A Warp Drive Is Within Our Reach, Apparently.

[Thaluikhain]

The cool thing about "Star Trek" (yes, I used "cool" and "Trek" in the same sentence!) is that ALL the technologies are feasible or theoretically possible because Gene Roddenberry always had an actual consulting physicist or two in tow.

Um...no.

Sometimes the science made some sort of sense, sometimes they used real scientific terms in a reasonably accurate sense, other times they threw random technobabble at the screen.

concidering humanity only really became properly intelligent 100 or so years ago with developing science and only became civilised say 2k years ago and the entirre universe has been about for something like 13billion years heavily doubt what you said tbh more likely 90% of alien life wont be intelligent and the remaining 10% will be just like us ie fuck up the planet and kill each other

Er...100 years? Do you mean 100,000?

Oh, and civilisation is generally accepted to have started about 13,000 years ago in the middle east.

...

As an aside, much more than 90% of the life on Earth is unintelligent, humans are very much the exception.

 

[Torrasque]

I love getting to plug this video into threads where it is applicable:
<youtube=qikjljlbTQw>

There was also another video where Mr. Tyson adresses UFO's, but I don't feel like searching for it right now. Look for it on your own if you are interested.
I agree 100% with Neil deGrasse Tyson on all of his extraterrestrial opinions. I think if/when we find an intelligent life out amongst the stars, it will be soooo much more advanced than we are. I think if we do find an intelligent life, it would be (at least) as advanced as the covenant, with their energy swords and energy shields and absolutely amazing technology. Considering all that, we somehow think we can communicate with them? How? With lights? With music? They could be based on some element we have never encountered before, they could transcend our physical reality. And we want to think we can communicate with them?
If we ever do find life that may not be as intelligent as us (maybe bacteria on one of the moons of jupiter, which is plausible) I think we will put them in jars and dissect them and see how they work. That seems to be the way we treat all other life on our own planet.
A lot of people are afraid of intelligent life in the universe because they think the aliens will annihilate us with their scary lasers and enslave us to do experiments on us. I don't think we're going to meet intelligent life anytime soon, and if we do, it will be much more advanced than we are, in ways we will have a hard time dealing with.

As for the FTL drive, I don't know quantum physics or how to find loop holes in physics, so I'll take their word for it. I'll be happy to get on the ship when it is built and help build it, but design it? lol, that falls wayyyyyy outside my expertise.

btw, UFOs are Unidentified Flying Objects. That means you don't now what they are. Calling them alien craft is just absolutely silly, especially considering that our stupid human brains are so easily tricked and look for meaning and symbolism where there is none.

 

[SnowBurst]

The cool thing about "Star Trek" (yes, I used "cool" and "Trek" in the same sentence!) is that ALL the technologies are feasible or theoretically possible because Gene Roddenberry always had an actual consulting physicist or two in tow.

Um...no.

Sometimes the science made some sort of sense, sometimes they used real scientific terms in a reasonably accurate sense, other times they threw random technobabble at the screen.

concidering humanity only really became properly intelligent 100 or so years ago with developing science and only became civilised say 2k years ago and the entirre universe has been about for something like 13billion years heavily doubt what you said tbh more likely 90% of alien life wont be intelligent and the remaining 10% will be just like us ie fuck up the planet and kill each other

Er...100 years? Do you mean 100,000?

Oh, and civilisation is generally accepted to have started about 13,000 years ago in the middle east.

...

As an aside, much more than 90% of the life on Earth is unintelligent, humans are very much the exception.

we went from mastering flight to sending probes outside of the solar system in 100 years look back at 1912 and tell me that it hasnt progressed a lot faster in 100 years then any other time, now think of what can happen in 100 more years. the singularity is predicted to happen in the next 50 or so years minimum so that would basically be immortality down so im sure in the next 100 years we can build engines powerful enough for near light travel given were deving up new materials all the time look at buckminster fullerenes and graphene also u mean 99.999999% of the life on earth isnt as intelligent as us including bacteria and you miss the point thats still about 13 billion years after the start of the universe BILLION thats far long enough for intelligent life to have developed, invented faster then life travel mastered the universe and been destroyed by a supernova or something else 10+ times over

 

[Spartan Altego]

The cool thing about "Star Trek" (yes, I used "cool" and "Trek" in the same sentence!) is that ALL the technologies are feasible or theoretically possible because Gene Roddenberry always had an actual consulting physicist or two in tow.

