Dekan

Mightn't they have "islands of stability", which could give them the properties of "dark matter"?

Suppose there were elements in the 500+ series, what physical/chemical properties would they be expected to have?

Even if all the above posts are true, they only show that the Solar System may contain very primitive life. Like bacteria. But who wants that - Bacteria are only the stuff you clean off with a toothbrush. You wouldn't try to communicate with gum-disease bacteria. So why get excited about bacterial scum on Enceladus? They're not worth bothering with. What we really need is an advanced form of life in the Solar System. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any. Even supposing that Jupiter has multicellular life-forms floating about under its clouds, they aren't transmitting on radio, so they're just animals like seagulls or dolphins. What can such creatures offer in the way of intelligent discourse. You might as well try to discuss quantum theory with a cat. The great tragedy with humankind, or so it seems to me, is this - we've developed spaceflight. This gives us the ability, with our rockets, to travel to the other planets. Yet, there seems no point in doing so. Because the other planets are not worth going to. They're just barren rocks, or giant balls of poisonous gas. We find ourselves in a dead solar system - at least from the viewpoint of intelligence. The system hasn't got any other minds we can communicate with. Who wants mindless bacteria? It could've been so different! If only Mars and Venus had been worlds like our Earth. With sapient creatures on them, to talk to and fight! Then Terran spaceships would be busily criss-crossing the solar system, bringing interplanetary trade, and exciting empires and wars, like in 1950's SF. That's how it might've been. But look at the situation as it is. The solar system is a dead duck. So In order to find worthwhile extra-terrestrial minds to contend with (physically - not just by radio) we must go to the stars. Can we ever do that?

How do you know?

The idea of "suicide booths" doesn't seem good, for these reasons: 1. They would have to be built, and kept in working order, at public expense 2. This expense would only be justified, if they were in regular use. 3. Regular use might make them popular sources of entertainment - wouldn't people gather around them, to watch the suicides getting in the booths to die? Rather like in the 18/19th century when public hangings used to attract big crowds. Of course, such crowds might provide an additional source of revenue for the State, which could sell licences for soft-drink or ice-cream sellers to set up stalls around the booth, to refresh onlookers. That might not be as depraved an idea as it sounds. I recall reading that in 1941 when the Wehrmacht had invaded Russia and the SS were conducting mass machine-gun executions of Jewish people in Ukraine, a German officer commented (in disgust) that crowds of unaffected locals stood watching the executions while licking ice-creams. Or is that a myth? Anyway, I can't see that "suicide booths" are necessary. If someone wants to commit suicide without causing trouble, couldn't they just take these steps: 1. Square everything with your family and friends - make a careful Will, so they're looked after. 2. Go to the coast incognito, hire a boat, sail it out to sea 3. Drink a bottle of whisky, pull out the bilge plug, then rest while the boat, and you, calmly sinks into the peace of oblivion. What's wrong with that?

Perhaps they tried (because they instinctively recognized it was right) to do just what you suggest - breed for increased intelligence. And for other mind-related qualities. Such as forethought, initiative, inventiveness, and leadership. That could account for the origin of the social "class system", which seems to be a uniquely human phenomenon - not possessed by other species, such as dogs. Won't any dog enthusiastically mate with any other dog that it encounters? As long as they mutually detect species-specific canine body-smells during the pre-copulatory bottom-sniffing, the dogs go at it. They don't notice, or worry about quality of mind. Whereas, we humans do notice mind-related qualities. And until recent times, that used to influence us when we bred. We saw that such qualities were valuable, and tend to be inherited - as you say "run in families". So we tried to preserve such families - by instituting a "class" system, which separated, and isolated, the superior families from the rest of the breeding population. And thus was developed the historical concept of a class of "noble families", with their titles of "Patricians" "Dukes", "Lords" and so on - who only interbred with other "noble" families. That protected the nobles'.high-quality genes from potential pollution by inferior ones. It also probably explains the origin of the "caste" system in India. An inborn, quasi-instinctive urge to guard and foster human genetic development perhaps? But all that was in the past. Nowadays, it's supposed to be completely different. We're told to disregard instinctive urges, and get enlightened and PC - so that anyone is free to mate with anyone, regardless of genes. Is that sound, from the viewpoint of human advancement?

