kaneda

We know from accelerating basic atomic particles that there comes a speed which is almost light speed beyond which they will not go and increasing their energy just makes them more massive. EMR and gravity travel at light speed and everything else slower. While in theory a rocket could travel at a constant acceleration and eventually reach almost light speed (maybe in many thousands of years), it would need a planet sized fuel tank (which would of course slow it down) for such a trip. We need a new type of propulsion. If you had told people 110 years ago that we could in the year 2000 cross the Atlantic in 5 hours and ask how we did it, they would imagine some kind of super sailing ship with loots of sails and never guess something like Concorde. At present, we cannot guess what will get us to the stars but it will hopefully come along in our lifetimes.

A singularity being one dimensional cannot spin yet we detect that all black holes spin so they must have size. I think "infinitely dense" is a wrong guess since I don't think even gravity could escape such an object. Neutron stars can have an escape velocity of 2/3 light speed. Still neutrons! So maybe for such an increase in mass/gravitational forces, black holes have a compact spinning ball of electrons, quarks and such at their centre?

I think ET's will communicate with us when they think we are ready. You only have to look at what happened when our "advanced" civilisation was forced onto red indians, aborigines, etc. We wrecked their socieites. Imagine aliens landing tomorrow. They have the cure for every disease and help us feed everybody, so putting us nearer a population doomsday. They give us technology which will put over 95% of us out of work and those people will do what? They reveal certain truths to us which shows various religious and scientific beliefs to be totally wrong and so on. And of course, we fight people not just over colour, religion, and such but imagine if these ET's are not human in appearance. Imagine the religious establishment saying they are Satan's emmissaries as well as the political establishment denouncing them as they see power slipping away from them. We are still far too warlike to be given bigger and better weapons. The technology may not start as weapons but mankind has a genius for converting even peaceful things into new methods of killing. If you were a peaceful alien race, would you trust mankind in your part of the galaxy?