Um...no.

Sometimes the science made some sort of sense, sometimes they used real scientific terms in a reasonably accurate sense, other times they threw random technobabble at the screen.

concidering humanity only really became properly intelligent 100 or so years ago with developing science and only became civilised say 2k years ago and the entirre universe has been about for something like 13billion years heavily doubt what you said tbh more likely 90% of alien life wont be intelligent and the remaining 10% will be just like us ie fuck up the planet and kill each other

Er...100 years? Do you mean 100,000?

Oh, and civilisation is generally accepted to have started about 13,000 years ago in the middle east.

...

As an aside, much more than 90% of the life on Earth is unintelligent, humans are very much the exception.

we went from mastering flight to sending probes outside of the solar system in 100 years look back at 1912 and tell me that it hasnt progressed a lot faster in 100 years then any other time, now think of what can happen in 100 more years. the singularity is predicted to happen in the next 50 or so years minimum so that would basically be immortality down so im sure in the next 100 years we can build engines powerful enough for near light travel given were deving up new materials all the time look at buckminster fullerenes and graphene also u mean 99.999999% of the life on earth isnt as intelligent as us including bacteria and you miss the point thats still about 13 billion years after the start of the universe BILLION thats far long enough for intelligent life to have developed, invented faster then life travel mastered the universe and been destroyed by a supernova or something else 10+ times over

Umm...What are you going on about? I can barely understand this mess you've written out and it seems pretty clear you're talking out of your ass.

OT: Exploration. Alien life. Evil corporations. I like the idea of human-kind being the most advanced (culturally, technologically, etc) form of life in at least a good section of the universe. I feel like if we found a primitive species though, we might go the route of "we Are Gods. Kneel Before Us," and stuff. Because that sounds fun.

Seems unlikely though, what with the resources needed, politics, and the sheer volume of time it would take to reach an actual life sustaining planet. Who wants to spend 20 years on a journey to a planet that might not even have life?

 

[SnowBurst]

The cool thing about "Star Trek" (yes, I used "cool" and "Trek" in the same sentence!) is that ALL the technologies are feasible or theoretically possible because Gene Roddenberry always had an actual consulting physicist or two in tow.

Um...no.

Sometimes the science made some sort of sense, sometimes they used real scientific terms in a reasonably accurate sense, other times they threw random technobabble at the screen.

concidering humanity only really became properly intelligent 100 or so years ago with developing science and only became civilised say 2k years ago and the entirre universe has been about for something like 13billion years heavily doubt what you said tbh more likely 90% of alien life wont be intelligent and the remaining 10% will be just like us ie fuck up the planet and kill each other

Er...100 years? Do you mean 100,000?

Oh, and civilisation is generally accepted to have started about 13,000 years ago in the middle east.

...

As an aside, much more than 90% of the life on Earth is unintelligent, humans are very much the exception.

we went from mastering flight to sending probes outside of the solar system in 100 years look back at 1912 and tell me that it hasnt progressed a lot faster in 100 years then any other time, now think of what can happen in 100 more years. the singularity is predicted to happen in the next 50 or so years minimum so that would basically be immortality down so im sure in the next 100 years we can build engines powerful enough for near light travel given were deving up new materials all the time look at buckminster fullerenes and graphene also u mean 99.999999% of the life on earth isnt as intelligent as us including bacteria and you miss the point thats still about 13 billion years after the start of the universe BILLION thats far long enough for intelligent life to have developed, invented faster then life travel mastered the universe and been destroyed by a supernova or something else 10+ times over

Umm...What are you going on about? I can barely understand this mess you've written out and it seems pretty clear you're talking out of your ass.

OT: Exploration. Alien life. Evil corporations. I like the idea of human-kind being the most advanced (culturally, technologically, etc) form of life in at least a good section of the universe. I feel like if we found a primitive species though, we might go the route of "we Are Gods. Kneel Before Us," and stuff. Because that sounds fun.

Seems unlikely though, what with the resources needed, politics, and the sheer volume of time it would take to reach an actual life sustaining planet. Who wants to spend 20 years on a journey to a planet that might not even have life?

not even going to continue this from the "we are gods kneel before us" and that "who wants to spend 20 years" comments...

