NASA TV stream of Huygens probe

[MadBuffaloDisease]

For some reason, please dont take this as an attack, I picture you as a person with horse blinders on, happily sitting in ignorance. Im not calling you ignorant, rather Im stating that you are content with notion that anything that seems difficult to be true, must NOT be.

Well, I guess this explains the thought process behind "JP could have done a better job this year."

[chicot]

The Sun is much farther away from the earth then Titan is Jupiter.  The sun is over 93 million miles away.  If Jupiter was a second star the earth would be hundreds of degrees hotter and could not contain life

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Actually Titan is far further away from Jupiter than the Earth is from the Sun. The distances between the planets in the outer solar system are much greater than those in the inner solar system. The distance from Saturn to the Sun is 9.54 AU and from Jupiter to the Sun is 5.23 AU (one AU = astronomical unit = distance from the Sun to the Earth). Thus even when Saturn is at opposition with respect to Jupiter (the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn forming a straight line in their orbits so this is when they are closest), the distance between Titan (which is a moon of Saturns, maybe you thought it was a moon of Jupiter's?) would be some 4 AU or 4 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth. As for Titan, even if it had a twin of the Sun at 1 AU's distance from it (and it would require an object many times the mass of Jupiter to achieve that) it still couldn't become a second earth. The key thing about why Titan has such a thick atmosphere when, for instance, Mars which is many times more massive has a relatively thin atmosphere, is that Titan is extremely cold. At lower temperatures gas molecules can not achieve the escape velocity that they can at higher ones. If Titan was to be significantly warmer it would lose it's atmosphere.

[JP-era]

Well, I guess this explains the thought process behind "JP could have done a better job this year."

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Interesting.

 

Yet, I imagine that the very same people that claimed Flutie was our answer because "hey he was fun to watch" are the also the guys that say "Drew is all we need".

 

Again ignorance is bliss I guess.

 

AVOID Change, change is a very bad thing. avoiding assimilation into the BORG is futile. We will all think the same, you must be assimilated!

[chicot]

Earth is approximately 150 billion kilometers from the sun. Jupiter is about 588 million km from us. Even a slight nudge in either direction, respective to radiation hitting the Earth, may cause large impacts in the average weather. It is possible that the type of life that thrived in these alternate conditions would be quite different that what we have today.

 

Your first question is one that we will hopefully get a few hints about, in the next few days...

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/kid...e/distance.html

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?! I think you've got something wrong there. We are far closer to the Sun than we are to Jupiter. Look at any half-decent map of the solar system and you'll see quite clearly that the distances between the Sun and all the terrestial planets (Mercury to Mars) are tiny compared to those from the Sun to the outer planets (Jupiter onwards) or indeed between the outer planets. Not sure what the figure is for Jupiter's distance from us is (it varies considerably depending on the relative position of the planets in their orbits) but, going on memory, the distance from the Earth to the Sun is about 93 million miles and that certainly does not convert to 150 billion km! 150 million km seems about right.

[Fezmid]

Interesting.

 

Yet, I imagine that the very same people that claimed Flutie was our answer because "hey he was fun to watch" are the also the guys that say "Drew is all we need".

 

Again ignorance is bliss I guess.

 

AVOID Change, change is a very bad thing. avoiding assimilation into the BORG is futile. We will all think the same, you must be assimilated!

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*sigh*

 

Only on TBD can a thread about NASA and space exploration be hijacked into a Drew thread.

 

CW

[TheMadCap]

?! I think you've got something wrong there. We are far closer to the Sun than we are to Jupiter. Look at any half-decent map of the solar system and you'll see quite clearly that the distances between the Sun and all the terrestial planets (Mercury to Mars) are tiny compared to those from the Sun to the outer planets (Jupiter onwards) or indeed between the outer planets. Not sure what the figure is for Jupiter's distance from us is (it varies considerably depending on the relative position of the planets in their orbits) but, going on memory, the distance from the Earth to the Sun is about 93 million miles and that certainly does not convert to 150 billion km! 150 million km seems about right.

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Typo. That's what I get for trying to type out on a message board quickly while at work.

