Interesting read:

Aliens almost certainly exist but humans should avoid making contact, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned.

In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was "perfectly rational" to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere.

But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources, then move on.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said.

Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.

He explained: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet."

In the past probes have been sent into space with engravings of human on board and diagrams showing the location of our planet.

Radio beams have been fired into space in the hope of reaching alien civilisations.

Prof Hawking said: "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.

"The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

The programme envisages numerous alien species including two-legged herbivores and yellow, lizard-like predators.

But Prof Hawking conceded most life elsewhere in the universe is likely to consist of simple microbes.

In the recent BBC series Wonders of the Solar System, Professor Brian Cox, a physicist from the University of Manchester, also suggested life may exist elsewhere within our solar system.

He said organisms could be present under the ice sheet that envelops Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.

Professor Cox added: "Closer to home, the evidence that life could exist on Mars is growing.

"We will only know for sure when the next generation of spacecraft, fine-tuned to search for life, are launched to the moons of Jupiter and the arid plains of Mars in the coming decades."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8642558.stm

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It really makes a lot of sense to me.
Verrry Interesting.

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I Desire Peace and Justice, Jim Scott (Mod-Ret.)

yeah i watched the show last night on the Discovery channel.
maybe they don't want to be heard.

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That is why i do not favor a "beacon" purposefully sending a signal aimed at an unknown alien intelligence...It is clear from viewing the folly of our own world that we are not ready for contact...Whatever is out there is more likely to find us through the things we do...our further penetration deeper into space...our technological achievements...than they are through some selective message we send.

If there are friendlies...They may already be observing...If there are aggressive and hostile species out there...Our call could be to them like the sound that prey makes.

I am in favor of our present passive method of search for alien intelligence...I just don't think we need to advertise our presence just yet.

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PROUD TO BE TFFE!

we already have beacons.
TV, radio, and satellite communications.
some aliens may be watching "I Love Lucy"
and can't understand "Loosy, chu gat alat esplaining to do!"

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yeah i watched the show last night on the Discovery channel.
maybe they don't want to be heard.

They even mentioned the WOW signal last night. :)

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

we already have beacons.
TV, radio, and satellite communications.
some aliens may be watching "I Love Lucy"
and can't understand "Loosy, chu gat alat esplaining to do!"

But those broadcast are not directed at...with a particular message intended for alien intelligence...

I myself have been working in radio for more than 30 years...So i theoretically could have already called accidentally what a beacon would be attempting to do on purpose...

Just think...A regular stream of my blather extending more than 30 light years out.

But seriously...I'm still against the beacon.

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PROUD TO BE TFFE!

Stephen Hawking also tells us that there are such things as 'singularities' that are actually blackholes. What is a supermassive blackhole, a 'large' singularity? Yet when a large star goes supernova, it produces a 'small' singularity? I question the man's logic, and quantum physics, based on common sense. A black hole is formed by gravity. A star implodes, reaches a certain mass, gravity takes effect, nothing escapes. Supermassive blackhole? A star implodes, gravity takes effect. Enough matter in its vicinity, it is attracted to the surface of the "object"...the object that has MASS, i.e. the imploded star of sufficient density to let nothing escape within its event horizon, and becomes bigger, attaining MORE mass and MORE gravity, allowing it to become a supermassive blachole. In essence, a singularity has no definitive mass...that limits its gravitational effect.
Well, f#ck me. The Japanese were right with Godzilla. Size does matter.

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"....Size does matter."

my wife is japanese?
she said she was irish!

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"Any alien life out there that is capable of determining that we exist, and/or capable of paying a visit, would be light years ahead of us technologically. In which case, they wouldn't be interested in this piddling little planet and it's miniscule mineral resources, or indeed in it's primitive indigenous population."

isn't that alot like the spanish conquistadors and the native indians of the carribean?

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"Yes it is, but it is tempting to assume that a spacefaring race would be a bit more circumspect."


To paraphrase or quote Oscar Wilde, i can resist everything but temptation.

Thinking advanced civilizations would be peace loving is a leap of faith.
The best odds are 50/50 and i'd err on the side of caution.

Ask any indian tribe in america what they think of aliens showing up.
Why should we think that the extraterestrial beings are any more "humane"
than we are.
We, humans have a long history of committing atrocities against ourselves and think of what we do to animals on this planet...
Hope and pray there is not any diagrams of human bodies on alien ships with parts titled sirloin...

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Reminds me of an old twilight zone episode- To Serve Man.
At the end the scientist screams out as he is herded aboard the ship, Its a Cookbook.

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[/quote]

Old James

Stephen Hawking also tells us that there are such things as 'singularities' that are actually blackholes. What is a supermassive blackhole, a 'large' singularity? Yet when a large star goes supernova, it produces a 'small' singularity? I question the man's logic, and quantum physics, based on common sense. A black hole is formed by gravity. A star implodes, reaches a certain mass, gravity takes effect, nothing escapes. Supermassive blackhole? A star implodes, gravity takes effect. Enough matter in its vicinity, it is attracted to the surface of the "object"...the object that has MASS, i.e. the imploded star of sufficient density to let nothing escape within its event horizon, and becomes bigger, attaining MORE mass and MORE gravity, allowing it to become a supermassive blachole. In essence, a singularity has no definitive mass...that limits its gravitational effect.
Well, f#ck me. The Japanese were right with Godzilla. Size does matter.

Imagine you have a bag of marbles, and crush them. You get marble dust. If you crush it further, the space between the marble dust gets smaller. If you keep going, at some point you will collapse the electrons around the nucleus with the protons inside of the nucleus, forming a bag of neutrons, which takes up vastly less space than the original bag of marbles.