 

[Oinodaemon]

We'd conquer the Universe, I'm fairly sure.

 

[Spartan Altego]

not even going to continue this from the "we are gods kneel before us" and that "who wants to spend 20 years" comments...

So you've basically replied to contribute absolutely nothing? You might as well not said anything at all. It's quite obvious you haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about anyways. Not attempting to be rude, but let's be honest here.

We'd conquer the Universe, I'm fairly sure.

Unless we come across, like, the Covenant or something. Then we'd be more or less boned. I could see us conquering a fair bit of the universe, however. A few dozen Galaxies, star systems. But there's a good chance we run into a bigger and badder race than us and get curbstomped.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Yeah, if we found out that another species exits and it's inferior to us it's highly likely that we will loot, burn , pillage and enslave them.

We can't even get along with ourselves.

Quoted for truth.

We all know how many movies and books center around humanity's encounter with The Ultimate Badass From Beyond The Stars. I've read a couple books where humanity IS the badass.

The Posleen series isn't actually very good but it starts in a fantastic way. Aliens land on the White House lawn and say, "We are part of a federation of 200+ planets surrounding Earth. We are only contacting you because we are being invaded by a totally hostile force that never negotiates, never takes prisoners. We have been pacifists for hundreds of thousands of years. We have no weapons, no soldiers, no tactics, and no killer instinct. We are being slaughtered by the billions. We have mastered entire branches of science you humans don't even have names for. We will put every scrap of it to work for you.....if you just please kill these guys for us."

 

[Zen Bard]

Um...no.

Sometimes the science made some sort of sense, sometimes they used real scientific terms in a reasonably accurate sense, other times they threw random technobabble at the screen.

Think we're saying the same thing. Trek tech made some sort of scientific sense because they were based on scientific principles corresponding to accepted modern physics theory...at least at the time.

Seriously, engage a physicist in a conversation about "Star Trek" science and they're more likely to get into a thought experiment than tell you to go pound sand.

But yeah...technobabble on the show is just that.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA I am one step closer to reaching my ultimate goal.
Colonizing Uranus.

 

[AlexWinter]

We all know how many movies and books center around humanity's encounter with The Ultimate Badass From Beyond The Stars. I've read a couple books where humanity IS the badass.

The Posleen series isn't actually very good but it starts in a fantastic way. Aliens land on the White House lawn and say, "We are part of a federation of 200+ planets surrounding Earth. We are only contacting you because we are being invaded by a totally hostile force that never negotiates, never takes prisoners. We have been pacifists for hundreds of thousands of years. We have no weapons, no soldiers, no tactics, and no killer instinct. We are being slaughtered by the billions. We have mastered entire branches of science you humans don't even have names for. We will put every scrap of it to work for you.....if you just please kill these guys for us."

That. Sounds. Awesome. Disappointing that it wasn't very good overall.

Who wrote it, might I ask?

OT: I'm not going to get excited about this because even if it does turn out to be possible - which I'm very sceptical of considering the way the article is written - because it won't be ready even nearly within my life.

However I know that eventually we will be able to star-skip whenever we want because we're just so damn determined.

There won't be any enslaving or slaughtering however if we are the smarter race it's likely we'll rob their planet of most of its resources... Then again maybe by that point we will have developed a better energy system.

 

[talker]

I don't believe in alien lifeformes . But if they did exist , they would probably be more intelligent than us or are the very least more united and structured . That being said , if hypothetically , we were the more intelligent of the two races , it would be most likely to be hostiles , if only because we would be unable to communicate with each other . Hell we can't even get along with orselves. Thus leading me to believe we would attack them , but be wiped out due to the lack of unity . Assuming we are on their home turf .

but if we are technologically superior then we technically don't need to be wiped out. we can use our technologically superior technology to blow their technologically inferior technology out of the sky. technically.

i LOVE that word

 

[Something Amyss]

Here's the scoop:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49064028/ns/technology_and_science-space/

And I squeed audibly.

This, however, did give me a rather interesting thought...lets assume that all the UFO stories are "fake". That is to say, they're not alien crafts, but rather just super-secret military test-flights of super-secret aircraft.

