sky you need to keep going.
It mentions that when Ellie was working at Aricibo she looked a Vega and found nothing becuase the signal hadn't reached us by then.
Maybe one thing scientists could do is keep an eye on any stars that could have picked up our radio or television signals and sent by a reply by now.

. .. ... . .. ...silly walks in... . . ...forefingers trapped in a chinese finger puzzle... . .peering under and over things. .. ..

oh! hey! hi prof, welsh and e-s-m19a you haven't seen my nametag around here anywhere have you?

. .. . . ...elbows up the corner of a huge messy stack of notes on the table and looks under it. .. . ....

nope, not there

. .. .. .. the notes plummet to the floor, sliding across it to all corners of the room. ... .. ... . .

oh sorry

... . . . nametagless one tries to shuffle them back into some semblance of order with her feet... ... . . .

s out.

Is your name Fluffy Kerfuffle? Does that help you?

. .. . ...sticks head back in!

yes! my name IS fluffykerfuffle!

why? did you find it?!

I just clicked on your name that took me too your page where you told everyone what your name was.
It was the first paragraph (I think) so is was easy to notice and a bit of a give away.
Do I detect that you're going to link this loss of your name in with something fudamentally scientific because I you're going to say what I think you are, then it's one of may favourite subjects!

http://www.kids4truth.com/watchmaker/watch.html

I really have nothing to say about this that wouldn't get me yiksed or banned.

I was just thinking about something you may find interesting. I know I did say I wasn't going to mention anything religious but I think both sides may be intersted to hear this.
I heard a programme on the television that mentioned about a species of life, if it was advanced enough could run highly complex simulations.
This made me think, could out Universe be one of those simulations. It could be a reason for the Universe to be teaming with life, to have no extra-solar life or to have just two civilisations.

It could be teaming with life to see what would happen when we do contact this life (when I say we, I mean the inhabitants of this Universe) and how long it will take due to the distances that seperate us.
This could be a similar situation if there were only two civilisations.
If we were the only one it could be a simulation of how we cope with being totaly alone, or the simulation could be totaly different and we are the only life since there wasn't a need to put anymore in.

I'd rather like to think we're a bit more than an expereiment that was run by creating a singulartiy in a lab but there's always the possibility.
Now for the religious note.
If we are part of a simulation - couldn't the scientist out there in the multi-verse be the God we've been discussing. They may not be the God that the religious people belive in, but since they created this simulation they could be taking his place, even if they don't realise it.

Any thoughts?

Its an interesting idea that has appeared in quite a few guises that Ive seenin Sci-fi and comic books and yes the idea is roughly approxiamte to the idea of bigG extrernal tothe normal physical universe as people can see and experience it.

Its interesting but where is the evidence that suggests that this might be the case?

We know for instance that the way chemicals interact make it impossible for single ants to have enough brain power to create anything like culture. So given what we know down sizing isnt an option. Likewise make our kind of brains much larger and they start to have problems with over heating and gettin the nutrients they need in and waste products out. That's not saying there arent any other ways that intelligence might be supported within a living organism but we havent seen any.

There might be beings beyond our comprehension. Giant gas nebulas that are alive that experience the universe interms of millenia while we count seconds, our civilisations rise and fall in the blink of an eye to them.

All this is interesting but unimportant while it reamains unfathomable.

If you can make sense of any of it Id be even more interested in it but for now to me atleast its a flight of fancy and no more important to our lives than horoscopes, religion or fairy stories ought to be.

one love

I think you're wrong about fairy stories. They give young children something to belive in. At that age, anything that is magical is something they want to hear about. They wouldn't be interested in the dull normal things of real life (of course things like our topic are not dull but possibly beyond their comprehension). That gives us the opportunities to put important, possilby moral, lessons that they need to know from an early age into them. He-Man was a good example where at the end of the story they had one of the characters telling you something important you should know realting to something in the story. We could do with more things like that these days. Also fairy stories like Star Trek or Doctor Who (which are fiary stories in their strickest sense) help set children up for what they want to do in the furutre.
If aliens were like us they could look in a toy shop window to find the most important clues to what our world is like from what we give our children.
Also fairy stories give great films, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Chronical of Narnia, Spiderman are just some of the more recent ones.
Horoscope are unimportant these days however there was a time when job of an astrologer was to do the job of an astronomer as well. Without astrology I doubt there would have been astronomy. Also I may not belive horoscopes but I still find them amusing to read (with the exception of Mystic Meg (does she still do the lottery?)).

Here there be Dragons.
One thought to add to my last post. If you wanted to look for an event in histroy in say, 541 AD you'd find just an enormous black hole since this period was called the dark ages and nothing happened. However if you look in the mythological records (fairy stories) you'll find that in the 6th century in Britian the stories of Dragons resurfaced.
2+2=...
We belive in a 541 AD metiorite. No history to back this up but a fire ball could be thought of 1,500 years ago as a dragon.

Also on the subject of metorites it is interesting to note that religious people knew that rocks came from the sky 300 years before scientists accepted it.
A Roman emperor wanted to win a battle. He prayer to the Christian God. A fire ball came down then and his armies reported seeing a Christian cross (crucifix) in the sky. Emporor Constantine won the battle and established Christianity and the empire's religion. This isn't any argument for or against religion but it may interest some of you.

We are engaged in a SETI program. Look for ET. It involve not only looking at the right place but also in the right time.
If ET pointed his telescope at Earth 200 years ago, there would be no signals. We've only been able to send radio since the 1920s (I think).
Let's assume we continue in a SETI program for 500 years. Lets assume we all agree on a figure for the Drake Equation.
How long do you think should persue SETI before we give it up? We've not been doing it long enough yet. But if there were no signals in 500 years, would it be worth persuring. Is it worth contacting a civilisation further away that 500 light years. You send a message and then wait 1,000 years for a reply. In 500 years time, if they detect us and decide to send the Encyclopedia Galactica, its still another 500 years to get it.
Any thoughts.

BTW had anyone read 3001. It suggested a LARGE monolith (spelling?) 500 light years away. A message was sent in 2001 and the monolith decided to destroy us on receiveing the message but of course the descision to destroy us didn't get back to Europa for 1,000 years. Surely after 1,000 it should have come here to have a look. A lot can change in that time.

Well, intelligent live must be very exceptional. There are so many conditions to get it eveolved. If the dinosaurs were not killed all together, we wouldn't be here. As example.

So one needs another intelligent life to communicate with.
How long does a civilisation exist?
Two hundred, five hundred thousand years?
The earth will survive us, that's for sure.

So one needs two intelligent civilisations at about the same time, both able and eager to get in contact with the others.

In my opinion it will never happen.

And if it might happen, we might become very anxious and sorry we tried.

Mister know it all,

Alfredo.

Any idea why aliens could be hostile if/when they visit earth?

We could well be alone. Is not there a famous exposition of why we could be - illustrated with the example of the evolution of the woodpecker - that shows this? Written by Matt Riddley.

After all life and consciousness are all material phenomena - there's no guarantee that similar phenomena have repeated themselves anywhere else.

At the same time, on earth itself there is so much a variety of life forms, that is is quite possible some other planet may have life forms that do not remotely resemble ours - maybe not carbon based at all.Maybe crystalline forms.

Personally, if there are others it's very good.