RE: Monkeying Around in the Garden of Eden
June 1, 2016 at 3:37 pm
(This post was last modified: June 1, 2016 at 3:39 pm by Jehanne.)
(May 31, 2016 at 8:51 pm)Gemini Wrote:(May 31, 2016 at 8:22 pm)Jehanne Wrote: A better explanation is that if ET exists, they would have to be emitting a very powerful radio wave via a directional antenna that was aimed directly at the Earth before we could detect them; problem, of course, is that we are a moving target, and so, ET would need to lead us by a small, but significant, fraction of a light year, but that would take knowing our exact position in space with respect to the Galaxy and where we were going.
You know, I've been interested in SETI since I read Sagan's books ages ago, and I didn't know that. So much for Fermi's paradox!
If modern physics is largely complete (General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory), then interstellar space travel is physically impossible for any sentient being with a decent sized body, which would be needed to build a spaceship anyways. Think about how much water, food, and heat would be needed for a 50,000+ year journey through interstellar space and how much lift capacity it would take to get that amount of material into Earth orbit. Every human being alive today (at least in the West) uses nearly 100 gallons of water per day:
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-home-percapita.html
Even if it would be possible to recycle and use all of that with 100% efficiency, and more importantly, without any loss of water, think about the amount of energy it would take to keep that water liquid and all of the energy needed to recycle and cleanse it for its daily use. And, then, there's the food that we eat, a minimum of 2,000 food calories per day.
Cryogenics is a pipe-dream, as there is no way to freeze a living brain for years on end without the cells in it dying, and so, interstellar space travel is probably impossible, which explains why the Earth has not been visited by aliens and likely never will be.
