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The Space Thread


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2 hours ago, Colonel Kurtz said:

 

Just read a good article in the new scientist about the improbability of finding and contacting intelligent life on another planet. It makes 3 good points;

 

1. intelligence is very rare (as we can see from the GF breakfast thread). Of the 9 million species on the planet, we are the only one to have evolved a brain capable of building space ships and only in the last 2,000 years. 

 

2. there is no evolutionary drive to intelligence. Fish have been around for 450 million years but are still pretty dumb.

 

3. the nearest potential planet in the right orbit is around 17,000 light years away so it would take 34,000 light years to have a single conversation 

 

All in all it is never going to happen in our lifetime. We are stuck with each other. 

 

 

Been having an ongoing argument with a woman in my team at work who is convinced that aliens are visiting the earth regularly and the authorities know but have made a deal to keep in under wraps.

 

There is so much wrong with what she says it's hard to know where to begin sometimes. 

 

My question is alway this though - if an alien civilization is intelligent and advanced enough to build star-faring crafts and can travel millions of miles in no time at all, why the fuck would they come all this way and spend their time hovering around our skies? 

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12 hours ago, Colonel Kurtz said:

 

Just read a good article in the new scientist about the improbability of finding and contacting intelligent life on another planet. It makes 3 good points;

 

1. intelligence is very rare (as we can see from the GF breakfast thread). Of the 9 million species on the planet, we are the only one to have evolved a brain capable of building space ships and only in the last 2,000 years. 

 

2. there is no evolutionary drive to intelligence. Fish have been around for 450 million years but are still pretty dumb.

 

3. the nearest potential planet in the right orbit is around 17,000 light years away so it would take 34,000 light years to have a single conversation 

 

All in all it is never going to happen in our lifetime. We are stuck with each other. 

 

 

You need to watch Men in Black mate. Real eye opener and puts to bed that whole theory 

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15 hours ago, Colonel Kurtz said:

 

Just read a good article in the new scientist about the improbability of finding and contacting intelligent life on another planet. It makes 3 good points;

 

1. intelligence is very rare (as we can see from the GF breakfast thread). Of the 9 million species on the planet, we are the only one to have evolved a brain capable of building space ships and only in the last 2,000 years. 

 

2. there is no evolutionary drive to intelligence. Fish have been around for 450 million years but are still pretty dumb.

 

3. the nearest potential planet in the right orbit is around 17,000 light years away so it would take 34,000 light years to have a single conversation 

 

All in all it is never going to happen in our lifetime. We are stuck with each other. 

 

 

Fermi's paradox, if life is so common in the Universe (and hence by association, our Galaxy), where are they all? Fascinating stuff.

 

There are numerous intelligent species on Earth but you're correct, there's only one that has gone on to develop technology, making it unique.

 

We cannot draw the distinction that because we're here, other intelligences must be out there. We could be the outlier and a statistical analysis based on only one known technological species can never be sound.

 

However, the Universe is relatively young compared to the age it should ultimately achieve before the big rip orbig freeze happens and it may be we are therefore the first or one of the first technological civilisations to arise.

 

Astronomical time scales are very long. Red dwarf stars may last trillions of years but arent really suited to hosting multicellular life. Shorter lived main sequence stars like the Sun may be the better option but their limited lifespan could mean the window for technological intelligence to arise and prevail is more restrictive.

 

One answer to the paradox may be that the rise of technological civilisations while not an infrequent occurence but, because of the different times they rise and live for may be relatively short, the chances of 2 or more existing relatively close by or even in the same galaxy, could be equally rare.

 

Personally, I think this is the most likely explanation why we've no definite proof of other technological civilisations in our galaxy right now.

 

But then again, the Wow! signal fascinates me!

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13 hours ago, johnsusername said:

Been having an ongoing argument with a woman in my team at work who is convinced that aliens are visiting the earth regularly and the authorities know but have made a deal to keep in under wraps.

 

There is so much wrong with what she says it's hard to know where to begin sometimes. 

 

My question is alway this though - if an alien civilization is intelligent and advanced enough to build star-faring crafts and can travel millions of miles in no time at all, why the fuck would they come all this way and spend their time hovering around our skies? 

I love Jill Tartar's comment on this that she finds it extremely hard to comprehend any alien civilisation, capable of travelling hundreds if not thousands of light years only to crash in the last 80 miles of the journey in New Mexico or, just buzz the planet for a few seconds as anything plausible.

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As much as I don’t like Branson as a person, that is pretty impressive. They did seem to cut the internal footage while they were floating around the cabin as the woman who was sat next to Branson appears to be trying to drag him under control by his ankle…

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7 minutes ago, dockers_strike said:

Just been watching that. It's an achievement but at the same time, much ado about little and you end up paying Branson shitloads of money for a 30 minute flight.

