Moontanman

I'm guessing none of you believe in species-jumping microorganisms?

They do exist, by the way.

 

Maybe it could be harmless to us, but perhaps not another species.

And from there, species jumping might eventually reach Homo sapiens.

You are 100% correct species-jumping microorganisms do indeed exist but all life on Earth is related, we all share the same basic genetic codes. All of Earths infectious microorganisms have evolved to infect Earths life forms by using this similarity to their advantage. Life forms who share no history what so ever with us would be very unlikely to infect Earthly life forms. I once heard it described as us being infected by alfalfa wilt but many times more unlikely.

The way I see it, if the aliens have enough energy and technology to swing over to this part of the universe, then they have enough energy and technology to use whatever resources around them before coming to Earth.

I see no reason to assume star traveling aliens would have magical god like technology. An enclosed space habitat could make the rip from one star to another in a few hundred years and with technology quite conceivable by us at the very least. Such a society would simply make use of native materials to make more habitats, eventually sending out more colony habitats to "infect" other star systems. No planets needed and maybe stars with huge debris fields instead of planets would be more desirable than stars with planets. A society that has made such a trip in a enclosed habitat might not even like the idea of a planet, having lived for generations inside what is basically a mega city a planet would seem a strange and dangerous s place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_habitat

However, be it they 'needed' to come to Earth from lack of resources, my guess is that aliens would have the intent of obliterating us. Perhaps such a situation would include the fifth generation of a species that's been inhabiting a spaceship in autopilot for the past 500 years; and then eventually the ship reaches Earth, docks, and releases the aliens.

What resources could the Earth have that wouldn't be easier to get from asteroids and comet like materials?

Then again, I would suspect if they couldn't gain enough education to take control of the ship and use the advanced technology available to them, they more than likely would not provide much of a threat to the human species. However, I think they could provide a temporary threat to the ecology if unnoticed for too long. Furthermore, if there is a virus they are carrying in their bodies (perhaps unknowingly), I suspect its pathogenic potential would be more of a worry.

You've been reading Heinlein I'm not sure about the idea of disease being transmitted between totally isolated ecosystems, Life on another planet may not even be based on the same nucleic acids as Earth's, or even the same Chirality. I think that debate is fodder for another thread.

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Here's a thought: how much mass is there in asteroids in the solar system compared to a planet like earth?

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All the Asteroids together make up about 4% of the mass of the Earth's moon, still a huge mass, and that doesn't count Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, comets or other asteroid like bodies outside the main belt.

Good point, I didn't think about complications of distance. Then again, and I hate to use the cliche Christopher Columbus analogy, but if Europeans followed your notion, (Oceans = Space, North America = Earth-like body) they would have built artificial, dock-like habitats just off the shore, instead of traveling across the Atlantic. And even still, it was less of an entire population migration,and more of a branching and expanding effect.

 

Please, don't hesitate to tell me that I'm wrong, as you can probably tell, these are just unfounded musings

First i think you have to consider how very few people actually traveled to the "new world" compared to how many stayed behind. Then there is the issue of how easy it was to live in the new world. Notice how Antarctica was never actually colonized, a new planet would be a very hostile, even an Earth like planet would be unlikely to be as livable as North America and even North American colonies failed. A strange ecosystem, lack of important trace elements or too much of poisonous trace elements, no friendly natives to help out (my ancestors were Native Americans) extreme logistical problems. Colonizing another star system via it's planets seems to be the hardest way to me. A small difference in mercury or arsenic could make a planet virtually uninhabitable to us. Lack of other trace elements could mean the same thing in the long term. A star with a huge asteroid belt instead of planets would seem to be the place to find star fairing aliens.

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On the other hand, a planet has such a gravity well because there is so much mass concentrated in one place. Now, considering the sort of energy source that would be required to do interstellar travel, you'd also have to consider the possibility that aliens would have the capability to disassemble the entire planet into space habitats if they preferred space habitats to planets.

Just a small group of asteroids such as the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter represent enough material to build habitats for billions of individuals. breaking up a planet and all the bits going off in wild orbits seems to be a bit messy and maybe showy to be realistic to me.

I have no clue but it's a pretty good question. Would all attractive forces become repulsive? Positive repel negative? Interesting.

Moving entire populations to a newly build habitat would be far more practical than moving entire populations to another planet in another star system. But for the most part populations in space habitats would move slowly as habitats were build, not in mass. We will never be able to move a significant number of people off the face of the earth. We have babies far faster than any possible number of space craft could move them off the earth much less to another planet. But orbiting colonies or space habitats built from the easily obtained resources of space could be built almost like cookies laying on top of each other in a stack, a never ending construction project. each stack of colonies could contribute to other stacks and populations could move among them freely. the population on the earth could contribute to the populations in space but billions or even millions of people could never be moved off planet in periods of time short enough affect the earth's own population.

