It is highly unlikely. It comes down to two problems. Distance and congruency. Distance, obvious problem. Unless we find a way to travel through wormholes, which we probably won't any time soon, we aren't getting anybody much farther than the outer rim of the solar system. The only consoling fact that is sometimes pointed out is that since there isn't anything to give resistive force in the vacuum of space, an object could travel at a constant velocity with only an initial force applied, and would constantly accelerate if a force is applied...unfortunately, to travel at velocities which are even remotely significant to travel cosmological distances requires taking Relativity into account, and unfortunately...

Ever seen what the Lorentz contraction does to massive objects at those speeds? Neither has anyone else. But it probably isn't pretty. The brick wall on the graph is there for a reason.

However, I am not saying that interstellar travel is impossible. It will just take a lot of technological advances. There are numerous proposed manners in which it could be accomplished. For intergalactic distances, conventional travel, even at 0.5c (anything higher will start to flatten the ship) will take too long. It would most likely require conjectured Einstein-Rosen bridges.

Problem 2: Congruency. Probabilistically, it is likely that there are many other life-friendly planets, and of these, there are many with life on them. As to whether there many intelligent life forms on different plants, we can't say, the Drake equation doesn't have the necessary values it needs to compute this, we don't know enough. Anyway, even if there are, communication or any form of recognition will be virtually impossible. We think that the biosphere on Earth is diverse. But really, from a molecular biology standpoint, all life on Earth is pretty much the same. But here we are talking about 14 billion years of totally divergent evolution. There would be no basis for any form of communication whatsoever. The creatures in question might (in fact, probably will) have totally different sensory equipment. It might percieve wavelengths and frequencies we cannot hear or see. In fact, chances our its perceptual equipment isn't remotely like ours. We might not even recognize them as life forms. They might be swarm intelligences instead of singular conscious entities...etc. ad infinitum.

As a final thought I agree with this statement from Geoffery A. Landis of NASA's Glenn Research Center on the possibility of interstellar travel; 

"I think that ultimately we are going to do it, it's just a  matter of when and who".

I completely understand.  I haven't been on this board long enough to have seen your prior posts.  One of my old history professors once remarked that it wasn't so much that certain people wanted to rule the word that made the study of history fascinating (since tyrants are a dime a dozen), but rather why they wanted to rule the world.  In a similar vein, you believe that the technical factors of interstellar travel may be to difficult to overcome, while my old science teacher didn't see the need.  Having not majored in science, I fall short on the technology part (I try to read about it though), and yet I feel compelled by the need for mankind to reach out into the cosmos.  Arthur C. Clarke also talked about this need, and said something to the effect that it was the final test of a species  (yes, I am a science-fiction fan). 

Thanks for taking the time to argue with me!

Are we alone? No.

 

As for travels outside the solar system, there are the possibilty of warp hole/bubbles that will allow for that. Think of it as a cosmic short cut.

 

However, these rely on String Theory which has not been tested, and require negative energy, and the Casmir effect is to inefficient in this regard.

 

My personal thought on the subect.

It really doesn't matter, given the current state of technology. Even if there are other sentient beings out there, it is doubtful we will ever contact them any time soon.

I do however believe that we will likely find evidence of life on other worlds (within our own solar system), or at least the evidence that it was once there, in the next generation or two.

There is certainly the possibility that there are other sentient beings beyond this solar system who also look up at the stars at night and contemplate their own place in the vastness, as we do. The poetic side of me hopes that is the case. Then again, I also think it would be really cool if there were a large hairy primate skalting the woods in the north west north american continent. Unfortunately, there is evidence for neither, and so while I am open and hopeful of convincing evidence, I'm certainly not holding my breath for it.

We're not alone.

Anybody mind if I answer this question too? -

They wouldn't share the same concepts, I'm sure - not even we share the same concepts - but yes, they would have concepts of a deity somewhat echoing our own.

a repugnant notion, but believable since the story was set in the US; there are places that wouldn't happen, fortunately.

Bah. Regardless of the problems getting us out there, myself and many others are looking forward to the day when we'll be downloaded out of our future computers into huge transforming robots to board a ship capable of lasting through epochs. Then we'll send out small reproducing probes to scout the galaxy for us and report back.

Then it's only a matter of meeting these strange new civilizations, and conquering them and their resources for the glory of the human empire! Mwahahaha!

Er, ahem.

 

 

Considering different civilizations on Earth have different concepts,  I would imagine that extra-terristial would have a different one as well.

 

now what are the possibilities that the human species or all earthly species were genetically engineered by an extraterrestrial species?

I think all Christians and atheists should dissmiss the X-file crap and area 51 crap. But considering the amount of time the universe has been around and the trillions of gallaxies which means even tons more suns and tons more planets, law of averages would say, even if life were a minority in the universe, it would still be a statistical probiblity.

If we look at the ratio of any life, most attempts fail, but a minority does happen. I see life on other planets as although an extreem minority, still a likelyhood.

