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

My sentiments exactly. There is no need for such a defeatist attitude despite the lack of technological advances, I'm certain we'll pull through the problem.

As far as I can tell, the only means of communication would be a radio transmitter with infinite range restricted to only one frequency. The only problem here being the speed of radio waves, as it usually takes years for a message to be sent across space. There's another project for humans!

Corporal X

James Blish and Orson Scott Card have both tackled this problem of communication in their novels. Have you ever read any of the 'Ender' series? I hadn't until recently, but it's excellent!

oh! you know what would work really well? if we could somehow attach a message to light and send it to different planets, it would get there faster
cheers
ford

A good idea, but the major drawback is the distance. As we already know, stars that we see in the night sky are over billions of lightyears away. If a spacecraft were at the same distance, the message would take to long to cross the galaxy as the light has taken so long to move across space. For all we know, some of the stars we see might be dead once we see the light.

It's hard to believe that not only are we looking across space, but also across time. The fourth and fifth dimensions work in conjunction with one another it seems, as the age of space itself is immesurable. Strange, isn't it?

Corporal X

Yeah there's gotta be more life, theres just so many planets in the universe it's infeasable not to believe in aliens, although we'll almost certainly never find out about them. As for many universes, they'd have to be called multiverses or poly verses or something else for the word to make sense. Some people say if you traveled into the past and changed something, like killed H.G wells before he wrote the time travler, you'd enter one of these alternate realiteis.
Catch y later
noble wushu

That is true, but supposing there was a parallel dimension to our Universe, a Paraverse, if you like. There are well over 150 billion planets in our Universe, but the bigheaded scientists believe our only planet is inhabited. But in the Paraverse theorem, everything would be reverse to our Universe (Remember, it does run parallel!) then, assuming only our planet in the Universe is inhabited, then almost every planet in the Paraverse (Excluding the identical Earth) would be inhabited. To inhabitants of the Paraverse, oxygen could be a poison (Remember the biological suggestions made earlier?) and they might be used to zero-gravity environments (So, for the moment, let's just call these inhabitants the Zeronites). If their laws of physics defy all that we know on Earth, then it might account for a sighting in 1998 where a UFO was able to fly at a 90 degree angle without turning. (Maybe the Zeronites have installed an exhaust on each side of their craft?)

Another method of finding life instead of going through Black Holes would be to locate a , calculate it's trajectory, and have a craft lock onto it's flight path and follow it to its homeworld. (If any of you have seen Gerry Anderson's UFO, then you'll understand!)

Corporal X

Hmm makes me think... If there is a parallel universe, does that mean what ever we do here on this universe has an opposite effect on the other universe ? I.e the sadness on this earth would generate happiness on the opposite ? For example we had a gulf war would that mean in the other universe that all but the gulf, was at war ??...erm ive confused my self now.

I think what you mean to say is, when we are at peace, they are at war and vice versa. In your gulf-war idea, then they would be at peace while we were fighting. The most bizarre thing in the Paraverse Theorem would that be politcians would be trusted. If the theory is true, then they'd be at war right now, with people putting their trust in the Cabinet. Let's not jump to conclusions though, this is just another one of my insane theories.

Corporal X

Its not insane to speculate about the existance of other universes though. The history of physics and astronomy is one of ever widening concepts of what the universe is.

Some people thought the earth was flat and even when it was acknowledge as being spehrical poepl thought that you could sail directly west from Spain and land next meet land in China. We always knew that the earth had a moon but now it turns out we have other smaller natural satellites too. Itc not inconceivable that the evidence that gives us our present ideas of what the universe is will be added to in the future. This new evidence could well mean that much of what we now think we know is incomplete or wrong.


Para verse if they do work are not necessarily mirror images of our universe. They will have developed randomly from a starting point the same as ours but their development at each stage from that point will be whatever it is there, they will have no more influnce on us that we have on them however we just dont know for sure so far.

one love

That is correct, but if they are a mirror image, their evolutionary status would cause them to go from advanced being to neanderthal in the same amount of time is took for us to evolve. They could begin with intelligence far greater than ours, slowly transforming into a race of simpletons. The reason the amount of time doesn't change is because time is reversible. You can have both clockwise and anti-clockwise, so presumably, time stays the same.

Corporal X

Of course there are "other beings", if not I must be a figment of my own imagination. Anyway from my perspective you are the "other beings" and as you obviously exist it must be true.

of course they are other beings, in an infinite universe theres an infinite amount of space for them to be in, and no matter how hard it is for life to evolve in somewhere as infinite as, say, our universe, there must be an infinite amount of intelligent life.

Even though some people here got quite deep, none really reacted on the "energy" life form. We're energy-based life forms.

And everyone talks about intelligent life, but no one seems to think about it as animals, it's always some "main" life form, some dominant species like humans.
I am not sure this is correct, but I have heard somwhere I can't remember that they have found becteria on mars. Which means there is life, and there might be and/or have been "intelligent" life forms.

sure why not ?

Even the smallest of lifeforms (IE: Amoeba) can be intelligent. These are intelligent life as they have been able to do what man couldn't, live on Mars without the need of terraformation.

Rear-Admiral X

Is that reall a good defeniton of intelligence?

A fish is not SMART becuse it can breath underwater it just does that, its a simple chmical reaction which we do not have the phsiology to carry out. We complete the same reaction in air because we have lungs but these lungs dont make us smarter than the fish.

If you think that the ability to carry out chmical reactions in any given environment where they are possible is a sign of intelligence then maybe you are right, brainless amoeba are samrter than *some humans*.

were you bored blicky?
I guess this comes down to the distinction between intelligent and self aware, and also now smart (although personally I find it doubtful that any liveform other than humans will be found to have any interest in human resources objective measurement processes).

Yes I was bored.

I think it has nothing to do with self awareness, why do you say that.

Pavlo's dogs did not need to be self aware to workout a relationship between the ringing of a bell and the arrival of food.

Tree looses it's leaves as part of a conditions dependant changes, whereas the beging of intelligence is to be able to react to changes. Plants and amoeba do not do this and therefore show no intelligence.

one love

ah no, what I meant was that the three often get used as synonyms. So one person saying 'intelligent life' may mean 'self aware life', just trying to point out that there are some confusing, and I think cross purpose, uses of the various terms in the above posts.