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Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 7:31:10 AM   
jlf1961


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While finding out there are other intelligent species out in the galaxy is a good thing, I have to ask the following questions:

1) What the hell are we going to do if we find a signal from another intelligent species? It aint like we can set up a lunch date for a meet and greet anytime soon.

2) Considering that the first thing another species is going to discover about us is all the radio and tv stuff we have been broadcasting for the last 100+ years, do we really want to contact a race who got their impression of us from "I love Lucy?"

3) If by some chance, they got past that and watched the nightly news broadcasts, does any one really think that another race would want to contact us after seeing images of what we do to each other?

4) Last, in reference to question one, why the hell are governments giving grants totaling in the billions to groups looking for intelligent life, why not spend those billions on something useful, say cancer research?

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 7:52:17 AM   
Greta75


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I see the point of interacting Aliens to learn about their culture, their technology, to see if they have anything more advance than us that we couldn't figure out that they could!

I mean, you never know! Aliens could have figure out the cure for cancer!

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 7:55:33 AM   
freedomdwarf1


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All good questions Jeff... I got no real answers.
And given that we haven't even explored our own planet yet, why waste it on the moon or mars or some other remote heavenly body in space?

I agree, spend the billions on health and disease reasearch instead.


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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 8:54:22 AM   
jlf1961


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Greta75

I see the point of interacting Aliens to learn about their culture, their technology, to see if they have anything more advance than us that we couldn't figure out that they could!

I mean, you never know! Aliens could have figure out the cure for cancer!



Greta, considering some of your statements on other threads, allow me to point out a few things you seem to have neglected.

1) Radio and television signals travel at 186,000 miles per second, so for a signal to reach the NEAREST planet that might be able to support life would take 50 years. So, a 100 year round trip for radio/television.

2) Considering that the ONLY signal that was ever received that might have POSSIBLY been and indication of intelligent life was the famous "WOW" signal which happened once, only once, and has never happened again, the odds are that if there were intelligent life out there, it is a hell of a lot further away than 50 light years.

The obvious proof of this is the fact that, since radio/television signals are not directional, and go out into space whether we want them to or not, if a species using this technology was any closer than 100 lightyears, we would have been picking up their signals already.

3) All the radio telescopes on the planet use a broad band signal processor, which means if there is life out there using electromagnetic communications, you dont need a brand new 100 million dollar radio telescope to look for it, we are gonna pick it up whether we want to or not.

4) Finally, the most logical location for a radio telescope to do this type of research is NOT on the surface of the planet, but actually in orbit, a few specialized satellites with dish style radio antennas pointing into space would be more practical and a hell of a lot cheaper, at about a half million a pop.

5) This planet has problems that would make better use of the billions spent yearly on the Seti projects around the world.

Hell, even without private gun ownership, people on this planet are killing each other with anything they can get their hands on. Those billions wasted on SETI projects would be just as good if spent to throw a world class 'let's get shit faced and sing Karaoke' party for every one on the planet.

Or maybe feed the millions of people starving to death on a daily basis.....

6) While the American based Seti project has spent millions on a new phased array radio telescope, they are privately funded, AND, instead of dropping hundreds of millions on a super computer to go through all that data, have taken a lesson from the US Air Force and set up a world wide network of privately owned home computers to process the signals.

The trick is to use a very simple software system that does not use a lot of resources in the back ground, runs like a screen saver, and when you look at the current number of 12 million home computers running it, actually has more computing power than all the super computers on the planet combined.

The airforce super computer that I am referring to is the one that built out of 1760 ps3's which actually out performs the much vaunted IBM big blue, at 1/3 the cost.

Hell, I am a ham radio operator, I built a radio telescope out of an old C channel satellite dish and a 40 dollar shortwave radio kit. Total cost $123.98, and most of that was coax.

In other words, even IF another race had the cure for cancer, by the time they realized we need it, transmitted it to us (of course, we would have to hope the biology is remotely similar) the odds are that we would have done something totally stupid, nuked the freaking planet and what few survivors left would be to worried about surviving one day to the next to monitor radio telescopes.

_____________________________

Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?

You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of.

Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 8:59:10 AM   
jlf1961


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quote:

ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

All good questions Jeff... I got no real answers.
And given that we haven't even explored our own planet yet, why waste it on the moon or mars or some other remote heavenly body in space?