BUT, as far as intelegent life, I would think that since the periodic table and the laws of physics are solid, whatever life is out there, will be in the same isolated position we are in.

We know of no material that can withstand getting past the speed of light, and we would have to go thousands of times faster than that, to make space travel possible.

I think we will eventually find a primitive cell type life maybe on Mars. And even if we couldn't we could find life here that can withstand extreem temps and put that life on Mars.

But crap about UFOs and little green men, was a myth started out of the WW2 fear of invasion combinded with nuts mistaking military exorsizes and equiptment for being real "little green men".

The only problem is that it's just not going to be possible if the thing is further away than the edges of our solar system.  To go further than that: First, build something that can withstand space for an indeterminate amount of time.  In itself that is virtually impossible.  Find a fuel.  Get that something to move fast.  Very fast.  Faster than objects can move.  That's never going to be possible.  Find a way to keep humans alive for the journey.  Freeze 'em? Nope.  Breed 'em?  Only if you pass the first obstacle.

There is almost certainly life somewhere out there, lots of life, but if some of it's not here in our solar system with us, we're not going to get to it.  Determination and money are not enough to get anyone to Alpha Centauri let alone Mars.

We already have. See: the Voyager spacecraft.

You'll note the adundance of these extremely large burning cauldrons of raw elements called 'stars'....

A perhaps-feasible means to do this was actually postulated by Carl Sagan once - of course, since then, we've come to realize that relativistic spaceflight is simply not possible because of the compessing forces involved.

Still - we don't need to move fast at all. Increase the average person's lifespan by replacing their organic parts with mechanical ones, or just download everyone onto a hard drive, and go from there. Granted, a giant interstellar sailing server won't exactly be shaking hands with anyone, but the load of self-replicating robots it produces should be able to.

 

I'd like to take this moment to also point-out that Hamby has never even had one single solid argument refuting an outreach to outer space. The practicality argument is ridiculous; last I checked, it's awfully practical to have a solution in hand for when your supplies all dry up. Earth can't sustain us indefinitely, which means we'll have to be moving along at some time or another.

Personally, I think it's just an old-fashioned mindset to think that we're bound here, or that the space program is wasteful.

Kevin, that spacecraft will cease to function.  It will become too irradiated in time for the computer components to continue to function.  That spacecraft could not support human life.  It is exposed to far too much deadly radiation that penetrates right through it.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Cheeky!

Mhmm.

And where exactly, Kevin, is this technology?  I'm not even sure that such a thing as downloading people onto a hard drive is even feasible, let alone possible.  And if we're not moving the spaceship all that fast, the time involved becomes immense.  So immense as to make such a trip worthless.  If it takes thousands of years to reach another star, what exactly is the point of having gone there if in the interim humans are extinct?  What would the point be in such a journey be if other technology could give us as much experience of that other world around that other star?  I mean, if we've built a spaceship to journey thousands of years through interstellar space and can download people onto hard drives, we must have some other fucking awesome technology.

And I don't believe the space programmes are wasteful and mindest has nothing to do with it.  We're not stuck here on Earth permanently.  It's just not reasonable to believe that we'll be living on a planet orbiting another star.

The technology is merely waiting in the wings. We're already replacing human body parts with synthetic ones - we just haven't takenthe really big steps forward in this area yet. Self-replicating robots are a matter of refining our ability to create better artificial intelligence algorythms. And you're correct - it may be that we can't, for some reason, download the contents of a brain onto a digital hard drive (though this looks more and more feasible as we realize how similar the human brain is to a computer system).

I surrender the fact that whatever the future holds for space travel, there is little chance that actual human beings will be making trips to other galaxies. But, in my opinion, 'humanity' is more than simply it's biology; we're our mechanical inclinations and our imaginations as well (at the least), and to shuttles ourselves to the stars in mechanical bodies seems just as appropriate to me as shuttling ourselves away in our current bodies.

Heavens no. It would likely be hardly appropriate to declare ourselves 'living' in any matter at all by this juncture.

Certainly we'd spend more time in the void than we would on a world.

Practically a meaningless statement.  That sentence is not atomic.  It must be taken in context with the rest of what I wrote.

You've totally misconstrewed what I wrote.  If humans are extinct by the time our acheivments reach another star the whole point of such a mission is void.  Our research into genetics and evolution and nano-technology are not comparable to a journey that isn't underway and isn't strictly within the realm of possibility.  Do not attempt to compare an imagined mission to another star to the point of studying anything that we have studied and are studying.

 

WHAT?  No matter where we go we die as a species.  Your argument is prolonging the inevitable.  Something I'm more than partial to, though I simply see no reason to believe that it's feasible that humans will live on another world orbiting another star.

Hmmm.. You might want to consult a few neuroscientists before you go off half cocked speaking for them like this.  I often use the analogy of a computer for how the brain works because for simple examples, it works just fine.  However, the analogy is severely flawed once you start getting into the nuts and bolts of it.

