General Discussions

Gravity Control!

POSTED BY: Calhoun
UPDATED: Sunday, February 15, 2004 12:14
VIEWED: 10201
PAGE 3 of 5

ADEPTUS

Friday, February 13, 2004 9:17 PM

My take on it is this: If I were on my way to developing an anit-gravity drive, I'd dang sure wouldn't post any of my research to the net. Nope, I'd keep a real tight lid on it because when/if I was successful I'd be the only company with the tech. Can't make as much money if everybody else and their brother can make the same stuff you can. So I'm thinking it's a scam.

No power in the 'verse can stop me.

CALHOUN

Friday, February 13, 2004 9:31 PM

Heya Drakon,

I know what you mean, the claims the web site make seem very fanciful, still.. I want to believe.

As far as the possiblity of an alien race becoming technologically advanced enough to achieve interstellar travel - My opinion rests in mathematics, the number of stars out there is virtually inconcievable. One analogy I have heard is that in our own galaxy there are more stars than grains of sand on our entire planet and a similar number of galaxies make up our universe. I think it is now widely accepted that there is more than one universe out there(multiverse), I suspect probably there is a vast number of universes out there as well. Now THAT is a big number of stars. Even if only a tiny fraction of them has planets conducive to life and only a tiny fraction of these planets develop technologically advanced civilisations then we are still talking about an incredible number of species taking to the stars.

This is a bet i'll prolly never get to collect on but I bet some of these civilisations have mastered gravity..

~Keep Flying~

MOMAW

Saturday, February 14, 2004 7:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Calhoun:

One analogy I have heard is that in our own galaxy there are more stars than grains of sand on our entire planet

Woah! Let's not get carried away, now!

A quick websearch gives the figure 100,000,000,000 (very roughly) stars in our galaxy as a working theory.

Let's assume that you're talking about some fairly coarse sand, each grain about 1 cubic mm. So we're talking 10E10mm^3 of sand, one grain for each star. Make that a bit more workable... A cubic meter is 10E8mm^3. Divide that. So we need a hundred cubic meters of sand. Which is a decent amount, but nowhere NEAR what's on the planet as a whole.

Another way of looking at it: the land surface area of Terra is around 150 million square kilometers. If you distributed our 100m^3 of sand evenly over that, you'd only have 666.6[..] grains of sand per square Km.

Space is insanely vast, but there's plenty of things that are insanely tiny too.

DRAGONFLYDIRECTOR

Saturday, February 14, 2004 8:17 AM

Um ... a 100 billion stars ... where did you get your websearched info? Just curious, not being sarcastic.

My quicky 'Number of stars in the Milky Way' search garnered a variance from 3 billion to 400 Billion stars or 3,000,000,000 to 400,000,000,000 from various educational sites.

Researchers have 'generally' decided that ,with the current tech, it is near impossable to define how many stars there are in our galaxy.

Mostly because of the compaction of stellar matter that happens near the core. You do know that the center of the galatic core is 'generally' considered to be a massive black hole. Which has been determined, by some, via the x-ray and gamma output from the core.

Anyhoo, I believe the quote was from Carl Sagan and concerned planets and planet sized bodies, not stars, in the Milky Way.

"Observe Analyze & Respond"
Motto of the A.P.E.s
Alliance Protean Engineers

CALHOUN

Saturday, February 14, 2004 10:08 AM

Yeah DragonFlyDirector, I wasnt sure exactly where I got that quote from, thought it may have been Steven Hawking but it could well have been Carl Sagan. Anyhoows I still stand by my earlier statement:

"Even if only a tiny fraction of them has planets conducive to life and only a tiny fraction of these planets develop technologically advanced civilisations then we are still talking about an incredible number of species taking to the stars."

CALHOUN

Saturday, February 14, 2004 10:29 AM

Well ok, I may have misrepresented the figures regarding grains of sand and our galaxy.

I have however found some interesting information at http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s910295.htm

Basically it says..

The universe contains about 70 sextillion - or 70 thousand million million million. This is not the total number of stars in the universe, but it's the number within range of our telescopes.70 sextillion is greater than the estimated number of sand grains on all the world's beaches and deserts - about 10 times more.

DRAGONFLYDIRECTOR

Saturday, February 14, 2004 10:32 AM

Calhoun
Actually I was supporting you. The question was directed at Momaw.