I agree, spend the billions on health and disease reasearch instead.




yup

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Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?

You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of.

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 9:12:01 AM   
WhoreMods


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As for the whole "them aliens might cure cancer" thing (which wasn't, iirc, one of the better X Files episodes anyway), you're dead right there's no reason for something that evolved elsewhere to be biologically equivalent enough to us to be able to distinguish a tumour from any other cluster of specialised cells we have. If nothing's contacted us, one explanation is that nothing out there has any interest in this sort of environment. (Or possibly that the Drake theorem is utter crap: one of the two.)

I'm not sure I like the karaoke party idea as an alternative to the money wasted by SETI, though. If everybody on the planet is having a turn singing, that's going to be millions of people singing "I Will Survive" or (even worse) "The Time Warp", and I doubt that anybody wants that...

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 9:24:07 AM   
freedomdwarf1


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Youtube: I will survive

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 9:37:43 AM   
Cinnamongirl67


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Stupid fascinating questions.
For fun.
http://youtu.be/k2mjs_gdMAI

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 9:46:30 AM   
jlf1961


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quote:

ORIGINAL: WhoreMods

As for the whole "them aliens might cure cancer" thing (which wasn't, iirc, one of the better X Files episodes anyway), you're dead right there's no reason for something that evolved elsewhere to be biologically equivalent enough to us to be able to distinguish a tumour from any other cluster of specialised cells we have. If nothing's contacted us, one explanation is that nothing out there has any interest in this sort of environment. (Or possibly that the Drake theorem is utter crap: one of the two.)

I'm not sure I like the karaoke party idea as an alternative to the money wasted by SETI, though. If everybody on the planet is having a turn singing, that's going to be millions of people singing "I Will Survive" or (even worse) "The Time Warp", and I doubt that anybody wants that...



Which would still be a better alternative to everyone killing each other, dont you think?

And remember, this is from the Resident collarplace Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist.

Now consider this, all the videos of those gung ho terrorists singing "I will Survive" or "the time warp" showing up on youtube, do you really think ANY of them would have an ounce of jihadist (or whatever philosophy they are using to justify their bullshit) will have an ounce of street cred?

Actually, there is a logical solution to the middle east problem, the Pakastan-India problem, actually all but maybe North Korea, but it means that everyone will have to stop shooting at each other for about 5 months to work out the details.

But then that is the problem, you cant get humans as a group to stop trying to kill each for any length of time that exceeds the time needed to take a healthy dump.

Individually, humans can and often are, decent, intelligent creatures. As a group, they are insanely blood thirsty.

Which is why, if we ever do get to leave our solar system before we blow each other to atoms, the first contact with an alien species will go something like this:

"Captain, I have an unidentified, non-natural object on sensors"
"What is it doing?"
"Nothing much right now."
"Dont take a chance, blow it to hell"

At which point, our primitive weapons are fired and the object in question is not damaged, but pissed off for being shot at, blows our ship to component atoms, back tracks it to earth, and proceeds to turn our little rock into a lifeless rock needing 300 billion years to recover enough for a bacteria to survive.

_____________________________

Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?

You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of.

Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 12:34:02 PM   
WhoreMods


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How long will a karaoke party with six billion people singing take to run its course? A decade or two? Longer?
I'm not sure what percentage of the population will choose to add something really shit when they get their turn on the microphone, but now I've had time to think about this, there's much worse people can (and will) go for than Gloria Gaynor and Richard O'Brien, isn't there? Beiber, Whitney Houston's version of I Will Always Love You, that fucking Quebecois bint's shrieking solo from that fucking Titanic film, Limp fucking Biscuit, early '90s eurobeat, Scottish folk music...
I'll take us wiping each other out over sitting through a load of that noise. There's a mere 480 three minute renditions of a really shitty song in one day. 480. How many decades of shite is that when six billion people get their shot at singing something crap?
Have you ever been in a karaoke night? Fucking hell, d00d, you need to think this one through.

