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Have we already been visited by aliens?

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Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distances aren't lost on me by any stretch - However I don't feel that the argument about distance would be as relevant to a hypothetical "class 3" civilisation.

I’m talking current capabilities rather than possible future technological capabilities.

Oh yeah, I get that. I guess my point is that people like to dismiss the idea of extra terrestrials being able to trave the vastness of space based on our own frame of technological reference, even though another race may not be bound to the same physical constraints that we are.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need any sort of "repetition" of Dedekind cuts to construct the real numbers, it's actually fairly straightforward. The set of all Dedekind cuts is a subset of the power set of rational numbers (i.e. each Dedekind cut is a set of rational numbers) satisfying the following properties: for each Dedekind cut A 1. A is not the empty set 2. A is not the set of all rational numbers 3. A is closed downwards, meani…

So you just assume that the set exists.

Well I assume the set of natural numbers exist, by the axiom of infinity. From there you can construct the set of rationals. And you can construct the power set of the set of rationals, by the axiom of the power set. And the set of all Dedekind cuts is a subset of the power set of rationals satisfying those properties listed above, which we can construct by the axiom schema of separation. All of this is Zermelo-Frankel set theory, don't even need the axiom of choice.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#363
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medical doctors and surgeons are not scientists. They don't do research, they don't publish papers. Medical research is an entirely different field which overlaps in skills sometimes. But MDs are more like mechanics for the human body.

Many doctors publish research. Is that not science?

The point is that there's a difference between medical doctors as a profession, and medical doctors by training engaged in research.

It's not a homogenous demographic, and it doesn't have a substantial overlap. So there is a very large (super-majority) of medical doctors who have absolutely no training in research, statistics etc. Because it's not what they do - they are not scientists. Their training is about their obligations to follow current developments in best practice, drug prescriptions etc. (or the same but for surgical technique) and apply it. They do not do science, they don't even necessarily particularly understand the scientific method.

So it is absolutely incorrect to imply that all medical professionals are "the scientific community". They're not. Those which participate in and publish research are but that is not even a significant fraction of their population.

Comparisons about what general population surgeons and medical doctors historically reacted to changes in practice does not say anything about the idea that these people represent a peer-reviewed scientific consensus, because they didn't. They represent the equivalent of a mechanic rejecting manufacturer recommendations on fuel quality and complaining about it to their colleagues.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#364
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ignoring the obvious question: what are we not doing that we should be with researching Oumuamua on that basis? What concrete experiments would prove its an alien construct as opposed to being just interstellar rock? The scientific community isn't rejecting proposals to find more Oumuamua like objects, and has been actively trying to figure out how we could intercept another one when it turns up. So what exac…

I only saw part of the Lex interview, and in the part I watched Loeb was saying if we had seen it on the way TOO Earth, we could have sent a rocket to investigate. If we aren't looking, and a chance arises, we'll miss it, and if we do spot something like it early, what are the chances we are ready with a rocket to go look? Would be nice if humanity could pre-plan. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/202…

But we are looking: there is enormous interest in discovering more interstellar objects. It's estimated there should be about ~1000 such objects in the solar system at any given time, and they all represent priceless data about the material composition of the universe outside of our solar system.

People weren't not looking for them, but by their nature no one knows a way to find them reliably (other then, find all the things, look for anything which has a hyperbolic trajectory relative to the sun).

Same problem with an intercept plan: we would like to do it, but the problem is not particularly tractable with our current space technology. Up until we saw Oumuamua we didn't even have a baseline for what we might expect the behaviour of objects to be - which is a problem when you're coming up with a propellant budget for a space mission, since you have no idea how much fuel or weight you can afford for an intercept.

As it stands, we probably need to see a couple more Oumuamua-like objects to develop a reasonable expectation of the frequency of different classes and come up with a mission-profile which we can reasonably expect we'd be able to launch at one in the next 20-40 years. Or a way of establishing a permanent capability (which is not focused research its "yes, let's build the lunar gateway station and develop a long-term La Grange point mode for the Starliner - which is also something which you'd do if you were colonizing Mars).