@ Rilex #8 - thanks - surely though there is such a thing as individual consciousness? At least, in the human species. If there weren't, wouldn't we all think exactly the same thoughts all the time? Like in a bee-colony. I can accept that all bees have the same "thoughts". Such as finding food-sources, building the hexagonal cells, fanning the hive and so on. But that's mere instinctive stuff. No individual bee will ever get uppity thoughts about instigating a revolution to overthrow the queen. Because the bees only have tiny brains, which can only support a very low level of "consciousness". Or really, hardly any consciousness at all. Not like in big brains, such as humans possess. Our brains give us sufficient consciousness to start revolutions, annex the Crimea, and in general, do whatever we want. Even committing individual suicide, or launching World War III. (Though there'd be loads of un-beelike protesters against the war!) What I think you're driving at, is that "consciousness" is a basic element of the Universe. Which is possessed by every particle in the Universe. Every atom, every molecule, has it in some degree - albeit only dimly. Isaac Asimov made that a theme in his "Foundation's Edge" ( I was going to quote from the book but damned if I can find it in my disorganised library!) Anyway, even if such a theory is valid, I don't see that it rules out a kind of "quantum leap", from bee-mind to human-mind, resulting in the human attainment of individual consciousness. Thus providing a power of innovation and organisation. In your post #8, you make the pretty and striking analogy that "consciousness is like a string, playing all notes in some order". Accepting that, surely only conscious human minds can organise the notes into the right order to make innovative tunes and symphonies - and the greatest achievement in history - Science?

"Conciseness may just be the very own soul of the universe." Yes indeed- "conciseness" pithily encapsulates the Principle of Least Action, which seems an intrinsic feature of how the Universe works. It might also provide an example of another principle - the occasional serendipitous appositeness of malapropism. Other examples have cropped up in poetry, for instance in Betjeman's "Ports have names for the sea". He originally wrote "Poets have names for the sea", but it got misspelled in the proof text, and he when he saw it, he thought "ports" was so much better than the banal "poets", that he kept it in. That happened also with another poet' - the famous "Brightness falls from the air", was supposed to have been "Brightness falls from the hair ". And you can see why the feeble original was junked! But all that is a digression. On the subject of consciousness, you're probably right that it's a kind of shared property among humans. We note how easily we can sometimes assess how another person will react to a situation, by thinking "If I was in that person's shoes, what would I do?" And most times, the assessment turns out to be on the right lines. And that leads to the thing that most intrigues me about consciousness. Given that all persons share a common property, what makes an individual person different from another? Or more precisely, who decides that you are conscious as "you", and not as somebody else? To follow that train of thought to its ultimate conclusion - suppose God exists. Presumably, He's a "person" with His own individual consciousness - He rules the Universe, makes decisions, intervenes in human affairs, and generally does what He thinks fit. Now, how did He get into that happy position, and not somebody else? I'm not expressing this very well! but I mean, who determined that "God" finds Himself conscious as God, whereas Rilex finds himself conscious as Rilex? (I'm only using your name as an example - not implying delusions of grandeur!) Is there an answer to the general question - what determines which particular individual consciousness we find ourselves in - whether as God, or you, or me, or President Putin?

I know what you mean! This subject has probably been discussed lots of times over the ages, and in SFN forums. I don't feel inclined to research what conclusions were arrived at, and will just give my own impressions, which are that when "thinking" about something - such as how to solve a problem, we can experience three consecutive stages: Firstly - a kind of instantaneous revelatory "insight" into the solution - the famous "ah-hah" feeling. Secondly - sometimes a mental image, or series of images, flashing ultra-rapidly through the "mind's eye"; Thirdly, a slower justificatory process of reasoning, which is carried out using language, ie by words. Like: "So if I put this component here, and that component there, then the electrical circuit will work!" Of these three stages (if they exist), only the last one seems to involve language. And the language usually only serves, as I suggested above, to justify conclusions which have already been reached by the mind without using language. Of course, this simplistic idea doesn't apply to all problems. Especially those of a mathematical nature. For example, when embarking on solving a Sudoku or Hanjie, I find that very careful verbal reasoning is required. That will be obvious to all fans of these puzzles. Any "flashes of intuition" are likely to lead to false entries - and to the frustrated rubbing out of the grid, to start again! However, for problems which aren't dependent solely on maths, language probably doesn't control our minds. But it may possibly influence our minds, by the presence or absence of certain words. For example, in the English language we have a finely graduated set of words describing increasing temperature - cold - tepid - lukewarm - warm - hot - boiling Can that series be adequately translated into the French language. If not, does it mean that French minds can't understand the difference between "tepid" and "lukewarm"? Or "warm" and "hot"?