Yes, the idea that they are opening it up for all of us is very disingenuous. Reminds me of the line from the initial Jurassic Park film about coupon days.

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NASA has announced that it will attempt a 'risky' manoeuvre to fix its 31-year-old Hubble space telescope later today.

Hubble accidentally went offline due to a mysterious glitch on June 13 that took down one of its main computers. 

But NASA says it's located the source of the problem – a faulty power regulator in the computer's Power Control Unit (PCU).

It will attempt a switch to a backup PCU staring Thursday (July 15), which, if successful, will bring Hubble back to normal science operations in 'several days'. 

Hubble, a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), has been observing the universe for over three decades.

Since its launch in April 1990, it's taken more than 1.5 million observations of the universe, and over 18,000 scientific papers have been published based on its data. 

It orbits Earth at a speed of about 17,000mph (27,300kph) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude, slightly higher than the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA outlined the problem and the upcoming salvage attempt in a blog post published on its website on Wednesday. 

'NASA has identified the possible cause of the payload computer problem that suspended Hubble Space Telescope science operations on June 13,' it says. 

'The telescope itself and science instruments remain healthy and in a safe configuration.'

As NASA explains, the payload computer resides in the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit, which controls, coordinates and monitors Hubble's science instruments. 

'When the payload computer halted, Hubble's science instruments were automatically placed into a safe configuration,' it explains. 

 

'A series of multi-day tests, which included attempts to restart and reconfigure the computer and the backup computer, were not successful.

'But the information gathered from those activities has led the Hubble team to determine that the possible cause of the problem is in the Power Control Unit (PCU).'

Hubble engineers will be switching over to the backup side of the SI C&DH unit that contains the backup PCU.    

However, the backup computer, which NASA hopes will solve the issue, hadn't been powered on since it was installed in 2009 during Hubble's last servicing mission.

Safely switching to a backup unit is also a 'very risky process,' NASA previously said. 

Earlier this month, the space agency had to dismiss fears from former NASA space shuttle pilot Clayton C Anderson that Hubble is 'beyond repair' or would be decommissioned due to the issue. 

NASA insisted there is still life in the telescope, telling MailOnline it has 'multiple redundancies on board and therefore options available to address this issue'. 

NASA is 'confident' it can get Hubble back up and running, adding that all on board observation equipment is in 'safe mode' and operating as expected. 

Engineers have already tried a range of measures to get it up and running again, including switching to a backup memory module, restarting the machine and turning on a backup version of the payload computer – but none have worked.   

Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division, told Business Insider last week that the issue is 'almost certainly' to do with Hubble's age.  

'Someday, a component will randomly fail that we won't have a backup for,' he said. 'That's the most likely way the Hubble mission will end.' 

Meanwhile, FermiLab director and leading physicist Don Lincoln said this 'could be the end of Hubble's story', but told CNN he couldn't discount the ingenuity of NASA engineers. 

This isn't the first issue with Hubble; the telescope has had a number of problems requiring repair or hardware backup since it was first launched in 1990. 

'The team performed a similar switch in 2008, which allowed Hubble to continue normal science operations after a CU/SDF module failed,' NASA said.

A servicing mission in 2009 then replaced the entire SI C&DH unit, including the faulty CU/SDF module, with the SI C&DH unit currently in use.'

Since that 2009 servicing mission, Hubble has taken more than 600,000 additional observations to exceed 1.5 million during its lifetime. 

Those observations continue to change our understanding of the universe. 

'It's been definitely been one of the most important instruments astronomers have ever had,' Professor Gaensicke from Warwick University told MailOnline. 

'Because Hubble is in space – so not affected by the blurry Earth atmosphere – it can take super-sharp pictures, which reveal fine structures otherwise invisible. 

'And those pictures are of stunning beauty, too, so Hubble is almost certainly the best-known telescope among the wider community, and many, many people have been admiring the amazing pictures Hubble took.'  

Hubble recently marked its 31st anniversary in space, doing so with an image of a giant star that is 'on the edge of destruction'. 

Affelia Wibisono, from the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said Hubble was one of the most successful space missions ever launched.

 

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On 09/07/2021 at 13:05, Dave D said:

Whilst I appreciate that deciding on it contents would have been thoroughly thought through,  I often wonder what another civilization would make of the golden record we sent out to space in the 70's.

 

They should have just sent Dark Side of The Moon

   

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

 

 

 

 

We sent them nude pics, a mix-tape and directions to our house. No wonder they take it as consent to arse-probing.

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The whole thing looked very 'no frills' and basic, which it obviously wasn't but it looked to be flawless.

Whether you agree with Bezos' plans for commercial space flight or not it was pretty impressive even if they only visited  space very briefly.

I had to laugh though when the steps were brought out for the 'astronauts' to climb out of the capsule.

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