 

Thank you for finding that oversight, change the 150 billion km in the first sentence to million. Sigh, those units will be our downfall, much like the Mars Climate orbiter.

 

The distances I referenced are minimum distances...

[JP-era]

Interesting.

 

Yet, I imagine that the very same people that claimed Flutie was our answer because "hey he was fun to watch" are the also the guys that say "Drew is all we need".

 

Again ignorance is bliss I guess.

 

AVOID Change, change is a very bad thing. avoiding assimilation into the BORG is futile. We will all think the same, you must be assimilated!

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hey, it wasnt me who started this one!

[chicot]

Typo. That's what I get for trying to type out on a message board quickly while at work. 

 

Thank you for finding that oversight, change the 150 billion km in the first sentence to million. Sigh, those units will be our downfall, much like the Mars Climate orbiter.

 

The distances I referenced are minimum distances...

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Well, at least the US did manage to put down the two Mars Rovers successfully unlike the Beagle 2 fiasco

[MadBuffaloDisease]

hey, it wasnt me who started this one!

Yeah, that was me. Sorry, just trying to inject some levity into the fledgling god/space-travel-is-possible-dammit debates.

[JP-era]

Yeah, that was me.  Sorry, just trying to inject some levity into the fledgling god/space-travel-is-possible-dammit debates.

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If we can just figure out that damn space-time-continum......thing.

[TheMadCap]

Well, at least the US did manage  to put down the two Mars Rovers successfully unlike the Beagle 2 fiasco 

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And while we are at it, shouldn't you be on the PPP page blowing holes in people's arguments there?????

[OGTEleven]

For some reason, please dont take this as an attack, I picture you as a person with horse blinders on, happily sitting in ignorance. Im not calling you ignorant, rather Im stating that you are content with notion that anything that seems difficult to be true, must NOT be.

 

For a moment, please release yourself from the confines of everything that you know from your life here on earth. In all the zillions of planets out there, there is not 1 that has life as intelligent as ours? THAT my friend, seems virtually impossible. And on that planet, that single planet in the zillions, to think that their intelligent life has advanced at the same rate as us, starting at the same point as us, so that they are only say a few THOUSAND years ahead of us, is absolutely ridiculous! There is EVERY reason to believe as a previous poster stated, that civilizations have risen, visited us as a primordial soup, left, and died out LONG before we were coherent!

 

Einstein, while immensely popular, is only human, and by being human, is strapped by the rules and laws that WE have found/created. If a race of beings has found a way to travel faster than the speed of light, interstellar travel is than possible and furthermore, plausible. At the time of Jesus, how would we humans have considered a personal computer? space travel? impossible? fiction? cant happen? That was only a few thousand year back. How far could a civilization go in say a MILLION years? 500,000 times as long? Thats a VERY VERY long time to develop technologies! And again, that assumes they have equal intelligence and an equal rate of technology development.

 

The shear number of possible planets, possible planets with life, and possible planets with itteligent life is HUGE. The chances that some of those planets have developed faster than us, started much much earlier than us, and have not been constrained by rules that we claim are absolutes throughout the universe is also HUGE.

 

By the easiest look at this, if we are willing to drop the rules that we THINK are absolute, it is so very very likely that we have been visited that it is an almost certain reality.

 

Furthermore, I see NO reason that an intelligent lifeform that has an intention to find a new planet to live on, would have not simply wiped us out in our infancy, or made us into their slaves. Hostility implies a drive to dominate or destroy, in either case a race that can get here can also accomplish either. It is very likely that whoever has come here has done so to watch, maybe to subtely help when times are rough, or to study us.

 

Or who knows, maybe the beings that come here are simply teen-age interstellar punks that are coming here to f_ck with us! I can picture it now, "hey dude, sweet new tat, lets go rip up a corn field on Earth with that tat design". 

 

Anyways, humans have a drive to know things. Yet every single time we think we know something we find evidence that in fact it is NOT true.

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For some reason, please don't take this as an attack, I see you as an overly simplistic dunce whose reading comprehension skills are on a par with a third grader.

 

You may not have read (or at least comprehended) that I agree with your assertion that life on other planets is likely out there in many places.