Many thanks for the link ACG, I see there's to be an announcement at 4.00 GMT today. Let's hope it doesn't follow the same fate as other claims in recent years, such as the FTL photons!

Doesn't the condemnatory reaction to Vasileturcu's posts show, how resistant some worthy but elderly scientists can become to anything that challenges the beliefs they've been taught? Beliefs such as - that Gravity is a force. And that consequently there must be gravitational waves. It's true that there's no experimental evidence for such waves, but that doesn't matter - they must be there, if we could only find them. Yet why should we think so? Perhaps Aristotle was right - "Gravity" isn't a force - only a natural tendency for all matter to gather together,. Without any "force" to make it do so. Matter is just seeking its "natural" place in the Universe. Wherever there's already some matter, other matter naturally goes there to join it - so that it can be "at home" so to speak. That could explain the failure of attempts to integrate gravity into the other forces - and why we don't detect "gravitational waves" - there aren't any! Look how much effort has been put into finding these waves over half a century. We started I think, back in the 1960s, with short vibrating aluminium bars. They didn't come up with anything. So we went bigger - today, there are huge 4 kilometer long LIGO tunnels bouncing laser beams between mirrors. So far (no surprise) with negative results. The failure is prompting proposals for a return to small "table-top" experiments. involving Bose-Einstein condensates of ultra-cold atoms. But doesn't that exude a whiff of desperation. Like fiddling about with the Michelson-Morley apparatus in an attempt to prove there really is a universal ether? Personally, I think Vasileturcu is on the right lines in accepting electromagnetic force as a real force. As for gravity, I'd tend to go with Aristotle.

Let's face it - only a minority of Intelligent people is interested in astronomy. Sadly, the majority of the population isn't. No amount of well-meaning "access to dark skies, access to good scopes, and informed members to answer their questions", can ever enlighten them. They'd rather sit in front of their TV's and watch mindless stuff like the "X-Factor" or "American Idol". Such people are a lost cause, and it's sheer waste of time trying to make them interested in Astronomy. Or Science in general. They really don't want to know. All they're interested in is beer and copulation. This is a hard fact to accept. But it's been known throughout history. Which is why the Ancient Greeks invented the term "Philosopher", ie "lover of wisdom". They did that to distinguish elite "scientists", from the masses, who couldn't care less. And that still holds true today. Just try having an intelligent conversation about astronomy, or science, with most people you meet in everyday life. The dumb hicks don't know what you're talking about. Thank goodness for an elite refuge like SFN!

Dylan, apologies for condensing your post to skirt round the references to "race". That word tends to cause trouble. "Species" is still OK though. And I think you're basically right ,that when the species "Homo Sapiens" came on the scene, evolution took a new step. I wouldn't call it a "mis-step", though, but rather a "step-change". This new species had genes which allowed it create "civilisation". And that 's a new phenomenon, which seems unprecedented in the history of life. Homo Sapiens "Civilisation" brings in the deliberate, organised, widespread - and consciously-directed support of the weaker members of the species, by the stronger ones. At first sight, that looks like a recipe for evolutionary disaster. It tends to preserve such things as weak eyesight. In a precivilised world, genes which cause poor vision would be quickly eliminated. A child born with such defective genes wouldn't last long. He/she would be unable to spot lurking predators, and so get eaten. Or be unable to hunt and forage for food effectively, and so starve to death. That would prevent the child from surviving to reach reproductive age and spreading "weak-eyesight" genes among the population. Thus everyone would have good eyesight. Whereas civilisation - especially technological civilisation - goes right against this. It invents devices such as "spectacles". and reading-glasses. These allow weak-eyed children to grow up, prosper, and reproduce But that's a good thing, because it preserves much more valuable endowments, like a powerful intelligence. And isn't the increase of intelligence something that seems to have been selected for, throughout the course of evolution? As time has passed, organisms have tended to get more intelligent. Any modern mammal is an intellectual giant, compared to the creatures of the Cambrian Period! Evolution seems to go for more IQ. In that light, couldn't Anthropogenic civilisation be regarded not as a "misstep", but as the next, improved, evolutionary step? [PS - I messed up the quote function -sorry!]

