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Sea Sorbust
Skeptic Friend
USA
68 Posts |
 Posted - 01/12/2004 : 08:24:03 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by ljbrs
I voted that aliens existed but would not ever visit Earth. The distances are tremendous, and living in space is hazardous for your health.
I am one of those obnoxious people who believe that robots should be used exclusively for studying and visiting the nearer portions of *The Galaxy* (a/k/a *The Milky Way*). After all, our first probes have not yet left the Solar influence (not yet reached the Heliopause). Humans have big imaginations, but seldom face the actual impossibilities of deep space travel.
On the other hand, who would want hungry aliens visiting us here on Earth. For them, we would all be considered as food!
Yummy!
ljbrs   
Perfection Is a State of Growth...
Yo vote with ljbrs except that am not so sure about them not visiting Earth or Mars. While the distances are tremendous, if they have an extremely long-lasting civilization and are curious about other suns then it might be possible for aliens to do interstellar travels, even at quarter-c speeds.
Don't like prospect of becoming alien-fodder, though.  |
"This is the forest primeval...."  |
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Sea Sorbust
Skeptic Friend
USA
68 Posts |
Posted - 01/12/2004 : 11:15:45 [Permalink]
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When you say, ljbrs that
quote:
I am one of those obnoxious people who believe that robots should be used exclusively for studying and visiting the nearer portions of *The Galaxy* (a/k/a *The Milky Way*).
I have to agree with you, with one exception: If, and yo emphasize the word "if" very strongly, if there happens to be someone or something out there which is intelligent and which objects to our probes, then it is very easy to trick a mindless robotic probe.
There just can't be enough internal directions to take care of deliberate efforts to foil a probe's mission.
Am of course thinking of the little-publicised "anomaly" that zapped NEAR-Shoemaker. Although JHU's Applied Physics Lab was able to recover the NEAR mission, it was a very close call. The myriad of failed Mars missions also come to mind. An intelligent inimical mind will almost always triumph over a computerized probe, ImHO.
Of course it's all a big "if" and there would have to be a substantial quantity of evidence before expensive countermeasures are put into place; even before simple detection measures designed to gather specific evidence of an "intelligent inimical mind" being in operation are deployed. Intelligence guys are good at suspecting existence of bad guys though and we should use their expertise.
ImO there is more than enough evidence already available for us to be at least suspecting of foul play with space probes and we can't blame the Soviets any more; particularly when Soviet/Russian probes have suffered similar fates, maybe even more often than ours. |
"This is the forest primeval...." |
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