If you crush it further, you eventually remove all the space between the particles, hence pure mass with infinite density. In other words, you now have a single particle. M theory suggests that there are 11 dimensions. It is the first theory to tie all 5 of the string theories together, with the addition of that 11'th dimension.

It is like space turned in on itself, leaving only gravity in the 4 dimensions we are familiar with. With that infinite density, the gravity is huge, and pulls surrounding objects into it, making them into the single object, but with the added mass, comes added gravity. Since light is both a particle and a wave, it is caught in the gravity, and it's particle form becomes part of the inword turned space.

These things can get massive enough to gobble galaxies. There is a supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. We know this because there is an area where we see nothing, but objects orbit it at extreme speeds.

A black hole is not completely black. There are matter/antimatter reactions in the event horizon, and sometimes a particle escapes. This is Hawking radiation. Once a black hole has consumed everything around it, the Hawking radiation will eventually evaporate the black hole.

M theory suggests that the universe was like two sheets on parallel close lines blowing in the wind. The two sheets touch eachother not at a single point, but at several points in a ripple. The points where they touch are deformed, and change shape. If two membranes that existed in 11 dimentions collided in a similar way, the result is the wave of a universe we see today.

This explains why the universe is not evenly distributed, but is in clumps, and bigger clumps, with huge voids scattered around. It is like the points of contact changed frequency, and became visible in our 4 dimentions. When a black hole evaporates, what flies out, becomes part of the original sheet, at the same frequency the sheet is fluttering at. Back to 11 dimentions.

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

I still just can't subscribe to that theory Steve. As far as i know, Hawking radiation is a theory. I've read where BHoles have been measured and studied, and it was thought that measurable results on decay could be obtained .... and none were. Not sure if it was in Cosmos magazine or elsewhere. But i remember that study. Just seems odd also that "radiation" can evaporate an object of infinite mass and density. Evaporate it into what? Pixie dust?
I'm a firm believer in a blackhole having a size and a definite mass. Kind of hard for event horizons on small BHoles and large BHoles to be different if they are both just "objects of infinite mass and density".
A supergiant goes nova, produces what? A one size fits all BHole? Does it have infinite mass and density the same as a powerhouse at the center of galaxies? No, it just has the mass that was not ejected in the Supernova.
Still trying to understand ;)

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Also, to reply to the original post Has Stephen Hawking got a team of monkeys working around the clock to come up with the "raid and move on" theory? I think the original 'V' series came up with that 20-25 years ago. 'Signs' more recently.

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I still just can't subscribe to that theory Steve. As far as i know, Hawking radiation is a theory. I've read where BHoles have been measured and studied, and it was thought that measurable results on decay could be obtained .... and none were. Not sure if it was in Cosmos magazine or elsewhere. But i remember that study.

Where would a black hole be that can be measured in such a way?

Just seems odd also that "radiation" can evaporate an object of infinite mass and density.

Not infinite mass, just (supposedly) infinite density. A black hole "only" contains the mass of the original star and what it as accumulated since its creation.

Evaporate it into what? Pixie dust?

Energy

I'm a firm believer in a blackhole having a size and a definite mass.

The event horizon has a definite size and the object has a definite mass (see above).

Kind of hard for event horizons on small BHoles and large BHoles to be different if they are both just "objects of infinite mass and density".

No infinite mass.

A supergiant goes nova, produces what? A one size fits all BHole? Does it have infinite mass and density the same as a powerhouse at the center of galaxies? No, it just has the mass that was not ejected in the Supernova.

That's exactly what evereryone says about black holes.

Gruß,
Gundolf

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours

As i said, i can't remember where i saw the article. But apparently there is a blachole in a binary system with a neutron star or something similar. The blackhole or the star was detectable, but the other not. Detectable by it's wobble. So it was known there was a companion. The mass could be detected by the slighest slowing or lack of wobble or soemthing to that effect, and could be detected theoretically in a short space of time if Hawking radiation was eating the blackhole. And nothing was detected. I'm off to try and find that damn article.

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That was a correct explanation by Gundolf. I will be able to elaborate more this evening when I get home, but you can think of a black hole as something that is only partly in the 4 dimensions we are familiar with. The rest apparantly has zero size, and may be ripples in other dimentions.

Imagine a magnet behind a steel wall with a hole in it. As the hole shrinks, it gets harder to see the magnet behind it, and if the hole shrinks to zero size, you can't see the magnet because it is hidden, but things will still stick to the steel that the magnet is behind. With a black hole, the mass is still there, but not in a way we can see it.

Many of the other dimensions are small and turned in on eachother, and may only exist for short periods of time. If you think of that sheet rippling in the wind, and something comes in contact with it, that deflects the ripple. With M theory, the location that changed ripple frequency is still part of the bigger sheet, and about 10 to the 100'th years from now ( 10 to the 100'th is a google) by Hawking radiation, the once dense black hole, will in effect return to the same frequency on the sheet that it was before two sheets collided, or a bend in one sheet is actually what seems to be two sheets.

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

As was correctly pointed out to me, 10 to the 100'th is a googol, not a google. My mistake.

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

As i said, i can't remember where i saw the article. But apparently there is a blackhole in a binary system with a neutron star or something similar. The blackhole or the star was detectable, but the other not. Detectable by it's wobble. So it was known there was a companion. The mass could be detected by the slighest slowing or lack of wobble or soemthing to that effect, and could be detected theoretically in a short space of time if Hawking radiation was eating the blackhole. And nothing was detected...

As far as I remember, the Hawking radiation is inversely proportional to the mass of a black hole. So, to see a mass reduction at a black hole with the mass of a star, you'll probably have to observe for a googol of years.

Gruß,
Gundolf