This is my point: nothing here benefits from "it was aliens" as a starting point. In fact, all of this useful work is pretty explicitly "it's probably not aliens". Because if aliens have gone to the expense and trouble to scout the solar system, then we basically don't need to do any of it - "it was aliens" closes research paths. If we're sure it's aliens, then a much more cost-effective strategy is waiting for them to send another probe that assuredly would move in to study the most interesting thing in Sol - us. Which will be much easier to see because we look closely for Earth-orbit objects.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is strange thinking because it breaks our laws of physics. The clock ticks at the same rate in internal reference frames, it is only different when looking at two different frames. But if you're talking about them acting at slower speeds or faster, then that brings along other problems similar to the mechanics ones we discussed (assuming we're not counting that they are in a slower reference frame). It r…

Good points, but ... consider the range of timescales that humans can have effective control over. We manage to organize subatomic collisions that occur in femto-seconds, and we manage to build things that last thousands of years. All this despite the fact that our own lives are measured in units that are several orders of magnitude smaller or larger. So I can imagine (just about) an intelligent system that can also…

> So I can imagine (just about) an intelligent system that can also effectively build systems operating in time domains orders of magnitude from their own experience/lifetimes.

This isn't the problem I'm getting at. The problem I'm getting at is that it'd be highly unlikely for an intelligent lifeform (or really any) to develop under those extreme conditions. Advancing under other conditions and then developing towards extreme conditions after they have reached a sufficiently advanced state is a different issue.

For extreme conditions like operating at a speed much faster to us (imperceptible) would mean that they would be under high amounts of acceleration than compared to us. Gravity already puts major constraints on humans and for a lifeform to be operating at a rate imperceptible to us we're not talking about 10x or 100x the gravity but more like 10^10^10^10 (or more). Mind you that their internal reference frames (their internal clocks) would operate at a different speed than what we see their clock moving at. Subatomic particles have a difficult time operating at a fraction of that gravitational force. That means you have no building blocks.

What you're not considering is that I've accounted for things like chemical processes and electrical processes not being needed. The problem is that I don't know how you get two particles to change state (at least in non-extreme or destructive ways) under the conditions you're talking about. This isn't about "oh we just don't know" it is that there are some things we do know. We know that lifeforms have to be able to change their state (e.g. you can move your fingers or you can have a thought. These are state changes). We know the basic building blocks of the universe, quarks (or at best strings). There's certain rules these things have to abide by. You can let your imagination run wild but there are still limits of what you can do within this universe. And any being even visiting this universe would still be subject to these rules even if they were from a different universe that had a different set of rules. You can't just trash these rules in the spirit of imagination (which btw testing and updating these rules is what the job of a physicist or really any scientist is. But it is still a convergent process).

Creating things that last longer than an individual's lifetime isn't hard at all. We've done it by accident, they are called artifacts. Nature does it all the time, they are called fossils or just dirt. Trees last longer than human lifetimes. I know you think you're keeping an open mind but instead what you've done is limited it. Operating within the bounds of the rules doesn't have to be a limiting process. There may still be an infinite number of configurations under these rules. But abandoning them makes your search space so open (and open in a way where you wouldn't expect to find solutions) that you can never find what you're looking for. It is like if you're looking for needles in a haystack and arguing that the way to find the needle is to add more hay because the needle is inside the hay.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#366
post #19
post #11

Such an object would function as a sail—one powered by light, rather than by wind. The natural world doesn’t produce sails; people do. What about jellyfish that move about the oceans pushed by wind?

Yeah, I can think of a lot of examples of sails in the natural world. Dandelion seeds, winged tree seeds, etc.

Those are all lifeforms though. And the "sailing" mechanisms have purpose.

The example you are looking for is a lifeless thin slate of ice/rock that gets pushed by a force such as wind or water.

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