swansont

Columbus wasn’t looking for a civilization that he didn’t know existed. AFAIK, neither did the proto Polynesians Remember that the context if this discussion is aliens finding us interesting or not, rather than stumbling across us by accident Where does the idea that I am obligated to respond to anything come from? You should ask for your money back.

Have we gone looking for a particular civilization despite not knowing, and having no evidence, that it’s there?

You haven’t given sufficient detail for me to specify anything. I can’t critique a theory/conjecture/idea that has no detail. You say “generation ship” and I’m asking “how does that work?” You (and/or others) start filling in those details and then I’ll be specific. But asking me to specify when you haven’t is just not a fair bargain. I posted specifics in the other thread, so I’ll thank you to stop pretending I haven’t addressed this

What assumptions are invalid?

If I’ve set the bar low, that’s more of an indictment against those who haven’t responded to explore the new proposed technology

Which affects the path of the light.

No such thing as pure energy. Photons - massless- have energy, and also linear and angular momentum. All three are properties, not substances.

Gravity bends light.

Potato, potahto. How can it be ignorant if you can’t/don’t point to any knowledge that would erase that ignorance? What is this missing information? As exchemist has noted, it’s not there are unknowns, as with Lord Kelvin - you would directly contradict known physics, with no basis for doing so. As with others, you point to “solutions” without any consideration of the details involved. Again, I invite you to do some analysis on the technical solutions you present. Absent that it’s just plots from sci-fi stories.

It’s changes in gravity that one would discuss. Gravitational waves propagate at c, as MigL notes above.

You are free to present an analysis showing the folly of the position. I have asked others to do so, and have found no takers.

Finding someone in contempt is not the same thing as bringing criminal charges for the acts being brought to light, which was the context of the discussion.

The problem is finding an impartial jury. All you need is one secret Trump supporter voting to acquit regardless of whatever volume of evidence is presented.

It’s a false dichotomy. Geology is more subtle than these archaic either/or descriptions. Models that are in the process of being formed are often incomplete and get modified as more information comes to light

Where do your quotes come from?

My understanding is no; the criminal charges have to come from the department of justice. The J6 hearings are bringing information to light, some of which (apparently) was previously unknown to the DoJ. The hearings may also serve to light a fire under their asses to bring charges. Up until now the public focus has been on the folks that breached the capitol, with nary a peep about the ones who were serving in government, and IMO that's not a good look, since it seems that just about everybody on the GOP side was in on it. Since he's accused others of doing that and it seems like all accusations have been projection of things he/they have done, no. Not at all surprised.

I measure the states of laser-cooled atoms and any kind of outside perturbation affects the results, so there is no outside direct connection or "engagement" with the atoms since that would screw up the results. This is true of a lot of physics; the observer effect is a known phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics) Any observation that is unnecessary is to be avoided, since it is known that it will alter the results.

So no actual examples. Most of physics involves taking data that can't be done with humans - detecting photons, paths of particles, measuring a magnetic field, to name just a few. So introducing humans into such endeavors would compromise the quality of the experiment. If humans do something less well than the devices we use to make measurements, that introduces bias, by definition. You say otherwise but can't back that up. at. all. And again, I see no connection to what I am discussing, in rebuttal to your claim. I'm pretty sure the photodiode I use to detect a photon signal is not conscious, so there is one example to show the falseness of your claim. I have others, if need be. I can walk through many aspects of an apparatus I have running, and where no humans are involved.

Suspension didn't make a dent. This has been upgraded to a permanent vacation.

To learn how nature behaves. Most of nature falls under the "not human" category. What bias do I introduce? Not all science is psychology. You say you can measure stuff by experience - what of someone with a different amount of experience? Do they come to the same conclusion? If no, isn't that a problem?

Absent technical analysis, I have lots of questions. Nothing you’ve posted is a reasonable substitute for technical analysis. From the wikipedia article “The light sail is envisioned to be no larger than 4 by 4 meters (13 by 13 feet),[1][50] possibly of composite graphene-based material.[1][33][6][36][43][51] The material would have to be very thin and be able to reflect the laser beam while absorbing only a small fraction of the incident energy, or it will vaporize the sail.” My objection, which is not addressed. The small fraction is very small. Also, the payload has to be on the dark side of the sail, or it, too, gets vaporized. I think that might introduce some stability issues. How do you keep the system from rotating/tumbling? From one of the links (52) in the references https://www.inverse.com/article/14352-the-starshot-breakthrough-light-beam-is-really-a-million-lasers-which-s-insane “Eduardo Bendek, who has studied Alpha Centauri for nearly his whole career and is working on a proposal to send a space telescope out to study the region, thinks the biggest issue behind Starshot is to figure out how to avoid “vaporizing the spacecraft” with the light beam. The nanocraft are just a few grams in mass. There’s an extremely high likelihood that firing a 100-gigawatt laser at them would cause them to evaporate. Bendek cites a previous experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that began a thermonuclear reaction using a laser with a fraction of that power. “I don’t know how they’re going to figure this out,” he says.”

That’s fine, because nothing I’ve said should suggest otherwise. I don’t know how you got from my observation that science tries to remove the human factor from measurement (because that introduces bias) to anything about awareness and being made of physical matter.

If I am trying to e.g. measure time (which is nominally my day job) the last thing I want to do is inject the human factor into it. I want to measure the signal from the cloud of atoms, and do that very precisely and repeatedly. Humans being involved generally mucks that up in various ways. You can substitute in most physics experiments for this. Measure the properties of an electron or other particles, or materials, etc. I have no idea what "how can human factors be separate from matter" is supposed to mean, or what its connection is to what I previously posted.

There's an app that will supposedly take a picture of your LEGO bricks and tell you what you can build, so just counting pips would seem to be a slightly lower level of difficulty

There are sciences that study the human factors, as iNow points out, but in other fields, one strives to remove the human factor, since that tends to introduce bias.