 

For a moment, please release yourself from the confines of everything that you know .... and ponder the question of what are the odds of life forming. We do know that the elements that make up our and other planets are taken from the same group in similar or different proportions. These elements are capable of supporting life (or we wouldn't be here). Do we know the odds of a planet forming in such a way that the combination of elements would be friendly to life? Well, we don't fully understand how planets even form so we can't understand that yet.

 

Let me ask you this:

 

What are the odds that you will pull an Ace of Spades from a deck of cards at least twice if I mix up the cards after every pull and give you a trillion tries? Pretty good right? Oh wait, I didn't tell you how many cards were in the deck because nobody knows that (maybe there are 900 trillion cards and only one is the Ace of Spades). Now what are the odds? Incalcuable, right?

 

Do I think there is life elsewhere? Absolutely. Do I know it? No. (P.S. you don't either.) Am I willing to call another person ego-centric and ignorant based on unknown things? No.

 

Would I write a note on a message board calling someone happily ignorant if they shared my opinion but left open the possibility of something else. No, because that would be rude.

 

Regarding your space travel dissertation, let me ask how you calulated the relative difficulty of light speed travel in relation to the development of the PC. Is it a thousand times as hard as the PC? A million? A billion? A trillion? What went into your scientific method in calculating this?

 

On this point (your original point #2) again I agree with your conclusion. I do however realize that my opinion is at least partially based on conjecture and hope and I am not arrogant enough to call other people stupid if they think something else is possible.

 

Have a nice day.

[JP-era]

For some reason, please don't take this as an attack, I see you as an overly simplistic dunce whose reading comprehension skills are on a par with a third grader.

 

You may not have read (or at least comprehended) that I agree with your assertion that life on other planets is likely out there in many places.

 

For a moment, please release yourself from the confines of everything that you know .... and ponder the question of what are the odds of life forming.  We do know that the elements that make up our and other planets are taken from the same group in similar or different proportions.  These elements are capable of supporting life (or we wouldn't be here).  Do we know the odds of a planet forming in such a way that the combination of elements would be friendly to life?  Well, we don't fully understand how planets even form so we can't understand that yet.

 

Let me ask you this:

 

What are the odds that you will pull an Ace of Spades from a deck of cards at least twice if I mix up the cards after every pull and give you a trillion tries?  Pretty good right?  Oh wait, I didn't tell you how many cards were in the deck because nobody knows that (maybe there are 900 trillion cards and only one is the Ace of Spades).  Now what are the odds?  Incalcuable, right? 

 

Do I think there is life elsewhere?  Absolutely.  Do I know it? No.  (P.S. you don't either.)  Am I willing to call another person ego-centric and ignorant based on unknown things?  No. 

 

Would I write a note on a message board calling someone happily ignorant if they shared my opinion but left open the possibility of something else.  No, because that would be rude.

 

Regarding your space travel dissertation, let me ask how you calulated the relative difficulty of light speed travel in relation to the development of the PC.  Is it a thousand times as hard as the PC? A million? A billion?  A trillion?  What went into your scientific method in calculating this?

 

On this point (your original point #2) again I agree with your conclusion.  I do however realize that my opinion is at least partially based on conjecture and hope and I am not arrogant enough to call other people stupid if they think something else is possible.

 

Have a nice day.

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Well that was an interesting diatribe but utterly a waste of valuable post space.

 

I can boil your whole post into 2 statements:

 

1) If anyone uses the word ignorant with you, you will be ticked off. I am also ignorant (meaning unknowing of the facts).

 

2) You are simply saying that there is a possibility that we ARE the only life out there, and that we have NOT been visited by anyone. No DUHH, Neither of us knows for sure. Thank you for straightening out the painfully obvious.

 

The discussion was about likelihood, not facts. In all likelihood, there are in deed many planets with intelligent life, in all likely hood there are in deed many of those planets who have the ability to travel between planets and galaxies. AND in all likelihood, there we have in fact been visited by aliens before. Not fact just extremely likely. If you want to maintain a posture that says, no it cant happen, and hasnt (probably done with a stern brow and your arms crossed) hey go ahead. Us "dreamers" will simply disagree.