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 2:49:24 PM   
jlf1961


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quote:

ORIGINAL: WhoreMods

How long will a karaoke party with six billion people singing take to run its course? A decade or two? Longer?
I'm not sure what percentage of the population will choose to add something really shit when they get their turn on the microphone, but now I've had time to think about this, there's much worse people can (and will) go for than Gloria Gaynor and Richard O'Brien, isn't there? Beiber, Whitney Houston's version of I Will Always Love You, that fucking Quebecois bint's shrieking solo from that fucking Titanic film, Limp fucking Biscuit, early '90s eurobeat, Scottish folk music...
I'll take us wiping each other out over sitting through a load of that noise. There's a mere 480 three minute renditions of a really shitty song in one day. 480. How many decades of shite is that when six billion people get their shot at singing something crap?
Have you ever been in a karaoke night? Fucking hell, d00d, you need to think this one through.



Yes, I have been subjected to a bar on Karaoke night.

I have thought this through.

I also happen to own a shit ton of ear plugs, really good ear plugs.



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Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?

You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of.

Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 2:59:05 PM   
WhoreMods


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They'd have to be really good earplugs, I suspect.
Or is the plan that you can corner the earplug market and make a fortune selling them on? Hike the price another five dollars whenever a bunch of four guys approach the mike obviously planning to do Bohemian Rhapsody?

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 3:12:29 PM   
Dvr22999874


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I don't think the party would ever end. Like the chinese marching past us ten abreast, the people would breed so fast that they would keep it going forever.
I have often wondered about that statistic about the chinese marching ten abreast and breeding. How would they go about doing it while they are supposedly marching ?

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 3:18:52 PM   
WhoreMods


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Maybe if every other row of then faces the row behind them and moonwalks while they get it on, marching forwards (or backwards if they're the row that's moonwalking) all the while?
Or perhaps a doggystyle wheelbarrow.
(I'd probably better stop speculating about this...)

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 3:34:42 PM   
Dvr22999874


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yes, it tends to make heads explode if people think too deeply about it. A mixture of mathematics, acrobatics and sexual gymnastics. Imagine how rich chiropractors could become ???

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 3:50:43 PM   
Dvr22999874


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And talking of karaoke, has anybody ever been to a CHINESE karaoke party ? We have a friend in Singapore who invited us to one and I have to admit that after the first couple of songs (????), I was beginning to worry that somebody would report us to the local version of the SPCA, because they might have thought a large number of cats were being horrifically tortured in there. We left as soon as we were able to but I think it might have scarred me for life.

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 5:58:03 PM   
MasterG2kTR


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the first three questions can be dispatched with one simple comment directed at #2 & #3: this is the best reason we have not received any signals

as for #4: that is a lot more practical to most of the other far more worthless/useless grants given out

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 6:00:12 PM   
Greta75


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Dvr22999874

And talking of karaoke, has anybody ever been to a CHINESE karaoke party ? We have a friend in Singapore who invited us to one and I have to admit that after the first couple of songs (????), I was beginning to worry that somebody would report us to the local version of the SPCA, because they might have thought a large number of cats were being horrifically tortured in there. We left as soon as we were able to but I think it might have scarred me for life.

Did they sing in Chinese or English?

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 6:05:06 PM   
Dvr22999874


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In answer to question #4............maybe, just maybe, the big pharmaceutical companies have got too much money invested in Cancer as a sickness, to really want a cure for it ? I know that sounds cynical but then I AM a cynic.

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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 8/3/2016 6:06:02 PM   
Greta75


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quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961
Greta, considering some of your statements on other threads, allow me to point out a few things you seem to have neglected.

1) Radio and television signals travel at 186,000 miles per second, so for a signal to reach the NEAREST planet that might be able to support life would take 50 years. So, a 100 year round trip for radio/television.


In another words, our technology is still not good enough to explore space and the universe.
The thing is, I do not believe at all, that our planet is THE only planet in this Universe that could possibly have life. That we are so special! Another thing is, I believe that even if advance beings found us, maybe they simply observe and not want to make contact, as they weren't sure if that would result in their own lives being endangered.

There is already more than enough funds spent on cancer research, but we all already know why. All our food is processed with chemicals in some ways that eventually pretty much in any long term consumption, make people sick. We know how to prevent cancer. Just that, quality food is not accessible or affordable to all.

I think some fund allocation to exploring extra terrestrial life is very important, CONSIDERING our sun has a limited lifespan. And since it takes so slow to develop technology that is advance enough to really explore the Universe, they gotta start doing it now. As it will also take a very long time, AFTER THAT to figure out how to migrate the population to survive elsewhere in the Universe.



< Message edited by Greta75 -- 8/3/2016 6:10:38 PM >

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