Having read through the above posts, I'm still having trouble with this consideration - Suppose we say "divide 5 by 0", Isn't that the same as saying "divide 5 by nothing" . And "nothing" literally means "no thing", And if you divide 5 by no thing, surely that means 5 ought to stay as 5. Just as when you "subtract" no thing from 5, it stays 5. As in: "5 - 0 = 5" That doesn't seem to cause any problems in maths. So I can't see why division should either. I mean, isn't "division" just a shorthand word for repeated subtraction? You can subtract 0 from 5 as many times as you like, 5 - 0 - 0 - 0 ..... and the answer is always 5, without apparently causing absurdity. Which is why this whole business of "division by 0" causing a problem, has always puzzled me. Can't mathematicians just stipulate that "5/0" means "5 - 0" ie, still 5. Would that resolve the problem?

I wonder why you selected 3 seconds for the duration of the time-trip into the past? Presumably, because such a short passage of time enables the Time-Traveler to be alive in both temporal situations. And so allows for paradoxical considerations. However, suppose you'd asked: "A time-traveler travels exactly 3 centuries into the past.... and waits 300 years.... but does not see himself traveling into the future.... how is this possible?" Then isn't the answer plain - not seeing himself traveling into the future is not just possible, but inevitable. Because after waiting 300 years, he's long-dead. And in no position to threaten paradox. Or is that too simplistic?

Perhaps we should make a distinction, between an interest in Astronomy in a kind of general sense, and actually going out to look at the stars in the night sky. In big cities, the night sky these days gets washed out by light-pollution. (This is point 5 in Bonefarts #3). Nowadays, more and more people are city-dwellers. This denies them the opportunity to see the patterns of the constellations. It was easier in the past. I grew up in a small English country town, where the street-lights got turned off at midnight! Then you could see the stars in their full glory.. This made it possible to trace out the outlines of the constellations, even down to their faintest stars. So you could see all the outlying stars in Ursa Major, not just the obvious ones in the Plough. And make out such obscure patterns as the Lynx. I got great pleasure from learning the constellations, with the aid of a trusty childhood guide - Patrick Moore's "The Boy's Book of Astronomy" which even today has a fond place on my bookshelves. It seems obvious to me, that a knowledge of, and familiarity, with the night-sky, is a lifelong benefit. Both to the mind, and the emotions. Especially as the seasons progress - how good it is to see earnest Orion rising above the horizon as Winter approaches! To contemplate proud Leo in the Spring, To see lovely blue,Lyrical Vega, high overhead in Summer skies. And, even in more barren Autumn, the Square of Pegasus, and use 7 X 50 bins to glimpse and ponder on M.31, on the corner of Andromeda where two constellations jostle in anomaly. Yet all this doesn't seem to appeal to most people. Some may take, as I said, a general interest. But how many people have a real fascination with the stars? I remember when I got my first astronomical telescope. It was a poor crude job - 47mm non-achromatic OG, with single-element "Kepler" eyepiece, giving narrow field, and magnification about 20X. Yet the view it gave of the Pleiades star-cluster, blew my mind. "Look at this!" I said excitedly to my friend, who squinted briefly through the scope, but was unimpressed and uninterested. That puzzled and disturbed me, and still does.

This is an interesting analysis of the economic and psychological factors which may have historically driven, or at least encouraged, wars such as WW1 and WW2 But are you taking sufficient account of a radical post-1945 scientific innovation - nuclear weapons. These are so destructive that any WW3 fought with them, would surely not boost economies, but quickly reduce them to ruins? I don't think a new World War would necessarily escalate into terminal nuclear nightmare, provided: 1. The war was conducted between rational "responsible" countries such as the USA and Russia 2. The losing side still retained sufficient nuclear weapons (eg on SSBNs at sea) to deliver unacceptable further punishment to the other side, if they wouldn't negotiate a reasonable termination of the war. 3. The losing side had not already been so much destroyed, that it adopted a kind of swashbuckling Goetterdaemerung attitude, where it thought - our families, our towns, our cities, our country have gone, so what the hell matters now - let's fire everything we've left at the enemy, in a last spasm of destructive revenge, and go down fighting. The real danger of nuclear nightmare lies in irresponsible irrational countries, dominated by religious fanatics, getting the weapons. Such leaders might stop at nothing if thwarted. Thankfully both Obama and Putin are sane. I can't see President Putin, exhibitionist though he may be, actually wanting to take some action which might result in the nuclear destruction of Moscow, At least, not over the Ukraine.

