PROOF (for me) of ET visitation on earth.

a reply to: 8675309jenny

The problem with everything you mention is if,if,if.

Please don't get too excited about this, almost no one in the physics community at large takes it seriously. The warp drive nonsense is nothing more than junk science that is only researched by those on fringes of physics and pushed by tabloid media. There will most certainly not be a warp drive in 50-100 years, and it almost certainly never be built. For the warp drive to work as we currently understand it, much of established physics would have to be completely wrong.

That is not to say that rapid interstellar travel is impossible, just that the speculative ideas of today are analogous to the pursuits of alchemy yesterday. There are still a great deal of fundamental physics that we do not know, and with all the interesting new physics of dark energy, gravitational waves, micro black holes, possible extra spatial dimensions, etc. it would be absolutely remarkable if no future scientific insights had any implications for technology and spacecraft propulsion. But this is many centuries perhaps even millennia out in the future. In the meantime, it will be best to focus efforts into established and realistic technologies such as solar sails, nuclear pulsed propulsion, etc. as those are the only realistic technologies that I can see getting us to the stars in the distant future for now.

a reply to: 8675309jenny

There is a patent out there that involves capturing anti-matter into a cylinder using strong electromagnetical forces.

Kratos40

originally posted by: 8675309jenny
I came across some information maybe a month or two ago about some "warp drive" NASA has been working on with renewed optimism about it's feasibility.

It's an interesting idea but it has zero practical value at this time and if you believe it will be viable in the next century you should re-examine the basis for this belief because it's not justified by anything I've ever seen, or if you still feel it is, present why you think so in more detail.

The only way we HAVEN'T been visited already is IF... out of those millions of civilizations out there on other planets, we are the absolute most advanced one. Considering the very good chance that life's building blocks got here on a flying rock from somewhere else anyway, I think I'm more likely to win the Lotto twice in a row, than for Humans to be the singular most advanced creatures in all the galaxy...

No that's not the only reason. Let's say there are 10 other civilizations in the Milky Way, which is a low-end estimate Sagan came up with in his Cosmos series. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across and these 10 civilizations could be so far apart it could take 10,000 years, one way, for any of them to visit each other.

See the Fermi Paradox

The Fermi paradox (or Fermi's paradox) is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilization and humanity's lack of contact with, or evidence for, such civilizations.[1] The basic points of the argument, made by physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael H. Hart, are:

The Sun is a young star. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are billions of years older;
some of these stars probably have Earth-like planets[2] which, if the Earth is typical, may develop intelligent life;
presumably, some of these civilizations will develop interstellar travel, a technology Earth is investigating even now, such as that used in the proposed 100 Year Starship;
at any practical pace of interstellar travel, the galaxy can be completely colonized in a few tens of millions of years.

According to this line of thinking, the Earth should already have been colonized, or at least visited. But no convincing evidence of this exists. Furthermore, no confirmed signs of intelligence (see Empirical resolution attempts) elsewhere have been spotted, either in our galaxy or in the more than 80 billion other galaxies of the observable universe. Hence Fermi's question, "Where is everybody?"

originally posted by: boncho
We've had the technology for a long while to send a probe to Alpha Centuri, and it seriously irks me that we haven't done that. Even without the warp drive, I believe nuclear propulsion systems were able to narrow the trip down to 30-80 years. (I know a large gap but there was various ships on the drawing board.)

Yes I think we could send a probe, but if it takes say 80 years, I guess this explains why it hasn't happened since people like to see the benefits of their labor completed in their own lifetime. 30 years? I'm not so sure about that.

We have a lot further to go to send humans that far, but I think a probe is do-able with a modest amount of development.

originally posted by: Maltese5Rhino
a reply to: 8675309jenny
How I think of it.... Its more luck to find another planet with life. Im sure some one will tell me if Im wrong but if an intelegent race similar to ours where to look out into space and see earth and they are aporx 100light years aware for example... that could mean they are looking at a planet as if it were a 100 years ago? So before our rock was a yellow disco at night.

Same with us now what we see in the outreaches of space is not how it is today. We could be looking at planets that already went full circle... Life began - Intelligent life developed - all got destroyed and the planet is now barren.

And with this type of warp drive tech..... You need to know your destination first. So without knowing which planet to go to because of the distance of light meaning we can only guess if it has life in the first place.

Heck imagine how many other Advanced Species prob just flew right by us and never knew.

originally posted by: Kratos40
a reply to: 8675309jenny

There is a patent out there that involves capturing anti-matter into a cylinder using strong electromagnetical forces.

Kratos40

What's it matter. The major problem with antimatter is that it's impossible to find a decent farmer who can get a usable sized crop of antimatter. Damn farmers...

a reply to: boncho

What would you do with the antimatter, even if you had it? I couldn't find a use for it that does not involve mult-billion installations. Nonetheless, damn farmers...

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