The first thing you need to recognize is that human memory and computer memory are not really analogous.  Second, a human being is not simply a collection of memory data.  Our DNA is directly responsible for every single aspect of how our data is processed, acted upon, and remembered (or not, as the case may be.)  Data without the accompanying human -- at the exact same time -- would not be the same human.

Let me put it another way.  To extend the computer analogy farther than it ought to be taken, if a human is a computer, it is a computer that is literally reprogramming itself every instant of its life, and that reprogramming is being done by a unique combination of 25,000 or so genes, each of which contains thousands of unique combinations of a base 4 programming language capable of creating any one of tens of thousands of protein variations, depending on how many "alternate spellings" are available for gene splicing.

I addressed this in my thread about cryonics.  The thing is, humans are not like computers.  You can't just unplug us, plug us back in, and stick a disc in.  In us, our bodies at any given instant ARE the computers AND the DATA at the same time.  They are inseparable.

Consider imprinting:  When a baby duck imprints upon a human instead of its mother, it's because there's a particular gene that expresses only for eighteen to thirty six hours a couple of days after birth.  Once the gene has expressed, it "turns off" and for the rest of its life, that duck is imprinted onto the human.  Can't be undone.  However, you take that same duck a year or two later and examine its genes, you'll find that you can't tell by "looking" at them what it's imprinted on.  Now that the genes have expressed, a certain neural pathway... a PHYSICAL pathway has been created, and forever and always, when a certain set of stimuli are received, neurons will travel down that pathway.  That pathway is unique to that particular duck. 

However, since imprinting, the duck has been recording data about the human it imprinted on.  Every interaction has caused physical changes in the structure of its brain.  These changes are dependent on life.  That is, if the duck's brain ceases to operate, the whole thing is kaput.  No amount of electricity pumped through its heart will make it the same duck anymore.  That's one reason why brain death is final.  Even if we could figure out a way to start a brain again after brain death, IT WOULDN'T BE THE SAME PERSON.  It would be an empty brain in a grown person.

Let me be really clear about this.  All of a person's memories are completely and irrevocably tied to their exact, unique DNA.  In other words, if you plug the right data into the wrong person, it's not the same person.  Furthermore, at any moment, your personality, memory, etc, are tied completely and irrevocably to the process of continual "reprogramming" that has been done since you were conceived.  Remove the data from this, and it is not the same person.

So... let's pretend for a minute that we can figure out how to take an exact snapshot of every one of trillions of neurons and somehow get an exact copy of a person's memory.  That's fine, but when you get to your new planet, you're going to have to have that person's EXACT DNA, clone them, and put them through exactly the same life they had the first time, down to every detail, until precisely the moment that you took their memory....

But then, if you're going to all that trouble, why'd you bother taking the person's memories in the first place?  You've just built the same person from scratch...

See the problem?  Memory is not just data.  People are a total package.  Our brain is not a computer -- our whole body is a machine, and every aspect of its function goes into the continual adaptation and "reprogramming" while we're alive.

 

 

 

 

It doesn't matter what context it is placed within, you are still wrong. You assume that your values apply to the entire human species, and they do not. You are acting as irrationally as a theist.

Again you are wrong. Ignoring all of the irrelevant and biased(as well as mistaken) comments, humans cannot be extinct if they are travelling between the stars, now can they? Beyond that, do not assume that travel to another star has no point. It merely erodes your argument further, as if it were necessary.

When someone resorts to semantics, I declare victory. Just because the offspring of humanity may not be classifyable or definable as homo sapeins does not mean that my points become invalid. Try again.

Again you are wrong. The human brain is remarkably similar to a computer system. Just because we do not yet have the technology to recreate it does not mean we will never have. You are effectively copying everyone who said flight was impossible, only to be proven completely wrong when it was acheived.

I need consult with noone. An abacus is by definition a computer, though it has almost nothing in common with the device of the same name that I am currently typing upon. The term "computer" is more varied than your arguments accept, nullifying your arguments.

 

Please do. I find this lack of logic within otherwise logical people to be most entertaining.

None of which are relevant. I turn your attention to an island on a lake in B.C., Canada. This island was once intended by a man(I forget his name) to house an amusement park. Everyone and their mother told him it was a stupid idea. He tried it anyway. It failed, as everyone said it would. But he still tried it. Guess what? People are going to try to go to other worlds anyway, regardless of your pointless and meaningless arguments to the contrary.

Finally the nay-sayers come up with something that I can agree with.

Who says I have to? Who says that the people who started the project won't have anticipated this? Or that a community in the future may decide to take up the cost out of pure curiosity? Quite frankly, you are throwing out quite the strawman argument here. Is there anything realistic for you to present here?

Indeed. That is fantasy. Or sci-fi. Or whatever. 

False again. Personal profit is not the only reason to do something. Despite the seeming inability of Libertarians to accept this reality. On top of that, you can not prove conclusively that extra-solar travel would be incapable of creating a profit. Again, you are simply putting forward strawman arguments.

Payoff is not a requirement. Try again.