 

 

Anyway, to think of us as being out on some remote "island" in the universe is awfully remote as far as possibilities go. I would call us more of a single grain of sand on a beach rather than a single grain of sand on a rock protruding from the ocean in the middle of nowhere.

 

So, using that analogy, isnt more likely that some "body" swept through here once or twice?

[OGTEleven]

Well that was an interesting diatribe but utterly a waste of valuable post space.

 

I can boil your whole post into 2 statements:

 

1) If anyone uses the word ignorant with you, you will be ticked off. I am also ignorant (meaning unknowing of the facts).

 

2) You are simply saying that there is a possibility that we ARE the only life out there, and that we have NOT been visited by anyone. No DUHH, Neither of us knows for sure. Thank you for straightening out the painfully obvious.

 

The discussion was about likelihood, not facts. In all likelihood, there are in deed many planets with intelligent life, in all likely hood there are in deed many of those planets who have the ability to travel between planets and galaxies. AND in all likelihood, there we have in fact been visited by aliens before. Not fact just extremely likely. If you want to maintain a posture that says, no it cant happen, and hasnt (probably done with a stern brow and your arms crossed) hey go ahead. Us "dreamers" will simply disagree.

Anyway, to think of us as being out on some remote "island" in the universe is awfully remote as far as possibilities go. I would call us more of a single grain of sand on a beach rather than a single grain of sand on a rock protruding from the ocean in the middle of nowhere.

 

So, using that analogy, isnt more likely that some "body" swept through here once or twice?

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The terms you used in the post to which I first responded were:

 

Ego-centric

pretty foolish

very foolish.

 

Take my Ace of Spades example. You are essentially saying that you think there are 52 cards in the deck so with a trillion tries you'll certainly pull the A of S lots of times. Another person might assert that there are 999 trillion cards in the deck so pulling that one is unlikely.

 

Science has yet to determine how many "cards are in the deck". Stating that ignorance is involved on both sides of the argument is correct. Evidence can be cited for either side. In my own interpretation I tend to agree with you. But calling one side foolish or ego-centric is unfounded based on the rules of logic. If you don't use logic, then you can say whatever you want.

[DC Tom]

wow. im impressed, and i dont understand any of it...

if it becomes a star... we wouldnt even really notice... not even at night???

what would that do to earths orbit???

 

and how would it become a star anyways??

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Basically, a "Jupiter-sized star" gives off only about a ten-thousandth the radiation of the sun...the effect of the distance from the Earth to Jupiter is pretty much ignorable in the consideration then since it's ALWAYS greater than the distance from the Earth to the Sun, ergo the Sun's natural change in brightness (it varies by about 0.1% over a few years) is an order of magnitude greater than a "Jupiter-star's" total brightness would be. So in terms of weather, or survivability on Earth, or such...no difference.

 

As for what would it do to the earth's orbit...well, nothing. Earth's orbit is determined by gravity; if Jupiter were a star of the same mass it is now as a planet, there would be no change in Earth's orbit.

 

The caveat being, of course, that Jupiter can't be a star without becoming significantly larger - about a hundred times more massive...at which point nuclear fusion would start, and a star would form. A small, dim, cold (as stars go) star...in the night sky it would look like a very bright and distinctly red star about as bright as the moon (not looking like the moon - it wouldn't show a disk. Just as bright as the moon.) As for what the hundred-times increase in mass would do to the Earth's orbit...unless I'm doing my math wrong (possible - I'm busy and trying to estimate very quickly), the average gravitational effect of a "Jupiter star" on the earth would be about 0.6% that of the Sun...measurable, but for everyday purposes negligable.

 

Except the Earth wouldn't be here to begin with. The tidal forces of the "Jupiter star" on the primordial solar disk (what the solar system formed from five billion years ago) probably would have preculded the formation of a planet in Earth's current orbit. Maybe. Possibly. No one's really come up with that good a theory on the subject yet.

[DC Tom]

Well we went from the earth being flat, to being round.  From the universe revolving around the earth to the earth revolving around the sun and only a teeny-weeny (in scientific terms) part of the universe.  Then our solar system was the only one with planets revolving around it.  Frankly I don't know WHOSE tune changes more.

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The universe does revolve around the earth...if you pick the right coordinate system.