Yes, I read recently that diesel cars aren't recommended if they're mostly used for short trips, where the DPF doesn't get hot enough. But is this an urban myth. It certainly doesn't seem to be referred to by manufacturers of diesel cars. I've got a very nice diesel-engine car myself. And have used it with complete satisfaction, for three years - while only making short urban journeys of a few miles a day. So far, there's no sign of the engine becoming non-functional due to a blocked filter. How soon can the filter-blockage be expected to occur - will there be any preliminary symptoms one should note. Like pedestrians coughing as one drives by, perhaps?

Damn, you got me about the echoes! I concede the point. But an echo in a cave is a mere transitory, once-only,recording. Multiple- echoes perhaps, but no permanent record. Not like a technological phonograph, which can be re-played. Stuff echoes, let's have CD's. I like Doris Day recordings, but not if she had to stand in a cave, permanently bouncing her lovely voice off the walls. (I only invoked Evolution because I thought it was de riguer on a Science forum, and might get a + point)

I suppose petrol engines may have caused more harm to human health by using leaded-petrol, and producing lead-laden crap from their exhausts. Aren't diesel fumes lead-free?

Was Ambrose uncannily foreseeing satellite delay?

I suppose we have to bear in in mind, that the experience of "hearing your own voice recorded", is a very recent development. Until the phonograph was invented in the late 19th century, no human had ever heard an objective recording of their own voice. Therefore it's not surprising that our human brains were unprepared for this new technological experience. Our brains have evolved a marvelous natural ability to recognize other people's voices. To the extent that we can easily recognize, and identify them, even when they're distorted and attenuated through such low-quality audio devices as telephones. But - hearing one's own voice from an outside perspective, is an un-natural phenomenon without precedent in evolutionary history. So we need a little time to adjust to it. Such adjustment may perhaps be acquired by regular and repeated exposure, as arc suggests in #13.

Thanks studiot, I seem to have heard of those terms. I would however respectfully dispute your suggestion that "Time" is a concrete noun. But as you say, no classification scheme is perfect. For example, "Love" can be used as a concrete noun, As in "Thanks, Love" .That reminds me of some old comedy sketch: "What is this thing called Love" versus Girl (in passionate clinch exploring boyfriend's nether regions):: "OOh, what's this thing called, Love?"

Strange, the word "moon" obviously refers to a physical object. Either our own specific Moon, or in a more general sense, a moon or satellite of some other planet. Either way, the word corresponds to an actual object. "Space", is more doubtful. I suppose it corresponds to something that exists, but couldn't the noun "space" be replaced, in most contexts, by the preposition "from". For example, instead of saying "there's a space of 240,000 miles between the Earth and the Moon", we could say "the Moon is 240,000 miles from the Earth". "Love" I don't think exists any more than "Beauty" does - it's just a word describing what we humans experience and understand, but has no objective existence. As regards "Time", I don't think that has any objective existence either. It really means no more than "we experience, as humans, that things don't stay the same, they keep changing". You could replace the word "Time" by the word "Change", and wouldn't it convey the same meaning. Possibly, what makes us think of time as a separate entity is mainly our artifacts such as clocks, and calendars

I take your point about modern wind-turbines being better designed than the old Don Quixote-style windmills. I suppose my views are just an emotional reaction against the whole idea of going back to wind as an energy-source for the 21st century. By now I thought we'd have nuclear-fusion power. And Moon-stations. It's all a bit disappointing. Acme, I did look at the link, but when it shows ships flying kites in the 21st century, I'm sorry but I don't like the idea. We can do better than that surely. Our ships ought to be nuclear-powered. That would be possible, except for a lack of will. Apologies if my posts have somewhat derailed the thread.