Why would aliens even want a planet? Artificial space habitats make much more sense than trying to colonies hostile planets. Gravity wells would be something a space faring species would avoid. Asteroid type belts would be much more of a target, materials to build more colonies and easy to move around, not like launching a space craft from a planet.

The block of aluminum in the vacuum of space would cool down much slower than a block in side the space station due to the air carrying away the heat. It's the principle of the a vacuum bottle.

Moontanman,

I'm pretty sure we already figured out that i was talking about American capitalism and its effects, not the USA hence why i did not say USA. and i do have substantial evidence to support my claims.

No Zolar you just make the claims and act like you are the word of god and move on. so far you have done nothing but make claims. You made the obvious claim of deaths in the USA now you say you meant something else but neither on is supportable anywhere but in your mind.

and if you have such a problem with my references or my wording, cite evidence contradicting mine. therefore making me actually wrong.

Zolar you are the one who made the claim, not me, you need to defend it. So far all you have done is try to wiggle out of it when asked to substantiate your claim. You clearly made the claim that thousands of people were dieing of hunger in the USA, now you need to back this up or withdraw it. If you withdraw it all your other claims come into disrepute. You started with with fear mongering, typical of people who have an ax to grind but little or no evidence to back up their claims.

i would think not, because i did not say that these people died in the US. i was talking about the contribution that american capitalism has on starvation both directly, here in the US, and indirectly, those affected by capitalist society.

No zolar, this is what you said.

Lets just take a look at the current american capitalism. every day there are hundreds if not thousands of people dying and starving because they do not have the weath to go and buy what they need. however under the american capitalism you do have the safty nets of food stamps, goodwill stores, food distrobution, soup kitchens, but are they really enough. if they were then you wouldn't have the destitute dying.

You were clearly saying the people dying were in the USA, if you make a contention and cannot support it you should admit to it not try to squirm out of it. This is disingenuous and counterproductive to this or any discussion. If your contention cannot be supported by facts and figures maybe you should regroup and think of a new assertion to draw attention to your cause.

I see. And would this be any different with less of an ozone layer or an early earth atmosphere; or is the environment not relevant and that is just the properties of UV?

It's just the properties of UV, in space even a grain of sand is enough to protect spores from being killed by UV.

No, UV cannot penetrate deep into the Earth or to the bottom of the oceans. UV of sterilizing wave lengths is stopped in just a few feet of water and just millimeters of soil and or rocks.

Some might say that certain catalysts are live as well. Not to mention Clay crystals.

Zolar, so your faith allows you to make wild speculaive claims that are clearly not true to make your point? Thousands of people die every day due to hunger in the USA? If you cannot support this claim everything else you say is in grave doubt as well.

I was referring to that, if someone asks me aobut capitalism or communism i would be glad to steer them to something that has the answers to their questions.

 

if you really want a real example for capitalism kills, then here

 

Lets just take a look at the current american capitalism. every day there are hundreds if not thousands of people dying and starving because they do not have the weath to go and buy what they need. however under the american capitalism you do have the safty nets of food stamps, goodwill stores, food distrobution, soup kitchens, but are they really enough. if they were then you wouldn't have the destitute dying.

 

Zolar, hundreds or thousands of people dying in the USA due to hunger? I am a US citizen and even though on person dying due to lack of money to buy food is unacceptable I doubt your figures are even close to being true. Can you back that up with any evidence what so ever?

 

 

now you have too look at the people who owned their houses,in which the dead people lived, these landlords took what they could from the people to meet thier own needs at the expense of the dead people. so therefore landlords win, dead people, well died.

you can even bring this to another level. and say that the landlords had millions of dollars and no heart and took what he could from the people and killed them(eventually).

 

Again, please provide evidence of all these people dying, Your basic premise depends on numbers that you need to back up.

yea i know that they are considered rare and that gypsum is quite common, hence why our drywall is omade out of it most of the time. but i would think that givin the age/size/volume of the planet that somewhere there is a cave filled with giant precious stones. you could almost call the Debeers diamond mine in souther arfrica a giant diamond cave just because of the sheer immensity of the volume of diamonds found there, despite their lack of size.

 

its would just be really awesome to find a cave filled with giant precious stone. quartz and gypsum are interesting in their crystal structure but others would also be abit more interesting imho.