Common belief. It seems unlikely that, with all the places they could test, they would choose such observable places like most of the major sightings.

Well what if that's a load of bullshit? What if we go out there and find that there is other intelligent life out there, societies and races we can only imagine...yet WE'RE the ones who are technologically superior to them. In fact, it turns out that humanity is the top species in the galaxy. What do you think would happen to us as a people and society should we one day find out that we're the dominant species in the galaxy?

Now that's quite interesting. The first thought I had would be that we would see Pocahontas in space. I suppose kind of like Avatar, but with a much larger scope of manifest destiny.

Personally, judging by the history of advanced cultures meeting more primative ones here on our planet, I honestly don't think we'd be very neighborly...

Depends on how you define "neighbourly." After all, "the White Man's burden" was once considered very neighbourly.

>.>

 

[Something Amyss]

But if they did exist , they would probably be more intelligent than us or are the very least more united and structured .

Why? I mean, seriously. Why would they more likely be more advanced/structured simply by virtue of existing?

 

[cerebus23]

Or the first planet we find we land on and die out to some super bacteria or virus, alien microbes would probably be the most dangerous thing out there for any off world species.

Even better war of the worlds style where we start the invasion are kicking the crap out of the helpless buggers and we all die off from their version of the common cold. karma is a *****.

I will give rodenberry trek many props for lest trying to get the technobabble in context and in some kinda proper usage. after the man died that show went to hell, and the newest trek was mind numbing from a techobabble being used wrong kinda way. they could not even get the decks right on the ships after rodenberry checked out, or know what elevator went where in the ships.

 

[Vigormortis]

warp (faster then light travel) PHYSICALLY impossible itll never happen unless einstein gets proven wrong which he wont. if wormholes get proven to existance then maybe that way but ftl travel is impossible even to put in perspective it would take like 100 thousand years at light speed to get from one of the galaxy to the other let alone other galaxies it would take over a year at light speed to get to the nearest star aswell and about 20 years to the nearest possibly habitable planet

There are a lot of presumptions in your post.

Firstly, faster than light travel is theoretically possible. Hell, Einstein himself theorized several ways, including wormholes.

A common misconception is that Einsteins theories of relativity prove that nothing can travel faster than light. This is false. What they prove is that nothing can accelerate to light speed or beyond. There is a difference.

Secondly, the ideas of warp drives and other faster-than-light travel methods aren't just the crazy ramblings of sci-fi writers. They are often the very real theories of very intelligent physicist. Like in the case of this particular news item. You should read the article before jumping to any conclusions.

Now, for clarity's sake, a few corrections. (It's kind of dickish of me, but sometimes I can't help myself. My apologies.)

The Milky Way is roughly one-hundred thousand light-years across. So, at light speed, it would take one-hundred thousand years just to cross our galaxy, let alone go to other galaxies.

Speaking of which, the closest large galaxy to us (not counting dwarf galaxies that orbit our galaxy, like the large and small Magellanic Clouds), is Andromeda. It is a little over 2.5 million light years away. Ergo, at light speed, it would actually take 2.5 million years to get there.

Our closest neighboring star, it's approximately 4.24 light years away, resulting in a 4.24 year travel time at light speed.

As for the closet habitable planet, well...that distinction actually belongs to Mars. But since we're talking extra-solar planets, we honestly can't say. There could be habitable worlds around Alpha Centauri, there could be ones farther out. We just don't know yet.

So one could be within 5 light years. Or, there may be no other habitable worlds for hundreds of light years. We just don't know yet.

 

[Basement Cat]

While studying biology back in college I wrote a short story with the title "The Impossible Conquest of Paradise".

It was a take on "The War of the Worlds", this time from humanity's point of view when visiting alien worlds.

Different star systems with different planets will have different native microbial populations. Because we'd lack the inherited resistance we enjoy on earth because we evolved here and have been exposed to countless pathogens over the ages landing on alien worlds would be insanely dangerous.

Basically every extraterrestrial world with alien life on it, even if it's only bacterial level, would be a Level 4 Hot Zone. And our native microbes would be hostile to the alien life forms as well.

So even if we come up with interstellar travelling capability--even Warp drive--we're not going to be able to "beam down" and take in the local fruits or do some hunting for lunch.

So much for Star Trek.