And this:

Quote:
"Even if only a tiny fraction of them has planets conducive to life and only a tiny fraction of these planets develop technologically advanced civilisations then we are still talking about an incredible number of species taking to the stars."

IS from Carl Sagan - nearly verbatium.

Heh, just gotta be careful of our examples.

Now, I thought we were speaking on the # of stars in the Milky Way...

... You just gave the total 'estimated' stars of our universe.

Which is it we are discussing?

I only skimmed the thread, so I may have missed the 'change-over'.

Oh, btw, you can 'call' me DFD.

"Observe Analyze & Respond"
Motto of the A.P.E.s
Alliance Protean Engineers

DRAKON

Saturday, February 14, 2004 11:40 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Calhoun:
Heya Drakon,

I know what you mean, the claims the web site make seem very fanciful, still.. I want to believe.

Don't get me wrong. I want to too. Nobody wants off this rock more than me.

Quote:

As far as the possiblity of an alien race becoming technologically advanced enough to achieve interstellar travel - My opinion rests in mathematics, the number of stars out there is virtually inconcievable. One analogy I have heard is that in our own galaxy there are more stars than grains of sand on our entire planet and a similar number of galaxies make up our universe. I think it is now widely accepted that there is more than one universe out there(multiverse), I suspect probably there is a vast number of universes out there as well. Now THAT is a big number of stars. Even if only a tiny fraction of them has planets conducive to life and only a tiny fraction of these planets develop technologically advanced civilisations then we are still talking about an incredible number of species taking to the stars.

This is a bet i'll prolly never get to collect on but I bet some of these civilisations have mastered gravity..

~Keep Flying~

Okay a few points.
1) The number of stars is estimated in the ballpark of about 100 million. Most of which are either too short lived, or too cold to support life (As we know it, yes, yes. We don't know life as we Don't know it, so lets not get into that kind of debate)

2) Recent research indicates that this galaxy did not become suitable for life sustaining planet until about 1 to 3 billion years before our own solar system was formed. You need a mix of carbon and other stuff, all of which had to be processed through stars from hydrogen and then novaed back out into the black. Even though the galaxy is about 10 billion years older than this solar system, it did not have high enough concentrations of carbon and the like to support life.

3) Intelligence is not the only path for species survival. All of the various incidents and "lucky accidents" that made up human evolution, that allowed for the development of the brain and the opposable thumb are not as clearly understood as we'd like, but what we do know, its hard to imagine it being a common occurance.

You need a brachiating (tree swinging) speices that for some reason is forced from the trees, due to drought, or some other catatrosphy. (In our case, it is believed to be the uplift that gave rise to the eastern mountain range in Africa)

[Look at all the "natural biped" like kangaroos and T-rexxs. Weak almost useless upper limbs.]

After you get that, you have to have a species that developes agriculture and gets good enough at it that it can predict surpluses. This frees folks from farming to do things like smithing, or pyramid designing.

You need concepts of logic, and a particular way of looking at the world. You need to think that the world is understandable, not ruled by demons, or mischievous godlings, and that it can be predicted.

And, I think, you need a concept of liberty or freedom, to encourage individuals to utilize their brains, try new things, with minimum interference from others. You need something to override the impulse to always do what you always did, to try new things.

There is a lot of cultural stuff that went into our own climb out of the gravity well. And there are even still today folks who want to keep the old ways, even if those ways were new a thousand years ago. And lets face it, if we were not here, doing what we are doing, it would not be a problem.

There is also the increasing risk of a "Fermi Plague" As you know, Fermi's paradox asked why, if there is intelligence out there, they have not contacted us yet. One proposed solution looks at our own development and offers this answer: As technology increases, fewer and fewer people are required to make bigger and bigger changes. At the extreme, you get one guy, who screws up, and ends up nuking (or otherwise killing off) the planet.

So I am not as optimist

MOMAW

Saturday, February 14, 2004 12:02 PM

I got my 100B figure from here:

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=31

Two years out of date, but...

CALHOUN

Saturday, February 14, 2004 12:43 PM

DFD, Initially I was comparing grains of sand to stars in our galaxy but it appears I was incorrect and in the later post conceded my error and pointed toward the website comparing grains of sand to stars in the universe. Any way you look at it there are a lot of stars out there and it just seems to me that the potential for the development of a superior species which has mastered gravity (assuming this is possible, as I do) is overwhelming. Appologies for the confusion :)

~keep Flying~