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think of what organisms could live in lets say a ruby cave.

I have to ask, what would rubies have to do with organisms that live in a cave?

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BTW, when you say crystals do you count basalt crystals? They have six sides and about as big as telephone poles. They have been used make buildings almost like log houses. Then there are emeralds as big as railroad cross ties. Not gem quality to be sure but emeralds none the less.

Hydrogen of course, there would be no other elements if not for hydrogen!

eh just make the reactor casing out of boron.

Boron is going to stop neutrons from a nuclear reactor? If that is true that would make a nuclear powered space craft much lighter and more practical wouldn't it?

Thank you for the input, and yes sisyphus if i developed cold fusion living underwater may not be the main use for it. As for the radioacticity, yes of course there's going to be a fine bunch of it, yet i think the main issue with fusion would be the electromagnetic field. If this were to be magnified to the extent you could power a city, it might have more practical uses*.

* In fact I could just make Rapture from Bioshock.

P.S. I live in the puget sound area

No actually the electromagnetic field wouldn't be the problem, neutron radiation would be the problem. Even cold fusion, if true, would produce neutrons at a dangerous level as well.

There is a huge disconnect between the truth and being right in our society. It's far easier to find someone who will tell you what you want to hear than it is to look for the truth. The truth has become an embarrassment to many people's world view but instead of changing their world view they look for someone who is shouting their beliefs loudly and join in by trying to change reality by disregarding the truth in favor of feeling good about what they believe. No matter how many people tell you the Earth is flat, it never will be, reality is never decided by popularity, belief, or the need to be correct.

well the ancient cultures did believe mercury had magical properties. they also believed certain animals had magical properties as well. you don't see the egyptians building antigravity devices out of cats or the hindus(? might be wrong on this one, apologies if i am, could be sikhs perhaps?) building antigravity devices out of cows.

 

just because some ancient civilizations believe it's true doesn't mean its actually true. aafter all we do know more than them however attractive it is to think of a lost civilization that was far more advanced than us. heck, 99% of the civilizations people claim have invented antigravity hadn't even discovered the joys of indoor toilets or that eating poison was bad for you.

I am sorry insane_alien, I didn't mean to suggest there was anything to the myths. I was suggesting that the OP was probably connected with the writings that made those claims. Much of this anti-gravity silliness is connected with some writings that had to do with Atlantis and vimanas and all sorts of made up silliness that really were not honest translations of the myths..

At one time, many many many years ago I read all I could about those writings that claimed a high tech civilization some time about 12 to 15 thousand years ago. I found out that most of the information was at best exaggerations of many times copied and translated myths that had no evidence of being anywhere near that old. The best than can be said of most of the translations is that they were imaginary. I am quite sure many were just damn lies made to sell books to gullible you men like me

Moontan, at that pressure and temperature the mercury would be solid. but still FAR too hot to be super conductive. there aren't many substances that ar super conductive ast such high temperatures.

Well that was my point, I knew it couldn't be a gas or a plasma much less superconductive. This sounds vaguely like some reports of so called space craft described in Veldic myth supposedly powered by rotating vats of liquid mercury. These myths have about as much to support them as the OP

http://www.hallofthegods.org/2009/03/ancient-spacecraft-on-moon.html

A basic design for an antigravity engine has been detailed in a number of ancient Indian texts. The texts speak of mercury as being the critical component in the antigravity engine.

There some possibilities for life not as we know it. Not knowing of course means this is all conjecture but here are some possibilities.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/B/boron-based_life.html

Boron is chemically flexible enough to make Bucky ball like structures quite easily but it is also quite rare compared to carbon.

More possibilities here

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/ammonialife.html

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/siliconlife.html

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/nitrogen-based_life.html

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/P/phosphorus-based_life.html

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/alternative_forms_of_life.html

This statement is nonsensical,

The plasma, mercury based, is pressurized at 250,000 atmospheres at a temperature of 150 degrees Kelvin, and accelerated to 50,000 rpm to create a super-conductive plasma with the resulting gravity disruption.

To be a plasma a substance has to at least at a temp higher than it's boiling point, at that temperature and pressure Mercury would be a liquid. How do you accelerate a plasma to 50,000 rpm? How is a plasma superconductive? The whole premise needs to be supported by something other than this statement. Again i say it's a distortion of the Stealth blimp rumors that have been going around. A stealthy blimp? Possible, a nuclear powered anti-gravity craft? Unlikely to say the least.

at somepoint could you get your lighter fluid to solidify under pressure?

Yes, most definitely!