exchemist

This seems, from the evidence, to be incorrect. There is evidence for say the age of the universe, or the age of the Earth, that long predates any evidence of consciousness. In science it is evidence that counts.

So nothing to do with high-achieving female business executives, evidently.

The trouble with these is they do not show these claims were actually underpinned by the science of the day. Dionysus Lardner was just one rather opinionated populariser of science. There is nothing in Newtonian mechanics, which was the science of the day, to support his notion - and in fact he seems to have made an idiot of himself several times over in disputes with Brunel, who was a professional engineer. Kelvin estimated the age of the Earth at a few million years. That is not at all the same as claiming it could not be older than that. Pickering did not say sending a man to the moon was impossible. He said he thought it absurd and would not happen in the foreseeable future. That means he thought it impractical. He did not claim it was ruled out by science. Jefferson was not any kind of astronomer, so his opinions on meteorites can't be taken to reflect a scientific consensus. Pasteur's dismissal of spontaneous generation was to scotch the notion that, for example, "the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog" (Hamlet), i.e. the ancient idea that living things could arise spontaneously all the time. He was not expressing an opinion on the origin of life on the Earth. So it seems to me that none of these examples is comparable to the conclusion that, according to current physics, aliens will not have visited the Earth and will not do so in the future. That is based on the scientific considerations outlined in some detail in this thread.

I doubt any of them were.

Which of those proclamations were predictions from the science of the day?

Not to mention the small problem of how to slow down at the end of your journey……

Why is clearing the cache important? It's a pain, as I have re-enter various passwords etc when I do that and lose history, so I prefer not to do that very often.

Curiously, what I got was apparently a successful log in, with no error messages and no hesitation on the horizontal bar at the top that shows progress towards logging on. But having apparently completed the handshake, it just presented a white screen. I had that last time as well.

Quite. Putting it another way, if our models of physics are correct aliens have not visited us and, we can predict, will not do so in future either.

What kind of homework is this?

Forum was unreachable again yesterday, just a white screen. This is getting pretty crap.

To me the key point is that any reaction engine will be subject to the rocket equation and thus you get a requirement for an absurd amount of mass. Unless the thing travels for millennia.

Many thanks for your intervention. It seems to have been fixed. Out of idle curiosity I’d be interested to know what the problem was, if you happen to know.

Yes it does seem to be back to normal now. Checked ~0600 and again ~0900 GMT and normal speed on both occasions.

Haha it was a fluke. Worked quickly for 3 operations, then back to the same slowness we have all been experiencing. To be honest it is not worth me even looking at the forum until such time as this gets fixed, as you simply cannot navigate around the site.